Home Bored with a Cold

Christmas- the luxury of noticing what one misses about home

I knew it was coming! What a marvelous trip through Qatar and then to Jordan; still I knew it was coming. I felt that scratchy throat; the thick head and the pressured feeling in the eyes. When we go home with an over night flight from Doha to the new Khomeini airport I knew I had lost the battle. So, here I am with a headache and the other accoutrements of a cold. In my pained and bored state of mind I decided to make a list of what I missed most about home. Now do not get me wrong; there are many things that I could say I missed about Iran when in the States last summer. With the holiday season about to begin and the busiest shopping day of the year just past I am noticing my what I took for granted in the dear old Martinsville of Virginia.

The most obvious thing I miss is being able to jump into the car and drive to visit one of our children. Thanksgiving saw all of them together in Miami without us. Family comes first on the “what I miss list.” I need not elaborate since this is obvious to most of us. What is not so obvious is the comment by one of our children that something is wrong with a holiday when your parents grow up and move away from home.

Next on my list is missing the comics in the daily newspaper. I picked up a copy of the International Herald Tribune from the Doha airport and read the comics. They had Calvin and Hobbs, Blondie, (no Zits though), Beattle Bailey, Doonsbury, etc. I laughed my way through them and as an extrovert had to read them to Linda. I miss the comic strips.

I miss the rituals of Christmas. It really starts with Thanksgiving and then the Hanging of the Green in church and proceeds through the events of Christmas (where I usually get a cold)! I was thinking about coming out of the church on Christmas Eve. The night is cold and often rainy in Southside Virginia. The street lights remind me of my vision of Christmas in London. The time is right to go home and open one present from under the Christmas tree. I miss the rituals of Christmas.

I miss the recreational activity of eating food. When we were in Jordan we spent several days at a hot springs. MCC had gotten quite a deal at a very nice Dead Sea hotel. (They told us not to get used to it. That is what Quakers and Methodists would have said also!) Each meal was a recreational activity of sampling wonderful middle eastern food. I ate too much and even found the eggplant quite tasty!

I miss watching basketball on TV and keeping up on my Sports Illustrated. I promise myself that when I get back to the US I wlll take off the remote every channel that is not sports or news. That way I will not waste time surfing.

When the language in the country you live is not your native one, you are unable to fully enjoy a number of its cultural events. I suspect in Tehran there are enough cultural events that do not need a working knowledge of Farsi. What I miss is live theatre. Our copies of “Law and Order” are great (I wish I had purchased “House”). What I miss is the Christmas productions at church and the civic productions in town. I promise to get seasons tickets when I get back into the states.

What I notice is that in the busyness of life in the US I do not take time to enjoy what is the most nurturing. I miss the following; sitting around the table and having a good laugh with friends; having a good theological discussion with colleagues; greeting friends in the grocery store; shopping for books in Greensboro at Barnes and Noble; and eating at Mi Ranchito and seeing someone I have not seen for a while (while enjoying that California Burritto).

I miss listening to NPR on the radio; most often as I travel through out the city of Martinsville and then hearing a colleague or friend asking if I heard thus and such.

I miss spice tea and Christmas treats; I miss visiting in the homes of church friends and neighbors. I miss phone calls from our young friends around the country (though we have wonderful calls from young friends here in Qom).

When we were in the Amman airport we found a Cinnabon and indulged in a Starbucks coffee (the Christmas blend.)

I do not want to leave you with the idea that we have not developed meaningful rituals in Iran. We certainly have! I very much enjoy our evening coffee or chocolate ice cream bar. I enjoy hearing the calls to prayer throughout the day. I enjoy the call of the peddlers and the recylers as they make their rounds through out the day. I enjoy listening to Christmas carols on the ipod. I enjoy the sound of children playing soccer in the courtyard outside our window. I enjoy hearing the chirp of small children in the apartment above. I enjoy visiting in the homes of professors and Armenian friends and the rituals of the tea, rice and meat dishes and the fruit that starts and ends a meal. I very much enjoy the new web sites I have been introduced to in the Middle East whether from Arabic news or Russian news sources, to mention only a few.

Two things are going on in our lives, at least; one, we are in the stage of our tenure overseas where the newness has worn off and we miss home; two, we are able to step away from our life in the US and see what is life giving; things we were unable to see when caught up in the day to day activities of life. I miss the interaction with people that I had at work in the hospital. I recently emailed my successor at the hospital and realized that I although care about the work I did as a chaplain, some of the things I cared about then have little interest now. What I care about now is the way I touched peoples lives and how I enjoyed the way people touched my life. The things I listed above that I missed are linked to people and rituals of life. Without them life has little meaning. I have been blessed with a richness that I sometimes take for granted. I am learning that in other societies lives also center around the joy of relationships and rituals. Mental health in Iran is strong because of this reliance on family, friends and the rituals of life. They may have all the variety of choices we have, but life is not centered around the things of life but the appreciation for life shared together.

A Reflection on Community

Coming to Qom is quite an adventure! Yet even in an adventure there is a time when you long for the comforts of home. We often say that the deepest thing we miss is our home, our friends, and our children and usually in the reverse order. Then the evening comes and one of us comments on the day just ending. The refrain goes something like this: “My what a wonderful day! Can you believe what we experienced today?”

I often wonder if I am missing something because most of the time I feel quite at home in this Holy City of Qom. There is such a contrast between the city of Tehran and the Holy city of Qom. You do not even notice when a man in a turban walks by you or climbs onto the bus in Qom. It is quite noticeable in Tehran. We recently came home via Metro and then bus. On the metro a cleric, dressed in common clerical garb, was traveling between Talighani and Khomeini stations. I could see the young men on the metro watching him board and depart. (Maybe it was because he was not wearing any socks. This is very unusual here since the dress of cleric covers him form head to foot.)

While we are the only Christians or Masihi (means follower of the Messiah) in Qom of which we know, we certainly are very well received. With its hundreds of bookstores, all religious books, its numerous religious schools, its shine to the 8th Imam’s sister, Fatima Masumeh (meaning the infallible) it stills feels like a friendly city. Yes, it is a city where the industry is religious study. It is a city that only ten years ago was a much sleeper one. It is a city where on my daily bus rides and my biking from home to the Institute to the downtown area for supplies I see at least a hundred clerics in turbans. In all this we find it fascinating.

I (David) have never felt any animosity or ill will from the clerics I meet. The clerics can be in there own world as they do the ordinary chores of life. I see a cleric in very fine attire and wearing a very well kept turban carrying home for lunch a sack of greens or haggling over the price of a new computer. When the clerics are not preoccupied and we make eye contact they acknowledge me in a very warm and friendly way. In our apartment complex our neighbors across the hall moved out and a very nice and pleasant cleric has moved in. His English is not as good as my Farsi and so we have not had a very long conversation but he just is the nicest man. We have been here since February and he is the first tenant of the complex to figure out our address and put sign up on the street to help people find us.

It is these kind of things that make life interesting.

In spite of our decision to take this challenging work it is always in our minds that we could not do this alone. How did this privilege come about? I have listed four reasons to keep me grateful for this opportunity. One does not step out in this adventure solely because of ones own merit.

First, the work of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in offering to help in the early 90’s with disaster relief was most important. I was at dinner with several professors about a month ago. One of the professors told me why he especially respected the MCC. The MCC came in to help in a time of need and without strings attached. They just wanted to help when there was a need in the world. He indicated that this was very refreshing I a world of calculation.

Second, there is a need to have life experiences that helped us learn to appreciate other cultures and be comfortable in meeting strange customs and different ways of living. It feels like our lives have been a preparation for this form of service. We did not get here with out the opportunities to work cross culturally in El Salvador, earlier in Jamaica, and then the most blessed and fulfilling endeavor is our friendships with the African American Church. It seems like God had given us experiences that help us accept the ebb and flow of being in a very different culture.

Third, we have been humbled by the realization that there are many people in many places that enable us to do what we do. Coming home this past summer we realized the prayer support, the support team that enables us to leave home and children and pursue this adventure.

Fourth, we are touched by the good will of many in the Muslim world who want to find ways to increase good will among people’s in a world of distrust and self interest. No matter how different our theologies are around a good number of issues, the good will and desire for peacemaking is a universal hunger among many of the people with whom we have come in contact. Today a massive demonstration took place in Tehran to protest the economic restrictions that the US has place on Iran. We followed the event on the TV. In the middle of the afternoon one of our close friends called and told us that this was not directed against us or the American people but just against the policy of the American government.

All of these points are worthy of further discussion. I wish to elaborate on two of them- number two and three.

When I got home in early July I started to add up all those who supported us in the few months we had been away. The realtor, our financial people, my brother as power of attorney, the neighbors, those that checked our house and saw that someone was hired to work the yard, the friends that took care of our animals, the prayer partners, those who encouraged us through emails and those who read our blog site. I will not mention names since that will leave out someone but the amazing group of people that keeps the home fires burning while we are away. You do not sojourn by yourself for it feels like the prayers of our friends and their churches have given us extraordinary opportunities to experience new and amazing things. The most important part of the whole experience for me is the strong and growing awareness how important interfaith dialogue is in a world where the press and the anxiety of globalization often pushes for distrust and conflict.

I now want to turn somewhat philosophical if you will indulge me. I read the NY Times on line. I particularly like the commentary. One of my favorite commentators is David Brooks. I do not come from the same part of the political spectrum as he but I deeply respect his integrity and clarity of vision and even his wisdom. If I disagree with him it always comes with a new clarity. This past year he gave the commencement address at Wake Forest University. It was very thought provoking. He said something we often do not think about in our individualistic society. He pressed home the idea that we bring together in our lives all the experiences of our ancestors. He quoted a modern geneticist who suggest that over the centuries we have within us a genetic link to our ancestors and all the experiences of their lives effect who we are and how we are wired. While there are some who transcend their background and ancestry and move it in a new direction, most of us are being carried on the backs of our heritage, our culture, our civilization, and our religious forbearers.