Wanderlust

“I love to go a-wandering,

along the mountain track, 

and as I go, I love to sing,

my knapsack on my back.

“Val-deri, val-dera,

Val-deri,

Val-dera-ha-ha-ha-ah-ha.

Val-deri, val-dera,

My knapsack on my back.”

I have long loved the word wanderlust. It holds such possibilities where each day holds the gift of something new. 

Wanderlust is waking up to find a new adventure, a new journey for that day, a new sight to see, a new person to meet and a new experience to be enjoyed. When it is at its best, it is a new revelation of God! Wanderlust is proclaiming that I am no longer satisfied with routine; with waking up and going through the same motions.

The word wanderlust has a German origin and literally means “a desire to hike.” We define it in English as a strong desire or impulse to wander or to travel and explore. Fitting for how I have been feeling of late.

It seems an odd statement, but I don’t think I am wired to stay in one place for very long. As I have been thinking and writing lately I have been caught on my desire to get more out of life. My thoughts are constantly drawn to doing and seeing more. I am not wanting my “one of these days” to be spent comfortably right where I am. 

In a sensible world, this is dangerous. It goes against what we were taught. We  were supposed, expected, to grow up, get good jobs and work through to the age of retirement (or beyond). Once we’ve reached that age, and if we’re still able, we could  then chase I dreams. That is how it’s supposed to work. But, that isn’t always the case. Some never get the chance to chase their dream or they simply can’t do it. They spent themselves, spent their lives, working to fulfill someone else’s dreams and no longer have the time or energy for their own. 

To me, that is the real danger; chasing after something that is not our own. We are convinced of what life is supposed to be like and have lost sight of what life could be like.

What life could be like - Gerrie and I had that once. We felt God calling us to the mission field. So we went against the grain and took a chance. It wasn’t always easy. It was difficult, at times, for us and our families. But as I have said before, it was perhaps one of the happiest times of our lives. 

That time, well, it really wasn’t wanderlust was it? It was more like obedience. Yet, it had some of the elements. It gave us a new adventure, a new journey, a new sight, a new person to meet and new experiences. And most importantly, a new revelation of God!

We may never make it back to a time like that. With family and friends, being far away for a long time, doesn’t seem like what God is calling us to do. But is God calling? We believe He is. We feel He is calling us to something

Last week Gerrie commented about our experience in Italy and about what may be on the horizon. In her comment she said, “Our restless hearts are, to me, a sign to be ready for absolutely anything!”

We’re listening.

Familiar territory. 

____________________

Update @ 12:55p  Gerrie and I got in from church a few minutes ago. This morning in LifeGroup, we were left with two thoughts to consider. First, how do we make our lives count.? Second, when God asks you what you did with the time He gave you, how will you answer?

An "Ah-ha" Moment

15 October 1996

I have had this particular date on my mind for a few weeks now. My wife and I woke up that morning in Arquata Scrivia, Italy. Arquata Scrivia is a small town in the Province of Genoa, about 34 miles north of Genoa. We had fallen asleep the night before with a light drizzle of rain falling and woke up with the same light drizzle. If only it had stayed that way.

We were in Italy on a prayer walk. This walk, the Reconciliation Walk, was the outreach of our missions training class. For us, the walk began in Dijon, France on September 23rd and ended in Bari, Italy on November 24th. We covered a distance of 1,020 miles crossing the Jura Mountains, the Alps at Saint Bernard Pass and the Apennines. But we didn’t walk every mile. A good many of them yes. But not every one.

This is what we were doing in this small, obscure town in Northern Italy on this damp morning. We had our breakfast, packed our gear and set out. 

The drizzle became heavier as the first hours passed and finally gave way to a steady rainfall that accompanied us through the day. It would lighten up at times and become heavier at times. Light or heavy, it was raining all the time. About that day, I noted in my journal that “even the inside of my coat was getting wet. My sweater and undershirt were getting wet around the neckline and I could sense the wetness creeping higher up my legs. There was no keeping the rain out.” It was a rain that would eventually soak me, and everyone else, thoroughly. 

It was also becoming colder. About the only thing that would keep you warm was to keep walking. Normally we would take turns having a break from walking as a day would progress. But not this day. Walking fought back the chill.

In time, we made it into Genoa and found a small church where we would spend the night. There wasn’t much room, but enough to have a place to change and get dry, to cook a warm meal and to drop my pack and spread my sleeping bag. I laid down pulled out my journal to write. Gerrie was beside me, laying on her sleeping bag, reading. 

“Another revelation of today is the appreciation of dry socks, shoes and cloths. Also having a dry place to lay your head. This whole day, and other events and locations we have rested for the day have taught me the appreciation of the simple pleasures of this life. So often we chase after so much comfort feeling that they are the necessities of life. But when it comes down to it, we all need few things than we think.

“Laying here in my sleeping bag I have just come to understand that all I really felt was needed for this two months, is under my head. It is a nice understanding. True, if I were settled somewhere, which I will be sometime in the near future, I would like my books and music. But I know that it doesn’t take all these things to live. They are add-ons that can make a life more enjoyable, but they are not needed to live. I am beginning to understand more about the teaching the Jesus in Matthew 6:25-34. He will provide.”

This was one of those quintessential moments in life. An “ah-ha” moment when you catch a glimpse of something bigger than yourself. It was a moment in time when I could pause and truly say that I was happy in that moment.

Life is full of distractions. We race around doing all in our power to achieve, to acquire, to accumulate all the things that we were told “makes life worth living.” As Tom Hodgkinson writes in the preface of his book, How To Be Idle, “In the West, we have become addicted to work. Americans now work the longest hours in the world. And the result is not health, wealth and wisdom, but rather a lot of anxiety, a lot of ill health and a lot of debt.”

When Gerrie and I returned from foreign missions, this is world we returned to. It is not the world of our creating, but the world of our necessity. It is the world that demands a quickened pace simply to keep up. It is a world that chips away at dreams and says that you can’t do something. You can’t do the thing you want to do because it takes time that you do not have. It takes time that you should be working, achieving, acquiring and accumulating. 

But this is not the life I want. Is is not that life we want. So I dream. We dream. We dream about “one of these days” and wonder if we might be able to manage one or two them. We dream about striking out on an adventure again where the experience, or the lesson from the experience, is gained. We long for those “ah-ha” moments again where we are given a glimpse of something grand. Something spectacular!

Many moments in life are meant to happen only once. Yet still, there are moments that I wish for, that I dream for, to happen again. I pray that someday I'll have a moment again, like that evening in Italy, when I realize that what I have with me, is all that I need. That I am at peace in a moment. Living simply and simply living.

Gerrie and I don’t know what it is, or when it will come. We don’t know where we will be. It could be right here at home for all we know. But we know that something is ahead of us. We know that before we close our eyes for the last time, that there is still a time for us. A time when we will say, “this is what it is all about. This is our life. This is profound. This is God!“

Defining Style

I have just completed a Digital Photography I course this past week. Actually the course ends tomorrow evening, but I am traveling on family matters this weekend. So, I’ll miss the last class.

The course was one of the better investments of time and money that I have made in recent years. Each Monday provided me with “ah-ha moments” and areas of being challenged. The instructor said he would engage the right side of our brains, and he did. I look at the world differently now. This means, I am actually taking time to look at it; not just rush through it. I look at the world through a camera lens in hopes of finding art. 

A few weeks ago there was a discussion about style. Find your style. What is it about a photograph that says, that it is your photograph? Think Ansel Adams. When you see a black and white landscape, you immediately think of Ansel Adams. In truth, it may be that someone else shot the photograph, but you first think of Adams. That was his style, his genre; and that is what he is known for.

I made a note in my class journal. “What is your style? Develop your style. What is it about my photographs that will define them as my photographs.” That is a question.

Finding my style will be like like finding my voice, but only with the camera. It is like a writer experimenting with words or a painter trying a different brush. It is that thing that makes one unique, causing one artist to be distinguished from another.

I read through my notes and think. I look at the work I produced for class. Is there something there? I know that I enjoy shooting landscapes. I like cityscapes. I am not that good at photographing people. This comes from being an introvert and shying away from people I don’t know. What abstracts I shot I enjoyed. And I had a little success with black and white (still a bit of work to do there though). There is a profile emerging.

Can I tell a compelling story with a black and white landscape? Can I marry that with my flirtation with high dynamic range processing? Maybe.

This past weekend Gerrie and I spent a few hours on the loop trail at local state park. We actually didn’t make it too far on the trail. The sky was overcast so shooting a broad vista of the changing colors would not work. We were forced to look at the trail; look at our feet. What was there? Was there anything interesting? What we saw was texture. A marvelous variety of texture that God laid before us. 

It isn’t Ansel Adams. It isn’t remotely close.

But it is a beginning perhaps.

Legacy is something that I’ll explore as time goes on. But this space, this blog, is part of the legacy that I wish to leave for my children and my grandchildren. For them, the photographs that I hope to make are simply other expressions of how I see the world. They help to chronicle how I lived my life. My wish is that after I have left this life, that they will look at photograph or a drawing and be able to know straight away that “Papa took that picture” or “Dad drew that.” They’d just know and, they may even be a little bit proud.

That is my wish at least.

"One of these days..."

"I have learned that I have fewer and fewer 'one of these days' left in my life, so I better get busy doing the things I dream of."

~ me

“One of these day.” How many times have I said this in life? Too many to count. I don’t know. Maybe it is a danger of being a dreamer. Maybe it comes from reading too much. Although I don’t think there is a such thing as reading too much. Wherever it comes from, these words have crossed my lips many many times. And sometimes, the “one of these days” actually comes to pass.

When I returned from my first trip to England and France in ’75, I said, “One of these days I’ll go back.” I did. I even took it a step further when in 1996 my wife and I moved to England. But still, there are some things that are left undone. There are still some “one of these days” that need to be taken care of.

This became more obvious to me at 9:50 p.m. this past Friday. I got a telephone call from my mother. She was crying. Her sister, my Aunt Bonnie, died that day. It was unexpected. She wasn’t sick. There was no warning. She simply went into her kitchen, suffered either a heart attack or massive stroke, we don’t know, and died. Her son found that evening.

My mother, Bonnie and her brother Bill would spend every Fourth of July together. They started doing this when my grandmother was still living. They’d get together every year at that time and spend one or two weeks. They’d visit, talk, reminiscence, look through old photographs and eat. There was always a plan on where to eat and on what days. After my grandmother died they’d still get together. They would take trips to my hometown to visit the graves of my grandmother and grandfather. They would change the flowers, wipe away the mud and dust, and tell a few stories. Then they’d drive home. A trip to Sikeston, coffee on the back porch, breakfast at Loveless Cafe, lunch at Cock of the Walk or Miss Mary Bobo’s, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were together and sharing life.

It will be different now. I’m sure that my Uncle Bill and my mother will still get together next Fourth of July. They’ll visit, share a few meals and remember stories of my Aunt. They’ll laugh some and there will be a few times that they’ll simply be quiet. 

That is what families should do I think. We should remember each other. We should rejoice in each others triumphs and soothe each others sorrows. We share our memories and we tell the stories. It is how families continue from generation to the next. 

But setting here and thinking about my Aunt and this past Friday, I am reminded of the frail nature of life and how suddenly it can be taken from us. When I go to bed tonight I will do so with a confidence that I’ll wake up tomorrow. But, I really don’t know that. None of us do. I hope that I have another sun rise in my future just as I hope that I will enjoy another sunset in the evening. But that is all it is - a hope. God will determine my days.

What I do know, and this too is a gift from God, is that I have this moment in time. I have this moment to hug my wife and tell her that I love her. I have this time to let my children and grandchildren know how much I love them and how very proud I am of them. I have this time to let my mother know how happy I am that she is still a part of my life. I have this moment to think about my sister and pray that her allergies get better soon and let her know how happy I am that her husband has a job that he loves. I have this moment to celebrate the wonderful friendships that I have been blessed with. I can be thankful for the hours we’ve had sharing our lives, laughing, breaking bread and the simple joy of being together. And most importantly, I can be forever grateful that God looked down upon me and determined that I was in need of salvation. So, He sent His Son to bring me home. That, I can do. And with whatever breath He gives me, I can use them to bring Him glory.

So, I’ll get up from my chair here and I’ll go about my day. I will continue to think about the “one of these days” that still (hopefully) lie before me. There is still a lot I want to do and places I wish to go. But, knowing that I only have this moment, I’ll get to doing what I can while I can. 

God Bless You Aunt Bonnie. Be at peace.

~ Greg

Margins V

“I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.”

~ C.S. Lewis

   Mere Christianity

Fifty Books

My wife and I visited our branch library yesterday morning. We were there on other matters but we made sure to stay for awhile. Like bookstores, there is something special about libraries. I could spend hours wandering through the stacks, thumbing through books, searching for just the right title to spend a little time with.

____________________

I make lists. I used to make more list than I do now, but I still make them. They’re helpful. They reduced the chance that I am going to forget something. Like a gallon of milk or head of lettuce. Lists are useful.

There was a series of books published titled The Book of Lists? There were three volumes.  They contained nothing but lists. Lists like:

• Former Jobs of 30 Famous People
• 15 People Who Became Words
• 15 Authors Who Wrote Best-sellers in Prison
• 10 Words You Can’t Pronounce Correctly
• The 15 Most Boring Classics

These were three books packed with all sorts of lists; some interesting and some not so much. Some were very enlightening and others made you scratch your head and ask why. But I have them and I have read them.

So, let’s see. Looking back many years ago, I had thoughts of running away. Things were not quite like I had hoped they’d be and I felt that a change could do me good. Perhaps I am the only who ever had these thoughts. But, maybe not. I thought about what all I could fit into a car and then just take off. No particular destination. Simply turn the car west and strike out on an adventure.

I made some lists. If I could take 50 books with me, what books would they be? That isn’t an easy question to answer. If I could take only 50 albums with me, which fifty would I take? That one was a bit easier. My Beatles and Jethro Tull albums, along with a few classical selections would get me to fifty fairly quick. I would have thrown in some art supplies, a backpack of cloths, the camera, and I’d be on my way.

Of course, I never packed the car and I never headed west. Maybe someday. I looked around trying to find those lists from years ago. I couldn’t find them. It would have been interesting to see if my taste in books changed much over the years. I know my music taste are pretty much the same, although I now enjoy a healthy diet of classical music. I have also grown fond of motion picture soundtracks. 

But thinking about books. If I had to choose fifty books now, I don’t know if they would be much different now from the ones I would have picked then. In fact, I have even started the exercise of choosing what would be my fifty titles. The list isn’t complete but I think I’ve made a good beginning.

1. The Bible
2. My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers
3. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
4. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
5. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
6. Complete Works by William Shakespeare
7. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
8. Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson
9. Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
10. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
11. The Lord of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
12. Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
13. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
14. The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
15. The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
16. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
17. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
18. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
19. Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
20. A Treasury of the Worlds Great Diaries edited by Phillip Dunaway and Mel Evans
21. The Oxford Companion to Music edited by Alison Latham
22. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
23. Curtain by Agatha Christie
24. ...
25. ...

You can see I have a few books to go. As I complete the list I imagine a few other Maugham and Hemingway works will be added. Perhaps a few more anthologies would be nice as would a couple of volumes of history.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “I cannot live without books.” Oscar Wilde noted that “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”

I suppose this paints one picture of my life. I cannot imagine a home without books. I cannot imagine a world without books. And books, to me, are like a wonderful pieces of music; they deserve to be savored again and again. Thus, most of the books on my list, I’ve already read at least once. But I would not dare be without them in the event I want to read them again. That is why they are there. In books, there is life.

Think on what Gustave Flaubert said, “Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”

~ Greg

Friends, what are your favorite books? Care to recommend one or two for my list?

I'm Missing Some Things

I woke up this morning missing things. I just laid there in bed - missing. 

The air outside was cool but not cold. Still you can tell that Autumn has arrived. It is one of my two favorite seasons, Spring being the other. I was hunkered down under the duvet and thinking of leaves. 

Years ago, while I was growing up, we’d spend a few Saturday afternoons raking leaves. I think my parents did most of the raking while I did what I could to scatter the piles. We lived on North 31st Street in Paducah, Kentucky and the front of the yard had a ditch beside the street. Into this ditch went the leaves. Big mounds of dead leaves. 

There is something inviting about a big pile of leaves. When you’re a kid, they call to you. They urge you to come stand beside them and fall backgrounds. The particularly big piles demand that you jump into them, scattering them. Once they’ve settled you  can easily put them back into a pile. You get down on your knees, lean over and then scoop or push the leaves back together. Then, you jump in again.

Sometimes you jump in and just lay there. There is something special about the sweet decaying aroma of dead leaves. 

When the leaves have all been gathered into the ditch and once the parents have you at bay, the leaves would be burned. Controlled burns of course. The small burn would start at one end and slowly work its way down the length of the ditch leaving a blackened charred path. A white smoke would curl above the fire. The smoke also had a distinct smell to it.

Piles of leaves, burning leaves; they are the scents of Autumn. I miss it.

I suppose that missing things is the benefit of living a long life. The longer a person lives the more opportunity there is to miss things. In my generation we’ve experienced the demise of so many things as we move further into the digital age. I guess that is true of all generations; past, present and future.

While our music as become more portable we’ve lost the warmth, along with occasional pop and hiss, that came from listening to vinyl records. We’ve seen music move from LPs to 8-Track tapes, then to cassette tapes followed by CDs and now to digital download. I like that I can have days of music available to me in a small hand-held device, but I also miss holding an album cover. Album covers were art and there was something to be learned in reading the packaging. 

Letters. I miss letters. I was never a great letter writer. I wish that I was. But we’ve stopped writing letters. Our communication, like our music, is digital now. Gone are the days of sitting at our tables and carefully crafting a letter to a loved one or a friend. Now we hammer it out on a keyboard. We search for economy of words instead of expressive speech in our communications. What can we do and how can we say it so that what we need to say fits within 140 characters?

Letters were our journals that we shared with one another. They chronicled our days and weeks for family and friends. They were glimpses into our experiences and our feelings about those experiences. They shared our joys and our sorrows. Letters were our family histories, our heritage. They were a record of who we were at a place in time. 

I have kept a few shoe boxes with letters in them. Some of these letters were from my father. Others were from my grandmother; a great letter writer. I have a bundle of letters that my son wrote to me during a summer he spent in my hometown with his great-grandmother. There are few from my daughter when she was a young girl. These letters, along with a few cards that I’ve kept, are precious to me. These are my treasures.

These things, leaves and letters, are but a few of the things I miss.

Progress is necessary. I enjoy the benefits of progress and I am not wishing that we return to a time without digital music and communication. Although, I would love to smell burning leaves once again (maybe a drive in the country sometime soon). But do we need to lose some things to progress? Can we not experience music played on a stereo or sense the joy that comes from sending or receiving a letter. I think we can. 

Yes, it is much easier to call someone or to send an email. But where is the memory in that? Are we going keep a flash drive loaded with memorable emails and text messages? In 10, 15, 20 years, the way we use these drives will have changed. That is if they are even still around. But, a letter. A letter can still be there to read. The letters from my dad were written prior to 1977. 

A few weeks ago I visited my daughter at her apartment across town. I went there to help her put together a bookcase. She doesn’t have many books, but she has nice collection of vinyl albums. We listened to a few albums that afternoon. 

Ah, the sound of analog warmth.

Now if I could only find a pile of leaves to jump into and someone to write a letter to sharing that experience. 

~ Greg