New!

  

These pictures are from a fantastic children's book given to me by a good friend in Japan. It depicts a year of important traditions, manners, and holidays starting with 3 of the most important: hospitality, cleaning, and New Year's! While we do celebrate the new year in the US as well, in Japan there are different traditions, food, and religious roots. Even on a seemingly "international" holiday like this, in a different cultural context everything is new! I admit in some situations new is stressful, can leave you feeling a little overloaded or even helpless; but many times newness is fascinating, calls back the joyful inquisitiveness of childhood, or brings to light a difference that makes me reaffirm what I believe (E.g. is this an American, Japanese, human, or Christian thing?). There is so much to learn from "new"!

All of which to say... whether 2016 is looking excitingly (or overwhelmingly) new, or like more of the everyday routine, may you be filled with joy and hope at the newness of each day. And most of all, may looking to Christ fill you with wonder as His steadfast love and mercy is new every morning!  

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas! What are you waiting for?

What are you waiting for?

I love advent. It reminds me of what Christmas is all about; since childhood advent has reminded me not only how close we're getting to Christmas day, but of the hope, peace, joy, and love we have in Christ.

I love advent partly because there is absolutely no guess-work or mere wishful thinking involved: it is a confident waiting that will definitely lead to Christmas! A time of waiting that involves mint chocolates and cookie-baking, siblings coming home from college and driving in with my awesome nieces/nephews from all around the country, the smell of pine needles and warm glow of lights and quiet evenings reading by the tree. I love advent because it reminds me that waiting isn't just about longing, but is active, content, and full of joy.

This Christmas I also get to be part of planning my sister's spring wedding. I had never realized how engagement has much in common with advent: very active waiting, deliberately planned time, fully confident in what is to come, full of love and joy!

Advent and this coming wedding have been refreshing reminders this week of how my time raising support still, while waiting, is also be a time of action, confidence, contentment, and joy, with my eyes on Christ. No matter what you're waiting for this week, I hope this little comparison encourages you as well!

But if you're waiting to order Christmas dinner, wait no more! As KFC's Japan webpage states, "it's not too late to place your order!" for a barrel of fried chicken ;)  Every year I chuckle a little that this - and white cake with strawberries - is considered a standard Christmas dinner in Tokyo:

Home

Where do you feel most at home? How would you describe "home"?

For me this year... airport terminals and highway gas stations! After being practically a nomad for the past 4 years, I feel "at home" immediately - anywhere I've stayed for 2 days or so. Partly because of the warm hospitality of my awesome family and friends old and new from Mississippi to Tokyo. But I realized this fall that while my optimistic brain likes to say "I feel at home everywhere", the honest answer is that nowhere has been my home in so long (8 years?), I'm not sure I remember what "home" feels like.

People encourage and even praise expats for valuing and longing for our "true Home" - our heavenly one - and I see where they're coming from (like Hebrews 11:13~16). I hear missionaries saying it to each other all the time! I'm growing in understanding it, deeply, but most days I don't feel like being praised for my sacrifice and faith. Because I'm human, and I'm homesick for a good ol' earthly home, too; in the heart of Tokyo, if you please.

And also because I don't want to minimize the beautiful other side: people who do know, for decades or even a century, the rich feeling of "home" in one location. Surely the experience of home can give an all-the-deeper appreciation and longing for our one-day heavenly home that will outshine any earthly one! (Not that I'm speaking from experience, but...right?)

So if you see me or a fellow expat/missionary/nomad and are inspired by how, like Christ, we have "no place to lay our heads" but look forward instead to our heavenly home, praise the Lord. But please don't praise us! In turn, know that you give us a refreshing little taste of that future Home as you share your earthly one with us through conversation, prayer, meals, warm beds, every-day worship... and we're praising God for it and for you!

Now a little fun for those who had the endurance to make it through my ramblings ;)  Pictures of what "home" looks like for some in Tokyo:

Efficient (Yes, this is the whole thing)

Luxury (Yeah...this one might be out of my price range...)

"Home" from the outside (my dear neighborhood 2012~2014)

Last but not least, my dream floor-plan (or close enough to it)!

Enjoy the Flight

Raising support feels a bit like flying standby.

Have you ever flown standby? Financially it is a massive blessing, but…it’s not for everyone. You have to be willing to be extremely flexible, a bit creative, and a splash of patience doesn’t hurt. I booked standby on 2 flights that had plenty of empty seats just 2 weeks before. The night before the flight, they were booked full. Oh shoot. I arrive at my first gate early, refreshing the tracking web page as paying passengers checked in, praying and being prayed for by family. 2 seats left…1seat…gone. I’m frantically searching for the best “plan B” as they make the final boarding call: “so and so, flight ### to Charlotte, last call…guess they’re not coming. Eleanor? You’re on”. Such beautiful words. Thank you, God! (Is it horrible to praise when someone else misses a flight, and the other person waiting for standby doesn’t get on?)

Phew. The hard one is over and I can relax – my next flight still has 12 empty seats. 2 hours later I dash to make my quick connecting flight. I make it on time, and just out of curiosity check how many seats are still open. 3. And 2 people are in front of me in the standby line. I’ll make it.

Up walks a captain – I’m outranked and bumped down and out. Noooo! Remember the frantic searching I mentioned earlier? Yep, that again. I hang around the gate as I search, and 10 minutes to take-off “Party of 4, last call…so-and-so party of 4…OK! They’re not coming. You’re all on.”

I know it’s not a perfect analogy. But the waiting, the wondering, the “plan A” making its way to “plan Q”. The praying, being prayed for, and updating on how it’s going. The realization that it’s completely out of my control. And there’s nothing to do but be thankful, breathe deep, and enjoy the flight.

Night Light

This week has felt dark. The flooding displacing thousands and thousands of people just north of Tokyo. The plight of thousands and thousands of refugees from Syria flooding into Europe in search of food, shelter, safety...home. The 14th anniversary of 9/11 plastered social media with images of smoke, debris, and falling bodies. And my Granddad passed away, and none of us got to say "goodbye".

I was reading Madeleine L'engle last night, and it was just the word I needed to hear:
    "...what do you do or say to your children when they're afraid to go to bed in the dark? There was a long and troubled silence. Finally one of the mothers who was a little braver than the others stuck out her neck: 'You give him a night light.' ...
     I'm afraid of the dark - not afraid to go up the stairs in the physical darkness of night, but afraid of the shadows of another kind of dark, the darkness of nothingness, of hate, of evil.
     So we rush around trying to light candles. Some are real: books, music, friendship. Others blow up in our faces, like too much alcohol and too many sleeping pills or hard drugs or sex where there isn't any love...
     St. John says the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not understand it, and cannot extinguish is. This is the great cry of affirmation that is heard over and over in our imaginative literature, in all art. It is a light to lighten our darkness..."

And I remember to look to the Light. To be proud of my brothers and sisters in Christ in Japan who are praying for and physically helping those hurt by the floods. Inspired by people all over the world crying for justice - for mercy - and taking action to help Syrian refugees. Encouraged by those who never forget 9/11...but also push on and focus on 9/12: on new beginnings. Comforted that my Granddad died peacefully in his sleep at the ripe old age of 89, and a chance to gather with family and remembering him, his laugh, and how he hated to wait.

And I walk a little lighter, and cling a little tighter to our night Light.

Look!!!

 There are so many beautiful things from my brief weeks in Japan I'd love to share with you. Familiar neighborhoods, smiling faces of friends old and new (that I didn't take enough pictures of), tasty food, churches growing/multiplying, dreaming about the future with artists and pastors... 

look at this little canal I walk past almost every day, full of beauty and peace on a rainy afternoon.

The splendor of the skyline from a friend's apartment. The beautiful blues, the energy of the city, the faces and stories of God at work that spring to mind at the glimpse of a familiar building.

Look at the way it lights up at night, a different kind of twinkling sky, that reminds me of God's light shining out, His care for each individual in each apartment, in each office.

Look at this little guy, the delighted urgency and earnestness in his face as he proclaims "あった!!!" (2-year-old-Japanese that loosely translates "look what's here, look what I found!!!")

[*An ant? A leaf? A plane? One must point to it and repetitively proclaim its existence to the nearest family member or friend until said item is no longer in sight.]

I've been savoring lots of things as I've enjoyed the opportunity to be back in Japan this month, and God's reminding me to follow this little guy's example in sharing the beauty. Look! Look what I've found! This is amazing, and beautiful, and I'd love it if you would pause and appreciate it together with me.

Beauty just isn't the same alone. In community we savor together. We point out the wonderful things, the lovely, the true. The new things we might miss, the familiar things we might pass by on our own.

And I'm starting to understand how this is about far more than pictures from a faraway land. It is one of the vital, delightful tasks of every artist...and every Christian. An important part of how we worship the most Beautiful One of all.

A recurring theme: All Clean

It doesn't take long in Japan to notice cleanliness is quite important. The streets are clean, the subways are clean, no shoes in the house, epic baths...it's fabulous. Clean.

As I strolled around my old neighborhood soaking up the familiar back-streets, checking out new construction projects, and attempting to show jet-lag who's boss, I noticed a new addition to the local Shinto shrine: smiling old ladies carefully doing a choreographed walk through and around this large ring of grass.

I learned this week is a special week for half-way-through-the-year purification: for health, good luck, and to wipe away any misdeeds from the past 6 months. To get clean.

I hear a friend practicing organ as I write this, composing. As musicians we work hard to get notes in their places. We want it to communicate well, we want to tell a story. Even in a "messy" story, we usually want the chords and melodic lines precise. Clean.

I spent this morning with a missionary friend/mentor, chatting and catching up on a year of life as we wiped the ash and soot from the recent volcanic eruption (miles away) from her apartment windows. Ahhh, clean. And we talked about complicated relationships and brokenness and sin in both our eastern and western "homes", and we looked forward to the perfect "clean" of our true but-not-quite-yet Home.

When I'm in the US, people often ask about religions, "felt needs", and values in Japan. So... this one's for you! This is one of those shrines, and one of the deepest desires: to be clean, inside and out.

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. 
(1 John 3:2-3)