Yesterday the new Word Made Flesh Moldova team took David Chronic, Liz Ivkovich, Phileena and me to visit Cricova, the underground wine city and vineyard in Chişinău, Moldova. It is among the most beautiful vineyards and wine bodegas Phileena and I have ever visited.
The tour ended at a long table in an exquisite dining room where we experienced a 5 flight tasting of some of Cricova’s great wines.
As we left the vineyard we drove to one of the little distribution shops to pick up a few bottles to take with us. After buying some reds, I took my bags (two bottles in each bag, one bag in each hand) and started looking around for a bathroom.
The shop owner told me to go outside and follow the sidewalk around to the back of the building.
It was snowing, snowing a lot. The sidewalk made of polished stone and was super duper slippery. As I walked past the front of a building beside the wine shop, I slipped and fell. Hard.
Laying there in the snow on my back, I immediately felt pain shooting from my tailbone into the rest of my body. I looked over and the bag of bottles in my right hand was fine, but one of the bottles in the bag on my left had broken leaving a big red wine stain in the bright white, fresh snow.
Still laying in the snow, with snow flakes falling on my face, I was unsure if I would be able to get up. Suddenly I felt the strong pull of a large Moldovan security guard tugging at the back of my coat collar. Twice my size, she just about lifted me up with one arm and then dragged me into the building where she worked. I limped to a seat and sort of moaned a soft, “oooohhhhh.”
I still had to use the bathroom and tried asking her where it was. Obviously not understanding any of my gestures for bathroom (sort of hard keeping them decent) I finally motioned like I needed to wash my hands. She brought me to a small restroom and left me.
When I limped back into the lobby of the building, I noticed a trail of spilled wine from the door to where I had been seated. Waiting for me was another woman in a white nurse/doctor’s jacket. She grabbed my left arm and started moving it to see if it was okay. I tried to tell her my arm was okay, and then pointed to my behind and said that my tailbone was in a tremendous amount of pain.
Before I knew what happened, she spun me around and pulled my jeans (and boxers) down to the middle of my butt crack and started poking around. WHAT!? The blond security guard, twice my size, stood there witnessing the inspection. I seriously should have worn a belt yesterday…
Apparently everything “checked out” and then they sat me down again in the lobby.
I tried to get up and leave, but the security guard wouldn’t let me go. Again I protested, “I think I’m fine,” and tried getting up again only to be asked to stay seated.
Finally David Chronic, who had noticed the large red patch of snow and the dribbled trail of wine into the building, walked through the door. In Romanian he spoke with the security guard and then turned around to leave, I was like, “Dave, can I go too?”
He headed back the way I had originally come and as I followed him felt the firm tug of the security guard pulling at the back of my coat again—she wouldn’t let me go the way I came but made me take a less snowy path.
Moldova… I do love it here even though I got my pants pulled down.
And today I am pretty banged up. Sore wrist, sore elbow and my tailbone still hurts.
Unbelievable.
I just opened Google News to catch up on the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating earthquake. Up and down, up and down I scrolled searching for a headline or even a link to the name, “Haiti.” Nothing.
Only after clicking on the “World” sidebar tab was I able to locate an article on Haiti, but it was the 7th one from the top of the page.
It’s only been 2 weeks since the earthquake hit. Some estimates put the death toll at 200,000 lives lost. How is it that we’ve already started to bury this story as secondary news?
Since the earthquake, our community has gotten a barrage of texts, e-mails and phone calls from concerned and compassionate friends who want to help. Most of the questions are asking about the best ways to respond. People are wondering how can/should donations be made to. Many people just want to go volunteer, be present and available in whatever ways are needed.
It’s been great to see the world rally around the needs of Haiti, I just hope our attention span lasts long enough to really make a difference.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time reflecting on what has happened in Haiti and want to offer two conversation starters for those who have it within them to help:
Rebuilding isn’t enough. Things were already pretty bad there before the earthquake, to merely rebuild isn’t an option. Can we find the imagination to hope for an even better Haiti? I mean, now that it has the world’s attention can we hope that rather than merely “re-building,” Haiti could be designed and constructed to what Haitians have always wanted, needed, hoped for and deserved? Can post-earthquake Haiti be a better version of what it was before the earthquake?
Haiti can’t afford another loss. I think one of the things thoughtful, caring people need to keep in mind is that going to help without following-through is another offense to a nation that can’t afford another loss. Making a financial pledge that you don’t follow through with is another assault on the vulnerabilities of our hemisphere’s poorest neighbors. I certainly don’t want to discourage people from responding, but I think we need to be accountable in our responses by cautioning and reminding people that engaging the needs will require a commitment on their part.
The ‘Devil’ Writes Pat Robertson A Letter - The Two-Way - Breaking News, Analysis Blog : NPR
By Frank James
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune published a letter from Satan to evangelist Pat Robertson, responding to his comment that Haiti’s persistent troubles, including the earthquake, are due to a pact the nation made with Mephistopheles.
Actually, it wasn’t Satan who wrote the letter but Lilly Coyle of Minneapolis writing in the persona of the hellish one.
I think she got it down pretty well. What say you?
Dear Pat Robertson,
I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action.
But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished.
Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”?
If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll.
You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.
Best, Satan
LILY COYLE, MINNEAPOLIS
via npr.org
Others recieving votes: Georgia 6, Navy 6, West Virginia 5, Florida St. 4, Oregon St. 3, Stanford 3, Auburn 2, Notre Dame 2, Kentucky 1.
Phileena’s first book, Pilgrimage of a Soul: Contemplative Spirituality for the Active Life, will be published by InterVarsity Press and available this June.
This print series began as a stepping off point from the print series “A History of Thugs”. When speaking about that print series I would comment on how many of the figureheads in American History are held in great regard while their records, when dissected, are brutal, cruel, and inhumane. One example that kept coming up was that of Andrew Jackson. Every time I spend a twenty dollar bill, I am confronted with the face of a man who as a main part of his political career focused on confronting the ‘Indian Problem’ and was instrumental in mass deaths of said people. And in strange twist, was a man that opposed to the National Bank of the U.S.A. The way in which States choose to write and rewrite history, and the ways in which they exhalt certain figures in those histories takes on relative significance.
Frustrated with our current political climate (2004-2005) and the habitual and unchallenged abuse of power of the ruling classes over time, I felt that it would be historically significant to document my take on things, a commentary on the now from a future looking back on us. While a parody of the concept of money, these documents are not based on a monetary scale of 1s, 5s, 10s, etc., but are instead a catalog of those things which will perhaps be glossed over or heralded in positive light. In no way are the signing secretaries the opinions of those chosen, but instead a selection on my part of my assumptions of those values they hold to be important.
This print series then, are the documents of the Banque D’Epoch Eclipse, the sputtering agendas of a culture bankrupting itself and full of hubris. The prints are digital archival pigment prints, editioned to 15 each, printed by Joe Stoner in Cincinnati, OH. Prints are available for purchase.
Putting together the list of my best reads of 2009 has been very difficult for me.
To begin, I sort of hate to post this because more than 30 of my friends had books published this year. And to each of you whose book didn’t make this list, I apologize.
Also, I am pretty selective about what I’ll read, so almost everything I picked up this year was pretty solid. That makes it super duper hard to narrow down the list of what I thought was the very best.
Finally, in 2009 I read almost 90 books worth 18,000 pages. That’s my best reading year since 1999. And still, there is a pretty tall stack of books I really had hoped to read before the year ended. If your book didn’t show up on this list, it may be on the 2010 edition.
It will be helpful for you to understand some background here, so let me explain a couple things about this list.
First, I cannot presume that I would be able to name the best books of 2009, that would be impossible for anyone—so rather than this list being the best of books published in 2009, it’s the best of what I read in 2009.
Second, it’s not fair to compare fiction to non-fiction, so the books that made this list aren’t competing with other books, they are simply the books that left the biggest impression on me.
Third, because I don’t think you can really compete books against each other, this list is ordered alphabetically by author.
Fourth, I endorsed a number of excellent books this year that didn’t make this list, however each of those books is fantastic and I whole heartedly recommend them.
Fifth, this might not be fair, but I will only list one book per author—not fair because I read a pretty tall stacks of books by Richard Rohr, Phyllis Tickle, Henri Nouwen, Tony Jones, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and others. Many of those titles are deserving of much more attention than they’ve received, but I will only list my favorite title of theirs from what I read in 2009.
With that, here are my favorite books read in 2009:
Honorable Mention:
And here’s just one more, my “Most Anticipated” book for 2010:
That’s what I got. Nine “Bests” and eight “Honorable Mentions” and my “Most Anticipated,” the one book I can’t wait to see published. All solid. All worth buying, reading and passing along to friends.
Alright, so if you stumble across (or write) something that you think I need to tuck into my 2010 reading list hit me up.
Happy reading.
Dear Friends,
It’s the season of Advent as I write to you. I love this time of year. Advent invokes a posture of waiting, recognizing our need and anticipating the arrival of the Messiah. The below reflection is one of my favorites this year. Jesus not only identifies with our poverty but is guarunteed present in it. This is one of the reasons WMF exists—because we have found Jesus among the poorest people in the world and we want to be near Him. In our own lives too it seems that Jesus is most recognizable in our impoverished condition.
Some of our friends in the majority world who are struggling to find their next meal or suffering injustices of the commercial sex trade or the affects of war, surprise us with their experience of God’s comfort and provision. And those of us in the minority world who enjoy relative affluence, are also invited to recognize Jesus in our need. During this season let us find courage to face and name the needs in our lives, that we might recognize the presence and provision of Christ.
Verses: Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 1:68-79; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6
Theme: God arrives in places of poverty in our lives.
Prayer:
‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.’ (NASB)
‘You’re blessed when you’ve lost it all. God’s kingdom is there for the finding…” (The Message)
“The gospels paint us beautiful portraits of how Our God comes to us in the midst of great poverty. The age of Elizabeth, Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary, no room in the inn, enemies out to get the newborn, all surround the central mystery - our God is faithful. Our God’s fidelity is not only not limited by great poverty, it is most apt in places of great poverty. The way the nativity happened then can tell us a great deal about the “style” of our God. And, it can open our eyes and our expectation to the places of great poverty in our lives now. Whenever I ask, “How can this be a place of promise?” or “How can I expect God to be present in this mess?” I am being invited to experience the mystery of the Incarnation in my life. Eventually, I begin to look for and to really anticipate special intimacy with Jesus in the difficult, challenging, painful, empty, power-less situations of my life. If I desire to find intimacy with God in all things, I’ll pay special attention to the poverty places of my life.”
creighton.edu/collaborativeministry/advent
Love, respect,
for the two of us
Phileena
