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reflections upon leaving wheaton


Last July at Wheaton I had my first exposure to “ELIC people”; I hadn’t yet been overseas or met my teammates, but at Wheaton I spent a month in class with a group of ELIC teachers who had mostly all been overseas for a year or more. My initial impression of the group was that they were a little weird. A lot of them had… strong personalities. I got along with them, and made friends; but sometimes I secretly wondered if these people went overseas because they didn’t fit in in America.

I had completely forgotten these initial impressions of ELIC-ers and happily went off to Wheaton this summer for my second round of summer classes. I immediately felt completely at home amongst my classmates; we had all experienced similar things living in Asia for the past year and we all needed and appreciated the community that we had at Wheaton.

Then I heard a funny story that jogged my memory. Sally told me that when her friend was being trained to work in the Wheaton bookstore for the summer, her boss told her, “Watch out for those ELIC folk. They’re a little kooky.”

And suddenly I remembered that they ARE a little kooky. Excuse me, we are a little kooky. Having lived overseas, where we most definitely did not fit in, we sometimes forget that we are supposed to try to fit in here. We forget that Americans generally don’t wear the same clothes three days in a row. We have become a little more “polychronic” - meaning, we don’t stress about time or schedules or deadlines. We’ve learned to be ridiculously flexible.
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One afternoon at Wheaton I was reading on the back step of my apartment building when I saw and heard an explosion in the garage of a house across the street. I’m not built for emergencies; I sat frozen for several seconds trying to figure out what had happened and if what I heard was laughter or screams. Then I bolted inside and knocked on Greg and Bethany’s door. “I think there was an explosion across the street,” I said, and Greg shot across the street while Bethany and I called Ginger, a nurse. Then all of us crossed the street, where Greg was talking on the phone with 911 . A girl about my age sat on the ground, all her skin singed black and purple, crying in broken English, “Oh my God, I am burning alive…”

Her father, torso burned red, was crying in some eastern European language, and her sister, the only one unharmed, couldn’t get out the English to explain what had happened. We began pouring water on the burn victims and cutting their clothes off.

Since that day, I’ve been more sensitive to violence in movies and on tv, especially violence that involves fire or explosions. But really, there’s just one recurring thought that I have about it all, and it has to do with the way we respond to crisis situations. I was tongue-tied and paralyzed - that was my response. The immigrants - who did know some English - couldn’t muster enough of their second language to explain what had happened. Their emotions came out in their first language. When we face a crisis situation, we naturally speak - perhaps, can only speak -in our first language. That’s the thought I keep having. And related to that, what is my “first language”? I think it should be prayer. But I think it might be fear.

beware: stream of consciousness below


When Karis and I were backpacking through Europe, we used to tell each other daily to remember to “live intensely”. And then we would go get another cappuccino, sit and read books and people-watch all afternoon. But somehow, that really was living intensely.

I’m not sure how that relates to what I want to say - but then I’m not sure what it is that I want to say. Hopefully before I get to the end I’ll figure that out.

Coming home to America this summer, I have in some ways been more critical of my nation than ever before. At the same time though, I have loved America more intensely than I thought possible. Every day I am amazed by the richness - not just the material richness, but also the green beauty and the resources and the wealth of literature and art and education - that surrounds me. I adore this country and our freedoms.

At this point you should go turn on Rich Mullins’ song “Here in America,” followed by “Land of my Sojourn”.

One of the things I have loved about America this summer has been the diversity. Yesterday in the park I heard at least three different languages being spoken. I saw people of a hundred ethnic backgrounds and of all shapes and sizes. It was a cliché, a taken for granted obvious fact to me before I lived in Vietnam, that America was the “melting pot,” or, as we like to say now, the “tossed salad”. But I didn‘t really understand that ethnic diversity within one country is a new phenomenon, and not a common one. Living in Vietnam taught me to notice and appreciate diversity because Vietnam (discounting the minority tribes) is a monoculture, where nationality and ethnicity are one and the same. Just as it had never occurred to me that a nation might NOT be ethnically diverse, my students cannot comprehend the idea that Americans can be all colors.

I never thought that diversity would be something that I would appreciate so much. Diversity is a byword of liberal academicians, and in my discipline, English Literature, the plea for diversity has led to the breakdown of the western canon. Diversity in the canon was a good idea that was taken to ridiculous extremes.

But now, I realize how much I treasure our diversity in America. There is in diversity a richness of insight and perspective that is truly valuable and worth the conflict that often accompanies it. Not to mention the pure beauty.

So, this weekend, in America, I was living intensely, which, as I am thinking about it, may simply mean that I was enjoying every moment of my life under the sun.

On Friday, by a curious string of events, I ended up committing to sell cds for a Midwestern singer-songwriter I’d never heard at her cd release party in Chicago. I was perfectly content to go alone to the show, but I mentioned it to a couple of people and they were intrigued and wanted to come. Well, word got out, and fifteen MA students came with me into the city. We went out for Ethiopian food (is it funny that a bunch of grad students who lived in asia all year wanted to go out for ethiopian food instead of hamburgers?) and then headed over to the club for the show. The venue had a great atmosphere, and my friends settled in around a dark wooden table while I hopped behind the merchandise counter. Anne Harris - an African-American classically-trained violinist who plays with a band and dances and sings while she plays - was on first, and it was an incredible performance. I couldn’t stop smiling, in part because she was just loving her music so much. Anne Heaton played next, and she was fun to listen to as well.

I’m not normally very self-analytical, but as I’ve thought about it, I think there are two reasons why I liked selling the cds that night. First, I like being in charge of something. It’s my firstborn child tendency. So I loved being in charge of the cds and the money. Second, I like interacting with people one on one much more than in large groups. Because I was alone behind the merchandise counter, my friends would come over one by one to chat with me. So I got to have a lot of good interactions without having to be in the big group dynamic. I guess there is also the fact that I had a great view of the show.

Saturday was lovely too - I spent all morning reading, and then all afternoon with Julie Whalen, my first college roommate, whom I haven’t seen since she got married last summer. And on Sunday I went to the Great Shepherd, and I loved the service - the liturgy, the songs, the teaching, and the breaking of the bread. I wish I had a home like that.

Sunday afternoon we went to Cantigny Park to hear a bluegrass band play, and then we walked through the gardens and the war memorials. What is more American than laying on a picnic blanket under the sun listening to old men play bluegrass?

I could go on - but I’m saying the same thing, the same thing I wrote about last week: gratitude. Every one of my days is so filled with beauty and blessing that I am overcome with gratitude in it, and I want to tell people every day how wonderful the gift of life is.

I’m almost done. Hang in there. I’m not making any linear logical points here, but you may have to deduct them for yourselves. I’m still thinking about what exactly it is that fills me with such joy -- and it is many things, from the greenness of the grass to the coldness of the drinks to the stacks of books in my native language. But one of the most important things has been community. I’m such an introspective individualist that I’m able to go for long periods of time without community. I was ok in Vietnam without the Body, without many close relationships. I wasn’t at all aware that I missed being with people who share a common foundation and culture and heritage with me. I was fine.

It’s been a surprising, eye-opening experience in the last six weeks or so, to recognize that so much of my joy is coming from being in meaningful relationships with the people around me. My life in the last few weeks especially has been a perfect balance of alone time, one on one time with people, and large group interaction, and I have suddenly realized that relationships can enrich my life so much, can fill me with such joy.

It will take time to deepen my relationships in Vietnam. It will take time because cross-cultural relationships are harder, there are so many kinds of communication obstacles that have to be overcome. But I’m committed afresh to relationships and community. Really, the more I study, and the more I live, the more convinced I become that interpersonal relationships are the key to change. I don’t mean to say that political lobbying or international government interactions (ahem, and wars) are pointless -- but they are incredibly complex, more than we realize. The dearest change occurs in one person at a time, and it occurs through relational interaction, not through logical proofs or scientific deduction or business contracts or bombs.

Maybe my ambitions (which are ever formless) are shrinking. Maybe I’m beginning to lose faith in the importance of trying to accomplish wide-scale changes, or in the importance of writing books or earning money or speaking to thousands. Maybe I just want to make it my ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind my own business and to work with my hands, so that my life can win the respect of those around me. Maybe.

Live intensely. OR, as we like to say, “Rage for a while. Then get gelato.” And give thanks.

on my bookshelf, in my cd player
Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
The Challenge of the Disciplined Life: Money, Sex, and Power - Richard Foster
Jewish Women in Historical Perspective - Ed. Judith Baskin
Girl Meets God - Lauren Winner (don't judge a book by its title, ok?)
The Book of Images - Rainer Maria Rilke

Transfiguration of Vincent - M. Ward
Ohio - Over the Rhine
Give In - Anne Heaton (I got it free last night)
Hymns Ancient and Modern (Passion)
soon...the mix cd that is in the mail from Katie...

musings from Wheaton
I’m using the culture shock excuse to explain away my seeming inability to focus my mind fully on my Wheaton coursework. I’m not doing quality work here; I’m turning in half-baked handwritten reflections instead of well-thought out typed papers. Why is that? Well, it occurred to me today that I can’t concentrate on my studies because my subconscious is very occupied processing other things. My journal is filled with entries that break off after a sentence and a half - I keep trying to write about this, about something, but I don’t have any words. When I put pen to paper, I find that my hand wants to make a point, and another, and to connect them with a line, and another; my hand wants to draw, not to write. My mind doesn’t have words yet, it only has abstractions, images, holistic things that I can’t break down with understanding yet.

But I don’t do images. And until words come, the two things I feel drawn towards are these: first, running. Normally in life, I don’t run. I can’t run for ten minutes without a pounding in my chest, nausea, shin splints, or a death wish. But when I run (and soon enough just walk) my mind has the freedom to process and think through or just disconnect altogether. There's a lovely path through some woods and then through downtown Wheaton that makes early morning runs actually begin to be appealing.

The second thing I am drawn to: I want to go to church. I just found out that an Anglican church a block away from my apartment has 5:45 prayer every day, and if I can work up the courage, I want to go there. I want to sit silently in a church and wait for God to bring some order to my mind, to clear the spiders out of my brain, to squeegee the windows of my soul. I want the rhythm of the liturgy to reshape my breathing.

These days are just so heart staggeringly and sometimes deceptively beautiful. Today was chilly and grey and everything here is clean and open and smells like freshly mown grass. I know why America is the promised land. It’s because the air smells like green.

The city of Wheaton is perfectly apple-pie middle america, and living here is like living on a movie set. I drive through neighborhoods with wide shady streets and beautiful houses, and I see neighborhood kids playing together and fathers on bike rides with children. I see moms and strollers, I see gardens, I see newlyweds repainting their house. I find yearnings in my heart that have rarely appeared there. I would like to have a family and a house that needs fresh paint and to go on bike rides in the summer. I would like to not be alone: to plant roots that can grow.

The life I’ve chosen for this season - or the life I’ve been called to - is a mobile life, and it leaves me restless, always wanting to be elsewhere.

No: I can’t blame my discontent on my mobility. I love my mobility, and, as the oft-quoted Augustine said, the heart is restless till it finds its rest in God. I need to practice resting in God. I need to learn to trust him, to trust that he fulfills all his promises and watches over his children. I need to trust him with the people in Vietnam and accept that I’m not supposed to be there now. I need to trust him with my future in Vietnam. I need to trust him with my future and my identity, both of which feel all in flux.

I’ve been painfully aware of at least two things since I returned to America. First, I’ve been increasingly conscious of my sinfulness: of my little faith, of my little love, of my little discipline, of my self-centeredness, of my insecurity. I am too passive and non-committal, too unwilling to subscribe wholly to the faith thing, too self-protective, too molded by others’ expectations of me.

And I’ve been flooded with gratitude. It is painful to see afresh how much I’ve been given. All my needs are supplied; and beyond that, even my wants are so easily attainable. I have parks and rivers and coffeeshops and cars and friends and cell phones and books and books and people and most of all family. I am nearly guilty with gratitude.

The words in my head:

i thank you God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes


(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-e.e. cummings

And

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with all the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

~ W. S. Merwin

This, what I am being so deeply impressed by, this, my sin and my gratitude: this is simply the gospel.

high places


I have a persistent headache. It’s nearly 11 pm on my last night in Vinh and I feel as if I’m already suffering from jet lag. Oh boy.

So I should go to bed. But I have a mysterious long-held belief in the importance of writing during transitions, even if one has nothing profound to say. I have nothing profound to say.

I have this thing for high places (and, to quell any christian humorists, I’m not talking about ancient Israel and idol worship -- oh, see what growing up in Sunday school does to a person? or do I blame Erlo?).

When I was a little girl, I used to climb on top of my chest of drawers and just sit there for a while. Years later, in Italy, I did it again, and when people came into the room and saw me sitting there with an empty wine bottle in hand, they thought I was drunk. Actually, I was getting a new perspective on life - thank you very much.

Summer after 10th grade. Our last morning in Haiti, Mollie and I somehow woke ourselves up before daybreak and climbed out the hotel window onto a low roof. There, eating dry cereal, we watched a very unspectacular sunrise. But, the beauty of the sunrise wasn’t really the point, not exactly; we had escaped “conventionality and the plague of the mundane“, which is a very important thing in the summer after 10th grade, even if pixie dust and feathers are no match for gravity and carpets and elephants will never be able to fly.

In college I liked to climb on top of Francis Hall. I’m pretty sure it was illegal, but, in my defense, I never saw any signs posted. Francis was an old building; my French classes were held there, and the parks and rec department was located there. At night, you could climb up the fire escape and a short iron ladder and sit on top of the building. From there you had a pretty good view of college station, as well as a view straight through the well-lit library windows next door. I would clamber up with a bag of m&m’s after a couple of hours at the library and be pensive and alone.

I live on the fifth and highest floor of an on-campus building at Vinh University. On the landing by the last set of stairs, there are some iron rungs stuck in the wall leading up to a small square hole in the roof, used by workmen for access. All year, I’ve been meaning to climb through the hole on the roof to see what can be seen. I haven’t, chiefly because there are usually students around during the hours when I’m awake, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the university would not look really favorably on me hanging out on the roof. “Unconventional” doesn’t really work here.

This afternoon I realized that the campus is completely dead during “nap time” and no one was going to see me. So I gave it a try - climbed up, flung the tin trap door open, and pulled myself up through the hole onto a small cement square of roof. I could see out, but no one could see me, because of the construction style of the roof. A perfect spot for sunbathing.

I returned to the roof tonight, after the last of my evening guests cleared out, to look at the stars. The moon was full this week, and is just barely waning now. Tonight it was big and yellow. Circling around from the moon, I can see the student hostel across the way; the lights of ben thuy bridge; the single light at the top of Quyet Mountain; the Phuong Dong hotel; the statue of Ho Chi Minh and the lights of Ho Chi Minh park; and darkness. There is summer lightning far in the distance, but the sky is mostly clear, and I can easily find the big dipper.

Stargazing is, contrary to what it might seem to be, an incredibly grounding activity. You can’t hold on to delusions of grandeur or self-importance when you’re laying flat on your back staring into the infinite distance above. You shrink down to your proper size. You remember who is in heaven and who is on earth and why your words should be few.

I haven’t taken enough time this year to look at the stars. I haven’t climbed on roofs often enough. Tonight I wanted to stretch out the moment, to expand time, so that I could just lay there in the cool wind and moonlight a little longer without it meaning that I was missing important hours of sleep.

And speaking of sleep…

Correction:
Our new teammate will be a 28 year old woman. This is definite - as definite as the last statement was. It feels like the universities are sports teams trading players.

I’m no artist. But every now and then I have this drive to work with my hands to create something. I believe it’s a basic human need. We are created in the image of our Father, and he is Creator; so, when we create, it’s not only natural, but it’s also spiritual.

Today I’ve been experimenting with different kinds of paper for creative ends. I’ve been soaking white, unlined paper in different substances to achieve a certain texture and color and age. It’s a fascinating, sensual process.

I hunch on the floor over the blue plastic basin, the rich aroma of black Trung Nguyen coffee steaming up and mixing with the heady fragrance of the fresh roses on the table. When I slide the first sheet of paper into the coffee, it absorbs the liquid slowly and unevenly. The fibers of the paper appear, unique on each sheet, like antique hidden maps, like fingerprints. I hang the soft, delicate, dripping paper to dry and begin the next sheet. Eventually the smell and color of the coffee works its way not only into the fibers of the paper, but into the pores of my skin, darkening the lines of my palms and the edges next to my nails. I swirl the basin, and the small amount of liquid rearranges itself; the grounds, the patterns formed, remind me of something a fortune teller would use to see the future. The paper doesn’t fit flat in the basin, and it scrunches, looking like a ridge of foothills with streams running through them. The gypsy with wizened brown skin and polished black eyes, with beads swinging and skirts flowing: There are yet many mountains to cross in your future.

I finished teaching my last two periods of the semester, came home, turned on Lauryn Hill, and started dancing.

Some very uninformative news
The third ELIC teacher who has been chosen to join me and Sandy next year is an unknown 22 year old male with no teaching experience. And that's all they could tell me just yet.
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Ok, I'll admit, I've been a little apprehensive about going home for the summer. I remember the reverse culture shock that I felt when I returned to the States after 5 months in Europe, and this summer the reverse culture shock will be much more drastic, I'm sure. But suddenly, today, I am completely ready to go home. I'm tired and dry and empty, and I'm especially tired of being a foreigner.
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This morning I had quite the experience. Well, let me begin at the beginning.

Yesterday morning I drove from Vinh to Cua Lo, the beach about 30 minutes outside of town. While I was driving there, a woman rode up next to me and said, "Where are you from? I want to practise my English with you." we had a fairly brief conversation and she invited me to stop at her house for something to drink. I politely declined, and she invited me to stop there the next day on my way back to Vinh. I murmered somthing noncomittal, nodding as she pointed to her house, and then zipped on down the road.

My retreat to the beach, which was actually an assignment for one of my Wheaton courses, was ok - I studied, reflected, wrote, etc., and ignored the shouts of "Tay! Tay!" {"foreigner" in Vietnamese} whereever I went. Before I went to bed, I asked the hotel proprieter to (as he usually does when I stay there)plug in my electric bike so it could rechare overnight.

This morning, about five km down the road from Cua Lo to Vinh, I realized that he in fact had NOT recharged my bike. I didn't have enough power to get to Vinh. But Vietnam is a small and friendly world, so I stopped at the house of the woman I had met on the road yesterday, and I recharged for an hour while we talked about English and family and Ho Chi Minh City and gardens. And I was off again. Until, three km outside of Vinh, when I ran out of juice again, and was going about 3 km/h. Suddenly two of my student friends showed up, took one look at me, and said, "Can we pull you?" For the final three km back to the university, I held Trung's hand tightly as their motorbike pulled me along. Perhaps illegal.

And that is how my 30 minute trip became 3 hours. And now I'm off to teach four periods. I may not update again for several weeks...