Obedience from BECstories on Vimeo.
You'll need the password "watchthevideo" to see this 11 minute version of my Kolontar story.![kolontar [k] - after the flood](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgciO0Ay9ZsRAKwz0F4cLT5NMyrNUtkD_A4604iG0INB92nS3TG4Db1GDkWe6sIiPu3Gsg6wv7fnhZqMPhocWLFpwh0UDRbicwpwpf6L2U5y-oYlQCMB1hIHMPq7rWIMGgLYCVWd1y1c8W8/s760/logo4.png){kind=logo}
Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Tuesday, 4 October 2011
Twelve months later
I looked out across the Warwickshire hills this morning, in between hitting tennis balls as my students enjoyed a coaching session at the picture postcard sports ground in Napton, and in my mind I overlayed the aerial photographs from last October 4th, the crimson tide spilling out from the ruptured reservoir, the River Nile turning to blood.
Since I last blogged, I had a chance to meet up with Conohar in my hometown Loughborough (you know how it goes: collect second hand kayak, eat lunch with parents before children head to theatre, meet eco-photographer for chat, watch sister spend an hour choosing which trainers to buy...) Among our many other connection points, places we'd lived or studied (or both), he wondered if we both shared in a kind of dark tourism. Nah. I don't reckon.
I gave him the photocopy of a child's drawing that I'd spotted in the office of Miklos Mold, the Catholic priest in Devecser. He was chuffed, and he's referenced it today on his blog.
By the time we met, I'd been in touch with the BBC's Nick Thorpe. I don't know why I hadn't done much earlier, once I'd got back in February, but that's often my meandering way. I got a really encouraging reply, together with the address of the family that lost a young daughter, and he'd copied in a colleague, Beatrix, who was able to translate my letter into Hungarian. My two youngsters drew bright pictures of dinosaurs, and we posted the bundle to Kolontar last week. I'm hoping it got there in time for today's anniversary.
Since I last blogged, I had a chance to meet up with Conohar in my hometown Loughborough (you know how it goes: collect second hand kayak, eat lunch with parents before children head to theatre, meet eco-photographer for chat, watch sister spend an hour choosing which trainers to buy...) Among our many other connection points, places we'd lived or studied (or both), he wondered if we both shared in a kind of dark tourism. Nah. I don't reckon.
I gave him the photocopy of a child's drawing that I'd spotted in the office of Miklos Mold, the Catholic priest in Devecser. He was chuffed, and he's referenced it today on his blog.
By the time we met, I'd been in touch with the BBC's Nick Thorpe. I don't know why I hadn't done much earlier, once I'd got back in February, but that's often my meandering way. I got a really encouraging reply, together with the address of the family that lost a young daughter, and he'd copied in a colleague, Beatrix, who was able to translate my letter into Hungarian. My two youngsters drew bright pictures of dinosaurs, and we posted the bundle to Kolontar last week. I'm hoping it got there in time for today's anniversary.
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Dominoes
Did you ever feel like things still had loose ends? I'd been wondering what would be next after I got back from Hungary in February.Hoping people would get in touch, that leads would, well, actually lead somewhere.
(Petra de Leeuw Van Veenen, our Dutch house group leader a few years back, would often say Lord, what is the next step? And then she'd go and make some coffee and cakes, because she was Dutch.)
While I was there I had tried to find contact details for the family that lost two children (including the 3 year old boy, the same age my own son was at the time), but the Mayor's office and Red Cross couldn't help. I'd had no news from my local contacts in Devecser, Zsolti and Marianne. Also, the Budapest journalist I met in Kolontar (who helped me not get arrested), Monika Gundisch from GeoMedia, hadn't replied to my follow up emails. Initially she had: I got this...
HELLO MATT, I WERE IN BRUSSELS, SORRY. NATURELLY I'LL HELP YOU, JUST WAIT PLEASE 2-3 DAYS. MONIKA
...which was kind of exciting, in a capital letter sort of way,but nothing since.
The guys at Calvary Chapel in Budapest that I emailed had said they hoped to do long-term follow-up support for families, but that things had become a bit political and they hadn't gotten any further. So I'd been feeling a bit puzzled lately, like doors had closed. But God has taught me to persevere, in prayer and the practical things I can do. I'm like a dog with a bone, a bit relentless. And I watch a lot of thrillers.
Then last week I got a newsletter from Goos Vedder, a Dutch pastor we knew from our Manchester days, a guy who travels widely in Eastern Europe supporting churches there. In it, he mentioned a Dutch friend of his, Stefan Bos, who runs a news agency in... Budapest. So I googled Stefan's contact details, and emailed him about what I'd done in February. He was really encouraging, and he mentioned this article from Nick Thorpe - the BBC journalist who'd covered the story several times over the past year. (Kate got me Nick Thorpe's book 89: The Unfinished Revolution for my birthday. Because she knows how I like to read about Polish trade union reforms before going to bed.)
I wish the BBC would just let me embed the article at the touch of a button, but here's a couple of quotes from it:
Erzsebet and Zoltan Juhasz walk down this way sometimes, to see where their home used to be. They even found a tomato plant, growing among the tall weeds where their garden was. "I dug it up and replanted it in my new garden and now it's full of fruit!" Erzsebet explains. It is the only light moment in a conversation about a subject which is still usually too painful to talk about - the moment when her 14-month-old daughter, Angyalka, was swept from her arms when a tidal wave of red sludge hit their house on 4 October last year.
As we speak in her new kitchen, another little girl, Dori, runs in, laughing hilariously, three years old, wanting to play. Seven-year-old Gergo comes in to listen solemnly to the grown-ups. His father asks him to go out again - both he and Erzsebet are crying - as they tell their story. But the boy stays, and Dori plays, and outside 13-year-old Renata stands by the slide. And Erzsebet is expecting a new baby, a boy, in November. "We've very grateful for all the help we received, from the Red Cross, from the Baptist charity, from the state too, for giving us this house. I mean, they didn't have to, did they? They could have waited for the aluminium company to pay up." Instead, the missing half of Kolontar has been rebuilt in record time, 21 brand new houses on the highest ground in the village.
[There's also a World Service podcast about the recovery effort.]
I already knew the rebuilding was going ahead, because I google stuff every now and then, and a few months ago I saw these images:
(photo: Gergely Botár)
Which showed real progress, but got me wondering about what was really happening, given the compensation and health concerns I'd heard. The government were certainly saying things were on track (thanks to "superhuman effort", they thought.)
I also stumbled across the work Conohar, a photographer doing his PhD at Loughborough University (ironically, my home town, where I did my Masters in finding things out - I mean, Library and Information Studies). He documents environmental damage.
Anyway, back to the latest Nick Thorpe article. It's also peppered with hopeful comments like
People speak of the remarkable regenerative power of nature, and of the unexpected speed and generosity of the state...
There are mentions of promises being kept, surprises, unexpected fruitfulness: I am so glad to have spent time prayer-walking the towns and prophesying God's goodness to them. I choose to join the dots!
It's also the first time I've been able to identify by name one of the families who lost a child, which was one part of my original "quest". I will pray about it, but I hope to make contact with them somehow. I will try to find someone here in Rugby who can translate a letter.
--
Hard to believe all the worldly hype around the football Transfer Deadline Day yesterday. Pundits talked ad infinitum about how a whole stack of deals was waiting for just one deal to fall into place, then the domino effect would kick in.
Waiting. Then one thing falls into place. Then a whole heap of other stuff.
I hope so.
(Petra de Leeuw Van Veenen, our Dutch house group leader a few years back, would often say Lord, what is the next step? And then she'd go and make some coffee and cakes, because she was Dutch.)
While I was there I had tried to find contact details for the family that lost two children (including the 3 year old boy, the same age my own son was at the time), but the Mayor's office and Red Cross couldn't help. I'd had no news from my local contacts in Devecser, Zsolti and Marianne. Also, the Budapest journalist I met in Kolontar (who helped me not get arrested), Monika Gundisch from GeoMedia, hadn't replied to my follow up emails. Initially she had: I got this...
HELLO MATT, I WERE IN BRUSSELS, SORRY. NATURELLY I'LL HELP YOU, JUST WAIT PLEASE 2-3 DAYS. MONIKA
...which was kind of exciting, in a capital letter sort of way,but nothing since.
The guys at Calvary Chapel in Budapest that I emailed had said they hoped to do long-term follow-up support for families, but that things had become a bit political and they hadn't gotten any further. So I'd been feeling a bit puzzled lately, like doors had closed. But God has taught me to persevere, in prayer and the practical things I can do. I'm like a dog with a bone, a bit relentless. And I watch a lot of thrillers.
Then last week I got a newsletter from Goos Vedder, a Dutch pastor we knew from our Manchester days, a guy who travels widely in Eastern Europe supporting churches there. In it, he mentioned a Dutch friend of his, Stefan Bos, who runs a news agency in... Budapest. So I googled Stefan's contact details, and emailed him about what I'd done in February. He was really encouraging, and he mentioned this article from Nick Thorpe - the BBC journalist who'd covered the story several times over the past year. (Kate got me Nick Thorpe's book 89: The Unfinished Revolution for my birthday. Because she knows how I like to read about Polish trade union reforms before going to bed.)
I wish the BBC would just let me embed the article at the touch of a button, but here's a couple of quotes from it:
Erzsebet and Zoltan Juhasz walk down this way sometimes, to see where their home used to be. They even found a tomato plant, growing among the tall weeds where their garden was. "I dug it up and replanted it in my new garden and now it's full of fruit!" Erzsebet explains. It is the only light moment in a conversation about a subject which is still usually too painful to talk about - the moment when her 14-month-old daughter, Angyalka, was swept from her arms when a tidal wave of red sludge hit their house on 4 October last year.
As we speak in her new kitchen, another little girl, Dori, runs in, laughing hilariously, three years old, wanting to play. Seven-year-old Gergo comes in to listen solemnly to the grown-ups. His father asks him to go out again - both he and Erzsebet are crying - as they tell their story. But the boy stays, and Dori plays, and outside 13-year-old Renata stands by the slide. And Erzsebet is expecting a new baby, a boy, in November. "We've very grateful for all the help we received, from the Red Cross, from the Baptist charity, from the state too, for giving us this house. I mean, they didn't have to, did they? They could have waited for the aluminium company to pay up." Instead, the missing half of Kolontar has been rebuilt in record time, 21 brand new houses on the highest ground in the village.
[There's also a World Service podcast about the recovery effort.]
I already knew the rebuilding was going ahead, because I google stuff every now and then, and a few months ago I saw these images:
(photo: Gergely Botár)
Which showed real progress, but got me wondering about what was really happening, given the compensation and health concerns I'd heard. The government were certainly saying things were on track (thanks to "superhuman effort", they thought.)
I also stumbled across the work Conohar, a photographer doing his PhD at Loughborough University (ironically, my home town, where I did my Masters in finding things out - I mean, Library and Information Studies). He documents environmental damage.
Anyway, back to the latest Nick Thorpe article. It's also peppered with hopeful comments like
People speak of the remarkable regenerative power of nature, and of the unexpected speed and generosity of the state...
There are mentions of promises being kept, surprises, unexpected fruitfulness: I am so glad to have spent time prayer-walking the towns and prophesying God's goodness to them. I choose to join the dots!
It's also the first time I've been able to identify by name one of the families who lost a child, which was one part of my original "quest". I will pray about it, but I hope to make contact with them somehow. I will try to find someone here in Rugby who can translate a letter.
--
Hard to believe all the worldly hype around the football Transfer Deadline Day yesterday. Pundits talked ad infinitum about how a whole stack of deals was waiting for just one deal to fall into place, then the domino effect would kick in.
Waiting. Then one thing falls into place. Then a whole heap of other stuff.
I hope so.
Monday, 28 February 2011
Planting vineyards
This particular chunk of Amos kept coming back to me as I was walking around, praying in the streets. I wrote it down a few times and posted it around the place.
...and I will bring my people Israel back from exile. “They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the LORD your God.
És hazahozom a fogságból az én népemet, az Izráelt, és fölépítik az elpusztult városokat, és lakoznak bennök. Szõlõket plántálnak és iszszák azok borát, és kerteket csinálnak és eszik azoknak gyümölcsét. És elplántálom õket az õ földjökbe; és nem szaggattatnak ki többé az õ földjökbõl, a melyet adtam nékik, azt mondja az Úr, a te Istened!
Ámos 9:14-15
Sunday, 27 February 2011
Photo album
As well as the video diary instalments below (I guess it makes more sense if you scroll down and plough back upwards through the archive to sort of watch/read in chronological order - blogs are a bit cumbersome like that), there's also an online photo album.
Video [14]
That'll probably do for now. Like I've said before, things deposited in an instant can take months to unravel. Lots of praying and thinking and processing to do.
Video [12]
Filming inside the senior school. I think it was a student called Eszther who was lined up to chat with me, but she got too shy. Her replacements, Katinka and Irena* (names changed, obviously), were pretty shy too, but it was a weird situation all round, and I needed to keep reminding myself of this fact.
Irena's house was affected, and is set to be bulldozed. I think they've bought a new house in town. Katinka told me (with Kate, their English teacher, translating - hey, this was supposed to be English practice for the girls!) that they hadn't given up hope, and that she'd seen me on the local television (presumably talking at the public meeting - I just thought the cameraman was filming it for the Mayor's office, or the green party who hosted the meeting, or for his own collection.)
The flash has whited out my daughter's picture that she drew for the children over there, but I was really proud that at 5, she's already written "Magyar".
Video [11]
I can't blame them. I stuck out like a sore thumb - what were they supposed to make of this strange pilgrim? Groundbreaking eco disaster tourist? Greenpeace snoop? Industrial espionage? So there was an inevitability about the police car slowing down and two armed cops (one with shades) stepping out and asking what I was doing. I know enough Hungarian to say (in a decent accent) "I'm sorry, I come from England. I don't speak Hungarian. Do you speak English?" They didn't, but they wanted to see my passport. And they hadn't heard of Miklos Mold either. Maybe these are out of town cops. (Oddly enough, for a trip full of oddly enoughs - funny how coincidences multiply when you pray - oddly enough the guy I sat next to on the flight back, his cousin is working as a police officer in the area. Maybe one of them was him.)
And there are a lot of police cars on patrol, ostensibly to stop theft from vacant (utterly trashed) properties, but some of the locals at the town hall meeting were complaining that they get stopped four times a day to show their papers, but when something is actually getting nicked noone gets, well, nicked.
Anyway, God was ahead of me on this one. About forty minutes earlier, I'd only been in Kolontar for a minute when I rounded the first corner towards the street that leads to the red zone and a car pulled up with a woman called Monika. She spoke English, said she worked for the Christian community down here, and seemed pretty choked when I said why I was in Kolontar. Turns out she's also a journalist from Budapest. Anyway, we didn't chat for long, and I headed towards the reservoir wall, or as close as I dared. And on the way back the police thing happened, and while I was still rummaging in my bag for my passport, she pulled up in her car - instant translation of why I was there, bemused looks on the face of the cops, and then I say "Yes, my dad was a policeman for 30 years, and he collects badges from around the world. Do you have any spares on you?" Shades cop rummages in the glove box for a velcro shoulder flash, then it's photo time.
No documentary is really complete without at least one near-arrest.
Oh, and another thing about God's timing. Monika said that if I'd have arrived a week before, the whole area was still cordoned off by the Disaster Management team, and I wouldn't have been allowed in. So going at Christmas wouldn't have been a smart move. And if I'd've left it until the Easter break, the 250 houses in Devecser would likely have been bulldozed (which I heard they were planning to do in March.)
Video [8]
Példabeszédek 16:9
Az embernek elméje gondolja meg az õ útát; de az Úr igazgatja annak járását.
Proverbs 16:9 (CEV)
We make our own plans, but the LORD decides where we will go.
Spur of the moment stuff, sometimes. Head to this town or try a previously closed door again. Holding loosely to the specific mission of meeting up with the family that lost the two children in the flood, hoping it might still come about, that day, the next. No audible voice on this one, no writing on the wall, just trying to flow and listen out and move.
Video [7]
I couldn't get through any journey to Europe without making fun of food packaging. And I trust I'm not alone in this.
I also love the way tea is marketed in middle Europe. They go for names that suggest English traditions, history, status, class. So in the local CBA supermarket you can choose bizarre fruity combinations from Milford (which sounds like someone calling for their butler), Pickwick (think Dickens, think our local Aldi), and my favourite Sir Morton. Images abounded of tea clippers and Victorian gents. And if you think I'm making it up, then take this you cad, you bounder:
If I was introducing a rival brand into the already saturated market I'd probably go for Lord Tommy. While I'm banging on about Hungarian food retailing, there's a major barrier to the concept of Fair Trade. That reassuring logo was nowhere to be found. And if I remember to get round to it, I've a whole treatise on the brew about the use of English to brand those energy drinks. In Hungary you can get Hell, Burn, Spirit, Monster...
Video [5]
Early Friday morning, Marianna and Zsolti already left for work, my eyes only partially opening.
Video [3]
What's left of Kastely Park, Devecser. Try to picture it like your local park, mostly green, flower beds, bushes and stuff.
Video [1]
Back in Rugby now. If I was smart enough I'd do yesterday's route as a shape poem, but it goes something like this:
Budapest-Deli station-metro 2 to Deak-metro 3 to Kobanya-Kispest-bus 200E to Budapest Ferihegy Airport Terminal 1-London Luton Airport-Err, bus to Milton Keynes Central doesn't exist like it did on the trainline.com timetable, it left ten minutes ago-quick, phone the rail enquiries and get on bus to Luton Airport Parkway rail station at same time-find out en route that there are no more trains from Luton Airport Parkway-take £50 taxi to Milton Keynes Central-train to Rugby-taxi home-hug wife-don't wake the children...
But with lots of sitting around on transport comes lots of chances to talk to people on the way: an Italian violinist on her way back to Modena, taxi drivers (well, they can't actually move, classic captive audience), a Hungarian guy living in London on his way back from seeing his dentist in Budapest (there and back by plane in the same day - it still worked out cheaper for him somehow), people who offered to help me on the metro or at the train station, cashiers at the National Gallery...
Anyway, I want to get some of the story out, and the quickest way for me will be some rough edit video clips. That way I get to spend time with my family, get back into the swing of school work. So it won't be polished, or a nice linear narrative, there'll be gaps. But hey, dip into what you fancy.
And besides, every keystroke is dedicated to the people of Devecser and Kolontar, so if you reckon I've gone nuts with the amount of detail or putting myself in the spotlight, then sorry, but I'm kind of doing it to honour the likes of Gagarin and Marianna, or the guys who stopped the car to give me a lift to Kolontar, to the people whose lives have been turned upside down and are still battling for answers, justice, hope and restoration.
So here's clip 1, from Thursday lunchtime, the train into Devescer. It's come from Ajka, through Kolontar, in the direction of the red tide:
Budapest-Deli station-metro 2 to Deak-metro 3 to Kobanya-Kispest-bus 200E to Budapest Ferihegy Airport Terminal 1-London Luton Airport-Err, bus to Milton Keynes Central doesn't exist like it did on the trainline.com timetable, it left ten minutes ago-quick, phone the rail enquiries and get on bus to Luton Airport Parkway rail station at same time-find out en route that there are no more trains from Luton Airport Parkway-take £50 taxi to Milton Keynes Central-train to Rugby-taxi home-hug wife-don't wake the children...
But with lots of sitting around on transport comes lots of chances to talk to people on the way: an Italian violinist on her way back to Modena, taxi drivers (well, they can't actually move, classic captive audience), a Hungarian guy living in London on his way back from seeing his dentist in Budapest (there and back by plane in the same day - it still worked out cheaper for him somehow), people who offered to help me on the metro or at the train station, cashiers at the National Gallery...
Anyway, I want to get some of the story out, and the quickest way for me will be some rough edit video clips. That way I get to spend time with my family, get back into the swing of school work. So it won't be polished, or a nice linear narrative, there'll be gaps. But hey, dip into what you fancy.
And besides, every keystroke is dedicated to the people of Devecser and Kolontar, so if you reckon I've gone nuts with the amount of detail or putting myself in the spotlight, then sorry, but I'm kind of doing it to honour the likes of Gagarin and Marianna, or the guys who stopped the car to give me a lift to Kolontar, to the people whose lives have been turned upside down and are still battling for answers, justice, hope and restoration.
So here's clip 1, from Thursday lunchtime, the train into Devescer. It's come from Ajka, through Kolontar, in the direction of the red tide:
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Szombat (Saturday)
Hotel Mercure,
near Budapest-Deli station
A first installment from the road, but the main content will have to get churned out once I"m back in England, and even then I imagine it"ll take a few weeks to get typed up.
This keyboard is a bit confusing, and I can"t work out the system for apostrophes, and the Z and Y keys actually type the opposite to what they say...
So I+ll keep it short, and get out into the chilly sunshine to see some of Budapest itself (the bits beyond the nearest supermarket, at least).
Five ways that God showed up on my trip to Devecser and Kolontar, bearing in mind how little was sorted out in advance.
1. Getting to stay at the OM mission base in Erd that first night, and for other people to sort of accidentally be there (sorting out paperwork for second hand cars they"d just bought) and the way they were around to pray me out the next morning. Istvan, a big St Nicholas/Falstaff of a man, grabbed me by each shoulder and prayed in Hungarian, then Marcel in Dutch (I even figured out he was praying for my wife and children back home, which really moved me). Great camerarderie.
2. Providing Gagarin, a guy who works for the Mayor's office (found that apostrophe now!) in Devecser, the only English speaker they had, and the way he offered to give me a place to stay, how he and his girlfriend Marianna took me under their wing, took me for dinner, showed me the public meeting in the town hall...
3. ...which just happened to be on that night. And how He gave me a chance to speak to the people there and declare God's hope and justice for that place, and how He sorted out translators for me (and how later the next day I heard from a student at the high school how she'd seen it on television...)
4. How he showed me someone at the local elementary school (actually, that was a word through Attila, team leader at the OM base, to seek out the local school as a route in) who spoke English and then gave me a chance the following day to meet the English teacher at the high school (Kate) who just happened to be on a free when I turned up, unannounced, which led to a chance to meet a couple of students, Boggy and Viktoria, who mostly giggled.
5. Getting to meet the local Roman Catholic priest, Miklos Mold, who hadn't been there the day before (but his mother, it turned out, had tried to explain that to me at the time, with gestures and expressions), and in a strange hybrid of German, Dutch and Italian we managed to talk about why I'd come, and how God gave me the courage to lay hands on him and pray for him.
More later. The Hotel Mercure is queasily over heated and I need to sort out some water pronto.
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Preparations
Spent some time this morning getting my two superstars ready for what daddy's going to be up to later this week.
Video mugshot
Just so that Jill Hitchcock at OM Hungary has a bit more of a clue about what I look like. [Jill's going to be picking me up from the airport on Wednesday. I'm just so chuffed that I get to spend some time with the OM team before heading off to Kolontar. ]
For more on OM's response to the disaster, click here.
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
Decisiveness
Just to let you know where I reckon the Holy Spirit and I are up to with this whole Kolontar thing. The bare bones of it are:
I've booked a flight out to Budapest for this coming half-term. And I much prefer Wizzair's cool purple planes to those tangerine Easyjet things. As for helping me overcome my plane iffyness, I'll mostly be standing on all those biblical truths about not fearing stuff.
I'm still trying to make contact with some English-speaking Christians on the ground (well, those in Budapest who've been out to Kolontar since it happened), so do pray for the right things to fall into place beforehand if they need to, but I'm also not trying to over-engineer this thing. I know I want that deliberate space for God to move and provide and be at work, and for my reliance on Him alone, so I don't want an itinerary all stitched up in advance. If all I do is go there and pray for three days, maybe I'll discover that's what He wants of me and I'll be obedient to that.
It's like I heard Bill Johnson say a few weeks back, some things from God are deposited in a moment that take months to unravel. And that's how it feels to me. It still seems on the face of it a daft and irrational thing to do, but I'm choosing to listen to and see by Faith and thereby access all of my Father's resources, all the invisible, supernatural, eternal, above-and-beyond, Kingdom stuff. It's like Jesus putting mud in the eye of the blind - nuts on the face of it, but since it was what He heard and saw His Father do...
I've booked a flight out to Budapest for this coming half-term. And I much prefer Wizzair's cool purple planes to those tangerine Easyjet things. As for helping me overcome my plane iffyness, I'll mostly be standing on all those biblical truths about not fearing stuff.
I'm still trying to make contact with some English-speaking Christians on the ground (well, those in Budapest who've been out to Kolontar since it happened), so do pray for the right things to fall into place beforehand if they need to, but I'm also not trying to over-engineer this thing. I know I want that deliberate space for God to move and provide and be at work, and for my reliance on Him alone, so I don't want an itinerary all stitched up in advance. If all I do is go there and pray for three days, maybe I'll discover that's what He wants of me and I'll be obedient to that.
It's like I heard Bill Johnson say a few weeks back, some things from God are deposited in a moment that take months to unravel. And that's how it feels to me. It still seems on the face of it a daft and irrational thing to do, but I'm choosing to listen to and see by Faith and thereby access all of my Father's resources, all the invisible, supernatural, eternal, above-and-beyond, Kingdom stuff. It's like Jesus putting mud in the eye of the blind - nuts on the face of it, but since it was what He heard and saw His Father do...
Five random things about me and Hungary
1. I was watching this amazing Stomp! DVD that I got from my sister for Christmas. We've all been getting into it in a big way, and plenty of household objects and paintwork now have dents in them because of our non-stop percussion around the place. We watch little sections here and there, and tonight, before bedtime, I noticed that part of the scenery was a battered old road sign that said: BUDAPEST.
2. The last time I was in Hungary was in the Summer of 1990. It was a University-holidays-Inter-railing four week thing. I guess Rachel Canning didn't really know what she was letting herself in for, but those were my dark, intense and melodramatic collegiate days and there were galleries to see and culture to be had. [Just for the record, my many years of watching the Gary Shandling Show had trained me in how to be a platonic friend and travelling partner, and besides, Rachel already had a boyfriend, so rest assured, there was no hanky-panky.] Anyway, our last stop, our furthest point east, was Lake Balaton. I think we rented a cottage in Balatonfured for two nights, and it was all rocking-seats-in-the-garden and reading EM Forster and Aldous Huxley (me) and Anita Brookner's Hotel Du Lac (Rachel) and the sun setting on the Lake and the thoughts of thousands of Ukrainian copper miners holidaying there for a week. And then we got the train back, from Balatonfured to Reading, and it took over a day to retrace our steps through Europe, and I slept the longest, deepest sleep I can remember (and still crave), the kind of sleep Frodo gets when he's recovering from his injuries in the golden rays of Rivendell or something.
3. World Cup 1982. I'm 11, and collecting the Panini stickers. And it strikes me that lots of their players are called Laszlo. Fast forward to visiting in 1990, and it still strikes me that there are a whole lot of Laszlos around.
4. 1990 again. And I think to myself "Budapest already has an IKEA with a blue ball pool for kids? Boy, perestroika's happening before my very (juvenile) eyes."
5. I managed to play in the Cambridge vs Oxford Varsity American Football Game in 1990. But don't get over-excited, it was just flag football, no helmets or concussions, and I only played the last two minutes. One of the team captains was Andre Czegledy-Nagy, and I remember naively asking for his address in Budapest in case I could stay there during the summer (I really was reading a lot of books and watching a lot of world cinema at the time, I thought of myself as a bit of a Huck Finn in a road movie). Actually, I asked lots of them for their addresses at the after-match meal at some Garfunkels place in Oxford, passing round my American Architects Association address book to these Ivy League post-grad wide receivers. Honestly, I used to get so star-struck with real life Americans, they must have been thinking why is this nineteen year old twerp asking for my home address? But weirdly enough, it's that out-on-a-limb, anything-is-possible, pick-up-a-train-timetable-and-go attitude that I miss, and therefore there's an element of trying to recapture a flicker of it this time around.
[Ok, actually 6 random things.]
6. There was this Chemistry teacher called Mr Imre Nagy at Loughborough Grammar School, and although he never taught me, he did run the astronomy club in the lunchtimes, and he leant me some videos of the Voyager missions and I used to show them to my sister and it used to blow our minds. Actually, he also asked some deep philosophical questions too, like do we change the things we're observing by observing them, and if the universe has an end then what's stopping it, which was pretty heavy for a lunch hour unwind with NASA).
2. The last time I was in Hungary was in the Summer of 1990. It was a University-holidays-Inter-railing four week thing. I guess Rachel Canning didn't really know what she was letting herself in for, but those were my dark, intense and melodramatic collegiate days and there were galleries to see and culture to be had. [Just for the record, my many years of watching the Gary Shandling Show had trained me in how to be a platonic friend and travelling partner, and besides, Rachel already had a boyfriend, so rest assured, there was no hanky-panky.] Anyway, our last stop, our furthest point east, was Lake Balaton. I think we rented a cottage in Balatonfured for two nights, and it was all rocking-seats-in-the-garden and reading EM Forster and Aldous Huxley (me) and Anita Brookner's Hotel Du Lac (Rachel) and the sun setting on the Lake and the thoughts of thousands of Ukrainian copper miners holidaying there for a week. And then we got the train back, from Balatonfured to Reading, and it took over a day to retrace our steps through Europe, and I slept the longest, deepest sleep I can remember (and still crave), the kind of sleep Frodo gets when he's recovering from his injuries in the golden rays of Rivendell or something.
3. World Cup 1982. I'm 11, and collecting the Panini stickers. And it strikes me that lots of their players are called Laszlo. Fast forward to visiting in 1990, and it still strikes me that there are a whole lot of Laszlos around.
4. 1990 again. And I think to myself "Budapest already has an IKEA with a blue ball pool for kids? Boy, perestroika's happening before my very (juvenile) eyes."
5. I managed to play in the Cambridge vs Oxford Varsity American Football Game in 1990. But don't get over-excited, it was just flag football, no helmets or concussions, and I only played the last two minutes. One of the team captains was Andre Czegledy-Nagy, and I remember naively asking for his address in Budapest in case I could stay there during the summer (I really was reading a lot of books and watching a lot of world cinema at the time, I thought of myself as a bit of a Huck Finn in a road movie). Actually, I asked lots of them for their addresses at the after-match meal at some Garfunkels place in Oxford, passing round my American Architects Association address book to these Ivy League post-grad wide receivers. Honestly, I used to get so star-struck with real life Americans, they must have been thinking why is this nineteen year old twerp asking for my home address? But weirdly enough, it's that out-on-a-limb, anything-is-possible, pick-up-a-train-timetable-and-go attitude that I miss, and therefore there's an element of trying to recapture a flicker of it this time around.
[Ok, actually 6 random things.]
6. There was this Chemistry teacher called Mr Imre Nagy at Loughborough Grammar School, and although he never taught me, he did run the astronomy club in the lunchtimes, and he leant me some videos of the Voyager missions and I used to show them to my sister and it used to blow our minds. Actually, he also asked some deep philosophical questions too, like do we change the things we're observing by observing them, and if the universe has an end then what's stopping it, which was pretty heavy for a lunch hour unwind with NASA).
Saturday, 1 January 2011
latest thoughts
I didn't feel the timing was right to fly out to Hungary this Christmas, so February half term seems more likely now.
I had a good chat with a guy who has the same heart for doing something for the victims of trauma in Eastern Europe, (the first of many I hope), someone who's walked the walk for years and who I feel has a lot of wisdom about this, so that all goes into the pot too. And I'm waiting to hear back from people who sent teams in the immediate aftermath, along with the odd Hungarian photojournalist.
I read an article that said that the 1 year old girl and the three year old boy who died were from the same family.
I had a good chat with a guy who has the same heart for doing something for the victims of trauma in Eastern Europe, (the first of many I hope), someone who's walked the walk for years and who I feel has a lot of wisdom about this, so that all goes into the pot too. And I'm waiting to hear back from people who sent teams in the immediate aftermath, along with the odd Hungarian photojournalist.
I read an article that said that the 1 year old girl and the three year old boy who died were from the same family.
Saturday, 11 December 2010
Why I'm doing this
I'm Matt Clements. I'm pushing 40, I have a gorgeous wife and two fantastic children (a girl and a boy, which is peachy), I work in education and the Kolontar thing has got me all churned up.
I know that disasters, tragedies, however you term them, are happening all over the world, for pretty much most of the time. I'm more aware of some than others, either because of their immense scale or how much coverage they get, what language the victims speak, whether I'm trying to avoid the news or overdose on it (I go in phases like that.)
So I don't know why the toxic spill at Kolontar has particularly hit home more than others, but I've got a few suspicions.
Sometimes I can't shift the thought from my head of the three year old boy who died in the torrent. My son's three. He lives in a town with an immense industrial plant on its outskirts. He's mostly making me laugh and wonder and downright enjoy, what with all the things he says and the daft faces he pulls and his drumming and dancing and running and a hundred other antics. And this other 3 year old was probably just like him, and every day now must be some living nightmare for his parents, and a big part of me just wants to find them and hold them and cry with them and let them know that someone on a different part of the planet is thinking about them and praying for them.
Part of me knows that I could wire some money to the Hungarian Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, but something won't shift for me in terms of making a more personal connection with the parents who lost children in the flood. I just want to stand with them and find out their needs and think about ways of supporting them over the long haul.
I don't know what will happen, but I want to take a step closer to finding out. So I'm chewing things over and listening out to God for whether I should go to Kolontar for a few days over the Christmas break, and see what that brings.
[I think about Ben Cooley at Hope forJustice signing off some blog post with "Take risks" instead of "Take care", and I've spent plenty of energy these past few years managing risk (in school, at home, in general) and I've developed some very risk-averse behaviours, but if I've heard right on this one then I really I don't want to miss the boat.
[the boat bit: so I was just doodling a logo as a way of getting a bit of mental traction on this stuff, and thinking about the way the last two letters of Kolontar just needed a [k] adding to them to make ark, and how that connected with flood and rescue and safety. And a day or so later I needed another sheet of paper to scribble on and I grabbed a worksheet left over from my kids' Sunday School class last year and it centred on the flood in Genesis. So I took that as a nudge.]
I know that disasters, tragedies, however you term them, are happening all over the world, for pretty much most of the time. I'm more aware of some than others, either because of their immense scale or how much coverage they get, what language the victims speak, whether I'm trying to avoid the news or overdose on it (I go in phases like that.)
So I don't know why the toxic spill at Kolontar has particularly hit home more than others, but I've got a few suspicions.
Sometimes I can't shift the thought from my head of the three year old boy who died in the torrent. My son's three. He lives in a town with an immense industrial plant on its outskirts. He's mostly making me laugh and wonder and downright enjoy, what with all the things he says and the daft faces he pulls and his drumming and dancing and running and a hundred other antics. And this other 3 year old was probably just like him, and every day now must be some living nightmare for his parents, and a big part of me just wants to find them and hold them and cry with them and let them know that someone on a different part of the planet is thinking about them and praying for them.
Part of me knows that I could wire some money to the Hungarian Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, but something won't shift for me in terms of making a more personal connection with the parents who lost children in the flood. I just want to stand with them and find out their needs and think about ways of supporting them over the long haul.
I don't know what will happen, but I want to take a step closer to finding out. So I'm chewing things over and listening out to God for whether I should go to Kolontar for a few days over the Christmas break, and see what that brings.
[I think about Ben Cooley at Hope forJustice signing off some blog post with "Take risks" instead of "Take care", and I've spent plenty of energy these past few years managing risk (in school, at home, in general) and I've developed some very risk-averse behaviours, but if I've heard right on this one then I really I don't want to miss the boat.
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