Homophobia

Most of my exercise these days comes from swimming. Compared with a lot of other modern recreational alternatives swimming is relatively safe, but it does have its hazards. On Monday I was midway through my workout when a handsome young man, muscled and tattooed, entered the lane I had been swimming in alone. Where I swim there is a wide variance among swimmers when it comes to their understanding of lap-swimming etiquette, so under circumstances like these there follows a period during which swimmers get acquainted, as it were, with one another's style, each hoping some accomodation can be reached to avoid fatal collisions. During this introductory period the swimmers are on heightened alert to the particular idiosyncracies of their new lane-mates. As it happened, when the hunk hopped in I was swimming backstroke. Readers acquainted with the backstroke will readily bring to mind that somewhat counterintuitive point in the underwater portion of the stroke where the motion is not entirely unlike the motion one performs when patting a kneaded lump of dough on a kitchen counter (see figure 2). As it happened, it was this particular point in my own underwater stroke that coincided with the very first time my new lane-mate and I passed going in oposite directions, with the unhappy result that I laid my hand squarely on his bum and pushed him gently past. It bears mentioning, I think, that, while awkward, this situation is slightly to be preferred to those occasions when the same thing happens with the ladies from the hydro-gymnastics classes. Nevertheless, I was mortified. I fully expected our strapping youth to bolt from my lane and seek refuge in another far away, despite their all being more occupied. After several laps it became apparent he would not. I began to relax, until I realized, to my consternation, that his decision to stay might have more serious implications. I finished my workout. Ordinarily, I would warmly bid my lane-mates good day on my way out, if they happened to be resting at the end of the pool, as the hunk was. Not this time. I set my face toward the locker room and strode manfully by.

Saturday was our Serve the City Quarterly Volunteer Day. A person really has to be nuts to want to organize one of these things. We slept very little in the days leading up to Saturday, staying up late answering emails from volunteers including two that signed up about eight hours before the event was scheduled to begin. At the end of the day I felt a familiar welling sensation as I assessed the work in my sleep-deprived stupor: like most volunteers, ours had arrived full of tremendous good will and very little experience, so that they succeeded in starting an array of projects and finishing very few. It looked to me like I was going to spend the next two weeks putting back together what they had taken apart. “This is insanity!” I said to God. “We really need to talk about this. You can't possibly Intend for us to continue to do this, can You?” I really love these heart to hearts with God. The way it works for me is that I bring things before Him and wait. Ordinarily I don't have to wait long. I ask and its as if He takes out a big flash light and illuminates what I might have seen all along if only I had had the eyes to see: Of course you'll keep doing this. This is what you do. It may change form a little, but Serve the City Quarterly Volunteer Day is just the evolution of those neighborhood work days you started organizing fifteen years ago in Seattle. Part of what made me see this was the recollection of the intense, intense pleasure I took in loving the children at Casa Sol, a home for children with AIDS, while we fixed up their house. It can be tricky, of course, finding the appropriate balance in showing affection to children who are not yours. On Saturday I felt like the Tiger Woods of Quarterly Volunteer Days. I picked those kids up and swung them up on my shoulders and hugged them and cupped their chins in my hand and ran my index finger along the contours of their faces and said to them in a hundred nonverbal ways, “YOU ARE GREAT! YOU ARE LOVED! BE WELL!” I enjoyed the volunteers almost as much. You put tools in the hands of people accustomed to pens and keyboards and watch the light of empowerment go on in their eyes. They'd forgotten their muscles are good for more than aerobics class; they're good for helping people. We've begun preparations for the next Serve the City events. If we spread it out maybe we can get a little more sleep in the days before work begins. Anyway, we've gotta do it.

A theme this week has been, “Thank God we function at all.” This is not an easy idea for Debbie to buy into, having as she does a high standard for her own productivity and a lot of funky infirmities preventing her from reaching it, but it helps that through her ministry to people suffering with Behçet's Disease she is acquainted with lots of people who were well along in years when they suddenly found their bodies betraying them. Being thankful for what she is able to do—which is a lot—may help distract her from what she can't do. Please pray she'll be well and praise God that Drex's health has been so good lately. Pray they're both strong and healthy for our upcoming trip to visit my parents in Michigan.

Thank you for your faithfulness. Godspeed.

Serve the City Quarterly Volunteer Day

Greetings, Serve the City Volunteers,

One of my favorite moments in the Bible happens in Luke chapter 8 when a woman who touches Jesus is instantly healed. "I know that power has gone out from me," Jesus explained.

I know that power went out from you Saturday.

Before beginning work Saturday at Casa Sol we prayed for the health of all the children that live there. One thing that will definitely contribute to their well-being is just the sort of care and attention you showed them and the children of Aldeia SOS at our Quarterly Volunteer Day: improving their homes, smiling, loving them in hundreds of small ways. These things extend life and relieve suffering.

But it isn't just the people we serve who benefit. I worked with one volunteer who was new to Serve the City and had come, in part, to see if he has jeito for this sort of thing. He used a circular saw to trim a new door to fit at Casa Sol. Before cutting we explained an important Serve the City Rule: The first thousand times you do something new you're not allowed to criticize your work. You're practicing. Criticism is poison and self-criticism is lethal. The door fits perfectly. Everybody wins.

Thank you. Thank you for sharing yourself, your time, your energy and your talent with us when you might have been doing something for yourself.

Not everything went smoothly Saturday. We're still learning how best to serve. But many, many beautiful things happened. I know, because a lot of them happened to me.

We look forward to working with you again.

God bless you.

Jordan

Gerber Daisies

Here's a health tip from Dr. J: If you're going to be well, you're going to have to do some things that give you joy. Joy helps maintain your body's chemical balance. Joy lowers your blood pressure. (If you already have low blood pressure you may want to stay away from joy.) For example, I've discovered that after cleaning and setting up an apartment for guests arriving to stay with VisitingPortugal.com, it's important for me to put a fresh flower--usually a big fat bright gerber daisy--in a bud vase someplace where you see it right when you walk in the door. The fresh flower acts as an antidote, counterattacking the poisons I've been releasing into my emotional system while crawling around cleaning the apartment: "What the hell am I doing here?!" I ask myself as I scrub toilets. The bright spot of life in the bud vase is divinely powerful, bringing me out of darkness into light. It gives me joy, redeems my work. I can hardly wait for the guests to arrive.

Last Sunday I went to church alone. Drex had spent the night at a friend's house and Debbie had a checkin. We've been frequenting a house church that meets out on the coast, about half an hour away, and was started by surfers from California. We started going because Drex vastly prefers the more informal atmosphere to our traditional Portuguese evangelical church, which he enjoys about as much as a blood draw. We also think it good practice for the house church we're starting here in our neighborhood. I've had very mixed feelings about going: one of my ambitions is to spend as little time as possible here with Americans. Americans are great, in America, but when you're in Portugal, I figure, you oughta spend time with Portuguese people, not least because you need to practice speaking Portuguese with them. On the other hand, one of our highest priorities is doing whatever we can to make Drex feel great about church. But as I drove west alone last Sunday morning I had to admit that the church has become a great blessing to me. The people there love us the way Christians are supposed to love each other. It was hard, but I had to admit it. After the "service," a word I use for lack of a better one, for the sun-soaked, lemon-tree-and-lavender-scented, guitar-and-bongo-scored, praise-and-worship-and-testimony-filled picnic on a stone terrace overlooking the rocky coast, two of the main guys came over and told me they wanted to lay hands on me and pray for me and my family but especially for Debbie and her health because they feel like we've been getting knocked around a little lately. People laying hands on me and praying always makes me sweat, but I had to admit I felt loved. A little Finnish dancer who's been studying in Lisbon a year said she had a vision, as we were praying, of me and my family nestled in the palm of God's hand. That was on the 29th. My journal is set up so I make entries beneath entries for the same date in previous years, so the following morning I read this entry from June 30, 2006: "Lisbon, Portugal. I'm feeling lonely, Father. We haven't any community here. No other believers, no friends, only acquaintances. Please build community here, Father, in Jesus' name." I had to admit I felt loved.

On June 20th we had our Annual Rua Joaquina Sardinhada, the Portuguese equivalent of a weenie roast, where we close off our little deadend street to cars, put up decorations, bring out tables, chairs, and barbeques and grill about 50 pounds (not an exaggeration) of sardines. Our neighbor, Tiago, great-nephew of Amália Rodrigues, the Portuguese Elvis Presley, goes out and rounds up his Fado (Portuguese blues) friends, who play their twelve-stringed guitars and sing until dawn. This year I was smarter than last year and dozed on the couch from about 4 until 5am, so as not to miss the end. Just as the sky began to lighten Tiago's 4-year-old son, Guilherme, prevailed upon a young hotshot guitarist to play. Guilherme sat next to him and strummed his own miniature guitar while the hotshot translated the sunrise into music. That was taken up in voice by a lovely young woman who sang notes expressing what words could not and made you wonder how you'd ever slept through something as thrilling as a sunrise. "The sun came up because we played," Guilherme explained to his mom. We pinched ourselves.

Please pray for Debbie's health. In lieu of a definite diagnosis, the pride of physicians she's seen has given her lots of drugs, which make it possible for her to move, most of the time, but can also make her days unpredictable.

Thank you for praying for us. God bless you this week.

Amusement

You guys did a great job praying a couple of weeks ago when I sent out a prayer SOS: Debbie's Dad is doing much better. He's up and about and gaining strength. Debbie is doing better. She's experimenting with her drugs, looking for a balance between mobility and masking pain. She wants to get around but she wants to know when her body really wants her to quit.

Unfortunately, her list of infirmities grew today when the bathroom mirror came crashing down upon her. (I should have gotten rid of that thing a long time ago.) It could have been much worse, but it was bad enough. Because our car is at the mechanic we took a cab to the hospital, our hands clasped together like eloping lovers in order to stem the bleeding from filleted fingers. Cab drivers love this sort of thing and ours was no exception, racing through orange lights, giving us the thumbs up, playing his part beautifully. When there's blood Debbie always assumes the attitude of a curious biology student, poking and prodding. "If you'll cover that and apply pressure," I explained coolly, "the bleeding may stop and I may not throw up on you." This, too, is a familiar role. What I do in situations like these is fain queeziness in order to distract the patient from their own discomfort. Invariably, they find my discomfort amusing, (Debbie more so than most) laughter being the best medicine, as everyone knows. Call me Dr. J. In the end the fingers took ten stitches from Dr. Matthew from Boston, who chatted amicably while sewing things up--despite Debbie's ruining his outfit with blood--about the heady feeling of being a Red Sox fan in the 21st century.

Drex was doing much better: he hadn't missed school since the SOS and he is doing a great job of keeping preadolescent insanity in check. But today he had to leave school at lunchtime because of an assortment of discomforts. Both he and Debbie have gone to bed feeling pretty beat up.

I had really hoped to finally have the first meeting of our neighborhood house church here this week, but it looks like we'd better give Debbie a little more time to mend.

Would you please pray for her mending and get back to praying for Drex so he can get back to school.

Thanks and Godspeed.

Please Pray for Our Trip

One of the challenges in raising children abroad is passing on one’s own cultural heritage. Drex isn’t going to get American History at school. What better way, therefore, to spend what is probably my last summer reading stories to my own children—after a rich twenty-four year career —than reading the Adventures of Tom Sawyer with Drex. Even as Drex has gained from Tom a broader sense of his own cultural identity he has found comfort in their sympathies: an abhorrence for the “restraint” of “whole clothes and cleanliness,” their distaste for Sunday School, “a place Tom hated with his whole heart,” and their affinity for fishing: “While Joe was slicing bacon for breakfast, Tom and Huck asked him to hold on a minute; they stepped to a promising nook in the river bank and threw in their lines; almost immediately they had reward. Joe had not had time to get impatient before they were back again with some handsome bass, a couple of sun-perch, and a small catfish—provision enough for quite a family.”

I would have said such exploits were for another time and place had I not seen a similar performance by Drex and his Uncle Butch last week in the Algarve. This was Butch’s first visit to Portugal and he wasted no time dispelling our myth of the elusive Portuguese fish. A storied fisherman, he reads water like ordinary people read maps. Where I see sun sparkling he sees structure: sand bars, shelves, pools. And he sees fish, powerless to resist his bait. He and Drex caught them “at will.” Almost as soon as they cast they’d begin backing up, reeling them onto the beach. “Thirty seconds without a fish! What’s going on?” Drex complained at one point. Thirty-one fish in all; all very tasty. Butch was pleased; Drex was beside himself.

Back here at home, one of the benefits of living in the center of a major European city is the summer street festivals, like Lisboamágica, Street Magic World Festival, today in its fifth and final day. At Drex’s insistence we’ve seen all fifteen magicians, some several times. Drex has been practicing tricks at home and has assumed a more theatrical bearing, generally. I have found the magician’s twenty-minute acts inspiring, too: what I need to do is develop a little repertoire of children’s stories I can relate and illustrate in Portuguese and English on the streets of Lisbon. I could make balloon animals—as many of the magicians did—until I’ve attracted enough children for stories. I could top them all off with a winsome version of the Greatest Story Ever Told.

The Habitat for Humanity Global Village trip I’m leading to Mozambique is just over two weeks away. You can meet the team and get a taste of what we’re in for at Bringing Together Worlds Apart. Please pray that God would fill the believers on our team with His Holy Spirit, that we might minister His love to everyone with whom we come in contact. Pray He would give us words and means to communicate the Gospel in ways people understand. Pray for safety and health. Pray Debbie and Drex are well while I’m away.

We appreciate your prayers more than we can express and more than you’d conclude based on how infrequently I’ve solicited them here lately. That is an omission for which I beg your pardon. The Lord bless you this week.

A Philosophical Question

If a pipe bursts in the wall and there’s no one there to hear it, does it still turn the basement into a swimming pool? Yes. That’s why we’re thankful that when a pipe burst Tuesday at Casa Pátria, twenty minutes before honeymooners were due to arrive, Debbie was standing only a few feet away, heard it pop, and watched water begin to gush onto the floor. She turned off the water, diverted the honeymooners across the street to Casa Joaquina which was mercifully unoccupied and we spent the following forty-eight hours fixing plumbing, finishing just in time for the following guests. God doesn’t eliminate all the difficulties from the lives of His kids--what good would we be if He did?--but He’s a very present help in trouble and often handles us with kid gloves. Praise Him.

It’s a long way to Lisbon from Southern California so it’s no wonder Jerry was out of sorts when he arrived Thursday with his wife Susan for ten days at Casa Joaquina. But in his weakened state he didn’t know what to make of the Portuguese man gesticulating and remonstrating from the doorway until he recognized his computer in the man’s hand and the man himself as the taxi-driver who had dropped them off twenty minutes earlier. Jerry had left the computer in the back seat. The driver hadn’t noticed either until he picked up two young men who very quickly—inexplicably—asked him to stop and hopped out carrying a laptop they hadn’t had when they’d entered. “Wait a minute, that’s not yours!” he’d said, and wrested it away. Then he’d made his way back to Casa Joaquina—an heroic effort in its own right, given the labyrinth of one-way streets and unavailability of parking—in order to bestow upon Jerry the computer he had yet to miss. “Nem toda a gente é má,” (Not everyone is bad) the driver said in explanation of his benevolence. Not every Portuguese taxi driver is so gallant either, to be sure, as a number of our overcharged guests will attest, so it pays to make sure the meter is running, but kindnesses like these should not go unheralded.

Blessed week.

The Shaping of Things to Come

Please don’t conclude from my long absence here that we no longer need your prayers. We need them at least as much as ever. Debbie and I continue to pray hard about the form our ministry here in Lisbon ought to take. Our passion for bringing the Good News of God’s love to this culture where it has been largely forgotten is being fueled by Australians Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch through their book The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church which is encouraging us to think creatively about introducing Jesus to people who don’t know Him. Praise God for His promise to direct us. Please ask Him to raise up people to partner with us in ministry.

Drex and I found out yesterday it takes just under two minutes to ride a mountain bike like a maniac from the Castle of St. George at the top of Lisbon through the Alfama, the precipitous, cobbled and crumbling old fisherman’s quarter, down to the Tagus River. UK biking icon Steve Peat won Lisboa Downtown (lisboadowntown.com—cute video! See if you can find Drex in the tree behind the throne.) for the fifth consecutive year, then, when given the last word by the master of ceremonies, said, in summing up the sentiments of his disaffected contemporaries, “Let’s get drunk!”

On a more wholesome note, Drex and I are reading Rascal, the eponymous tale of a pet racoon and his boy, set in early 20th century northern Illinois and Wisconsin. Author Sterling North so charmingly evokes the ethos of the place and time I keep expecting my grandfather to pedal around the bend with a string of catfish dangling from his handlebars.

Good books, warm spring days festooned with flowers, the companionship of the Holy Spirit; God communicates with us in lots of different ways. May He give us ears to hear and eyes to see this week.

Thank you for praying for us.