Home Sweet Construction

We've been out of house and home for a month now, because of a botched remodelling job to the upstairs apartment. The project ultimately engulfed the entire building, sending us into hotels.

The contractors have lied to us repeatedly about the duration of the project - basically promising work they had no intention of doing, simply because telling us what they thought we wanted to hear would get us out of their hair. It didn't work, because that's not how we operate.

But the project has also given us a taste of what the poor go through on a regular basis. The poor cannot appeal to an authority, because the entire system is in place to protect the propertied, not the unpropertied. The poor are often in poor health, because they can't access healthy food. We found the same - when you simply can't access a refrigerator, or a kitchen, you are stuck with the high-chemical pre-packaged foods available at the 24/7 convenience store. Such food also costs more.

Overall, this last month has been an education in how it feels to be helpless and without rights. We haven't truly been helpless, and we haven't truly been poor, but our eyes have been opened.

Bowl of Cherries

Summer means Cherries. Nothing in the world tastes better. I discover them new every year, having forgotten about these little bites of paradise in the intervening
eleven months. It's easy to forget about cherries, because they don't keep. Canned and frozen cherries are awful, whereas cranberries do perfectly well in a freezer.

But precisely because of this storage instability, cherries mark high summer like no other fruit. Peaches on roadside stands may provide a challenge to cherries' title, but cherries taste so good they make you happy.

When I was a kid, we had some friends with dozens of cherry trees, and we used to climb them on lazy summer days, reclining on shady branches, and eating cherries to our hearts' content. Every cherry I each today puts me back in those trees.

Happy July!

Cross-Cultural Bird Watching

Last week I heard an incredible bit of insight into the spiritual dynamic of crossing cultures, and "home". At a commissioning ceremony for new missionaries, an older, retired missionary gave the new class some tips and pointers.

"When you get to your new homes," he said, "watch birds."

When one moves to a new country, and lands in a new culture, beauty will come in unexpected packages. One's ability to prosper in that new land will hinge in part on opening those packages. Birds are part of the natural environment, and are thus less important for a sense of home than the cultural environment, but important nonetheless. They also teach us about the cultural environment.

For one thing, in the international, jet-setting world, people are so abstracted from their natural surroundings that every place is no place. It's hard to gain a sence of place when the economy revolves around a globalized everywhere. But locals still live there. They often have a work face and a home face, and sometimes they can't wait till the end of the day when they can be themselves again. When we only get to know a place through the locals' work faces, we miss out on the best that place has to offer.

For another, watching birds teaches us about the seasons and times of one's new home. We get to know our own hearts, and our own homes, better by watching a new place.