Sunday, May 27, 2007

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.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

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

Friday, May 18, 2007

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.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

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.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

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 :(

Friday, May 11, 2007

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.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

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.