I first met Kaye and Jason Straight in 2011.  The two of them felt called to be a part of the mission team to El Salvador shortly after they began attending All Saints Church.  Jason is a hard working, soft spoken man’s man who found and wed an amazing woman.  Kaye is a highly driven, highly intelligent woman who found and wed an amazing man.  Together they form one of All Saints’ most prized super couples.  

Having dinner with them last night had a hint of surreality.  The three of us were together in El Salvador in January of this year.  I can remember sitting on the curb of a parking lot in San Salvador, talking about their hopes to adopt a child.  Kaye and Jason wanted to be parents and at that time it appeared that their only option would be to adopt.  Last night I got to hold their baby girl for the first time.  Hazel was born October 5th of this year.

If Kaye becoming pregnant was miracle number one, the day of Hazel’s birth was the day of at least a dozen more miracles.  If you ever have the opportunity to break bread with the Straights, ask them about it.  Jason will narrate, because Kaye cannot remember.  He will tell you of God’s protecting hand over his wife and daughter that day.  He will tell you of the miracle that every person who worked at the hospital had to come and see; the 9.9.

We had dinner at the Claim Jumper in Southcenter.  I had always heard that the entrees were so large as to be repulsive to the human conscience.  I must have heard wrong.

Chet and Brianne have been staples in my life since late 2008.  It was around that time when Chet first invited me to go deer hunting with him.  The end of 2008 marked more than just the end of an awful presidency; for me it was the end of many treasured things.  The eyes remember.  In my mind’s eye I can still feel a veil of unanticipated disappointment and loneliness over everything I experienced in that time.  I hadn’t fired my rifle in over a decade, but I could still shoot.  Chet and I visited a gun range north of Seattle some weeks before our excursion to sight in our long guns.

On our way out toward Cle Elum, I recall singing “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” to Chet in his red Chevy S10.  That song has been a part of my consciousness since around that time.  The Pogues and the Psalms are good company in times of grief.  Over the next three days of walking woods framed trails, slopes, and deer paths, Chet and I saw the hind quarters of two fleeing animals.  The trip did not fill our freezers at home with buck steaks, but both of us netted a strong bond with someone from church.  Chet and Brianne are both nurses.  About a year later the Owings were two of the ten missionaries who traveled to El Salvador as part of our medical mission team.  I think it was there that the connections were galvanized.

Since then I have been treated like a brother by both Chet and Brianne.  Last night I slept in their spare bedroom after celebrating Chet’s birthday party at the American Brewing Company in Edmonds, Washington.  This morning I was encouraged to stay for breakfast.  Sweet potatoes, sausage, eggs, and kale make for a tasty spatch.  Later, Brianne helped me complete some online Christmas shopping duties.  All Saints is teaming with amazing couples like these two.  Anytime I sit in a service I feel like I’m looking at a roster of plain-clothed super heroes.

Up from Colorado out

From Colorado setting down

My home city state

Number ten bringing flair

Rich a bright conscious

Black on black top

Fierce as your beast

Curious, lunging, lovely, smooth

A trio finding trails

Tears stain a beauty

Humans connect over meals.  In a culture where people are encouraged to constantly appear busy, this time of connection can easily get lost or forgotten.  We have all experienced how difficult it is to keep good habits.  As an observer of and participant in this experimental time, it is impossible for me to completely remove myself from the mad discarding of the sacred which is taking place in our society.  One might observe that the Albanian people seem to know better than Amerikans when it comes to connection and family, consistency and tradition.  I believe that they know better simply by default.

There is a wisdom to traditional life, both spoken and unspoken.  Wise living is a tradition of no small craft.  Countless years of cultural evolution have resulted in numerous flawed yet sustainable, simple, systems for living.  Those systems have family members eating food together.  Those systems declare that two people, when eating together, are participating in a sacred familial act.

In honor of my birthday yesterday, my little sister Anne took me out for lunch.  Yester-evening I ate with six of the finest people I know.  Tonight my mother treated me to ahi and fire pasta at the Powerhouse Brewery in Puyallup, Washington.  We talked about family for the most part.  She made an observation which was no small flattery.  She told me that I remind her of her father.  “And my father was a good man,” she reminded me.  “A man with simple tastes, maybe, but a good man,” she concluded.

Any man who can look down from heaven on three such fine children must have simple tastes indeed.  A taste for meals at home, for his wife’s cooking.  A taste for gatherings in state parks with siblings and outdoor fare.  A taste for oranges taken from the toes of stockings on Christmas morning.  My grandfather left me an amazing mom.  How did he do that?

Some months ago, in anticipation of my return visit home, my father sent me an itinerary via email.  Outlined in the document were key moments like my trip to Tucson to celebrate Christmas with the Funk Family, and All Saints Church’s mission to El Salvador in January.  Also included in the list of blacked-out dates was a three day road trip with my father down to Chico, California; he must have wanted to surprise me.

My father loves to drive vehicles over long distances.  The drives give him a chance to see different parts of our expansive nation at different times, when the season is new or changing.  He likes to pass by cities and towns at night when all he can see is the lights.  He fascinates at sunlight breaking over the crisp white reminders of snowstorms; marvels at the weave and winding way our land has been grooved, cleared, paved and brought under foot.  He especially loves the trains.

The Black Bear Diner in the town of Mt. Shasta, California is a place of comfort for my father.  I have eaten there with him on numerous occasions.  We found ourselves there on both legs of our Chico journey.  On our way to Chico, after having eaten our gigantic breakfasts at the Black Bear, we walked into town.  Near the diner is a railroad crossing which speeds goods through one of the most beautiful areas on earth.  “I hear a train.  I want to see it,” my dad said as we neared the tracks.  I hadn’t heard anything, but I did not doubt him.  “Do you think it has a caboose?” he asked.

With a friendly wave he greeted the conductor in the same manner I expect he greeted conductors as a child growing up in Oklahoma.  How could you not love this man?

About three months ago my father sent me a question.  The precursor was the fact that All Saints Church was having an auction to raise money for the upcoming mission to El Salvador.  The question was: “Do you have anything you could bring from Albania that we could auction off?”  The answer seemed simple, seamless, brief yet honest: “No.”  I didn’t tell my father that.  Instead I looked around my apartment at the various treasures I had accumulated over the previous five months and concluded: “I can bring home three hand-forged axe heads and a knife made by me.  Oh, and a printed copy of the blog I’ve been keeping, signed by the author himself.”

All of these seemed like relatively simple things to produce.  The church we’ve been building in Fushekruja is a short walk from Osman.  Osman is one of the most talented men I’ve ever had exposure to.  He has been a blacksmith his entire life, and his mind is like that of my Uncle Norman’s: organized, precise, imaginative, and beautiful.  Osman had agreed months before to help me forge a knife of my own design, hand-forged axe heads can be readily purchased from the pazar in Fushekruje, and my friend Cory Lockhart told me about an online service which prints blogs into book form.

One of the axe heads sold for a generous sum to a man named Ian.  On Sunday last I spoke with my friend Chelsea Cook at church.  Ian is Chelsea’s work mate.  Chelsea is about as beautiful of a person as you are likely to meet.  She and my good friend Kris Bates have been nurturing a love for some time, and are on the docket to wed in May.  Congratulation you two.  So, there I was, Seattle 2012, trying to make good on commitments I made from Eastern Europe some months ago.

The axe heads were advertised as axes, and Ian must have been expecting a fully functional axe i.e. something which a man can wield to bring a fully erect tree to a prone resting place along the forest floor.  A visit to Hardwick’s Hardware in Seattle turned my predicament into a blessing.  I love that place.  Any carpenter, shipwright, furniture maker, or cabinet maker would love that place.  Before leaving I not only had the materials to turn a simple hand-forged axe head into a limb  lopping leviathan, I had the knowledge to produce a dangerous weapon of the woods.  And so I did, and was able to meet Chelsea’s deadline of yesterday plus one without any hickups.

Janice Walker is the person who runs S.A.V.E., a volunteer organization based in Chico, California.  S.A.V.E., Salvage All Valuable Equipment, has been holding and redistributing medical supplies for future use since 1996.  In 2004, Janice Walker became aware of the organization and took it over.  S.A.V.E. had been floundering, and was about to disband when Janice felt a call from the LORD to serve in a significant way, and was made aware of S.A.V.E.’s existence.  I do not believe in coincidence, I believe in God.  Janice is God’s perfect instrument in Chico.

My father and I spent about an hour on Tuesday morning with Janice, touring the warehouse and storage units that S.A.V.E. operates out of.  Since 2004 this organization has sent 99 shipping containers full of medical supplies to some 40 countries.  The Chico facilities are also available to receive supply donations and to distribute small amounts of supplies to individuals on Tuesday mornings.  While the three of us were walking around, a hospice nurse drove up looking for a bath chair, a floor-to-ceiling pole and a transfer bed.  It took Janice about five minutes to outfit the stranger with all three, blessing her as she sent her on her way.

After the tour I spent about an hour helping with the unpacking, labeling, and repacking of supplies, and then the morning was over and it was time to close the warehouse.  Janice offered to take me to lunch with three of the other volunteers.  We had hamburgers, sodas and fries.  Janice had one more thing to take care of before her day’s mission was over; the delivery of a scooter to a woman in need.  The scooter did not run, and we went to three local businesses for help in troubleshooting and repair.  In all I think the entire undertaking took four to five times as much effort and energy as Janice had expected.

At the bottom floor apartment unit, in a cul de sac part of town, we found Pam.  Pam recently lost her foot to an emergency amputation following a rash of odd sounding injuries and mishaps.  The conversation between Janice and Pam was polite, but mechanical, until we were about to leave.  I shook Pam’s hand and, as we made eye contact that neither one of us would break, I said “God bless you.”  The woman began to cry, and Janice asked if we might pray for her.  Pam accepted, and we prayed, and it was really a beautiful feeling.  “I want to help people,” Pam said, through tears, “I want to build things for people.”  And I believe that is what God wants for Pam too.

I have been impressed and encouraged by my father in recent months.  January of this year he and I and nine other people from All Saints Church in Seattle went on a one week mission trip to El Salvador.  Since that time my father, Joe, has been looking for ways to bless the people of that nation.  He and I drove down to Chico, California yesterday to meet with an associate of his named Janice Walker.  Janice has made it her mission in life to see that medical supplies be sent to nations in the Third World.  This trip was also designed to give my father and I some time on the road together.  

We were invited to attend a dinner at an American Chinese restaurant in Chico last night.  Janice hosts one such event for her volunteers each year.  At the dinner we were blessed to hear from a man named Leon, who has conducted the delivery of four containers full of medical equipment to the nation of Liberia in Africa.  We were all encouraged to hear about and see the ways that efforts like his are blessing those in need.  Our nation is so very rich, with many resources sitting fallow in warehouses or in the landfill, I was happy to see how blessed this man was by his work.  

I was reminded that God will not require more than all of us, everything we are is all that He wants.  If we follow His direction in our life, we, our world and our God will be richly blessed.

As the irregular nature of my postings to this website would cause all who have been following my travels to realize, I have not gotten into a rhythm since leaving Albania.  This is true for my mind, body, spirit, self, soul, core, energy, all of me.  I have had a number of people ask me “Are you having culture shock?”  And while I insist that I can not know the answer to that question, the answer can only be “yes.”  

I have come home to a world transformed a little, to people transformed a little.  My friends Dana and Leigh had a little boy on Christmas day of 2011.  Yesterday I saw that baby Jack is walking with sure, sturdy steps.  The Metropolitan Market on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle is gone.  It, and some of the surrounding businesses have been removed root and stem to make way for new.  I didn’t know any of the people working at the Starbucks on the corner of Boston and Queen Anne Avenue North.  I knew the person I walked there with, however.  I am grateful that Hannah has not changed so much as that.

These changes are not what has caused the shock.  The shock is coming mostly in the form of how I perceive the conversations I overhear in the coffee shops and restaurants.  Are the concerns of the average Amerikan really as mundane as YouTube clips and bacon strips?  Isn’t there more going on in the world than those kinds of things?  Don’t we have an empire to expand and create?  And do we not long for connections with roots?

I will say that I know in my heart that we are longing for those things.  We need to remember what we are building, and who we are building for.

Late in 2004 my Uncle Lynn, my father’s oldest brother, took me with him on a safari trip to five southern African nations.  On our way we had a layover in London which gave us about four hours to tour the city.  My uncle had been to London a number of times before, and so he was confident that we would be able to see some of what the British were known for.  And in that four hour period of time we walked through Westminster Abby, were able to see the Royal Palace, 21 Downing Street, and various other fountains and lesser monuments.  With an educated guide, the short trip was made full and memorable.

It was with this success in mind that I booked extended layovers in both Venice and Paris.  My time in Paris seemed to be made uncomfortable by the design of some very intelligent people, and so I will not here go into the details of it.  Most likely, if I had been with someone who knew the city, I would have experienced at least a marginal amount of enjoyment.  If you have never known hunger, it is impossible to perceive the comfort of satiation.  Venice has everything in place to give a person travelling alone the keys to that great city.

For a small fee, I purchased a ticket for the water bus from the airport to Rialto, one of Venice’s countless neighborhoods.  Rialto had signs of an advanced culture from what I could only guess were ancient Roman times.  In reality, Venice has only been a great city for about 1400 years, although it is named for a people group who lived therefrom as early as the 10^th century B.C.

Before visiting Venice, all I knew of it was what I remembered from the third Indiana Jones film where Indiana and his quick mating German counterpart are hunted through the city’s canals and subterranean passageways by a fanatic group of Holy Grail protectors.  I looked online, and the city is actually built atop 118 small islands.  The roads are made of water, the conveyances float.

The buildings are mostly separated by narrow alley ways.  In Rialto, which is the only area I was able to see, the buildings are typically between three and seven stories tall.  If there is a full meter walk at the alley floor, the buildings at their peak are far closer together.  Rough timbers and stone faced, concrete steps are everywhere.  I am imagining the dissection of the city in a careful way, and all that might be known about the Mediterranean world over the centuries if we could simply catalog and study the materials used to turn spits, hooks, holms and strands into one of the most enduring treasures of humankind’s creation.