Sabbatical Journey - a good book

When I find a good book, it's hard for me to take it slowly.

I usually lap it up as fast as I can, thinking about it during the day when I should be paying attention to something else and staying up all night to finish it when I get the chance. I'm only a couple dozen pages into Henri Nouwen's "Sabbatical Journey" and I know it is going to be one of the best (most influential, encouraging, resonating, exhortative, moving, surprising, enjoyable, go-back-to) books I have read.

What's amazing is I'm reading nice and slow. I read it a page or at the most four per day, a day or two at a time (it's his journal, written day by day through his sabbatical year break from his regular workful life, and last year of life). As I read, with about every other sentence, I think of various of you, my friends. I keep stopping myself from buying copies and sending them out, in part because by grace I know I can be more "miss" than "hit" when it comes to recommending books. Plus, I'm not done yet and it might turn out to be a stinker after he gets a little farther into his sabbatical. It could happen.

Also, there is the little business of it might be the right book at the right time for me (and my sabbatical journey, although as far as I know it won't last a year and I'm not planning on dying at the end and I think I might be working harder than he did on his; in this it-could-just-be-me vein, I am the one who found reading "The Year of Magical Thinking" as quickly as I could, staying up all night to finish it, just two months after my dad died actually helpful, not "too soon").

So I decided just to mention it here. If you'd like to taste a book that, through intimate and somewhat random reflections on a life-break, illuminates writing, belief, prayer, patience, solitude, purpose, friendship, tiredness, commitment, imperfection, and some other stuff, then maybe check it out.

I got my copy for $2 at Half Price Books. But, I'd go up to the $15 Amazon's asking. . . so far.

http://www.amazon.com/Sabbatical-Journey-Diary-Final-Year/dp/0824518780/

Sometimes the night is beautiful.

Maybe you'll wake up tomorrow and it'll all be gone.

There's more that rises in the morning than the sun. . . A music higher than the songs that I can sing.

We all wanna go there something awful, but to stand there takes some grace.

The sound of a car, the color of the pre-dawn sky. A trip to the office with my dad, on the back of his motorcycle, in the industrial green van.

Midnight blue. Dark willow, the color of my purple-brown hoodie. Periwinkle becoming pink then perfectly sky blue.

Pre-dawn airplane, sleepy and hopeful, children imagining, anticipating new smells, weather, going far or going home.

Through the Windows (Alternate Nuts and Quacks)

Sometimes, when I have a 13-hour day's worth of commitments on campus, and I neglect to bring a lunch (or dinner) from home -- or just to get a change of scenery and air, I drive into town, grab some fast food, and sit in my car in a parking lot by water.

This pond in Wenham is a favorite spot for a 30 minute breather.


Yesterday was one of those days.


Sometimes, when I can't get off campus for a breather, I sit and watch the leaves change and wave in the wind outside my office window.

Fitting Friends and Finds: Antiques Roadshow, Here We Come!

Post Table of Contents
Section 1: Moral of the Story
Section 2: The Story Before Pictures
Section 3: The Story Continued With Pictures

Some of you will want to skim section 2.

The Moral of the Story: Always travel with a friend who can find cool stuff for you, and you for her; remain open to the input and help of others, even if they overly confidently suggest something you just tried and found failing; don't measure things before deciding whether to buy them; and be willing to ask to borrow a screw driver from someone who is actually trying to sell not loan it for free!

The Pictureless Part of the Story
We wandered around the flea market for a couple of hours this morning, admiring kitsch, families, nostalgia, and possibilities. (Shawn also named all the breeds of the many dogs we encountered. But that's not part of the story. I also don't have any pictures of that part.)

Shawn was looking for a ring. A nice, unique ring for $50 birthday money.

I, who really am usually (and happily) just along for the ride on our adventures like this (my contribution to the social calendar this fall was to suggest we attend a high school football game in October; my sister, mother of two teenagers attending the #1 ranked high school football school in the nation, assures me it isn't creepy for non-alumni, non-parents, non-h.s.-teachers to attend; I'm going for the nachos and nostalgia; do they serve nachos at New England high school football games?! At least they should have a marching band. Right? Oh, but I did take us to an art gallery after the flea market, so never mind). . . I announced cheerily as we left early this morning, "I'm going for a bike and furniture!" I'd been thinking about buying a bike for awhile, but not seriously planning to pick one up today. And, I don't need any furniture, but I'd just been admiring a corner shelf unit Shawn has in her dining room, so I thought it would make a nice focal point for me on our trip. I wasn't really looking for furniture, just company and society.

But we weren't finding any nice rings. I kept flirting with a spinning globe that lights up and an unpleasantly framed supercool old map of Boston Harbor, but neither one was priced to sell (to me).

Then I said to Shawn, using my subtly-toned "I'm serious, not ironically pointing out a hideous piece of never-fashionable trash" voice, "I think you will want this." It was a very nice old camera, in amazing shape -- inside the case, the camera, etc. -- for its age. She loved it, bargained it down to just slightly more than she should have paid, and had her find.

We wandered around some more, then she said, "Wow! You must love this!" And pointed out a contraption I'd never seen before or known existed, but didn't even bother bargaining down to just slightly more than I should have paid. It's a library-step-stool-arm-chair. Apparently they exist.

The professional-garage-saler cleared it of the books he was using it to display, showed me how it folded over, assured me it would hold me if I climbed up the steps (it did), and pointed out how it was broken in a few spots and imperfectly mended. I gave him all the money I had in the world (of that time and place) and we distractedly wandered the rest of the flea market until we admitted out loud that we were both a little concerned about it fitting in Shawn's car.

We have a history.

A few months ago we drove a couple of hours west to visit a huge warehouse of letter press equipment. I didn't even know it existed, but Shawn took a class. On the way back, or maybe a little way out of our way, we stopped in a thrift store and I fell in love with a very comfortable green chair. For quite a bit less, I must say, than what I paid for my new ladder-chair. But it didn't come with its own step stool so. . . . But, being two hours from home (so not inclined to find alternate forms of transpo if needed), we used the measuring tape Shawn carries in her purse. For such a time as this. We measured all the several widths, lengths, and heights of the chair. We measured all the openings of the car. We calculated. We did not purchase the green chair. One or the other of us thinks of it and brings it up at least twice a month. Semi-monthly, even. Except for its size (or the size of Shawn's car door openings), it was a perfect chair for me.

I had paid the man for my new chair-with-steps. We had not measured. We drove Shawn's car as close as we could get it to the row with the library-chair-ladder-man's stuff, including my paid-for chair. I won't tell you the part about how we wandered up and down a couple of rows before we found him and my chair again. It was pretty close to the car. The chair is made of solid walnut (he says). Shawn said this would be heavy, but we're two strapping women. I didn't tell her or the man I'm not so strapping. (I just looked up "strapping" on dictionary.com. I changed my mind. I am strapping ("large, whopping" in sense #2); Shawn is strapping ("powerfully built" in sense #1). So, we're good.)

We carried the awkwardly constructed chair (it has folding and flapping parts) to her car.

The Part of the Story With Pictures

And then the comedy began. We tried it front first. Sideways. Back first. Front seat. Back seat. We cleared everything out of the trunk, and there was a lot of stuff in there (I didn't take a pictures, because I sensed Shawn's issues with this part of the story). We tried it frontwards, backwards, sideways, in the trunk. Nine days old.


And friendly, helpful person after friendly, helpful person stopped by. Offering to help. Suggesting we try another way (almost always the way we'd just tried). Several saying they do this for a living ("I move antiques"). One man suggesting I could rent a trailer -- just add another $10 to the cost of the chair. I do not believe I could get a Uhaul trailer in this northern town and use it to bring my library-chair-steps down to my house in my southern town for $10. I did not call him a liar, because I believe he meant well. The little Italian man running the booth right next to where we were illegally parked kept insisting we just tie it in the trunk. "It not going nowhere! I know! You drive all the way to New York, it not go nowhere!" We had no rope; I had no hope. I asked to try it one more time on its side in the back seat, just for my sanity before she went in search of rope and I pictured it flying off the back of the car for the whole drive home.


We tried it in the back on the side again, and a nice man stopped by to give us more advice. It has hinges, he said. Yes, Shawn said, but it's still too wide. I said, "It's so close, let's try to take the bottom step part off the hinges."

The nice lady let us borrow a screwdriver she had displayed on her flea market table with other random tools (how much were they asking to sell that single, used, simple flathead screwdriver for?!).


The steps came off. The chair went in. It's a beautiful thing.


After brunch in a cafe in Salem and visiting my friends-colleagues' home-which-doubles-as-an-art-gallery open house and (both of us) buying art for other friends, we parted ways, I inserted the chair-in-two-pieces in the back of my car, drove home, brought it upstairs, screwed it back together, and: voila!






I haven't figured out yet where I'll put it or what I'll use it for.


Though I do have excruciatingly high ceilings and light bulbs that consequently have been burned out for over a year, I don't have bookshelves up high (and the step stool is not only not nearly tall enough for me to reach the bulbs, it also emphatically must only be used in library-like climbing activities).


Georgie does not like the new chair (nor does she like Buddy).


It's a beaut and I'm pleased as punch and a pickle.


I also found a scary looking bug on it, which I brought to an end, and vacuumed up some other animal's hair off it, but it could use some more cleaning. Which makes it fit in just fine in its new home.


Also, it has wheels (Shawn says "casters"). I love furniture with casters.

Wherever you are, may there be music, strangers, ice cream (if you like it), and fat dogs in strollers

When my bus blew a tire last Saturday evening in The Middle Of Nowhere, Connecticut, maybe halfway between a refreshing visit with my friend Heidi in NYC and Boston's South Station, Humanity reared its interesting head.

No one freaked. Everyone seemed to take it in stride, even while we sat for well over an hour on the side of the interstate while CT staties, take-charge passengers, and the inexplicably smiling driver couldn't seem to make any progress in applying our contingency plan. We have a contingency plan, don't we?

No, everyone seemed just to do their own thing. The college kids made immediate friends smoking and swapping stories about bars, while the rest of us wandered or stood around calmly in the field where we'd pulled over.


One passerby pulled over on the side of the highway and ran the quarter mile back to us, entered the bus and asked if a certain person was aboard. No? She went to the back of the bus to check, then ran back to her car and kept driving. Another car pulled over and the driver came to tell us "I have room for three -- I'm going to Boston." My nervous seatmate and two others ran across the field to pile in the stranger's little car, all of us accepting he was a Good Samaritan and not a crazazy freak.


The young couple in the row in front of me -- he in an Israeli Army Reserves shirt, she reading a novel in Hebrew script -- tried to tamp down their curiosity and enthusiasm. I served them, by getting my camera out and snapping away. He grinned and almost seemed to crackle with enjoyment as he, and soon a few others, confidently documented the misadventure.

After awhile, the state police told us all to get back on the bus. They figured 45 minutes of milling about freely on the side of an interstate was enough danger for that time and place.


The driver never told us a thing that was going on, but one passenger took it on himself to give updates so I wasn't confused when we pulled off at the exit and drove slowly and carefully to the Shell Station parking lot where we lived for the next nearly two hours.



The band members riding across the aisle from me eventually got their instruments out, set up by the dumpster and played not particularly inspiring jazz. The very fact they were playing music was great -- but I wondered if their level of talent warranted taking instruments on the bus back and forth from NYC to Boston: did people pay to hear them outside the context of a surreal roadtrip?





I sat on the bus and ran my ipod batteries down. I finished reading "The Year of Magical Thinking." I twittered and photographed our "progress."



And a mechanic arrived to change the big tire, then a new bus from Boston? New York? pulled up, and with no instructions, we all piled on and headed back to the Big B.






I'd gone to New York to see where Heidi's been living on the upper upper west side for six months (last trip I took down we hung out on the lower east side for a few hours and I took another bus right back up, without staying over night). This visit I took the bus down, the subways up, spent the night in her miniature home, and we thrived in good talks and walks through her neighborhood and then midtown the next day.

There are a lot of people in the world. There is a lot of music. There are mishaps, adventures, dogs and dog poop, cell phones, a limited but sufficient supply of patience, and. . .



Life is a highway. It's beautiful when we manage to roll with whatever comes our way: walk our dogs, take our pictures, play our instruments, keep our cools, and accept rides with strangers across state lines.

All we need. . .

Yesterday at the end of a rather long and discombobulated faculty workshop to start the new year, a professor was asked to pray and dismiss us. She asked us to close our eyes and think of something that we hoped for this school year. I'm not much investing in wide ranging hopes these days; I think hope has something to do with the future, and I'm not much imagining futures these days. But, I easily thought of one thing I hope -- in all hope's complexities of belief, expectation, and desire. To love my students.

I do love my students, of course I do. I love everyone In God's Way. Ha -- such the goofball phrase from my 70s-80s church-talk childhood. Did you ever say it? I remember in elementary school if we were asked if we loved someone that we really "liked" (romantically) we could preserve the privacy of a crush by answering quite properly, "I love him in God's way." As in, most definitely not in the movies or Top 40 radio way so no need to tease me. Oddly, the same response applied even more frequently to someone that we found quite difficult to like at all (not least of which romantically). Amy Grant's 1979 song "Giggle" serves well here: "Must I hug him real close now? He smells so bad I'll faint! What will my friends think if they see me? Kill my pride, I caint!" But do I love him? Of course I do, in God's way. Because the simple fact is, God loves everyone. So, I indiscriminately loved everyone, too.

But the less simple fact is to love a human being as a person, not a conglomeration of humanity, demands discrimination.

And sometimes that takes things I don't have a lot of in my natural state: patience under pressure in particular. When I get stressed, I get in a hurry, and the apparent most important thing is to do the tasks I'm supposed to do.

This morning at the annual Faculty/Staff chapel service, our Assoc. Dean for the First Year Experience gave one of the most refreshing reflections I've heard in a long time, miraculously saying words and painting pictures I needed. She spoke about hospitality, and all followers of Jesus being called to provide a welcoming place for strangers, being attentive to their needs at the time we meet them. Visiting them in prison (not necessarily breaking them free), a drink of water (not necessarily digging a well). I think my dad was good at this, what my brother and I meant when we talked at his memorial service about his generous and paradoxical interactions with strangers and with family.) Mainly what struck me this morning was hospitality not as "entertaining" (providing well-planned, shiny food and decorations) but as providing an opportunity for the people we encounter to be who they are with their needs and not letting them get lost in the big fat details of the doing and the tasks.

It's certainly a familiar idea (be present, love people, meet needs), and my reflection here is a fuzzy one, but her saying those things in the way she said them today was what I needed, and I now hope with more faith that I can love my students as I meet many of them for the first time -- strangers to me, to be treated as if entertaining angels unaware even though, as my friend said this morning it becomes clear they are not angels soon enough -- and as I welcome back so many more in a fresher, more discriminating way.

My to-do list is ridorkulously long and convoluted, and the tasks are not irrelevant or without some connection to meeting real needs, but I hope in some moments I will be more hospitable, providing a space for individuals to be present and to have some needs met by me that I might otherwise be inclined to miss.