Why are there so many churches in this place?

Some years ago, I was reading something. That's almost all I can say for sure about it. I don't remember if it was a book, or a magazine article, or something on the Internet, or what. Given the amount of reading I did during the years of the DMin degree, I'm sometimes amazed I can remember any particular book and author! In this case, I don't remember.

(I kind of wonder if it may have been James K. A. Smith, and if so then it was probably in his book You Are What You Love. I highly recommend that book, whether or not this came from it.)

Whatever I was reading, the author was for some reason driving in an area with lots of corporate buildings. His young daughter was looking out the windows and suddenly asked, "Daddy, why are there so many churches in this place?"

He was surprised and puzzled at her question, because they hadn't passed a single church, only a bunch of office buildings.

Then he realized that his daughter was mainly familiar with church buildings that looked liked office buildings, because their architecture was based on corporate architecture rather than traditional church architecture handed down through the ages.

If I remember correctly, he went on to make the point that everything we do in material ways shapes how we see things spiritually. Architecture affects the ways we think and feel.

As we drove from the airport the other day, out of curiosity I decided to take pictures of each structure we passed that I could see was clearly a church.

I wish I could tell you where all of them were, but I can't. This one may be more accurately called a chapel, judging by the size.

I've always loved seeing churches built on the tops of hills. They remind me of Jesus' words about how a city set on a hill cannot be hidden, and neither should we hide the light of our faith. Not to show it off, but because the world needs light and hope and love.

I'm pretty sure this is in the place called Breznički Hum. I've always loved that name, knowing nothing about the place other than driving through it. Something about the name itself charmed me 30 years ago and still does.

I think this may be Novi Marof, another place I know nothing about, but have remembered the name for 30 years because we would always drive by/through on our way to and from Zagreb. Now we actually have a friend from there, so perhaps it will become more than a name.

Clearly, the architecture of each of these is pretty similar. And it's quite clear that they are not office buildings or centers of corporate activity.

Except that the very word "corporate" comes from the word for "body," and the church's early teachings use that term to refer to the church a long, long time ago. So in a way these places are in fact centers of corporate activity, just activity of a very different sort.

I realize of course that Christians can gather anywhere possible, and that the place they are in does not make them a church. But I also love architecture that makes clear the purpose of the space and turns the mind and heart toward spiritual truths. I love that steeples point (metaphorically) to heaven, that the height of the tower and steeple help us feel our smallness, encouraging humility. I love stained glass windows and other forms of art that over time have made the stories of scripture available and vivid for people who would never own a Bible. I love the big, wide doors on so many older churches, welcoming people in and also thick and strong as a protection against the world when needed.

These are pictures I took in about an hour through the car window, of the places I could "catch" before it was too late because of our speed. There were others along the way besides these. "Why are there so many churches in this place?" is a question for another time. I'm just so thankful that the decades of Communism didn't do away with them, or with the faith connected with them. It did a lot of damage, but faith is alive, and for that I am thankful.

Advent in Varaždin

Before writing about Varaždin, here's a picture from our neighborhood church. We got out after a night of less-than-ideal sleep and walked around to see familiar streets and houses, and to let the sunlight do its part in resetting our circadian rhythm, hoping we might sleep better the next night. (Alas, neither of us did. But we're doing okay despite that.)

It was the first time either of us had seen this wooden nativity scene, almost surely carved by some local talent. It is really nicely done, and I love seeing things made by hand. Such a refreshing break from the inflatable figures that have become so common in Memphis!

When the sun got closer to setting, we took off in the car to meet a friend who lives in nearby Varaždin, just on the other side of the bridge mentioned in yesterday's post. Varaždin's baroque architecture just made me wonder how the city might decorate for Christmas, and it wasn't disappointing. The castle was left alone, which I thought was a good idea, as it could have cost a lot to do anything that would really do justice to it. And anything less would cheapen it. It was so beautiful in the light of a nearly full moon.

The central part of the city held nothing back, though. Strung with lights, alive with stalls selling ornaments, warmed by coffee shops selling hot drinks and refreshments, it was full of people and full of life, even with temperatures requiring hats and gloves. A stage was set up with live music heard in the surrounding area. Church bells rang every so often, adding to the joyful bustle.

This is a part of Europe that I miss greatly in the States. Sometimes when I'm driving down the road, I try to imagine all the people in the cars around me as people walking by, the way it is in the cities of Europe. We miss a lot by not seeing people up close, hearing their voices, seeing parents and children holding hands, sometimes seeing expressions and eyes when close enough--all of that.

As we walked, I would look around and wonder, "Who here really knows the story of Christmas? Who knows why all this came to be?" And I just hoped that many did and prayed for all who didn't.

Because, just as in America, Christmas has been seized upon and put to use by the god of commercialization. These lovely cities and their celebrations have become tourist destinations, with marketing and awards given out. Zagreb, the capital, was chosen not long ago as the best place to go in Europe for Advent.

Which brings up another difference between Europe and America. Secular Europe, with its centuries-long history of being so heavily influenced by the Christian story and the Christian calendar, still calls this period leading up to Christmas, Advent. Christmas isn't here until December 25th, so they go by the church calendar and call all of this Advent celebration. Just as in America, it's an interesting mixture of earthly and heavenly influences at work.

This was one of my favorite light displays. So simple, so serene, so much a mix of the old and new.

Speaking of mixing old and new, we saw new-fangled flashing lights on a ferris wheel, constantly changing colors while playing music--probably not something Mr. Ferris imagined when he created the first one before 1900.

And one of the last sights we spent time admiring was this striking scene, with that very old moon shining bright above the happy scene below.

(And then we hurried to the car, because my hands were freezing, even with gloves and mittens!

That part of living here will take some getting used to again!)

All photos in this post courtesy of Mr. Vamplin.

 

Over the Ocean and Through the Woods

My hopes for the "same old routine" written about in the last blog post here did not go as planned. A leak discovered by the people living below us led to a major repair/rennovation project which all the chaos such projects bring.

Life continued, nonetheless. We survived the chaos and moved forward, and what I briefly mentioned in the last post (the "big ship sailing steadily toward us," that stood for moving to Croatia) kept moving forward, too.

And so this past Friday found us in the Memphis airport yet again, having successfully passed the negative covid test. (Lately I'm refusing to capitalize that, thinking that tiny virus, along with the illness it causes, has already had more than its fair share of attention.) It was pleasantly warm in Memphis, but we had our coats at the ready for the colder temperature we expected the next day.

You gotta love a plane with "Delta Spirit" on it.

That Delta plane took us to Atlanta, where we heard lovely music from a saxophone player, a pianist, and a violinist, all in different times and places. We had some of the worst stuff called coffee I think I've ever had. We also took turns walking as much as we could, knowing how much sitting lay ahead.

This was the first time I recall seeing the moon, nearly full, out the window of a plane . . . .

Not the first, and probably not the last, time to see the sun rise from such a vantage point. It's always amazing. Flying is not generally pleasant or comfortable, but having a window seat makes for some wonderful moments of gratitude and contemplation.

We reached foggy, foggy Amsterdam on one of the smoothest transatlantic flights I've experienced, and after some much-needed walking and a pleasant couple of hours waiting, plus another hour or so of delay, we finally saw this plane out the window and knew we were almost there.

I have fond memories of the earlier Zagreb airport, old and not-so-shiny as it was. It was small, built in an older style, and you walked out of it to green grass with benches, a playground for children, and just a sense of being part of the real world, not the world of speed and traffic, hustle and bustle.

The new airport is nice, though, in its modern way. Mostly I miss the green grass. But I always enjoy seeing this welcome sign, which with its nod to handmade lace, olives, and fountain pens, does feel far from hustle and bustle and closer to the parts of life that make it worth living.

A good friend met us at the airport, and soon we were in the car, the ocean behind us and the woods before us. The drive from Zagreb to Čakovec means lots and lots of wooded hills, with houses and churches and businesses dotted here and there. Lots of smaller towns but no major cities until we get to Varaždin. And then beyond Varaždin we cross this bridge, and that means we are officially in Medimurje, the land between the rivers, the land with Čakovec as its main city.

And a land with trains, who have their own lovely bridge. The sun was setting on two sleepy travelers, making the view of the bridge even lovelier.

The official city limits sign of Čakovec greeted us after we passed through a couple of smaller villages.

And then the more interesting welcome came with its happy art and the reminder that Čakovec is the city of the 13th century castle that was home to the Zrinski family and others who protected this area and made possible the settlement that became a city.

And best of all, the sign was a reminder that we were almost home.

Normal

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Yesterday I was talking with a sort of mentor who has listened to me over the past couple of years, and I asked what advice he would have for me going forward, since I'm not sure how much more our lives will intersect.

His response: "I think you will regret it someday if you don't start writing. Writing something. Your blog, a book, whatever. I think you'll be sorry if you don't do more of that, get yourself back into it."

So, because I respect his thinking, nearly half a year after I wrote about the possibility and the power of always beginning anew, here I am on my blog, beginning anew.

I had started a post sometime in the time between January and now, to share the poem below as a way of expressing what this year so far has been like. After the January New Year's post, a good chunk of my free time was spent helping a special person in my life by proofing and editing their master's thesis. Once that was done, the free time was spent traveling to visit friends out of town as well as hosting a friend from out of town. Oh, and both a personal retreat and a group retreat. A pretty full month.

By the end of February it was becoming clear that life was about to be hit by the novel coronavirus, and March ushered in the reality of that with all its unsettling dynamics. I was closely watching the news coming from Italy, with daily death counts and pictures of coffins the stuff of surreality. We had beloved people in Bergamo, the hot spot, who became ill with flu symptoms.

Normal life here began closing down. I stocked up on groceries. Started seeing my clients through a screen. Learned that someone I had had lunch with the first week of March, had been exposed to people who had tested positive, so I stayed in for over two weeks straight just to be careful.

Photo by Andrew Buchanan on Unsplash

Then one Sunday morning I woke and found a text message, "Croatia had an earthquake." It was March 22, and until I could get more details later that morning, I had no idea if people we knew were okay or not. We were so thankful to learn that as bad as it was, it could have been much worse. Then that same week two different friends in Croatia were hospitalized with serious problems.

March was an apocalyptic sort of time for everyone. Writers have been using that word to refer to the pandemic, not so much as an "end of time" word, but in the literal sense that an apocalypse is an unveiling of reality, pulling away the props and curtains we have in place in what we think of as normal life. We've been able to see serious cracks and crevices and crooked places as the veil has been pulled away. It's been a painful time in many ways.

In early April a very dear friend died. I'm sure I'll write more about that later.

Then near the end of May began the events that led up to the ongoing protests and all the difficult and painful realities and the accompanying emotions intertwined with that part of our country's story.

All to say that even though I had thought I'd be writing more in 2020, it was as if my mind went into survival mode. All my energy was needed to just keep taking the hits, as it were, and keep up the necessary functioning, working with clients and occasionally teaching for our class at church (via Zoom), learning to teach piano through a screen, helping a group tasked with making decisions about when and how our church might return to some kind of meeting in person. (We have not yet.)

The early days of the pandemic often took me back to Croatia, to the early days of the war in 1991. It was uncanny how many emotional memories I had during March. Of course a virus spreading around the world was very different from a war starting, but I repeatedly had intuitive flashes, my body and mind making connections back almost 30 years to those feelings of uncertainty, fear of the unknown, the hope that maybe it wouldn't be as bad as some predicted, the hard realization of how bad it could really be. The way time slowed down. The sense of isolation. Small things like the grocery store shelves emptying. Much bigger things like the wondering who would survive and who would be lost. Weeping at scenes of death coming through the media.

One night I sat at the piano and wept as I realized that it could be many months, possibly a couple of years, before I would sing in a chorus again. Certainly not the greatest suffering of the situation, but it represented so much more than what might seem to some a simple hobby.

Since the third grade, I have kept some kind of journal. It started in a little green diary with a lock and key and has gone on to fill bound books of various sizes and shapes, with rarely a week between writings, and sometimes daily writing for significant periods of time.

But for the years that I lived in Croatia, I have nothing in writing beyond letters and occasional notes in a planner that I've found in my desk there. I did no journaling for three full years.

I think the past few months have been something like those three years. The mind can only do so much, and my mind hasn't had the energy or ability to put things in writing.

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity," said William Wordsworth. My dear English teacher used to emphasize the importance of the "recollected in tranquillity" part of that process; one's best writing doesn't tend to come completely spontaneously, but requires some distance for reflection and a sort of absorption and assimilation. And sometimes writing at all seems to require some distance.

Perhaps I'll share one day a poem I did actually compose in those early days, before the virus had clearly arrived in our area. But for now I will share a poem by someone else. I've shared this poem with many of my clients over the years, people struggling when life events have taken them so far from what they had called normal before. I don't recall where I came across it, but since then I've learned more about its author and just love it all the more for the life behind the words.

We've all lost some of our Normal since I last wrote on this blog. I hope that anyone reading this has been able to hold on to enough Normal to keep you anchored in the midst of all the change. And I hope you'll find some courage and strength in this poem, especially when you consider the writer, whose life you can learn more about via the link at the end.

About Normal

Right now,
I don’t know what Normal is
Anymore.
That’s because Normal has been changing
So much,
So often,
Lately.
For a long while of lately.
I’d like Normal to be
Okayness.
Good health…
Emotional health,
Medical health,
Spiritual health.
I’d like Normal to be
Like that.
For now though,
I know that Normal won’t be normal
For a little while…
But somehow,
Sometime,
Even if things are not Normal,
They’ll be okay.
That’s because I believe
In the great scheme of things,
And Life.

May 2001

From the book Hope through Heartsongs, written by Mattie J.T. Stepanek, a 10-year-old “poet and peacemaker” who died from a rare form of muscular dystrophy. He started writing poems when he was five to allow his mom to “see what was inside of him” and he continued to write up until his death at age 13.

https://www.daily-journal.com/opinion/the-faith-of-mattie-stepanek/article_cbb29c1d-4af3-5ee1-89b6-5dc782705ccd.html

Morning in Medimurje

[This is a continuation from the last post, which I wrote much closer in time to the other one, but life events kept me from posting it....but in case you need a refresher, or are a new read and have no clue, I was writing about our trip to Croatia in late spring.]

From Munich we flew to Zagreb, where a good friend met us at the airport and drove us the circa hour and a half to....home. Because oddly enough, we travel from home to home when we make this trip.

In fact, on our last trip, I took this little sign and left it there just to add a touch of homey to the house there. And you can't see it, but next to the muesli (which I took with me this time) and on the other side of the little boxes of tea there, I had left a box of cereal when we were there in November, and it was still within the expiration date and ready to eat.

So in some ways it just felt like walking into normal.

The house there looks very much like many other houses in Croatia with its light facade and terra cotta roof, its fence along the front of the property. Like many others, it has flowers in front and fruit trees and vegetables further back. It has the ingenious metal blinds ("roleta") that aren't aesthetically lovely as wooden shutters but are amazing for having a dark bedroom at night or letting in just the right amount of light during the day.

Red clover was in bloom, which is also a very normal thing, but not too far from our house, set in the midst of this particular patch of clover, stands a reminder that "normal" varies quite a lot from place to place.

I walk by it just about every morning when we are there, as it's just off the street that leads out into the fields where I like to walk. It's an old chapel, built in the 14th century. You can read a bit more about it here and also here. Before an earthquake hit, a much larger complex stood here, a church and monastery. Now only the chapel remains, and I'm so glad it survived. I would love to go inside one day and see the frescoes. It belongs to the city museum and it always locked, but I think surely you can make an appointment to see it? After almost 30 years of standing an looking at it from the outside, I imagine going inside will feel something like a dream come true for me!

The shorter construction to the right covers an area where excavation has been done in the last 20 years. The local story says that this chapel is connected to the castle in the center of town by a tunnel that served as an escape route in case the castle were ever attacked. No one seems to know if such an escape ever was necessary, and I imagine the time, energy, and money it would take to try to excavate the entire route to prove the tunnel's existence is simply not worth it. But underneath that dwarfish little shelter, you can see what is obviously the end of some kind of tunnel going somewhere. It's really fascinating.

I just found a photograph of the chapel, near the end of this long article, taken in 1921. Someday maybe I'll be capable of reading something like that, but for now it's just amazing to me to see an actual photograph of that chapel taken when my grandmother was a little girl growing up in far-off Tennessee....and to think that when the chapel was built Dante was probably living and writing in not so far away Italy.

I learned on this trip that local legend includes a story about a dragon that is also connected to this tunnel story. Somehow I think the tunnel is more likely to exist than the dragon....

Sometimes I think about these things on my morning walks there. And sometimes I just stare at the red clover and listen to the birds singing.

(About the title: Medimurje is the name of the region. I love the name, as it means "between the rivers," and so makes me think of Mesopotamia and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and so much that comes from that.)

Airport Adventures: May the Lord Go Before You

It may be a new record, going over six months without putting anything on my blog. Certainly not a record I intended to set.

Maybe reading the book Digital Minimalism affected me more than I realized. I did not determine not to write on my blog, but I was enjoying the intentional space between me and the screen as a result of reading that book (which I haven't yet finished, but do recommend.) It wouldn't surprise me if at some level that book was a factor.

But I think it had as much or more to do with a couple of different health issues that meant extra appointments over several months. And a couple of major house repair/renewal projects that interrupted life significantly. And singing in a couple of different choruses over the spring, which meant two rehearsals each week for a good bit of the time. Oh, and two out of town conferences that took me far away from home. (Don't they say good things come in pairs?)

Whatever the reason, here I am again. Determined to share some pictures and do a bit of writing about our recent travel to Croatia.

The picture above is from a booklet I found in the Munich airport, in the "Raum fur Stille und Gebet," or "Space for Prayer and Silence," a lovely small secluded area  which "invites people from all over the world to pray in silence, to calm down, and to draw new strength," as the website says. And it must have some amazing insulation, because when you get in there, it is completely quiet. You'd never imagine you were in a bustling, noisy airport if you didn't already know that.

I've written about it before here, and since that first visit have been there a few times. This is the first time I had seen the little prayer booklet, with this lovely prayer written in ten languages. It was a wonderful way to be welcomed onto the European continent and to begin our visit there.

I know I've seen a chapel in at least one other airport, somewhere in the States, but I can't recall where it was. I wonder if any of my readers have ever found a chapel in an airport? And how many have wished they could?

And I just found the most amazing thing. An entire history of this place, with photos from the architect's designs to the woods where they found the tree, and how they moved it into the airport. Fascinating. Now I just need to learn to read German beyond my single college semester level! (If you decide to check out that link, just know that there are a couple of blank pages after the initial title page. then it's full of pictures.)

Korak po Korak

When I first was in Croatia, even before we married, I think, I heard a singer named Lidija Bajuk on TV singing a song that of course I could not understand, since I didn't speak Croatian. But the refrain always included the words "korak po korak," and I remember asking my newly beloved if that might possibly mean "step by step."

He said yes. And once more I thought how all those puzzles I used to do in the newspaper had paid off. I think they were called cryptograms? All the letters had been assigned a number, and you were trying to figure out a phrase simply by making intelligent guesses based on what you knew about how letters tend to be used in patterns to form words. I'm sure it helped me in learning foreign languages because of the constant pattern recognition that is necessary.

Anyway, today that memory came back to me because I saw my doctor this morning and was told that after six weeks following a surgery, I can (and should) begin walking again.

For six weeks I have mostly lain on a couch, keeping my foot, and usually its companion, up above heart level, to prevent or decrease swelling and to help it heal. I have leaned heavily on the generous heart and strong body of my husband, and we have been immensely grateful for the support of friends with prayer, words of encouragement, meals, visits, and other ways of helping out. But the time has come that walking is what this needs to further heal. And it's what I need to live the life I normally live, which was the whole point of the surgery.

So today I took my first very tentative, very strange steps. I have to wear this surgical boot that reminds me of the stormtroopers from Star Wars. Said boot is about two inches higher than the very, very low-heeled shoes I normally wear, so each pair of steps was almost comical because of the lopsidedness. (I'll be calling the doctor about that. I don't want to develop a spine problem from lopsided walking for another month and a half.....!)

I think in my naive mind when I first scheduled this surgery, I imagined that when the day came that the doctor said I could walk, I would just be able to walk. I hadn't thought about what six weeks of not walking would do to the muscles and joints and even the part of my brain that has since toddler years just known that I could walk and how to do it.

I hadn't thought that my foot would still be bruised at this point, that the incisions would still show and be sensitive. Or that one of the major nerves in my foot would still be experiencing strange effects that sometimes resemble pain.

That's why I decided to take those first steps with the walker you see in the photos. Just to be smart, just in case I needed it.

So I thought I would just be walking to an event I've been looking forward to tonight. John Michael Talbot is coming here to teach and sing. I'm very much excited about it. I had really hoped to simply be walking, even if slowly. Now I'm wondering if I should just go with the scooter thing I've been using. I hate calling attention to myself and can't decide which is worse--to be on that thing, or to walk with a hobble and possibly "give out."

The truth is, either way I have to wear a stormtrooper boot, so I'm not exactly going to blend in, no matter what....

I'm not sure what I'll do. But it's an exciting day. And it was really neat when I took these steps and sent the pictures to my  husband, that he texted back, "One step at a time." Which is basically what "korak po korak" means.

I remember over 25 years ago when we saw her on TV, I said something like, "She seems like a lovely person. I'd love to meet her." And he told me she is from his hometown, she is his age, she is a real person that people do meet and know, even though that night she was on TV and by that time was living in Zagreb, the capital, where we moved shortly after we married. We didn't know at that moment that a war was going to start and change everything. And we thought perhaps we would connect with her.

So today when I'm not thinking about walking or the other things I have to think about today, I'm thinking about Lidija Bajuk and wondering if somehow, someday, I may still be able to meet her and tell her  how beautiful I think her voice is and that I love the simple way she plays guitar and sings. And that she has worked to keep poetry and folk stories alive. That I love how her videos feature nature and its beauty.

Maybe I should write her a letter?

Send her a link to this blog post?

I don't know. Step by step. Korak po korak. First I need to be able to walk to my desk if I want to write a real letter. And walk to the mailbox to mail it.

Meanwhile, you can listen to her music and see scenes of Croatian nature here.

And here is a song she wrote about the river that runs close to the town where I first heard of her, with pictures of it, also.

Now I'll go practice walking some more.....(and any typos are surely due to residual pain medication effects....)

Impressions of Beauty

When it was too late, I realized that I had only once in my life had a picture made with this woman I love so much. And that picture was across the ocean, where it had been since I framed it and set it out in our living room in our house across the ocean.

 

So, when the man I married made a trip across the ocean earlier this year, I asked him to bring the picture back so I could have it over here.

 

And he did. And here it is.

 

 

 

As you can see, the frame is too big for it, but it is what I had twenty-something years ago. What I didn't have back then was any normal kind of matting for it. This was wartime Yugoslavia/Croatia we were living in, and there wasn't a lot of choice about a lot of things. And decorating wasn't my top priority at the time, in any case.

 

So, odd as it seems to me now, I found some crinkledy paper that at the time matched the color of the flowers on Mama Neva's dress. And for twenty-something years, that is what was in the frame behind the photo. Over time, it had changed color and faded around the edge, and at any rate it just didn't look so great, so I took it out.

 

Being sentimental to a degree some might find pathological, I couldn't bring myself to throw the pink paper away, and it sat on my prayer desk for a couple of weeks until I decided I had to do something with it. (Meaning, it was time to throw it away.)

 

But when I actually looked at it, rather than simply looking over it or beyond it, I had a surprise:

 

 

 

The twenty-something years of light shining onto the photo had created a second image behind it!

 

So now I feel as if I have a sort of shroud of Turin, or something like that, and I don't know how I will bring myself to throw the paper away....or what I will do with it. This may be how hoarders get started, who knows?

 

On a more serious note, discovering this unexpected image gave me hope and resolution. The secondary image is not the same as the original photo, but it is recognizable as an impression of the original. And I know that I am not like Mrs. White in many ways. No one could ever mistake me for her. I certainly don't play piano like her, and I don't live my life as well as she did. But I hope that with the years of Light shining through her onto me, maybe there is something about me that can be recognized as a faint image of her. I would love to bear the image of her compassion, her grace, her gentleness, her joy.

I would like to be beautiful like her.
Because she was beautiful.
She was the best kind of beautiful.