Uncle Tom and Evangeline

It is difficult for me to say how I reached the age of forty-two years having grown in my love for literature and having been inspired from my youth by the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King - how I might have taken this long to begin reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  I pretend to have no excuse and will only move forward with gratitude for what this story is speaking to me now.  I am just over half way through the book and I don’t know what is yet to come in the story, nor, sadly, do I know anything about the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe.  For these reasons, I hesitate to comment on the entire book, knowing the importance of the story not only to American literature, but also to American society. 

Nonetheless, on this particular morning, I encountered in the middle of this tragic, painful tale, the most beautiful description of an unlikely friendship between a patient, humble sufferer and an innocent, loving child.  A slave sold away from his family and a young girl, the daughter of the slave owner who had purchased him.  The redemptive impact of the friendship with Evangeline on the lost years of Tom’s life is exchanged for a profound spiritual growth and depth of compassion growing in Evangeline as a result of her close association with this gracious, kind saint.  I can’t begin to describe the impact of this interaction on me, so I will just share some of the text directly from Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

From CHAPTER XXII – “The Grass Withereth – the Flower Fadeth”

Life passes, with us all, a day at a time; so it passed with our friend Tom, till two years were gone.  Though parted from all his soul held dear, and though often yearning for what lay beyond, still was he never positively and consciously miserable…

Tom read, in his only literary cabinet, of one who had “learned in whatsoever state he was, therewith to be content.”  It seemed to him good and reasonable doctrine, and accorded well with the settled and thoughtful habit which he had acquired from the reading of that same book.

His letter homeward was in due time answered by Master George.  It contained various refreshing items of home intelligence… The style of the letter was decidedly concise and terse; but Tom thought it the most wonderful specimen of composition that had appeared in modern times.  He was never tired of looking at it, and even held a council with Eva on the expediency of getting it framed, to hang up in his room.  Nothing but the difficulty of arranging it so that both sides of the page would show at once stood in the way of this undertaking.

The friendship between Tom and Eva had grown with the child’s growth.  It would be hard to say what place she held in the soft, impressible heart of her faithful attendant.  He loved her as something frail and earthly, yet almost worshipped her as something heavenly and divine… and to humor her graceful fancies, and meet those thousand simple wants which invest childhood like a many-colored rainbow, was Tom’s chief delight.

Nor was Eva less zealous in kind offices, in return.  Though a child, she was a beautiful reader; - a fine musical ear, a quick poetic fancy, and an instinctive sympathy with what’s grand and noble, made her such a reader of the Bible as Tom had never before heard.  At first, she read to please her humble friend; but soon her own earnest nature threw out its tendrils, and wound itself around the majestic book; and Eva loved it, because it woke in her strange yearnings, and strong, dim emotions, such as impassioned, imaginative children love to feel.

The parts that pleased her most were the Revelations and the Prophecies, - parts whose dim and wondrous imagery, and fervent language, impressed her the more, that she questioned vainly of their meaning; - and she and her simple friend, the old child and the young one, felt just alike about it.  All that they knew was, that they spoke of a glory to be revealed, - a wondrous something yet to come, wherein their soul rejoiced, yet knew not why; and though it be not so in the physical, yet in moral science that which cannot be understood is not always profitless.  For the soul awakes, a trembling stranger, between two dim eternities, - the eternal past, the eternal future.  The light shines only on a small space around her; therefore, she needs must yearn towards the unknown.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Harriet Beecher Stowe

The story brought to mind my young friends Claire and Carly - their beautiful innocence and disarming kindness warm the hearts of so many haggard saints whose lives have seen trouble and pain and injustice.  They sit together with old children in a sanctuary in South Minneapolis on Sundays listening to Pastor Walt expound the book of Revelation while his own heart longs together with many of us that these precious young ones will one day take refuge in God when they meet with suffering - that like Hannah, they will pour out their soul before the Lord in that day (I Samuel 1:15).  The story reminded me also of the old children who shared the Word with me in the innocence of my own youth and who prayed for me from nursing homes and hospital beds that I myself might find grace to help in my own hour of need.  I am grateful for them, and humbled to be the beneficiary of their patient faith and kindness.  And together with these dear friends past and present, I yearn toward the unknown, the glory yet to be revealed, the wondrous something yet to come.

Come, everyone who thirsts

“Come, everyone who thirsts,

come to the waters;

and he who has no money,

come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

without money and without price.” Isaiah 55:1

Since leaving home in late January, I’ve been in a different city every Sunday.  I have not taken the opportunity to gather with others for worship while I’ve been traveling, and I have not yet looked for a church home here in Mexico.  God is faithful and I’ve been very blessed to be able to listen to sermons online and to meditate on His word.  Still, something deep in my soul longs to worship with the people of God, to draw encouragement from the saints, and to serve and edify my brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Being home in Minneapolis last Sunday for the first time in six weeks, I looked forward to Sunday morning worship with a greater than usual anticipation. I was thirsting for the presence of God in the midst of His people.  “I rejoiced when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord.” Psalm 122:1.  It is an inexpressible honor and blessing to be able to gather with the local body of Christ.

 

We arrived at the beginning of the worship time.  “I was created to make Your name glorious.”  To lose my voice in the song of the congregation was water to a thirsting soul.  Before and after the service and during the worship time, the people of God stopped to welcome me and encourage me and to pray for me.  Brothers and sisters who partner with me in ministry and who care for my family in my absence.  Brothers and sisters who know my weaknesses and my faults, who understand my temptations and who forbear with me, forgiving and praying for me.  Brothers and sisters I’ve known for 20 years and brothers and sisters I’ve known for a few months.  The kinship of the family of God draws us together as a people dependent on grace.  It was good to be home.

 

 

“Seek the LORD while he may be found;

Call upon him while he is near” Isaiah 55:6

Words with Adversaries

One of the ways I have stayed connected with my family this past month has been through on-line games.  I’ve found so much enjoyment in messaging with Hudson, My Linh, my nephew Josh and my Mother-In-Law Maxine while we’ve been playing Words with Friends or DrawSomething.  I rarely found time to engage this way in the past, but now with weeks spent alone in hotel rooms, this has become one of my favorite past times.

I must confess to being rather competitive though, at times to a fault; and Words with Friends can easily bring this ominous side of my character to the surface.  I try to demonstrate sportsmanship and encouragement, but I acknowledge being irked at times with the ludicrous words admitted in Words with Friends.  There was a time in the not too distant past when two people settled in across a Scrabble board armed only with their intellect and the vernacular they had attained in life.  The rules were simple, at least in the games I remember playing, and the most basic rule was that the words you spelled were not only actual English words, but words you knew and were familiar with. 

On the rare occasion when your adversary would play a word of questionable authenticity, you would simply ask them to use the word in a sentence or perhaps to define it.  Worse-came-to-worse you could always check the dictionary to see if it was, in fact, an actual English word.  Still, anyone who has ever perused a lexicon will honestly concede that there is an ocean of words that we never use, have never encountered, and really are not familiar with.  Point being that when you sit face to face, mano-a-mano, across a board with little wooden tiles, you both know that you can’t guess at words, or stumble upon them, and you certainly can’t search through the dictionary to find them.  And even if you happened to know somehow that ZA is slang for pizza and you were able to use it in a sentence and find it in the dictionary, you wouldn’t really be able to play it for 68 points with a clear conscience and a straight face because deep down you would know that the only reason you were aware of its being a word was that someone, somewhere had stumbled across it at some point in a game of Scrabble and had made you aware of it.

I guess that is part of the game now though, and I suppose I have started to come to terms with it.  For a while, I tried to stay to the high road in Words with Friends, but eventually my competitive nature eroded my purist tendencies.  The one remnant of valor I’ve retained is that I still have not made the first non-word play with a new adversary.  The minute you drop QI on me though, it’s GAME ON. 

So far, my kids have not made up any words – at least not any two letter words involving Q, J or Z.  In fact, both Hudson and My Linh are getting better and better at the game.  My Linh even held a 35-24 lead over our friend Dave Lindmark at one point. (Sidebar – if you ever need an ego-check, challenge a retired English teacher).  A week ago, I had a nice lead on My Linh, so I set her up with an E next to a triple word square and she promptly responded with a 58 point word.  Live and learn.  I’ve played cards with My Linh long enough to have known better.  She is cute and charming, but don’t let that pretty face fool you.  Inside the sweet exterior is a determined competitor.

I have to say though, that I don’t really enjoy playing non-words.  There is so much more satisfaction in playing JINXED, or BUXOM, or NECROMANTIC that I really prefer to hold out for those opportunities.  But hey, I’m not proud.  So if you figure out what KOS means, please let me know… I just played it on my nephew for 41 points.

 

Treadmilling home

One of the most decided down sides of my departure from Minneapolis is the personal loss of the running trails of the Twin Cities. I’ve logged thousands of miles on the Twin Cities running paths, mostly the River Road loops, Minnehaha Creek and the Minneapolis lakes.  I love the running paths and the scenic views.  The trails are beautiful in all seasons, and I enjoy running them throughout the year.  I usually run alone and I’ve come to know the trails so well - the distances and splits, the water fountains, shady loops for hot summer afternoons or sheltered stretches for windy winter days.

It has been over four years since I’ve run indoors and much longer since I’ve run on a treadmill.  The thought of running on a treadmill has so little appeal to me.  It takes so much more discipline to run on a treadmill in my opinion.  Outside, the natural world is so inviting that even on days when I have almost no motivation, if I can just get myself down the block and into a bit of rhythm, I’m very soon lost in the enjoyment of the run.   A treadmill seems like a foreboding prison guard, keeping me from the bright outdoors.

Nevertheless, with the travel schedule I now have, I’m forced to come to terms with the treadmill.  Not that I can really enjoy treadmilling, but I can tolerate it.  This morning, I was on the treadmill at the Jacaranda Hotel in Nairobi.  The dull monotony of running on a treadmill was difficult to manage.  I started converting the kilometers to miles in my mind so I could gauge where I was in the run.  As the time wore on, I started to picture where I might be on my favorite running loop.  Most runners have a favorite loop, I suppose - sort of the go-to run or the bread-and-butter route.  Mine is the Ford-Lake Loop on the River Road system.  I typically run this loop 70 or so times each year.  Soon I was imagining myself crossing the Ford Bridge and heading north on the East River Road.  Kilometers would tick past and I’d do the conversion to find myself at Summit Avenue and then making my way onto the Lake Street Bridge.

Often when I’m running unfamiliar courses and having a difficult outing, I will count down the miles by imagining I am on a familiar course.  Since every treadmill run is unfamiliar and difficult for me, it seemed quite natural to find myself counting down the kilometers near the end of the run.  I crossed under 46^th Street and Minnehaha falls.  With one kilometer to go I was crossing over Hiawatha and ascending toward 34^th Avenue.  I sped the treadmill up a few notches for the final stretch.  Turning the corner at 34^th and crossing over Minnehaha Creek I often pick up the pace as I aim for the intersection of 47^th Street and 34^th Avenue.  I reach down and turn off my Garmin 305 as I walk the final block.  The hum of the treadmill disappears as I grasp the door handle.  My run is finished but imagination hasn’t.

Missing my house on 33^rd Avenue and missing my family… Wishing I were home.

Maize Lethal Necrosis

This past week I attended a CIMMYT-sponsored workshop on Maize Lethal Necrosis, a very serious disease that has developed rapidly in Eastern Africa over the past two years.  MLN involves infection with two different viruses which combine to severely reduce or completely eliminate crop yield in susceptible varieties.  The first documented case of MLN in Africa occurred in 2011, causing extensive crop loss in small pockets of western Kenya.  MLN has subsequently moved throughout much of the mid-altitude maize growing region of western Kenya and has also been identified in eastern Uganda and northern Tanzania.

The workshop included representatives from the national agricultural research centers, private seed companies, national phytosanitary regulatory agencies, universities and CIMMYT scientists from eastern and southern Africa.

On Wednesday, we drove two hours to visit a screening trial near Naivasha.  It is difficult to describe how devastating the disease is.  I have seen foliar and stalk diseases, but never anything like what I witnessed in Naivasha.  The most susceptible varieties were dying outright prior to flowering, the majority of the varieties were showing chlorotic symptoms and stunting, and the few relatively tolerant varieties were still suffering significant yield reduction.  Even plants that appeared to be developing normally often had cobs with no seed development.  It was a sobering day.

The disease is leading to a crisis for maize farmers and the seed companies who serve them.  Farmers with very limited resources have already incurred significant losses and are now unable to grow their most important crop.  Seed companies are left with inventory of lines and hybrids that they can no longer sell.  Reduced maize production in the region will invariably lead to price increases.  Since maize is the primary staple food in the region, higher prices will affect the poorest throughout eastern Africa.  It is a very serious situation.

Please remember the farmers of eastern Africa in prayer.  Many people are facing hardship because of this disease.

“He regards the prayer of the destitute and does not despise their prayer.”  Psalm 102:17

 

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

Thomas Merton - Thoughts in Solitude

I wrote the above quotation out on a notecard and posted it above my desk in graduate school.  I used to read this on the long nights studying statistics or plant metabolism or quantitative genetics.  The thought that studying to be a plant breeder could be somehow connected to following God's will seemed so abstract at times, and I often wondered if I had taken a wrong turn somewhere.  

"But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing."  

Some nights this simple, desperate prayer seemed the only ray of hope in a confusing and exhausting journey, a road that seemed to be taking me far from the intended path of service I thought I had set out on.  So while I have thoroughly enjoyed the occupation of corn breeding and the outstanding colleagues I've been privileged to work with, and while I am also grateful to have been able to work for nearly twenty years on improving one of the most important cereal grain crops in the world, the opportunity to more directly contribute to poverty alleviation and food security for the most vulnerable seemed far distant.

"...you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost..."  

Nonetheless, what I could not envision, God had clearly in mind.  The road was taking me through experiences of critical professional development and invaluable personal growth far beyond the science and the day to day challenges of commercial corn breeding.  What appeared to me to be a career path far from what I had imagined was in reality a much more profound preparation than I could have comprehended.

Tonight I find myself at the end of an exhausting week - planning and strategizing to help a very talented group of maize breeders and researchers more efficiently develop stronger varieties for the world's poorest farmers.  It is a tremendously humbling task and I hope that I am able, by God's grace, to make a meaningful contribution toward this end.  Yet regardless the result, "... you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."  The outcome is beyond me, but the apprehension of God's grace is always at hand.

Grateful for the sovereign wisdom of God.

______________________________

"If you spend yourself on behalf of the hungry

and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,

then shall your light rise in the darkness

and your gloom be as the noonday."  Isa 58:10

Cry, the Beloved Country

I recently finished reading, "Cry, the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton, a book which immediately became a personal favorite.  The story is developed around an elderly Zulu pastor in rural South Africa, 1946, and his journey to Johannesburg in search of his son.  The story touches on several important social and environmental developments of the past century contributing to urbanization, poverty, crime, race relations and community fragmentation.  More importantly though, the story exposes the subtle beauty and stabilizing strength of humility and love.  It displays the power of forgiveness and culminates with a deeply personal commitment to faith in God and His goodness.  In the final pages, Pastor Kumalo is alone, praying in the pre-dawn hours of what will be a terribly sad and solemn day.  His prayer of thanksgiving reminds him of the myriad ways that God was present in his life and in his small community and leads him to contemplate the kindness of God:

"He pondered long over this, for might not another man, returning to another valley, have found none of these things?  Why was it given to one man to have his pain transmuted into gladness?  Why was it given to one man to have such an awareness of God?  And might not another, having no such awareness, live with pain that never ended?"

There are people in our lives who impact us profoundly for good, not so much by their words as by the simple, small actions of their lives - actions they are unaware of, actions reflexively sprung from a depth and beauty of character cultivated by a life of faith and love.  Pastor Kumalo is one of these people, and reading "Cry, the Beloved Country" through the eyes of humility and compassion certainly had this effect on me - it left me wanting to emulate this noble man and left me longing for a closer relationship with God.
______________

"More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces patience, and patience produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."  Romans 5:3-5
______________