A Recording My Friend Made For Me Twenty Years Ago Today

Dear Friend,

I was lying awake in bed at 4 o'clock this morning when I heard my phone buzz. It was a Facebook notification. My close friend Jennifer had just updated her status from Europe.

I am thankful for being able to communicate with my family easily. When we were in the Philippines, we mailed letters or made cassette tapes for the family. That was how Grandma and the others could hear what we sounded like. These were filled with one-sided conversations, songs, funny stories, or even awkward pauses when we ran out of things to say before we hit the stop button. I remember Mom and Dad trying to hurry to do anything to fill the tape since we did not want to waste the precious minutes on the tape. I always felt sorry for the people who actually listened to the WHOLE tape, front and back. I feel spoiled by how easy communication is now.

Jennifer is the daughter of missionaries who lived in the Philippines during her childhood. We met in middle school when her family was on furlough in the States. In high school they moved to Hungary, where she still lives today. Now she is a teacher in Budapest. She normally posts updates during her lunch break. I left a comment under her status.

Me:  I'm thankful to be the owner of a Jennifer tape from when you lived in Hungary in the early nineties. 

Me: Listening now.

Jennifer: Poor you. :-)

Me: It's wonderful. I keep tearing up over it! I just paused it about half way through side B. You said, "Good morning, Adriana. It's Sept. 12!" You were making this tape 20 yrs ago today!

Me: You just talked about your mom's birthday. And your [little sister] is brilliant. You describe her playing with her Hungarian friends in spite of the language barrier. Sulysap doesn't have phone service, but your dad has agreed to take you to a phone so you can call me. That would be my Christmas present. Your mom has made you some nice dresses by hand. There's a scene where you rescue Esther's shoe from the other side of a muddy lake. You're talking about what you and I will do next summer when I come to visit. I can visualize most of the places you're describing. You're going to miss your beautiful room with the "pure white walls" when you go to the Bible Institute. The curtains in the girls' room there are so drab . . . This is priceless.

Jennifer: Maybe I don't feel sorry for you. We'll see how you hold up at the end.

Me: I feel richly blessed this morning.

Jennifer: Funny, I completely forgot that I even made a tape for you.

Me: I knew it was in my letter box, but I haven't listened to it since you sent it to me. It's value has increased with time.

Jennifer in Toalmas at the Word of Life Bible College in 1994.

I visited Jennifer in the summer of 1995, a year after her recording was made. On the tape she talks about our plans for my visit.  We will work at a Bible camp, we'll travel throughout the countryside, and take day trips into the city. Her voice is the same --mellow and precise -- though of course she sounds younger. In part of the tape I can hear her alarm clock ticking as she recorded herself while still in bed one morning when she had a cold. There is a dog barking in the distance. A quiet day in a small village without telephones. 

I guess I'll go now. I love you very much. I think about you all the time. I can't wait until next summer. We're going to have so much fun. Even if you can only stay for a month, we'll still have a lot of fun. I know Budapest pretty well now. I don't get lost when I go there. I can even find places I've never been to before without too much of a problem. I think one of the best places you'll like is Buda. It's not polluted like Pest is. There's beautiful hills all over. That's also where the Castle District is. And you can walk for days in the Castle District just looking at stuff. So gorgeous.

Together at last in 1995.

So Jennifer, if you're reading this I want you to know that I listened to the WHOLE tape, front and back and there is no need to feel sorry for me. You apologized more than once on the tape because you were concerned I would find it boring. Well, it wasn't boring. Not one bit. It was a beautiful gift which I savored (and cried over) two times, twenty years apart. Thank you so much for your faithful friendship. I am richly blessed.

With Love,

Adriana

P.S. I can't wait to visit Hungary again!

Other posts in this series: Invisible Friendship, Air mail: Letters I Wrote at Age 17

Walking the Underground Railroad with a Friend

Dear Friend,

Here's a picture of my friend Jai'yah. She and her family spent a weekend with us last summer.

One night I was up late washing dishes after everyone else went to bed. I turned to see Jai'yah standing in my kitchen doorway.

"Can't sleep?" I asked her.

"Nope."

"Do you want to talk for a while?"

Her face lit up.

We went to the living room and sat on the couch. We talked about school.

"I love history, " she said.

"Me too! Do you know we live near the Ohio River? This area was once part of the Underground Railroad."

"Are you serious?" Her eyes widened.

"Oh yes. The farmhouse behind our property was built in the 1800s. I've been told it has a secret room. It's not listed on a historic registry, but I sometimes wonder if runaways once hid there."

She was entranced. I told her about my road trip to Ripley, Ohio. I pulled out my laptop and showed her pictures from my blog posts. She wasn't familiar with the story of Reverend and Mrs. Rankin who conducted thousands of passengers on the Underground Railroad to freedom.

She turned, knelt on the couch, and pulled apart the curtians to peer outside.

"It's so dark in the country," she said. "And quiet . . . creepy!"

"Sometimes I imagine people rushing, barefoot through the night, " I said. Because I knew she was thinking of this too.

"Do you want to walk down to the road with me?" I asked.

"Oh yes! I'm kind of scared to. But, yes!"

I gently shut the front door behind us as we stole into the darkness. Once at the road she said, "It's like we're on the Underground Railroad!"

I felt chills on the back of my neck. "I'll be your mother," I said.

She grabbed my hand and pulled my arm hard. "Come on, Mama!" she whispered. "We've got to run!"

We bolted down the road hand in hand. When we reached a clearing I pointed to the starry sky. "There's the Drinking Gourd," I told her. "That will lead us north."

We traveled on a little way and suddenly we saw headlights coming toward us from far in the distance.

"Hide!" She yanked my arm. We dove under some shrubery on the side of the road and lay on our stomachs until the car drove past.

"They didn't see us," she said with a sigh.

We continued on, backtracking this time along the same direction we had come. When my house came into view she said, "Look, Mama! It's the Rankin House!"

And this made me cry.

To think she equated my home to such a place -- a  place of safety and freedom and love.

We ran up the driveway to the back of the house and quickly pushed the back door open. Then, smiling, we jumped up and down and hugged each other tightly.

"We made it!"

"We're safe!"

"Yes! Safe!"

"I hope Mrs. Rankin will give us sometime to eat," I said. "I'm starving!"

She giggled.

"I wonder if the kids ate all the pie? If not we'll have some cookies and milk," I said.

"Adriana, Thank you."

"Thank you, Jai'yah. I love you, dear."

* * * * *

I realize our adventure was in no way harrowing like the real experience of those who once traveled from the slave-holding states in the south to freedom in north. Still, the imagination of my young friend stretched my mind and my heart. It made me think, really think, about what such a journey would have entailed and how desperate a mother would have been to protect her loved ones.

Hope this post finds all my blog-friends well.

Peace & Joy,

Adriana


P.S. Jai'yah, if you're reading this -- I know you will make a splendid history teacher or even a professor someday, if that is what you want to be. :-)

What Do You Do When You Feel So Mad You Could Bite?

Dear Friend,

This morning I read Montaigne's essay "How the soul discharges its emotions against false objects when lacking real ones."

A local gentleman of ours who is marvelously subject to gout would answer his doctors quite amusingly when asked to give up salted meats entirely. He would say that he liked to have something to blame when tortured by the onslaughts of that illness: the more he yelled out curses against the saveloy or the tongue or the ham, the more relief he felt. Seriously though, when our arm is raised to strike it pains us if the blow lands nowhere and merely beats the air . . .

 . . . it seems that the soul . . . loses itself when shaken and disturbed unless it is given something to grasp on to; and so we must always provide it with an object to butt up against and to act upon.

This passage made me think of Mr. Rogers. I remember watching him as a child and feeling relieved because, in his gentle way, he explained to me that I wasn't bad for feeling angry sometimes. He also gave me some great suggestions for how to handle those angry feelings. (For one thing, I could hit a pillow! Hitting a pillow is totally OK!) I believe this song was part of the episode where he gave the anger talk. It seems like the whole world could use this now --

So, what do you do when you feel so mad you could bite?

Love,
A

Montaigne on How to Toughen Your Skin

Dear Friend,

It's 2:20AM. There's a splendid thunderstorm going on. Inside, my house is deliciously silent. We're tucked into the side of a hill, like a ship run ashore. I'm enjoying the view from my husband's office. His large bay window is the prow.

School starts tomorrow for my oldest three kids. The last several days have been noisy and exciting -- Go! Go! Go! -- back to school preparations and a birthday party to boot. The wonderful pulse of life that comes with a large family has lately felt like a marathon for my nerves.

Waking during the night can be blissful, though I'll likely suffer for it tomorrow, especially if the baby won't take a nap. For now though I feel too refreshed and focused to sleep. Maybe insomnia is not something I should battle. Maybe -- like my unusual heart beat -- it's just me.

If your night's sleep is often broken into segments with a mid-night interval, you will appreciate this article. Some of us heed the sound of an ancient ancestral chime. Or something.

Anyway, when I woke up tonight I decided not to be frustrated with myself.

Carpe noctem!

I recently picked up Montaigne's Essays again. Click here to read a short post I wrote two years ago in which I compare reading Essays to paying a visit to my rich, quirky uncle (who happens to live in a chateau).

Château de Montaigne via Wikipedia 

Montaigne is considered the Father of the Essay, so I suppose this also makes him Patron Saint of Bloggers. He's quite an engaging person to know. No topic is off limits.

Our life is part folly, part wisdom. Whoever writes about it only reverently and according to the rules leaves out more than half of it. 

But fair warning: rarely does Montaigne stick to his point. He's all over the place! Reading him feels like partaking in a conversation full of delightful rabbit trails. I love him for this. He likes to go deep, but we can also talk candidly about stuff like bodily functions. We can ramble a bit, then go on with what we were first discussing. Or not.

I'm sure I'd grow weary of other writers for using his method, but it works for him. I expect this randomness out of him, I suppose. And because he's the first true essayist, I feel like this gives me permission to loosen up a little and just blog what's on my mind. As I've mentioned before, I've found if I wait until I have time to make my posts tidy I end up going long stretches without blogging anything.

I also believe reading Essays is good for my depression. Montaigne is so much more rational than me! I tend to experience an exhausting array of peaks and valleys of emotion. In "On Sadness,"  he gives examples of people who are seized by a sadness in a "deaf, speechless stupor." Others "languish for love" or even "die of happiness." As for Montaigne --

Violent emotions . . . have little hold on me. By nature my sense of feeling has a hard skin, which I daily toughen and thicken by arguments. 

In one segment of "On Sadness" I wrote a question mark in the margin:

We cannot display our grief or our convictions during the living searing heat of the attack; the soul is then burdened by deep thought and the body is cast down, languishing for love. That is the source of the occasional impotence which sometimes comes so unseasonably upon men when making love, and of that chill produced, in the very lap of delight by excessive ardour. 

Just a question mark. Because this was new information for me. (No one need comment with personal examples of experiencing untimely impotence due to excessive ardor! But see what I mean?This is one example of territory that is fair game for our host to discuss.) He wraps up his comment on impotence with some level-headed advice for life in general:

For pleasures to be tasted and then digested they must remain moderate: Curae leves lonquuntur, ingentes stupent. [Light cares can talk: huge ones are struck dumb.]

I depart from this visit to the chateau , feeling a little calmer, more steady, and rational. I'm smiling, actually. When calling on Montaigne, I must leave my hysterics at the door.

Moderately yours,

Adriana :-)

When Flowers Fail: Moving Forward When It's Time to Embrace Something New

Dear Friend,

My neighbor owns most of the meadows near my home.  This past spring he leased his property to a local farmer. I was told ahead of time that the land would be turned over for soybeans, but I wasn't prepared for the acrid scent of chemicals in our gentle valley. The day after the fields were sprayed, I viewed the land from my car. No sign of life to be found. All was burnt. Yellow. Destroyed. 

It was weeks before the deer crept back into the fields.  Now they come in droves to nibble at the scrawny crop of beans. Tall black stalks poke up through the rows, unsightly as unwanted hair.

I haven't taken many walks down the old paths this summer. I feel something akin to homesickness for the butterflies, bees, and red winged blackbirds that used to flutter, dive, and hum.

The pictures in my post today are from last year. I took them on one of my long rambles when I thought my lovely meadows (which were, of course, not really mine) would last forever.

How many Flowers fail in Wood—
Or perish from the Hill—
Without the privilege to know
That they are Beautiful—

How many cast a nameless Pod
Upon the nearest Breeze—
Unconscious of the Scarlet Freight—
It bear to Other Eyes— 

Emily Dickinson

I'm glad I have pictures. 

The images I've captured of my long county walks are closely tied in my mind to the great classic books I've read in the last few years.

Sometimes, as I journey through books, I capture them well; I take lots of great notes, ponder insights, and do research.  More often though, life happens. I become absorbed in my primary job of nurturing my lovely family! (And sometimes, to be fully honest, I become absorbed with less noble things like what my friend Anne Bogel calls the "Facebook Rabbit Hole.") Before I know it, I've read another tome without documenting the experience. The moments -- the flashes of insight and awe -- they slip away like a "nameless pod upon the nearest breeze" and I'm left with a sense of loss. 

I have more unfinished drafts of posts in my blog archives than I have published posts. 

Here are some classic books I've read while on my quest that I've written little-to-nothing about:

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville 
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
Streams of Living Water by Richard Foster

And here's some modern stuff I've read lately:

David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore
Cut Me Loose by Leah Vincent
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
What Makes Olga Run By Bruce Grierson
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Homeschool Sex Machine: Babes, Bible Quiz, and the Clinton Years by Matthew Pierce
Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L'Engle
The Intellectual Devotional by David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim
How to Read Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz

So here's to moving forward! To seeking new places to ramble! To reading more and writing more as time, self-discipline, and energy allows!

Peace & Joy.

Love,
Adriana

P.S. I wonder -- is it time for you to let go of something? Perhaps you need to release something that has more gravitas than a burned up meadow and some forgotten quotes. Is it time to move on? Is it time to make room in your life for a new residence or friendship or job or project or pet or ______________?

Defining the Contemplative Tradition: Quotes by Richard J. Foster

Dear Friend,

I've been listening to Streams of Living Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of the Christian Faith by Richard J. Foster. If you've followed my blog for any length of time, it won't surprise you that I am drawn to the "Contemplative Stream." The following quotes are Foster's descriptions of what life for the contemplative person is like:

Defining of the Contemplative Tradition

Love. Though time and experience we sense a delicate but deepening love for  God that feels more like a gift than an achievement. In the beginning this love is so quiet and unobtrusive that it is hardly perceptible. John of the Cross calls it a "secret and peaceful and loving inflow of God. This is a great encouragement to us, for early in our prayer life -- try as we might -- we are unable to truly love God. This love comes little by little, and at first we feel a great of fluctuation in its intensity. High and low, hot and cold. In time, however, our love grows deeper, stronger, more steady.

Peace. At the same time, in slips a peace that cannot be analyzed or dissected -- "a peace that passes understanding," as Paul puts it. (Phil.4:7) This quiet rest, this firmness of life orientation, is not due to the absence of conflict or worry. In fact, it is not an absence at all, but rather a Presence. This peace is interrupted often by a multitude of distractions, especially in the beginning. But no matter -- it is still there, and it is still real. And in time its quiet way wins over the chatter and clatter of our noisy hearts.

Delight. Another movement we begin to experience is delight. A very wise woman -- one who had been through great hardship in her life -- captured the essence of this quality for me when on one occasion she declared, "Fun ahead, saith the Lord!" There is pleasure, friendship, joy -- deep joy. And playfulness. God laughs into our soul and our soul laughs back into God. John of the Cross calls it "the sweet and delightful life of love with God . . . that delightful and wondrous vision." But it is not uninterrupted delight. We experience an ebb and flow, an exquisite delight mingled with a painful yearning.

 

Emptiness. Which brings us to an opposing, almost contradictory movement in the contemplative life: emptiness. At the very moment we are entering a loving delight, we are also pulled into intense longing, yearning, searching -- searching and not finding. Well, there is a finding of sorts, but not a complete finding. Perhaps we could call it a dissatisfied satisfaction. John of the Cross calls it "a living thirst . . . [the] urgent longing of love."

Often the emptiness is a darkness as well. We experience Deus Absonditus, the God who is hidden from us. dryness too -- a Sahara of the heart. Throughout these experiences solitude is our welcome companion, for we are learning to be alone with the Alone. Please understand this emptiness, this darkness, this dryness is itself a prayer. It is a heavenly communion of an ascetic sort. While delight is a feasting, emptiness is a fasting, and both are needed for the growth of the soul.

Fire. Still another reality we experience as we grow in the contemplative life is fire. Not literal fire, of course, but real fire nonetheless -- in some ways more real than literal fire. The initial movement of love now intensifies, becoming a steady, flaming passion. Anything that causes distance or separation from God -- disobedience or perhaps mere neglect -- is painful in the extreme. So we feel, and even welcome, the purifying fire of God's love burning out the dross: all stubbornness, all hate, all grasping need for self-promotion. And as the self-sins are burned away, the seeds of universal love blossom and flower.

Wisdom. This leads to a still deeper movement of the Spirit: Wisdom. No sterile intellectualism or impersonal awareness, this is a knowing and inflowing of God himself. We are filled with "the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Hab 2:14). We know as we are known. We enter that eternal life which is to "know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3b). Prayer turns into the deepening self communication of the Trinity, a self-communication we are privileged to listen in on and even participate in.

Transformation. Though it all, God gradually and slowly "captures the inner faculties: first the heart and the will, then the mind, the imagination, and the passions. The result is the transformation of the entire personality into the likeness of Christ. More and more and more we take on his habits, feelings, hopes, faith, and love.

Hope you've been as blessed and challenged by these quotes as I have felt lately. I tend to experience the first three parts with some degree of regularity: love, peace, delight, emptiness. I long to move forward into the realms of fire, wisdom, and transformation. Pray for me!

Peace & Joy,

Adriana

Quest Notes: What I'm Into Link-Up

Dear Friend,

I'm late to the party! Every time I notice a blogger taking part in Leigh Kramer's "What I'm Into" link-up, I think, I should do that!

So here I am. Better late than never, right?

I've listed a bunch of random things I'm into now. ("Random" is my 10yr old daughter's new favorite word.)

1. My green picnic table
My four year old son picked out the color. I couldn't be happier with it! Our entire family has spent a good deal of time around it lately.

2. Fabric mosaics
I've long been into colorful mosaics, quilts, and decoupage -- so when I discovered a way to pull all three crafts together, I was very pleased. I found inspiration for this project here and from my great-grandmother's quilts which I wrote about here.

my latest project: fabric on canvas

a quilt my great-grandmother made in the early 1950s

3. Just Between Us: A No-Stress, No Rules Journal for Girls and Their Moms by Meredith and Sophie Jacobs.

My daughter wrote an entry for me before she left for a week long camping adventure with friends in the Adirondacks. She left it on my bed. I read it several times while she was away. I made an entry for her to read when she got home. This journal is a perfect tool for strengthening the bond between moms and their tween daughters.

4. I found Salad Days: Salads for Dinner at the grocery store and bought it on a whim. Lot's of brilliant images. All the salads in this look scrumptious. The first recipe is for a "Classic Melon Salad." I've made a large batch of it twice in the last few weeks. Addictive!

5. Classic Melon Salad

(Adapted from Salad Days) --

Slice watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew into thin pieces. (You could make it without the cantaloupe or honeydew, but you must have the watermelon.)

Toss together with fresh basil.

Combine 1 part light olive oil, 1 part red wine vinegar in a small jar with a lid. Shake well and drizzle over salad. 

Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Eat right away or chill and serve the next day. 

Optional Ingredients: shaved pecorino, sliced prosciutto 

6. Protecting my skin from too much sun exposure.
I bought this inexpensive hat at my local supermarket. Most days, I also wear 30 SPF on my arms.

7. Red Curry Lentils. They're tasty, nutritious, and cooking them fills my kitchen with the scent of savory spices. Nice over rice.

8. Streams of Living Water by Richard J. Foster

"In this book I have tried to name these great Traditions -- streams of spiritual life if you will -- and to note significant figures in each . . . The Contemplative Tradition, or the prayer-filled life; the Holiness Tradition, or the virtuous life; The Charismatic Tradition, or the Spirit-empowered life; The Social Justice Tradition, or the compassionate life; The Evangelical Tradition, or the Word-centered life; The Incarnational Tradition, or the sacramental life."

(Related Post: "Sacred Pathways and Celebrity Diets")

9. What Makes Olga Run?: The Mystery of the 90-Something Track Star and What She Can Teach Us About Living Longer, Happier Lives  by Bruce Grierson

"They say she is like Grandma Moses in the sense that she found her calling very late in life. But while Grandma Moses took up painting out of desperation, to make ends meet, Olga took up track, at age 77, for fun. A dozen years retired from her career as an elementary school teacher, she still had lightning in her that needed grounding."

10. The Little Oratory: A Beginner's Guide to Praying in the Home by David Clayton & Leila Marie Lawler (LML's blog, Like Mother Like Daughter, is a favorite -- "Because it's important to maintain the collective memory.") Written with a Catholic readership in mind, but could be adapted to suit most faith traditions. Lots of emphasis on the home as a school of beauty. Makes me want to tidy up and spend some time in deep prayer!

"This book is about making a little oratory -- a little sacred space -- in your home and praying there . . . Really, it is just an outward manifestation of the simple truth that God wants to be with us. He is Emmanuel, God with us."

11. Emma by Jane Austen  (audio version) The more I read Austen, the more I'm hooked. I was not familiar with the plot for this one, so it was very amusing, indeed!

12. Our new German Shorthaired puppy, Heidi.

If you're visiting Classical Quest for the first time, I'd be delighted if you would introduce yourself in the comment box. You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Bloglovin, and Pinterest. 

Peace & Joy!

Adriana