The Bidet

I neglected to mention that the bathroom in 10b Paton’s Lane is equipped with a bidet, or in the vernacular: a butt bath.  In case you’re wondering, yes, I tried it and yes, it felt weird, but very…clean.

God is good

It’s amazing to me just how perfectly what Signpost needed in an intern (a kid with some knowledge of development work and basic computing skills who’s willing to do anything) turned out to match what I could provide.

It’s also incredible how my summer turned out to be precisely what I wanted. I wanted to get experience in development work, and I wanted to go to Great Britain (talk about American arrogance, at least we don’t put “great” in front of our country’s name! But I digress.). Before the position at Signpost came up, I hadn’t thought of those two goals as compatible.

More than simply fulfilling my desires, my experience this summer has been over and above what I could have thought or imagined. The level of input I’m able to give at Signpost is incredible. I was given the freedom to rewrite one of their grant programs, then given the responsibility of communicating with one of the applicants from India! Words like “community ownership, “vulnerability,” and “sustainability” flew thick in the air. Finally my formal education was becoming useful! For one brief moment the classroom melded with the workplace and nirvana was achieved.

So basically, what I’m saying is, it’s as if God said to me, “Seth, I love you, and that doesn’t always mean giving you what you want, but this summer it does. So here you go. Enjoy.”

For these brief months the will of God has seemed like a broad road, gleaming with reflective road signs all pointed in the same direction. I know it’s not always like that, so all I can do is thank God for His blessings now, and let him take care of the future, whichever way the road may wind.

My Life in Dundee

With only a week and a half left of work at Signpost before I head out to travel Scotland, it’s beginning to feel as if my time here is coming to a close.  That means it is all the more important to squeeze every drop of goodness out of the next few weeks.

Lately I’ve been hanging out with Signpost’s Going Global team, a group of students taking a gap year to work with Signpost.  They got back from the Philippines last week.  They’re a really great group.  One of the sad but lovely things about this summer is that I’ve made so many friends who I’ll never see again.  Two weeks with a group of people is just enough to form the basis for a great friendship.  Oh well.  We’ve got facebook.

Last night I wrote down a few things that I’m promising myself to remember forever:

The sunset tinting the huge sea-built clouds pink and blue.

The rise and fall of old Reverend Murdoch McCloud’s voice as he prays; how it has little to do with the words but operates on a logic of its own.

The excitement of poetry as performance practiced by Paradox, KP (Kip the Poet) and the druids at Stonehenge.

My conversations about the Kingdom of God with Elias from Sudan in Cardiff and with Kelly, Monika and Graeme back at Signpost.

How to say A Salam A Lakem.

That this summer in Scotland was the first time I really articulated to others my desire to make writing my profession.

Hill Walking

Today I went hill-walking with a group from St. Peter’s. Henrik Svensson, the Swedish guy who is filling David Robertson’s shoes in the pulpit, Steven, who leads the psalm singing, and Julia, a cool lady with a nose ring shaped like a snake (it’s pretty awesome), came along.

It was a wonderful hike up into the clouds, up where the rocks pierce through the grass and the angry wind made my fleece jacket feel like wings. It’s not always angry though. When the sun is out the wind seems like it’s playing with you, tempting you to fly. When the clouds descend though, it’s voice turns sinister and sometimes when it whips around the boulders it shrieks in your ears. Best are the unexpected stillnesses, when the silence sounds like God in its inexplicable profundity.

We made the peaks of Ben Glass and Ben Lawrens, then circled back around through a stretch of rolling meadows. For a moment I wished we’d just come up that way, but I was immediately ashamed of the thought. You can only really enjoy the peace of the meadow when you’ve been to the mountaintop.

Independence Day!!!

Happy 4th of July everyone!  Just to assure you of my patriotism, I’m going to a barbecue this evening at a fellow American’s house.  That’ll be cool.  In order to balance out the Americanism of this evening, last night my flatmate Darren made Haggis…in the microwave.  It was good actually.  Especially with mashed potatoes. 

I have a very open mind (and mouth) when it comes to Scottish food.  I even tried black pudding, which consists of pig’s blood thickened with barley.  To make this culinary crime even more unappetizing, chip shops will shape it into a long roll and deep fry it until you can’t distinguish it from the wide array of other greasy items under the heat lamps.  It was this version of black pudding that I sampled.  It wasn’t that bad.

The strangest thing about Scottish food is not how weird and gross-sounding it is, it’s how gleeful the Scots are about its weird grossness.  People are positively over-joyed to tell me how haggis is made, and uniformly dissapointed that I already know (if you don’t know yourself I won’t spoil their fun).  It’s like Scotland is having a gross-out competition with the world–and winning.

 Scotland is the only country in Europe where Coca-Cola is not the most popular soft drink.  Irn-Bru takes the number one spot here, despite its garish orange color and cough syrup after-taste.  The home brewed (bru-ed?) alternative always sells better here.  Tennant’s Scottish Lager is in every pub and Tesco’s is filled with food items labeled with the St. Andrew’s cross to show it’s local.

These are only a few examples to demonstrate that the Scottish national character is obsessed with its own uniqueness.  Well, it’s the fourth of July and I’m an American, darn it!  I can be unique too!  So pass the burgers and break out the firecrackers America, it’s time to celebrate.