the price of truth

“The writer, without softening his vision, is obliged to capture or conjure readers. And this means any kind of reader. It means whatever is there. I used to think that it should be possible to write for some supposed elite, for the people who attend the universities and sometimes know how to read, but I have since found that though you may publish your stories in the Yale Review, if they are any good at all you are eventually going to get a letter from some old lady in California, or some inmate of the Federal Penitentiary, or the state in sane asylum, or the local poorhouse, telling you where you have failed to meet his needs. And his need of course is to be lifted up. There is something in us as story-tellers, and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance of restoration. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but he has forgotten the cost of it. His sense of evil is deluded or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. He has forgotten the price of truth, even in fiction” (863).

Flannery O’Conner

On Reading and Writing

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all. Shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things will fill from behind, from beneath, like water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.” ~Annie Dillard

These past six weeks, Annie Dillard has been filling my mind with great fodder for contemplation. So has C.S. Lewis. And Flannery O'Conner, Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen.

Last semester was characterized by an exorbitant amount of writing: paper upon report upon essay. Those finite moments of potential social interaction that I glimpsed last semester were negated by this simple fact: I cannot write surrounded by noise. No music, no talking. I whisper to myself as my fingers flit across the keyboard, clickclickickclick, but--heaven forbid--someone else speak or sing! At the spark of conversation, all my writing effort come to a halt and I am thoroughly distracted. Flannery O'Conner must have had a similar problem, for she placed her desk flush against the back of her wardrobe in the upstairs bedroom of her farmhouse. No writing and looking at the window...no noise...pure attention to detail and the delicate art of the composition of the grotesque. Virginia Woolf would say that we all need a A Room of Our Own in order to properly write, be it papers, reports, essays or novels.

This semester, however, I hardly have cause to write at all; this semester, I read.

Last week I read The Abolition of Man, A Room of One's Own and Wise Blood. This weed I am working on the collection of A Good Man is Hard to Find stories, The Four Loves and Emma. Reading I can do anywhere...And so over the past six weeks, I have formed the habit of frequenting the local Coffee and Tea and shop. Curled up in a corner armchair, atop a stool at the coffee bar or bent over a table by the window, I sip pots of tea--splurging occasionally on a latte--with pencil in hand, reading, underlining, and reading some more. The music playing through the sound system changes as shifts end and one barista is replaced by another, but still, I read on. Friends stop by to say hello, I look up form my book, we chat and sometimes I share my pot of Mango Ceylon tea. Beaver Falls is dreary in January and almost worse in February. Coffee Shop socialization and good books turn grey skies into something almost-cozy and homework into something rather pleasant.

What we do in our flat :

Because western Pennsylvania in January requires yeasty breads and herbal teas to get one through each day...

Seasons

The sharp cold weather of January turned for a moment, and western Pennsylvania blew a mild breeze through our chilled, college town, melting snow and giving false hopes of March before February. We have passed the darkest days of winter now, and lately, I have been contemplating the subject of seasons.

It is helpful for me to have a focus for each season, something to frame in the months and separate each from the other. Four months have passed since I dared to write, and though I thought about it occasionally, this latest season of my life had to be characterized by silence. On a grand scale, this is the finishing college season and the preparing for marriage season. But on a personal scale, the last four moths have been a season of accepting change, nursing bruises and keeping quiet.

The New Year did not begin as freshly as I expected. Two-thousand-and-twelve was born in some of the darkest hours of that season of silence. And when January broke forth, I wrestled and pondered and ached all the more. It has taken me the whole month step forward, but, finally, this season of silence is over.

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

Necessary Endings

C. S. Lewis wrote,"We do not write to be understood, but to understand."

Though this is my usual way of functioning--writing till all the pieces of my scattered heart are carefully aligned in a way that I can finally make sense of them--not even writing has helped to ease my mind upon leaving Africa.

So I stopped.

What any writer will tell you is that to stop writing...well, that is a dangerous thing. Giving in to the temptation of putting down your pen, when you pen is your primary mode of maintaining sanity never helps clear away confusion. Rather, you cease to understand.

I left Uganda.

I cried when I hugged my mother goodbye and left her standing under the vibrant blue awning shading the airport doors. I cried as the plane lifted off the ground and sped high above the continent making the huts and hills shift from barely visible to hidden behind brilliant white wracks of clouds. I cried sitting on the tarmac in Ethiopia, because I was on land, in Africa again after short hour-long flight, but even then I could not leave the interior of the plane. Staring out the window at the fence that separated the airstrip from grazing goats and young boys kicking a football, I felt everything deeply.

Arriving in Dubai, I didn't cry. But I didn't write either.

I tried. Tried to focus on the scattered pieces. The fear of never returning that was crippling my ability to hope. The stark reality that I had spent the last night under my father's roof as an unmarried daughter, though the wedding is still nine months away. The sharp pieces of a hundred other things firmly probing at my soul, cutting the threads that were my ability to write. To understand. We sat for seven hours on less than comfortable chairs, trying to sleep before our early morning connecting flight. Pen poised and journal open on my lap as I shivered in the unexpected blasts of airport air conditioning, all I could do was copy the song lyrics flowing from ipod to ears.

Copying lyrics is not writing...any non-writer can tell you that.

Leaving Dubai and passing through one final metal detector, I tried to gently remove the single Karimojong bracelet from my wrist. The man behind me was nervously pushing, everyone was rushing and as I tried to remove both bracelet and shoes simultaneous, the bracelet snapped and my composure with it.

The obvious symbolism and intense sentimentality made me sick to me stomach and I pushed through the metal detector afraid to make eye-contact with the Muslim security guard for fear of causing a dreadful scene. I cried in Dubai, staring at the bold tan line on my right wrist and the broken aluminum bangle that Lokwi had given me on my first visit to Nakaale when I was fourteen.
"Here," Zack removed his own Karimojong bracelet--the one I gave him three years ago when we had just started dating-- and slipped on my wrist.
"No..." I pretended to be calm and began to give it back to him, " Its okay. Its yours. I am fine. Its just a thing."
"No, really," He replied, " Right now, you need it more than I do."

Sometimes material things really do matter. At least to sentimental people they do. And to rather emotional girls who are feeling very broken.

I wore the too-big-bracelet on the twelve hour flight from Dubai to JFK. In twelve hours, one can do a whole lot of writing and thinking. I did neither.
But upon returning to my future in-laws house in New York, catching up on sleep, praying a great deal and crying just a little bit more, I ordered a book on a whim. The author, Shauna Neiquist, writes the following, which I found particularly relevent considering both my heightened emotions and my inability to begin writing again.:

"This is what I've come to believe about change: it's good, in the way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good. By that I mean that it's incredibly painful, exponentially more so if you fight it, and also that it has the potential to open you up, to open life up, to deliver you right into the palm of God's hand, which is where you wanted to be all long, except that you were too busy pushing and pulling your life into exactly what you thought it should be. 'I've learned the hard way that change is one of God's greatest gifts, and most useful tools. Change can push us, pull us, rebuke and remake us. It can show us who we've become, in the worst ways, and also in the best ways. I've learned that it's not something to run away from, as though we could, and that in many cases, change is a function of God's graciousness, not life's cruelty.'"(Bittersweet, Shauna Neiquist)

Understanding everything I felt, and continue to feel since removing myself and everything I own from Karamoja is taking time. But slowly by slowly, wadio wadio, I am gaining the courage to write again.

A Reflection on Attitude

Ten things that must be better than Jesus, because when I don't have them my soul turns sour, I feel irritated or worse, I complain in my heart and with my speech despite the fact that I am a hell-deserving sinner who has been washed in Christ's blood, given all things good, and am headed for glory:

1. Good health

2. Having everyone I love on the same continent

3. Not being ignored

4. Unimpeded reading time

5. Always being told the truth

6. Not being interrupted in conversation

7. Being appreciated

8. Friends who are even-tempered and rational

9. Those I care about agreeing with me

10. Money enough to pay tuition

Twenty One

Back in the United States, it is Zack's birthday. In the true style of celebration, we began the day by rising early in the morning and experiencing beautiful things. Here are a few of them...

I made him a special breakfast of eggs with steak, onion and sharp cheddar topped with fresh tomato salsa and basil.

We snacked on wild blackberries as we explored the woods surrounding his house.

And we collected fresh flowers from the dew drenched field beside his house. Our wedding shall be filled with wildflowers. Because we like them :)

The hardest part...

...was letting go.

High Above the Waterfall

We took one last holiday, clinging to the opportunity for respite and cool weather. Sipi Falls has been our quite place of retreat since the beginning and the winding drive up the mountains and foothills was well worth the two days we spent at Lacam Lodge.

Three main waterfalls grace the cliffs of Sipi, shooting out over the jagged drop and after falling nearly a hundred meters pounding into the rocky pools below. Lacam Lodge rest at the very top of this first fall. High above the waterfall, listening to the roar of water hitting rock below, we spent our final two days of holiday.

The nine of us hiked through banana groves and coffee fields, were soaked in the spray at of two other waterfalls, drank excessive amounts of Africa tea, played intense games of farkle and cards, read, visited and rested. Twas a beautiful escape from normality.

"Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me— a prayer to the God of my life."

Psalm 42: 7-8

When Life Gives You Lemons...

In Uganda, every variety of citrus fruit grows green.

Lemons, Oranges and Limes abound in the more tropical towns,however each fruity core is encased in a thick green skin. In Nakaale we have a prodigious lemon tree, but the lemons are a challenge to harvest. First, the trunk and limbs of Karamojong lemon trees are studded with sharp, barbed thorns. Secondly, the lemons--green as the leaves of the tree-- are rather difficult to spot from the ground.

The following is a Step by Step description of how to conquer our lemon tree make lemonade in Karamoja.

Step One: Find Spear. Take careful aim at the largest lemons hanging from the highest bough. Ready. Aim. Fire.

Step Two: When you have tried several times to dislocate a green lemon from its branch, seek the help of a Karimojong watchman. Not only will he be able to throw the spear properly, but he will be able to find lemons hanging at eye level so you needn't strive for the ones highest up in the tree.

Step Three: Collect Lemons off the ground. Take inside.

Step Four: Roll lemons, pressing the skin so that the inner citrus fruit is easier to juice.

Step Five: Juice lemons with lemon juicer. Strain seeds and pulp (if desired) from the juice.

Step Six: Add water, ice and sugar to taste. Drink and Enjoy.

As a thank you for helping the ignoramt wazungu find lemons on the tree, we caught our guard, Akol, before he left work and offered him a tall glass of the fresh lemonade.

"We drink this in America," we explained.

A grin spread across his face as he took a long sip. " Ahhhhhhhhhh!" He exclaimed, draining the glass. "Ebob Nooi!" Delicious!

We were, all of us, quite pleased. :)