dispatches from South Africa

Sunset Journey

2012-01-13T17:29:00.000-08:00

UPDATE - April 29, 2011

2011-08-28T17:44:00.000-07:00

QUIZ!!!

1. I was born September 14, 1849 and died February 27, 1936. I was a Russian physiologist primarily interested in physiology and natural sciences. Through my study of the digestive function of dogs, I discovered the conditioning reflex. Who am I?
A) Ivan Pavlov
B) B. F. Skinner
C) John Watson
D) Edward Tolman

2. I initially wanted to be a writer, but eventually became a psychologist and one of the leaders of the behaviorist movement. I rejected the concept of free will, instead suggesting that all behaviors are conditioned. Who am I?
A) B. F. Skinner
B) John Watson
C) Ivan Pavlov
D) Edward Tolman

3. This former Roman slave escaped from a school for gladiators, then started a revolt with 90,000 soldiers under his command. He had an effective run, but eventually Crassus and Pompey wiped his forces out and killed him. He's better known because he was the subject of a 1960 film by Stanley Kubrick. Who was this leader of the revolt?
A) Cicero
B) Marcus Antony
C) Pontius Pilate
D) Spartacus

4. This man was the lead defendant in the case of United States v. Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad in 1841. In the 1997 Stephen Spielberg movie "Amistad", he was played by Beninese actor Djimon Hounsou. Who was this African illegally sold into slavery?
A) Dincã
B) Cinqué
C) Dred Scott
D) Malinche

5. This man was captured by Algerian pirates in 1575 and spent five years as the property of the viceroy of Algiers. Later ransomed, he went home to Spain and began working on his writing, eventually giving the world one of its novel-length masterpieces, "Don Quixote". Who was this author and former slave?
A) William Shakespeare
B) Miguel de Cervantes
C) Gabriel Garcia Marquez
D) Chinua Achebe

6. I was the youngest of six children and was very close to my father, a rather well-known psychologist. While I never earned a higher degree, I made numerous contributions to psychology and psychoanalysis, including creating the field of child psychoanalysis and describing the ego's defense mechanisms. Who am I?
A) Anna Freud
B) Melanie Klein
C) Sandra Bem
D) Mary Whiton Calkins

7. My interest in identity began early in life. At temple school, I was teased for being tall, blond, and blue-eyed, while my grammar school classmates rejected me for my Jewish background. I later learned that my biological father had abandoned our family and that the man I thought was my father was actually my stepfather. I spent some time wandering around Europe before becoming interested in psychoanalysis. My contributions to psychology include a theory of psychosocial development and my concept of the identity crisis. Who am I?
A) Albert Bandura
B) Abraham Maslow
C) Carl Rogers
D) Erik Erikson

8. This woman was owned by Thomas Jefferson, and bore him six children, four of whom survived to adulthood (though there is some controversy about the DNA evidence). What was her name?
A) Sally Hemings
B) Hagar
C) Harriet Tubman
D) Margaret Garner

9. This man was the slave of Iadmon of Samos. Later released, he mingled with the rich and famous of ancient Greece (even living in the court of Croesus). Today he is known for his stories of animals, each of which gives a moral meant to teach men. Who was this creator of fables?
A) Agamemnon
B) Thucydides
C) Aesop
D) Homer

10. This former slave, freed by the American Civil War, became an educator. He was the first leader of the Tuskegee Institute, and stayed in that position until he died in 1915. Who was this author of "Up From Slavery"?
A) Samuel C. Armstrong
B) W. E. B. Du Bois
C) Booker T. Washington
D) Henry Huttleston Rogers

11. BONUS - I failed in business in ’31.
I ran as a state legislator and lost in ’32.
I tried business again in ’33 and failed again.
My sweetheart died in ’35.
I had a nervous breakdown the next year in ’36.
I ran for state elector in ’40 after my health improved.
I was defeated for Congress in ’43, defeated again for Congress in ’48, defeated when I ran for the Senate in ’55, and defeated for the vice presidency of the US in ’56.
I ran for Senate again in ’58 and lost.
I decided to try, again. I ran for the presidency of the United States and won.

UPDATE

Last weekend was pretty crazy. It was Holy week last week. My a capella group was asked to sing for a Maundy Thursday event (we didn’t). I Joined a liturgical pray group for a Good Friday morning reflection. I took the day off, and then went to Good Friday service at night. Saturday we held an Eggstravaganza in the park near my home. I hung out with a good friend, Bianca, in the afternoon, caught up with Min on her birthday, and then attended a Holy Saturday Night Vigil at a Greek Orthodox church from 12 – 2 AM. Then I woke up to serve at 3 Easter Sunday services after which I went to a Greek Easter Brunch and played some Greek Easter games. Whew!

My church sends people out on international mission trips each year and really wants to see everyone go on one. We have a team going to Greece in a month so they wanted to attend the Greek Orthodox service and have the Greek meal. It was an interesting experience. One of my favorite writers is like me in that he’s experienced many different denominations of Christianity, and we both take the best of each one. I like the reverence and awe I find in Catholic/Episcopal/Anglican churches. I learn about an excitement and zeal for God from Protestants. The Orthodox traditions, along with awe and veneration, remind me of the mystery of God. Those are simple examples as I could talk even more about specific sects which teach me about service, emphasize the Holy Spirit, envelope mysticism, or promote hope more than others. You get the point.

All in all, it was a great Lent season for me. Lent, if you don’t know, is the period after Mardi Gras starting from Ash Wednesday and going to Palm Sunday (though some might say Easter Sunday). I’m usually one who reflects at night. But one thing I’ve been doing is slowing down the pace of life in general which affects how and when I eat, how much I seek to find out the time, how attached I am to the internet and the phone, and how much I engage with nature. So I start each day with some stillness, quiet, meditation, reading, contemplations, study, journaling, prayer, reflection, etc. I’ve found that, for me, it affects me better if my day starts that way than if it ends that way (and hopefully it can do both). I have a wonderful job that allows me to slow down like that and not have to wake up super early. I take walks each day beyond the walking I do throughout the city. And I usually do it alone because a lot of people here walk too fast. It’s been quite nice slowing down. And it’s in slowing down that I’m able to see and hear. It was then that I knew what I must do with the professor who was harassing me.

Another things I’ve learned in the slower pace is to see sacredness in all things and in all acts. So instead of just practicing my faith, I’m learning to faith my practices. I used to see email as a challenge or an obstacle keeping me from having an empty inbox at the end of each day. So I would hurry to answer an email forgetting that the main reason I love email so much is that it lets me communicate with people far away with whom I otherwise wouldn’t communicate. So now I’ve gone back to being completely ok with a large inbox and cherishing each actual email replay as a point of contact, a chance at relationship, and an extension of community. Back to the basics.

Holy is the dish and drain
The soap and sink, and the cup and plate
And the warm wool socks, and the cold white tile
Showerheads and good dry towels
And frying eggs sound like psalms
With hits of salt measured in my palm
It’s all a part of a sacrament
As holy as a day is spent

Holy is the busy street
And cats that boom with passion’s beat
And the checkout girl, counting change
And the hands that shook my hands today
And hymns of geese fly overhead
And spread their wings like their parents did
Blessed be the dog, that runs in her sleep

To chase some wild and elusive thing
Holy is the familiar room
And quiet moments in the afternoon
And folding sheets like folding hands
To pray as only laundry can
I’m letting go of all my fear
Like autumn leaves made of earth and air
For the summer came and the summer went
As holy as a day is spent

Holy is the place I stand
To give whatever small good I can
And the empty page, and the open book
Redemption everywhere I look
Unknowingly we slow our pace
In the shade of unexpected grace
And with grateful smiles and sad lament
As holy as a day is spent

And morning light sings “providence”
As holy as a day is spent

--Carrie Newcomer

SPARKS

2011-08-28T15:42:00.000-07:00

Week 2

Each week I hold a community dinner. Now, many weeks it doesn’t happen which my roommate points out. But what he misses is that it’s not important how it ends (we encourage risk and celebrate in failure) or if people decide to come, rather it’s important to try. And I do try. However, I’ve been bothered more and more by the words of a particular Jewish man who lived during the Greco-Roman empire. And those words encourage people to throw a party (dinner party or banquet) for people who cannot pay you back. Now I’ve had trouble understanding this man as I’ve learned to take some of his literal words figuratively and some of his figurative language literally. Currently, I think this was one of the ones you actually could take quite literally (and learn figurative things in the process). Throwing a party for people reminds me of our culture, where it’s (not) really love to give to someone whose will first feel obligated to return it and will then repay it. Giving with the expectation of return. But can you give when there will be no direct or tangible or visible return because the receiver is incapacitated?

Well, I was challenged. After all, I hold a weekly community dinner. Though it doesn’t happen every week due to cancelations or scheduling, I sure do cook and host a lot of friends who ask to bring food or wine, who try to take me out to dinner, who actually try to give me money for the meal, and who invite me over to return the favor. Why wasn’t I hosting and cooking for people on the street? Now, if I had a place where I had full reign I could easily do that. But I don’t live alone and have to be respectful of everyone’s comfort. So in place of doing my first choice, I decided my spark for the week would be to take a homeless person out to dinner.

What is different than what I normally do is that I would not just buy them food and give it to them (where is the love in that? You can do all kinds of good, humanitarian, beneficial things without love). No, I would take them out to dinner, that means we would share bread and, in the process, lives. We would actually relate. Now in my experience and work, homeless people are most starved of relationship, more than food or clothing or shelter. And it’s this I wanted to give over a meal. I would invite a homeless person in a restaurant (in times past, friends I’ve met on the street don’t want to come into a restaurant due to embarrassment) and we would sit and share our stories. So that’s what I did.

I knew exactly where I was going and who I would take to dinner—this particular man who has an engaging theatrical voice when asking people to buy the DC newspaper that helps the homeless. On my way there, I saw another homeless man begging, and I knew I had to stop. This man’s name is Mike Venables. Mike begs outside the subway stop at my building. I asked him if he wanted to get some food. He said sure. The closest place was Quiznos which he chose. I would later find out he went there a lot. So we went in and we ordered food in line. Mike is a boisterous character and doesn’t worry about politeness when ordering his food, sometimes feeling like the workers cheat him out of enough lettuce, tomatoes, or meat. So Mike always asks for more. I don’t think the workers are supposed to do that, but they did it today as Mike said “Put some more pickles on that. Come on!” It makes me laugh even now.

After we got to the end of the line and our toasted sandwiches were handed to us, I paid and asked Mike if I could join him and have dinner with him. He said sure. He was surprised, but he welcomed it. And we sat down and began to eat and talk. We sat the “man” way, side-by-side on a long bar-table with stools facing the window.

We talked and listened. Well, mostly he talked, and I listened. And most of the conversation was that way. I was trying to engage in a bit of performance art if you’ll allow me to reappropriate the term. You see, Mike and I come from two different backgrounds, socioeconomic levels, regions, and education levels. And in relating to him I was hoping that for an hour we could wash that away as if those differences didn’t exist. But I was very aware while talking that he was a homeless man with very little money and no family and I was a rich man who bought him a meal.

Then something strange happened. Mike had finished telling me about his plight on the streets, and I asked about his family. He spoke about his mother in the hospital. But the strange thing is his response to my question about siblings. He said he had one brother in the DC area. And his brother is a pastor.

“If he’s a pastor I don’t want no part of any of that God stuff.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“I see what kind of pastor he is. I seen him when he was in seminary studying to get his degree, all the stuff he was doing with women.”

“Oh, you mean he was doing questionable things?”

“Puuuleeease. That guy ain’t no man of God. If you a man of God, ain’t you supposed to lay hands on men and women?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Then why does he only lay hands on women?” We both laughed.

“Really?”

“I mean, I went to one of his “bible studies,” I was the ONLY man in there!” We both laughed more.

“He has a ministry to the women, and I’ve seen what he does with them. Always trying to show them the power of God and God’s thunder.” Laughing, “I don’t want no part in that.”

It was strange, but that was the first time we had laughed while talking, and when we laughed it was as if the flood gates were opened, the draw bridge lifted, and the temperature relaxed. We laughed and laughed.

“I mean all he wants to show women is the power of God.” We laughed more. “God’s thunder.”

We laughed. And it was in the moment of laughing that I felt us become two men. We actually seemed to float from the restaurant, the two stools, the food. We left the labels given to us by the world and each other. We left it all. And we were just two people sharing a joke.

And then it happened once more in a deeper way. After telling me the story of his brother who doesn’t want to have anything to do with him, he mentioned an ex-wife.

“Yeah, you see I would drive trucks and so I would be on the road a lot going up the east coast. And she was back there in Florida. I guess she got bored or tired or something. But she found another man and cheated on me while I was away trying to help provide.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you still upset? When did this happen?”

“This happened last year. But it’s cool. People can do what they want. She’s a grown woman. The strange thing is that she cheated on me with a friend of mine. Out of ALL the guys she could have chosen, she chose my best friend. Now does that make any sense?”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“So then you’ve been very angry.”

“Naw, I’m not angry.”

“What? Not even a little bit.”

“Naw, she’s a grown woman. She can do what she wants to do. Why she had to choose my best friend, I don’t know. But she can make her own decisions. We just got a divorce. I wasn’t mad one bit, not one bit, not even once. Why am I gonna be mad at her? What do I have to be mad at her about?”

Now it was in this moment that the conversation took a turn because I had a recent break-up at the time, and not only did I not understand what had happened due to seemingly contradictory messages or inadequate (perhaps only for my brain and mind) explanations, but I had a lot of people accusing me of not doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing. And at the time I had visceral moments of anger which I tempered or eliminated immediately by quickly counting the blessings from the relationship and putting myself in the other person’s shoes. But it would come back again later and I would counteract it again.

What was amazing to me was that this man was claiming he felt no anger and was never upset after someone willingly broke a vow and decided not to hold on to the commitment they had. I wanted to know his secret. The reason the topic changed the conversation is that I was mostly listening or asking questions, and he was happy to talk. But now I wanted to know . . . I wanted to know what he thought or if. . . if he had any advice or . . . help . . . .

“You know I had a recent break up where I was left. . .”

And I told a very short version of some story to say I’ve been there. And he listened. And he shared why he wasn’t mad and I listened, and it was in this moment, we stopped being rich man who buys a meal and poor man who eats it. We were two guys who had similar experiences or feelings of being left. . . .where one was showing how a new way is possible, a way without anger. We were just two brothers sharing life together. And that’s when I learned it is possible to ignore class and levels in a moment. One of my purposes in life is to extend those moments as long as I can with as many people I can starting with the outcast, the marginalized, the minimized, and the oppressed. Thanks, Mike.

THE GIFT

2011-08-28T15:31:00.000-07:00

Today Mike and I are friends. We’ll talk when we see each other which usually means I’m headed home or to something after work and even though I’m going to be late, I still stay and talk to him. He trusts me. He gave me a card once to the person who schedules people at a particular shelter. He wanted me to look into it since the guy wasn’t getting back to him (I’m not sure how, I don’t think Mike has a phone).

But my interaction with Mike makes me think about giving. Now, there are certain philosophical schools of thought that would say we’re all hedonistic or epicurean-like in that we do everything for selfish reasons. If we help someone build a house, clean up the yard of an elderly woman, adopt an orphan, or give money to the poor we do so for selfish reasons. We want to get an award; it looks good on our resumes; others think more highly of us; it makes us feel good; etc. The tough portion about disagreeing with this particular philosophical conclusion is that it’s perpetually defensible. How do you show you’ve done something for an unselfish reason when it can always look good or feel good to do something for someone else or when there were always invisible strings or conditions attached? Imagine a person who gives all kinds of wonderful gifts to a beloved in the name of love. Then when the relationship is over, what happens? This same person might demand certain gifts back evincing that the gifts were never unconditional gifts but gifts given on the condition that the receiver would continue to love the giver in return. Is there a way to commit a real act of love or really give?

Good question. The next attempt to get around this problem is to give without the receiver knowing who gave. Nice. This avoids receiving pleasure from the gratitude of the receiver since the gift is anonymous. However, there is still the joy of knowing the recipient is grateful to someone and that you have made someone happy.

So perhaps a purer gift (our next attempt) would not just be an anonymous gift, but perhaps a gift where nothing is given. A good example of this by philosopher Rollins is forgiveness. When Marcius has wronged you, you can offer forgiveness to Marcius, and you will have given nothing (no thing) because forgiveness is not a thing. The problem, though, is that you can receive personal pleasure from knowing that you did the right thing, looking spiritual, or having Marcius’s apology accepted. So then you might add the first criteria, anonymity, to the act of giving nothing and try to offer forgiveness without telling the offender or without the offender knowing that they have been forgiven. Now this avoids satisfaction from seeing the offender have his apology accepted or seeing you as a super spiritual person. But this anonymous gift of nothing still suffers from the fact that you can feel self-satisfaction or pride for having done something amazing.

So then you can add a third criteria. Give anonymously so the receiver doesn’t know who gave; give nothing; and give anonymously so the giver doesn’t know a gift was given. Huh? This is hard to explain but imagine giving a gift without knowing you’ve given anything. In this way you give a gift so naturally it’s like breathing. At times you don’t notice your breathing. Or giving is second nature like the beating of your heart or the regulation of hormones in your body. It’s natural, constant, continual, and steady. It’s done without thought. This is the type of giving you see evidenced in a woman's life when she is thanked for something and she, the giver, responds “For what?” This is true love of God – a love that gives with the same reflex that causes a bird to sing. It’s a love that gives money to a beggar on the street without stopping to think if he should give or gives of its time to someone who is in pain or in the hospital without any thought that this is any different or special from any other act on any other day. That’s love. And it’s shown not to the loveable but to the unlovable. The trouble is, you can’t simply choose for the reflex to be there. It comes about in another way which we may talk about later.

When one can do the works of virtue without preparing, by willing to do them, and bring to completion some great and righteous matter without giving it a thought – when the deed of virtue seem to happen by itself, simply because one loved goodness and for no other reason, then one is perfectly virtuous and not before.

-Meister Ekhart, quoted in “How (Not) To Speak of God”

The Book Of Love

2011-08-28T15:19:00.000-07:00

by Peter Rollins

There is an ancient legend that speaks of God’s struggle to guide the destiny of humanity. It is said that God had grown tired of the way that mortals constantly lose their way, creating disasters as they go. So he sent out his angelic messengers to gather together the timeless wisdom contained in the world and to place this wisdom in a multitude of books that would be housed in a great library—a library that mortals could use in order to work out how they should live and act in the world.
When, after many millennia, the great task was completed, the colossal library stood proudly in one of the world’s great cultural capitals, dominating the skyline. However, this huge building contained too many books for any individual to read. It was all but impossible to reach for the majority of people, and the library’s sheer size was enough to put anyone off even entering it. So God demanded that his couriers compress the essential wisdom into a single encyclopedic book.

Once completed, this single work was widely circulated, but the manuscript was so huge that one could hardly lift it, let alone read it or put what it said into practice. So yet again God put his couriers to work, crafting a booklet with all the essential information. But the people were lazy and there were many who could not read, so the booklet was refined into a single word, and that word was sent out on the lips and life of a messenger.

And the word?

It was love.

******
I was reflecting on this story recently when I most recently heard that someone felt I was maligning the character of God. So this made me reflect on God at what is God in God’s essence. This story reminds me that all the various rules, laws, creeds, ethics can be boiled down to one word and simultaneously arise from that word. This word wasn’t just the central message of Jesus but it was incarnated by Jesus. Sometimes when I try to dial down the position of belief in faith, people get upset. In no way do I forget that faith is expressed in love. I know this. It’s from a real desire to come to terms what this world means that we come up with theories, laws, theologies, creeds, rules. The problem is when these very structures meant to help us understand the world and the event of God become unyielding.

So at the same time that love motivates us to seek solutions to environmental problems, political issues, and ethical problems in the world, love also motivates us to question the very solutions that we have found to see if these political, environmental, and ethical solutions actual do liberate us from the shackles of these problems. Without love, the political and ethical systems become oppressive and rigid. Without love, we become dogmatic and didactic legalists, serial ritualists who follow books and creeds without regard for human life and the true purpose of those books and creeds.

Remember the law always falls short of justice, the ideal to which it leans. If it did not, we would never need to test it or probe it to see if it delivers the justice of its intent and then amend it when we realize it doesn’t.

The Third Mile

2011-08-28T15:11:00.000-07:00

by Peter Rollins

One day a small group of disciples who had embraced the way of Jesus early in his ministry heard him preaching by the side of a dusty road. As they crowded round they heard Jesus say, “The law requires that you carry a pack for one mile, but I say carry it freely for two.”

The disciples were deeply impressed by these words, for at that time a Roman solider had the legal right to demand that a citizen carry his pack for a mile as a service to the Empire. This teaching not only allowed the disciples to turn this oppressive law into an opportunity to demonstrate “kingdom” values, but also presented them with an opportunity to suffer in some small way for their faith.

As it was common for soldiers to evoke this law, the small band of believers soon developed a reputation for their actions. Roman soldiers would often hope that the citizens they asked to carry their packs would be among these disciples, and often a small bond of friendship would develop between a soldier and these followers of the Way.

After a year had passed this custom had become so established in the group that it became a defining characteristic of their shared life. The leaders would frequently refer to the teaching of Jesus and emphasize the need to carry a pack of the Roman soldier for two miles as a sign of one’s faith and commitment to God.
It so happened that Jesus heard about this community’s work, and, on his way to Jerusalem, took time to visit them. The leaders eagerly gathered all the members of the group to hear what Jesus would say. Once everyone had gathered, Jesus addressed them:

“Dear brothers and sisters, you are faithful and honest, but I have come to you with a second message, for you failed to understand the first. Your law says that you must carry a pack for two miles. My law says ‘carry it for three.’”

This story brings up the question of Biblical interpretation (there are many ways to look at this story). So to treat the Bible as a type of religious textbook that provides a sort of ethical framework telling us how to live in each and every situation requires that we approach it in a certain way. Usually this means we must mine the pages and try to discover the answers to specific questions in life or to specific situational uncertainties. Once you find the answers, one then can choose to act according to the textbook or blueprint or to violate it. At the same time, one can ask if the Bible can be read this way without doing Jesus’s teachings a disservice. So was Jesus advocating an approach like that where we open up scriptures for a concrete set of religious conduct or was he promoting a radically different Way of life?

What if it is the latter? What if he is offering a life of love that transcends religious codes of conduct? A religious code seeks to provide a way to work out or figure out what can be done in each situation. Contrastingly, love is never satisfied or constrained. Love doesn’t sit back but always does more than what is asked of love. Imagine a law that says to give 10% to the poor. The person who loves those who are poor will always give more than the required amount. Instead of waiting what out to be done or how much out to be given, the lover doesn’t wait but always gives in excess. The lover’s love exceeds the law and acts in the absence (very important as religious codes of conduct including the Bible, if interpreted as such, never address every situation we face today) of the law. Love fulfills the law by going above and beyond it.

So the story imagines what Jesus might say to the community that took Jesus’s words literally and enacted a religious law in order to follow it. By the instantiation of the law in order to follow Jesus’s words actually undermines the radical nature of it by missing the spirit of the words. The literal following failed to take the words seriously enough. Now we should still admire the ardor and passionate intent of this faithful band of brothers and eschew maligning them. But the example points to the real danger inherent in a literal rendering (at least for these words) and absorbing his living beyond the law back into the law.

So love goes further, beyond duty. The ethical question asks “What must I do?” The love response is “I will do more.” When the ethical guidance or compass doesn’t provide clear direction (and it by nature will have many of those times) love sets out anyway with clear direction, providing a way when there is no way. This is the love Jesus lived, a love that pushes harder and further than any law, a love that is more demanding than any rule or creed. This love experienced in a revolutionary life is faithful to the law by exceeding it.

A CHURCH THAT MALIGNS THE CHARACTER OF GOD

2011-08-28T15:00:00.000-07:00

So as I said, I was reflecting on love because as I’ve heard before and heard recently again someone felt I was maligning the character of God. When I heard and read that, I responded “Yes I do malign the character of God.” I have done it in the past and I currently do it. Hopefully my understanding of the character of God is getting better in time, but I’m grateful for the knowledge or cognizance that my understanding of God or God’s character is incomplete, fractured, and wrong, yet hopefully improving.

The fact that I hear that means people probably don’t fully understand what I’m saying. I have been talking about a move away (a way) from orthodoxy as right belief (ortho – correct, doxy – belief) to a reverse reading from right to left as believing in the right way. In this way, yes we do believe certain things. Beliefs help us to navigate the world, make sense of it, and ponder the mystery of God in the aftermath of the event of God. But to claim that everything that I understand and believe about God, this life, the nature of our world, and the nature of the human spirit-body being is correct is too high and haughty a claim for me to make. I’ve gone too far; I’m too aware how wrong I’ve been, am, and will be. Rather, I believe and simultaneously disbelieve in what I believe knowing that in the future it may change. One way of looking at fundamentalism is based on how one believes and not the content. Fundamentalism can be said to be a way of believing in which one believes in what one believes. I believe and yet hold lightly what I believe while fundamentalism is a way of believing where one excludes all others in correspondence to the proportion with which others’ beliefs differ from one’s own.

For my sake and the sake of others, I’m glad right theology doesn’t mean I rightly know God or else I’d be in trouble.

So when I say wrong things and you feel I’m wrong, I agree. I agree with your disagreement and yearn and crave for more. One experience for me, however is that God is less concerned about my maligning his character are than those who believe they understand (the parts of God’s character I’m maligning) are. My experience is God’s concern with me living out love (believing in that way) and wrestling out faith. So I decided to imagine what I would love to see in a church.

My church would. . .

Spend more money on others than on themselves

Go beyond any seeming law (like in the statement above) and simply share EVERYthing they have. Instead of asking “how much do I give” they will share everything

Meets in buildings, spaces, and outdoor locations so as not to have to pay any fees such as utilities, where all money can go to do good works and redistributive justice

Would somehow have the ability to suspend class, race, economic differences (I’m inspired by the IKON community in Ireland and my conversation with Mike Venables in the Sparks section)

Would be as attractive to people as Jesus was (this paradox of people hating the church contradicts the historical Jesus who drew all kinds of people to himself)

Was completely open and inviting to people of different orientations, religions, nationalities, tribes, languages, ages, genders, etc.

Would involve others (including lay people) in the preparation of the sermon, so that we don’t hear a sermon that is the result of one person’s individual study but rather we hear a sermon that is the result of a community wrestling with a topic

Would use interactive discussions or at least a sermon with Q&A afterwards (Mark Driscoll does this sometimes)

Would not feature the sermon as the central point in our gathering, but would have all types of REGULAR gatherings

Would avoid the introspection – service divide, by having service work that simultaneously transformed the inside of people as well, a holistic church
Practice, taught, and lived a law of love rather than of rules not just on the visible or public level but even subconsciously and individually (currently working on what this looks like)

Engaged in art as a means to escape what words can’t describe (by art we look at Jesus’s creative use of short fiction (parables), poetry (Beatitudes), guerilla theatre (cleansing the temple, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem), performance art (healings, feedings, etc.; thanks to McLaren for this understanding)

There’s more, but I’ll stop here for now. . .

JOBS

2011-08-28T14:58:00.000-07:00

People always ask about jobs to which I say read the past updates. Here, I’ll only add new updates to the previous ones. This week I had a phone screening interview with a Yahoo-competitor for a position helping to help design, create, and promote educational learning tools for engineering faculty and students throughout Africa. It would be based in Zurich or Johannesburg and would require a go-getter spirit and lots of travel throughout the continent. We’ll see how it goes.

I have a sitcom audition on Monday. And I’m involved in a 48-hour film festival this weekend. I’ll probably write a bit on how it goes next weekend after it’s over Sunday night. We’ll see. . .

KALILA

2011-08-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

From my vantage point, each day I’m given the opportunity to participate in the story of various people’s lives. Sometimes it’s in big ways, sometimes it’s in “small” ways, but the opportunities are there for those that have eyes to see. And often what seems small is actually big in retrospect. Often your participation doubles back as a gift to you. Often you are adopted into an entirely new family just by joining someone else’s story. That’s what happened with Kalila.

Taren, now a friend (family member) of mine, was doing work in Africa and she met Kalila Mahama a quiet and beautiful Ghanaian toddler. Well, American doctors were doing work in Ghana when they diagnosed Kalila with Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF), a congenital heart defect involving 3 or 4 abnormalities in the heart. The doctors said that Kalila had at most weeks to live.

Now, Kalila’s story has a beautiful ending, but I will tell you that I was not most amazed by the people who helped and participated. I was amazed by Taren who decided that such a verdict on the life of Kalila is not acceptable. This type of clarity and love is where I’m most grateful to find beauty. Taren decided that the physical or congenital verdict or ruling given was unjust and she was going to help bend the arrow of the law towards the justice it ideally tries to reach, a justice based in love. I’m always amazed when I find such faith in the world. You see, for Kalila to have the life-saving open-heart surgery she needed, she had to be flown to a place like the United States. Taren moved quickly.

Taren got on her blog and posted the story asking for help and donations. Taren emailed friends in the States and the email went around and around. This is how I first heard of it, through a common friend. When I receive emails like this, though I receive many, they are no-brainers. You help out, you participate, you give, you join in the creation and the saving of life anytime you have the opportunity. It’s the nature of love. It’s the most important thing. So I helped, and we had to raise money not just for the surgery but for travel expenses for Kalila and her parents from Ghana for the duration of the trip. I told Taren I can help more. Soon Rotary joined in helping. Taren raised the money.

Kalila was flown to Indiana, had the surgery, survived, and is thriving. The joy and tears over the whole super-quick process can never be understated. I met with her parents and talked with them and there were no words. Gratitude is written into the lines of their face. . . . indelibly. I don’t want to write too much about it because I do no justice to the lived experience. I wanted you to hear Taren talk about it after they had flown back to Ghana. I include even financial housekeeping at the end of the story because it tells the continuing legacy of everyone who entered into the story.

Dear friends,

Two weeks ago, Mom and I headed to the Indianapolis airport in our van stuffed to the gills with Kalila, her parents, and luggage packed with presents from many of you. Already emotional, we soon found a reason for tears: Faiza, Kalila's mother, told us that, on legs strengthened by regular oxygen flow thanks to the surgery, she had taken her first unaided steps the night before--her very last night in America. Leave it to Kalila to provide us with such a fitting ending to this incredible journey!

It was an eventful last few weeks for Kalila, her family and all of us. Kalila passed her final medical checkup with flying colors; many of you got to meet Kalila and her parents at receptions for donors in both Greencastle and DC (here are some pics from Greencastle, should have DC ones up soon); and the family landed safely back in Ghana. Along with reports of Kalila's continued progress with
walking, her grandfather wrote to us last week to say:

This is time to celebrate and to thank you for this wonderful event; saving the life of Kalila. I do not know where and how to start the Thanksgiving. Americans have a day for Thanksgiving, and Taren gave me a story about it. Our Thanksgiving has a different twist and angle, the bottom line is that you saved a life.... I would like you to thank all your friends, relations and colleagues, who in various ways assisted in this whole process; the numerous generous contributors, your Rotary friends, the doctors and nurses, the newspaper editors, and all, too many to mention. You have to carry our thanks to them on behalf of my family, Samad, Faiza and Kalila.... Our Thanksgiving day is the day of the successful surgery.

To his thanks, as always, Mom and I add ours. We have wonderful friends!

******

Now, some housecleaning:
In total, we received $27,433 in donations to the Kalila Mahama Heart Fund from 202 individuals, couples and/or families in the USA. Because Rotary accepted Kalila into its Gift of Life program, we were able to limit our total expenses for saving her life to $11,025 ($5,000 as our contribution to surgery which actually cost many times that amount, $4,199 for plane tickets, and $1,826 for food, medicine, diapers, and other miscellaneous expenses--see attached spreadsheet), leaving $16,408.

As promised, if you would like the pro-rated remainder of your donation returned to you, please reply to this email and let us know in the next 7 days. At that point, we will donate the rest of the money to Rotary's Gift of Life program, where it will help fund a trip by the same surgical team that performed Kalila's surgery. They will travel to the Middle East to conduct lifesaving heart surgeries for children like Kalila and train local doctors. We've been told that $16,000 will pay for surgery for another 2 or 3 children there, which would be wonderful.

With our heartfelt thanks,

Kelsey and Taren
For more from Taren or to read up on Kalila (from Taren), you can check Taren’s blog.

MORE THAN A LIBRARY

2011-08-28T14:07:00.001-07:00

Most things I do in life fail, even the successes. What I think is special about most of the successes is that, for some reason, I decided to try again. . .and again. . . and again. Retrospection is perspicacity, and am I thankful that I did not give up on the following project!

Let me give you the background first. While teaching in the States (I taught 9-12 in a grade 6-12 school), I decided to take a job teaching in a school for kids from low-income communities. My school was an all-day school (till 5 PM) which helped keep kids off the street longer; we had afterschool tutorials until 6:30 PM which were mandatory if your grade was below a certain mark; we had Saturday school; we had mandatory summer school before grades 6 – 10; we had two mandatory high school summer internships between grades 10-12; we had mandatory service hours each month; we had week-long college visits across the country during the spring to different locations for each grade level; we had cell phones for the students to call the teachers for help on homework because “being stuck” was unacceptable; our seniors were required to gain acceptance into a 4-year college or university in order to graduate otherwise they had to stay again for at least another semester until they met this requirement; etc. I could go on. You get the picture.

While teaching there, I wore many hats as do most teachers. Besides, teacher, tutor, informal doctor, informal counselor, I was also a service advisor, a service grade-level coordinator, a summer internship advisor, and various club advisors. What concerned me was that many students wanted to do international summer internships but the costs were prohibitive especially for kids in my school. But, as the story goes, we changed that.

After a visit to El Salvador to see a Peace Corps Volunteer friend (a trip that profoundly affected me, even to this day), at the suggestion of my PCV friend, I decided to organize a group of students to go to El Salvador and join her in her work. This time, however, there would be no prohibitive costs for the students as long as they were willing to invest the “sweat equity” to raise the funds and own the trip. What was difficult however was that the students not only had to raise the money for the projects they were to do, but they had to raise the money for their expenses, as well.

I ran into a variety of obstacles along the way, the biggest of which was my school, opposing me (yet “supporting” the trip). Another obstacle was time. Because this plan came through during Spring Break (which is half way through 2nd semester) we only had half a semester (a month and a half) to raise the money. But we did it. We chose students were available most weekends to raise the money. And, of course, as I always say, the students do not raise the bulk of the money (at least according to plan), much of that is done by me or other teacher-leaders when they go and request money, talk about the program, give presentations, etc. But I wanted the kids to participate in their own legacy not just pass a gift on. I wanted them to sacrifice for what they gave. I wanted them to own it in order to truly give it away.

Needless to say, we overcame the obstacles and raised the money, all the money required, even when it looked like we would fall short, some money coming just in the nick of time. The process was very hard on me as a teacher because I was at a school that was all day and doing tutorials until 6:30, the same school that required 2-3 hours of preparation each night for each subject-lesson you teach the next day, not to mention all the grading you’re supposed to do added onto administrative work, parent-contacting, parent-visiting, service planning, etc. That year I also had the most students out of any teacher in the school, so it was interesting. I would often get a substitute on a test day or slip off-campus during an off period for which no students needed me to give a presentation or a talk at a Rotary club, Lions Club, Chamber of Commerce, or a Breakfast club. I would use off-periods while students were doing tutorial problems to call businesses and request in-kind donations such as airline tickets or transportation or housing, etc. But we raised it.

I meant to leave it at that, I had no grand vision, honestly, at least I don’t remember having one. But something strange happened. I came back to the school the following year, and teacher after teacher after parent after parent came up to me and ask “how did you do it?” I of course had no idea what they were talking about when they made a general opening statement like that. Then they would say “Alex” or a name like that. They would point out how he was more kind, considerate, others-focused, responsible, and dependable. They would point how that he thought less of himself and had a greater awareness of his surroundings and the needs of others, his school, his city, even his teachers! So I said, I don’t know but that’s great to hear. Around the same time, people would ask if the program would be offered again. When students started asking me, there was no way I could say no. The answer was of course, YES. So we did.

The same process ensued. I contact Peace Corps country directors during the summer to ask them to send my email out to PCVs. They would read it and some would respond. We would also contact NGOs and we would evaluate the project options put before us by the PCVs or NGOs. We always did groups of 10-12 for a specific reason related to group dynamics. We always sent a team back to the same countries we visited the previous year because we were doing relational service. We always added a new country each year. We always had one primary tangible project that the students could see (the concept of service is somewhat narrow at that age, and this helps to solidify the service work done while at the same time destroying that concept of service through other secondary projects) and a multitude of secondary projects both tangible and intangible. There were other (quite beautiful) components to the program but I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that the students met throughout the year for 4 reasons: training for the work they would do in the country, fundraisers, language training (though this could be done individually), and pen pal letter drop-offs or writings. They wrote letters to students of the same age and younger so that when they arrived they had already established relationships with the kids.

That second year there were 3 countries teams – a Ghana Team (GT), an India Team (IT), and an El Salvador Team (EST). I usually spend my summers abroad doing international service work to balance local service work I do, and I had some travel myself and couldn’t be everywhere, so I was soo thankful the second year to have a team of teachers on each team. They were truly wonderful. That freed me up, thanks to the good counsel of one teacher, to help manage them all and fundraise for all 3 trips while each group focused on their own. We even had mixed groups – where a team like GT or IT had students from more than one school (but the same family of charter schools).

So I flew in and joined GT (the Ghana Team) after they had been there for 2 weeks (I was in China on an educator trip) right about the time they met an amazing, still, and inspiring woman named Sophia. It is the words of Sophia that I share with you, today.

I still remember sitting by the fire that night with all the kids and the PCVs and teachers and sharing the good news. Only two months earlier, I was invited to the National Public Charter Schools Conference to speak about “Service in Education.” Now, the program, only in its 2nd year had been nominated for a National Character Education Award, and it won. The kids didn’t really get it, but we were flabbergasted. I think what struck me most was that I was always asked one question by potential funders: why should we give money to send these kids over when we could just fund the projects directly without sending the kids over? The very first time I heard this, I had answer for this without ever knowing that I knew what to say. We are raising future service-driven leaders who are not only being taught how to do service and serve relationally, but they are being taught how to raise up service-driven leaders themselves. This isn’t international development, I would say; it’s international as well as community development. You’re developing your own community at the same time.

This is the story into which you enter. The Ghana Team encountered a lot of problems along the way. I fought with the school even more. Some people wondered why I would do that, but to be honest, I’d rather be someone who fought a good fight and lost then one who worried about being on the good side of a school or the good side of the administration. And believe me, it put me on the bad side and raised all kinds of questions (and accolades) for the school. But as always, you have to remain beyond reproach and no criticism can stick. And even if it does, you remain honest and vulnerable. So I did. We almost didn’t make it. It was tough. The school seemed even more “supportive” than before (by that I mean less actively supportive beyond verbal/aural support). I advocated, emailed, discussed, criticized, and fought for my kids. And I did it because it was for my kids (both in the States and in Ghana). So to fly into Ghana after leaving China and see my kids and meet Sophia and the teachers and tell them that what they are doing works—I don’t know; it touched me.
So the kids brought the money to start a project which I think was initially conceived as an adult education center that would allow for night classes. There would be books and desks and the opportunity for learning. The kids raised the money not only for the construction but for their expenses which always doubles the costs but it was worth it. Often times, with some of this type of work, you never know what happens with what you did, brought, started, or gave. But Sophia kept in touch with the students. And I want to share Sophia’s story.

You see, the students started something along with Sophia and her townspeople of Wamfie. Everyone helped with the housing, food, construction, and work. The kids were also busy doing other secondary projects like HIV/AIDS workshops, permacultural sessions, classes at the school, etc. My kids were actually not able to finish the work they started in conjunction with Sophia and the town of Wamfie. They never saw the building completed. I stayed in Ghana about 2-4 weeks longer and helped out a bit more and saw it developed even more. Now I want to share the legacy of what my Ghana Team started.

Sophia will correct me if I’m wrong in saying this, but I don’t believe the building would have been built or started when it did if Sophia hadn’t received our request, that we wanted to go to Ghana to work with her. Most PCVs tell me that the work the students do in 2-4 weeks (it was only 2 with Sophia because our students worked with another PCV in another location for half a month) is the work an individual PCV would take to do in 6-8 months which is close to half her time there. It’s not only a big work boost, but also an emotional boost, a spiritual boost, a mental boost to have the kids visit and share their lives (for the kids, too). So as I was reading Sophia’s update, I was crying (I cry a lot these days) because the story is beautiful. It’s not a story written by my students alone, for many joined in the work with the kids and continued it afterwards. But my students planted a seed. Now you can always go further and further back. Teachers emailed the Ghana Peace Corps Country Director who passed it down. And I was over the teachers helping to run this program. And I was invited to go to El Salvador with my kids the year before by my Peace Corps friend. I only became friends with her because I accompanied another person down to El Salvador for spring break to see Peace Corps work firsthand. Etc. etc. But there you have it—life, in all its entangled and interconnected glory, is made bare and plain through letters like this. And the impact of what the kids did has never lost its effect on me. I love the Peace Corps practice of having new volunteers take over in the same place as old volunteers. I love the practice of having them overlap for a brief time. I love the practice of continued work which Ann, the volunteer after Sophia, actually did. And Ann carried the work until completion beyond Sophia (or my) wildest dreams. When I have opportunities like this to co-partner with people in creating beauty in this world in a way that liberates and transforms people—it’s like something within me resonates. This is how life is meant to be lived, and it’s something that can be done every day. As you read, pay special attention to all the many people involved in the project even after the kids left the first summer (they came back another summer without me after I moved abroad). The town is called Wamfie. It truly took a village to raise this library. And to be honest, it’s much more than a library.

Greetings YES prep former or present teachers and staff,

First and foremost, I hope you are all well. It’s been a while since
I’ve written, and I regret the extent to which I’ve fallen out of
touch with you all. However, I write bearing good news! The Wamfie
Community Library/Youth and Community Center has opened its doors to
the public! I made a return trip to Ghana last month, and visited
Wamfie, where I was able to help physically stock the bookshelves. It
felt good to slide those books into place, I feel lucky to have been
involved in the final phase of the library’s development. Although I
realize it sounds corny, my heart was literally overflowing with love
and happiness the entire week I spent in Wamfie- and you are all part
of that happiness. I wish each of you, and your students, could have
the rewarding experience of stepping through the doors and seeing the
awesome culmination of our efforts. While that may not be possible, at
the very least I can share with you some photos of the finished
product.

As you can see from the photos, the library is a pretty impressive
sight. The construction is totally complete. The walls have been
plastered inside and out, painted, and decorated with world, African,
and Ghanaian maps. (Ann- the volunteer who succeeded me- painted these
with local kids.) I should mention that all the masons, carpenters,
electricians, and other artisans who helped with the construction
worked at half price for the duration of the project- an act I think
really demonstrates the community’s commitment. In addition to their
labor, there have been countless days of community labor, during which
individuals donated their time- hauling water, mixing cement, laying
bricks, weeding, or cooking food for those who were laboring. This
obvious commitment helped us (me and Ann, the volunteer who came after
me) convince the District Assembly to chip in money for a beautiful
ceiling, complete with ceiling fans. The DA is also paying the
electricity bill, and hired a night watchman to guard the facility in
the evenings. They also helped us get in touch with Ghana Youth
Employment Services, a national agency that has agreed to send 2
librarians to work full time in the library. All 3 jobs will be filled
by residents of Wamfie, the librarians will also get periodic training
in computer record keeping and library cataloging. Ann was able to
work with Books for Africa, a non-profit organization based in the US,
to get 50,000 donated books- an entire container! She also did an
enormous amount of fundraising to pay for shipping and transportation
costs. One neat partnership she formed was with the Ghana Book trust-
she gave them a share of our books in exchange for assistance within
country transportation. They also did a bit of a swap- where we traded
out some of our English books for books written in Twi and English by
Ghanaian authors. Even after all of this trading and exchanging, there
were still so many extra books that the library couldn’t possibly hold
them all- so we donated the excess (sets of classroom textbooks) to
the District Education Office (who will distribute them equitably to
Wamfie Junior Secondary Schools), and to Mansen Secondary School
(where we did our HIV Education with the YES prep students).
Meanwhile, we used excess funds from construction to build
bookshelves, tables, and chairs for the interior- and we purchased 2
computers which will have intermittent internet access courtesy of MTN
cellular network.

I was unable to attend the grand ceremony for the opening, but I wrote
a small piece to be read, which I am attaching to this email. Ann
tells me that the ceremony was huge- there were 3 canopies set up to
create shade, and chiefs from all the surrounding areas came to bear
witness to the opening. The present and former DCE (you met the
former) also came to show their support, as well as representatives
from the regional and district education offices, and numerous local
teachers. (I think they may have canceled school so students could
attend.) Our Peace Corps country director also attended, along with
most community members. Ann is sending photos which I will forward
you.

There is one remaining task left… Ann and I would like to collect
photos from all phases of the library’s construction. We are planning
to make a nicely bound photo book to place in the library- and we
would like everybody that was involved in the project, start to
finish, to be included. I could just rely on my own photos- but I have
a feeling that you all have some good ones too. I am therefore
requesting that you send me your photos (if you still have them) from
your time in Wamfie, to be included in the book. If you are interested
in a copy of the photo book, I’m happy to let you know how much it
ends up costing to print- otherwise I’m happy to burn all the photos
onto a CD for you. For now, I’d really appreciate access to your
photos- however I need access to the full file (as opposed to a
condensed shared file). I think the easiest way to do this might be to
request a burned CD? CDs can be mailed to my address, which is listed
below. THANK YOU in advance, and THANK YOU again for all the work you
put into this project… I hope you can see for yourselves the fruits of
your labor, and feel immensely proud!

Hope you are all well,

Sophia

REMARKS READ AT LIBRARY’S OPENING (DRAFT)

Greetings to my dear friends and family in Wamfie. As many of you
know, I was recently in Wamfie, however my visit was too short. I
apologize for my inability to greet many of you due to the very short
visit. Although the visit was short, I was happy to have the chance to
visit the wonderful library, and help with the final stages of its
organization. I wish I could be here with you today, to celebrate the
opening, but instead I am with you in spirit, and have sent Ann these
words to read.

The library has been a long time in the making, and there are so many
people to thank. I think, however, that it is best to first recognize
ourselves, and thank each other for all the work we have put in to the
library. This is truly a community library- together we have cleared
the land, hauled water, mixed cement, helped dig a solid foundation,
and raised these very walls with our own two hands. Families have
helped by cooking for the laborers, or offering housing to those who
traveled from far away to help with the project. Our carpenters,
masons, and electricians have generously given their time and
expertise, even the young children here have helped put books on the
shelves, and have enthusiastically helped sweep the floors. There is
one person I would especially like to thank in Wamfie, and that is Dei
Prince. He has
been involved with the library from the very beginning, selflessly
giving of his time and efforts. I am happy to announce that he has
been selected as a librarian, and I can’t think of anybody who
deserves the position more... I think he represents everybody’s
enthusiasm for the project. As he told me yesterday, “Today, our
dreams are finally coming true.” I hope you all feel the same. This
library belongs to all of you, because you have all helped in some way
to build it. Without your help it would not be standing here today,
full of books.

There are also so many people to thank who have contributed
financially to the library. YES Preparatory School from Houston,
Texas, in the USA, send not only money, but they sent their students
for two
summers to help with construction. We also received funding from St.
Paul’s Catholic Church, in Juneau, Alaska, where even young children
gave their small change, all to help build this library. So many
individuals in Juneau, Alaska, my hometown, hearing of the library
project, approached my mother and asked to make a donation- some gave
money, some gave books, some gave games and toys… all of which my
mother carried with her when she came to visit me. All of these things
are now in the library! The donations didn’t stop there. Reading of
Wamfie in my hometown newspaper, schools and clubs and individuals who
I don’t even know came forward and donated to the library. Without all
of these donors, we never could have afforded the cement, bricks,
timber, roofing sheets, plaster, and paint to build the structure.
Today, I know they are all thinking of Wamfie, wishing us well. I know
they are very happy that our collective partnership has led to such a
beautiful library.

There were also many donors here in Wamfie that gave generously to our
project. In Wamfie, I would first like to thank Nana (PLEASE ADD HIS
NAME). Nana granted us use of the land, the very foundation of our
project, and even joined us to break ground. He has been very
supportive of the project, sending rice, oil, and charcoal to help
feed our visiting laborers. We will never forget his generosity, and
we thank him for being here today.

Ben (LAST NAME), former DCE of the Dormaa East District, has also been
incredibly supportive of our project. He joined us for the ground
breaking, and provided my sister Ann with support in carrying the
project forward. While I did not have the honor to meet NEW DCE, Ann
tells me that under his direction, the district assembly has continued
to be supportive, performing necessary roof repairs, providing funding
for the ceiling, paying the electric bill, and helping to secure two
librarians from the Youth Employment Office, as well as a night
watchman. We are very grateful for the districts support of the
project, and hope they continue to support the library in the future.

Last, I wish to thank the Peace Corps, for supporting me as a
volunteer. I can’t thank them enough for sending me to Ghana, and then
to Wamfie- which has become my second home. I also thank Peace Corps
for sending Ann as my successor. Not only has Ann done a wonderful job
carrying the project forward, she has helped it evolve into something
greater than I ever imagined. Most importantly, she has the same love
of Wamfie, and cares deeply about the community. I am happy to count
her as my Wamfie, Mansen Habitat Sister.

When I first arrived here, in 2006, most people did not know of Peace
Corps, and often asked of my mission. I struggled to come up with an
appropriate response. I hope that today you know my mission here was
not just to be involved in this library, but to learn from you and
share in your culture so that I could share it with people in America.
I hope you know how many people around the world care about you. You
will forever be in my heart, and I hope to come back and visit often.
I love you all.

--
Sophia

ART & LIFE

2011-08-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

There’s a jazz vocalist I like name Gretchen Parloto. I actually didn’t know she was that big, that the accolades around her were quite high, that her stylings are so laudable. But she’s good and she sings like. . . another instrument in the band somewhat. Funny, I heard her say in an interview that if she could croon like Chaka Kahn or Aretha she would. She said she tried it and it doesn’t sound pretty; no one would want to hear her (I laughed at this). So she does what she’s good at, and boy is she good at it. It’s an understated sound and singing so it may not be for everyone, but I wanted to mention her since I was listening to her recently.

The other reason I like her is that she teaches and does workshops. I think this is the greatest thing an artist can do. It’s that connective link that’s so important. There’s more. When she’s passing on what she does or trying to give a workshop, it’s very important to her that it’s more than just the music, more than just working on or learning about rhythm, phrasing, interpretation, and improvisation. She wants to drink tea, talk about who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing. She wants to know where you are going. She wants to also work or tap into the emotional and spiritual side of music and release its potential to transform both the artist and those that are listening.

The other artist I’ve been listening to is Bobby McFerrin. I’m not sure what to say about him. I actually view him as a gift to the world and the type of artist that doesn’t come along very often. I have been recently rediscovering him, again. I’m especially amazed by him because he treats the voice in a similar way to the fashion an instrumentalists treats her instrument. Normally in music, we use the term singers to denote someone who sings but isn’t a musician. Vocalist is carries much more connotations of musicality with it. But in all honesty, even if you are a vocalist, you get by with less. You can practice less than a non-voice instrumentalist. You just learn your notes (way faster than it takes for instrumentalists to learn theirs which actually deals with physically moving the hands, feet, and body fast enough and with dexterity and agility in order to play it technically correct). Bobby sings songs that vocalists don’t normally do. For instance, my FIRST interaction with Bobby was to sing “Flight of the Bumblebee” for my senior recital in high school. I did it as a duet with a cellist, just as Bobby did it as a duet with Yo-yo Ma whom I love (Yo-yo is so willing to improvise and play with anyone to create beautiful music). Vocalists don’t sing Flight of the Bumblebee. It’s too. . .technical. It’s just a bit crazy to do that. But he did it, so I did it. Bobby will also sing arpeggiated accompaniment to a song like Ave Maria exploiting the range of the human male voice. No one did that before him (I haven’t really heard anyone do it after him). It’s hard to do that and play your voice like an instrumentalist but he did it and does it.

His intonation and accuracy, his ability to shift between his full-voice register and his falsetto and head voice at a moment’s notice is unparalleled. He jumps back and forth between them with ease and not only is able to do that with learned songs, but he can do it while improvising. This is quite . . . amazing. He is able to really go on and on and on improvising which is important for vocalists to learn—not to stop, keep going. Anyway, can you tell I like him and his work. Once Bobby came and did a workshop with my choir, and Bobby actually said “God is in the music.” Literally, God is in the music.

Smile

Improvisational duet - Lullaby of Birdland

Centerpieces

UPDATE - April 2011

2011-08-28T13:44:00.000-07:00

I’m stopped at a red light and I look to my right past the right lane to the right sidewalk. A noise draws my attention. I see a group of three black youth in an open circle (arc) looking to the left at an older white woman on crutches (the type that are just poles but have a holder for your forearms and a horizontal bar protruding from the pole for your hand to hold). The women is medium build, about 5’5’’ with disheveled brown hair; her complexion looks as if it hoped to be fairer if only it had a good wash and scrubbing down. But her mind and complexion seemed to be out of relationship so she plodded along.

Now the three youth were looking at her because she appeared to be . . . rapping. What was strange is that she provided a steady beat to the rap by hitting her pole crunches against the ground. She could only do this by moving forward or backward as if walking. So when she would get really hype into a great part of her rap, she would hit a quick “bmm bmm bmm bmm” (left right left right) which would quickly walk/crutch her backwards away from the kid down the sidewalk. It had a funny look. Imagine a physically handicapped person trying to have her crutches keep up with her fast rap, having to walk-crutch-limp faster to thud faster to the rhythm of her rap all the while the three youth looking at her like “What in the world is that?” I promise you that’s the look that I saw. At first I thought they were all friends and they for someone reason couldn’t understand what she was saying. But then I saw that they were as mystified as I was watching her hobbling to tap and crutch-walk herself in rhythm with her fast walk. Too Legit—bmm—too legit to qui-bmm bmm bmm-say what?-bmm—too legit—bm—too legit-to quit--Crutch-walk, tap tap tap-Can’t touch this-- bmm bmm bmm—You hear what –tap—cause this is a beat-bmm bmm—you can’t touch--crutch-step, crutch-step, crutch-step.

Then she comes to me . . . bmm bmm bmm bmm . . . . with the biggest smile on her face.

“Did you see that?”

“Yeah.”

“I was spitting some truth to those kids. Those kids didn’t know what hit ‘em,” she said proudly as if she had just discovered a new chemical element or finished her career-ending concert finale.

“Yeah.”
“You got some change?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m flipping and ripping a couple of lyrical styles y’all never heard “ Bmm Bmm Bmm
Trying reach dem partners dat be on dat cornah sipping syuurp.” Bmm bmm bmm

Green light.

Hidy-ho. It’s good to be in touch again. I’m starting a new series which may require me to write once a week again. One thing I’ve learned is that though I don’t enjoy writing these updates as much as people think, there are vast majority of the 6 of you who do enjoy getting them. For that reason, I keep on writing them when I’m tempted to stop.

You’d like to know what’s new with me? Well, all the same old stuff. I’m still doing a few mentoring programs and volunteering here and there. I am still in my fellowship program doing international development work for big people. I still sing in a few groups and enjoy that.

What’s new since the last time I wrote is that I auditioned for a science education show and got the part. I’m the physics content host for a science education video series that helps science teachers understand the science they teach. The science education organization hired a production company to handle the videos, and the production company thought “We always get actors to host things. Why don’t we get actual scientists?” That’s where I was lucky since I’m at the intersection of acting and science. Either way, they hired me after the audition. There are 20 units, and 6 are in my area—physics. Each unit has 20 lessons, and I go through the 20 lessons and choose 8-12 that warrant extra explanation via a video. Then I write bullet-point descriptions of what would be in the video. Then I write the scripts for it. Then we shoot. They’re a good group of guys, and I’m really enjoying the process to work at the intersection of education, science, and acting. It’s the first time I’ve worked with a teleprompter, too!

Another new thing is that I went to book talk on a social justice book (in the Arts section below). The editor was a really nice and humble man who is charge of Christian student life (or something like that) at Princeton. Anyway, I didn’t realize he was also the religion editor for the Huffington Post. I was the last person to talk to him that night before going home. I just wanted to say hello with no ulterior motives. He asked about me. When he realized what I did, he told me the CEO of my fellowship organization has written 3 articles for him over the past few years. He said he would love for me to write articles on the intersection of science and faith. So he told me to submit some ideas to him. I was surprised, but told him ok. I sent him an idea the next day. He said he looks forward to seeing the full article. Wowzers.

Also my a capella group got serious and had a December holiday concert. We were going to do a joint concert with a barbershop group but they pulled out so we had a Christmas party and sang a few tunes at that at two different points during the 2-hour party. It was a hit and people LOVED it! So we’re currently working on a spring concert. Unfortunately people have left due to drama (yes guy groups can have drama, too), other commitments, and moving away from the city. So we’ve been auditioning. We’ll see if we can still have the spring concert in time. Most likely we’ll move it to the summer/fall or just do a nice Christmas concert.

But the big thing people have been asking me about is what I’ll do next year (September 2011). My fellowship program is over in August, so all the 2nd year fellows are job-hunting. There are various opportunities, but I’ll tell you about the three related to my current fellowship.

1) I’ve applied for a Congressional Fellowship (so doing the same program but in Congress)

2) I could get hired on (there budget problems and it seems unlikely)

3) AAAS Fellows at my department/agency are the only AAAS fellows allowed to do a 3rd year extension overseas as one of the missions. There are 20 countries interested in hosting a 3rd year AAAS Fellow, so I’m in talks with them to see if they would like to have me. Unfortunately it’s a matching program. They don’t want a general intern who can learn what they want her to do, they want someone who is already an expert in a certain field and language to come in and hit the ground running. So I’ve had 7 no’s so far. Ghana will no longer host a fellow. Zambia has competing priorities and also won’t host a fellow anymore. Russia said no due to money (which doesn’t make sense because there is Washington money available). Egypt said they have to wait for a new government before they decide what they will do with science & technology (S&T) work in Egypt. Mozambique and DRC said the fit wasn’t good. DRC wanted a French-extremely- fluent biodiversity expert who uses GIS in land surveying conservation efforts (I really liked this position as it was a regional position and required you to go around to different parts in the area, and you wouldn’t be stuck in the office, but out in the field a lot). So that’s that. We’ll see what happens with the others.

Outside of that, I’m applying various things, mainly social enterprises since I love those whether joining one, joining a social enterprise incubator, or starting one. We’ll see. It’s an exciting field and I’m glad I’m a part of it from a donor and experimenter side. Since I’m looking at jobs all over the map, I will tell you about one in science education that floored me. An HBCU in Baltimore has a center for Excellence in Mathematics and Science. My name was given to them (by AAAS due to work as an adj. prof of Ed for AAAS through George Washington University, working with DC public school teachers). The center’s director resigned or retired. The associate is taking over for the time being. They are interested in me coming in to be the interim director and applying to be the permanent director (competitive post). I told them I’m interested. So we’ll see how that goes.

In the meantime, I’m still doing weekly community dinners, watching plays and concerts, and preparing to teach a salsa dance class this summer. Still I really love singing with my a capella group.

DARKNESS

2011-08-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

The reason I’m excited about my a capella group, is that, honestly, in the past year they’ve been one thing that has given me a lot of joy amid a lot of sadness. There’s a strong darkness that has had a grip of me for some time, and I have to actively work to keep it off or from controlling me.

And I’ve been very sad lately. Sometimes I can’t shake it. People always ask “what are you sad about?” There is so much to be sad that in many ways I’m continually sad while I’m continually happy. They co-exist (it is possible). I’ve been especially sad because I have a dear friend who was diagnosed with cancer. It was in the late stages, and she had to have an abdominoperineal resection, colostomy, and a hysterectomy. She’s infertile and must now consider adoption when she ever has time to reconsider kids again. And the colostomy, if you don’t know, is when they create a new exit for your poop through your lower abdomen. I was really sad to hear this and it has been gnawing at me and bothering me for a long time (some of those doubt questions that you will see below start creeping up).

Then another good friend is getting a divorce after 10 years in relationship (I think). When she told me I could do nothing but cry. I seriously just cried. I was so surprised because it was a deterioration that I did not witness. Either it was kept from being visible or it’s just because I’m far away from most people. Regardless, I was shocked. She told me love isn’t enough. I wondered what she meant by love.

One thing I’ve learned is that good things come and bad things come. Good events happen and bad events happen. When the bad comes, you’re not too bogged down because you know it will pass but, more than that, you understand that you have no understanding of what worse was avoided because of this bad or what lives it saved or what greater purpose can be pulled out of it. You learn to detach yourself from desire and control and want. So the bad doesn’t affect you as much (may still affect you), and when there is good, you simply enjoy it for what it’s worth while it’s there, knowing that it’s fleeting as well. Of course this deals with things beyond your control. And that makes life hard because people put their trust and faith (I have done this) in things beyond their control. Many times, outside of your control, that thing or person or concept can crash and you don’t have anything to hold on to. So we learn to enjoy the good when and while we have it, knowing that we not only lack control, but we don’t own it either. It’s made me not question the concept of human rights, but made me question the use of the term “rights” as the best way to represent the concept of human rights.

CORRECTIONS

2011-08-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

I forgot that when I send these updates people often see inaccuracies with what I write, take offense or issue, or don’t like it. Now this isn’t the case with every remark I remember below. But since I made the marks publicly I want to correct them publicly.
Last update I wrote this top 10:

10 Reasons You Know You’re Serving the Homeless in the United States

10. When serving a plate of food, a homeless man says to you “Would YOU eat that?”

9. When offering food to a homeless, hungry man he says to you “Is it cold? I don’t eat cold food.”

8. When offering salad to a homeless woman, she says “No crunchy pieces. Only salad with no croutons.”

7. When offering salad to a homeless person, he says “I don’t eat salad.”

6. A homeless man looks at the food I’m offering him and says, “Hey, even homeless people have standards! You know what I mean?”

5. A homeless man sees you without a phone and offers you one of his two cell phones.

4. A homeless woman in a soup kitchen turns down your Moroccan chicken soup saying, “No, thanks. I’m a vegetarian.”

3. A homeless person offers you a job.

2. A homeless man pats his tummy and says to you “I’ve decided I need to lose a few pounds.”

1. A homeless man complains about rising prices and backs it up by showing you his energy bills.

Now someone pointed out that it’s offensive or seemingly offensive. In fact at least one of the readers was homeless for a while and it’s not a good place to be. I want to acknowledge the plight of homelessness in the U.S. and the often subtle bias against them that shows up in our actions in conscious and subconscious ways. This was not meant to poke fun at homeless people. I didn’t make up any of the items. They’re all true. And yet they are things that I can smile and laugh about with homeless people (not at them). I took each item from true happenings between homeless people and me. They each had names, though, I didn’t name them. For instance, one man, my first homeless friend in DC, really did offer me a cell phone. I’ve really been shown bills. True story, comedy-filled, but true. I think the funniest aspects of life are true. It’s like truth is somehow embedded into the fabric of that mysterious quality that makes us smile and laugh. And that is what is in these stories.

Secondly, someone pointed out that they have experienced this abroad. My friend experienced it abroad and this does happen outside the U.S. The point isn’t so much that it is a US phenomenon, but it’s a phenomenon that happens in places that are relatively more affluent or wealthy than other places. In other words, in any situation in which homeless people are steadily or regularly receiving food through whatever source, they have an option of being particular or picky. This can happen in developed or developing countries. And I was highlighting the cases I experienced in D.C. However, I have yet to experience this in a region of hyper-dire need and hunger, seeing people reject my food due to taste, for instance. This may happen but it’s outside my experience.

Next, someone wrote to explain to me that the Jewish prisoners at the camp in Terezin did not sing Verdi’s requiem because they somehow believed Jesus was God or were converting to Christianity. I asked some others about this to see if this is the message others received. So far, I think only one person seemed to have sensed this in the words I wrote, so I hope it was just one. My point was that the tension was beautiful—the tension of a group of Jewish prisoners singing a Catholic mass and the greater tension of the prisoners singing a mass for the dead in order to both inspire and retain life. I find life doesn’t exist without tensions. If we see none, it’s probably because we’re not yet awake.

I don’t remember all the comments I was to correct from the various response emails, but I do remember one last one deals with sharing what others say. I’ve shared what many people said about me anonymously, never with any problems. But an anonymous story breaks fiduciary trust (confidence) according to some or one. So please excuse me for sharing anything you might have said about me in an email to a few people. Please feel free not to share with me answers to questions such as when I ask “what do you think I want.” I don’t interpret anonymous stories as breaking trust so that was probably the difference in ethical behavior there. My guess is that the feeling of betrayal committed by me is worsened if the story I share is one that is critical of me (making the person feel bad) versus a story when someone is praising me (I don’t think every story would elicit a response).

Lastly, someone asked why I would not have more questions or fight more when told he was not into God anymore. My guess is that my point in the last update was completely missed. So to repeat, I said something like this. It is evident more and more to me that there is an undercurrent of atheism that runs central to the Judeo-Christian tradition. There is a dual tradition of the priest (who works in the service of God) and the prophet (who speaks out for God against God (the god being served by the people)). There is a strong tradition of religious people who fall into rituals of serving God in their image rather than one greater than their conception. And so a multitude of voices (usually a prophet) usually speak out revealing glimpses of a greater understanding. Through the arc of the Torah and New Testament Bible one can find a pattern of people coming into a deeper understanding of God and trading in old images of God for better ones. You can see this developmental understanding of God through the trajectory of the Bible regarding people’s understanding of God’s uniqueness, God’s agency, God’s character, etc. This list goes on. This is a process I, myself, have engaged in throughout my life whether I knew it or not. And I still do it today. It occurred with Jesus’s disciples after he was crucified, with the Christian church through Luther and Calvin, with the church during the movement from slavery to abolition, etc.
So it is evident then that we can engage in certain dialogues that, though seemingly subversive, lead us into a deeper meaning such as

“God, rid me of God” Peter Rollins
“Forsaking God for the sake of God” Meister Ekhart
“Before God and with God we live without God.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is always difficult to stuff ideas and lessons that have taken years to learn or ideas I’ve picked up from others and share them in a short email or blog, but think of it like this. I’m not surprised when a friend has left the faith or questions God. First, the act of questioning God and this crazy world is a very godly act, one I feel is desired by the God of Judeo-Christian tradition. Think of the one name that was given to the people who would be God’s chosen people (remember; they were chosen not at the exclusion of others [old understanding], but chosen to be a blessing, for the inclusion of others—one example of a developmental understanding through the arc of the stories of the people of faith)—Israel. The one, singular, defining name given to the people of God means “wrestles with God. . .” Really? Wrestles with God? Not holy or sanctified or righteous or good or perfect or better-than-you or best or anything else that is perfect? Really? Really. It seems to be the nature of God to allow the tension that is humanity to find beauty in the mess, the quagmire of questions.

The story of Job is probably the oldest dated writing of the Torah and Bible. In the story a man named Job loses everything (business, money, etc.) and his friends come around to comfort him with. Job has even lost his children; his wife tells him to curse God and die. His friends come one by one and reason with him. They tell him this and that (for example, “you must have committed some sin in order to be dealt a blow like this”). The perfect cookie-cutter answers, given to me by church people for why God was happy with Job and unhappy with the visiting friends, never made sense to me. The friends said reasonable things (according to some wisdom). Job just struggled and questioned God. And therein lies the answer. The friends offered . . . theology. Theology isn’t bad in and of itself. It’s quite natural in the after math of the event of God to have thoughts about what happened. We form beliefs. But it’s what happens when those provisional, inadequate thoughts take the place of final authority that a problem arises. And here Job didn’t deal with theology. He wrestled with God. He questioned, he pleaded his case. And I honestly think, at the end of the story, when God shows up in a huge whirlwind and asks all these impossible questions about “Who put the stars in the heaven? And who put the sun in the sky?” God doesn’t answer Job’s questions because it’s not about the set answers or understanding or . . . theology. It’s not central. Rather, it’s about a conversation and the growth that happens in that engagement with God. God then honors Job and not his friends because Job didn’t cling to theology; Job clung to God by wrestling with God (just like the name Israel would come to mean when given as a new name to Jacob). It’s the same reason David was so close to God. David wasn’t close to God because he felt close to God all the time. No; he was close to God because even when he felt distant from God he expressed his feelings of distance directly to God thereby maintaining the closeness and connectedness even in the center of feelings of isolation (I may have to reread that a few times to let that sink in). He struggled.

And the most mature of us realizes that our images or pictures of our God are provisional. That’s why we trade them up. That’s why when I question God I realize and understand that I’m never questioning God but I’m questioning my understanding of God. So when someone becomes an atheist, I’ve learned that they are not rejecting God but they are rejecting their understanding of God. And if that is the definition of atheism then I’m a type of Christian atheist because I reject my understanding of God all the time as I learn to hold a better and more accurate (closer to who God actually is) image of the increasing mystery that is God.

So in a sense because I understand the tensions, the wound, the rupture that is in the scripture (a recent book called the “Encyclopedia of Biblical Difficulties” tries to resolve every single problem; unfortunately it creates more problems than it solves due to the inadequacy of the unsatisfactory answers), I understand that at the same time I name God, I must engage in a process of de-naming God so as not to create a conceptual idol (think of the contrast between “our father who art in heaven”—the familiarity of a dad to “Hallowed be they name”—actually God’s not like a dad, he’s also wholly other). Does that make sense? So fundamentalism can be looked at as a particular way to believe rather than referring to the content of beliefs.

Fundamentalism can be said to be a particular way of believing such that you exclude all other people who believe differently in accordance to the amount that their beliefs differ than yours. Rather, I try (key word is try, I also fail) to include everyone especially those that differ the most from what I believe understanding the belief isn’t central. To put it another way, fundamentalism is believing in what you believe. Because I know the current picture I have of God is wrong (though I don’t know what will improve in the future), I, rather, disbelieve in what I believe. I love that, and I thank Rollins for that thought. It’s so true.

So no, I don’t get mad at a friend becoming an atheist. I understand many of those friends were driven there by reinforced hurtful images of God manifested in us. Rather, I try to love those especially and increasingly in correspondence to how much the beliefs of others differ from me.

EMERGENCE

2011-08-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

I didn’t mean to have a whole section on religion again, but it’s because someone had questions about me not being more expressive about friends who turn to atheism. Continuing with this understanding of the difference between God as God really is and God as I understand God, I’m reminding of this question of emergent thought. People always ask me “isn’t the emergent church a bunch of balderdash?” Normally, I would say it’s not a church; it doesn’t have a hierarchy or a denominational structure. It has no denominational manual to guide its actions. It doesn’t even have a set of written beliefs that instruct people on what to believe. No, it’s just a movement, I would say, of different voices. And if you criticize you must specifically criticize a specific person because they have different voices.

Well, I read the best analogy or actuality of what is emergent. It’s not a church or a denomination, but it’s also not a movement. It’s more properly called a conversation. I’m thankful for that reminder. It’s a conversation among disparate and disagreeing voices, but most importantly it’s a group of people who have felt comfortable enough to create a space in which people can struggle and wrestle with questions that don’t seem to be satisfyingly (intellectual, emotional, spiritual satisfaction) addressed by mainstream Christianity. But the voices themselves don’t agree. They offer up various interpretations and understandings. So when criticizing the group it’s important to criticize specific people since they don’t all believe the same points. But they are so willing to enter into conversation together, that you can find one person write a review on the first inside pages of a book of a person with whom he disagrees on some points.

I love this! In one way, it implicitly suggests there is something higher than belief or faith (and there is). They have found it and I want to experience and share in it; it’s called love. Secondly, it creates a place where, as I said before, it’s less about naming God and more about entering the space where God names you (experiential truth rather than descriptive truth).

Now most of these guys are obscure, some are academics (and academics always disagree and say crazy things. . . .well, sometimes). But I’m always quite curious when someone who is in the spotlight has the courage to ask a question and offer a different understanding contrary to mainstream belief. And that’s what happened with Love Wins. I normally don’t like to speak about controversial matters, especially when they don’t matter. But I know what it’s like to step out and put your neck out there for a cause, for family, for a friend, for a beloved one, for an enemy. And I know what it’s like to experience the onslaught of criticism and the silence of friends. So since I’m a friend of Bell, the author of Love Wins, I thought I would say how courageous he is and how I admire that.

Usually people consider Brian McLaren the “elder statesman” of the emerging conversation. But to be honest, there are many that have questions and thoughts though many would never say anything because they belong to orthodox churches or groups or lead them and it wouldn’t work. Some might lose their job or position. In the middle of all this is a pastor who has been steadily rising in visibility and influence (he has a widely popular video serious called Nooma used by all types of Christians). He normally writes suggesting stuff in the forms of hints or whispers. He doesn’t always write everything he thinks or push you all the way out of your comfort zone. So I used to read his books and wonder “I wonder if he’s holding back or thinks other things that are different than the mainstream.” I could give examples, but he has now written a book that questions the doctrine of hell. Remember people don’t like doctrine to be questioned. This is because doctrine is tied into belief. And for many people belief is central because it is identity forming. Belief determines who you are. Belief also determines where you go when you die. Not relationship, but belief. So it’s unsettling for a lot of people. And I wanted to say amidst the vast onslaught of negative criticism and silence of friends, that I admire Bell for asking the question and going there. I also admire Bell because he asks such questions not out of a sympathy for people who are not Christians or out of a desire to have a more convenient message. No, he asks because he’s actually seeking the truth. He studies hard and long and reads everything he can. He’s seminary-trained and he dives into the culture and context of the times. He’s coming with a fully armed knowledge base. No, it’s not soft, fluffy convenience. He’s rather trying to conform to the image of God he’s experienced in Jesus.

So let me end this section with the prompt for the book. Bell’s church recently had an art exhibition with artwork displayed around the church. One picture was a picture of Gandhi. Someone—no one knows who—decided to take a note and stick it under the painting of Gandhi. It read “News Flash: He’s in Hell!” Bell then asks “Really? Gandhi’s in Hell? And you know this for sure? And someone felt the need to share it with the rest of us?” Bell goes on to ask from where does the idea of hell come. How does it all work in the end? Is the central message of Jesus that God is going to send you to hell unless you are one of the select few who are saved from hell by Jesus? If that’s true, how are the select few chosen? Who decides who is in each group? And what happens to the rest of us?

It’s quite provocative and not new. The tough part of mainstream Christianity today is that there are plethora of diverse voices in the history of it, but many times we miss different understandings and interpretations because only one perspective maintains the dominant space in popular literature, movies, and sermons. That’s why it was so strange to see someone popular say something like that. But hey, as Bell would say don’t just accept what he says. Test it, prove it, wrestle with it, and probe it. “God has spoken. The rest is just commentary right?”

FAITH

2011-08-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

I recently held a doubt night with a group of men I was in charge of helping to lead. They wanted to discuss the topic and I was to facilitate the discussion on doubts. I started a few weeks earlier and had them write down all their doubts about God, Christ, religion, this life, this world. They looked something like this.

I don’t get the Trinity. Is it even real?
How can God have done all those miracles in old times but I don’t see any now?

To this. . .

If it’s as it says in the Bible, how come scientific evidence points to the earth being much older than how I read Genesis through the appearance of Christ in the New Testament?

If evolution is wrong, why is there scientific evidence pointing towards the probability of evolution?

And this. . .

How can a Good God send people to hell?
Why doesn’t God step in and stop the suffering in this world—the violence, wars, diseases, natural disasters, hate, etc.? Why? It doesn’t make sense. What kind of God is that?

To this. . .

Why did my aunt die? She was a good woman, and she died. Why?
Why would she leave me if I gave her everything? Where is the God in that?
Will I ever find a job?

So we sat down and I prepared some worksheets to allow them to work through some thoughts and study on their own, then in small groups, then in a bigger group and then altogether as one group. It was interesting especially because the previous meeting I was preceded by a facilitator (famous guy who runs a large church out of Seattle) who argued that it was important to have a right belief in order to have truth faith.

Well, you know me . . . not that I like to challenge, but . . . perhaps it comes naturally. We explored the role of doubt and we found that doubt was central. Far from being something that was removed by faith, it was mixed with faith, necessitated faith and wasn’t diminished in the presence of it. We first looked at the refrigerator.

If I have an unreasonable phobia preventing me from opening refrigerators I seek counseling to get help because it prevents me from eating and I go out a lot (thankfully I have roommate). Bobby on the other hand, has no fear of opening the refrigerator. Now, does it take courage for me to open the refrigerator? For me, the person with the phobia? Everyone agreed it did. Does it take courage for Bobby to open it? People thought for a moment (they were in small groups), but everyone agreed it really took no courage for Bobby to open the refrigerator. I asked them (through the worksheet to come up with a definition of courage using the word fear). They had different versions, but the definition was something like “courage isn’t the absence of fear; courage is the triumph over fear.” Later on in the worksheet I had them write an analogous definition of faith using the word doubt. Faith isn’t the absence of doubt; it’s the triumph over doubt. It’s not the best definition, but it works. :-)
We then talked about relationships. I gave an example of a couple, a man and a woman, who were thoroughly and utterly convinced and convicted that they were perfect for each other in every way and would have a long and lasting marriage. In the context of their conviction and belief, there was no decision to be made at all. It was clear; they needed to continue their loving by being married. Now I mentioned another couple. Imagine a second couple. This couple facing family opposition, various challenges, and is plagued by an uncertainty future not sure of where they will be or if this will work out in the end. Now it’s here that a real decision has to be made. Far from doubt taking away the chance for faith, doubt is the very place and sacred site where faith is forged.

It’s in this situation that the couple must decide to 1) not get married or 2) go forward and get married. Now I have sympathy for people who fall into #1 because it’s a hard decision and scary. I understand, though (for a good woman) I may not have chosen that option. But I admire and am more like people in #2. Those are they who took a chance in the context of doubt and allowed faith to be forged (assuming it was a relationship in which faith was implicit, infused, and inspired and which inspired faith in all those around them). That’s a real decision, that’s real faith. And it’s hard to find that these days.

Strangely but honestly enough, many of the guys disagreed when I asked the question of which situation requires a decision. Some said both situations, both couples had to make a decision. It was hard for them to understand the subtle point of what I was suggesting, that a real decision (and therefore a real choice and therefore real faith and therefore real LOVE) was only required in the second. A REAL decision that required faith.

I’ve been working on faith for a bit, but it’s been working on me for much longer.

PORNEUO

2011-08-28T13:08:00.000-07:00

I was at a meeting of men, and during the discussion, one man said “Yeah, guys run to pornography as a way to seek intimacy.” Everyone nodded. Internally I thoroughly disagreed. At least in my experience it is exactly the opposite. I have many friends who are married and going through problems, relational problems with wives due to various reasons (money, children, family, travel, working too much, etc. I do believe all these have a common root). Contrary to what was said, many of these friends have sought pornography as a way to experience pleasure while avoiding intimacy. It’s actually easier to engage with a relationally fictional image or movie and please yourself than to engage with this woman with whom you do not agree, this woman with whom you are fighting, this woman with whom (dare I say) you are not loving? Rather they seem to be avoiding intimacy, because intimacy is hard.

Porneuo. It’s from the Greek. And it means “I fornicate.” Porne and pornea means prostitute and prostitution. Lately I’ve dived into the dark underworld of pornography. I say dark, but acknowledge that many people see it as neutral or good.

“There’s one thing about me that ruins my chances of being with any woman. And that’s pornography.” I have a friend who is struggling with pornography and his apathy over his addiction. He actually feels bad because he doesn’t really care about changing. So I hear I go, again. I step In the gap and offer to struggle alongside him and fight with him.

The first thing I told him is that he does care. And that’s the first step. You see, he doesn’t care about his addiction to pornography but he does care about the fact that he doesn’t care. If he did not, there would be no internal struggle with his apathy. It’s one level removed, but it’s a start. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t care, but he doesn’t like it. He’s said he doesn’t like it, and that’s caring about his apathy over his use of pornography.

He also comes from a perspective of wanting to wait for marriage, but his problem is that he doesn’t believe there is anyone out there for him, so if he’s not getting married why not get all he can now—pornography with masturbation, prostitution, etc.? Why not?

The problem, of course, with the thinking is that he comes from some in-built presumption that he will get married or that everyone does. So the notion of “waiting for marriage” assumes marriage when in reality not everyone gets married. And even within his religious tradition, though it’s not promoted, singlehood is promoted as a viable option (by Jesus and Paul). But saving something for a state (sex for marriage) which may not be his future does not work well with him. And I understand; his thinking makes sense. That’s why I don’t like the phrase “save for marriage,” at least not for him. It’s causing problems in this space.

What’s a better way forward for him is how to have healthy expressions of sexuality no matter your state single or married, so that you are not holding out for something that may never come. Healthy expressions of sexuality don’t imply anything (i.e. sex) other than what it says. In fact, I have a men’s group that I meet with and this is a point I try to highlight because too often in most groups (religious or non-religious) I see that we, as people, swing one way—to the body or to the spirit.

We have a body and are therefore like animals (as Rob Bell might say). But animals have sex with no meaning. They have sex at certain times and in certain seasons (excluding a select few like dolphins) and then they stop. As soon as sex is over that’s it. There’s no attempt to attach meaning, extrapolate, prognosticate, or deeply and profoundly bond (now this is a broad generalization, as zoologists can show examples of bonding). Many people lean this way “We ain’t nothing but animals. So why don’t we do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel.” The problem is that we are more than “animals” in that sense. And we run into problems when we act like animals on the Discovery Channel.

We also have a spirit. And as humans, actions and interactions have meanings and re-meanings. So with a spirit we are like spirit-beings or like angels (or the concept of angels). The problem here, of course, is that angels have no bodies, physical cravings for food (need), water (need), sex (want), shelter from the elements. So angels can ignore such things and deal only with higher meanings and connection with God. The problem, of course, is that we have bodies. We’re sexual beings and run into problems when we act like angels. (i.e. a man waiting for marriage can still find healthy ways to express desire of his beloved without sex or getting as close to it as possible, but without some healthy expression problems will arise in the heart and mind of the woman as to why this man doesn’t desire her; it’s like my female friend waiting for marriage said to me “I want a man who won’t have sex with me but I want him to want to have sex with me.”)

So we’re caught in the tension of both. In so many areas, as humans we’re explicitly unique in that we live at the nexus, in the intersection, in the tension of two overlapping regimes—in this case, spirituality and physicality. So in many groups I’m a part of, including my men’s group, people swing one way or the other, or I’ve seen groups pray to be released from the desires of one—body or spirit. Far better than the release from one, is learning the art of living in the tension, being comfortable with the discomfort. That’s what it means to be human.

So my aim with my friend is not to remove the desire, but rather to keep it, honor it, and learn how to live with his desire healthily. I do not advocate a paradigm of avoidance or resistance. Resistance doesn’t work; it’s much easier to avoid something if you’re never able to do it in the first place (easier to flee from a temptation than to resist it). Avoidance is messy, as well, because one may always linger or come back to that which one avoids if given leisure. Replacement is more powerful.

But this world of pornography is intimidating to me. Its hold is other-worldly. The percentage of men involved is in the 90’s, no matter if they are religious adherents or not, political leaders or not, schoolteachers or not, adults or teenagers. It’s everywhere. Luckily there are tools to help with computers and websites and programs. The only problem is that such extreme work (breaking a habit) calls for extreme action. After all, repeated thoughts become actions; repeated actions become habits; repeated habits, lifestyles. So it takes time to change a lifestyle or (my favorite word) replace old habits with new habits (not just avoid old habits—they’re habits after all). But the person must be willing. In the case of my friend, we have to make some changes to his computers in the meantime while changing habits. We’ll see if he’s ready for this first part.

We’ll see if I’m ready. The number one thing this teaches me is that no one is above temptation of something. In other words you never outgrow the need to deal with temptation, and anything—any lifestyle, any habits, any actions, any thoughts—I see around me is something it’s quite possible for me to engage.

THE TWO BEST GUYS I KNOW

2011-08-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

I just want to take a moment to honor two guys, John Linn and Mark Little. They are two of the best men I know (really people).

I don’t know how to explain John. He’s older than me but treats me often like I’m his older brother. John finds any moment and opportunity to give you a compliment not just on what you do but a praise for who you are. And he does this without trying or being obsequious. It’s natural for him. The reason that I like him is hard to articulate. In simple, he’s the person that I know who is most utterly aware of his messed up condition, his broken humanity, his need for grace. He wears vulnerability on his sleeve. I don’t know anyone who does it like he does it. He will tell you his brother needs a kidney transplant but he, himself, needs grace because he hasn’t always had a great/good relationship with his brother and that affects wanting to give his kidney. He’ll tell you that’s messed up and he knows he needs grace and knows he should give a kidney but that’s where he’s at. He’ll tell you he wants to keep his kidney. He’ll tell you that he does a lot of stuff he doesn’t want to do and the things he wants to do he doesn’t do. He’ll tell you you’re better than him. He’ll tell you he doesn’t know why the woman he’s with is with him and he never once means that in a self-deprecating way but in a truthful way. My goodness. He’ll see the beauty in everyone, meet them at their point of departure and contact and lift them back to life by showing his brokenness. He is drenched with the recognition of who is and it constantly prevents not just hero-worship but self-worship and egotism. Paradoxically, I admire him more. In an age when I’m used to having leaders who hide their faults to maintain their eligibility for leadership, I’m drawn to him as a man who shows his faults in order to say “Don’t follow me. Follow God.” At the same time he implicitly says “Don’t follow me in my actions. Only follow me in my honesty and vulnerability.” And he’s right. Honesty allows you to avoid pride and gives you the sight in order to be the site where change happens. Clear vision is the first step and he takes it and puts on a clock of humility as daily ritual. I really admire that and want to be like him.

The other guy I know is Mark. Mark is an enigma. Mark is real and has things he’s ok with people knowing and thing he doesn’t want people to know (we all do), but he has understanding of the entire human race. He has an understanding that we are all family. He understands that when he does something for you, you don’t have to pay him back, and he’s not looking for it. He understands, counter-culturally, that to say thank you and then offer money for the meal or gift rebukes and reduces and possible refutes the thanks. He understands that to say thank you and then say “I’ll get the next meal” or “I’ll have to have you over for dinner” is a context of “becoming even” when rather he lives in a context of love. Love doesn’t just forget any record of wrongs. Love keeps no record of rights. But very few people get that. He does, and in him is true love because there is no record keeping. Mark is also a person who is brutally honest. If you want a confidant, he’s the best kind. He won’t pull any punches. And often when I think that he is such a better man than me, so perspicacious he’ll poignantly tell me that we actually see things similarly that I just don’t think I do. When he says that, he doesn’t understand that that is the biggest compliment to me. Two of the best guys I know.

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

2011-08-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

Mark reminds me of love. When I was young, I learned about things that are good to do, and I thought I was good because I did them. But no I realize, that when you’re young a lot of times you lack the proper context for certain things. Faith needs doubt, love needs a decision, etc. And I didn’t really have enemies, or I didn’t know of them. So I thought I always loved my enemies.

Now, today I still walk around thinking I have no enemies. But I forgot that you can have enemies even if you yourself are not at odds with people. Anyone can set themselves up as your enemy whether you want to engage in a relationship of enmity with them or not. So I was reminded of this over the past few years when thinking of my time as a graduate student and my first advisor (whom I left). I’m reminded of him because he continues to academically harass (by this I mean find papers that I’ve published and then publish papers that discredit them or write a letter to the editor of the journal/mag to say how what I wrote was wrong or I cheated or stole). So I had to give another reply to a second paper he had written now about another article of mine from my thesis. It gets tiresome, but the lesson finally clicked for me. I have an enemy. This is where love is tested. If there really isn’t a decision to be made (check out the faith section above) have you really ever truly loved? If you haven’t been at the point where you don’t want to be in a relationship with this person because it’s hard work and there’s opposition every step of the way and you’re unsure, have you really ever decided to love (I’m not referring to the emotion here).

And so I was reminded of what I profess (which means nothing) and decide to incarnate it. In fact it’s been on my heart for a number of years of what I could do. So I sent an email to this person to initiate contact and asked if I could help set up interviews for him in DC with program managers to talk about grant money over which they presided (this is a legal meeting that serves to inform the professor/applicant about which avenue is best to apply for money and to help the program manager assigned the write reviewers to the application of the professor/applicant). We’ll see what he says. I know what I expect, but it doesn’t matter. I know the man, and I feel bad for him. But I don’t want to just feel bad for him I want to love him. So counter to people and friends who pray for his downfall (no joke) and would rather love him back to life. I want his life to be more than just vindictively trying to hurt most of his former students (meaning they left him or were kicked out without graduating under him). I want the place he goes to at night to be more than a house. I want him to find a greater joy in life than just he told me. “Do you know what gives me the greatest joy in life? It’s when I get in front of a group of people and say something they don’t know and they scurry to write it down.” I want him to understand there is more at home than what I’ve heard. “What is there at home for me? Nothing. All I have to do is give my wife a movie once a month and go shopping for food and she’s happy. After that I’m done.” I really do. And sympathy doesn’t cut it. I, too, know what it’s like to be in a place where you feel like you have no friend or the kids in school don’t like you (or maybe I don’t). But I hate that he’s grown up and it hasn’t changed for him. He’s done a lot of awful things which I haven’t disclosed, things that have messed up people for life, academically, professionally and psychologically. I’ve forgotten that I have an enemy. And I’ve remembered to show love. We’ll see what happens. I’m reminded of MLK’s words.

To our most bitter opponents we say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory."

There is so much truth to be unraveled in those words on so many levels that currently the only thing I can say to that is this: I love those words. Still they’re just words. But if I want them to be Words, I incarnate them.

WORDS

2011-08-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

I’m smiling now as someone told me this week “You need to get grounded.” As much as I intellectually know the effect of words and that we seem hard-wired as humans to be susceptible to them, I still deal with it. Some people say words that water my soul while others tear it into pieces. Now, none of this may be purposeful but it happens. And I’m quite procedural about it these days. I know what I must due to counteract such words, and I do. But I still cannot avoid the need to deal with it and counteract with it. It’s like practicing medicine on yourself. You know what to do but the bruise or wound is still felt while you treat it.

The most interesting part of words for me is that words can affect me just as much as the removal or lack of words can affect me. Let me give an example. I used to date a girl (she’s a woman now) a number of years ago. And while together, in hopes of one day marrying me, she would say “I’m marrying the best man I know.” At first I didn’t believe this because how many people marry the best man you know? Really, it’s not important. The best man a woman knows can be her father, her mentor, a guru—it need not be her significant other. But here, this woman was saying that she chose the best man she knew. Eventually, those years ago, I believed it. One day, she left, and I realized those words aren’t true for her, at least most likely because you don’t leave the best man you know. Not good enough? I’ve a better example with a woman, from when I dated her, a number of years ago. From my warped perspective, we were a good couple but we faced problems from the outside due to families. For me, it was hard but didn’t change anything on the inside of our relationship, between us. For her it did. So I used to say, “If it would be better for you, less pain and strife, to be apart and not be with me, then that’s ok.” (Strangely I cared more for her happiness then for my happiness caused by her.) I would say something like that. She would say something like “With all the mess and messiness, with all the craze and craziness, with all the ridiculousness. . . . you’re worth it.” I, of course, have dressed up her comments, but that’s the essence. So one day, when the relationship is ended, tell me, what was the implicit (and honest) message I received? That’s right: you’re not worth it. With all the mess and messiness, craze and craziness, ridiculousness and hurt, you are not worth going through that. I’d rather not have you and the mess.

So what I have loved recently is that I had some good words given to me. It’s funny to think you may do the work of planting the seeds of words into the lives of people only to reap a harvest of fruitful words right back from your investment, but it’s been happening. . . with my students. I had two of my former high school students visit me during their spring break in college. It was nice to have them in the house for a week. We would make meals together; they would ask for permission to go out. I would stupidly stay up waiting for them to come home. I would fiercely guard them from DC guys they met, and I would drive them around and treat them. It was funny. But the words, oh the words they wrote to me in a card they gave me with a picture of them on the cover! When you don’t know if you’re good man, not because you may not be but because of silly words (which you know you just need to counteract, almost methodically), it helps to be told you are a good man. And I had forgotten because of other words. They gave me new words to replace the old. They told me. You’re a good man. You’re a Good man. They said some positive things and put it in writing for me to rehearse (I rehearse positive comments—it’s a practice of mine). I encouraged them, and I inspired them, and I was an example of a good man, and not just that a good Black man. (the word “good” is considered vague, banal, and provincial, but I actually consider it a very specific and great word in a different sense) Another friend contacted me to explain the wonders of me. I don’t know why she did it but she did. Her most repeated word was beautiful, but she spoke about more specific aspects of me since she meant beauty holistically. She even remembers the first day we met. Another student contacted me and said something special to me about me for me through me. From the last update, I received some negative comments, but I don’t write it for those. I write it for the positive comments that I receive, not to receive them, but to know that somehow some boring writing about sparks in my life can do some good in the life of someone else. I’m nourished by service.

SPARKS

2011-08-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

Week 1

In January 2011, I took part in a social and interpersonal experiment which I immensely enjoyed. One reason I was delaying my next letter is because I wanted to be able to update you about SPARKS and then continue to tell you about it when we continue in May 2011 without breaking the email cycle. That’s right; I’m leading a session of Sparks in DC with hopefully about 50 people. But I want to tell you about it now and how it went in January. Here is the letter we sent out:

Dear Friend:

Hey, this is Victor.
2011 is upon us. I want to share with you an event taking place January 11 through February 1 (Tuesdays @ 7 pm about 2 blocks from Union Station). For full details check out this blog post about the Spark Series in DC. I invite you to join me, or forward to anyone in your network who might be interested!

January is always especially full of possibilities – a chance to reset our priorities. But the rest of the year can often feel like a graveyard of good intentions that petered out back in February. This year I’m starting out with a bang – or perhaps I should say SPARK. And – if you live in Washington, D.C. – I invite you to join me.

For four weeks in January and February, I’m attending a SPARK series organized by my friend Andy Pisciotti. The series will help each person focus on this one question: What’s one thing I can do this week to make the world a better place, or myself a better person?

It can be in any area of life that you want…finance, health, romance, family, friends, spiritual, social justice, recreation/hobbies, etc. It doesn’t matter how big or small it is; all that matters is that you take a risk.

You’ll come up with an answer to that question, then we’ll come back the following week to share stories about how it went. We’ll repeat the process for a few weeks. It’ll be a great way to add some initiative to 2011, and it’s another excuse for a laid back evening with friends and food.

First, watch the 1-minute promo from SPARKgood.

Spark Promo from Spark Good Studios on Vimeo.

We’ll meet on Tuesday nights (January 11 through February 1) at 7 pm. Bring yourself. Bring friends. Bring some goals you’ve just been itching to get around to. I think you’ll find the atmosphere encouraging, inspiring and practical, too.
Contact me or Andy if you want the full details. How about starting your new year with a SPARK? Then, see it blossom in 2011.

During week 1, we just met. We had a total of about 8-10 people. In the first meeting, the concept was explained and we were given spark-generators, some worksheets that contained ideas about potential sparks (reconnecting with an estranged friend of 15 years, pursuing the man/woman of your dreams, building a home for someone in need, etc.). We ate food, talked, and discussed ideas. At the end we all shared what we thought we might do during the week. Because I have weekly communal dinners, I was hoping to open up my home to the homeless and invite them in for dinner, but because I don’t live alone, there are problems with that. So I decided what I wanted to do was to take a homeless person out to dinner. Now, I’ve taken homeless people out for a meal, but I normally have left after they receive their food. This time, I wanted to engage with them not prior to purchasing the meal and a bit afterward, but to sit down with him or her and spend time breaking bread and sharing lives. Next week, we’ll see how it went.

I’ve decided to start a new series in these email updates. Each week, I’ll tell you what happened in the subsequent week of SPARKS for me (I can only talk about me). It was an exciting time, and I quite enjoyed it. When it was over I didn’t want it to end.

Overall, it went well, though we had a few challenges about people wanting bigger and better things, about people risking bigger things. The problem was sometimes they didn’t, or they went for something that was easy instead of challenging, something that takes longer than a week instead of what could be done in a week, or something that wasn’t in their control, perhaps. So we’ll be doing it better, and we’ll do it again in May, and my friend Andy asked me to help co-lead. I’m really looking forward to it!!! VERY exciting!!

GLOBAL GIVING

2011-08-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

From one of my students: Keara Cormier-Hill
I'm working with the African Development Initiative, a nonprofit organization that works primarily in Ghana. Its two main foci are Project ACWA (Access to Clean Water for Agyementi) and Project RISE (Rural Irrigation System for Ekumdipe). ACWA worked with Agyementi to build a borehole (aka a well for clean water), an iron filtration unit, and 27 latrines (with 20 more being built now). Clean water and sanitation has helped reduce diarrheal disease in the community as well as had helped with reducing time spent on gathering water at the stream and with women's menstrual health. RISE enabled Ekumdipe to take advantage of their local river with an irrigation system that allows them to farm even in the dry season. Before, the farmers there were not equipped to be able to farm during the futile dry season, which is 6 months of lost profit. Now they are able to profit all year round. In early March, the first batch of dry-season onions was successfully harvested there using the implemented technology! Pretty cool huh?

I wanted to ask you as my family to support me as ADI competes in the Global Giving Campaign. This Campaign is a competition amongst nonprofits to raise $4,000 during the month of April by at least 50 unique donors. Reaching this goal gives us a permanent slot on their website which is a pretty popular site for people interested in donating to causes they support. Whoever raises the most money OR has the most donors will get an additional monetary prize from Global Giving.

It would be wonderful if you all could forward this to friends/family/colleagues/lists and most importantly consider donating yourselves. I know that personal finances and other charitable obligations could cause some hesitation, but even if you can only give a few bucks, that will raise the amount of unique donors we have and thus help with one of the competitions. Anything helps. If you want to know what your money would specifically be helping, $25 is a whole sack of dry-season crops, $50 pays for 1/3 of the pipes needed for the irrigation system, $200 can cover the fencing for 10 farms, and $500 pays for 3 months of the living expenses of the nearby farmer Bawku who moved to Ekumdipe and helps the community members demonstrate the dry-season farming techniques.

Helping this cause can literally be done with a click of a button: Here is the site.

TIDBITS

2011-08-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

Goldman Prize to a Rhino-Lover

According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, By the early 1990's, only 370 black rhinos survived in Zimbabwe. With
intensive anti-poaching efforts, and active translocations and
interventions, the rhinos have made a phenomenal recovery in spite of
Zimbabwe's current economic crisis. The population continues to grow, now
numbering 430 black rhinos and 244 white rhinos.

Raoul DuToit and his team, the Lowveld Rhino Trust, deserve much of the
credit for this miraculous recovery. They work tirelessly to keep tabs on
rhinos and to keep them alive and well. When rhinos wander into insecure
areas, they literally move them out of harm's way: darting and then driving
them from high-risk areas to safer locations. With USFWS support Raoul has
treated more than 100 injured rhinos per year for gunshot, snare and other
wounds, and returned them to the wild.

I want you to check out this ad about domestic violence in South Africa.

And here’s an interesting article a friend sent to me. Tell me what you think.

ART

2011-08-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me what books I’m currently reading and wanted me to talk about them in this section.

Religious Studies
Finding Our Way Again by Brian McLaren
A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren
Prodigal God by Tim Keller
How (Not) To Speak Of God by Peter Rollins
Fidelity of Betrayal by Peter Rollins
Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales by Peter Rollins
Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

Social Justice
Christianity and the Crisis in the 21st Century edited by Paul Raushenbash

Negotiations & Social Science
Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, 2nd ediction, by Roger Fisher, William L. Ury, Bruce Patton (editor in 1st edition)

History
Africa in History by Basil Davidson

Economics, International Development
Wars, Guns, and Votes by Paul Collier
Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo

Fiction
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Juno Diaz

But more than that, I wanted you take a few minutes and look at a few photos from the White House Photography Exhibit. I love photography.

Presidential Photography
Domestic News Photography
Story & Politics Photography

Booksneeze Review: "Finding Our Way Again" by Brian McLaren

2011-05-17T05:35:00.001-07:00

A Breath of Fresh Air

I recently read Brian McLaren’s “Finding Our Way Again,” the introductory book of the book series “The Return of the Ancient Practices” edited by Phyllis Tickle. I was asked to write a review of the book, and all I can think is that it has been a breath of fresh air.

Before starting, I read a few reviews of the book, and now that I’ve read the book, I want to address one criticism of the book and other books of Brian McLaren. That criticism is the issue of his “bad theology.” Comments like this always entertain me, partly because, in my educated experience, no one’s theology is all correct. If I look at everything that I understand and believe about all aspects of life, my religion, God, and people in general, it’s not only continually growing in size (new knowledge) but it is also continually changing (corrections to old knowledge). So I think McLaren would readily admit he doesn’t have it all together; neither do I. Additionally, there’s a second problem with the criticism. Besides the fact that I doubt any of us have a correct theology, it’s clear to me that criticisms on his theology are simply a matter of interpretational perspective.

In other words, conventional interpretations (of why Jesus came, the place of other religions, hell, etc.) make sense from the scripture if you understand the lens through which a conventional interpreter looks. The same is true for McLaren. If you understand the interpretational lens through which he views the scripture, then everything he says (or most things as he is quite comfortable wrestling through interpretation publicly) actually does make sense. So the understanding or view that he twists scripture or claims it says what it doesn’t is false; this is because what it says is interpretation. Understanding how he views words like “salvation” or “eternal life” explains that, through the interpretational lens he uses, the scriptures actually do say what is saying. The same is true for more traditional interpretations of scriptures. If you understand what a person understands when reading words like “hell” or “believe” or “salvation,” then you see, that the scripture does say what a traditional interpreter says. It’s the lens that’s important. If a reader uses a different lens than the writer of a book of biblical commentary, then of course the reader will say that the writer is lying and making things up or contradicting what the scripture says.

Besides that, the book is quite engaging, and sweet, like a song. He writes in a very personal, sometimes conversational style. But he mostly employs short story. And story is quite powerful when trying to make a point without forcing it. It’s through this medium that the book shines. And McLaren really quickly engages the reader through it.
I’ll be honest, though. While reading through the first section of the book (the first third), I kept thinking why did this book have to be written. In the series there is a separate book on each ancient practice—constant prayer, Sabbath, fasting, tithing, the sacred meal, the liturgical year, and the sacred journey (pilgrimage). Why did we need an entire book for an introduction? And I find often that what you get out of a book depends on where you are. So part one, which set the stage for the series, was familiar to me and contained material found in many of McLaren’s books, though not as deeply treated. He talks of the Jesus he understands and what Jesus’s kingdom means, and the way of love advocated by Paul. McLaren also talks about the many different denominational practices within Christianity (and Judaism and Islam) and how over the years he has been able to take the best of each one. I resonated with this thought which he roughly refers to as open-source spirituality. We have much to learn from each other and to give to each other.

So I didn’t expect anything new in Part II, but it was at this point that I began to be pulled in. After explaining in part one that spiritual practice help us develop character, become awake (truly alive), and finally experience God; he groups the spiritual practices in three categories: contemplative, communal, and missional practices. What I love about Brian is that he’s holistic and integrative in his philosophy and practice. So even though he has certain “unorthodox” thoughts (I believe we might all have such thoughts) and ways he still accepts and includes others who think differently and tries to learn from them. In this way, he doesn’t advocate one of the categories of practices over the other; rather, he shows how all types of practices—contemplative (solitary), communal (group), and missional (outreach)—all are intertwined.

By Part III, I was truly drawn in as he takes us into a short story where we meet an abbess and she invites us to stay at a convent while teaching us the the Way. It is broken into three parts: Katharsis (Via Purgativa) in which we try to rid ourselves of all pride and ego and greed and lust and all impurities; Fotosis (Via Illuminativa) in which our now emptied selves can be filled with the light of God as we thirst and hunger for new things through prayer, contemplation, reading, reflection, nature, and seeing the light of God in all our work; and Theosis (Via Unitiva) in which we become infected by God, become more like God, become one in nature with God, and begin to exude the characteristics of God such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This was my favorite part of the book.

Much more could be said, but I’ll stop here. McLaren does a great job of setting the stage for the rest of the series. He even opens wide the floor of ancient practices including practices which have no dedicated book in this series. There are contemplative practices like submission, gratitude, meditation, and journaling; communal practices like service gatherings, confession, stillness, listening, and interpretation; missional practices like such as giving, service, hospitality, and working for justice. And many practices fall into multiple categories. The book series focuses only on the 7 ancient practices shared by the 3 Abrahamic faiths, but McLaren’s book doesn’t end there.

No, McLaren invites you to remember not just to practice your faith but to faith your practices. This phrase especially touched me and reminded me that in everything I do, I do it unto the Lord with thankfulness, fusing the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual. How can my walk or drive to work be practice infused with faith? How can answering email be a practice filled by God? I read this book during a season (ancient practice of the liturgical year) of lent in which I started each day (instead of ending each day) in prayer, meditation, stillness, contemplation, journaling, reading, and study. And McLaren’s book not only reminded me to slow down, but gave me a breath of fresh air while doing it. I’m becoming more alive each day and I was thankful for the reminder.

UPDATE - January 2011

2011-02-06T20:12:00.000-08:00

10 Reasons You Know You’re Serving the Homeless in the United States

10. When serving a plate of food, a homeless man says to you “Would YOU eat that?”

9. When offering food to a homeless, hungry man he says to you “Is it cold? I don’t eat cold food.”

8. When offering salad to a homeless woman, she says “No crunchy pieces. Only salad with no croutons.”

7. When offering salad to a homeless person, he says “I don’t eat salad.”

6. A homeless man looks at the food I’m offering him and says, “Hey, even homeless people have standards! You know what I mean?”

5. A homeless man sees you without a phone and offers you one of his two cell phones.

4. A homeless woman in a soup kitchen turns down your Moroccan chicken soup saying, “No, thanks. I’m a vegetarian.”

3. A homeless person offers you a job.

2. A homeless man pats his tummy and says to you “I’ve decided I need to lose a few pounds.”

1. A homeless man complains about rising prices and backs it up by showing you his energy bills.

UPDATE

All those top ten stories are real by the way. No joke.

Hi, everyone. I’m back. I took a break because I didn’t like some of the responses I received back and needed to take a break from writing. It’s really hard to write about yourself all the time (especially once a week); sometimes you need a break from it. But I’m back.

The biggest item at the moment is next year. I’m in job searching mode as my fellowship will end in August next year (2011). It is possible that I could be hired on, but since that is unknown, I need to go ahead and start looking. I’m not very motivated to do so at the moment.

Last night I had a progressive dinner; they are one of my favorite things. We had a 6-course meal where each course was hosted at a different person’s house. I was the organizers and I offered my house for one host whose house was too far out of the way. I had to plan the route so that you didn’t walk too many blocks between houses. We hosted the progressive dinner for 20 people, and even though people canceled their RSVP they day of the event and new people asked to come the day of the event, even though some left early and some started the route late, it was a good night. I enjoyed meeting all the people I did and hopefully developed some old relationships. I’m working on developing new ones as well.

I haven’t written in 4 months, so I wanted to share that this fall we had an acorn epidemic. I walk a lot in DC, for fun sometimes, too. And I will be walking outside; all of a sudden, I hear a large thud that sounds like someone threw a rock at a car or a squirrel fell. But when I look I don’t see anything. Slowly after seeing this a number of times, I’ve realized it’s acorns, falling acorns. We have the largest acorns I have seen in my life. They are like small boulders. When one falls on you, you wake up the next day. They damage cars. Squirrels consider this part of the country paradise. Rodents play pirates treasure with them. And the candy corn industry booms at Halloween time.

But my favorite part of my day in my daily walks is a walk through a certain part of my neighborhood that has a mix of White and Black and some Latino peoples and Asian dry cleaners whom I love but who fail to get stains out of clothes (I really believe cleaning was supposed to involve water). In this part of my neighborhood there is one house I love. This particular house has a garden in the front and the back. And most times during the day. Though you can’t see the back of the house, you can see in the front that they are growing various vegetables and roots and perhaps herbs and spices. What makes this place lovely is not the actual house itself; it needs help. But the people there are always out and they are always ready to talk with anyone who wants to stop and talk or “shoot the breeze.” It reminds me of what I call the “porch culture.” I love porches (communities with porches) because they foster and cultivate a culture of neighborliness and community in your neighborhood if you let it. People sit on the porches in the cool of the evening or dawn and they talk to their neighbors. And that’s what happens at this house. The man who lives there is a big man, who walks slowly, and has a hole in his trachea from an operation. But his heart is big.

I still haven’t told you why I like this house. What is amazing is that this man takes the vegetables he grows and puts them in boxes on tables at the edge of his yard/garden near the sidewalk. And anyone may take some home! I love this. Few people in my side of the neighborhood understand this, but it’s what I understand about how to live. He sows alone but allows others to reap where they have not sown with no obligations or strings attached or expectations. Take and eat freely. It’s a gift (a true gift is one that you don’t endeavor to pay back). And I love it. It’s also practical; a lot of what he grows would go to waste if he didn’t give it away. And do you know many of the conversations had in his yard outside his house start from people rummaging through the vegetables and food left for people to take--kale, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, etc.

But let me finish. It’s my favorite part of my day (I doesn’t take much, huh? Ha!) even when no one is there talking, even when no food is there to share. It’s my favorite part of my day because in his yard is a toilet. I’m tearing a bit because of the symbolism of it. When facing the yard in front of the house, the toilet is against the right border of his yard, up against a wooden fence, 3 feet high. The toilet base of the toilet is almost hidden in dirt. You can only see the very top part of the base as it reaches and curves toward the site and tank. But not only is there dirt packed around the rooted toilet but inside the toilet there is dirt. The seat is open and spring up from the depths of the toilet bowl are flowers growing in the dirt and soil and muck of the toilet. They are strong flowers, sprightly and eager, reaching to the sun as they reflect its rays in their yellow and orange “carnations.” Their stems are as green as goodness and they grow with no regard for their home or where they started or their environment. But that’s not all. There is also dirt in the tank. It’s lid is missing and out of the tank, more flowers spring forth and grow. For some reason I have hope when I pass it. It doesn’t mean any of my situations will necessarily change. It doesn’t mean that everything I’ve lost recently will be reclaimed right now. But it means there are people that are in the business of reclaiming, redeeming, reusing, and reinventing. And that is the kind of work that inspires and lights. I see these types of moments of lucid clarity and bright illumination all around. And the movement is growing.

It’s art but it’s art of a different kind; it’s living art. It reminds me of the ancient Jewish prophet who prophetically (and I still wait to this day) spoke of a day when we would “beat swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks,.” It reminds me that I’ve got muck in my life and some mistakes whose effects I still feel, but it can be made recreated. The toilet doesn’t go away, but it’s reinvented and new life can be born. This life is different than I imagined, but it’s new. It’s new, and it’s life.

A MASS FOR THE DEAD

2011-02-06T20:04:00.000-08:00

There was a man, Rafael Schaëchter, who knew about life and reinventions. He was captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp in Terezin (Thereseinstadt) in the Czech Republic. He was a composer, choral conductor and vocal coach, and he smuggled one copy of Verdi’s Requiem into the camp. Using this one copy and a broken piano in the camp, he decided to recruit singers from among the prisoners to perform this piece.

Schaëchter recruited 150 singers to perform this very difficult piece of music. The piece is hard enough to perform with healthy, well-food, well-rested vocalists who each have their own copy of the music and are able to read music. But this group of prisoners learned the piece after a long day of being overworked through manual labor, underfed, and malnourished. Some could read music and some could not, but it didn’t matter because there was only one copy of the music, and so they had to learn the entire requiem by rote.

This group of prisoners learned the entire requiem and performed it 16 times from 1943 to 1944 including one performance for the Red Cross. Schaëchter continued to recruit new prisoners to replace those who were deported to new camps.

The amazing part of the story is that the prisoners were tired at the end of the day, at the end of 14-hour days. And Schaëchter was a perfectionist. And yet, during the few hours of rehearsal at night, the prisoners forgot about the fact that they were hungry, sick, hurting. They forgot about the fact that they were overworked and underfed, confused, and uncertain about their future. They forgot about the fact that they lost family and were without hope because. . . .for a few hours each rehearsal they were hope. . .ful. They were hopeful.

The seeming contradictory tension is astounding. Here was a group of Jewish prisoners singing a Catholic mass. If that doesn’t make you think and learn to find God in unexpected places, imagine this: a requiem is a mass for the dead. And yet, these prisoners were using a requiem, a mass for the dead, to inspire life. In those moments during rehearsal and performances, even in front of an international Red Cross delegation that were being shown a camp to falsely “prove” that the camps were not death camps that abused the Jews, even in that situation, they sang this Catholic mass for the dead, this requiem, as an act of defiance. It was as if they were saying, “You can take my health and age my body. You can hurt me and beat me, but you can never, will never take my spirit, my attitude, my hope. That belongs to me.” Think of some of the parts of this Catholic mass in Latin: Dies Irae - day of wrath. Appropriated in the hearts and minds of the Jews it perhaps referred to the day of wrath awaiting the Nazi perpetrators and captors in judgment for their atrocities. Or the imagine the final part of the requiem: Libera me - Release me! Liberate me!!! In the hearts of these singers, they were not asking for their souls to be liberated to heaven from their earthly frames, but they were asking to be liberated from these camps back to life as normal, or liberated by death from these concentration camps. The whole event was too staggering to comprehend and required a fully immersive experience.

The conductor, Murry Sidlin, was a professor at Catholic University and he founded the Defiant Requiem Foundation that puts on these concerts of the Verdi Requiem around the world. What is special about how the concerts are done is that we didn’t just sing the requiem. Through the different movements/parts of the requiem, we had bits of film, interviews with actual prisoners, and readings to help paint the picture. Actual prisoners from the actual camp, actual survivors, actual surviving choir members attended the performance and were there. Two sons of a choir member prisoner joined us in singing in the choir. And we performed this all in the Kennedy Center. It as a powerful performance.

What is amazing about Murry is that he’s a conductor that actually makes music. Music is both an art and a craft. But most of the time people work on the craft part--simply learning the piece, learning the notes, playing them with the best intonation, technique, fingering, mouthing, blowing, plucking, etc. Murry inverts it. Work on the notes and learn the piece outside. With him you will work almost exclusively on the musicality--the phrasing, the dynamics, the nuance, the subtext (for vocals), the sub music, breathing, speaking through the music. It was both easy since the context for the performance of this piece was provided by the story, but it was harder because we wanted to do justice to the prisoners and honor them and their courage and defiance. Murry made us FEEL the story and sing from that place of darkness, of crying out to God, of not understanding why things are happening the way they are and not knowing what to do. We sang from the point of not having any hope and yet hoping with what we have left, where we struggle with the events happening and yet cling to the God who defies understanding. We cried out through the music; it was powerful, powerful, powerful. It was impacting, it was earth-shattering. I kid you not. There was such movement in the music with the orchestra and choir, I was amazed. I have never felt that intensity in a performance ever. And he pulled it out of us, inspired it from his inspiration, encouraged us to put ourselves in their shoes (with utmost respect), and came alongside us in this journey. And in the end, the surviving choir members who were there were pleased and thankful.

I don’t know what it is they went through, but I thank them for allowing me to participate in the remembrance of their experience.

Requiem Concert
Kennedy Center Promotion

ME

2011-02-06T19:59:00.000-08:00

I had a homework assignment for a book study group. The task for me was to ask people what the believe I want in life. I received a number of answers. Some I didn’t like; I disliked them enough to ponder on them and take a break from updates. But now I’m back. I wanted to share some of them but I know people will say it’s a bit unfair to only share negative ones. So I’ll share some positive ones. Here are a few.

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I think you really want to be an artist (actor/singer) and activist. Like an activist who helps kids---those in true need.
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I think what you want in life is to learn, to love, and to express your thoughts about both of the previous. Actually, those 3 are sort of wrapped up in each other, you do one to do the others. On the most basic and obvious level, the learning is done through reading and such. The loving is done through helping people and being a friend to others. And the expression is done through the arts such as singing and writing. But that is just the obvious level. In reality, those three things are intertwined, and you do all three when you do any one (usually. I suppose there are times when only 1 or 2 happen at a time for you as well). That’s all I have to say about that.
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What do I think that you want? I think you want recognition. Not in the sense of prideful fame, but in the sense of the establishment encouraging and accepting all of the contributions that your talents can produce.
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Hi Victor....a stream of comments on my impressions of who you are. The paths available are many and the path you choose will lead to another path...and on and on... each will build on another - even those that were not your favorites.

Your heart lies in the global humanitarian fields.....true humanitarian work....not a vacation humanitarian who counts hours of service.

You are a Christian.....not the kind that follows systems and rules but the true kind that walks in the steps of Christ following the principles that he taught...not a weekend Christian. The true humanitarians quietly broke the rules....made changes....as Christ did. Doing what is right is not always popular. Padre Pio, Joan of Arc, Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Mark and Louise Zwick (Casa Juan Diego), the 12 apostles and the list goes on. Interestingly the 12 He chose as His support were not what you would have thought of as stellar Christian examples.

You have a true missionary spirit.....not the kind that prosthelitizes.(sp) ..but teaching by living the example.

Learned a new term yesterday Human Geographer - seems to fit you.
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Regarding your homework assignment, I think of you living your life as a quest for knowledge and understanding, and for making a positive impact via your loving, generous spirit.
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I think you want to do it all.
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What do you want in life? Hmmm...I find this hard to answer for you. I
see you as someone who has all the answers. I see you as someone who
if selfless. If there is anything you want, most of it will be
something for others. But enough rambling like a lawyer...you want
Love in your life. I don't need to know if that is what you want. I
have no need to be right. But I want you to have Love in your life...
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I think you want the following out of life:
happiness
to make an impact on the world around you
to be loved

You know, basic stuff. But I think whoever assigned this assignment was kind of presumptuous. I mean who the heck knows what anyone else wants in life? Anyway, miss you much! Hugs to you!
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I think you want very little. I think you enjoy what you have and what life brings you. I also think you like responding to life rather than designing a life. Your heart seems to be in music and performing. I think you like living and acting what is written. You understand roles very well. I don't think you enjoy writing them as much. Your writing is not in story telling style. It is not audience oriented. It is more like listing facts and observations. I think you want to take in everything to the fullest and some day build something with it to share with others.

There seems to be invisible forces in your life that keeps you thorn between engineering and art. Perhaps that conflict is a motivator, I can't tell. Looks like you are caught between right and wrong. Something, someone or some experience has convinced you that the right thing to do is want what you studied instead of following your heart. You may be thinking the only reasonable way to follow your heart is if it is for serving God which could make it acceptable to forgo doing the right thing that your mind pesters you about.

My guess is that you may be exploring what you want in life not because you don't know it, but to discover a way to "allow" yourself to want what you want. We are all going through similar questioning in various phases. My thought is that what we want is not as relevant as how much we want something. It is the degree of wanting that puts us in motion. When we are equally divided in are wants we are stalled.

Oh, I just realized you asked the question because of a book! Oh well...

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(paraphrased)

You have non-Christian friends, but I think there are like points (or trophies)to your Christian friends. Don’t worry, though; all Christians do this.

I think you want to help people but more than that, you really want to please other people. You want everyone to be happy with you, but you need to stop because you’re ruining your life. You need to be able to shut some people completely out of your life like I have done.

Also I have been an atheist for 13 years and it’s the happiest I’ve been in my life.

PS Please don’t try to pray to God to convert me. I’m fine.
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A lot of people said I want to help others or I want very little. Some said I want impact lives. A number of people said I want knowledge and want to learn. Some people said I want either to love or to be loved.

A few took a while to process. I had to process the recognition comment because I would have thought (about myself) that I want impact, not recognition. In other words I would take impact without recognition but am not interested in recognition without impact. But my friend said he didn’t mean recognition like I normally meant it.

Another (the penultimate) said I was feeling tugged between engineering and the arts. There is truth there or, let me say, I know why she said it. I do feel currently in my life I do feel passionate about international development and using engineering skills to passionately help people help themselves in developing their communities and pulling themselves out of poverty. That friend misunderstood and wrote it from the misconception that I was struggling with what I want; she didn’t realize I was doing it for a homework assignment. I don’t know if she would have written something different.

The last one is interesting. It made me stop and ask why I could get some messages that seemed partly contradictory to other comments. I realized that I had to consider what everyone said (I am never in a position where I immediately dismiss criticism). What I realized is that different people knew me different amounts, some people judged me from updates (as opposed to a relationship outside of group email), some didn’t know me as well as others, and people are different places in their own lives dealing with different problems of which I may not know. Or I could actually be quite contradictory or perhaps showing different parts of myself to different people or having multiple personalities. So I must factor that all in.

But these comments (and others; I couldn’t include them all) made me think about myself. I’m a flawed person. Some think I’m crazy; I had two people call me autistic a few weeks ago (I don’t get it). I’m a simple guy, somewhat of a loner but always working on community as I learn to live relationally with people in all I do (with my money, food, etc.). I’m not prone to pornography or stealing (though I can be tempted by anything if presented in the right time and place), but I am given to pride and work on my pride indirectly (not by trying not to be prideful but by realization of who am I, my place in the world and universe, the impact of so many people in my life, etc..). I’m also given to lying; this might confuse people who know me to be very big on the truth and being true to my word. But I only say lying because that’s what it is; I don’t care so much about people understanding any particular truth or fact about me and will many times remain silent instead of correcting people when they have a misconception about me. I may sometimes make statements that can be taken multiple ways but I don’t worry about clarifying it. Especially when I’m in situations when I feel too many people know me, I like to guard my anonymity or mystery (people say).

As much as I try to continue on a path of elevation and enlightenment, as much as I continue to get offended less and embarrassed less, it still happens. I was meeting the head of my agency/department a week ago and we went around the circle to introduce ourselves and my heart was beating before I spoke. This bothered me. I was able to control it better when we had the same meeting with an Undersecretary/Assistant Administrator type. Ha ha!

So that’s me. But I should continue. In the last excerpt from a good friend, my friend said non-Christians were points for me. That’s actually not true if I know myself. There are people in my family who love being in and out of Christian communities. I’ve always been quite comfortable and happy with people different from myself. In fact, this point in my life is the period in my life in which I’ve known the fewest Christians and the most non-Christians. I know more non-Christians than Christians in my life today in DC. And I’ve always enjoyed having with my people outside the church. So I don’t think that was true.

Continuing with my faults, many of you know that in the past I was engaged. That ended, and I take full blame and responsibility for that. I believe that is what the person was referring to in the response about being disappointed in me and needing to cut people out of my life. You see, our relationship was a bit different in that we not only informally counseled people but people looked at our relationship as an example. It wasn’t that the she was an amazing woman (she is) and it wasn’t that people liked me, but it was specifically something extra and beyond that, something about our actual union that blessed people. We both had many girl friends (and a few male friends) who had never known what it is like to be loved by a man, really, truly loved. So they will take men who don’t love them, or they will take what they can get. So people looked at us and saw that true loving relationships were possible. Some people looked at us and thought “Oh, this is what it’s supposed to look like.” So people were disappointed.

It makes me laugh to think about it: in counseling we’re not supposed to cry more than the client who is going through the crisis or trauma. But when people would find out that the relationship was over, I’ve had people cry while in conversation with me, cry more than me. Or I’ve had people very, very angry at me. I’ve had some people very disappointed in me. Most people blame me either explicitly or implicitly. I believe that’s why this response is critical. So I don’t wish to talk about it, but I’ll address it.

Most people haven’t spoken to me about it, so I actually believe that what many people believe happened may not be true. I could be misguided but I believe I did everything in my power to salvage the relationship and to keep it going. I did. And I take full responsibility for the relationship ending (but not why many people believe). I’ve heard when you’re with someone you’re supposed to make that person feel like the most important person in the world. I didn’t do that; I failed. And for that, I deal with the consequences every day. My good friend Maeve tells me not to self-reject.. I hope I’m not; I think I’m just giving facts. :-)

One thing for which I’m grateful is the ability to comfort others who are going through something similar. There’s a woman in my program whose engagement was called off. Another guy in the program was engaged before. Two friends are getting a divorce, and my boss is in a custody battle with her husband for her children. Her situation really kills me; her two children are simply beautiful and she treats me so well; my heart goes out to her because sometimes you can catch her at a wrong moment when perhaps the situation is affecting her. A really good friend (bountifully full of beauty and life) just had her international relationship of 1 year end abruptly and suddenly as she was preparing to move to Africa to be with him. She is still shocked to this day. I just saw Christmas Carol on Sunday (Sunday before Thanksgiving) and poor Ebenezer Scrooge had actually been engaged when he was younger; I had forgotten but the Ghost of Christmas Past helped me remember, and I knew what he went through though he’s a figment of Dickens’ imagination. But the actor had to feel it right? Ha! The ability to understand, come alongside, and just be there to understand is a flower from a toilet.

In all the responses I received, some were different enough that it was important to use judgment and ask others for input on the differences. There were various reasons. I didn’t think my friend (with the last response) knew me that well because I had no urgent unction to get on my knees and start praying for her because she called herself atheist. Partly it just didn’t occur to me, but it’s partly due to the fact that atheism and the Judeo-Christian tradition are closer than we realize, sometimes.

ATHEISM

2011-02-06T19:42:00.000-08:00

The Agnostic Who Became An Atheist
by Peter Rollins

There was once a world-renowned philosopher who, from an early age, set himself the task of proving once and for all the nonexistence of God. Of course, such a task was immense, for the various arguments for and against the existence of God had done battle over the ages without either being able to claim victory.

He was, however, a genius without equal, and he possessed a singular vision that drove him to work each day and long into every night in order to understand the intricacies of every debate, every discussion, and ever significant work on the subject.

The philosopher’s project began to earn him respect among his fellow professors when, as a young man, he published the first volume of what would turn out to be a finely honed, painstakingly researched, encyclopedic masterpiece on the subject of God. The first volume of this work argued persuasively that the various ideas of God that had been expressed throughout antiquity were philosophically incoherent and logically flawed. As each new volume appeared, he offered, time and again, devastating critiques of the theological ideas that had been propagated through different periods of history. In his early forties, he completed the last volume, which brought him up to the present day.

However the completion of this work did not satisfy him. He still had not found a convincing argument that would demonstrate once and for all the nonexistence of God. For all he had shown was that all the notions of God up to that time had been problematic.

So he spent another sixteen years researching arguments and interrogating them with a highly nuanced, logical analysis. But by now he was in his late fifties and had slowly begun to despair of ever completing his life project.

Then, late one evening while he was locked away in his study, bent wearily over his old oak desk, surrounded by a vast sea of books, he felt a deep stillness descend upon the room. As he sat there motionless, everything around him seemed to radiate an inexpressible light and warmth. Then, Deep in his heart he heard the voice of God address him:

“Dear friend, the task you have set yourself is a futile one. I have watched all these years as you poured your being into this endless task. Yet, you fail to understand that your project can be brought to completion only with my help. Your dedication and single-mindedness have not gone unnoticed, and they have won my respect. As a result, I will tell you a sacred secret meant only for a few. . . .Dear friend, I do not exist.”

Then, all of a sudden, everything appeared as it was before, and the philosopher was left sitting at his desk with a deep smile breaking across his face. He put his pen away and left his study, never to return. Instead, in gratitude to God for helping him complete his lifelong project, he dedicated his remaining years to serving the poor.

Think of it like this. When someone says “I believe in God,” the next question or a good question to ask is “Which god do you believe in?” As Rollins would say and as we all know, theism refers to a belief in God and atheism is a rejection of this belief. But just as you can ask the theist “What God do you believe in?” you can also ask the atheist “What God do you not believe in?” This is because traditional atheism is specific; it is limited to attacks of specific notions and conceptions of God.

Therefore one form of atheism may attack a specific understanding of God but have nothing to say about another concept of God. Traditional atheism, in such concrete forms, isn’t just limited because there are so many varied concepts of God, today, but also because there are an infinite number of possible conceptions of God yet to be dreamed.

The philosopher in this short story sets out, then, to achieve an infinitely large task--to establish once and for all the non-existence of God. But to do this he must reject every known and possible concept of God. It is not until God steps in, that the philosopher is able to achieve a true universal atheism, one that can reject every possible description of God . . .in advance. Why? God transcends every possible concept and cannot be approached as an object or a thing at all.

But who is the one who points this out? It is God who says God doesn’t exist. This type of universal atheism runs strongly through the Judeo-Christian tradition (whether or not you have seen it in the mainstream forms, on TV, and other visible forms) especially in Biblical form. Approaching God as an object that can be grasped and known runs contrary to the Biblical God (or the growing understanding of God found through the arc of the Bible). This is because that God is above all names, above all labels, above all concepts. He is “received but never conceived.” Instead of understanding God like an object, a possible analogy is found in light. Light is not what we “see” directly in some sense. Light is what enables us to see transforming our experience allowing us the experience of sight. God is similar; God is not directly experienced (yikes people might get upset with me) but the name we give to the transformation of experience, to a whole new way of experience. You don’t experience birth; rather, birth opens you up to a whole new world of experiences. That is how God is.

So what my atheist friends and I were never told is that every description of God falls short, even descriptions we find in good books. With every description falling so inadequately short of God, we are led to a universal atheism. We only do justice to the reality of God by laying claim to the fact that no concept of God does justice.

Therefore religious believers can affirm a radical form of atheism in a true sense while still holding on to the reality of God. Are we questioning the importance of good forms of theism? No, rather we are saying that we never let these incomplete, provisional concepts of God stand as absolute authority (we often do this with incomplete expressions of God in the Bible, even if good expressions). A true understanding of the reality of God welcomes the rejection of incomplete descriptions of God and continues searching for less partial, less incomplete descriptions of God, never giving these newer, better incomplete descriptions of God final or absolute authority. You see this through the Bible and Torah as people’s understanding of God is improved and torn down and recreated through the Bible as we move closer to the person of Christ two thousand years ago.

So in the last answer to my “What do I want” questions, when my friend pitted atheism against theism, I want make sure that we understand that a universal atheism runs strongly in the Judeo-Christian tradition. We’re not just a tradition of priests (people serving under God) but prophets (people who speak out against God). You see this in Jeremiah, Amos, even Jesus, himself. . .

My good friend says she’s an atheist, and I think that means we have a lot in common especially if she’s rejecting the visible forms of religion she sees in the world today. I’m constantly in the minority in D.C. in my sub-circles when my policy and science policy friends find out I’m a Christian. The people they make fun of are often conservatives, people who depreciate science, and Christians--Christians who protest at funerals of victims of homosexual hate crimes, Christians who fight against the teaching of evolution in school, Christians who blame the people of Haiti for the earthquake that befell them (because God is mad), Christians who value life when it deals to abortion but do not fight for life as strongly when it relates to poverty or the global burden of disease or the application of the death penalty. Trust me, some Christians are atheist, too. There is more to say about atheism and what it means within the Judeo-Christian tradition, but perhaps I can talk more about it if you ask me to in a future update.

What I’m reminded of is the decline of the Christian church in North America. I’ll spare you the statistics, but it’s been noticed by priests, lay-people, youth pastors, even missionaries. In fact, I almost expect people who grew up in the church to leave it when the go off to college (university) or later. I expect people who grew up without God to stay as far away from him as possible. I’m often surprised at people like myself who grew up with God and yet, somehow, stayed with God. Why? Because both non-Christians and Christians have become increasingly disturbed by what they have seen embraced by prominent mainstream visible Christianity in North America--wars of choice, being anti-big government as if big is bad but being ok with big military and big business, embrace of growth over environmental conservation and preservation, focus on criminalization of abortion (without working on issues that decrease the need for abortion) but not working to fight for life in issues of the death penalty or poverty or disease especially when it disproportionately targets the poor, etc.

Brian McLaren talks about a great awakening, he calls it a new revolution in Christian understanding, thought, and action that is occurring today. I don’t think it’s as monumental as he describes; when I go to the book store the Christian books still mostly comprise books by authors who are not in this emerging understanding of God. Still, McLaren is right. It’s growing, almost like a mustard plant. There are many names of people and churches and groups around the world who are trying to search for something new, embrace something bigger than the concepts we’ve formerly understood and mystically dance with the divine in a new way. There are more authors and more people coming out to say “I’ve always had these questions” or “I’ve always thought that, but I could never find anyone to talk to or with whom to discuss.”

Brian has a new book called “A New Kind of Christianity.” I like this book because Christianity (what does that mean exactly?) is less about doctrines than it is about questions to me. So when I find a group of people or a faith community that embrace people and allow them to ask questions, even questions that remain unanswered still, I’m excited. I’m energized. I need questions. I need to continually strip down and reclothe myself in better understanding. I’m thankful to those around me who have helped me to do that, who allow me to be angry with God, and who show me that God is bigger than my questions and is not offended by them even though religious people around me are (I’m one of them).

Here are the 10 questions

1. What is the overarching story line of the Bible?
The usual answer to this involves the story that man of us Christians were taught to recount when talking to a non-Christian about Christianity. It involves Adam and Eve and the Fall. Over the years there have been minor tweaks here and there to this narrative but nothing major. But there have been parts of it that have been hard to understand and explain (for many this is ok because they want to worship a God they don’t understand). McLaren talks a bit about how some of the difficult concepts might be from men than directly the Bible or even the understanding of Jesus.

2. How should the Bible be understood?
This deals with the question of how the Bible is viewed. Is it a constitution providing an unquestioning legal framework of how to live. Is it a guidebook telling how we live our lives? I had a friend say this to me last Sunday at church. I reacted and said it’s so much more. I said the Bible was a story a history of a story of a people and how, through time, they have learned and unlearned, struggled and fought with God, questioned and loved God, turned away and hated God. Yes, through it we can learn things about our story and lives, but it is not a rule book and if you reduce it to that you’ve missed the main point of it. Regardless the answer to how you view the Bible depends on your answer to the previous question. This is very important because people often interpret and use the Bible for backup of their position. How do you properly interpret it? Is the Old Testament more important, less, or equally important than the New Testament?

3. Is God violent?
This is related to the narrative question. In the traditional narrative God is viewed as a either justice-seeking or vengeful or punishing or angry or hateful, etc. And this is seen in many Biblical stories. Are we viewing this correctly or is God different? How does this fit with Jesus? The answers to these questions depend on the previous two questions.

4. Who is Jesus and why is He important?
This is very important. Was he God or was he not? Beyond that, was he here to provide salvation to go to Heaven, or is it something more? What did Jesus say himself?

5. What is the Gospel?
What is the gospel? And what does it mean? What is the good news? Is the gospel related to salvation in the future, promising a spot in Heaven or something more? When people in the New Testament heard words like “saved” did it mean the same thing it means to Western Christians today?

6. What do we do about the Church?
How was the church understood when it started? Is it understood the same way? What is its purpose and function in the world? Is it there to help its members or non-members? Is its job to convert people to a new belief?

7. Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it?
Our sexuality is a mess. We have a problem not only with a battle between many churches and homosexuals but also with teaching children to deal with sexuality healthily. Teenage pregnancies (and even abortions) are rampant. Is there a way to deal with human sexuality that is closer to the heart of God than how we’ve done it? Are we missing something? Is this all of what the Bible and Christianity has to offer?

8. Can we find a better way of viewing the future?
Is the normal linear view of time and the future correct? Are we waiting and awaiting something in the future which dictates that the world will continue to worsen and de-motivates and discourages us? What exactly is supposed to happen in the future? And why isn’t Jesus here, now?

9. How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?
This is a tough one. People of other religions (or no religion) have traditionally had a tough time with Christians because of its claims of exclusivity and the fact of a belief that everyone except Christians is going to Hell. Of course this relates to previous questions. But the real question here is how do we interact and treat and deal with people of other faiths. It hasn’t always gone well in the history of Christianity and we want to do it better.

10. What do we do now? (How do we translate our quest into action?)

BELONGING, BEHAVIOR, & BELIEF

2011-02-06T19:36:00.000-08:00

(Thoughts sparked by Peter Rollins)

I said that I currently don’t think the Way Jesus lived and about which he spoke is based on belief. I do not mean belief is absent. I’m just saying it’s not fundamental, the way we use it to divide ourselves in North American society. I was reminded this the other day when I was thinking about a baby.

A baby is born into a family. And instantly it is accepted. It is welcomed. It is loved. It is given a first name and immediately has a last name. It belongs to the family. It belongs.

Later, the baby grows up and begins to take part in the life of the family. The baby becomes a child and shares in regular practices or rituals with the family. They eat together, they play together, they shop together. They may go to church together, sing songs together, pray together, dance together, and watch movies together. This child now shares in communal behavior. She behaves a certain way.

Later, still, the child begins to question some of the beliefs she was taught. This self-examination period could last an uncertain amount of time. But the child, now a teenager, begins to reaffirm some of the beliefs of her parents and dissents with other beliefs of her parents. Some become her own and others are rejected and let go.

What is amazing about this is not that she believes some things her parents do or that she does things her parents do or that she belongs to her family. The amazing beauty is the order. She first belongs regardless of beliefs. She then hangs out and shares in common practices and rituals regardless of beliefs. Finally she learns to believe certain things (many will be shaped by that experience).

Why is that novel? Well, in the church we have done the opposite. We have said you cannot be a part of us (you’re not one of us) unless you believe, until you believe. Even more, you cannot participate in our common practices and rituals until you believe, without belief. So we have been taught, learned, and continue the practice of exclusion based on belief. It is many arenas---democrat versus republican, left versus right, etc. I see it all the time in D.C. and it makes my stomach churn. Why does it matter? Jesus, the person on whom Christianity is supposed to based, did the opposite.

He first accepted unconditionally 12 guys, mostly from the lower class of society. He didn’t ask them what they believed, he didn’t ask them to believe anything. He just said, “Come and follow me.” They were welcomed and loved, without doing or believing a thing. In fact Jesus did this with a lot of people. As I write in another section, he didn’t hang out with ex-tax collectors and ex-prostitutes, he hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors among others. He loved people unconditionally before any change in belief or action.

Once in his circle (and there more than just the inner circle of 12), people joined him in communal practices and rituals. They broke bread and ate together. They sat and listened to stories and parables together. They hung out with the poor and children together. They fed people. They healed people together. They spent time with those with no friends, no family. They loved people. They befriended the unfriendly; they loved enemies. They spoke with the occupiers. They healed the lame, the blind, the lepers (those with skin diseases). All this was done without a single plea or appeal to change their belief of God or who hey thought Jesus was.

In fact, it wasn’t until after joining Jesus and after already participating in shared practices that Jesus asked them who people thought Jesus was. They gave him answers like “Some say Elijah” and “Others say John the Baptist.” Jesus then asked them who they believed (key word) he was. Peter spoke up and for the first recorded time, we find that he believes that Jesus is the Messiah, the awaited one spoken of in the scriptures of the Jewish community. Belief came last. Belief came last. Not only did it come last, it wasn’t fundamental but a natural outworking of belonging to this community of Jesus and learning to do the things that Jesus did.

I believe in the power of change by behavior especially behavior of service. It’s the guiding principle I accidentally “discovered” and used while teaching and still use to this day especially in my own life. I never saw Jesus exclude people on the basis of belief. And I love churches and places where people are accepted even if they disagree with what is said, where people are allowed to ask questions when they don’t understand including questions without answers, where people are loved, forgiven, and welcomed unconditionally into a community that practices the Way.

COMMUNITY

2011-02-06T19:28:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I know I’m doing ok at community is that I’m still hurting people. I know it’s a strange comment and a strange metric or gauge, but it’s true. Now it is true that we as people can learn and grow to be embarrassed less, less self-focused, less pride-intensive, less offended, but we are all at different points in our lives. And usually with proximity and vulnerability comes the ability to hurt and offend. To this day, like my friend Shane Claiborne says, I have never been able to live in community without offending and hurting people. I have yet to outgrow that.

And so I have had new people lately angry or upset or offended with me. One friend, a beautiful geneticist, was upset that I was telling her that I like people more than they like me (including her) and always end up bothering them more than they want to do things. :-) I told her about all the times she wasn’t able to do things that we planned to do, or at least we hadn’t been able to do it yet. This bothered her, but before we could ever talk about it, she forgave me (and I apologized first--though unconditional forgiveness can pave the way for the conditions “required” for the gift of “conditional” forgiveness in the first place [figure that one out!]).

I had another friend with whom I was car pooling get upset with me because I was in an emotional hurry to meet up with family members. But my friend wasn’t comfortable traveling without stopping for directions. In an effort to calm her, I said “That’s fine. We’ll do what feels good for you. You decide. Yes we can stop for a map.” But I think she wanted more reassurance or more words because she got upset when after the 2nd stop we didn’t find a map, and I thought that meant we would go to the airport. I wanted to drive on to the airport to see my family. She said these words, “I feel like sometimes you don’t hear me. . .” What was strange about her being offended that I wanted to try to get to the airport, even though I was willing to wait and stop for a map twice and stop again for a map after not finding it twice, is this: my friend has never said I don’t hear her ever before. To my knowledge it was the first time that she has felt this way, and yet she said “sometimes.” This is either true and I offender her a lot, or she used the wrong words. I’m not sure which as we’re not around each other that much. I wasn’t able to get to my family in time more so due to leaving late, but I think offending a friend would be a small price to pay to see family from Nigeria whom you’ve never met before they fly back to Nigeria.

There are other stories, but I won't bore you with details. I will tell you that in one interesting situation my friend John said that money could be used on charity not on friends or people who were ok (I was using it on friends at the time). I thought the comment (though not his ultimate motivation) was well-intentioned and heading in the right direction. We do want to help those without. What the statement highlighted was the misguided way in which we give. It’s the usual recipe. The rich give to the poor through a website or a program or an organization and the rich go home feeling good about themselves for having given, and the poor go away feeing good because they received what they wanted or needed. This is not true giving. There’s no face to it. There’s no sacrifice of time, and there’s no relationship. Relational giving is the highest form of giving. Well, if not the highest, it’s the most natural. Time wouldn’t be so expensive if people didn’t value it so, but they do. It’s easier to give money then to give time. It takes time to build a relationship, time to rebuild trust, time to create trust in the first place, time to hope, time to love, time to make peace (as opposed to keeping peace). You could never say to a family member or spouse, “I don’t have time to be with you but here’s money to handle all your needs.” One reason is that food, shelter, clothing, and housing are not are only needs. People say sex is a need, but it’s not really. Love is. Relationship is. The way we were created we will seek it out wherever we can get it or find it, whether from a family, from a baby (at whatever age), from a dangerous gang, from a teacher, from an abusive spouse, wherever. There’s something about experiences that is not complete until the enjoyment of the experience is expressed to someone.

It’s like the Rollins story of the guy who ended up shipwrecked on a deserted island with Beyonce (you can insert any highly attractive famous person to any cultural group). Day after day, as they realized there was no one that would ever rescue them, the man began to nag Beyonce trying to convince her to be with him romantically. Beyonce always resisted his advances; she just wasn’t interested. But he kept bugging and bothering and pleading. One day when Beyonce realized that they would never be rescued she said “All right. I’ll give you one night.” So they spent the night together. In the morning, he was so excited and elated that he told Beyonce “Do you mean putting on this hat and t-shirt and mustache?” Beyonce said “What?” “Yes, will just put on this hat and t-shirt and moustache, please? It won’t be long. I just need to run down to the beach and I’ll be back.” It didn’t make sense to her, but she figured “Ok, whatever, I’ll do what he says.” So she put it on. The moment she put it on, he ran down to the beach’s shore and, as if he had just exited a boat, started running to Beyonce whom he recognized. When he reached her he said “Hey, Charles! It’s so good to see you. You will NEVER believe who I spent the night with last night?. . . .”

In all of the rambling and in all of my living, I’ve realized the really poor people are not those without money but those without relationships. When counseling the homeless (we all need it) I’ve realized that if I were in the situation, I wouldn’t be poor because I had relationships in which I would be taken care. I would quickly have a place to live, even if at least temporary. I would quickly get food in my tummy. And I would soon enough get a job again, even if part-time through a friend. In other words, poverty is not the lack of things such as food, shelter/housing, clothing, employment, water, etc. Poverty is the lack or relationships through which those things are naturally given and covered. Poverty is the lack of friendships. Check out this video which I’ve shown before from a Brazilian brother who seems to have come to this same conclusion that I saw in my work in South Africa.

Definition of Poverty

So the redistribution of wealth is something that we naturally experience in relationship and family. I don’t think we were meant to provide for physical provision without nourishing and nurturing the soul and spirit in relationship. I realize there are many types of families, so I’m speaking from a Christ-exemplified model. In a family, a person buys food and anyone eats; you go and buy provisions for the household and you do not ask for money back from those around you. But these people are not your family? I hear this often. Actually one thing I love about Jesus is that he expanded the definition of neighbor and brother. Everyone is your brother even your enemy, the person you would least expect it.

I don’t want to push the topic too much, but the best place to give is in relationship and in a way that costs you something. So though my friend is right that we should give to charity (I’m assuming this means people who are without provisions), this should be done by developing relationships with the poor. And in the same way that I give to my family and friends in relationship both with time and money, I give to my family and friends who are poor in relationship. And in families, no one keeps count, no record is kept. We live in love.
That’s community.

FORGIVENESS

2011-02-06T19:03:00.000-08:00

But if I never outgrow the incidences of offense, one thing community needs is forgiveness. In fact, forgiveness is probably a better measure of how I am doing at creating community. I can definitely create community, offend people, and not practice forgiveness thereby destroying community. Forgiveness is an integral part. Here’s a story; it’s not a true story, but a fictional one based on a Biblical fictional story. Confusing, I know.

The Unrepentant Son
by Peter Rollins

There was once an elderly man who had raised two sons and had worked diligently his whole life. Now, the younger of the two sons was impetuous by nature and said to his father, “I do not want to wait for my inheritance. Give me my share now.”

His father reluctantly complied. A few days later, the younger son packed his bags and departed from the home. For the next few years, he squandered the money that he had been given, leading a life of worldly pleasure. However, his money soon ran out, and the young son found himself without friends, food, or shelter. He eventually found a job feeding pigs and was so poor that he had to supplement his diet with the scraps used to feed the animals.

This was no life for the young man, so he thought to himself, I have had a good time in the last few years, but perhaps I should now return to my father’s home. For there it is warm, and while he will be angry, he may take pity on me and let me work as a hired hand. And so he began the return journey.

But, while he was still a long way off, his father saw him. Overcome with joy, he ran to his lost son and embraced him. The father then said to his servants, “Bring the best robe that I own, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, but now has been found.” That evening there was a great celebration.

Later that night, after the party, while he was alone, the younger son wept with sorrow and repented for the life he had led.

This story (from Orthodox Heretic) is a great example of what true forgiveness is. It’s so rare, today, in my experience, that I must usually qualify it and describe it as unconditional forgiveness.

Most of our forgiveness today is conditional. Whether talking of personal debt forgiveness or national debt forgiveness, political pardons or business forgiveness, interpersonal forgiveness or church forgiveness, all of our examples are conditional. They are based on the person, group, organization, or country doing something or meeting certain standards that then allow forgiveness to be bestowed or given. So what we see is forgiveness following repentance or forgiveness on the condition of repentance.

But did Jesus (I always go back to him) have a more radical message? What if he did? What if he practiced and preached an unconditional forgiveness which was unheard of in his day? I think so. Forgiveness was common and church leaders often pardoned people, but Jesus forgave people before any condition was met. He hung out with prostitutes, tax collectors, and drunks as opposed to ex-drunkards and ex-prostitutes.

This story is very close to the original. A few items are excluded and a few features changed to more clearly elucidate the message of forgiveness. Here it’s possible to see that true forgiveness (unconditional forgiveness) houses within it the power to evoke repentance. It contains the power to bring about the condition pre-required for conditional forgiveness. What if this is true? What if repentance isn’t the necessary condition for forgiveness but the natural and freely-given response to unconditional forgiveness?

In the story, the son goes home not because he’s repentant but because it’s warm and he may be able to get some work. Yet, the father has no concern for whether his son is repentant or not, not at all. His only concern is that his son is back, having no idea what his son is thinking, and no thought of whether or not his son is penitent or contrite. It’s just unconditional love. And yet it is the unconditional forgiveness born of this unconditional love that leads the son to repentance.

I received some thoughts and criticism from the last update in which I was told that there are a huge group of people (some label them liberal Christians, hippie Christians, emergent Christians, etc.) who lean too much to the side of grace (or love) and not enough to the side of truth. As a counselor, my job was to speak the truth in love, but even that truth could never be given until a deep strong relationship had first been established. And that took time. In my life experience, usually the word “truth” is used to mean “telling a person that she is wrong or doing something wrong.” And in my life experience, this usually does not work. When I’ve seen it work, usually the effects are superficial and fleeting. The only thing I’ve seen work or turn a heart is unconditional love and acceptance, not the manipulative kind that gives it as a trade to get something back, but the unconditional kind that loves and accepts because that is the best way to live and because love is what we do. Being a person who has grown up rule-bound and morally affluent (ha!), it’s hard to say this but it’s quite true. I see this every day, even now as I write. There are people in my life who want other people in my life to change but are unable to create this change through nagging, criticizing, or even truth-telling. I don’t mind truth-telling at all (I love the truth), but the biggest truth is love and love is the foundation for anything. Isn’t that the amazingly transformative power we see at work with Jesus and the Zacchaeus, a rich and wealthy tax collector who had few if any friends. Jesus befriended Zacchaeus and invited himself to Zacchaeus’s house. There was not one word of condemnation or criticism or “truth-telling.” There was truth but it was in the form of love and presence. Zacchaeus immediately gave half of all he possessed to the poor and decided to pay back any victim four times what he cheated them. That’s the power of unconditional forgiveness.

FORGIVENESS & RECONCILIATION

2011-02-06T18:50:00.000-08:00

Donald Miller once described forgiveness in a book (Father Fiction) as not holding another person accountability for the burden you carry. I liked that description. It doesn’t mean you won’t carry a weight or that your situation has not changed due to what happened, but it means you don’t hold someone accountable for it. Here’s another story.

The Empty Exchange
by Peter Rollins

Samuel and Luka had been lifelong friends. Their relationship stretched back to when they were both children and continued through adolescence into their adult years. But their friendship really deepened when, during the war, they fought side by side in the trenches.

Yet, when they returned from the war, they both fell in love with the same woman. Although she finally married Luka, Samuel continued to harbor his own deep feelings for her.

As time went on, Samuel’s parents were tragically killed, and he inherited his family’s estate. Although now a wealthy man, he found it hard to accept the death of his parents and sought emotional support from the one woman he had always loved.

Amidst the intensity of the circumstances, a brief affair ensued between Samuel and Luka’s wife. Unable to live with the secrecy of their actions, Samuel ended the affair and confessed all. Luka, devastated by the news, looked Samuel in the eyes and said, “Before God and all the heavenly hosts, I sweat to you now that I will never accept your apology.”

These words haunted Samuel for many years, for he felt awful about what he had done and yearned to be reconciled once more with his friend. Yet he understood the pain and heartache he had caused and knew that his friend was a man of his word. Samuel knew that his friend would remain true to his vow and would never accept Samuel’s offer of repentance, even if Luka now wanted to.

Yet after years of wrestling, he decided that it did not matter whether his apology was accepted or not. What mattered was that he approach his friend and express his sorrow. So, early one evening Samuel gathered his courage and went to Luka’s house. Upon seeing Luka, Samuel fell to the ground and cried out, “Old friend, I know that you cannot accept my apology because you made a solemn oath all those years ago. But I must tell you that there has not been a day when I have not been brought low by my actions. I have never been able to free myself from this pain, and I am truly sorry for what I did.”

Luka smiled with compassion, for over the years he had come to understand that those had been dark days for everyone, and that Samuel had been suffering from great depression. So he addressed his repentant friend saying, “I made a vow never to accept your apology, and I intend to keep my word. But seeing you like this makes such an apology superfluous. Indeed, if I were to accept your apology, then this would mean that I considered you to have intentionally hurt me--something that I know is not the case. So I reject your apology as unnecessary and thus keep my vow intact, not because I wish to continue our estrangement, but so that we can truly be reconciled as brothers once more.”

After this Samuel and Luka were reunited and went on to grow old together as friends and companions once more.

This story looks at reconciliation instead of forgiveness. Whereas forgiveness was a prerequisite for repentance in “The Unrepentant Son,” here, reconciliation involves the offering of repentance as a prerequisite. In other words, Luka needed to hear the apology to know that Samuel was sorry, but Luka’s rejection of the apology meant that he understood what Samuel was going through and the circumstances surrounding the actions. In rejecting the offered gift, their friendship is restored.

Now, I’ve experienced this personally. I have a friend who felt I treated her badly. I don’t actually agree that I did anything wrong, but I was truly sorry for my offenses and had I known the actions which I deemed harmless would offend I would never have done them. I was truly penitent. What did she do? She accepted my apology in full recognition that I was a bad person. She will still bring it up today though she has accepted my apology.

Contrastingly, when someone apologies for something that I completely understand and with whom I empathize I say “No apology needed,” or “Please, it’s fine,” or “You don’t need to apologize,” or “Really, it’s ok,” or “I’m the one who should apologize to you,” or many times “I didn’t even realize I was supposed to be mad or upset. Forget it, man.” I actually find myself rejecting the apology and our communion restored.

Forgiveness is hard. Reconciliation is harder.

Starting in 2003, the government of Rwanda released tens of thousands of genocide perpetrators who confessed to what they did. There was overcrowding of prisons and a backup of court cases, so this definitely was a factor in the decision to do this, but can you imagine a government doing such a massive release of prisoners? And prisoners of genocide? Yet they did. And these perpetrators went back to their home towns. . .

This one act created an intense situation in which forgiveness was forced on the table as an option between perpetrators and families of victims. Laura Waters Hinson, a DC filmmaker, produced a film while a graduate student. It’s called “As We Forgive.” In 2008, she won the Gold Prize in the Student Academy Awards for Best Documentary for “As We Forgive.” It chronicles the life of two women who are on two different journeys of reconciliation in the aftermath of the genocide.

Laura is a beautiful woman who was able to find stories of beauty in Africa, for which I’m grateful. Through the film and her own story, she’s taught me about forgiveness and reconciliation. Check out her clip. Listen to the entire clip especially the end when forgiveness becomes personal for her.
As We Forgive Interview

BED BUGS

2011-02-06T18:41:00.000-08:00

We had an outbreak of bed bugs in my government building. So my entire department/agency received an email about bed bugs and bed bug etiquette (don’t ask me what this is). Apparently, the bed bugs were tracked down to two cubicles on a particular floor. It wasn‘t my floor, thank goodness, but I was freaked out because the email explained that bed bugs can travel up and down floors. I started screaming in my cubicle and scratching immediately. The email told us that though they located the source, it was important for us all to know that it doesn’t matter if they eradicate the source in the building because they could be coming from somewhere. It went on to explain that the people who brought the bedbugs into their cubicle have a responsibility to eradicate it at their residence; if they don’t, they could always bring it back and the problem starts again.

Poor people. The story got out among all the different government agencies and departments. Then it showed up on National Public Radio and all my friends heard about it. My agency sent an email telling the brief history of bed bugs, how they grow and breed, and how they are killed. It freaked me out. I mean, did you know bed bugs can live up to a year without feeding? Yes! Not only that, but some people have no reaction to their blood-sucking while others get marks!! I mean I felt itchy just reading these emails about it. And the jokes! The poor people whose cubicle in which they were found! I kept wondering about everyone joking about them. What if the person was single and was dating a new boy. Why does she have to be a woman? Fine. What if the person was single and was dating a new woman? That poor guy. Would she even want to date him anymore? Would she want to touch him? If I were him, I would tell her I just have a rare skin disease but the new clinical trial I was in looks promising (though rare side effects can include heart failure, blindness, and sometimes death). Or I would tell her it goes away after I get special chemicals and steam cleaners after submitting my body to science.

Then there is the thing called scabies which I think is just gross because it sounds like a combination between scabs and rabies. And that’s the worse combination you can get. Apparently with scabies, as you scratch the bug that is scabbing rabies on your arm, they climb into your fingernails and then you spread it around to other places.

No joke. I was having lunch with a woman who had latched on to me for the day (her words). And we were talking about dating boys. She mentioned that she had scabies in her place and had to tell a visiting ex-boyfriend to watch out. After I finished wiping some of my drink that came out of my mouth, I suppressed the urge to quietly slip away without her noticing because she was looking right at me and she would probably notice. Then, later she says, “I think you and I should date.” No joke. She said that. But for some reason I couldn’t hear those words. She was saying “I think you and I should date,” and I kept hearing “I think you shouldn’t shake my hand.” I just nodded my head agreeing that we shouldn’t shake hands.

LIVING A BETTER STORY

2011-02-06T18:18:00.000-08:00

That last homework assignment was a tough, but good one. It’s always scary to hear what story you seem to be playing for those around you or observers. My next assignment is to ask you what you want?

What do you believe you want in life? What are your goals? Are you a list maker or do you not have goals? If you do know what you want in life, is there anyway I can help you achieve some of that? If so, invite me in to partner with you in your story. What do you want in life?

Out of the six of you on this list, looking forward to hearing some of your responses. :-)

I’m currently reading “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” and like Rob Bell’s review reflected, this book is reading me more than I am reading it. It’s a bit haunting in a way that inspires you to reflect and examine your life. Am I living a good story? Am I living the best story possible?

I was thinking about this recently as I was sharing with my reading group a lot of recent failures. I sure do a lot of things -- I mean a lot of things that do not work out. Some of them were huge parts of my life. Some of them are huge projects that fail. The interesting thing about it all is that it’s not the achievement of a great goal that makes it a good story; it’s the attempt to reach it that makes a good story.

Did you see that movie “Friday Night Lights?” It follows the story of a football team through their season and all the setbacks and problems as they rise and make it all the way to the state championship game. In the final scenes, though a well-fought match, they lost. And some people might viscerally find that anticlimactic, but most people still felt it a great movie. The interesting part about the loss at the end of the movie is that this is a true story of a team who actually won the state championship the very next year. The filmmaker was asked why he didn’t make a film chronicling the winning season. He said, at first he wanted to do just that. But when he looked at that season, he realized there was no good story there. The previous season when they lost the championship had an amazing story even in the loss.

I’m always reminded of that. It’s not the achieving of the goal, but it’s all the things you do, how you change your life, the discipline and desire and inspiration and encouragement used as you reach for your goal. And no matter if you’ve reached it or not, you lived a better story trying to reach. You’ve lived a better story trying.

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

2011-02-06T18:04:00.000-08:00

There’s a group of four guys trying to live a better story. . . sometimes. They make me laugh. I’ve only seen two episodes, but they’re funny. These four young men decided they would make a list of everything that they ever wanted to do -- whether asinine or inspirational -- and write it down. Then they set out to do every single item on their list. They filmed their journey and story as they did it. MTV heard about them and turned their story into an MTV TV series. It’s called “The Buried Life.” Have you heard of it?

What I love about this group of guys is that each episode, as they try to achieve an item on the list, they also make sure to ask people along the way “What do you want to do before you die?“ And they make sure to help one person they meet achieve one of her goals. So you follow this group of guys having a good time, doing silly stuff, and shooting for their goal while, at the same time, using their resources and energy to help someone achieve his goal. I love this part of the TV show.

The other great part about the show is that they don’t always achieve every item on their list. Sometimes it doesn’t happen. These four gentlemen also taught me that it’s not whether you achieve the goal, but it’s the fact that you tried that matters. One episode I watched showed them trying to play basketball with the President of the United States of America. If you have time, watch them on MTV or on you tube.
I would put a link here, but I’ll let the people who really want to watch them, find them. Ok, I changed my mind. Here’s a link to a trailer, but you’ll have to find an entire episode to watch on one of those episode internet stations.

“The Buried Life” Trailer

There are few more people who are doing work that reminds me of the toilet sprouting flowers in the communal yard, people who have taken it on themselves to be the change they seek, to be the answer to the problem they see.

I work in international development and there are tons of problems with giving money from one government to another (Official Development Assistance - ODA). And it has never been conclusively proven that the 60 years of international aid has been transformative (some countries have transformed but many believe this was not due to aid but other reasons). Given this, I’m always encouraged by people who are not discouraged but engage in work that is actually effective, efficacious, and effectual, though, it’s on a small scale, in one community, or in one life. Will you do me a favor? Will you read this article that illuminates what I’m saying through real examples. Here are people that inspire me, not because they’re superhuman but because they’re human. The author of this article calls it Do-It-Yourself Foreign Aid. I like these people and what they have done. If you don’t have a free NYTimes e-account, get one so you can access it.

The NY Times article

There are examples of such life-giving and creative work all around the world. Here are a few of the people and groups of whom I’ve been learning, studying, and supporting. One of my favorites is the teacher who writes birthday cards.

Gift Card Giver

StoryCorps - Connecting people to share powerful and life-changing stories

Nuru International - Ending extreme poverty

Benched - Building a bench at a busy Atlanta Bus Stop

The Redemption of General Butt Naked - Story of a warlord turned Christian preacher and the question of Justice

A teacher making people feel special one letter at a time

Love 146 - Child Sex Slavery (Scroll down to see the video)

Story - Find your passion and shout it from the rooftops

Tell Your Story - Texas A&M Leadership Forum

Invisible Children -
Invisible Children Video
Another Invisible Children Video

Charity Water Video URL

AFRICA

2011-02-06T17:55:00.000-08:00

(from The Secret History of the American Empire)
Continuing our study of Western involvement in different continents through economic hitmen and jackals, we arrive in Africa. Perkins calls Africa the least understood continent, and the phrase has merit. The problems plaguing Africa sometimes overshadow the rays of hope that do exist there today. Though this hope is not my topic today, rest assured that there is hope and there are rays.

The problems facing many of the countries of Africa (many of them being part of the “Bottom Billion” coined by Paul Collier) date back to the times of colonialism but need not still be here with us. There have been other forces derelict that could have crafted a new route for some of the countries in spite of the colonial pasts but instead we’ve had new forces that have helped to sustain a path (for some, not all African countries) of stagnancy or plummeting health conditions, conflict conditions, and poverty. One of those forces deals with this concept of corporatocracy and effect of western businesses and business-supporting governments in the affairs of African countries.

The US had a role in the assassination of Lumumba in the DRC and supported malevolent dictators or leaders like Jonas Savimbi in Angola, Mobutu Sese Seko in the DRC, Laurent Kabila in the DRC, General Sani Abacha in Nigeria, Olesegun Obasanjo in Nigeria, Samuel Doe in Liberia, etc.

Sometimes forces for good unintentionally cause bad. In Uganda, peace talks began in 2006 (Joseph Kony is still free and roaming around) but one contribution to the late start of such talks is the presence of NGOs that provide wells, educational facilities, and food relief. Western governments and the Ugandan government shrank their responsibility for ending the fighting because of the gap being filled by NGOs. In other words, sometimes NGO work allows Western governments to show that the Western governments are doing something in a certain situation, when what we really need is for these Western governments to systematically address the root causes of the situation. So NGO work can substitute for diplomatic or political engagement (I’m not suggesting that elections solve anything; elections themselves do not represent democracy and many leaders have been forced to have elections to show they embrace democracy but can easily ensure the results that keep themselves in power).

Sadly a lot of Western business benefits monetarily from instability in Africa -- arms sales; exploitation of mineral resources, cheap labor, and agricultural products. In a stable, peaceful truly democratic (meaning there are checks and balances and accountability not just elections) DRC, it would be much harder to exploit mineral resources. We make money from natural disasters and man-made disasters such as war.

I remember when a large company named Shell had trouble with a Nigerian environmental activist. Because the government (oligarchy or plutocracy) colluded unofficially or official with Shell and mixed with corruption benefited an elite few, it was advantageous that Ken Saro-Wiwa stop organizing protests against Shell. He was arrested and tried by the government of General Abacha (a pro-western company dictator), and in November of 1995, he was executed by hanging along with 8 other environmentalists. I retrospectively remember this especially because Mandela considered it one of the dark spots in his time as president since he fought for the release of Saro-Wiwa.

During the Cold War, Africa became a battleground between what was labeled the communist threat and the capitalist threat depending on your perspective. When Lisbon decided to free her colonies, Washington went into heated internal debate about how to respond. The closure of the Suez Canal and the new supertankers made the case for a location or base to protect shipping lanes from Middle Eastern ports through the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Arabian Sea, into the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and up the west coast of Africa off into the Atlantic. A decision was made to put this fortress on Aldabra Island, off the east coast of Africa. This would add to Simon’s Town, a South African naval base that the US used to refit nuclear submarines before going back out to patrol.

The government planners discovered that Aldabra was a breeding ground for a rare species of giant tortoises and not wanting to face the backlash or bad publicity from ecologically-minded groups, they changed their choice to Diego Garcia, a large British territory and island in the Chagos chain, part of Mauritius. There was only one problem: people inhabited the island--1800 descendants of African slaves.

According to Perkins, EHMs and US and British intelligence agents, brokered a deal in 1970 where London secretly forced the inhabitants off the island. It was done secretly to maintain the pretense that the island was uninhabited. Many were sent to nearby Seychelles. Then England sold an uninhabited Diego Garcia to the US and received an $11 million subsidy on Polaris submarine technology. If you want to how much each life was valued at, do the math.

The Pentagon built the military base which housed B-52s and Stealth bombers it played a key role for the US, though relatively unknown. But a problem arose when James Mancham was elected the Seychelles’ first president after independence was declared on June 29, 1976. Mancham communicated with the US through South Africa and made it known that he supported the Diego Garcia deal. He offered to quietly take in the displaced Garcians and he enjoyed benefits from it according to Perkins. This doesn’t seem like a problem until you consider the Seychelles citizens.

They had a huge sense of national pride after independence and had a backlash against Mancham, the deference paid to the US and UK, and the policies causing Garcians to come to the Seychelles (especially since the influx of people created competition for their jobs). While Mancham was visiting London in 1977, Prime Minister France-Albert Rene led a bloodless coup and overthrew the president. Rene said he would give a greater share of the country’s wealth to the country’s poor and opposed the US military base saying the Garcians should be allowed to return back to their homeland. According to Perkins, EHMs were working this situation, but were pulled off the case in 1981 and jackals were called in.

The plan was for forty top jackals to assemble in Swaziland, fly to Victoria (capital city of Mahe), and meet up with an advance team (including a few women hired to get information out higher-ups). There were local cops ready to help and the only opposition would come from several hundred Tanzanian soldiers (Tanzoons) brought in by Rene near the airport. They were to creep into the barracks of the Tanzoons and shoot them in the night which would signal the uprising as they took the radio stations and the presidential palace.

However, the plan failed. Though the weapons were stored on the island, for some reason the plans changed at the last minute calling for some weapons to be brought with them. One jackal had an assault rifle that was poorly wrapped and was caught at the airport. A gun battle followed. The jackals captured more weapons and ammo from troops they ambushed on their way to the barracks. Other jackals tried to attack the Tanzoon barracks but failed. The fighting went on through the night. An Air India jetliner requested permission to land wondering why the lights were out. One of the jackals turned on the lights and granted permission to land. The jackals and Seychelles authorities talked on the phone and agreed to a cease-fire if the jackals would board the plane and leave the island. Some decided to stay behind but the remainder decided to take the plane to Durban, South Africa. At this point there was one dead, seven missing, captured or taken prisoner including one of the women accomplices.

The Seychelles government arrested the seven, eventually dropped the charges against the woman, sentenced four of the men to death and the other two to 10-20 year prison terms. After negotiations with Pretoria, South Africa eventually paid $3 million for the release of the 6. In the subsequent media coverage, the US and UK managed to avoid notoriety while South Africa took much of the blame. After that President Rene became more moderate and tempered his policies towards Diego Garcia.

The list of stories goes on and on. From agricultural subsidies that adversely affect the global poor (corn, cotton, etc.) to Western government agencies working with a company like Monsanto to rewrite Malian legislation to allow the introduction, sale, and patenting rights of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) crops. Sometimes the way such aid and development is structured, it causes farming communities in developing countries in Africa to become dependent on fertilizers, pesticides, newer plows, herbicides, and GMO seeds. Sometimes this is purchased on credit which sends some farmers in deeper debt (I don’t have statistics to give you percentages).

The strongest picture in my head of corporate interests in Africa deals with the very instrument on which I’m typing -- laptops. Laptops and cell phones. They both have tantalum, also known as coltan. And the Democratic Republic of Congo has it in abundance along with gold, diamonds, and copper. Remember that DRC has been embroiled in conflict for the past 15. After it’s independence from Belgium in 1960, Prime Minister Lumumba was assassinated by Belgian and U.S. backed opponents due to ties to the Soviet Union, according to TIME magazine’s 2006 cover story as reported by Perkins. General Mobutu Sese Seko took over after Lumumba. Mobutu’s rule was corrupt, though he was a “favored” by the US. But his rule disturbed the DRC’s neighbors and in 1996 and 1997 Uganda and Rwanda invaded and overthrew Mobutu installing Laurent Kabila as the new president. But even with Kabila the socioeconomic state deteriorated and Uganda and Rwanda invaded again in 1998 along with six other countries sparking Africa’s first World War.

Now when wars occur and countries invade the DRC, militias from Uganda and Rwanda earn millions--no--billions of dollars from the sale of tantalum that they collect and smuggle across the border. This is the same tantalum whose shortage caused a shortage of Sony Play Stations 2’s during the 2000 Christmas season. Now if you read the section “It’s Not About You” above, you know there is a Do-It-Yourself foreign aid woman who has been working to change the situation of tantalum which fuels wars in places in Africa. More still needs to be done. But this bright young woman (read the article) shows that there is hope and change does come.

Billions are made selling arms to both sides in conflicts. War enables corporations to sidestep tariffs, taxes, and human rights-based and environmental regulations. Again, corporations due profit when there is conflict.

I leave you with the words of U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) during a hearing she chaired April 16, 2001.

“Much of what you will hear today has not been widely reported in the public media. Powerful forces have fought to suppress these stories from entering the public domain.

“The investigations into the activities of Western governments and Western businessmen in post-colonial Africa provide clear evidence of the West’s long-standing propensity for cruelty, avarice, and treachery. The misconduct of Western nations in Africa is not due to momentary lapses, individual defects, or errors of common human frailty. Instead, they form part of a long-term policy designed to access and plunder Africa’s wealth at the expense of its people.

“. . .at the heart of Africa’s suffering is the West’s, and most notably the United States’, desire to access Africa’s diamonds, oil, natural gas, and other precious resources. . .the West, and most notably the United States, has set in motion a policy of oppression, destabilization and tempered, not by moral principle, but by a ruthless desire to enrich itself on Africa’s fabulous wealth. . . Western countries have incited rebellion against stable African governments. . . Have even actively participated in the assassination of duly elected and legitimate African Heads of State and replaced them with corrupted and malleable officials.”

ART & BOOKS

2011-02-06T17:24:00.000-08:00

Ernest Cole

Ernest Cole was the son of a washerwoman and tailor. He quit school at age 16 in 1957 in South Africa. He pretended to be an orphan and was able to convince authorities to reclassify him as colored or mixed-race, no doubt helped by his fluency in Afrikaans. This mobility (as a colored person in South Africa compared to a black South African) aided his interest and work in photography. By age 20, his family home and township were bulldozed down, considered a “black spot” by the authorities.

Ernest was inspired to write Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “People of Moscow” Ernest was inspired to create a photographic portrait of Black life in South Africa. Taking his camera into intimate spaces of work and public life, he took pictures to create a frightening pictorial record of life in South Africa at the time. He went into exile in 1966 and the next year his work, “House of Bondage” was released in the United States, though it was not allowed in his home country.
In the 70’s and 80’s he was destitute in New York City and died in 1990 just after Mandela became president. His work “House of Bondage” survives today, thank goodness, and you can view some of the photos below.

Slideshow

Do-It-Yourself Foreign Aid Slide Show

Why We Fight (a new book on America’s history of war-making)
Amazon review

Haiti Photojournalism
Haiti One Year Later
NYTimes

UPDATE - September 20, 2010

2010-10-31T20:51:00.000-07:00

The Lord of the Rings concert was spectacular. It wasn’t perfect, but we had a great time. We gave a gift to the Swiss conductor (we also did this for the 2nd movie last year and the 1st movie 2 years ago). I was amazed at the purity of sound (and straightness of the tone) of the female soloist that follows the conductor around the world to give these performances. We’re now working on the Verdi Requiem at the Kennedy Center next month.

Last week, we had a weekly dinner at the house and the next day another gathering of guys from my church. Then I had the parents of a friend of mine visit from South Africa for the weekend; they just left this morning (Monday morning). So the house was full of guests which was nice because both of my roommates have been gone.

I sing with an a capella group, a bunch of guys who wanted to sing and therefore formed a group. I’ve decided that we will sing a Christmas concert; it will give us something towards which we can work, something that will motivate us. It’s very hard to schedule rehearsals; we can never get 100%, so that’s hard for me. But last rehearsal on Saturday, we sang a version of Silent Night and I was so excited. There was something magical about it. The arts excite me very much especially when I’m doing them, the way I have been doing them since I was a kid. I miss that. It’s hard to go through any time when I’m not doing them. I’m about to go in for a photo shoot to get headshots redone as I try again to enter the theatre scene here. We’ll see how they go.

A good college friend in the area asked me “Why don’t you be a pastor?” I thought it was a funny question but telling. I’m not the type of person who is not a pastor but feels led to be one and is running from that feeling or calling. I’m just me. . . . whatever that means. Most people think pastors are good preachers, some say great teachers, still others say strong leaders. None of those are what make a pastor. A pastor, primarily, is just that--a pastor. He or she is a shepherd. In my opinion that’s the quality that makes them best suited and most ready for the job. If you can’t shepherd or pastor or don’t do it well, the preaching, teaching, leading is probably meaningless. There was a church in Cape Town that wanted to hire me a few months before I left. I had a huge decision to make. I decided to take this current opportunity in DC. However, if I could forsee the future, I actually might have stayed.

With all those thoughts floating around, I’m in job mode. This is the second and final year of my fellowship. I can apply for another one if fitting, or apply for a job, or I can be hired on. I will say that I had my first meeting with the engineering services and urban programs team, and the team leader introduced me saying “This is Victor. He’s a AAAS fellow with us for 1-year, but hopefully he’ll be here for much longer,” and she looked at me, nodding as if to garner agreement or an acceptance of some implicit offer that she had just put on the table. I was taken aback, imperceptibly nodding my head, wondering if she was just talking.

They have a real need for engineers and they want to hire more. Funnily, I’m working with people who have the exact job that I had applied for over the internet 2 years before--engineering foreign service officer. On the other front, I handed in my badge, phone, and computer to my previous department/agency, but it was nothing like Cheers. No one knows my name; no one is ever glad I came. J I gave thank you cards to a few people (8), but all were gone except one. And she was sooo thankful. Then I got some “Cheers.”

Can I just say? Robbie Seay is one cool white brother. I don’t know if he gets up in the morning and just eats the Cool Wheaties but it oozes out of him. Regardless, it was such a blessing to have the Robbie Seay band in town to play for my church’s all-church celebration (where all 6 locations come together). He even spoke to me for a bit, and I thought maybe Robbie recognized me from Houston. There are only a few things that can remind me of Houston and Robby Seay band is one of them. My church sound guys play his music between services a lot. But I enjoyed those guys. Funny enough, they seem to write and play songs that fit in with the style of the church. He had one song whose words stood out to me very poignantly.

Oh God, may we be focused on the least
A people balancing the fasting and the feast

Wow. Unpack that.

JESUS CAMP

2010-10-31T20:45:00.000-07:00

I’m on a documentary binge, and I’m watching this documentary “Jesus Camp” which I mentioned last time. And my roommate is freaking out and saying negative things about Christians or those people in the film. And I have a church group coming to my house in 3 days; she’s repeating that they better not be like those people in the film. Ha ha! Don’t you love the tension.

I dated a girl once who introduced me to a friend of hers. This friend knew I was a Christian of sorts and the first thing she asked me was why I was a Christian. “I mean, when I think Christian I think judgmental, hypocritical, and self-righteous.” Man, what do you say to that? Aren’t you glad that the history of this religion of which I’m a part (of sorts) is filled with a tension, so that it’s not just known for the Crusades, witch hunts, slaveries and slave trades, wars, apartheid, Nazi movements, etc. but it’s also known for the abolition of slavery, the abolition of child labor (in many places around the world), St. Francis of Assisi, Jesus (pre-Christianity), liberation theology and Oscar Romero, redistributive principles, etc. That tension is palpable anywhere and everywhere and ever present in the religion of which I’m a part. To deny it is to cut off any chance for real dialogue for you’ve no where to start with someone different than you. Plus it probably means you have specks in your eyes. So daily, I wrestle with God (Israel) as what it means to be a Christian or Christ-follower in a world that feels hated by such and in a world that is loved by such (I won’t talk of proportions).

I have a very beautiful friend named Jeannie living in South Africa. She recently became more beautiful as she has worked to blossom more, care less about what others think of her, be embarrassed less, and just live and love. She asked me once if I was an “evangelical Christian.” The problem with the term is that there are a few meanings especially as you travel around the world, but yes. I know she probably took this to mean that I am trying to proselytize and convert people to a new religion but I didn’t bother explaining or correcting or challenging or conversing about it. I just said yes. The problem is if you try to convert me, I’m pretty resistant. I feel it when I talk with Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses (ok this isn’t true; I LOVE to dialogue with these people that share a similar book with me but originally when I was younger I didn’t look forward to it always). It’s the same way with Christian people trying to convert. I have tons of Pentecostal and charismatic Christian friends who talk about who they have reached hundreds for Christ themselves on the power of their prayer or through the power of reading the Bible or through the power of the Holy Spirit when they speak. I’ve never had that happen to me. In fact, the few people who have “become Christian” didn’t tell me when they decided to do it. For them, it was a gradual process. They told me I was a part of the influence that led them in that direction. And most of them never had deep conversations with me about it (meaning it wasn’t due to my words or some deep intellectual battle). They watched me, they interacted with me, they were loved by me. I guess people talk about the Word of God so much they forget that the Word of God isn’t real or formed until it is performed; otherwise it’s just words. Anyway, actions will speak louder than your words.

What I mean to say is that I’ve never seen people repulsed by Christians who follow Christ, they way I understand his words and teachings. That’s a different thing. People always seem to love those Christians, or people are unnerved by them and unsettled from constant hate or hurt.

GOD IS NOT ONE

2010-10-31T20:43:00.001-07:00

People always say that all religions are the same or they say “basically” the same. Some people, usually Christians, disagree (Christianity tends to be exclusive, as I have grown up understanding it). I understand both sides. There are commonalities, specifically in ethics and morals between many religions. But the framing narrative of religions is different and the goals of the many religions are different.

Stephen Prothero, a Boston professor, wrote a book by the title “God Is Not One” about 8 of the world’s religions. He says in Islam, the problem is pride, and the solution is submission; in Buddhism, the problem is suffering, and the solution is awakening; in Judaism, the problem is exile, the solution is returning to God; Confucianism, the problem is chaos and the solution is social order; in Christianity, the problem is sin, and the solution is salvation. Though I liked his realization that there are different narratives in each of these religions, I disagreed with his framing of Christianity. I think he did a great job with understanding traditional Christianity but if it’s about following Jesus, I’m pretty sure that is way more than just about sin and “salvation.” It’s a common and prevalent misinterpretation of Jesus in the West. I think Christianity, if it is following Jesus, is probably closer to the Jewish framework--can you imagine that! We don’t call it the Judeo-Christian tradition for nothing. But I would still word it differently. I’m in a story-mood during this update. So let me share one.

In a world where following Christ is decreed to be a subversive and illegal activity, you have been accused of being a believer, arrested, and dragged before a court.

You have been under clandestine surveillance for some time now, and so the prosecution has been able to build up quite a case against you. They begin the trial by offering the judge dozens of photographs that show you attending church meetings, speaking at religious events, and participating in various prayer and worship services. After this, they present a selection of items that have been confiscated from your home: religious books that you own, worship CDs, and other Christian artifacts. Then they step up the pace by displaying many of the poems, pieces of prose, and journal entries that you had lovingly written concerning your faith. Finally, in closing, the prosecution offers your Bible to the judge. This is a well-worn book with scribbles, notes, drawings, and underlinings throughout, evidence, if it were needed, read and re-read this sacred text many times.

Throughout the case you have been sitting silently in fear and trembling. You know deep in your heart that with the large body of evidence that has been amassed by the prosecution you face the possibility of a long imprisonment or even execution. At various times throughout the proceedings, you have lost all confidence and have been on the verge of standing up and denying Christ. But while this thought has plagued your mind throughout the trial, you resist the temptation and remain focused.

Once the prosecution has finished presenting their case the judge proceeds to ask if you have anything to add, but you remain silent and resolute, terrified that if you open your mouth, even for a moment, you might deny the charges made against you. Like Christ, you remain silent before your accusers. In response you are led outside to wait as the judge ponders your case.

The hours pass slowly as you sit under guard in the foyer waiting to be summoned back. Eventually a young man in uniform appears and leads you into the courtroom so that you may hear the verdict and receive word of your punishment. Once you have been seated in the dock the judge, a harsh and unyielding man, enters the room, stands before you, looks deep into your eyes and begins to speak.

“Of the charges that have been brought forward I find the accused not guilty.”

“Not guilty?” your heart freezes. Then, in a split second, the fear and terror that had moments before threatened to strip your resolve are swallowed up by confusion and rage.

Despite the surroundings, you stand defiantly before the judge and demand that he give an account concerning why you are innocent of the charges in light of the evidence.

“What evidence?” he replies in shock.

“What about the poems and prose that I wrote?” you reply.

“They simply show that you think of yourself as a poet, nothing more.”

“But what about the services I spoke at, the times I wept in church and the long sleepless nights of prayer?”

“Evidence that you are a good speaker and actor, nothing more,” replied the judge. “It is obvious that you deluded those around you, and perhaps at times you even deluded yourself, but this foolishness is not enough to convict you in a court of law.”

“But this is madness!” you shout. “It would seem that no evidence would convince you!”

“Not so,” replies the judge as if informing you of a great, long-forgotten secret.

“The court is indifferent toward your Bible reading and church attendance; it has no concern for worship with words and a pen. Continue to develop your theology, and use it to paint pictures of love. We have no interest in such armchair artist who spend their time creating images of a better world. We exist only for those who would lay down their brush, and their life, in a Christlike endeavor to create a better world. So, until you live as Christ and his followers did, until you challenge this system and become a thorn in our side, until you die to yourself and offer your body to the flames, until then, my friend, you are no enemy of ours.”

Here, I hesitate to interpret or comment as I might lead you one way; there are many layers. I almost added to the story, but I know the author of the story, a philosopher named Peter Rollins, would not object. I could have added that the person, the defendant, had been a righteous (really blameless man) or that people who had been convicted had been people who had sinned (I guess we all have according to the definition). But my point is that the court (in this story) isn’t interested in personal, private piety. The judge might say, “That just shows you’re a personally good person with morals but not Christlike in that you are systematically against systems, communing with the excluded and the least of these.” Great story.

That is the first story in a book of modern-day (I call them parables) stories by Peter Rollins. It’s called “Orthodox Heretic.”

FIDELITY OF BETRAYAL

2010-10-31T20:39:00.000-07:00

I have a friend I’m calling Sam. Sam did something recently that has bothered me. I had the hardest time putting my finger on the emotion, but last week, I realized what it was. It is the feeling of being betrayed. I feel like I’ve been betrayed. Now, normally I don’t care about such things or hold grudges, and I’m not doing so this time. I’m simply identifying an emotion which is simply an emotion whether I was actually betrayed or if I’m just framing it in my mind to make myself feel better.

But what strikes me hardest is that I can’t shake the fact that Sam’s actions were done to “help” me. Can you imagine that? Betray me to help me, to benefit me. It’s paradoxical but perhaps intention means something. Let me share a story I first heard from Pete Rollins.

There was once a small town filled with believers who sought to act always in obedience to the voice of God. When faced with difficult situations the leaders of the community would often be found deep in prayer, or searching the scriptures for guidance and wisdom.

Late one evening, in the middle of winter, a young man from the neighboring city arrived at the gates of the town’s little church seeking refuge. The caretaker immediately let him in and, seeing that he was hungry and cold, provided a meal and some warm clothes. After he had eaten, the young man explained how he had fled the city because the authorities had labeled him a political dissident. It turned out that the man had been critical of both the government and the church in his work as a journalist. The caretaker brought the young man back to his home and allowed him to stay until a plan had been worked out concerning what to do next.

When the priest was informed about what happened, he called the leaders of the town together in order to work out what ought to be done. After an intense discussion it was agreed that the man should be handed over to the authorities in order to face up to the charges that had been made against him. But the caretaker protested saying, “This man has committed no crimes. He has merely criticized what he believes to be the injustices perpetrated by authorities in the name of God.”

“What you say may be true,” replied the priest, “but his presence puts the whole of this town in danger. What if the authorities find out where he is and learn that we protected him.”

But the caretaker refused to hand him over to the priest saying, “He is my guest, and while he is under my roof I will ensure that no harm comes to him. If you take him from me by force then I will publicly attest to having helped him and suffer the same injustice as my guest.”

The caretaker was well loved by the people, and the priest had no intention of letting something happen to him. So the leaders went away again and this time searched the Scriptures for an answer, for they knew that the caretaker was a man of great faith. After a whole night of pouring over the Scriptures the leaders came back to the caretaker, saying, “We have read the sacred book all through the night seeking guidance and found out that it tells us that we must respect the authorities of this land and witness to the truth of faith through submission to them.”

But the caretaker also knew the sacred words of Scripture, and he told them that the Bible also asked that we care for those who suffer and are persecuted. There and then the leaders began to pray fervently. They beseeched God to speak to them, not as a still small voice in their conscience, but rather in the way he had spoken to Abraham and Moses. They begged that God would communicate directly to them and to the caretaker so that the issue could finally be resolved. Sure enough, the sky began to darken, and God descended from heaven, saying, “The priest and elders speak the truth, my friend. In order to protect the town this man must be handed over to the authorities.”

The caretaker, a man of deep faith, looked up to heaven and replied, “If you want me to remain faithful to you, my God, then I can do nothing but refuse your advice. For you have already demanded that I look after this man. You have written that I must protect him at all costs. Your words of love have been spelled out by the lines of this man’s face, your text is found in the texture of his flesh. And so, my God, I defy you precisely so as to remain faithful to you.”

With this God smiled and quietly withdrew, confident that the matter had finally been settled.

I will refrain from explanation as not to detract from its impact and meaning. But that’s a little of what I meant by the Fidelity of Betrayal. I got the phrase from a wonderful book by Peter Rollins. Check it out if you have time. . . .or if you’re ready.

PETER ROLLINS

2010-10-31T20:28:00.000-07:00

God isn’t the different patches of meaning we all place on the wind of the unknowing; God IS the wind.

Pete is one of my favorite philosophers and theological studiers. He’s a researcher at Trinity in Dublin, and he’s written a few books. The thing I love about it him is that he understand theology as a means to an end and is ultimately more interested in working with communities that want to put some of these thoughts into action.

I was introduced to him by a great friend named April. She’s a beautiful, unassuming, sometimes self-effacing nurse with a real quiet, strong spirit. She’s increasingly more humble each day and ever so patient to let me rant and rave in my ego and arrogance while she just loves me constantly. What is most beautiful about her is that she is willing to be challenged away from the environment she grew up in, as long as it leads to what is true. So we’re searching for that together.

This first link is to a 20 minute video. There are several things on the web page...just scroll down to the video and press play.

http://solarcrash.com/2009/07/peter-rollins-stuff/

These other three are consecutive lectures that he gave...they'll be a little longer, but if you like the video content you'll want to hear these too.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1616209/rollins1.m4a

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1616209/rollins2.m4a

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1616209/rollins4.m4a

I’ll tell you why I like what Rollins says. Like Rob Bell, he’s the first to tell you it’s ok to disagree with him. In fact, Peter often disagrees with himself. This resonates with me as I’m still searching, struggling, figuring things out, trying to understand how to live in this world. I absolute love when people disagree with me because there is a chance on either side to learn and grow. And if the thing about which we disagree has a certain answer (an apple sits behind a curtain; you think it’s red, I think it’s green) one of us has an opportunity to learn what it is and maybe learn about why we thought it was something else (maybe both of us do). In fact if you disagree with Rollins, then you’ve already agreed with him (huh?).

Rollins also speaks about the heart of Christianity. I sometimes shy away from using the word Christianity because it seems useless to use it to mean what Jesus meant since it has so many other interpretations and realizations in the world, today. But Rollins doesn’t shy away from that. He calls it an irreligious religion, an atheistic theism. I understand this and try to help my groups back in South Africa understand that doubt was not something to fear. It did not have to be a hindrance to faith, but rather a necessary stepping stone. He talks about Christian atheists like Nietzsche. How cool is that?

There’s a philosopher-writer who thought about how anything can exist in our world. He said there were three ways. First, something could exist as an idea. This is the lowest level, and (to this philosopher since others would consider this the highest level) this is rubbish. What can you do with an idea? It’s not yet physically real. For example, I can have an idea of a new type of school, but if the school is not created, it’s only an idea.

Secondly, there is actual reality that was first conceived by the mind. For example, I can imagine a building in my mind (lowest level) and then I go out and build it. The physical building is now a reality that was first conceived in my mind. This is the 2nd level, a higher level.

Third, he hypothesized that perhaps there is a higher level. Imagine any type of reality that cannot be contained by the mind, cannot be understand by the mind. If something could exist in reality but be beyond the mind’s capacity to comprehend or contain, this would be the highest level, the third level. In fact, he thought if anything like this exists, it must be God.

In other words, most agnostics or agnostic atheists imagine that we don’t know God out of anonymity. If there is a God, he’s acting in a hidden, invisible way. He’s anonymous. His work, his touch is anonymous. And we can’t know God because he’s anonymous if he even exists; he may not exist.

The philosopher above is saying something different. He’s saying if God is a type of reality that is above and beyond the ability of our minds to comprehend, he’s not anonymous, but he’s hyper-nonymous. In other words, it is not that we don’t know God out of anonymity, we don’t know God due to his hypernymity. In other words, maybe he’s too much to know or understand. It’s an excess that our minds can’t handle. He’s everywhere. His imprint of excess is too much or great to take in.

This resonates more with me, personally, than anonymity due to the evidence both for a God and against a God. But this is too theoretical. Let me show how Rollins lives some of this out and how it resonates with some of the things I’ve been doing in South Africa.

Rollins has a group called IKON. Unlike most Christian churches that severely believe in man-made authority and leadership over each other, IKON operates with a doughnut structure where everyone is on the outside and no one is at the center. So there’s no membership for instance. Another example is that there is no professional hospitality or greeting team. In other words, if the person sitting next to you doesn’t reach out and say hello and love you then they’ve all failed. It’s on everyone and everyone does it; it’s not a role for some, it’s a living principle embodied by all. I could continue with more, but you can begin to see. Most traditional Christian churches feel that this could never stand or hold up, but I’ve learned that where there is love, perfect love, authority disappears. So when I tried to get my church to have a speaker about human trafficking and they wouldn’t allow it because they had a set agenda for months of sermon series and topics--that’s authority that’s not listening to the breeze of the wind through the people.

They offer an Omega course. Ha! It’s like exiting Christianity in 12 weeks. It’s like Alpha (and I like Alpha and am not knocking it as many people have started a relationship with God through it) but no answers are given in the end about anything so there is even less of an issue of saying the wrong thing or not believing the “correct” thing in Omega than in Alpha. This reminds me a little of a doubt series I did with my life/small/cell/house group while in South Africa. We did a few sessions on doubt. We had Doubt Night. People could write down their doubts about the faith on sheets of paper and enter it anonymously into a bin and we would read them out and talk about them. No answers, no resolution. Just doubt. Why? God doesn’t resolve (read “Blue Like Jazz”) like jazz music. Yes, some of those questions we had answers, but many we didn’t. It’s the tension of humanity that is our daily lot while living in the human condition.

They have atheism for Lent. They read all the big atheists during Lent, like Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, etc. I LOVE this. Why? I read atheists. I read as much as I can about people who think and believe differently than me. I want to understand. More honestly, there are parts of me that agree with them as I doubt things that I do believe. I once gave a book about love to a Christian homosexual (non-practicing at the time) friend of mine struggling with homosexuality and not feeling that he could have someone to love while being a Christian. This book is called “Sex God” by Rob Bell and doesn’t even mention homosexuality directly (Rob can be vague sometimes), but he deals with love and sex so holistically and from a place of tension and release that I love. The church bookstore keeper order tons of books because she thought it would go well with the 6-part “sex” sermon series going on at the time. The pastor saw the book and rejected and told her to return all the boxes of copies saying that it was theologically shaky. She saved a book for my friend. This happened again with a book I wanted my small group/life group to read (I was leading the life group at the time). The pastor again rejected “Velvet Elvis” by Rob Bell because it was theologically shaky. And it killed me because I longed to be in a place where instead of sheltering sheep from different thoughts you expose people and allow them to doubt and breathe and question and understand while not understanding. Does that make sense? So many pastors are in a protection mode from even people with different thoughts within the SAME RELIGION. Many pastors, for instance, told their congregations not to read “The Shack” which I found a wonderfully challenging book. I’d love to be a pastor and have my congregation read from Richard Dawkins. It’s good to understand, see, feel, empathize, and sometime agree (and disagree).

They have anti-evangelism. My friend Jeannie asked me about being evangelical. It’s a bit like when a person ends a long relationship, engagement, marriage and it’s quite painful. The thing the heartbroken person wants most is to get back into the relationship or to find someone else. At least that’s what they say they want. In reality, they just want comfort and security and the feeling of being loved. If you give them what they want and they quickly find someone new it can be a waste and hurtful and disingenuous. Instead, you withhold the very thing they want in order for them to find it. You tell them, “No, you don’t need to get into a new relationship. Go do something with yourself. Get a hobby, develop yourself. Work on yourself.” Once you do that, and are engaged and actually fulfilled without some elusive love, you actually end up finding that love when you aren’t looking for it. Sometimes it can be similar with God if that makes sense. I won’t go on, but they encourage doubt in their evangelism as Christianity is a type of atheism mixed with theism, in a sense.

They do other things like Suspended Space, but I’ll stop for now. I encourage you, if you want, to go to the IKON website or just check out the links above in which he talks about these things. If you don’t want, that’s cool, too. I just love talking and moreso doing some of these things.

LIVING A BETTER STORY

2010-10-31T20:22:00.000-07:00

I’m meeting with a group of friends who are reading a book called “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years,” but we’re only discussing the book during 2 of 10 or 12 sessions. We’re mostly concerned with living a better story. Most people see life as a story. But they think you have a great story if you’ve been through some great tragedy or drama and have come out a winner. I think what we’re doing is a bit different. We and the book talk about living a better story even when nothing is wrong, in times of peace, at least on the outside. In other words, is it possible to live a great story without huge drama and why does it matter?

We’ve been giving an assignment. We’re talking about the importance of knowing what you want and wanting the right things. I have to ask people what they believe I want and see if it matches up with what I say or think I want. What do you believe I want in life? If you have an answer will you e-mail back please? You need not spend hours of time. It can be a simple or quick response. Thanks!

I’m not in the writing mood this week, so here is a story to explicate what it means to live a better story.

“A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller
Chapter 9 Excerpt
How Jason Saved His Family

When I got back from Los Angeles, I got together with my friend Jason who has a thirteen-year-old daughter. He was feeling down because he and his wife had found pot hidden in their daughter’s closet. She was dating a guy, too, a kid who smelled like smoke, and only answered questions with single words: “Yeah,” “No,” “Whatever,” and “Why?” And “Why?” was the answer Jason hated most. Have her home by ten, Jason would say. Why the guy would ask. Jason figured this guy was the reason his daughter was experimenting with drugs.

“You thinking about grounding her?” I asked. “Not allowing her to date him?”

“We’ve tried that. But it’s gotten worse.” Jason shook his head and fidgeted his fingers on the table.

Then I said something that caught his attention. I said his daughter was living a terrible story.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

To be honest, I didn’t know exactly what I meant. I probably wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t just returned from the McKee seminar. But I told him about the stuff I’d learned, that the elements of a story involve a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. Even as I said this, I wasn’t sure how it applied to his daughter.

“Go on,” my friend said.

“I don’t know, exactly, but she’s just not living a very good story. She’s caught up in a bad one.” I said a lot of other things, and he kept asking questions. We must have talked for an hour or more, just about story, about how novels work and why some movies are meaningful and others simply aren’t. I didn’t think much of it. I just figured he was curious about movies.

A couple of months later I ran into Jason and asked about his daughter. “She’s better,” he said to me smiling. And when I asked why, he told me his family was living a better story.
* * *

That night after we talked, Jason couldn’t sleep. He thought about the story his daughter was living and the role she was playing inside that story. He realized he hadn’t provided a better role for his daughter. He hadn’t mapped out a story for his family. And so his daughter had chosen another story, a story in which she was wanted, even if she was only being used. In the absence of a family story, she’d chosen a story in which there was risk and adventure, rebellion and independence. “She’s not a bad girl,” my friend said. “She was just choosing the best story available to her.”

I pictured his daughter flipping through the channels of life, as it were, stopping on a story that seemed most compelling at the moment, a story that offered her something, anything because people can’t live without a story, without a role to play.

“So how did you get her out of it?” I asked. And I couldn’t believe what he told me next.

Jason decided to stop yelling at his daughter and, instead, created a better story to invite her into. He remembered that a story involves a character who wants something and overcomes a conflict to get it.

“I started researching some stuff on the internet,” Jason said, “and I came across an organization that builds orphanages around the world. And that sounded to me like a pretty good ambition, something maybe my family could try to do together. It sounded like a good story.”

“Right,” I said, trying to remember the elements of story myself.

“So I called this organization,” Jason continued, “and it takes about twenty-five thousand dollars to build one of these orphanages. And the truth is, we don’t have the money. I mean we just took out a second mortgage. But I knew if we were going to tell a good story, it would have to involve risk.”

“That’s true,” I said, remembering it from the seminar.

“So I went home and called a family meeting,” my friend continued. “I didn’t tell my wife first, which it turns out was a mistake. But I told them about this village and about the orphanage and all these terrible things that could happen if these kids don’t get an orphanage. Then I told them I agreed to build it.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said.

“No, I’m not. And my wife sat there looking at me like I’d lost my mind. And my daughter, her eyes were as big as melons and she wasn’t happy. She knew this would mean she’d have to give up her allowance and who knows what else. They just sat there in silence. And the longer they sat there, the more I wondered if I’d lost my mind too.”

“I actually think you might have lost your mind,” I said, feeling somewhat responsible.

“Well, maybe so,” Jason said, looking away for a second with a smile. “But it’s working out. I mean things are getting pretty good, Don.”

Jason went on to explain that his wife and daughter went back to their separate rooms and neither of them talked to him. His wife was rightly upset that he hadn’t mentioned anything to her. But that night while they were lying in bed, he explained the whole story thing, about how they weren’t taking risks and weren’t helping anybody and how their daughter was losing interest.

“The next day,” he said, “Annie came to me while I was doing the dishes.” He collected his words. “Things had just been tense for the last year, Don. I haven’t told you everything. But my wife came to me and put her arms around me and leaned her face into the back of my neck and told me she was proud of me.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“I’m not,” my friend said. “Don, I hadn’t heard Annie say anything like that in years. I told her I was sorry I didn’t talk to her about it, that I just got excited. She said she forgave me, but that it didn’t matter. She said we had an orphanage to build, and that were probably going to make bigger mistakes, but we would build it.” My friend smiled as he remembered his wife’s words.

“And then Rachel came into our bedroom, maybe a few days later, and asked if we could go to Mexico. Annie and I just sort of looked at her and didn’t know what to say. So then Rachel crawled between us in bed like she did when she was little. She said she could talk about the orphanage on her web site and maybe people could help. She could post pictures. She wanted to go to Mexico to meet the kids and take pictures for her Web site.”

“That’s incredible,” I said.

“You know what else, man?” Jason said. “She broke up with her boyfriend last week. She had his picture on her dresser and took it down and told me he said she was too fat. Can you believe that? What a jerk.”

“A jerk,” I agreed.

“But that’s done now,” Jason said, shaking his head. “No girl who plays the role of a hero dates a guy who uses her. She knows who she is. She just forgot for a little while.”

Actually even if someone isn’t a Donald Miller fan, then you’ll probably still like this book. The guy leading our group discussion, for instance, is not a fan but raves about this book. The leader, a friend of mine, is a storyteller, himself; he uses film. The husband-wife relationship tugs at my heart strings more than the focus of the story (the relationship with the daughter) because of the commitment made between them and because their relationship affects the relationship with the daughter; a marriage is a creative relationship. The part in the story that gets me is that even after his wife hadn’t said anything like “I’m proud of you” in years, even though he had a bad year with her, even though his daughter was very distant from him and yelling and punishments made it worse, things changed. Things could change and they did; the relationship with his wife was redeemed . The relationship with his daughter was redeemed, and it was redeemed through a better story. Go read the book.

MIDDLE EAST

2010-10-31T20:00:00.000-07:00

I’ve been delaying continuing the economic empire talks with the Middle East. We’ve been traveling geographically as opposed to chronologically. But the Middle East is probably the most significant region in this game because of one single resource--oil. And it still affects the world today. Oil, like gold, became a way of valuing currencies and a symbol of wealth and real power, quite honestly. But oil was even more valuable because it is use in most products today--plastics, composites, chemicals, computer parts, etc.

After WWII, oil company executives worked to convince the Congress and the president to save our domestic oil supplies and rather go after oil in other parts of the world. So working with UK and European companies, they obtained tax breaks and incentives to ensure they maintained domination of global petroleum supplies.

Well, at the same time, we were entering the Cold War with Russia labeled as the enemy (and vice versa). Why I bring this up is that in every geopolitical move in the latter half of the 20th century, the America empire used Communism and the USSR as the excuse or reason or threat. This is normal in most empires if you study history. So let’s look at how it plays into Iran.

IRAN
The 1951 Time magazine man of the year was the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh who wanted his people to share in more of the profits from the oil companies. So he nationalized a British petroleum company. Both England and the US did not like this but thought that military action would cause the USSR to act. So instead of the marines, CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt (Theodore’s grandson) was sent in. With a few million dollars he organized violent demonstrations that overthrew Mossadegh. He was replaced by the CIA with Mohammed Rez Pahlavi, known as “the Shah,” the despotic partner of the oil companies. So a democratically elected president was replaced by a despot, but because this despot was good for big oil we were ok with it. (this will later change)

(By the way, this led to EHMs because Roosevelt was successful, but if he had been caught that would have been very bad for the US because he’s a US government agent. EHMs are contractors and work for other groups, so it’s less sticky and incriminating)

Reason #1 - Why Some Middle Easterners Don’t Like Us (there are many)
1. The Iranian people, to this day in 2010, have never forgotten this and never forgave the US. This includes other countries in the region. (I honestly believe this is why it’s hard for them or their politicians to believe the US when we say certain things. Do you blame them?) There are political scientists who believe if the US had, instead, encouraged Iran to apply oil revenues toward social services for his people and had supported him, democracy might have been encouraged to grow in the region and much of the violence in the region might have been prevented.

Well, the country’s debt increased as the corporatocracy grew, says John Perkins. Factories for our products were increasingly located in other countries. And foreign creditors (people from whom we took out loans in other countries) wanted to be repaid in gold. The Nixon administration responded by revoking the gold standard in 1971. This is a little hard to understand, but if these foreign creditors (people to whom we owed money in other countries) switched to other currencies (switched to some non-US dollar currency), the US would have to repay the loans at the value that the loan had relative to gold when the debt was incurred. But the US didn’t have the money to do this; they would go bankrupt. Or the US Mint could print a bunch of money and devalue the dollar in an effort to pay, but who wanted to do that? So the goal was to make sure the world kept accepting the dollar as the standard currency. And Nixon and Kissinger and his team figured out a way to do this.

SAUDI ARABIA
First, Israel decided to launch pre-emptive attacks aimed at Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian troops along its borders; this became the Six-Day war in 1967. Many think this was Israel’s determination to protect its borders. After the week, Israel’s land holdings had quadrupled, of course, at the expense of people in the West Bank, Golan Heights (Syria), Sinai (Egypt), and East Jerusalem.

Reason #2
2. Arabs were angry by the loss and frustrated. They knew that Israel needed US financial/military and political support and could not have succeeded, otherwise. I always thought Washington’s motives were Israel, but I’m learning that Washington had more self-focused motives than that.

It’s time for Chess. Watch this.
Secondly, Egypt and Syria, in response I believe, attacked Israel simultaneously in 1973 on Yom Kippur (the holiest of Jewish holidays)
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat asked Saudi Arabian King Faisal to act against the US by using “the oil weapon.” On October 16, Saudi Arabia along with 4 other Arab nations and Iran joined in announcing a 70% increase in the price of oil.
On October 19th, Nixon asked Congress to approve $2.2 billion in aid to Israel.
The next day, Saudi Arabia led Arab oil producers in a total embargo of oil to the U.S.
By January 1974, the selling price of Saudi oil was nearly 7 times its price 4 years earlier. There were long lines of cars at gas stations around the country. People thought the economy was on the verge of collapse.
And the last move belongs to Nixon and the U.S. By giving the aid to Israel, they purposely engineered a situation (the embargo) that was conducive for their next move.
The U.S. Treasury department contacted MAIN and other contractors with EHMs. Their mission was two-part: 1) formulate a plan to ensure that OPEC would funnel all the US money spent on oil right back to the US and 2) establish a new “oil standard” to replace the gold standard

And they did it. John Perkins was one of the EHMs who engineered this through trips to Saudi Arabia. The House of Saud agreed to 1) invest a large portion of its petrodollars in US government securities, 2) allow the US Treasury Department to use trillions of dollars in interest from these securities to hire U.S. corporation to westernize Saudi Arabia, and 3) maintain the price of oil within acceptable limits (acceptable to corporatocracy). Then get this: Saudi Arabia (biggest oil producer in the world) also agreed to trade oil exclusively in U.S. dollars. Now oil replaced gold as the measure of a currency’s value; the dollar reigned supreme.

Reason #3 (and there are many)
I’m quite amazed the House of Saud even agreed to this, but let’s face it. They were put in power by the British and weren’t looking after the needs of their people. But this deal which the Nixon administration masterminded quite well angered one person--Osama bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire who would go on to coordinate and chiefly execute 9/11.

LEBANON
Skipping much of its history, it was the Lebanese Republic in 1926, formed by the French, but when France gave allegiance to Nazi-controlled Vichy government, German supplies moved through to Iraq to fight the British. It won it’s independence in 1944 on January 1st. A National Covenant was adopted by the prominent two leaders of the Christian and Muslim communities. The only problem is that the covenant gave power according to a 1932 census (12 years ago) in which Christians were 54% of the population. The covenant said the president would a member of the majority, Maronite Christian, the prime minister would be a member of the Sunni population and the speaker of the legislature would be Shi’a. This angered many Arabs who felt that, in fact, in 1944 the Muslims outnumbered the Christians.

Everyone was told that the atrocities committed against the Jews warranted the creation of a state. And everyone agrees, that they deserve better and should be given a state. Sadly, for the state to be created in 1948, many Palestinians had to give up their homes and people fled into Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries. This influx is why people believed there were more Muslims (there were).

Reason #4
People think or thought that Israel was sort of footstool for the U.S., a type of armed station in the Middle East for the US, and now Lebanon was being groomed by keeping the Christians in power.

A Muslim rebellion occurred in 1958. Washington accused Moscow and attributed it to communist threats even though Syria backed the rebellion more than the U.S.S.R. Eisenhower sent troops in.

Reason #5
People realize that the U.S. was willing to protect such interests militarily. This had an impact on Muslims throughout the region.

IRAQ
I said this already, but let me repeat this one. See if it sounds familiar. In the 50’s and 60’s there was a popular Iraqi president, President Abdul Karim Qasim. He grew more bold with the U.S. and the U.K. and wanted more profits shared with his people. He threatened to nationalize the oil. Economic hit men were sent to Iraq, but it didn’t work. So then a young Saddam Hussein was part of team that was hired to assassinate Qasim. Their attempt failed; Saddam was shot and fled to Syria. Kennedy then ordered the CIA to join the MI6 to finish the job. They executed Qasim on Iraqi TV by a firing squad. Saddam came back and placed as head of national security and his second cousin became president.

I’m skipping a lot here, but Iran was promoted as a model of Christian-Muslim cooperation, and EHM’s offered the shah’s government as an alternative to those in Russia, Libya, China, Korea, Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, etc. In selling this government, EHM’s focused on the facts that the shah broke up large private land holdings and gave them to peasants which ushered in socioeconomic reforms. John Perkins believes it was subterfuge for increasing the shah’s power and creating hegemony in the Middle East. More EHM contractual work was done in Iran after 1974.

Well, the ayatollahs deposed the shah. So we now had new leaders in Iran who were not sympathetic to our geopolitical interests: they expelled our oil companies, attacked the US embassy, and took hostages. Washington supported Saddam’s war against Iraq. We gave Saddam weapons, billions of dollars. We built chemical plants which Bechtel knew would be used for chemical weapons (like mustard gas and sarin) to kill Kurds, Shi’a rebels and Iranians. We trained his military and gave him conventional weapons and tanks. We pressured the Saudis and Kuwaitis to lend him $50 billion.

The Iranian-Iraqi war ended in 1988 with more than a million dead. US military suppliers and contractors profited greatly from the war. Oil prices were high. But Saddam, with the 2nd largest deposits in the region (behind Saudi Arabia) kept refusing to accept a similar deal to the Saudis. Saddam would have received U.S. protection as well as more supplies of chemicals and weapons. But he kept refusing. So he then became an enemy (or Iraq became an enemy) and jackals were sent in. But Saddam was hired by us in the 1980s and he understood CIA methods. The way you assassinate someone is to conspire with bodyguards. Saddam screened his bodyguards very carefully and rigorously and he employed doubles and look-alikes so the bodyguards never knew if they were guarding the right one. Since EHMs failed and jackals failed, only the military was left.

Reason #6
Bush Sr. sent in the military in 1991 (remember Saddam invaded Kuwait). They didn’t want to kill him, just reduce or hurt his military thinking so he would come around. EHMs worked on him afterwards; Saddam still would cut no deals to aid US companies and economic interests. The 2nd Bush went in and deposed and killed Saddam. Islamic militants were enraged by this especially when we all saw there was no tie or link to 9/11. People understood the influence of the Christian Right and the Israeli lobby in trying control the region, oil supplies, and transportation routes.

Since Medieval times, it seems Arabs have wanted Europeans (and now Americans) to stay away and to be able to turn their government as they see fit. Many Arabs see the American empire of the 2nd half of the 20th century as something similar to the empire building of the Crusades during the Middle Ages. So one resentment feeds the other.

Time or space doesn’t permit to continue and talk about issues like the Suez Canal, for instance, or the 1978 Camp David Peace accords in which Egypt and Israel had to earmark a large portion of the money received from the US for purchasing US military equipment. Our system thrives on the manufacture of arms, a hugely profitable business (around $900 billion a year) involving France, Russia, China, U.K., and Brazil as major players. The issues are complex here, but the name of the game is quite old in time. I’d like to take a trip to Africa to see how such empire building may have ravaged the beloved continent.

DONORS CHOOSE

2010-10-31T19:55:00.000-07:00

If you have a minute, would you please vote for the project of my friend Josh Dugat at www.donorschoose.org. The sight allows public school teachers to create projects seeking out materials for their classrooms, and allows individual donors the opportunity to fund any amount of a project they would like. He is a great teacher down in New Orleans at an alternative campus for expelled high school students with the goal of getting an LCD projector for his science classroom (the school doesn't even have one). You can help make it happen with a simple click!

Sonic is offering to fund up to $600 for classroom projects on donorschoose each week in September through a campaign called "Limeades for Learning." They will provide funds to those projects receiving the maximum amounts of votes each week. Anyone can vote once a day for any project. His proposed project asks for an LCD projector for the classroom, a $900+ proposal that the Sonic grant would greatly assist in helping out. If this project is funded, he will receive "points" on donorschoose that will allow him to request materials for field trips, guest speakers, and more materials in the future.

Follow the directions to help Josh get an LCD projector for his class:

Go to www.limeadesforlearning.com
Click the link "Find a Project"
Click on "Keyword"
Type "Dugat" into the keyword search
His project is called: "Modernize Class! It's As Easy As L.C.D."

In advance, thanks and please pass on! Or just go and vote for whichever you actually

Update - September 6, 2010

2010-10-31T19:38:00.000-07:00

It happened again. I’m beginning to think that dry cleaners should be called driers.

I go into the dry cleaners with clothes that are not dry and are not clean. We greet each other as usual.

“Hello!”

“Hi, how are you?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“Good, good. Let’s see. What do you have?”

I put the clothes on the counter top. And low and behold she starts making noises.

“Mmm. Mmmm. Mmmmmmmmmmm.” Oh my goodness.

“What is this,” she says.

“It’s a stain.”

“MMmmm. Mmmm. Mmmmmmmmm.”

“What kind of stain is this?”

“I don’t know. It’s Barbecue juice sludge.”

“MMm. Mmmm. Mmmmmmmmm.” She was not hungry for breakfast. Lunch was another two and a half hours.

Then I gave her a look as if to say “Don’t you do it. Don’t you dare say that you can’t clean it. You’re a dry CLEANers for goodness sake.”

And she gave me a look as if to say “I’m not going to tell you that we won’t take the stain out. I’d rather you pay us money first and then be surprised when you come back and have our usual conversation.”

I HATE that usual conversation which goes like this.

“Hi.”

“Hello! Phone number.”

“1-2-3 . . . 4-5-6-. . . 7-8-9-10”

“Thanks.” She goes and retrieves my clothes. A minute later she returns with it and hangs it up on a bar near the counter for my inspection knowing full well she should have hurried me out the store because---

“Wait. There’s a stain on this pant.”

“Let me see that,” she grabs it back. “Where?”

“Right there, “ I point.

She squints and doesn’t see. So she bends closer and doesn’t see. She puts on her glasses but doesn’t see. So she puts on her granny glasses, still shakes her head. Finally she calls for the magnifying glass which her partner gives her and she inspects it without the glasses. “AH”

“Ah AH” I say.

“Ah, yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a stain.”

“Yes”

“It didn’t come out.”

“Yes.”

“So shouldn’t you clean it again or give me my money back?”

“Oh no. Stain was there when you give it to us.”

“I know. I wanted you to clean it.”

“You gave it dirty.”

“I know, but it’s still dirty.”

“Yes, you dirty it.”

“Ok, . . . I’m ok with that. But it’s dirty now.”

“Yes, your fault.”

“Yes, but I wanted you to clean it.”

“No, but you bring it dirty.”

“But I paid you to clean it.”

“Not our fault. We clean all the clothes.”

“Except that one.”

“That one is dirty.”

“Oh my gosh. I know that. Can you clean it?”

“I don’t know. It’s dirty.”

“Yes, but if it weren’t dirty, I would have kept it in my closet.”

“Maybe your closet is dirty.”

Are you kidding me? . . . . . Wait, maybe my closet IS di--- “Wait, this is about your cleaning.”

“We did clean.”

“Ok, ok. This is working. Can I at least have my money back for the pant that wasn’t cleaned.”

“Money gone. We cleaned. You dirtied.”

“Yes, but I gave it to you to clean.”

“And we would have cleaned, but you bring it dirty.”

“But that’s why I wanted you to clean it.”

“Yes, but you bring it dirty.”

“Do you take out stains or not?”

“We do clean, but not your dirty clothes.”

“What are you saying? My clothes are dirty?”

“Maybe. . . Or maybe your closet is dirty.”

I’m staring at my closet right now as I write this.

UPDATE

A day is not complete in my neighborhood without hearing at least on occurrence of a police siren, a fire truck siren, and an ambulance siren each. I sometimes wonder if new emergency response recruits secretly pine over being assigned to my neighborhood because they’ll get so much action while criminals pine over working here because they know the police will be busy with other calls. But the city has done well over the past 30 years to reduce the amount of crime. And I definitely feel safer than in Sao Paolo or Johannesburg.

But that’s my neighborhood. I don’t see much of it these days. I’m currently in orientation for my program meeting all the new first year fellows. People keep asking me how the new placement or job is, not realizing I won’t start until mid-September. I’ll let you know then.

What amazes me about my program is that all the fellows are . . . . VERY amazing and impressive. If you look at their resumes they are staggering. They tend to engender feelings of inadequacy where you look at yourself and ask “How did I get here?” or for shorter people like me “Am I human?” We sometimes don’t get it. The current class even has a woman who played professional basketball in Europe. I want to play with her but I don’t know how to ask. I remember talking to one fellow about being an astronaut. Another fellow overheard and said “Oh, an astronaut. I know 3 of them. I’ll introduce you if you like.” That’s the kind of conversations we have. I’m pretty sure some of these guys don’t even need this fellowship. They’re beyond it. But it’s a nice break from industry or academia.

Two things that happened for me recently was a trip to the US Open in NYC over Labor Day Weekend. I now have a new appreciation for tennis and will try to play some this year. Those guys hit the ball so fast and could make the ball spin and fall slowly and drop to the ground---it was phenomenal. I also got to see the #2 player in men’s tennis play. It was great.

And my choir is performing Lord of the Rings. . . Again. The past three summers we’ve performed the first, the second, and now the third this weekend. A crowd comes to DC’s open air amphitheatre to either sit in benches or on the grass and watch the movie with no music soundtrack while an orchestra and choir perform the music soundtrack live. It’s quite amazing. Check it out.

http://www.wolftrap.org/Home/Find_Performances_and_Events/Performance/10Filene/0910show10.aspx

If you know me well, you know that at any given time, I’m always applying for something. The nice and vulnerable side of a blog or update is that people who normally find you very successful get to see more of your failings along the way. Normally you only hear about the thousands of dollars raised for a charity, but you didn’t hear about the failed fundraisers and the solicitations which elicited a no from the potential donor. But following me along you get to see when I apply for things and don’t get it. I won’t write everything because these updates end up eliciting a mass of e-mails about people wanting to see, read, or know more details and for some “applications” or submissions, I’m not allowed. But you know that I’ve applied to the astronaut program once and my application was not accepted (notice I said my application wasn’t accepted as opposed to me); if there weren’t so many politics and budget concerns, by now I should have been able to apply 3 times, but they don’t know when they’ll open applications again. I’ve applied for a Gates Grand Challenges Exploration grant twice for HIV research, and my proposal was not accepted. I recently applied/auditioned for a reality TV show called Hitmakers, a Bravo production that is supposed to be a reality elimination show for singer/songwriters. I was not chosen. Those are just a few. Each thing I do is connected to me and what I want to do somehow and dreams inside of me. I’m not too phased by it; I just keep plugging along.

I’m not sure if you realize this, but at any given moment, I’m usually doing several things/tasks for several different people. Let me give you an example. This past week before last I was

1) writing a recommendation for a friend’s law school application
2) helping my niece with computer programming
3) helping to edit a scholarship essay for a TV, film, and radio communications student and friend
4) asked to help give a list or my opinion of the top experts in geo-engineering especially carbon capture and sequestrations (storage) and the top experts in communication science related to geo-engineering
5) asked to write a vocal a capella arrangement of Wade in the Water (I still haven’t started
6) asked to help with sports development studies and find out if there are any global studies that show the impact of sports on development in post-conflict societies
7) asked to argue the immuno-biology efficacy of a particular research idea

What amazes me is that they are not in the same disciplines at all. Some people say I do different things and that is why I am asked; I actually think it’s because I actually help people when asked or go out of my way to help. This is probably because I know I would want to be helped in the same when I don’t know the answer or have no where to turn if I’m trying to finish my thesis proposal, get an A in a course, conclude a project for my work, or help a girl grow into a woman.

MOTHERS and DAUGHTERS

2010-10-31T19:32:00.000-07:00

I know a lot of good women, many of them are mothers. I suppose motherhood does something to you. It makes you grow up (though it doesn’t force you to do so; you’re always free to abdicate responsibility). It makes you grow as much as the young one for whom you’re caring.

Isn’t it interesting with that vague and oft ill-defined word love?
I mean you learn to love your family.
You fall in love with a spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend/partner. (this is a different meaning of the word love)
But we seem to love our children instantly.

Even if you take a very high meaning of the word love and do not include emotions (or the emotional thing we call love) but consecrate its use for a chosen priority, a deep commitment, a conscious choosing, a bestowed gift, people seem to do this instantly with their children. They just . . . . Love them. And in the early years its easier to love them. When they get older it’s harder to tell if you’re loving your image for them, your desires for them, or if you’re truly loving them which may require letting go some of your dreams for them and seeking their joy in everything.

But why is that?
People love their families on the condition that they were treated well by them. They love their romantic partner on the condition that it is requited or that they are treated well by the partner (not always so). But with a child? No matter how much the child screams, no matter how self-focused the child is, no matter wrong the child does (if it’s possible to do wrong at that age), we love them.

And if you believe in God, you wonder if that’s how God feels. At least I wonder. I wonder if there is that same ability to forgive but magnified because I’m his child. I wonder.

I bet it’s one of the lessons we learn from our mothers, how to love (unconditionally by definition). Fathers are definitely important to the development of both sons and daughters but mothers provide that space, that safe place, that hearth, that security even in disability; they’re quite amazing. And growing up without one is hard. It’s not required but I bet there are subconscious things you learn from having a mother that you miss and must learn elsewhere without one.

My friends Robyn and Nhi are great mothers. Beautiful women judging by the attention they got in high school, great wives, and true mothers. It doesn’t mean they are always at their best; it doesn’t mean they’re relationships with their husbands have always been perfect or even great, but they’ve done what they had to do to provide, to care, to nurture, and to mother. I like that. I wonder what their children receive or know of that. I wonder why some animals release their young in the world after a few years and Nhi and Robyn, as humans, will take 18 years of motherly care before allowing their children to go off, most probably to college. Why does it take so long with the most advanced of human beings?

I don’t know. But I think it underscores the importance of a mother due to such a long period of care over the non-adult human. Eighteen years. I hope daughters learn how to be mothers by watching their mothers. But I hope we all learn what unconditional love is by watching them, so much so that one day we won‘t need to say unconditional in front of the word “love“ because that is all we‘ll ever mean.

FATHER FICTION

2010-10-31T19:02:00.000-07:00

One thing that is not true is that you love your kids equally. (I mean this in the emotional sense of love). You love them uniquely . . . .which is a beautiful thought. I often think then of orphans who grow up with no family. Do they experience that of sorts in an orphanage surrounded by all their “sisters and brothers.”

In Father Fiction, Donald Miller writes about a friend of his who apologizes to his kids when he messes up as a father. I think that’s beautiful and I’ve seen it before in a lot of families and sometimes on TV, but he specifically gives a different reason. He says he does it because he doesn’t want them to think that God is like that. He wants them to know that that was his mistake and not related to how they do, might, or will view God some day (especially due to the father imagery applied to God).

It seems plausible, not necessarily for everyone. But I have seen that people relate issues of parenting to issues of God. God only exists in as much as he is around us, anyway. I mean I know people who talk of God in the clouds and the heavens, but real people need some God with skin on. And the only way we have interacting and understanding God is probably through each other or people who act as entryway points of God in this world. Maybe that’s what Father’s are supposed to do. Be a beacon. I’d love to do that.

In one chapter in this book, Don writes of being invited to a frat house in Austin, TX, to talk to a bunch of guys who have read “Blue Like Jazz” but feel lots of pressure to sleep with lots of girls, brag about it, drink a lot, and party hard. This particular chapter is on sex, and it’s quite amazing to read. It’s not that it offers solid answers, but it’s the beginning of a conversation. I mean Don offers his heart, his learnings, but above all his honesty. I think that’s what strikes me about a father apologizing. If true, it’s honest. And honesty is one of the highest valued virtues. I don’t even care if I hate God and just want to yell at him; I just want to always be honest and get it out. I think there is connection and community in honesty. And Don does that when he explains his heart and what he’s learned. In that he was fathering those gentlemen. I won’t share any of the ideas or the perspectives with which they view men and women relationships, but it was just an amazing situation to be in and read about and witness and take in and learn and breathe. Fathers can help you breathe.

FOUNDING FATHERS

2010-10-31T18:26:00.000-07:00

It makes me think about the founding fathers a lot and if fathering a nation is similar to fathering a child. If so, where are we as a nation? Infancy? The toddler stage? Childhood? Adolescence? Young adulthood?

There are some founding fathers I actually like for some reason. I think of people like Washington who slowly underwent lead poisoning as he was given, in those days, false lead teeth to wear. And he would stand before the troops giving an order and then leave and walk behind a tree and struggle in pain.

He actually had very clean language and didn’t allow bad language from his men around him. I always wonder what his life would have been without the necessity for war. I’ve looked at some of the maps he made as a land surveyor/cartographer.

I also think about finally being done with the war and going back home to his very tough wife and trying to live the life they were supposed to. And how one day while in his house, probably still suffering, James Madison, small man that he was, rode up to the house and came in the door with that look which I’m sure George immediately understood to mean “I’m needed.” And the question would arise how would he explain this to Martha who had missed so much of his husband on the farm already and could have been wondering if this was the life she had signed up for. But James Madison was insistent. I suppose George took a few days and then decided to go to the future capital to be the country’s first president. It’s always funny, isn’t it, how most countries are initially led by the leaders who brought them independence and fought for liberty. This transition would be a different one, though, in this new democratic experiment. He would not just hold on to rule; he would voluntarily give it up after two terms. Imagine that.

I’m not a fan of Thomas Jefferson though. True George had slaves; I know he released them all upon his death. Thomas Jefferson actually wrote quite nasty things about the inferiority of black people. Moreover, at the same time, he had relations with at least one of his slaves and had a child with her. It’s interesting to look at some of the letters that went back and forth between Jefferson and John Adams (The nation’s second president) as Jefferson revealed this and looked for advice on what to do or maybe was just confessing his predicament. I like John Adams a lot. It seems like he had no slaves and ran his land with his wife quite industriously and independently. I often wonder about many of these men and what they would have done and been without the independence and nation-begetting business.

What I’ve learned is that people have many sides to them. I have a cousin who loves to tell me how she doesn’t understand this and that about America and American people. Generally, I hear this a lot from friends. I don’t understand drivers. I don’t understand Black people. I don’t understand Republicans. I don’t understand the Tea Party. I don’t understand poor people. I don’t understand road rage. I don’t understand Hitler.

Hitler is interesting because I bet he never imagined that he would be used, so often, as the baseline for a bad person or for evil. I mean what a crazy life and resulting legacy. Legacy is so important and his is ruined. In acting, though, we’re not allowed to say “I don’t understand Hitler.” In Huxley’s book “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan” one character says that the stupidest verse in the Bible is “They hated him without a cause.“ There’s always a cause or a reason. You may not know what motivated someone to do something, but we’re all human, and everyone has motivations, weaknesses, foibles, pressure points, lusts, and cravings. I know very clearly that the same thing that was in Hitler is in me. I’m so glad it has never controlled me or propelled me to such audacities. [in context of the Biblical verse from the Old Testament requited in the New Testament, “without a cause” probably means without justification though the reasons are clear]

So I’ve decided to get over my issue with Thomas Jefferson because I know he has many good points in him. I know he’s motivated by certain things. I know a man can find black people inferior and yet be sexually attracted to Black females. I think you can play the violin well and still be a racist (and it’s easier to be one when it’s acceptable or the vogue thing to do or be) and help craft the Declaration of Independence which ironically says all men are created equal. So I’m going to watch a documentary on him to learn a little more. In theatre, we have to find personal motivations and make EVERY character human. We have to show that someone COULD do certain things and they are motivated by passions, cravings, the past, history, environment, the will, weaknesses, and greatnesses. It’s all there. You have to find it and make it human. I’m going to make Jefferson more human. Besides it’s not in me to judge, but rather to learn.

HISTORY is HARD

2010-10-31T18:19:00.000-07:00

The same happened with Abraham Lincoln. I thought highly of him in school because I was taught to think so. Then some people told me he was a hypocrite and he only freed slaves for ulterior motives not because he wanted to do so. The same slaves that Thomas and George had. Still here. Still an issue.

They remained an issue through the Civil War (April 1861 - April 1865). The hard part about history is that it’s hard. Can I be any more redundant. I think it’s the hardest humanities discipline. It involves the craft of historicity with the art of interpretation. Getting the events is one thing, but interpreting them is an entirely different issue. Look at current events, we have such a hard time with figuring out why we as a country just did something, why we went to war, why we didn’t sign an international agreement, why there’s no official statement about policy on this issue. And one reason is that you can do the same action for many different reasons. Sometimes you don’t want the public to know those reasons. Sometimes you say the opposite of what is true or you hide what is true in public speeches or public receptions. This makes history hard because if you want to know the true motive of people and presidents and groups, you sometimes have to infer and dig around. But when you do, often you can be accused of making things up, creating conspiracy theories, or similar actions. But, in reality, such work is necessary because it’s not as it all seems. I mean, look at how difficult the issue of Iraq was for the American people. Why did we go? Why did we not go to Rwanda in 1994 under Bill Clinton? Why are we in Columbia? Why do the same two parties have control most of the time? Who, what, when, where, and how is hard enough in this day of classified information with the FBI and CIA, but why? That is the toughest part and history’s hardest endeavor. It’s hard.
I mean if a class of students cannot even agree about what the a book, a novel from literature, is trying to say how much harder to determine the hearts of men in the events of the world.

Then arrives what’s called revisionist history (I call it that, anyway), when a historian returns to some bit of history to re-envision it and rewrite it differently. It may not be that new facts have surfaced or new records found, but rather re-interpretation of the facts. Or maybe it is just new facts that causes a direct reinterpretation. Or maybe it’s both.
I remember growing up and hearing that Civil War was fought over slavery. Then I remember studying it in high school and being told that it was fought over slavery and states’ rights, but mainly states’ rights. I, of course, considered this revisionist history, which it was. But it was convenient revisionist history. If you go back and read documents leading up to the civil war and study the historical record, it was definitely fought over slavery and slavery alone. So now I’ve come back full circle. You can only say it was fought over states’ rights as an incomplete statement. The complete statement is that it was fought over the states’ right to have slaves. Complete statement. Ultimate reason. After the civil war there was a concerted revisionist effort to recolor the history in a more favorable light for southern states. This does not mean discrimination or racism didn’t occur in the north, I’m just speaking of slavery at the moment.

I walk past an old Presbyterian church in DC sometimes. I like it a lot, partly because I love history, but partly because it was Abraham Lincoln’s church. I can walk past the theatre he was shot at, the church he attended, and the area he ran the country from. I think of him often as I visit the Lincoln Memorial anytime visitors are in town. He’s an enigma. I first learned he freed the slaves because it was the right thing to do. Then I learned he freed the slaves for political reasons but not because he actually wanted to; he didn’t care about slaves or Black people. A type of revision of history. Now, though I don’t know for certain, I’m beginning to rewrite that in my head.

History is so hard, but it’s so good. I love it. I think I love history so much because you learn so much from it. Man, as a rule, doesn’t really learn from history and we just repeat the same mistakes. But as an individual I can learn a lot from it. I include biographies in this as well. Read biographies and histories and really imbibe the lessons because it’s good for the digestion of your life, what you create, what legacy you leave.

Lincoln was a man of history, too. And he struggled. He struggled at an amazingly tough time in the history of this country. I don’t envy it and don’t want to trade places. One thing I’ve learned about history is that proper interpretation (what is proper anyway?) requires context in order to reach the subtext and avoid pretext that allows anyone to proof text. I don’t think I understood what I just said, but I know of a wishy-washy letter he wrote once where people point and say “Look, he didn’t outright blast slavery as wrong and immoral.” Looking at the context of the letter, he was writing to slave-supporting, powerful men, and it makes sense that he would use a guarded in tone in trying to achieve his ends. Context is everything.

I remember the story of someone asking him about the Civil War. The person asked “How do you know God‘s on your side?” Lincoln said something like “I don’t. I just hope and pray I’m on His side.” I love that humble approach quite honestly. They story goes that Robert E. Lee was called to Washington and had an audience with the president in which he was asked to lead the Union troops. It’s believed if Lee said yes, the war would not have lasted 4 years; it would have been shorter. General Lee, however, took time to think about it and took a boat back to his residence across the river in Virginia. He later sent word that he would have to decline and he went to lead the southern forces. And the war lasted 4 years.

I’m looking at a picture of Lincoln delivering his 2nd inaugural address. In it can be seen John Wilkes Booth, his assassin; Booth’s co-conspirators are there as well. It’s a blurry picture and you can’t really see individuals well, but the speech is amazing. It’s one of my favorite of Lincoln’s and of all American speeches. It touches on subjects I discuss a lot in philosophy, theology and religious studies. Here’s an excerpt

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether'.

Isn’t that amazing. He says both sides chose war for different reasons--one as an alternative to loosing the union, the other as an alternative to keeping the union.

He then continues this ability to see both sides and says both prayed to the same God, both invoked God’s help against the other. And then he calls it strange and daring and then quickly retracts so as not to judge. But he sees the ludicrousness of it. It’s theology as anthropology. We worship God in our own image. Remember the quote where he said he was trying to be on God’s side? I love that understanding and nuance. He knows the prayers of both cannot be answered and neither received their full answer. He kind of sees both sides as wrong to do such (enlist God in a Godless endeavor).

But can you imagine what he says next? He postulates that perhaps this -- this war -- is some type of woe, some type of punishment for the sin of slavery, that perhaps the war won’t end until the total cumulative profit from the business of slavery has been wrung from the pockets of this country through the war and perhaps until enough men have died from the war as have died through slavery and the slave trade. Can you imagine the thought? I would never have thought it, I don’t’ think. But he thinks it and suggests it in an inaugural address. Are you kidding? That’s humility if I’ve never seen it. I don’t know how that is supposed to be political or win you fans on any or either side, but it’s very humbling.

That speech has probably the most valued element I seek in a speech -- honesty.

TODAY’S FATHERS

2010-10-31T18:12:00.000-07:00

And so all the political theorists and scientists and historians tell us day in and day out in orientation that the government is slow and it was designed that way. It’s supposed to be that way. Our founding fathers created it as such. I disagree.

Our founding fathers designed it not to have to much centralized power or unbalanced power. Yes. That is true. But the concept that their intent was for the government to be slow does not make any sense to me and is not connected at all by documents. Slowness might be a side-effect of a balance of powers but it was not their intent. That’s different.

Moreover many people in DC seem to think that we’re supposed to do things according to how the original fathers wanted it. They wanted a right to bear arms so we should have it. They wanted a very weak federal government that does very little so we should oppose a federal government intervening too much.

I also doubt this. What is it that is supposed to be (or was) the greatest strength of the US Constitution? At that time it was its flexibility. The writers new they didn’t know everything, that it was an experiment and that, quite frankly, there would be bumps along the way. So allowing an amendment process allows you to fix and change the document so that it was both flexible and adaptable and hopefully would stand the test of time. I think that’s what they understood more than anything else, more than supposedly wanting a slow government or everything to be the same.

I’m confident that they would adjust to the times and when more government was needed for problems that states are not able to handle or for problems that are national problems, they would support and allow it with much debate and talk, of course. They were men that knew the document and its meaning must change as the times, the demands, the problems, the obstacles, and the needs changed in time. That’s the founding fathers.

Have you never wondered how amazingly ironic it is that the founding fathers used such perfect, ideal language to originally include themselves and exclude others, but paradoxically allowing, later, for the full interpretation of those words to include everyone? I mean ethnic minorities and women, for instance, fulfill the words they wrote, when they said that

“All men are created equal” [Declaration of Independence]

PRACTOR'S PROMISE

2010-10-31T18:06:00.000-07:00

In the past two or three months, I have been approached by 4 girl friends (2 married and 2 single) asking me if I would be willing to “meet” a female friend of theirs. Now, I’m not sure why this is all happening at once or at this time, but it is. Strange. I wonder if I have that kind of walk and head bob while I walk that says “Me. ME! That’s ME! I’m the one you read about in the paper that will do whatever it takes to get married!!” Actually, I’ve had women come up to me or my roommate and say “Find me a man!”

And many people in the last update were confused about the dating service. So let me tell you how it works.

A woman in DC (I say woman because no men have come to us either because men, on average tend to be more insecure about such things or the fact that DC has large amount of men compared to women in the 20-30 and 30-40ish range) will contact me (or us) and say, “I’d like to join your service.” Then we meet up for dinner, and the only fee we charge is the meal. So over my free meal (I don’t enforce it of course) she tells me what she wants. I take notes. At this point she has the option of using our personality assessment which includes the same 29 dimensions of personal compatibility as Eharmony but we include 6 more for a total of 35. In fact, the 6 dimensions are personality dimensions of incompatibility because, as our motto goes and as grandma taught us in woodshop, “You’ve got to rough up two pieces of sandpaper before you can glue them together.” She doesn’t have to (and no one has used it to date).

We then set her up with someone in one of 7 ways.

1. The traditional Blind Date
We call you up and say “Hey, be at Farmer’s Market at 7 PM on Saturday. He’s wearing a blue shirt and looks like me.”

But sometimes that’s a little unnerving for people. So we offer a low-stress version of the same thing.

2. The Blind Group Date
This is the same thing but it is a blind double date or a blind triple date. I and/or Praj will take another girl or two and join you. Or you could invite two friends or four friends you know to join you in your blind date to ease the tension.

Still, the fact that you are paired with some person (man or woman) whom you just met makes some people unsettled. So we offer another option.

3. The Group Outing
In this case, there is not an equal number of guys and gals (I didn’t say girls) or men and women. For instance, it will be 5 gals and 6 boys or 7 women and 4 men. So the feeling of being paired romantically falls away (hopefully) and you can get to know someone in peace.

Yet again, some people are unhoused by the prospect of meeting the person face to face even in a group outing. They prefer something else.

4. Faceless Communication
In this case, you are put in contact with a potential date through e-mail, telephone, videophone, text-message, and instant message (any other instant, e- or video- methods you can imagine). This is quite comfortable for some because they want to get to know someone in a hyper romantic state before a personal face-to-face meeting.

But for those who think love is so superficial and they think they are really into the heart of a man or woman, have we got a test and option for you.

5. The Literal Blind Date
This is where you come to our house for dinner and you dine. The only difference is that the windows are all blacked out and no light is let in. The lights inside are off and we use infrared goggles to serve you your food. You get to know the personality and voice of your date, but that’s about all. We have ways to black out the bathroom so you can be guided there and use it in peace with the lights on but without light escaping into the room. It’s phenomenal. Let’s see if love really IS blind. :-/

Nervous are you? Well, we have another version.

6. The Literal Blind Group Date
This is the same blind date at our house, but it is done as a double blind blind date or a triple blind blind date. It’s quite fun!

7. The Mixer
In this case, let’s say you’re a boy. You enter our house and there are 12 or 13 girls. People don’t like this scenario and prefer the gender-reverse. So let’s pretend (or maybe it’s true that) you’re a woman. Then you come to our house for drinks and talking and schmoozing with 12 or 13 guys. At the end of 1.5 hours, you choose one guy with whom you can go out on a funded date (did I say this was a non-profit. We might even be in the red!).

Even with a funded date, some women find too much focus and energy directed at them, and it is hard to handle. So if you prefer, we have another option.

8. The Mixed-up Mixer
This is the same thing but if you are a woman meeting 12 or 13 guys we throw in 3 or 4 other women to help defray some of the energy. So the guys have other people to talk and mingle with while waiting to meet you. This makes some clients feel better and not as anxious about the whole affair even though she has her pick.

In general the name of the game is personalization. We personalize the experience. In other words, it’s what the client wants. If the client wants a service we don’t offer, we start offering it. But we do whatever the client finds comfortable. Because it’s not about us; it’s about you!

LOVE

2010-10-31T17:54:00.000-07:00

Love is funny. Have you ever watched someone fall “out of love” with you? It’s quite interesting, really. At one time you were quite amazing to them in a way beyond just your personality and characteristics. You had that special “other” which drew the person to you and explains how so many of the people in the world who are ordinary-looking and not supermodels find each other and love and live. Sometimes I walk around and rationalize it, knowing it’s just chemicals and hormones and chemo physical and chemo-hormonal responses, that I could romantically like anyone, but still it’s a nice thing we have as people. And you know that two people can see the same characteristics in a third person but only one of the two fall romantically in love, and you don’t know why. It’s because there’s that other thing.

But watching someone view you again without the other is quite strange. You don’t really know what to do or say. You just watch and let it happen, I suppose. Peter Rollins (one of my favorite philosophers and studiers of religion) believes that the moment the person fails to see that in you, it didn’t just stop or cease, it never existed. That “other” never existed. Maybe he means it was created or made up and now that the person still sees the same traits in you but without that thing, that special other, that intangible---maybe it was never there. . . . . . .it probably wasn’t.
Read-it-here.

MOVIES, BOOKS, ART

2010-10-31T17:37:00.000-07:00

I always do movies, but I’m being lazy and not talking about other stuff.

I restarted on fiction this year after many years of rest from it. I’m back and I love it.

Books

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley
A Single Man by Isherwood

A Single Man refers to the Huxley book, so I read that first and am still reading the second one. I saw the film first with Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. I won’t spoil it but to say that Huxley’s book is hugely intellectual and makes you think and question life and how this world works. It’s almost like reading a non-fiction book on philosophy at the same time you’re reading a Hollywood novel (set in LA). Isherwood is all about the senses and is deeply set in the emotions of the main character with as little dialogue as possible. Small words, big feelings. You might enjoy it.

Movies

Born into Brothels

Some of the images produced by these kids were phenomenal. I heard about this first in 2006 I think it was. But I haven’t watched it until now. A photographer travels to India and while there she works with kids who live and work in brothels (usually their mothers are prostitutes) and she gives them a camera to see the world through their eyes. Definitely watch it.

Jesus Camp

I talked about this earlier in this update. It’s about these summer Christian Evangelical camps (charismatic variety) and how they indoctrinate with political ideology as well about George Bush or abortion. It’s interesting and scary. I have a small group from my church that wants to meet at my house and my roommate was freaked out saying they better not be like that or else no. What’s interesting to me is that someone described the film as neutral. It’s possible it is, but I think the film spins a bad light on the people and that’s maybe because I’m sensitive to such things, but the Christian camp director and the people in the film weren’t able to see that their own actions or responses could be interpreted pretty badly so they fed into it. I wasn’t that freaked out by it as I’m used to that type of Christianity, but maybe they didn’t see anything negative because I’m a different type.

Art

I recently have been looking at some of the art by a photographer named Newbegin. She goes to developing countries (and developed countries) and takes pictures of buildings and rooms. I’m more of a people photographer but her work is rather interesting and improves throughout the years. See if you can find some interesting pictures on her site. Click the Portfolio link.

Katherine Newbegin

UPDATE - August 29, 2010

2010-08-31T18:17:00.000-07:00

August 29, 2010

My friend's mom used to think LOL meant Lots of love which is not that funny. So she used the phrase in a bunch of condolence e-mails such as “I’m really sorry about your devastating loss. LOL."

While attending a conference in another city, I decided to visit an island as I was planning to use it as the location in a surprise gift for a friend. I wore khaki pants, brown belt and brown shoes, a dark orange shirt (what I called muted orange), a brighter orange tie (with blue diagonal stripes) and a beige/tan sweater vest. While strolling through the island, a man approached me apparently misreading my “freaky deakiness.” After briefly engaging me in polite conversation, he asked “Are you gay?” No. “Bi?” No. “On the down-low?” No. “Me neither,” he said emphatically and indignantly. “I’m not gay. I just sometimes like to sleep with men to let off steam. You know it’s a hard life, you know? Yeah, man. I’m not gay.” Silence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(blink). . . (blink). . . . . . . . . . . . . “So, really, are you gay?” No, I repeated. “Bisexual?” No. “But, but. . . I thought. . . . . you dress so well.” I made a mental note while waiting for the light to change to dress more poorly. I had to make the mental note many, many times before the light finally changed. ‘Sorry, I am going now,’ I told him. “Ok, well, your conference is still going on. . . .I’ll see you around?”

A guy at my church was unsure how to tell me, but he just came out and said that certain people like black people look younger than they are. He then said I look about 33. . . . .that is not funny . . . . . . on multiple counts.

A friend of mine in my fellowship program also suffers from piles (look it up). One day he was caught by his father with anal bleeding in the toilet paper in the toilet. His father told him “SON! WELcome to the family! This is GREAT news! We thought you were different and special, but you’re NOT special: you’re just like the rest of us! YOU bleed, TOO.” He didn’t know how to respond. Apparently it runs in the family. . . no pun intended.
He also just had his first child and hopes, against his father’s highest wishes, that it’s not hereditary.

UPDATE

Well, let’s see. Not much since last time. I took a bit of a break because I was out of the country. I was in El Salvador for 1-2 weeks and missed a few weekends when you would have received an update. But I’m back.

I prepare to start the 2nd year of my fellowship in mid-September. At the moment we have orientation for two weeks from the 1st through the 14th. I finished most of my duties involving security work. I’m only doing a few university program reviews to help decide to whom my department should give grants for educational purposes. So I’m ready to start the 2nd year and see what kind of development engineering work I’ll do for a year at USAID.

Out of the 3 people on this e-mail list or who follow this blog, 2 wrote back thinking that I did a lot of activities. I want to clarify. Last update I was just telling you most of what I do (I didn’t talk about everything; check out Practor’s Promise below). What I didn’t explain was that they are not all at the same time. They are spaced out so it seems that I do more than I really do. My life is pretty relaxed, chill, and sometimes boring.

In general, you have to take my words with the understanding of who is saying them. For instance, some people jumped on my recommendation of Rosetta Stone, but I’m usually ok with discipline needed for language learning. If you’re a person that will have difficulty doing the lessons regularly then it’s not good for you. Moreover, what I was really commending was the right-brained dominated immersive approach over the traditional, left-brain dominated, translational approach. It doesn’t have to be Rosetta Stone. In fact, the drawback is that you are not speaking it with other speakers. Rosetta Stone does get better as you get more advanced (you learn like a baby learns and therefore you don’t put sentences together early like you would do in a translational class), but you don’t speak with other live people. So I always recommend doing it with a partner or taking part in a language lunch table to complement the Rosetta Stone Cds. Moreover, I would choose an immersion-based class with other speakers over an immersion-based CD. I would then choose an immersion-based CD (for myself) over a translation-based class (but I would complement the CD with some type of activity with actual speakers). I hope that makes sense. The same goes with recommendations on books or movies. You can always ask me what I mean or what I liked about it to help you with figuring out if it’s good for you.

We just had one of our famous parties. This time we did an island/Caribbean/tropical theme. We had underwater creatures on the walls, New Orleans beads hung up, and bamboo bush things hanging from the ceiling. There were tiki torches (unlit) in the corners of the room, and a piñata filled with candy. Everyone who entered received a lei (can you picture the mix of motifs, now?). There was a limbo contest as well during the night. People loved it and had a good time. They especially liked the blended smoothies and licuados as we had many tropical fruit there. It reminds me a lot of El Salvador.

THE SAVIOR

2010-08-31T18:13:00.000-07:00

I have a pact with my best friend to visit a different country every year. This year we chose El Salvador. I had been there before, but I took one for the team. Plus I have a relationship with the country. My friend pretended he didn’t know that I went there. He should more properly use the term “forgot.” Anyway, he also “forgot” to tell me he was bringing his girlfriend until the moment right before he bought the ticket. I kept trying to figure out why he was telling me to bring a girl friend. Then he subtly mention, without asking, that his girlfriend would be going. Ha!
It’s funny how life works. I thought I was going to be a third wheel, but one person in El Salvador, upon observing us, told me SHE was the third wheel! Imagine that. I think that was temporary or just because that person wasn’t used to our relationship because between all the kisses between the two, the cat calls (mwah, nwah), the “babes” and “cute,” I had to increase my medical doses to cope with the nausea. Well, . . . ok. . . . sometimes I wanted to make a cat noise, too, but they would look at me with that singular look which when translated into human speak is “Three’s a crowd.” So I would make dog noises behind my breath.

Other than not being invited to play with mice, We had maybe 5 nights where I had to pay for my own room which changed my price expectation (normally I would have shared a room the entire trip or with my friend, and all three of us DID share a room for the other half of the trip—those were the best days :D ). But the trip was grand. I enjoyed it. We toured the country and got to know the people somewhat. I became familiar, again, with the pupusa, that ingenious invention of the Salvadorian mind. I love the food and if you put the right food inside it, it’s maaaahvelous.
I don’t buy clothes, but my friend was going to buy a shirt for me if I didn’t so I purchased a matching shirt to his to show solidarity. I wore it at the party in DC and people liked it. I like the colors of the indigenous clothing and cloth here. It’s a beautiful country.

For part of the time I was there we stayed at a site where there were two Peace Corps friends. I was hoping to talk to them about possibly restarting the high school summer international service program that started in 2005. [Quick summary: In 2005 I helped to start a summer international service program where we took high school students in groups of 10-12 to a foreign country for 1 month to do service work including a large, tangible/visible primary project plus many diverse secondary projects; the kids had language training, project training, and fundraising meetings throughout the year preceding the summer trip, and they engaged in pen pal relationships with kids at the site, in the community they would visit; There were reflections each night, strong relationships built and life-changing experiences held; the students became more globally cognizant, understanding, considerate, other-focused, responsible, etc.; the difference with our program is that it didn’t cost the kids anything as long as they were willing to work, and our preferred mode of working in the country was paired with a Peace Corps Volunteer working in his or her site/community; each year we returned to the same country and added a new country, maintaining old relationships and building new ones; Long story short, the program won a national character education award in 2007 and I went to the National public Charter Schools conference that year to speak about service in education. There I was told that I should make the program its own non-profit; I left the country and didn’t think about it much though it’s been on my mind. I was going to wait until there was a proper way to generate revenue but I went to El Salvador and they were interested in having someone now and. . . . . I could start it and simultaneously work on the business model; so this program that was so successful (at least with the trips I was involved) is restarting, and it’s going to be an exciting ride!]

Well, both of the Peace Corps Volunteers were ecstatic about me brining a group of American high school students to El Salvador in the summer of 2011 to do service projects in their community. Not only were the Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) excited, but the townspeople. I met with the ex-mayor and the head of a private school in the community. The community board in the town disbanded a few years ago, so the private school used its building. The community board has reformed (fortunately; this is good), but they demand the building back. I asked why they don’t just build another building; they don’t have the money. So the director looked in my eyes and told me “Everything happens for a reason.” It was a chilling moment; of course, he didn’t know that I went there with the intent of discussing possible projects with the PCVs. They deftly had us sit down for a meeting together during my last night there and mentioned that I am part of this program. They let him connect the dots and he loves it. But the meeting snowballed too quickly. I just wanted the seed of the idea planted. The school owner did more; he called someone to come in with architectural plans to show me; this was the ex-mayor. I just wanted to see if there was interest. I didn’t mean to discuss details. I still hadn’t found a school! The program started in Houston but I now live in DC and it was going to be hard to run it while not being a K-12 teacher. How was it to work when these people were already thanking me in advance showing me the new building my kids (I didn’t have kids) were going to build and the life-savers my kids would be?

THE SAVIOR Part 2

2010-08-31T18:08:00.000-07:00

Well, I’m a teacher of teachers, these days, as you know, a prof of science education (don’t ask me how). So I sent out feelers to all the teachers I work with to see if any would be interested. More people are always interested than the number of people who will follow through. Well only two responded. But last week Friday, one teacher invited me to his new campus (he is teaching at a different school this year) to meet with this principal for 5 minutes and the head of schools (superintendent) of the charter school family for 1 minute. Then we set down and talked for awhile and I met the head of expeditionary learning. This school makes all students do expeditions to experience research, fieldwork, project work, and service. So they LOVE the idea. They love going to a different country. They are Pre-K through 11th grade. And when the 11th graders become 12th graders they want all the 12th graders to do multi-month solo expeditions everywhere, all around the world. So the principal was eager to see synergy between my program (really, do I have a program?) and her school.

So I sat down with the head of expeditionary learning and she was excited about it. Her only concern was money, so I’m putting together a budget and will talk to them again next week hopefully before she presents it to the principal and head of schools to see if it’s a go. But they definitely want to do it. WOWZERS!!

I even have college students who were part of the original program who are interested in accompanying the program in the summer (I told them this is part of my vision for the program). Some want to help work on the program during the year. And I could pay them to do it. So this seems to be something that is bigger than me and almost destined to become a program. I’m willing to lend my hand and help especially if it gives kids from low-income communities opportunities to build themselves and build others in other parts of the world, opportunities that some of they may not have ever had.