A Spa for the Soul

The sun was just settling into a bank of clouds over the sea as I tapped this on my keyboard from a balcony of that funky old village house perched on the rocky hillside. That dream we purchased three years ago. Mid-November. At last, renovation had begun.*

The five story tower was not much more than a shell after two weeks of cement saws and sledge hammers. A shell filled with hope. New openings to the outdoors will be enclosed with French doors to welcome the clear Mediterranean light and air. New openings and closings inside mean guest rooms with private baths, a private floor for Curt and me to rest and work, a working kitchen, and a garden studio to create, experiment and play. Each space opens onto a balcony or terrace. Olive trees and scattered tile roofs in the foreground below with islands, sea and sky spreading huge beyond.

Peaceful. Quiet-but-not-really, for birds chatter and the voices of children at play echo up from the village. That day I watched the tiniest of hummingbirds, not more than three centimeters from beak to tail, feed on the bougainvillea.

We work to create a spa for the soul. Prayer by prayer, brick by brick, worker by worker. “Spa”—a place to be pampered, massaged (to work out the kinks), scrubbed (to get rid of the dead stuff and bring on a glow), and anointed with oil (for softness and renewal). Fragrant with life. “For the soul”—a place to be still, to let the competing voices of daily life or work or technology fall silent, to pray, and write or paint or cook, and to dream. A meld of ancient Christian disciplines of communal solitude, listening prayer and spiritual accompaniment with more contemporary ideas of hospitable spaces for fellowship, exploration and play. We hope.

Today we watch from faraway Abu Dhabi as carpenters build 26 windows, 19 doors, shutters for the ground floor, the wood-and-glass studio and a rooftop pergola. Electricians and plumbers lay the hidden things necessary to the magic of water and light, guided by marks we drew on the walls and my pencil drawings covered with Őzer’s notes in Turkish. The tile layer arrives today. Next week I rejoin the workers for a few days—armed with sketches and ideas for the carpenter who will build cabinets, tables, bookshelves and dining chairs. And more for the ironmonger who will make bed and sofa frames. Everything home-designed and hand-crafted.

This place, this “spa”--we prepare an offering. Not a business, or a “ministry.” Just a couple of cracked old pots, retired folks, who want to share their mix of good food, listening, quiet, beautiful private spaces and hospitality with whoever wants to come and partake—from wherever they may come.

*Check out www.curtbidinger.phanfare.com for photos of the breaking, the deconstruction necessary to any real transformation.

Parables, pictures and prayers from Kaş ...eternity in their hearts

Alper and Tuğba step to a different beat. I guess them to be 30-ish. They’ve been in Kaş for six years—which makes them newcomers and still outsiders among at least some of the Turkish community. Their small jewelry store displays lovely original pieces in a wide variety of semi-precious stones. A passionate gardener and able handy-man, Alper spends many of his days doing physical labor. Evenings and other free time are for the shop. He has one of those minds that constantly runs four to six different tracks, is full of ideas, and fixes on details. Tidy order is essential for him, and he’s a natural-born recycler. “Intense” is one way I would describe him. Tuğba is beautiful, artistic, and shy. Her hands are constantly busy with new pieces during her days at the shop's small worktable while her intelligent eyes follow the flow of conversation.

They seem to treasure each other and to keep very close. And they have this gentle generosity. In memory, I watch Alper carefully choose a necklace and give it as a gift to our daughter, take me to the post-office so I can learn to pay the phone bill, and meet me at the bus station the day I leave because he doesn’t think anyone should undertake a journey with no one to see them off and wish them well.

Alper and Tuğba don’t have much stuff, but they have dreams. They watch every lira as they carefully build. When we first met they had a tiny shop in a terrible location. And enthusiasm and hope. Before that, they had a table on the street. They had sold an old family carpet to get the seed money for that. This year they’ve moved to better space and the business is growing. They have their eye on some land in the mountains 20 kilometers or so away, and already they envision fruit trees under cultivation and the beginnings of a small house.

For the merchants of Kaş one day flows into another in the ceaseless rhythm of “the season.” There is no weekend, no day off, no long lie. Shops open no later than mid-morning and are still open at midnight. Alper has been opening by 8 am to catch the boat traffic. Many vendors sleep over the shop or in a back room, and exist in the narrow radius of the shop and the tea vendor.

What a surprise, then, when Alper and Tuğba invited us to their place for a Sunday afternoon. “We work very hard,” said Alper. “And that is good. We don’t mind to work hard. But it is not good for a person to work all the time. We need time to rest, and we need time to be together. So we close the shop on Sunday and have a day off. People think we are crazy, but we do it.”

Ecclesiastes is a provocative book. Chapter 3 became well-known in the late 60’s when Joni Mitchell recorded a song based on its wisdom: “To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time to every purpose under heaven….”

Ancient literature shows us a time when humanity understood life as an endless wheel circling round and round. Birth, life, death, birth, life, death. Day after day after day, with no beginning and no end, no progression or purpose. In Genesis we have the first recorded human understanding that time is linear, that there was a beginning, that there is progression, that there is purpose and an end-point. Ecclesiastes 3 speaks to this, I think, in its description of seasons and cycles of time as part of a larger purpose “under heaven.”

That writer goes on to say, in verses 9-11, “What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on people. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Not only is God the author of linear time that is progressing towards the fulfillment of His purposes, but He has set some whisper of understanding in the hearts of human beings—who are, after all, created in His image.

Alper and Tuğba give me a glimpse of this as they make an utterly counter-cultural choice that manifests God’s image in them. At creation, Genesis records, God set a pattern of six days of work and one of rest—a day to step back and enjoy the fruits of labor, to fellowship, to celebrate, to be refreshed. A day that is an act of faith in a good and powerful God who is willing and able to keep the world turning and provide for our needs without our help. A day that many among those who call themselves the people of God ignore. Somehow these two grasp it, and choose to risk celebration.

O Lord, bless them! Increase their fruitfulness, even as You sustain their relationship with one another. And as Alper and Tuğba savor this simple revelation, would You show them ever more of Yourself and give them the inner freedom to choose to embrace that, too.

Parables, pictures and prayers from Kaş …call to prayer

Five times every day the call to prayer streams from the mosque to envelop the town. The singer invites the faithful to pause, cleanse themselves, and bow before Allah—now standing, now kneeling, now with forehead on the ground.

Five times each day: before sunrise, around lunchtime, mid-afternoon, late afternoon, and evening. After years in the Middle East, I barely notice. Lately, though, I’ve given more thought to the awareness of God’s presence that a pause for prayer might bring.

In April, friends took me to a Benedictine monastery in Northern Ireland where monks gather to sing “the hours” several times each day, using the Psalms as their source. Shortly before, I’d browsed a book at a friend’s house in Baku. The author, a pastor, talks about that rarified morning time of reading and prayer—and the emptiness of how little its blessed insights impact his intense days. From his own search for a more penetrating awareness of God’s presence, he suggests a personal practice of “hours,” and even proposed a schedule and format. We talked some about it with our hosts. They found the idea overly ritualized. It put them off.

But my hunger is similar to that pastor’s. It’s not that I don’t pause for prayer during my day. We pray grace at meals, and at meetings and studies. I pray for directees and others who come to talk about spiritual things. I throw up “arrows” of prayer when surprised and uncertain what to do. I lean into God when I’m stumped and barren in my writing. But this pause simply to give God worship, this pause that is active as it requires one to interrupt the flow of work and move to a place and position for prayer, or even to gather with the community, this is different.

I’m “nudged.” In Kaş last month I decided to respond by intentionally interrupting whatever I was up to each time the mosque call began. I would go stand on the balcony, as though standing next to Jesus as He brooded over the town, and pray for the community until the call ended. An experiment. A learning.

First I learned how rarely the familiar call penetrates my awareness. I never hear it before dawn, and probably only notice about half of the other times. At the beginning of my experiment when I did notice I would go, stand and look, and find lots of things for which to pray: people I care about, situations and events of the day, the peace and prosperity of the town, the possibilities of the gospel, the timing of our move there. I watched people scurry by below me, to the grocery store, or to their cars, or into the school—people alone, people with friends, people buzzing by on scooters. I saw how they, too, seemed oblivious to the call. No one stops work to head for the mosque, or even pauses in their conversation. A big change from 20 years ago. I began to pray for the imams who make the calls, for God to touch their broken, frustrated hearts.

Later, as the “new” of my experiment wore off, I found that I could be aware the call had begun, but unwilling to be interrupted. Whatever I was focused on took precedence over prayer, whether it was an exciting discovery of just how to express a complex thought, or a conversation with another person, or solitaire on the computer. Sometimes I didn’t want to go to the balcony because it was hot. That brought me to some shame, and some repentance, reminded of how easily our human agendas overtake and consume us so that we fail to respond when God interrupts.

Then came days when I could no longer think of much to pray for, save to repeat what I’d already prayed. To say anything began to feel like babbling. I would stand and wrack my brain for something fresh. I decided it was time to stop talking and listen, and look. The sense that I was invited to stand and brood with Jesus increased.

“For My house will be called a house of prayer for all people.” Isaiah 56:7 jumped off the page at me. My heart went to the Gőkseke house, for that is our vision: a welcome, and space available, to anyone God might bring to pray, to lean in to Him, to seek and explore the reality of His presence. Isaiah’s context is a prophecy that strangers and foreigners, not just returning exiles, will find a spiritual home with the people of God.

I hear Isaiah’s words in another way, too. Our “house” is God’s house—wherever in the world He may place us. That image of Jesus standing and brooding over Kaş, and drawing us to stand and brood with Him—oh, the deep, deep love. In a town where no one knows His Name He is present, He is protecting, and He desires to be known and to bless.

O Lord, thank You for the certainty that You look out over Kaş, for the humbling realization that You drew us there to watch and love with You. Grant, please, that we, in all our fallen frailty, would act worthily. We long for Your presence to so permeate our days that Your life spills out to the bits and the few that we touch. By whatever means, increase Yourself in us.

Parables, pictures and prayers from Kaş ...a vine cut off

There is no church in Kaş, so each Sunday evening we gather with whatever believers are around to share table fellowship. Sometimes at Ken and Eva’s flat, sometimes at ours. Sometimes it’s just Curt and me, or even just me. Whoever—we celebrate the presence and promise of Jesus among us, the One who is enough.

A few weeks ago seven of us gathered on the highest balcony of the Gőkseke house. Cait was there, and so were friends Stephanie and Josh. Ken and Eva, too. Ken shared from John 15, where Jesus calls Himself vine and us His branches. Branches produce grapes through the life that courses and radiates from the vine.

As Ken talked, I noticed an old bit of vine that clung to the railing. It was deader than dead, brown and brittle with these minuscule dried-up grapes. Our gardener had taken the plant the summer before, but because the house was shut up he couldn’t get to the balcony.

I gazed at those tiny, dead grapes and wondered what my “fruit” looks like to Jesus. Me, thinking myself in a lofty space, intertwined and sturdy with a panoramic outlook, when in truth sometimes I cut myself off from Jesus in my spirit. Pride, self-interest, or just habits of fitting in, complacency. So that no supernatural life courses through me, and my proud, self-manufactured “fruit” is dead, dead, dead.

A few days later I went back to the house with my camera so I could show you that dead vine. I climbed all the steps, and struggled with the stiff lock on the balcony door. I looked. No vine! The gardener had been back, this time with a key to the house. No doubt glad to finish, he had torn away the branches and consigned them to the burn pile.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the Gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful…. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a person remains in me and I in her, she will bear much fruit…. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” John 15:1-8 (excerpts)

I couldn’t take the photo of the dead branch, but perhaps this one of this year’s tended vine with its budding new life is a better image to contemplate.

O Lord, heal us! Show us the dead places--not to discourage us, but so that we can receive your gracious tending and pruning and experience Your life coursing ever more through us. We long to bear Your fruit, fruit that will satisfy, fruit that will last!

Parables, pictures and prayers from Kaş ...the carpenter

Kaș is a simple place where people make do and make things themselves, often with a mighty splash of beauty tossed in. Last year we watched a man build a stone wall in the parking lot below us. Two weeks of dawn-to-dark hard labor. He left a trough in the top, and this year it is planted with flowers and lovingly tended.

Our kitchen cabinets and closets are hand-made, as are our dining table and chairs. Sűleyman began with rough sticks of pine that he planed and laminated into panels himself. He beveled edges and trim pieces with simple hand tools, and did the decorative design in the table and chairs with a small awl. I drew pictures and jotted measures, and he interpreted with craftsmanship and simple creativity.

This kind of custom work would be outrageously expensive anywhere else. Here it’s just one of the ways you get basics, one of the ways a local guy willing to work hard with his mind, heart and hands can support his family.

We love visiting Sűleyman’s workshop. Set into the hillside beneath his Gőkseke home, one wall is completely open to the sea. The place is piled with sawdust and works in progress. Tools are few and basic, and a few photos of his pieces are tacked to the back wall. When we pull up Sűleyman’s face crinkles with delight. We talk in body language and my pigeon Turkish. Invariably patient with changes and misunderstandings, his eyes sparkle when I admire his workmanship and he loves Curt’s photos that capture the process and the human face of his furniture.

As I watch Sűleyman labor over a piece, I’m touched by his obvious love of the wood and the way it responds to his touch. I admire his quiet spirit towards his crew, and the way he frees them to do what they are good at, giving them respect and dignity. Both of his adult children have turned up when he needed extra hands to install things. His labors have allowed them university degrees and professional jobs, but their admiration, pride and love for their dad glows as they work together.

Jesus was a carpenter in a small town . I think he and Sűleyman would have gotten on. Sűleyman helps me to imagine the hard work of the carpenter shop. I think about the job-to-job nature of Sűleyman’s business. The work he’s done in our place represents close to two months of his life. I hear this past winter was a lean one. The shop can be a hot, sweaty place. Misunderstandings can lead to waste of time and money. Yet the wood is a living thing, and the most utilitarian piece can embody great beauty under a loving hand. I think about the family right there above the shop, and the community of fortune that draws a 25-year-old nurse to spend two days holding tools and nails while she and her dad chat peaceably.

Jesus was a carpenter in a small town. Watching Sűleyman, I’ve come to think that it was a good school to learn about beauty, ingenuity, people and family, patience and hard work, and human need.

Oh Lord, bless Sűleyman. Thank you for the beauty and simplicity of spirit he has shared with us. May we be Your sweet fragrance of life to him and to those he loves.

Parables, pictures and prayers from Kaş ...economies and investments

Nearly two years ago we rolled in Kaş for the first time. Another stop in a multi-year, multi-national search for a place we’d visited in God’s dreams, a place where we would “retire” and throw our doors open to the world. Without knowing what it looked like we had our shopping list: great natural beauty, fabulous view, attractive year-round climate, walkable, plenty of private spaces, outdoor activities, good local food, and culturally interesting. A place people would love to visit. Preferably in the Muslim world. Er… and something we could afford to operate without having to act like a business.


We’d considered Albania, Italy, the south of France, Morocco, Oman and the UAE. We’d been in Turkey six days and hadn’t even come close. But I’d had email contact with an English fellow who made Kaş sound worth a visit.

As we cleared the last curve and saw the town spread down the rocky hillside to the sea below we both caught our breath. It looked, well, like the dream. The road wound down to the now-familiar harbor. We located the estate agent’s office, ready to go.

“Not today,” he said. “You really should get the feel of the place first.” “But we only have this afternoon and tomorrow!” we pled. “Go. Walk around. Talk to people. Tomorrow, if you still want to, we’ll look at houses.”

So we wandered the town’s heart, stopping to talk with shopkeepers and artisans, remarking on the absence of hawkers and mass-market tourist junk, the pleasant music and easy converse floating from coffee shops, restaurants and bars. Curt took photos: the ancient sarcophagus at the top of the delightfully-preserved old streets in the pedestrian area, and the pelicans and boats in the harbor.

We looked at a lot of places the next day. We saw a gorgeous new villa with infinity pool overlooking the sea, and a weird old place that ran straight up and down a cliffside with a tiny terrace at the bottom. One villa had a huge barn-roof, and three really ugly new houses just in front of it. Another was almost right, but not enough rooms and the only access to the pool was through a bedroom.

We arrived at the last place sweaty, weary, and disappointed. Access was down a narrow, weedy track in the highest part of Gőkseke village. Behind the iron gate a vine-shaded rock stairwell led straight up the mountain-side through an weedy, overgrown garden to a tower of a house almost covered with vines and bougainvillea. Junk everywhere, and three little dogs yapping and growling.

As we wandered the disheveled five stories, it felt like we had entered God’s dream. Five shady, quiet balconies overlooked the Mediterranean and beckoned us to rest and to pray. Olive trees in the rocky, unspoilt side-yard whispered to us of the Mount of Olives, and called up images of oil and lamps. Vines invited us to abide in the True Vine. We leaned our arms on the third floor balcony railing and felt we had come home.

We bought the place the next morning.

Since that day in late August I’ve had ample opportunity to revisit our decision and to wonder whether, reality suspended, we momentarily lost our minds. I’ve lived through periods of blind panic. The place has title problems. We knew that and went ahead anyway, choosing the risk. But I’m a lawyer. Shouldn’t I have known better? Since we bought, the world economy has cratered. The dollar is much stronger, so if we had waited, maybe we could have paid less. Turns out renovation costs more in Turkey than the cheerful estate agent said it would. It might have been cheaper to build a place from scratch than to remodel this one. We bat around names for the place. Curt favors something peaceful and romantic like “Fair Haven.” I call it “House of the Cracked Pots!”

One anxious day when I was feeling certain we are complete fools, I leaned into Jesus and began to muse over images of real estate investment in the Bible. My self-critical mind turned first to Proverbs, to wisdom and stewardship images of shrewd understanding and principled management.

But then actual purchases of land rose in my mind. I can think of four that God deemed worthy of record.

In Genesis 23, Abraham buys a cave at Machpelah. Though God had promised him the whole of Canaan, he’d lived for years as an alien stranger and still possessed nothing when Sarah died. He wanted a place of his own to bury her. Given the climate, there wasn’t much time to haggle. In a formal meeting with the Hittites he refuses to use one of their tombs, and insists on giving the full asking price for Ephron’s field. That cave was Israel’s first foothold in the promised land. Generations later, Joseph honored Jacob’s deathbed request and carried his bones from Egypt to be buried alongside his ancestors.

Several hundred years later, Boaz bought some land, Naomi’s land. By then, Israel had possession of Canaan, and had divided it among tribes and families. Under the Law, if there were no direct descendants left to take title to family land, it could be redeemed by a next-of-kin, but with a catch. The land came with the dead man’s wife, and any children born of that union were deemed to belong to the dead man so that the land would stay in the family. Naomi was old, and her husband and sons were all dead. Her Moabite daughter-in-law, Ruth, had moved to Israel with her to share her sorrow and desperate poverty. Boaz wanted to marry Ruth, but another guy was in line for the land—and the woman. Seems like Boaz already had plenty of land of his own, and no need for Naomi’s, but he had to buy it to get Ruth. So in Ruth 4 we see him buying the land, along with its “baggage”—a title problem that meant his own children would be deemed the sons of another and the land would revert to that man’s family. All for the gracious love of an alien woman who would become one of the four women named in the line of Christ.

Fast forward to David. God calls him the man after His own heart, but David still did stupid things and angered God from time to time. 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21 record a census he ordered, and makes it clear that everyone knew this was a huge offense to the Lord. The repentant David is given a choice of judgments, and throws himself on God’s mercy. Seventy thousand die of plague, but at the threshing floor of Araunah, the Lord relents. David is commanded to build an altar there. Araunah, after encountering the angel, urges David to take the site and the animals. But David insists on paying full price to buy the place before he will worship, refusing to sacrifice in a way that costs him nothing. That bit of land would become the site of the Temple, a pivotal piece of land for both Jews and Muslims yet today.

Lastly, in the dark days just before Judah was conquered by Babylon and carried into exile, God directed his prophet Jeremiah to buy a field. Jeremiah 32 finds Jeremiah in prison and Jerusalem under siege, but he obeys this crazy command that no doubt made him look even more like a collaborator. After the deed is sealed away, Jeremiah wonders what God could possibly be doing, and God gives His promise to restore His people and to bring again a day when land would be bought and sold in a prosperous Israel.

Economies and investments. We evaluate a house or a piece of land in terms of financial return, or a safe and pleasant place for a home. These few purchases God thought noteworthy represent pure worship, investment in relationships, and radical acts of obedient faith. Abraham believed God would give him the whole land, and Jacob clung to that promise when he died in exile in Egypt. Boaz desired to marry to a foreign woman of faith and noble character, and was willing to incur the cost and take on the baggage that came with her. David owned his sin with a costly repentance and refused to take advantage of his God-given kingship to avoid the price of sacrifice. Jeremiah made a ludicrous purchase in a costly act of sheer faith.

All these are kingdom investments, and God’s economy knows no scarcity, no downturn. My anxious fear of loss, of appearing foolish for following what I perceived as God’s dream, and my temptation to second-guess our timing, is met and satisfied in His “do not be afraid.” “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted…. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Luke 12:32-34.

I don’t doubt we could have heard wrong on that sweltering hot day. We may indeed have been foolish. But I think I’m beginning to grasp something about God’s economics, and I can trust Him with my feeble efforts to follow. Joyfully, truth is I’ve still never visited “House of the Cracked Pots” without a profound sense of peace descending on my spirit.

Oh Lord, we do continue to ask you for resolution to the title process in Gőkseke. Today we ask for that to happen soon so that we can begin the renovation, and start welcoming the world there.

Parables, pictures and prayers from Kaş ...untidy cupboards

We gutted the flat last year. Did a lot of big work. This month is about finishing. Today I await the electrician who will do the last of the light fixtures, and another guy with a big drill who will put up toilet roll holders and all those other bathroom bits you only notice in their absence.

The kitchen is shiny new, completed after we left last June. But yesterday I noticed the cupboard under the sink is already a mess. Gas bottle, wadded grocery bags, cleaning stuff, garbage bin, an old dishpan. Stuffed, not stored.

I’m picky about cupboards. I get a little crazy when people misplace things. I’ve never told anyone before, but whenever I come home from a trip (usually in the middle of the night) I can’t settle until I go through the kitchen and put things back where I think they belong.

Still, here it is--pristine space already overfull and scrambled.

Have you ever been a guest in a home that whispers peace and rest? No distracting clutter, no untidy projects lying about. Nothing to hint what your host is reading, whether she has a hobby or a load of unfinished paperwork. Sometimes as I’ve moved from guest to friend, into that space where I am welcome to help in the kitchen, or to poke around and help myself to what I find, I discover the spacious outward order has been achieved by hurried heaping and closing the door. Or that doors hide jigsaw puzzles to be oh-so-carefully unpacked and repacked just to find a coffee mug, an iron, or the vacuum cleaner.

People can be like that, too. Outwardly calm, apparently at rest and full of spacious joy, while inside all is jumble and clutter. When we arrange our lives so that we are always in a hurry, leaving no margins to reflect and unwind the jumble to look for God’s Presence, His order in it all, our calm is worn like a mask to cover confusion, thoughtlessness, and an untidy intellect.

More often with me, I just cram too much in--too many projects, too many people, too much information. Good stuff, and I may keep it all compartmentalized and organized with lists, time-lines, journals and disciplined regimens of so-much-of-this-or-that-each-day. I can even be admired for my management skills, or for the sheer quantity I can pack in. But the result is the same. An inaccessible complexity obscures clarity of vision, unhurried listening, deep reflection and attentive prayer. I’m present, but I may not be truly available—to my Lord, or to the people He places before me.

O Lord, teach me the way of an uncluttered spirit—inside and out. Remind me to bring stuff to You to see whether it belongs in my cupboard before I dump it in. Discipline me to leave space—margins—to reflect on the jumble of my days, and to notice what good stuff I’m tempted to cram in so as to bury the best stuff, the building of Your Kingdom and the dwelling in Your presence so that I mirror that gracious spaciousness that is real, truly hospitable, and life-giving.

Neither hot not cold...

We have this place in Kas, Turkey, a whimsical, quirky 5-story villa perched overlooking the Mediterranean, that we dream of opening as a quiet space for retreat and refreshment. All those balconies and rocky nooks in the garden turned into places of prayer and solitude, a kitchen equipped to turn the region’s local produce into celebrations of God’s creative goodness, and community areas on main floor and rooftop for nourishing community.

Though today 99% of Turks are Muslim, the nation is rich in biblical images--the geographic backdrop of much of the New Testament. Paul put in at Patara, a few miles up the coast from our place. Not so far inland, he planted churches at Colossae and Laodicea. Later John took Jesus’ mother, Mary, and settled in Ephesus—or so goes the tradition. Before he died, he wrote Revelation, which includes seven prophetic letters to seven Turkish churches.

“I know your deeds,” says Jesus in the letter to the church at Laodicea, “that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Rev 3:15-16.

Words to make one squirm—a challenge to one's passion for Jesus and His gospel.

But recently I learned something fascinating about the geography and history of the ancient spa-towns of Laodicea and nearby Colossae and Hierapolis. These places were spa-towns famous for their springs! Hot geo-thermal mineral baths at Hierapolis drew people from all over to soak up their restorative properties and experience healing. Colossae’s cold mineral water provided invigorating refreshment from summer’s heat. In Laodicea itself, though, tepid springs turned the stomach and made people nauseous.

Any Laodicean would easily catch the implications of John’s imagery. The letter to Laodicea speaks not of a failure of passion for the gospel, but a failure to generously, consciously serve up its life-giving properties so that we spill out refreshment and healing on the world He brings to our door. The quirky village house on the rocky hillside becomes a spiritual spa where people drink in refreshment; or splash, float, and immerse themselves in healing restoration. Stopping for awhile to leave invigorated for the onward, upward journey.

Likewise, your place and mine right today. For it’s not about the great location, or all the balconies--the beauty of the vessel, but about what God puts in it to be served up and poured out. We just have to be generous enough, prayerfully dependent and outward-facing enough to do it!

Out of my head...

Sometimes when I pray I try to picture Jesus in the room with me. As a thinker (you know--“thinker” as opposed to “feeler,” one of those intense folk whose guiding star is analysis and logic—and, honest, I can’t help it!), I have not always been sure when I was truly at prayer, talking to and listening for the eternal sovereign God, and when I was still trapped in my own head analyzing, applying truth, imagining what I think God might think. To picture Jesus can help. As I move out of internal conversation and into communion/communication, He surprises me like fresh wind. Another is present Who introduces surprising perspective, a way of seeing that I am simply unable to get to on my own.

Journal: 25 February--Abu Dhabi and a full house. “To picture You, Lord, present in each room of this house…. As I look around our bedroom, suddenly conscious of my environment, I’m struck by evidences of Your grace in our life together: Cait’s childhood art, ‘miracle’ furniture we could not have afforded, the artistry of the carpet under my feet. The kitchen: You see what I eat and HOW I eat it (with furtive guilt, or with gratitude and health), and You are present during all the meal prep, fellowship and laughter. The living room: the words on the wall become Your words; the warmth and space reflect Your safety, welcome, protection.

Journal: 2 July—the flat in Kas, Turkey. “Early morning, watching the town awake. When I close my eyes and try to picture You, Lord Jesus, I again sense You standing and stooping to serve us communion—the same impression I had as we prayed together on the balcony at the Gokseke house Sunday night. This balcony and that other—places You have chosen and anointed to share Your flesh and blood. Dare I believe this image is from You and not my own hope alone?”

Journal: 4 July 2008, home in Abu Dhabi after nearly four months away. “Your presence here today: You twisted the tree that became the lamp. You knew the Indian carpenter that carved the flowers on the high bench, and the American one that built the oak sofa 100 years ago. You gifted Steve Gordon to paint, and You love the women who knotted the carpets, and the metal smiths of Oman, Afghanistan and Iran who pounded the pots and trays. You created cows that give meat and leather, sheep that provide wool, peacocks, whale bone, moose, and sand for concrete and glass.

“You call forth the creativity in artists and inventors—people You gift to see possibilities in raw materials. You see and love the workers who work today in the heat of Abu Dhabi, Suleyman who installs his handcrafted cabinets in our kitchen in Kas, and the sweet daughter who helps him.”

Journal: 21 July 2008. “This morning as I turn my mind to focus on You, Jesus, here with me, I am awed (and timid) to recognize that life lived in Your presence is HOLY.

“We are children-at-play in whom You delight as we listen and take You seriously with childlike trust, and as we ‘work out’ our day before You with the sober understanding that our “play’ has purpose, hope, reality. For a child, ‘play’ is serious business, concentrated, abandoned in time and energy, experimental, and rich in love.”