Announcing the 2019 World to the Wise cultural tour!

Summer 2019 Tour

GREECE +ITALY + FRANCE!

Plans are already underway for the 2019 World to the Wise Cultural Tour, which promises to be as packed full of adventures as any tour in the past! We will begin with a brief visit to the ancient land of Greece, cradle of Western civilization. We’ll then head to one of our favorite countries, Italy. We just can't get enough of its incredible mix of history, beauty, culture...and food!

We'll also spend time in another non-negotiable destination: Paris. Not only do we see the highlights the city is famous for, we also discover some little known nooks and crannies, plus a day trip to one of France’s most treasured cultural landmarks. (Shh!)

If you’re interested in getting in on the action, just leave your name and email address below to receive information updates.

Announcing the 2018 World to the Wise Cultural Tour

Big news! We have decided to include GREECE as our first destination of the 2018 World to the Wise Cultural Tour! As you may know, Becky and I have had the opportunity to spend time there the last two summers, primarily in the context of the international refugee crisis. We fell in love with Athens and with many of the people we met, and we're looking forward to introducing our tour participants to one of the world's most ancient civilizations. Are you one of those?

This tour is open to the public, although it will primarily be students and some parents. Students under the age of sixteen must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

In addition to visiting the ancient sites in Athens, our time in Greece will also include a day trip to the ancient city of Corinth as well as a cruise to one of the fabled Greek islands.

From Athens we'll fly to Rome, where we'll kick off an 8-day adventure through one of the most popular destination countries of our tour alumni.

We'll finish the tour in Paris. How can we not?

For detailed information on the tour, including pricing and dates, click here.

To register for the tour, click here.

Not ready to commit but want to stay updated? Just leave your email address in the form below!

1st Anniversary Edition: the Top 7 Downloads

This weekend marks the first anniversary of the launch of the World to the Wise podcast. For me personally, it’s been more fun than should be legal – to talk to so many fascinating people, hear their stories, and pass these stories on to you so we can all grow and be challenged together. Challenged to broaden our perspectives and travel vicariously to other parts of the world; or, as the case may be, to other subcultures within our own borders. To mark the occasion we’ve decided to do a roundup of the top seven downloaded episodes from this first year of our existence. We thought this would not only be a great way to celebrate, but also give you a chance to hear a synopsis of some episodes you might not have caught so you can go back and listen. It’s never too late to catch an episode because you can just click on the podcast tab on this website.

Here are the top seven most downloaded episodes from the first year of this podcast adventure:

1. Dr. Lee Camp, professor of theology and ethics at Lipscomb University. Lee discusses his insightful and incisive book, Who is My Enemy: Questions Americans Must Ask About Islam -- and Themselves. A great interview with a thoughtful man, and a must read!
2. Drs. Eric and Rachel McLaughlin, an internist and OBGYN, respectively, at Kibuye Hope Hospital in the impoverished East African nation of Burundi. You'll find their work and their words inspiring.
3. From the land of New Zealand, our dear friends Neil and Jill White are given the chance to brag on their fair country, where Becky and I enjoyed an unforgettable visit a couple of years ago. You should save your money (or miles, as we did) and go -- and stay at the Whites' Air Bnb!
4. Author, entrepreneur and adventurer Chris Guillebeau talks about his quest to visit every country on the planet. Chris shares about lessons learned in all his travels, and he also has a lot to teach us about thinking outside the box -- entrepreneurially!
5. Author and speaker Sarah Lanier is a long-time friend and former colleague who has a wealth of knowledge and experience to share in the area of cross-cultural dynamics and communication. In this interview we discuss her book, Foreign to Familiar: A Guide to Understanding Hot- and Cold-Climate Cultures. Don't let the title intimidate you -- this is a short but powerful read, where Sarah leads us into a greater understanding of the basic cultural differences between people groups and the importance of this understanding. A must read -- in fact, it's required reading for our Global Studies students!
6. If you haven't already, you'll fall in love with Eleni Melirrytou, of Athens, Greece. Nowhere is there a bigger heart to serve the displaced people of this world; they have come by the hundreds through the doors of her downtown Athens church, been fed by her, loved by her, changed by her. Her testimonial will stretch the corners of your heart and challenge your thinking about the worldwide refugee crisis -- and perhaps the refugees in your own city.
7. Number seven comes from our series on American subcultures. Bill Moser was a successful architect living in an upscale suburb of Detroit when he met some people who changed the course of his life. Bill and his wife became Amish. The radical change in his belief system and, consequently, lifestyle is nothing short of fascinating, as told through his childhood friend, Jeff Smith, in the book Becoming Amish.

We could go on and talk about the next seven, and the next...but we'll let you discover those for yourself.

Thank you to those of you who have been faithful listeners over this exciting first year! We realize what a privilege it is to be "in your ears" every week!

A Family Ruined for the Ordinary

Meet my friend Dwane Thomas. Dwane and I have known each other for a number of years, and both live and work in the greater Nashville area. But this interview comes to you from Athens, Greece, where Dwane and his family, along with Becky and myself, have been volunteering with and observing some of the work going on among the many refugees stranded or waiting here in Greece. (You can hear more about that in my interview with the amazing Eleni Melirrytou.) But there's more about this remarkable family of seven. Before coming to Athens, they spent two months on the Greek island of Paros. I'll let Dwane tell you how he and his wife Gretchen came to lead their kids on that adventure, as well as how their contact with the refugees here in Athens has changed them. Dwane is also a language freak like yours truly, and we compare notes a little during this interview. He has some advice that you'll want to take to heart, especially if you're student or parent of a student.

At the end of the podcast we talk about the idea of going out into the streets of Athens and having fun reading signs and guessing what they mean. Recommended especially for word nerds!

Next week I'll be coming to you for the last time from Europe, where Becky and I have had our eyes opened, not only on the refugee situation but how it and other factors are changing the face of Europe. All blog posts and podcast episodes for the past several weeks deal with this subject in one way or another.

Now here's the video shot on the Athens streets by Jackson Thomas:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-Bb5GsV6wQtSlBDSFdLT0Utb0E/view?usp=sharing

Resources mentioned in this episode:

An Oasis in Athens

What a week it has been here in Athens. Last week I shared with you some of our observations of the city itself. That was before our work with the refugees began. In this week's episode we share some of their stories -- not only from the camps, but from some of the people reaching out to them here. In particular, one dynamo of a lady named Eleni Melirrytou, a pastor's wife from a small church in the heart of Athens. My wife and I have been tremendously impacted just watching this lady, and she herself has been changed, as you will hear, by her relationship with the dozens and dozens of refugees who have come through her doors just since January of this year.

After listening to her, you just might find yourself wanting to know more -- or maybe even join her and her team in Athens for a week, a month, or longer. If that's the case, you can email Eleni at emelirry@aol.com, or find her on Facebook.

Next week we'll be coming to you from Germany, considered the Promised Land by many of the refugees. Some already have family waiting for them there. We're curious to see what things look like on that end, and I hope you'll join us.

Hopeful and Hopeless in Athens

IMG_2838

My wife and I have been in Athens for a week. We've experienced a bizarre juxtaposition of emotion and experience: on one hand, we're seriously exploring the possibility of including this great city in a World to the Wise cultural tour at some point in the future, so we spent the first few days exploring this city that began casting a long shadow almost 3,000 years ago. From the obviously stunning sights like the Acropolis, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Ancient Agora and the Roman Forum to the neighborhood Greek Orthodox churches that have been calling the faithful for over 1,000 years, to the warmth of the Greek people themselves, we have predictably fallen in love with the city.

On the other hand, we are also here to volunteer with a nonprofit reaching out to the thousands of refugees currently stranded here in Greece. Meeting them and listening to their stories is nothing short of heartbreaking. We have visited them in camps at Pyraeus, the port of Athens, as well as in what are called squats -- abandoned buildings such as schools, where they set up tents in the classrooms and attempt to make the best of a desperate situation.

image1 (1)

I spent some time talking to a small group of Syrian men at the port. Their tents are grouped around one of the port terminal buildings, apparently not currently in use. They greeted me warmly, led by a man in his 40s who was the best English speaker and served as the group's mouthpiece. All of them have family (or a fiancee in one case) waiting for them in Germany, and are themselves waiting to be processed. This can mean waiting for a first interview, or for a second one months away. And in the meantime, they wait, forming temporary family units as there is virtually no such thing as an intact family in the camps. More than one young man spent months in prison for refusing to serve in Bashar Al Assad's army. If they set foot back in Syria, they are imprisoned or worse.

But these men have some form of hope. They hope to eventually be admitted into Germany or another northern European country and reunited with their loved ones. This is what prevents them from despair.

English lesson

Others are not so fortunate. Becky and I spent some time talking with and teaching English to a small group of Afghani women yesterday. Two of them are sisters and one is a sister-in-law. Two out of three were widowed by the Taliban. They lost everything to escape with their lives, paying $3000 per person to be whisked away in the night by car. They are now a family unit in themselves, along with the eleven or so children between them.

Their biggest problem is that Afghanistan is currently not recognized by the powers that be (UN, EU, etc.) as a nation at war, so there is no way these ladies can be granted political asylum. They were granted permission to stay one month in Greece, and that was four months ago. So now they wait, illegally, but with nowhere to go and no known recourse.

I was struck by their warm smiles and upbeat manner the entire time -- that is, until they began to tell, through the 17-year-old daughter who spoke decent English, about their ordeal. The more she told, the more their countenances all fell and revealed the utter exhaustion and despair they must be living with constantly. They only get 2-3 hours of sleep in the building where they are being housed because of the incessant crying of small children through the night, and the 3 days a week they come to the church facilities where we are based are an oasis in more ways than one.

So Becky and I live each day in this bizarre blend of adventure and discovery, and heartbreak and unanswerable questions, while a Syrian man, separated from his family, sweeps the eight square feet of parking lot outside the tent he calls home.

Be sure to tune in to my podcast this week for more updates and stories.

The Wise Traveler

In this episode, brought to you from Athens, Greece, I ask the question: Is there a right and a wrong way to travel? I would say yes. There's not just one right way and one wrong way, however. Find out some of the characteristics of what I call the wise traveler. With the magnificent, world-shaping city of Athens as a backdrop, we explore what it means to travel wisely. If what Solomon said is true, wisdom is something to be sought after above all else. Wisdom is the ability to apply intelligence at the right time, in the right place, and in the right way. So what makes someone a wise traveler and not just an intelligent one? 

Take a listen, send your feedback, and share! Share your comments either here or on the Reviews section of your favorite podcast store, or email me at podcast@daviddurham.org. I'd love to hear your own insights and experiences!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

The Fiddler Is Still on the Roof

Tevye

While browsing through hundreds of photos on a computer at home, looking for a good photo of my mother for Mothers' Day, I came across this photo of myself as Tevye in Lifesong Theatre Group's production of Fiddler on the Roof. The next morning, I turned on NPR in the car and got in on the end of a Studio 360 story on the history of the Broadway musical, two years after its 50th anniversary. Fiddler is one of the highest grossing, longest running in Broadway history. The photo alone was enough to take me back to an emotion-packed experience for me. In some ways I found myself relating to Tevye's ongoing dialog with God, particularly, at that time in my life, his complaints to God about his circumstances. The fact that he felt free to openly address his concerns to God revealed a very present faith on the one hand, with room for doubts and questions on the other.

The story of Fiddler, which originated as a series of short stories published in 1894 called Tevye the Dairy Man by Sholom Aleichem,  continues to resonate on so many levels. In an age where cultural change is only accelerating, it challenges our ability to deal with change while reexamining the traditions we hold dear. It also reminds us, as Tevye and his family and friends are driven out of the village of Anatevka by the Bolsheviks and face a new life in America, that in the 21st century we are all nations of immigrants. The story takes us inside the mind and heart of someone who is being forced from their centuries-long homeland, giving the word "refugee" a face and a life.

In the United States, we have talked so much about the American dream and the Land of Opportunity that we risk assuming everyone wants to come here -- unless we ourselves have experienced what it's like to huddle with the few we know, longing for home, against a mass of strangers in a strange land.

These are the people my wife and I are soon going to be meeting in Greece. For them, the fiddler still represents the precarious balance between keeping traditions and dealing with change. I look forward with mixed emotions to the experience. I'm pretty certain that I'm not quite prepared for the barrage of emotions awaiting us, but I'm quite certain one of them will be a feeling of helplessness against the plight of the Syrians, Afghans and others who have been forced out of their homes.

I'll be documenting our experiences on this blog, as well as occasional vlogs and possibly Blab sessions. Stay tuned for an adventure that you're invited to live with us vicariously. Better yet, sign up below as a member of the "culturally curious"  tribe so you don't miss a thing.