chuck!

If you haven't gotten hooked on Chuck yet, now's your chance. They have all of the episodes up on NBC, and it looks like it might be a while until we get a new one, so here's a good chance to catch up. I highly recommend it. If you're looking for some other tv shows to fill the current void, try to find firefly or wonderfalls. Yup, do it.

Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone!
The other day I was listening to NPR, and they did a segment on different ways that people celebrate Christmas. To highlight the contrast, they chose two sisters. One with her husband, is very eco-conscious, and they try to celebrate in a responsible but festive way, i.e. give gifts sparingly and make sure they are thoughtful and useful. Her sister and sister's husband think the others are grinches, and want to give as much as they can, not worrying about how practical the gifts may be. The part that pissed me off was that the eco-friendly couple were criticized by the other for losing the true meaning of Christmas by not giving as carelessly. The couple doing the criticizing is Christian, and it seemed the others were not. This is entirely backward to me. Shouldn't the Christians have been the ones more concerned about taking care of the earth-instead of getting upset with those who were trying to live in harmony with creation? God commanded that in Genesis 3, but for some reason it doesn't make it on to many people's lists of things they think God wants them to do.
Sorry if this is a little discombobulated, if anyone heard the story and can explain it more clearly that would be appreciated.
Peace. Merry Christmas!

winter

It's officially winter now, and the 6 inches of snow we had is almost gone. See, it's 48 degrees right now. Here's to hoping things turn white again before Tuesday.

gas

The House passed a bill to raise the mileage standards to a fleet average of 35 mpg by 2020. The Senate is promising a filibuster and Bush says he'll veto it. Why? Because it takes away tax cuts that were given to the big oil companies. What the hell.

I'm in love

with Raúl Midón. Amazing voice. Amazing guitar. Do yourself a favor and check him out. (Also on myspace.)

pura vida

If you know what that means, beyond "pure life"--sweet.

If you know what that means in a more...uh...intimate way--you rock.

And if you can relate to that more intimate knowledge--you rock my face off :)

headphones

I'm looking for a decent pair of headphones...any suggestions?

terrible

Back in the day, GM bought up street car companies and closed them down. In 1950, the company was convicted of criminal conspiracy, but was only fined $5,000. Ridiculous.

If only a reasonable percentage of the money that has been spent on roads was spent on public transportation...

good gifts

I dislike gift shopping. Many of the people I "have" to shop for have "everything", and I don't like buying things that won't be used. At the same time, I dislike all the consumerism that goes along with Christmas, (check out Advent Conspiracy) and don't want to buy gifts just for the sake of buying gifts. I like the idea of buying a goat for a poor family in someone's name, but don't feel that many people are terribly appreciative of having goats given in their name rather than receiving a gift. Enter The Hunger Site. I told you about them before-click there every day and they use the money from ads to give food to people-awesome. They also have a store! This is awesome because:
1. The purchase of gifts in the store help The Hunger Site give food to more people.
2. They have some awesome and creative gifts.
3. They have a large fair trade section.
I plan to buy at least some of my gifts from this site and encourage you to do the same. Anyone else have ideas like this they can share?

reaction to Joshua's comment on Ron Paul

Thanks for the thoughts, I appreciate your feedback.

I would agree that the government is pretty wasteful at times, but there are not enough rich people in the world who choose devote their resources to fighting social injustices, and inefficiency is better than nothing. A well run welfare program can take care of those who get screwed by the system. Even if we were to privatize more things (for instance, the school could probably run more efficiently if it were privately run and schools had to compete for students), that money would still have to come from somewhere. Government funded, privately run programs could solve some of the problem of inefficiency. (I understand this doesn't always work all that well, look at contracts for Iraq for instance.) But if we the people hold our representatives to higher standards, that could change too. As for those new trucks-the people of your city should protest if the government is spending their tax dollars irresponsibly, and we need to take advantage of our opportunities to vote and decide who is going to be making our decisions.

I know the government hasn't been so good with racism in the past, but now that most people seem to have their heads on straight, the government has the ability to do something about it. I just heard a report on NPR the other day about how African American students perform worse than white students, regardless of economic background--due to racism. There aren't enough people who are committed to fighting this racism, but the government can do something about it.

Some wealth is created by productive citizens, but most of it is created by citizens who had some pretty good resources to begin with. Some people don't have these resources, and need the government to look out for them, by redistributing some of the wealth of the very wealthy.

Gun control? Places that don't allow handguns are much safer than those that do.

I agree that our military presence around the world is not such a good thing, but we can't chose to ignore bodies like the UN, ICC and WTO.

postsecret

Check out postsecret.blogspot.com. It's intense.

Ron Paul (not what you're expecting)

A couple friends of mine encouraged me to check out Ron Paul, so I went to his website and read some of what he has there. Here are my reactions.

Racism: Paul thinks that liberty is the solution to racism, because part of liberty is free-market capitalism which rewards individual achievement and not skin color. This might work...if we were living 400 years ago. As it is, we are living in a society that has been shaped by racism, and free-market capitalism can't change 400 years of social constructs. Free market capitalism doesn't only reward individual achievement, it rewards those who have money and opportunity. It is far easier to achieve when you are handed money and opportunity. Government needs to be proactive in righting the drastic inequalities in our nation. A poor child who is a student in a poor school system will have little chance of attending college, and free-market capitalism isn't going to change that, so that person's children will also grow up poor and without opportunity, and is more likely to end up in prison.

Taxes: Ron Paul is for lower taxes. Well, that sounds good. He thinks the government wastes a lot of money. I agree. But I don't think that all people should have their taxes lowered, sorry to any rich people reading this, but I think you should pay more. America used to be that way, and it worked pretty well, our economy and society were quite healthy back in those days. I just read an article in Time magazine about Denmark. Denmark has considerably higher taxes than we do, they also have 3% unemployment, 5 weeks paid vacation, a dynamic economy, and a generous welfare state.

Immigration: Paul wants to lock down the borders, kick out all "illegal" immigrants, and make it harder for people to get here legally. The reason we have so much illegal immigration in the first place is that it's hard to get here legally. Why do people want to come here? Their lives are hard. Instead of spending so much money on wars, why don't we use some of that to better living conditions in the countries that these illegal immigrants are coming from? If the government isn't doing it, why don't we work toward it as citizens. Tomorrow, we will spend enough money to provide clean drinking water to everyone in the world. Wow. If we right some of the social injustices around the world, people would be happier staying where they're at.

Ron Paul claims he is strongly pro-life, and it seems that he is fighting abortion as much as he can, but he is opposed to any form of gun control, including measures outlawing assault weapons and handguns. If unborn lives are so important, shouldn't born lives be at least as important? How can you justify letting people carry handguns and own assault weapons when they take so many lives, both intentionally and accidentally?

Ron Paul wants us out of the United Nations. The organization may not be perfect, but that is at least partially our fault, for expecting others to follow their rules, but obeying them ourselves and instead doing whatever we feel like. Leaving the UN would give the US even less global credibility and respect. We should try to work with the UN, instead of doing things that undermine their influence.

Paul doesn't want the US to be a part of anything bigger than the US. No UN, no trade agreements, nothing. He doesn't like the WTO "imposing" regulations on us. He doesn't want the ICC to bring our soldiers to trial. I'm scared for what would happen to international relations if he was elected. Does Paul not realize that globalization has been going on for some time now, and the United States is incapable of being 100% independent? If we ignore everything the international community thinks that we should do, it won't help our trade, it will hurt it. And it certainly won't make us any safer, it will make us more liable to terrorist attacks.

poem?

Who commented on the poem? I can't for the life of me figure out who you are, and I'm a very curious person.

farm bill

"It's also a horrible deal. It redistributes our taxes to millionaire farmers and millionaire "farmers" like David Letterman, David Rockefeller, and the owners of the Utah Jazz. It contributes to our obesity and illegal-immigration epidemics and to our water and energy shortages. It helps degrade rivers, deplete aquifers, eliminate grasslands, concentrate food-processing conglomerates and inundate out fast-food nation with high-fructose corn syrup. Our farm policy is supposed to save small farmers and small towns, instead it fuels the expansion of industrial megafarms and the depopulation of rural America. It hurts Third World farmers, violates international trade deals and paralyzes our efforts to open foreign markets to the non-agricultural goods and services that make up the remaining 99% of our economy."
-Time Magazine "Down on The Farm" Nov. 12

"Obama would be the first globalized American leader, the first leader in whom internationalism would not be a credo, it would be in his veins."

Check out this article on Obama. Good points. Anyone have feedback? Why do or don't you like Obama?

"Obama, in many ways, is where the world is going. He embodies interconnectedness where the Bush administration has projected separateness."

I've loved you since your freshman year
Loved might be too strong a word. Adored
and admired maybe but how can I
say I've loved you when I never really got to know you
IwishIwouldhavegottentoknowyoubetter
Why didn't I
What was I afraid of
I just wanted you to know
that you're beautiful
and special

poetry

I need to write
more
I need to write
now
I say I'll do it
someday
but someday
never comes

Why aren't we taught more creative things in school? Our schools focus on teaching us things that will make us money, but wouldn't the world be a better place if we all spent a little more time writing and reading poetry?

Not that you have to be good at it, I certainly don't view myself as a poet, but I pledge to start reading and writing more poetry. Hold me to that.

the bank

I love going to the bank. You see, there is this branch that is perfectly located on my way home, and every time I'm there it brightens my day. Why? Because it's a beautiful cultural experience. All of the customer service representatives are bilingual, and somehow they know which people to speak to in English, and which people to speak to in Spanish. I mean, I could do a pretty good job guessing, but there have to be times when they try to speak Spanish with someone who is Latino but has grown up in the US and is much more comfortable with English. I've never seen them offend anyone though. I love the fact that I get to listen to them assist about 3/4 of the customers in Spanish, and I love even more that I know what they're saying and they probably have no idea that I do. I'm waiting for the day that they slip up and speak to me in Spanish, but I'm thinking it might not come, so I think I might just walk up to the counter speaking in Spanish someday and see how they react.
That's all. Take pleasure in the small things.

papers

Why do professors give minimum length requirements when assigning papers, especially in grad school? I'm working on a paper right now that's supposed to be 8-10 pages, and I'm onto the seventh page, but I feel like I've covered everything I need to cover and that anything else I add will be merely fluff. :(
Maximum lengths are different. If a professor wants me to cover something in 2 pages that I could write for 10 pages about, she is forcing me to boil my thoughts down to the essence of the issue and get rid of any fluff. That makes a lot more sense, but I guess if the professors want to give themselves a bunch of extra pages of fluff to read, there's not a whole lot I can do about that.

organic part II

Not sure what to do about the organic issue yet, and then the question will be how far to take it. Organic cleaners? Organic clothes? How much is "enough".
Whatever I end up deciding, I think I'm going to be hooked on some organic food just for the taste of it. The top picks in this category are yogurt, OJ, and tortilla chips (so far). Wow.

U.S. Is Top Arms Seller to Developing World

I saw this article in the NY Times today. I haven't even read the story yet, and it pisses me off. Aren't we ever going to learn?

alcohol

The E85 fuel that we use in the US contains 85% ethanol made from corn. Because of the increased demand for corn to make ethanol, the cost of corn has gone up. This is good for farmers, but bad for hungry people. Some friends of mine in Guatemala told me that the price of corn has doubled at the local markets over the last few years. And yesterday I read an article that said that US Food Aid is at an all time low because the money doesn't go as far, and a big part of this is due to corn being more expensive.
I support renewable energy, but corn isn't the way to go. Brazil seems to have it figured out: they make ethanol from sugarcane, and are almost self-sufficient when it comes to energy. It is considerably more efficient to make ethanol from sugar than corn, and if the price of sugar goes up, it's not the poor starving people who get hit. So why don't we use sugar in the US? The US has placed high tariffs on sugar imports, so it wouldn't be cost-effective to make ethanol from sugar in the US. I imagine that these tariffs are in place to encourage companies to use high-fructose corn syrup in their products instead of sugar, and since the farm lobby is so powerful, these tariffs probably won't get dropped anytime soon.

organic

I stopped at "Harvest Health", the organic foods store on my way home from work the other day to pick up groceries. I definitely had a bit of sticker shock at the check-out. Just as I rationalized the cost and told myself that I would get used to it quick enough, this argument came into my mind: Should I spend extra money on groceries to do my part to take care of the earth? Or should I use that extra money to help people get food that aren't getting enough?
I think that buying organic food is great...it makes sure the earth is being taken food care of, it's healthier, it ensures that people who work harvesting the good don't have to be exposed to damaging chemicals, and it tastes great! But are those things worth the extra money when so many people are going without food?
I don't know what to do with this. I need some insight.
Oh, and remember to check out The Hunger Site everyday

I should blog more

Throughout the day I often have ideas of things I'd like to blog about, and as you can see, most of them never make it this far. I need to figure out a way to remedy this.

One thing that came to mind the other day: the average American drives about 25 minutes to and from work everyday. This is kind of hypocritical of me to talk about right now, since my commute is temporarily longer than that, but that won't last for long. This seems quite ridiculous.

That's 208 hours a year spent commuting for the average person. What I could do with 208 extra hours....

That's over $1000 spent on fuel (depending on the vehicle you drive, a Prius would use about half that). I could go for an extra grand right now.

Since we can't rearrange the whole country to set things up a little better, we should build better public transportation. It's much easier to utilize your time while on public transportation than while driving, it is a lot friendlier to the environment, and it would save money in the long run.

habitat

Had you asked me a couple of years ago what I thought about Habitat for Humanity, I would have told you that it's a great organization doing great things. Now I'm starting to wonder if things could be done a little differently. Why build houses when there are so many houses sitting empty right now? Wouldn't buying some of the empty houses on the market do more for the economy? I understand that Habitat doesn't really pay for labor because of volunteers, and therefore can build houses pretty cheaply, but it just doesn't seem quite right to use up a whole bunch of resources to build new houses for the homeless (or people with less than adequate housing), when so many houses are sitting empty. What do you think?

wall

The US is building a wall. In Baghdad. Between a Sunni neighborhood and a Shi'ite neighborhood. Bad idea.

thank you Time

Time magazine publishes some really good stuff. Here's something I liked, from a web piece on the worst cars of all time.

Uh-oh. Here comes trouble. Let's stipulate that the Model T did everything that the history books say: It put America on wheels, supercharged the nation's economy and transformed the landscape in ways unimagined when the first Tin Lizzy rolled out of the factory. Well, that's just the problem, isn't it? The Model T — whose mass production technique was the work of engineer William C. Klann, who had visited a slaughterhouse's "disassembly line" — conferred to Americans the notion of automobility as something akin to natural law, a right endowed by our Creator. A century later, the consequences of putting every living soul on gas-powered wheels are piling up, from the air over our cities to the sand under our soldiers' boots. And by the way, with its blacksmithed body panels and crude instruments, the Model T was a piece of junk, the Yugo of its day.

:)

Mother Teresa

As most of you have probably heard by now, there's a book coming out about how Mother Teresa struggled with her faith and even doubted the existence of God. (There were excerpts from the book in Time magazine, and an editorial about it in the NY Times.)
I don't really think this is bad. I think there is something wrong with never questioning one's faith, and that questioning often leads to doubts. Most of us live pretty sheltered lives, but if we lived at all like Mother Teresa did, in the midst of all that poverty, we'd probably doubt God too. How can there be a good, loving God who lets so many people suffer so much. Fair question.
The thing that I think is amazing about this is that she continued to love people and do what she could to help people and better their lives, even when she wasn't at all sure if God existed. I feel like most people would have a hard time sacrificing that much if they weren't sure that God existed and wanted them to be doing that. Maybe I'm wrong.

thanks for the comments

new house

So, I just moved in to a new place. It's on the college of Western Seminary in Holland Michigan. I'm pretty excited about it. It's an apartment building for Seminary students and highly functioning cognitively impaired adults (and a few Hope College students because they didn't fill it with Western students this year), and me. I'm kind of the odd one out, but I might be taking a couple of seminary classes, so then I'll fit in a little better. I really am excited about this though, hopefully some good conversations and such will come.

Life in these United States

I love having friends in other countries, because I get to read about their adventures and the things they are learning. I also get to learn from their experiences. I also like the fact that I can sit here on my computer and read the News in my inbox. It really gives me no excuse for not having some idea what's going on in the world.
I came across a story in the NY Times today that hits somewhat close to home, as I've spent a significant amount of time in Mexico, just across the border from Texas. Some of the border cities on the US are very nice, but there are many neighborhoods that don't look much different than the poor colonias on the Mexican side of the border. This story deals with those neighborhoods and the people who live there. Check it out. Please.

(If that link didn't work, copy and paste this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/us/27colonias.html?ex=1345953600&en=f932dd57a886c9a8&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

insurance

This isn't deep or thought provoking or anything, but I wanted to throw it out there. I've seen a couple of car insurance providers advertising their accident forgiveness policies...which I think is bullshit. My car insurance is high because of speeding tickets..which makes some sense, but not as much sense as raising someone's car insurance because they got in an accident...sorry, but if you get in an accident that was your fault, you should pay higher car insurance...I shouldn't be paying for your car to be fixed just because I got caught speeding.
That's all.
I need to start reading again so I have something better to post about.

oh yeah

I almost forgot. I think it very stupid that cigarette taxes go to fund education. If part of the goal of raising cigarette taxes is to get people to quit, and the taxes do their job...schools are going to be short funded. Why do they want to get people to quit? Because it's costing so much in healthcare. Why not use the cigarette taxes to fund healthcare? That makes a lot more sense. That way, if the taxes do their job, we wouldn't need as much money for healthcare.
I have similar thoughts about taxes on gasoline. If we tax gas more, the money should be used for public transportation and developing alternative fuels. This would decrease our dependence on gasoline, so that gasoline prices don't keep rising (and we take better care of the earth).
That's all

hmmm

I haven't done this for a while, and I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to write about, but I'm thinking about taxes and health care and farm subsidies, so we'll see where this goes.

The farm bill pisses me off. Am I against small farmers? Not at all. Am I against wealthy people receiving my tax dollars as subsidies because they own farm land? Very much so. It irks me that I'm paying taxes that are going to people who certainly don't need them. I wrote my senator to tell her that I wanted to see this changed about the farm bill and she didn't write me back.

I also don't like that fact that tax rates for the very wealthy keep dropping. There are too many people living in poverty in this country to let the rich keep more and more of their money. People argue that to be able to provide health care for everyone we would all have to pay a lot more taxes, but if we would just raise the tax rate on the wealthy, the government would have a lot more money to help out those who don't have much. Kudos to people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates who are more generous than most and who are using a lot of their money to help people, rather than just a small percentage.

Oh yeah, I just read that Barak Obama thinks we should intervene in Pakistan to attack the terrorists there if the Pakistani government doesn't do more about it. Not sure I like that idea.

Well, that's all for now, I'll try to make it more of a habit again.

I just started reading a book (upon my mom's request) called "Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World" so I'll probably have some interesting things to post from that soon enough.

Peace

Why is Iraq in Chaos? NO END IN SIGHT Learn the Truth! 7/27

I climbed a volcano Saturday.
My sister is here.
I leave in a week.
I'm reading Grapes of Wrath and it's phenomenal.

good points

Tiffany made some good points in her comment. Thanks. I may be over-reacting some to the over-spiritualization of Christ's message, but I feel like we don't often focus on the physical here-and-now parts of it. I think Jesus did intend for us to change the world, and though he knew that people would be oppressed, it's not what he wanted. I think Jesus' message did have a spiritual component to it, but I still think a big part of what he was teaching was a revolution on earth.

Peace on Earth?

I just finished reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States", and that, along with Rob Bell's "Calling All Peacemakers" sermons have me thinking a lot about peace on earth. I don't know that it is possible for the world to be completely at peace, but I have no doubt that the world could be a much more peaceful place than it is now. It is going to take some drastic changes, but it is possible. I believe the United States plays a huge role in perpetuating a world that is constantly at war, and that as a nation, we have the power to change that. The United States exports massive amounts of arms (the government seems to make sure that large "defense" contractors in the US always have well paying contracts). Inevitably, some of these weapons are used against the US, which gives the Pentagon an excuse for spending billions of dollars to develop more sophisticated weapons. It's a pretty sick cycle really.
Not only are we equipping armies and terrorists all over the world, but we give them plenty of reasons to want to use them. As Robert Bowman, a former combat pilot in Vietnam, and now a Catholic bishop said,

We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these thins to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations. That hared we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism....Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we should send tem to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children....
In short, we should do good instead of evil. Who would try to stop us? Who would hate us? Who would want to bomb us? That is the truth the American people need to hear.

Howard Zinn uses this quote at the end of "A People's History". I recently listed a few things the US could do with some of the trillions it spends on the military to begin trying to bring about peace on earth. Zinn mentions that the US could use a small portion of the military budget to treat tuberculosis and save millions of lives. Zinn puts a large part of his focus on what the US could do domestically with the military budget were we to shift our view from that of needing to have military control over the world to policy that is focused on meeting basic human needs. We could create jobs, give healthcare to everyone, provide housing subsidies to those who are unable to secure jobs that pay well enough, and give many more people access to higher education. Zinn dreams of the US as being a humanitarian superpower rather than a military superpower.
For any of this to happen, some major changes need to take place in our government. Neither the democrats nor republicans have done much of anything to reduce the military budget or increase humanitarian spending. Despite Clinton's promises to bring in a new era and to change the government, he increased military spending and cut programs for the poor. His balanced budget involved cutting funding for many programs that helped people have a decent life.
I could go on and on about this, and I would like to quote all of "A People's History" here, but hopefully you will take the initiative and read it yourself. I know that I recommend a lot of books, and this one is not exactly light reading, but I would strongly encourage you to find a copy of it and move it to the top of your reading list. No books really matter if we don't understand what is going on in the world and do what we can to change it and to fight for the rights of everyone, and this book will open your eyes to the way that the country is run and encourage you to do something to recognize the rights of all humans.
I've been reading the Bible quite a bit lately, and the things that stand out most clearly to me in the New Testament are Jesus' coming to change the world. At the end of one of his sermons, Rob Bell quotes Mark Krylanski's (not sure on the spelling) "Nonviolence: 25 Lessons in the History of a Dangerous Idea" saying, "If someone were to come along who would not compromise, a rebel who insisted on taking the only moral path, rejecting violence in all its forms, such a person would seem so meaning that he would be killed, and after his death he would be canonized or deified, because a saint is less dangerous than a rebel." Rob Bell goes on to say: "If you hyper spiritualize [that person]... people would lose the fact that his message is about this world, here, today." I don't know if Rob Bell took much flak for this, but I can't imagine he didn't. He's preaching to a church full of people who have grown up thinking that Jesus' message is primarily spiritual, and some in his congregation (though they might not say it) probably think that Jesus' message is only spiritual, other than the fact that we're supposed to live better lives because out of gratitude to the one who got us into heaven. Rob Bell is making a pretty bold statement here. The way I understand it, he's saying that Jesus' mission was to come change this world, that the spiritual component of his message was very minimal, with most of the spiritual focus added after Christ's death. Maybe this isn't what Rob Bell was trying to say, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that. Before Christ, being a Jew, and part of God's chosen people meant that God was going to take care of them in this life. The Jews couldn't even agree on whether there was an afterlife. Jesus made it pretty clear that there is (using the Jewish scripture of the Torah) by pointing out that God told Moses "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Jesus said that God is the God of the living, not the dead, therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must be alive somewhere.
I got a little sidetracked by that resurrection business, but what I wanted to say was that the Jews believed in a God who took care of them in the present, and were looking for a Messiah who would save them from the Romans and from the systems that oppressed them. They were a little off, because Jesus didn't set them free from the Romans, but he did bring a message of hope and justice for this world. His message wasn't "Just hang in there for a while, and then you'll get to go to heaven where everything is all right." His message was "I'm bringing a revolution that can change the world, it can flip the power system on its head through non-violent resistance, and set the oppressed free. It can restore this world to something much closer to what it was created to be. My revolution means that all people are equal and should be treated equally, no one should ever be oppressed, but all should have the right to live a beautiful peaceful life." In those days, that meant the Jews shouldn't be subject to the Romans, that everyone should have land to grow food and a place to live, that people should be free to worship as they please. Jesus wasn't telling his followers to go fight the Romans, because he understood that violence always leads to more violence, but he was telling them to be subversive and to rebel against the unjust systems of the world. To rebel non-violently, we have to be creative. I would love to hear your ideas on how we can non-violently rebel against the unjust systems of this world. How awesome would it be to have a weekend conference on "Peacemaking" with open forums and then to go put those ideas into practice? (For more on this, go listen to Rob Bell's "Calling All Peacemakers" sermons on the Mars Hill website. I promise you they are worth the time.)
Peace.

life

I didn't write out a big entry this week, maybe in a couple of days, but I did have a wonderful week. I've been translating for a Physicians Assitant group from Madison (I'll probably work with them this next week too). This weekend I went over to Panajachel and hung out with them, and it was wonderful. One of them is a co-owner of coffee shops in Madison, and she got me super excited about opening a shop, so maybe that will happen in the near future. We also had some wonderful conversations about faith and church and the like, so that was really cool.
Peace.

I was just listening to a sermon from last December by Rob Bell entitled "Calling All Peacemakers." I think I've probably blogged about this already, but I'm going to do it again.
First something unrelated, but this stuck out when I saw the scripture that he was using. He read Luke 19:41-42, I read on a little further and something stuck out to me that I don't think I've ever noticed. Here's the passage:
As [Jesus] approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace--but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and your children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.

Does anything stand out there? Because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.
It sounds to me like Jesus is saying "Hey! I'm here! How long have you been waiting for me? How did you not realize that I came. This is your punishment for not paying attention to me. Had you listened to me and followed me, things would turn out different. You wouldn't be overthrown by the Romans and your city wouldn't be destroyed." That seems really odd--what would Jesus have done had the Jews listened to him? How would things have turned out?
That's all, I don't really have anywhere to go with that, it just struck me as odd? Has anyone else ever thought about that?

OK, so this sermon I was listening to was actually part of a four part series (I've only heard the first three) entitled "Calling All Peacemakers." In the second part, Rob Bell uses a lot of statistics about poverty, US affluence, and war to make the point that there is a better way to fight against terrorism than to kill a bunch of people in Iraq and Afghanistan. (This is going to be a mixture of his thoughts, my interpretation of his thoughts, and my own thoughts--so I'd like to give him some credit, but he may not want you to think that he said some of the things that will be here.) One estimate on the cost of giving everyone in the world clean drinking water is $9 billion. An estimate on the cost to provide all women with reproductive health is $12 billion. In sub-Saharan Africa, 1 in 16 women dies in childbirth. In the US, it's 1 in 3700. Sounds to me like that $12 billion would be a pretty good investment. Being down here, I've seen people and villages that don't have running water, and none of the water down here is not safe to drink. People here have access to bottled water, but many people can't afford it. I would love to see everyone here have their own water filter...Anyone want to donate a few million dollars? I have friends working in a small village a few hours from here and everyone there has to boil all the water they use because they don't have access to safe drinking water (at least not at a reasonable cost due to the remoteness of the village). The US has spent something near 1 trillion dollars on the war. Think of everything that we could have done with that money. We could have given billions of people a better and safer standard of living, and if we were doing that, I don't think there would be too many people who would want to try to destroy our way of life or act out in terrorism. Or we could have done a lot towards developing alternative fuel and better public transportation, so that we wouldn't need to have influence in the Persian Gulf.
If you're interested in hearing these sermons they're available on the Mars Hill website (not sure exactly what it is...google Mars Hill Grand Rapids).
Anyway, lets start doing what we can do to change the way things are (how vague was that?). Let's vote for people that are aware of what's going on in the world and are committed to using the power of the US to better the world and make it a more peaceful place. Let's think about how we spend our money and who we're supporting with it. You vote with every dollar you spend. Start doing what you can do "with your own two hands."
Peace

hook me up

Hey,
If you've been reading this, please send me your blog address sometime...I haven't been staying on top of blogs down here, but I'd like to do a better job of that.
Peace.

Dostoevsky

3 posts! I stole this quote from the MHGS website...love it.

Beauty is not only a terrible thing, it is also a mysterious thing. There God and the Devil strive for mastery, and the battleground is the heart of men.

clarification

Big day...two posts!

My parents started reading this blog, and got a little worried about some things, so I'm going to try to clarify a little bit of what I've been saying.
I'm not convinced that one has to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ in order to be saved. That doesn't mean that I am not a follower of Christ. I think that when people heard Jesus' message they didn't think about being saved from hell and getting into heaven. Try reading the new testament without any presuppositions about what it's saying about heaven and hell. I'm not even sure of a place where Scripture confirms that there is a place where it confirms that there is a place called hell where people will suffer eternally. Revelation talks about a place called "Hades"-this is where Jews believed everyone goes when they die. Revelation talks about death and Hades giving up the dead that are in them at the final judgement, and then death and Hades are cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death. Where does the idea come from that this second death isn't just a permanent cessation of being-that makes a lot more sense to me. Why would death and Hades (once empty) be cast into a place of permanent suffering? It makes more sense if they just cease to be. Revelation goes on to say that anyone whose name is not found written in the book of Life is cast into the Lake of Fire (the second death). This, along with several other references to some sort of judgement, make it pretty hard for me to be a universalist, but I still haven't found anything that flat out repudiates pluralism. My mom told me to read Romans, so I read it in the Message and the NIV, and I found myself leaning more toward universalism while I was reading it, which was the opposite of what she intended. Paul tells the Romans that all Israel will be saved. He also says "the result of one act of righteousness was justification for all men...through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous." There are other verses that make me lean toward univeralism too, but I don't see the need to write all of them here. Paul does say, "This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe." Paul doesn't elaborate in this section on what we need to believe, and he doesn't make any exclusive claims as to this belief being the only way to be saved. I think we read that exclusivity into a lot of things...so if you find yourself disagreeing with what I've been saying, go do some reading in the New Testament and rather than looking for verses that prove your point, try to imagine that you have never been taught anything about your way being the only way.
I got a little off topic, but I was talking about how I don't believe that there will be a place of eternal suffering for those who don't believe in Christ. I also don't think that those who do believe in Christ will be spending the rest of eternity in heaven. Revelation talks about the creation of a new heaven and a new earth-I think those who God chooses to save will spend eternity on that new earth, and probably not in heaven.
What is salvation? I kind of started out with saying that most of Jesus followers weren't looking to be saved from hell and to get into heaven...what then was this message of Salvation that he came preaching? If Jesus had said "I'm going to get you out of hell and into heaven," I don't think it would have meant a lot to the Jews of that day. Jesus came to invite people to be part of his revolution, to join him in a new way of doing things that would set things back to the way they were supposed to be. In Romans 10 (the Message), Salvation is defined as "with your whole being you embrace God setting things right." The Message also uses this language in the gospels-Jesus calls people to be part of his setting things right, and to join in God's revolution. The NIV (and at times The Message) use the language of God's Kingdom come on earth, or the Kindgom of Heaven (in Matthew). In inviting people to be part of his Kingdom, Jesus was inviting people to take part in changing the way things are done on earth, he wasn't inviting them into heaven. Even in the Lord's prayer, Jesus teaches his disciples to pray for God's kingdom to come, and his will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven. In the Message, Eugene Peterson uses the words "set the world right. Do what's best, as above, so below." If the last two thousand years are any indication, the worlds not going to be set right without some serious intervention. We just keep making things worse (and a lot of Christians are part of making things worse, rather than making things right, like all Christians should be.) I think it's pretty likely that the world is going to see some pretty intense divine intervention (like the vision recorded in Revelation) in order to set things right, but I hope that we can at least start moving things in the right direction. Start taking care of this world (that's the first thing ever commanded in the Bible!), start living lives of love, start taking care of people, and changing the terrible conditions that so many people live in on this world.

change the world

I wrote this a few days ago...

I was listening to a Ben Harper song the other day that I think is a great reminder for all of us. It says:

I can change the world, with my own two hands.
Make a better place, with my own two hands.
Make a kinder place, with my own two hands.
I can make a peace on earth with my own two hands.
I can clean up the earth with my own two hands.
I can reach out to you, with my own two hands.
I'm gonna make it a brighter place
I'm gonna make it a safer place
I'm gonna help the human race
With my own two hands.

Sometimes we feel pretty helpless against the great problems and injustices that we face in this world, but we really can do something. Margaret Mead said,

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

I think these two quotes are actually talking about pretty different things, but they are both great things for us to think about, and very encouraging reminders. Ben Harper is talking about the small differences we can make in the world around us, and how we are capable of changing the world for someone by the little things we do. A great example of this would be the work that I was translating for last week of helping people learn to uses prostheses and learn to walk. We changed the world for the people who we were working with. Mead on the other hand is talking about major worldwide changes (I think). The world doesn't change itself, and we're not helpless when it comes to which direction the world is going to go. We have the power to change it if we are truly committed to a cause.

I've been thinking about what to do with my future, and I really don't know. I'm pretty certain that I want to go back to school, but I'm not sure if that's something I want to do soon, or whether I want to do some more international work first, or maybe start my coffee shop. I'm also not sure what I want to go back to school for. There are a lot of things that I enjoyed studying, and a lot of things that I would like to study more. Since I'm going to be around Michigan this fall filling in for my brother at my dad's warehouse, I think I'm going to try to take a few classes-and I think at least one of them is going to be in Psychology, but I'm not exactly sure yet-I need to look into it.
My problem isn't really that I don't know what I want to do, but that there are too many things I want to do, and I don't know how to do all of them or which to do first. Part of me says that I need to just take life as it comes and figure it out as I go, but to some extent I do need to make some plans, and there will come times when I will have to decide what to do next. I'm not worrying about it too much yet though. While I'm down here I'm just trying to take it one day at a time and enjoy it. I only have six weeks left, and only about four until my sister comes for a couple weeks. I don't think I'm going to be too ready to go home, but it will be good to see friends and family again. And to tell the truth, there are things I'm going to enjoy about my rich lifestyle back in the states...like driving, riding my motorcycle, and going out in the boat. It's hard, because the simple life that I think I should be living is very different from how I grew up. I always had everything I needed, and almost everything I wanted, and now I don't want to have so much, because if everyone lived that life we would deplete all the worlds resources in no time. That's not the only reason I want to live a more simple life of course, I don't want to live in luxury when so many people live in extreme poverty. Now, I know some pretty rich people who do great things to help those who are living in poverty, and who are very generous with their money, but we could always do more. For instance, if I was making $200,000 a year, I could give away half of that and still live a luxurious life, but why not give away 160k or 170k of it and live a very simple life? I could still afford a better life than the majority of the world. --I'm not really sure where this came from, I certainly wasn't planning on writing about it, but it is something that struggle with a lot. So far I haven't had to worry about it too much because I don't actually own too many things, I've been living off my parents, but I won't be doing that too much longer, and then I'm going to have to start dealing with this in a lot more real way.
I haven't been doing much reading lately--slowly working my way through Walden and a few short stories by Tolstoy. I don't have much to share from my readings other than that Thoreau makes me want to go build a simple little cabin in the woods. There was a great quote that I shared with Becky and she asked me to post it, so here it is:
There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
I'm sure there are some other great quotes, but I haven't been doing much underlining, so I don't have more to share right now, I'll try to work on that.
So I'm almost out of books. There are only a few more that I own, and I plan to read most (if not all) of those by the time I leave Guate. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'll be looking for a bunch of books to buy when I get home, so share with me what some of your favorites are, and maybe I'll even order a couple so they'll be waiting for me at home.
That's all for today...have a wonderful week.
Peace and Love.

So, I wrote another entry, and I'm having difficulty uploading it...hopefully it's coming soon.
Still no comments on the last one though :(

So, I wrote this Tuesday, but then my card reader broke, and it's been a crazy week, so I'll post this now, and there's probably more to come this weekend.

Only 7 weeks left--time's passing pretty quickly.
Thanks to those of you who leave comments/send me e-mails about what I write here. It's nice to know that people read this and think about what I write here--even when what I write isn't all that interesting. I appreciate it.
This week there are 3 physical therapists here from the states. They're fitting people with prostheses that they brought down. (They were made by a prosthetis (sp?) who was here a couple of weeks ago.) They are doing exercises with those people to teach them to use their artificial limbs. Today went really well, and tomorrow we're going to be working with some kids who have difficulty walking. I'm translating for them this week, so that's pretty exciting. Usually groups just grab a couple of volunteers to take with them each day to translate, but apparently these people are really special, because I was assigned to them before they even got here, and I had to be here to meet them Saturday when they got in. Sunday I took them to Santiago and Panajachel (two of the more touristy towns on the lake) and had a pretty good time hanging out with them.
I've been doing a fair amount of medical translating lately, and it's been really enjoyable--and really challenging. I'm learning a lot of medical Spanish and a lot about medicine in general. It's always fun when I get words that I don't even know in English and I have to try translate them. I've never really had much interest in medicine, but now I find it fascinating. I don't think I'd go to med school or do anything with it, but I've done a lot of things in my life that I wouldn't have expected. I'm really glad to have great opportunities to keep learning, and I hope I always have that desire and I'm always doing something to keep learning. That was a really poorly written sentence, but you know what I mean.
The rainy season has started--time to start carrying an umbrella everywhere :)
Unfortunately not all the groups that come down are as great as some of the medical groups I've had the opportunity to work with. I wish everyone could go through some sort of cross cultural orientation before they came down here so that they what not to do. When kids come up to me and ask me for a dollar I know that someone has been giving dollars to kids...not such a great idea. There was one group here that was doing consults in some of the villages around here-which can be a pretty good thing, and some of the groups do a good job with it, but this group did not. It was a group of nursing students that comes every year, and every year they pass out clothes and toys to all the people that come. One problem with this is that people will come to get clothes and toys and not because they need medical help, so they are getting drugs that they don't need to be taking. When I went out with this group to translate, we had a couple people keep coming back with different symptoms, just so that they could get more clothes. Another problem is that it encourages people to wear "American" clothes rather than the traditional clothes that a lot of them still wear. Another problem is that it creates and reinforces the idea that "Americans" come down here to give things away, and that is not the best way to help the people here. If you want to give donations (which can be helpful if given in a good way), they should never go straight from your hands to the hands of the people who are going to use them. Some local person should be involved as an intermediary. Someone who can give the things out after the gringos leave, so people don't become dependent on gifts from gringos. And donations should never be given out in a medical setting-it gets in the way of doing good medicine. There's probably even more problems than these, but I'll stop venting for a little while and see if I can write about something a little more interesting.
I haven't done a lot of reading lately, and I haven't written in my journal in quite a while. I need to do more of those. I learn a lot from reading, and I'm realizing I can teach myself when I stop to reflect and write about what I'm experiencing and thinking. (I also learn a lot when people interact with these things, but there's not always people here who I feel like I can have good conversations with.
When I was volunteering in Mexico a couple weeks ago, a couple of people asked me how I was saved. I may have already blogged about this some, but that question really frustrates me, and if I end up back in Mexico this summer, I'm going to be honest with people when they ask me that question. I'm going to tell them that I don't think salvation is all about whether someone goes to heaven or hell. I'll also tell them that salvation isn't mainly an individual thing. Salvation is for communities and for nations. It's really a message for all of the human race, something that's better the more people embrace it, and not because it means one more person is going to heaven. The more people that embrace the true message of Christ, the more people are working to bring the kingdom (or as McLaren suggests may be a more appropriate term-revolution) of God about on the earth. It means more people in on bringing social justice and fair treatment to everyone. It means undoing the wrong that we have done, and the wrong that those who have gone before us have done. No one should be working for a dollar a day. No one should be starving to death, especially when so many people are dying from causes linked to eating too much food. No one should have to work in sweatshop conditions so that I can have a cheaper shirt to add to the dozens I have already. No one should have live in a cardboard house when so many people are living in mansions and have more than one house. So many things in our lives are so contrary to the revolution that Christ started, and yet we claim to follow him. I could go on for a while about related things, but I'm going to leave you with these words from Nickelback (interestingly enough) that I think speak to what I've been talking about.

"If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride,
Then we'd see the day when nobody died.

And as we lie beneath the stars
and realize how small we are,
If they could love like you and me,
imagine what the world could be"

Love.

ummm....

01 May Blog
Happy May Day! (It's a lot bigger deal here than in the states-a lot of people don't work today.)
No deep thoughts on my mind right now, but I guess I'll start writing and see where I end up. I finished that McLaren book, and he has some great thoughts, but I can't put anymore quotes here because I lent the book out to someone. The next book in that series is called "The Last Word and the Word After That" and there was a small excerpt from it in the back of "The Story..." In the excerpt, the main character (who is a pastor) faces a college age daughter who is doubting her faith. She says something along the lines of "If Christianity is true, then most people are going to spend eternity in hell." Of course, there are more open versions of Christianity (such as pluralism or universalism), but most people hold a pretty exclusivist view, and I'm anxious to read the book and see how McLaren treats the issue. I deal with it through accepting some form of pluralism, but I'm not sure exactly how to define it yet. Actually, I'm not sure what I believe about heaven and hell, so usually when I'm trying to explain this part of my belief to someone it goes something like "If there is a heaven and a hell, then I believe that there are other ways to get to heaven than "accepting Jesus Christ as one's personal Lord and Savior" and being baptized in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit. This is obviously a different belief than I grew up with, and I know some of you are going to want to remind me that Jesus says "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through me." Trust me, I haven't forgotten, and like I said, I'm still trying to work this out, but one potential way of dealing with this is through the possibility of Jesus saving people who don't accept him as lord and savior. I have a good friend who is a universalist, and while I'm not quite willing to go that far, I have some issues with the exclusivism that most people believe as well.
I was talking with a good friend the other night about faith and beliefs and how we often don't talk about what we believe with those who are close to us. Most Christians believe that everyone in their church believes very similarly to how they do, so they never talk about it, they never ask each other challenging questions, they just take it for granted that the people around them have the same beliefs that they do. I try to be pretty intentional about having these conversations. I think part of that is because I questioned a lot of the beliefs that I grew up with, and talking about things is a really good way for me to think about them and to process the thoughts that I do have.
I did quite a bit of reading this past week. I can't remember reading a sci-fi book since about fifth grade, but I read two this past week. They were recommended by a good friend who has made good recommendations in the past, so I brought them down with me. The two books are "Ender's Game" and "Speaker For the Dead", both by Orson Scott Card. They are both great books, and I thoroughly enjoyed both of them. I had a really hard time putting them down. I finished "Ender's Game" within 24 hours after starting it (I didn't get much sleep that night) and started "Speaker" immediately. Good stuff...and a little lighter reading than I've been doing lately, so that was a nice change, although they are quite thought-provoking for sci-fi stuff (I guess that's not really a fair statement, since I haven't read much sci-fi). Anyway, I'd definitely recommend them, although I'm not sure they make it into my top ten. Now I'm reading a couple of Tolstoy's short stories, and I've finally gotten back into "A People's History of the United States."
I'm going to open up now, and I'm not sure why. I guess because I want to talk about this with someone and it's easier to tell my problems to a computer than to a person. A computer can't judge me :) I'm not as happy as I could be here. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful place and there are wonderful things going on, and there are a lot of great people here...but I could be happier. I think I'm just feeling lonely. Some of that is probably due to the chain of events that led to me being here instead of in California. I've met some great people, but the best ones all leave after a day of two, and I haven't gotten really close to anyone who is here for longer than that. I've heard a few Christians say that we have to be completely content with our relationship with God, and that we shouldn't need anything more than that, but I honestly think that statement is shit. God didn't create us to live in isolation; he created us to live in community. We are "created" in the image of God, and God doesn't live an isolated life, he lives in the community of the Trinity. Anyway, I guess all I have to say is that I'm feeling lonely, and I can't do much about it. I guess that's not entirely true. I can invest in the lives of the people that live here, and try to make some good friends in town here. But at the same time I leave in two months and it will be very hard to keep in touch with the people I leave behind. The culture also makes it a little difficult. I think I understand now what it was like for the kids who came to my school as international students. I feel really at home in the culture here, and with the language as well (for the most part), I hate it that the people here view me as an outsider, especially when I go to other towns and I'm viewed as a tourist. I know, I technically still am a visitor and a tourist, but I certainly don't feel like it anymore. Anyway, that gap makes it hard for me to relate really well with the people here and to get to know them really well. I hope that my relationships with the people here are going to grow a lot in the next two months, but it's difficult.
Wow...this is probably the worst entry I've written in a while...all over the place and nothing terribly deep or profound, but hopefully you were able to take something from it, and hopefully you'll leave me a comment so that I know it :)
Peace.

Panajachel

So I wrote out this big long entry this morning so I could copy and paste it when I came to use the internet, but I forgot the adapter I need to do that, so now I'm going to rewrite the whole thing (I think). Good thing I'm in Panajachel and internet is cheap and fast. Oh yeah, I'm here to hang out with the LASP group for a little while, but they don't get in for a few hours...
It's been a pretty good week, defnitely different than any I've had so far. There was a group of doctors here, and they were in different communities throughout the week seeing patients, and since they don't speak Spanish, I was translating for them. Monday I was the only on translating, because everyone else was gone, and it was crazy. They had three different stations, and a "pharmacy" where they were passing out medicine., and they all needed translation, so I was running from station to station, basically translating nonstop. Thankfully all of the patients spoke Spanish, so we didn't have to do any double translating. The rest of the week we had some patients that didn't know Spanish (only one of the Mayan languages, of which there are 22 (but only 3 in this area), so we had to do some double translating, but then there were other people translating from Spanish to English too, so it was more doable.
I've gone out a few times with soe of the family that I live with and tried to do some dancing, but I definitely need to practice. I did some salsa last night, but it was different than the salsa I had learned in the past. I should try to get them to give me dancing lessons in the house...they would probably love it, and I could use the help.
There was a group of 4 LASP students here this week, and one instructor, and now the whole group is coming to Pana (which is why I'm here). There are only 29 students this time! (It's usually around 50.)
I finally finished reading Brothers Karamazov. I would highly recommend it. The plot gets pretty intense near the end, and I couldn't put it down. Dostoevsky is a great writer. There is one scene where the "devil" visits one of the characters, and they have some fascinating conversations. The character is starting to lose his mind at this point, and isn't sure whether it's really a devil, or a figment of his imagination.
One of the LASP students asked me what I thought it meant to be blessed, and after talking about the beatitudes, and how they tell us that being blessed is far different from how we usually think about it, I hypothesized that the things we often see as curses, such as persecution or poverty or war, may be more like blessings; for these things make life more real, and they force us to be more real. It's easy for me to be down here helping people when it doesn't cause me any hardship. I'm not poor because I'm here, and no one is shooting at me or stabbing me or making threats on my life. I would like to think that I would still be here if those things were happening, but I don't know if I really would. If I was here anyway, it would show that it is really important to me, and it would make what I'm doing here a lot more real and meaningful. By contrast, the easy life I grew up with is in some ways a curse. A life like that makes it far to easy to be fake, to belive what you're told, and to not be real in what you do or believe. A day or two after that conversation, I came across the section in Brothers Karamazov where the devil vists, and the devil says "(People) suffer, of course...but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it? It would be transformed into an endless church service; it would be holy but tedious." I like this philosophy, but it raises issues with the Christian belief in an afterlife without suffering. This afterlife would be "holy, but tedious" Maybe it will be ok, because we suffer in this life, so if we still have memories of suffering when we move on to the next life, we would be able to enjoy life there.
After I finished that book, I started reading "The Story We Find Ourselves In" by Brian McLaren. It's pretty intriguing. At least it makes me feel ok that my beliefs aren't exactly the same as what I grew up with, with what I was told is the right way to believe. Interestingly enough, he also talks about what it means to be blessed. He brings in the story of Abraham, and how he was blessed "instrumentally"-so that he may be a blessing to others.Abraham's blessing is to be a blessing to others. I wish McLaren would have gone into this a little more than he did, but he didn't, so I will. God didn't tell Abraham that he would give him a lot of material possessions, or that he would never let him suffer. I have a feeling that Abraham got pretty excited whn God said " I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great". At this point, Abraham is probably thinking "All right! This sounds wonderful!", but I think his tone probabyl changed a little when God said " you will be a blessing...and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you". Part of Abraham probably didn't want to share this blessing, especially once he realized how hard it is to be a blessing to those around you, let alone to the rest of the earth. McLaren says " When religions assume that their adherents are chosen only to be blessed, and forget that they are blessed to be a blessing, they distort their identity, and they drift from God's calling for them. When they assume that they are blessed exclusively rather than instrumentally, when they see themselves as blessed to the exclusion of others rather than for the benefit of others, they become part of the problem instead of the solution." I agree, and I think that Christians do a really good job at preaching and believing an exclusive blessing. If someone wants to be blessed, we need to convert them, so that we can bring them into the circvle or blessing, because that cirlce can only contain Christians. We think that if we want to be really good Christians, we need to convert a lot of poeple so that more people can be blessed. We need to drastically change this mindset, and realize that non-Christians can be blessed too, and that it is really our responsibility as Christians to bless others.
I'm not through with the book yet, but I would recommend it so far. It will challenge you no matter what you believe, and I like the way he's setting up the story that we find ourselves in...even if I don't agree with each part of it.
We went cliff jumping today...the first time in almost 2 months that I've been able to go, and I only jumped once, because when I hit the water something happened to my ear (the same thing used to happen sometimes wakeboarding), and now I can't hear very well out of my right ear, and it's causing me a bit of discomfort. I'm just not having the best of luck with this cliff jumping thing.
I tried to watch the two meteor showers that are taking place right now, but it's hard to find a good dark place...sad day. We did have a big storm roll through yesterday, so that was cool.
That's all for this week.
Peace.
Be a blessing.

back in Guate

Sorry it's been so long. I tried to update in Mexico, but for some reason I'm not able to post from my pocket pc, and now I lost the post that I wrote there. I don't feel like I have a lot to write about. I hardly read while I was in Mexico, so I'm still working on Brothers Karamazov, and it's still great, but I should be done soon.

Depending on who reads this, it might scare some people and surprise others. Being in Mexico was not an all around good experience. Parts of it were great, but other parts were not so good. Part of what wasn't good is that I don't feel comfortable being a spiritual leader to a bunch of high schoolers that come from prett conservative churches around the US, and that's supposed to be part of my role there. I still believe in God, and in Christ, but my ideas about salvation and what it means to follow Christ probably wouldn't match up so well with what World Servants believes and with what most of the people who go on World Servants trips believe. I didn't feel very comfortable there, I felt like I had to put a mask on every morning and not be who I really was. Maybe that means I need to change, or maybe it means that I shouldn't be working with that organization. Of course I'm always open to the idea that I need to change, because there will always be ways in which I should change, but sometimes it's tough to figure out in which ways I need to change.

I'm a much different person than I was when I worked with WS last. I think most of the changes that I've made in my life have been for the better. I'm more socially aware, more concerned with social justice, and generally more loving, although I'm still an ass sometimes.

On to a completely different subject: I was talking with a friend from California the other day, and he is planning to drive from Cali to the Southern end of Chile, starting in Januay or February. I told him I might just have to join him for that...we'll see.

I think I get more confused about what to do with my life with each day that goes by. Maybe I should apply to the Peace Corps or something to give myself couple more years to figure things out :). Maybe I'll never really figure it out, maybe I'll keep bouncing around from one thing to another my whole life. I think I'd be ok with that, as long as I spend enough time in one place to build good relationships that are going to last. I don't want to be starting all over with new friends every couple of years. Maybe someday I'll find myself doing something that I want to do for the rest of my life, but as of now I have no idea what that might be, though I think that if it were anything, it would probably be in Latin America...Vamos a ver.

Well, I think that's all for this week, I'll try to post again in about a week...until then post some comments so I know you're reading this and so that we can all take some of these ideas a little further.

Peace.

Thoughts from Guatemala

After writing this entry, I realized that it was far more information than most anyone would want to sit down and read at once, so I split it into three parts for your convenience.

Part I
I don't feel like I have a lot to write about this week. It's been a pretty relaxing week...or pretty boring, whichever way you want to look at it. My leg is taking a ridiculously long time to heal, so I've been doing a lot of sitting around, and when I do go anywhere, it's on crutches, which significantly limits the places I can go. I've been doing a fair amount of reading, not as much as I had been doing before though. I've been playing an obscene amount of cribbage. I'll probably get bored with it at some point, but not yet. I've also been teaching some English, so I've been able to feel somewhat useful.
I did the most intense translating that I have ever done this week. One of the women who works in the kitchen here lost her husband in the violence of the civil war, so she talked (with translation) for about an hour and forty five minutes. Her husband was trying to helped the poor people in the area, and someone told the army that he had been helping the guerillas, so he had to flee the area for his safety. They never heard anything from him, and he became one of the tens of thousands of "disappeared". (During the civil war, the army killed any one who they thought was collaborating with the guerillas. They often did this secretively, so that people would just disappear and no one would know for sure what had happened to them. She also talked about Mayan culture, and how this city has changed in the past forty-two years since Father Greg came down here. She's been working for the mission for forty-one years, and she has lot of stories about the civil war and what she and Father Greg did to help people here. There were two families in a town near here with a total of eleven children age ten and younger. The parents from both of these families were killed in front of their children, and the priest from that community felt the children were in great danger so he called and asked Father Greg if he could help. Chona (the woman who I was translating for) went to this town and picked up the eleven kids and brought them back to the orphanage that was in San Lucas at that time. To get back they had to go through three military checkpoints, and she had to convince the soldiers that all eleven kids were hers (even though she was only thirty years old at that time). They made it back safely, and all eleven kids grew up in the orphanage here, and now live in different parts of Guatemala.

Part II
I'm slowly working my way through "Simply Christian" by N.T. Wright, and he has some pretty good stuff to say. For instance "It seems that we humans were designed to find our purpose and meaning not simply in ourselves and our own inner lives, but in one another and in the shared meanings and purposes of a family, a street, a workplace, a town, a nation." I guess I've been doing a lot of thinking about what it is I'm going to do with my life...where I'm going to find my purpose. Same days I want to go back to grad school so I can be a college professor. Other days I want to move to Latin America permanently and set up an organization in an area where no one else is really doing anything to help, and do things like help people get a fair price for their coffee, and find ways for people to get paid decent wages and be self-sufficient. Other days I want to get my pilot's license and use that to do some sort of relief and development. Some days I feel like I should work for a while, save up a bunch of money, and come to here to live in solidarity with the people and start small projects as they see fit. And of course, I still have a strong spirit of adventure that wants to do things like travel to exotic places, sail around South America, climb mountains, surf, sky-dive, take a motorcycle trip (and a bike trip) across the US, and the like. I realize that unless I die young, I will have time to do more than one of these options, but I still don't know where to begin or what path to take. I want to do something that is fulfilling for me, but helps bring justice and relieve poverty in the process.
NT Wright also says "Nor is Christianity about Jesus offering, demonstrating, or even accomplishing a new route by which people can 'go to heaven when they die'....That isn't to deny that our present beliefs and actions have lasting consequences. Rather it's to deny both that Jesus made this the focus of his work and that this is the 'point' of Christianity." So then, what is it all about? In a later section on prayer, Wright says that the Lord's prayer "sums up what a lot of Christianity is all about. It's a prayer for bread, for meeting the needs of every day. And it's a prayer for rescue from evil....The prayer says: I want to be part of his kingdom movement....I want to be part of his bread-for-the-world agenda, for myself and for others." Later, Wright claims that the Bible has the power to change the world.
If we believe all of these things (and I do), then we need to start living differently. We need to stop putting so much emphasis on getting people into heaven, and instead focus on bringing heaven to people-to feeding them, clothing them, freeing them from oppression, and helping them to find value and meaning in life. If someone is poor or hungry or oppressed, they will be much more interested in a gospel that feeds them and brings them justice than in a gospel that offers no immediate hope. True, many people have found hope in a gospel which only promises them heaven in the future, but how much better if they could find hope in a gospel that offers them immediate hope. Jesus' message wasn't "Someday the kingdom of God will come and everything will be ok." Jesus' message was "The kingdom of God is here-I'm going to feed you and heal you and restore your place in this world. (In Jesus' day, if someone was sick, it was assumed to be a result of sin, either the sin of that person or of that person's ancestors. These people were excluded from being a normal part of society, because they were unclean.) Jesus didn't give hope for the future, but hope for the present, that things were beginning to change, and that his followers had amazing power to change the messed up way things were if they would follow his example. It is important to note that when Jesus fed crowds, he didn't do it on the condition that they would go to synagogue or follow him or anything like that. Jesus love (and the actions that come from it) are unconditional, and so should ours be. We shouldn't feed and clothe people only if they agree to go to church or listen to the Bible being read. We should meet there needs because they are needy, without placing any conditions on it.

Part III
The other book I've been working on is "The Brother's Karamazov" by Dostoevsky. I'm only about half way through, but at this point I would say the book is phenomenal. The way he writes makes the other books I have been reading look mediocre by comparison (and I've read some very good books lately). I believe Dostoevsky could write about anything and I would find it fascinating. I've underlined so many things in this book I don't even know where to begin writing about it. I think I'm just going to list some of my favorite quotes here, and maybe comment on some of them later.

"[Hell] is the suffering of being unable to love."
"At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men's sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve that once for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things and there is nothing else like it."
"Brothers, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all of God's creation....If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things."
"Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be feeling and meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education."
"God have mercy on all of them, have all these unhappy and turbulent souls in Thy keeping, and set them in the right path. All ways are Thine. Save them according to Thy wisdom. Thou art love. Thou wilt send joy to all."
"The science of this world, which has become a great power, has, especially in the last century, analyzed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this world have nothing left that was sacred of old. But they have only analysed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvelous. Yet the whole world stands steadfast before their eyes, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Has it not lasted nineteen centuries, is it not still a living, a moving power in the individual soul and in the masses of people? It is still as strong and living even in the souls of atheists, who have destroyed everything! For even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old. When it has been attempted, the result has only been grotesque."
"Love [life], regardless of logic...and it's only then one will understand the meaning of it."

There's so much more, but I think that's all the quotes I'll put in here for now. Basically you just need to read this book. Not only is a great story (so far), but it is filled with challenging and thought provoking statements.

I love Latin America

It's been a pretty uneventful week, and everything is going well. A whole bunch of groups came in yesterday, which can be good and bad...hopefully it´s a good experience for all of them. I need to come back to Latin America at some point and be in a setting where I'm interacting with locals more and not around gringos so much...we'll see what I can come up with.
I'm trying to decide whether it would be good for me to be in latin America full-time long-term, or if I should be in the states, making money, raising awareness, and supporting projects here....thoughts?

For those of you who don't know...I arrived in Guatemala about 3.5 weeks ago, and aside from a week I'm spending in mexico, I'll be here until the end of june. I'm in San Lucas Toliman (on Lake Atitlan), volunteering with the Catholic mission here, it's going pretty well so far...

back at it...

It's been a while since I've written here, but I figured it would be a good way to share some of my thoughts and such in addition to the mass e-mails I'm sending. I'm going to try to do this about once a week, so we'll see how that goes.
This weekend I left San Lucas for a few days with some of the other volunteers, and we visited Panajachel and San Marcos, which are also on Lake Atitlan. It is super beautiful here, and if any of you want to get away for a little while, you should come down here to visit. You could work with the mission for a little while, and then we could do some sight-seeing type stuff, I guarantee that you'll enjoy it.
Things at the mission are going pretty well. Like any organization, it isn't perfect, but I think I'm learning a lot about how to do something like this on my own in the future. I've been considering that lately...moving to Central America and doing something that gives people decent pay and helps to better their lives a little.
One thing I've heard about since I've been here is that Coca-cola has apparently done some pretty bad things in Central and South America. I haven´t had the time to research it yet, but I would encourage you to do so and to start buying Pepsi products instead. I'll keep you posted when I learn more about this.
We had a group here from Loyala-Marimont (sp?) in L.A., and one of the girls asked me where my service emphasis comes from if I'm not Catholic. I didn't know that Protestants got such a bad rap...something for us to think about and keep working on I guess.
I've been doing a lot of reading here and I've finished "The Brothers K" by David James Duncan, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", and "A Prayer for Owen Meany", and I would recommend all of them. David James Duncan is simply amazing...Zen and the Art is a bit different, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and Owen Meany is a quality book as well, though it didn't quite live up to the buzz that I had heard about it-definitely still worth reading though.
That's all for today.
Until next week...