Faithful administrator

A couple of weeks ago I listened to a sermon about faithfulness, one of the fruit of the Holy Spirit—characteristics we should see growing in Christians. Instead of talking more generally about this characteristic, our pastor looked at a real person in the Bible: Daniel. 

A fruit photo was called for...and why 
not share with you one of my favourite
"Japanese" fruit: nashi, aka "Japanese
Pear". I don't like "Western" pears,
so loving nashi has been surprising.

As someone who grew up on Bible stories, the things that first come to mind about him are the amazing stories: spending a night imprisoned in a lion's den and not being devoured, being chosen by King Nebuchadnezzar to be brought into his royal service and then resisting the king's food, interpreting two king's dreams, and praying to his God despite that being illegal. Not to mention his three friends who didn't die after being thrown into a furnace.

But I have never really thought about Daniel as an administrator. 

It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three chief ministers over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the chief ministers and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. At this, the chief ministers and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. (Daniel 6:1–4 NIV)

The preacher pointed out these things about Daniel from this passage:

• First Daniel was part of three chief ministers over 120 local governors with the goal of the king not suffering any (financial?) loss.
• Then Daniel so distinguished himself that the king planned to set him over all the kingdom.
• Daniel had "exceptional qualities". In a different version (ESV) it says that he had an "excellent spirit" in him.
• His colleagues tried to find fault in him, but they couldn't "because he was faithful" (ESV). He was "trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent" (NIV). 

He had a lot of responsibility and was clearly gifted at what he did.

The story continues. Those conspiring against Daniel asked the king to make a new law that made it illegal to pray to any other God or man other than the king for the next 30 days. They lied to the king, saying that everyone had agreed to this law (but clearly Daniel had not). The penalty was the lion's den. The story says that when Daniel learned the decree had been published he went home to his upstairs room and prayed, just as he had done before, three times each day. He was discovered and they "dobbed" him in (Aussie and maybe British for reporting someone for doing wrong).

Daniel clearly didn't hide his devotion. When the king gave the order, he said, "May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!" We focus in on the lions and the rescue, but do you note that even the king knew that Daniel, one of his most trusted administrators, served his (foreign-to-the-king) God faithfully.

Over the years I have become more and more an administrator, a team leader, and a project/event manager. I enjoy what I do. It's a quiet job that I mostly do on my own from my own home. Though I interact with dozens of people through my week, it's usually via email or other text-based ways. Somehow it's easy to get discouraged. 

I don't know if other people who do administration get discouraged. I see some of the little (and big) tasks that go into the running of our Japanese church and am so thankful for the people who do them. They make sure supplies are ordered, that buildings are cleaned, that minutes are taken, that finances are managed, events are organised, and equipment maintained. Without administrators, our churches, missions, organisations, schools, governments, etc. wouldn't run. People tend to only notice administrators if they're doing a bad job!

But clearly administrators are valuable in God's sight too. Being faithful in what I do is glorifying to God, even when it doesn't feel that way. I found this such an encouraging sermon!

Processing our weeks in Australia

My husband and I have both found ourselves continuing to process our weeks in Australia, but especially the last three crazy weeks of speaking and travelling. It's processing that's happening in the quiet moments between other things . . . and in our subconsciousness (i.e. dreams...last night I struggled to pack for a return journey from somewhere and had lost luggage and a lost toothbrush).

Since we returned to Japan life has been pretty busy, yet fairly routine, especially after David started back at school and I got back into my routine editing work. So we've now got the mental space to do the processing needed.

Yesterday I enjoyed an afternoon puttering 
around our local area: the city we've lived
since 2010. I volunteered at school, did a 
little bit of grocery shopping, and met a long-
time Japanese friend. This photo is of the 
front of the school. The gym is currently having
a maintenance facelift, hence all the scaffolding.

The other day I watched an interview of a good friend/author. Part of his story is that he was medically discharged from the military, but not due to physical injury. This I knew, but it was interesting to hear him (with a bit of space since it happened) tell about the process and the advice given to him at the time. One of the things he was advised to do was to minimise chaos in his life, to seek out something of a boring life!

That struck me in terms of my own life. Missionary life can be full of not-boring stuff and plenty of chaos, especially at transition times. The challenge of living (even thriving) in another country is often not boring. Certainly there's plenty of stress involved at times. The temptation that many of us deal with is to fill your schedule with so many things to keep things interesting and make you feel like you're achieving stuff that you can report in your regular letters to supporters. 

And then there's the strange thing called home assignment. That's full of decisions, upheaval, and adrenaline-filled periods.

Overall, I'm grateful to be back into my relatively boring daily life here in Japan. I'm thriving with the household tasks of simple menu planning, grocery shopping, and making our own food. (Not that I didn't appreciate others cooking for us for much of our time in Australia.) I love being back on a regular daily and weekly schedule that we've been working with over the last couple of years. Though I do need to get some vacuuming done soon!

So what is there to learn? I think that for us, we need more margin during home assignment than we need in our daily lives in Japan. To us that looks and feels like laziness, it's uncomfortable as we're generally conscientious people who work hard at the things we're given to do.

And then there's always the deadly comparison. It's easy to look at what other missionaries do, and think that we should be doing the same. In mission circles everyone's heard the crazy stories that people tell about home assignments: "Yeah, we spoke at 52 churches in 20 weeks, never staying in the same place for longer than a couple of days, often doing two or three services each Sunday..." I exaggerate, but it's no lie that some people do incredible feats of travel and speaking when they're visiting supporters. I think that it's become pretty clear to us that David and Wendy Marshall aren't among their number.

When I find myself working with a lack of sufficient margin I need to remind myself that I don't need to perform to any audience. I don't get extra points from anyone for being super busy. What I mostly get is physical signs that I'm too busy and stress. And, I need to let go of caring so much about what others think of me. The only one whose opinion matters is God...and I can't do anything that will make him love me less (or more). I'm saved by grace alone.

Grief...again

Right now my head is a little bit all over the place. The last couple of weeks have been fairly quiet at my desk, but all of a sudden this week my work has exploded and there's plenty to do. So it's not very helpful that I'm having trouble mustering my brain this morning. But I think the main reason would be grief.

Image by Michaela 💗 from Pixabay

Sometimes it's getting hard to write here because there are themes that just keep coming up and I wonder if I've said all I can say on them? Or if I'm boring my audience?

But then I run into a new-ish missionary who asks questions about the same themes I've experienced and I remember that they are also on a journey of learning, though perhaps not as far along as me, and that perhaps I can continue to speak on these themes helpfully...

This week it's grief. On Tuesday, part of my job was to write a short obituary-like piece that was used in our mission's social media yesterday. Just doing my job, but it's about someone about my age who I knew, someone I had lunch with in Brisbane last home assignment, someone whose daughter is around the age of my kids, someone who comes from the same part of the world that I do, and who was a missionary like me. Last night we attended his funeral (online). [Link to the post I wrote is here.]

In 25+ years of service more than half-a-dozen of our missionary colleagues have died (i.e. pre-retirement age, currently in ministry when they first became ill), mostly because of cancer. It's always a shock and the questions arise: Why Lord? Why now Lord?

Even if we didn't know some of those colleagues really well, it's still a shock and a grief, and I'm often surprised by how much I get affected by each one.

But I've come to understand that the missionary life is laden with a lot of other grief, so many goodbyes and losses, many more than most people encounter this early in their lives. And that grief piles up.

This week I Googled "missionary grief" and this nine-page article came up in my browser: https://www.emsweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/OB_Winter_2014.pdf I've yet to steel myself to read the whole thing (I'm pretty busy this week and also not good at reading longer articles on my computer), but these points from it grabbed my attention:

"HIDDEN LOSSES are crippling many on the missionary field and they don’t even know how to identify where it all began."

The article lists typical losses missionaries experience when they first go to the field, and, I would argue, ongoing losses:

• language (the ability to communicate)
• identity
• a place in society
• life skills
• sense of safety (less in Japan)
• family (knowing the wider family and seeing them regularly, and these goodbyes happen again and again)
• friends
• intellectual and professional peers
• places (e.g. favourite places in home country)
• things (e.g. favourite foods, familiar furniture, house)
• pets
• smells (familiar scents from home country)

Many of the above are "hidden" losses, many of these we often don't identify or notice. 

The difficulty with many of the losses of a missionary life is that there is no funeral, no socially acceptable way to acknowledge our loss. And indeed, it might even seem that we don't have permission to admit that we are grieving these things.

I am attentive when a younger colleague mentions a sadness that is in the list above, because I know that it is not going to get any easier, if they continue to work as a missionary. 

Life happens at a fast pace and missionaries make massive transitions that involve multiple griefs all at once, there is often simply a lack of time and emotional energy to process. As well as that, we live life amidst other missionaries who are also experience more transition than the average person. We build a friendship with a colleague at language school and they graduate and move to another part of the country. We build another friendship with a colleague who lives near our place of service and they go on home assignment, or we do and when we get back, they have moved somewhere else. No one is having a "funeral" about these losses; we sometimes get to say goodbyes, but they are hard to do again and again and again.

Another quote from the article, sorry it's a bit long:

“Ambiguous grief” is a response to “an unclear loss that defies closure.” This barrier stems . . . hidden losses. The losses are hard to acknowledge and therefore the response of grief is muted.  The groundbreaking work of Dr. Pauline Boss in her book entitled Loss, Trauma, and Resilience; Therapeutic Work with Ambiguous Loss is very helpful in understanding this barrier. Dr. Boss explains, “…ambiguous loss is the most stressful kind of loss. It defies resolution and creates long-term confusion…. With death there is an official certification of loss, and mourning rituals allow one to say goodbye. With ambiguous loss, none of these markers exists. The persisting ambiguity blocks cognition, coping, and meaning making and freezes the grief process.” Ambiguous grief is born from a loss that is often hard to recognize, therefore it is also hard to resolve. In order to overcome this barrier to grief we must make a concerted effort to name these hidden losses so that the grief process can be experienced.

As you get older you accumulate grief. I see this in older people—they're gradually losing their friends, parents and siblings, their professions, and their strength and health—it takes a toll. Missionaries accumulate grief at a faster pace, though:

 Accumulated grief is usually a result of ignoring many small losses and allowing them to build up. . . . Although the losses many missionaries experience may seem trivial and small, much like the paper cut, their accumulated effect cannot and should not be ignored.  (also from the above linked article)

Hence, I'm writing here today about grief. Because I have accumulated a lot of small paper cuts, and larger grief-wounds over the years and a death like we experienced in our community last week hits deeply. It's easy to rush into the next thing (my work on the magazine and in social media hasn't stopped, the emails coming across my desk haven't stopped, I still have a dental check up today and a seminar to attend this evening). But I'm instead taking a moment today to stop and process my thoughts by writing.

To newer missionaries and those who are headed that way: I don't want to discourage you. This calling we've received is hard, but it's not impossible. Indeed, the text that Steve chose for his funeral was Joshua 1:1–11. These are a bunch of instructions from God to Joshua, just after the death of Moses. He uses this phrase, or similar words three number of times: "be strong and courageous". Why? Because "I [God] will never leave you nor forsake you" (said explicitly twice in the passage, but also implied in other words multiple times). Because our God is great and has promised to be with us wherever we are, because he's called us into this work—he will provide all we need, he will be all we need. Fix your eyes on him, again, and again.

To those who have been around longer and are feeling this deeply. Take some time. Reach out to someone to talk it through. Journal. Take a walk. Acknowledge this accumulated grief.

To people who pray for missionaries: Keep praying. Let them know you are praying for them. See if there's anything practical you can do to help one of them. Remember when you see them that they are carrying some accumulated grief, and ask God how you can help. Ask good questions.

Unexpected tears

More unexpected joy this week, but you're going to have to bear with me a tiny bit because there's backstory to why I was crying during a two-hour predominantly Japanese-language OMF celebration on Monday.

For a long time I've had a passion to share missionary's stories. It's stories that grab people's attention, and missionaries collectively have some amazing ones to tell, but often not the time or skill or passion to get them out to a wider audience. It's my joy to be pretty much working with missionaries and their stories most of the time these days. 

In 2017 I had a unique opportunity to start a blog for OMF Japan that has become a wonderful vehicle for getting missionary's stories about Japan out to a wide audience. I've had the support of OMF Japan leadership and the field in this endeavour and the last eight years we have published one story a week on our website...that's around 400 stories. At almost the same time I joined with one of my colleagues to start OMF Japan Facebook and Instagram pages as ways to get our website stories seen even further.

Fast forward to today and I'm working with a creative team of five on our social media, and getting stories from across Japan to share with thousands of our followers. In September this year we had the theme "Partnering with Japanese churches" and one of my team members asked one of her colleagues, AJ, for a story about the church that he is planting in partnership with their church. AJ wrote a really good story. As soon as I read it I knew this was important to share with our audience. So, I edited it and then we got it out there (you can see it here).

On Monday, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of missionaries coming to Japan with OMF and 60th anniversary of missionaries going from Japan to other parts of Asia with OMF. It was a joint two-hour gathering in a church in downtown Tokyo.

A portion of AJ's story was shared as a key part of the message presented by OMF International's General Director (GD), in fact, he used it to bookend his talk on John 3: 29, 30.

In particular, this bit:

When we first began exploring the idea of planting a new church, I sat down with our Japanese pastor from Hatogaya and admitted, “I am scared of this undertaking.” . . .

Pastor Oshima listened and I will never forget his response. He simply smiled and said, “That’s okay. I’m scared too. Let’s be scared together.” 

I was stunned, and delighted. And teary. 

Our organisation is very large, over 2,500 people actively engaged in various ways across the globe. The GD is from Taiwan and works in Singapore, I've met him only once and never had a conversation with him. Yet this story had reached him and he used it to encourage his largely Japanese audience (with translation) to push on in doing God's work.

I only had a tiny part to play in this, but somehow God took my "two small fish" and used them for his glory.

To be fair, there were other elements in the gathering that had me pulling out a tissue, before and after this surprise. Most of the talking was in Japanese and the only speech that I really understood was the one spoken in English by the GD. 

But we sang. One of the songs, "One Voice" I first encountered it in Japanese during our first term in Hokkaido. I learned it during a very difficult time in my life when I felt pretty useless and exhausted (two little boys under 5 + trying to work in a Japanese church without much language or capacity). It makes me emotional most times I sing it! Interestingly, the English version doesn't affect me at all!

English lyrics:

Father, we ask of You this day
Come and heal our land
Knit our hearts together
That Your glory might be seen in us
Then the world will know
That Jesus Christ is Lord

Let us be one voice that glorifies Your name
Let us be one voice declaring that You reign
Let us be one voice in love and harmony
And we pray, O God, grant us unity

Now is the time for you and I
To join our hearts in praise
That the name of Jesus
Will be lifted high above the earth
Then the world will know
That Jesus Christ is Lord

After the service they had some refreshments and there was much mingling amongst those gathered. The prayer booklet, Beneath the Surface, was for sale, in English and Japanese, this is another project that I had deep involvement in in 2019/20. I'm always excited to see it "out in the wild" as it's also one of my editing babies! I had just had a conversation the day before with someone from our church who's very excited about this booklet, she's sent it to her mum in New Zealand who is also excited and it giving it away to whoever she can. My friend asked me for 10 more copies!

I was exhausted by the end of Monday. It included four trains and an hour-long car journey and constant interaction from the moment I climbed into the car before 8 am. But also so much brimming with joy at God's good gifts to me that day. Though I periodically feel pretty useless and not worthy of being used by God in Japan, he continues to call me and to encourage me, and even use my "two small fish" (see the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand in John 6).

Craziness plus encouragement

This week has felt overwhelming (last week did too, but for different reasons). I could have seen it coming. It tends to happen four times a year when several things collide in my schedule. The overlapping of the end of one magazine issue and the start of the next is the main culprit, though this has been less so in the last couple of years since I handed off some responsibilities to another person in my team. However that person has left our team and I've been helping two people take his place. You don't need to know the details!

On Monday of this week I spent much of the day travelling to and from meetings on the other side of the city. It's a usual monthly gathering of missionaries from our organisation, and almost always worth being at, but it takes out an entire day from my week and often leaves me feeling behind when I sit down at my desk on Tuesday.

I'm usually writing our prayer/newsletter in the week leading up to the first Sunday of the month...that happens to be the first week of September, rather than the last week of August this year! I tried to start last week, but didn't get as far as I'd have liked to have.

My social media ministry team has also had increases in responsibilities as we cater for a team member going on maternity leave tomorrow. I've had to learn some new stuff!

On top of all that I had email troubles. One of my three work emails stopped working yesterday. That always flusters me as I rely heavily on email, and I'm not the most confident when dealing with tech stuff.

Those are the main things that have all landed on this week and I found myself jumping ever more rapidly between one thing and another. I usually work quite well juggling various responsibilities, but this week hasn't been so good.

I put this out there, not because I want you to feel sorry for me, but because I'm trying to be real here.

But God has also given me different pieces of tangible help through the week:

• On Monday I heard the story of someone who has come to serve with our organisation who was prodded by our social media work to get involved. Exactly what we're trying to do and such an encouragement to see someone in front of me who probably wouldn't be there if I didn't do what I do.
• We booked flights to go to Australia for Christmas to see our new grandchild (due end of November)!
• We've located a good spot and good days to go camping with our friends next month.
• I flipped the calendar to September and was reminded that we have tickets to the World Athletics Championships, which are in Tokyo this month. The session includes the 200m finals, which might include a young man from Queensland who has been making headlines in recent months: Gout Gout.
• Last night we attended, as usual, our church's online prayer meeting. I was able to share briefly in a small group that I'd been feeling overwhelmed at work and they prayed for me! Such an encouragement.

Bit by bit I've made it thus far through the week, and that I'm able to sit here and write about it is proof that things are calming down a little. 

I'm thankful, too, for a cooler day today (28C, current humidity 81%). It's been grey with some showers, which is really encouraging. The length and intensity of the Tokyo summer has been close to the top of almost every conversation that we've had recently—we're all longing for the cool that autumn brings.

June's a big month

June, how can it already be June? My calendar says it's a so, so it must be so!

My calendar also has a lot written on it this month. It's a month that will contain a five-day OMF Japan conference in Hokkaido, a trip to Singapore for work, a couple of days holiday in Singapore, and flying to Australia for a five-week stay.

The day before we head off to conference I'm playing the piano for church. It's been a long time since I did that! David's also leading the service, which is something he's not done for a long time either. It's a great joy to be able to serve our new church in these tangible ways.

Conference starts on the 16th, and there are many preparations going on. The schedule is pretty much 8 am to 9 pm! We've done many of these over the years and they are really good times, but very exhausting at the same time (though not as bad now as when our kids were little). More than 250 adults and kids will meet together at the pictured hotel for the week.

We've been to this venue on
the outskirts of Sapporo multiple
times. It's beautiful. Our boys 
especially loved the all-you-can-eat
buffet for breakfast and dinner
as well as the water park in the 
basement!

My own small parts are:

• I'm part of a worship team as the pianist for one session, which has required creativity to get the music as well as practise (I no longer have a piano at home and live a long way from others on the team). 
• I'm leading a voluntary session that is themed writing. It's unclear what this will look like and completely unknown if anyone will even come to it...and it's on the last evening, by which time I'll probably be staggering around under the influence of too much coffee, just to stay upright! So, some preparation has been necessary (yep, I stopped writing this blog post and actually did some prep!).
• I think the only other thing I'm responsible for requires almost no preparation, but will require concentration. I'm the designated "conference recorder". Which basically means recording the important stuff that happens through the week and providing a report at the end. I've been given a copy of the report from 2023, and it's actually pretty intimidating. I don't think I'll be able to make my report as pretty!

On June 20, after conference, we head back home for the weekend before David heads to Thailand. I get to stay at home for a couple of extra days before I fly to Singapore. I'm planning on meeting others in our organisation who do similar work to me in social media and we're going to "job alike", which is a new term I learnt last year that is mostly used in education circles. It's when people who do similar jobs in different places/organisations get together and talk about common stuff in our jobs. It's the first time I've done this as an in-person thing in another country. I've talked to various people over video calls, but usually just an hour or so, but this will be larger than that and I'm interested to see how it goes. Our organisation is large and spread over multiple countries around the world. It's not easy to get together with others who do similar things. Social media is a newish kind of ministry and there aren't so many of us around.

After that David will meet me in Singapore where we'll rest for a couple of days and catch up with some Singaporean colleagues from Japan who happen to be "at home" at the moment. And then we'll head to Australia on the last day of the month.

When we left Australia last July we told our boys we're planning to come back this year to see them. As it turned out, we saw all of them in January at our son's wedding, but we still wanted to catch up with them and other loved ones, so we've pushed ahead with this plan.

Our five weeks in south-east Queensland will be a combo holiday/work remotely situation. It's much like July would usually look for us in Japan—with David on summer holidays from work and me still working from home, but scaling things back a little (getting some mid-week sleep-ins for example).

We'll fly back to Japan in early August in time for a couple of annual medical checks for David before he starts back at school.

Phew, I'm tired just writing all that (about June, especially).

Writing from the depths of a writing retreat

We are into day four of our five-day writing retreat. It's going really well from an organiser's perspective. You might wonder what a retreat like this looks like. From my research and experience, a writing retreat can look quite different from one to the other. It can be as simple as one person going somewhere for the day and working on a writing project. Or it can be as complex as a group going to a very special destination for a lengthy period with a complex schedule that includes teaching, workshops, small groups, as well as individual and writing time.

This retreat is a time for missionaries who feel compelled to write to get away from their daily lives (and ministry) and write and talk about writing amongst ourselves. And we've had lots of time to do both. Each day we're spending up to five hours in "Shut up and write" (SUAW) time where we're trying hard to stay silent. We don't have desks in individual rooms, so we're mostly quietly writing in a single (beautiful) communal room. Often people will stop and go for a walk, or have a snack to break up the time. One of our group has been stoking literal fires. The room is heated by a wood heater, and yes, it's cool enough in the evenings to enjoy that.

Aomori Christian Center

Each day we're starting, straight after breakfast with a devotions led by one of the participants and a short time of prayer. We follow this with 10 minutes of "no-back-space" writing time, using a choice of several prompts, from the serious to the absurd. After that, there's time to share what you've written, if you wish. I've also given a Daily Creative Challenge that people can choose to do during the day if they wish. Then we transition into a couple of hours of SUAW before lunch.

After lunch we've spent 40–80 minutes talking about writing, which has been participant-led. It's often been people sharing something they've written and the rest of us giving kind, but constructive feedback. But also we've had discussions about an idea for a story or article.

The rest of the afternoon is SUAW. It's been wonderfully focused time. No nattering or catching up on email or errands to run or meals to prepare or meetings to attend. I'm so thankful that our hosts here are fully catering for meals, snacks, and drinks. 

After dinner we've had time to share our responses (if we wish) to the Daily Challenge. On the first couple of evenings we had some get-to-know you questions that we each answered, as well as sharing our expectations for the week. Then we've indulged in some fun games which have been welcome after the intensity of the day.

I'm appreciating the time to relax into being here, and also being with this small group, most of whom I didn't know well. It means that it's much less hit-and-go than previous short events that I've led, most of which have been one or two nights only. We've been able to focus on longer projects or getting more things written. But it's also challenging. This hasn't been a holiday.

As one who has mostly worked in the publishing field as an editor, to have this much time to work on my own writing is very confronting. It's not that I haven't written much in the last 17 years, I've actually written quite a lot! Dozens of magazine articles and online articles, a handful of short pieces in book collections, and a personal blog that now contains 3,300 posts. 

It's the latter that I'm focusing on this week. The last three days I've been reviewing what I have actually written...from the beginning in March 2009. I've been pondering what content I've got that could be reworked into a larger thing—also known as a book—for publication. That is also confronting. For years I've eschewed any idea that I might write a book, and now I'm wondering if I actually should. That scares me because it is a big project, a long-term project. But it also excites me.

The other exciting thing is that it's looking likely that we'll be able to do it again next year in the same location. Hopefully we'll be able to widen the invitation to allow a larger group to join us. Though the small group has been very special and comfortable, I know that there are others out there who would love to join us and would both benefit and contribute. We'll see what feedback everyone gives me after this is over so that we can make the next one even better. 

Weeks of contrasts

It's been been another couple of weeks full of contrast. (Sorry, this is a little bit long, nice photos and a bit of Japanese history and culture, though.)

Last week Monday: was CAJ’s winter break, which meant Monday and Tuesday off for teachers and students alike. The monthly Kanto gathering of people associated with our mission happened to fall on Monday, so David was able to join for the first time in 18 months (he’s usually working, and of course, we were out of the country for a year). It was a great day of catching up with friends and colleagues. But also it was loud because the room isn’t large for the 40 or 50 who gathered. To have conversations with someone in front of you, you practically had to shout at people. Sad, but true. And tiring. We stayed a little longer, not to watch a certain popular football match that was being shown, but to record a couple of videos with my short term worker.

Plum blossoms are one of the first 
to bloom in late winter, bringing the promise of
spring with them. The inside of this building is
shown in the next photo. It was built by an
architect in 1942 for himself.

Tuesday: we had various half-baked plans for the day, but these all got thrown out when we got an invitation to hang out at a park with colleagues. It’s not a great time of the year to go to a park (end of winter deadness plus cold), so we chose to go to the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum. It’s inside the large park I’ve often written about here. I’m the only one of the four of us who’d been inside, but that was for the purposes of a photography workshop, not actually reading the signs and learning about the many buildings that have been relocated to this spot. It was fascinating! 

I've included a few photos along with captions (the brochure they gave us in English was very helpful).

Inside the house shown above. The high ceiling is unusual and as it
faces south, the room was bright, even on a cold winter day.

This is a farmhouse, a fairly well-off farmer, I suspect. Part of the inside was 
an earthen floor. This is from the mid-Edo period (1680–1745).

The thatched roof of another farmhouse. This was a fairly prestigious upper-class farmhouse.
It's a little difficult to imagine how they lived because there was little furniture in these traditional-style homes. But these roofs are amazing. I can't image that there are too many people around these days who are skilled in the art of building and maintaining roofs like these.

I can't remember exactly which house this was in. There were two large
houses right next to one another. One of them was the home of Korekiyo Takahashi, who
played an important role in Japanese politics in the early 1900s. He was Prime Minister (1921–22) and, in 1936 he was the finance minister. This house has a couple of rooms upstairs that were Takahashi's study and bedroom and where he was assassinated in a coup in 1936, known as the "February 26 incident". We'd never heard of this incident. Several leaders were killed, but then 19 were executed and 40 imprisoned for their involvement.

This is in the commercial section of the museum, a little street full of former shops. This is 
a kitchenware store built in the late 1920s. The outside is covered by copper plates.

Oil-paper umbrella shop

And this beautiful public bathhouse. What was amazing about this is
how little Japanese bathhouses have changed in the last 100 years.

Outside of the bathhouse.. The features are similar to temples and shrines, with carvings of 
gods of good luck above the entrance.

There were lots of bilingual signs around with tonnes of information. I'd love to go back. One I sign took a photo of was in this bathhouse. I'll transcribe most of that here:

We can find a connection between the origin of the bathing in Japan and the custom in which human beings purify their mind and body with water. In Japan where rice has been cultivated with abundant water resources since BCE, water was a holy element that fosters life and washes away kegare [lit: uncleanness], a polluted and evil condition, and purge things.

In a part of the Account of the Easterners: Account of the Japanese people, which recorded the situation of Japan in the circa 3rd century in the Book of Wei of the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the official history of China, described a custom in which a family who lost their members immersed themselves into water in a white costume after the funeral to purge kegare. The manner of purification of the mind and body with water was diversified into a variety of practices such as immersion into rivers and waterfalls and remains today. Apart from it, the manner of rinsing hands and mouth at chōzuya (fountain for purification) when the people visit shrines is another transformation of the custom that continued to exist.

Bathing, in which people artificially boil water and use the hot water and steam from it, was introduced to Japan around the 6th century with the arrival of Buddhism. The Buddhist temples were equipped with bathing facilities in which Buddhist monks cleanse their minds and bodies and heal their illness in steam which were required to accord with the teaching of Buddha. These facilities were later opened to the public . . . and spread widely over Japan along with having been associated with the propagation of Buddhism. 

Public bathing in Japan peaked in the 60s, I think, and then began to decline as people increasingly had bathrooms in their own homes. Most people these days indulge in public bathing as a relaxing pastime, something you might go out to do on a day off.

But back to Tuesday: by 3 the warmest part of the day was past and a cold wind had whipped up…and also whipped up the dust and lots of dead grass. It was nasty. Just outside the museum was a large Pottery Market. Massive, actually. All in well-secured, but open tents. We poked our noses in just for a short while, but refrained from buying anything. All the beautiful dishes were covered in dirt and grass from the wind! Needless to say, we hurried back to the car to get out of it all.

Wednesday to Friday: it was back to work at my desk at home. I had a lot of things waiting for my attention and really that’s what I did for the next three days. First day and a half I mainly focused on magazine matters and from Thursday afternoon I turned attention to OMF social media. It was satisfying.

Saturday: I went into our nearest big city centre for lunch with some other mums with kids who have significant special challenges. This loosely affiliated group gets together for lunch every other month, but I don't often make it. A very diverse group of women, and interesting conversation about our lives.

The adventure really began after I left them. I got back to the train station and found that half an hour earlier there'd been a fire near my home station and the line was closed for now. It was 3 pm and the day was already fading, I needed to decide how I was going to get home. Incidents like this quickly bring up feelings of insecurity and fragility in a foreign country. I'm very comfortable with trains in our part of Tokyo, but how easily that comfort can be disrupted!

I was 17 km from home, not far, but far enough. On a Saturday afternoon, in Tokyo, that is a 50–60 minute drive. Now I have some distance from the incident, I can see some other options, but in the heat of the moment my main thought was: can David drive and pick me up (he was at home with the car) and my second thought was: how far can I walk before he gets here? So that's what we did: I walked west and he drove east. We met up 50 minutes later, he'd driven 13 km and I'd walked 4. The walking was good and took me to a spot that was much easier for David to find me and drive around (less congested). In the end it took nearly 2 ½ hours to get home. The train would have taken about 20 minutes, plus the walk home. That's why we take the train!

Sunday: it was a pretty usual day. We rode to church mid-morning, bought lunch at a convenience store across the road, ate lunch with various others who stayed, then rode home. And then chatted and played online games with our kids for 90 minutes before having dinner.

Then back to Monday which was another people-intense day, the way all the weeks in February have started. Yesterday I spent time in the morning catching up with a colleague, and in the afternoon was back at my desk catching up with many things that had been waiting. I love both being with people and working at home at editing, writing, and admin tasks. And this month has had both in abundance and relatively well balanced. I'm thankful.

I'm still pondering my current responsibilities and wondering if I should seek to add anything else to them. In weeks like I've described above, I've had more than enough to keep me out of trouble ;-) and it makes me think that it would be foolish to eat up the margin that I do have by adding more. I have to remember these kinds of weeks when things get quieter for a time, remembering to savour the quiet times. 

It reminds me of a some Bible passages:

1There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

4a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

6a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

9What do workers gain from their toil? 10I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no-one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil – this is the gift of God. 14I know that everything God does will endure for ever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. (Ecclesiastes 3, NIV)

And also:

He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth.’

11The Lord Almighty is with us;

the God of Jacob is our fortress. (Psalm 46, NIV)