Emmanuel- God in our midst

Matthew 1:23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel” (which means, God with us).

In Helsinki, I visited an exhibit of nativity scenes, based on Italian nativity scenes from the 17 and 18 hundreds.  At first, I was struck by the oddity of the anachronisms- women selling sausages, men discussing business in the street- all dressed in styles from a more modern time, and somewhere, in the midst of it all, the Holy Family. 

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14

But the more I looked, and the more I pondered, the more I came to love the symbolism of it.  He was there, in our midst.  He is here, in our midst.  Many of the people in the scenes went about their daily lives, oblivious to the greatest of all miracles: God among us.  The greatest moment in history was happening, and they were unaware.  Others though, stopped what they were doing.  They came to adore, bringing offerings of everyday life- bread, apples, fish

It made me wonder, what if we remade these scenes, changed the characters to people we see about us every day?  What if we added ourselves to the scene?  Do I go about my daily life, so busy with normality that I forget to ponder the miracle this season reminds me of?  Has the idea of a God who dwells with us become so familiar to me that it has lost its mystery?  Or do I still pause in what I'm doing, and stop in awe at the manger, to wonder at the God who became flesh and dwelt among us?

May you see Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, in your life this Christmas.  May you experience the wonder and the mystery of a God who humbled himself to become one of us. May you be like Mary, treasuring the miraculous in the midst of the ordinary, and pondering it in your heart.

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." Philippians 2: 5-8

But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed." Isaiah 53:5

Happy Thanksgiving!

Back in September, I was already starting to think about Thanksgiving.  Not celebrating Thanksgiving just wasn't an option, but singlehandedly hosting Thanksgiving dinner when I've never made a turkey before was a daunting task.  So when Alistair was just as excited by Thanksgiving as I was, we had a team and a goal- introducing one of our favorite holidays to friends from around the world.

Hosting Thanksgiving dinner is a big deal.  It's even more of a big deal in a foreign country where it can be tricky to find the ingredients you need.  Add to that living in student apartments without the space to host a large dinner and no car for transporting groceries, and you have a logistical puzzle.  But, where there's a will, there's a way.

A scouting trip to the closet major grocery store near my house revealed that turkey, pumpkin pie, sweet potato casserole and cranberry sauce could remain on the menu, as long as we were willing to make them from scratch.  Watergate salad (or what we call "green stuff" in my family) was a no go however.

An early Happy Thanksgiving email to my family on Thursday morning prompted me to look at how long I'd need to defrost our bird in the fridge if we were celebrating on Sunday.  I suddenly realized that the answer was I should start defrosting it now.  So, after my first class of the day I biked to the store and bought a 17 pound turkey.  While I've gotten better at balancing my bike with packages hanging from the handlebars, I don't think I'm up to the disequilibrium that something that heavy would cause, so lucky for me, the turkey just fit into my backpack.

Next on the to-do list was finding a venue.  Fortunately for us, all the student apartment complexes have "common rooms" that you can reserve.  So Alistair reserved a room and I swung by the student housing office on Friday afternoon to pick up the key.  When I got home Friday evening, I decided to stop in and scope out the room.  Much to my dismay, the key I was given didn't open the door.  I tried again.  I've been known to be slightly key-challenged, so maybe I was just doing something wrong?  Nothing.  Suddenly our whole plan seemed to be crashing in around me.  We had 17 people scheduled to show up on Sunday and it looked like we might not have a room.  I was imagining us sitting on the floor of my apartment, eating out of paper plates.  Not really the best Thanksgiving dinner scenario.

Since I was biking (again) on Friday and had bought poster board downtown, I'd asked a friend who happens to be a neighbor if he'd take it back with him on the bus.  So, when I called him to get the poster board from him I asked if he'd see if he had any more luck with the key than I did.  He didn't.  I realized that maybe the lady at the housing office had given me the wrong key, so we went off to see if we could find the other common room in the complex.  The exterior door there was open, and the housing office key let us into the common room.  My immediate relief was followed by disappointment.  The room was ugly, windowless, with a broken down pool table on the floor and not enough chairs to seat everyone.  To make it worse, the kitchen was also locked, and, you guessed it, the key didn't work to open it.

As I was mentally trying to come up with plan C, some random inspiration made my friend try his key in the kitchen door.  It opened.  Thoroughly confused, but glad at least to have access to a kitchen on the premises, I figured the rest of the details would work themselves out.  Another random moment of inspiration led us back to the first room where my friend's key worked on the outside door and the key from the housing office worked on the inside door and voila, we finally had a (somewhat) better place.  At least there was enough seating and no broken pool table.

Prepping sweet potato casserole on Saturday 

So, Saturday back at my place, Alistair and I, with the help of our friend Paulina, made all the desserts and prepped some of the other food.  And Sunday morning, at the early hour of 7 am (made even earlier by the fact the sun doesn't even rise til 9:30 here right now) Alistair showed up and (using my friend's borrowed key) we let ourselves in to the common room and started cooking away.

Necessity is the mother of invention

The turkey came out perfect.  An olive oil bottle worked just fine for mashing potatoes since we didn't have a potato masher.  My cranberry sauce gelled.  In short, all the disasters that could have happened didn't.  Thanksgiving was an amazing success.  None of our guests had celebrated an American Thanksgiving before and almost none of them had eaten a whole turkey.  They all waited anxiously for it to come out of the oven.

The two American co-hosts and our perfect turkey

As we shared about our American traditions and history- pumpkin pie and breaking wishbones, the Macy's day parade and football, Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians- it was so fun to see people experiencing Thanksgiving for the first time.  We went around the table and all shared one thing we were thankful for.

Guests from around the world experiencing their first American dinner (in Finland).

For me, I was thankful for friends.  Thankful that despite being far from home and family, I was surrounded by people who I could share Thanksgiving with.  That's what I said.  I was also thankful for this plate of food and pulling off Thanksgiving without a single mishap.

Of course, Thanksgiving dinner isn't complete without dessert.  "Let me put this in perspective" I told our guests.  "This year at home, there were only 8 people at my family's Thanksgiving celebration, and I think they had 4 different desserts.  This is the one day a year when you can eat as much dessert as you want and not feel guilty.  Please, try everything.  We want you to."  Alistair and I weren't sure if our 2 apple pies, 2 pumpkin pies, 1 chocolate mousse pie, brownies, and ice cream was going a bit overboard.  But hey, there's no such thing as too much food at Thanksgiving.  

An apple pie and a chocolate mousse pie, made by me with some help from Paulina

Some of my favorite people in Finland.  :)

Now the leftovers are mostly eaten, other than some turkey soup that is saved in my freezer.  And I'm looking forward to next year's Thanksgiving, but not sure who I'll host it with since Alistair won't be here next year.  Any American friends want to come host Thanksgiving with me next year?

The American Dinner!

Rewind to September.  The International Students organization hosted a Finnish dinner.  Somehow my innocent offer to "help cook" at the next International student dinner transformed into "plan, shop, cook, and host" when another American also offered to help cook.

Which explains why one Saturday morning found us in a common kitchen, surrounded by towers of canned goods. I was chopping a mountain of onions while Alistair browned onions and Paulina scrubbed potatoes.  "What can I do?" Jonathan asked.  "You can open the crushed tomatoes" I said, searching for my pocket knife.  I knew I'd left it somewhere and none of us had brought a real can opener.  Fifteen cans later, plus 15 cans of kidney beans and pounds of green peppers, onions, and ground beef later, our chili for 50 was simmering on the stove.


As it simmered, we hung stars from the ceiling, rearranged furniture, and set the tables.  Five o'clock and the place was decorated and the food almost ready.  We were ahead of the game.  I slipped home to change and got back in time to help with the appetizers.




As guests came through the door I stuck a name on their back, giggling a bit at some of the mismatches.  "Oh, this one's perfect for you" as I stuck Princess Jasmine on a very decidedly not princess like man's back.  They were instructed to figure out who they were by asking questions, and then to find the person who had their match.  It was our cleverly designed ploy to require guests to mingle.  And it worked.  :)  The food helped too.  Chips and dip and pigs in a blanket seemed like perfect American party foods, but we had to supplement them with the most quintessential American ingredient we could think of: peanut butter.

The quintessential American ingredient in 2 very school child forms  

The room, ready for guests.

Mingling

Once everyone had found their partner, we lined them up for contra-dancing.  Alistair (my token American friend and partner in crime, or event planning, whichever the case might be) also happens to play the fiddle.  So, he explained the steps as we tried to maneuver around each other in a room most certainly not designed for 25 couples to dance in.  We had to restart from the beginning multiple times before we made it through the first set of steps, but when we managed it successfully, the whole group spontaneously burst into applause.

Some of the awesome people who helped

Ice thoroughly broken now, we sent people in to find a seat and served chili and baked potatoes.  I found an empty seat at a table of French speakers from France, Switzerland and Belgium to eat some chili, then got up to help get dessert ready.  While pancakes aren't traditionally a dessert, everyone loves them, and most of the rest of the world eats crepes, not our fat, puffy, wonderful pancakes.  To make things even better, we served them with maple syrup and whipped cream.  I joined a table with people from Azerbaijan, Chile, Romania and Albania for the dessert course.  And may or may not have finished off all the whipped cream in the bowl when the pancakes were gone. . .

Disconnect

I've been wondering lately why I'm having such a hard time getting back into the rhythms of student life.  I was always an excellent student, but here I feel less motivated.  I'm doing my homework, but it doesn't seem to have the relevance or importance it did back when I was an undergraduate student. My thesis topic (ever elusive but always on my mind) inspires me, and I know, for me, my thesis is serious.  Everything else, sort of feels ancillary

We had an interesting lecture the other day, on three types of learning: knowledge acquisition, participation, and knowledge creation.  Knowledge acquisition is traditional classroom learning: an "expert" with knowledge passes that knowledge on to someone without knowledge.  In it's most basic form, it's seen as a banking system of education-knowledge is "deposited" into your mind by the one who possesses it.  You are passive, receiving knowledge.

Participation is, as its name implies, more participatory in nature.  It's a social method of learning. As you work alongside an "expert, you learn through doing, observation, experimentation, and failure.

Knowledge creation goes a step beyond that.  You improvise and create new ideas based on your knowledge and experience.

These don't have to be a continuum of learning, taken in order.  However, each level has an increasing amount of intellectual challenge involved.  Lately, I've been feeling a disconnect between what I'm doing here in class and what I want to do later in life, and as I listened to this lecture, I realized why.

For the past 7 years, I've mostly been learning at the participation and knowledge creation levels.  Knowledge acquisition has usually been in response to a real life problem.  And now I'm back in school.  I've become unaccustomed to learning and problem solving separated from real world problems.  When my former "stimulus" for learning was "we don't have a reading curriculum" and the outcome was a 60 page organized manual with reading and writing ideas written in my second language, suddenly, "read a scholarly article and write a summary and critique of the methodology" or even, "compare one facet of 2 different school systems in 6-8 pages" just doesn't seem as critical.

Here's to hoping that while I feel disconnected from the "real world" and real world problems, I'll be able to see how my time here will help me be more effective in meeting some of those problems when I leave the ivory tower of academia.

Adventures with my bike

I was in the forest, following the 7 year old on the bike path.  The hill was steep and his little brother struggled up it.  I was tagging behind, ostensibly not to lose the kids- after all, watching them was my responsibility- but the honest truth was that this hill was about as hard for me as it was for the four year old.  He stood up on the pedals, leaning in to keep going.  

When I was a kid, we lived at the top of a steep, gravel drive way.  It wasn't ideal for riding bikes.  So I never really progressed to the "look Mom!  No hands!" stage of bike riding.  I'm getting there now, but balancing while standing is a feat I still haven't mastered.  

Despite that, my bike has become one of my new best friends.  The fog creeps over the river in the morning, and frost paints the bushes white.  My ears freeze, especially since I misplaced my hat.  I steer to avoid the potholes, and smile as I pick up speed on the hill right before I reach campus.  My half hour walk has been shortened to a just over 10 minute bike ride.  

On a drizzly day, when I finally arrive I'm slightly damp, my hair frizzy.  Riding in the rain is hard.  I blink, trying to keep the raindrops out of my eyes.  I momentarily consider wearing swimming goggles when biking in the rain, and then wonder if maybe a hat with a visor might work just as well and not look quite as strange.

We laughingly call ourselves a "bike gang" when there's a group of us together.  We ride through the town square in the dark.  It's empty this late at night, and the group of us all headed home in the same direction call back and forth to each other as we ride through the silent streets.  There's something magical about riding at night.  When everything around you is obscured, you feel like you're gliding, almost flying in the dark.

Unfortunately, with the cold comes ice and snow, and I think I'm still too new to the world of cycling to brave those conditions on the way to school each morning.  The bus might just replace my bike for a season.  But for now, in these last few days of fall, I'm still enjoying this new bicycle life style. 

Falling off the tight rope

I used to think of God's will as a tight rope: you're either on it, or off it, and staying balanced is a treacherous journey of discernment, where any mis-step will send you tumbling.  And if you want God's best for your life, you have to work to get back on that tightrope, because it stretches away into God's perfect future for you, and there you are, on the ground, stuck with plan B.

When I'm thinking this way, decisions are terrifying.  If I don't discern God's will correctly and instead I (take this job, move to this place, date this person) and it wasn't REALLY God's will, then I'll be stuck in plan B.  I start to stress, on one hand, that I will fail God, and on the other that he will fail me.  If I choose wrong, he won't be able to use me as he planned to.  Life will go on, but I won't meet that one person who was going to tell me about that particular mission's organization that would have been the perfect fit for me and I would have changed hundreds of children's lives.  He also won't be able to bless me as he planned to.  I also won't meet that amazing man that God had planned for me to marry.  Oops.  I would have met him at that other job.  Or in a different country.  Or at a different school.  Too bad I heard God wrong, and now I'm stuck with plan B.  Unless of course, I can figure out where I misheard, back track as it were, and get myself back on the tight rope.  Then maybe I can still have the "best" plan.

How small my view of God can be, and how large my view of myself.  Did I really think that I could fail God?  That me, one tiny, insignificant creation in a world of 7 billion, could make a choice that would upset the course of God's divine plan?  That with my one decision, I would lessen his ability to work through me?  Do I really think that God's grace is so small that it only covers me when I'm following down a pre-made path that I can't see and nothing but faith and guesswork can ever make out?  Do I not know that God is everywhere?  That he redeems all our mistakes, is with us always, even to the end of this age, and lavishes his love on us?

I'm reworking my understanding of God's will.  When God put Adam and Eve in the garden, he gave them choices and parameters.  "And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16 & 17) I'm beginning to think, that in much the same way, God gives us choices and parameters now.  "He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 5:7)  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22: 37&38)  Does my decision flow from my love of God?  Does it demonstrate love to my neighbor?  Is it a decision that embraces love, mercy, and justice?  Because if it does, I think it's a decision that I'm free to make without agonizing whether or not it's God's will.  Perhaps that seems obvious, but for me, it hasn't always been.  It still isn't.  I feel like I need a special confirmation, a special blessing, in order to proceed.  Maybe because of my personality.  Maybe because of things I was taught in church (until you have "perfect peace" that a decision is from God, you should continue to seek him. . . how does that even work if a decision has a deadline and not making a decision is the same as deciding "no"?).  Maybe because of verses like this one, "And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left." (Isaiah 30:21).

As I've been trying to come to a Biblically sound view of what it means to seek God's will, I can't really bring to mind any soul-searching, agonizing times of desperately seeking God's will in the Bible (Jesus, at Gethsemane is the only time that comes to mind.  And there he already kenw God's will, but was asking if there was any other way, that's a bit different than evaluating options and choosing the one God approves).  Yes, there are MANY times when God clearly speaks and directs someone to do something specific.  And there are times when God's people seek guidance for how to overcome specific problems.  But overall, I see a principle of honoring God with our lives and moving forward trusting that he will guide. "The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way; though he falls, he shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD upholds his hand" (Psalm 37:23 & 24).  If you search the Bible with the term "God's will", you'll find that often it relates to general principles (it is his will for us to be holy, to give thanks, to be sanctified) or a general calling (it was his will for Paul to be an apostle).  Rarely is it written about a specific circumstance, and if it is, it isn't generally something that needs to be carefully discerned, but more likely revealed through circumstances (Paul writing, "I will come back if it is God's will." in Acts 18:21).

I've been trying to find out what the early church father's wrote about decision making and while my search has been cursory so far, I haven't really turned up much of anything.  And I'm wondering if this is the reason why, "increased control over one's own life- problems of choice- are typically upper-class phenomena in the previous generations" (Life Stories of Social Change J. P. Roos) Until recently, "discerning God's will" wasn't something that your average person had much cause to do.  All the major life decisions where it's easy to worry about making the wrong choice, were choices they didn't even truly have to make.  Your father was a farmer, you were a farmer.  You were apprenticed to someone as a child, that became your trade.  You were a woman, you would marry, bear children and keep house.   Even "choices" like marriage were less of a choice when marriage was a much more practical arrangement and much less of the romantic attachment it is seen as today.  So if they could take those steps without fearing that they would somehow unknowingly be disobedient to God, I think we can probably do the same. 

I'm not suggesting we not pray, and seek God's will.  I just think that maybe, just maybe, God is more interested in us becoming transformed into his image than he is with creating prescribed paths for each one of us that we have to figure out.  And I'm confident that my God can transform me anywhere, and use any circumstance for his glory and for my good.  So, I'm beginning to say sometimes, after praying and seeking God, "maybe this right now, is a choice God is allowing me to make, and it's all right to choose any of these options"  But it's hard to do.  Even as I realize that my decisions shouldn't be made in fear because "Perfect love casts out fear"I find myself returning to the "comfort" of old ways of thinking.  Discerning God's will doesn't require me to make a decision- it just requires me to hear God's voice.  He chooses, I obey. There's safety in that, despite the fear of "mishearing".   But choosing, somehow that's a bit scarier.  But there's joy and freedom in that too.  So for now, I'm trying to learn to walk the tightrope with more confidence, no longer fearing that I can fall off and "lose" God's will for my life (as long as I'm not in rebellion to what his word reveals), and rejoicing in the truth that "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28).  It's not MY choices that keep me on that tight rope after all.  It's the glorious grace of my wonderful savior. 

The me that I'm becoming

Today, I made myself arepas for breakfast, and then sat and read my Spot books (in Finnish) while I ate.  There was something about that juxtaposition of cultures that got me thinking.  Because for me, making and eating an arepa is more than just cooking and eating.  It's an act of identifying with the Colombian "side" of my identity, connecting with friends far away, remembering- learning to make arepas for the asado (cook out) we had in La Calera with Bibi, the laughter in the kitchen at Luz y Vida as we made breakfast for 30,  the open bag of harina pan that Alex used to pat his arepas into shape, listening to Edwin and his brother and cousin discuss politics around the breakfast table, making arepas rellenas for dinner with Andreina when she came to visit me in the States.

And I realize how much my time in Colombia changed me. Not just in ways that are easy to explain, like memories, and eating new foods.  But things that are so much harder to see, or even for me to identify.  I see the world differently.  I have more than one way of doing things depending on where I am and who I'm with.  My values have shifted.

And now, I'm learning a new language, in a new country, with a new culture. Somewhere in a powerpoint this week, I saw these sentences: "You can't learn a language without learning the culture, and you can't learn a culture without learning the language"  I'd agree, and I'd add that you can't learn a language and culture and remain the same.

My favorite poem pretty much says the same thing-

Aprender el inglés/Learning English  by Luis Alberto Ambroggio

Vida 

Para entenderme 

Tienes que saber español 

Sentirlo en la sangre de tu alma.

Si hablo otro lenguaje

Y uso palabras distintas

Para expresar sentimientos que nunca cambiarán

No sé 

Si seguiré siendo 

La misma persona

Life 

to understand me 

you have to know Spanish 

feel it in the blood of your soul.

If I speak another language

And use different words

For feelings that will always stay the same

I don’t know 

If I’ll continue being 

The same person

And that's what I wonder- who will I be when my time here is done?  How will Finland and everything I do and see and experience and learn here change me?