Life on the Sea

I spent the weekend with the Allens, and of course had a fabulous time. Enjoyable conversations, home cooked meals, Saturday afternoon projects around the house, and the hanging out down at the local restaurant on the dock (you can look through the floorboards down into the turquoise water below you). David kept handing me the phone with whoever we was talking to, putting the person on the phone and myself in a somewhat awkward situation. "Here Charles, this is my friend Ben. He's a priest from Seattle." (David never lets the truth get in the way of a good story).

Different folk came floating into the Allens' house through the weekend. David is probably the most well-connected-extroverted person I've ever met. He loves people, loves telling stories, and loves to laugh. It seems like every ten minutes his mind is drawn to another person that comes to mind and he calls them up and chats it up with them.

David recently finished a book on Shame, and he gave me one of the draft versions to read. It's quite insightful and helpful. He's been digging out different writings I've done and has been encouraging me to write a book! We'll see if that happens. "Man, you're a great writer. I think some of your stuff could take off. I've got a publisher, so just put it together man! I'm thinking the name of your book should be The Beauty of Holiness. Yea, the beauty of holiness. Yea. yea." He makes me laugh.

The most shocking part of the weekend was when David suggested for the second time that I should move into their back guestroom. He said they got plenty of room, they enjoy me being around, and that they want to help out the school by giving me housing for free. I didn't have to think about it for too long. "Okay, yeah that sounds good." Viki agreed that she would be happy for me to move in. We kept talking about it over the weekend. It was decided that I would need to buy a scooter to make the 25 min commute, and let my landlord that I was moving out fairly soon. So I'm thinking I'll move out the beautiful beach house the second week of November!

"Check out this cool video Mr. Moore!"

This is the kind of music my students are into these days: Christian Rap.

I didn't even know people were still making Christian Rap!

Getting Out and About

Following my illness last week, I made a concerted effort to get out as much as I could this week.

On Saturday I went over for dinner at "Young David's" house on Sandyport, and had a fabulous feast with his family. Viki, his mom, came over and we all had a wonderful evening on the patio overlooking the harbor drinking wine and laughing at little baby Johnny dance to the music in the living room.

I went out to this hilarious concert on Sunday night to listen to this African American singer/preacher from Georgia or Texas at one of the nice hotels. I went with Mama Dorothy and Marlene, and enjoyed the very different cultural experience. The singer sang karaoke style to a CD of instrumental music. He kept telling stories about how he was friends with Opera and spent time with Presidents. It was all about how God brings us BIG blessing and makes us successful. And even though the concert was a benefit concert for the purchase of a new church organ for St. Barnabas Anglican Church, folks in the Bahamas are pretty into the 'bigger is better' approach to life.  I could never see this guy getting much of crowd in Seattle, but he certainly was a big hit down here!

Then on Monday night I went with Kari over to the opening service for the Anglican Synod at the Cathedral in town. A synod is basically a big meeting for all the Anglican pastors in the area to gather to meet, pray, discuss issues facing the church, and make a plan for the coming year. I have been to one other synod in Kenya, but the Bahamian Anglicans sure know how to do pomp and circumstance: everyone dressed to the nines, the governor general attending as a guest, three supreme court judges, and singers from all over the diocese. It was very enjoyable.

A few visiting judges at the Synod

A waitress in a wig!

Yesterday was "Literature Day" at school and everyone dressed up as a character from one of the novels we are reading. I dressed up as Toomai the elephant rider from The Jungle Book in my white punjabi suit. We also had Allen Breck from Kidnapped, a couple white seals from The Jungle Book, and a couple waitresses from Kidnapped. (It was somewhat lamentable that Classic literature doesn't have more memorable young female characters to be role models for young women. After reading three great classic books, the best character the girls in my class could find was a minor bit part of a waitress in Kidnapped!)

This week marks midterm of the semester, and so for some reason we have Thursday and Friday off from school. But no questions were made by my students who were excited to have a four day weekend!

Mi classe

Last night I went to an awards ceremony at Government House, the main estate for fancy government functions, for an award Kari received. I rode ol' Sweet'n Smooth through the front gate and the Defense Force guards dressed in pure white from head to toe, looked at me strangely (they probably don't see many white guys ride up to the gate on bicycles!) and directed me to a tree where I could lock up my bike. The award ceremony was only 20 minutes, a point that Kari was irate over the rest of the evening. "This is outrageous! 20 minutes? Who put this together? You can't have the recipients wait outside the room and call them in one at a time, and then have a prayer all about thanking God that the Governor General let us use his house! I'm going to write a letter to the director tomorrow demanding that we have another ceremony!" (Kari can over react now and then...) Nevertheless they had a nice reception afterward and I hung out most of the evening with Shavincia's (Kari's girlfriend) mom and chatted, while Kari "politic-ed" his way around the room and got his picture with all the other budding young politicians.

This weekend I'm going to be heading out to the east end of the island and enjoy some time with the Allens, which I'm looking forward to!

(This clip is of a high school senior sing one of my favorite hymns. She was a natural singer!)

A Rough Week

Life comes in seasons, good follows bad, bad follows good. This last week was the later.

Following a wonderful weekend with the Allens, this past week was one of the hardest. I came down with the stomach flu on Tuesday night, was bedridden all of Wednesday. I went back to work on Thursday and Friday but felt pretty lousy. School wasn't particularly smooth this week either: problems between parents and administration were heightened when school fees are due. We had parents coming in and creating a lot of drama. And though I thankfully wasn't directly involved, it creates an atmosphere of pressure. Kelly has been great about trying to buffer me from parents who are out of control, but she goes in great detail explaining it to me later.

We also had a student suspended for making jokes about niggers. It was a good teaching opportunity, since many of the other students didn't know what the word meant, but still not a very pleasant situation to deal with when recovering from the flu.

Other than that it was a very quite week of solitude. I'm trying to use this solitude for good, but sometimes there can be too much of a good thing! I'm praying that God would provide a little motor scooter for me here. It would really help me be more mobile around the island. No one drives over 35 mph here anyway, and it's relatively safe. It would be very nice to have some transportation to get around after dark (when it isn't safe to ride my bike any more) to have more of social life. The monotony of spending my evenings alone is starting to get to me.

However despite all the things that seem to be challenging, I continue to see glimpses of the potentially wonderful life one could have living in the Bahamas: the place is really very beautiful, the beaches gorgeous, the life laid back, and the weather wonderful all through the winter.  I love being near the ocean and being able to having nice walks along the surf by moonlight anytime I want! The big thing I miss the most right now are friends. No matter how beautiful a place you live in, its hard to enjoy alone. My friend Phil Tanaka has encouraged me to think of this time as a time to grow closer in intimacy with God. I've tried, but it's not an easy thing to learn. So I pray that I will increasingly live into the potential that exists here, and enjoy this place to the fullest.

A Whole New World

 This weekend I took a break from the crazed dogs, my tiny apartment, and my solitude and went to stay with David and Vicki Allen. They are the couple who have been inviting Marleen and I over on Sunday evenings for a Bible study, and they said last weekend, "Ben, why don't you come over to our house and relax and rest here." So I packed a little weekend bag and  rode ol' Sweet'n Smooth the 8 miles out to the Allen's home.

They have a beautiful house on the water...the kind of house in movies where people go when they make millions and retire on the beach.

I spent hours this weekend gazing out at the ocean. I read a little, took naps, and flipped through picture books I found on shelves around the house.

But the best part was spending time with the Allens. Vicki teaches English at the College of the Bahamas, and loves to talk about literature and ideas. She was good friends with Marni Keyes (a L'Abri worker in Boston) back in the olden days, and loves the intellectual life. She took me to a Shakespeare reading at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas on Friday, which was fabulous, and then to a musical drama on Sunday night at the same local theater I was at earlier in the week for a Midsummer Night's Dream. Vicki was so generous and pleasant to spend time with. She had hours of marking papers that she would disappear into her study to work on while I napped.

And David is a GREAT person. He's like a Christian Pablo Neruda...enjoying everything and everyone. He carries this aura of joy and pleasantness inside of him. He took me out to this little breakfast place on the beach where he treated me to a 'real Bahamian breakfast': boiled fish, grapefruit juice, 'johnny cake' (which is a kind of cornbread), and grits. He kept telling me how much he liked me and enjoyed me. Sometimes we would be talking to someone and then all of the sudden he would pick up his phone and call someone and after talking with them for a while he would hand me the phone and have me talk to the person. Then he get the phone back and he'd ask them if they knew any single girls that are looking for a handsome man. It was rather ridiculous. "You've got to find some Bahamian love man!" He would tell me.

A few times through the weekend David would sit me down overlooking the sea and we'd crack a beer and chat about all sorts of stuff. He kept saying, "Oh man, Ben, you Anglican priests sure know how to live! You're living well!" Then we would have a long laugh. "Ben, I had a professor at Yale, a Jesuit priest, Fr. Aden. Man, he would ride this big Cadillac around and smoke cigars. He'd tell me, 'David, when life is well: live well'. Ha ha ha, he'd say, 'When life is well: live well." David would then keep chuckling and slapping his knee.

David also teaches a Sunday school class at the 'emerging church' on the island, and does a top rate job. He used to teach Sunday school in Washington DC at 4th Presbyterian and packed it out. But here for some reason, people aren't as interested. It tops out at about 12 people. But I really appreciate how he facilitates the discussion and uncovers things in Scripture. He's always weaving quotes from different theologians or thinkers in whatever he's talking about. One morning we had a devotions together, which was beautiful. Reading, praying, and meditating on the Word on his waterfront patio.

David living life well on his boat.

This weekend I also got to meet 'young David', David and Vicki's son. He lives a couple minutes away from his parents with his wife and baby boy in a quaint little neighborhood (Sandyport) filled with ex-pats.  Canals twist through the homes, giving residents all a little plot of waterfront to tie up their boats. It was quite a remarkable place. 'Young David' is about 34, has a small law practice, and teaches at a public school. He loves ideas and talking about theology, but doesn't have many people on the island to talk to. So we had a wonderful time following various intellectual rabbit trails. I think we're both excited to spend more time together and strike up a friendship.   On Monday we had a holiday for Columbus Day (or what they call 'Discovery Day') and had the day off from school. I offered to clean the Allen's boat so that we could take it out later in the day. I spent that morning with a scrub brush and a hose cleaning the Lady Victoria.

We then took the boat out for a little excursion and anchored in the shallows where we swam and dove. The water was like turquoise crystal, but there weren't any fish or coral to look at. It was just SO good to be out on the water...'messing about in boats' as Ratty would say.

Needless to say I've returned to my apartment and school routine greatly refreshed!

Breakfast with David and Vicki on the patio

Field Trip to A Midsummer Night's Dream

 Luckily for us, it just happens that the same Shakespeare play that we are doing as a class is the same play that was playing last week at a local theater.

So I organized a field trip to take my class to the play to get some inspiration for our play. For many of the students it was their first play that they had ever been too!!!

The theater folk were real nice to us through the whole trip. They gave us a private tour backstage so that the kids could be on stage for a few minutes and see the scenery, the backdrop, and the props up close. And then they even let us go and say hello to the cast who were putting on their makeup and getting ready for the show.

The show itself was done very well. The play was set in the Bahamas in 1910. There were a few places where they talked about local aspects of the Bahamas through the play.

As we sat and watched the play, every time Hermia came on the stage, I could tell my Hermia was watching her every move. Every time Bottom or Puck did something funny, my little actors were paying very close attention. It was like they were projecting themselves into the characters on stage. They were totally and utterly enthralled. On the one hand they are now going to push themselves to be better actors, but it also means that they've got higher expectations for scenery and costumes (which I'm not so sure how I'm going to work out yet!).

Later that afternoon we had our own rehearsal, and my actors were like they were on fire with energy and enthusiasm. They have certainly caught the vision for what theater is all about!

Snapshots of Week 7

Here's a few highlights from this week so far:

Math under the trees

-I met with my pastor at St. Matthew's Anglican Church on Sunday, and he's agreed to start getting me more involved with the services at the parish.
-I've been teaching The Jungle Book and teaching Math under big tropical trees.
-I found a new running route around the marina on Paradise Island that is quite beautiful.
-It's been overcast and rainy most of the week. I had to turn down the air conditioner in my classroom for the first time yesterday because all my students were shivering at 73 degrees.
-I sometimes eat out at this little Chinese restaurant called The Hong Kong Kitchen that has great food.

My new running route: around the Atlantis Marina

-I've been teaching Latin every day this week and it's been very enjoyable. It's first year Latin, and very basic for children.

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  A Kidnapped presentation