I'm back in Ohio, and happy to report that we had safe travels and many happy adventures while in Norway. Our plans were not directly affected by the bombing and shooting in Oslo by a deranged right-wing Norwegian, since we were flying into and staying at Trondheim, a city in the central part of Norway. However, all of Norway was in shock and reeling from the effects of this national tragedy. Trondheim had a vigil in their downtown area, and the news has been focused primarily on this event.
Trondheim, a smallish city by U.S. standards (170,000), is most famous for its St. Olav's festival, an event that happens once a year at the end of July. The week-long festival starts with St. Olav's wake, a service held on the eve of his death-day, July 29. St. Olav, who introduced Christianity to Norway, was martyred (actually, killed in battle - but his death is viewed as martyrdom by religious Norwegians) near Trondheim and is buried at Nidaros cathedral, which is at the center of Trondheim, both geographically and religiously. The festival itself consists of a medieval craft and food fair (think week-long Relief Sale, if you're Mennonite), numerous musical events, and lots of programs for kids, all of which is kicked off by the service of St. Olav's wake held in the massive Nidaros Cathedral.
This service in Nidaros is the climax and final destination of one of the few still-practiced Christian pilgrimages that began in the middle ages. Many pilgrims begin in Oslo and travel hundreds of miles, on foot, to Nidaros. Although I would someday love to complete the entire pilgrimage, a highlight of my trip was participating in two small segments of this great journey: one stretch from Ranheim to Ringve (approx 6 km), and another stretch from Sverresborg to Nidaros Cathedral (about 4.5 km).
The first stretch was a day-hike with two fellow pilgrims: my dear hubbie, Joe (the reluctant pilgrim), and my friend, April (the over-packing pilgrim). We made an interesting trio along this ancient path, which was marked by signs indicating that it was a pilgrim way. We had a book that marked destinations that we should be passing and served as a rough guide, but we primarily had to find our way by looking for these signs that emboldened the way. Part of what I love about the pilgrim way is that it is a great metaphor for life: we have guidebooks, travel companions, and the path in front of us. But on this path we still have to be alert, looking for signs to guide us, not just walking blindly ahead. We took a wrong turn or two, which meant having to trod some extra meters (the reluctant pilgrim being none-too-happy with the over-packing pilgrim on this stretch), but in the end, we reached our destination of Ringve and enjoyed some delicious Norwegian hot-dogs and fresh plums.
The second stretch was a journey from Sverresborg, a folk museum in another borough of Trondheim, to the Nidaros Cathedral in downtown. I began this journey with my friend, her hubbie, and their two children in a double-wide stroller. A bonus about this stretch of the pilgrimage (which the reluctant pilgrim decided to sit out) is that it is ALL downhill on city streets, which makes it much easier physically than the earlier hike.
This journey was a more organized pilgrimage, beginning at the Sverresborg Kirke (church) at 7 pm, and ending at the Nidaros Cathedral around 11 pm. A group of about 50 pilgrims met together at Sverresborg Kirke for a 20 minute service (all in Norwegian), and then we set on our way to the second destination, Hospital Kirke, where we were joined about approximately 50 more pilgrims. We proceeded to Ilen Kirke, then to Var Frue Kirke, then to a healing well outside of Nidaros, then to a statue of St. Olav, and finally we proceeded into the Nidaros Cathedral. By this time our throng numbered in the hundreds, and we were met by hundreds more Norwegians who gathered in the Cathedral for the wake. While we processed into the Cathedral, we were surrounded by torch-bearers shrouded in brown frocks, and the organ was playing a majestic piece of music that echoed through the stone pillars of the cathedral. I don't think I have ever participated in such magnificent pageantry, certainly not for a religious service, and the experience was breathtaking. The Cathedral, which had seemed dark, dank, and cold on Joe and my earlier visit as tourists, came to life in this setting, and I felt the awe that so many earlier Christians must have experienced upon entering it. I felt surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, past and present, and the fact that we spoke different languages, used different currency, and valued different things, made little difference in this shared transcendent experience.
That is what I love about true worship - it can lift you up out of your own dark corner and take you to a completely different place. And, no matter your language, your heritage, your race, or your age, to share in this experience with other humans - it's nothing less than divine.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
Tour de Health
Lately my brothers, both biking fanatics, have been spending mass quantities of time watching the Tour de France over the Internet. Even my lackadaisical husband has jumped on the bandwagon of watching tall muscled men in spandex pedal at furious speeds across various landscapes, although he could be convinced to watch almost any sport (exemption: figure skating) for the entertainment value. I admit to enjoying some of the race myself, but more for the passing scenery and the occasional possessed fan than for the actual race, the technicalities of which are largely lost on me (drafting? peloton? Who knew that bike racing had its own vocabulary?)
While I haven’t invested much time in the Tour de France, or any kind of biking lately, I have been on my own little tour since school let out: the Tour de Health. Between days of organizing our house, canning jams, swimming with my nieces and nephews, and other things domestic, I have ventured out on trips to visit my friends and to touch base with loved ones. I see this as part of my calling to “do while it is yet day” – to spend as much time as possible with those that I love. As much as I try to maintain contact via Caring Bridge or Facebook or Cellphone or Skype – nothing beats face time with my favorite peeps.
Here’s a summary of some of my recent escapades:
Early July – I visited Pittsburgh where I spent a day at the Menno Convention and had the opportunity to see my friends Bryce Miller and Jodi Beyeler. I was also privileged to stay with my friend Jessica Spieser Landes and her husband David at their home in Swissvale, where I enjoyed debriefing with them and sharing fresh meals.
Mid-July – While Joe was in Atlanta for 2 trade shows, I drove out to Baltimore, MD, where I spent some time with my friend Liz. On the way home I stopped for some quality time with the Bentzes, my host family in Scottdale, PA, when I interned at the Mennonite Publishing House.
Late-Mid-July – My sister Mary arrived back in Ohio from her year of service in Peru! She’s going to be living on the farm with us for a few months and hopefully go back to Peru in September to finish some of her projects. It’s so good to have her back for now.
And that brings us to present – late July. This past week has been spent preparing for Joe’s and my trip to his Scandinavian homeland – Norway. Planning for this trip has consumed most of my free time; I’ve been scouring the Lonely Planet Norway guide for ideas and advice, talking to my friend Martha Hancock, who just returned from Norway, and of course, e-mailing April & Eivind, our friends and hosts in Norway, for suggestions. It has been exciting and overwhelming to pull together the details for this trip, and I’ve had to do most of it since Joe's been so busy at work. Joe and I will actually be flying separately due to the fact that we used credit miles to purchase my ticket, and purchasing the same ticket for Joe would have resulted in an extremely expensive price. So, he found a flight that leaves within an hour of mine, goes to Norway by a completely different route, and arrives within a half-hour of mine. I realized today that a) I’ve never traveled internationally by myself before (it’s always been in a group or with other people) and b) I’ve never planned an international trip before (it’s always been coordinated by someone else). So now my Tour de Health is taking me somewhere I’ve never been before, and somewhere that I’m a little afraid to go – a different culture that is 3 flights away and 6 hours ahead of us. Yikes!
Doing all this traveling has me reflecting on a favorite quote of mine by Susan Sontag, a brilliant writer who also had breast cancer: “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” Until I had cancer, I had no idea what it was like to travel to “that other place.” Now that I have been a resident there, and am, temporarily, back in the realm of the healthy, I have to think about what it means to hold dual citizenship to both of these places. Especially as someone whose cancer is in remission, I don’t particularly belong to one place or the other: I don’t fully “belong” with other physically healthy people who have never suffered from a serious illness; I also don’t fully “belong” with other people who are ill or suffering, since right now, my body is pain-free and I am physically able to do the activities I enjoy doing. I praise God for that, but I also know that, eventually, I will need to revisit the land of the ill. What does it mean to belong to that “other” category? Where is my place, and how should people respond to me?
I have been reading a book, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, by Arthur Frank, to help me think about these questions. He uses the term “remission society” to describe people who are well but aren’t considered cured such as people who have had cancer, diabetics, those with allergies and environmental sensitivities, the chronically ill, the disabled, those recovering from abuse and addictions, etc. I love the term “remission society” because it gives a name to the group of people, often invisible and all around us, which I am a member of. We are not the sick, and we are not the healthy. We are the in-between.
Tonight I will be pulling out my U.S. passport as I pack and prepare for my trip to Norway. Tomorrow, Joe and I will be boarding separate flights, having layovers in separate cities and countries, as we head to the same destination: Trondheim, Norway. Lord willing, we will meet up again at the Trondheim airport, as our flights are scheduled to arrive within a half-hour of each other. Dying must be a little like our trip to this unknown foreign land: we will say good-bye to each other in Cleveland, but our passages to our final destination will be separate. I trust that we will see each other again on the other side.
Please think of us and pray for our safe travels while we are gone.
While I haven’t invested much time in the Tour de France, or any kind of biking lately, I have been on my own little tour since school let out: the Tour de Health. Between days of organizing our house, canning jams, swimming with my nieces and nephews, and other things domestic, I have ventured out on trips to visit my friends and to touch base with loved ones. I see this as part of my calling to “do while it is yet day” – to spend as much time as possible with those that I love. As much as I try to maintain contact via Caring Bridge or Facebook or Cellphone or Skype – nothing beats face time with my favorite peeps.
Here’s a summary of some of my recent escapades:
Early July – I visited Pittsburgh where I spent a day at the Menno Convention and had the opportunity to see my friends Bryce Miller and Jodi Beyeler. I was also privileged to stay with my friend Jessica Spieser Landes and her husband David at their home in Swissvale, where I enjoyed debriefing with them and sharing fresh meals.
Mid-July – While Joe was in Atlanta for 2 trade shows, I drove out to Baltimore, MD, where I spent some time with my friend Liz. On the way home I stopped for some quality time with the Bentzes, my host family in Scottdale, PA, when I interned at the Mennonite Publishing House.
Late-Mid-July – My sister Mary arrived back in Ohio from her year of service in Peru! She’s going to be living on the farm with us for a few months and hopefully go back to Peru in September to finish some of her projects. It’s so good to have her back for now.
And that brings us to present – late July. This past week has been spent preparing for Joe’s and my trip to his Scandinavian homeland – Norway. Planning for this trip has consumed most of my free time; I’ve been scouring the Lonely Planet Norway guide for ideas and advice, talking to my friend Martha Hancock, who just returned from Norway, and of course, e-mailing April & Eivind, our friends and hosts in Norway, for suggestions. It has been exciting and overwhelming to pull together the details for this trip, and I’ve had to do most of it since Joe's been so busy at work. Joe and I will actually be flying separately due to the fact that we used credit miles to purchase my ticket, and purchasing the same ticket for Joe would have resulted in an extremely expensive price. So, he found a flight that leaves within an hour of mine, goes to Norway by a completely different route, and arrives within a half-hour of mine. I realized today that a) I’ve never traveled internationally by myself before (it’s always been in a group or with other people) and b) I’ve never planned an international trip before (it’s always been coordinated by someone else). So now my Tour de Health is taking me somewhere I’ve never been before, and somewhere that I’m a little afraid to go – a different culture that is 3 flights away and 6 hours ahead of us. Yikes!
Doing all this traveling has me reflecting on a favorite quote of mine by Susan Sontag, a brilliant writer who also had breast cancer: “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” Until I had cancer, I had no idea what it was like to travel to “that other place.” Now that I have been a resident there, and am, temporarily, back in the realm of the healthy, I have to think about what it means to hold dual citizenship to both of these places. Especially as someone whose cancer is in remission, I don’t particularly belong to one place or the other: I don’t fully “belong” with other physically healthy people who have never suffered from a serious illness; I also don’t fully “belong” with other people who are ill or suffering, since right now, my body is pain-free and I am physically able to do the activities I enjoy doing. I praise God for that, but I also know that, eventually, I will need to revisit the land of the ill. What does it mean to belong to that “other” category? Where is my place, and how should people respond to me?
I have been reading a book, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, by Arthur Frank, to help me think about these questions. He uses the term “remission society” to describe people who are well but aren’t considered cured such as people who have had cancer, diabetics, those with allergies and environmental sensitivities, the chronically ill, the disabled, those recovering from abuse and addictions, etc. I love the term “remission society” because it gives a name to the group of people, often invisible and all around us, which I am a member of. We are not the sick, and we are not the healthy. We are the in-between.
Tonight I will be pulling out my U.S. passport as I pack and prepare for my trip to Norway. Tomorrow, Joe and I will be boarding separate flights, having layovers in separate cities and countries, as we head to the same destination: Trondheim, Norway. Lord willing, we will meet up again at the Trondheim airport, as our flights are scheduled to arrive within a half-hour of each other. Dying must be a little like our trip to this unknown foreign land: we will say good-bye to each other in Cleveland, but our passages to our final destination will be separate. I trust that we will see each other again on the other side.
Please think of us and pray for our safe travels while we are gone.
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