There is certainly a lot of work left to be done in building ecumenical relationships and negotiating ecclesial structures toward unity, but I would say (with a little hard work) we could put full intercommunion on the fast track, and achieve it between the Orthodox Church and (some) Anglicans within the next couple hundred years.

Metropolitan Jonah, Archbishop Duncan, et al.

Still, I enjoyed every moment of the conference. In particular, I enjoyed meeting Metropolitan Jonah, who is a Christian leader of the first order. (Anyone who can still take himself lightly after you dress up like the Byzantine emperor, and can casually direct the focus of any conversation to the Gospel is a person worthy of admiration and emulation.)

But on this side of things, I can't help but be a little confused. The discussions provided plenty of reason for hope, but also plenty of reasons for cynicism. We have a lot in common in mission, desire, governance, and outlook (and the people: something like thirty percent of the OCA are retreaded Episcopalians). Great. That can all serve as the basis for a lot of discussion and collaboration. And we have a sense of unity in Christ; a glowing ember that perhaps can be fanned into the flame of full fellowship.

But I couldn't help but come away with the impression that the Orthodox folks believe (on some level) that the best way to solve all our problems is if we all just become Orthodox. Here, I am less convinced.

Of course, one of my professors asked me during the conference when I was planning to become Orthodox. I guess I have a reputation (probably fairly enough) for being the most East-leaning of the Junior class. I don't have any particular doctrinal issues with Orthodoxy, and cultural barriers are ones I don't mind crossing. So if God called (and my wife also heard the call) we wouldn't have a problem becoming Orthodox. Or, even if we became convinced that it would be a better way to serve the Gospel. And quite frankly, all things being equal, I would be sorely tempted.

I love the depth and the beauty of the Orthodox tradition, in expressed in both its liturgy and its theology. And, there is certainly plenty to be discovered and re-articulated from that tradition that may serve us in sharing the Gospel with a postmodern world. John McGuckin expresses this reality particularly poignantly in Standing in God's Holy Fire, a short introduction to the Byzantine spiritual tradition.

"For a society that is in danger of losing even the distant memories of its root religious civilization, at a time when its preferred religions have shrunk back in the face of serious social decline, and its schools of political, philosophical, and artistic thought have elevated short-term, self-interest to new heights, the Church's task is not less than to show the way back to a renewed sense of the Beautiful. It will be in the Christian reinterpretation of the Greek notion of kalokagathon, no less than the ideal synthesis of a religious, mystical, and moral transcendental. … If the Church can find the wit, and the energy, for the task, then this pro-paideusis will be no less than the re-evangelization of the western world."

But I fear that attaching myself to the wonders and exotic splendor of Orthodoxy would only serve my own spiritual tastes, and would severely detract from my interest in and ability to minister to this broken world. Orthodoxy is an illumination of the Gospel: a beautiful and complex illumination, but not the only illumination. It is a legitimate and particularly deep and well-formed expression of the faith, but it is not the only expression. It's antiquity gives it authority and precedence over my own half-baked ideas, or those of the fashionable mega-church. It is a mature tradition, but that should not imply that other traditions cannot mature. And, we must bear in mind that there are peculiar benefits to youth that we ought not negate.

Thus, at the end of the day, I have the utmost respect and reverence for Orthodoxy, and I desire to learn as much as I can from it, even at the expense of a deeper exploration of the Western tradition. But I simply cannot cross the line. I do not need Orthodoxy to affirm the orthodoxy of my faith (although that would be nice.) Nor do I desire to be a part of a true, pure church, as Orthodoxy often proudly presents itself. Indeed, I need the brokenness and imperfection of my church to compel me outward for Jesus' sake and in his name.

So, for the love of the Gospel, I cannot become Orthodox—while, for the love of the Gospel, I find Orthodoxy deeply alluring. It is a creative and dynamic tension that I pray will propel us both forward in faith in love of Christ and service to the Gospel. I pray and hope fervently that God will lead us together in our mission, and I pray for the strength and courage to sustain this longing for unity in Christ — not just between Anglicans and Orthodox, but between all Christians, and indeed, all people. As always, however, the work is the Lord's — and the best I can do is maintain an open and listening heart, eager and expectant to receive his direction.

photo: Fr. Gregory Jensen

by nathanielkidd

It was a solemn Eucharist, with all the usual Nashotah pomp and ceremony (plus an added dash for the occasion). Still, it was a little anti-climatic. I was hoping for some words of secret gnosis, or ancient cultic rite of initiation, or at least a secret handshake or something, All I got was the standard sacred wafer and a sip of wine. (We did get to sing the school hymn, though, which has a nice Latin chorus. That's kind of like a pagan incantation, if you believe some hard-core anti-Roman polemicists.) I did, however, feel as though sermon (which focused on last part of John 1) was being preached right at me!

Preceding Matriculation were three days of silent retreat, which most of us more or less kept most of the time. I enjoyed them immensely. I've reflected briefly, in moments of personal quiet, how compelling and powerful the wordless can be. Corporate silence is even more potent. It's impossible to not notice the deliberation of withholding speech. The result is a kind of pregnant absence, which heightens the awareness of all the little sounds of everyday life, and all the little whispers of the Spirit.

My poor wife, right? But I was not particularly strict about keeping the rule of silence at home. We're still working on this new reality, where we both have a lot of different activities going on, and don't have easy and immediate access to one another twenty four hours a day. It's a new challenge for us, but one I think our last year of full-time togetherness has prepared us well for.

Bishop Parsons, retired Bishop of Quincy, gave a series of talks on the Ascension to break up our long hours of silence. He managed to thoroughly and potently summarize Christian life and doctrine in his half dozen or so sermons on the subject, craftily weaving in wisdom about life in Christian leadership. He was an excellent and powerful speaker – although my attention wandered a bit.

Yes, my mind wandered – unfortunately, in my personal moments, I didn't make the best use of the precious hours of silence. Being quiet only served to aggravate the intellectual gluttony that has grown in me since getting back into class. I was going to settle in with rereading The Way of a Pilgrim, but reading that only prompted me to pick up the Philokalia. Which in turn took me to a book on the Byzantine idea of the heart, leading me to pick up Maximus the Confessor, leading back to Evagrius Pontus, which took me back to Syrian asceticism, and then the allure of Symeon the Stylite (and this whole network of ideas out of which I will ultimately be trying to distill some papers.) And there were probably another half dozen or so topics nipping at my attention, occupying my study carrel, sitting on my desk. A chapter here, a chapter there, bounding around the world and through Christian history with the turn of pages… It was, like the old adage goes, trying to get a drink of water out of a fire hydrant; or rather, out of several fire hydrants spraying in different directions in a dizzying deluge. In the end, a sort of word-bound baptism in the sheer force of the quantity of the psychospiritual wisdom in the Christian tradition.

On Wednesday night I finally closed all of my books and cleared my desk and rubbed my eyes and tried to get down to the real business of the retreat: identifying my spiritual state and trajectory, and regrounding myself in that sense of calling. Allow me to summarize some of those prayers and thoughts.

Even though I've only been at Nashotah House for a month and a half, my time here has already had a significant impact on my sense of calling and direction, both clarifying and transfiguring it.

The office I feel myself called to might be called something like “hiero-scholar.” I am deeply attracted to reading, to thinking, to writing, to the life of the mind, to language and linguistics. But none of these activities, for me, is something that can be safely or wisely isolated as an activity valuable in of itself. If it is not integrated into my (hopefully balanced) Christian life, it is useless, pointless, and boring to me. (This is why I was relatively lazy during my undergraduate, and why I didn't finish the Physics major.)

Furthermore, part of the character of Christian knowledge is that it is to be shared. I am coming more and more to a sacramental theory of knowledge – that this information I am receiving (and all information I receive) is to be ground up by meditation and prayer, carefully organized and flattened, cut into bite-size chunks, stamped with the Cross, and prayerfully distributed to the faithful. So planted and watered by grace, this knowledge does not does not puff up, but blossoms into wisdom, which is the fear of the Lord.

There seems to me to be a further parallel: our culture desperately needs both intellectually deep communities of faith and morally-spiritually vibrant communities of learning. Many churches seem to have given up on doing anything more than adding a little Jesus to the American good life, while most schools have ignored the role of character in the course of education. And both spheres have been torn apart by powerful social forces favoring individualism over interdependence and isolation over community, with the effect that many are alone, unhappy, and ill-equipped to do much of anything about it. Community building, further still, seems to be the kind of thing that Sarah and I work very well together at – our gifts and aptitudes dovetailing nicely to create atmospheres of hospitality.

Above all, my desire is to be a faithful and timely representative of the Christian faith and tradition in this age. This involves, first of all, the knowledge, love, and imitation of Jesus Christ the Son of God as he is revealed through the Scriptures; second, rootedness in and dedication to the history and devotions of the Church throughout time and space as an authentic but incomplete incarnations of the Christian life; third, an ear to a dark and hurting world in need of Gospel light, and the willingness to put aesthetic and theological concerns on hold to work in triage when God calls.

What will I do? Well, first of all, I will pray, and I will trust God to put the pieces together. There is plenty of work to be done, enough for many lifetimes: the harvest is indeed plentiful, and the workers are few. And this is not a particularly obvious trajectory in our culture, which means avenues of support (both financial and otherwise) are going to be difficult to find. Neither pioneering scholarship nor pioneering ministry has a lot of rewards attached in our culture. I have significant anxieties about finding the resources to follow my calling, which I am doing my best to bury under the (hopefully true) mantra that God will provide.

In light of all this, I am prayerfully preparing my application for Holy Orders with AMiA, which is where my relationships are, and where God is doing new things of the sort that I think intersect significantly with my own perceived calling. I was tempted for a time to perhaps look in another direction: but it occurred to me with reflection that my primary motivation for this was wanting a stable, definite job that would bring home a regular paycheck. This being not a very Christian motivation, I determined to remain in the station wherein I was called, even though there are some ambiguities and uncertainties there.

In any case, we are both enjoying and looking forward to God's unfolding plan in our lives. Please continue to keep us in your prayers.

by nathanielkidd

There is much to say about our life here, in all its color and variety. It’s quite different from the pace of normal life, or even normal studenthood. But I want to start with a general update and then later move into some of the specifics of our strange new world.

Life here is busy, but not stressful; communal, but leaves ample space for solitude; and all in all, deeply rooted in Christ through twice daily community prayer and daily Eucharist.

I know that part of this euphoria is the joy of starting something new; I guess we’ll have to see how we feel when this situation becomes the new norm. For better or for worse, our ideal world is now populated with human beings. Undoubtedly, this will yield unforeseen challenges down the road, but also unexpected rewards.

It’s strange taking six classes at once, particularly since CC only did one course at a time. This semester, I have Historical Theology, Ethics and Moral Theology, and Biblical Interpretation on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Church History and Church Music on Tuesday and Thursday. And the Greek reading course meets on Wednesday afternoon.

So far, the instruction is great, the reading is well-selected, and the material is excellent. At last my interests compliment what I am supposed to be reading in class, rather than compete with it. I find myself reading not only what is required, but picking up titles on the recommended reading list, and listening for citations in class to track down in the library. Thus far, for every page of reading that has been required of me, I‘ve probably read at least two.

I end up doing almost all of my reading in the early morning and in the evening between dinner and bed. The morning class schedule is quite tight, and, although it seems there is little formal scheduling of the afternoon hours, they manage to fill up pretty thoroughly with the miscellaneous community requirements. We have work crew one afternoon, dish duty another, rehearsal for this or that procession, community choir rehearsal, etc. I have landed a position as a “choral scholar,” which involves several additional practices a week so that the handful of us can confidently lead the chapel music during daily prayers.

At home, we’ve put an emphasis on hospitality, usually around dinner time. In the course of these past three weeks, we’ve probably had people over for dinner a dozen times – basically every time we cook, we entertain. Lots of Indian food woven together out of whatever veggies we can find a deal on!

It works out pretty well. We’ve figured out how to work efficiently, simultaneously cooking and conversing so that it takes only slightly longer to have these meals with others (roughly two hours) than we would take on our own. And budget-wise, so far we’ve found that we save enough money cooking from scratch to make up for regularly adding heads around the table.

Sarah is still looking for a job; your continued prayers are appreciated. Money is a lingering concern, although we are perpetually prompted to live on faith and assured that things will work out. No one has ever left Nashotah for financial reasons. These assurances can only go so far against a dwindling bank balance and mounting bills. I try to remain helpfully worried – mindful of what I need to do and working on it without being overly anxious over things I cannot control.

Of course, we’re all in the same boat here. Very few people have any kind of financial security, and some are more challenged than us. Some of the older folks have already sacrificed a lot more than we have in choosing to come here, walking away from successful careers, businesses, and significant possessions. I should probably be grateful: Jesus asked many of his disciples through the centuries to embrace poverty. We only have to endure a little ambiguity and risk financial ruin for the sake of the Gospel (which, though bad, is definitely several steps above poverty.)

So what can I say? Life is good. Keep in touch. After a long battle with CenturyTel and Maintenance, we have at last secured internet for our apartment, so our Skype is now usually on so you can reach us at that number [(208)875.2534]. And physical mail can be sent to Nathaniel and Sarah Kidd, 2777 Mission Rd., Nashotah, WI 53058.

by nathanielkidd

Don’t get me wrong. We’ve definitely come to a new chapter in our story. We have certainly entered a new stage of our journey, and this segment of the path we are on is very different from the last one. We’ve once again left the comfort, security, and familiarity of our families, our friends, and the communities we grew up in so that we can follow the Lord where he is leading us.

We will be three years at Nashotah House. Three years in one community, in one apartment – this is more stability than either of us have had in quite some time. It’s more time than we’ve ever stayed in one place as a couple; more time than we’ve even been married. Still, our time at Nashotah House is only a training, only a phase, only a preparation for what comes next. It is a new segment of our path, and will certainly be a formative one, but it is still but a segment.

When I say that we are only “sort of” on the road again, I am not doubting the fact that the Spirit of the Lord has moved us forward, nor I am not doubting that our next phase is but another transient moment in our lives of pilgrimage toward the eternal. When I say that we are only “sort of” on the road again, I am referencing the series of misadventures that greeted us only hours after pulling out from the driveway.

We packed our little borrowed Tercel to capacity, then strapped on a cartop carrier and kept packing it. Somehow, we managed to stuff most of our needs for the next three years into five suitcases, two backpacks, two shoulder bags, and three small boxes. People laughed at us when we arrived in India with four suitcases and thought we were “traveling light.” But we’ve learned a few things since then.

Still, the Tercel looked hilariously overburdened with the shell on its top and bicycles lashed to its back — like a child trying on his daddy’s suit.

“Get ready for a bumpy ride,” my father laughed at us, as we finished packing, “You’ve probably doubled the weight riding on those shocks.”

At midnight on Monday morning, a time that certainly presses the edge of sanity, we began our journey. Wisely, Sarah had been gradually adjusting her bedtime earlier and earlier, so that by Sunday night, she was able to hit the sack at six o’clock to be fresh for our nighttime departure. Unwisely, I had been sleeping less and less, trying to wring every moment out of my last few days with my family. On the night of our departure, I hadn’t slept at all. When we got into the car, I found I had developed an acute case of narcolepsy, prompting Sarah to adopt the heroic task of being the sole driver over our two-day excursion. (But this turned out to be just as well – as we discovered later, we had packed the car was so full only Sarah could fit in the driver's seat.)

At four in the morning, we made our first stop, a rest area in Sterling, Colorado. (This was an understandable necessity, given that Sarah had been pounding bottled frappachinos since we departed.) We intended it to be a quick in-and-out venture, but unfortunately, our little car had other ideas. Upon returning from the bathroom, we found that the engine would give us no more than a series of angry clicks when we turned the key in the ignition.

After an hour of thumbing the manual and fruitlessly staring into the foreign country hidden beneath the hood, we decided it was close enough to a reasonable hour to justify calling for some advice.

“Sounds like you have a problem with the starter,” my dad told me. At his suggestion, I tried hitting various things under the hood and beneath the car with a hammer. Not surprisingly, it didn't help. Nor did two more collect calls serve to improve my knowledge of engine taxonomy.

“Alright,” my dad said, “Even if you can't knock your starter back into place, you should be able to push start it. Give the hammer thing one more try, and then I'll call you back in five minutes.”

My final attempt to hit the right piece of metal with a hammer was just as unsuccessful as all the others. So we went back inside to wait for a phone call. Five minutes. Ten minutes. After fifteen minutes, our impatience finally outweighed our feeling of guilt for making yet another collect call. We picked up the reviver and…

The pay phone had died. The speaker was emitting an “error” beep, and faintly picking up a Country radio station. We had to laugh. It just wasn't our morning.

—
With not a lot else to do, we decided to try a push start. Fortunately, this worked.

That's the long and short of it, but try to imagine this for a moment. There, in the dim light of early dawn, pitifully augmented by yellow street lamps, a frumpy and bleary-eyed Nathaniel with his shoulder against the frame of the car. The thwap of thrice-repaired sandals against the asphalt rose to join the chorus of early morning insects, and – finally– the engine sputtered to life.

Surprised by our success, I didn't quite know what to do – and neither did Sarah. The car kept rolling forward, and I kept running. I tightened my grip on the frame of the car and leaped heroically into the vehicle, nearly losing a sandal in the process. After a few breathless moments, I pulled the door shut behind me, and we laughed and zoomed off into the sunrise.

It was quite a scene. The humor of the situation could have only been improved if I had been wearing my cassock.

After another hour and a half of smooth cruising, we reached Big Springs, Nebraska, and pulled off to get some gas. Unfortunately, though we had been driving without incident, our car problems had not fixed themselves – and indeed, they had gotten worse. This time, even a good push couldn’t convince the engine to start chugging. Even several good pushes, assisted by a couple of friendly Syrians didn't convince our engine to start.

“I'm no mechanic, nor a son of a mechanic,” the portly Syrian told me, as we all caught our breath, “But I think you have a problem with your alternator.” He nodded sagely as we stared under the hood and watched wisps of white smoke emerge from the battery every time Sarah tried to start the car.

Big Springs, Nebraska is not exactly noted for an urbane and educated population. As we scanned the faces in the parking lot, we began to feel a little anxious. These were not exactly the kind of people that four years of a Liberal Arts education and a year in India had equipped us to deal with, and, with our set of wheels inoperative, we were totally at their mercy.

Fortunately, however, Sarah and I were blessed to experience the lauded and elusive quality of small-town hospitality. Everyone was eager to share their automotive acumen, and our conversations ended with two guys from Truck Repair shop around back jump-starting the car and nodding over the sorry state of our alternator, which apparently wasn't moving at all.

“We can charge yer battery, and that should gecha to Ogalala,” the chief mechanic told us. “Thar's a mechanic thar who does alotta work with foreign cars.”

After tentatively pulling around the building, the mechanic lifted our hood and attached a device to our battery that might have been R2D2's rusty cousin. One hour and two hardy trucker breakfasts later, we were set to move on to our next mechanic.

“I ain't gonna charge ya nothin',” the truck mechanic said as we got back in the car, “'s just electricity, and tha's practically free. I know it sucks to get stuck like that when yer on the road.”

The ride to Ogalala was pretty uneventful. Well, it was uneventful for me – I fell asleep instantly. Sarah was a little more stressed. Between going over a bump that nearly knocked the bikes off and wondering if the car would start if she stalled out, Sarah felt that the car moved the twenty miles to Ogalala more by prayers than by burning gasoline. She didn't even stop to fix the bikes because she wasn't sure she'd be able to start it again.

Nevertheless, we made it, we made it in one piece, and we made it without losing any cargo. More than that, going over the severe bump seemed to fix our problem. When we pulled up at the shop behind the tourist-trap-faux-Old-West-town in Ogalala and popped our hood, our alternator was spinning away and our mechanic was a bit mystified that we had been experiencing such horrific problems.

Dave, our mechanic, struck us as a car-nerd version of Owen Cramer. He was a thin old man combining a sweet nature, extreme erudition in his craft, and an abundance of energy uncommon for his age. He spent his time abruptly teleporting around his shop, chain smoking into our engine, and brandishing a tool that made us cringe with memories of the dentist's office.

Dave agreed to take apart our alternator, but I think mostly to humor us. After dissecting it, he showed us how the mystical innards of this little cylinder were like new, if a little dirty. In reassembling our engine, however, he discovered that our issues were probably the result of a lose battery cable. He charged us thirty dollars for his diagnosis, which is not bad, considering the drastic and frightening nature of the symptoms we were experiencing.

This little side adventure stretched what Google thought would be an eleven hour day, and what we thought would be a thirteen or fourteen hour day, and made it a good nineteen hour day. If we had spent all that time on the road, we could have made it clear to Nashotah House, rather than to our stopover point at a friend's house in South Dakota.

Worse still, we left in the middle of the night to avoid driving in the heat of the day in our little air conditioner-less car. But not only did we do the bulk of our driving along sweltering, shadeless Nebraska highways, we also somehow managed the dubious pleasure of driving into both the sunrise, and the sunset.

Fortunately, the rest of the drive was pretty uneventful. Of course, I can only say that because of my tendency to fall asleep instantly when I wasn't specifically doing something else. Sarah got to enjoy many hours of tension, wondering if the car would keep moving, and at least one episode of road charades when a friendly couple in an SUV was kind enough to point out that we were close to losing the contents of our cartop carrier.

But we're here. We made it, not only through our first day of driving, but our first of settling in in our new community. We're tired, disoriented, and still recovering. But if we can survive India, a nomadic summer, and a cross-country marathon in a 94 Tercel loaded down with our belongings, surely the Lord is with us, we can certainly make it through seminary.

I'm not normally one for omens, but I think our bumpy beginning was, as a matter of fact, a good one. It was rough, but it could have been worse. It was rough, but the roughness was actually quite enjoyable. The roughness heightened our sense of adventure. To all those who have prayed for us, we are glad to report that, while our travels have not been smooth, they have at least been safe, and we have seen the fingerprints of Jesus along the way.

by nathanielkidd

Why another blog channel? This project flows out of a need that I feel to be writing about and interacting with new ideas that I am processing in a semi-public format. I think of it as an experiment in blogging ascetics. These particular thoughts did not seem appropriate for the Pilgrim Road forum and format.

I have been doing some work over at the Oyster Man, and I am pleased with the outcome that far. Go check it out!

You can also sign up for email updates.

Just to be clear, however, we are going to be keeping up with this blog for life updates and personal news, as well as our ongoing reflection on our time in India, probably posting around once or twice a month. There will also be links to the Oyster Man on the Pilgrim Road page that should be sufficiently easy to find, in the event that you lose track of this particular post.

Thank you for your patience. The internet is a powerful medium, but the rules and etiquette are still quite fluid and unpredictable.

by nathanielkidd

India Reflections

Our reflection on our experiences in India is still ongoing. Indeed, who knows if it will ever really be finished! For most of our friends, an hour of conversation and a look through our pictures will satisfy their curiosity. But for us, the journey was a formative experience, and one that will continue to define us and inform our choices and directions.

We've reorganized our India project home page to reflect our ongoing process of thinking through our pilgrimage. We would love your input, and it would bless us to have ongoing conversation about this! You can find our reflections here.

Vision and Vocation

We've come back from India with a (somewhat) clearer sense of who we are and where we are going. The first step is seminary. We have put down our deposit at Nashotah House, and, God willing, we'll be heading there this fall.

In a few days, we will be sending out a letter with a full update and ways that you can support us in prayer. We've also done some work to outline our vision for our season in seminary. You can read more about that and converse with us here.

Contemplating the road ahead.

What to Expect

As we adjust to seminary life in the coming months, we will plan on making an significant update at least once a month, with perhaps a few other updates with photos and for special events. There may be activity in other parts of the site as well, depending on our level of interest and energy.

A Second Blog Channel?

One possibility for upcoming expansion is a second blog channel. I have been doing a fair amount of reading this summer, and some writing as well. But it can take a while to work through new ideas.

I am quite glad I haven't made a lot of attempts at keeping up with this blog through the summer. My thoughts have been oscillating chaotically between a number of very large and not always uplifting topics, due in part to the stresses of our time of transition. While my reading has been interesting, and my thoughts perhaps provocative, and my process possibly instructive, I do not feel that it would have been appropriate to hoist on an unsuspecting digital public.

So, in this coming months, this space will be preserved for mostly personal reflections, while a new channel will likely emerge to discussing the things I have been reading and vignettes on thinking about. More details on this will be forthcoming.

Thank you all for your love and prayers through the last phase of our pilgrimage, thank you for your continued support, and for your anticipated witness to our ongoing journey. We are ever grateful to have such a wonderful extended family in Christ.

Nathaniel and Sarah

by nathanielkidd

According to the study, the biggest challenges to spiritual growth are lack of clear definitions, expectations, and guidelines, and a tendency to equate spiritual maturity with "following the rules."

I would add to this list the challenging fact that a lot of groups that are actually promoting spiritual growth or maturity often promote more of a “weirding” than sustainable growth. It is absolutely important to connect your faith to your everyday life, but that needs to happen in a way that draws people in, rather than in a way that makes outsiders feel alienated and judged.

Personally, I have tended to make a four-fold equation: spiritual growth = discipleship = becoming more like Jesus = becoming more human. Facilitating spiritual growth, then, has more to do with coming along side the work that Jesus is already doing in a person's life, rather than trying to convince them to adopt a particular practice or behavior.

I have some sense of the mechanisms involved in this process—off the top of my head, community, solitude, the Bible, and the grace of God all play an indispensable part.

In any case, it’s probably a topic worth more deliberate thought.

What do you think? What is spiritual growth, and how should we pursue it as Christians? What is your practice for spiritual growth?

Here is a link to the article, if you missed it above: http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/264-many-churchgoers-and-faith-leaders-struggle-to-define-spiritual-maturity

by nathanielkidd

My intention in making the film is to connect the audience (mostly young Sunday schoolers) with what it is like to be a child in Pakistan. I want to get away from the terror and poverty that we typically associate with Pakistan, and just show what it is like to be a kid — both struggling, and having fun.

It's been fun and informative to put together. I hope it is also reasonably enjoyable to watch!

I'm still doing a little work on the movie. Comments are appreciated!

by nathanielkidd

Jesus before Pilate — in Bangalore

The Vatican has the whole thing up on their website, accompanied by beautiful icons by a nun from Bangalore.

On a related note, Sunday morning, Sarah and I turned on the TV. Whoever had last watched it had us tuned to a Hindi entertainment channel—and, to our surprise, the first image that popped onto the screen was a man dragging a cross, a look of agony on his beardless face.

"Woah!" we thought, "Some kinda contextual Jesus in an Indian passion play!" — as the man was clearly Indian in his dress and appearance. We were confused a few moments later when a woman ran across the field behind him, tripped, hurt her ankle, and suddenly became the center of attention.

No, it turned out that the guy was actually pulling a plow. Just another Indian soap opera. Way to get our hopes up, Zee TV.

by nathanielkidd

Discussing this odd stipulation on our visa with my parents got the gears turning in my mother’s head. My mom is of Presbyterian missionary stock, born and raised in Pakistan. After my parents got married, she came back with my dad for a month-long visit, but otherwise has not had an opportunity to come back, despite her desire to share this with us kids.

“Wouldn’t this be the perfect excuse and opportunity,” my mom pondered, “to share Pakistan with my eldest son and daughter-in-law?” So she eked out a little vacation time, and we started weaving plans for a whirlwind Pakistan visit.

Of course, Pakistan’s been in the news a lot lately, and not for the best of reasons. Even in neighboring India, Pakistan did not seem like a particularly safe place to vacation, with reports giving the impression that every other person was walking around with a bomb under their clothing. So we weren’t sure how much we should talk about it. We didn’t want to jinx our journey, nor did we want to cause unnecessary concern amongst our friends.

From the time we started planning right up till when my mother landed in Delhi on 20 March, our plans seemed uncertain. The Taliban were gaining strength in the northwest, the Sri Lankan cricket team was attacked, and unrest and turmoil over the deposed Chief Justice grew more and more intense. My uncle, a seasoned international traveler, began to question the wisdom of visiting Pakistan at such a time, and my dad asked if I had any quotable last words, just in case. But then the political storm clouds suddenly cleared. Pakistan is still probably not the safest place in the world, but the immediate danger of chaotic collapse dissipated.

Our week of travel in Pakistan was fantastic. We were lavishly hosted by the Presbyterian Education Board, an organization that runs several private Christian schools in Pakistan. They made all sorts of wonderful arrangements for us. We got to see all of the important sites from my mother’s growing up years, and see some of the tourist sites. We had a chance to get acquainted with the work of the PEB, and the lovely people associated with it. We got to observe mission and challenges of the church in Pakistan, and explore the complex missionary legacy in which my family plays a small part.

A warm welcome from the Christian Boy's High School in Martinpur.

I felt very at home in Pakistan during our visit. Perhaps it was the warm hospitality of the PEB staff, and the graciousness of all the people we met. Perhaps it was connecting the dots from stories that my mother and grandparents told me when I was growing up. Perhaps it was seeing so much evidence of my grandparent’s work—the people they influenced, the institutions they participated in, the little memorial plaques on the walls of schools and churches. Perhaps it was all of these strings coming together. But this is not something I have felt in India.

Indeed, we enjoyed our time in Pakistan so much that we immediately started planning to go back. We had the foresight to purchase a double-entry visa, and there were still plenty of days left on it. So, within a week of dropping my mother off at the airport, we were on our way back to the Wagah border. We have arranged to work on a couple of short term projects with the PEB, and we are hoping to spend more time with some of the pastors we met, learning more about the life of the church in Pakistan and building connections for the future.

This will be our last subcontinent venture in this leg of our pilgrimage. In May we will be heading back to the States, for the dual purpose of attending graduations and avoiding the summer heat. This summer we will continue in the spirit of our pilgrimage by renouncing many of the material things we have accumulated through life that we have until now avoided thinking about or throwing away by storing them in our parents attics and garages.

I don’t think that we will ever travel quite the same way that we have traveled in India for the past several months. It has been an extraordinarily valuable and broadening experience, but it has also been quite challenging to have so few connections, so little structure, and so little to contribute. I do believe, however, that what we have learned will remain with us, and form us; that our life together will continue to be fed by streams from around the world, and that we will always be “multi-local” people.

by nathanielkidd

His auto is his chariot, his home, his weapon. He glides along the roads, most often with his meter turned off and his customer paying more than what it would read were it on. He feels no remorse at bullying those weaker than he is, be they beggars and the uneducated, who lack economic and educational power to confront him, or tourists, who lack the cultural knowledge and experience to take him on. And because he is the chief provider of transportation within Indian cities, almost no one is free from having to interact with him. He is a bully, and should be treated as a bully. He should be responded to aggressively and forcefully, and by upstanding citizens, he should be given nothing more than the fare he is entitled to.

That’s one way to look at it.

He is also a man struggling to make a living, to feed his family, to chisel out a place for himself and his descendants in the overburdened and underfunded mess of Indian society. He is oppressed by laws that set his fares only slightly higher than what it costs to operate to his vehicle, and demand that he does not do this thing or that thing with his time and with his transports.

He does things that are shady and manipulative, but he must just to survive. He does things that are immoral and illegal, but that is because the System has been built with no regard to his rights and his dignity, and he has found shelter and community amongst those whom a cruel, emerging economy has left behind. He is not a bully, he is a victim; and if he abuses his customers, it is only because he has first been abused by the System.

That’s another way to look at it.

The autorickshaw-wallah is an astute amateur economist, carefully gauging the laws of supply and demand to calibrate his maximum advantage. When extracting extra rupees from his passengers, or manipulating them into jumping through the commission circus, he carefully factors in the risk involved; the fact his customer might complain and bring upon him a five hundred rupee fine that would more than erase his minor gains.

When his customer is ignorant, he exploits that. When he is knowledgeable and confident, he respects that. But in all cases he is always on the look out for any cracks through which he can make an extra ten or twenty rupees, and eagerly grasps at them like any good ascendant businessman.

So there is a third way to look at it.

Above all, the rickshaw-wallah is a human being; complex and multi-faceted creature, whose behavior is not always the best and not always consistent with his values. But he is a creature created in the image of God, for whom Christ died, as in need of repentance and redemption as the rest of us (although it is often easier to see his faults than our own.)

I’ve been wondering, recently, how Jesus would look at it, and how he would handle his autorickshaw-wallah. It occurs to me, first of all, that there would not be the sort of economic discontinuity between Jesus and his rickshawist as exists between us and our rickshaws. Jesus was the kind of guy who would walk, and when it was too far to walk, crowd on to public busses. Economically, he was less endowed the rickshaw-wallah; even if he did possess an unmeasured unseen richness.

It seems to me that the rickshaw-wallah occupies approximately the same space in contemporary Indian society that the tax-collector occupied in Jesus’ Galilee. He is ubiquitous, obnoxious, and a bit slimy.

This has only begun to help me understand how to interact with them appropriately and compassionately, and I’m sure I still make lots of mistakes. But, at the very least, my interactions with them are now are not merely frustrating or challenging: it is a sort of Bible study in living color.

Thank God for autorickshaws. Not only do they make it possible to get from Main Bazaar to Shanti Path, but they have shown me something about the love and the character of Jesus.

by nathanielkidd

The ancient building. The goofy tourist pose. The beggar child, who looks like she was photoshoped from an "authentic" picture of the "real" India from National Geographic. I look at it, and I laugh.

India. What an impossible bundle of contradictions!

by nathanielkidd

But no big deal, right? 50 rupees is, what, like a dollar; maybe in India it has the purchasing power of about five bucks. I was about to shell out 80 rupees for our one hour each of Internet time. Oh well.

The guy who was running the Internet Cafe, however, had another idea. "Hey, can I see that?" he asked.

50 rupee note. Note the cute picture of Gandhi.

"Um…sure," I said.

He held the pieces together and squinted at them, evaluating. Then he nodded.

"Can I buy it from you?" he asked. "40 rupees."

Of course fourty rupees is better than two halves of a fifty rupee note that we won't ever use. So I agreed.

India is full of opportunists like this: people who figure out a clever way to make a buck and then hover around waiting for the right moment. The other day we were going up to explore the ruins of the Bundi palace, and we ran into a couple of kids.

"Monkey problem," they told us. "You will want a stick." Of course, they conveniently had a stick, that they were willing to part with for ten rupees (or "ok, five" as they offered when we turned them down.)

There's a long, gentle hill along this road, and as I sit and look out the window while I type, I see autorickshaws coasting down. They cut their engine when going down hill, saving some nominal amount of gasoline, which translates into some nominal savings.

Speaking of Internet Cafes, they often add random extra fees, like a "downloading fee" or a "skype fee" or a "webcam fee" or a "use your own laptop fee" … of course, it costs them nothing extra. But they watch, and they take note of what people will give them an extra ten rupees for.

It's a kind of thrift that we have totally forgotten in the US. I've heard stories of people's grandparents reusing tin foil in the depression; of old ladies who saved and reused every scrap of everything through their whole life, that when they finally passed away, what they left behind (a junk-filled, cat scented house) was more of a burden to their descendants than a blessing.

They still do this in India. More than once we've seen vehicles pieced together out of what is essentially junk, or typed emails on machines that look about two generations older than the ones I salvaged from CC's recycling program. MOre than once we've peaked into a closet in a guest house (that happened to be open) and seen huge piles of plastic water bottles. What they will use them for, I don't know, but saving them (particularly then intact ones) seems to be a high priority.

Indeed, when we rode the camels, I went to crush our used water bottle, but the camel driver stopped me.

"No no!" he said. "Don't crush. Just throw into the desert. Some goatherd will find, and will use. Very good, very much the better."

Are these behaviors relics of a past that is passing away? Or valuable habits for a new world order, where both wealth and resources are scarce? Who knows. In any case, it is interesting.

by nathanielkidd

Don't get me wrong: the wedding procession is a wonderful tradition. But there are only so many times per day one can tolerate the all-consuming musical riffs of a marching band that doesn't have a concept of tune. There are only so many times per day that we can drop what we are doing and run to the window to observe the glittery ruckus without being a little annoyed.

So Sarah and I have moved on. We took the public bus some two hundred kilometers south, to Bundi. We don't know why we chose Bundi, and we've only so far seen it from the bus window and a little lethargic exploring in the (already oppressive) heat of the desert.

But so far we haven't been disappointed. Bundi is a magnificent ancient city; blue havelis and rotting palaces smished together under the watchful eye of crumbling, ancient walls. It is also very unapologetically Hindu. The reformed iconoclasm of the Mugal Empire has been reabsorbed into the generous aesthetic vocabulary of the Hindu pantheon. The abstract elephants of Akbar’s artwork are replaced by actual elephants sculpture, and instead of empty mosques the palace contains the rotting remains of icons of Krishna.

There is a magic to this place, undoubtedly the same magic that drew Kipling when he retired here to write. It remains more or less unspoiled by the caustic pressures of the tourism industry. Short-term travelers typically find it too far out of the way to be worth their while.

"Our home, very shanti shanti," Mr. Kiwan Niwas assured us, as we tripped across his doorstep, weary from our journey. He has a flailing large Rajput mustache that would look splendidly noble in the antique costume of nineteenth century India, but in a t-shirt and jeans, it makes him look a little like a retired cowboy, or country singer. All the same, shanti shanti sounded good to us, as did the price for their family's extra bedroom.

It’s a little less of a “guest house” than we expected. It’s a little awkward to have the two of us occupying the largest room in the house while the other half dozen crowd into the bedroom downstairs; a little strange that whenever we need food they stop to cook it for us. We can only trust that if this were indeed an imposition, they wouldn’t do it. Meanwhile, we enjoy the Hindi chatter of the children and watching the littlest one tottle about.

We have about a week to enjoy the “shanti” before we’ve got to go back to Delhi. It will be hard to go back to the city, but alas, duty calls. We have other plans brewing.

by nathanielkidd

I asked Sarah the latter question, and she replied that she would rather be a saint. “A saint is something that other people call you,” she said, “whereas a prophet a label a person usually gives themselves.” I found this incredibly insightful.

To summarize my own reflections on the subject, the saint is God’s friend, the prophet God’s mouthpiece. The saint is like a candle, a gentle light to the world; the prophet a torch, come to incinerate the established order.

A guy with a beard ponders stuff.

I found myself agreeing with Sarah’s choice. The prophet may be higher profile, but I would rather be a saint.

There are plenty of people today who want to set the established order on fire, and not enough who are satisfied being simple light and heat to the world. In the pressure to be successful, to be visible, to be accepted, a lot of people champion some strange things. I’m not sure if in the spotlight of prophecy I could accurately discern between my voice and God’s voice.

I suppose the true spirit of prophecy is utterly irresistible. But every prophet should be a saint first. If the gentle glow of friendship with God is not hidden within the incendiary momentum of prophecy, then what is the difference between prophecy and terrorism?

by nathanielkidd

While it doesn’t share the ancient lineage of neighboring Pushkar, Ajmer has its own fascinating history. Indeed, through the Mughal era, it was a site of particular religious and strategic importance. Crumbling reminders of their infrastructure still interrupt the cityscape without explanation or apology. They are all prominently labeled as “Protected Monuments” by the Archeological Survey of India, but none of these immaculate signs indicate what the ruins are, or why they are protected.

Ajmer is not a popular spot for foreign tourists. While it does boast a constellation of interesting sights to be seen, Pushkar’s fame whisks them all away quite quickly. The English-speaking taxi drivers around the railway station all know this: they unanimously push transport to Pushkar, or at the very least, to the Pushkar bus stand.

Yet Ajmer is not wanting in tourist infrastructure. It has tremendous draw for domestic tourists, and is a popular destination for pilgrims, both Hindu and Muslim, who come to pay their respects to the Sufi saint Muinuddin Chisty. Indeed, for poorer Muslims in the sub-continent, a ziyarat to the Chisty Dargah is almost as good as the hajj to Mecca that they can’t afford.

We have come to Ajmer for three reasons. First, we wanted to get out of Delhi. We enjoy catching up with our friends on Main Bazaar, but being in Delhi is stressful and claustrophobic unless we have particularly well-developed aims. Ajmer is not exactly a laid-back utopia. Streams of pilgrims pass beneath our window almost round the clock; our solace of our hotel room is perpetually disturbed by the wail of the muzzien, the invitations of roadside vendors, and the cries of limbless beggars. Still, it is not Delhi.

Second, we wanted to catch up on some reading, writing, and Hindi study. The first two are mostly a matter of finding the will to do it. On the last count, external input is extraordinarily helpful. In this respect, Ajmer is an ideal setting for Hindi study. As a conservative Rajasthani town, few people speak English. Indeed, it seems that even some of our hotel staff can’t comprehend the fact that some people do not speak Hindi.

Finally, I am interested in observing sub-continent Sufism, and perhaps accumulating a few books on the subject. On our first visit to the Dargah, I was deeply impressed by simplicity and tangibility of the devotions: the scent of a thousand flower blossoms, the smooth marble streets, the strings tied to the marble screens, the trickling of the fountain installed for ablutions. The Dargah is the fascinating fruit of a foreign religious infrastructure. I want to peak behind the curtain, and know a little more about what is behind it.

I furthermore feel a strange kinship with Muinuddin Chisty, this mysterious figure from some eight centuries ago, toward whom this strange and ancient swirl of religious activity is focused. Chisty, by divine compulsion, left his native Persia and settled in Ajmer. His broad compassion earned him the epithet “Garib Nawaz” (friend of the poor) and won him undying devotion from the natives of the country he adopted; a devotion that continues to this day.

We look forward to a couple of weeks’ worth of time to pursue these goals before returning to Delhi and striking out on another adventure.

by nathanielkidd

I’m not sure if it will help him in life, or if it’s any good for us. Sarah worries that we’ve created a monster: “One more game! One more game!” he choruses. It’s not so much a request as a demand. We went into the Grand Sindhi at three o’ clock, and didn’t come out until nearly ten.

“This very interesting game,” Nicky said. “Very quickly the time is passing.” He played right until he had to chalo his house. A wedding passed by: the groom and his band processed up and down Main Bazaar, but Nicky hardly looked up from the board. Amar came in and suggested we see the new movie down at the theater, but Nicky said, “Why waste your money? Movies everyday the coming. But chess is not coming.”

I am amazed. Despite the language barrier, despite his low frustration threshold, despite the subtlety and complexity of the rules of the game, Nicky was a very eager student, picked up the ropes quite quickly.

“I telling you,” he said, “two, three times in Goa I ask the tourist people if you can a teaching the me, but they say ‘No, no, no, we have no time. You chalo your place!’ I berry happy you a the teaching it me.”

With a few reminders of the rules, a little advice, and the freedom to rethink his blunders, Nicky won one and a half games out of four with Sarah. Then he challenged me.

“Don’t tell me the moves,” Nicky requested. “I only want to think it.”

I didn’t go easy on him. I handily trounced him game after game, checking to make sure he wasn’t getting frustrated after each round. But my unrestrained expertise seemed to only fuel his desire to master the game.

I more or less stopped playing chess in high school. My pursuit of academic, social, and spiritual activities gradually crowded out the hobby, and my vicious competitive spirit always made playing more stressful than it should have been. But chess provides a unique opportunity to create social space: it gathered a crowd in the high school cafeteria, and it seems no less attractive in India.

Half the wallahs roving street and every souvenir shop will sell you a chess board, but almost no one knows how to play properly. To see a board in action is compelling to Indians passing by who have a free moment, and many of them express a desire to learn.

We bought a chess board to see what would happen. We don’t know what else will happen, but it does seem to be a promising experiment.

by nathanielkidd

Lydia’s visit was a great opportunity for us to evaluate how what we have experienced has affected and changed us. It put to use the hard-won street smarts and intercultural wisdom we’ve accumulated in our time in India. It allowed us to experience some new things, and revisit some old ones in new ways. It has also helped us to demonstrate to ourselves that we have accomplished many of our goals for personal development in our time here.

Sarah feels very accomplished and satisfied by the things that we have learned about ourselves, each other, and Indian culture through our struggles to live here. Lydia’s visit has galvanized this feeling. She feels “finished,” in a sense. She has achieved what she wanted to achieve, and could happily leave tomorrow, but is also willing to stay to satisfy my lingering goals and curiosities.

I have also done some reflection on our experiences, and I realize that I have grown a lot through our time so far. I don’t quite feel “finished” in the same way: I think our erstwhile growth is a starting point for more interesting learning, experience, and reflection to be gleaned from critical interaction with the culture and ideas that fill this strange continent we are in.

I want to open this process up to the input and feedback of our community. This is a discussion that Sarah and I are having, and we want you to be a part of it as well.

In the next few days, I will be exploring three topics relating to where we have been, and where we are going. First, I want to explore how our journey has changed us thus far. Second, I want to unveil and explain the subjects that I am hoping to occupy my thinking with for the rest of our venture. Finally, I want to review some of the challenges that we are facing, or anticipate that we will face in our continuing journey.

These topics of meditation will not necessarily result in any easy or direct answers in terms of immediate questions. I doubt that having thought through these issues, we will know where we will go, or what we will do when we get there. But this is the nature of our journey. We came to India to be in India: not to see India or do this or that particular thing. Nevertheless, we trust that as we pray about and reflect on these issues, our vocation, what God is calling us to for this particular moment, will continue to become clear.

Pray for us!

by nathanielkidd

Lydia gets a henna job she didn't ask for by shaking someone's hand.

These days, the sacred town is a haven for Hindus and hippies. I find it fascinating, I find it mysterious, I find it disorienting, but I have a hard time seeing its sanctity. The town is a bizarre, sometimes sickening chimera of cultures, boasting institutions like the “Pink Floyd Hotel” and the “Funky Monkey Café.” Shops on the street sell Indo-European fashion, and artwork that looks like Indian folk art reinterpreted through an LSD trip. Loud techno dance music mingles in the air with the sound of pooja bells and sacred drums. Restaurant touts enumerate their official offerings loudly, and then drop their voices to list their illegal options. And, of course, there is a generous helping of aggressive, manipulative, and deceitful schemes along the roadside that play off the ignorance of tourists to get inside their pockets. It’s hard to be reverent in the midst of such apparently flagrant irreverence.

Aside from the economic boon brought by foreign visitors, most of the locals seem perturbed at the proliferating tourism industry, particularly the debaucheries young travelers tend to bring with them. Signs very carefully spell out the responsibilities of foreign tourists to abstain from drugs and non-veg food, to dress modestly and take their shoes off within thirty feet of the lake, to avoid public displays of affection and taking pictures of bathing pilgrims. In their final bold imperative, the signs beg visitors to respect the Hindu religion and follow these guidelines.

These are all absolutely fair requests, and I am anxious to comply with all of them. Indeed, I scan the signs every time we see them, just to make sure there isn’t an extra rule they’ve slipped in there.

I am more than happy to respect Hinduism. Hinduism is a noble religion rich with beautiful stories, fascinating philosophies, intriguing traditions and important insights. I treasure the little strands of the religion that have been freely shared with me by the friends I have made here, and I wish I had a good way to learn more. I am glad to behave modestly, respectfully, and with self-restraint. I would expect the same of visitors to my culture and my religion. I am glad to follow the rules when I know them, and I will eagerly apologize if I trespass them unawares.

I know that as a traveler and a visitor I cannot expect the same standard of respect to be extended to me. I have to be a little guarded, and, when I feel abused, I have to step back, laugh, forgive, and avoid blaming the culture as a whole for the shortcomings of a few.

Nevertheless, it is still extraordinarily aggravating to be treated disrespectfully when you are trying so hard to be respectful.

This afternoon, we were walking along the lake when we were harangued by a self-proclaimed Brahmin, who put flowers into our hands, despite our best protests. He insisted we follow to the lakeside, repeat the Sanskrit prayers, cast the flowers into the waters, receive a thread around the wrist, and make a donation.

Of course, we had no particular interest in doing any of this. We were just on a walk, minding our own business. It was fairly evident, however, that he only knew enough English to express what he wanted us to do, and (naturally) pester us until he extracted our maximum donation.

Sarah caught on faster than the rest of us, and withdrew from his prodding very quickly. I didn’t realize what was going on until he had already tied a string around my wrist. “Listen,” I told him, “we don’t want to make a donation, and we won’t be pressured in to giving.”

“Just donate now!” he said. “You won’t have to donate anywhere else.”

“No, sorry,” I told him, as we continued to leave. “We’re not interested.”

“OK, give back string,” he said. I was OK with this, and I held out my hand for him to take his string back.

“Now go back to your hotel,” he commanded. “You are not allowed here. Do not come to the water. Do not go to the temple.”

His curses were hard to take in, but I don’t think we were being disrespectful to stand up for ourselves when we had been bullied into doing something we didn’t want to do and not wanting to pay for it. I’m sure that this guy had equated somewhere in his mind that “respecting Hinduism” meant doing what he said and then giving him a sizable donation. That is simply not a fair equation, however you want to look at it.

This is not the only manipulative encounter we’ve had in Pushkar, and it is quite aggravating. Manipulation is the worst form of disrespect. It indicates that the manipulator has spent enough time and energy studying your culture to figuring out how to approach you and weasel what they want from you, but they have never discovered that people from your culture have anything more to offer as human beings than the content of your pockets.

Perhaps as travelers it is unavoidable that we will be expected to earn our legitimacy and earn respect from the host culture, and I think that this is something that we should consider carefully in our continued ventures. But we don’t have a lot of money; we can’t purchase respect and friendship from everyone we encounter. Even if our financial resources were less limited, such behavior is ethically questionable.

All we have to offer is our time and our meager persistence in trying to find ways to interface with the culture. We are committed to learning from and conversing with the people we meet in a respectful manner. Sometimes, by the grace of God, this is enough.

by nathanielkidd

We'll be traveling tomorrow morning to Rajasthan, where we will spend about a week visiting the pilgrimage centers of Ajmer and Pushkar. From there, we will continue on to a National Park near the border with Uttar Pradesh, and hit that, the abandoned fort at Fatipur Sikhri, and the Taj over a couple of days. Finally, we will be heading to Varanasi, to spend a week getting lost among the ghats and dodging shady sadhus.

Sharing our experiences with a peer is shaping up to be an enriching experience. Lydia adds a lot to our company. It's wonderful to have our perceptions both confirmed and critiqued by a trusted companion. What wonderful grace for our journey.

Our sharing brings to my mind the Prayer of St. Chrysostom. Traveling is, after all, a sort of supplication; or it is, at very least, a cause for supplication.

Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication to you; and you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them: Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us; granting us in this world knowledge of your truth, and in the age to come life everlasting. Amen.

by nathanielkidd