Some of my favorite moments as a tour leader are watching the expressions of our travelers as they first encounter some of these wonders. There is a particular corner where I like to skip ahead just a little so I can savor the expressions as the group rounds the corner and sees the magnificent Eiffel Tower towering above them in all its glory.
I had a conversation yesterday that will stick with me for a long time.
If you've been reading/following me for a while, you know that Becky and I had our lives changed when we made a visit to Athens four years ago to see up close just one of the crises caused by the Syrian civil war: the influx of thousands of refugees into Europe. Athens was the epicenter.
For years I've been telling people why I love the word "sincere" so much. As the story goes, in medieval Europe, a potter or sculptor would use wax to cover over any flaws in the vessel or sculpture once it was dry. Being a language freak, I was fascinated to learn that "sincere" meant "without wax" -- "sin" ("without" in Spanish) "cera" ("wax"; "cire" in French). Being truly sincere is being "without wax", with no attempt to cover one's flaws. What you see is who I am.
If you're in the US, this is Super Bowl weekend. But if you're in New Zealand, it's Waitangi Day, the national holiday.
One year I decided to visit a small museum in the Ardèche area of France which documents much of the history of the Huguenot community there. One display featured a mannequin family of Huguenots, all dressed, to my surprise, in blue denim. It was a bizarre juxtaposition of what looked like 80's stone-washed denim set in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Can you look back at a single moment or experience that set the tone for the rest of your life? Not everyone can point to something that dramatic, but I'm fortunate enough to be able to say I can. Sure, there have been many defining moments in this full life of mine, but I'd like to tell you about one that actually helped determine its course.
If you're aware that the birthplace of Jesus is now part of the Palestinian Territory -- therefore Arab -- you'll be forgiven for being surprised to see a host of Arabs parading through the Bethlehem streets playing bagpipes.
So just what are the 12 days of Christmas, and who decided what 12 days they are? Are they the 12 days leading up to Christmas, or the days following Christmas? If you guessed "B", you would be correct. And if you did, you are likely from a background where the Christian liturgical calendar is observed in detail. The 12 days begin on Christmas Day and lead up to Epiphany, the day when the coming of the magi (wise men) is observed.
When we hear the phrase "learn a foreign language", some of us break out in hives, perspiration, or just have an unpleasant taste in our mouths. Unless you're among the few like myself who actually think it's FUN, it might just sound like hard work. I get it. I'm the same way when you mention computer programming or accounting.
If you read last week's edition of the Wayfarer, you know my perspective on the need to come together as a nation to begin the healing process. I've been accused in the past of being an idealist; believe me, I have enough years of experience in the real world to have had plenty of time to yield to cycnism from time to time, so I'm no Utopian.
After a long and bitter election season in the U.S., there is a concept from Africa that comes to mind. It's called ubuntu. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said, "Ubuntu speaks of the very essence of being human.... Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate.... It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.'"
Other summarize ubuntu as concisely as this:
Kind of flies in the face of American individualism, doesn't it! Sociologists generally agree that American culture is the most individualistic in the world. I am conditioned from childhood to follow MY dreams and pursue MY own success. When asked what we want our lives to look like, other people often don't even enter the equation. Thanks in large part to the Enlightenment and the whole series of revolutions that ensued, we are laser focused on individual rights and freedoms.
In most African cultures, what I do is directly connected not just to my own desires and dreams, but to who we are. In other words, my good flows from the common good.
The common good. Seems to me a phrase largely absent from much of our rhetoric these days.
I'm not suggesting that we all pick up, move to the country and form rural villages and call everyone in the village "Auntie" or "Uncle", as is often the case in Africa; I just can't help wondering if ubuntu isn't a part of the healing we so badly need to move forward.
A few years back I interviewed a brilliant Zambian doctor of infectious diseases whom I met here in Nashville. I asked him to explain how ubuntu is lived out in his home country. You can listen to that interview here.
How can you and I put ubuntu into practice? Is there a (greater) place for the common good?
