Author: Marilyn

Writer & Public Health Nurse living between worlds. Third Culture Kid. Grew up in Pakistan. Four countries to call home: Pakistan. Egypt.United States.Kurdish Region of Iraq.

Friendship Forged of Steel – In Memory of Jean Buker

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At nine pm on October 11, 1954, as tugboats slowly pull a freighter away from the docks in Brooklyn, seven passengers stand together on the deck, watching the lights of the city and the Statue of Liberty fade into the distance. Four more are sleeping peacefully below deck in their bunks and portable cribs, blissfully unaware of how the events of this day are shaping their lives. On the dock where our family members and friends had waved their last goodbyes, a lone man walks to the end. His voice echoes across the harbor waters, over the noise of tugboats as they move the Steel Recorder out towards the open Atlantic: “Grace and peace…Pray without ceasing…Preach the Word.”

Pauline Brown in Jars of Clay

My mom called me yesterday and left a voice message. It was about a dear friend of hers from Pakistan days who was dying.
“It’s not that I’m sad for her,” she said through tears. “It’s that I’m sad. Just so, so sad.”

Mom’s friendship with Jean Buker goes back to early days when the two young families were embarking on a journey that would affect them and their children in unquantifiable ways. Their first forays into friendship began at Hartford Seminary where the two couples, along with a few others from my parents’ mission were enrolled for missiology classes. Those early days of dreaming and planning for their life overseas propelled them forward onto the Steel Recorder – a freight ship that left out of New York Harbor.

I picture my mom and Jean, both in their mid-twenties, beautiful with not a wrinkle on their skin, dressed as one did in that era – in skirt suits with hats and perhaps a strand of pearls at the neck. Jean and Ray Buker had three children while my parents had my oldest brother. The journey by sea to this newly formed country was four weeks long. Four weeks of walking the deck to get exercise, keeping tight rein on their toddlers so they didn’t fall through the huge gaps on the railing of the ships deck, trying to make it through seasickness and the beginnings of homesickness, playing scrabble with a competitive edge in the evenings, singing and praying to a God they loved, then at last seeing the shores of Karachi Harbor in what was then West Pakistan.

How young and naive they all were! And yet – how very brave! They watched as their family members became little dots on the shore, finally looking at each other knowing this was it. There was no going back.

Then those first months in the Sindh region of Pakistan, three couples and six children sharing a two-bedroom house in a questionable area of the city of Larkana because no one else would rent to these foreigners.

Those early days built a solid foundation of friendship. Friendship forged in shared language learning, learning how to cook with unfamiliar ingredients, and all that comes with a cross-cultural move to the other side of the world.

The friendship continued through the years, made stronger as more people joined them. Websters, Roubs, Addletons, Pittmans, Johnsons, Dobras, Salmons, Elkins….names that I don’t think I could ever forget, so much were they a part of our family’s srory.

The Bukers moved back to the United States at one point, Jean’s husband Ray taking a job at the mission. And though the proximity of their friendship changed, every time my parents were in the U.S. they visited the Bukers. Updating each other on life in Pakistan, their kids, what was going on in the mission and sharing joys and discouragements continued to be a part of their friendship.

Jean Buker didn’t stop with my parents. She was Aunt Jean to us, more a relative than any blood could possibly create. Her friendship and love continued on to us kids as she extended her table to feed us too much at every Thanksgiving so we knew there was always a place where the turkey and pumpkin pie would be offered up with friendship and understanding. She provided a home base where we and other members of our family and TCK tribe could stay. Aunt Jean was the one who hosted a graduation party when I graduated as a proud nurse. Aunt Jean was the one who gathered people from all over the Chicago area to shower me with gifts a week before my wedding.

I knew where my mom’s tears were coming from as she cried over the phone. They were coming from a place of sweet saudade, that wistful longing for what no longer exists, no matter how much you mourn or long for it. They were coming from a place of memory, where young hearts and bodies with the world at their fingertips go out to the unknown, and friendship is a necessary ingredient. They were coming from knowing that earthly loss smacks of pain and grief because our hearts are created for eternity.

They were coming from a place of a beautiful, God-ordained, orchestrated, and formed friendship and they reflected the heart of God.

“The shifts of time unearth our longing for a permanent residence, unshakeable, immovable, wholly given and wholly ours. Scattered across this great globe, now and then, we stumble across gifts of happiness from a God who, kindly, with an absolute patience that the trees themselves were taught to imitate, guides us up into the security of his own life”

Laura Fabrycky

This post is dedicated to Pauline Brown, Bettie Addleton, and Grace Pittman – the remaining originals from CBFMS.

Lenten Journey – Healing Comes in the Trying

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I don’t know when the dawn will break for you or for me, but I know that the healing comes in the trying. And that even in the dark we have to keep practicing our callings. Whatever they are. We have to keep doing the things we were made to do. The daily acts of creativity and honesty and service as much for what they bring about inside us as for the good they do in the world. Practice your vocation and calling whatever you understand that to be because the practice of it will keep you connected and to the God who planted those things inside you. 

Shauna Niequist

Last Monday, on the first day of Orthodox Lent, I had a wisdom tooth extracted. As the dental surgeon’s assistant was giving me instructions, she reminded me that the first few days I would get steadily better, and then by days 3-5, it would feel much worse. “It’s like so many things,” she said. “You get worse before you get better. To heal, you have to go through a process.”

I didn’t think much about it that day, so focused was I on the procedure and on the wads of gauze and local anesthesia that made me sound like a cartoon character. But days four and five came, and though I thought I would be unique and spared the pain of those middle days, the pain came on with a vengeance. The only thing I could do was follow the paper of instructions given to me as I left the dental office. Ibuprofen, rinsing with saline, soft foods, and waiting. I had to keep doing those things because I knew that ultimately, they would aid in the healing, and the healing would indeed come. I had to keep trying.

“The healing comes in the trying.”

But on Saturday I wanted to give up. I wanted to stop trying and call the dental assistant and say “This isn’t working. I need something else. I’m not healing.” In truth, I was. I just didn’t like how it was going. I wanted to speed up the process. I was sick of the pain. I didn’t want to believe the dental assistant’s words.

Today is a new day. In the world of tooth extractions, the dawn broke and with it was a tenderness replacing the pain. I know now that every day will be a bit easier.

Though they are nothing to do with healing from a tooth extraction, Shauna Niequist’s words above are not unlike those of the dental assistant. They are both about process, about doing all those things in the dark that we learned to do in the light.

If you’ve been following along with me, you know that I’ve had some healing going on during the past few years. Healing from pain far worse than that of a tooth extraction. Every time I think the dawn is about to break, it seems the clouds come over and instead of the brilliant colors of sunrise, it’s all greys and muted colors. In the midst of this, I’m continuing to learn what it means to keep trying. To make plans and follow through with them. To cry heavy tears in the shower and then get dressed. To pray soul-aching prayers and then get up and make dinner. To wait for answers and then actively process through writing. The dawn has not yet broken, but God is present, gently reminding me that healing comes in the trying.

Reminding me that someday, the “grey horizons must grow light. It is only the immediate scene that shouts so loudly and insistently.”

Author’s Note: This season is Lent for those of us in Christian Traditions that celebrate Lent. Lent is perhaps a bit like a tooth extraction. You know you need it, but initially you dread it. Lent is also about believing that the dawn will break, the resurrection will come, and with it – a healing greater than we can even imagine.

*Alfred Delp

Earthquakes & Stories Matter

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The sun is crazy bright today, reflecting off the wooden floors in our house. It is beautiful – a reminder to me of hope and warmth and spring coming. I think about this – the contrast between the safety and warmth I feel and the ongoing crisis of the three earthquakes that Turkey and Syria have endured.

I have been quiet in this space about this tragedy, not due to lack of care, but because what can I possibly do or say that could help? I am far removed from the area and get my news the way most of you do. But I do have a deep love for that part of the world, family who live in Istanbul, and friends who are well acquainted with the area. So today, I’m posting a piece I wrote 10 years ago but never published. A piece that will remind all of us that before the crisis, there was already a crisis. A reminder that these stories that we know and those we don’t know matter to God. A reminder that earthquakes and stories matter. When they are far away, they interrupt our lives for a short time through crisis news reports. But long after the front-page news ends, the crisis, the stories, and the people within those stories matter. At the end of the piece, I have included two places where you can donate. They were recommended to me by my brother and sister-in-law and you can trust that the money will go to those most in need.

And now, back to 2013….

I am sitting in a sun-filled room in Uskudar – an area of Istanbul on the Asian side of the city, occasionally staring out at the tops of buildings. I am tired in the best way possible. I heard the Call to Prayer a half hour ago telling me that it is late afternoon, and we will soon be getting ready for the evening activities.

The day began in chaos. It was the first night since arriving that I did not sleep well. Carol (my sister-in-law) and I were heading to a refugee clinic on the European side of the city, and we knew we would be late. We ran to catch a ferry from Uskudar to Kabatas, breathlessly sliding into seats by the window.

The morning was beautiful, partly cloudy but sun spilling through at odd moments, reflecting off a blue-gray Marmara Sea.

“This is a beautiful city” – the same words came to mind that I had been saying both internally and aloud all week. Beautiful. Breathtaking really, with Topkapi Palace and Hagia Sophia on a hill, the Blue Mosque back a bit creating the picture-perfect skyline that is Istanbul. And the ferry rides were ideal places to slow down and experience the view and the city.

Arriving at the dock, we headed to an underground cable car, taking it the rest of the way to Taksim. As we set off in search of the clinic, Carol remembered that Google maps doesn’t do construction. This is fact.

 But no matter – we were determined. And determined won, as it usually does.

We found the building and after walking down a dark hallway, trekked 4 flights up a set of stairs. Istanbul is not a city for the short of breath. The room we entered was full of language. Turkish, Farsi, English, Arabic – it all melded into indefinable verbs and nouns, participles and dangling. It was a gift to my ears. One of the side rooms was designated as a nurse’s room and we did a quick survey of medicines and equipment. It was quick because there was none (apart from Sarah Goodwin’s 2-year expired antibiotics from Michigan). No blood pressure cuff, no stethoscope, one thermometer, and medicine that fit into one 8 by 11 plastic container.  

Our first patient was an Iraqi refugee. With rusty and wanting Arabic I asked her what was wrong. I barely made out the words ‘headache’ and ‘chest pain’ when the interpreter came to my rescue. And the story came out. Bit by bit by bit. The headache – but really the heartache; the chest pain – but really the stress and a heart broken. The words gave a  picture of a family exiled. Refugees. Forging a new home in a new place.

What is the remedy for a broken heart?

We had so little to offer. A small packet of Brufen (Ibuprophen), and encouragement to drink a lot of water, an offer to come back if the headaches worsened, if the headaches were accompanied by blurred vision or dizziness. She was followed by more people, children and moms, more symptoms and more stories. And these were only the tip of a Titanic size iceberg of stories.

For years I have said that stories matter; stories give us a bigger picture, a narrative into which we offer our hearts. And these stories – they matter. They matter to the clinician who attempts to distinguish, with no equipment, symptoms that need physical medicine, those that need emotional, those that need both. They matter to the interpreter who skillfully takes the words and decodes them for the listener. Most of all they matter to God; a God who needs no interpreter and no storyteller, a God who was present in the room with us, caring for all who were there. A God who gives eyes to see and ears to hear the cry of the heart.  

 The sun has almost set and the Call to Prayer was now over two hours ago. As I close my computer and type the last words, I whisper a prayer for the people I met, and those I never will; for stories I heard, and for the millions I will never hear.

Here is a message from my brother who has lived in Istanbul for 10 years with info on two organizations that he would recommend donating to for earthquake relief efforts:

Two organizations you might want to consider supporting are Medicins Sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders which works on both sides of the Turkey – Syria border, and İLK UMUT DERNEĞİ / First Hope Association a small Turkish NGO that has a good record of working in close cooperation with government and non-governmental organizations. 

Please keep in mind that support for survivors of this tragedy will remain urgent for many months and years to come, long after the attention of world media has passed on to other things.

On Quiet Belonging

Published on by Marilyn2 Comments

I’ve been quiet in this space. In the past few years, February has been a time of quiet reflection and muted colors. It is equal parts winter, past tragedies, and me. I don’t hate it and I don’t try and push it away. Instead, I probably bake way too much (cinnamon rolls anyone?), find myself frequenting coffee shops even more regularly, and do a lot of reading and journaling.

As I write this, I have escaped the city to Rockport’s beauty and quiet. It was the anniversary of my brother’s death and I needed time for reflection and some mourning. This morning I literally chased the sunrise, knowing that it had to be just around the next corner, finally happening on its magnificent break over the horizon, flames of color spreading across the sky. It was deeply satisfying!

Into this quiet, my dear childhood, now adult friend Mikaere Greenslade posted a beauty of a poem online, specifically tagging me. The poem was titled ‘belong’ and I’m quite sure he has little idea of how much it meant to me.

Mikaere is a beautiful poet who lives in New Zealand. I found out recently from my mum that she considered Mikaere’s mum to be one of her closest friends. We lived in the same city from around 6 years old to 10 years old or so. Then, as is the case of so many global friendships, we parted, each to our respective passport lands. I was to return to Pakistan after a year, but Mikaere did not. Before the advent of social media and the finding of these long-lost friends I never imagined that we would reconnect. But reconnect we did over a shared love of Pakistan and writing.

On this quiet February, where introspection is not an enemy but a dear friend, I offer you his words. Enjoy! 

'belong'

(for Marilyn)

where is home she asked
four walls or
being known
where do the birds call
your name
where does rain caress
the stones that cover your
bones
where a sigh and smile
can hold hands
and the dog sleeps late
nau mai haere mai
haere mai ki tou kainga
whisper the trees

Mikaere Greenslade 2023

To purchase this beautiful book, contact Mikaere through Celestial Press by clicking here. Here is a recent poem he shared on his page. Do think seriously about supporting him for where would we be without our artists, our poets, our writers, our dancers? 

night prayer 

it whelms from deep
bones and memory
not a story but
a know
what you know
dark turns and wait
after the cold comes stand
after the joy come scars 
hold breath
it is all precious 
and you child
and you

Arguments about Origin – a TCK post

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I was exhausted. It was yet another argument about where I was from, arguments that I was beginning to call “Arguments of Origin” – perhaps so that they sounded more academic and less fraught with emotion.

But the reality was, they were fraught with emotion.

This particular argument started out as a benign comment by a friend to something I had posted online. I don’t even remember the original post, but it was about belonging and my connection to my childhood home – Pakistan. In the post I called Pakistan “home.”

“But it’s not really home for you.” she stated matter-of-factly.

“I’m not sure what you mean.” I said “I grew up there, so yes, it was my childhood home.”

“But you’re not from there.” she was not going to let this go.

Fair enough, but it really depends on what “from there” means.

I tried to put a different lens onto the conversation. “Well – where do you say you are from.” “That’s easy” she named a small town in one of the New England states. “Okay, why do you call that town home?” “Well, I grew up there.”

The defense rests their case.

When I returned to Pakistan in 2010, I got to walk through the house we had lived in during my junior and senior years of high school. A tsunami of memories came over me as I walked through the large front rooms, around the verandah, and finally stopped in front of my bedroom door. As I pressed my face against the window, looking into the room where I had spent winter vacations, I gasped. There on the bed was the comforter that my mom and I had picked out so many years before. The previously bright green, pink, yellow, and blue patterns had faded through the years, but there was no mistaking it. I never thought something as simple as a comforter could bring on such a profound sense of belonging. It was, after all, an inanimate object. But in that moment, it was confirmation of a life that I had lived, a life relegated to stories, photo albums, and memories captured in the cerebral cortex of my brain.

Despite 18 years of life packed into old passports, photo albums, old journals, and letters that my mom kept through the years, in many people’s eyes I have no right to say that Pakistan was home, even less rights to saying that I am from Pakistan. My rights to the country are defined by outsiders who tell me who I am and where I am from.

It brings up many emotions and deep empathy for the many around me who, in this era of massive displacement, struggle silently in the same way.

In a beautiful essay called “Reconciling with Less Home: Between Haiti and Me” Martina Fouquet writes:

The real question is who determines where we belong?

Martina Fouquet in Catapult Magazine

Perhaps what people don’t realize about their challenges to our concepts of home and where we say we are from are that the challenges act like a knife cutting to the core of who we are. The knife cuts deep, and we are left with our own origin questions, self-doubt raising its ugly head telling us once again that we don’t really belong. The internal dialogue that we thought we had silenced so long ago emerges once again, loud and accusatory: “You don’t really belong. You aren’t Pakistani. You left years ago.”

“But that’s not really home for you” or “That’s not where you’re really from” viewed as benign statements to many presents as a challenge to personhood and origin to another.

I don’t know what the answer is to arguments of origin, other than reminding myself once again that no one gets to tell any of us where home is. It is uniquely ours to determine where and why. Our stories may not fit into tidy boxes that connect within the experiences of others, but that’s not a problem we need to solve or a burden we need to bear.

Despite awkward questions, arguments, and discussions on home and origin, the paradoxical gift of this journey is that sometimes less home becomes more home, our lives richer for the multiple places we are privileged to call home.

Home is more than just a place where we come from, it is a part of us. And the longer we distance ourselves from home, the less complete we are.

Martina Fouquet

The Weight of Winter

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In winter, the whole story doesn’t show

Paraphrased from Andrew Wyeth

I’m discouraged. It’s not uncommon for me during the winter months, but it is still hard. I do all the things you are supposed to do when you are low and feel defeated. I light candles, I chase beauty, I seek out joy. But sometimes no matter what you do, you still feel the weight of life, still feel the limitations of candlelight and beauty. Beauty may save the world, as Dostoevsky claims, but it doesn’t necessarily take away the weight of winter.

Some of this has to do with things that cannot be changed – feeling the sadness of my brother’s birthday coming on Wednesday, knowing that he is not here, that a phone call is impossible. In addition, my own birthday arrives later this week and I feel some of the emotional cost of aging, the heaviness of responsibility coupled with the weight of wrinkles and a changing body.

What do other writers do with the weight of winter? They write. They describe and, in their descriptions, I find comfort. The quote by Andrew Wyeth is perhaps my favorite. this idea of the story being hidden, but still present is something I think about all year long, not just in winter.

If you are feeling the weight of winter on this Monday, I invite you to read these quotes and to write or find your own.

“I prefer winter and Fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape–the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. “
–Andrew Wyeth

“How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!”
–Thomas Wentworth Higginson

“I pray this winter be gentle and kind–a season of rest from the wheel of the mind. “
–John Geddes

“The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. “
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness. “
–John Steinbeck

Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”

Edith Sitwell

What are your favorite winter quotes? How do you face the weight of winter?

Security within Obscurity

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You have to keep living your story. You have to keep living faithfully, seeking God, praying, caring for those things you know are critically important and you have to keep writing about them.

A Kind Friend

Since 2012, at the beginning of every year I’ve gone through a mini writing crisis. 2012 marked a milestone: A year of writing publicly every day. In 2011 I set out on the journey to communicate across boundaries through writing. As 2012 rolled around I was both proud and apprehensive. Now what? I had done what I set out to do, but was I beginning to be a loud noise in a louder world? Was there a place for me to write and an audience for me to write to and for?

Every writer asks themselves the same questions at different points of their journey. Self-doubt is a faithful, all be it depressing, companion to writers, artists, musicians, scientists, doctors, priests, monks and any other vocations that involve the heart.

About a year and a half ago a dear friend of mine who had published a successful book was featured on a podcast. Toward the end of the interview, she was asked a question about writers who meant a lot to her or inspired her. She named two writers who are fairly well known, and then she went on to talk about a writer friend she had who inspired her but wrote largely “in obscurity.” She talked about how much she valued her words and friendship. The writer friend was me. It was incredibly kind. I heard it and I began to cry. My friend was so kind and also, the word obscurity stung.

Obscurity – the state of being unknown, inconspicuous, or unimportant.

I was unknown, inconspicuous, unimportant. My words didn’t matter.

Of course, my friend didn’t mean that at all. She was giving me praise. She was saying I inspired her. She was honoring me in a public forum. But I didn’t hear that part. All I heard was the part about obscurity.

It is a humbling journey being faced with your own desires and weaknesses within those desires. Because here’s the truth – I would love for my words to journey across the hearts and minds of millions. There are times when I fantasize about walking up to an airport bookstore and standing with sunglasses on looking at my own book, just grinning. I’d love to stand to the side and watch others walk up and peruse the stand, finally landing on my books saying, “I love this writer!” There are times when I dream about an agent taking calls about interviews on public radio and speaking at events across the country.

It’s about then that I hear my alarm and know that it’s time to get up and face my day job, where I grab time to write before work and after work and not much in between.

Despite the obscurity, every time I think I’m going to quit putting my fingers on this keyboard, every time I get discouraged and think my words don’t matter, I get a message like the one at the top of this page. And even when I don’t, I remember how much I love writing; how much I love the craft, the ideas that flow or don’t flow. The words and descriptions, the stories and how they are birthed onto the page, the staring into the distance at a coffee shop when suddenly a phrase comes to me. The feeling of hitting “publish” on my own blog, or “send” in an email submission and then waiting to hear if my essay was accepted for publication, the utter joy of seeing my words on the printed or online page…or not, because whether published or not there is deep joy in creating.

It’s during those moments that I know I will never quit. I may go through sabbaticals of quiet, I may take time out to not write publicly, but I’ll keep writing every day.

But I also know another truth that overrides all of this – and that is that my identity cannot be found in writing alone. My security cannot be rooted in who reads or doesn’t read my words. That would be a fickle identity indeed. My security doesn’t lie in my ability to create words, sentences, paragraphs, and stories but as one who is created and beloved by God.

In these 12 years of writing, I’ve learned much about myself and about the human condition. I’ve learned more about what it is to live well in places that are hard, in places where you don’t feel you fully belong. I’ve heard from people who are displaced or in transition, who are struggling to find their place. I’ve received messages from teenagers in France and retirees in the United Kingdom. I’ve connected in ways I could never have imagined. I’ve gone through public and private crises, and asked readers to come along with me in the grief. I’ve learned more of what it is to give both identity and desire to God, to invite him into my writing space, and pray for words. And I’ve come to see that it’s a big world out there and within it there is a place for small writers in small spaces.

A Prayer for New Year’s Eve

Published on by Marilyn4 Comments

Here’s to the elderly, their memories thick with days gone by, wistfully longing for the time when staying up until midnight or dancing until dawn was a joy. May they know their lives and their memories count.

Here’s to the one who has been left, either by death or divorce, unshed tears just behind their eyelashes, as they watch the clock longing for bedtime to come. May their tears be received, and their hearts healed.

Here’s to the couple with the newborn, eyes wide open with newness and hope, bodies aching with the tiredness a newborn brings. May they have enough sleep to love each other and their little one well.

Here’s to the couple who just met, the ones who are wondering if this is just another in a long list of disappointing relationships. May they not put their hopes in another person but in a relationship-loving God.

Here’s to the ones who just got engaged, starry-eyed with the delight of sharing a lifetime of dreams together. May the strength of their love and the mercy of God equip them for the joys and tragedies ahead.

Here’s to the one who is single in a world of couples, always wondering why they feel second best. May they walk tall in the joy of friendship, growing in God and knowing in their bones how much their lives count.

Here’s to the new arrivals, fresh off a flight from warmer places, the cold and the unfamiliar hitting them as they walk out the doors of the airport. May they be greeted with bread and tea, a place to sleep and people to help.

Here’s to those who pray for peace but suffer in war. May they be safe, and may they know that they are not alone, that there are those praying for them – that wars would end, and peace would reign.

Here’s to the suffering one, who dreads the dawn of a new day. May they be wrapped in comfort and love.

Here’s to the dying one, ready to enter eternity on the cusp of a new year. May they die knowing the love, rest, and mercy of God.

Here’s to those who are heavy with conflict, weary of fighting, broken with fractured relationships, longing for peace in their families and communities. May we know the one who is mighty counselor, everlasting God, and Prince of Peace.

Here’s to you and to me, wherever we are and whoever we are with. May the hopes and dreams of all our years be met in the One who promises his presence.

Happy New Year’s Eve.