What is there to say about today?

I had a lot of time with my good friend Visi today, and he is a good friend.  In the church, we say that the Body is composed of people we wouldn’t otherwise choose to spend time with, just like family.  One of the great things about this time has been God’s revelation to me, some small glimpse at least, of the vastness of His family.  I am so thankful that part of His plan for me was to be introduced to Visi.  Our friendship is one of the things I treasure most.

A scale not grand

Limitless wealth of craft

From pebbles placed each

Foot honored to tread

Wall nook, door, tile

Vision precise, meticulous, fine

Drawn upward, chin high

Eye capture without capacity

Fabric magnified 1000 times

Ripples in ocean counted

Crush under opulent gaze

Lost telling kingdom’s tale

My trip back from Istanbul put me in at my apartment in Sauk at 10PM, Thursday night, yesterday.  This morning I went to my Albanian language lesson despite my mind and body crying out for just a few more hours of sleep.  Traveling even a short distance involves so many stress triggers and interactions with people that are out of the ordinary, no wonder it is exhausting and not refreshing to complete the final leg home.  At the airport in Istanbul, all of the luggage of the passengers is checked withing 50 feet of walking through the front door.  Avarice in the form of westerners making their way through the line with as many as a dozen parcels, each measuring around 24 inches cubed, is common at IST International.  One of the shop keepers I spoke with near the Blue Mosque told me that he once sold $105,000 in rugs to a couple from Everette, Washington.  The proper answer to the age old question “what do you get the man/woman who has everything?” is: “everything else.”

The church in Fushekruje had a different appearance today from the time when I left 9 days ago.  The facade in the front and the rear have been inlaid with tile, giving just another incremental glimpse of what the finished church will look like.  The godina went through another transformation in roof plan while I was away, and it looks finished and professional.  Visi was pleased to report that in seven days of rain there hadn’t been any leaks.  The transformer which will bring electricity from the street to the church has been mounted and appears ready for its final wiring.  Visi had also done quite a bit of work on the flower beds which are on either side of the entry-way steps.  

It was good to be back in town.  Sauk, Tirana, and Fushekruje all have the familiarity of home, its comforts and frustrations, the parts I have always loved and the parts I am learning to love.  Last night, on my walk from the bus stop to the college, I found myself surrounded by street dogs who were eager for whatever food I had brought them.  After no little insistence on the part of one of the smaller, blonde coated, black nosed beasts, I dug into my backpack and produced a package of cookies.  Standing there, throwing the hard biscuits to one animal, and then the next, I was grateful for those begging hounds.  In less than a month I will be returning to the States for a short time.  I wonder if they will know me when I get back.

Knit capped Arabic woman

Cipher a needleless fir

As the wind hurries

Her branches over lead

Welded sun bleached blues

Crisp deep honey green

White streaked pinks form

Round mustard centers each

Storm’s breath carries work

Painter’s brush over salvaged

Triangles, sharp jagged bits

Make dark your words

Rhythm in beaded bracelets

Turquoise and ruby interruptions

Silver banded breaks to

Delicate cream thin wrists

Joshua Hughes

7.November.2012

Brent Liebe is trying to fulfill a vision that he first had in Romania 13 years ago.  While on a mission trip here with his group from Master’s Commission, Brent received a word from three separate Americans serving in Romania that God intended for him to serve here.  May 8th, 2009 Brent, Renea and their 3 month old son Latney landed at Henri Coandă International Airport.  Since that time they have added to their family with the addition Falise.  This family of four is committed to serving in Romania, and what they have the potential to achieve is both inspiring and exciting.

What they hope God can achieve through their service in Romania is a living blue print which can be used the world over for rehabilitated men to be reintroduced to life with the skills necessary to thrive.  Brent, Latney and I went for a ride to Campina to visit one of Brent’s contacts today.  What can be accomplished for God in Romania and for all of Eastern Europe will only be limited by the willingness of His Body to love, plant, serve, educate, and lead.  The backdrop to this ministry is like a Balkan Pennsylvania.  If there is a more beautiful place on earth, I have never seen it.

I attended a conference in Greece in July of this year.  At that conference I met a married couple named Brent and Renea Liebe.  Invitations to come and work with missionaries who are already serving in other nations are relatively common.  Once my time of service in Albania comes to an end I will need another assignment.  Eastern Europe could easily make use of ten times as many missionaries as are currently fielded here.  Brent Liebe has been the only missionary to approach me about helping out in ways specific to my strengths.

He is planning to begin a trade school to train young men who have graduated from Christian, drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs in Romania.  The training would give these men legal, marketable skills that are both practical and in demand in the local economy.  The overall intent of the program would be to offer men who clearly have the desire to change their lives, the tools to succeed.  Brent is currently in the beginning phases of seeing through his ministerial vision and I am here to get a feel for things.

Bucharest is a city of 1,700,000 people.  Romania is a nation of 22,000,000 people.  There are 200 beds available to substance abuse victims through Christian organizations in the nation of Romania.  By the grace of God, the Liebe’s will help in providing for those people a chance at a better life in Christ Jesus.  By the grace of God we will all play a part in that healing.

Istanbul has as many cats per square meter as the kitchens of Seattle restaurants have rats.

Eastern European countries have an abundance of street dogs.  The hill I grew up on was known locally as Sumner Heights.  People from around our community would intentionally bring their unwanted dogs onto the hill to leave them there.  One of those dogs was brought in by my family when I was in the eighth grade.  My relationship with Bo fostered an affection for unwanted dogs in me.  I still would love to take almost every dog I see under my roof, any roof, and see to their feeding and care.  I do not typically feel that way about street cats.  

Curious sea stone scavenger

Friend to fishing men

Centurion of the cemeteries

Marble perch master

Snack cart stalker

Company while I make my way home

Mentor in relaxation

Treasured resource where west finds east

I have a number of subjects in mind for posts in the coming days.  However, I would like to try and tackle first a bit of the man known as Ataturk.  Travelers to Istanbul will first encounter this legendary human on their tickets from wherever to Ataturk Airport.  Images of him are reminiscent of other foundational leaders from the 20th century like Vladimir Ilyiç Ulyanov; a man of simple blood who rose to meet the challenges of his day in a fearless, ruthless manner.  The drive of men like these is a point of fascination for me.  By the end of the battle for the Gallipoli Peninsula there was a Davidic Hero walking amonst the Ottoman ranks.  Our tour guide gave the synopsis just so: “Right place, Chanuk Bair (where the Ottoman’s stopped the Allied advance), right time, 1915, right man, Mustafa Kemal.”

One of the quotes our tour guide took from history was of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk saying “I am not ordering you to fight, I am ordering you to die.  Let us die so that other men can come and take our place in the battle.”  Mustafa Kemal lead the counterattack for 9 months.  Eventually the Allies withdrew.  Ataturk is considered in Turkey like Andrew Jackson or George Washington are in the United States.  A military man who helped secure the freedom of his people through intelligent, thoughtful, relentless and honorable sacrifice and fervor.

Eventually the Ottoman Empire was defeated along with Germany, Bulgaria, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Its lands were occupied by foreign forces.  In the next years Mustafa Kemal lead a military effort to bring the rule of modern day Turkey to its own people.  He became the first president of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, and office he held until his death in 1938.  Even today heroes are being born around the world; women and men we will not know by name for many years.  Our world has a dynamism we cannot comprehend, one more example of the vast creator and His infinite genius.

In the States we have memorials in the places where battles were fought.  There were battles to secure freedom for the colonists, battles to prove northern superiority, battles to displace the native peoples of our lands, and others as well.  We also have a number of memorials which serve to remind us of those we have lost in foreign lands.  Today, in Gallipoli, I visited the memorials erected in honor of the Australians, Canadians, English, French, New Zealanders, and Turkish who died during the invasion of the peninsula in 1915 and 1916.

I first learned of this battle through a song on a Pogues album.  And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda is a song from the perspective of an old man who is recalling the life he had as a patriot of Australia.  This song and the Psalms were the two poetic works most instrumental in the healing of my mind and heart after I lost something very dear to me in 2009.  And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the seemingly senseless ways we treat our fellow man.  The scars and bewilderment of loss are universal.

Two days ago I was having a conversation with the concierge at the hostel I am staying at.  He mentioned some of the places that people who are visiting Istanbul like to visit.  He told me that Troy was not very good, but that there is a place called Çanakkale with a tour that people enjoy quite a bit.  I told him how interesting I found that name because it sounded similar to Gallipoli which is the name of a place in a song I love.  Gallipoli is what English speakers call Çanakkale, and I knew immediately after he told me that that I had to go there.

I was already there, it turns out.  We are all there.  Each person reading this has a brother in some distant way who died either in the water, or the sand, climbing a hill or digging the next inches of an endless trench.  It wasn’t until I heard that song by the Pogues for the first time that I knew to even think of this place.  The pines are like Bend, Oregon or Split, Croatia.  The grass is like Yakima, Washington or Bizerte, Tunisia.  The water is like Sanibel Island, Florida or Zihuatanejo, Mexico.  But the blood is like no place and every place.  The blood is like a home we will never find, a place in which we will always dwell, an embrace from Mother Earth, a gift from Father God.

I am sitting at a Starbucks Coffee in Istanbul, near the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque.  In the days leading up to my departure for the nation of Turkey, I found myself feeling out of sorts.  I can’t know how common or uncommon it may be for you, dear reader, to feel like every noise is sharp and unwanted, every drop of rain on your wet skin is unpleasant, and even the landing of a fly within reach an unbearable nuisance.  October 30th had me sharply aware of every misery I might well have ignored.

And now I am here in one of the centers of civilization as its known.  There are some 17 million beautiful children of God, brothers and sisters of mine, in this city.  I was met at the airport by two of them.  Bruna and Rukiam were waiting for me at the public receiving area just outside of Ataturk.  In the States pedestrians are allowed to meet their dear ones at the baggage carousel, but not here.  After Bruna introduced me to her new friend, we were on our way to the tram, and then on to another tram to arrive at a plaza where sultans have been trying to out design, and out build each other for as long as there have been sultans.

Rukiam and Bruna were lovely.  It had not been my intention to meet anyone in Istanbul, but fortunately there was a need.  In the future I will endeavor to spend my first day in a place that is new to me with one or more people who have learned how to roam and feast and find beauty where a stranger might not see.  Rukiam is the first Kurdish person I have known, Bruna has been known to me since April.  Rukiam has the discoverer’s heart.  She wants to hone her English, learn Arabic, and she sings in Hebrew.  I must have heard her say “Thank you Jesus,” a dozen times or more; a bright, beautiful heart.

The landscape here is one common to coastal cities.  There are low hills like those in San Francisco, Seattle and Split.  Like any great city, there have been endeavors at mass transit which have resulted in a heightened degree of opportunity in the form of access to wealth and culture; the humming thrum of bustle. Vibrancy, tradition, world, motion, vision, community: Istanbul.