Peaches in the Name, Oranges in the Font

I imagine somebody has (hopefully with at least some mild irony) written of the deeper personal dismemberment that results from minute cultural differences, as contrasted with those of surprisingly less acute sting while in one utterly different, for their ease in being ignored and the corresponding immediacy of the former. Take a toilet. If somebody is used to a rather American toilet, more specifically one for which he must pull down the flush, he or she will be far more confused (and, perhaps even disgruntled) at a near identical toilet whose flush must be pushed up than one shaped like a spaceship, for the latter will hardly even be considered a toilet; it will be so foreign - in an array of ways - that it will only be admired or mocked, like a museum artifact.
While I don't really think this is necessarily true in all cases on either side, it is an interesting thing to think about, being in a country whose language is all but identical (bathroom->loo/toilet...yeah I think that's it) and whose cultures are adapatable both ways, not to mention mutually influence. And no, I haven't felt like the aforentioned imaginary person, I just was thinking about it. While not terribly disorienting culturally, London has indeed been nothing but eye-opening from the start. The pace is so fun. I have thought over the past year how I have enjoyed living in Seattle for its pace much of the time, and I love ending the day exhausted by the constant movement, which is simply everywhere. I think this will be even more fun once Alex and Brent get here, and even less exhausting, in an odd way. Either way, I've come back to my (very generous) host family (friends of friends from church) as late as possible all three nights, or at least as late as I feel comfortable without risking potential strandage.
A few highlights:
Wednesday, I wasn't really in any shape to go anywhere till around dinner, so I stayed relatively close to the Wolff's, heading off to Hamstead, as Noelle told me there were some good pubs out that direction. I managed to find - after some wandering, which led me unintentionally to the house in which Keats wrote "Ode to a Nightingale," among others (see below) - a cool quiet old pub near a vegetarian Indian place (no breaking under the unyielding(?) fish 'n' chips pressure yet!)
First beer in London, at the Duke of Hamilton:
Thursday, I slept in a little, and spent the whole afternoon in the British Museum. I generally enjoy museums, but don't normally have the stamina for that many hours, but had I not gotten hungry, I could have gone longer. The shear magnitude of it is incomprehensible in numbers, but even more so in site. Just the great hall is amazing, and that just composes a fraction of the museum. Afterward, I wandered about Soho, which is my favorite district so far, and ate/drank at a pub I'd read about in my (now lost) guide book called the Dog and Duck, which was also a great choice. Good food, very nice environment, and suprisingly uncrowded (plus, George Orwell went there all the time.)
Today was a buffet; I went all over the place. I started at Westminster Abbey, which I will write more on later, as I want to think about it more, but I'll at least say that what the British Museum did for grandness with museums for me, so did Westminster for churches. However, there are levels of the finery, the way it is portrayed, the fact that it costs money (while the museum doesn't,) the fact that you can't take photos despite the inextricable ties between church and state (i.e., why is it okay for it to be overwhelmingly focused on the crown, yet still be so revered as to not warrant layperson photography) that make the place off-putting in ways. Super important to see and glorious, but I'm not sure what it means. I can say that poet's corner was pretty incredible, particularly seeing as I saw original prints of most of the figures there at the National Portrait Gallery later in the day.
(Me there, the abbey from outside)

Afterward, I went in a totally different direction, visiting a photography gallery I read about in the same lost guide book, which proved to be fascinating. I fingered through tons of monographs in their extensive book store, looked at photos by André Kertesz in a series called "On Reading" (see below) and one on male fashion. They also had prints for sale (starting at £250...) and I found among these Vee Spears (among others,) whose work I really enjoyed. Her photo below and right was for sale there (click to see; it went off the frame against my will,) part of a great series called "The Birthday Party." I think I'll be back there at least once more, particularly if/when I come to London during the term, and the galleries change.
After this, I made my way to the National Portrait Gallery, at which I saw incredible original portraits of...just about everybody from Britain. All the famous images of writers and royalty were there. A couple of my favorites below, of William Blake andVirginia Woolf (the latter wasn't on display today) respectively left to right.
Finally, after dinner/Guiness in a pub, I perused the National Gallery for its final hour before it closed, which I thought wouldn't be nearly enough, and nearly was. It's not as large as I expected, but it had some beautiful Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Velásquez. I stopped back at the Dog and Duck on the way back to the train, and here I am, at 3:30 A.M., writing this...

In all these galleries, museums, and attractions, I've been trying something new, which has been working really well: I write down just about everything that interests me. Maybe all my teachers saying writing things make them sink in way better finally...well, sunk in, but it's made me remember things far more vividly, and when I look on pictures of things from the British Museum (I wrote the name and year of everything I photographed,) I can say what it is.

As for tomorrow, it will probably be a lighter day than today. I might walk around Kensington Gardens and read a little, or something else pleasant like that. Did I really just type that? This is still weird.
In one week's time, I'll be meeting the 50+ students in my program whom I've yet to meet. How exciting! Till then, I will continue to enjoy myself.

Oxford!

Hi all!
So, for those of you who don't know, I'll be living in the UK for the coming four(ish) months and studying at Oxford, and I thought this was a perfect time to start writing in my blog again, seeing as everyone's favorite thing is read the thoughts of people studying abroad...right? I'm already there, spending a little over a week in London and Dublin (mostly the former, two days in the latter) prior to embarking to campus for my studies.
While future posts will feature more in-depth thought, I'm tired, and will wait to post a couple pictures tomorrow from today (and any I take tomorrow,) all with comments.
Hope this can give you a window into my time,
Nate
PS To further emphasize this new era of blogging, in which I actually am I have renamed it for now, as I never liked "Musings," and I chose this (temporary? permanent?) name from a quote in Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, in which she talks about blind people receiving site for the first time, and how depth and seemingly intrinsic differences between objects and things don't yet exist. In trying to bring herself to such a point, she notes how our habitual vision is near impossible to return from, that she can't "unpeach the peach," and I hope that any writing/thinking we do is aimed at least in part at that very thing: taking seeming givens and letting them melt before our eyes.
Not sure what that has to do with consistency (I'll think of something tomorrow,) but principally it's a change.

Parfaits!

While at New Horizons training yesterday (a two-Saturday training program to learn how to best serve homeless youth, also a pre-req for volunteering there) that life can be thought of in terms of layers. For example, I encountered this on Urban Plunge. Suddenly, now that I was dressed a certain way, the droning of certain things was no longer audible, but a very different rhythm of words and images were emphasized -- some of which had been heretofore less noticeable, and others not perceived at all. While in Westlake, in the midst of shoppers, policemen, and all other variety of people, pot could be requested for or offered to us with no hesitation. How did I not notice this while there any of the times I went there as a kid with my family? I think that a similar layer was omnipresent in high school, one concerning the sexual and drug-related exploits of my fellow classmates, though I was equally oblivious to this, because I wasn't really addressed with it or seeking it out.
I think that this is what Jesus meant when He said that the Kingdom of Heaven is now. A leader at a camp I went to likened it to the spectrum of light that we can and can't see, the latter limited by our bodies, and that our spiritual "eyes" have similar limits. To me, this whole thing implies two things:
a) Heaven doesn't feel like it is a place "over there" to me, but rather that reality that we cannot perceive completely right now.
b) We can perceive it and participate in it, at least in part, in a similar sort of "layer-shifting" that went on during Plunge.
I'm pretty sure this looks different for everyone, too. One of my dear friends and I were talking yesterday, and I got on him a little about being overly bold and explicit about his faith, that Jesus doesn't desire us to smother people. He's the sort whose intensity for God always seems about to stop increasing, but somehow, it never does, and I admire him immensely for it. In the conversation, while he agreed with what I was saying, it became clear that deepening connection to the Kingdom meant different things for us right now. As can be seen in the previous post, I am finding a distinct call to be more silent in my faith, becoming not dependent upon feelings or experience, but on a metronome-like prayer life, a direction my friend is not headed. I have been so perpetually struck this year by how different God works in people, something that can seem frightening/discouraging/confusing at first, but has become a thing of beauty for me. "Don't badmouth what God is doing in other churches." -- Dr. Nüesch-Olver. Not sure if that was going somewhere particular, but this seems a sufficient place to stop, yes.

What is progress?

I don't want my faith to be founded upon experiences. If I were to sum up the general trajectory that I think God puts us on, I would say that he is fashioning us into beings that know Him completely enough to not need intense experiences to know Him. When I think of many people whom I consider prominent spiritual figures in my own life (St. Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, Richard Foster, Oswald Chambers,) they all experienced a certain silence from God that increased as they moved along in their spiritual journey. I believe this is a part of what Paul meant when he called himself "the greatest of all sinners," not merely trying to emphasize his humanity, but revealing what true growth is with God -- that is, characterized by silence. Human relationships move towards this as well, as the people who truly know each other don't need to say anything. This is similar to my thoughts on lowness during my last post. It's so hard to become truly insignificant. Alec put it well in relating it to James, that we should rejoice in suffering, because then God is making progress with us.
I am not implying that God neither shapes us nor reveals Himself to us through intense experiences; indeed, He does for me, and when I think of just how hard this would be, it's pretty scary. However, I hope that I can someday I can take God's silence in exactly the same way I take his intensity.

Ytinav

Two nights ago, I shaved my face for the first time in almost six months. I had finally gotten sick of my facial hair becoming a new form of doodling within class. Prior to this particular beard, I believe my record sat somewhere in the 3.5 month vicinity. However, as some know, I didn't shave off the whole thing. I left a grotesque combination of a soul patch (I put the soul in soul patch,) a Fu Man Chu (I put the man in Fu Man Chu,) and large, braidable (we tried it) mutton chops (I took the mutton out of mutton chops, cuz im a veggieterrian, c boi?) I always enjoy doing this, because it's sort of like Halloween, except you're the only one dressed up. I had every intention of using Thomas Castle's mustache wax the next day, milking my comedic material for all its worth.
Then, I went to group. Believe it or not, this was my first time at group, my absence up to this point being mostly a consequence of some seeds of snobbery that still have yet to be rooted out. For the most part, I enjoyed the whole thing. I would have liked it more had the Scripture not been explained, because though the music was better than I expected and the passages they chose spoke to me, the way in which they had to give an inadequate explanation of the passage afterward only served to distract me, as it didn't really let the passage speak for itself. On the whole, however, it was worthwhile and I plan to attend at least more regularly.
However, that's not really the point. While I was there, I remembered something I said in passing to a friend of mine. For some reason, he was talking about his struggles with vanity, and how he was trying to work on that. To this I said semi-jokingly that I "struggle" (quotes implied in my sarcasm at the time) far more with reverse vanity. That is to say, I pride myself on being somebody who never buys new clothes, whose cell phone doesn't have a camera, who isn't a germaphobe, and who lets himself smell every once in a while, whether from a lack of shampoo or a lack of laundry (both of which stem from laziness just as much as intention, honestly.) While I had meant it to some extent, I didn't really take it too seriously. Then, while I sat with my facial hair, the attraction of the day for many people, I thought seriously about the reasons for why I do some of these things. They aren't all for attention. In fact, all of the things I mentioned above are rooted in something I believe and take seriously. However, there is a strange sort of flaunting that I can easily tag on, as if to say "look at me, I'm so selfless and not centered on material things, what up!" I really don't want to be that sort of person. It made me think a lot about when Jesus said to only boast in Him, and not in anything else, even good things. It's so hard to understand what the lowness God calls us to really looks like, because lowness with a trumpet or a sombre face is not real humility.

Urban Plunge Reflection

If I were to sum up Urban Plunge in one sentence, I would do so in this way: “It was both a big and new step, yet an altogether preliminary one. If you don’t wish to read a couple pages of further explanation, I suppose this would be the place to stop.
The truth of the matter is this: it’s impossible to understand Urban Plunge without going. I really desire that this sounds as non-condescending as possible, for I don’t wish to elevate myself, as if I came out of this experience with a more potent moral compass. If anything, the experience has served far more to illuminate faults in myself. It’s impossible to fully communicate partly because different things strike different people. Additionally, every group has a unique experience. Ultimately, (and I believe, most importantly,) the difficulty arises in that through the experience, one learns almost entirely things that he/she did not expect.
For example, in considering the difficulties to be faced prior to embarking on Plunge, the ones most likely to come to mind would be finding food, staying warm, avoiding death, and the like. However, these were hardly the larger difficulties faced, particularly in light of the fact that we were given a place to sleep (the second of those would have been harder, otherwise.) It became quite clear how to avoid danger, and finding food simply depended on looking in enough trash cans/dumpsters, begging at enough market stands, going to shelters, and spanging (spare-changing)/asking for leftovers. The true difficulties arose in the psychological experiences, most particularly at the end, when faced with the prospect of going home, clarifying how the experience would not suffice on its own. This hasn’t been made easier in coming home, as I feel like almost every action is measured by my experience. I can’t say that I’ve not eaten anything out at all, but I do see food differently, and I pray that this new mindset will continue.
In addressing the first part of my one-sentence summary of the experience, I have completely new eyes as a result of this experience. After Plunge, going downtown will be wholly new, for as it progressed, one encountered the same homeless people every day. People we encountered at Westlake on the first day were hanging out at the very same stage at Westlake on Monday night. When I sat at the end, on Tuesday, I looked at Seattle from Gasworks Park differently. It was a huge conglomeration of individuals, not the homeless and the non-homeless.
As for the second part, there is still so much for me to do. The experience is so deep, and yet it's so shallow, in that we always knew there was not only an end to it, but even if we were legitimately homeless, we hadn't been rejected by the world innumerable times; we had a support system that we don't realize.I felt like there were so many more people to meet, so many things I didn’t understand, and so much that I want to change in myself as a result. I want to hear more stories, and understand all the people who we watched, but couldn’t talk to. I want to bridge that gap, which was only made passable through my dress, and make it passable through love. I want to see just how far SPU can go in truly living up to the responsibility of being a Christian University, something that is so easy not to take seriously (I'm speaking for myself here as well, mind you.)
The root of the “So what?” at this point seems to come down to this: I want my beliefs, thoughts, words, and actions to be as perfectly unified as possible. I think back on how I saw the my own face in those that passed me, and couldn’t help but think how much infinitely more was the abandoned feeling I gave, to people who received a hundred looks like that a day for years on end. Is this how I believe or pledge to act? Hardly, and this reminded me immensely of passages from a book I’ve been reading over the last few months, slowly: The Freedom of Simplicity. In this, Richard Foster talks about how simplicity ultimately must stem from this simple unity within God, and I found that similar connections existed with many other things I’ve thought about recently, like my own attachment to possessions, just how reckless I need to be in my faith in God with giving of myself, and my education. I couldn’t help but constantly think, throughout the trip, of my own education, the lack of which was a common denominator among those we met, and how ungrateful I was for it. I greatly desire my education to be worshipful and joyous, in the context of learning to the end of serving others. I have believed this in my head, but I want it to be visible in how I learn.

For a little cross section of the people and experiences we encountered, here are a couple of stories:

Mississippi (he only went by his street name, unable to reveal his real one due to warrants for his arrest) was a 19-year-old from Portland. He’d lived there till he was about 7, and after his mother was put in prison, he and his brother were moved to Mississippi (hence, street name), a placed he described as “where the police encourage parents to beat their children, and the schools still paddle you.” At some point, he ran away from his broken adopted parents, ultimately ending up in Seattle last summer. He now deals pot to the high school kids at Westlake, and is looking to get back home to find his brother. Additionally, he mentioned that he had essentially been awake non-stop for three days, because the police had found his squat, and he had to sleep in alleys and whatnot, in addition to the fact that he is high most of the time. A lot of the street kids (as I mentioned before) dress just like any typical high school kid, but Mississippi was the most legit street kid we met, as his hands were practically black with dirt, and he wore a huge, black coat. We took him out to McDonald’s on the last day.
Don was a fifty-something-year old, who we met spanging outside Gameworks. He has colon cancer, lives by himself in an apartment, and has to pay for chemo on his own, and lives in an apartment. I’ve never seen somebody so weak in my entire life. We offered him a donut, from the gigantic bag we’d found in a dumpster earlier (we were sooo cool with the street kids at that point, handing out donuts left and right), but he declined, saying he hurt too much to even eat. We prayed with him and gave some money and our remaining bus passes, but it all felt so feeble and weak. The ironic part is that we gave most of what we had, and this didn’t feel like enough; we had hardly anything ourselves! This illustrates a thought that struck me perpetually throughout the trip, as we were able to give away five dollars so easily, when it was a quarter of all the money between us at a given time, depending on how much we had spanged. Would I, in turn, be willing to give $250 out of the 1,000 or so in my account at such a whim? Should I be so? These sorts of questions plagued the trip.
We met Otis in Pioneer Square, and he had a cast for his foot, which he had apparently broken quite recently in a scuffle with his girlfriend. He had just gotten out of ten years in prison in New Orleans.
MFC, whose name stands for “Monkey Fucking Coconuts,” a name ordained by one of his friends, had been up for an entire three days without food, on an ecstasy trip.
We also met Jerry, an ex-crack addict poet in the University District. He gave us a free copy of a poem of his, which I enjoyed reading, for it portrayed the world in a refreshingly simple manner: The hate is everywhere, and the love needs to come in soon!
On Sunday, we were encouraged to try out one or two churches, in order to see how Christians would react to our homelessness. We additionally decided to attend a church that would be very uncomfortable with our presence, so what better place to go than a prosperity gospel church, where health and wealth are seen as signs of God’s goodness and work? In that vein, we decided to go to City Church, and I think that stands as one of the most disturbing experiences I’ve ever encountered. There are some churches that I’ll never attend, but still respect, because I feel as if we’re working toward a similar goal, and have the same foundations, yet our beliefs simply work themselves out differently. City Church, on the other hand, was flat-out unbiblical. When tithing envelopes are waved in the air, sick people are suddenly not useful to God, being happy is always better than sadness, credit card machines can be used to give offerings, I start to ask questions. There was some value to their message, in that the churches I’ve attended haven’t put the emphasis they did on miraculous healings, something that still happens today. However, their view of material and physical “success” was simply not rooted in who Jesus is and what He did. We stood outside afterward, and asked for money, additionally holding up a sign saying “Jesus was homeless,” in order to cause at least a little stir (I wanted to more angry signs, but my group wisely calmed me down.) To our shock, two middle school girls told us that Jesus in fact was not homeless. One very nice, humble woman gave us money without any show, when nobody was watching, and a couple people were very friendly. However, on the whole, we weren’t looked upon very fondly, as the seats around us were the last to be filled. There’s plenty more to be said about my feelings about the service, but this wasn’t the whole of Urban Plunge, so I’ll leave it at that!
I suppose that’s it. I would love to talk to people further on this, but I wanted to provide a baseline for it. I’ll also post more if I remember anything different, or have new reflections.