Prayers

Just as church was ready to start via Skype tonight, the spandex soldiers had another outdoor cookout – this time with pasta and roasted tomatoes and Parmagiano Reggiano cheese. I think I am going to get fatter. Everyone told me I would LOSE WEIGHT when I came here, but apparently, they lied. I can still get into my clothes, but I know I am NOT losing weight.

I ate a few bites outside on the patio and then came in to attend Broadway Presbyterian. I can’t tell you how comforting it is to hear the church service that I have been listening to for the past 25+ years almost every Sunday. I find that over here, my weeks are divided as they are at home: Sunday is church, and Wednesday is court and choir practice. I look forward to Sundays, and then I remember a few days later that it is the middle of the week, and that someone will be going to jail and then the choir will practice.

Tomorrow, I hope to go back to class – the one I talked with about free speech. I will probably be able to tell their feelings about me when I walk in the room. Here’s hoping for good feelings! I will be observing a new teacher – not new to the classroom, but new to me. This is another young man with whom I work, but I haven’t spent as much time around him as the two young men I have been blathering about, as I don’t share an office with him. We do occasionally eat breakfast together, and as far as I can tell, he is just as nice and polite as all the other Afghans I work with. He is very quiet, and so I will be interested in how he comes across in the classroom. My job, then, will be to do an assessment of his technique and give him some feedback. I will take a translator with me so that I can understand the topic, especially if I have to speak. And you know I love speaking!

A man was here from Kabul to take inventory of the company’s things, and he remembered seeing me at the other camp. He even remembered that they fixed my iPhone! He then apologized if he made enough noise to wake us up. Julie and I told him we hadn’t heard a thing. He said he got up at 4:00, and Julie asked him if he couldn’t get back to sleep. “Oh, no,” he said, “I got up that early to pray.” I have to tell you, as far as I’m concerned, that is dedicated faith. I am afraid that if I got up that early to pray, I would be asking the Lord to let me go back to sleep.

All joking aside, I do think about that. I am in a country where the people who practice the majority faith take time to pray five times every day – and these are not say-at-your-desk-and-be-quiet prayers; they take time and effort and require some movement. I think I need to find out more about daily prayers and how the faithful accomplish that. I have heard the call to prayer a few times in the evening. The sound is beautiful; it’s as if someone is chanting – kind of like a Gregorian chant, but with more movement in the melody. And hearing it in the evening when the sun is going down is also soothing. It’s as if someone is saying, “Day is done, take time, give thanks.” Some of the other people who have been in the Mideast say that in some places the call is put over a loudspeaker and is very loud and irritating. Fortunately, the call I hear is ethereal, far away, and calming.

And now, the call I hear is for me to get to bed because, as I have said before, 6:30 will come earlier than I would like! But I will say my prayers before I go to sleep.