It was Friday morning.  I woke up on a couch, having spent the night at the apartment of four of my class-mates from dive-school.  I can’t say why the television was even on that morning.  Tony Meyers was from Florida and I think his girlfriend had received a telephone call from her mother, telling her to turn on the local news.  It was difficult to make out what we were looking at and I was frustrated that the television was even on.  What could be so important?  I called my parents to find out what they knew.  My mother told me that one of the Twin Towers had fallen.  “Ridiculous,” I thought.  “What a bunch of reactionary nonsense.”

We all walked to school a little stunned, not wanting to be late, but also not knowing if school would even be held that day.  It was, and I can’t remember if the subject was salvage or haz-mat; hazardous materials handling.  There were around 20 people in my dive-class, four of whom were ex-military.  We all talked about going to war that day and what might happen next.  I thought that soon I would at least lose my class-mate Steve Acton to the Rangers where he had already served for four years.  None of us would eventually go on to enlist and eventually all of us graduated, with the exception of RIchard Burns who died in a motorcycle accident with less than two months remaining in our program.

I can remember the rhetoric in the days to follow.  Turning desserts into glass and taking whole populations out of the lexicon of modern peoples were the punchlines of wishes masked as jokes and japes.  We can all thank God for Hiroshima and Nagasaki in times where our collective intelligence has been undermined by a seemingly unquenchable anger.  It seems we have learned, to some degree, the limitations of revenge killing on such a scale as that.  And I can say, that had we murdered every Muslim believer in the days to follow the day that cowardice masked itself in religious righteousness, our world would be so very poor.  In condemning our perceived enemies so, we would have lost our very souls with as much certainty as the most instrumental participants in the Nazi regime lost their’s.

After coffee with Vissy today I came back to Shpetim’s tile-stand to talk about language and life.  We went over some business ideas of his which gave me a rare opportunity to explain some of the basic tenets of Christianity to him.  In kind he explained some of the basics of Islam, making for a discussion which held my interest utterly.  Islam is the only faith that most Albanians have ever known.  Every day we wake is another day which God has given us to carry out His commission.  I am so very grateful for days like today, and for friends like Shpetim.

Who has forgotten where they were on this day eleven years ago?  And just as important is where you are today.  Not mentioning nine-eleven in this post would be like overlooking the fact that it was Christmas or Easter.  Hopefully another decade or so will relegate this date to history like December 7th, 1941 or June 6th, 1944; dates which are significant to our collective history but no longer compel us to curse faceless cowards or condemn entire nation-states to any of Hell’s many levels.

I spent the morning in Tirana taking my first formal Albanian language lesson.  Arta is my teacher’s name, and she seems both capable and personable.  After going over the alphabet and some questions I had about pronunciation of letters, our time was up.  There are 36 letters in the Albanian alphabet, nine of which are called diagraphs.  Diagraphs are two-letter combinations which always stand for a certain sound.  We have these in English too; combinations like ph and qu.  It is essential to know these in Albanian because pronounciation of the double L verses the single L can mean the difference between the words for “tile” and “old woman,” or “boy” and “devil.”

On my walk to the bus stop from Arta’s house I took in some of the local graffiti art.  I arrived in Fushekruje around 10:30, en-route having a chance to speak with a pair of Germans on their way to Kruje.  As I approached the job-site Shpetim Lula waved to me.  I told him that I would meet him after lunch time.  Shortly I had a chance to speak with Vissy about the morning’s events and to take a look at the results of the first day’s concrete pour.  I was pleased on both accounts.  The crew we hired is taking the necessary time to place the concrete as it should be placed, and to give it the proper finish before moving on.

I was pleased also to see that Fisnik had hired Agim to lend a hand on the job.  Agim has a smile ready for me every time we meet.  He is a sweet man.  After checking on the work, I walked to Capo Nord for a coffee while waiting on Vissy to take his noon-time break.  Once he arrived we went over the cost estimates he has put together for some of the last remaining tasks on site.  Over the course of this job he has shown a keen ability to learn, and also to take the lead when necessary.  Hopefully the church in Albania can find a way to capitalize on his maturity and growth.  We have grown together over these past five months.  I value his friendship as highly as any that I have.

The first day of concrete was today.  Most of the work we’ve accomplished over the past five months will soon be covered over, inaccessible, invisible, and in the past.  The time just before a concrete pour is the most stressful time in a superintendent’s existence on a job site.  As the day to begin pouring approaches, one’s senses get heightened as does one’s anxiety level.  Problems on the job site seem alive and wicked as curses.

Today, more than ever before in my building career, I am having to trust that the men on the ground know their craft, care enough to produce a good product, and have the experience necessary to catch all of the things that I’ve missed.  The Plagenhoefs and I decided to hire the work out to a crew which specializes in concrete work; instead of taking on the task of pouring the flat-work ourselves.  Weather the crew on site today is composed of men who are skilled in the craft of concrete remains to be proven.  

Two of the four man crew hired by Fisnik were men I’ve worked with in the past.  Cole and Edmund seem like good men, but it is difficult for me to get a bearing on whether or not they are trustworthy.  When faces become friendly too quickly it always causes me to doubt.  Tomorrow morning I will have a look at the results of the first day’s pour and after that I should be able to relax a little.  

Vissy and Sajmir were in site today to install more pieces of border; the results of a last-minute change made in a meeting last Friday.  Tomorrow Vissy will be working on the sprutso, alone.  It will be good to have his eyes on site in the morning before I get there.  Tomorrow I am going to take my first class of formal language instruction.  I am a little nervous.

Today was the first day of school in Albania for gradeshoolers.  Fatjon came by the job site with his friend Mario for a quick visit.  It is always nice to see young men in their best clothing with their faces washed, and their hair clean; looking sharper than a diamond-carved razor blade.  I had not expected to see him today and it was a nice surprise.  He is a good young man and he is intelligent and sincere besides.  Working with young people is a good way to remind oneself how unwritten the future is and how beautiful it has the potential to be.

The school year is upon us here in Albania.  Grade school children will be expected to appear at their desks promptly at 8AM tomorrow morning.  The cost of school is prohibitive, even for the very young who are expected to purchase their textbooks besides all of the normal supplies needed for school.  A benefactor from the States provided funding enough for about 35 bundles of books for poor students to be received through our church.  The church in Fushekruje was crowded today with parents and children who had come for their books.  It was a rare opportunity for Pastor Alban to reach new ears with the Gospel message.

Yesterday the Plagenhoefs and I took a break from our Fall cleaning of their home to interview a prospective student for the bible school in Sauk.  School will begin here on the 17th.  I am eager to see my friends again.  I enjoyed connecting with the students immensely when I first arrived here in April.  Five students will be returning for their second of two years of instruction.  I am also excited to make connections with the first year students like the young woman we interviewed.  After hearing her story I feel so blessed to be a part of the church here.  Jesus has brought hope, love and joy to countless Albanian families over recent years.

The summer has been a challenging time for me.  I am so very thankful that I did not arrive here in the summer to begin with.  Having students living here at the school with me for the first two months made my transition from the States a smooth one.  Being alone for the last three months has been a mixed blessing in and of itself.  In Seattle companionship was never far away.  I could always find someone to meet for a late night bite or conversation.  At the end of the dial tone were numerous members of my natural and church family, any time of day.  Living alone in a place where I was already very much alone has lent to adapting, and humans were made to adapt.

Sonila is the name of a young woman who attended the bible school in Sauk a few years ago.  Last Sunday Bashkim announced to the congregation in Fushekruje that she would be having a pre-wedding open house for friends of the family on Friday the 7th, today.  I have become a member of the delegation from the church in Fushekruje, my attendance was assumed.

Sonila is a woman in her early twenties, I couldn’t say how old she is exactly.  Her family is of the Egiptar minority in Albania.  The Egiptar are like the Roma, except they trace their heritage back to the free people of Egypt.  It would be an interesting study to research how this people group came to migrate from the middle east to eastern Europe, but it is not a study I have undertaken as yet.  The Egiptar are treated by many Albanians of traditional bloodlines like African Americans in the States are treated in the South, like a sub-class, a non people-people group.  The Egiptar make up a strong percentage of the number of Christian believers in Albania.

Sonila’s family was beautiful, as she was beautiful.  She looked lovely in white and was very gracious as she received us into her family home.  Although we had not met before, she greeted me warmly and with affection.  There was the excitement of an impending Dasem in the air, but I couldn’t help but notice that the vibe was subdued as well.  All weddings hold a bit of sadness, but this is especially true in here.  In Albania a wedding is not the joining of two families, but the loss of a daughter to another person’s house.  Men will typically remain in the cities and neighborhoods of their youth while inviting their wives to join them to live in the family home. The day after tomorrow may mark Sonila’s first day away from home and family; the first of thousands of days like it.

Of the people in attendance, I was most taken with Sonila’s grandmother.  Grandmothers are typically some of the most lovely people you are ever like to meet as a rule, but in Albania there is an added level of preciousness to them.  For the most part these are women who were kept at home after age 10 or 12 to learn how to care for a household.  Married somewhere between the age of 14 and 19, these women went on to raise between 3 and 10 children, while caring for a house and small plot of farmland, which might include around half-a-dozen farm animals.  They are only sitting down now because their bodies have worn out.  Quiet, calm, dear, simple, courteous, meek and sincere; many of them have lost their husbands and one or more children.  Once a son has died, Albanian women wear black for the rest of their lives.

It was good to be a part of a strong church presence at this event.  I was honored to be a part of the festivities in honor of this young woman’s right of passage.  Life is exciting, change is exciting, and brides are beautiful.  Most likely it has always been thus.

About five weeks ago now my crew and I installed the bitter pieces of the sewage handling system at the church in Fushekruje.  We had a time restriction because I had promised Shpetim, the man who’s family owns the road which leads to our property, that we would not have the road torn up for more than two days.  In my haste to meet that deadline, I overlooked the need for a back-flow valve in the line.  A back-flow valve keeps waste heading in one direction and is designed to keep waste from inundating your system with the waste from a dozen or so other residences.  The first toilets fed into systems which did not have back-flow valves, which is why you were encouraged not to use your toilet during high-tide.

And so with concrete looming, set to begin next Monday, today was the day to get our final preparations in order before the pour.  Installing this valve while the system was new and had not been covered over might have taken Mariglen the plumber five minutes.  Because I allowed myself to get in a rush the valve went in in just under ten man-hours.  There is a maintenance metaphor in here, one of taking the time to regulate what God has blessed you with in its proper time.

If I say I don’t have time to plan my finances, or to teach my child how to properly address and adult, or to work-out, then I am cheating myself of my intended future.  God did not design us to suffer at our own hands.  Rushing through the things that maintain health of spirit, body, soul, mind, and relationship give to our future a cloudy nature it need not have.  If we make time for the things which are important to God, God will make time for the things which are important to us.

Osman paid a working visit to our job-site today.  Osman is Shpetim Lulla’s friend (no not the Shpetim who owns the road) and the three of us have had coffee together a number of times.  Osman appears either to be a boulder with arms and legs attached or a man who was rough hewn from basalt before the dawn of time.  He is a blacksmith and one of the most talented artists I have ever encountered.  I hope to learn a few basics of iron work from him before my time in Fushekruje comes to an end.

Osman came to work on our gate voluntarily.  I asked him what I could pay him for the work, and he insisted that I not pay him anything because we are friends.  It is good to work beside a master of their trade, but it is nearly as educational just to observe what they do when they make beauty out of iron or wood or words.  There is a speed and precision to a master’s craft which makes one feel almost silly for having thought there might be another way to perform a given task.  Osman could have re-hung our gate while giving the play-by-play of an American Football game, never missing a down, never misplacing the smallest drop of welding rod.

Metal craft is simple craft.  Watching Osman I could see that there is a natural discovery taking place in the mind of the artist while they work.  In many ways an artist has no idea what they will do when the time comes to craft; but they know that knowing precisely which steps to take has always been as natural as breathing for them.  It implicit in their genius.

Being afield has brought me to an unfamiliar place mentally.  I couldn’t say why, but this morning on the bus I found myself fighting back tears; I did not have to fight very hard.  As I was walking between buses I found myself pining for my mother.  When I was 17 I had practice for a musical at my high-school every afternoon, and water-polo practice in the evenings from 9PM-10:30.  I can remember sitting in the great-room of the house I grew up in, looking at my mother, and crying for no reason in particular.  It was good to have her there.  Years later, in that same room, I received a telephone call letting me know that one of my classmates from Dive School had died in a motorcycle accident.  I cried then as well.

I would cry now, if there were someone here to look into my eyes while I did.  Somewhere in my life journey I learned that shedding tears, like movies in a theater, or beers in the afternoon, have one thing in common.  All of these activities only serve to make you feel more alone than you did when you began.  This afternoon, on the bus home, a young man kept bumping into me for the entire twenty-minute ride.  After awhile I gathered that he and I were both chipping at each other.  Right before he got off the bus our eyes met, and, I didn’t remember until after that that Jesus freed me from such petty encounters as those.  I should have apologized.  

So, what do you do when you are in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by strangers and your emotions are running ragged on you?  If I come to an answer to this question, I will surely share it with you.

For the gift you never intended for me

I am grateful to the greatest measure

We are so proud to call your son a Hughes

He is the light of our family

A child with magic eyes and a sweet curiosity

Strong, simple, loving, lovely

How it must have broken you

To part with him

How you must have wept

I weep now

Thinking on my life had you not had him

How big that hole would be

My little brother

My only brother

The one I nearly killed a dozen times

Thank you for the gift of his life to us

The only one I will ever have

We will not forget you

Rest now raging heart

Sleep now stirred spirit

Free from the bondage of the body

Strong and willing for the Body

Heaven was made to have you

The Father’s house is ever rich

Walk on this day all in white

Run a fearless race in sky

We will join you soon

Joshua Hughes

4.September.2012

Culture shock is difficult to understand both in theory and in the flesh.  I would like to have believed before coming to Albania that I was somehow “above” culture shock, that the experiencing of it was the result of a lack of will.  More accurately, I would now say, my belief in my own will shielded me from acknowledging that I was experiencing culture shock to begin with.  A man in love can overlook his lover’s infidelity if he will’s for her to be his and his alone, but that won’t keep her from growing large with another man’s child.  My humanness has been the central teaching point for God on this journey.  

I am familiar with the people here, but I am not one of them.  At times I can be convincing enough for a stranger to second guess their intuition at my foreign birth, but that disguise is less than paper thin.  I speak a bit of the native language, but not enough to converse satisfactorily.  I recognize small talk for what it is now, and I never liked small talk.  I long to get into a person’s heart, to hear their story, to walk with them in their victory and the pain that came afterward.  My frustration at my own shortcomings bleeds onto the marble floor of my patience making the surface sickly slick and treacherous.  So often I simply want to wear earplugs or put in my headphones and listen to Tycho or Com Truise.  

But getting lost in silence or a mind-silencing beat is not what I was sent here to do.  I was sent here to be available for the needs of the people of God, the children of God, right down to the very light in my eyes.  How easy does my smile come, how directly do I move to greet a stranger, how quickly do I sit beside a crippled beggar?  I am not where I would want to be in my mind, and I am not yet as God would have me be.  I am not free.  

Today I was certain that I had split the crown of my head open on the branch of an olive tree.  I’m certain the man passing me on the sidewalk heard the impact as our eyes met shortly after and I gave him a quizzical smile.  He smiled back, knowing what it is to be the source of your own unconsciousness.  Continuing to walk I could feel the blood of my torn scalp as it radiated and spread through my hair.  When I finally reached my hand up to feel how deep the gouge was, I found that the skin had not broken.  I must have been imagining the wetness of blood.  The beginnings of a scab are forming their now and the ridge where my parietals fused behind the sagittal suture is raised.  Why would the trees over the sidewalks be trimmed to a height where people weren’t like to brain themselves?    

How do we know our calling?  How do we discern the voice of God?  How do we know that we are living the life that God intended for us?  

Is kindness of God?  Is love?  Is risk, for the sake of obedience, of God?  Is sacrifice in the name of humility?  Is peacemaking of God?  Weighing out, is there a weighing out of a person’s worth before we decide to step in on the side of justice?  Is a person who looks like I do worth more to me than a person who appears to be different, or is my kind the lowest of all?

As I prepare my heart for the conversations in the coming days, the necessary explaining of my answers to questions like these, a pause for clarity is good for my heart.  If a man dies while saving a child, what does he lose? If a man saves his own life and allows a child to die, what does he gain?  

I believe that God is less concerned with results and more concerned with the heart behind those results.

Today I was sitting in church, listening to Pastor Alban go on about John chapter 15, not understanding much of anything.  But the visions I was having were of hands joining to make a bridge to peace in Mitrovica.  Walking across that bridge of hands brought together in greeting were the children of that city; safe and high above the Iber River below.  And where were the parents in that vision, the adults who inherited a city divided by hatred from their parents?  Where were the workers who were standing to see that peace be made?  They were ankle, knee, waste, chest deep in a mighty river.  They were cold, and their clothing was wet.  It might be that their best pants, finest shoes, and most richly colored blouses were becoming brown, stained ruins bound to join a pile of refuse.  And would you stand in the mud, apologize to your sworn enemy, and offer them you hand if it meant that your child would know peace?  Are you called, do you feel called to try?  Is that sort of endeavor, of God?