arms and legs

not long ago when we were returning to CA on a flight from dallas, i had occasion to observe a rather surly flight attendant who could have been the “poster child for relevance theory” in that she said nothing more than was absolutely necessary to point her audience in the direction of her intended meaning. i had already noticed a couple of things: how she narrowed her eyes and smiled only from below the nose …the result was not unlike the picture of a possum i saw when i was in elementary school perousing an encyclopedia article on “rodents”.

anyway, the beverage service was about to start, and with service cart in tow towards the designated starting position at the front of “coach”, she backed up the aisle, casting cold glances behind her, announcing to the passengers “arms and legs…arms and legs…arms and legs…” obviously a warning to her audience to keep their extremeties out of the aisle, as she would be only too happy to collide with them if they didn’t. (i, fortunately, was sitting by the window, so i was out of target range.) then the “service” started; she came back pushing her cart down the aisle stating “something to drink” without the slightest hint of question intonation in the vecinity. now circumstance and experience normally sanction a passenger’s ready assumption that such an utterance constitutes an “offer”, and therefore s/he could justifiably supply implied information along the lines of:

[would you like] something to drink[?] or [can i offer you] something to drink [?].

of course on this particular occasion, i felt they could also be equally justified by filling it in as:

[you’re lucky if i give you] something to drink[!]

she eventually came to our row and a “something to drink” was directed first at me…

me: “I’ll have a diet coke.”

Flight Attendant: [blink]

[eyes move in melanie’s direction]

melanie: “Do you have cranberry juice?”

FA: [single nod]

…then to “arms and legs” sitting by the aisle.

“Orange juice.”

FA: [take plastic cup, scoop ice, open can, pour, extend hand in direction of window]

“diet”

[take second cup, more ice, another can, pour, extend hand towards middle seat]

“cran”

[repeat process, relinquish 3^rd cup]

“orange”

[push cart forward while directing withering look at next row of obstacles to inflight contentment]

you never know the effect you may unintentionally have on someone. outside of our being a nameless collection of faces with irritating requests, just like those she sees every other day, she will likely have no particularly salient memory of the passengers she “served” that day. she will certainly not remember me, the diet coke in 16A. melanie and i, however, will remember her for a looooong time.

a view from 35000 ft

a friend requested that i post this letter. okay, larry, here you go.

the end of October, 2009.
Peru, Nepal, my mom’s severely declining health, computer theft …sigh. As we go through life there are times when it seems that lots of life goes through us instead, and at an alarming rate…five months in the blink of an eye. As I write this, I feel as though I am treading water in a turbulent sea of organizational chaos, whipped into a frenzy by all the above…sort of my own personal “hurricane Rick”. I’m looking for the eye in the storm.

The view out of an airplane window gives you perspective you will never have while on the ground: you can see the OTHER side of the clouds, for example, and you can apprehend vast expanses of earth at a glance. And from that vantage point you can also see major landmarks and the relationships between them in a particularly clear way without getting sidetracked by the million and one details that grab your eye while earthbound. I’ve had lots of opportunities to look out of airplane windows in the past 5 months and it’s left me reflecting on life from the 35000-ft-view rather than from the 5’9” perspective normally afforded me. The temptation here is to fill pages with details, but that, as interesting as it may be, could also easily obscure the much more significant big picture.

Peru: Melanie and I worked there for 26 years, raising a family and joining together with the Wanca Quechuas to produce all kinds of literature in their language and ultimately the New Testament, a historical first. With experience comes responsibility, and since that time we’ve made ourselves available to consult, teach and train those who are already, or hope to be someday, involved in Bible translation, be they here at Biola University or elsewhere. It’s made us both mobile and global. So over the summer we returned to Peru for 4 weeks and then spent 2 more in Nepal trying to tweak translators’ perspectives on how to compile dictionaries, and draft the book of Philemon, and understand the relationship between communication and translation. I will forever be impressed with those I met, some of whom have suffered for their faith in ways I will likely never know, and all without having scripture in their language. Amazing. And humbling.

But we had no sooner landed in Nepal than we got an urgent message telling me to call my brother in Dallas. You never want to get messages like that, and especially when you’re 12 time zones away. Seems my 90 year-old mom had suffered congestive heart failure and had been admitted to the hospital. She was now stable and in good care, and, thanks to Skype, we could talk to her every day. But our stay in Nepal had this as its backdrop. We got back to California after 44 hours of takeoffs and landings, and after teaching the first two days of the new school year here at the University, I hopped on yet another plane to Dallas to see mom – now in a nursing home – and to support my brother and his family in this situation in whatever way I could. It was on the way back from Dallas to Los Angeles that my laptop was stolen…not misplaced, not picked up by accident…stolen. The details of how it happened are peripheral.

There is something deeply chilling when you realize that your entire professional Bible translation and linguistic life for the past quarter century has just been taken from you, along with financial records, passwords to online financial accounts, correspondence, address lists, pictures of trips you will never repeat, intensely personal reflections, books, the IPod, the thumb drive, and, oh yes, even the backup hard drive…all conveniently present in the same back pack. First panic, then a mad dash for baggage claim in the dim hope you’ll see the person who has it; hope fades. Then frustration, anger and helplessness, as neither the airline nor the airport police seem capable, or even willing to do much about it. Then driving home amidst wracking sobs, paralyzed by the fear of certain identity theft…and loss…the incalculable, irretrievable loss…sigh…and sigh. “How in the midst of this can there be any good, but if there is, O God, show it to me.” And a long, restless night full of “Why did I…?” “...if I only hadn’t…” and “What if they …?” and punctuated by getting up to cancel more accounts and change more passwords.

And then I saw myself all too clearly, naked in a desert before God, with nothing; accomplishments, gone; dictionary work, gone; all the consulting and teaching I’d just done in Peru and Nepal, gone; lesson plans for tomorrow, gone, every means through which I might accrue some value for myself, gone. Then came the good I’d asked for: the single, poignant, defining moment…the pristine re-recognition that I am not my work, that my value is not in what I do, in what I offer to God in terms of talents, or as a linguist/translator/consultant with years of experience, or as a teacher with well-crafted lesson plans…but that my value is now and always has been only that I am an intentional target of God’s grace, and nothing more; and that apart from that, I am no different from the guy who took my laptop; and that because of that I can say with all honesty, “Have mercy on him as you have had mercy on me.”

And in the midst of all this, I realized that this was very likely the back-door answer to some glibly uttered prayer somewhere in the past: “Help me know you better” or “Get my attention”. When you pray for God’s work in your life, you are really praying for an end-result, not the path that takes you there. So if the result I ask for is consonant with God’s purposes in me, then he is justified in molding me and pressing me into it regardless of the means. It was an encouragement, albeit a severe one, to realize that God had not abandoned me and was still answering my prayers for my good.

I am not the only one to suffer loss; there are some that suffer losses much greater, like those who were affected by the wildfires I watched from the window on that flight, where all their treasures literally went up in smoke; and I, like they, still pick through the rubble and chaos, retrieving whatever is salvageable. And almost daily for the last 6 weeks, the realization of yet of another missing piece. I’m sure some of the wildfire victims suffer alone…very alone. But I do not, for I have walked through this accompanied by the people of God, who have loved me and encouraged me, and even supplied me with equipment to replace what I lost. This shows me that they – and you – are my true treasure. The computer was just a box and the stuff in it were ultimately just tools. And however painful it may be to lose them, the work of God was not in that box; rather, the real work of God is the extent to which I foster the image of Christ in those around me; and that, no one can steal.

Forgive the accutely personal and solemn tenor of these lines. I realize this has not been our typical communiqué, laced with home-improvement challenges or the stuff our kids are up to. Rest assured, we are still home-improvement-challenged and our kids are up to plenty. Melanie will probably want to write the next one. But I felt that this time a view from the other side of the clouds would more accurately reflect the present landscape of our lives. Who knows? It might also provide some food for thought and prayer as you seek to know Him better. It might also encourage you to back up your computer…off site…in a place far, far away.
...
Pummeled by the grace of God. Rick

arequipa shadows

the sun seems to do things to arequipa i've not seen anywhere else. maybe i just haven't been enough places...

bread

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
from ancient times
…
He will stand and shepherd his flock
in the strength of the LORD,
in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.
And they will live securely, for then his greatness
will reach to the ends of the earth.
And he will be their peace. (Mic 5.2ff )


Bethlehem: "house of bread". Bread: simple, common everyday food. Bread to fill your stomach when you are hungry; bread to give you strength when you are weak. Bread permeated with yeast, and yeast the symbol of sin. And in the house of bread, would be born the Bread from heaven itself. The Messiah who would fill our hungry souls and strengthen our spirits when we have no strength. But this only because he would take on all our sin; a stable-born king who left his riches and became poor for our sakes, so that we through his poverty might become rich.

Bread for life; yeast for sin and death. Richest of Kings born stable-poor. Sinful man loved by him who knew no sin. He dies; we live.

inn-n-out

Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem only to find that the one place that lodged travelers was full. People must have been there from all over because of this census. No room anywhere. And Mary’s labor had started. Bad timing any way you look at it. So they were given a corner in a stable. Open to the world. Dirty straw instead of a bed. The annoying intrusion of animals. Far away from home. No family or friends to help. Something was surely wrong somewhere. How could the King of the Universe be born in a stable? The Messiah – the long awaited Deliverer, the One promised throughout the ages by the prophets, has only a feed trough for a crib?! Didn’t God himself send an angel to announce his coming? But not this way. THIS is hardly the kind of birth that should attend royalty. It makes no sense.

But then throughout history God so often did things that boggled the mind. Didn’t he back Moses and his people up against the sea with no way of escape when the Egyptian army came in to annihilate them? Quite a poor battle plan. But then he did something else totally unexpected: he opened the sea and led his people across dry land. And when Gideon had 10,000 troops at his disposal to attack the Midianites, didn’t God tell him to send all but 300 away? Bad strategy. But with those 300 God delivered the Midianites into his hand. And here in this very town hundreds of years earlier, didn’t God choose a shepherd boy to be King over the nation, one not even the prophet Samuel would have picked? And yet this was one whose heart beat for God and from his line would come One whose kingdom would never end.

So much that just doesn’t fit our expectations. But then our God is a God of paradoxes. His ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. It’s THAT – the difference – that sets the stage for our amazement and awe at what he does. That the King should be born in a stable? Yes, on second thought, this too might bear the fingerprints of God.

a prayer for ryan and kenlynn

O Lord, you are the giver of all good and perfect gifts, and Ryan and Kenlynn have been gifts to us. This was your idea. THEY were you idea, for before either of them were even the remotest of our thoughts, you, O Lord, saw all their days from beginning to end. You alone know what lies ahead of them.

You are a severe God, but you are also severely compassionate, and you sent your Son as the ultimate demonstration of your love and determination to provide a way for us to know you. And Ryan and Kenlynn DO know you. And they know that life is not about them; it’s about you.

So I pray for their success, in all ways, of course, but ultimately in the only way that really matters, that their lives together reflect your presence, your power and your grace. Be the center of all they are, and have, and undertake to do.

Be their sufficiency when they lack.

Be their stability when they waver.

And be their hope when they are discouraged.

We commit them to you with great joy and thanksgiving. Keep them firmly in the center of your merciful, loving, gracious, and relentless grip.
Amen.

souveniers and salvation

we’re back. 20 hrs of travelling and with each passing minute – for me anyway – the “normality” of 6 weeks of life there sadly fades. we have several hundred pictures snapped at those instances when your soul says “i want to keep this forever”; experiences and moments too rich and too dynamic to be captured by such simple, static, 2-dimensional arrays of pixels on a screen.

we have a few souveniers to physically extend the visit beyond ourselves and share it with others who stayed here: “here’s a piece of the sea of galilee”; “these are from the ravine near where david fought goliath”; “this is for you. i wish you could have been there.”

we have a collection of new neural pathways that have been etched in our brains and souls, the proof of which are the hebrew-flavored phrases and songs that we hear echoing in our minds when we wake up in the middle of the night, or that spring to life randomly during the day: hatiluni el ha-yam; gol, gol, gol al-adonai darkekhah…

and then we have things like this: reflective post-mortems done in the attempt to trap the evanescent fleeting thoughts that will surely escape if no attempt is made to tether them somehow to some kind of verbal stake, thoughts which no image or souvenier can capture.

i was struck by the veneration displayed for places; churches built on top of rocks where tradition has it that something significant took place: Jesus wept here, Jesus broke the loaves and fishes here, the foot of the cross was here. perhaps more striking was the smoothness of the rocks themselves, the results of hundreds of thousands of visitors over the centuries who at least with curiosity, if not with awe and reverance, have approached the rocks and touched them, and maybe crossed themselves and said prayers in their presence. i’ve wondered what lies behind this. are they attempts at achieving a tangible, physical connection with someone the world can no longer see or touch, to reach back into history and maybe make their faith “real”? is it perhaps a longing for a kind of magic, for a transfer to take place: that maybe there is resident in these rocks a trace of His power – “let it pass to me to help me live a better life”? i felt all this myself, but at different places. not at shrines, but in gardens and sea shores, uncluttered by buildings. “Jesus surely walked up these steps”, “Jesus saw these hills”. and as i sit on the beach at migdal and sift sand thru my fingers i think “Jesus walked along these very shores…maybe he even touched this rock”? and so with my own sense of wonder and reverance i pour sand and shells into a bottle to take away with me…hoping it is not just sand, but a piece of history actually touched by the Master. but then it occurs to me “Jesus DID touch this sand and this rock” realizing that “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” in a real sense all places, whether in israel or here, are holy; all things have been touched by Him; and all souls that have stretched out hands to touch “sacred rocks” – or not – are to Him sacred, the works of his hands, invitees to His mercy and His grace. i save pictures and rocks and sand to remind me of places he may have been; He, on the other hand, saves me, and those like me, and reminds me of his unfailing love and compassion on all in all places at all times. to Him be glory and honor forever. Amen.