Transitions

Saturday, June 21:

William Bridges wrote an insightful book entitled "Transitions" in the early 1980s and recently updated. He identified the various characteristics of transitions and illustrated them quite effectively. The most common characteristic is chaos. Lebanon is a country in transition.

The Baths and the Sniders are families in transition as sons Joel (Bath) and Stephen (Snider) will marry their betrotheds today. Pray for them.

Interestingly today is a transitional day for the world. It is first day of summer, the longest day of the year. It represents a subtle change as the days will gradually shorten until December 21. Our transition is more dramatic (at least from our perspective) as we conclude our time at the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary and the Middle East Conference and move to a local Catholic retreat center for the balance of our time here. This blog might go dark until we return to the states depending upon availability of service.

We are well, but worn. These have been full academic days, with site visits and dinners in the evenings. Yesterday we attended the Institute of Divine Theosophy for a dialogue on peace making with Daniel Buttry and a Shi'a cleric. It was a practical application of our studies of the week and Leslie made a Muslim friend (school psychologist). Many Middle Easteners are quite curious about Leslie.

Earlier in the week, Daniel Chetti took us us to a group home for street children, many of whom are Muslim. Again, we were confronted with the trajedies of this country as 35 to 50 children have been diverted here by the courts for care. Many of them are simply cast off by their mothers for a variety of reasons.

In the coming days we will visit several baptist mission sites around Lebanon and I will attempt to keep you posted as time allows. Our traveling mates are delightful and sensitive including Ed Hobart from Massachuetts, Fred Wear from Missouri, Jonathan Hilshire from New York, and Matthew Peters from Arizona. Gary and Mary Rice from Coos Bay round out our team.

Peace be upon you all. rtm