HeightstoDepths

Another six weeks on and I’m posting again … just when I start to get pretty regular with these posts my time in Belfast is wrapping up. Zussamen-fassen (quite probably misspelled) is a word I learned a couple years ago. It refers to the concept of bringing together all the loose ends, especially at the end of a meeting or a talk so that a coherent and common understanding emerges. This ending time here in Belfast is an exercise is just that, trying to finish off my various responsibilities well, see and thank the many people I want to, trying to consolidate the various gains the Lord has wrought in me personally, and preparing some for the next stage of life as I return to Ann Arbor. I’ve plenty weaving left to go, but it’s very evident to me that there is a rich tapestry of experience, relationship, challenge, and growth from the last eight months I’ve had here in Northern Ireland.

My last update came just after St. Patrick’s Day mid-Lent. That ushered in four days of snow, sleet, and some hail for good measure. It was all just in time for a week long visit by two of Noel’s mates from Miami. Late in the week the weather turned and we had a beautiful sunny and warm spring day for a Charis men’s day. This was a great day to be with most of the men, Secondary School aged on up, of Charis community. Some inspiring talks, and good prayer, mixed in with some good craic in the afternoon. Softball (not typical here) was the sport of choice in the afternoon, although I did get a sizeable minority playing some Frisbee Golf (even less typical).

Most of the next week was madly taken up with preparations for our TEC weekend. As I mentioned before the TEC format is highly developed and takes an awful lot of work to pull off. At times that week I must admit to having a bit of a bad attitude. The amount of sucking details (rest assured my language at the time was stronger) was daunting. It wasn’t clear how many were even going to be able to come, and I was well prepared for the whole thing to be a fiasco and a giant waste. In some perverse way I was even looking forward to that eventuality because then all of my crappy attitude would be justified (not good, I know, I repent).

On Friday morning, with leaving at 2pm for the retreat, I had a delightful break from normal retreat preparations. I hopped a bus to the airport and camped out in front of the international arrivals door, eventually to be rewarded by the first sight of my parents in seven months. We picked up the rental car, the roomier model (although not by big car loving American standards). The other wrinkle was the manual transmission. I was meant to reserve an automatic. I know I checked on their availability when enquiring about the price, but might have neglected that when actually reserving, the memory is foggy. Anyhow, Bob Laba being the adaptable and talented man that he is, quickly revived the decades long dormant stick shifting skills, and with a completely different hand to boot. We stopped by my house and saw some of the brothers, grabbed some breakfast, and then got them settled at Noel and Diane Dick’s house in the community cluster (a number of Charis families living in the same neighborhood). They met Noel that evening, but then had the place for themselves as the whole family was away in the States the oldest son Mathew’s wedding. Mom and Dad headed down south to tour a bit and spend the night in a castle as an early birthday present for Mom and I headed up north for a weekend at lovely Kilmore house.

Since my last visit there had been some facility issues, and a good portion of the girls’ side was missing great roof chunks. Thankfully the remarkable sunny and warm weather held through the whole weekend. The weekend itself was quite successful. We had a good crowd of first time participants, and the feedback overall was raving (in a positive rather than deranged sense). It’s an intense format, and nearly all seemed to receive abundant blessing though the time. Normally a TEC weekend is from a particular denominational perspective. This one was the second in trying an ecumenical format. We had a Catholic Mass Saturday night and an Anglican Communion Service Sunday morning, and participants were from Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Free Church backgrounds. Everyone there was grateful for the opportunity to advance against some of the exaggerated divisions that plague the churches in Northern Ireland.

The next week was Holy Week. Charis celebrates Holy Week in a rich way I’ve never seen before. Each night of Holy Week there were community night prayers in different locations. Most of the community crammed into whichever house or church we were at every night that week. My parents were back in Belfast by Tuesday and joined for most of these prayer times. This provided the chance for me to share the community life I’m living from the inside with my parents in a fuller way then I’ve ever been able to before and I’m truly thankful for that. On Thursday my sisters Beth and Kim arrived in Dublin so Mom, Dad, and I drove down to pick them up. On the way back we did a bit of touring at a Neolithic passage tomb (Newgrange), monastery ruins (Mellifont), and some huge carved stone crosses (Monstaboice). We arrived in Belfast in time for some afternoon ice-water with the brothers (meant to be tea, again that unusual full on sun had made its presence known and changed plans). Since I had dinners at the house during Holy Week my parents and, then parents and sisters, were generously hosted at different families for dinners. Holy Saturday the whole clan joined my house and five other guests for our Seder meal (seventeen total around the extra long table). Again this was a wonderful chance for me to share one of our yearly celebrations I really treasure with my family. On Sunday we had a house Easter celebration. I stuck around for the prayer time, plenteous hors d’oeuvres, and one of Martin’s finest soups for a first course. I left before while the steaks were on the grill to join the family at the Gilroy’s for a sumptuous Easter dinner (and if I hadn’t managed to escape that next course I likely would have exploded). After dinner we went back across the driveway to Noel and Diane’s and called Amy and John who were visiting John’s family for Easter.

On Monday the five of us set off for some Laba holiday action in Ireland. We lacked only Amy and John to make the sibling pentavorate complete, but their presence was distinctly felt. That first day we took a driving tour of the Glens of Antrim, stopping for lunch and a stroll in Glenariff’s forest park (GLEN-arf, the Queen of the Glens). Continuing along the coastal drive we stopped at Carrik-a-rede and Whitepark Bay, and found a bed and breakfast not far from the Giant’s Causeway. Carrick-a-rede is a forty foot long rope bridge eight feet high connecting the mainland to a rocky island. Originally it was used to fish the salmon which were forced into the small channel between island and mainland as they ran in the spring for spawning. Even thirty years ago there were a thousands salmon swimming by an hour at the height of the run. The fishery has collapsed, being gutted by big off shore trawlers. All fishing ended off the bridge ended about five years ago, with the run being measured in hundreds over the entire season now.

Day two, fortified by our hearty Ulster fry we set of bright and early for the causeway. Getting there bright and early we beat most of the crowd and had the sunniest portion of the day on the weird geometric basalt formations that make up the causeway. After that it was into Bushmills for a tour of the whiskey distillery (the oldest licensed whiskey distillery in the world). At the end of the tour it happened that it was four Laba’s that were selected to be taste testers, sampling six whiskeys instead of the typical one that comes with the tour, Sláinte (Irish for cheers). Next it was through Stroke City (Derry/Londonderry) and into Donegal and the republic. We found another B and B, walked around a Franciscan Friary, and sat in on a local Celi (dancing). On day three we visited Glenveagh National Park, toured the castle and gardens, and learned a bit about the glenveagh clearances, when a former occupant of the castle drove hundreds of families out of their houses in the middle of the winter when he found out he could make more off the land by grazing sheep then having tenant farmers, nasty stuff that.

On Thursday my parents headed back to the States, and I drove down to Dublin with Kim and Beth. We did some touring that afternoon in the city centre and even made it to evensong at St. Patrick’s cathedral. Some Nazareth (the community in Dublin) folks hosted us that night - I stayed at Cormac’s place and Sorcha (pronounced Sirca) arranged for my sisters to stay at her parent’s house. The community was already hosting a load of other folks for a teaching week, so I was really blessed by the ready hospitality. Thursday night we went out with a crew of the younger crowd. Because of the teaching week it included people living in Dublin, Belfast, London, and of course, the States. Tadgh took us up to one of his favorite spots, a mountain overlooking all of Dublin lit up below. The next morning I dropped Kim and Beth off at the airport and headed back to Belfast.

After putting together several hours of solid work over the weekend it was off to Donegal for some holiday time with the brothers (it’s a hard life trying to celebrate Easter well). For the third week or fourth week in a row the weather was predominately sunny, virtually unheard of in this part of the world. We climbed Mt. Eragol, ate good food, watched some films, and golfed. Doug Smith took around Noel, Georges, and I to first a par three and then a proper golf course. Doug was the only one in the group that had ever golfed before; I had never actually swung a club outside of putt-putt. My impression of the sport overall - incredibly frustrating, costly, but also quite fun, and notably addicting (given my disposable income I think I’ll need to focus on the first two I think). I had one beautiful drive the last hole on the proper course. As is expected I messed up my next several shots, losing any advantage I had. We stayed in a couple caravans owned by some Charis families. Again the generosity of the Charis folks was a tremendous blessing. The holiday was grand but the last day included a series of mishaps, including breaking the kitchen faucet, losing the car keys (with the spare set locked inside of it), and nearly having the car top carrier burst open when a couple latches broke. This last one was 9:30pm on a rainy Donegal Saturday night, not an opportune time to try and locate bungee chords, but luckily a local resident observed our plight and gave us some rope that allowed us to make it home intact.

Sunday I went to dinner with Doug at Joel’s family. Joel is a Queens student who has gotten involved with TEC this year and came along on the weekend. After dinner I went along with Joel and watched a Gaelic football match. The game is really different from anything else I’ve observed, and I enjoyed trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

This past week I actually had to do some real work. One of the highlights was interviewing ten former gappers over the phone (gappers are folks doing a year of service in our communities). It was really inspiring to hear the many ways the Lord had worked in people’s lives through these service years set apart. Another beautiful sunny day yesterday, and I got my last opportunity to play some Ultimate Frisbee here in Belfast. There are lots of lasts coming up, and more and more as I say good by to people after this or that event it’s not until the next thing, but until God only knows when. Yesterday was also the Belfast reception for Mathew and Sheena Dick (the ones who got married in the States over Easter). It ended up that I was able to help serve the meal and clean up at the end of the night. The service was just like I would have known when I worked for a banquet hall in High School. At that point, even though I was being paid, it was generally just a pain to serve tables and clean up. Last night I was grateful for the opportunity. It was a small way to show thanks for the way in which the Dick’s have blessed me over this year, particularly by giving my parents their home for their two weeks here in Ireland.

Today the big event was the first (and last) book club event for me in Belfast. Mags Tierney, who visited Ann Arbor a couple years ago and joined the book club I was in, encouraged me to pull something together over here. I finally got around to it and we had nine folks around a beautiful meal today talking about The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. The book had been recommended to me by both Bruce Yocum (former presiding elder of the Servants of the Word and one of my bosses this year) and Sara (random Pakistani girl I met on the plane in September). Given these disparate sources I was intrigued. Most everyone really enjoyed the book and found it powerful and evocative. Thankfully Steven Dick (nephew of Noel and Diane) disagreed and stirred up some very good debate by expressing his thought that it was really a two dimensional stilted work and comparing it to an Afghani version of the OC.  Every good book discussion is helped when someone is  willing to be a bit provocative.
As I finish this post and sip a(nother) glass of wine I am impressed by what’s gone on in my life over the last eight months. The Lord has been very present and challenged me in many ways. I’ve loved the time here, and sincerely hope I get the chance to spend more time here. Eight months is a good time, but at this point it feels short. There’s much more I see I could have helped out with and contributed to here. Regardless, I know I will be able to continue to serve and experience God’s work in new ways as I return to dear friends and family in Michigan. Hard to believe it’s my penultimate Irish Sunday … time to go raid that leftover Brie from book club before going to bed.

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