A well-watered garden

a research day in the life of a part-time teacher/grad student

2012-01-19T19:01:00.000+02:00

I’m sitting between the stacks in a tiny study carroll on the second floor of a college library. The funky old stone walls and the mustiness of books has a strange appeal.

There’s something about being able to walk up to the computers, do a quick search, and find my home for the morning near a category of literature that might be mildly useful to me today. It almost counter-acts the humbling effect of looking like a student in my jeans and college sweatshirt. Clothes really do matter, people. Take the grey-mustached man in the suit jacket. No one mistakes him for a student. But today, I don’t mind. In fact, today I am a student.

I take a few weathered old books off the shelf, books on how to do sociological research. Didn’t realize that’s what I was doing, but now I know, because of Dewey’s famed system of organizing information. I feel the subtle cursing from the ghosts of my humanities/rhetoric past—social science? Really? You have stooped so low?

Even though there is more than a decade separating me and my status as a communication major, I remember, vaguely, something about the dangers of believing that you can trust a “science” made out of the study of human beings. And I plod on, relieved that I am in a program that is more comprehensible to the rest of the world. Psychology, sociology, anthropology—yeah, those are subjects. What is Rhetoric? An English professor actually asked me that question a week ago, apparently unfamiliar with it as an area of college study. Bad sign, people.

At any rate, I’d better get to work, with my humanities prepped brain on a sociology-ish project. Hoping to summon up good words to frame the questions. If I remember nothing else from college, and my Word-oriented professors, it’s that asking good questions is the THING.

. . .

It’s a few hours later. I’ve cracked a book on Grounded Theory. I’ve whipped out four books from my bag: three on Orthodox theology and one on the history of the ‘Gospel Christians’ in the former Soviet Union. I’ve opened one of those and copied a line or two into a document. I’ve browsed a half dozen sites on simple church. I’ve checked out the schedule for courses and come up with a best-case scenario graduation estimate (I think it was early 2015, for the curious). I have written two lines on the actual assignment I was hoping to finish today.

A scattered, diffuse reading habit screws my brain into knots, but I actually enjoy days like this. Hopefully the time and effort will produce a set of better questions.

Fireworks in Ukraine

2012-01-17T23:16:00.000+02:00

You should not pause in the middle of a chat with your mom right after telling her that someone set the front door of the apartment in which you are staying (an ocean away) on fire.

Little lessons learned from this last trip to Ukraine.

We had just finished a round of Carcassone, and we'd decided to start a second when a funny smell came into the room. The mention of it was quickly followed by all four of us unplugging things until we saw smoke coming in around the door. Since the mission apartment is on the first floor, jumping out the window was a real option, but we didn't want to if we didn't need to. So we grabbed some coats and boots and valuables, called the fire department, and let Misha jump out the window. He called a few minutes later to tell us it was the door cover burning off, and not a huge fire in the stairwell, which was a relief. Once the acrid smoke cleared, there was little to do except talk to the police and give statements until about 2 in the morning.

Such was the adventure of my last night in Rivne before heading to Kyiv for another grad course. Usually, when people want to send a message that you are being a little too noisy too late at night, they bang on the pipes. Most don't light your front door on fire. Lots of apartment doors (including our charred one) are metal with a covering of fake leather and stuffing. Apparently that stuffing is pretty flammable!

We weren't so noisy either, especially compared to the folks crawling back from parties and setting off fireworks. It was the night of New Year's Day, and we were definitely not the main disturbance in the area. No, we were pretty sure that it was the paranoid, unstable, unfriendly upstairs neighbors sending a sign. Most likely they didn't expect it to go up quite so fast and furious.

I was reminded what it feels like to feel unprotected. The firemen and police came, but we almost felt like we were the ones in trouble rather than the victims. I was proud of my Ukrainian friends and how they handled everything. After an hour or two of indignation, and talk of moving 'shop' elsewhere, all settled down. The mood was light and resilient in the morning, and repairs were made that week.

Amazing though, how in the middle of a crisis, you are reminded how fragile life is. It can be burned up in a moment. Or snuffed out.

It also becomes clear that there are those who aren't happy about Christian ministry no matter how subtle or innocuous the format. I thought of stories of the propaganda directed against Christian believers during the Soviet period (all Protestants are cult members, Baptists engage in human sacrifice--really!) And the propaganda continues even today . . .

How difficult it can be to engage people who, when there is a lack of accurate information, tend to believe the worst.

In light of these things, it amazes me even more that our three friends who minister there can keep moving forward, keep trusting God, and remain encouraged. They are a light in an often-dark place. We just didn't expect to get such a physical, flamboyant reminder.

Getting away with it

2012-01-12T02:41:00.000+02:00

I stepped into the elevator today in tower B of the medical center in my high-heeled ankle boots and white wool coat. The boots and coat (and perhaps the scarf) were the things that made me jeans and sweater feel teacher-worthy. When I'm still dressed like that after class and roaming round stores or, in this case, hospitals, I almost feel like a grown-up. Like I belong in the world. Like if I ask someone a question, they will take me seriously.

Yet, somewhere underneath it all, I still wonder if I'll be found out. They'll know. I'm really just a kid.

Vareniky!

2011-12-19T16:20:00.001+02:00

Vareniky, ready to throw in the pot

I seem to be reminiscing about Ukraine more lately. It could be the upcoming post-Christmas trip. Or the paper I recently had to write for a class. Or perhaps it's just normal to think more about things I've experienced once I'm completely on the other side of them. At any rate, today I'm thinking about vareniky.

Vareniky are what you Pittsburghers call 'pierogies.' I just read a website this morning that says vareniky is the Russian name, but I'm not so sure. All the Ukrainians I know in Ukrainian-speaking Western Ukraine call them vareniky. Not that that's proof, but let's go with it, eh?

Vareniky are the epitome of comfort food. Made of a flour-based dough, filled with anything from potatoes to kraut to sweet cherries--vareniky are quite filling and just good to eat. They are even better with fried onions and (preferably fried to a point of being somewhat indistinguishable as the pork belly that it is) salo on top. And of course, as our friend Misha would say, they must be 'swimming' in smetana! (sour cream)

frying salo

There is a holiday in December (I usually think of it on the 19th, St. Nicholas Day, but I think it is really on the 13th, St. Andrew's Day) when it is traditional to make a huge pile of vareniky. One of the traditions is to hide interesting items in a few of the vareniky - from black pepper on apples, to small change, to wads of cotton! There is also some connection to fortune-telling and guessing who your future husband will be. Ukrainian holidays were often like this for me: an amalgam of religious commemoration and folk tradition, hard to decipher, but always interesting to observe!

What's cool about St. Andrew is that in Ukraine they call him 'Andrew the first-called.' First mentioned as a follower of Jesus, credited for inviting his brother Peter to come along, and legendary for marking out Kiev as a future great city - Andrew is well-loved (and statue-fied) in Ukraine.

There may be no logical reason to connect an overindulgence in vareniky with this apostle, but who needs one? Let's eat! :-)

Right in the cup

2011-12-10T13:22:00.000+02:00

Because I'm always inspired toward creative writing when I'm supposed to be working, here I am again, finally, with an idea. I want to tell you about Alla Ivanovna and my little china coffee cups.

They are coffee cups and not teacups, because when I bought the set in Rivne's 'Budinok Odyahu,' back in 2001 before it was remodeled, when the insides looked kind of open and warehousey, when everything you bought was behind glass and you had to get a receipt drawn up and then go take it to another lady to pay for it, the label said coffee set. Who knew? The only main difference is that the cups are slightly inadequate for a good cup of tea, and the pot has a more sleek physique.

I lived on the tenth floor of a fourteen story building, and Alla and I would sit at the kitchen table with the window that looks out to the highway below. Russian lessons usually started at 10 in the morning, which gave us an unusually decent chance of sunlight shining through that window.

Alla Ivanovna usually brought a few pieces of candy, sometimes just two really nice big chocolate bonbons of some sort, knowing that I would pour the coffee. I'd usually get out my delicate yellow-and-white cups, pour in a generous spoon of coffee grounds--more grounds and less water for Alla, even with the tiny cups--and pour 'kipatok' over it. As I've explained to many a shocked American, you can make a perfectly decent cup of coffee this way, as long as you let the grounds settle, and don't drink 'to the last drop.'

I haven't thought about it in awhile, but perhaps one can catch the importance of hot beverages in Russian and Ukrainian culture from the very fact that they have their own word for 'boiled water.' Water, as it is, is called 'voda'. Boiled water, however, is something completely different: 'kipyatok'. You make tea and coffee with кіпяток.

By offering coffee, I fulfilled the basic hospitality requirement (and my basic 'being conscious enough to learn Russian' requirement). By bringing chocolates, Alla offered it in return, making our lessons serve double duty: visiting as well as education.

We learned my last levels of Russian with Alla. I basically just said that in Russian: you say 'We with Alex' when you mean 'Alex and I'.

We studied that advanced form of a verb that becomes an adjective: "I saw the reading girl on the subway." Hardly ever use it, but I'm proud that I know it. Nevermind that I still make mistakes with the simplest of forms.

She used Purpose Driven Life in my early lessons because I'd needed to use it in ministry. She'd sit with the Russian copy and I'd sit with the English copy, and she'd make me re-translate it myself into Russian, as best as I could. And she loved our cat, Phoebe, took pictures of her sitting on the chair with the cover that matched her fur, and seemed the least put off by her tendency to pop out from under the kitchen benches and attack us.

I haven't seen Alla in a few years, but as I sit at my table in southwestern PA, drinking my coffee and using my computer, I look up at the delicate yellow and white coffee set, and remember.

Once Upon a Time . . .

2011-11-07T20:15:00.000+02:00

I'm catching up on last night's episode of the new fairy-tale based drama on ABC, Once Upon a Time, by the guys who wrote LOST. In it, familiar characters from fairy tales are trapped in a modern town, under a curse cast by the wicked queen from the Snow White story. They are doomed to forget who they are, and be trapped in a world where there are no happy endings.

Besides being entertaining and fun, waking up my childlike imagination, this story often gives me little chills of truth.

A scene caught me: the modern day Snow White, who doesn't know who she is, has been talked into reading from the Storybook to Prince Charming, who is in a coma and also doesn't know who he is. As she opens the book, she says "I know this might seem weird, but I'm doing it for a little boy..."

Sometime after that magical reading session, the prince wakes up.

Immediately I thought about all the little small group times I had in Ukraine with college students who were unfamiliar with the Bible. Often I felt like that. "This might seem weird, but . . . "

This fantastical story is true, and you are in it.

When you hear and start to believe, you'll realize that you didn't know who you really were.

There are friends and enemies in the story. Good and evil. And a curse.

But there is also Hope.

In other news, I've been enjoying this cd, Music Inspired by the Story. The overture has the swelling massive orchestral sound of a good movie score. Each track is a song sung by one of the main characters in the Bible. It's good. Go listen!

Walking through what was: an exercise in re-membering

2011-10-30T12:54:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I wrote the story of my time in Ukraine. For some reason, I've never done this before, not in this way. I've prepared for sermons/missionary reports, but they have always been focused on bringing home a particular message, or just a sliver of the story.

It's not that this was the 'complete and unadbridged, authorized' version either, but it was the most complete I've ever done, that's for sure. We were assigned a paper in our Cross-cultural Leadership and Followership course this summer, and it's due this week. In it, we are to analyze a character or an organization using the material we studied in class. I only decided a couple weeks ago to change my topic from a character study on someone from Eastern Orthodox history (which I thought might help me with my dissertation) to an organizational study on our own mission in Ukraine (which I think might help me with my life).

This homework has the potential to be both grueling and healing. Let's hope it also has the potential to actually get done :-)

Missionary kids

2011-10-15T15:43:00.000+03:00

We were at a Ken Medema concert Wednesday night and while he was doing his usual 'tell me a story and I'll write you a song' bit, a girl came up to the mic. "When my brother and I were growing up in the jungles of West Africa," she started, immediately changing our perception of this white, fleece-wearing, 'typical' Christian college student.

Missionary kids often hide a colorful past behind a pale exterior. Compared to their peers in their birth country, they are usually better educated, but less aware of recent cultural phenomena (or aware of the recent, but with a gap of 10-20 years of what was going on in the 80s or 90s, or whatever decade their parents were serving overseas). What they possess in exchange is hard to display, impossible to measure, and scary to reveal to peers. How to shop in an open market for a chicken that isn't spoiled yet. Or a rabbit that isn't a cat. How familiar airports are. What to do when the UN leaves you to the ravages of genocide. How to survive as a woman in a culture where sexual harassment doesn't have a name: it's just life. How to manage half of the adult responsibilities of running a church (or two) when you are sixteen. What it's like to always be a foreigner, no matter where you go.

On occasion I have even felt like a missionary kid, since I went away relatively early in my young adult life, and missed some of the early formative adult experiences that one has in the US. But that's only a teeny taste of what a real missionary kid knows. Many come back and go right into colleges, and through that intensive course in peer relations, they make a swift transition to being 'normal' American young adults, at least on the outside.

But the missionary kid holds at least a world or two inside them, that few are able to access. And for the most part, they get pretty used to not being fully known.