I can feel a chill in the air today, a whisper in the wind telling me that the cold will return and the Indian summer is not going to last. The beautiful shades of autumn saw a brief firework of display and left me aching for the 5th of November and the absentee event that will dawn on me in the coming week. Meanwhile my timetable has bosomed and bloomed like spring. Each evening of the week seems to hold different occasions and this working week has seen me at meetings each night (apart from Monday which I skipped as I felt decidedly the wrong colour). Tomorrow I will witness the wedding, the selling of the bride, the church service and the dancing of the wedding party. Yesterday I saw the start of the Fokus events and this week has been planning and preparing for the new Fokus venture that will begin Tuesday. Last Friday I sat surrounded by the group I have come to call 'the girls' and we sat having those conversations which really mean so very little and yet bond the ties that bind us together. It's been a week of conversation. The frustrating search for meaning and the dawning of hope undeniable. For the last two days I feel like I've turned agony aunt. I've listened to stories as old as time and heard people plan with steps of hesitation. Today I have tried in vain to write, to place the words I have planned in my mind upon the screen and produce something. Though plans were laid, every venture I made outside the flat I have discovered people who needed the service of an agony aunt, a person to accompany them upon this moment of their journey, a sympathetic ear. I met a guy from England in a moment of discovery, a babe in a moment of hunger, a worker in a moment of receiving, a frustrated volunteer in a moment of despair, a friend in a moment of joy and the blessing to witness the bloom and death of these moments is a blessing indeed. And so with the day so much gone I finally sit and write this blog, perhaps this is my moment, my moment of self indulgence, my moment to be recognised in the world today. And so I go and the evening will complete and I will finally get chance to write.
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What can I begin to write about the past week, for words can be so deceptive. The trip to Temerin was beautiful, like the newly decorated room, with smiles of reunion and the hum of the familiar that comes with family and friends living out the everyday. Long conversations and beautiful reunions has been but one of the mark of this week. Meeting Dejan again who I got to know well during the detaching project was a blessing, to see how he has changed and how his story continues to be written, and chance meetings of people who had disappeared from radar and are now hugging you greeting... that warm buzzing feeling. So the week has progressed, meeting with friends for drinks or the indulgence of a meal out, talking late into the night and turning into bed before the dead of night arrives. I've also met a new face who told a well worn story which resonate with my soul as the latest in the line of foreign volunteers turns up at Eho and faces the joys and struggles that the potholed landscape of the organisation offers. My heart froze and broke and ached for this individual, and wondered what compromises and conquests she would achieve. The sun has returned to the land and the temperature one again risen to the late adolescence allowing for long wanderings of the city, camera in hand. The chairs that only a few days ago were stacked ready for winter storage are being shaken out and placed into the sunshine outside café and bar alike. The feeble throws of autumn are straining at the seams to be heard before winter swallows them and with the passing of the first third of my time here the plans for the remaining have finally emerged out of the foundations and thrown off the air of slumber the city cloaked them in for so long. Bring on the ice and snow, for the sun makes us sleepy and the whiteness cleanses and challenges us to paint a new picture. Some-days I feel sad at how much there is to do, others I feel sad at how little I have achieved. Other days shine like stars as time flies past in activities I barely noticed I was agreeing to take part in. Planned days twist and turn in the wind leaving me closer to fulfilment and yet unsure if I am headed to the right goal, until it hits me that the goal is my construct and a fall back into his step and worry not where it is headed. The days of the past weeks have been interesting and beautiful, humdrum and tentatively adventurous, as innocent as a child's kiss and as loaded as politics. I am excited about my Novi Sad days where I will once again find Christian fellowship 'focus' on the students of the city (fokus is a part of a worldwide Christian outreach program). I will again return to MNRO as I did on Monday to spend time with those who are mentally challenged, to be infected by their laughter, and I will continue to return to the smiles of the Roma children as they study and create on Saturdays in a school nearby (pictured). The conversation group I attend on Monday has offered to show me some of the monasteries and Željko has offered to show me across the border to Bosnia. The slow creep of autumn is absent, Saturday was basking sunshine and today it coats, hats, scarves and gloves weather. People are huddled inside their shelter giving me opportunity to continue to get to know my room-mate, to paint my words upon the screen and fix my diary for the coming days. Requests for things to do and people to see, ways to fill time and ways to use time as a blessing. Tuesday I made a cake, Wednesday I got the opportunity to dive back into the pages of 'the ordinary radical' and be inspired afresh, make glue from flour and paper-mache, Thursday I dreamt a dream of heaven and talked of life and love and placing my foot in god's footprints one at a time. Later today I will travel back to a family in Temerin, and tomorrow I am invited to explore the hidden underground passages of the fortress with friends. Before this month ends I will attend a wedding, the same day my friends at MNRO will celebrate Halloween with masks I helped create. There is nothing radical, but nothing ordinary about this life, for even on the days I feel life pass me by I know there is more. I met an English woman at church on Sunday, she and her husband live in England and translate Christian resources to Serbian. She described me as 'brave', and though it sounds cliché, in that moment I realised that it's those moments when something amazing isn't happening that we really live the life most extraordinary. I felt a little coy about the term brave, much more at ease with the term foolish, but though around a quarter of my trip has past and I'm still to do so many things I feel so blessed to be allowed to be brave, to be foolish, to stop looking for the goal and simply step in the footprints already laid out before me. Do I dare to take the liberty to stare at you? I have slipped back into listening to Nichole Nordeman. The line played out of the speakers as I started to type this and so it appeared back upon the screen in black typeface. I have taken the liberty to stare at this world, to expect things to come and speak back to me but how foolish I have been to stare and not to speak. To expect, when the lessons learnt from my first three months here should have taught me so acutely that I must ask. I have been staring at the mountain, wondering if I dare scale it's heights while He has been behind me in the valley. It's like I've awoken afresh to the foliage and the flora of the foothills, the hum of the insects and the stirring of the wind. And this divine orchestra has allowed me and my feeble triangle it's place upon the seats of withered branches and the conductor has tapped his baton, for the recital must now begin. Face down on the ground I have lifted my head and taken the liberty to stare at that light radiating with the swirls and strokes as all creation responds. Here the temperature still nestles in the low twenties and the people smile with welcome as you pass them on the street, the infection of the young Christian drifts around the room when you meet them as if they have somehow attached themselves to the baton waves. The social groups meet and transform themselves with the ease and pain of every relationships growth and death, some see the symphony, others are oblivious. There is so much more to discover but the life has begun to feel settled again, the music is flowing beautifully around me and though I have not needed to add a sound to the choir yet I know that my part is needed as much as every soft beat of bird wing or cry of child playing on the playground beneath the flat's window. hourglass What are we waiting for? I'm sitting reading the advent readings, the anticipation and trepidation of this event that for centuries was waited for, that prophets foretold and kings sang of. I'm looking around for the messiah and knowing that one day he will walk through that door, brush past me on the street, cry out of an infants mouth, trip me up on my nice neat understanding of the world and pull me up. But what are we waiting for, he's come already, he's here already, I've seen his eyes in every iris I've ever seen, I've felt the air that once blew through his hair, I've read the stories of the words he spoke and held hands that held hands that held hands that held hands that his hands once pulled from the dirt. That dirt, that mix of soil and dust that once was on his hands and ours, how we sterilised it. Now we look in CD covers and soft leather bound books of commentary and notes to find him. We wait but we wait while the dust still swirls in the wind, while the people still walk through doors and brush past us on the street, while we try and re-sculpt our world without tripping ourselves up. What am I waiting for, some person to swoop in and tell me what to do? who to serve? No! For almost 2 weeks of sand has dribbled through the hourglass, and my list of achievements is by no means long. But still I wait, for in the waiting comes the revelation, and in this land of slowness it's in the waiting that one discards the sand as poor and finds the diamond. I've started to see something glimmering in the sand dunes.... |
The other siteWho is GfeefGfeef is the name that my writings have been under for some years. As far as I know it's unique to me. Originally from the UK, I now live in Serbia but continue to have a passion for childrens and youth ministry. Archives
October 2014
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