Paris

After 3 days/4 nights in Paris, these are my observations:

Paris is

·      packed with tourists (that would be us and hundreds of thousands of our closest friends) and jammed with people hawking things to tourists (we are guilty of providing a market for Eiffel Tower trinkets and other “Paris” souvenirs). 

·      stinking expensive.

·      literally stinking and hair-raisingly dirty in places.

And despite all this, Paris is still “all that” - an incredible, grand city that fully lives up to its iconic status.  I offer as proof the following photographic evidence:

Joyeux Noël

There were many reasons why it seemed like a good idea to us to travel around Europe during Christmas time this year, chief among them that we were already in Europe courtesy of Calvin College.  When else would we have the chance to see some of the great sights of western civilization without having to pay the airfare to get here? 

Still, a vacation in Europe, especially western Europe is not inexpensive.  And so we are economizing where we can.  Thus we find ourselves spending Christmas in Paris, yes, but in a pretty ratty hotel in Gare du Nord, described by The Mini Rough Guide to Paris as “rough, boisterous and shabby”.  Indeed.  

Name of our hotel mis-spelled on its own front door:

the name is Hotel Liege-Strasbourg (named after the street it is on)

Thus we find ourselves walking the crowded streets around our hotel on our way to more desirable spots, sharing the sidewalks with people described by Jeff as “definitely not genteel”.  Bastian has dubbed our area “the h-area”, due to the plethora of wig shops featuring many neon-colored dos among the more ordinary styles and also to the clumps of  hair littering the sidewalk.  Merry Christmas….

On our way to a Christmas Eve mass at Notre Dame - an other-worldly experience of another sort – we pass people set up for the night on mattresses or in sleeping bags on the street, and I think “no crib for a bed”.  And thus arrives my epiphany.  Of course!   When Jesus arrived he didn’t even have a ratty hotel.  The first Christmas could not have been clean, and “genteel” was probably not a word ever used to describe the shepherds.  And Jesus didn’t come to help the homeless – he was the homeless.   So in our non-traditional, not exactly Christmas-y feeling observation of Christmas this year,  maybe we are closer to Christmas than ever.

Christmastime musings

This week our focus has been on the O Antiphons of the Advent liturgy.  We have pondered Christ as Wisdom, as Lord of Might, as Flower of Jesse's root, Key of David, Dayspring (on the solstice), and as Keystone.  Today is the last of antiphons, Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us.

In our unusual celebration of Christmas this year - in Europe, away from family - we are reminded and comforted especially that Christ is with all of us, near and far.

Our semester has finally come to an end.  Yesterday we accompanied 16 of 18 Calvin students to the Budapest airport, and said our farewells.  The remaining two stayed with us for one night before heading off to Ukraine together to revisit a family there.  Our semester ended well.

There was a Christmas party with a nice dinner out followed by a raucous Secret Santa gift exchange, original artwork revealed, poetry read, and a lighting of the Advent wreath candles and a time of liturgy and prayer together.

There was a semester end open house held for each of our service-learning partners at one of our favorite cafes, which brought stories and reports of very positive effects of (and on) our students serving and learning within multiple Hungarian contexts and alongside many many competent and phenomenal change agents and teachers in Budapest.

For me, there was reading over 300 journal entries, final papers, and other semester-end writing, along with two full days of individual meetings with students to go over lessons learned, goals for back home, reflections and challenges.  Grades are now in, and the lessons continue for all of us.

There was a service of Lessons and Carols at St. Columba's Scottish Presbyterian Church, and then on the fourth Sunday of Advent, (this week), the Paradise Singers, the singing group directed this fall by one of our students, Aemelia Tripp, (and in which Julie sang, along with several of our students) participated in and led worship after a semester of weekly practice.

There was an evening of games, and a dinner out with our new friends Zoltan and Andrea, and their son Peter.  We enjoyed playing Ticket to Ride, Europe, and being able to walk from our home just a few blocks with them to a wonderful dinner at Okay Italia.

We have enjoyed multiple trips to the various Christmas markets all around the city, but mostly at our favorite St. Stephen's Plaza, and the main market at Vorosmarty Square.  Lights and Advent wreaths occupy most public spaces, and the city is vibrant in this anticipatory time.  We had snow on the ground for a day, and have continued to enjoy walks across the wonderful bridges across the Danube.

Today we pack up and fly away temporarily as we begin our two-week whirlwind of western Europe.  To Paris today and over Christmas.  We hope to see and worship in the Cathedral at Notre Dame, visit the Scottish Presbyterian mission congregation on Christmas, summit the Eiffel Tower, wander the streets of Paris, maybe see the Louvre and Versailles, but we are fairly loose with our planning.  It's all bonus after this fall.  Then on Tuesday we train to Amsterdam for a few days of enjoying Holland.  Then an overnight train will take us to Berlin for New Year's eve and the first few days of 2012.  We will connect with our friends Mary Buteyn and her daughter Abigail, as Mary directs a Calvin German Interim group there.  Then we finish with two days in Vienna with our friends Jeffrey and Lisa Schra and their kids Willem and Xander.  After that our final weekend will be in Budapest before we leave for home ourselves on January 9th.

As our students arrive home, literally as I am writing this, I am struck again with a powerful sense of gratitude.  Our regular practice as a group this semester has been to observe the liturgy as presented in the book Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, and each time the worship would end with this blessing, which I'll offer now to you:

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,

Wherever He may send you.

May He guide you through the wilderness,

Protect you through the storm.

May He bring you home rejoicing

at the wonders He has shown you.

May He bring you home rejoicing

once again into our doors.

 

A few more reminders of how spoiled we've been on our morning walks around the city... 

Majestic Parliament.

Ecseri Flea Market

Yesterday we visited a big flea market that is well-known here in Budapest - Ecseri Használtcikk Piac.  Literally translated,  Ecseri (name of the street it's on) Used Article Market.  It was a fun place to visit and if transporting items home were no problem, we could probably have been in serious shopping danger there:  awesome old Christmas ornaments, old tin toys, lots of art and "art",  beautiful traditional Hungarian embroidered linens and clothing, etc. etc. etc.  A few visual examples:

Don't know why, but I love this chimp...

I see an awesome birdbath/water feature for my sister's yard.

If I didn't have to bring it home on a plane, this lamp would be coming with me!

Booth no. 36 is the one that stopped me in my tracks, however.

A visceral reminder of my dad and my childhood:

My dad was a collector, and one of his largest and most beloved collections was of Matchbox cars.  Our whole family spent many hours at places that looked a lot like this, with people that shared my dad's love for Matchbox.  Matchbox cars:  not Hot Wheels, not no-name cheap-plastic-junk miniature cars, but Matchbox - die-cast, scale-model, the real deal.  In fact, Matchbox is such a part of my childhood story that they say I would call one of my first friends - a little boy who lived next door to us - outside to play by rattling my bucket of cars.

I'm sure I still have one of those red double-decker buses.

Some still in the boxes.  That's always a good sign.

He's asking about $5 each for the ones on this shelf...

...and the ones on this table are going for about $2.

Dad would have loved this.  And he probably would have wanted to stay at Booth 36 way longer than I did.  Though Jeff and I did spend some time looking at old Budapest postcards there.  We bought three.  (They'll be easily packed away in the luggage!)  Then the siren call of other people's trash called us to keep looking...








<a href="http://www.mycityantiquing.org/wiki/Ecseri_Flea_Market"><img alt="Ecseri Flea Market" src="http://www.mycityantiquing.org/exlink/index.php?pg=7096&tp=3" style="border:0px;padding:0px;width:150px;height:150px" /></a>

Almost too deep to heal

The courses I teach and the work that I do with students inevitably end up dealing with questions of a larger hope, and the difficulty of living in a world that is deeply loved by God (John 3:16), but also *waiting* for redemption in its fullness.  Waiting.  Waiting.  The deep brokenness of the world cannot, can never, be glossed over, and spending time teaching and learning in Eastern Europe this fall has definitely provided no relief from this pattern.  In addition to much more, we are left with images of bullet-ridden walls in Sarajevo; hulking ex-Communist high rises dotting the Romanian landscape; the ruins of Auschwitz's crematoriums on a clear blue day in November; and now new awareness of legislation in Hungary that has made homelessness a crime, instead of an opportunity for mercy.   None of these images look like Christmas; none are easily "fixed."  All of these are reminders in this season that we wait, with the Pevensie kids and all of Narnia, for Christmas to return.  No, it's not Christmas time yet, but Christmas is coming.  Meanwhile, we wait, and its ok to cry while we wait.

Advent thoughts from Over the Rhine's "Little Town":

                   The lamplit streets of Bethlehem
                     We walk now through the night
         
                  There is no peace in Bethlehem                     
                     There is no peace in sight

                  The wounds of generations
                     Almost too deep to heal

                  Scar the timeworn miracle
                    And make it seem surreal

                  The baby in the manger
                     Grew to a man one day

                 And still we try to listen now
                    To what he had to say

                 Put up your swords forever
                    Forgive your enemies

                 Love your neighbor as yourself
                    Let your little children come to me
               
            

Debrecen (DEH-bret-sin)

Last weekend we went with some of the Calvin students on a tour of Debrecen, Hungary's second largest city.  This excursion was organized by one of Calvin's academic partners in Budapest,  Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem (Karoli Gaspar Reformed University).  The Reformation was embraced very early in Debrecen, and it was known at one time as the "Calvinist Rome" because  most of its inhabitants at that time were Hungarian Calvinists.

One of the places we visited in Debrecen was the Nagytemplom (the Great Reformed Church), the largest Protestant church in Hungary.  It was very simple, almost stark, compared to the many Catholic and Orthodox churches we have seen in our travels this semester, but beautiful in its own way.  While in the church, we were fortunate enough to hear an organist with 40 years of playing the organ "exercising" (I think that meant practicing!).

Another sign that we were in a Reformed church...

"...not my own, but I am the property of my faithful savior Jesus Christ..."  I bet you can figure out  "(Heidelbergi Káté 1.)" without my - rather Google Translate! - help.

This Advent wreath was the lone sign inside the church that we are preparing to celebrate Christmas. 

Outside the church, the city of Debrecen is all geared up with Christmas lights and a Christmas market (as is Budapest). 

The Nagytemplom

 

The center of Debrecen and its Christmas market

 

 We're going to try to get some Hungarian Christmas ornaments back to Michigan unbroken!

 

Scottish Dancing!

The church we've been attending here, St. Columba's Church of Scotland, hosts an evening of Scottish dancing once or twice a year, and we are fortunate enough to have been here for one of them.  The Budapest Scottish Dance Club did some demonstration dances, the band Dagda provided the live music, and Debbie Moss instructed everyone in the basics of a number of dances.  Also, can't forget that there was mulled wine!  And a good time was had by all...

My Thanksgiving Litany

For music swelling and echoing through the rooms of St. Columba's Church,
I thank you, Lord.

For dancing and silliness and not being afraid to look foolish,
I thank you, Lord.

For the wonder of food:  the labor that produces it, the hands that prepare it, and the providence that supplies it,
I thank you, Lord.

For the bed at 852 Calvin that is starting to call my name,
I thank you, Lord.


For family members who travel halfway around the world to be with me,
I thank you, Lord.

For family members and loved ones who are halfway around the world from me,
I thank you, Lord.

For fellow travelers on this journey,
I thank you, Lord.

For the endless beauty and wonder of this world,
I thank you, Lord.

For the promise that the darkness and despair of this world will not be endless,
I thank you (and remind you), Lord.

For the path that is waiting to lead me home to you every time I stop running away and turn around,
I thank you, Lord.

For grace sufficient,
I thank you, Lord.

Practicing Joy in Poland

Our visit to Poland was not only mourning and lament.  For a visual tour of the joy we found there, click here:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.290183881015244.79624.100000709028573&type=1&l=fc18b4fd24

To whet your appetite...

"A Cry of Despair and a Warning to Humanity"

How can the sky be blue here still?  And how can the sun still shine?  How can my stomach retain its food?  It's not sure it wants to:  it's knotted, clenched like a fist.

My feet are walking in the exact same places their feet walked, stumbled, fell, marched, terrorized.  This is not a movie set.  As disturbing as that place is, this is not the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum.  This place is the blood-soaked origin of the anathema.

I look at the exhibits, or I look at my feet.  I do not meet people's eyes, especially not the eyes of people I know.  I am ashamed to be human.

I see a display of children's items, and I realize that under different circumstances of birth my mother, born in 1941, could have been one of these children.  These piles of shoes could have contained the shoes of my grandparents, her young parents.

There is hallway lined with intake photos of prisoners that list the date they entered the camp, the date they died, and sometimes the date of their birth.  One man shares my birthday.  In 1942 his birthday present was a trip to camp. 

I see the standing cells, not big enough to lie down in, where prisoners were made to enter through little doors down at floor level, like animals.

It's cold outside, but it feels so much better to be outside than inside the buildings.  I'm not sure why.  Some things here are even beautiful, like the numbers on some of the buildings and some of the light fixtures.  How can this be? I don't know.

We get back on the bus, and the only appropriate response after being attacked by dementors is to eat chocolate.  So we do.  But it is only a brief reprieve.  We are driving only the short distance to Birkenau, the largest part of Auschwitz, what you think of when you hear that word - "Auschwitz".

We see the memorials, large and small, and I wish I could read Hebrew.  We see the ruins of two gas chambers and crematoriums.  I walk completely around one and wonder at how much death can be accomplished in such a small space.  I wonder if I am walking on the ashes of victims, and I think about my feet carrying them back out of this  place.

We go inside one of the remaining barracks.  I see a man, probably in his fifties, wiping away tears with the backs of his hands, like a little child.  This is not a momentary upswelling of emotion.  I see him more than once, and both times his emotion is on raw display.  Did he have a relative who was killed here? or who lived through this horror? more than one? Or maybe his relative was one of the SS guards?  Perhaps he is just a man whose soul has not been seared by the endless litany of man's inhumanity to man.

The sun still shines in Auschwitz.  It still casts its warmth.  Colors are still beautiful here, especially the ones on the inside of my eyelids.  Birds fly over this place as they would any other.  People even build homes nearby this place, as they would any other.  Is redemption possible for such a place?  Do I want it to be?

Things We Don't See At Home

These thoughts have been bubbling up for a while.  The title pretty much says it all...

• dogs on public transportation (You can purchase a special pass for your dog.)
•  doggie social hour at the local park.  I know you think we see this at home, but we don't.  Not like what they do here. The same dogs and their people night after night just standing/running/sniffing/laying around.  And this isn't the dog park, just the closest park to us (right at the end of our block), but this happens in every park that we walk past.

•  extremely well-behaved dogs everywhere.  Don DeGraaf swears that he saw a lady tell her dog to pee in a grate in the sidewalk, and it did.  If I ever get another dog, I'm going to ask a Hungarian to train it for me.
• signs like this one:

                                         Is it a warning... or a prediction?

• serious bike lanes
• statuary as a normal part of building decoration
• food delivery Vespas (I'd be a pizza delivery girl, if I could ride one of those...)

• Turkish/Mediterranean fast food chain (Star Kebab and others)
• little corner produce stores everywhere
• little corner floral shops and booths everywhere
• a couple stretching out in prep for running as part of a Marathon relay team, then taking a smoke break to calm their nerves
• air filter masks on bicyclists
• public displays of affection  (unfortunately they are not all this beautiful)

•  rose-shaped gelato

  As if ice cream needed something to make it better...

•  people sitting on park benches:  Some are homeless.  Most are not.  Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.
• men carrying wicker market baskets
• high heels:  Heels with a suit or a dress is baby stuff.  Intermediate heel-wearing is  heels with jeans and shorts.  Advanced heel-wearing is heels with jeans pulling a wheeled suitcase while walking through a border crossing and on down the road into the next country... 
• torsos holding things up

 

• public telephone booths (also not all this attractive)

I probably could have kept adding to this post, but I decided it might never be finished and that incomplete was better than nothing at all.