That whole reflecting business

I knew that at some point after I left São Paulo for Santiago Wednesday morning, there would be one night where I would be up early in the morning with a lot of thoughts and nothing better to do than write them down.

I suppose tonight is that night.

I am halfway through a debriefing session that is probably more necessary and productive than I would like to admit, because I just want to go home. Once I said goodbye to the five guys in the airport who stayed up all night with me just so we could go to Fran’s Café at 3:30 in the morning, my mind walked off and hopped on a direct flight to Nashville, and the rest of me went to Chile. I have slowly dragged my focus back across the continents to join me, but it has been hard.

It has been hard because I shouldn’t be in this weirdly paneled kitchen with no microwave. I shouldn’t be able to look out the window and see the Andes. Heck, I really shouldn’t be able to wake up in the morning to a cloudless sky that stays that way. I should be dragging myself off my lopsided mattress to the sound of rain and a Blackberry that has served as a very expensive alarm and address book the last four months. I should be seeing guys in various stages of dress making coffee, reading e-mail and greeting me with a hearty Bom Dia. And I should be heading off to university campuses, and Starbucks, and a bakery, and an English school, and an outdoor açai restaurant/car wash.

 

Brothers and sisters

While Jesus was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:46-50)

 

Christmas ZOE Café

 

Relational leaving

It’s Dec. 1,  80 degrees and sunny, and I’m sitting next to a box full of coffee. That means two things: I am in Brasil, and I’m coming home soon. In these final days, I have been thinking about authentic relationships. What are we more likely to do: grow our relationships, maintain them, or let them die if the other party doesn’t take initiative? And what do our decisions say about what we value?

I sometimes fear that students here think that when I leave, our relationships will go with me. I’ll go back to that mythical land known as the United States, where no one works and everyone has money and we all just sit around in coffee shops and talk about sex, and forget about the last four months of my life. It seems silly on its face, but students’ apprehension of building relationships is borne out of experience. Too many times Americans promise to keep in touch, and we don’t. Too often we say we’ll see them again, and we won’t. Add in a healthy dose of Paulistas’ homebred form of relationship neglect – a combination of isolation, busyness and a very un-Brazilian protection of privacy – and you’ll begin to understand the biggest obstacle to friendships that I have faced during my stay.

And so, as I move toward my inevitable departure, my message to São Paulo remains the following: To leave is not to forget. I’m hoping the same is true for everyone here.

 

Further proof that I have a self-deprecating sense of humor

Yours truly, zonked out as I wait for Chris B and Chris J to finish their physicals at the doctor this morning. After I woke up, I drank coffee and ate cake at the doctor’s office. This is the hard life of an American in São Paulo. (Photo courtesy of CJ)

 

Scenes from Rio

See more at my Flickr

More from Chris

 

Goodbyes

It has been quiet here at the house today. The sun pulled the clouds over its head today and let the rain steer the short-lived day into the darkness. The only other soul in the house is Chris, as the rest of the lot has taken off to the beach for the weekend. I must have told them goodbye a half-dozen times before everyone finally spilled out the door last night.

There have been a lot of goodbyes lately.

Last night, I also was saying goodbye to my friend Sean Nestor, who had been with me throughout this journey. We were three weeks from ending our time here in São Paulo when Sean got word of another goodbye he would have to make – to his older brother. It was an unexpected end to a life lived too quickly, and Sean was left to pack up and bear a burden no one should. Please pray for Sean, and even more for his family. I learned strength from Sean, and I hope that those around him can do the same.

It’s not easy to say goodbye to those you love, but sometimes it’s harder to watch the people you love say it to someone else. As I write this, Lindsey is saying goodbye to her grandfather, who taught her what a man should look like. I never got to meet him, but I know she will expect me to live up to his example. I am thankful he gave her those expectations.

Soon, I will say my goodbyes to the wonderful people I have had the privilege to meet here. Until then, I have had quite my fill.

 

A review of books and perspective

I read two books in the sofa-ridden, over-caffeinated vacation I took within the city this weekend, and I have fooled myself into thinking that I might have some great thought to impart regarding them. The two works should not share the same bookshelf, for reasons both practical – one is fiction, the other presumably not – and thematic. Although they are of similar length, the first took me two weeks to read; the second, I completed in a couple of hours. Perhaps accordingly, the first would be considered high literature among people who know such things. Those same folks label the second with that most odious modifier: “mass-market.”

I could go on, and I will. Just give me time.

In Dubliners, Joyce paints Dublin as a most awful place, with the most pitiful people. I hope its residents have found something in the last century to console them. Albom, in his Have a Little Faith, takes two of the most depressing places in America – New Jersey and Detroit – and finds happiness, hope and God among its people.

But both address death, and it is there I wish to pause. In the final story of Dubliners (titled, “The Dead”), we see Gabriel conclude he is blessed, if not wholly fulfilled, among company at a holiday gathering. But when he finds his wife listening to an old tune that recalls her tragic young love, Gabriel discovers that his suppositions about his standing among men mean nothing. Death will soon rob him of his family and even himself, and yet he will never experience love like that of an already-dead boy. Emptiness suffocates.

 

Relearning familiar lessons

This weekend finds me laid up in the house, the victim of both a sprained ankle that turned my left foot a delightful purple and a sinus infection that produces quite a lot of yell–  … well, better to leave that to the imagination. In any case, my body’s rainbow of maladies have left me with my toes pointed to the sky, a laptop in my, well, lap, and a steady flow of fluids and anti-inflammatories coursing through me.

I was to travel this weekend, until my body finally yielded to the abuse to which I have subjected it these last few months. I suppose it is for the better, as I am now forced to do something I don’t allow myself – that is to say, nothing. Those who know me well are aware that my vacations often turn into something resembling The Amazing Race, as I try to cram 17 experiences into a single day, not so much for the act of experiencing, but to check them off a list.  I often return from such sojourns more tired than when I embarked.

And so once again I am learning the importance of rest, of solitude, of dependency. I have been here before, in the hamster wheel, but rarely have I stopped running. It is too easy to lose myself in the act of doing, without reflecting on the purpose of the task. Faith without works is dead, James wrote, but it has been my experience that works without faith are similarly fruitless.

 

Demons and angels

 

Sean Nestor

Junior and I make very different faces before the Sport-Palmeiras game Wednesday night. The three of us (including Sean) went through a bevy of emotions as the teams tied 2-2. I ended at relief … that Junior would not be angry enough to hurtle our car off a bridge on the way home.