Seasons

This too shall pass…good words to remember when times are good but especially when times are hard…that nothing stays the same forever.

This will be a post on seasons – both literal and metaphorically – but in many ways using seasons as a theme is the best way to sum up the past four or five months. I don’t think I have ever been as grateful for the coming of new seasons even if the hoped for metaphorical seasons aren’t quite as dependable as the literal changing seasons.

Since last posting (in December!!! Happy New Year everyone! OK, Thai New year wasn’t that long ago), we have walked through three literal seasons here in North Carolina – Winter, an incredibly short Spring and now what I consider to be Summer (but the locals most likely still refer to it as Spring!) But when it is 90 (32 C) degrees in the first week of April and local strawberries are being picked – I call that summer! Everyone said that North Carolina was much colder and snowier this past winter. Although we didn’t have quite the dumping that other places on the East Coast experienced we did have snow several times. (Photo: Andrea on the deserted street in front of our neighborhood.) But I’ll take a colder, snowier but much shorter and sunnier North Carolina winter over a long dragged out Western Washington winter any day. Now of course this year, Seattle and Tacoma experienced the warmest winter they have had in years!

I was actually back in the Northwest three times during the first three months of the year. In January I attended a week long retreat at Mt. Angel Abbey in Oregon organized by Center for Transforming Mission and the Street Psalms Community. (More on CTM later.) It was my first time to stay at a monastery and be able to experience the daily rhythms of the life the monks live which was good and a timely gift. I was also able to spend time with family and friends back in Seattle/Tacoma. During this time a short term employment opportunity also presented itself. Sadly it was due to the closing of Sound Youth Counseling, the counseling agency where I worked in Tacoma for seven years before leaving in 2008. It’s a long story, but due to several reasons that could have been easily avoided, the decision was made to shut down operations. Even closing was not handled well and everything was sort of left in pieces with much uncertainty and limited leadership to ensure that things were done right. I agreed to help out for two weeks to help tie up loose ends and do what needed to be done so that the agency would not lose its non-profit status AND if in the future there is the leadership, energy and finance in place, that it could be restarted with relative ease.

In March I returned to Seattle again for a wedding of a friend, a former bible study member and also one of the team that went to the Philippines ten years ago to lead Faith Academy’s Spiritual Enrichment Week and High School Retreat. It’s been amazing to see what has happened to this group in the last ten years. Of the ten of us that went at the time two were already married (and still are), of the rest all but one have married and there were at last count six kids between the group. So it was fun to catch up with some that I hadn’t seen in a long time!

And then spring arrived in North Carolina sneaking in with a greening of…well everything. I loved watching the forest that I often run through – which for several months was just brown, quickly turn green and lush – so lush that where a week or two earlier I could easily see though the trees, all of a sudden I am unable to see farther than five or ten feet. Waves of wisteria climb wild, high up into the pine trees – sometimes 50-60 high. Driving along the highways, you’ll see stretches of solid purple embankments…then a week or two later the azaleas began exploding like fireworks…and now honey suckle is taking over and blanketing many areas. It’s so wonderful. And my first experience with major pollen…I walked through the grass one day and later on wondered why my shoes had taken on a greenish hue. A few days later the full effects hit. The pollen (again, just for our benefit, was much more severe this year than most, everyone said) was so thick you could sweep it off the sidewalk. Cars were blanketed. It looked like a cross between the ash that fell from Mt. St. Helens back in the Northwest combined with the powder that is thrown and smeared during Holi (India) or Songkran (Thailand). So whether it’s being surprised to learn that tulips are grown as annuals here (they don’t survive the hot wet summers – and the deer eat them) or being fascinated by the blooming redbuds which make the trees look like they have been wrapped with pink led Christmas lights, I have loved experiencing new seasonal patterns here! And again, how can you complain when it is 90 degrees in April?!

I’ve also been sucked in by…the birds! I don’t even know what they all are but living in a place surrounded largely by forest, makes it at times feel like we are living in an aviary. Probably beginning in March, we began to be woken up by the birds in the morning and I have to admit, I’ve been mesmerized by many of them. I’ve never lived where cardinals are before so they have become my favorite as I learn to recognize their many songs and calls.

I also was sucked in by a certain basketball team winning the National Championship. Normally whenever the team would play on campus I would curse and mutter because parking would be impossible. Literally. Even if you have a parking pass for a certain area, basketball trumps your right to park there! But by the end of the season and as they started making a run in the tournament, I was sucked in to watching the Duke team (and there success was because they were a team and not individual superstars play. One evening Andrea walked out and I was watching a game on TV (and I rarely watch any sports on TV) and she asked ‘Are you becoming a jock?!’ Not quite, I just liked the attitude of this team. When they won the championship, we went with some friends to see the traditional bonfire on campus. (Photo - Andrea is with Bruce and Renee Puckett - Bruce is the Assistant Pastor of the Congregation at Duke Chapel and the one I help with the youth group.)

Other highlights for me have been continuing to be involved with Duke Chapel and volunteering with the youth group. I have also continued to be a part of the ISI international student group. It’s been really encouraging to meet with people of faith from around the world and hear their stories and insights. We also made two fast trips up to Washington DC which were fun. Andrea has been to DC several times, but these were my first times. Though we didn’t have too much time to see sightsee, it’s still a little odd and surreal to be in places previously seen in so many movies and on TV.
(Photo to the left: Tourist)

So there have been some wonderful things that we have enjoyed, but the past months have also been very difficult in other ways. If you read the posts at the end of 2009, you will know the frustration I was having in trying to obtain my mental health license here. It’s a long long story and not even worth repeating (unless you happen to be moving to NC and also plan on getting licensed – if that’s the case you DO want to hear the whole story so you know what to do!) because of how much ineptitude and incompetence involved. But long story short, the board did finally grant me my license in March. Not that I am using it yet! Many of the counseling jobs that were available last year are of course no more and I am now having to jump through some of the hoops regarding setting up a business here in NC so I can work independently. And of course that involves getting a form from my favorite North Carolina Board of Licensed Professional Counselors…cue another long wait! I’m not sure it will ever end. It’s been difficult to walk through this season when it seems somewhat meaningless, but I have been trying to find meaning in it. Both Andrea and I have been reminded that God is looking after us – and we are so grateful for the journey we went on in the past year and a half where God so obviously looked after us. We try to lean into the fact and remember that this is still true today, but I won’t lie, it has been difficult to do at times.

I mentioned the Center for Transforming Mission (CTM) earlier. Kris Rocke, who is the director of this organization has also been a friend, mentor and wise counselor to me over the past five or six years. CTM is a grassroots leadership development organization committed to developing communities of grassroots leaders who serve high-risk youth and families in hard places. They equip urban leaders to teach and preach Good News among those who have been labeled the least, last and lost. CTM is based in Tacoma where they serve and train grassroots leaders in the Northwest and several urban centers throughout the U.S., but they also are working in Central America, the Caribbean, and Kenya. Kris was one that went out with Andrea and I to do a training in Thailand in 2006.

All this to say, last year Kris asked if I would like to do some grading of papers for a cohort of students in Nairobi, Kenya who are working on their Master's in Global Urban Leadership in partnership with CTM and Bakke Graduate University. In addition, in the past couple months, Kris asked me to take on some development work in the form of grant writing and also to maintain and edit the Geography of Grace website. This website is basically an online resource with submissions and articles from different folk in the CTM network who are working with the vulnerable and marginalized around the world. Being unemployed, being able to work from home and keeping me plugged into things international and with an organization and people that I really respect, this was a no brainer. And it has been a real answer to prayer as far as bringing in a little income and keeping me from completely rotting as I wait for whatever is next! And I have really enjoyed it and hopefully am bringing some of my gifts to the CTM network. Please visit www.geographyofgrace.com. I may not have posted here as much, but you are guaranteed a new article there every week – not that I am writing it – just editing, putting together the accompanying pictures/artwork and posting it.

For Andrea, this year has been a challenging one, especially this past semester. I’ll let her write more on it if she wants, but let’s just say she has met her share of frustration with classes being all consuming. She has literally spent most of her waking hours doing something related to school. It has not been fun.

But…this is where it does become a little more fun. As part of her degrees, she has to do an internship each summer. This summer she is working/interning with the International Labour Organization in Geneva, Switzerland – in fact she is already there! After taking her last exam on April 30, she left the next day on May 1 and has already completed her first week. Because Business School begins at the beginning of August and her internship must be a minimum of ten weeks, she had to leave right away. I’ll be joining her for the next couple weeks…

So the Wilsons are wandering again. From season to season, we have survived the first academic year (even though Andrea will be working every day this summer she’ll have her evenings and weekends free – a novel concept after the experience of this past semester!), we still have a roof over our heads, and I get to get on a plane again! It has been a difficult and challenging season at times but we know God has looked after us.
See you soon in Switzerland!

Duncan

(Photo - Murphy's law? Many times when we take a photo of ourselves, it doesn't turn out so great - the one time it does...I have a phone in my hand?!)