Peter the Disciple

 I got to guest write a blog for WorldVenture. The prompt was, "What if Jesus' disciples wrote newsletters home to their supporters while they were following Jesus?" I got to pretend to be Peter. 

Fishbowl

Yep: a fishbowl. That’s how the BFA community is often described: A bubble which might be easy to swim and out of, but while you’re in it, you’ll be watched constantly. You can’t go anywhere, eat anything, date anyone without everybody knowing. With only two grocery stores in town, every student is likely to know your purchases within an hour, and as my own house is across the river from the doctor’s, I all too often see when my colleagues enter and exit that place. Forget medical privacy rights. Recently it was the actual doctor’s office which, while I was translating for my friend, let slip her pregnancy. Surprise!

Over the years I’ve watched different people handle the fishbowl in different ways, whether by sheltering their private life so very much that regular work hours were honestly the only times I saw them. Others have chosen the opposite route and keep nothing private. Not going to lie - sometimes that is quite awkward. Some have had to leave the community sooner than planned, and others couldn’t even bring themselves to consider moving here. "How do you recharge if you can never escape?" they ask.

Maybe I’m an anomaly, a beta fish who settles too easily for cheap tricks inside my bubble, but I love living the tight-knit community life. It’s comforting to me to see the mother of my student also trying to figure out which yogurt to purchase now that prices have gone up, to run into a visiting alum at the local town festival, to get a ride from my colleague’s husband - who happens to also plays bass at my church and the dad to four former students - to the mechanic three villages over. It’s what so many refer to as “life on life.” The divide between professional and personal, between spiritual and secular, is microscopically thin, and I LOVE it.

To me, it’s a foretaste of heaven - where we are forced to be vulnerable with each other because there’s no hiding it anyway and we can’t remember what the point was to all the secrets. Maybe I've been luckier than most. I have found that I can share the worst of me, and I have still been loved. It keeps me honest, humble, and engaged. My small group girls could appear around the corner at any moment, and what message will I communicate to them? Am I living in an authentic way? I’m not saying the fishbowl is for everyone, but I am saying I’ve made my home in one and I won’t be trading it for a giant tank anytime soon.

Community eating together at local town festival (pic credit: BFA's Facebook account)

Neighbors

Every so often the neighbor to my north comes home on a Saturday from her family farm with a trunk full of produce. Admittedly this is one of the few positive things about summer. When my timing is just right, and she thrusts a giant zucchini or 17 ripe tomatoes or a bushel of carrots at me, I get just a little bit giddy envisioning time in my kitchen. With my new blender, I can make salsa, and while most of the zucchini will end up in bread, there’s still plenty to make a delicious veggie stir fry with the 5 funky shaped carrots. My neighbor to the north is truly a lovely human being who delights me with her gifts.

Every so often the neighbor to my south has a really bad cancer day. I felt gut-punched this weekend when I could see her through the opaque glass of her bathroom, her head clearly leaned back and resting on the window. That in itself wasn’t the hard part; it was the fact that when I happened to glance over half an hour later, she was still there. And another hour after that as well. Her battle has been long fought, and she has kept high spirits for as long as she can, but some days are exhausting.

Every so often the northern zucchini bread needs to go to one’s southern neighbors.

Memorializing

Halfway into the 3-minute Introduction video, I already had tears rolling down my cheek. “Great,” I thought, “Why am I doing this?!” The screen went black, and before I could bolt, the lady from the front desk was opening the sliding door to the gardens, pointing me to a big #1 sign, and showing me how to start the Audio Guide hanging limply around my neck. A somber voice came on, “Welcome to the Kigali Genocide Memorial.”

In 1994, when the 100-day Rwandan genocide took place, I was 13 - old enough grasp that something significant was occurring, but young enough to not really comprehend the scale of this global atrocity. With my barely adolescent mind, the person I remember identifying with the most was a fellow MK who, I overheard, had been sitting in the front seat of the car when her parents high-tailed it for the border, and she saw everything. I didn’t know what that word meant when it was said in such hushed tones, but it sounded bad.

The Audio Guide directed me into the museum portion of the Memorial where I learned precisely what the everything was. I willed myself to go slowly, to read the posters about Hutus, Tutsis, and colonizers, to listen to the recordings on politics and propaganda, to watch the interviews of survivors asking “why” over and over, to absorb the reality that the bodies in the pictures had been real humans. And I grieved for what my fellow TCK had witnessed. I walked past remnants of clothes and toys that are still being retrieved from muddy fields. The humor of the flamboyant 90’s style was overshadowed by the memory that, unlike the Holocaust in my own beloved land, this genocide had happened in my lifetime. Truly it could happen again.

When I reached the Children’s Room, the unraveling began more fully. Through blinking tears, I read about the personalities of 2- and 5-year-olds as well as how they died until I felt an overwhelming need for fresh air. I practically ran out and straight into the gardens where I sat and sobbed for a moment. I spotted a number and somewhat mechanically typed it into the Audio Guide, and the heaviness on my chest began to lift slightly as I listened to the beautiful intentionality behind some of the garden designs. The rose garden with the jagged paths, the forest where baby trees were planted in the hopes that they will still be around for multiple generations, the garden that is the resting place of more than 250,000 victims. My favorites were the three layered ones on the hillside that allowed a river to flow through the Garden of Unity to the Garden of Disunity to the Garden of Reconciliation.

Later that night as my gracious hosts and I ate dinner on their rooftop, watching the sky fade from yellow to dark blue, they listened to me debrief and make comparisons to my visit of a Holocaust concentration camp back home. It would be so much easier to remain in ignorant innocence, but I’m grateful for the times when harsh reality crashes into my fairly easy life, calling me to empathize and to memorialize. Reminding me of the frailty of the gift we call life and the eternity of the gift we call the gospel.

Garden of Disunity

Before and after sunset

The Delight of Seeing

Several of you might know that this summer I walked my 3rd Camino. It wasn’t necessarily the primary goal to walk it again, but when Karen and I decided to spend part of summer hiking, and when we both picked Portugal as our top destination of the ones available to us, it only made sense to select 400 km of the Portuguese Camino from Coimbra, Portugal to Santiago, Spain. :-) To me, it was actually flatter, easier, and overall more comfortable of a walk than the previous two in northern Spain, barring the fact that Europe is breaking heat records everywhere. (Sleep tends to elude me on hot nights.) But the highlight was once again in the people.

There were Roberto and Enrico, my two Italian dads who watched over me the first week until Karen could join. The albergue host Carlos Rios, who talked a mile a minute and had 24 years’ worth of stories on the Camino. David, whose skills as a physical therapist were called on nearly every night to deal with aching feet or sore shoulders. Viki, to whom the waters of the Atlantic were never too cold for a quick afternoon swim. And of course dear, sweet Ildiko, who became our steadfast companion and shared our room, meal, and life beyond just the walking.

It was she who brought to life the chapter on “Seeing” I had read by Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Dillard’s challenge is to be more mindful at noticing the small things that pass you in life and could so easily go unnoticed. Actually, it’s more than just seeing them; it’s about taking joy in them. I’m not sure of Dillard’s faith in the slightest, but her chapter resonated with the Spirit inside of me, whispering of how God is glorified when I enjoy his creation. This practice came naturally to Ildeko. We’d walk around the corner, and you could hear her breath catch as she sighted an iguana sun-bathing on a rock or relished the sound of the waves. Regularly she’d reach to the ground, crush something green like mint or rosemary between her fingers, and then hold her fingers up to her nose for the next kilometer. Once she stopped in a small pine forest to take in the stillness of no cars or beachy tourists and to perceive all manner of bird calls and squirrels. There is so much I would’ve missed without her.

I’ve only just started reading Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist, but after spending two weeks being shown how to “see,” I was arrested by Niequist’s back cover blurb: I want my everyday to make God … glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.” That’s exactly it! Why it mattered that my new friend, Ildeko, was calling attention to beauty. She was creating in me a gratitude at getting to witness that beauty, an appreciation for being present on the Camino. And I couldn’t help but see God’s fingerprints all over, which in turn caused me to delight in him. Worship. Perhaps this is the real reason why this third trek to Santiago felt easier than the other two. How can I be the kind of person who uses ordinary, everyday beauties to call forth worship? I'm still learning.

free oranges a lady gave me

my two Italian dads

pretty door

with Karen in Porto

lovely flowers

church chandelier

Ildiko makes us laugh with her fake mustache

from Ildiko's camera lens (used with permission)

We made it!

The Power of Place (and People)

 In my last entry, the picture I shared from our 8th grade trip to Nuremberg was actually taken in the middle of Hitler's unfinished Kongresshalle, the location intended to be the heart of Nazi Party legislation for his Third Reich. The outside is massively impressive and the inside an unfinished mess. I'll spare you that obvious analogy because I instead want to talk about the power of place.

In addition to the Kongresshalle and Documentation Center, we took the kids to the Zeppelin Field, where the massive seats and podium still stand and you can actually stand in the same spot where Hitler gave his speeches during the Nazi Party Rallies of 1937 and 1938. 

     

Zeppelin Field - then and now

Most of our kids were eager to stand on that dais, either with a triumphal arrogance over Hitler's failure in history or mere bragging rights when they got home to their parents. But my heart went out to the lone student who stayed away. Having lived in Germany all his life, he felt the power of the place we were standing in.

Because places do have power. We see its origin in Genesis with the Garden of Eden. Then Abraham is led to the Promised Land, to which Yahweh has to lead his descendants again through Moses after the Exodus. We can read as God sets ups his own dwelling place in a chosen spot, from the Tabernacle to the Temple in Jerusalem - a city that itself becomes a location beloved by many psalmists. Even Jesus weeps over this place. And in a way I'm jealous! I want to stand in a spot and to be able to declare: here is where God lives! To join the Psalmist of 84 "setting my heart on a pilgrimage" or rejoicing with the people in Psalm 122 who said "let's go to the house of the Lord."

Today, June 15, we end another year at Black Forest Academy, a place where 65 school years have passed before us and - we certainly hope - more are yet to come. I was sitting in the Auditorium a few weeks ago and reflecting on how that particular room held so many memories for me:

• the first graduation I witnessed in 2000 when we picked up Andi after his freshman year
• passing the microphone in a huge staff circle my first year teaching in 2009
• hiding backstage for 10 drama productions, mostly trying to keep 25 Middle Schoolers quiet
• crying with my friends, the Crooks, has they mourned the passing of their 1-month-old Jacalyn
• praying earnestly with a student for God's healing in his life only to witness it happening
• worshiping God as my brother spoke at Spiritual Emphasis Week
• and so many more

The Auditorium might not hold the same meaning for everyone, and that's when it began to dawn on me: places become significant because of who is in them.

Old Testament prophet Ezekiel is often connected with the Temple because of his many chapters of measurements. He's the same guy who also spoke on behalf of Yahweh when he recorded, "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. ... You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God" (Ezekiel 36:26-28). It's the start of the promise that God's presence will move beyond the location of the Temple, fulfilled in John 1:14 when "the Word became flesh and dwelt (= tabernacled) among us." First among us, and then, after Acts 2, inside of us. I've referenced this term before, too, but it's as if we became Little Mobile Temples.

I love that. I reminds me that when I'm face to face with a brother or sister in Christ, I'm also in the presence of Yahweh, dwelling both in me and them. I'm not sure if it's okay to refer to fellow Christians as sacred places, but Peter seems to do it in 1 Peter 2:5 when he calls us "living stones being built up as a spiritual house." It teaches me that while it's okay to love certain places, I'm called, even commanded, to love people, especially my siblings in Christ. They are habitations of God's Spirit, the fulfillment of promises made to Abraham and Ezekiel, living stones with hearts of flesh. Together, we are made significant because of who is in us! The fulfillment of my desire to say "Here is where God lives!"

Unity in the Slide

The noise was deafening, but I could hear our student giggles over it all. Boys were yelling “The blue one! The blue one! Miss Custer, get up here to the front!” I hoisted the inner tube above my head, swallowed my pride, and shoved my swimsuit-clad self down the center of the four lines. Since it was a holiday, everyone in Karlsruhe had apparently had the idea to come to the swimming pool. 

The entire 8th grade class stood at the wide entrance of the biggest slide, several with inner tubes in hand. One of them took charge. “Miss Custer and her tube up front, three of you grab her hand and make a chain. Then quick, Miss Kubanek, you’re next; then three more kids.” Germans stared as we did our best to make a train chain with our entire group, completely thrilled at the awesomeness of our idea. A sudden lurch, and the crush of 15 people behind me tipped my inner tube over the edge; with a squeal of anticipation, we were off.

I swirled and spun, four 8th grade hands all gripping my tube or hand or foot as I clung to one of theirs. We passed through a dark section that took us on a sharp left turn, and I lost Sam’s grip as he floated away ahead of the rest of us. “Nooooooo,” a student shouted dramatically and attempted to push off the wall, hurling us into a free spin just as we passed under the strobe lights. Everything looked eerily like a disco dance party, the music our laughter. We caught Sam again, and he clutched at the tube. Glancing over my shoulder, I could see the chain had come apart in several sections, but still I could make out the whole group, and my heart swelled.

After two years of cancellations, this was the first 8th grade trip we had been able to have, and even so it had to change from its original destination to be much closer to home. Several colleagues had given up part of their Easter break to scout some sites and options and figure out the right balance of learning and fun. Then there was the anxiety of heading out with this particular class, not exactly a united group of friends - not that any class is ever perfect, but this one seemed to have more clashes than I was used to seeing. And yet the week had gone so much better than I could’ve anticipated: respectful listening to tour guides, a giant game of 4-on-the-couch, even a somber bonfire sing-along. This frozen moment, 12 students and 4 teachers suspended in a giant water slide, all reaching for one another with wide grins on their faces, it was a scene I wanted to imprint.

The darkness gave way to light and we were all unceremoniously spit out into the reception pool at the bottom, a crowd of locals vying for our inner tubes. We relinquished them and turned to each other, spluttering and laughing. “That was fantastic!” “I lost Luke!” “Did you make faces under the strobe lights like me?” Some headed off to repeat the blue slide while others split up to try the green and yellow ones. The shared moment dissipated, but the point was never that it lasted forever, rather that it happened at all.

2 days earlier at the Documentation Center in Nuremberg