Missing You

As I said in the last post, friends are wonderful – and we miss our friends and community in Durham and Raleigh. Our last weeks in North Carolina were hectic but we were able to get some good time in with people that matter – our previously mentioned book group (as a group and individuals) and some other dear friends. It is strange now to be in a city surrounded by thousands of people and realize that (other than a few co-workers) nobody knows me and I don’t know anyone. Moving is lonely. And after starting over in a new place three years ago, it takes a little effort to want to be starting over again now. We’re thankful that our NC friends are only four hours away (ok, six if I-95 is jammed up as it often is for no reason!)

 (Photo's top to bottom - the last picture I took as we left Durham of our driveway and the sun peeking through the trees - i loved where we lived these past three years, our book group - I know I already posted this photo but they are worth posting twice!,  Lunch with wonderful and profound Mary Carol - also of the book  group!)

So here is a list of things I do and will miss from the past three years…

Friends and co workers, Duke Chapel and Congregation, the amazing and wonderful youth of Duke Chapel, our neighbors, our townhouse that was home for the past three years, the cardinals, cat birds and other flying friends who would entertain us taking their baths on our back patio, the lovely blue pool behind our house, NC blue skies and space… the two mile trail I would run through Duke Forest, cheap $5 Duke Performances (where we saw so many amazing performances from Bruce Springsteen to the Carolina Chocolate Drops to Murray Perahia), Duke Gardens – there’s a lot of Duke related things I miss.

I also miss Sam Wells, who left Duke Chapel in May to return to England and take up a post at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London ….quite honestly I cried and was sadder at his departure in May than when we left. (Perhaps in acknowledging the change and loss of this incredible life giving truth speaker, I was also anticipating our potential departure from this community we have found companionship the past three years.) I am excited for the new dean and have high hopes for him but like many at Duke Chapel, I felt Sam’s impact in a significant way and continue to process the gift and the loss of his presence and words even as we anticipate trying to find a church here – something I'm just not looking forward to very much. 

So there's much I miss and this post is about naming some of those people, places and things (even the North Carolina Pine Trees pictured above.)

But Bruce Puckett (who gave me the great opportunity to volunteer with the Duke Chapel youth) and who has done a remarkable job doing the many jobs handed to him in the last couple of years reminded me that in all our searching for and finding community, it is better to have loved and lost…and for this I am thankful. I have been loved and been able to love in return. Our time in NC, though challenging at times (unemployment for a year, difficult school) was a rare gift…which in some ways makes this move to DC more challenging. There is much we look forward to here at this stopping point on our wandering, but I sure miss people and places in NC and look forward to returning often. Here are a couple photos of a few activities we were able to sneak in at the last moment before we left including a paddle down a river and finally (after three years!) a visit to Maple View Farm!

Duncan

Remembering...

Ten years ago I was asleep in the basement of Rosewood Manor, which was once used as Teddy Roosevelt’s hunting lodge. (This was before Church of the Beloved established itself there and contrary to what they write in the link it wasn’t entirely vacant – four good friends were living in the basement – but that is another story!) I was awakened to the sound of one of my housemates shouting that the US was under attack. And for many, the world changed that day in so many ways. Everyone, of course, has a story. I remember time stopping and continuing at the same time. I remember watching hours of news coverage. I remember clear blue skies with no planes for days. I remember a brilliant and wise sermon at St Alban’s Episcopal Church in Edmonds by the priest at the time. I remember the run on “patriotism” and flags sprouting everywhere.

Three months earlier I had flown to Malaysia and Singapore to attend the reunion and closing of Chefoo School. Three months later I would fly to Thailand for Christmas. Needless to say travel and security were dramatically different for these two trips. In addition to talking with Thai friends, I remember random strangers wanting to have conversations and share their thoughts on 9/11.

This past week it has been impossible to turn on a tv without hearing a 9/11 retrospective and perhaps rightfully so. One of the wisest and most thoughtful men I know at this present time is Sam Wells, Dean of Duke Chapel. Here are two postings from him, another from a former classmate of mine whose dad (my high school history teacher was killed by a terrorist bomb) and a unique story that Andrea passed along to me.

Dean Wells Statement on Osama bin Laden's death

Dean Wells 9/11 Message: Starting from Zero

Steve Hyde Reflections on 9/11

Remembering 9/11: A warrior's unexpected gift to America

Duncan

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?!)

Settling In - Initial thoughts and observations about Duke and Durham

In many ways, as many people know, Duke University is an impressive school. (Thus we start off with a very unimpressive photo of Andrea and I entering our town house for the first time - toilet paper in hand! ) Oprah was the commencement speaker this last year. Bill Clinton gave a speech here this summer. Maya Angelou has delivered an opening address at the opening convocation for the past 15 years. Power speaks. (And I haven’t even mentioned the research that goes on here or another local favorite of folks around here called Basketball). But in church on our second Sunday at Duke Chapel, Sam Wells, the Dean of the Chapel, went straight for the heart as he addressed new students telling them they have come to a place of great power – where the three streams of knowledge, money and social influence come together. He went on to say that when we like and approve of this power, we call it wisdom. When we don’t, we call it privilege. Going a little deeper he noted that all Duke students know what privilege is. Either they have rich parents who are paying for it or they have convinced someone else to (or they are going into massive debt – but he didn’t really mention this category!) Either way, Duke students are privileged. Wisdom is a harder and less fashionable word but hopefully wisdom is what students are really trying to achieve while in school. With privilege you often have many choices, but choice without wisdom is useless. Wisdom allows you to make good choices. He then wove this all together quite well with the practicality of Ephesians chapter six. (Aerial photo of Duke Chapel and surrounding countryside. Not taken by me. The following two I did take though.)

So it was good to hear someone speak truthfully to the privileged and powerful. It is good to know that there are those at Duke who are not all about rank and name. Andrea and I have seen this lived out in a variety of ways. We know that even before moving here we fell into the 'privileged' camp compared to most of the world's population but being here forces us to continue to ponder what this means.

As the spouse of a student, my favorite thing about Duke so far is the chapel. 'Chapel' is really a bit of a misnomer though. Duke Chapel is a beautiful Gothic style cathedral and supposedly has the largest involvement of all university chapels throughout the United States. For more info go here. The music and setting of sacred space has been stunning and life giving…

Other things we like about Duke…the Lemur Center! With over 300 lemurs, it is the largest gathering of these cute animals probably outside of Madagascar. We haven't been there yet, but we are looking forward to it!

Duke also has the spectacular Sarah P. Duke Gardens, again one of the ‘best’ private collections in the US. (photo above, the aspiring student with some very large water lilies.) Duke is surrounded by forest which is beautiful but this leads to one of the things we don’t like so much about the area. Durham and Duke and the surrounding cities are urban areas plopped in the middle of forests and fields. Because there is so much land available, this area is a great example of suburban sprawl. There really does not seem to have been too much planning - but what do we know, we've only been here a few weeks. Certainly there is no laid out grid to speak of. I call where we live forested suburbia. The views alternate between forested countryside and large apartment/condo/townhouse complexes that are plonked down in the middle of the forest. Infill is not a word used here yet!

If Duke and Durham were looked at as an island, then the island is completely surrounded by a confusion of intersecting highways and roads. This is helpful for those who know where they are going as there is always a multitude of ways to get anywhere, but for the newcomer, it is a bit of a maze and a challenge. And just to make it a little more complex, it’s all flat. No hills or really tall buildings so to speak to get your bearings. Just stretches of trees.

Other things we have noticed – people are very friendly and try to be helpful (even if the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing!), lots of pine trees, this is the land of fried chicken, rivalry over what kind of sauce (either vinegar based or tomato based) that you put on your barbecue depending on if you are from the east or the west part of the state and much, much rivalry over Basketball.

One of the most interesting things we have encountered in Durham is that the homeless or panhandlers who stand at intersections hoping for a handout as cars drive by, MUST wear orange vests. Whether this is for their protection or it just makes them official we don’t know yet, but it is unique!

Weather wise, it's been humid and hot this first month - can't complain! All my plants that survived the journey are thriving and loving their new home. When it rains, it rains tropical Asian style – heavy and then it’s over and the sun comes back out to bless the steam coming off the roads. It is interesting to be in air conditioning most of the time. But there are times when I step outside in the morning and the combination of the pine trees, the cool morning air and droning cicadas, if I closed my eyes I could think I am in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. A couple of times it has taken me by surprise. I love hearing the cicadas and the other myriad insects and birds throughout the day and night.

We have told various ones we have talked with that it is an interesting and different place. But it might be a place we come to really love. It has been difficult at times. Any big move and change can be difficult but the dynamics of the past year of travel, leaving Thailand, having a rushed month in the northwest and then coming here has left us in a strange state – somewhat tired and unable to be too excited about anything. It’s been a weird feeling. As an old saying/song goes - “Can’t go over it, Can’t go under it, Can’t go around it. Have to go through it.”

The other night we made Sushi, sprinkling on some sesame from the fields of Napajat that Pi Toi gave us. We have a bottle of wild forest honey from the forests of Maehongson that made it back with us too as well as our bottle of olive oil from Levanto from the olives I helped pick. We are surrounded by tangible gifts and memories of our trip, friends and God’s goodness to us. Having it smell like the Cameron Highlands is simply a bonus!

Duncan