The Blessings workshop in Sweden went swimmingly with 13 participants. It was preceded by an MSIA ministers meeting with nine ministers coming from all over Sweden to participate. That is one of the great advantages of staff visits, it gives MSIA communities an excuse and motivation to get together when under normal circumstances they don’t. All the events and Services were held at Agneta and John-Crister Lindhe’s home. They were very generous hosts housing and feeding me and Vladimir and any others that needed to sleep over from the long distances they had traveled for the staff visit. They had gone to the bank to recently to take out a second mortgage to help pay for the herring I was consuming.
The Lindhes’ home borders on a forest and one of the highlights of the trip was a walk in the forest that Agneta, Vladimir and I took one evening after Services. We picked and ate wild blueberries, raspberries and ligon berries. And they pointed out to me the look-alike ligon berries that were poisonous. (Which had me second guessing myself for a moment). Vladimir lives and works as a zoologist in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, so it was a normal walk for him. But for me it was a thrilling change from my urban existence in downtown Los Angeles.
It was time to leave Stockholm. Vladimir helped me load into the car my 40 lb suitcase, then my 20 lb carry-on. He needed no help with his luggage as all his belongings were in a canvas container no bigger than a messenger bag. On the way to the airport we chatted about a future MSIA staff visit to St Petersburg. Vladimir would be back at home soon having taken over one month for his journey and spending over a year’s wages to come to Sweden for his initiation. It was but two weeks ago that I had found myself in a slow check-out line at Whole Foods and had rolled my eyes to the heavens and screamed, “God, why has thou forsaken me?” In all sincerity I prayed that Vladimir would not have to suffer on his journey home, as I had in that moment. I also reflected on how similar we were–except for the fact that he loves potatoes and I love herring.
And so I was on my way back to London. A now naturalized U.S. citizen on my way to my place of birth. Of course, as an American I know that there is no such thing as global warming. The silly Europeans think there is. I tried to tell my European friends that the fact that the hottest summers on record had killed 20,000 people, the toxic algae showing up in the Mediterranean beaches for the first time, and that Northern Sweden was experiencing Lyme’s disease for the first time due to the tick surviving in the milder weather, had nothing to do with it. They refused to listen to me and are actually doing something in anticipation of the trend continuing. Building cities higher as the oceans rise, and taking all kinds of other sorts or proactive measures. “It’ll never happen,” I openly shared with them. “You’re making it up. Look at the United States, things are the same as they have always been.” But they still didn’t listen.
But global warming was nothing compared to the fate of the English football team who had been having a terrible time of it. They had lost on Wednesday to Northern Ireland. This was the first time Northern Ireland had beaten England at football in 72 years. England’s display was described as “gutless, shameful and spiritless” and that was the conservative BBC. What to do? Fortunately, England’s cricketers were playing the best they had in 20 years and the English publics’ never-ending search for heroes found a safe place to land on. England, playing Australia in a “test match” series were involved to taking back the “Ashes,” a trophy Australia had retained for 20 years much to the embarrassment of every English cricket fan. As you no doubt know, a cricket game lasts 5 days. A day’s play includes stoppages for lunch and tea.
The final day of the last and fifth test match was being played at The Oval in Surrey as we boarded the plane for Madrid. A win or draw for England would mean that they would take the Ashes, a small finger sized wooden urn containing the ashes of something, back to England. Fortunately, this was a British Airways flight and the captain realizing the score was more important than the altitude we were flying and us knowing that the English Channel was below us if we looked outside the left side of the plane and had x-ray vision to see through the clouds, announced that England were 127 for 5. This brought confused and quizzical looks from Angel and Celia, who also incredibly were very neutral about this world changing event. Well, as anyone knows 127 for 5 is not good against, perhaps, the best Australian team ever. I sunk into a gloom.
I was lifted out of it by vanity. The Spanish MSIAers greeting us at the airport were raving about my goatee. Ignored in Sweden and derided in England, my goatee was getting rave reviews. I immediately forgot about cricket and wanted to make Spain my home. Of course, as enthusiastic as the welcome is when staff arrive at a new location, it is comparatively modest compared to the ecstasy the community experience when we leave. Such are the demands we place on our volunteer reps and their helpers that they need a long vacation, several massages, and a year’s worth of therapy after we leave. They say that a woman’s greatest pain is giving birth, yet it is the pain that she most easily forgets. (I must interject here that my mother has not forgotten the pain of my birth, she almost died bringing me into this world, as she generously shares with me around my birthday each year). Nevertheless, if there is some truth to this saw, it surely has another manifestation in the way our MSIA representatives greet us at the airport with unbridled enthusiasm and joy and innocence–the pain and exhaustion of our previous visit having been miraculously forgotten.
Madrid is a beautiful city with its old and beautiful architecture. It particularly stands out at night. Not that I cared. I was busy asking the price of apartments and looking at where to live. We ate with our reps at the oldest restaurant in the world. Of course, every city has the oldest restaurant in the world, even Studio City in the San Fernando Valley. This was Madrid’s. We went several floors below to a brick lined room to eat. You could almost taste the Spanish Inquisition, which I actually have very fond memories of. It was here that I had the best anchovies of my life (at the restaurant, not at the inquisition). These were not the anchovies one puts on pizza, they were delicious and fresh and I raved about them to my wife on the phone until the phone went dead.
John Morton and Vincent arrived in Madrid a day later and my elation at seeing John was soon diminished by the palpable feeling in his presence that people were no longer admiring my goatee. The fickleness of humans astounded and shocked me. My mind wondered if indeed moving to Madrid was a good idea. Madrid probably didn’t need a DSS anyway. At the risk of seeming superficial and reactive, I called my wife and told her with some degree of urgency not to sell our home. She calmly reminded me that we don’t own a home, we rent. This was an enormous blow as I had spent the last year celebrating the housing boom with the purchase of all of Sally Kirkland’s old films available on DVD. It was really too much stuff for one day. I cleared. I cried. Vincent put his arm around me and reminded me that no one said that being on the road was easy.
Oh yes, England won the Ashes. And the price of housing no longer interests me, anywhere. And my DVD’s of Sally are for sale on eBay.
Click here to Paul Kaye’s report “From Kippers to Foie Gras”.
