Round The Ball: Lent – 2009

When our building ran out of water a few days ago, it was, at first, a fascinating sociological study.  We soon became acquainted with people we had only shuffled past in silence before.  They were coming to our door, each one of them, to see if they were the only ones who didn’t have any water.

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Yes, we called the water company.  Yes, they said they were working on it.  Yes, the trucks and workers drilling into the street behind us probably have something to do with this.

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But then our last drip of water trickled out of the tap over the weekend — we had been managing without a flushing toilet or running water upstairs, but still had a steady flow in the kitchen –  so when the last drip of water ANYWHERE in the building disappeared, the pitch took a higher tone.  Young Bengali neighbors, translating for their elderly parents, came by our door.  Only this time they were angry; incredulous that we’d all been left by the Council and the water department without some kind of emergency provision.

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“This is unsanitary,” one young man spat at me, as though I was the water-department myself, rather than a similarly-afflicted neighbor.  “How are we supposed to wash our hands, use the toilet, or prepare food?”

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Pam and I were slow to complain.  On days two and three we figured the problem was bad but would probably get better.  After all, we were having a truly “two-thirds world experience” — and we figured our Bengali neighbors were saying to each other “Hey, this is still better than Bangladesh.”  But on day four, when the water really did run out, we were on the phone in a flash — making it clear we didn’t intend to spend another day drinking bottled-water and fishing refuse out of the toilet-bowl.  At least put some portable-toilets out in the courtyard and deliver some water, please!  At least tell us you’re taking care of the problem and you’re really sorry!

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The water company got the hint — and we don’t honestly know if it’s because enough of us finally called in, or because some of us happened to have the right accent when we called to complain.  But things started getting taken care of, finally.  By Saturday night we had a trickle of water running in the kitchen again.  But to date we still don’t have any water running in the bathroom.

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This was one of those great InnerCHANGE situations where our first instinct was to just run out and buy a bunch of water for our neighbors . . . kind of drumming up a Santa-esque evangelistic  door-to-door campaign with water bottles from the Great-White-Americans downstairs.  On second thought, however, it was much more of a bonding opportunity than a problem to throw money at and solve.  In an environment where getting to know neighbors has been slow and rare, a total water shortage has brought more people to our door than anything to date.

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So here we are, our laundry piling up, dishes stacked on the kitchen counters, going on four days without bathing, explaining to our neighbors in our thick American accents that, no, we still don’t have water either and, yes, we’ve called the water department again today and they say we’ll have water by tonight.  I’m standing outside in my robe feeling just as sorry for myself as the next guy – co-miserating with irate neighbors about the insanity and unsanity of it all.

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So, if you’re praying for us, I’m not sure how to tell you how . . . it’d be nice for the water to come back on before Christmas — but it’s also been a great way to connect with the neighborhood.

We have visited about eight churches since landing here in London, but none so fascinating as the one right on our council estate right here in Stepney.  I’ll leave the name out of publication, to be fair.

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It began with bells . . . church-bells chiming over the neighborhood like a call to a grand cathedral.  This church, however, had been bombed in World War II and never quite recovered.  Though it had been rebuilt — just a 30 second walk from our front door — most of the church-goers began moving out of the neighborhood in the 1970’s when the Bengali’s started moving in.  That explains why there were only five other people there the morning I visited.  Five plus the vicar and the deacon, that is.

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Now, I’m all for small churches, but when the priest is stealthily pointing a remote-control at a jukebox that plays the pre-recorded organ music for each hymn . . . something’s wrong.  When there are only five other people besides the visitor and nobody really looks at or talks to the visitor, something’s really wrong.

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It’s a lovely space, honestly.  To think of the building itself sitting so close to our house, and smack-dab on our estate full of thousands of people who don’t claim the name of Jesus — my mind starts spinning at the possibilities . . . gathering space, kids’ clubs, office space, training space.  A place just to come an pray in quiet.  The list grows long.

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But then I remember that Jesus often uses the small things to confuse the wise and the proud.  I can deride the church for not making a stranger welcome — but can I really judge it for it’s smallness?  God, what are you doing here that you might want us to be a part of?  Does the pastor need encouragement?  Do the aging congregants need companionship?  Where are you in this?

When our Salvation Army friends held a little neighborhood Nativity at the local farm-yard, I wasn’t surprised by the angel costumes, the roasted chestnuts, or the jolly Salvation Army band tooting out the carols.  I was surprised, however, at the prospect of a nativity set, of all places, in the most authentic place possible.

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As we walked, stations-of-the-cross-like, from the telling of the shepherds, a visit with King Herod, and the three wise-women, we  arrived in a small, dilapidated barnyard hovel.   Stepping through the pig, sheep and cow droppings to get a glimpse of the Christ-child, I realized again how crude it all was — how humiliating it must have been for the Son to move from Pearly-Gates to cow-pasture . . . riches to rags.  What a fascinatingly upside-down story we celebrate.

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I walk away, hand-in-hand with Jesse, and my breath, visible, reaches out into the cold evening sky in silence.  What child is this, indeed?

We will, at the close of 2007, be waiving goodbye to our over-priced U.S. based health insurance and enrolling in the gloriously inexpensive (as in, free) Nationalized Health Service here in England.  It is too good to be true, yes, that you can just move here and sign up for free health care . . . but then again all those Value Added Taxes we pay on everything (not to mention local “Council Tax”) are going towards something!

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It turns out this was as easy as registering with a General Practitioner here — by enduring a somewhat personally grueling humiliation at the hands of an NHS nurse who does the usual: height, weight, body-mass-index, “tsk, tsk, Mr. Prince, you’re slightly overweight.”  (We shall not mention ourselves how large this nurse was, herself).  In the end, Pam and I signed up together at a clinic just a stone’s throw from Jesse’s school.  Luci kept thinking it was her turn to see the doctor, so in between answering all the questions about smoking, drinking, birth-control and other goodies we were both reassuring Luci that she wouldn’t have to have her blood pressure tested like we had.

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In the end, Pam was told to eat more spinach (for the iron) and I was told to, well, wasn’t told to do anything, actually.  We’ll get cards in the mail that assure us that doctors visits are free (prescriptions aren’t)  – and off we go!  Yay for socialism!

One of our fun Christmas challenges this year has been doing Christmas without a car. That means no quick trips to the store when you’re in the middle of making wassail and you run out of brown sugar. No dash out to pick up a few stocking stuffers the night before Christmas. And, yes, managing to get a Christmas tree set up at home without driving out to the lot (and driving back!)

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This was especially a big deal for us because in the past few years its been our tradition to drive south from San Francisco to a farm where we could walk around a large tree-field and hack-saw our own tree down. We’d make a day of it: eating marshmallows by the camp-fire, swinging on the giant tree-swing, romping around the forest, and then the long drive back with Christmas tunes playing and a tree strapped to the top of the Subaru station-wagon.

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This year it was a cold, wet walk up to the local grocery-store to pick a tree out of the lot and haul it home in the kids’ little-red-wagon. So much for tradition.

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It’s a cute one though — and the kids loved spending the day getting decorations out, hanging ornaments, and chomping on Christmas cookies while dad made several other rain-soaked dashes to the store for Christmas lights that fit the right power outlets.