Walking like an Egyptian

I had many expectations when I left for Egypt last August. A semester in the Middle East amidst a completely different culture promises many adventures: meeting new people, learning a new language and way of life, bartering for everything from souvenirs to cucumbers. Surprisingly, though, one of my greatest accomplishments while living in Cairo would simply be learning how to cross the street.

My textbooks refer to this region as the Cradle of Civilization. In its present state, the country famous for its centuries of advancements is a bit sad, considering. Cairo is a huge, sprawling city: originally planned to hold two million people, it houses ten times that. The smog is horrid; residents habituate themselves to the smoky haze constantly covering the city, and I suffered from a two-month long “smoker’s cough” due solely to Cairo’s pollution.

Some might deem the place uncivilized, simply because of the missing crosswalks, broken-up sidewalks and garbage-filled streets. That’s right; in a city of 20 million, there are no crosswalks to be found.

One of the first lessons I learned after arriving in Cairo my peers and I like to call “walking like an Egyptian.” This activity has nothing to do with the hieroglyphic-type poses and head bobbing one might associate with a Cleopatra music video, but a more serious and possibly life-threatening activity: crossing the street.

Considering that most main streets in Cairo are marked as eight lanes wide, and Egyptian drivers create up to twice that many lanes, crossing the street is quite hazardous – especially for naïve Americans unaware of Egyptian street-crossing etiquette. We eventually learned the basics to crossing the streets, but even with this knowledge we found ourselves waiting ten minutes just to find the first clear lane!

Thanks to some expert guidance by our interns, we discovered the foolproof way of getting across without waiting half an hour for a clear road: find a nearby Egyptian also waiting to cross and follow his lead. Miraculously, the street seemed to open up before the locals, like the Red Sea before Moses’ staff. If they made it halfway across and then encountered unending traffic, they simply stood in the middle of a lane, waiting for another break in traffic. Egyptian drivers, accustomed to this strange phenomenon, simply swerved around the pedestrians and continued on their way. Scared to death but determined to cross, we trusted our own safety to random Egyptians who pitied us, showing us a way.

Since my arrival home three months ago, re-adjustment to life in the wealthy and consumer-driven States has proven slow and complicated at times. The journey home – extended to 80 hours by missed flights and weather delays – the subsequent adaptation to American culture and the process of learning which direction to go next have reminded me of crossing the street, Egyptian style.

From where I stand, it seems impossible to make it across all those lines of traffic with no guide or light, but slowly and surely I put one step in front of the other, sometimes hesitating as another obstacle passes, sometimes sprinting to the median. Scared to death but determined to cross, I find all the complicated and unconventional process is worth it when I put my trust in the Lord, a knowing and righteous guide even through the most hazardous of places:

“And the Lord will . . . make a way to cross on foot. Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid” (Isa. 11:1, 12:2 NRSV).

© 2008, Amanda K. Brunt. All rights reserved.

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Amanda K. Brunt is the daughter of regular Perspective columnist,

Deborah P. Brunt.

Solid ground

Every time I stick my little toe into the subject of politics, I get sucked neck-deep into quicksand.

The day I voted in the Mississippi primary, I exited the polling place to find a tall young man approaching me. Naming a local radio station, he said, “May I ask you a few questions about how you voted?”

Someone using my mouth answered, “Yes.”

“What are you doing?” an inner voice screamed. “Don’t you know that’s quicksand you’re stepping into?”

Warring inwardly, I said my real name aloud into a tape recorder.

“What is the main issue that influences how you vote?” the young man asked.

The word integrity leapt to mind. I pushed it aside. Such a trite word. So overused, so under-lived by candidates of every stripe. Maybe the ancient Proverbs writer had just exited a polling place when he wrote, “Many a man proclaims his own loving-kindness and goodness, but a faithful man who can find?”

“Name a real issue, not a cheesy one,” my inner voice ordered. “Integrity,” my mouth said.

The young man with the tape recorder gave me plenty of room to try to explain. Then, he asked, “Who did you vote for in the presidential race?” My second response, coupled with the first, painted me into a stereotypical box. Not ashamed of my choice, I did not fit the mold this media interview was pouring around me, either.

“Do you attend church regularly and, if so, did that affect the way you voted?” the young man asked.

“What an interesting choice of words,” I answered. “Yes, I attend church. But more important, I know Jesus Christ personally and that relationship affects every aspect of my life.”

Loving Jesus fiercely, and not wanting to paint him into any boxes, I added, “You know, Jesus Christ isn’t a Democrat or a Republican. As best I can, with all the media hype, I try to understand which candidates have the most integrity, which are truly trustworthy, and vote for them.”

Remember the old Tarzan movies? In those movies, someone always stepped off into quicksand. When they did, the camera always showed a shot of the person almost completely submerged, with head back, face turned upward. The mouth went under last.

“That’s an interesting perspective,” the young man said. The way he said “interesting,” he might have said “dumb.” Christian or not, practical people pick candidates one of three ways:

• Vote their chosen party.
• Vote for candidates with whom they agree on certain key issues.
• Say eeny-meeny-miny-moe.

Seeking integrity proves “interesting” because:

• The person of integrity might not agree with you on all the issues.
• Integrity can be mimicked. Just ask New York’s Governor Spitzer, who funded a prostitution ring while supposedly ridding the land of prostitution.
• A trustworthy politician, who can find? Saying eeny-meeny-miny-moe will probably get you better results.

Sometimes, in the Tarzan movies, the person sank. Sometimes, Tarzan reached down at the last moment and pulled the sinker to safety.

I exited the interview feeling sunk. Then, God reached down and grabbed me with these words from Proverbs 8, The Message: “The Fear-of-GOD means hating Evil, whose ways I hate with a passion — pride and arrogance and crooked talk. Good counsel and common sense are my characteristics; I am both Insight and the Virtue to live it out. With my help, leaders rule, and lawmakers legislate fairly; With my help, governors govern, along with all in legitimate authority. I love those who love me; those who look for me find me.”

Now on solid ground, I’m still looking for integrity.

© 2008 Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.

Plan B

New seasons have a way of chewing up and spitting out normal schedules.

Naively, you think, “This afternoon, I will . . .” Likely as not, you won’t. While you’re trying to carry on as usual, do not marvel if something wholly unknown to last season’s routine interrupts your plans.

To navigate new seasons, expect interruptions; refuse diversions.

Today, my plans went awry early. Expecting to spend the day working in my home office, I donned a warm-up suit and headed upstairs. Immediately, my e-mail presented opportunities I hadn’t anticipated. This should have delighted me. Instead, it stressed me. Deciding which opportunities to pursue took time. Acting on what I decided took even longer.

Then, a project I’d anticipated completing in an hour took two. Near noon, I still hadn’t started the main task planned for the day. The phone rang. A caller from a government office told me she had received certain business paperwork I’d sent. I had correctly filled out one form – but had failed to include a second required form.

Before mailing the paperwork, I’d called a financial advisor and the government office itself to confirm what to send. Neither had mentioned a second form. The caller invited me to drive to her office to complete the paperwork. When the government invites, I generally accept.

As I changed out of warm-ups, my husband popped in. Discovering my new afternoon plan, he asked me to handle another business matter at a second government office. Innocently, he thought the two offices could be found in the same building. No. The offices are located in two different towns, neither of them the town where we live. However, I accepted the second errand, knowing that town lay en route to the other.

Thus, I spent the afternoon making a 90-mile round trip, enhanced by various trip-lengthening experiences:

• I missed an exit and went six miles out of my way.
• A phone call introduced a third matter I had to stop and handle.
• Lowered signal arms at a railroad crossing halted traffic on one town's main street for roughly 10 minutes. Why the arms lowered, I know not. We saw no train.

Even before the phone call that sent me cross country, I was fuming over the interruptions diverting me from my original plan for the day.

Ah, but somewhere between the missed exit and the railroad crossing, I realized: By accepting interruptions, I had sidestepped diversions. I could have refused “distractions” and continued with my intended schedule.

Plan A felt comfortable and familiar. Plan B felt arduous and tedious. But the interruptions did not take me around the mulberry bush. Each project, each errand, took me forward into new territory. The normal routine created the diversion that could have kept me from the best.

Long ago, a woman named Deborah sang a victory song because her people let a major interruption shatter their schedules. Abandoning their routines, they followed Deborah and a man named Barak into battle. Embracing the arduous, they saw miracles, won freedom from oppression and entered a 40-year season of peace.

Yet a tribe called the Reubenites missed out on the victory. Judges 5:16, The Message, laments, “Diverted and distracted, Reuben's divisions couldn't make up their minds.”

Some interruptions side-track us; those, we need to sidestep. But many times we let the routine divert and distract us from the tedious, arduous business of pressing forward into the new. Waiting at a railroad crossing, I made up my mind: Expect interruptions; refuse diversions.

© 2008, Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.

Jingle bricks

“Jingle bricks, jingle bricks,
Jingle all the way.
Oh what fun it is to drive
My Caliber today-ay.”

I know. You’re thinking I have a hit single on my hands. But this song just emerged.

My husband started the brick rolling. He came home midday to pick up some papers. Driving back to work, he saw bricks lying streetside in front of a house being built near ours. A scavenger at heart, he stopped and asked the crew foreman, “May I have a few of these?”

“You can have them all,” the foreman answered.

Visions of cool brick projects danced in my husband’s head. Short on time, he picked up some bricks – 24, to be exact – brought them home and unloaded them in the grass near our garage. “If you want,” he told me, “you could drive down there this afternoon and get the rest of the bricks. They’re going to throw them away at the end of the day.”

One, two, buckle my shoe;
Three, four, shut the door;
Five, six, pick up – bricks!
Seven, eight, lay them straight.

That rhyme also emerged, as I opened the tailgate of my Dodge Caliber near a pile of red-brown bricks. Picking up two bricks at a time, neatly placing two layers of bricks in my vehicle’s back end, I felt like a cross between a homeless person plundering a garbage bin and a child stacking blocks.

Visions danced in my head, too – visions of bricks piled randomly in our side yard until the day brick projects materialized. Having errands to run, I took the bricks with me, thinking they could lie neatly in my car until I found a suitable spot to store them and time and energy to put them there.

Ah, but the bricks did not come neatly. Nor did they come quietly. Instead, they jingled like Christmas bells. Whenever I turned corners, they thudded like Santa landing rooftop. It being February, I did not say, “Ho ho ho.” I tried to maintain my composure amid incessant and annoying jingling punctuated by abrupt and violent thuds.

As soon as possible, I stopped to investigate, opening the tailgate curiously, cautiously. Thankfully, toppling bricks had done no visible damage while thudding around in my vehicle. Mysteriously, the jingle-bell noise seemed to have no other source than the bricks themselves. I found nothing metallic that might be bumping against the bricks or itself rattling or shaking.

Abandoning my errands, I drove home, jingling all the way. I backed the car into the driveway, opened the tailgate and spent the next hour hauling 60 bricks, two by two, from the back of my car to a discreet location behind the house and relocating in like manner the 24 bricks my husband had deposited on the grass beside the garage.

Amazing how a little distress goaded me into action, completely rearranging my priorities, producing time, energy and insight for a task I previously had no inclination to tackle.

Once a man named Paul wrote a letter that distressed its recipients. Later, Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 7:9, “Now I’m glad – not that you were upset, but that you were jarred into turning things around. . . .The result was all gain, no loss” (MSG).

If something is creating distress and havoc in your life, why not let that distress spur you to action? Let it jar you into turning things around.

Instead of stewing, try singing:
“Jingle bricks, jingle bricks,
Jingle all the way.
Oh what fun it is to leap
To action in this way.”

© 2008, Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.