And, the Coast..... (Big Smile!)

Our team snuck out of town on 13 August at 5am. We pulled up at the hotel on the Kenyan coast at 1:30pm and for the next (almost) 6 days we RESTED. Ahhhhhhh. It was so good.

Heather and Sianna got their hair braided because a) they've always wanted to do this and b) it saved their mommies literally hours in time that would have been spent untangling their hair every night. Those girls can give some serious time to body surfing, I tell you what!

I mostly lounged and read. I shifted from one lounging area to another and sometimes got up for a cup of tea or a glass of juice. I read For the Beauty of the Earth, that book on Creation care that Jesse brought home. Excellent. I lingered through it. Then I read My Hands Came Away Red. I especially liked the parts about re-entry to home culture and the journey of healing after trauma.

Meanwhile, the rest of our party was engrossed in our ONE copy of The Shack. Fortunately for me, I finished it before we went to the coast and so I wasn't in a race to read it and then pass it on to one of the others. Byron, Jesse and Trevor read it there while Colin and Tammy both started it.

Oh, yes! Byron and I also celebrated our 26th anniversary while we were there :-)

Back to real life now. We have a team from LA here for 10 days. Good people doing good stuff. Very nice!

"It started out as a feeling..." (or Oh, Narnia!)

We're a little behind the times here in Arusha, but this week, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian has finally come to our one cinema complex.

This is not a hefty review. This is just me saying that I went to see it twice, 2 days apart, and I liked it both times. I enjoyed it more the second time around as I was not distracted thinking about all the ways that the film diverts from the book that Lewis wrote. It does take a rather major detour into new territory.

There's been a lot of anticipation in our house for the film because Jesse already had the Regina Spektor song The Call on his iPod so we've been playing it for weeks and weeks. If you've seen it, you'll remember that Regina's lovely voice breaks into a dreamy song right at the end as the 4 English kings and queens of Narnia take their leave and head back to Jolly Old.

I liked the film, even though it's not the quality of Lord of the Rings and even though it departs from the book. But in all honesty, those closing scenes with the lilting loveliness of Regina mixed in, formed my favorite part.

The longing, the leave-taking, the re-entry to another world, the whole goodbye and cross-cultural adventure thing, all set to perfectly poignant lyrics and music, ahhhhhhh... it was sweet.

I love Narnia. I can't help it. I've read the series through more times than I can remember, starting when I was about 8 years old.

C.S. Lewis was a genius... And Regina sings like an angel.

A Pretty Pile of Books

I have this pretty pile of books on my shelf. They are recent gifts and loans from friends and each comes highly commended. When I glance at the pile, they all seem to straighten up in their places. It's as if each one is quietly saying, "Pick me! Pick me!"

I sigh a little when I see them because I would really like to plow my way into that pile but the days are busy and, so far, I've been making some pretty pathetic progress.

Let's see--

I'm just about done with Alan Jamieson's slender little book Chrysalis (The Hidden Transformation in the Journey of Faith.) This has been a helpful book that puts words to many things I have seen and felt.

Then there's Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love. I confess to being a little bogged down in India with her right now. This second of three sections in her book has become a little boring to me but I do want to finish the book since it has been wildly popular AND I promised Tait I would.

I'm dying to get into Lisa McKay's My Hands Came Away Red. I like Lisa. I like the essays she sends me and I like her quirky sense of self. (Maybe because I can relate to the quirk-producing life of one who has lived in many different countries.) Plus, the subject matter of struggling with faith in the face of trauma and evil is pretty darn relevant in this big ol' world. It's her first novel and it's doing very well so I'm excited to take it in.

Jesse brought me 2 books that I have been strictly instructed to read. (Are your kids allowed to enforce good reading on you?) His summer assignment for me includes Shane Clairborne's Jesus for President (A Book to Provoke the Christian Political Imagination.) The second book is Steven Bouma-Prediger's For the Beauty of the Earth, which deals with our responsibility to care for Creation. This book, I am told, will be removed from my shelf and taken back to California with him at the end of August so I'm supposed to make sure I've completed it by then.

I know less about the other books... Some Anne Lamott to catch up on... Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss. My sister sent that one and I've always loved anything she sends me.

For the great delight of it, I look forward to The Good Husband of Zebra Drive. This is #8 in a series of charming, insightful and clever little stories set in Botswana. I could devour that one in a free afternoon but free afternoon's are hard to come by.

And Rilke's Book of Hours is like chocolate. One little piece at a time, snuck in here and there, I will let the little poems bring me pleasure. Better than chocolate, they also bring me revelation. Thank you, Nelly, for the gift of your very own copy.

So I'm not getting to them very quickly, but they do fill me with a happy anticipation as they sit there so patiently on my shelf.

Grub, The Bush Baby... and other old friends

It was pretty hot around here today and Jesse, Colin and Heather were languishing around, looking sort of half melted and in need of distraction. I decided to tackle some boxes filled with books that needed sorting. These are books that we packed during the summer of 2006. I opened the dusty cardboard tops and oooooooh....

It was like I was seeing dear old friends. I pulled out Cry, the Beloved Country-- a book I wept my way through. I found the first edition of Out of Africa that my sister gave me for my birthday just a few years ago and I remembered sneaking onto the premises of the Karen Blixen museum years and years ago when it wasn't yet open. We sat on the stone benches round the back and quoted beautiful passages from the book. This was prior to the film and, believe me, the book is MUCH better.

I smiled at books that touched me in different ways, and wondered a little quizzically at why others had been hauled all over the globe with me when I'm sure I've never even opened them. (Those were very few, mind you.)

My heat-weary off-spring slowly came to life. Each one found a treasure and soon they were pouring over pages as they sat together on the sofa in the corner of the living room. I was especially happy to see Heather giggling at Grub, the Bush Baby, a picture book made by Jane Goodall and her then-husband about their little boy as they camped and studied in game parks here in Tanzania. My boys spent hours with that book. Nice to see Heather getting to know that old friend.

I confess to a deep love of bound-together pages. I know I have far too many of them, especially for someone who makes major global transitions. I will have to cull this library.

But not today.