Please Nice View If Possible

"There's no combination of words

I could put on the back of a postcard..."

- song lyrics, Jack Johnson

Dear Friends,

Some say it's love. Others say it's money. Scientists may give you a completely different answer altogether from the poets and economists in response to the age old question, what makes the world go around?

Maybe the key to unraveling the mystery lies in swapping the question word what with who. I'd be willing to wager all my heart and money on the bet that it's folks like you, me, and anyone who's ever packed a get-away weekend bag that crank out the next reluctant turn of this so-called lonely planet.

Those who go around the world make the world go around, and those who do are called tourists.

Tourists. What a strange lot.

This last week I was one. In Egypt. There were many tourists like me. But of course, they were very different from me.

Or so I thought. The title "tourist" is packed with a multitude of meanings, and one of the most strikingly paradoxical tenets of being a tourist is the fact that, of all names, the last thing a tourist wants to be thought of is a "tourist." Call me "adventurer," "sojourner," or "explorer," thank you very much. Even the less haughty title "traveler" suggests a higher purpose for one's traversing and psychologically separates him from the bulk of garden variety tourists (i.e., everyone else) reeking of sun lotion and carrying two to six cameras and mismatched batteries.

The basic life principle proves to be as true at home as it is on the road, in the air, or on the sea: Let me be unique, but not too unique.

The desire to travel is innate. Think Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life, rabid with his brochures from exotic locales: "I'm gonna see the world, Mary!" One physical step into the long-dreamed-of place that until now was only an image projected onto a screen in a classroom or a glossy picture on a postcard can give birth to the intoxicating realization that there is so much to discover in the world. And making discoveries is fun! Barring cataclysmic food poisoning or death, traveling and living to tell about it is often more than enough fodder to keep the flame of desire to see more, go more burning. And if tourism is the vehicle for getting us where we want to go, so be it. Just don't make me feel too much like everyone else when I get there. Dammit, Mary, I'm an individual after all!

In my letters and e-mails home, I often tout Latvia's sublime location on the globe. The son, grandson, and great-grandson of realtors, I guess it's in my blood to think "location, location, location." I particularly remember coming back to my flat one Thursday night in January after choir practice, sitting down at my computer and searching the potential destinations I could reach from Riga. The ethereal search went on for a couple hours. I was overwhelmed with the possibilities. Funny, I never piddled away the hours in Illinois wikipediaing Cleveland, Ohio or researching the cheapest flights to and from Boise, Idaho. What makes this experience different?

Aside from location, curiosity and opportunity play their respective parts. That, and four-day work weeks coupled with this near two-week spring break provide ample time for traveling. But if I'm being honest with myself I cannot deny the narcissistic kernel vested in any form of travel, the ever-strong motivator and one good reason for leaving home: I can't wait to tell you where I've been when I get back.

In high school, my family took an uncharacteristic spring break vacation to Disney World in Florida. We'd been once -- a decade prior -- and this time we were returning as intermediate Disney dynamos. Not all was peachy in the Magic Kingdom, however. Several factors inhibited our adventures. Turns out you don't have to go to Mexico to pick up dysenteric bacteria; a nasty strand of something kept Mother and Brother not more than three Goofy-sized feet away from the toilet.

When the family was collectively feeling better about mid-week we ventured out into the bowels of Disney World. I don't remember much, really, except for a conversation we had with one Disney employee one day on the monorail. Lord, forgive her. She was perky and she was only doing her job.

As I recall the cordial conversation went something like this:

"So, where are you folks from?"

"A small town in Illinois. Jacksonville. Not far from the capital Springfield."

"Uh-huh, and do you like it here at Disney World?"

"We sure do!"

"And how long have you been here?"

"Four days now, I guess."

"And what have you done?"

"Well..."

"You've been to the Castle, I suppose."

"No, not yet..."

"Epcot?"

"Nope..."

"You've been on the rides I bet, right guys?"

"Well, no. We hope to..."

"Seen the shows?"

"Um, no."

(Here comes the kicker!)

"Well, then... what have y'all done??!"

The last thing we want to be faced with while traveling or woe, after traveling, is the pestering uncertainty of did I see enough?

When it comes down to it, isn't travel all about the View?

I traveled to Egypt with the same agency I used to get to Crete last fall. The travel agent, Karin, has become a friend of mine. Before each trip she asked me if there were any special notes she should write in the "remarks" section of the travel vouchers for the hotels. When I couldn't think of anything, she suggested we make the request of being provided a room with a view. "Please Nice View If Possible," she noted.

Room 309 of the Al Baston Park Hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt didn't offer much of a view, even though in time I came to "see the sea" in the white concrete cinder blocks that comprised the wall of the maintenance shed not one yard away from my balcony. It was the dessert, after all, and I had found my own mirage. But when I bent and stretched and held the camera just right, I was able to take the photograph you see at the top of this post, of the moon rising in the late afternoon Arabic skies.

It's all about the view, after all, and beyond the shimmering allure of packaged tours, I feel as if I could confidently say to anyone employed by Disney or otherwise, when asked about Egypt, "Yeah, I've been there. I've seen that."

Thankfully, grander inward excursions lie ahead of any traveler who is looking. And sometimes those precious findings catch and capture even the heart of a tourist, at once ordinary and unique, who is looking so hard and not seeing a thing. I hope to relate my views and impressions in the coming days and weeks.

Yours,
Tim

Silence and Expectation

"Religion took over the legacy of Paul as it did that of Jesus - because they both opposed it. They said that worship of God is a matter of interior love, not based on external observances, on temples or churches, on hierarchies or priesthoods. Both were at odds with those who impose the burdens of "religion" and punish those who try to escape them. They were radical egalitarians, though in ways that delved below and soared above conventional politics. They were on the side of the poor and saw through the rich. They saw only two basic moral duties, love of God and love of the neighbor. Both were liberators, not imprisoners - so they were immprisoned. So they were killed. Paul meant what Jesus meant, that love is the only law."

-Garry Willis

Dear Friends,

Yesterday began Holy Week, known as Week of Silence in Latvia. My students have decidedly chosen not to observe the prescribed parochial silence and instead sound off noisily, buzzing about in concupiscent pre-Spring Break anticipation. I have no qualms. Their buzzing, at least in my presence, is in English.

In lieu of palm branches, Latvians usher in the Week of Silence with pussy willows. Walking the streets of Riga yesterday afternoon, I was again struck by the beauty of flowers (mostly pussy willows) poking from satchels and handbags, brief cases and shopping baskets. To join in the festivity, I picked up a small bundle of pussy willows from an aged petal pusher on Terabatas iela.

For many around the country and other parts of Europe the pussy willows strike in real ways. Tradition dictates that adults wake their slumbering children on Palm Sunday by beating/nudging/tickling them with pussy willow branches. One student, Krisjanis, shared with me his vivid childhood memories of his Latvian grandmother waking him with pussy willows once a year.

"I bet that felt kind of good," I told him, picturing an endearing hunched grandmother with a soft face, leaning over a twin bed.

"You don't know my grandmother, teacher," he responded pensively.

Though the alter at the Anglican church was adorned with copious quantities of pussy willows and daffodils Sunday morning, in Western fashion, each parishioner was given a single green palm frond. I struggled to hold mine still. Hearing the familiar regal strands of "Ride On, Ride On in Majesty" transported me back to the sanctuary of First Presbyterian, College at Westminster... the days of parading up and down the aisles with other children, waving leafy palm branches, chanting that strange word our Sunday School teacher taught us: Hosanna!

Again this year I'm indebted to the First Presbyterian family for accumulating yet another stirring collection of Lenten Meditations and Devotions that have uplifted my moments of silence this season, usually right before bed or over morning cereal, illustrating the truth that the church who writes together stays together.

I didn't submit a devotion this year, but if I would have written one, I probably would have written about expectation. How a resurrection was probably the last thing on the minds of Jesus' friends and family and peers. A resurrection must have seemed as improbable, as hopeless, as out of the question to them as it does to us today.

And yet we wait. Sometimes in silence. Sometimes in the "presents" of others. Knowing very well what's coming but not expecting a thing.

Two old friends, former First Pres palm wavers like me, have graced my Latvian abode and existence over the last few weeks. Illinois Blueboy Alex flew in from his year-long post in Heidelberg, Germany, and Simpson Sweetheart Allison gave up her sunny spring break retreat in Seville, Spain for a few days in snowy Riga. With a lump in my throat (is this what it is to mellow with age?), I hope they know what joy they've brought to their former youth group leader. It just seems like yesterday that...

A year ago or more I ran into my college communications professor at a cocktail party. "Tim," he said, "You've been given a lot. I hope every once in a while you simply look up at the sky and say 'thank you.'"

Once in a while I do. Life's pattern of filling and emptying wields me here in Riga just as it does in Jacksonville. But in those moments of silence, looking up or bowing down, I am most likely to sense the sustaining Love that will not let me go.

Yours,
Tim

Al and Tim, Top of St. Peter's Cathedral, March 14

Alex in front of Stockholm School of Economics, a fine example of the city's dazzling array of Art Noveau, March 5

This Land

"This Land"

With its gray skies and forlorn buildings

its sundered sidewalks and icy puddles,

one might feel comfortably broken here.

One might find solidarity among the barren trees

and muddy streamlets that run along the roads.

Seated on a concrete stump,

a street man stretches his legs.

Anchored beneath an empty bench,

a newspaper futilely trembles in the wind.

The wind is cold and yet it blows.

I join the sullen passengers on the city bus

and think of the words I was handed:

Sometimes people make situations,

Sometimes situations make people.

My dark coat fits me.

Surely this ground is ripe for

excavation, frozen though it is.

Threadbare arms reach for me,

extending from this desolate land.

"I Dreamed Her Alive"

I dreamed her alive

last night as I lay sleeping

We had aged, as evidenced by

the lines around our lips

And though we laughed, a

darkness surrounded us

What was it?

The immanent shadow did

not stop us from embracing

I awoke to a triangular pillar of pink

light streaming through the curtains

I held that moment somewhere in between

as gently as a downy chick in my cupped hands,

longing for the warmth of its former shell