The horizon, distant as it seems

This summer, American roads will be sliced in two beneath the thin wheels of my touring bike—South, beware—but I will not be doing so as a leader. While we are not stretched beyond our capability to stretch, or stretched and broken without a pillow beneath, this has marked—apart from Starbucks and a single film job—an entire year of being turned down by every job I have pursued.

Yet I am in Europe, carving the wood of new history with a good friend. “Married and Ravenous” is drawing baby breaths in Jacksonville, FL after a painful, three-year labor. Moreover, there comes in DC a Luthien, a beautiful young girl with a pink face, held by Andy and Tawny, the beautiful, young parents. She poops well, says Andy, and the storks continue to fly in and out of our stories, bringing greenery to new fields, and enlivening what we left in fallow.

Though I’d tempted to think so, my stork is not caught up in a jam upon the Gulf Stream. Accents remind me of that, as do our stunned, non-English faces when Mike needs to erase some pencil markings and looks up to ask, “Does anybody have a rubber?” No, the blessing is here, but I look forward to the time when my bundles of joy are less apt to be dichotomous: to walk me picturesquely through the mountains before the zenith explodes from deep wells of TNT, minions reaching for the coal deposits buried deep within.

Circuit Work

Little Chloë reaches her small feet beneath the brown, homey table at the pub and places them on Ryan’s. She’s spent the morning moving from one old lady’s lap to another and, we’re told, was very excited when her grandma told her that two American boys were coming around; she did not anticipate that “boys” in grandma vernacular can refer to people twenty years older and three feet taller than her. Nonetheless, eventually she puts away her shy fingers with which she hides her face and begins to chase us around the church.

Someone has noticed the feet. A stylish bluehair at the end of the table in a red jacket smiles in a big way that highlights her mischief lines. “That little flirt!” she says. “She’s too young to be so cheeky!” Later, Ryan confides that he felt uncomfortable, with the little girl playing footsy and the elderly folks looking on, not realizing that all we old folks (myself included) think it’s hilarious.

Such is life on the circuit, its four welcoming churches bringing us in as prized guests, almost to the level of C-3P0 among the Ewoks, and we are humbled. Our schedule is thus, plus every meal shared with a family, every transport in a friendly sedan or by foot:

Saturday: Coffee Morning – at Bourne. Hang out and provide coffee/tea, biscuits, and teacakes for 50p each to the folks attending the Saturday market in this old market town. The church, built in 1812, used to have a big cattle exchange in what is now the car park. We sit with many people, but a steadfast presence is Chris, a jolly, Santa Claus of a man, albeit without the beard. He wolfs down teacakes and tells of the Tudors, Bourne’s ironic history in Formula One racing, Operation Market Garden, etc. We heart him.

Sunday: Service – always changing. Currently, I’m preparing a Bible study on the Prayer of Solomon in 1 Kings 3, practicing our readings and prayers we’ve been asked to give, and I’ll be playing with Alan in the worship band, without a microphone (since I don’t know most of the older, Petra-era songs), focusing on playing guitar and looking confident, maybe dancing a bit. Ryan is writing a children’s moment on Zacchaeus from Luke 19, because God can use us even when we are short. Our short days are over for now, though, at least until we finally get the chance to play in the NBA.

Monday: Cheeky Chimps – toddlers at Bourne. Craziness.

Tuesday: Youth Club – pandemonium of awesome moms who run it and 10-14 year olds who all have cooler phones than we do. The schedule usually goes: run, run, eat sweets at Tuck Shop, and run some more. For the less active ones, substitute sit on a couch watching “Futurama” or playing with multimedia phones that probably cost more than all my gear in my rucksack. We’re creating some sort of video project for them, but regardless of what we do, we’re only here for two months, and nothing we start can be sustainable. So we’re meeting with Colin next week, and will mention the need for a youth pastor.

Wednesday: Prayer Breakfast – at Thurlby. We pray and eat breakfast, usually porridge.

Thursday: Lunch Club – for older folks, at three of the four churches. Depending upon where we are, and how anal the chefs are, we prepare, serve, and share over a cheap lunch. It’s a three course meal wherever we go, but only Thurlby makes its own, homemade pudding. Derek, the seventy year-old cook from the RAF, is swell… and mischievous, so we work together well.

Friday: Off!

Reverend Ann, that is to say, Anne Barker, author extraordinaire

The other car in the shop, she is forced, forced, to drive the sports car… Vroom. Coming on her thirtieth wedding anniversary with chic blue fingernails to match her cobalt blue convertible, Doc Martins, hair dyed magenta; she is a veritable character of a vicar with the collar on straight.

Ann is the other pastor in our little circuit. She’s the woman in charge of the Deepings church, and the Deepings St. Nicholas church, which was, until very recently, the longest village in England. Colin is the supervisory minister, retiring in another six months, and he takes Bourne and Thurlby, filling in the speaking docket with a substantial number of stewards and lay ministers. Colin used to be an accountant until ten years ago, and Ann a music teacher.

We meet Ann at one of the schools we visit. Since the Anglican Church is still a governmentally-supported institution, schools are required to have singing/teaching time involving God and love and such. We pantomime the story of Jesus turning water into wine. Ann tells is with Bernie, a St. Bernard puppet, on her arm, and I play Jesus, Ryan the wedding feast guy; Ann is both narrator and Mary. The kids are tiny, though, elementary-schoolers, and to perform the story with historical accuracy the kids would probably have to get on each others’ shoulders to pour the water into the large, imaginary jars. We are looking for fervor, though, fervor by which the kid volunteers pour the water and shake it around, and in fervency they get a C.

Ann is versatile, inspiring, and refreshing. Though both of her kids are older than us, she welcomes us into her house and shows me books upon books upon books, for we are both nerds. Her husband, Mike, is a nerd as well—that is to say, we are marvelously interested in things that, like early Methodist history or data projectors as is this case, may not seem marvelous or interesting to others who are missing out; though, I confess, even I am missing out on data projectors—Mike has stylishly unkempt hair and a short, gray beard that seems to turn smiles into full-face affairs. He is also a pastor.

Perhaps what endears me to Ann most is her wonderfully creative character. I never want to be labeled easily. I want to be that suit that fits multiple occasions. I want to be a layered cheesecake made of things you never thought would go together. I want to faux paxs into voilas!. I want the Dewey Decimal System to hate my opus, sending people all over the library to piece it together. I say this because, apart from all of Ann’s distinctiveness, the wall around their staircase is full of the colorful covers of her fifteen—fifteen!—pre-Victorian historical romance novels that she has published in the last ten years. There is no passion that is wasted, even if it seems so at first.

Fred

Fred and Mavis have been together for fifty-four years, and today, as he sits across the table, he is sitting by himself. On Christmas Day, they got to their daughter’s house, went in, and then Mavis had a stroke. Scarcely could there be a better place to have a stroke, other than a hospital, but so it goes.

He gets to Colin and Kath’s house not to visit us who have just arrived in South Lincolnshire, and, actually, I don’t think he knows why he came. He just dropped in and Kath offered to fix him a plate, as dinner was in an hour and a half or so. He says no. Kath gets him talking, which he realizes he needs, and suddenly the hour and a half is up and she says to Fred, “Well, Fred, dinner’s dished up and I’ve made you a plate; you might as well stay,” and he does.

He’s a cross between jovial and maudlin. An old pastor, he is marvelous at getting on our level, and a good, active listener. He cracks jokes and smiles with old, genuine smile lines. Eventually, though, the weight of it all settles upon him and he grows quiet, closing his mouth and misting over his eyes. Mavis is in hospital, looking good, but, when she asks Fred to send her daughter in, Fred says the daughter isn’t there. Mavis replies, “Yes, she is… I can hear her.”

Being with the South Lincolnshire folks we experience a depth of community unlike that to which we usually subject ourselves. I am not used to old folks, nor am I used to strokes and death. This, perhaps, is one of the Church’s greatest elements of community: people from poverty to riches, black to white to Asian, birth to death. I realize, knowing Fred, that he knows something like this will happen someday, he’s given Mavis his heart anyway. I don’t think we can prepare ourselves emotionally for a surprise event like this, cannot protect ourselves from them, less we take our hearts from the people that would otherwise have them (or have a larger piece of them), and we hold out our hearts from God, who teaches us so much about His love for us through the people we love.

This is as much a story as it is a prayer request: Fred looks around over his plate, at Kath, Colin, Ryan, me, half-smiles, and says, “This has done me good.”

The State of Christianity

I am adding Liberty spikes to a bust of a bald eagle I have made out of blue Play Dough. Ryan is building a wall of blocks with a toddler next to him. On the perilous edges of the tower the bearded man and child place figurines of farm animals, as one would expect from a block tower.

This is how it goes at Cheeky Chimps, the once-a-week toddler program at Bourne Methodist Church. While Ryan has his toddler, I've wound up hanging out with Jacob, another toddler, and chatting with his mom, Sally. We talk about direct distribution business models, then about organic skin care, both of which make up her business. Jacob is exuberant, hardly paying attention, and is deftly forcing the pure red and purple Play Doughs together to form an inseperable hybrid.

Sally asks if I am religious, which is a question I never like. I would like to say that I have experienced something of the grace of God through Christ, and as such my mind is no longer my prison, I can think very far out of the box, knowing that nowhere I can go, even to Sheol, will I be away from God. I would like to say that, because of my faith, I will protest oppression but yet strive to love both the oppressed and oppressors like a good radical. Because of my faith, there is no one beyond capacity of being valued. Instead, for simplicity's sake, I just say yes.

I am used to the look she gives me. As a Religious Studies major in college, "the look" covered everything within the spectrum: one person giving "the look" says "he's a hardnose conservative who shirks education for blind faith, and anything he writes must be lame and unrelatable to the masses"; another person's "the look" says, "he's a bleeding heart liberal, one of those academic types, crushing traditional values, and he probably believes in evolution! (which I do)" It's often a look of suspicion and, in creative writing, music, and Religious Studies communities, betrayal.

Yet Sally's look is different and more drastic: it says, "In spite of our conversation, by your answer, I'm honestly pretty certain we no longer have anything in common."

And so it goes in this country, especially among the twenty- and thirtysomethings. This is not to say that England is losing faith, in fact, the Church is growing in some great, real ways in London; rather, I feared that the problem would be with the churches, and that culture was waiting to see a church that looked like Christ. I believe that is the case in the U.S., where so many have been judged, discouraged in education (especially science), or manipulated by the rise of fundamentalism. Furthermore, many of us in the States abandon our churches when we realize that the Church is supposed to be a loving and progressive voice in the world, as Jesus was in his time; if all we know of Church is that our local church isn't being these things, then we leave, rather than stay blind and inactive. Yet, in all of these disaffected Americans, there is usually a religious basis, often of an Abrahamic religion, or at least a platform of personal spirituality with which to have dialogue and wax philosphically about.

Yet here it is as if God is taboo, especially so the mention of Jesus. I'm told it's the two World Wars that have led to this, that so much death in such close historical proximity has created a culture of unbelief. Yet what I don't understand is that everyone is spiritual--anyone who has ever loved or strived for something has used their spirituality, even if they didn't realize it. In fact, the only option to avoid all spirituality is to be nihilistic, and even nihilists have to care about something or enjoy life at some point and, hence, leave their nihilism behind.

All that said, the congregations here are lovely. They are welcome, often elderly, but full of energy, jokes, and not a few jokingly flirtatious old ladies. But how do we bring young people in when even the mention of spirituality flips the light switch off? How do we let moms of toddlers know why we are serving them if telling them about the Church's mission may make them feel disrespected?

I have no answer, but God is good.

The world smiles with bright, shiny teeth

Though this is not practice, this e-mail demands inclusion. It's one of those things that both hits someone like a sledgehammer with humility and showers one with blessing at the same time. From Jeff, my old drama prof and current director:

To the cast and crew of "Married and Ravenous in New York":

Thanks to all of you for a wonderful show this afternoon, and congratulations on a tremendous showing at the awards ceremony!

As you know, sixteen shows were entered in this year's district one-act festival. I was very proud that you earned one of those Superiors, but only three of them could be chosen to go on to the Florida State Thespian Festival, so imagine how much prouder I became when the judges named our production as one of the three!

And then there was the icing on the cake ... Jake Harrelson's being named to the festival's All-Star Cast for his performance as Irwin, Alex Johnson's winning the festival's Best Actor prize for his performance as Dr. Stanley, and our wonder-working backstage gang's taking the award for Best Technical Crew.

We owe a *huge* debt to Miss J.B. for her set and for her training of our crew, so make sure that all of you thank her the next time you see her.

Of course, there has to be a special shout-out to our playwright (and Stanton alumnus) Adam Darragh, who is also getting a copy of this e-mail. Adam, we couldn't have done this without you, and you should know that the judges specifically praised your script when they met us in the critique room, mentioning how clever and funny it is.

I am tremendously happy for all of you, and I thank you for the contribution that each of you made in representing Stanton at the festival.

Here's looking forward to more performances at school in two weeks, and again in Tampa in April!

All the Single Ladies in Peterborough

The paddleboat swans are forming up for attack. I am in Peterborough, a normally intriguing city beset, like the rest of the country, with a thick, bleak, expressionless gray cloud like a bad children's diorama. The young artist has fashioned a crafty brown cobblestone quarter, full of shops and garden-walls, churches, and a cathedral, but he has underscored his whole effort by the backdrop made of too few thinly-stretched cotton balls fastened to the shoebox with bottles and bottles of rubber cement. I think we'd all rather a few clouds fall out of the sky than have a frownyface sky like we've had, with the thick snow and ice it has brought that is finally melting away.

However, none of this changes the large "V" of white-feathered fowl advancing resolutely across the glassy water as if I were a piece of helpless and cornered waterborne plantlife. The few colorful and brown mallards are looking around as the armada passes them going, "Huh? Huh?"

They gather their bulk formation at the foot of the cycling path, their not-runners'-feet churning humorously beneath the surface. They are looking at me and saying, in their own way, "Sir, won't you give us some vittles?" Yes, swans speak a little like the guy at the beginning of "David Copperfield" (this is England, after all). They stare at me for minutes, then they realize I have no bread, and they are disheartened. I am amused.

Eventually, one of them rolls its swan eyes at me and says, "Lame!" It rolls its neck and head to the side like a troubled teenager and begins to move through the group while they are still trasnfixed on me, the cruel American who dared come to the shore without vittles. Eventually, one by one, they file after the leader, going away from me, hoping the woman pushing the stroller across the way has brought appropriate vittles to the river's edge.

I'm not sure whether to call this leader-swan Magellan, for its decisive leadership and in honor of the book I'm reading (Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe [!]) or Beyonce, for its limber, defiant neck and trend-setting characteristics. Its gender a mystery to me, I think--since it is pretty and did not first befriend me, then try to convert me, and finally and rashly burn my village--that said swan is more likely "bootylicious" than the commander of the biggest maritime voyage of its time, and with a funny beard. This is my logic, but it is not law; oh, and Katherine of Aragon is buried in Peterborough, and the city is close to our circuit, both are why I came in the first place, and, having eaten lunch in Thirlby, why I brought no vittles. The swans were a bonus.

Organic in England

Mike asks me not to tell his pastor about the fartichokes. I don't think Peter would mind, really, given that he has most likely farted before (14 times a day on average or it comes out in your sleep, and that's science) and I bet, on occasion, he has even laughed at them. Ryan brings up this idea every now and again that Jesus' farts could have cured people. Sure, it's an odd area to focus on, but if God can forge the platypus as a final creation out of the dredge of evolution, if the Holy Spirit can work and grip my heart despite my often self-devouring narrative, and if–getting more Scriptural–Jesus' cloak can stop a woman from hemorrhaging, then I can only find it at least possible that his healing presence could be felt in that way, too.

So Mike is a big man, a farmer through-and-through, and we find him because we are hear to serve... whatever that means... and he needs a hand digging up fartichokes. To be more P.C., these are Jerusalem artichokes, though it is not P.C. because they have nothing to do with Jerusalem; rather, they are "sun-followers" whose scientific name sounds like "Jerusalem", and some historic record-keeper wrote it down wrong. Clifford is just as jovial as Mike, both about the same age, and both wearing the same fun British, paper boy-like hats that I totally cannot pull off, especially when I wore Kevin's much smaller clothes in addition to a hat like that and bothered Keri LaBrant at Stetson... fun, but not a shining moment for the history of those hats.

Anyway, Clifford is on the tractor, and he buries the nose of the artichoke digger in the snow and dirt. It's a smaller conveyer belt that I would have thought for such a big tractor, only about a foot across; the belt is made of metal rods which both yank the earth out and filter it out along the belt, leaving a trail of nicely-tilled earth with a bunch of little, knobby root vegetables on top. We follow behind, putting them into buckets, eventually eating three small ones for lunch, whereby Ryan and I, for the rest of the day, understand the reason for the nickname.

We experience a whiteout in all of the snow flurries, coming in when we finish what the tractor had dug, even though we could barely tell the artichokes from the frozen dirt in the snow. Our toes are frozen in our wellies, but we wish we could stay and get the whole crop into the wooden boxes which, when washed, become widened with sightless ice.

There is much triumph also in a different field. Ryan's snowman is coming along, and he makes one in front of the shop where Pam, Mike's wife, bakes for the Organic Farm Shop. We drop into the Shop and help prepare all of tomorrow's orders, should tomorrow's snow to be too difficult to drive in, for which we receive organic chocolate bars. We see many delicious vegetables, meats, and the 100% vegan dog food I've read about; though we determine that the dog on the front was probably smiling before it ate the dog food, and that only the owner was probably the only one made enthusiastic by the meal.

Finally, after a month of typing, the applications are done. Perhaps Columbia will be in the future, but for now it's the play, and the simple joy that, in light of the recession, Emerson has waived all application fees.

Living hardcore in quaint Pickering

I'm torn about marriage and subsequent counseling, but I'm positively confounded about how the inevitable werewolf can eat a cat and cause trouble without the police catching him. There is joy in the air as I learn that, not only is my play getting performed by the Stanton Thespians, but it is already in production. This means the rewrites have to happen fast, before they perform at the District Thespian Festival on the 15th. Yet my biggest conundrums are ethical, and there are two of them: one, does the werewolf have to vomit into a trash can after he has eaten the cat whose silver collar turns him back to human form, and is that deliciously twisted or just plain gross? two, he eats a bag of organic produce, and the wife has to tell the NYPD something, so can she blame it on hippies? With my often-bare feet and shaggy hair, I'm half-hippie myself, but will my audience understand that? I like hippies, and want to make the joke work, but don't want them seriously associated with not shaving, or werewolf attack, or, for that matter, organic produce.

Yet while there is snow everywhere, like the odd rain in Spain, it cannot usurp the warm homes of Pickering Methodists! We eat with Peter Cross and family, whom I know from 2003 when my youth choir visited his church in Bolsover. The Methodist connection brings us to Margaret and Lorrie, an old missionary couple who put us to work on a jigsaw puzzle and have read Gilead and other of my favorite books. Peter Halsworth puts us to work in his new office making notes about ministry videos for him, and he recognizes, like us and Bishop John Shelby Spong, that Christianity must change die (for irrelevance to our lives is spiritual death for certain). York, also, is cool, as is Avatar, which must be seen on the big screen even when poor in a different country.

We are living with Tony and Ruth Leeming, a wonderfully kind couple who, completely casually, treat us like kings. Apparently, they retired from the Bed and Breakfast trade four months ago, so it's normal to have multiple-course breakfasts with different sets of knives and spoons around the perimeter of the place-mats. Ryan is building a snowman to rival Adam Hunter and the others who posted pictures of their individual snowpeople on facebook, and my thoughts are also sadly away from this quaint, little town, toward "Married and Ravenous in New York" (the new title) getting its world premiere soon, and its special nights from January 28-30 at my old high school of Stanton College Prep, where you will see my mom and Anna at least that I will be living vicariously through. If you see them, love them, for when you love my fam and friends, I feel the love too.

London

The New Year rings twice. After my day of being broken up with and losing all of my toiletries to the jaws of airport security, Nick Walsh shows up like a deus ex machina, like William Shatner in the "Priceline Negotiator!" commercials. With Nick, everything is alright. He cabs us to where our bags can be put to rest, he feeds us with proper English food at a one pub when other pubs open their eyes only to revelers with a reservation; he takes us beside Trafalgar Square to a church where Pete Gregg––the founder of the 24/7 Prayer movement––is leading a worship service.

The words could otherwise sound stilted if Gregg didn't say them with all of the invitation and warmth of his heart. This is the "New Year's Eve Prayer Party" at Holy Trinity Brompton, the largest Anglican congregation in England, and the genuine people, exuberant atmosphere on the brink of a new year, and the mince pies immediately extinguish any lameness which might have crept into my cynical heart.

There is much to pray for as we eat our mince pies and sip champagne and apple juice. Praise for Obama as president of the U.S. and Holy Trinity's efforts to eradicate homelessness. Prayers for ending Iraq responsibly and quickly and for so much else terrible in this year. There is music I did not realize how much I missed, there are colors and lots of people sitting on cushions on the floor. I am thankful to be in a church, like Foundry back in D.C., which realizes that Jesus calls us to love God and our neighbors long before we create doctrines about homosexuality, just war, or create ministry strategies. I want to live in this moment in church, where the focus is so right and everything else just falls into place.

A side effect of all this praise: sitting, standing, singing, my rebound desire to make out with every girl dissipates before I can take advantage of bad decision-making that I will kick myself for later. Besides, even afterwards though less communicative, Rachel still gives me so much to be thankful for.