The Oxford Project

"In the Storytelling tradition of Studs Terkel and the photographic spirit of Mike Disfarmer, The Oxford Project tells the extraordinary true tale of a seemingly ordinary Midwestern town through the pictures and words of its residents. Equal parts art, American history, cultural anthropology, and human narrative - The Oxford Project is at once personal and universal, surprising and predictable, simple and profound.

The Project began almost twenty-five years ago, when Peter Feldstein undertook the remarkable task of photographing nearly every resident of this town, Oxford, Iowa (pop. 676). The collection of photographs that resulted is a fascinating glimpse into the ethos and character of small-town life. In those stark, full-body images Feldstein managed to capture not only the visage of rural America, but a sense of its underlying spirit."

- from the opening pages of The Oxford Project

I discovered the website for this interesting book/project via another blog. The book is more than 250 pages long, but on the website you can view quite a few of the photographs and stories of the townspeople. What I was able to read and see online was fascinating and gripping in it's own way.

I never actually grew up in a small midwestern town, but have family in rural northwestern Illinois. It definitely reminded me how different the world can seem in different places. Even though I lived in Chicago for 10 years, and now live abroad, part of who I am can be traced to small town and rural Illinois. It also reminded me of how precious small town life can be, when often it's overlooked as so common and uninteresting. I'm convinced that much of America has lost it's connection with our rural roots. And to me there is some mist of sadness about this loss as we become a more urban and global society. Something like this helps shine the light on the unique and valuable way of life that continues unnoticed in many small towns like this.

Update: I discovered this short 3-minute video on youtube about the project. Enjoy!

As an added side note, I am also currently reading the book Gilead, which is also set in a small rural town in Iowa. It's funny how these two things found their way into my life from so seemingly far away. I guess there's nothing like a little nostalgia to offset the difficulty of learning Spanish!!

Holy Leisure

"If we are constantly being swept off our feet with frantic activity, we will be unable to be attentive at the moment of inward silence. A mind that is harassed and fragmented by external affairs is hardly prepared for meditation. The church Fathers often spoke of Otium Sanctum, "holy leisure." It refers to a sense of balance in the life, and ability to rest and take time to enjoy beauty, an ability to pace oursevles. With our tendency to define people in terms of what they produce, we would do well to cultivate "holy leisure."

This passage is from a chapter on meditation in Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline. It got me thinking about how it does seem that much of my experience in American Christianity is one of frantic activity and defining ourselves by what we 'produce.' I think in that we are reflecting our broader American culture. I have heard many sermons about taking sabbath, but little more than making sure we take a day of week to rest. I also think that it seems many pastors (and missionaries) are driven by proving we did not choose this vocation because it's 'easy' - trying to prove to a rightly cynical world that we are productive. It is a pressure that I feel keenly (mostly internally) as we are in our early days here in Spain.

I know that this idea of holy leisure sounds good, and that I often choose to pursue other forms of leisure that add to the cacophony and frantic activity instead. I know I do not experience this sense of this holy leisure often enough, but I have experienced it enough to know it is good and life giving. I am sure I am not alone, and that many of us would benefit from pursuing God through this.

A slice of daily life

This is one of the local parks we visit often. There are three within a short walk from our home. This one is the most popular park of the neighborhood, I presume, because it gets full sun in the afternoon. It has been dubbed "the ria park" by our family because it is overlooking the scenic tidal river here. It is the park that we most often run into classmates of Brennan's, and a few local families we have met. Here Brennan can shyly start to play with those classmates as he feels more and more comfortable here. Here Ryan lives as large and as loud as he wants, and blends right in with the natives. And Kathryn gets to watch even more frenetic activity and hear even louder noises than she experiences at home. She also is a great tool to help us meet other parents. No one can resist her (see my last post for proof).

This is the view of the sunset over 'the ria.'

The above and below pictures are action photos from yesterday's visit.

Another boat photo. Still addicted to them.

"How are you?"

Or, here in Spain they ask it, "¿Que tal?," or "¿Como estás?". (Can you tell I'm enjoying using the upside down question mark?)

The answer is usually fairly easy. It is both convenient and conversationally correct to answer 'fine', or 'good.' That greases the speed of conversation and allows us to move on to more important matters, such as the weather, recent sports scores, or our children's latest bodily excretions. Even in Spanish the answer is fairly simple, even for those of us who are struggling to learn the language. A simple 'bien,' or more complicated 'estoy bien' will do. It's really great to follow that up with "¿y tú?" That then puts the conversational ball squarely back into the other person's court without having to explain yourself any further.

I've been thinking a bit more lately about how things really are, partly thanks to a book by Larry Crabb called "Inside Out". I may post more on that later, but one of the big themes that stuck with me from the book was his challenge to Christians to live honestly, and to seek that honesty to the point it thoroughly disrupts our complacency. It gave me the idea to blog about how things are really going for me, and for the Walter clan in La Coruña. I'll address a few common questions, give the standard safe answer, and then follow with a more transparent answer.

How are things in Spain? Good. Great. We love being here. We are as confident as ever that we are here solely because of God's leading in our lives. We have a great community in our local church, Vida Nueva, and have been enjoying discovering more about the people, place, and culture here.
Really? It has been a fun, but difficult (at times) transition. We feel we've come through the first stages of the transition pretty well, but it was quite a tough road at times. The kids seem to have adjusted pretty well by this point. Communication has been tough at times, obviously, as we did not speak Spanish when we arrived. We learned to drive stick shift and how to drive in a different country at the same time - with three kids 4 and under crammed in the back seat. We feel pressure to focus on our language studies as our number-one priority, but also feel pressure to figure out how to become more and more involved in our local supporting church. Plus we are learning to live in a completely different culture, and learning little by little to adopt to different ways of living. Our running joke here is that everything takes longer to get done here than you think it will. The way things are done hear are different enough to often leave us wondering why on earth they do things this way. All of this is in addition to the pressures of making sure we are caring for our kids in the best way possible, which is not always that easy, as I hope most parents can attest to. Plus, the real bummer about being here in Spain is that we missed the Super Bowl this year! On the whole, it's great to be here, we really do enjoy it. But we do miss some things from 'home', and are baffled by some things here.

How is language school going? It is good. I know more Spanish today than I did 5 months ago! But seriously, it is a challenge for me, but it's good to be able to communicate better, and I just keep on keepin' on to continue growing in my communication skills.
Really? It's hard for me. This is the thing I worry about more than anything here. Partly because it feels like so much of our success here relies on our ability to learn to communicate. Partly because I've had no success in my past at learning languages. Languages consistently were low spots in my academic career. But mostly, I go to class, and struggle to understand the teacher anytime she veers off of the textbook to explain things. It feels like I am learning at a glacial pace when I look around and see many others who learn quickly (classmates, family members, etc). I definitely feel like I'm learning stuff, but it does not seem to happen fast enough. I'm fairly certain I'm in the bottom of my class. I have no choice but to succeed in what might be the biggest challenge I've faced in my life.

How are the hostel plans? Things are going well. We still have a ways to go to get our plan off the ground. First things first, we have to learn the language! We are excited to have a great teammate, and have another couple who is interested in joining us that we are excited about.
Really? Things really are going pretty well. But I think we often feel as if other people's expectations are that we might already be running a hostel, or be doing it very soon. We have a pretty clear idea of where we think we are heading, but we are prepared for the journey to take some time. We want to do it right the first time, and set ourselves up to see the best possible chance of long-term success. The truth of the matter is that we are here because we feel a pretty clear leading from the Lord that He wants us here. We see that in order for this hostel to become a reality, God will continue to guide, and will have to 'show up' in such a way that any hostel and/or backpacker ministry that results will clearly be of his doing, and not our own. And we continue to hold 'our' plans loosely, aware that what we think is our direction will change if he guides us in another direction (for example, living now in La Coruña instead of Santiago). After I learn the language, opening a successful hostel and ministry might be the next "biggest challenge" I've had to face in my life. Despite all of our planning and dreaming, there are parts of me that have trouble imagining seeing that vision become a reality. But then, I also know it was not that long ago that parts of me that had trouble seeing us moving to Spain, and here we are!

How are the kids? They are great. The boys are adjusting to school. Both boys seem to like being in school. Kathryn is a great baby. Very quiet and well behaved. We had a lot of illness over the first several months here, but we seem to have come clear of that.
Really? Yeah - for the most part, this one is pretty accurate. What we generally don't talk about though are the temper tantrums and fits that each of the boys seem to have seemingly too often. They are happening with less frequency than when we first arrived, but still seemingly too often. We also don't talk too much about the times we are woken up at night--by all three of the kids, not just the baby. But mostly because any parent can talk about that too - there's not much sympathy to be found out there for something so common : - ) We also don't talk as often about our concerns for the kids - how their personalities will adjust to being here. How will Brennan's gentle and quiet spirit adjust in a place where he clearly is an outsider? How will all of the kids respond to growing up in a place where some of the general cultural values are not all that similar to our own?

So, in the end, there is truth in the simple, pat answers. But it is often a simple truth, unencumbered by the more difficult realities of daily life.

How was your year?

Here is a not so short list of milestones from 2007:

- Support raising trip to Colorado in early January. Lots of snow, sub-zero temps, high winds, beautiful landscapes and warm people.
- Birth of our third child Kathryn on March 21. Followed by the requisite recovery time from the c-section, visit from families and friends, etc.
- Preparing our town house for sale in May. Living with some good friends off and on for 6 weeks waiting for our town house to sell. Selling the house in July (closed in August).
-Packing up our house. Determining what to keep, what to send to Spain, and where to put it all in the meantime.
- Driving cross-country July 24 with the kids to Washington DC to spend our remaining time in the States with Faith's parents.
- Faith and I driving to Chicago and back to DC in 3 days to pick up our visas and finish all business in Chicago.
- Depart DC September 3rd
- Arrive in Coruña September 4th. Learn to drive stick shift immediately. Begin looking for a home immediately after checking into a hotel.
- Move into our new apartment September 19th. In that time we opened a bank account, applied for our legal permission to live here, registered the kids for school, met our new church community, and even found time to visit a zoo.
- October 1 - begin two-week intensive course for missionaries in Galicia, conducted entirely in Spanish (and some in Gallego). During this course our church was shut down by the local police and it remained closed for 3 weeks. We had worship outside for three straight Sundays.
- Mid-October, register for and start my Spanish class 2 weeks after classes started.
- Late October - host our first visitors - A college friend stopped by while traveling the world, and Faith's parents stopped by for a week on their way to Romania for a short-term missions trip.
- November 8 - my Grandfather died after a long 3-year battle with cancer. I was not able to return in time for the funeral on the 10th.
- The rest of November we attended an all church retreat with our new church, and hosted some leaders from International teams. Celebrated thanksgiving with other missionaries here in Coruña.
- By the first week of December things felt fairly normal. We were as busy as we had ever been, but the busy-ness felt normal. We finally seemed to hit a schedule and a rhythm to our life. This abruptly came to an end when several things happened seemingly at once.
- December 5th - I had my first significant test for my spanish course
- December 9th - our shipment from the states (40 items - mostly boxes of clothes, kitchen stuff, toys, books, etc) finally arrived. Nearly 2 months after we expected them. This re-ignited some chaos into our little apartment that we are just now nearly finished unpacking. Nearly.
- We also spent more time preparing for Christmas here than I remember doing in the US. We bought a tree and decorations for our house. We tried in vain to plan ahead with our shopping in an unsuccessful attempt to get gifts sent back to the states in time for Christmas. We did a healthy amount of shopping for the boys to help make their first Christmas in Spain a special one.
- We are thoroughly enjoying the 2 week break the boys and I have from our schooling. It feels like the first time in a very long time that we've had an extended period of time together as a family to simply be. Time to exhale, relax, and enjoy time off, and time together.

The Lord has clearly been good to us this year. He has always provided for our needs, but that fact stands out a little more for us this year than in years past. It's crazy for us to think back about how much we've been through this year. It's almost hard to believe.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!! May the Lord continue to provide you joy in 2008.