Boundaries in Forgiveness

01/9/2008, 4:00 pm -- by | 3 Comments

I recently had a conversation with a good friend about forgiveness. She had a painful childhood, but she’s found a way to forgive those who hurt her — forgetting. She remembers who hurt her and the general idea of what happened, but she can’t remember specific fights, words or wounds. She’s moved on, and used the results of her broken childhood to become a brilliantly insightful writer and poet.

Nevertheless, my friend still receives pressure from her extended family to forgive her parents. They believe that forgiveness means making contact with her father, going back to her mother’s house on vacations, etc. Essentially, they want her to act like the sins were never committed and submit herself to the possibility of being hurt again.

I know another woman who had a difficult life, somewhat due to her family. She claims to forgive them, but daily brings up specific incidences when they hurt her. She believes that one can forgive without forgetting, and sees no problem with rehashing those wounds, both with her family and with other people.

These are three different concepts of forgiveness, three coping mechanisms for conflict in the human brain. Jesus instructed us to forgive infinitely, but did he tell us how to treat the people we forgive? Is it healthy to forget? If not, what do we do with those memories? Where do we set up boundaries against those who have hurt us, or should we set up boundaries at all? Take a moment to think about it, and then please leave your comments and experiences, as well as any verses you find particularly applicable.

The Dragon Tree

12/5/2007, 10:30 am -- by | No Comments

The Dragon TreeIn a place called Clissold Park in North London, where dogs run without leashes and babies learn to walk, off the path and far into the cold emerald grass, there is a dragon, cursed by an English witch hundreds of years ago to be eternally rooted in the ground, to pay for transgressions long since forgotten.

The dragon is mossy green with age, and ribbons of bark twist around his huge serpent-like branches. His coils stretch far and low, curling like arabesques in stone cathedrals, and reaching out to those who happen by him. At first glance it is impossible to tell whether he is inviting people to take refuge under his canopy or clawing the sky, writing in agony with the wind.

I have only ever seen the dragon in the winter, when the leaves have all fallen and he looks ragged and lost, like nature put far too much work into one side and forgot about the other. His branches lie at the height of my shoulder, five feet from the ground, and I can wrap my arms around them as if I were holding a horse’s strong, muscular neck, and feel the strange warmth in the tree’s core, the flame of his breath that has yet to burn out. He is a climbing tree, and a limber person could clamber all the way to the top branches to view St. Paul’s and the Gherkin defining London’s horizon, or simply settle in the cleft of a low-hanging branch and write verse or read old novels.

When I first discovered the dragon, I couldn’t tell if he was writhing or beckoning, whether the warmth in his branches was from the burn of fighting muscles or the comfort he exuded. I couldn’t decide whether the holes in his trunk and the creeping moss were conquerors or companions. Perhaps, I thought, he was a content and wise old tree — or perhaps an embittered dragon biding his time, waiting to break free.

Whatever the case, I took on impulse the invitation to recline where the trunk had split at the base so that another gently sloping trunk had grown out of the ground. I accepted the proffered place to sit and muse, to lie back and tell him my thoughts on God and nature, on my fellow man and our history.

During these long afternoons, the dragon taught me things he had learned throughout his centuries in the ground. He described to me the great people who took their first steps within his circumference, the heinous crimes committed beneath his branches, and the everyday commonalities that taught him the most about humanity. He taught me that men search for God in whatever they can, be it mountains or oceans, stars or suns, or trees that reach out to touch people, to brush their shoulders and say, “Come, I have much to tell you.”

The dragon taught me that, as great as nature is, and as much as it can fill me with awe, the Creator is still greater. He taught me that I too must learn patience and discernment if I will be wise like the dragon. He taught how the world will go on after I have passed away and time has swallowed my memory, how I am so undeniably small.

There is a dragon in Clissold Park in North London. I have never hugged, never loved, never learned from a dragon before. But the dragon in Clissold Park, cursed by a good British witch, has learned much in his years in the ground, sedentary and silent but for the wind. He has learned that when one’s movement is measured in decades rather than seconds, one must calculate each choice carefully: that choosing to writhe is choosing to writhe for an eternity, and choosing to beckon is choosing to listen and teach forever. And he learned that though each small movement will make its impression on his form, only the results of centuries will be remembered.

November!

11/27/2007, 1:00 pm -- by | No Comments

My friend Keisha and I made an attempt this week to find a coffee shop with wireless on Oxford Circus so we could work on one of our many final papers. It was raining when we hopped on the 19 and struggled up the stairs to find seats, spotting two in the back after several moments of searching. We wedged ourselves in and watched the windows fog up as the bus lurched to a stop to pick up more passengers.

No one ever talks about buses in London. It’s all about the Tube and the Thames and other things starting with T that you can get around in, like taxis and trains and . . . tugboats. No one talks about how close you can get to people you don’t know on the bus — and I don’t mean inside. I watched with mild panic as mopeds and bicycles swerved in and out of our lane, wondering if they would suddenly slip on the wet asphalt and meet a damp and messy end before my eyes. Other buses breathed down my neck at stop lights, while my bus did the same to unfortunate passengers in other vehicles. I didn’t realize until that ride how small buses are. It wasn’t long before I was in a full-fledged anxiety attack, and I had to force Keisha to move to another seat closer to the stairs and surrounded by more windows to keep from hyperventilating.

We never got to Oxford Circus. By the time we reached Holborn (a 20-minute ride normally), we had been on the bus for nearly an hour and a half, and the muggy bus wasn’t even inching along in the driving rain. It was millimetering along. Keisha and I went downstairs in the mad hope of jumping off at the next stop, no matter where it landed us. Then a girl approached the bus driver and asked him to open the doors. “I’m late to an interview,” she said. “I’m so late, and I must get off. We haven’t moved in 15 minutes!”

“If I open these doors and you get plowed down, you’ll sue me. I can’t open the doors,” the gruff driver replied. He’d already displayed an extensive arsenal of colorful words throughout the trip, and so we inched away from the looming altercation.

“No, no, I promise I won’t sue you! Please, let me off, I need this job!”

She continued to beg him, and he continued to refuse. Then a gallant young businessman rose to the occasion and defended the fair maiden. “Look, please just open the door.”

Good job, turbo.

“I can’t open the doors, because I’ll get sued if you get hurt…but that doesn’t mean you can’t open the door.”

So the ambitious knight began tugging on the door. “No, no!” the bus driver said. “Press the button above your head!”

The hopeful suitor looked above him and espied the button, pressing it with all the fervor of a man about to be spurned by a pretty girl.

The doors hissed open and the girl sprang off, yelling “Thank you!” over her shoulder. The poor hero hopped off, too, heading in the other direction. So I was romanticizing it, but I had been on the bus for over an hour; I was mildly insane by that point.

Keisha and I made our escape at that point, too, giving up our search in Oxford Circus and returning to familiar territory — the Starbucks in Angel with two floors and magnificent heating. We were freezing cold and dripping wet, and we had spent nearly two hours getting there.

As I settled down with my Eggnog latte (┚¤3.05, but I so deserved it), I picked up the assignment for the literature class:

No traveling at all — no locomotion,
No inkling of the way — no notion —
‘No go’ — by land or ocean — [:]
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member —
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds —
November!

Indeed.

Trust

11/21/2007, 10:00 am -- by | No Comments

In Starbucks the other day, a woman asked me to watch her purse, jacket, and shopping bags while she fetched her coffee downstairs. It struck me as ironic that she would trust me, a total stranger, with some of her most important belongings. For all she knew, I was a thief waiting for the chance she gave me. In all honesty, I thought she was a total moron for trusting me, not because I shouldn’t be trusted, but because no one should be trusted.

When Adam and Eve ate from the tree and betrayed God, an innate inability to trust sprung up alongside sin in humanity. Because we as individuals know that we should not be trusted, we instinctively do not trust anyone else, particularly God. He is, after all, the One we betrayed. It’s like we’re just waiting for Him to get back at us when we least expect it.

This isn’t just true of non-believers or people who have been hurt by Christianity. I, for one, am struggling daily with giving even an inch to God for fear of what He’ll make me do, what He’ll make me give up. There are some things in this life I’ve decided I can’t live without, and I just know that if I trust God, He’s going to take that chance to get back at me. Just like I deserve.

Trusting God and giving up control over our lives is not easy, especially when we have everything planned out with careers and relationships, budgets and schedules. Who knows, maybe God will ask you to give up your office or teaching job to do His work in the Congo or Zimbabwe. My fear is that God will tell me to give up writing to go do something awful and miserable, something I’ll hate and will eventually kill me. Something like teaching high school.

Will He? I don’t know, which is one of the reasons I haven’t let go yet. But I’ve been told God doesn’t work like that. He doesn’t give gifts and then forbid us to use them. Obviously, I don’t believe that yet, so if you’re struggling with the same thing, let me be an encouragement to you. You aren’t alone in your wrestling. I’m praying for you, and I’ll ask you to pray for me, and then hopefully one day soon we’ll take that step and let Him direct our lives. I wish you the best.

Sunrise on Firth of Forth

11/14/2007, 9:30 am -- by | 2 Comments

There is no smell in the air, none at all. There is no lingering cigarette ash or swirling car exhaust, no rotten garbage or fetid water. And it is quiet, only the sound of the water slurping up the rocks and the wind rustling the waves like a dancing woman’s skirt. Scotland’s wind is not pushy and impatient, but mischievous, catching and teasing the tendrils of hair that have slipped my fist. Here there is respite from noxious cars and obnoxious horns, from people muttering, “Sorry,” and salesmen tugging at my sleeves. Here there are only the croaking calls of seagulls and the chatter of wind and waves.

There is a storm brewing off to the north, big and tumultuous, yellow and blue like a bruise, and when it breaks, everything in Scotland will turn greener than it was. In London, the plain almost-gray sky never quite rains, but drizzles unremarkable specks of water into unremarkable puddles of muck. When this storm breaks, the writhing clouds and turbulent ocean, the heavy blue hills ambling out of the water towards the southeast, all that will be washed in tacky greens not fit for painting. Maybe, when it breaks, the neon sunrise lurking beneath the horizon will decide to wander in.

I settle on a rock, where brine has anchored conical shells to the sides of the massive black boulder, and they scrape my legs each time I swing them back and forth with the rhythm of the tide. I face the east, where the sun will make its entrance and wrestle with the waves for the stage.

The sun rises uncertainly over the harbor, budding baby yellow on the hills, melting into confused greens and deepening shades of blue up into the sky. As it gains confidence, though, it throws out against the clouds an armory of pinks and oranges, bold and embarrassing colors to the Prussian blue ocean. The sky is flaming now, no longer shy yellows and greens, but bright shades of gold against the clouds.

And then the tides change. The clouds begin to recede. Those bullying masses were only testing the waters, looking for a reaction, and meant no harm, after all. They give ground to the sun, taking with them the chill wind and white waves, leaving in their place ripples on a placid surface, and shallow pools reflecting the boulders on which I perch. And then a final flourishing bow from the clouds splashes vibrant greens all over the opposite shore.

Scotland is green once again.

Epilogue

11/8/2007, 1:00 pm -- by | 2 Comments

I wanted to share this with everyone. I volunteer at Salvation Army Homelessness Center on Wednesdays after class. This week I went in, and the boss, Andy, said, “Oh, Chloe! You have a message!”

A message? For me? I’m not important enough at Salvation Army to have a message! But there was a little yellow piece of paper with the name “Jean” on it. I don’t know a Jean, and certainly not one who works at “Islington Home Health Care.”

“What’s the message?”

“Well, apparently she found your driver’s license on the street. She sent it by post, so it should be here by tomorrow.”

(In my head, I’m still jumping up and down, yelling, “Praise God, praise God, praise God!”)

What are the odds? Really, what are the odds that in all the 7.5 million disenchanted, apathetic, tunnel-visioned people in a big city like London, a decent person would spot my stolen driver’s license and pick it up? More than that, what are the odds that the card I have from Salvation Army would be chucked out with it, land in the same place, and stay there with all the wind London had Wednesday? And, honestly, what are the chances that, in calling that number, the angel named Jean would get in touch with someone who knows me in a church as big as Regent Hall?

There aren’t any.

Praise God, praise God, praise God!!!!!

Awful, But Good?

11/7/2007, 9:30 am -- by | 6 Comments

London isn’t so friendly anymore. In fact, I rather hate it right now, but I’m sure that will pass eventually.

I got back from Scotland late last Monday night to find my room in ruins. Apparently a water input pipe on the toilet in the room above me had suffered from a slow leak. When I first saw the rubble, I thought my room had been broken into. But amazingly, nothing was ruined, thanks to how much time I spent tidying up before I left. What’s more miraculous, though, is the fact that I wasn’t in the room when the disaster occurred. The ceiling collapsed in an area where I spend a lot of time, and big chunks of stained drywall landed right where my head would have been.

I was moved around a few times until the guesthouse settled me in a room meant for one person. I’m sharing it with a dear friend whose kindness shows no bounds. The room is cramped, very cramped, but it’s only temporary. On the 15th my own room will open up. In the meantime, I’ll have to do what I’m worst at — humbly accept the kindness of others. I’m in awe, really, of how hospitable Houghton students are. I had numerous offers the first night for me to stay with someone else, and one girl was adamant that she would give up her bed for me. And again, with the friend I live with now, Christian hospitality is at its best, even if it means my pride is writhing on the floor.

The Sunday after this incident, while most people were gone on break to Rome, Amsterdam or Geneva, three friends and I went to the White Swan, a fantastic little pub with cheap and delicious coffee and meals that fits our budget when the food at the guesthouse is substandard. We sat around a square table, and I put my purse between Matt’s and my feet, nearly under the table. It was safe, I knew, but I checked it every so often because I’m paranoid.

We were there for two hours, completely absorbed in a conversation that weaved in and out of film and literature, what made movies span generations, and whether M. Night Shyamalan was working on anything. Then something changed in the atmosphere, a flurry of movement, perhaps, or a sound, and when I looked down, my purse was gone.

I don’t remember getting up from my chair and running the length of the bar to get outside, but suddenly I was out there, jogging down the street to find a man I had noted as suspicious when he walked by the table twice. There he was, walking quickly down the street. I jogged ahead of him, then stopped and turned around, getting a good look at his face. He didn’t look nervous, but he had a backpack big enough to conceal a purse, and if the police find anything on the CCTV, I’ll have no trouble confirming it. I know that man’s face. I dreamed of it last night. He was a televangelist.

I didn’t lose much: $40, my (now canceled) debit card, driver’s license, mobile phone, universal bus/tube ticket, hair brush. The things I’ve missed most are my chapstick, oddly enough, and my glasses. On the way out the door, I recalled that it was a weekend, so usually pubs had bouncers out front to check ID’s. I’d been turned away before on account of my student ID being unacceptable, and I almost, almost took my passport along. But then I thought, No, this will be the night my purse gets stolen, and opted for the license instead.

Again I find that if this had to happen, this was the best possible way — and again I am dumbfounded by how wonderful people are. One girl even gave me a hairbrush! The professors have gone out of their way to replace my travel card, and thanks to the kindness of others, I now have a loan to last me until I can figure out how to get money from the States to my pocket.

London is not my favorite place right now, not by far. But throughout this terrible week, God has reinstated in me a faith in other people, and in the divine arrangement that kept me from losing my head to plaster, or a knife in return for my purse.

Things could have been so much worse, but praise God, they weren’t.

Doomed to Learn

10/24/2007, 9:15 am -- by | 3 Comments

It was a bright and beautiful day when we kicked off. The weather must have been sunny with a high of 75, not a cloud in the blue London sky. The traffic was moderate, only a few people honked at us, and before too long, we were on a train headed to Birmingham.

Two friends (Mike and Matt) and I were biking from Birmingham, England to the coast of Wales, 160 miles total, sleeping on the side of the road, and eating dried fruit and peanut butter and jelly. We had been planning the trip for weeks, everything had gone right, and now we were there, on the train, actually going on this grand adventure.

Birmingham was bigger than we anticipated. We hadn’t done much in the way of city cycling, and we didn’t know Birmingham. As the sun sunk lower, it got colder. We lost each other a couple of times trying to maneuver the rush hour traffic. Then I started shaking. My heart was beating irregularly, my legs were on fire, and I was dizzy. I was falling behind, so I jumped off my bike. Mike and Matt stopped ahead of me and waited for me to catch up. We had only been biking for about four miles. “I don’t think I can do this,” I announced.

They convinced me to try again, arguing that since I wasn’t out of breath, it was probably just the traffic throwing me off. They were sure I could do it.

But ten minutes later I was off my bike again, then again five minutes after that. Only then did they finally accept I simply could not handle this trip. So they went on, and I walked the bike all the way back to the station and caught a train home.

Throughout the next day, I learned that even the fittest person can’t just hop on a bike and go 160 miles in four days — that kind of work uses such specific muscle groups. It would take intensive training to take such a strenuous trip. But my mother didn’t share her similar biking experiences until I got home. My professors didn’t admit how worried they were until I admitted it was impossible. No one said I couldn’t do it. And knowing me, if they had, I would have made a point to prove them wrong.

There are so many lessons in life we must learn the same way. One of the hardest things is keeping your counsel when you know someone else is going through such a trial. But the lessons learned through experience will be lessons they’ll never forget, lessons that will increase their wisdom and make them more whole.

Mike and Matt returned home the next day because of a broken bike. I’m thankful all three of us got home safely. I’m thankful for the experience, for biking around London and Birmingham, for getting to know Mike and Matt better, and for getting to see firsthand how God humbles and protects His children.

And I’m thankful to the people who let me figure it out myself.

Mentally Homeless

10/17/2007, 10:00 am -- by | 11 Comments

Imagine your doctor telling you that you are seriously ill. He books you into hospital for an operation. You go in, are shown to your bed and are asked what you want for supper.

The next day you sit by your bed, now familiar with the hospital and its regime. You wait patiently.

The next day is followed by another. Nothing happens. The days turn into weeks; and then months.

And one day a nurse says: ‘Tomorrow you are going home.’ ‘But I thought I was seriously ill,’ you say in surprise. ‘Oh, you are,’ she replies, ‘but our budget doesn’t extend to curing you. This is all we can afford.’

— John Bird, The Mail on Sunday, February 2007

This is the image John Bird presents of the way the UK deals with homelessness. Essentially, government-funded programs provide soup kitchens, hostels, clothing and flats to homeless people depending on need, urgency, and of course, funds. It’s a social program designed to keep legitimately poor people off the street. It generally does a good job of weeding out those who are homeless due to drug or alcohol addiction, which is why between 87 and 90% of homeless people in London are there because of addiction.

John Bird is one of the founding members of the Big Issue, a magazine which provides homeless people with 10 free issues to sell on the streets, then allows them to buy more magazines as they sell. The Big Issue is a not-for-profit organization, designed to enable the homeless to make a living and gain both the skills and the resources to rehabilitate themselves.

One would think that, as a founder of an organization aimed at helping the homeless, Bird would be sympathetic to them. Instead, he writes, “The people who are homeless through addiction are feckless, unstable, unreliable, incapable of holding down a job, feeding themselves or cleaning themselves. You take them into a hostel, patch them up and put them in State housing on benefits and they continue to kill themselves… They are ill and should be ‘sectioned’ — lifted from the streets and confined in the care of the mental health system, behind bars if necessary.”

Bird argues that, while not all homelessness can be attributed to addiction, those that are addicts need to be institutionalized and ‘reprogrammed’ in order to live stable, healthy lives. In England, there are a few institutions that deal exclusively in rehabilitating the homeless. Bird reports a 60 to 70% success rate.

Is addiction a mental disorder? Is Bird right in saying the homeless should be committed? What about people who aren’t homeless, but still struggle with addiction? Or is it just the homeless who are mentally unstable? What do you think?

Best of Bweinh! — Prophets of the Rain

10/10/2007, 9:30 am -- by | No Comments

Best of Chloe, July 2007.

I won’t waste your time telling about the rain. You know the rain, its monotonous drip, drip, drip, its messy puddles and leaks. The rain is boring. It’s the oracles that are so alluring and stunning, the way they turn the storm into an electrical mess that muddles your senses and leaves you waiting for something both life-threatening and satisfying.

They come in the evenings, when it’s finally cool enough to go outside and work. If there’s a shed to be painted, a deck to be oiled, or lumber to haul, I can count on the clouds that hover like an alien ship to come crawling over the mountains in the south. These clouds aren’t blankets, oh, no. They are mountain ranges, arroyos, Grand Canyons flipped upside-down to create a skyscape that looms overhead and promises quite the show.

That’s how it starts, with the clouds. And then the birds begin to sing. I’ve heard that birds are most active before a storm, and the ruckus reminds me of an out-of-control high school class.

After the birds come the wind that, when it blows through the pine boughs, sounds like the tide on the wet sand. The wind brings with it the scent of the rain, that dusty metallic aroma of ozone. Then the air changes, an electrical charge that starts the birds off at a whole new decibel and pulls me further outside to feel the coming of the storm. Now the air is a rosy brown like old pictures and the wind chimes sing something familiar in the key of G and any moment now, any moment now, any…

The first drop is teasing, as if the clouds are demanding proof that I really want this deluge they’ve been dangling in front of me all evening. I reply with a shiver that can only come to a person who has been glorying in three-digit temperatures. Another drop falls and the old picture fades into a fog as that strange sheet comes tearing across the valley straight for me.

I won’t waste your time telling you about the rain. It is a disappointment, ten minutes of downpour that will evaporate in half the time. It wasn’t the rain I came out to see, though. It was the prophets of the rain.

A Fresh Look at Bible Stories

10/3/2007, 9:30 am -- by | 4 Comments

There once was a man who was possessed by many unclean spirits. He lived among the hills in the region of the Gerasenes, cutting himself and crying out at all hours. He called himself Legion, and even chains could not restrain him. One day, as Jesus was getting out of a boat, the man came and started calling out to him in a loud voice. The spirits begged Jesus not to torture them, then asked to be sent into a herd of 2000 nearby pigs. Jesus consented, and the unclean spirits drove the pigs over a cliff and into the water to be drowned.

Fifty or so years before this incident, there was a Roman legion called Legio IX Hispana, which disappeared mysteriously from the meticulous Roman records. Some say the legion was overtaken by robbers. Others say it was swallowed by the earth for the sins of the Roman Empire. Still others say the legion was made up entirely of men who refused to ask for directions or cook for themselves, so they all starved to death in Siberia. Whatever the case may be, the fate of the legion has remained a mystery…..until now.

It has been proposed that perhaps this legion was killed in a brutal manner, before its time, and far from home (all ingredients for a proper haunting). What if this legion of wronged Gentile souls found its way into this poor Jewish man and made him so strong that even chains couldn’t bind him? What if they so longed for pork that they actually desired to be pigs? What if the only way for their deaths to be avenged was for them to get out of the kosher man and into the unclean pigs? And what if all demons in the gospels are actually ghosts?

What if, indeed?

Now, it must be admitted that few people believe this story. Why, when my Luke-Acts professor suggested we all get under the conference table and start a camp fire so he could tell us a ghost story, I thought for sure he was completely bonkers. But after he made the disclaimer that he didn’t actually believe what he was telling us, I began to see the light. This must be true, if my educated Bible professor doesn’t believe it. So open up your mind, forget all you’ve been taught, and read the story on a stormy night, preferably Halloween.

And don’t forget, gullible isn’t in the dictionary.

Blue Rose Code

09/26/2007, 4:30 pm -- by | 5 Comments

There is no better concert than the one where you sit with the band when they aren’t performing. Last night I had the privilege of hanging out with Chris Smith and Blue Rose Code, thanks to my graphic designer friend Jesse. She had been to a Blue Rose Code concert the week before and ended up chatting with Chris, the band manager, about her work. He asked to see her portfolio, liked what he saw, and invited her back to chat with the band about the possibility of working together. I tagged along since Jesse didn’t know these people or where she was going, and ended up discovering a new favorite band.

The concert was at The Distillers, a classy pub in Hammersmith, and though the room where the event was held was more in the style of an open mic, the audience was completely focused on the performers. People who talked were shushed, and any mobiles that dared to ring were promptly tossed out the window. The program was called One Taste, and included a remarkable young man named Jamie Woon, who took a looping device and turned his voice into a full choir and band to accompany his rendition of “Wayfaring Stranger.” Also part of the show was PoeTree Man, a slam poet and tree surgeon who, as part of his performance, had the audience sing and scream like they’d been oppressed for two thousand years.

Blue Rose Code is an Islington band (Islington is a borough of London), although the lead singer, Ross, is from Scotland and Steve, the bass player, is from South Africa. They play relaxed folksy rock, bringing in instruments like the harmonica and fiddle to accent the acoustic guitar and bass. The band members themselves were personable, treating Jesse and me as little sisters, rather than a potential business partner and her random friend. Chris offered to buy us drinks, Steve’s sister told us stories from when she was a student at the London School of Theology, where we happen to be studying now, and Steve and Ross fell in love with the art samples Jesse brought along to show them.

Most important, however, was their music, which was so mellow and nostalgic that I became convinced I could listen to them forever and never grow tired of their style and sound. Blue Rose Code has real talent, and I wouldn’t be all that surprised if, in a couple of years, we find their album in our music stores. I encourage you to check them out at MySpace, and if you like what you hear, you can purchase their CD here.

The Difference Between an Englishman and an American

09/19/2007, 9:30 am -- by | 6 Comments

I have, on many occasions, been accused of being an Anglophile. People say this to me with any number of emotions in their voice, ranging from disgust to perplexity. They have horrible food, bad teeth, and haughty demeanors. Why would I choose to be obsessed with the English culture? How could I betray America like that?

Gentility. They have it. We don’t.

On my way from the airport to my new home, I had to carry two 50-pound bags on the metro, up and down many flights of steps, and through vast crowds of people enclosed in tight spaces. I had no idea how I was going to do it alone, and I was sorely tempted to spend an outrageous amount of money on a taxi to avoid it altogether. However, when I got onto the platform for the train from the airport to the Underground and started struggling with my suitcases, a man nearby carried them into the train for me. On the way out of the train, another person did the same thing. When I reached the Tube, people walked around me, didn’t bump me or harass my luggage, and helped me on and off the train.

The real kicker, however, was when I got to my home stop and faced a huge escalator, many people, and the difficulty of getting through the narrow ticket passage. A little old lady, not more than five feet tall and somewhere between 65 and 70 years old, swooped in and announced that she was going to help me. She grabbed a suitcase right out of my hand and carried it off. I thought for sure that she was trying to steal it, but of course she wouldn’t have gotten far, since she couldn’t have weighed more than twice what the bag did. She carried it all the way out of the station before handing it back to me, then nodded once and walked off. I have never experienced that type of kindness in a big American city.

While England is much more secular than America, its people seem to understand something that we don’t: those around us are people, too. We as a general population are very capable of walking by a struggling person and ignoring them. The English do not. They treat each other with respect, even saying “Sorry” whenever they bump into someone on the street. Americans keep walking, or worse, instigate something. This flaw in our society saddens me even more in the context of our beliefs. We’re supposed to be a Christian nation. Where did our common courtesy go?

The Body of Christ

09/12/2007, 1:15 pm -- by | 3 Comments

I’m always nervous when I return to a place I haven’t been in a while. Going back to Houghton tends to be more difficult because I know my friends and I have changed in leaps and bounds, and the girl I wanted to hang out with all the time last year could quite possibly have morphed into a moody or flaky stranger. If I no longer know the people I knew, what will I be left with?

This semester, I only returned for a few days because, as most of you know, I’m off to merry old England tomorrow. The first chapel I went to emphasized the body of Christ. God singled out my fear and reminded me that the body of Christ is everywhere. I don’t know the majority of the students at Houghton, and some of them aren’t part of the body of Christ, but looking around the chapel, I felt nearly the same thing that I do when I take Communion — this is my family, whether I know them well or not.

After chapel ended and I began the trek towards the campus center, globs of people around me, my fears of isolation completely vanished. From every side there were people saying, “Chloe! Where have you been?” or, “Chloe, how have I not seen you this whole time?” Right and left, people who knew I was going to London were doing double-takes at my presence on campus. And for the three and a half days that I’m here, I have only half a handful of hours left to myself because my friends want to catch up.

The intense love that comes with residing in the body of Christ always surprises me. My group of friends has showered me with that love these past few days, telling me about their assistance in the first ever purely civilian election in Sierra Leone, their trials in teaching inner-city Buffalo kids to read, their joy in spreading the Word of God all over the East Coast with Dayspring. I am amazed at what my friends are accomplishing for the Kingdom, and they share their excitement with me as if I had been right alongside them the whole summer.

I am so blessed to be part of this group of people, and even more blessed to call the body of Christ my family.

Bweinh.com Goes Global

09/5/2007, 2:30 pm -- by | 1 Comment

At the beginning of the summer, I declared that if you didn’t want to go to New Mexico, you would change your mind by the time you read my articles. Well, it’s September, and even I don’t want to be in New Mexico. Despite the fact that the days are shortening and fall is descending, the mercury still boasts still between 98 and 102 degrees. I’m ready for something new.

Here’s the plan, then: I’m out of here. I’m jumping the pond, and I’m taking Bweinh! with me. Until mid-December, my articles will serve as a travel log, unless there’s something more important to write about. All the things you’d naturally hear about (the Tower of London, the Thames, the Tube) may or may not be mentioned, but the things you never hear about (the great food, English gentility, the homeless) most certainly will. So sit back, relax, and enjoy, while our favourite website finally crosses an ocean.

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