Autumn--A Month Early

If you are single with no roommates and there is therefore no one waiting for you at home with a hot meal, the next best thing on a blustery, rainy, chilly day is definitely this:

Get home, slightly damp, and change into sweats or pjs or something. Feed the dog. Feed the birds. (The ones outside, I mean. I don't have indoor birds.) Feed the woodstove. Make a fire in the woodstove which, in itself, is a thing of beauty--starting with the first match, no smoke in the house, no wet wood (on account of Mark-the-Plow-Guy putting some in the garage last winter). Heat up a meal that you made the night before so you don't have to prepare anything else. Curl up on the couch with your meal and a book or a movie and some crocheting (after the meal, naturally), in front of the fire, with your feet on the dog. Finish up with a cup of hot chocolate.

The only thing--and I really do mean the only thing--wrong with this picture is . . . hey, did you notice the date-stamp on this post? August 23rd, people. I do not live in Alaska. Why did using the woodstove seem like the best idea in the world on August 23rd? If I'm writing blogposts from a permanent relocation to Costa Rica come February, you'll know why.

Earth Month

Easter's almost here. Death comes before resurrection, but there's this kind of anticipation of the shroud being flung off, even though we haven't got through that Best of Fridays yet. You can feel it in the blogosphere, too. People are talking about nature and life and the outdoors and . . . um, kicking things and private property.

Today I got the bright idea that I know someone with private property, with whom I could probably have a nice walk and a nice chat. So I invited myself over to Young Christian Woman's house and we went tromping through the rain-sodden forest. (It wasn't actually raining, but it has been, and the ground felt a little like pudding in places.) Let it be known that there are "No trespassing" sorts of signs in certain places on the property, but they are not overly prolific, nor are they yellow.

The walk was really beautiful, especially the swamp part. I'm serious. Have you ever looked at a swamp? There's something about dead trees jutting starkly out of the water that is so stunningly bleak and inspiring. Plus, at the tops of some of these tree-skeletons were the crackly tufts of herons' nests. YCW conceded that we probably wouldn't see any herons, though we had been wishing we would, and then suddenly and obligingly a heron flapped into view, pterodactyl-like, and perched on its nest. It remained there for as long as we did, which was quite a few minutes, and I felt some sort of benediction. Then we went inside and had hot chocolate, which was nothing to be sneezed at, either. (Although I think YCW did inhale some of the powder by accident.)

In another natural vein, I was finally reminded to check out Gustavo's blog. Gustavo is one of the men who works with my aunt in Costa Rica. I found out about his blog shortly after my visit there last autumn (which can be read about in posts like this and numerous ones thereafter--finishing here, and with a complete photo-post here). But then I forgot to visit it until my aunt's Christmas letter arrived yesterday. (I feel that I can be forgiven my tardiness, as it clearly runs in the family.) He is currently writing about trees and soda bottles. This is a good blog to read if you're interested in checking out some great stuff going on in Costa Rica. Plus I really enjoy recognising a few of the kids in the photos.

R&R

It's taken me the better part of a month to describe to you that my Costa Rican vacation, which I had been approaching rather gingerly at the outset, ended up being just-the-thing. I got to see some local "reality." I got to do a little bit about it. I also got to see some great (non-human) natural beauty, too, and I got to relax. We spent my final weekend in a cabin/hotel on the beach at Jaco.

Over the mountains on the way there we stopped at Doka Coffee Plantation for a tour, for obvious reasons. Our tour guide gave us a coffee tasting first, and I impressed myself by being able to compare tastes of four different roasts and a peaberry coffee, with coffees I know from Starbucks. Auntie Susan said to our tour guide, "My niece works for Starbucks. Have you heard of it?"

"Actually," said the tour guide, "We sell 75% of our beans to Starbucks." Suddenly I remembered why the name Doka was familiar. I took an excessive number of rather geeky pictures of coffee-processing with which I will not bore you (or myself during the upload), and felt clever because I knew a lot about the process to begin with. Every once in a while one needs to feel clever, I find, even if the feeling isn't accurate.

The day had managed to stay beautifully sunny and glorious much later than it had any of the other days--until we got in the car to continue our journey to the beach. The rest of the trip was hair-raising for a lot of reasons, and probably would have been worse if I could have seen the dramatic drops off the side of the road in the dark and the rain. Sarita pushed on valiantly until we got through the mountains and then pulled over so Auntie Susan could drive the rest of the way. At which point the roads became wide, straight, well-paved, and dry, almost like magic. Fortunately Sarita missed the experiential irony of this, as she fell sound asleep almost immediately in the back seat.

The beach was lovely--and that is about all I have to say about it, because we didn't do ANYTHING--except go for a walk, get pleasantly and occasionally pummeled by some waves, and read in hammocks and lounge chairs. And then it was time to go home. So--happy and wistful and rested--I did.

The Rest of the Week

As you can tell from the previous posting's photos, the day deteriorated into something akin to a monsoon, as well as some traffic of well-nigh cataclysmic proportions, due to a fountain overflow in the city or something. But the outing had been utterly lovely.

I spent the rest of the week having leisurely breakfasts with Sarita, looking at the birds that frequent the feeders in their orange tree. Then we'd usually do some random for-the-benefit-of-Jenn-the-tourist things in the late morning, heading to Carpio in the afternoons where I would help Auntie Susan again with activities mostly involving kids. There was another kid's club, louder and rowdier than the Pavas one, but no instant migraines involved.

One afternoon, I kept an eye on some children during a women's Bible study. The kids were old enough to understand that my own understanding of Spanish was fairly limited, and that my ability to reply was even more so; however, this did not deter their attempts to communicate with me. They would chatter on and on about something as long as my aspect registered any sort of comprehension, and as soon as I glazed over, they'd find something new to talk about.

Before that, though, we visited one of Auntie Susan's friends in her home. Olga and Auntie Susan have a Bible study together on a regular basis, but in this instance, Olga, who had nevertheless answered all the written questions for the study ahead of time, didn't have much time for actual study. She was understandably distraught. Some time ago, she had allowed some relatives space on her already cramped strip of land, and now they were trying to oust her from it. Don't ask me how you can get into a genuine legal battle over squatter's rights, but Olga is in one, and even though the facts and the witnesses seem to be in her favour, her relatives somehow have the ear of the judge. Olga is trying to trust God and forgive her relatives even though her already tenuous living situation is even more in jeopardy. I tried to think about if I were poor enough to live in what is essentially a tin can, and had four or five kids living in there with me, and was about to lose the can as well. But I couldn't.

I especially couldn't over the weekend. Being a North American on vacation in a developing country is weird. You can see poverty. You can even touch it a little bit. Then you can escape. Actually, if you're only on vacation, eventually you have to escape, because it's not like you have the right to live there or anything. Plus it was a holiday weekend in Costa Rica, and Auntie Susan and Sarita were going to take a well-deserved break, so we packed ourselves into the car on Friday afternoon, and headed to the beach.

Does This Story Have Pictures?

Do Not Descend Into the Crater

Even though the sun came up in all its glory on Tuesday, we weren't very surprised when we got to Poas, one of the local volcanoes, that the entire top of the mountain was socked in with fog. The guy in the booth at the entrance to the park warned us that they couldn't guarantee that we'd see anything. They probably have to make disclaimers like that for fear of lawsuit-happy and I-want-my-money-back-happy North Americans. We said we understood. When we got to the lookout point where we were supposed to see the crater, all we saw was a grey void, and a little sign perched perilously between land and nothingness, warning us to go no further.

As we stood there, however, the fog began shifting, and we could almost imagine we could see something. It felt like I imagine it would feel to look for Nessie. The monster we were looking for was breathing smoke though, so combined with the fog, it didn't seem likely we'd see much more. Then the clouds shifted again. And again. And again, until finally we could tell that we were, indeed, looking into a volcano.

We oohed and ahhed and felt sorry for the tour group who had left the vicinity two minutes before the unveiling. Then the clouds came back and the crater disappeared as before. So we set off through windy, but paved, jungle pathways, under twisted limbs, and a little higher up the mountain to see the crater lake, which was the volcano's previous location for letting off steam, as it were. When we got there, the view was just as opaque as it had been below, but once again, as we stood, the clouds shifted back enough for us to see the lake and the forest reflected in it on the other side.

We left the park with a sense of luck or blessing, and headed off next to La Paz Waterfall Gardens. It's a sort of mountain resort, but they also have a restaurant, wildlife exhibits, and a trail along which one can see five waterfalls. In spite of the dreariness, everything we saw was in living colour. Not to mention that the bathrooms at the restaurant were some of the coolest I've ever seen. Unfortunately, I chickened out of taking a photo in there, too, because the cleaning lady was in there and I was afraid of what she'd think . . .

The rest of the day can only be described in pictures. In my experience, however, blogger may heartily assert that it has uploaded one, yet leaving it invisible. I have not yet deciphered html well enough to programme it into each post by hand. And at this moment blogger has, apparently, decided that three photos are quite enough for this post. So I will show you the rest of that Tuesday tomorrow.

Across the Ravine

Across the ravine from Carpio is another, similar, settlement known as Pavas. CfC has been involved there longer than in Carpio, although it appears that at least Auntie Susan spends more of her time in Carpio. Still, on Monday afternoons, she runs a kid's club on the other side of the gorge. If we had had some sort of rope bridge (or the faith of Indiana Jones), we could have made our merry way across the chasm in five to ten minutes. As it was, we had to drive all the way out and along and around, and it took much longer.

The kid's club meets in a multi-purpose building built by short-term teams for CfC, and it started with a game of Uno. The club, I mean--not the building. It is much easier to play Uno without language than to try to teach English without it, by the way. After that, Auntie Susan taught the kids something out of the Bible, and then we played a game, during which a kid's skull collided with my jaw when we both went for the ball at the same time. I'm pretty sure the kid was okay, and my jaw only felt jarred, but my head registered an instant migraine and I had to sit out for a bit. I use the term "migraine" loosely; I have been prone to them at times, and this felt like one, but the intense pain subsided in about fifteen minutes, settling quickly into a barely-discernable, dull ache which lasted about a day and a half.

By the time we went home for dinner, I had nearly forgotten it, and was looking forward to a day off the next day. I mean, come on. It's tiring to spend a day trying to talk and listen in a language you don't actually know.

Travels with My Aunt 3

It takes something like two buses to get from San Pedro to Carpio, along with a potentially detouring little walk through a pedestrian shopping area, and when we reached the clinic, there were already people waiting to be seen.

I don’t imagine that Carpio is a garbage-city the way there are garbage-cities in, say, Egypt, but it kind of is one in that there’s a giant dump right at the edge of it, to which trucks are constantly trundling. From what I could see and understand, this barrio is an area where people who are considered to be refuse live, too. A lot of them are illegal immigrants from Nicaragua. The Costa Rican government doesn’t really want them there, and won’t issue them any papers to make their stay more comfortable, but it’s hazardous to live next to a dump, so they just kind of pretend they don’t know that there are scores of tin-and-board shacks crammed with people, all right next to the waste area. Most of the people in Carpio, says Auntie Susan, still have hope, unlike in various similar settlements. They still want to work hard and earn their livings. Christ-for-the-City has a clinic in the midst of all this, and that is where she works.

I spent the morning mostly hiding out in a storage room, putting labels on bags of children’s vitamins. Children’s vitamins have this almost irresistible smell—somewhat cloying and acidic at the same time, a little dusty, and really quite awful, but did I ever enjoy taking those things when I was a kid. I was sorely tempted to open one of the packets and take one, for nostalgia’s sake. Then the bag would only have had 29 supposedly-animal-shaped tablets in it, but they could have used that one for February. However, I restrained myself, and in the late morning, Maria came to take me to The Refuge.

Maria is another worker with Christ for the City, and she teaches English to adolescent girls coming from abusive backgrounds. I was supposedly going to help her with this endeavour this day. After giving me a tour of The Refuge’s “campus,” we went upstairs and she allotted me six girls to coach in English. This was a fine idea, except that the girls she assigned to me knew the least English in the class, and I definitely knew the least Spanish. Furthermore, I am a little more familiar with a semi-immersion-based approach to language learning, and these girls appeared to be tied to their books. Which were in English. Which they couldn’t understand. Which I couldn’t explain to them.

Overall it was an exercise in futility, I think, though the girls were very patient with me, so what could I be but patient with them? Still, I couldn’t help noticing a couple of them completely giving up on trying to communicate, instead taking notes from what Maria was writing on the board in another part of the room. I returned to the clinic for lunch, feeling like I wanted to be disgruntled again—or still—but having really enjoyed interacting, albeit patchily, with those girls.

And I was in awe at the work that was going on there. It seemed like these Christ for the City people just got ideas, and then they did them. I used to want to run my own coffee shop, where we could have ESL classes and maybe a counselor-in-residence or something, as well as live music and the art of local artists, and, oh, yeah—coffee. Before that I used to have dreams of working in or running an orphanage. But I don’t know how to start things. How do people start things? And I’m disorganised. And I’m not good with administration. One thing about all the projects going on with CfC is that it seems like the people with the gifts for the ideas just turn up. So far every person I thought could and would want to help with the coffee-shop idea, for example, has moved away or I have lost touch with.

So I’m working at Starbucks, and I know there are things going on there, behind the coffee as it were, that God is doing. But you know—sometimes I just wonder why I’m not working with girls who live in one-room tin sheds and whose older brothers abuse them.

Travels with My Aunt 2

The next morning was Sunday and sunny. Which I thought odd, for rainy season. By the end of the week I had observed that “rainy season” in Costa Rica apparently means something like “constant rain and fog in the mountains, and rain everywhere else only between 3-9 p.m.” But at the time I was a novice.

I peeked around the curtain, which was making a half-hearted effort at keeping out the sun, and saw . . . the back of the house . . . and the top of the orange tree . . . and the mountains . . . and a church, whose bells were joyfully calling people to worship. It occurred to me that maybe after a while those bells, which were probably only exquisite-sounding to someone like me who didn’t hear them every day, might have had the general feel of a school bell telling kids to sit down and be quiet, after a while. But I, for one, was going to enjoy them.

Auntie Susan, Sarita and I were going to church, too, but not the one with bells. Not the one Auntie Susan and Sarita normally go to, either, it turned out. I had been getting all geared up to attend a lively Latin American service where I understood one- to two-thirds of what was going on and didn’t know any of the songs, but I’ve done that before, so I was kind of looking forward to it. However, my two hostesses had long wanted to visit one of the international (i.e., English-speaking) churches in the city, as one of their colleagues will soon be attending there and they wanted to check it out. I provided an excellent excuse.

The church surprised me by seeming both familiar and totally out of place. After leaving the highway, we meandered up a dirt road, past people staring at us from the windows and doors of their corrugated tin shacks, and into a parking lot at the crest of the hill that was better-paved than any of the roads I think I encountered on the entire trip. In the middle of the parking lot, as if it had landed their like a UFO, was a modern, North-American-style church building, surrounded by potted plants—and some unpotted ones surrounding the perimeter of that parking lot.

Walking inside, I felt like I had not left the States at all. But I had—I knew I had. I had just spent over eight hours on a plane the day before, hadn’t I? Plus it was October and I was actually warm, instead of pulling out sweaters. I spent the morning in a state of cognitive dissonance, wrestling even more with my feelings of the night before. If I wanted this vacation to be convenient and comfortable and all about me, why was I so cranky about the North-American-ness of this service? Not to mention that I was supposed to be worshipping God with these people He had made to be my brothers and sisters (whether I knew them or not). It was, in a way, irrelevant what my preference was. The point was—well, God. What was my problem?

After church we got in the car and drove up one of the mountains, even though it had begun raining up there (according to the Law of Rainy Season), just in case we might be able to see a good view of San Jose from up there. I'll let you decide whether or not we did.

Upon descending again, Sarita steered us to a steakhouse for lunch. I was famished, but I think even if I hadn’t been, I would have wolfed down that meal, in spite of its enormity. If David and Emmylou had been there, they could tell you about it in much more descriptive detail than I. But let me put it this way. Only once in my life have I had a meal that was so delicious that it made me cry. (I’ve had plenty of meals that were so spicy they made me cry, and they were good, too, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.) This meal was a close second.

The rain was coming down fairly uncompromisingly even in the lowlands when we got out of the restaurant, but we set off for Cartago after that anyway. I’m not sure how a Catholic country can have something like a “most Catholic city,” but apparently in Costa Rica, Cartago is it. The basilica was packed with people at mass when we got there, so Auntie Susan and I scurried with our umbrellas from the car to the doorways and peered in at various angles for a while, before heading back to the house for supper.

Auntie Susan said I was going to the clinic with her at Carpio the next morning, and that we needed to leave by 7. I was okay with the timing, since my body-clock was still two hours off. But I was nervous about the clinic and English classes.

Travels with My Aunt

In this version of the story, the narrator (that's me) is definitely the sketchier of the two. Also, my aunt is actually my aunt. Apologies for anyone who hasn't read Graham Greene's book by that title, and was planning on it. Of course, if I were really sorry, I wouldn't have said anything . . .

My flights to Costa Rica were two of the pleasantest airline experiences I have had in years, and even the layover in Dallas was well-nigh enjoyable. Nice airport they've got in Texas. I mean that part of Texas. So far the only part of Texas I've ever seen--or really care to, at this stage of my life. Even still, I was a little out of sorts when I landed in San Jose. This had more to do with what was going on in my head than with external circumstances.

This, more or less, is what was going on in my head:

I'm in Costa Rica. It's warm, but it's raining. Why did I come to Costa Rica in rainy season? This is my vacation. I went through a whole lot of hassle with these tickets, so this trip better be good. I don't want to have to do anything. But I'm going to stay with my missionary aunt and I said I'd help out. How can I help out? I'm only here for nine days and I only hablo un poquito de espanol. Plus, I don't want to help out. I want to lounge around for an entire week and I want this to be all about me. I want to see pretty scenery and go to the beach and maybe get tan for the first time in probably fifteen years, even though I should never get any sun at all because my dad's side of the family has a history of skin cancer. I don't want to mess with any poverty.

Also:

What is wrong with me? I'm supposed to be a missionary, too. I thought I was going to spend my entire adult life in a country where I did not originate. I thought I was going to help poor people. I thought I was going to save the world. Now I spend my life serving specialty usually-caffeinated beverages to yuppies (and one guy who lives in his car, and one bearded lady) and people who used to be yuppies (even if the "y" no longer applies) and I'm disillusioned by it but I've absorbed enough of the culture, apparently, to be self-absorbed and not want to have to do anything inconvenient when I'm taking a break from the culture I've absorbed that I'm sick of. (Don't try to decipher that last sentence, unless you think like me--which, fortunately for you, you probably don't. Just take it as an indication of how my thoughts work, especially when I'm disgruntled.)

Basically, I was feeling a distinct lack of compassion and motivation, and also feeling guilty for the lack.

Auntie Susan and her roommate Sarita have been sharing lodging and working among the impoverished for decades. They arrived, smiling, at the airport and bundled me into their rickety Honda, and I felt even grouchier. These two amazing women represent to me a fate I both admire and dread. They are well-adjusted, mature women, neither of whom have ever been married. They have, nevertheless, deep and purposeful relationships and a sense of community. (At least, it seems that they do.) They love Jesus and follow Him intentionally and are changing the world--their little corner of it. Describing all the nuances of just how that awakens simultaneous longings and terrors in me would be too complicated and boring for anyone not living inside my head, but you can probably intuit the overall reasons behind my internal reactions.

We drove through San Jose for what seemed like ages and probably was. I discovered, in my brief time there, that it is a large city for such a small country, and that there are no quick trips anywhere. Furthermore, the potholes in the country at large make Auburn's roads look like well-funded highways. I wasn't really thinking of the potholes that night, though. Mostly I was just gaping out the window as Sarita trundled the car along and Auntie Susan in the back seat told me what I was looking at. The city was busy, and both foreign and familiar. I could understand what I was reading on the signs--sometimes because they were in English, but sometimes because I seem to have more Spanish packed away in my subconscious than I realised. They kept telling me what things meant, and most of the time, I already knew. San Jose seemed like a place I had never been before (even though I had, when I was 2 and 5), and also like all the cities I've seen all over the world.

Finally we reached the part of it called San Pedro, which was more residential, and then we arrived at Sarita's house. We were barked at by Canela and Chipis, the two slightly-larger-than-large-furry-slippers dogs who take up residence there, dodged the raindrops through the garden to the door, and entered the warm and homey interior. Dinner was ready and waiting, and I was still hungry for it, even though I had eaten about five times already that day. I don't know why traveling makes me so famished and exhausted, when I don't actually do anything all day. Plus there were fresh avocados. And Auntie Susan is a good cook.

After we ate, my body said it was 11.30, even though there it was two hours earlier, so I went to bed.

A Preface Regarding Relatives and Insects

I suppose you can't really have a preface in the middle of a work. But I feel the sudden and immediate need to explain the nomenclature I will presently be using to refer to my aunt in the ensuing narratives.

When I turned five, my friend Mark scoffed at me because I still called my parents "Mommy" and "Daddy," names which he said, with great authority, were baby-talk. We were five-year-olds now, and far beyond the need to add diminuitive endings. Please!

I remember feeling rebuffed and very insecure about that for months--maybe even years--afterwards. These days I typically call my parents "Mom" and "Dad," only occasionally reverting to the more "babyish" terms. However, I still call all my aunts "auntie." I can't get rid of it. They probably wish I would, and sometimes I wish I would, which is why I feel constrained to defend it now. I think a lot of it is habit. For example, even though my high school band teacher told me after I graduated that I could call him "Franz," I still find it easier to refer to him as "Mr Kuder." And it remains a struggle for me to refer to my college faculty advisor as "Kent" instead of "Dr Gramm," even though I used to visit with him and his wife casually when they would come over to England with an entourage of undergrads.

There are other reasons for my use of the word auntie, though. I think it has to do with auditory asthetics. I hail from a region of the country where aunt rhymes with words like gaunt and flaunt and taunt. There is, after all, a u in it. To this day I fail to see any good reason for talking about the sisters of one's parents as if they were small black or red insects which most people pay money to exterminate. (Then again, maybe it's because all my aunts are very very cool.) Let it be known here, moreover, that if and when my brother and esteemed midwestern sister-in-law have children, said children are welcome to call Peggy and Kelly "Ant," if these women so desire it, but let's have none of this talk of my being called "Ant Jenn."

But the thing about the pronunciation of, er, that word, is that it affects how the following name sounds, too. For example, "Ant Susan," if you were going to call her that, sounds "better" than "Antie Susan." But to me, "Aunt Susan" sounds funny, too--incomplete, as it were. I don't know what it is--maybe just subjective--but to me the name has a better flow as "Auntie Susan."

That is all a very long way of saying that in future posts about Costa Rica, I will be referring to my Costa Rican aunt as "Auntie Susan," and I hope nobody scoffs.

Still Not in Costa Rica

The morning of my departure dawned gloriously sunny, and it occurred to me that although I was taking a trip to a tropical country, I might regret the timing. The leaves around here were shaping up to be pretty spectacular; I had spent the last few days before taking walks surrounded by blue sky and fiery leaves, and dodging acorns, which, by the way, can be rather threatening little objects. I wanted to write a blog incorporating the phrase “the land of falling acorns,” because it sounds so romantic but really just means if you park your car outside, you can expect a lot more dings in the roof the next morning. Only at the time I was embroiled in the women/church/leadership issue and didn’t feel up to it.

In the meantime, I was heading to a warmer country that was having its rainy season. This entire year has been a rainy season here, really, and I wasn’t too sure how happy I was to be giving up some actually-sunny days. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the ride to the airport. The cab driver was a Tanzanian with dreds (is it “dreds” or “dreads,” by the way?) and that accent that makes every utterance sound wise, whether it is or not. He was both voluble and aphoristic, and we talked about missionaries and faith and materialism. At one point when I said I had been a missionary in London, he said, with the sound of one raised eyebrow in his tone of voice, “But aren’t we all children of God?”

I said I thought we were. But I also said that not all children relate to their parents. If God’s everybody’s Father, well and good, but He gives us the choice to actually relate to Him or not. There’s been a rift between us, and He sent us Jesus to reopen communication. Still, we don’t have to accept the offer of peace. (In thinking about this later it occurred to me that if we reject the offer of peace and God forced us to come to live with Him in Heaven anyway, it would be like being forced to live at home with parents we hated, I think.)

Tanzanian-Cab-Driver tentatively agreed with that, and then pointed out that most people just go to God when they’re in trouble. I agreed, too, and observed that, if they do that and things don’t go well, they blame God.

“Yeah,” he said. “But really, for God there is no ‘bad time.’ It’s all just equal to Him. It might seem like a bad time to us, but to Him, we’re still learning something and we weren’t learning it under normal circumstances.” (Brian H will be relieved to know that he did not follow this up by saying, “It all good.” I kept waiting for him to, but he didn’t.)

It did sort of hit me, though. I mean, I don’t think that’s completely right, because I think the Bible is sort of a diary of God’s pain, and I think it’s pretty clear that a lot of His pain is closely tied into and a result of ours. (A thought which is pretty intense and crazy in its own right.) but on the other hand, it does seem like that would explain a little of why He allows the stuff He does. On some level, maybe He really doesn’t see things as “a bad time” or “a good time” the way we do. Maybe to Him “a bad time” is when we’re so comfortable we take our lives for granted, and a “good” one is when we’re grabbing onto His lapels, screaming “WHY?” into His face at the tops of our lungs.

Still mulling this over. Still being hit by how unlike “my ways” God’s ways are . . .

When Your Airline Itinerary Gets Changed Five Times . . .

. . . you have to wonder if God is trying to tell you something.

(I know. I've been saying things like that a lot. More on that later, mayhap.)

Ever so many years ago, Grandma G made the extremely generous offer of flying any interested grandchildren down to Costa Rica to visit her daughter Susan (the aunt of said grandchildren). At the time, I was living in London and jetting around for ridiculously low prices to random Eastern European countries to visit former au pairs who had, after participating in my church’s ESL classes, returned home. All that to say: at the time, I wasn’t really very interested. Don’t ask me how anyone can be uninterested in a free trip to anywhere, but there you have it.

Last March, I was talking to Andrew’s-sister-Janice about the tropics and suddenly remembered the offer. It also finally dawned on me that maybe this was too good to pass up. Particularly because it costs a lot more to get to Eastern Europe from here. Fortunately, Grandma G was overjoyed to have someone else take her up on it.

I didn’t want her to have to pay too much, though, so I searched the web for the-cheapest-tickets-I-could-find. The good thing was, they turned out to be pretty cheap. The bad thing was, it was because the itinerary was shared by two airlines flying people around at deeply inconvenient hours of the day and night, via completely irrelevant locations like Philadelphia. I didn’t really think through all the repercussions of these details until things started to go wrong.

The first thing that went wrong was that United Airlines tried to ditch their leg of my return journey, leaving me stranded in irrelevant Philadelphia. (Apologies to people like Bryan and Bay and Lloyd Alexander, but you have to admit that Philly doesn’t really help me in the getting-to-Costa-Rica-quickly department.) Almost the last thing to go wrong was that United Airlines, who, over the course of three months, endeavoured to wrest me from their passenger list time and time again, finally succeeded. In the interim, I made numerous very long phone calls to very determined expedia employees and my tickets got changed five times. Moments before the final change (which happened a day and a half before I left), there was a nerve-wracking episode where it looked like I would have a pair of completely useless tickets, leaving from and returning to . . . where else but Philadelphia?

In case you haven’t guessed this by now, I do not live in Philadelphia.

In the end, though, I got to fly my whole trip on American, who behaved admirably throughout the entire ordeal, at much more human-appropriate hours, allowing for things like sleep and breakfast. But you can imagine that by the time I got on the first plane at 11 a.m. on the 7th, I was wondering if there wasn’t more to this trip than vacation.