Why India?
I've had a lot on my mind as I prepare for this summer's adventure.
Very soon, I will depart for India, where I will spend the rest of the summer working with Indian pastors across the country in their respective ministries. Unlike my previous trips to India, I will not be traveling with a group of people, but will be going there alone and staying with host families until the final week, at which time I will meet up with some dear friends for a medical outreach. At the moment, life feels a bit purgatorial as I refrain from starting new projects and basically kill time before wheels up.
Am I nervous at the prospect of going solo to dive into the frenetic country of India?
Yes and no. I don’t relish the twenty-hour (including layovers) airline journey from Florida to India. I have plenty of reading material ready for the trip, but it is still going to be a devastatingly quiet trip without any traveling companions.
But actually being in India again, doing work that is truly meaningful, is a prospect which I am greatly looking forward to. I am never as confident in my purpose in life as when I am ministering in India.
People often ask me why I feel the need to go as far as India to share the gospel. And, honestly, I’m still not sure how to respond sometimes, because there are a lot of reasons why I feel I need to go to India. A major reason for this is that I can’t think of any institution outside of the Christian church that goes into India to reach out, form individual relationships and provide relief.
The biggest reason I can think of, though, is that India not only needs the gospel, India is hungry for it. India has been under the rule of the caste system for so long that the freedom of thought and spiritual uplift offered by the gospel is a deeply moving concept, and one which they are eager to share with their friends and families.
It’s funny, really. If you had come up to me three years ago and told me that I would spend two consecutive New Years in India, and would even go so far as to devote an entire summer to an epic missionary journey across the country, I would have laughed at the idea. Not out of scorn, but out of sheer disbelief.
Me, go to India? Why?
My first trip to India began in a picaresque way. I logged into Facebook one day and found the following message waiting for me. It was from a good friend who had already been to India for missions work the year before:
Find your passport
Need you to go on an expedition with us, December XX- January XX, to India to deliver the Christmas backpacks. Need someone who is not afraid of travel, weird food, sketchy legal situations, and who is strong as a horse. This is not missionary tourism. This is the real deal. You in?
How could I turn down an invitation like that? It was a classic "offer I can't refuse," worded in exactly the sort of terms that I respond to favorably.
The trip was every bit the adventure the message hinted at it being. But it was also the start of something bigger.
Prior to India, I had traveled, but never with the kind of purpose provided by ministry. Stepping off of the plane into India was like leaping into a snowbank after languishing in a warm sauna all my life. For the first time in my life, I saw real poverty among real people. Not from a distance--it wasn’t a documentary or a movie--I was overwhelmed, overstimulated and in the middle of everything. It changed the way I looked at the world; it made me fully cognizant of the freedom and sheer number of choices I had always enjoyed in the States without even knowing I had them.
But my experience wasn’t limited to observations on third-world living conditions. India re-introduced me to all that is good in the human spirit. Most of the people of India seem blissfully unaware of their poverty. It is simply their way of life, and as such, they greet visitors with the biggest smiles and the warmest welcomes I have ever seen. The Indian people are kind in the extreme, and their beauty of spirit is exponentially magnified when touched by the love of Christ.
My first trip to India was one of culture shock. So much was new and different that I was glad for the relief of coming home. My second trip, however, was the opposite. I was prepared for India, and the culture shock hit home when I arrived back in the US. After barely more than a week in India, seeing beauty of soul in people who had next to nothing, I returned to the United States and was greeted by a spoiled culture of wealthy, overweight individuals who couldn’t make it from one gate to another in the airport without complaining the entire way. To make matters worse, I had school to return to at at the time, and could look forward to three months of busywork in the homestretch toward my diploma. I was experiencing reverse culture shock, and it made me angry. I wanted to go back to India at that moment.
And now, I want to go back to India because the work I have done there represents the only times in my life to date when I had complete and total confidence that I was doing was the right thing. When in India, I wake up every morning with the knowledge that the work I do each day is for God and will help others. It is a far cry from the standard-issue drudgery of the daily grind in America. It makes me question the core values of Western culture. For Christians, ministry and outreach should be action items every day, but we allow ourselves to get caught up in the tedium of everyday life, and outreach is pushed to the back burner, or even worse, it is viewed as something “for other people.”
Evangelism in its pure form, sharing the words and love of Christ, is not an option if you identify yourself as a Christian. Christians are, by definition, already called to share God’s love with the world. Not judge the world, not to scream at cars from street corners--to share love. It is a travesty that we allow our divine purpose in life to be relegated to a once-a-week event instead of daily practice.
In the end, I think that is why I love working in India so much. It is a complete and total separation from everything that I see as lopsided in American culture, and blocking out time to be totally removed from the obligations of home, work and school lets me experience the joy of full-time service.
I recently saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. While the film’s depiction of India was a bit too clean to ring true, there was a very stirring line spoken by Tom Wilkinson that sums up my own feelings about India. Wilkinson’s character, Graham, is asked a pointed question by Jean, played by Penelope Wilton:
Jean: "How can you bear this country? What do you see that I don't?"
Graham: "The light, colors, the smiles, it teaches me something."
I have to agree.
Mr. and Mrs. White's Wedding Video
Last week, I wrote about putting my wedding videographer hat back on and shooting Mr. and Mrs. White's Wedding Extravaganza in Gainesville, Georgia. It was a beautiful event; I love my Gainesville family. This morning I mailed the DVDs to the family and sent them a link to see the video online. I'll leave the sharing of the full-length video to the family's discretion, but for my devoted followers at large, enjoy the highlight reel.
An update from my Italian grandparents -- two people who gave me kindness when I needed it most.
Two years ago, I sat in the Ristorante La Giostra in Florence, Italy. Apart from the single candles that sat on every table, the only light in the room was an omniscient golden glow that descended from Christmas lights strung along the walls and wrapped itself around everyone and everything in the dining room. I sat alone.
Florence was everything I wanted in a city. It was beautiful, diverse and busy--but not so busy that I felt overwhelmed. There was balance, just like the proportions of the Renaissance statues to be found all over the city.
Sitting alone in this luxurious restaurant, the walls near its door covered in snapshots of the celebrities who had previously dined there, it struck me how out of balance I was in this perfectly-balanced city. I wasn't sharing this experience with anyone. Not the city, not the sights, not this meal of goat chops and parmesan-crusted zucchini. It was just me, in my khaki pants and blue shirt. I usually took delight in the freedom of traveling alone. But that night, surrounded by candles and laughter, served by a head waiter descended from the Hapsburg line, a beautiful young woman of my own age dining with her mother at the next table, I was struck by the ridiculousness of my being in La Giostra without a companion. For a brief moment, I saw myself walking with that young woman, laughing and discussing art and history and dreams as we passed the Ponte Vecchio on a walk along the Arno. But my reverie was just a reverie, and I was snapped back to life with the arrival of the secondo.
I enjoyed the food. I paid my bill, complimented the staff and emerged from the restaurant feeling melancholy. I had done what I wanted to do: I was in Italy. I had gotten what I wanted in Florence: a meal at the best restaurant in town. Every day was a learning experience as I moved in and out of museums, churches and palaces. But it was a quiet trip. I would go most of each day without talking much. And that night, it became a fact to me that travel was not always best when the traveler was alone with his thoughts. I might be a modern Hemingway in my own mind, sitting on riverbanks and hilltops inscribing a leather-bound notebook with thoughts and impressions, but to whose benefit was my facade of quiet mystery? I shook my head as I walked and vowed never to eat at La Giostra again unless it was a shared experience.
The melancholy of that night abated, but that moment of clarity was like a bite of Eden's apple--there was no undoing it.
Two weeks later, I was on a train. I had left the Hotel Bonconte that morning singing beneath the weight of my backpack and camera bag because I was on my way to Venice. Venice was the city of dreams. La Bella Venezia, floating like a ghost city in the early morning mists of the Adriatic. The city of Marco Polo, and my final destination in Europe.
I boarded the train with my customary haste, barely clambering into a trailing car before the final bell sounded and the doors hissed shut. I walked the length of the car and settled into the first compartment I found which was unoccupied. It was a weekday, and it took a while to find a space with no commuters reading novels or talking on their phones on the way to work.
It was a pleasant morning outside. I had a pleasant view of the Adriatic shoreline for the first leg of the trip. The rocking of the train and the serene blue of the water relaxed me, and I settled into the well-worn seat to write in my journal. I would enjoy Venice greatly, but I was still alone, and the knowledge that I would be in a guest house with internet that evening gave me the comforting knowledge that I would be able to video chat with my family.
But, in the space of a moment, I wasn't alone any more.
The train had just stopped in Faenza. Some people got aboard, others got off. Two of the people who had just boarded, an older couple, smiled at me through the clear plastic compartment door and entered. I smiled back and they sat down. The old man was bright-eyed, sanguine and cheerful. His wife was missing teeth and bore an inscrutably mischievous expression that hinted both a quiet demeanor and the threat of sharp wit.
The man leaned forward in his seat. His English was serviceable, if spoken with a concentrated effort. "You American?"
"Yes," I said.
He smiled broadly and leaned back in his seat. "Ah! And what do you think of Mr. Obama?"
And thus I met Renato.
Renato and his wife, Lina, lived in Faenza, and he was more than happy to hear my benign opinion of President Obama, and to eagerly tell me about himself and his family in return, as well as to give me a crash course in some basic Italian to prove to me that it was not a hard language to learn. A retired train conductor, Renato and his wife were traveling the train on his lifetime pass, which he told me was one of the perks of twenty years of unbroken work in the industry. They were on the way to Bologna to eat lunch at the Bologna Centrale station cafe, apparently a favorite spot among train personnel for a well-prepared and inexpensive lunch. Would I like to eat with them?
Renato asked me this question in a way that seemed impossibly friendly for someone he had just met. I was instantly wary of some surreptitious scheme that would see me jumped by a confederate at the station and relieved of my cash, camera and passport. But I had an hour to kill before my connecting train to Venice would arrive, and Italian trains on this side of the country were usually late by as much as an hour, so I agreed.
Lunch turned out to be delightful. For the first time, as an American traveling abroad, I was made to feel like a novelty instead of a commodity, and it was both pleasant and humorous. Entering the restaurant, Renato jovially called out to people he knew, greeting them in Italian before gesturing to me and saying "Americano!" I felt like a bullfrog brought home by a young boy with a proud herald of "look what I found!"
We ate and talked, and I asked Renato and Lina to sign an empty page in my journal, as a way of remembering them. Renato went the extra mile by adding their address below. The two of them, with Renato doing most of the talking, were a sweet relief to me on my quiet trip across Italy. After three weeks of entering and exiting places of interest with no more impact than the ghost of an enemy of the Medici, I found myself with a pair of surrogate Italian grandparents; two older companions who were eager to give of their time and share a meal with a traveler who was much lonelier than even he realized at the time. "Hemingway-esque sojourn" be damned, I had finally established a relationship, and it was grand.
After our meal of lasagna and salad, Renato graciously escorted me to the platform for my next train. He consulted every timetable twice to make sure that I made I was on the right line to go on to Venice. I bade him and Lina goodbye a little after noon as they boarded their own train back to Faenza, and I sat on a bench on the platform to continue my journey.
The journal in which Renato and Lina’s names and address were written went on with me to Venice, two trips to India and a college tour of great American cities from Charleston to New York. I never wrote to them. I always meant to. In fact, the memory of them only grew fonder in my mind as I grew older and saw what a blessing our time was together. When swapping travel stories with people, I would always smile and reference my “Italian grandparents in Faenza.” But work, college and several moves always distracted me from writing to them, or anyone else.
Two years later, this year, I heard from my father that there had been a damaging earthquake near Bologna. My first thought was of Renato and Lina. By this time, my own grandparents had all passed away after long illnesses, and I was and am extremely sensitive to the plight of older people under adverse conditions. The idea that they might have been injured in an earthquake sickened me, and I felt guilty for not having ever written to them.
That night, I opened a page of stationary and wrote a letter to them. I pulled my travel journal off of its revered place on my bookshelf and thumbed through it until I found their address, still barely legible in Renato’s unique handwriting. I copied it down as best as I could and posted it the following day. I was not overly hopeful for a reply.
Today, at a moment that I did not expect it at all, I received the following envelope in the mail:
I couldn’t believe it. The letter had reached them. I opened it with trepidation, not sure what I was worried about but worried nonetheless. A smile so big it hurt crossed my face, and I felt a surge of emotion in my throat and behind my eyes as I read the letter’s contents.
This happened several hours ago, and I am still smiling as a write about it. Renato and Lina were okay. Furthermore, they remembered me and still wanted to show me hospitality. What a rare, beautiful thing that spirit is.
It’s easy to write about travel as a marketable subject of interest and quantify human contact into an abstraction. The depth or number of local relationships forged during a trip are used by the pretentious as badges of the nebulously defined “accomplishment” of being a “traveler” instead of being the dreaded “tourist.”
I have no time to engage in these arguments. At the end of the day, a few things are true as facts and the rest is interpretation. And the facts in this case are: I was a young man traveling alone, and I met a wonderful couple that remembered me as long as two years later. I have friends in Italy. They call me Stefano. And it means more than they know.
We could all take a cue from Renato and Lina's unhindered hospitality.
Behind the scenes of air-to-air photography fun over Fairhope, AL
I took a personal day this past weekend to tag along with my buddy Sheldon on one of his projects. Sheldon is currently working on a documentary for college about private aviators and their uncanny passion for flying. Parts of this documentary require air-to-air photography and video footage, and Saturday was Sheldon's day to shoot it. The location was picturesque Fairhope, Alabama. How do you shoot good footage of another airplane in flight?
You remove the door of the airplane, obviously. A sixty mile-hour wind is the perfect wake-up call for early in the morning. It cools you off, blows your hair back and inflates your clothing to Schwarzeneggerian proportions.
It was Sheldon's project, so naturally he took the primary position by the open door, as you will see below. I sat in the backseat and photographed Sheldon videoing another plane, and also used the flight time to capture some nice landscape shots of the beautiful countryside in and around Fairhope.
The 5am wakeup call aside, it was a heckuva fun way to spend the morning. I was only disappointed that we weren't in Fairhope at lunch to hit up the Biscuit King & Willie's Smokin' BBQ, which happens to have the best smoked brisket I have ever had anywhere...but there's always next time.
And now, photos!
And, as a bonus for all my techie friends, a little gratuitous gear porn featuring Sheldon's 7D and video rig...
Hatuey, Texans, Kites, and other Memories from Guantanamo Bay
I had the opportunity to be part of something very special this summer. Through the Department of Public History at the University of West Florida (holla, alma mater!) I was part of a team of volunteer historians who interviewed various naval veterans who did tours of duty at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. These interviews were recorded and archived in their entirety for purposes of further research, as well as for incorporation into an upcoming nationwide exhibit.
Growing up, I always enjoyed listening to older people tell stories from their lives. Ironically, I know more about many people outside of my family than I do about my own grandparents' histories. While many of my peers were bored by the storytelling of various "old ruins," I enjoyed hearing tales of days gone by. Most recently, I have made it one of my personal goals to spend more time listening and documenting what my elders have to say.
History is much more than the headlines and the chapter titles. When someone says "Guantanamo," a million images might spring to an audience's mind. Castro, Soviet missiles, post-9/11 detainees; these things are common knowledge. But what are the people like? What do they do between the headlines, between shifts? Those "core elements" are what this project seeks. We want to understand the communities and their relationships. In the brilliant conversations which I had recently, I heard stories of everyday life in GTMO that spanned from as far back as 1939 to as recently as 2003. I met interesting men and women whom I never would have connected with otherwise, and I am incredibly grateful to have had these opportunities.
Here are some excerpts: