It is a long-standing tradition in the our household that the Husband comes up with surprises for the Wife that catch her completely off-guard. It is also a tradition that the Wife tries to reciprocate in kind, but the Husband manages to wheedle the surprise out of her beforehand. However, the Wife pulled off an astonishing feat this year, wherein she arranged for the Husband to jump off of a cliff! Well, with a "pilot" and a parachute. Thus did the Husband fulfill his lifelong dream of floating lazily in the air, and the scenery was to die for: Lake Annecy in the French Alps. Below, you can find two videos of the flight and landing and get a look at some of God's most gorgeous creation.
http://youtu.be/dYiDk4zkiBc
http://youtu.be/a2nkQucwFcE
Until next time, may God bless you, or as our French brothers and sisters say, "Sois béni!"
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Sunday, September 22, 2013
For my children.
I was
in Darty recently (a French analogue to Best Buy) with my kids. We were looking at a Sony TV, oohing and
aahing over how svelte it was. As we
stood there, two realizations hit me.
First, TVs look cool today. I
mean, really cool, as in, scifi hadn't the foggiest clue when I was
young just how cool the TV itself would someday look. Thirty years after my birth, they are barely
recognizable as family members to the gigantic CRTs of yesteryear. Second, I realized how much things have
changed that play on the television now versus thirty years ago.
That realization was much more depressing.
I grew up watching a lot of the same stuff that my dad grew up
watching. The Dick Van Dyke Show,
Hogan's Heroes, Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy. I also was able to enjoy the golden age of
Disney television programming with shows like Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, Chip
& Dale Rescue Rangers, and Talespin.
I would sprint home from school
to catch Bill Nye the Science Guy, Reading Rainbow, and the live action show
"Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?". Saturday nights were PBS nights, where we
would match wits against David Suchet's perfectly-realized interpretation of
Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot while feasting on burritos.
MTV was, of course, on the air when at that time. There was definitely still trash to be found,
but my parents didn't have cable, and they didn't let us watch whatever was on
or whenever we wanted to. From the age
of about nine onward, I was allowed to watch Bill Nye, Reading Rainbow, and
Carmen Sandiego for "free", but all other TV had to be consumed on
Saturday or Sunday. I could earn an hour
and a half per week by reading 200 pages of approved books and another hour and a half
by reading 200 more pages. Family
movies didn't count towards my time, and later I could swap movie time for
Nintendo time. My mother would get our reading goals from the teacher for the BookIt! program and then go into school and tell our teacher to triple our requirements.
In short: my parents were pretty smart.
We try to do the same.
We try to ensure that our children never watch a movie that we haven't seen
already. We try not to use the TV as a babysitter (I failed miserably at this while my wife and I were both in language school, although then I had the kids watching a lot of French TV, so at least it was educational...right?). When we got the kids a
tablet, I removed any method for them to access the internet, leaving the only
apps on it the Kindle app (with public domain classics like Tom Sawyer and Anneof Green Gables, using MY login) and an audio player with Librivox books. We refuse to allow games to be installed on it. We refuse to use the Google Play store. We hold our children to minimum reading times
every day and I expect those who can write to give me book reports. We discuss their books around the kitchen
table. And yet, I worry.
I worry that they will not be able to distinguish truth from
culture. I worry that they will live in
a way that sees them staring into a screen more than looking a real person in
the eye and having a connection. I worry
that they will buy into the literal and figurative crap that is being served on
phones, tablets, media players, PCs, consoles, televisions, and virtual reality
displays. I worry that, like me, they
will someday be caught off guard by pornography or that they will lose their
ability to focus on tasks because they have trained their brains to operate
like a web browser with 35 tabs open, always consuming, rarely creating. I
worry that they will live virtually while virtually not living at all. I worry that they will not value privacy or
modesty or honesty or legality and that they will freely give away their lives
and the lives of their loved ones for convenience and social acceptance.
And so, here I sit at 2 AM, worrying. However, I really do believe that all
Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and that it is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in
righteousness. I also believe that God
has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound
mind. The answer is in Scripture and the
Holy Spirit. It has to be, or God
is a liar and my life is a sham. So,
over the course of a few blog posts, I'm going to prayerfully and with humility
try to find the answer to the question: what is the foundation for a Biblical
theology of technology? Please pray,
think, and converse with me as these weeks go by.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
C'est biengue, c'est biengue.
"Non, c'est le six, vehngue, deux, cehntengue!"
I tried again, with some desperation, to decipher the last number. This was the fourth time that the man repeated the phone number, and I was slowly making it out.
But what was that last number? Okay, twenty in French is usually "vingt" (pronounced "veh(n)") and he was saying "vehngue". So, it was apparently normal to add a hard "g" to the end of a word that usually ended with a nasal "n". That made the last number end with "un", which is French for "one" so what was the number right before "un"?!
Suddenly, I brightened. He was saying "cent-et-un", or 101. They must drop the "et" between numbers here and make the "e" in "cent" sound like "eh" instead of sounding like "aw". I repeated the number back in the Parisian French that I'm used to and at last received confirmation.
This was the scene as I continued to drive through the setup for yet another apartment tour. Frustration on both ends scarcely seemed the ideal way to pass an initial phone call with someone who might very well end up as my landlord, but such is life. It was another growing experience in a long line of growing experiences.
Despite what you might think, I am not fluent in French. I am, generally, conversational. That is, I'm generally conversational in person. On the phone, it takes me a minute or two to turn on my "phone brain." I was now finding that it took longer yet to switch on my "southern accent phone brain." We were leaving the comforting abri of the French Alps and moving to the southern coast of France. For many in the world: a dream. For me: yet another process of adaptation and limited communication.
The strong accent in the south presents an interesting challenge. To be blunt, I find it charming...but I don't want to adopt it. I've worked hard to conform my accent to the Parisian one spoken by my French family and at language school and the southern one sounds, well, so rustic to my ear. And yet, is this part of integration? Is this part of "contextualization", that missionary buzzword that hangs like an ill omen over every missionary's decision-making process? The southerners have a traditional hostility towards Parisians that mirrors somewhat the disconnect between, say, stereotypical New York city-ers and Midwesterners...the small town locals resent the big city hotshots that come to their area and expect to be waited on hand and foot, the latter resent the former for being stuck in backwater traditions instead of aspiring to be like the Big Apple...or the City of Lights, in this case.
So, what to do? Do I let myself adopt this new way of speaking to show my investment in this area? Certainly, my children will have this accent before too long, picked up from classmates that they spend 40 hours a week with and from friends spending the night at our house. But for me, who had some French growing up, it seems fake, as if pretending to have a different connection to France than I actually do. But does that matter? For Americans, I would say that it's similar to moving from Nebraska or California to the deep South. Do you adopt that twang or not?
I haven't answered this yet. It's, ultimately, a smaller issue in the grand scheme of things. However, it is symptomatic of the larger issue of identity on the mission field. When Paul calls me to "become all things to all people so that by all means I might save a few" does that extend to my identity? As a family, we are discovering what this means, and welcome your thoughts and prayers on it! I'm sure I'll continue to explore this thought in these blogs, because I see the ramifications for it in my life, my marriage, my parenting, and my ministry every day.
I tried again, with some desperation, to decipher the last number. This was the fourth time that the man repeated the phone number, and I was slowly making it out.
But what was that last number? Okay, twenty in French is usually "vingt" (pronounced "veh(n)") and he was saying "vehngue". So, it was apparently normal to add a hard "g" to the end of a word that usually ended with a nasal "n". That made the last number end with "un", which is French for "one" so what was the number right before "un"?!
Suddenly, I brightened. He was saying "cent-et-un", or 101. They must drop the "et" between numbers here and make the "e" in "cent" sound like "eh" instead of sounding like "aw". I repeated the number back in the Parisian French that I'm used to and at last received confirmation.
This was the scene as I continued to drive through the setup for yet another apartment tour. Frustration on both ends scarcely seemed the ideal way to pass an initial phone call with someone who might very well end up as my landlord, but such is life. It was another growing experience in a long line of growing experiences.
Despite what you might think, I am not fluent in French. I am, generally, conversational. That is, I'm generally conversational in person. On the phone, it takes me a minute or two to turn on my "phone brain." I was now finding that it took longer yet to switch on my "southern accent phone brain." We were leaving the comforting abri of the French Alps and moving to the southern coast of France. For many in the world: a dream. For me: yet another process of adaptation and limited communication.
The strong accent in the south presents an interesting challenge. To be blunt, I find it charming...but I don't want to adopt it. I've worked hard to conform my accent to the Parisian one spoken by my French family and at language school and the southern one sounds, well, so rustic to my ear. And yet, is this part of integration? Is this part of "contextualization", that missionary buzzword that hangs like an ill omen over every missionary's decision-making process? The southerners have a traditional hostility towards Parisians that mirrors somewhat the disconnect between, say, stereotypical New York city-ers and Midwesterners...the small town locals resent the big city hotshots that come to their area and expect to be waited on hand and foot, the latter resent the former for being stuck in backwater traditions instead of aspiring to be like the Big Apple...or the City of Lights, in this case.
So, what to do? Do I let myself adopt this new way of speaking to show my investment in this area? Certainly, my children will have this accent before too long, picked up from classmates that they spend 40 hours a week with and from friends spending the night at our house. But for me, who had some French growing up, it seems fake, as if pretending to have a different connection to France than I actually do. But does that matter? For Americans, I would say that it's similar to moving from Nebraska or California to the deep South. Do you adopt that twang or not?
I haven't answered this yet. It's, ultimately, a smaller issue in the grand scheme of things. However, it is symptomatic of the larger issue of identity on the mission field. When Paul calls me to "become all things to all people so that by all means I might save a few" does that extend to my identity? As a family, we are discovering what this means, and welcome your thoughts and prayers on it! I'm sure I'll continue to explore this thought in these blogs, because I see the ramifications for it in my life, my marriage, my parenting, and my ministry every day.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
The Wife's Visa Renewal adventure.
Hi everyone, just an update to let you know that yesterday's visit for the Wife went very well. This is going to be pretty long, so here's the short version:
It went really well, there were some miracle involved, and my wife's not being deported or put into visa prison or anything like that. All is well.
If you're one for details, here's the longer version. :)
It's a little hard to convey how obvious it was that God was at work if you aren't familiar with how unhelpful the French bureaucracy usually is. Usually, any single item out of line with their list (hereafter referred to as "The List") results in an immediate "do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollars" with them. Going into the appointment, the problems that I couldn't get around were:
1) The Wife's visa and titre de séjour were expired. Our renewal process was supposed to be started two months before expiration. I had been unable to get an appointment for three months prior to expiration. The website to book always said that no appointments were available for the next three weeks and the phone number that I had been given routed me to voicemail, which was full and routed me to the website. She should be able to get a temporary titre de séjour for 180€ and then the full one for 280€.
2) We didn't have a copy of the French version of our marriage license that had been issued from the state within the past three months (I had requested one, but they still haven't gotten it to us as of this writing). In the past, a copy of our American one or the French copy from a year ago have NOT been accepted as substitutes.
3) We didn't have a copy of the French version of the Wife's birth certificate that had been issued from the state within the past three months. According to their list, we didn't need one for a renewal of the titre de sejour, but since we'd moved, the new prefecture wanted a copy. I found this out too late to even request one.
4) We only had one proof of address instead of two because we've just moved.
5) Normally, the Wife was supposed to get a carte de séjour (a sort of residence card) that would last for one year. I was hoping to make the case for a carte de résident that would be good for ten years. Usually, you have to live in France for at least three years before asking for that, but I thought I might have found an exception. However, my team leader, who has lived here for 21 years, is eligible, and has never been able to get them to do his. A team member from an EU country (and thus immediately supposed to be on the fast track for a ten-year card) has also been unable to get his. So, it's not a given that just because you're eligible, you'll get the card.
I usually don't sleep more than four or five hours before these things. I set three alarms and woke up before all of them and went through everything again. I verified that "visa" is masculine, that "demande" (request) is feminine. I practiced my little speech in both polite and aggressive versions (no really, I've had to use the latter pretty frequently. Remind me to tell you the parking lot story sometime). And then I sat down, crushed, and realized this wasn't going to work. I told God that I had done everything I could, that I wasn't new at this, and I knew impending doom when I saw it. I asked Him to do just please do the impossible. I asked Him for hope and for deliverance from that greatest of woes and opposition: the French government, a nefarious entity bent on my frustration, financial ruin, and general inconvenience. He gave me Psalm 25. Read it and be amazed.
We made the trip to the sous-préfecture in the city of Béziers with a van borrowed from some team members (we don't have a family car yet), which was a godsend. Upon arrival, I handed my confirmation email for our appointment and was informed by the receptionist that she didn't think it was good enough to have our appointment. This is typical of the system here, and if growing up with a French mom has imparted anything to me, it's the ability to point out when bureaucracy is being idiotic. Thankfully, having an American dad has taught me to say it without getting escorted from the premises. I remarked that since it was clearly stated that this email came from the immigration department of her building, I would imagine that it was meant to serve as proof of my appointment. She had to check. Once she confirmed, we were able to enter the waiting area. As we approached I saw a young woman talking to an employee of the immigration department. Practice has taught me to look at these employees and prepare myself for them. It was obvious through eavesdropping that this was not going to be any easy woman to deal with. Her approach with the immigrant who had a minor paperwork issue was pretty much, "Well, guess YOU'RE not getting anything done here today." I saw one of her colleagues approach, start listening, and adopt body language (and eventually language language) that suggested that she didn't agree and was willing to work the situation out then and there. I prayed that we would have her as our contact for the day.
We did.
She initially wanted us to leave our kids in the hallway, which was technically in eyesight, but I wasn't very comfortable with it since #5 is the equivalent of Christopher Nolan's Joker during appointments and #2 and #3 hadn't exactly been operating under ceasefire rules that day. She let us bring them in and park them in a corner. They were amazing for the rest of the appointment. It turned out that the Wife's *visa* expired on August 20th, but that her titre de séjour was current through October 25th. This lady had a stack of renewal folders about eight feet high on her shelves, and she told us that she had never seen that happen before (she had to check with her boss on how to proceed). She then went through our paperwork and let all of the problem items for the titre de séjour slide. I have never had this happen with ANYTHING, and I've had these types of appointments for my carte d'identité, the kids' cartes d'identités, my French passport, our family book (livret de famille), our French healthcare, our French social security (where I once had to turn in the same paperwork at the same office twice in the same day because magical disappearance into thin air is a thing, apparently), car insurance, getting an apartment, getting a bank account, getting the Wife's initial visa, etc.
The French DO NOT compromise on The List, they do not say, "Oh, well since your American marriage license is here and since you have a copy of it in your livret de famille from 2012, we'll let it slide that you don't have ANOTHER copy from less than three months ago, because logic." They just don't. Any time in the past four years of doing paperwork with them, if anything is amiss, it's a no-go. We once travelled from Nebraska to Chicago, with a flight the next day to Sweden for a work/vision trip through Sweden, France, and Spain. I could only make one appointment for that day. I needed to get #5's birth certificate written into our livret de famille. The Wife and I travelled, paid $250 for one night at a hotel across the street from the consulate so that we could be there first thing and make our flight the same day. We got it done, but needed the consul's signature on her birth certificate. He was one desk over and they handed him the book.
He said that signing the book is its own appointment.
I told him that I had flown from Nebraska, had stayed the night at a hotel of great cost, that I could not come back the next day, and that I had tried both calling and emailing to say that I needed it signed, but that, unlike the American consular system, I could only make one appointment per person per day. I stressed that we were flying to Europe the next day, and that Chicago was not exactly down the street from where we lived. I also mentioned, as politely as I could (it was hard to phrase it without sounding snide), that it had taken more time for us to have this little conversation than to sign.
He then spent TEN MINUTES explaining why he wouldn't sign the book. And that was that; I lost. This has been the sort of experience we have if things aren't perfectly in line with The List. This is the reason that I have made so many individual trips to Chicago when we were preparing to move. I can't tell you the amount of Americans that I have seen there and and at the consulates here who have spent huge sums of money to get their visa or visa renewal done and are turned down on small technicalities ("Oh, you brought one copy of your passport and we wanted two. We won't make a photocopy for you, and if you leave to make one we'll move onto the next person and count your visit as done. You'll have to make another one for another day. By the way, we're book for two months.")
So imagine our surprise when this woman simply wrote a note down for the problem items and said, "No problem". Imagine my surprise when I didn't even mention our hope for getting the Wife a carte de résident and she said, "Well, your husband is French, your children are French, and you've been married for more than three years, so why don't we forego the carte de séjour for one year in favor of a ten-year carte de résident?" The Wife then had an impromptu interview to do in French (she did very well) and was approved for the card. She'll have a follow-up interview at our mairie (city courthouse) but the lady said that it was just a formality.
She then gave us a temporary card for the interim, didn't have us purchase the 180€ temporary stamp or the 280€ full one, told us that our children were wonderful, and bade us have a good day.
Wow.
It still hasn't sunk in that we're okay, that we're more than okay. Thank you so much for your prayers for us. This can be exhausting, but it is such an oasis when you find a friend where you expected opposition.
It went really well, there were some miracle involved, and my wife's not being deported or put into visa prison or anything like that. All is well.
If you're one for details, here's the longer version. :)
It's a little hard to convey how obvious it was that God was at work if you aren't familiar with how unhelpful the French bureaucracy usually is. Usually, any single item out of line with their list (hereafter referred to as "The List") results in an immediate "do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollars" with them. Going into the appointment, the problems that I couldn't get around were:
1) The Wife's visa and titre de séjour were expired. Our renewal process was supposed to be started two months before expiration. I had been unable to get an appointment for three months prior to expiration. The website to book always said that no appointments were available for the next three weeks and the phone number that I had been given routed me to voicemail, which was full and routed me to the website. She should be able to get a temporary titre de séjour for 180€ and then the full one for 280€.
2) We didn't have a copy of the French version of our marriage license that had been issued from the state within the past three months (I had requested one, but they still haven't gotten it to us as of this writing). In the past, a copy of our American one or the French copy from a year ago have NOT been accepted as substitutes.
3) We didn't have a copy of the French version of the Wife's birth certificate that had been issued from the state within the past three months. According to their list, we didn't need one for a renewal of the titre de sejour, but since we'd moved, the new prefecture wanted a copy. I found this out too late to even request one.
4) We only had one proof of address instead of two because we've just moved.
5) Normally, the Wife was supposed to get a carte de séjour (a sort of residence card) that would last for one year. I was hoping to make the case for a carte de résident that would be good for ten years. Usually, you have to live in France for at least three years before asking for that, but I thought I might have found an exception. However, my team leader, who has lived here for 21 years, is eligible, and has never been able to get them to do his. A team member from an EU country (and thus immediately supposed to be on the fast track for a ten-year card) has also been unable to get his. So, it's not a given that just because you're eligible, you'll get the card.
I usually don't sleep more than four or five hours before these things. I set three alarms and woke up before all of them and went through everything again. I verified that "visa" is masculine, that "demande" (request) is feminine. I practiced my little speech in both polite and aggressive versions (no really, I've had to use the latter pretty frequently. Remind me to tell you the parking lot story sometime). And then I sat down, crushed, and realized this wasn't going to work. I told God that I had done everything I could, that I wasn't new at this, and I knew impending doom when I saw it. I asked Him to do just please do the impossible. I asked Him for hope and for deliverance from that greatest of woes and opposition: the French government, a nefarious entity bent on my frustration, financial ruin, and general inconvenience. He gave me Psalm 25. Read it and be amazed.
We made the trip to the sous-préfecture in the city of Béziers with a van borrowed from some team members (we don't have a family car yet), which was a godsend. Upon arrival, I handed my confirmation email for our appointment and was informed by the receptionist that she didn't think it was good enough to have our appointment. This is typical of the system here, and if growing up with a French mom has imparted anything to me, it's the ability to point out when bureaucracy is being idiotic. Thankfully, having an American dad has taught me to say it without getting escorted from the premises. I remarked that since it was clearly stated that this email came from the immigration department of her building, I would imagine that it was meant to serve as proof of my appointment. She had to check. Once she confirmed, we were able to enter the waiting area. As we approached I saw a young woman talking to an employee of the immigration department. Practice has taught me to look at these employees and prepare myself for them. It was obvious through eavesdropping that this was not going to be any easy woman to deal with. Her approach with the immigrant who had a minor paperwork issue was pretty much, "Well, guess YOU'RE not getting anything done here today." I saw one of her colleagues approach, start listening, and adopt body language (and eventually language language) that suggested that she didn't agree and was willing to work the situation out then and there. I prayed that we would have her as our contact for the day.
We did.
She initially wanted us to leave our kids in the hallway, which was technically in eyesight, but I wasn't very comfortable with it since #5 is the equivalent of Christopher Nolan's Joker during appointments and #2 and #3 hadn't exactly been operating under ceasefire rules that day. She let us bring them in and park them in a corner. They were amazing for the rest of the appointment. It turned out that the Wife's *visa* expired on August 20th, but that her titre de séjour was current through October 25th. This lady had a stack of renewal folders about eight feet high on her shelves, and she told us that she had never seen that happen before (she had to check with her boss on how to proceed). She then went through our paperwork and let all of the problem items for the titre de séjour slide. I have never had this happen with ANYTHING, and I've had these types of appointments for my carte d'identité, the kids' cartes d'identités, my French passport, our family book (livret de famille), our French healthcare, our French social security (where I once had to turn in the same paperwork at the same office twice in the same day because magical disappearance into thin air is a thing, apparently), car insurance, getting an apartment, getting a bank account, getting the Wife's initial visa, etc.
The French DO NOT compromise on The List, they do not say, "Oh, well since your American marriage license is here and since you have a copy of it in your livret de famille from 2012, we'll let it slide that you don't have ANOTHER copy from less than three months ago, because logic." They just don't. Any time in the past four years of doing paperwork with them, if anything is amiss, it's a no-go. We once travelled from Nebraska to Chicago, with a flight the next day to Sweden for a work/vision trip through Sweden, France, and Spain. I could only make one appointment for that day. I needed to get #5's birth certificate written into our livret de famille. The Wife and I travelled, paid $250 for one night at a hotel across the street from the consulate so that we could be there first thing and make our flight the same day. We got it done, but needed the consul's signature on her birth certificate. He was one desk over and they handed him the book.
He said that signing the book is its own appointment.
I told him that I had flown from Nebraska, had stayed the night at a hotel of great cost, that I could not come back the next day, and that I had tried both calling and emailing to say that I needed it signed, but that, unlike the American consular system, I could only make one appointment per person per day. I stressed that we were flying to Europe the next day, and that Chicago was not exactly down the street from where we lived. I also mentioned, as politely as I could (it was hard to phrase it without sounding snide), that it had taken more time for us to have this little conversation than to sign.
He then spent TEN MINUTES explaining why he wouldn't sign the book. And that was that; I lost. This has been the sort of experience we have if things aren't perfectly in line with The List. This is the reason that I have made so many individual trips to Chicago when we were preparing to move. I can't tell you the amount of Americans that I have seen there and and at the consulates here who have spent huge sums of money to get their visa or visa renewal done and are turned down on small technicalities ("Oh, you brought one copy of your passport and we wanted two. We won't make a photocopy for you, and if you leave to make one we'll move onto the next person and count your visit as done. You'll have to make another one for another day. By the way, we're book for two months.")
So imagine our surprise when this woman simply wrote a note down for the problem items and said, "No problem". Imagine my surprise when I didn't even mention our hope for getting the Wife a carte de résident and she said, "Well, your husband is French, your children are French, and you've been married for more than three years, so why don't we forego the carte de séjour for one year in favor of a ten-year carte de résident?" The Wife then had an impromptu interview to do in French (she did very well) and was approved for the card. She'll have a follow-up interview at our mairie (city courthouse) but the lady said that it was just a formality.
She then gave us a temporary card for the interim, didn't have us purchase the 180€ temporary stamp or the 280€ full one, told us that our children were wonderful, and bade us have a good day.
Wow.
It still hasn't sunk in that we're okay, that we're more than okay. Thank you so much for your prayers for us. This can be exhausting, but it is such an oasis when you find a friend where you expected opposition.
Learning to Eat Again.
Eating in France takes a while. The French schedule budgets two hours for lunch break, from 11AM to 1PM, or from 12PM to 2PM, typically. If you are invited to someone's house for an informal meal, plan on easily spending two to four hours around the dining room table. You'll start with an aperitif and some hors d'oeuvre before having your salad course, and then you'll progress to the main meat course (with carefully selected wine, of course) and then finish with some dessert before lolling about trying the cheese platter out while sipping a digestif of choice. You absolutely will not eat more than one type of food off your plate at the same time. You'll talk in an animated matter, covering family, politics, world history, literature, politics, religion, philosophy, politics, immigration, and maybe a little politics to change things up a bit. If your hosts are very trusting and open with you, they will feel comfortable speaking about religion. The French love ideas, and I like to say that where there are four Frenchmen, there are six opinions. You can't just agree on a topic, you have to examine it. If you do agree on the topic, you'll find that your friend has shifted his stance, just for the sake of argument, and is examining it from another point of view. It is entirely possible to end up in a debate with someone who agrees with you completely! For the French, this is simply the logical result of a culture that has children in preschool stand up to have their first tentative handwriting efforts critiqued in front of and by their entire class. For Americans, hailing from a culture of self-esteem and individualism, it can feel very uncomfortable, very personal.
You get over it.
You get over it.
If you're like me, you start to wonder why your meals with friends require you to eat in 30 to 45 minutes and then move to another room or start an activity. Maybe a nation founded by immigrants has a sort of hereditary restlessness, things to do (or build, milk, shoot, trap, make, as it were). At any rate, it is a sign of trust to be invited for a meal here, and it is a time-hallowed and quotidian event that has a complete list of rituals and habits. If you make a false step, they are very patient, but they'll correct you ("Thank you for the gift, but it's unthinkable to drink even a fine white wine with wild boar!") and love it when you ask them how to find a good cheese or wine. They know their regional and national history and many know more American history than I do. They are witty, they struggle with doubts, they feel the weight of their history (praise France and they'll bring up all of her faults, criticize her and they'll bring up all of America's), some struggle with infertility, some struggle with loneliness, but you won't find out any of this if you don't eat with them.
Somehow, that's not that much to ask. I feel a little closer to the culture of the Old Testament, where hospitality reigned so supreme that a man would raise the best of his flock for God and the second-best for a complete stranger to dine on while he stayed the night. It requires me to slow down, to be willing to load sleeping children into a car because we arrive at four in the afternoon and we're leaving at one in the morning, and our hosts give us a ride home because we don't have vehicle.
Somehow, that's not that much to ask. I feel a little closer to the culture of the Old Testament, where hospitality reigned so supreme that a man would raise the best of his flock for God and the second-best for a complete stranger to dine on while he stayed the night. It requires me to slow down, to be willing to load sleeping children into a car because we arrive at four in the afternoon and we're leaving at one in the morning, and our hosts give us a ride home because we don't have vehicle.
I think that God's like that. He invites us over, He assumes all of the cost, He accepts our clumsiness, our ignorance, our maladroit attempts to seem sophisticated and He bathes in the fact that for this once, we came to visit. And He'll stay up talking late, if we will, too.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Who moved my keys?
Okay, get some gas in the car, make a quick transfer of money at the bank in Mèze, bring the car back for the Wife to go grocery shopping. Now, where are the keys?
Thus started a quest that would lead through six hours of turmoil, searching, researching, prayer, frustration, and yes, I admit, a few angry remarks here and there. Our newly-purchased, used car had just been brought the 5 hours from the French Alps to our new home in southwest France. It had not moved with us because it had decided to staunchly apply the parking brake and then refused to release it.
Yesterday, thankful to have it back, we'd taken our first outing as a family in months: a day at the beach. We'd come home, lightly baked, and unloaded the car. But HOW had we unloaded? Who unlocked the house? Who brought the keys back to lock the car? Were they locked in the trunk? Had #5 decided to be "helpful" and put them in her infamous, roving, "hidey spot"?
I went through the seven stages of grieving a few times and finally arrived at the eighth: the self-induced coma. I awoke to #1 asking me if these car keys were the car keys we'd all been looking for. Those of you who know our family know that two thirds of the time, #1 is the only guy who has a clue what's going on. The other third of the time, it's the Wife. Anyway, the keys hadn't actually been anywhere all that out-of-sight. Regardless, by this time, the gas stations were closed, the store was closed, and I wasn't going to be able to drive to talk to someone in Montpellier about the Wife's stalled visa renewal. So: why, God?
I kept looking for things to work on. I was caught up on ministry stuff, we'd cleaned the whole house looking for the stupid key, we still didn't have internet. So, I played a little computer (Dragon Age: Origins, if you're curious), built some Legos with the kids (Anakin's Jedi Starfighter and Mustafar duel scene, if you must know), had coffee and conversation with the Wife, worked on an HTML class that I'm taking, and took another stab at deciphering the gigantic mystery that is Arabic.
In the process, God quietly answered my question.
The "why?" was "because."
Because God loves me, He gave me a day to relax.
Because God loves me, He taught me that it suffices to pray and trust, to not always assume that I can fix a problem.
Because God is God, storms come and in their passing bring renewal instead of destruction.
I don't know what storm you're facing today, whether it is a shower or a hurricane, but there is a reason for it, and while it's commendable to try to fight against it, it might be wiser, just once, to lay down and let it wash over you. God knows where your keys are.
Thus started a quest that would lead through six hours of turmoil, searching, researching, prayer, frustration, and yes, I admit, a few angry remarks here and there. Our newly-purchased, used car had just been brought the 5 hours from the French Alps to our new home in southwest France. It had not moved with us because it had decided to staunchly apply the parking brake and then refused to release it.
Two. Days. Before. We. Moved.
Yesterday, thankful to have it back, we'd taken our first outing as a family in months: a day at the beach. We'd come home, lightly baked, and unloaded the car. But HOW had we unloaded? Who unlocked the house? Who brought the keys back to lock the car? Were they locked in the trunk? Had #5 decided to be "helpful" and put them in her infamous, roving, "hidey spot"?
I went through the seven stages of grieving a few times and finally arrived at the eighth: the self-induced coma. I awoke to #1 asking me if these car keys were the car keys we'd all been looking for. Those of you who know our family know that two thirds of the time, #1 is the only guy who has a clue what's going on. The other third of the time, it's the Wife. Anyway, the keys hadn't actually been anywhere all that out-of-sight. Regardless, by this time, the gas stations were closed, the store was closed, and I wasn't going to be able to drive to talk to someone in Montpellier about the Wife's stalled visa renewal. So: why, God?
I kept looking for things to work on. I was caught up on ministry stuff, we'd cleaned the whole house looking for the stupid key, we still didn't have internet. So, I played a little computer (Dragon Age: Origins, if you're curious), built some Legos with the kids (Anakin's Jedi Starfighter and Mustafar duel scene, if you must know), had coffee and conversation with the Wife, worked on an HTML class that I'm taking, and took another stab at deciphering the gigantic mystery that is Arabic.
In the process, God quietly answered my question.
The "why?" was "because."
Because God loves me, He gave me a day to relax.
Because God loves me, He taught me that it suffices to pray and trust, to not always assume that I can fix a problem.
Because God is God, storms come and in their passing bring renewal instead of destruction.
I don't know what storm you're facing today, whether it is a shower or a hurricane, but there is a reason for it, and while it's commendable to try to fight against it, it might be wiser, just once, to lay down and let it wash over you. God knows where your keys are.
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