Homeleave #6: O Canada

Rebecca and I on a suspension bridge that crosses over Lynn Canyon, North Vancouver, Canada.



This is another important juncture and opportunity to put down 'on paper' the happenings in our homeleave.  I am writing this for friends in Burundi who are interested in keeping up with us, as well as a way for me to reflect back on the experiences and how they have renewed and enriched us mentally, physically, and spiritually.

I had mentioned in my last entry that we were leaving the children with the Grandparents for a one week trip as a couple to Vancouver.  The plan was to audit a one week course on the Psalms at Regent College (a Christian seminary) where Rebecca received her M. Div.  We had chosen this option for several reasons not necessarily in this order of importance:

1) Spiritual renewal-- We feel we have needed this both as a result of our overseas assignment as well as parents of young children.  Both are equally trying I would say, even though we love our children and do find a great deal of satisfaction in our jobs.  MCC encourages us to do something intentionally renewing as part of our leave time and even provided a contribution to the tuition fee of the course.

2) Visiting the Pacific Northwest again-- Both of us did our graduate work in the region (me at UW) and Rebecca at Regent.  We also spent time during our courtship together in Vancouver so we did relish the idea of going back and reliving some of those memories.

I should add that our decision to take a course in Old Testament theology (the Psalms) over some of the more topical courses offered was due to the fact that Dr. Bruce Waltke was teaching (one of the foremost evangelical scholars of OT theology and Hebrew in the world, as well as one of the greatest men of sincere faith I have ever met.), and also because we really felt a need to 'get back to the basics'.  So we forewent some interesting options including "Reading C.S. Lewis",  "Writing with Scripture", "Faith in a Postmodern World", "Poverty and Transformtion in the Gospel", etc.  in favor of what could have been a very dry series of lectures on exegeting the Psalms using various critical methods.

In fact, Dr. Waltke did exegete and give us tools to exegete using various critical methods, but through it he opened my eyes and heart to receive them for the bursting garden of hidden treasures they are. He also restored my confidence that indeed those psalms attributed to King David were most likely written by him despite the doubts cast by some late 19th century Bible scholars who have claimed they date to the more recent 'second temple' period, theories that remain in vogue even today.

I cannot go into the details of everything I learned about the Psalms and that might also detract from talking about the important way that reading them daily worked on my soul.  Class was from 8-11 followed by an hour chapel service at the seminary with beautiful music and inspired speakers.  It was the perfect beginning to each day.  Rebecca and I would walk back to the sublet apartment we were staying at then have the afternoon to relax and do things in the City.

Before I go forward though into our extracurricular activities in Vancouver I should back up a bit to talk about our arrival.  We left on a Friday from Baltimore.  My Dad dropped us off at about 7 am at the airport and we headed for Seattle where we planned to connect with some old friends of ours (Matt and Jana), stay the night, then head out in a rented car the next morning.

The weather was bad in Chicago, our connecting town, and our flight left Baltimore several hours late.  We were quite sure we would miss the connection but by a miracle, our next flight was also delayed taking off so we made the connection with about 10 seconds to spare but sprinting through O'Hare Airport when we landed.

The long flight and even delays were not all bad.  Not traveling with kids meant that Rebecca and I actually had a chance to read a book or two.  I brought a book called When Charity Destroys Dignity: Overcoming Unhealthy Dependency in the Christian Movement.  It is written by Glenn Schwartz the son of the missionary martyred in the movie The End of the Spear.  It is a good book about the problem of charity and worth reading if you are in the mission field.  I got through most of it on the flight to Seattle.

The arrival in Seattle was less dramatic and Matt met us at the airport.  I could not do justice to Matt and Jana in trying to 'sum them up' in any brief way.  I have known them for many years, probably most notably during my dance mid-career.  I lived in New York at the time but did some work in St. Louis at Washington University from time to time.  Matt was a student and then later got a job at MADCo a dance company I had worked in in St. Louis.  Jana was a dancer there and I set several works on them as a guest choreographer.  When I went to grad. school in Seattle, Matt and Jana had moved there and founded their own dance company 'The Rockhoppers'. We became very close those 2 years because of our past connection.  So close that when I did get married in Baltimore to Rebecca, they came out and even performed a duet at the reception of our wedding.

They are unique in many ways I cannot even explain. I get the impression, for instance that they succeed at everything they try.  They have since left dance and have an amazing landscape architecture business that does beautiful garden work in Seattle called Terabithia.

They were very happy to welcome us to their house when we arrived and Matt smoked ribs, beginning on the morning we arrived.  We had a fantastic dinner and spent a lot of time laughing and reminiscing about the old days.  They gave us a lift to the car rental place after breakfast and also gave us some fall/winter clothes as we had no idea that while it was 105 in Baltimore it has not ever been above 80 the whole summer in Seattle and is in the 50s and 60s most of the time.  It was cold there and Rebecca and I were not at all prepared for that.

We started the 3 or so hour drive North to Vancouver but stopped for lunch to see another friend, Elizabeth, who was a housemate of Rebecca's when she was a student at Regent.  (She was also at our wedding.)  Elizabeth has since married a man named Nick and they live in Skagit Valley about an hour north of Seattle where they work in a ministry alongside migrant farm workers, ex-prisoners, former addicts, and other marginalized people.  Nick also manages a community farm project where they grow some of the most beautiful vegetables I have ever seen.  (The soil there is probably the best in the world for things like cabbages, broccoli, berries, etc.)  We had a very nice lunch with them and talked about some shared interests in ways, as Christians, to engage poverty which do not lead to dependence but rather empower those we are serving to find sustainable solutions to their problems.  The spiritual leader of their ministry is a man named Robert Ekblad who wrote the book Reading the Bible with the Damned.  I read it when I was doing prison ministry in New York and it is one of the best books I have ever read on sharing hope, through our faith, with people who are deeply marginalized and alienated from (and by) mainstream western culture.

We continued on to Vancouver after our visit with Elizabeth and Nick and arrived in the afternoon. (It was so simple to cross the border--did not even get out of the car--its lush gardens and parkland were a real contrast to the border between Rwanda and Burundi that we drive through monthly.

We found our apartment and key, dropped our stuff off and decided to take a long walk from the UBC campus along the shore toward the City.  It was cool but perfect weather to walk in.  We marveled at how clean everything was, how well-cared-for the City looked.  And of course marveled at the sublime back drop of snow-capped peaks which surround the City across the picturesque English Bay.  We also were interested to see expressions of Vancouver culture (where everyone seems super healthy.)  Here is a picture of an outdoor yoga class with about 300 people in attendance.

We made a loop back home and had some sushi and Korean soup at an Asian restaurant near the campus.  We had decided to eat very healthily and exercise daily during our time here as well.

The next day was Sunday and we were invited to preach at Peace Mennonite Church, where Rebecca had interned while she was in seminary.  We shared our video and reflections on Psalm 126 with them.  There were some MCCers there who really appreciated the presentation.  There were others who still remembered Rebecca from her seminary days including the pastor and his wife who Rebecca had actually been in Seminary with.  (Tim and Sandra)  Although Tim was not in town, Sandra invited us over to lunch afterward and we had a nice meal with her and their 3 sons.

What most impressed me that day was the story she told me about how their family had biked across Canada in 80 days two summers before.  I was amazed that they had the wherewithal to do such a thing. The youngest son was only 12 at the time.  It apparently was something they had planned to do for years.  I was so impressed I am thinking about maybe working toward doing that with our family in about a decade (maybe for my 60th Birthday).  I imagined what a lasting memory that would be to leave with one's children as well as a time to really grow together as a family.  Anyway, we will see if that ever happens.  I certainly admired their willingness to do that.  We also talked about some common interests as they had served as a family in Zimbabwe and had been back in the past year.

We left in the afternoon and had made a plan to do a hike that day.  Specifically, we had decided to hike up Grouse Mountain on a trail called the Grouse Grind.  I know every Vancouverite knows what this is but I will try my best to describe it to those who do not.  It is not a remote trail, in fact it is quite well used, probably hundreds of people a day ascend it.  If that were not the case I would call it the most grueling vertical ascent short of mountaineering.  Several thousand feet up in less than 2 kilometers.  I know that we were dying and wondering if we were near to the top after half an hour.  We were sure we must be, until we saw the one quarter sign about 300 meters above us.  We trudged on, Rebecca did her best not to look down as she is extremely acrophobic.   Meanwhile we were being passed every 2 or so minutes by individuals or groups that were virtually jogging up, trying to beat their previous time.  (Which you can get recorded on an e-card.)  The world record is about 24 minutes and Rebecca and I probably took about 1.5 hours.  To the average person this hike is a grueling struggle against nature and fear; for Vancooverites it is Nature's stairmaster, and many do it several times a week.

The top is a real tourist attraction and can be reached as well by a giant cable car (the way we came down.)  It is a real thrill ride, like a roller coaster only thousands of feet down hanging by a thread.  There is skiing at the top in winter and there was still snow on the mountain when we got up there.  (We were not cold after the climb though.)  We shopped on the way home and ate dinner around 10pm, which did not seem late as the sun just barely sets by that time.


Monday we began class and as I mentioned above, we felt very good about the course of study we had selected for the week.  It was really satisfying to be back in a class setting and listening to a lecture by an inspired teacher!

On Monday afternoon we took a brief walk on the beach but then rode the bus into the City in Vancouver to have dinner with another former classmate of Rebecca (who also came to our wedding).  Scott and his wife Patricia live in a really nice apartment in downtown Vancouver that reminds me of a highrise on the upper westside of New York City.  Very small but extremely well-appointed.  He is working for the Catholic Church running a homeless shelter and helping people with transitional housing.  They prepared an exquisite dinner for us perfectly presented including a cake that Patricia made.  She even went to the internet and found the phrase Kaze Abagenzi (welcome friends) in Kirundi and wrote it in icing on the cake.  We took our dinner to the park by the waterfront and then took a walk around the marina to the entrance to Stanley Park.  It was great to catch up with them and hear about what it is like for Scott as an American to be working now in Canada.  We ended the evening with cups of imported Colombian hot chocolate before Rebecca and I returned to our apartment.

Tuesday we went swimming in the afternoon in the UBC pool.  We chose to use the 50 meter outdoor pool even though the air was quite cool.  The water is kept at a reasonable temperature so the workout was very satisfying.  We took another long walk afterward and found a park on the waterfront where there was a 135 meter pool!  It was phenomenal and we planned to return to try it out on Thursday.

Wednesday we took a walk through Stanley Park downtown along the waterfront.  It is very scenic and includes beautiful views of mountains, water, as well as ocean liners, enormous oil freighters and cargo ships coming and going, and sea planes taking off and landing.  We also saw seals in the water as well as a family of otters.

Thursday after class we did take a trip to the gigantic pool for a swim.   It was quite an experience to swim laps that measured 135 meters.  Going across and back once was the equivalent of doing 11 laps in a 25 meter pool.  Afterward, since it was our last evening in Vancouver, we went out to eat again at a Japanese restaurant (we love sushi--something you just don't get in Burundi or much of Africa for that matter.)

After class on Friday we packed and left Vancouver and drove back to Seattle where we met Matt and Jana again after dropping off the rental car.  We arrived about 6pm and since our plane was leaving at 11:30 pm, (red eye) we had dinner with them at a Thai restaurant.  Another unforgettable meal for both the food and the conversation.  They dropped us at the airport afterward and we took the overnight back to Baltimore (with a stop in Chicago) without incident.

We were extremely grateful to our parents for watching the kids for the whole time.  We did Skype regularly and got very good reports about them.  For most of the week Oren stayed with Rebecca's folks and David stayed with mine.  Splitting them up was actually really good since sibling rivalry is one of the main programs they run when they are together.  Being apart at night made them very compatible by day and they did many things with cousins including visit the zoo, train museum, a farm, etc.  They were extremely well-behaved the whole time.

The challenge of ending this trip was the lack of transition time to the next activity.  We landed in Baltimore at 9:30 am Saturday and left 3 hours later, bleary-eyed on the next stage of our leave- a vacation with Rebecca's family at the Chautaqua Institute in upstate New York.  I will say more about that next week, but I am writing right now from New York.  The 8 hour drive up here was probably the most difficult part of the trip since Rebecca and I only had the fitful sleep one gets sitting upright in a plane the night before.  Still we are glad to be here and to see our kids again and are enjoying our time now with Rebecca's parents, her brother's family and the cousins are having a blast.

Postscript:  I want to reflect a bit on the experience of visiting Canada as an American, particularly during this week when all the news seemed to be about the impending debt crisis and the inability of Congress to reach a compromise.  I guess the tension will always exist here in our culture between the recognized need for an effective federal government and the desire to be left alone to pursue one's own destiny.  Our forefathers overthrew their own colonial overseers in order to pursue individual inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

In Canada the 3 words that probably best express the Canadian citizen's worldview is  Peace, Order, and Good Government.  That is, they do, on the whole, privilege the good of the community over the rights of the individual.  It is evident in that Canadians pay very high taxes.  But the trade-off is also evident in the well working efficient mass transit system, in low unemployment, in beautiful parks to be enjoyed by all, in free health care, and in a highly regulated banking system that did not get caught in the sub-prime lending crisis that plunged our economy into recession.  Scott, who works with the homeless also noted that in Seattle (3 hours down the road) there are 10,000 homeless people on the streets, in Vancouver there are less than 2500.  This is because all new building in Vancouver City must make provision for 20% low-income housing in the facility and homelessness is a priority for the city.  (the mayor was elected on a platform of providing more bike lanes and ending homelessness.)

I think the Tea Party in our country represents the apotheosis of the rights of the individual over the state.  Rightfully they ask why the government should force us to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves.  (I think  Tea Partyers believe that unemployment is more due to ones unwillingness to work rather than bad fortune beyond ones control and helping out just makes it worse.)  I disagree, but I really don't know who is right.   -- I will say, however, that there is a lot to be said for a nation that takes care of all its citizens and foreigners and puts the good of the community over the individual.  Whether Canadians are generally less lazy and likely to take advantage of the system than Americans, I can't say... but I doubt it.  And yet government regulation and taxes seem to succeed there in promoting the good for all better than unregulated private enterprise in our country.  Many who read this may differ with me on this analysis, but I would suggest taking a good hard look at a place like Canada before rejecting the notion completely.

Bonus Photo:  Oren at a farm in Maryland that his grandparents took him to.