Learning to See

During this time of readjustment to the US, I have learned the value of silence.  I've learned the value of slowing down, of reading the Bible slowly and reflectively, of letting God speak to me.  One of the hardest things for me about living in China was the constant noise and chaos.  Sometimes it was fun but often overwhelming.  Now I am in a phase of my life where I crave silence.  Silence helps me to hear and it helps me to see.

Last week I went to a birding class at the Portland Audubon Society.  It was a basic class on identifying birds.  The basic message?  Stand still and look. Look for shape, look for marking, look for size.  We looked at guide books, identified similar birds by pictures.  On Sunday, a Rufous Towhee came to my feeder.  How did I know it wasn't a strangely marked robin?  By looking.  By seeing.  Today a peregrine landed on our fence.  How did I know?  By looking, by seeing, by checking the guidebook.

Wendell Berry says this.

How to Be a Poet.

i   

Make a place to sit down.   

Sit down. Be quiet.   

You must depend upon   

affection, reading, knowledge,   

skill—more of each   

than you have—inspiration,   

work, growing older, patience,   

for patience joins time   

to eternity. Any readers   

who like your poems,   

doubt their judgment.   

ii   

Breathe with unconditional breath   

the unconditioned air.   

Shun electric wire.   

Communicate slowly. Live   

a three-dimensioned life;   

stay away from screens.   

Stay away from anything   

that obscures the place it is in.   

There are no unsacred places;   

there are only sacred places   

and desecrated places.   

iii   

Accept what comes from silence.   

Make the best you can of it.   

Of the little words that come   

out of the silence, like prayers   

prayed back to the one who prays,   

make a poem that does not disturb   

the silence from which it came.

On Ash Wednesday, I went to an all day reflective retreat.  During a time of individual silence, I looked out of the chapel window and saw this.

Can you see it?  Look closely.  There is a scrub jay hidden in those bushes.  I spent quite a bit of time watching him fly in and out of that bush. Fascinating.

As I walked on the grounds of the retreat center, I saw the stations of the cross.  I am not normally drawn to stations of the cross but these were quite lovely in their simplicity.

The women at the cross.  

This year, I am trying to have a quiet and reflective Lent.  I am taking things out so that God can put what I need in.  I am reading the gospel of John with its beautiful words and imagery slowly.  Phrases like "Bread of Life, Living Water" are staying in my mind.  I've put several things around our home to remind us of this dark season.

A cross made of rose thorns and tied with purple and black ribbon.

Seven candles for the seven weeks of Lent.  Each week, we light one less until we reach Maundy Thursday. We have less and less light as we enter  further into the darkness of Lent.

Three purple candles for the three days between Maundy Thursday and Easter.

I've often felt a loss when Easter came and I hadn't spent time really preparing and thinking.  This year, I hope it's different, as I take time to slow down and to really see.

More poetry and a lovely piece on memorizing by heart.

Memorizing by Heart  An interview with a new program in Great Great Britain where they are wanting to memorize by heart, not by rote.



This is so lovely I may have to memorize it.



Happiness

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine. 

Jane Kenyon

Three poems about death.

These are three lovely poems with really contrasting attitudes about death.  Jane Kenyon is almost welcoming death (in the image of evening) as a gentle friend. I believe that she was fighting cancer when she wrote these poems.

Dylan Thomas was a fighter and he fights death in his poem.  I have a cd of him reading "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" and it is fierce.

Christina Rossetti has a very accepting attitude towards death.  She is very matter-of-fact and practical in her poem.

The differences in images and attitudes fascinate me.

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving

up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come. 

Jane Kenyon

Do not go Gentle into that Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

Dylan Thomas

When I am dead, my dearest.

When I am dead, my dearest, 
Sing no sad songs for me; 
Plant thou no roses at my head, 
Nor shady cypress tree: 
Be the green grass above me 
With showers and dewdrops wet; 
And if thou wilt, remember, 
And if thou wilt, forget. 

I shall not see the shadows, 
I shall not feel the rain; 
I shall not hear the nightingale 
Sing on, as if in pain: 
And dreaming through the twilight 
That doth not rise nor set, 
Haply I may remember, 
And haply may forget.

Christina Rosetti

What Christmas looked like this year.

No snow, no cold, no sweet little boy.
But he got some new pajamas in a Christmas box from us!

He looks pretty happy, doesn't he?  He is thriving as he waits for his forever family.

New traditions in a new place.

Sweet children in our new church singing their hearts out..especially this one little sweet girl.  The boys?  Not so much.  They had the total deer in the headlights look.

Some of the Evergreen Group sang "Jesus Loves Me" in Chinese."

The Four Chinese Tenors?

Body worship-those of our friends will recognize this kind of singing and dancing that is so Chinese!

The Sunday before Christmas, we had four baptisms.  They had sweet testimonies and were so joyful when they came out of the water.

Great food, of course!

A new tradition of driving to the coast on Christmas Eve.  We drove to through the snowy coastal range and had a beautiful day at Cannon Beach.

Old traditions-our tree.  It was so wonderful to have a fresh tree and to get out our ornaments that we have seen in four years.  Some of our ornaments are from when Paul and I lived in Germany in the late 80's.  

New tradition-getting our Christmas tree in the pouring rain.  Welcome to the Pacific Northwest!

Ancient tradition-the Advent wreath that we light each week of Advent as we anticipate the coming of Emmanuel.

Family tradition- a movie on Christmas afternoon.  This time it was Les Miserables.  I desperately tried to finish the 1200 page book before we saw the movie.  I got up to page 500!  The movie was simply wonderful-an amazing story of redemption.  Go and see it...and read the book.  I am still engrossed.  The story is compelling!

Finally.

Grace and Peace to the few who still keep up with my random blogging!

Some things change and some stay the same.

I am working pretty much full time now at a small language institute that is on the Concordia University campus in North East Portland.  It's a beautiful little campus with a lovely library to work in.  Statues of Martin Luther abound!  I am thrilled to be working but this job has quite a steep learning curve for me.  The teaching part is fine and good.  But this is a very different kind of program than I am used to. It's an accelerated program and students come in one month cycles. The one month cycles go very quickly and we are suddenly at the last week of my first month.  I am really sweating to be sure I have done everything right and given all the right tests and quizzes and graded them correctly with the right scale and weight.  Now I have to transfer my grades to an Excel web-sheet and then upload all my grades by Wednesday for my electives and Thursday for my speaking and structure class.  For those of you that are technically minded, this kind of thing may not seem like such a big deal.  But for me, it's a big deal. Technology is not my friend and I would like less of it in my life not more.  I love teaching and students and language.  Testing and technolgy?  Not so much.

I do walk back and forth between the main building of the language institute and the campus.  There are beautiful homes there and it's a lovely walk.  I caught this unusual flower on a tree.  I wish the picture was better because it was so lovely.

Some things never change.  Paul loves fun and will do anything for a laugh.  Our youth leader had to be out for some pregnancy complications ( we are so thankful for the early birth of her sweet little baby).  One night before teaching the Bible, they kids played throw the cheerio's at the shaving cream.  The guy to the left of Paul won but there may have been some minor cheating as they placed Cheerio's instead of throwing them.

I went to Seattle a few weeks ago to see some dear friends and to see Elisabeth.  We went by her dorm room afterwards and I got to see the $1.00 couch that they bought at a used furniture store.  It was so good to see her that weekend and then again over Thanksgiving.  She is flourishing at Seattle Pacific and we are thrilled.

For Thanksgiving, we had a really good time with my youngest brother and his family.  Among the odd things that are missing from our storage unit is our carving knife.  So Paul carved it with a cleaver.  It worked!

I knit our foster son a sweater a few months ago.  The minute I took it off the needles, I realized it was too small.  So I made him a the same sweater a few sizes larger.  The first sweater was knit in a few days.  This one (even though it was identical) too forever.  I just made mistake after mistake and had to rip it out over and over again.  Next time- circular needles so I don't have to seam it!  It wasn't perfect and one sleeve may be a little longer that the other but hey, it's my first sweater and it was knit with love.  It went off in a box to China a few days ago.

I also made him these socks which were a pleasure to knit and I love them.

I was walking on the Concordia campus the other day and looked up at this tree and saw this....

Doves!  So lovely.  In the afternoons, I teach on the third floor of the Luther building and I can see Mt. St. Helen's in the distance.  These little touches of beauty are God's grace to me as I am really struggling in our new life. We have had so many losses in the last six months. I feel loss and pain and joy all at once.  I've always been fairly optimistic and upbeat but I feel fairly broken and fragile.  I've lost my sense of competency and my sense that I have something to share with people.  It's all part of the re-entry process and the only way through it is through it.  I am glad for small glimpses of grace and beauty.

Last year, I taught 13 middle school students how to knit.  Their first project was to knit a square that I then whipped stitched into a blanket.  We had all levels of knitters with different gauges and each of the squares was really a different size.  With quite a bit of maneuvering, I was able to get in into a blanket shape and then gave it to the  same foster care program that we foster through.  Here is the little sweetie that it went to.  That picture just makes my heart full.

My job saga.

My life has gotten very quiet and I kind of like it.  Time with people, time with Paul, time to read and time to knit.  Several people have encouraged me to think of this time of not having a job as a gift and indeed it has been.  But that all changes on Monday when I go back to work!  Yes, I finally have a job teaching ESL (English as a Second Language).
I've been really surprised at how hard it has been to find a job here.  ESL is a very competitive field here and even with many years of experience, a Master's degree in TESOL and just having come back from living and doing some teaching in China, I am (as another teacher told me) just another cog in the wheel.
I started looking for a job last Spring when we were still in China. I contacted a local junior college and received a fairly curt reply saying that I should check with human resources.  I filled out several online applications to different places in the Portland/Vancouver area and had two interviews.  One was for a four hour position and they hired someone else.  The other was dependent upon student enrollment and I never heard back from them.  I sent a resume to another place and they e-mailed me back saying that they'd like to interview me but that I needed to do the on-line application.  I did it and never heard a word back, inspite of follow through e-mails on my part.  One lovely school told me I was the best interview they had had all year but that they had no positions.  Sigh.  I've heard from several different ESL teachers that this is very common-there are so many people looking for jobs and so many people willing to drive all over the place to work that normal professional courtesy isn't even necessary.
I heard about another college that had an MA TESOL program and was looking at their website out of curiosity.  I discovered that they had an ESL program and sent a resume last September.  I got a polite response back that they weren't hiring but they would keep my resume.  Then a few weeks ago, I got an e-mail asking if I was still available, did a phone interview, observations, real life interview and now I have a job!  I'll be working for ELS Portland which is housed at Concordia University.  All though I will be surrounded by statues of Martin Luther, the program is separate from the University.  The campus is beautiful and it's surrounded by a beautiful neighborhood with beautiful homes.
Each person that I have met has been pleasant and helpful. The program is an academic English program that runs in one month cycles.  Most students are Arab or East Asian- Japanese, Chinese and Korean. I start at the lowest ranking which means that my job depends upon enrollement.  This month, I will teach 20 hours a week or four classes.  Next month?  Who knows?  In order to get to a more permanent status, I need to work three consecutive months in a row at 20 hours.  So it's still a "maybe" job but one that I am thankful to have.
It's been a little over three months since we have moved here and we are still blown away by the beauty of the area.  We like the church where Paul is working and the people there have been warm and welcoming.  Elisabeth is happy at college and that makes us happy.  She has a work study job working with developmentally disabled teenagers- fruit of having a developmentally disable child in our home for two years. I will be seeing her next weekend when I go to Seattle to see some friends-yay!
I read these two quotes  about "sainthood" this morning and I am pondering them. The first is by Frederick Buechner.

 Maybe more than anything else, to be a saint is to know joy. Not happiness that comes and goes with the moments that occasion it, but joy that is always there like an underground spring no matter how dark and terrible the night. To be a saint is to be a little out of one's mind, which is a very good thing to be a little out of from time to time. It is to live a life that is always giving itself away and yet is always full.

The second is by Thomas Merton.

Sanctity is not a matter of being less human, but more human. This implies a greater capacity for concern, for suffering, for understanding, for sympathy, and also for humor, for appreciation of the good and beautiful things of life.

So here is to great joy, deep joy that also lives in the tension of a great capacity for concern and suffering.  I love that Merton mentions humor as I believe that a sense of humor is the unnamed fruit of the spirit and just necessary for survival in life. Here is to living a life that is full enough to give yourself away.

Thank you, Pinterest!

Based on this image found on Pinterest..

Here is my picture taken from the other side...not exactly Pinterest worthy, is it?

We drove over to Portland to go to Cathedral Park today.  Cathedral Park is a small city park on the Willamette River.  To quote the Portland Parks and Recreation site. 

The site which now bears the name Cathedral Park is steeped in history. It is believed to be one of the 14 Lewis and Clark landing sites in the Vancouver-Portland area: William Clark and eight men camped there on April 2, 1806. This spot had been a fishing and camping site for many area Indian tribes. In 1847, the founder of St Johns, James John, settled on the site and operated a ferry to Linnton across the Willamette River. In 1931, the St Johns Bridge was built on the site with 400-ft towers and a main span of 1,207 feet. It is the only steel suspension bridge in Portland. 

It really was quite lovely. Today was a warm fall day with minimal rain and it was good to get out.
Here are some of my pictures from my i-phone.

This isn't the first time we have found something fun to do on Pinterest.  I guess it's not just crafts and baking!

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