To See Simply

I went on a picnic yesterday, a concept that is simultaneously similar and disparate from picnics in the States. Families here spend a lot of time together, especially on Fridays, the Muslim holy day. Every week, during the spring, summer and fall, everyone and their grandmother pile into their vans and heads out to scenic locations with the ridiculous amounts of food that the women stayed up half the night to prepare for lunch the next day. We’ll drive for at least a couple of hours, usually up into the mountains, pulling over for whoever needs to chuck their breakfast and finally find a place with some running water. Of course, if there’s anything slightly lovely to see, it’s already trashed with everyone’s rubbish. That’s an unfortunate backlash of the culture here: They don’t have any concept of environmental management. Forget reduce, reuse, recycle: we’re a step up to put things in a trash can around here.
But I semi-digress. We went to this one spring along the highway and I couldn’t really tell why we were stopping at this junky stream but hey, go with the folks and do what they do and do you’re best to have a good time while your at it is my motto. But the trash site that was to be our oasis definitely gave me a pause. Still they asked, do you like it here? They were so sweet and eager to make ME happy, I didn’t have the heart to tell them that the rubbish piles creeped me out. So, of course! So, we ate and then hopped into the cold water, ignoring the litter as best as I could which was surprisingly easy once everyone decided to attack the American in a water fight. I represented my country well! So this lasted for (what I considered) and inordinate amount of time before we climbed out to dry. Then we took off for another site. And this is where the rubber meets the road folks: the people here don’t do anything in a straight line. Their concept is time is, shall we say, lax. They don’t rush to get back. They have, no joke, 3 sets of tea within an hour. I’m thinking, enough already but then, they’ll talk some more. And eat and drink. Lord help me not to gain weight! And talk some more. But there’s something that I can’t get over: They’re just altogether PRESENT. They are completely in the moment and not fixed on some mental checklist. It’s rather refreshing.
Alexis de Tocqueville once commented that America, even in the 18th century was beginning to reveal “a strange melancholy in the midst of abundance.”
Being here checks my western despondency with time and life when things don’t move fast enough or the thrill isn’t present. It’s always a fight to catch myself as I struggle for the grand adventure. Like so many of my generation, I desire to be entertained, to be enraptured and captivated in the moment. That’s just not possible here. It’s the little things, the small moments of good companionship, of staying with people that you have loved and argued with for years, the constancy that helps them in the lack of visceral gratification. As grossed out by the litter and time that sometimes lagged, I kept thinking of just being content with these sweet people. Teasing and playing simple card games, thousands of little details that I regularly fail to pay attention to because the actions and plots aren’t lit up with grandness. It’s almost as if I’m blind. Now, when I struggle with the culture, the distance from my loved ones, I take hope in what joys I’m learning to see everything, it’s life and light:
“For the one who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord.” (Prov. 9:4) And, as the silver tongue would say, “The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, shining brighter and brighter until midday.” (Prov. 4:18)


"I’ll give you a lot of detail so you can see how much of it you're missing. Then, when you're feeling despair, you can look for the little things and see them as magnificent." I'd always thought that hope took for form of lightning bolts or blazing fires or northern lights. For me it's just like Emily Dickinson wrote: "hope is the thing with feathers." Hope is a giant flock of pelicans. Hope is love and grace and even in the middle of the shadow of death. -- Excerpt taken from Stumbling Toward Faith, p.153-154-- Written by Renee Altson (2004)-- J.Brown & Grains of Sand