Cut from a Cloth

I'm not going to lie. I really adore Anthropologie (just not that the most I can buy from Anthro with my fifty-dollar gift card is one scented candle... I'm kidding. But not really). 

There is something therapeutic about trying on beautiful, overpriced clothes that you have no intention of actually buying. The other day I walked around the back of the store in a $240 dress for a while just because I really liked it and knew I'd never get it (let's be honest, that's the equivalent of a plane ticket that could take me somewhere I really want to go). No wonder fashion-savvy girls with their parents' credit cards look so chic all the time. The rest of us would probably look fairly good on a day to day basis too if we could constantly shell out that much money for pricey (albeit well-made) clothes.

There was a time in my life (i.e., when I was first acclimating to my new Southern California, private college environs) when I almost subconsciously aspired to be and look like those kind of people. You know, the carefully styled, beach-y bohemian California girls with wardrobes as inexhaustible as C.S. Lewis's and gorgeous blond hair to rival any red-carpet starlet's. 

As often as I reminded myself that this quasi-aspiration was extremely shallow and materialistic and that I really didn't want to look like that anyway, I still found myself insnared by an ever-present desire to go shopping and completely overhaul my own wardrobe. I never actually did this, of course. I tried to set my sights on contentment and thankfulness, because that's really the only acceptable attitude that comparatively well-off Americans should ever have anyway. 

But especially after staying in Turkey, Jordan, and Israel over the course of last semester, my perspective has completely shifted. I donned the same few clothing articles day in and day out for over four months, and I found to my great relief that I could function perfectly happily with very little as far as attire was concerned. I was satisfied with what I had, and relieved not to feel defined by what I wore or where I shopped.

And now being back, something in me is fundamentally appalled by the materialism of so many girls here. I find the carefully styled, beach-y bohemian thing so...unnecessary. I'm no longer striving to fit in with people who I want to be seen with. There are so many more valuable and quality interactions and relationships to be had, and so many other more worthy things to strive for. 

Do not misunderstand me. I enjoy fashion, and I am definitely a proponent of putting your best, classy foot forward.

But did you really decide to pay that much again this weekend for another new outfit from Free People?! Maybe you could free some people by not buying more clothes for yourself. Maybe you could be ungrudgingly, uncovetously satisfied with what you have.

Maybe we could all afford to take a critical look at our own materialism. 

Sanctum

It was almost an instinct, that feeling that I needed to get away for a bit. Not tell anyone exactly where I was going. Wander for wandering's sake. 

Downtown, I diverted from the main road...discovered a patisserie with rainbows of macaroons...delighted in walking alone... 

My only worry was that I would cross paths with someone I knew. 

I felt like sand trying to find an escape route through interlaced fingers. I longed for someplace different, more mysterious, more sacred, more impenetrable. Somewhere that wasn't Californian America. 

Maybe that's the curse of having experienced life abroad. 

For some reason, the Different seems more approachable now, even more familiar. 

My feet directed me to an episcopal church. My eyes fixated on the church doors, and I approached it as if my whole Saturday had been aligned to lead me to that moment. 

The doors were locked. 

I spent the next seven minutes strolling around the complex, trying every entrance to the church to no avail. 

There was a glass panel in one of the doors that led to the sanctuary, and I stood there and peered inside longingly. Lit candles in votives. Stained glass windows. Majestic vaulted ceilings. Though I couldn't see the organist, I could hear him practicing, and the door reverberated with the vigor of the lowest notes. My face was so close to the door that I could smell incense burning from somewhere within the sanctuary.

It was as if a few granules of sand had sifted between those fingers, fallen, and rejoined the dunes along the seashore...

For the redolence of incense had rocketed me back to memories of a Syrian Orthodox service in an extremely poor neighborhood we attended one night in Istanbul...to mental images of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Good Friday teeming with Christian pilgrims and holy men from all over the world...to recollections of quiet, solitary explorations of smaller churches in the Old City of Jerusalem. It was the aroma which for thousands of years has symbolically reminded worshippers of the ever-present prayers of the saints. How strange, I thought, that churches East and West could be united in my mind by that scent of incense.

The organ music continued to rattle the door. I thought back to the evening years ago when my family sat together in the pews of a German cathedral and listened to an organist practicing for the approaching Easter services in Nürnberg. 

I thought especially of my Dad, who has always loved organ music and the smell of incense. My memories are now imprinted with their significance. 

There was an open window above me, and I could glimpse more stained glass, the colors of which were much more vivid from the inside looking out than from the outside looking in. 

Church doors should never be locked. 

Greener Grass

When I was a little girl, I was a Native American who could slink silently across our backyard in leather moccasins, an unbelievably beautiful mermaid trapped in our shallow inflatable pool on the back patio, a medieval princess fleeing from an evil babysitter, a hungry pioneer wearing a makeshift bonnet and gathering unripe raspberries from our poor bushes, a misunderstood orphan dramatically trying to escape the "orphanage" (a.k.a, my house) by taking off down the sidewalk towards the neighbors' (because no one would ever think to look for me there...). In my fantasies, my hair was always straight and jet black instead of curly and blond; my eyes were blue instead of green. My imagination allowed me to be what I was not, particularly when I thought I would be better suited to an entirely different place and era. 

As ardently as I enjoyed and appreciated living in Istanbul last semester, there inevitably came the moment when I missed home. If I remember correctly, we were sitting in an especially drawn-out lecture on the implications of gold mining for a remote region of Turkey. It had been a chilly and wintery morning again...we had trudged to the classroom through icy slush and soggy cigarette butts.

My pencil strayed from my notes to the margin of my notebook and began doodling as if guided by a hand not my own. The sketch took shape: a strong and gnarled tree, tufts of grass at its base. An unoccupied wood-and-rope swing. I stared at what I'd drawn longingly as if gazing through a window. I imagined plunging headfirst into this scene redolent with the essence of carefree childhood summers. Yes, I missed the rich damp earthy smell of June rains and blackberry blooms and boardwalks by the bay in Washington State. I missed feeling known, understood. I missed being sure about who God was and what His goals for me were. 

Many, many times since returning to the States, I've longed to be back in Turkey. I miss riding the ferry, sipping at a tiny little glass of steaming black tea, watching the seagulls dodge each other above the Bosphorus. I miss buying flowers from the Roma for way more lira than should be spent on something that will wilt within the week...miss carrying them from Taksim square back to Galata tower and feeling poetic and putting the tiny, fragrant blooms in a water glass. I miss dodging the untamable city traffic while crossing the street or exploring some new part of Istanbul, learning how to navigate, feeling a little BA. I miss hearing the Call to Prayer (yes, even at indecent hours of the day/night) and the way it reminded me of how I was a punitive Christian fish in a sea of Muslim believers. I miss climbing up several stories of stairs (winded..calves burning..) in old, old buildings...knowing that thousands of feet have tromped up the same stone steps.

I miss delighting in the night lights, the Aya Sofya and the Yeni Cami aglow in the distance. And oh the skyline! Blue and gold in the evenings. I miss strolling past those brightly lit fish restaurants along the Golden Horn with a heady sense of all the possibilities of a passionate future. I miss hunkering down in coffee shops kept warm in the wintertime. I miss devouring pistachio and pomegranate Turkish delight and the entertainment of trying to charm young male shopkeepers. I miss visiting the art museums, gleaning endless inspiration, and catching sight of Istanbul's elite artsy crowd. I even miss being part of the morning subway commute and munching a simit on-the-go. Taking the stairs instead of the escalator. Admiring Istanbul's fashionable women, their peacoats, their boots, their scarves. Getting soaked by sleet on the way to a church meeting and regretting not owning an umbrella -- on the same day that Istanbul lost electricity for hours and hours. Seeing the ubiquitous Atatürk lounging in photographs on the ferries, above our classrooms, in thrift shops and on book covers. 

What an unfortunate thing that we are so prone to be dissatisfied with what we have and where we are. I, for one, know my tendency to yearn for something, someone, or somewhere that is out of my reach. 

Thank goodness God doesn't always give us what we want right away, or even at all. 

But in an unpredictable change of pattern, I am actually content with being here, now. 

When one of my roommates was desperately missing life as a counselor at a Christian summer camp, I recognized that aching and dissatisfied look in her eyes -- like it mirrored my own feelings when I perceive being back in the States as a drab, flat, limp, shallow experience. Sympathetically, my other roommate suggested that we transform our room into a foresty scene reminiscent of camp. 

But as much as I would love to revitalize the wilting heart of my friend and roommate (and would love to plaster our ceiling with Iznik tiles that remind me of the magnificent mosques and museums of last semester), I knew it simply wouldn't be the same. I knew that it's impossible to recreate something that can never be matched. 

I don't always enjoy being in the Santa Barbara bubble. I miss the iridescence of life abroad exploring and having an infinite variety of intense things to think about and conversations to have with people very different from myself. 

How do you show or explain to someone who has no concept of life outside of California how much you are forever changed? How your faith and attitudes have been altered? 

Despite these questions and so many others, I have been overcome by the love of my friends here, and the gracious ways in which God is revealing truths to me in this specific community. 

God has already fulfilled so many of the desires of my heart. The least I can do right now is praise Him with the joy of contentment. This peace surpasses all understanding. The grass is pretty green on this side, too. 

My eyes are not blue, nor will they ever be. I'm not a resourceful Indian fleeing from frontiersmen or a blasé Parisian flapper in the 1920's or the disconsolate wife of a soldier in the Second World War or a fierce princess in Medieval times. I'm a green-eyed, twenty year-old American college student in the 21st century. And that's okay with me. 

Origami

Many years ago, my family hosted a Japanese exchange student in our home for a month. In all the time we spent with Miko, what I remember best is how she taught us to fold beautiful patterned paper in the art of origami. Swiftly, deftly, her fingers creased and tucked until the little square sheets transformed into basket-like dishes, regal cranes, and exquisite heart-shaped envelopes. I would watch her in rapt admiration and begged her to help me create my own set of paper paraphernalia. 

I was hardly as skilled as Miko, but I did craft quite a few origami boats. I would fill our bathtub and send the boats gliding across my miniature ocean with gusts of breath. Sometimes I would churn up the water until the little paper vessels were so waterlogged that they began to sink in sorrowful silence to the deepest leagues of the bathtub sea. 

Sometimes I would wonder if that's what God does to us.

I think I recognized even then how God's fingers are always creasing, tucking, folding us into new shapes. 

I certainly wouldn't know what to do with my paper-square of a soul without Him. And just when I think I'm taking recognizable shape, I realize that the process isn't over...He has more steps in mind, more folds to make. 

Sometimes I feel like an origami boat in a bathtub, blown around with unpredictable gusto by some omnipotent and Divine breath. 

You'd think it would be terrifying as a boat not to know when the calm would be interrupted with the gusts that toss and turn you so, or with the changeability of the churning water beneath you. 

But if you've allowed God to craft you into a vessel of His own, you can greater enjoy the tranquility and better survive the storm. 

Maybe we sink when we don't let Him make us ship-worthy. 

The less I try to take charge as captain of my life, and the less of my corrupted self I drag into my relationships and interactions with others, the more I feel freedom knowing that God has taken control. 

That I am but an origami boat in His hands.

That God can use me however He pleases. 

That He can bless me with peacefulness and purposefulness, or send me to the bottom of His sea. 

Either way, I trust what He's doing. 

Peaches. Sunburn. Plato.

I'd forgotten what a whirlwind college students get swept up in the minute they set foot back on campus... the all-student emails, the high expectations of well-loved professors, the quickly accumulating piles of dirty laundry, the late-night jam sessions that keep the entire dorm awake long past "quiet" hours. 

I'd forgotten my mailbox number and code, and some acquaintances' names ("Oh hiiiiiii...[blank stare]!"). I'd forgotten that my bedding still has Nutella stains on it from freshman year. I was so enthusiastic to soak up some sun when our first weekend finally arrived that I'd forgotten to put on sunscreen before spending several hours reading at the beach. I'd forgotten how highlighting too much of a book defeats the entire purpose of highlighting (sorry, Socrates' Apology). I'd forgotten the small delights of adventuring (I was pleasantly pleased with the peaches at the farmer's market...)

I'd also forgotten how good it is to fall to the floor in a fit of uncontrollable laughter, or cry in the arms of a really exceptional friend. I'd forgotten to brace myself for the strangenesses of returning from a semester abroad and realizing which people actually care. 

For everything I'd forgotten, returning to college stirs up an awful lot of memories too -- both the kind I wish I could discard and the gemlike kind that I want to treasure forever in the jewelry-box annexes of my heart. 

I'm reminded here of how much I have grown; how deep my roots can go if I choose to invest deeply and richly; and how I am still in a continuous process of flourishing to my utmost potential. 

It's good to be back.