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.