jamie's wanderings

This weeks writing has been more focused in an end of the year, thanksgiving note to those that pray and still financiall support us. The list of the former has dwindeled over the years, but it still important nonetheless. Here is a bit that I wrote, not all but some. Yesterday, Andrew took his scooter over to the hospital next door and sat with Sarah, an English widow who hires Andrew to translate for her and her doctors during her medical visits for a chronic disease. After experiencing a number of health crisis in the last month, Andrew spent two hours with her and her doctors to arrange meds, treatment and tests. Afterwards they had a coffee and talked at length. She has had some difficult health and personal issues lately and to thank us for our support and help, she gave us a little holiday package of chocolates and a beautiful card. Later that afternoon, I drove up to visit an elderly English man, who is now confined to a wheelchair. He has lived and worked all over the world, a...

 This week is one fraught with emotion, between the events in Valencia last week of super mega flash floods to the Day that is Today, most awaited US elections. Just writing that sentence above felt heavy. One week ago, the heaven opened up and the storm systen called Gota Fria, or cold drop, let over 19 inches of rain to fall in just moments in the Valencia regions. We had much less, perhaps 3 or 4 inches, and as my friend pointed out, we proved the saying, The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain. Since Granada is bumped up against the Sierra Nevada mountain range, and is surrounded by 4 rivers, we watched it all go past us. But in Valencia, it overwhelmingly flash flooded in a way that caught everyone flat footed. Mud, sticks, cars and trucks floated by as if they were toys, and people screamed and cried and terror. Now that the mud has settled, over 850,000 people and 69 different towns and villages have been affected by this horrible act. Worse than this, before the rain ha...

 Andrew and I watch a lot of varied movies, sci fi, drama, action, you name it, we like a lot of it. But I'm reluctant to watch certain genres, horror and some kinds of suspense, as I'm sensitive and have nightmares. Andrew and Sofi have gotten me to step out in the last few days as they claim they need some more scarier movies in their lives, and I've boldly gone where I've not really gone before. Much as I'd hate to admit it, I've actually found it very cathartic and enjoyable in a very different way. We watched, the three of us, the Night of the Living Dead. The ending I was unhappy about, but the cinematography, the fascination that in 1968 there was an amaing African American male lead, and also that this was filmed in Butler county, where my mom and her sisters grew up, and where my grandparents are now buried. The house felt like my great grandmothers house and it felt like a familiar area in so many ways, that I found myself engrossed in yes, even classi...

 I wish I could write it all down. The names, dates, places, and organizations. But, I will refrain. But the indignance, the righteous anger I have, will not be silenced. Yet again, one we know, this time one of our ninos, a student who long ago studied in Granada, and we had moments of connection with, came back. This happens at least once a year. We get a text, phone call or whatever and a name from our past says, "Finally! Bringing the husband/wife/fam, can we have a coffee?" And we get dressed on a windy, fall afternoon and ride Andrew's scooter to the vibing, thriving center of Granada with thousands of tourists gaping up at the buildings, eating icecream and finding a coffee. And we find them, and hug them and sit down and ask, "How are you?" It doesn't take long, and halfway through a cup of coffee, it all come pouring out. Tenative at first, and then all of the nitty, gritty, ,awful details, as my Uncle Peter says, the plot of life then sickens. I kn...

 This blog is not necesarrily a manifesto, but this words have definetly rung over and over in my mind again and again the last several months. I've offended some with these words, and others have affirmed them. So here goes this post. It is my convicted belief that the Kingdom of Heaven began and will be completed at a table, and not a temple, or cathedral, or mosque. It's humble beginnings are first in the 6 banquets Jesus particpates in in the book of Luke, the 7th the momement as Jesus sat and broke bread and drank wine with his disciples, the 8th when he breaks bread as a resurrection Jesus on the road to Emmaus,  and finally,  will be completed when we all sit together with Jesus and finally do the same at the Feast of the End of It All. And, to expand on this theme, another thought has surfaced. Jesus was found on the road to Emmaus, not in a temple, or synagagoe or mosque, but rather walking as a traveler and no one realized who he was, until he sat at the table w...

 In my dashboard, I have three unfinished blogs that are too angry, too over the top to be published and I've let them block my writing, as I have moved through so many emotions and processed through so many situaitons in the last two or three months. When you write a blog that is deeply personal, deeply introspective, this happens. It's not a diary blog of cooking, family life, vacations, travel, but rather, a blog of the experiences of someone who has lived very far from her home and worldview, and has watched the definitions of home and worldview change and evolve and maybe even warp a little over the 20plus years of living not in my passport country. And watching the current events unfold in my passport country have made things even more facinating in the last couple of weeks....I refuse to be political, or at least avertly so in my publishings, but it is easy for me to state at this point, fo the first time in my adult life I'm deeply considering not voting. I sat on t...

 For the second time this month, for a long weekend, I sit in a quite place. The first one was for our anniversary, and we relished being meters away from the coast and hearing the waves crash upon our rocky beach as we sat on the balcony, or merely just opened the door to our bedroom. The bed wasn't anything to write home about, but the small apartment with a balcony, big comfy sofa and nice tv, and a kitchen equipped to do what we needed, is all that we really wanted for those three nights. Today, my views are birds and sky, sheep and rolling olive groves and pretty Spanish villas that used to be second homes. The two dogs alternate coming out on to the terrace to sniff the air, lay in the sun or shade, and make sure we are still around. The pool glistens underneath me, matching the blue of my aptly named Aygo, Blueberry. This weekend we are house sitting and after a long stretch of a lot of work, and some really tough emotional moments, this is respite. It's all I can do, ju...

  A long time ago, my aunt and uncle lived in Granada and we lived in each other's back pockets. They held our hands in language school and those first 10 years as we figured out Granada and culture and life and love and happiness and grief. I will never forget those days. Even though they now live between two other worlds, I know they left a chunk of their hearts here and we talk regularly, sometimes more and sometimes less. This week, as we walk through a family crisis with my dad's health, we have spoken a bit more. They left me, probably without meaning to, a book called L'abri, which discusses a long ago refuge created by the Schaeffers in the 1950s in Switzerland. They were in another time and another place and a different way of communicating, but God provided. They chose to step out in some crazy decisions, but God was there. And so, at my lowest moments, I pull out the book and reread the passages. Last night after shopping, I drove up to the edge of our property. ...

 I don't always publish back to back days, but I've run across a few interesting quotes on the state of life in general and wished to put these thoughts down before they flit across my brain and we are done.. I've again found a fascination with e.e.cummings who broke poetry rules and wrote as he felt, without caps and punctuation. In recent moments I've adapted something of my own of the lists of things that rollout of me without commas or periods so that you can follow where I'm really going. See what I just did? But, he, cummings, is still the King. And when the winter turns to spring far sooner here than the northern reaches of this planet, I remember his simple turns of phrases that suddenly cause us to remember spring pasts. I told Miguel Angel last month that I'm team Spring. So many people crawl out of the woodwork in August longing for cooler weather, and I shake my head at them, because, I'm team Spring. With the almonds bursting into bloom as we wo...

 My super young (no age to protect her innocence ) at heart relative called me today, we talk at least once a month about various issues, sometimes cry, sometimes laugh, usually both, and I feel so blessed to have her. See, her story, just like all stories, has its share of violence, but she abounds in grace. This phrase is stolen from a dear professor of mine from my undergrad days, who needed to show a conservative Bible school that it wasn't just about memorzing theology and verses, but that story is what shapes who we are. So, she had a literature course that dedicated itself to the theme of violence and grace. Those of us who took it drank it in like water from a fire hose and some of the themes I learned almost 30 years ago, echo in my mind time and time again. These moments of violence, be they true violence like disaster, destruction, crime and more, or violence of the heart and emotions, are evil. Being unkind is just as evil as other bits of evil you can imagine, as bones...

 I have been overwhelmed as of late of the deep intense unkindness that has seemed to ooze deep into our society. But, I am reminded of those kindnesses give towards me as well. One does not preclude the other, but sometimes the unkindess has felt echoey, loud and reverbating that I find myself choking back tears late at night wondering what the world has gotten itself into. I am an intense fan of the goodness that we have, both inherantly and also given to to us by God. I believe that many people in this world do not knowingly commit evil, but rather are motivated by selfish desires. I do believe that people can change, and not always say the same, but I believe we can do so because we have been empowered by God, and not only from ourselves. All this to say, I acknowledge the brokeness, the evil in the world, but I hesitate to meditate on the depravity of man. I believe that when we focus on our collective and personal evils, we do nothing but feed them, and allow more evil to per...

 One of the journey's we faced last year was to put it mildly, unique. Back in August of 2022, I found an apartment for an older gentleman named Bob, and I know the landlady personally.  A few months later, Bob phoned me and asked for someone to go with him to the emergency room to translate as he wasn't doing so well. Bob was cool, an old rock and roller, a writer, a scholar, and just a cool guy. But he had struggled with a lot of mental health issues and just needed someone to help translate. Andrew ended up in the ER with him for several hours got some much-needed meds and said, See you Monday Bob, and that was that.  We never heard from Bob and then on that same Thursday, the landlady called me anxiously. Bob hadn't moved around his apartment in days, and his window was on and his light was open. Andrew went a few hours later, and found Bob by his bedside, not having moved from it for 5 days, semi conscious, having suffered a stroke. For months Bob moved around variou...

      For my MA and then my unfinished PhD theis, I wrote about how the emotion we label as Shame can affect us in speaking our second languages. It's a lot more complicated that than sentence above, but more or less that's what I wrote about.     Reading all the materials I did, papers, books, talks and more, I realized how much shame, named or unamed, is a motivating factor for so much what we do or do not do as adults. And, I can remember intense moments of shame in my own life, that have somehow defined who I am, or am not.     One of the fascinating elements of faith, and especially if you are not focused on the Christian institutions, but rather Christ himself, is His whole ministry focused on love and not following what a shame-based culture said he should and shouldn't do.     He should have never touched a woman who was bleeding, dead bodies, lepers, and women in general. But he did. And they were made whole, healed, raised from the ...

 It has been decided, from this blog and other musing, that I'm going to write a book this year, and see where things go from there. I've had some really interesting encouragement to do so, mostly from people who just don't know me, and only have ever read what I've put here or on social media. The best encouragement comes from a very prolific author of over 40 books who told me she's not really a person of faith but has enjoyed my writing the last several months. I'm, as the Brits say, gobsmacked, and truly delighted by her praise. Since 2012, my writings have been mostly either academic or deeply personal correspondence, and as of late, more business correspondence. More and more, my time has been dedicated to social media, rather than long format, so the last three or so months of stretching my legs out on this blog writing what I want to say has felt rather delightful, and incredibly therapeutic. I think some of the most important things to keep in mind, and...