I'm marrying my best friend

Pete and I are getting married!

Here's the wonderful Save the Date that Satpreet made for us and the unbelievably adorable response I got from my cousin Dawn (with her children Ashlyn and Luke).

It's hot here.

So, it is official.
Although I was hoping to return to the States earlier than my original date, I am destined to stay.
Until June 12th that is.

I've been back in Amritsar now for a week and a half and have spent most of my time reading, learning to cook Indian dishes, sweating, and drinking water.
The weather turned pretty darn hot a few weeks ago, but for the past week it has been especially miserable.
It's consistently above 105 degrees during the day (113 degrees on Wednesday and Thursday), and although the internet tells me that it cools down to the 80's at night, I don't think that's the case in Naniji and Nanaji's home.
We're on the 2nd floor of a flat with no air conditioning.
There are fans on the ceiling, but the fans honestly don't seem to cool things down a bit, just stir hot air around making one even more aware of the oppressive heat.

It really is oppressive.
I spend my nights miserably tossing and turning on top of sweat soaked sheets.
I am happy to declare, however, that I think I have found a (good enough) solution!
It involves a shower and a fan.

Step 1: Remove sweaty clothing
Step 2: Shower
Step 3: Avoid towel. Instead, simply stand in bedroom with ceiling fan on full blast and let evaporation do all the work.

This process allows approximately 60 seconds of relief.

Yes. In the past 24 hours I have taken EIGHT showers total (2 of which were in the middle of the night) and I have a feeling this number will increase exponentially as the days and nights go on.


So here's the thing.
India gets hot during the summer.
Like really freaking hot.
To the point where lots of people won't go anywhere outside between 12pm-4pm.


What I don't understand, is why people continue to cook food that's spicy enough to heat a person up in the dead of a Michigan winter, during summer.

Fruit and Vegetable Stands.

I'm going to miss being able to simply walk down the street to buy whatever fruits and vegetables I desire.
No car is needed. No cash register. No line.
Just my solid two feet and a few rupees.

A Passage From The Fifth Mountain

 I just finished reading Paulo Coehlo's novel The Fifth Mountain.
The book is filled with black lines left behind by the ink of my pen.
There was so much in the novel that I connected to...in ways that I can't fully describe.
I felt like the words on the pages were a reflection of my thoughts, my doubts, and my struggles. But it went beyond mere reflection;  I found inspiration and encouragement within the pages as well.

There are so many passages and sentences that I want to post on here, but I will stick with one for now.
It's long, but I encourage you to actually read it.
For those who know me well, you might understand why I connect so much with this.
And for those who don't know me well, or maybe do but don't see the connection, maybe these words will inspire something for you.

That Night, a man entered Jacob's tent and wrestled with him until the break of day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he said, "Let me go."
Jacob answered, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me."
Then the man said to him: "As a prince, has thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. What is thy name?" And he said, Jacob.
And the man answered: "Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel."

"Elijah awoke with a start and looked at the firmament. That was the story that was missing!

Long ago, the patriarch Jacob had encamped, and during the night, someone had entered his tent and wrestled with him until daybreak. Jacob accepted the combat, even knowing that his adversary was the Lord. At morning, he had still not been defeated: and the combat ceased only when God agreed to bless him.

The story had been transmitted from generation to generation so that no one would ever forget: sometimes it was necessary to struggle with God. Every human being at some time had tragedy enter his life: it might be the destruction of a city, the death of a son, an unproved accusation, a sickness that left one lame forever. At that moment, God challenged one to confront Him and to answer His question: 'Why dost thou cling fast to an existence so short and so filled with suffering? What is the meaning of thy struggle?'

The man who did not know how to answer this question would resign himself, while another, one who sought a meaning to existence, feeling that God had been unjust, would challenge his own destiny. It was at this moment that fire of a different type descended from the heavens--not the fire that kills but the kind that tears down ancient walls and imparts to each human being his true possibilities. Cowards never allow their hearts to blaze with this fire; all they desire is for the changed situation to quickly return to what it was before, so they can go on living their lives and thinking in their customary way. The brave, however, set afire that which was old and, even at the cost of great internal suffering, abandon everything, including God, and continue onward.

'The brave are always stubborn.'

From heaven, God smiles contentedly, for it was this that He desired, that each person take into his hands the responsibility for his own life. For, in the final analysis, He had given His children the greatest of all gifts: the capacity to choose and determine their acts.

Only those men and women with the sacred flame in their hearts had the courage to confront Him. And they alone knew the path back to His love, for they understood that tragedy was not punishment but challenge.

Elijah retraced in his mind each of his steps. Upon leaving the carpentry shop, he had accepted his mission without dispute. Even though it was real--and he felt it was--he had never had the opportunity to see what was happening in the paths that he had chosen not to follow because he feared losing his faith, his dedication, his will. He thought it was very dangerous to experience the path of common folk--he might become accustomed to it and find pleasure in what he saw. He did not understand that he was a person like any other, even if he heard angels and now and again received orders from God; in his certainty that he knew what he wanted, he had acted in the selfsame way as those who at no time in their lives had ever made an important decision.

He had fled from doubt. From defeat. From moments of indecision. But the Lord was generous and had led him to the abyss of the unavoidable, to show him that man must choose--and not accept--his fate.

Many, many years before, on a night like this, Jacob had not allowed God to leave without blessing him. It was then that the Lord had asked: 'What is thy name?'

The essential point was this: to have a name. When Jacob had answered, God had baptized him Israel. Each one has a name from birth but must learn to baptize his life with the word he has chosen to give meaning to that life.

'I am Akbar,' she had said.

The destruction of the city and the death of the woman he loved had been necessary for Elijah to understand that he too must have a name. And at that moment he named his life Liberation."


Coehlo, Paul. The Fifth Mountain. pgs 203-206.

The one thing I am truly grateful I brought

That would be Wendell Berry's book of poetry called LEAVINGS.

Never before have I experienced a book in which every single page spoke directly into my soul.


As I type these words I imagine my mother reading this entry and responding to me later in conversation that, "Kayla that's the role that Scripture should take. That's how you should feel about reading God's Word."

But this is a time in my life in which I feel almost nothing while reading Scripture. Just confusion, frustration, and sometimes even anger. Anger because I don't know how to read Scripture anymore. I no longer know how to interpret the words on the pages.
What should I take literally? What should I take metaphorically? What should I read as being completely 100% accurate and what should I read as a historical account written from one perspective? What should be interpreted in a cultural context and what transcends all cultures?


So since I don't know how to approach what I read...how to internalize and interpret...I have a hard time confronting the pages. It only leads to questions and questions and questions that don't seem to ever be answered.

Going back to Wendell Berry though; right now, in this country, I feel closest to God when I read his writings. Maybe this isn't how it should be, but this is how it is. And I am grateful to have at least this.


"I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.

I have no love
except it come from Thee.

Help me, please, to carry 
this candle against the wind."




VII.

"Having written some pages in favor of Jesus,
I receive a solemn communication crediting me
with the possession of a "theology" by which
I acquire the strange dignity of being wrong
forever or forever right. Have I gauged exactly
enough the weights of sins? Have I found
too much of the Hereafter in the Here? Or
the other way around? Have I found too much
pleasure, too much beauty and goodness, in this
our unreturning world? O Lord, please forgive
any smidgen of such distinctions I may
have still in my mind. I meant to leave them
all behind a long time ago. If I'm a theologian
I am one to the extent I have learned to duck
when the small, haughty doctrines fly overhead,
dropping their loads of whitewash at random
on the faces of those who look toward Heaven.
Look down, look down, and save your soul
by honester dirt, that receives with a lordly
indifference this off-fall of the air. Christmas
night and Easter morning are this soil's only laws.
The depth and volume of the waters of baptism,
the true taxonomy of sins, the field marks
of those most surely saved, God's own only true
interpretation of the Scripture: these would be
causes of eternal amusement, could we forget
how we have hated one another, how vilified
and hurt and killed one another, bloodying
the world, by means of such questions, wrongly
asked, never to be rightly answered, but asked and
wrongly answered, hour after hour, day after day,
year after year — such is my belief — in Hell."

Next?

And for all those who are wondering what's next for me since I still have six more weeks in India...

I will either be heading to Dehradun to work on a farm or returning to Amritsar and hopefully take sewing lessons.

It is still unknown.

Soon to be Solo

The day is almost upon us when Satpreet and I go our separate ways.

Of course there will be a lot that happens before then.
 We still have Navi's engagement to go to on Saturday, and all the final preparation for it tomorrow (I've been informed we're getting henna done. Woot woot!).

But to be completely honest I'm sad to say goodbye.
There has always been so much depth to my friendship with Satpreet. But this trip has given our friendship width.
So much width.
And it's sad to know that this probably won't happen again. I'm not referring to the India part. Not even the part where we're together nearly 24 hours a day. I just mean we probably won't ever be in the same place for this long again.

But I am thankful for the time that we have had. So unbelievably thankful.
We've learned so much more about each other and the world these past few weeks. I think a big part of the reason why I haven't written very much in my blog or journal, is because we are constantly processing things together in conversation. By the time my fingers get a hold of a pen or a keyboard I feel like there's nothing left to express. I've already let the contents of my heart spill out in speech.

So I will miss Satpreet come next week when she returns to the States and I move on to whatever it is that I'm going to do. But I am excited for the summer she has ahead at Penland. It will be full of creativity, beautiful art, and wonderful people. And I'm excited for what lies ahead in her future. Because God has given her a mind and a spirit that is capable of so much.