Grocery Shopping

I feel like I should give one of those disclaimers that speakers at conventions say, you know the whole "this speaker doesn't in any way represent endorsement or quality assurance or have any financial investments in the aforementioned products;" because let me just say I'm a huge fan of Trader Joe's (maybe the biggest). There, it's out.

So, I usually write about living in Africa and.... newsflash, there are no Trader Joe's in Africa.

So, where are we? Well, exactly a month ago it was Christmas, and 13 days ago it was my birthday, but today...today was like both of those all rolled into one because I got TWO packages in the mail! Yes, two long-awaited packages that (due to African mail service) didn't come on Christmas and didn't come on my birthday. So today, the 25th of January was a special day.

Getting a package here is fun because it means:

1.) Hearing from a friends or family back home

2.) Knowing that you haven't been completely forgotten living all the way across the world, and

3.) Getting something uniquely American and unobtainable in Africa, like chocolate chips or something.

The first world-weary package arrived frayed and tattered after 39 days of traveling. It was from my dear (not to mention super-cool, amazingly-talented, and slightly ghetto rockstar) friend Michelle. She sent me a box full of wrapped packages and let me tell you, I felt like a little kid getting his first red flyer wagon for Christmas.

About halfway through happily tearing paper though, I got teary-eyed. Every single little gift was something I would have picked out myself, familiar favorites that were my Trader Joe's staples of "yesterday."

Here's the funny thing. The other package was from my family (packed, and I'm sure sealed with a kiss from my mother) and (coincidentally?) contained some of those same loved TJ items....honey whole wheat pretzels, trail mix, cinnamon almonds, gorilla munch cereal (!!!)....do I have good taste or what?

Clearly, I'm excited about having a stash of a taste of home, but they really mean so much more to me...

Either,

a.) I'm a pretty transparent person making it easy to know what I would pick off the shelves at Trader Joe's

b.) My friends and family have gone shopping with me one too many times, or

c.) These were people who love and care enough to notice the small details that make me happy, like my favorite kind of trail mix.

I think I'll go with “c.”

The other night I was up late watching the movie "Marley and Me" by myself. I had heard it was one of those family-friendly tear-jerkers but those rarely work on me (I promised my steely heart...). I'll sheepishly admit that there were tears in my eyes as the film ended, but it was really the last lines of the movie that caught my attention:

"How many people can make you feel rare and pure and special? How many people can make you feel extraordinary?"

I think that's what those packages really represented for me...

…and how much I want to go about my days helping the people I'm with feel the same way. Far too often I go about my ordinary day, doing ordinary things, having ordinary conversations and end up treating people as if they are, well… ordinary.

I don’t know if that makes sense or if you’re tracking with me anymore, but I think the best way I can elucidate what I’m feeling and thinking is to have you read through this excerpt from “The Weight of Glory” by C.S. Lewis:

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

And that’s just it. That if the love of Christ has radically transformed my life, and I believe that this life is only temporary and will be followed by eternity with God, then I will see, in you, the image of God….something that cannot (indeed refuses to) be seen as or treated as ordinary.

I pray that as you go about your day doing things that seem unexceptional, unremarkable and ordinary – putting in another day at the office, changing another diaper, teaching another class, seeing another patient, cleaning the house, grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s….you would see the people around you for what they really are – rare, pure, special and extraordinary. Because that’s what you are.

kodak moment

It's 11:59 pm and I should be sleeping. However, I'm wide awake, searching my room for a mosquito (as I do most nights) and waiting for my whopping dose of benadryl to kick in. No, I'm not a big advocate of sleep aids, and yes, the benadryl has a story behind it.

So settle in, here's your bedtime story...

I spent the last week away from my usual city life in Kampala and traveled about 8 hours into southern Uganda for field meetings in Kabale. Our week of meetings was spent on Bushara Island, located on Lake Bunyoni.

Bushara Island is a small natural island measuring only 1.8km in circumference. It is a lovely oasis tucked away in the mountainous land of southern Uganda. Its accommodations are a step above camping with some cabins and safari tents, but still no electricity or running water. The island is encompassed by a forrest of eucalyptus trees imported from Australia and populated by scores of different bird varieties. It is lush green quietness surrounded by water, clean air and more green - one of those places that makes your soul sigh and sink back into relaxation.

Having never been to Africa before I moved to Uganda, I really had no idea what to expect when I arrived in Kampala. I think when most people think of Africa without tangible experience of it, phrases like "the bush" and "the jungles of Africa" come to mind. While these certainly may be true of parts of Africa, I moved to a different type of jungle - the city jungle. Kampala is a city of 3 million people living in a space intended for maybe 900 thousand. It is constant movement, noise, dust, people, talking, music, honking, smog, crowds, selling, buying, laughing, crying, carrying, walking, stopping, going.... So being out in the fresh nature expanse of Bushara Island was, quite literally, a breath of fresh air.

I spent just about every spare moment soaking in the outside.

There is a little trail that traces the perimeter of island and I circled it a few times every day. I've been working on my new hobby of photography and so my camera came with me on most of my walks. I found that something amazing happens when you start to look at things from the angle of a camera lens - you start to notice minute details that you otherwise may not have seen.

The first time I walked around the island I was completely caught up and amazed at the beauty and variety of the plants, flowers, birds, trees...Here's the interesting thing - the second and third time around I was just as amazed, but each time I saw new and different details that I hadn't noticed before. It was almost as if I was walking around a new island each day. Even though the walk was relatively short it seemed like the slower I went, the more I really saw and the more I could really take notice of the smaller things that would be lost to the power-walker.

I think God, more times than not, has something to say to me through nature. As I walked, it was as if He was saying,

"Slow down, I don't want you to miss it."

And somehow I don't think that only applies to nature walks. I'm a do-er, a fix-er, a fast-walker, and a hardly-ever-still sort of a person. I wonder what beautiful things I would notice for the first time if I just walked a little slower through life? Took time to treasure people even more by seeing them from this angle, and that angle, and that one? Allowed others to affect me instead of trying to be the influencer? Fully enjoyed the "right now" instead of always mentally preparing and anticipating what's next?

There's more to the story.

The third day on Bushara, I again set out with my camera. I was happily strolling, minding my own business, when an insect (that was apparently in cahoots with al-Qaida) dive-bombed and attacked my eye. Judging by the stinger he left in my eyelid, his attempt at suicide was quite successful. The next few ensuing days left my eye looking like I had taken up professional boxing (and hence, where we started out with the hefty dose of Benadryl).

But I was thinking...that unfortunate and uncomfortable event didn't make the other times I spent on the island less valuable or special. In fact, it became more memorable. It added a new dimension and a new color to my memories.

I'm asking myself if I can apply that to life as well. Not that I enjoy bad or hard times in a a weird masochist way, but that I live them out in a way that realizes they are important to how I view the whole of life, myself, others, God...they are a part of the whole picture.

I don't want to miss it.

View my Bushara Island pictures at:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2084113&id=68603237&l=044b4a9777

YOU are like coming home....

I'm fascinated by airports - the stale weary air baited by anticipation, expectation, happiness, sadness, nervousness... A place with a cacophony of personal life events, from the mundane business trip to the extraordinary honeymoon or cross-country move; a place where dreams break and come true in the same stretch of worn-out carpet; a place of the sweetest reunions and the most heartbreaking partings...a place where physical distance conquers or is conquered by the creation of our own inventions (Oh, "Those magnificent men and their flying machines..." If you think I'm crazy, see the movie.). 

More particularly, I love the Arrivals Gate. I was at the airport just a couple of days ago to pick up my roommate who was returning from the States and had a inspiring goose-bump kind of moment while waiting. 

At the Entebbe Airport you have to wait for your expected passenger to clear customs and walk out through a glass partition, then halfway across a tiled room to reach you, waiting not-so-patiently behind a roped stanchion. The Ugandan experience was awesome. A passenger would emerge through the glass doors barely visible behind a mound of luggage and suddenly a loud and shrieking (high-pitched "aye-yie-yie-yie") group would emerge from the waiting crowd, sprint across the open space (arms and handbags wildly flailing), to mob their loved one in hugs, kisses, and and more loud exclamations. Here's the fun part. With each passenger that arrived it almost seemed as if it made the anticipation for the next one even greater. The walk to cover the distance to the loved one almost took on the art forms of an improv performance for the benefit of the rest of the waiting crowd- they danced across, they sashayed across, they MO-OOVED across. I loved imagining and guessing at the relationships between them, how long they had been apart, and how long they would be together. 

I was so touched by these unabashed displays of love and affection - words, noises, and gestures that all add up to a sense of home and belonging because you are with a person you love.

It's not that I spend my days in misery pining away for the people I miss in the U.S...but the holiday season lends a certain clarity to life... How precious, how dear just to have the presence of those you love the most...to know that despite current life situations or future events, "I am KNOWN by you. We've been through the good and bad together. You've seen me at my ugliest... And you love me still." That, my friends, is home; a home not restricted by time zones, air miles, land miles, latitudes or longitudes. A little bit of heaven here on earth. 

Zephaniah 3:17-20 (The Message)

God Is Present Among You

 ^16-17Jerusalem will be told: 

   "Don't be afraid.

Dear Zion, 

   don't despair.

Your God is present among you, 

   a strong Warrior there to save you.

Happy to have you back, he'll calm you with his love 

   and delight you with his songs.

 ^18-20"The accumulated sorrows of your exile 

   will dissipate.

I, your God, will get rid of them for you. 

   You've carried those burdens long enough.

At the same time, I'll get rid of all those 

   who've made your life miserable.

I'll heal the maimed; 

   I'll bring home the homeless.

In the very countries where they were hated 

   they will be venerated.

On Judgment Day 

   I'll bring you back home—a great family gathering!

You'll be famous and honored 

   all over the world.

You'll see it with your own eyes— 

   all those painful partings turned into reunions!" 

         God's Promise.