"If I knew I had to pack tomorrow, I think I'd cry"

"If I knew I had to pack tomorrow, I think I'd cry" - was what I said when I was going to bed last week Saturday (saturday the 9th of July).

It had been a long week, full of seminars and networking and giving my own presentation and being in a new place (and trying to kind of take a vacation in the middle of it!). Thursday evening we were home late, Friday was a meeting with my supervisor and a community barbecue, and Saturday was painting and cleaning.
The week before that hadn't been all that relaxing either: it had started off with a weekend working in the community and then was packed full with preparations for moving and London and putting last minute changes into a re-write of my research proposal.
And the week to come wasn't looking any easier: packing, moving, unpacking, organising and having out-of-town guests during the weekend.

In the midst of all the busy-ness, it seemed hardly sensible to choose not to get more of a head start on packing things. Yet, knowing how much energy the past week(s) had cost me (and Matthijs), and expecting the coming week to be just as challenging, I desperately wanted (and needed) a day to stop and rest. Whether it was sensible seemed irrelevant - I couldn't imagine finding the courage or energy to face the coming week without that break. And if there was a bit more extra packing to do (because I hadn't done it on Sunday), well, I expected that God would help me find the courage and energy for that, too. (And He did - He also thankfully provided a lot of help and encouragement from friends and family!)

The decision not to pack last Sunday was hardly a difficult one for me - in fact, it was the choice most obvious to me. I grew up with the idea that Sunday is a day of rest (and you do your best to keep it that way, irrelevant of how much needs to get done). As I've grown older, I've kept that - and have discovered the blessing of this day of rest: it is a day not only to rejuvenate, but also a day to remember to trust in God. It is a day to stop trying to act as if all my hard work is what will make me succeed - God's grace and his blessing are very much part of things going well.


Psalm 127:1-2
"Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labour in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.
In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat - for he grants sleep to those he loves."

An alternative type of networking

At the Society of Biblical Literature conference last week, I discovered an alternative form of networking. As this was the kind that gets you home-made chocolate chip cookies at break time, you can imagine that I was immediately interested.

Julie, who'd attended most of the sessions on prophets with me, was the one who introduced me to the networking. (She was also, incidentally, the one who'd baked the cookies). She, after all, lived in London - and thus had the resources available to do this. She also had the resources available to bring lunch for those she knew really couldn't afford to be buying it every day.

And so if I hadn't already been intrigued by Julie's brief mentioning of the fact that she frequently taught classes in the majority world - this hospitality for others certainly caught my attention. It illustrated to me an alternative to the 'publish or perish' way of thinking that seems to overwhelm academics. What I saw in Julie and her networking was instead a strong desire to use her gifts and resources to help others - whether it be local hospitality to visiting theologians in London - or whether it be her sharing her Ph.D. in Old Testament with those in other parts of the world. And that kind of desire is something that I'd like to develop more and more in myself.

I do want to do my best with my biblical research - and that means being very much a part of the academic world. Yet, at the same time, I don't want to get completely lost in academics - I don't want to forget that the gifts that God has given me are not only to be a blessing for me but also a blessing that I am to share with others. It was thus delightful, in the midst of an academic conference, to be reminded of both academic excellence and generous hospitality.

Wat een stom kleur!

Last Saturday as we were painting the house, I asked my soon-to-be neighbours what they thought of the then current colour of our study. The mother kind of hemmed and hawed and didn't really give an answer. Her five year-old daughter, however, felt free enough to say 'wat een stom kleur' (what a dumb colour)! As the colour of the room was a combination of pink and peach (neither being colours I appreciate), I couldn't help but agree with her. This was a woman after my own heart. I think we'll get along marvelously.

The fact that the five-year-old and her younger sister are enamoured by my cat (which their mom graciously agreed to watch while we were on London - and again these few days that we're packing up) only strengthens my sense that this neighbour relationship will continue to be a joy :)

All your ducks in a row

There's an English expression about getting all your ducks in a row - it means getting everything in order. It's a good expression both for presenting a paper at a Conference and for moving. It's a great ideal to strive for - and in both situations I've been doing my best.

But sometimes, no matter how hard you try, there's no guarantee that your ducks will stay in a row - as illustrated by this great picture opportunity Matthijs and I ran across in Kensington Park in London.

By the time I got my camera out, the birds had started to hop off the posts nearest to us. I'm hoping that with moving, 'my' ducks will stay a bit more in place (they did, at least, in the presentation of my paper in London).

Oxford!

Matthijs has a Master's degree from Oxford, so I was delighted to have the chance to go with him to visit the place he lived for a year.

Matthijs wrote about it on his blog, so I'll direct you there to read the story of our visit last Sunday. And I'll just provide the pictures (most of them are the view from the tower of University Church):

A window in Queen's chapel depicting the Ascension - Jesus' feet are worth noticing.

The garden at New College (1)

The garden at New College (2)

Surprises in London

One of the things that makes travelling more memorable is the unexpected: you start out with plans, but they don't quite work out as planned or somewhere you turn left instead of right. Sometimes that leads to frustration, but sometimes it leads to delightful surprises.

Our trip to London, especially the first day (last week Saturday), felt like that. We'd left on time (7 in the morning!) and started biking to the train station - except my suitcase didn't have a side handle so I couldn't carry it on my bike - so Matthijs eventually took it - and we were a bit later leaving.

We did make it to the train station on time - only to discover that our train to Brussels had been cancelled! So first to Rotterdam and then the next international train - which was crammed. After things emptied out in Belgium, a friendly blind guy sat across from us - and we had a delightful random conversation. And despite the train delays, we had lots of time to board in Brussels.

And finally London! Neither of us had thought to print out a map (the ink in the printer is almost out, so I'm not sure if it would have helped anyways), so we meandered around trying to figure out how to get to our address (it didn't help that our 'local' subway station was closed). We ended up walking past the Oval cricket stadium and through a tiny little community garden - and then we were by our bed and breakfast. We were met by our host, who turned out to be a bit more flamboyant than we expected (and quite effusive about his love for God, as we discovered in the days to follow); we happily settled in and got ready to explore London.

With a guide book and a transportation card (oyster card), London is fairly easy to navigate. And our first stop was the Victoria and Albert museum. After exploring the more usual museum things, we bumped into the glass display (on our way to architecture). Wow! A staircase with a glass banister and hundreds of strange shapes and colours of glass - not what we'd come to see but it captured our attention in a way we hadn't expected.

After the museum, we walked through Kensington Park to get to a lovely Indian restaurant - only to discover we'd needed reservations. And so, we chose instead a strange but delightful snackbar place with crazy spicy food and a mixture of customers (from young mediterranean guys to a black woman to a couple where the woman was clothed in a burka).

And after dinner, back to the bed and breakfast - delighted by our day but tired from all the new things. We also wanted to get some extra sleep so as to be ready for the next adventures: Sunday would be Oxford and Monday was the beginning of the conference!

Dutch Theologians go home at 5

In normal life, I don't think I know many dutch theologians who do go home at 5 - most go home later than that. But when you're at an International Biblical Scholarship conference, five in the afternoon is apparently the time to head back home.

After all, if you take the train home at five, you'll have had a couple of free hours between the end of the conference and departure time so that you can go sightseeing in London - and you'll still make it home that night.

At least, that's what Matthijs and I were planning to do. It was a delightful surprise to discover that we were not the only dutch folk at the conference who'd had exactly the same idea! And so travelling home, after a good conference, we could greet the other dutch folk - and even if we didn't say much, there was a sense of comraderie born of having done things together and heading towards home together.