Category: About A Dozen Years Ago…

Poor, Suffering Me

In the About a Dozen Years Ago series… 

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about “poor.”

Those poor kids in Aleppo. Especially the economically poor.

The poor people in this video by (the incomparable) Wilbur Sargunaraj.

But this isn’t really going to be a post about those people. No. For, these days, I am the Great Sufferer. At least that’s what my feelings tell me. The days of being comfortably ensconced within organizational payroll tick down as all thoughts about “the poor” become suddenly about me. (Though it must be noted that up to this point my lidded panic has only the theoretical to engage—nothing has happened.) Still, most days I cannot shake this macabre pall of apprehension weighing down my mind: “Provision” or “More suffering”?  What lies ahead?

But if I can’t trust him now, what was I trusting in before? Salary, benefits, and investments, apparently? What else would explain this unrest?

As to those everywhere worse off than me (and goodness, the planetary percentage is staggering) I find that for the most part their suffering doesn’t do a thing in regards to lessening my sense of mine. Sure, it might make me more grateful (especially this week), but as to making my suffering feel like “not suffering”? Almost never.

If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he himself will cry out and not be answered.

-Proverbs 21:13

 

Rich and poor have this in common. The Lord is the maker of them all.

-Proverbs 22: 2

Leafing through old journals today, I came across an entry reflecting on both of those verses. The entry (from today’s date a dozen years ago, 2004—still in language school and all of China still ahead of us) also included:

Lord, I want to commit to always having packages of food in the car when we go downtown. We—I—have no idea how to respond to the poor because they’ve always been so conveniently removed from my life. I prayed with Tammy last night that you teach us and show us how.

As I recall, dry noodles, maybe crackers, sometimes meat sticks.

Apparently you’ll have to seek out grander blogs than this for ideas about engaging global social issues.

I’ve got passing out ramen on the streets of Xi’an 12 years ago.

Not exactly blipping the philanthropic radar. But, on the other hand, eyes and ears were opening when before they’d been shut. Perhaps the greatest blessing to be found in suffering is in sharing suffering. Even now, I can picture some of those individuals (and others throughout our years in China). Even today, remembering that personal participation in sharing theirs, my suffering diminishes.

How will you initiate sharing in someone’s suffering today?

Handwriting Defended.Then Diminished.

Does anybody write on paper anymore?

I do. Most mornings. My usual: “Good morning, Lord,” followed by journaling followed by comments on whatever Scripture I’m reading that day.

Today I was done journaling after 4 lines. Then (the Book of Revelation has never exactly been my favorite place for devotions) my written comments about Revelation 8 were not much longer. 

Except they started a train of thought that went on for 7 pages.

When’s the last time you hand-wrote seven college-ruled pages’ worth?

About a dozen years ago, I tried to switch over from handwritten devo notes to digital ones. We’d just moved to China for the first time, and I’d discovered that the notebook paper I’d been journaling on since I was 18* was nowhere to be purchased.

I hated digital journaling. I gave up after less than a month. Too much of the rest of my life was digital. So since that time I have either brought paper in myself or had others bring it to me from the States.

Here’s the other weird thing I noticed this morning [it happened only because I did a rare immediate re-read because Tammy, who once in a while does, had asked to read, and so I went back to remember all I’d written about]: I observed that when writing on paper, I never correct myself.

Weird. I can write on and on and when I’m done, if I go back and read it, I don’t care to change anything. Whereas that never happens when typing. I can’t so much as write an email without editing it thrice, plus.

But I was soon to discover––though I’d thought these were the reasons––it was not the paper, and not the handwriting that made the difference.

No. Because I proceeded to also wrote this blog entry out by hand. As an experiment. (That and Tammy had my laptop in a coffee shop taking some online course.) And, lo and behold, I did not proceed to embark on some no-need-to-edit stream-of-consciousness piece. Far from it, my paper (pictured above) was full of cross-outs. Carrots for inserted words. Whole paragraph insertions. Then, after transposing it here, it changed so much it’s hardly the same document anymore.

So…if it’s not using paper that makes for un-edited writing, what is it? If it’s not the handwriting, what is it?

It’s the audience.

The audience. I guess that means––and this can only be good news––you’re not God. God is the only one I can write to without having to constantly adjust for clarity. Without repeatedly analyzing how I might more thoroughly impress him.

Writing to him happens on a level that writing to anyone else cannot go.

Do you ever write him, friend?

If that’s not your particular habit, why not take today and do your own experiment? Who knows what you might learn (don’t expect he’s going to learn anything) in your own 7 pages? I’ll heartily recommend notebook paper and a pen––they do give the brain that little bit of extra think-time as the hand catches up––but less so than I would have yesterday. For they’re not what matter the most.

It’s the audience.

Happy letter-writing.

 

 

*gotta credit that 8½”x11″ recommendation to you, Mrs. Stimmel––freshman year at Crown College.

What Are You Driving At, Anyway?

WHOOSH. Woosh. Woosh. WHOOSH whoosh whoosh whoosh WHOOSH tinkle clatter Crash.

The scene in my rearview mirror.

Somehow I’d ended up down a lane clearly not meant for driving. One second it was a road, the next it was outdoor cafés. Fancy umbrella-ed tables with silverware and wine glasses.

My wife and I are traveling in Italy right now. It’s our 20th wedding anniversary, and that’s the only reason a whole week went by last week with no updates to this blog (for the first time––not likely the last). It has been a special privilege indeed to enjoy a vacation without kids (thanks to my folks and Ruth, the kids’ Xi’an auntie). At the moment I’m typing on a train somewhere between Florence and Venice, which is just about as lovely as it sounds.

For three days we had a rental car, which we took from Rome to the Tuscan countryside to the sea and then back to Florence. While in the charming city of Siena, we found ourselves between ancient stone buildings on an ancient stone street: lots of people but no cars. Except ours. The people were huddled around their guides, or looking at maps or in our windows as we crept through their midst. The shops were selling gelato and postcards and trinkets. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a way out, and the road wound ever downwards, everything in the bowl funneling us to old city Centro. Every time I tried a turn, it seemed to be a road that was only more inappropriate.

Finally, the warning signs informed me the next pass between stone was only 2.0 meters. I longed for a digital option where the sign told me how wide my car was. At last, around the next bend there was a teeny garbage truck, a handicap parking space, and “P” signs. I wasn’t crazy. “Parking” up ahead. We emerged, blinking, into a large open square surrounded by churches. I saw the green-and-white-striped marble monstrosity on a postcard later.

Off to the side was a pile of compact cars like ours. I pulled up to the bumper of the last one in a row, the final “space” they’d formed in between the two rows of real spaces. At last I felt lucky, and we got out ready to walk around a bit.

I noticed a lady in a nametag watching us. She wasn’t wearing any kind of uniform, but she came towards us a few steps to scrutinize my license plate. “Blah blah blah blassio?” she asked in what I assume was perfect Italiano. “Um…no?” I replied in flawless English.

Thankfully she spoke English, too, and she kindly told me that not only was this resident parking only, but that driving within the city walls of all the cities in the whole region was illegal. Only residents and those with hotel reservations inside the wall.

“Oh.”

“There are cameras everywhere; they will put a €150 fine on the credit card connected to this rental car.”

Oh, my. This wasn’t even my first violation, then. Tickets surpassing our restaurant bills for two weeks was not my idea of a priceless vacation. We thanked her for the information and hightailed it out of there.

That’s when the WHOOSH story came back to me. The WHOOSH story didn’t happen on this trip. But the WHOOSH (an umbrella around a restaurant table spinning and spinning until it fell) story did happen in Italy. I’ve been here once before. For one night. 1994. One year before getting married. Only that time while driving, I’d found myself so deep into old stone roads that I’d left them altogether with only restaurants as far as the eye could see. Plus, that time it hadn’t been a Fiat 500C I’d been driving, it had been a diesel camping van. Six-sleeper.

Like on the current trip, then I had long been stressfully looking for an escape route. At the moment of my umbrella disaster, I’d actually judged the space wide enough, but…I’d forgotten about the double bed cannister above, extending out wider than the driver’s cab. That’s what swiped the umbrella.

It was bad enough to see a couple of Italian waiters running out into the street waving their arms and shouting, even though I got out and even though they told me not to worry. It was far worse, 100 meters later when the road truly became impassable, to have to throw the camper into reverse and go by them again backwards while they covered their mouths in a weak attempt to conceal their laughing.

Did the “beep beep beep” that day really sound like “I.Di.Ot” or is that just my memory?

Here’s what I will say: if those ticket violations from this trip really do show up on my visa card? For my next trip to Italy (which, if things follow the current pattern, I guess will fall in 2036) I’ll stick to trains.