Surviving the Hobbit Hole

I have a fantasy about being part of the persecuted church. I am captured for my faith and put into a dark dank little room and left there to suffer in solitude. But, in my imagination, I pray. I sense the presence of Jesus and meditate on his beauty. My circumstances become irrelevant as the glory overwhelms me. The divine beauty lifts me up.

Maybe it’s good to put such positive pictures in my head. But every now and then reality marches in and knocks them out.

Our current reality is called “The Hobbit Hole.” Hal and I gave it that name in order to inject a bit of humor into our living situation.

Several years ago, the executive council of the Friends Church here in La Paz fixed up this little apartment for us. It had been the office of the Bible school staff and when they relocated, the council painted it a peach color, put in a ply-wood partition and a miniscule kitchen counter and sink, and invited us to live here during our yearly visits to Bolivia. It was a loving gesture and we receive it in that spirit. It’s conveniently located near the office of the history commission we’re a part of, and right in the hub of activity of the Bolivian Friends Church headquarters. Moreover, it comes with its own small but private bathroom.

We’re grateful.

And yet….

People here have their own nickname for this space. They call it “The Refrigerator.” Truth be told, it’s small, dark, cold, and ugly. When we first moved in, we referred to it as “The Cave,” but later opted for the more positive “Hobbit Hole.” The peach-colored walls help.

The apartment does have one large window—that looks four feet out onto the unfinished brick

wall of the church. Not one beam of sunlight dares to enter. Ever.

Our “Hole” is located on the lower level of the large Friends school in back of the main church. Above us is a primary classroom, and from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., the kids shuffle, stomp, recite in unison and scrap their desks across the floor. In the time between the morning and the afternoon shifts, rascally little boys and girls run up to our door, bang on it, and run away giggling. We choose to see the humor in all of this.

But at night, the place is dark and silent. Sleep is sweet.

So, we ask ourselves, “How do we choose life in this particular situation?” There is much we can do. Rugs help warm up the floors (tile over cement), as does the small but efficient space heater. We’ve brought in trees, mountains, flowers and even two affectionate giraffes with calendar photos on our partition.  Pictures by our artistic granddaughter, Gwen, add both joy and beauty. We try hard to keep things neat and orderly. Our table serves as a center for study, meals and hospitality. Yes, people do visit us here. We have seating for five if we bring in the stools that serve as our bedside tables. If more show up, some of us stand. It tends to keep visits short.

 Living room/dining room/office

Thank you, Gwen!

A place to fix simple meals

But I have to admit that my surroundings do affect my spirit. There are days when I fight depression, when the lack of sunlight and the sheer smallness of this space begin to give me a spiritual claustrophobia. I fight the temptation to give in, but this takes its toll on my energy level.

So we make an effort to get outside every day, to visit our friends around the city, to program adventures that let us see real trees and flowers growing out of the ground.

And in the early mornings, as I wait before the Lord, there are times when his beauty becomes more real than anything else, and glory fills even the Hobbit Hole.

For all the other times, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”

Amen.

Leaving home, returning home

Once again we’re getting ready to change planets. Our son David will pick us up at 2:00 tomorrow morning and take us to the airport for our flight to Bolivia where we will spend the next five months.

Our friend Timoteo Choque will meet us at the La Paz airport Thursday morning at 6:00. It will be good to see him—and so many others—after an absence of a year and a half. We will spend the next months with the marvelous team of Bolivian Quakers, men and women, who have been working with us these past five years to research and write the 100-year history of the Bolivian Friends Church.

We plan to compare our findings and try to fill in the gaps. I look forward to scores of interviews, long discussions and time to re-write and edit. We hope five months will be long enough.

But this time, apprehension mingles with excitement. We were in our 20s when we first flew to Bolivia in 1972. Obviously we’re no longer in that phase of life. Our bodies now struggle more to adapt to the high altitude. While every bit as motivated by a sense of God’s call, we’re more vulnerable and certainly not as energetic as we used to be. We depend on the prayers of our loved ones—which is not a bad place to be.

And we have a different sense of home. While in many ways we’re going home to Bolivia, our lives have shifted since those early days of following God to a far-off land. Last year we took the plunge into a new adventure and moved into Friendsview Retirement Community. It was a major change and it’s taken us a while to adapt.

But we have adapted. This upcoming trip has helped me realize this. When people here express alarm that we will be gone five months, I’ve sensed some grief myself. It is a long time to be separated from my new family, and that sensation has helped me see that this is now home, too.

(Concern over separation from kids and grandkids is, of course, a given.)

So tomorrow we both leave home (with a certain sense of sadness) and we return home (with a great deal of anticipation).

More than all that we know that we carry home with us. Thesese of Lisieux once gazed upon the face of Jesus and prayed, “Your Face becomes my home, the radiance of my days, my realm and sunlit land.”

Oh, Lord, may it be so.