Sitting
in a circle of grasped hands, ready to lift each other up in prayer
at the close of our cell group meeting, we all shared our hearts’
concerns and life anxieties. Valya, on my left, asked for prayers
for her friend. “She’s never happy,” she said,
“She’s always talking about what is wrong and what is
bad; she never sees the good side of life; she never sees the beauty
in life.” Listening to Valya’s heartfelt concern for
her best friend, I realized that over the past month, over and over
again I had been shown a variety of hints and clues demonstrating
and discussing the simple fact that life can be beautiful; it requires
a person to stop and look. Even my roommate’s and my new favorite
CD that continuously revolved in our player sang the lyrics, “We
live in a beautiful world.”
Envisioning life in a big city, the first images that came to my
mind were shadows. Part of me dreaded a life amidst concrete and
traffic and away from the spacious greenery and nature that surrounds
and invades Nashville. However, slowly I have begun to see beauty
in a new light.
Over the past month, my day-to-day life has settled into a mostly
set routine. After all of the planning and preparing, the time arrived
to act out all of these plans. As often happens, several of my plans
had to alter or shift once they were put into action. The second
week of September, Grady Bryan came up to me at the UEC with a question.
“Would you like to teach at ICU (International Christian University)?”
Somewhat confused since the semester had begun two weeks earlier,
I simply stared at him. Explaining to me that a professor had quit
two weeks into her job, he again offered me the opportunity for
which I had prayed ardently a few weeks before. Realizing that the
scheduling did not conflict with my other responsibilities, I accepted
the next day and added a Composition 1 class of 35 students twice
a week for an hour and a half to my weekly schedule. Dissimilarly,
the bible study/English class to which we invited many of the veterans
of the summer’s LST mission, did not pan out as we had planned.
After an attendance of one the first week, and two the second, we
decided to disband the idea for the present and attempt a different
route to reach these people.
Now, however, my weekly activities are basically ordered around
a constant routine. On Mondays, I go to my Russian tutor, hold “tutoring
hours” and volunteer at the UEC, and then lead a discussion
of C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce at night. Tuesdays are a
day for preparing my classes, holding hours, and volunteering at
the UEC. Wednesday brings a composition one class, and Thursday
brings more Russian, UEC work, and cooking and preparing for our
cell group that evening. The end of the week represents total chaos
to me, unlike the normal workweek. Friday, I prepare and teach Composition
1, then go straight to Nyvky church and teach for another hour and
a half on science and religion. Usually, after class, many students
hang out at the church watching movies, doing watercolor paints,
or playing ping-pong. Then Saturday morning arrives and it’s
time for the weekly Frisbee game, followed immediately by choral
practice and that immediately followed by cooking and preparing
for student night from 6-10. Sunday brings church in the afternoon,
and usually emails and reading in the morn.
In between, after, and among these activities, I spend most of my
time working on my personal web site, a new website detailing our
November book drive – “A Harvest of Books,” and
communicating with friends and family back home. Despite the fact
that I have a schedule similar to the one I had my last semester
at Vanderbilt and despite the fact that I usually have something
hanging over me that I feel like needs to be done, life has begun
to offer me more and more moments of inescapable quiet marvel and
undeniably beautiful contentment.
Before my composition class, I stood up front organizing my papers,
and I happen to see a group of early arriving students laughing
excitedly bathed in a window of afternoon sunlight. Coming up from
the underground and seeing the ashen liquid clouds billowing along,
separating, colliding, and attempting to cover the persistent sun,
I just stopped and stared, a smile spreading over my teeth. I can
see so much life in the city, millions of people, each individual,
desiring, hurrying, loving, laughing and purposeful. Strolling through
the open-air museum of ancient Ukrainian villages with four students
last Sunday, I relished the simplicity, the stretched fields of
wheat and tidy huts, squatting low next to swarms of bright flowers.
Three weeks ago, I joined several church members in running the
“Race for Life” sponsored by the U.N. as a fundraiser
for the AIDS effort. Gulping for breath, red-faced and blood quickened,
we engaged in an all out war of water in downtown Kyiv; water bottles,
fountains, and gasps of cold kept us laughing for the next hour
or so. Even the last few days of unceasing rain has fallen on our
city has convicted me of the sweetness of the world as I lay in
bed listening to the rhythmic explosions on my windowpanes.
I truly cannot describe why I have these striking moments of insight
or awe. Being new, I think I observe more closely, a stranger trying
to understand his surroundings. I walk everywhere, observe people
more closely, and rely on my other senses more to make up for my
language deficit. I also feel like my routine, my scheduled tasks
have purpose. In school, playing football, I often asked myself,
“Why?” I could not answer satisfactorily why I was in
an economics class or why my whole body ached with bruise and soreness.
Now, I have a difficult dividing “work” from “play.”
“Work” has such a bad connotation in my mind, but here
it has become synonymous with “purpose.” I am forced
to do the simple things – wash dishes by hand, walk, etc.
– and they have demonstrated to me the beauty of our world.
We are sponsoring a “Harvest of Books” at the UEC in
November, attempting to get small groups, cell groups, bible studies,
etc. in different places across the U.S. to join us in collecting
a few books each and sending them over to us. I have spent hours
designing the website, and I have not tired of it. I want it to
be perfect because I can see the good that the library does the
students. I can see the place of love, of Christian principles,
and education it offers students. Therefore, I desperately want
to give all I can to it, to build it, help it function, and constantly
improve it.
Four new freshmen have begun attending our weekly cell group meeting,
asking questions about and commenting on our discussions of faith
and prayer. They brought a new energy with them, a willingness to
give their whole selves. They come early to help cook and stay late
to wash dishes; they say, “thank you” repeatedly when
leaving because they commit so much of themselves and receive so
much in return.
This century has seen the progression of the terror of existence,
the darker sides of man and the evil of the universe. Many times,
I have found myself despairing over these existential horrors. However,
these thoughts have always returned me to the foundation of my existence
– my hope in Jesus Christ. As God continues to blatantly reveal
the beauty of His creation, my hope feasts on its delights and swells
daily. Like Valya, it pains me to think of all the people who live
simply to wake up and breathe. To complete their scheduled tasks,
to move from place to place, time to time consumes their daily existence.
I ache to show them this beauty in which my soul delights and the
hope it nurtures; I feel sorry for those who live only to flee from
their fear of the looming shadows of despair and isolation.
Each breath sustains life; each bite gives energy; each sip offers
refreshment. I miss beautiful faces at home, and I am falling in
love with more and more beautiful faces here each day. Raindrops
create a calming lullaby, chilled winds cleanse my eyes, and leaves
age with glorious colors. I am working for what I believe; I live
to give money that has been given to me to people who have none
to spare; I get to teach students to write, to read, to think about
existence, and to see the beauty I see. I cannot recount all the
events of the past month, but I can convey the unity of moments
that stick in my mind. A breathless verbal spar during a Frisbee
game, a hug after sharing in the power of prayer, pitiful attempts
to learn Ukrainian words over an enormous pile of dishes, voices
harmonized together in song, hearing the passion in a student’s
voice discussing C.S. Lewis’ fantastical glimpses of heaven,
and so many more.
My
camera batteries constantly remain empty because I am irrepressibly
compelled to attempt to capture these moments in photographs, no
matter how lacking they may be. This past month has convicted me
that Valya’s prayer for her friend should be each person’s
personal prayer. We live in a beautiful world, but we seldom open
ourselves to see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, or taste it. Once
it consumes us, once we feast on its delights, it becomes us, and
we cannot imagine life without it. Here in Kyiv, I live in a beautiful
world, and I desperately want to share it.