Romania and its Effects on the Psyche

The square sounds of skateboards, heels on stone, trap music. It smells like dough. A prominent theater building seems to be a feature of these benches and rails and small gatherings of people, rather than the opposite. This warm street in the early-evening of downtown, a ministry unto our hearts, as we were a ministry unto its occupants. 

I crossed the place, eager to find those along the road running down from behind the shoppes and cafes. 

Walking here, there are fewer than can be approached of the appropriate age. Drew has taken to the skateboarders, applauding in his way, very like only him. Veneration flows out of him at a constant rate.

Here, I round a corner of the prominent building to even fewer. All at once, there is in my head, ‘Wait here.’

 

It is here that I should note that I have determined to speak only that which I know to be the truth. I shall do this, or, if only the least is possible in my incomplete understanding, I will attempt not to lie. That to say, this is where I doubted.

That voice could be my own. Is the Spirit genuinely asking me to wait? In the relative stillness of my heart as I write this, I do not know, entirely, yet. Maybe I never will.

I probed for why. I dug, that God might be proved in this asking. Do I delude myself? Am I avoiding the physical place prevalent with encounters? Is this simply easier, to say that I am waiting…? Is this fewer — less — than I am being asked?

Having stood obtusely still, now, for longer than is human in a spot like the middle of a walkway, I grew conscious of my uniquely obnoxious posture, and sat. The stairs I chose were firstly cool, then uncomfortable, not for their construction, but for the young couple tonguing each other immediately to my right. Sitting down just prior to when I did, they got straight-away to it, and I now think that surely he had already swallowed whatever it was he was digging around in there for by the time I sat.

So I sat, accosted by that peripheral, and prayed for them. The shortness of my prayer shames me now, but my flesh could not get over the image playing out in an entire quarter of my vision, no matter which way I looked.

The humor in it all.

 

Who is it for which I am waiting? Am I indeed waiting? Or waits the Spirit in this space that I occupy? This was a great horror to flood my mind: that only I might wait, mistaking my flesh for conviction.

Circular and floundering are all of the thoughts of man.

 

To my right, a young girl who had drug herself quite pathetically by sits down around the corner of the pillars lining that back step of the theater. I could not know this until I had walked forward to a railing overlooking a park walkway where trellises and flowers flank the path, and some gather in the shade of each of the overhangs.

Facing back toward the stairs, I felt called to ask her of herself. Is this the waiting I was doing brought to its purpose? I gather and purpose myself to sit next to her on the stairs. She flinches as I do. 

The tourist approach seemed logical, if mostly easy by its obvious omissions; yes, I am in the area learning the language and the culture, but is that why I am principally here? More difficult rhetoric and questions of honesty to ask myself while I am trying to keep focused.

“Do you speak English?”

(hand gesture) “Yes.”

“A little…?”

“Yes.” This, herein meaning, ‘Go away.’ Even less enthusiasm tailed her next one-word responses. 

“I’m just in the area, [insert tourist spiel]… is there anything I should see?”

An irritated glance and mumbling, half-hearted, what I assumed to be, ‘No.’

I don’t remember either of our responses with perfect accuracy after this, with the exception of her last. ‘I see. Any chance at all you go to school here? [pointing at the nearest University building] I am curious about the University as well.’

‘I am just in high-school, so…’ She spoke the distinction like a hyphenated word, likely so as to emphasize her age to a certain creepy American. 

‘Ahh. A high school in the area?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see.’ And then the tragic, ‘Interesting. Can I ask whereabouts you live…?’ Followed immediately by the minorly-panicking-of-his-suspicious-question-to-a-minor amendment, ‘What neighborhood, I mean.’ 

“Uhmm,” scooting, “Yeah, no.”

‘Oh. Okay…’ Shame and absurdly profound embarrassment, ‘Have a good day. Buna ziua.’

The redundance of this parting phrase, literally meaning, ‘Good day,’ should suffice to portray it. I have been describing this interaction to other people shortly as tragic, and reading back over it does not involve any less certainty than before that it puts a permanent face on my Mt. Rushmore of uncomfy interactions. The fact that she so entirely needed even the smallest encouragement does not help my memory. She later walked away of the same dejection.  

Drew approaches. He had been at the bottom of the near stairs down to the park, seen as I bent over the rail. Just after the last step, he stood talking to kids who had thrilled to ride down the stairs on their bicycles not minutes prior, and then, oh! how thrilling to meet an American.

I had, already, had my moment of injury by this. I was hobbled to tell of how he was being given many a chance that I was not. Reason answered me bluntly:

“There exists a difference in results.”

 

I was ashamed of my thought for my brother.

I felt warmth in the knowledge that his infectious way was a universal language now being understood by children.

I did not, then, stew with suchlike resentment as he trod up to tell me jovially how the police had not cared entirely for the kids riding there, and how he had been left holding the bag as they scattered.

It was quite funny. I laughed. I had already had my moment of discouragement. I need not pick up another.

 

In this way do I often have to get over myself. Father, who am I here for?

If I am really serious, ‘Father, for whom am I here?’ 

Cleanliness of speech. Close to Godliness.

 

I stand again at the balcony. The kids and their scapegoat are gone now, and the park is a quiet lovely to admire: still bustling, but in the way of a mountain creek, constantly flowing. This background noise plays its tune along with the next development.

Studying graffiti, I find one worth photographing. On the other side of the pillar adjacent, I find the name of our ministry partner in massive letters, with no apparent purpose.

“RAUL.”

Below, an arrow. Wholly pursuant to that which I do not usually acknowledge, and unwilling to miss a sign of God, I walk in the direction of the arrow, pushed on in my thinking by the direction it takes me: back toward the busy square. 

For whom am I here? 

There are now even fewer this way. The police, who had strode up the stairs after their tip with Drew, for a moment study me, afterword deciding that whatever threat I posed was at least wildly uninteresting. 

I walked past the parked police car and the staging of a puppet show. Aside, a plaque and stone obelisk to revolutionaries of yesteryear. I studied this for a while, finding that as I did, I once again had the attention of the police.

While Google searching the things of this small monument, and not finding a soul with which to speak, I scolded myself for the astrological logic of it all. I had seen a simple, common name spray-painted with a vague, gloved-hand-like arrow under it, and, wanting not to find folly in my detest of symbols and signs, followed it. I looked for opportunity, and none appeared. How I would later find folly in this human desire to make an equation of God’s goings-on. Surely, if I am doing what I am asked, things ought to go a noticeable degree of well, yes?

I thank God for His great mercy in constructing things that human capacity can not equate. 

“Look for Me.”

I go to look in the only place I believe I had before heard His voice, returning to the back of the theater near the quiet park. Perhaps by now He will have brought them around… those for which He has appointed me to wait.

“If I asked you to speak, would you?”

I saw the faces of those who had passed as I waited in my memory. I felt no specific calling to any of them… I felt a tremendous assumed burden to each of them. The weight of my perceived failure was great.

‘No… it is obvious now that no, I would not. What for my sight should I use, but the ways You have given me to feel and to think? I know no other way. That this has gone poorly is certainly only my fault… Father, teach me another way.’

It is a great human mistake to think quite instantly in ministry that something has gone poorly. The things of God are not measured of human hands.

I determined then, in His silence, that forward will I answer, “Yes.” Whether all had gone poorly or not, I was not sure. To that degree, redeem, God. 

And so He did.

 

I had only a few seconds to stop Stephen. Briskly walking toward the rail over the park, my greeting reached him as he readied his mind for the first step down.

He works with a non-profit. He speaks excellent English. His heart plainly burgeons for the children of Craiova and the surrounding swells of urbanizing landscape. He is studying in economics at the university. He passionately made one, two, and three suggestions for my days in Romania. I suggested to him, as my heart felt led, that I might be back in his country after our short time is finished here. Nevermind the terror internally as I so said. He asked that I contact him in Cluj Napoca or Bucharest, where he hopes to be living as he continues work for the non-profit, should my wife and I return. I told him that I would put him in touch with my contacts at Hope Church to partner in work for the area, should they be willing. 

After garnering contact information and giving him a parting gesture, I rejoiced to hear his praise of my attempts to speak Romanian. This rejoicing continued as I walked back up the slope toward the square, the cops, and the anti-communists in-memoriam.

I could shout. Very unlike me, I could shout. The Christ to replace my old man screamed with joy around inside.

It was sobering to hear in the moments that I made a second walk up toward the square that I am not to allow the impermanent to discourage.

“If that is all — just the one — are you satisfied?”

I mulled quickly. I could honestly say yes as I peered around to find my wife and others to shout at. 

Almost as soon as I had made honest peace with this most recent question, more firmly God bade me on. “But do not sit in this moment… I have more for you to do.”

While I had walked to the front of the theater and been on my way in the suspected direction of the others, I now did an about-face, and walked down through the quiet mountain stream of a park below the square. As I reached its edge, seeing more people sitting quietly ahead on either side, I was reminded of another purpose. Pulling out my phone, I began to walk unto an address sent to me at the beginning of our time in Craiova. It supposedly houses a community of the few remaining Jews in the area (their number now is estimated around forty). As I walked, a text came in from Drew.

‘In the park area.’

Ambiguous.

I crossed a busy street, perhaps, now, a couple kilometers from the theater. At the opposing corner were a beautiful congregation of fountains and paths and trees and hedges and plants, set about like a park.

What was this but the exact park my group were in, as I spotted a few of the small number all chatting with a couple there, my wife amongst them.

 

That evening, we sat long overdue in that park with a practicing Wiccan, not much more than seventeen years-old. I could understand his love of mythology, and my wife could encourage his hopeful friend, giving her a pamphlet for Hope Church, and encouraging her to simply talk with God throughout the day. My wife tells me her eyes lit up as she heard this new revelation about the nature of prayer. To the Wiccan I gave a Psalm to read for protection. He does not know it was prayed over him later.

 

It will be a sad departure to give up Craiova soon. Of what I have learned, I still have meditation to do. To quote a dear friend on this Race, “I do not fully know this thought.”

God mature it all until we do. 

 

** Sensitive information, including and not limited to, the name(s) of the people with whom we interact may be changed for their privacy and safety.