February.

  Two of my siblings share February as their birthday month, Lent commenced with Ash Wednesday, and Valentines Day fell serendipitously after this. Add on my favorite Great-Aunts Birthday and a friends fatal car accident, introspection and reflection help to frame questions about life and love, among other things.
  I remember exactly where I was standing that Wednesday in 2004 when my father called to tell me that Phil had died. I remember telling him that this was impossible and that, "I am sure he will get better - right?" It wasn't until I called my boss to ask for the evening off that the gravity of the event had buried its way into me. I could feel the finality - unalterable, fixed forever without an undo button. My poor sister's birthday came a day later suspending celebrations and trading them for tears. We have not forgotten.
  Aunt Erma's birthday was on the 10th. Phil died the 18th. Grace's birthday was on the 19th and Sam's on the 22nd. These, surrounding other events, more catholic in nature - Lent and Valentines Day. This year, I celebrated Lent with our Anglican community in the Old City and found the phrase, "Repent and believe the Gospel" as it was juxtaposed to, "From dust you came into the world, to dust you shall return" resonating in my ears for some time. This, due to sobering realization that life is terribly transient - pent up in a symbol, ash - set in contrast to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
  These heavy thoughts were not alleviated the next day. Valentines Day followed in sequence bringing a number of images to mind, good and bad. It reminds me of Dad and Mom sharing little gifts. I remember that my sister and I set up a little candle light dinner. We set up a little card table and dressed up in our finest, just a simple and probably silly-looking thing.
   Truth is, holidays and memorials are powerful. Perhaps its their ability to bring pause to life or the way they pressure you into a relative kind of introspection. In the end we evaluate our current relationships or connectedness to God and people. As for me, Psalm 73 has been on my mind a lot recently:

Whom have I in heaven but you?

And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;

you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.

But for me it is good to be near God;

I have made the Lord GOD my refuge,

that I may tell of all your works.

(Psalm 73:25-28 ESV)

   As for the everyday life, February was full up with new visitors and new opportunities alongside of responsibilities that I have already taken on. New students arrived at JUC a bit before the month started and programs and classes have been a part of their first month. For me, it has been incredibly meaningful to be a part of the cycles here. The availability of thesis materials, church, campus work, the Olive Branch Institute (OBI), etc. are themselves the reasons why I came back to Israel.
   That said, my schedule has a pretty constant run with a mix of different kinds of interruptions. My mornings are devoted to my thesis and my afternoons to work on campus. After work, depending on the day, I have church, teaching responsibilities for the OBI, soccer and more time for my paper; this, between tours, private and for the OBI.
  Trips 'round with groups remind me that this small stretch of real estate is extraordinarily diverse from the Negev to the Galilee; from mountains to desert plains; from Hermon's heights to Dead Sea lows. Its striking how life runs along a similar tenor. Fully engaged we encounter joy and heartache; whether as a result of love and betrayal or community and disenfranchisement. Life contains the ups and downs of journey... a journey that, once started, "will be carried on to completion".

 “The Lord bless you and keep you;

  The Lord make His face shine upon you,

And be gracious to you;

  The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,

And give you peace.”

Know that I am ever grateful for your prayers and support.
Love,
Seth

January...

    January emerged in spite of media-driven eschatological misrepresentations of Mayan culture. "End of the world" prophecies and media marketed a notion that resonates internally with so many people - a strange expectancy that this whole cycle could mysteriously and imminently end. Sure, different variations spell a different end-date or end-drama, regardless, endings have a curious way of reminding us all that we are human - transient and short-lived. 

   This, I don't think, is such a terrible thing. And, its seems to me, this is what makes January so meaningful for people. A stretch of so many failures and inconsistencies meets a pause in apathy or downward spiral. It follows that new resolutions fit the occasion for people counting time together from beginning to end. Out with the old, in with new sentimentality runs the holiday and gives people a opportunity to try again. I am not arguing that this is a helpful cycle... more just suggesting this is why people have grand celebrations 'round New Years Eve.

   My new year started in a rather anti-climatic way because on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem there wasn't a massive kind of celebration on; big enough to hear a small crowd count off 2012's last seconds, but that's about all. It's not that folks there are acquainted with the Gregorian calender, for all practical purposes most folks use it concurrently with two other civil calenders, one Jewish, one Muslim, respectively. Maybe it's just that the Western impression hasn't holey swallowed up Middle Eastern schematics and all that includes or overlooks.

   Students arrived on campus for their short-term program on December 31, so I had a few chores before I could leave campus that evening. Immediately into the swing of short-term, our small JUC staff manned different responsibilities to make sure things went off according to plan. My twenty hours I owe the school were used up in these ways, so I now have a lot of catch up work to do in the garden, but so it goes. 

   Inside the reigns of JUC responsibilities,  I had to manage and care for two private tours: one set up through the school, the other through the Olive Branch Institute (OBI). This occupied a good portion of two separate weeks. You can imagine the rush, given the need to keep up with my commitment to the school and then to tailor two tours: a three-day and a four-day. 

      All said and done, I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to teach and guide. Israel is an incomparable classroom dynamic and one I will miss when I leave. While both groups were full up with a wide age-gap, 50 years or something, it was helpful to see how different folks processed similar information. It was also helpful to test the depth of my knowledge, here. Even more, tours take folks from wildly different backgrounds and enable them to engage a setting that they typically know about, but one they have never seen before. To see lights come on and connections made as my students interface a familiar text with an unfamiliar context, this is what makes teaching fun. Its as if their entire frame of reference resurrects into something more realistic - a move from flannel-graph to a real physical setting... fun to watch, meaningful to be apart of.

   The month, as it was, ran-on according to schedule with a lovely interruption in the sequence. January 9th, it  began to snow. It continued into the tenth and by the time morning came around the whole city was covered in white. They say, it snows here once every three years. It snowed a little last year so I didn't think that it would happen again, but it did! And it came down heavy. Everything closed and people found ways to enjoy the snow. Random snowball fights and snowmen littered Jerusalem. I built my own snowman to stand a bit taller than myself. It was amazing. Its one thing to see snow in the states, but its quiet another thing when you can stand in approximately the same location as biblical writers and think about impact of the use of snow in metaphor and simile -  the way its referenced to describe leprosy or a clean heart. 

  Short-term students left campus January 19th, give or take, and then we began immediate preparations for the long-term semester. Only a few days in, the campus is a bit quieter than normal having only thirty JUCers on campus; but its a lovely mix of folks intentional in trying to make sense of modern and ancient histories. This, to better appreciate God's word. 

   I have found myself caught between activities with a need to focus more intentionally on my paper. Work requires quite a lot of attention, but I am thankful that this is how God has chosen to provide for me while I am here. Your prayers are warmly appreciated as I engage the semester looking to finish work I have started and to find a path after I am done. The month has had its mysterious successes and foibles, all which have helped me trust that everyday God fashions new mercies and new opportunities to discover what is the impact of Christ's work. May you be encouraged to live more earnestly and resolutely until He comes again. Thank you for your prayers and support.

Love, 

Seth

December and Christmas

            December began with endings. JUC finished its term in early December this year. Students and friends trickled away for home and country. Two fellow grads and I were given the task to care for campus while the rest of the staff went on holiday leave; so by the middle of Hanukkah the campus was empty and quiet, save three.

Plenty of chores and holiday activities kept us all quite busy as we continued with our own respective communities off campus. I have been doing a bit of preparation for the Olive Branch Institute's Israel tours that I have scheduled for January while trying to gain momentum on my school work.

It shouldn't be too surprising that the holiday allows for more opportunities to get away from the routine. The city, after all, has been full-up with celebrations. Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of the long-lasting oil; this, a provisional symbol of God's approval with the Maccabees' revolt. During this Festival of Lights, each new day is begun by lighting another candle. This year Hanukkah started December 8th and lasted until the night of the 16th. 

Christmas has a similar intrigue; secular and religious folks celebrate, albeit in their own way. The overlap, Christian and Jewish, secular and religious, spills into the streets and lights flicker all over the city express with connections to one of two holidays.

For us also, this time of year ushers in the best of spirits. It’s familial and meaningful, colorful and bright. The holiday has all but usurped the month, too. We wish our days faster, prepare with ornaments and symbols, buy and write in preparation for a brilliant celebration. 

And celebration ought to be thick with luster because celebration is a really good thing; a day or season to venerate important sacrifices and memories. However, isn't it our tendency to embellish and recreate? Andrew Peterson’ song “Labor of Love” starts out, “It was not a silent night, there was blood on the ground.” This is a stark kind of realism that routes-off fantasy away from incessant recreations. Our tendency, I think, is to mythologize and embellish until all that are left are the narrative’s names and places - to celebrate silly things and trivialize the more important bits.

A lot could be said to help Westerners filter out images of Motel 6-no vacancy and wooden stables and mangers because the stories greatness, after all, is not in what is made up about it (I never did like flannel-graph), but it is in what is so mysteriously real. Here, the raw moments that accompany the human experience are shrouded in God.

God humbles Himself by restraint and imposed limitation – placing His heir in a woman’s womb. She has to travel an awfully uncomfortable journey in and out of rain all for government dues; and this only to find their family's accommodations a bit less kind, you might say. 

This birth and His life will be terribly normal. Of course, this is what is so exceptional. He suffers the silliness of learning; learning to eat, speak, and walk with all the imposed ignorance of an infant. A story of common cycles envelopes His life. And then, after having succumbed to something so far below Him, He establishes his ministry restraining so much in his own attempt to help the world see that He is Emmanuel. This harsh reality takes on greater terrors when He is met with rejection and curse. That it, though. He offers Himself up… according to plan... at the right time. 

 This, after all, was what Jesus said to Pilate, essentially, “I was born for this!” We celebrate, now, the undoing of every dark thing, venerated in the connection this celebration has with His life lived on our behalf and His death died in our place, vindicated by an approving Father who raised Him from the dead. Everything sad is going to come untrue. Is not this what Christmas is all about, anyway?

Hope yours is lovely and meaningful - Merry Christmas!

Seth Hague

November Reflections...

November marries autumn and Thanksgiving; football and turkeys; pumpkin pie and people. The Hague and Augsburger clan stitch birthdays, Thanksgiving, black-Friday shopping and Christmas all into one. It’s the season of giving and going, rest and reprieve. And somehow we manage to craz-ify it, filling the holiday with acrobatics, baseball injuries and music, not to mention our staple hand-and-foot tournaments.

Last year these things changed. It’s the inevitable journeys end that comes to us whether we like it or not. The end always comes - hopefully birthing something that remembers and cherishes the past just as it embarks on its own new voyage. Last year, Aunt Erma and Jean left this life for another. My brother Samuel married two weeks later. These events were the get-togethers that marked our holiday, so it was, therefore, more tight-knit and sober filled with tears and laughter surrounding different memories: one final and one beginning.

I have been in Jerusalem two months this time around. School has just finished its term and students are trickling out catching their respective flights home. I have been leading tours for the OBI and am tending the JUC garden, this all falling under the priority to get my thesis done. Though my responsibilities keep me rather busy, I have taken time to arrest some of my holiday reflections and interface them with this estranged and lovely Jerusalem context; this to offer a few update-anecdotes and wish you a Merry Christmas.   

As you know, Jerusalem has never been free of drama. November’s included Gazian rockets and return fire, people coming and going, and now a mishap-pole incident. I am sure in a donkey-driven world more than one Jerusalemite has fallen off or, in my case, ran right into something hard and stable. I will be well, soon enough. Thanksgiving football has provided an extra measure of continued entertainment for those who have seen the video of my little accident.

Even more, conflict and sojourning seem to characterize Jerusalem from the time of Abraham and Melchizedek, Joshua and Adonizedek to the lives of Zerubbabel and the returnees during the Persian period through to Jesus and the Romans, and so on and so forth. Remember, history highlights happenings and conflict sells; so it may take a bit of added effort to gain a better sense of what is really going on. In any case, every age knew folks who journeyed ‘round like strangers in a foreign land and I feel as if I can identify.

The long drives and short stays have become a normal part of my narrative. Though I have found a temporary home here, soon enough it will be time to move on. So it’s actually quite a marvel that I have now spent over three years in Israel. Though I have moved from place to place, Israel has taken on a sense of familiarity - the people and places. For this I am becoming more and more thankful. 

Just last week, as I toured in the north I found that every site offered more perspective than my previous visits. Even walking ‘round Jerusalem, trekking with a colleague I found things I had not seen before and appreciated things that I had before resented whether it be Egyptian building features at the Garden tomb or the Jerusalem rain. Amazing what you see when your eyes are open or receptive.

This is summarized well in a parable told by David Foster Wallace. He tells a story about three fish. An older fish said in passing to two younger fish “How’s the water?” The younger fish were perplexed by the question because they had no ideal what water was. Wallace’s point is so obvious and perceptive. Their whole lives were inundated with a reality that they had never taken time to appreciate.

It is high time that we begin paying better attention to the life-situation in which we have been called to live. While I find it particularly remarkable that God has chosen to work with a bunch of boneheads i.e. Isaac, Samson and Peter, it seems to me that he energizes us to engage our generation - living in this world as bright lights thoroughly equipped for every good work. We must have answers that are Gospel-informed. Answers for how to engage with situations that are right in front of us, whether it be couple-drama or country-drama. Forgiveness is a power won by the Christ's cross. This after all is why Jesus came.

I do hope that your Christmas Holiday is filled with wonder and blessing. I hope, too, that this Advent season would awaken your numbness and quicken your spirit. 

Blessings from Jerusalem,

Seth