"To talk of many things:
Of shoes...and ships...and sealing wax...
Of cabbages...and kings..."
This quote from Lewis Carroll's The Walrus and the Carpenter has always made me very happy, though I seldom chance to remember the words correctly. I do know this quote is correct, however, because I looked it up just now. It's not terribly relevant, but then, when is Lewis Carroll ever relevant to anything?
I suppose the relevance lies in the fact that it is now time to talk about the journey I'm about to embark upon. A journey that a part of me, deep down, has been waiting to make for four or five years now. To this place:
At least, somewhere near this place, if my calculations by the vague airliner's map were correct. I took this rather prophetic picture on the flight to India several summers ago, while we were flying over some of the "Stan" countries. There was a lot of desert, and then there came this.
Something happened to me on that flight. This area of the world had already been on my mind, but when we flew over it for real, my chest got tight and I cried a little, and something like love that I really didn't understand welled up inside me. It was just the jet-lagged emotion of a seventeen-year-old, maybe, like some kind of crush, but it's stuck with me these past four years, so much so that I've now taken the physical steps to make it real.
But maybe my journal explains it best. I chronicled like mad at that time in my life, and I'm not sure what use it is to me now to know what I puked up the morning we left Yavatmal. Or how many hours I slept on the top bunk on the train ride to Delhi, but I still have those three journals. This is what I wrote impulsively as we flew over an expanse of desert. I lost track of the countries exactly, but like I said, they were "Stan" countries.
"We are over the desert. My heart is crying out! It is Samarkand and Tashkent and Kabul and Dushanbe. Around Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and nearing Afghanistan and Pakistan and then India...But my love is poured out on the desert.
And then there were those barren, creased mountains that met a green, tan, brown quilt-blocked place, an inhabited place. There were cities, orderly cities from this view, in lines and rows and curves of lines and rows and roads. It was a valley, because there were more mountains on the other side.
Out the plane window I could see both mountain ranges with the valley looking like a paved, cobbled road stretching out into the dim, distant horizon, over the rim of the world.
It is beautiful. So beautiful. That kept going over and over and over in my mind. Beautiful to me in its barren way. The man sitting in front of me said that this part of Asia is "the stage of history, the heart of the world." And the world's heart is dry and thirsty.
And on the way home, flying out of El Paso:
"Staring off into the flat earth curving away to the horizon haze, I'm filled with love. I remember what the rest of the world looks like. I remember that desert and I will go back one day. I don't know what that means for my life...for now I'm awed and somewhat surprised. As we took off over El Paso it just flooded back to me from our first flight..."
And so, in less than two weeks, I'll be on a flight over the same patch of beautiful barrenness I first saw four years ago. Only this time I'll be landing. The grandparents are on their knees more than they've ever been before, bless their courageous trembling hearts, and the looks I'm getting from the people I tell about my trip are...different.
(In line for passport photos:
Lady: So, are you going on a cruise?
Me: No, actually, I'm going to Afghanistan.
Lady: Smile vanishes, blankness spreads over the face.
Me: Um, well I won't be in the south...)
Nothing comes out of the TV but bad news, so it's no wonder that people are worried. I understand that things can happen, and do happen, but it's too bad more people don't get to hear the hope stories. I guess that's what I'm after.
7 comments:
The sun was shining on the sea shining with all his might, he did his best to make the billows smooth and bright. And this was odd for it was the middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily for she thought that the sun had got no buisness to be there after the day was done. "It's very rude of him" she said "to come and spoil the fun"
The sea was as wet as wet could be, the sands were dry as dry. You could not see a cloud for no cloud was in the sky, no bird was flying over head, there were no birds to fly.
The walrus and the carpenter were walking close at hand they wept like anything to see such quantities of sand. "If this were only cleared away" they said "It would be grand!"
"If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year" the walrus said "Do you suppose they could get it clear?" "I doubt it" said the carpenter and shed a bitter tear.
"Oh Oysters! Come and walk with us, a pleasant walk a pleasant talk along the briny beach." The eldest oyster winked his eye and shook his heavy head as if to say he chose not to leave the oyster bed.
But four young oysters hurried up, there coats were brushed there faces washed and there shoes were clean and neat. And this was odd for you know they had not any feet.
Well that's all i remember, I started to memorize it but sorta
stopped! Bronwyn
Oh good, glad to hear that anonju is not persona non grata :)
By one of those strange coincidences that life brings, I was able to borrow "Something Happened" by Mildred Cable and Francesca French from a nearby library.
It is written in somewhat unfashionable prose, but nothing can disguise the astonishing, inspiring story of three ladies' courageous witness to the gospel in East and Central Asia. Your story will be different.
The book quotes from W B Yeats poem Maid Quiet. It is on the web. Yeats is not my favorite poet at all, nor was his lifestyle. But some lines do stick in the mind.
E.g.:
"The winds that awakened the stars
Are blowing through my blood...
Now words that called up the lightning
Are hurtling through my heart."
If the winds are like the wind of the Spirit, and the words come from the Word, then these lines can apply to our witness too.
God bless.
Anonju
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