in trans[-it]lation

Nationality as we know it.

2010-01-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

This summer I went home to the Midwest. There I listened to much of the same conversations I've heard from most circles I've been a part of in the past few months, meaning those on the topic of American politics. It wasn't long ago that I would have been right in there trying to get my opinion heard as much as anyone else, but these days I've been listening, weighing in a word or two from time to time, but mostly listening. It changes what one hears when the mind isn't set on any agenda but rather to hear and understand.

What I noticed is that more often than not these conversations are not so much each side talking about how good their group is or the other but consist rather more in talking about which side is less wrong; which side has less holes or the worst holes. Whether democrat, republican, libertarian, conservative, liberal, cool and calm or yelling and screaming, there are thinking Christians, thinking members of all colors and creeds on each side who find and admit failing, corruption and distrust in leaders and philosophies and tactics of each group. 'Regan did this'; 'Kennedy did that', 'Bush the tyrant', 'Clinton the harlot', 'Obama the anti-Christ'. Oh and let us not forget the classics: if only there was more money for This or for that, here or there, less government or more, more over there, less over here, more now less later. In the relatively short time that I have decided to be educated about politics and the even less time that I have stepped back and watched and listened, I've noticed that it has all gotten real repetitive real quickly. Different sides, same coin. Always one week’s solution becomes the next week’s new problem. Band-aids for brain damage.

For my people's part, I listen and wonder why there are such strong feelings fighting for one side or the other in the christian community? Why does it sound as though these politics of man, with their powers and clever ideas to make lasting change-- which never last-- which these often admittedly corrupt people can come up with are all there is? That this is all we have to work with? Why, as Christians, does it seem that this is where the good life and our hope is made or broken? That world changing "good news" is limited to whatever one party or the other says is good and winning the most votes? With each new regime change in American government Christians on one side or the other are convinced that the new regime will try to pull America away from being a "christian nation", thereafter viewing every move made through rose--anti-Christ-colored glasses and make an uproar at anything that might be considered evidence to this, even if they have to make it up or spread a rumor they haven't checked the validity of. An example of this being the e-mail forward I previously posted about that the Obama family nixed all religious oriented ornaments from the white house Christmas tree. Many have taken hold of this rumor as alarming evidence that they want to take America away from being a Christian nation-- see my post on the Christmas rumor. What feeds this fire moreover is the apparent comment made at some point by Obama that he doesn't consider America a "christian nation." With these words an immediate defensiveness and panic sets in for many christians, a call to action of sorts to "take back their nation, casting back to the good ol'days of the christian america." What is it that is so Christ-like about America though, or the America of yester-year? I'm not going to speculate at this, just think about it, if you will, remembering that the fact that America may have been more comfortable for you to live it at a different time doesn't mean that it was any more of a "Christian nation."

What first comes to mind for me as problematic with America being a "Christian nation" is that The kingdom of God is a nation in its own which calls its citizens to complete transformation and is not one to share loyalties with kingdoms of man. To the early church, when the name "Christian" first came about as referring to the disciples of Christ, it was a citizen title for the new people of God, who, though being made up of people from every nation and division, now are a new nation of one people, sanctified-- completely set apart from the old ways for the new. To the early church being a "Christian" carried a very similar meaning as did being an Israelite, an Italian or an American; they no longer fit or submitted to these old divisive titles because they had been adopted into a new nation, so people called them Christians. God's Kingdom is a new kingdom and a new way of being a kingdom and a new kind of freedom and economy, a new way of peace that isn't limited to the ways of the nations of men, not merely an improvement on the old, nor is there room for the old with the new. The claims in scripture that "Jesus is Lord" was a very political one and considered treason as it is exactly the word they used to refer to Caesar: "Caesar is Lord." His lordship over his people's lives is not limited to some spiritual realm while Caesar gets everything else due a king. "Jesus is Lord" was/is a choice between kings, kingdoms and the ways of life which follow. The land that Caesar said was his may have had Christians in it but they all belonged to a new nation.

Lets Consider for a moment, though, what a nation that follows Christ and has taken to heart and lives out the freedom that he has given might look like?...

...If you do have a considerable knowledge of the lifestyles, national policies, conditions and standards of nations around the world you might notice that America doesn't measure-up the best to some other nations on having similar values as Christ seemed to have. Such as caring for the sick and impoverished, community, generosity, and stewardship of nature, to name a few.

However, being the nation of God is not merely about the ethical stances but where our freedom comes from, where our daily sustenance comes from and who we submit our all to and where we find fulfillment. It is freedom to be broken and in need, knowing that all we have and all we need is the love of God for who we are--unconditional for who we could be. The American message in all of these things (again, especially speaking in word and deed rather than the ideologies America loves to use and abuse at their best) are not at all close to the message and lifestyle of Christ. Recall the old Pauline philosophy "to live is Christ, to die is gain."? Doesn't sound very American to me.

The more I listen to these conversations with family and friends and follow politics I just keep thinking 'thank God that he has saved us for full life, another way! That he has set us free from this worlds trickle-down authoritarian politics and the death of self-sufficiency. Let us live a life of witness to this good news so that people will see the hope of our Lord, lest the world see our lives and hear our bickering, saying "even the Christians and religious argue angrily with us, losing and gaining hope where we do; they look to our leaders for world change, surely they see no other way than this. Their God is a God of moral law and the after life but now they are stuck with the best of man's wisdom and strength."'

I wonder if, as Christians, we're not wholly concerned with the wrong politics and wrong citizenship?

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25

He has saved us from the salvation and damnation, slavery and freedom, peace and full-life that is conditional to and defined by the nations of man. But do we want His salvation and freedom? His peace and fullness? Do we want his wisdom?

Too often Christianity is reduced to monotheistic morality, trading the lifestyle of unconditional love in our following of Christ for a judeo-morality and effectiveness. We trade giving freely in selflessness for capitalism for the greater good (doing the best for others by doing the best for ourselves). Trade the freedom of Christ from all death, for a freedom behind a gun much like bully on the play ground: long life, as much as you want and no fighting as long as everyone follows your rules. We trade lifestyle implications of taking a stance on world effecting issues for a vote, letting the government carry out the day-to-day of our heavy convictions, which allows us to blame them as a scapegoat if things aren't going the way they should.

To restate what I said concerning Christmas in America: Throughout history the worst thing that keeps happening to distort the identity and name of Christ to the world, from my understanding and education, is that his people, those who are suppose to be his embodiment in the world, in gradually accepting benefits and social ease and popularity mix their allegiance with the kingdom of man, following Christ within civil limits and using the "power" of the nation to "further the kingdom more quickly and effectively". The Church has always, and continues to, grow rapidly in areas where those who follow Christ are most persecuted and outcast. In these places God is moving in radical miraculously present ways for his people and the freedom and life in Christ is a more vivid day-to-day reality than most of us have ever known.

I hold that the best thing that could ever happen in America today for Christians, for Christian relationships with Christians, for Christian relationships with God, for Christian relationships with the world and for the world's sight of Christ is for America or Christians to distance themselves as much as possible from the mutual, co-allegiance and all the ways that the US uses the name of Christ and God for its ways. Let us claim back our nationality, our sanctity (set apart, otherliness) in Christ, accepting any persecution we receive from the nations of men as a possible effect of our following Christ.

America, The people of God and the celebration of Christ

2009-10-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

I recently received this e-mail forward and thought I'd share my thoughts, as well as a piece in response from urbanlegend.com

E-mail:

Hello all,

Thought you might be interested in this information from the White House. This isn't a rumor; this is a fact.

We have a friend at church who is a very talented artist. For several years she, among many others, has painted ornaments to be hung on the various White House Christmas trees. The WH sends out an invitation to send an ornament and informs the artists of the theme for the year.

She got her letter from the WH recently. It said that they would not be called Christmas trees this year. They will be called Holiday trees. And, to please not send any ornaments painted with a religious theme.

She was very upset at this development and sent back a reply telling them that she painted the ornaments for Christmas trees and would not be sending any for display that left Christ out of Christmas.

Just thought you should know what the new residents in the WH plan for the future of America. If you missed his statement that "we do not consider ourselves a Christian Nation" this should confirm that he plans to take us away from our religious foundation as quickly as possible.

Urbanlegend

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/barackobama/a/white_house_christmas_ornaments.htm

Analysis: Baseless rumor. Apart from the announcement last August that an 18- to 19-foot Fraser fir from Shepherdstown, West Virginia will serve as the official 2009 White House Christmas Tree, there have been no revelations to date as to First Lady Michelle Obama's plans for decorating the Executive Mansion for the holidays. All speculation in that regard is premature.

Moreover, we have only this one anonymous, secondhand account to support the claim that artists who have contributed White House Christmas ornaments in the past were invited to contribute again this year with the stipulation that submissions be limited to non-religious-themed designs. Its veracity is dubious, if for no other reason than that it does not appear to be the case that the same artists are asked to participate year after year. In 2008, for example, Laura Bush asked each member of Congress to select an artist from their home district; in 2007, each National Park site was asked to designate an artist; in 2006, submissions were restricted to craft artisans; and so on.

White House sources say that as yet no such invitations have been sent out for 2009.

White House Christmas Tree vs. Capitol Christmas Tree

It's possible the rumor was sparked by a controversy surrounding decorative guidelines for a different tree, the Capitol Christmas Tree (aka National Christmas Tree), which is displayed every holiday season on the West Front lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Each year, the federal government selects a different state to supply a 50- to 85-foot-tall National Tree and 75 smaller specimens for distribution around the Capitol, and citizens of that state are invited to contribute handmade ornaments.

Objections were raised this year when it was noted that the program guidelines stipulated that ornaments contributed by citizens "may not reflect religious or political themes." Threatening a first-amendment lawsuit, Christian and conservative groups called on the U.S. Forest Service, which sponsors the program, to rescind the ban. A Forest Service spokesman said the language prohibiting religious themes came from "old information" posted on the Capitol Tree website, an ABC News report says. It has since been revised.

Religious-themed ornaments were banned during the previous administration

In point of fact, online documents show that a ban on religious-themed ornaments was in effect in 2007 and 2008, though no one objected at the time.

My Thoughts:

I don't understand what the problem is if it is true? It seems to me that the more absurd fact is what Christmas has been for so many years. the token celebration of the birth of Jesus has been hoard-out to commercialism and materialism at the worlds worst year after year, which is saying a lot-- approx. $450 billion dollars. To give just a pinch of perspective to that number: conservative estimates say that approx. 3.4 million people die each year from unclean water related diseases; it is also estimated that it would only require approx. $10 billion dollars to make clean water available to everyone in the world. Moreover, it is also a rather widely held understanding that if just all Christians living in the United States tithed 10% it would eradicate poverty.
World issues aside for a moment, what do we see if we step back and ask ourselves how much of the Christmas' past have even just been more about the birth of Christ in word and deed rather than just ideologically vs busyness, materialism, stress and excessive amounts of food? I know that at least in my life the evidence doesn't fall in favor of Christ.
We can even isolate from the world issues how these practices and the attitudes that it brings out in many of us fall against the teachings of Christ on Materialism, selflessness, worry and love?
Moreover, if we couple all of these issues together with the world issues of water-sourced disease, starvation abroad and next door, as well as those without clothing and shelter or toys, how does it seem Christ would have us spend our time and money in remembrance of him? What traditions of remembering Christ are we teaching our kids?

Christmas is Changing? I say thank God. It seems that one of the best things that could happen for the name of Christ so far as Christmas is concerned is to take his name out of the "holiday season" altogether. At least that way maybe his name will quit being sold and raped as a commercialism mockery.

need help deciding how to change your spending habits this holiday season? check out

http://www.adventconspiracy.org/

and

http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.204586/?msource=kw2689&gclid=CLfR9dn60J0CFc9h2godMA4ErA

... or will I just forget?

2009-09-05T09:28:00.001-07:00

Journal entry: approx. July 26, 2007 rural Sukuma territory, Tanzania

At the point that I stopped writing yesterday I decided that I was going to go see if I could do anything for any of these children [I hear crying everyday in the village I am staying in]. I hadn't before out of the order of men, women and children here; because I am a guest that doesn't speak their language and because children of such a young age here are known to be frightened to hysteria by our strange white skin. None the less, this time I decided to try.
I didn't find anyone outside [the huts] except a very small naked baby girl sitting in the dirt, with flies eating at her running snot (accumulated from her recent crying?) which was now collecting sand, her vagina already being covered in sand and dirt.
I went and sat beside her, bashfully giving her my thumb to hold onto which she, even more bashfully, took.
All I could think to do is tell her that God loves her and ask that somehow God might show his love for this girl through me in that moment and ask that she be healed. I repeated this over and over again (though I got a sick, steadily deepening self righteous feeling that she, as well as her whole family, already knew and would continue to know God and his love in a more present, day-to-day power and reality than I might ever).
Then I began to tell her that I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I couldn't bring myself to tell her that I loved her also without feeling as though I had just told a bold faced lie, one I was just realizing I had been telling myself for years [to shake about some warm, lively feelings of selflessness when feeling empty and cold]. I had nothing to give evidence to my love, no inconvenience from me; no pushing through a difficulty for her sake. So I apologized, for myself and all of us. I apologized that we have abused, raped and reduced and made in our image a "the love of Christ," to checks in the mail and "deep conversation", spiritual masturbatory feelings of meaningful life and even a little martyrdom. We have raped and deformed her identity to checks and deep, emotive and philosophical conversations, essays, poems and music videos, and so used her for our own invigorating feelings of self-sacrifice that might last for quite some time; all the while she is sitting naked in the dirt. It is these good feelings of selflessness that we buy with our checks and accomplish with our heated conversation, for they rarely ever move far enough from that starting point to make her feel loved selflessly. I am so very sorry that we have used her in this long running cycle, replacing her for our "conviction." I apologized that at the rate we tend to go with loving the power, control and orderly ways, she might never get a chance to know the love of Christ in a white person. Although, many of us Christians might never know it at all the way she does or will.
And if this is read, my fear is that, if it does move anyone in any way, it will become another link in the cycle. That those good feelings of conviction and that tingling to "help" will only produce more checks and "good conversation," perhaps even prolonging her life, but not to the reality of Christ in her's which is missing in ours.
...

April 1, 2008: Abilene Texas, USA

Stories are what they want, just a simple "good" will do. Nothing else please, or you might break my stride, effect my time or even wake-up my mind. But don't worry because I can't even speak your nothing more nothing less, I tried just saying "bad" but it tasted like blood in my mouth and about knocked you on the ground for not being the answer you already "knew" for yourself. I can't speak knowing the places I have driven through, everyday life I'd see through the windowed AC. I can't think because for twenty years these things I'd see were through the safety of a screen, where people watch together and everyone would sit and think, passionately speak or maybe even weep, and now I pasted pasted pasted them on the street. The empty swell of the babies belly and the beginnings of infection in that place for a leg where there is none-- treated a little sooner and she probably would have seen years to come. But she never had a chance because she's as noticed as a suit on wall street. should have stayed on the screen. But I had to come and ignore you to your face. I've come a long way, hours in the airports to get to this place to know name and face, real relationship, be changed, and a simple way. But you've made the mistake getting in my space, asking for help and slowing my pace. I'm just here to watch, "hands off. they will help you. get a job." If I help you, allow myself to reach out and feel you, I'll have to help him too, or at least pick and choose, else I'm liable to become just like you. It's more practical to write about you somewhere down the road from the safe activism of my Fair Trade brew.
I can't speak of the times and words I could speak, bargaining on the street, good thing I learned some Swahili. I can't give you money, though it wouldn't be enough anyway. If I had time and we could speak I'd sit with you in the street; as is, I'm off to Europe, have a nice day.
You want to hear stories of my "great adventures?"Sorry, I couldn't see because my eyes were adjusted to sort of pain on T.V. When in Africa, do as the Africans do: Survive. Don't be affected, this is everyday life. Do as the missionaries do: tough love; a turned eye and resenting sigh. Get out of my mind! I didn't pay to live with your cries, I just wanted to tell stories of the days I stayed in your sty. Could you please stop for a moment, it's hard to get a convincing picture of your loathsome plight when your always laughing. know the time and place.
How was my trip? How was my trip? How was my trip? How was my trip? I don't have an answer for you. I can't speak because I didn't speak (who was I to speak?). Now who am I to speak? Numb, frustrated gap of life. On autopilot. Sleep walking, trying to make my dreams like I think they should be. Now I just live with this nagging feeling of incomplete. Learn to be okay with not being okay. Okay with not being okay with what I was okay with. I understand what your trying to do but it's not catchy enough.
I need to go on with my life now, please let go of my hand, I have plans to be with these people so let me leave. Take your hands off, I need to roll up the window.
How was your trip?
Not okay. African is a whore for social service. A tax deduction, a stamp in the passport, a story for the blog.
----------------------------------

Present day:

For this reason I've wrestled for years with sharing this story at all, not knowing how to get around and cut deeper than just being another "inspiring" story, with all the ways we abuse that word as well, from which we throw up our hands in helplessness or to some half baked effort to do something, anything, just long enough to make these feelings of guilt wear off and settle back into our groove and forget that the effort ever stopped.
This experience, her face, has been sitting inside me, a wrenching ache in my soul. She is the crying inside my head, the mirror I never wanted to look at and always saw. I felt this excruciating tear in feeling that she was just serving as something for me to be continuously convicted about and letting myself forget her and moving on to any degree of a well adjusted life in America. No matter what I do I am doing exactly what I didn't want to let happen. I don't want to forget her and move on. I don't want to settle back into American life-- as long as I'm living in America I've realized I can't help being some degree of who I never wanted to be again. I am afraid of not being changed enough by her face, by her cries. I am afraid of using her to make myself and others fool ourselves into thinking we don't forget about the pain of the world around us every day, while we go about ours so comfortably that it is over before we know it. The structuring of the societies of man allow us, "nurture" us to think it "nature", to live in two different worlds and right next door, this fact alone has to be one of the first things to go in the kingdom of God.
Yes, I know I've changed, but what bothers me is how much I haven't changed, how closely similar the person I am now, together with my worries and decision making, is to who I was before.
None the less, these past couple years I have done just that, I have adjusted relatively comfortably to living in America again and taken as automatic some ways of life and thinking, becoming some degree of who I never wanted to be again. At times I think I have gone weeks without thinking about her, seeing her face, hearing her cries and laughter that is fourth dimensional to life as I know it.
I write the story now because I need to get this wrenching inner wrestling off my chest somehow. I write knowing that all of these things I fear are inevitable because the societies of man are the way they are and we are broken bastard children of the societies that raised us, who make for broken neighbors. But we disciples of Christ have been adopted by God and are being transformed by grace and love to an entirely new way. I hope that this story, she, can be another face in the millions that we have encountered that make it harder and harder to forget that they are our living, breathing, dying, laughing neighbors. I pray that I, we, will never stop lamenting what is not yet of the breaking in kingdom of God, in our hearts, minds, lives, homes, religious congregations, neighborhoods, communities. That no matter how uncomfortable it will get at times, we don't forget that we strive to be transformed to the society of God and not back to that of man which says her pain and our comfort is just the way things are.

This may of seemed all over the place and repetitive at times because that is the way it has happened in me, more or less.

"To be deeply bothered is a sign of hope... We are not in control of reconciliation. Too often christians are driven by activism that by trying harder and doing more our communities can become all they should be. We have to keep proclaiming [lamenting] what is not, even what is not in our own midst. Even if things never really change. This keeps calling us to hope in God, to humility, to resist certainty, self-congratulation, and the pride which so easily besets self proclaimed 'radical disciples'" - Chris Rice
-----------------------

There ain't no reason things are this way
It's how they always been and they intend to stay
I can't explain why we live this way
We do it everyday
Preachers on the podium speakin' of saints
Prophets on the sidewalk beggin' for change
Old ladies laughing from the fire escape,
cursing my name
I got a basket full of lemons and they all taste the same
A window and a pigeon with a broken wing
You can spend you whole life working for something
Just to have it taken away
People walk around pushing back their debts
Wearing pay checks like necklaces and bracelets
Talking 'bout nothing, not thinking 'bout death
Every little heartbeat, every little breath
People walk a tight rope on a razors edge
Carrying their hurt and hatred and weapons
It could be a bomb or a bullet or a pen
Or a thought or a word or a sentence

There ain't no reason things are this way
It's how they always been and they intend to stay
I don't know why I say the things I say
But I say them anyway
But love will come set me free
Love will come set me free, I do believe
Love will come set me free, I know it will
Love will come set my free, yes

Prison walls still standing tall
Some things never change at all
Keep on building prisons, gonna fill them all
Keep building bombs, gonna drop them all
Working your fingers bare to the bone
Breaking your back make you sell your soul
Like a lung that's filled with coal
Suffocating slow
The wind blows wild and I may move
The politicians lie and I am not fooled
You don't need no reason or a three piece suit
To argue the truth
The air on my skin and the world under my toes
Slavery stitched into the fabric of my clothes
Chaos and commotion wherever I go
Love I try to follow

Love will come set me free
Love will come set me free, I do believe
Love will come set me free, I know it will
Love will come set my free, yes

There ain't no reason things are this way
It's how they always been and they intend to stay
I can't explain why we live this way
We do it everyday

people love you the most for the things you hate.
and hate you for loving the things you can't keep straight.
people judge you on a curve
and tell you you're getting what you deserve
and this too shall be made right.

children cannot learn, when children cannot eat
stack them like lumber when children cannot sleep
children dream of wishing wells,
who's waters quench all the fires of hell
and this too shall be made right.

the earth and the sky and the sea are all holding their breath
wars and abuses have nature growing with death
you say we're just trying to stay alive
it looks so much more like a way to die.
and this too shall be made right.

yes theres a time for peace, there is a time for war
theres a time to forgive and a time to settle the score
a time for babies to lose their lives
a time for hunger and genocide.
and this too shall be made right.

oh i dont know the sufferings of people outside my front door.
and i join the oppressors of those i choose to ignore.
im trading comfort for human life
and that's not just murder, it's suicide.
and this too shall be made right.
oh this too shall be made right.

celebrate characters

2009-08-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

A project by NY TIMES-- New York Characters in Sound and Images--
A celebration of people in their "normalcy" as beautiful individuals with stories worth telling and worth stopping to listen and see; as One in 8 million.

does my heart good, not only to receive these stories, but that this project was even put together. check it out, you'll love.

thanks to this guy for bringing it to my attention.

Always We Begin Again

2009-08-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

The Benedictine Way of Living--

...
The First rule is simply this:

live this life
and do whatever is done,
in a spirit of Thanksgiving.

Abandoned attempts to achieve security,
they are futile,

give up the search for wealth,
it is demeaning,

quit the search for salvation,
it is selfish,

and come to comfortable rest
in the certainty that those who
participate in this life
with an attitude of Thanksgiving
will receive its full promise.

I read it again. again. daily again. I effort to read these words into my life, read this spirit into my spirit. read the state of being and world view into this (my?) state of being and world view. Daily the words find new relevance to my existence. "Always we begin again" is itself a daily contemplative effort toward a foreign reality; to "always begin again" makes no sense in the context of the society that has raised me and instilled in me its ways. Intellectually feasible but lacking lacking experiential reference to build meaning for reality. It is a reality which in contemplative discipline, neither lacks a disarming hope, nor blunt challenging of present existence.

Oh God,
Get Egypt out of us.
Take us out of Egypt if you must to do this, as you did with your people before us.

Let our prayer not be for a better world
but for the breaking in of a new world and the transforming of our minds from the old to new--
your Kingdom come
your will be done
on Earth
As it is in Heaven.

(The rule is from St. Benedict's Rule, restated for today's reader by attorney John McQuiston, titled Always We Begin Again. This is only the first rule.
these rules, particularly as stated in this little book simply because it is easier to understand its relevance, has been invaluable to me and many of my close friends and their close friends in our pursuit of daily living a peaceful, full, contemplative life in relationship with God and all of creation.)

...
The First rule is simply this:

live this life
and do whatever is done,
in a spirit of Thanksgiving.

Abandoned attempts to achieve security,
they are futile,

give up the search for wealth,
it is demeaning,

quit the search for salvation,
it is selfish,

and come to comfortable rest
in the certainty that those who
participate in this life
with an attitude of Thanksgiving
will receive its full promise.

who's telling our story?

2009-07-17T18:40:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from New Monasticism by Johnathan Wilson-Hartgrove. I made bold a few parts that really hit me.

Teaching in our local church and talking to pastors and friends in other churches, I've been convinced that you can learn what a church really believes by asking what it teaches its children. This is why God said to Israel, 'Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise' (Deut. 6:6-7). Deuteronomy says that the way we really believe a story as a people is by talking about it at home and on our way to other places, when we get up and when we go to bed. If that is true, then I think it's fair to say that the TV tells us our story more than the Bible. With a TV in the Living room, the bedroom, and increasingly in the car, kids hear the stories that advertisers sell them when they sit at home and when they're on the road, when they lie down and when they get up. Of course we often acknowledge that this can be bad for children, and parents limit TV time. But if Deuteronomy is right, this is bad for all of us. God's law is not on our hearts when we're not impressing it on our children. (Incidentally, I think this is true whether you have biological kids or not; if we're a people, they're all our kids.) It seems that we don't tell the story of God's faithfulness enough to convince ourselves or our Children that it's true.

On this topic he referenced an encouraging movement in Christian education called Godly Play ("an imaginative method for presenting scripture and stories to children"). check it out.

2009-07-16T09:21:00.000-07:00

Flag(s) in the Assembly: An Uncertain Proposal (from Brad East's blog Resident Theology)

I take it as axiomatic that a church should not display a national flag in or around the physical premises of the church building, much less in the assembly or sanctuary. That this is not self-evident is in itself a problem, of course, but for those churches that do see the discrepancy but struggle to find a satisfying solution or do not feel threatened by the American or other flags' visible presence (usually out of a thoughtful gratitude, rather than a frothing patriotism), I wonder if there are any faithful options. This especially came into sharp focus recently after a story I heard secondhand about a church, contrary to regular practice, displaying the American flag for Memorial Day.

The reasons are manifold for maintaining an absence of the flag, but the danger is uniquely potent for American Christians, for two reasons: First, since its inception America has been inextricably linked conceptually, metaphorically, religiously, and militarily with the (Protestant) Christian church. America has been proclaimed a new Israel, a city on a hill, the hope of the nations, the triumph of man, the promised new world, etc. These are frighteningly blunt in their appropriation of eschatological images of the church in the New Testament. Thus the claim that "America is a Christian nation" or, as straightforwardly as possible, "Christian America." This is -- and it ought not need to be said at all -- idolatry, plain and simple. The church is the people of God, the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit. America is none of these things. Even if every single individual that made up the nation called America happened to be, by birth or by choice, Christian -- like other European nations of the past, I might add -- nothing would thereby be changed. America is not and cannot be the church, and therefore is not and cannot "be," without qualification, "Christian."

Second, America is not merely one among many nations, nor merely a nation "with the soul of a church" or one happening to contain many self-professed Christians; America is, in a profound sense in our time,the nation. It is the preeminent world leader in military power, economic strength, and political muscle. When America throws its weight around, people amen, cower, rebel, submit, flee, or at the very least flinch. There are no bystanders in the time of America; one is not neutral toward it. It is in the business of picking sides and asking others to do the same. That is simply what it means to be "the best" in those areas the world deems important.

And so, as any American knows, what comes along with being (or claiming to be, or acting like) "the best" is a resilient, remarkable, fervent pride. Americans love America, love being American, love that America is what it is. And with that comes a kind of devotion which, accordingly, involves the American flag. The flag is the symbol of the nation: its history, its virtue, its standing, its future. And because the nation demands allegiance, Americans pledge allegiance to that flag as the one thing uniting them all together.

It is easy to see, then, regardless of how one feels about Christians actually pledging allegiance (we'll leave that for another day), why the presence of the flag in assembled Christian worship would be problematic. Here is a visual representation of National, Economic, Political, Military Power that expects, solicits, and even demands Pride, Devotion, and Allegiance. There are four visual possibilities for the flag in worship, all equally detrimental in their role:

1) above the cross, in which the cross of Christ lies symbolically in subordinate service to the flag;

2) on level with the cross, in which the two are linked visually as mirror and equal representations of the same divine reality;

3) below the cross, in which the flag exists ontologically in service to the cross; and

4) in place of the cross, in which the cross of Christ has disappeared altogether and the flag has replaced it as the symbol of the faith.

Obviously, every one of these possibilities is disastrous. The cross represents to us the absolute call of Jesus to each of us individually and to us together as a community to follow after him, to commit ourselves utterly to him in allegiance above and in replacement of all other allegiances, to renounce all former claims in order to become citizens of the kingdom of God. The flag, by any pairing imaginable, enters into this call not as a rival claimant but as a complimentary fellow, one more icon in the visible reverie of the faith. The God of Israel, however, is a jealous God, and he will not stand to have a rival god in his presence, and thus not in the gathered worship of his people.

I hope it is clear, therefore, why it is utterly inappropriate for the American flag to be displayed in, on, above, around, or by means of any other coterminous preposition vis-a-vis physical church grounds. Before moving on to my uncertain proposal, though, I should also note an apparent doublesidedness to this brief explanation. On the one hand, this temptation and reality is, in the present day, uniquely American. Being the Biggest and the Best, the most Christian and the most Iconic, we are nearly singular in our patriotically syncretistic temptations. On the other hand, however, there is nothing "less wrong" with, say, a village church in Uganda or an apartment church in Russia displaying their respective flags. Nationalism is a sly devil; rabid revolutions and demographic violence do not demand international influence for participation. And the call to discipleship with its subsequent expectations do not waver according to nation.

Now, with all of that said, what of possible "faithful options" of which I hinted above? This is merely a thought, and probably a bad one, but I share it in hope for feedback and contemplation.

What if, in a church accustomed to display of the American flag, instead of fighting the battle to remove the flag completely -- which, while acommendable fight, too often rightly earns that coercive description by the tactics and attitudes employed -- other nations' flags were added to the display? And not only random flags -- of equal size and shape as America's! -- but chosen specifically for that specific church in that time and place, in visual subordination and subservience to the cross. (If there is no cross, of course the whole project falls apart.)

For example: begin with the American flag. Then add the flags of any church members' home nationalities, whether Mexico, Britain, or Australia. Next add the flags of all the international missions locations that church is involved in, say, of Uganda, Honduras, and Croatia. Finally, take the flags of the half a dozen or so most prominent, most talked about, most reviled, most foreign enemies of America (from the past, present, and foreseeable future), and display those too -- say, those of Iran, North Korea, Cuba, China, Russia, Venezuela, and Sudan. And order them chronologically, randomly, or even by "greatest enemy," beginning in the center and moving outward.

So displayed might be, in some order, the flags of Australia, Britain, China, Croatia, Cuba, Honduras, Iran, Mexico, North Korean, Russia, Sudan, USA, Uganda, and Venezuela. Fourteen nations, from around the world, ordered arbitrarily, some home to members of the church, some home to fellow members of a missionary church connected to this one, and some explicit enemies of the nation in which this church resides.

What might this convey to the people of the church?

What if it meant that Jesus, the one to whom the cross points, is Lord of and over each and every one of these nations, fully and equally? What if it meant that the great commission applies to each and every one of these nations? What if it meant that God is already present by his Spiritin each and every one of these nations? That Jesus died for each and every one? That God loves each and every one? That each is on equal footing before God; that each belongs to the broad sweep of history that is God's created world; that each is mere withered grass before the Word of God; that each is allowed no ultimate claims of allegiance before the one true God? That any person of any tribe or tongue is welcome in the assembly of this gathering of God's people? That when we pray, we not only pray a blessing for the well-being of the nation in which we find ourselves as exiles; we pray even more fervently for the blessing of ourenemies, whether of the church or of the nation in which we reside. All are one before the Lord our God, for God is not the God of Jews alone, but of Gentiles also. And we pray Maranatha! Come Lord! We pray that God's kingdom would come on the earth -- for we know that it has not come in full, not in any nation or place, but we await it in its fullness in all times and in all places and in all languages: for the coming of the Lord; for the New Jerusalem; for the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

Juxtapoz magazine - Reader art of the day

2009-07-16T08:11:00.000-07:00

I learned from my old friend Amy Hardin's blog The Fluttering, That Juxtapoz magazine posts daily a new "Reader art" piece selected from those their readers have sent in. If you have any interest in art, namely relatively undiscovered art (if you don't maybe you should), go read Amy's post and then check out the art.

Artist of the day yesterday:

TITLE: Goldfish
ARTIST: Dominic Bugatto

"That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you..." - Jesus' prayer

2009-07-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

"That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you..." - Jesus' prayer John 17

"For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father." Ephesians 2:14-18

I have had the opportunity to be in many, many conversations about community (what is, value of, development, enrichment, etc) the past few months. A reoccurring sort of conclusion many of these came to is that community ought to be allowed to happen organically, via commonality (interests, values, proximity, age, etc). I think the idea of organic community is a very valuable one; to not force while still not taking for granted what we have and so as to not nurture it properly.
However, I feel whole heartedly convicted that I have too often stopped our conversation and visions for "creating" community at our own terms and limits of man; at this world's social norms and practicalities rather than faith in the God who can do anything and what I know to be his desires. I have forgotten the truth and power of the Kingdom of God. It seems to me, the kingdom--the nation-- of God is nothing if not a breaking of barriers; it is the resurrected life in which all the norms, all the barriers, all of the "us, them" mentalities are overcome and washed away by the all saving blood of Christ. There is no rich or poor, white or black, republican or democrat, American or Iraqi, Christian or Muslim, Terrorist or soldier.

In the confines of the ways of this world, this is speaking idealistically. However, I am speaking in terms of the reality of the breaking in of the Kingdom of God. Set apart (sanctified) through Christ, as His disciples we are living resurrected lives now; this is our reality. We have died to the old nature and way of thinking we grew up in, which taught us all its ways and defined life and it's limits for us. "We should not expect the call to be Jesus' disciple to be anything less than a painful intrusion into what comes naturally to us." We are being raised to a transforming and renew of our minds. Our nation, our life sustenance is not of this world, rather our daily way of life is freely defined by the desires and will and possibilities of God, who is Truth and Love.
We must believe in community as God desires it, we are free to live it out, not being hindered by the lies and boundaries of this world but knowing that He is a God of reconciliation who keeps His promises.
In regards to the divisions of this world and the people of God, Chris Rice put it something like this in a book he co-authored Schools for Conversion: 12 Marks of New Monasticism

To be deeply bothered is a sign of hope... we are not in control of reconciliation. Lament reminds us that we are not God... Too often Christians are driven by an activism that by trying harder and doing more our communities can become all they should be. We have to keep proclaiming what is not, even what is not in our own midst. Even if things never change. This does far more than keep us open to transformation, it keeps calling us to hope in God, to humility, to resist certainty, self congratulation, and the pride which so easily besets self proclaimed "radical disciples." We keep naming the "not yet" of the coming kingdom, keep praying to be interrupted by the unexpected, keep reaching out to the stranger, keep holding our hands out for the gift of new people (or work) the Spirit may bring tomorrow. or not.

2009-07-04T20:03:00.001-07:00

We should not expect the call to be Jesus' disciple to be anything less than a painful intrusion into what comes naturally to us. - Brad East

The Heavenly Man

2009-07-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a book called Heavenly Man, about/by a leader in the underground house churches in China named Brother Yun. It is making me search my life in a way perhaps no book has. I am humbled and rebuked by the unfamiliarity of his God--my God. The way he knows Him is so distant and foreign to me. I am bursting with excitement to find, to pursue this God, to Know Him in such a way, though I am brought low to see in perspective how I have been starving, thinking I knew what it was to have faith, to rely on Him and to see the ways I have been pursuing other gods. His faith rebukes me, scares me, and Gives me a taste of freedom and Life that I am thirsting to get more of. I want to know the reality of the God he knows but I also see now more than ever I think, how it would mean such a new way of life, I can tell it is freedom beyond what I can imagine but I wonder how possible such a faith, such a relationship, such a reality even is within this society, where it is so easy to be a christian and hard and incredibly hard to be a disciple of Christ.
Still, I want to know God as Brother Yun does; as my life blood and sustainer in all things; as a God present and all powerful in each moment; present in daily abundance, contradicting the limits of this world and over coming its hopeless poverty in any situation. The God who works daily miracles in abundance for His people, no matter the boundaries.
I want to be broken and transformed by Brother Yun's story. I need to pursue This God no matter how much it tears down my life as I know it. I have faith that God will be faithful to his promises of fuller life and abundance in his time as I pursue Him.

I recommend this book to everyone as a testament to the living God in ways most of us in the western world can't imagine. Our eyes have been blinded to His power and the reality of His promises.

abstract reality

2009-07-04T14:37:00.000-07:00

I identify with this painting (weeping willow by Monet) right now, or at least, I want to identify with it. its abstract yet vivid reality seems to be more like a real beauty than any I can seem to grasp around me as of late. There is a blending of pain and peace and dark and light in the color; it reminds me simultaneously of weeping brokenness and the lifted weight and calm that follows.
Whatever it is, it's in the family of abstract, like a dream I realize I'm in but which, no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get a hold of its reality or wake myself from.
This is how I feel of the way of life that's surrounding me, reality as defined by society at large. I have been realizing how different God's society, His nation, His way of life and economy that comes with it, really is. I am beginning to see with new eyes, with a new heart, the kingdoms of this world in contrast to God's new life and the life that this world says is available just doesn't feel real. It doesn't feel like life. It feels like layers between people and real life; like a thick coating. I am seeing the lies that have so proliferated through this world that made us believe certain inevitabilities, certain evils functioning that is because it's "just the way things are." The difference of the two kingdoms (of this world and God's) comes to mind like that of a elaborate fat clown suit vs. the naked skinny man underneath; I feel as though I've been being fed cake and being told this is as nutritious as it gets. The more I have tried to come into the presence of God lately the more vivid the layering and coating over my life, me way of thinking and functioning has become.
I newly realize that God is not just trying to make people better; He is not just trying to change the nations of this world, but rather his nation is an completely different/new way; new way of thinking, new way of functioning and relating and defining. Many of us grasp that jesUSAves isn't entirely a healthy understand, but I am realizing that to be God's people, God's kingdom, is so much more otherly, sanctified (set apart for one thing).
His is a economy set apart from that which we've grown up knowing. He is the king who is creator and sustainer of all things. He gave food to his nation from the sky daily and to teach them who created food and who they could rely on he made whatever was stored for the next day rot. He is the God that feed thousands of people with only a little breed and fish; the God who tells us 'do not worry about your life. I feed and clothe and sustain the birds and grass and you are more valuable to me than they.' He is The God who who raises from the dead and promises to give good gifts and protect those who follow Him. In Him all things are possible and true freedom is found.
How can there be any lack of abundance and all that we need with this God who creates every morsel of food?
The more I try to pursue these realities of who God is in my life the more I see this to completely transform how I view economy and the way society functions, and this is only the tip of the iceberg of all of the scripture pointing toward a whole new politics and new economy of the kingdom of God ('blessed are the poor,' 'the last will be first and the first will be last,' 'give to everyone who asks you,' 'lend to your enemies without expecting anything back,' 'do not repay evil with evil,' etc, etc).
If God is who he says He is...
I want to know God in this way; I want to break through the layers to a life I can't even imagine yet through the lies of this world. I thirst, I ache.

The Cinematic Orchestra - To Build a Home

2009-07-01T10:20:00.000-07:00

Mmm... stirring. It really is, so I just wanted to share. Thank you, Slater, For introducing us. Away, I delve and comatose.

relevant similarities

2009-07-01T09:46:00.000-07:00

I wrote the Post "the above line... "about the title of this blog around the same time my older brother Brandon wrote the following post on his blog dear autumn--or at least, it was right after I posted mine that I encountered his, half way around the world. He said in greater brevity, and perhaps accuracy, largely what I was getting at, without ever having read mine or us talking about the matter. I thought the timing and context of each of our lives as relevant to the other was certainly a noteworthy example of what we were both saying. Enjoy.

writing (and, i believe, all art) is the translation of experience (broadly defined) from one form into another. in order to write you first have to understand how you understand. then you have to decide how to translate what you understand and what to translate it into. but you must also be aware that whatever you have translated you have done only for yourself, and if anyone else seems to connect with it, it is very lucky. for this reason everything i have ever written has been something I've wanted very badly to read. - Brandon Thompson

involuntary mulling: going back to go forward.

2009-06-22T21:50:00.000-07:00

Let it be said and understood in the heaviest sense of these words (while avoiding the often ignorant-outsider-condition of perceiving the weight of words required in attempting to communicate in a moment Life altering experiences which took place over a span of time as exaggerated) that, since last I wrote prose here, I've painfully and peacefully and wrenchingly experienced death and Life beyond me; beyond what I thought I ever wanted, beyond my imagination, and beyond every ounce of self within me. And I am Grateful; although it has broken me and my world and, by the grace of God, transformed me by the renewing of this mind.

Having been at a loss for words for some time now, aside from poetry--abstract, fragmentary and vague-- which, Interestingly enough, I never wrote before, I feel a need to explore a different sort of abstract, fragmentary and vague expression. Mulling over and a laying out of sorts of my translations past and other's expressions I have been a translation of. In short, I mean to post what's on my mind as I am mulling and contemplating, pieces of thought and inspiration in a sort of free-write streamofconscience manner; less inhibited by my fears and criticisms while still being intentional.
I am God gathering the pieces to put something new and old together; a work in progress; a translation being translated, and this is my attempt to translate what's going on inside me.

End The University As We Know It (first post in a series concerning needed creative rethinking ideological structures in our society)

2009-05-02T18:18:00.000-07:00

End the University as We Know It - Mark C. Taylor - New York Times

please forgive me

2009-04-18T08:29:00.000-07:00

why are things this way?
in all this excess I can't access
to feel
real
on the eve of your twelfth year
which
unbeknownst to we
you've worked half of it for me
to give all I have and can't feel
because it's all you can do
to continue to breathe and feed
your six-month-old beautiful hope
from a drunkards seed

now thinning now crying
now I discontentedly whine
bored with my pillows and walls
the earnings of my success
are a hate crime
rightful by law
so how is that my call?

How many lives make up my aesthetic numb ignorance?
what good is this and that and those
over there and these I can't see
are the wall paper and seat
where I sit and don't know exist
I'll choose what will be
and breathe
in my little reality
the best I can do is drink coffee and wine
while I contemplate my life's woes and tragedies
failing to pinpoint a time when I was sure of anything
or what I am breathing

the malfunctioning AC
has train wrecked my dreaming
and awoken me enough to glimpse
the life you've lived at the expense
of my material cinema sleep
is in that moment more real
than wherever I've been can ever be

and In my understanding I am too ashamed to weep
or ask forgive me
considering the easy justice of suicidal sleep
feeling the weighty judgment of naive privilege
in the moment I think I wouldn't wish this luxury on anyone
and ponder a "vow of poverty"
now this one thing I know
that in your pain-- poetically by my hand--
you and your family
are happier than I will ever be.

now leave me be.

Church with Crist

2008-11-30T08:11:00.000-08:00

Today church was with Crists' blog, with Dennen's prophetic song gone unheard, reality's interrupting way, black coffee's bitter resting grounding, balanced with purified water with half lemon, Weather's religious practice of rejecting God, The Cold and heartless whore that is Mrs. Butterworth, and my own fist; my chest and my broken kite.

Here is my attempt.

to be right

about this world's shameful ignoring

of their neighbor

being stranger

and the communion of self plight

Checkbook clouded sight keeps them

from counting his visible ribs beneath breathing skin

or veiled lover Jerusalem dying

in brown skin fighting

bombing precisely

wrong place wrong timing

Shock and awe not so surprising

another day of bleeding for not fighting

playing with grenades called "aid"

this blown away face never existed in your statistics anyway.

gas a dime less

a strange way of counting success

something they've come to expect.

so I avoid your bank blinding

of the dead child at our table

soldiers killed on cable

and feudal fitting of comfort to living dying

in a way only done in the Christian sort of lying

and redefined submission remarkably reminiscent

of self sufficient.

This way good news is what you make it to your own pious existence

and applicants of words regarding the "blessed poor" refer to--trail off in some unconsidered utterance about their treasure being in heaven and the need for more AK 47's...

in an effort to (avoid) understanding Christs' death we spend our money sending others to theirs and writing checks, for a fraction of what's left, to those who made it through the salvation genocide.

This is my effort, to avoid more death,

to be righteous; I attempt. My attempt.

I have sent myself floating an angry striving existing;

to do something. change something. do nothing.

toward empty failed betterment is my blind defeat.

I beat and beat this chest in agony

harmonizing with all created things in beat and scream

our death is a heralding symphony

in final breath and broken ceasing

I feel Peace spreading; divinity willing.

not in speech or listen

both requiring the independent striving me,

this being blends to Being, I AM breaths.

2008-02-19T03:20:00.000-08:00

This world is dark

Cold reproaching

Light.

How far you are from me In reflection

Infancy distant empty reaching

Through reality momentarily

Unneeded appealing

How precious Your resurrection.

How tiresome and tearing.

My body submits every longing

Running

Chilling

My mouth watering

Rest me.

What merciful numbing beauty.

In clouded ink character

In the sounding strings and leaves

Tones of light blindly revealing

Where you have been,

Gone just

And early am I

Not yet and some how when I cry.

Smile, forgetting smile.

Your lonely breath I breathe

Pieces

timely

broken not yet complete

timing

Amphetamine

The taste sets in

Burning

Turning

The sound flows in voice

Distracting noise

Soft nearness

Dark tight eyes fools loneliness

These colors, foreshadow curtain

Something never happened.

Dying life mute proclamation

just since breathing the stranger drags

still and stiff begins the digging

Regardless of later or never again

Still remembering Kitchen floor drugs.

I scream

See

Approaching

and mothers wailing.

explain to me

this and that

Maybe merciful mad sleeping

Wakeful dreaming Is hopeful forgetting

refining spirits fire

crack pipe flame burning just a little brighter.

Once remember

Trying trying

My mouth is drying

So many dead

Died living dying.

Season brings

memory will

these vivid illusions be

when

When what

naive victory

pointed to nothing.

Merciful stealing thoughts stealing.

Painful fair foul hear

Anguish healing.

Broken apathetic fear submitting.

These muted full.

Beautiful nameless breathing

Familiar rising.

2008-01-23T11:28:00.000-08:00

And the billowing shrouds
of weighted, aged clouds,
from frustrated perspective first,
offered beyond its tearful pains
scene,
virgin light and ancient color due dance,
can only dream or faith
fashion origin,
to Irish lullaby
orphan "bastard",
look,
breath,
in the moaning current
of all history's whore,
former lines exceed repeat.

2008-01-08T10:21:00.000-08:00

On Unassuming Bluffs infinite Mosaic of Colors Trinity,
Dance on,
On,
on Prancer, promenade
on my freed Sea of the Broken stained See
saunterly break Leaves
I lay
Whisper Breathe
Create
Symphony in Saffron Beams translucent Satin Keys
through Willowing Living Doors Dead
Entreat,
not while Aye Him but She
be Thou
yet less or more moreover This and Thee,
none ever cease, did
Thebes or These,
only Form
varied likeness
still fully given former He,
what matter Seems
our Senses Magically
Uniquely Am Antiquity
Still Are Presently
differ none Gracefully, of in Portrait find
Maestro
Painter
Bee
equally,
on Rhythmic Feet We likewise conversely Me

filling in blanks, maybe...

2007-08-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

I will be leaving in around 12 hours to travel in Europe for three weeks. I confess I am nervous. I know very few specifics about European areas, so few real details that I'm sure I would surprise you. Moreover, having experienced the language barrier here, I can't help but wish I had spent more time learning languages growing up--sometimes I really wonder what I did with all of my time home schooling?

I know I will be going to England, France, Italy and Greece, though I'm not sure if those are the only countries I will go to or ,whats more, exactly where I will go in them. When I have told people the approach that I am taking to this trip, a sort of solo, unplanned, play-it-by-ear way of travel, I have almost entirely (with the exception of mothers) had it expressed to me that I am doing it "the best way to do it", with a sort of envy voiced or otherwise somewhere fit in. At the time I would simply smile and agree, that is after all why I planned it this way. But then, I hadn't been out of the country yet at that point; now I'm not so sure about it to be perfectly honest. I like the idea, but I still wish I knew more about the countries. It is much harder to act like you know what your doing in other countries than I think most people imagine. Still, I have great expectations for these next few weeks, not the least of which being to meet people in hostels and any context I happen upon. On the one hand I am fascinated in travelers, particularly when I am traveling and particularly in places that I am already very interested in--to that effect, I am probably equally as fascinated in people in places as I am with the place itself.

I'm sorry it has been so long since I have said anything. When I get back to the United States I will try to catch you up a little on additional thoughts I have been mulling over in this remaining gap of time I have been in Africa and offer some pictures.

I will say that while I have done a few things worth while, this leg of my trip as been over for at least a week I think, while I have continued simply to wait I think; wait for something to strike me, wait to feel Africa again, wait for Europe? To put my attitude and activities into words, I think it is best said as "uh-huh".

church planting

2007-07-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

believe it or not I am just starting to really understand how certain people interpret evangelism--whether that be for better or worse-- and how it is or is not at times a necessary focus on a ministry.

Here, evangelism is certainly a necessary focus-- to which "the great commission" seems to be a central motivation. Yet I've commonly found among missionaries that, in observing their practice, an unknowing observer would more likely deduce that it is a call to "go make church plants of every nation" rather than make disciples. Discipleship seems to go about as far as delivering a set lesson series (often once a week), at the end asking if they want to be a church, then passing on the lesson plans and sending them "planting". A missionary team here has talked about an approach they have taken of sending out 72 native church leaders in pairs to plant churches, as Jesus sent out the 72. Granted Jesus himself did send out his disciples to spread "the good news", what they had seen, experienced, and what he had taught them. If I understand correctly though, there was so much more to the relationship that Jesus had in his discipling prior and in addition to sending them out. In my time observing missionaries, this initial planting routine hasn't even been the main goings on (if that had been the case we would have had more repeated visits to the same villages). What we have mostly been doing is what might be referred to as "making the rounds" which seems to consist mainly of taking care of "business" and "making an appearance". what this means is that from time to time, in between new planting jobs, the missionaries go visiting villages where they have already planted a church to sell bibles, give more made up lesson plans, schedule their next visit and any other leadership business leaders might want to discuss. As I understand from the missionaries these visits mainly result from insistence from church leaders that they come because no matter how much they might try to distance themselves and let the leaders of that church be the leaders, the church still wants to hear from the white "missionaries".

"The missionaries" (the white people at that) still carry a certain status with them. To begin with, western religion as a whole carries a status of being new and trendy--as do most things from the west with most people for that matter. Yet what's more, is that most the churches of western religion (the majority also being the longest present churches) have a rather set common order of doing things which over time has taken its foothold in modern African culture--how to do church, some sort of hierarchical leadership, church buildings, special outfits, etc. So while the Church of Christ missionaries have done something different than most in their church planting, which is their attempting to distance themselves and put as little of their own interpretation and western church customs into the Africans as possible and let them interpret for themselves how to be a church in their culture, they still struggle with the people wanting all the things of all the other churches to feel more official.

I think the CoC missionaries here have a good idea with this sort of hands off approach in realizing that following Christ isn't limited to the western way and letting the Africans discern from what they know of scripture on how to follow Christ in their culture. However, it seems as though even though they aren't telling them how to order their worship services they are missioning with a clear assumption that they do have to have an orderly worship service and meet on Sunday (even if they don't necessarily believe it must be Sunday themselves) and other subtle traditional doing church practices. I am not saying that any of this is right or wrong, I do wonder though at what being a church is really about when you take ALL of the cultural customs out of it, including those recorded in scripture?

what bothers me more though, Whether rooted in their hands-off attempt or from their church plant factory approach to ministry, the missionaries have formed a very detached relationship for themselves with the villagers (church members). While Planting churches with relatively brief select stories from the old testament and a little more in depth look into the look into the life of Jesus, they seem to have lost a grasp of the actual story they were telling and what they were suppose to be planting. At times I can't help but feel like I am an intern for a business. To which affect they have taken the business practices of Jesus (sending out 72 in pairs) but are missing his life aspects like making himself self nothing, feeding the poor, counting others better than himself, loving unconditionally to (at the time) a seemingly meaningless death. This sort of relationship is so much of what was different about Jesus (and for that matter the early church) and certainly the Kingdom of God as a whole. We are outright told that Love is the most important thing, Love is how people will recognize the people of God, God is Love. Jesus' life was an example of the extents that this love goes and the Church is to complete what is lacking in Jesus' death and resurrection which to be presently living out that Love in a community. So much of "the gospel"--the good news-- that we act like we are teaching of the kingdom of God is the church loving like this. That is good news. what is news about it, much less good or true if people's lives aren't really changed by being loved and seeing love like this?

I am certainly not saying that the missionaries here don't believe any and/or of this and rather purposely leave it out. Only that in their focus on producing churches it feels deeply that they have lost track of it. Mind you, I think at least some of them are at least beginning to realize it more and more.

I think this too, is a great issue in their attempt to let the Africans be their own leaders and in communicating why all of those other "doing church" customs and rules and rulers aren't important or what Church is about. I think it is a great issue because without this sort of Love and close friendship in discipleship they will rarely be able to show what is different about following Christ and what is truly important. How can the Africans be expected to see and understand if they haven't been shown it in their very teachers? I fear they have left hollow the stories and teachings, to which I think "the parable of the sorrow" speaks relevantly in a way I have never read it before. My fear is that in this fashion of evangelism we westerners, as we are bringing this story of the people of God and Jesus for the first time to many while they are very receptive--and thus to their descendants-- we are quibbling their faith for them to become much like the us, where "non-believers" want very little to do with Christian moralist-"church doers", and many "believers" treat Christianity as not really following Christ at all--not to say that this is necessarily acknowledged.

for granted life...

2007-07-13T23:35:00.001-07:00

There are moments, very different than any others, that I find my life suddenly calm, still, clearer-- even though I had not realized just moments before that it was not but comparably rather blurred, anxious and otherwise just the opposite. At times the moments come when I have gone about for sometime with white noise such as a fan or a car engine and then when they are turned off it changes my perspective entirely-- as this happened in the Serengeti when we had been driving through the for sometime and past hundreds of thousands of Zebra and Wildebeest to the point that all of us who had never seen either in the wild before were already disenchanted with them almost as though they were field grass and simply anxious to see more exciting spectacles. Yet when we stopped and turned the car engine off so I could hear the breeze and the grass rustling and animal's sounds and breathing; at the time it felt as though I was seeing them for the first time all over again only this time standing in the field in the middle of them, almost forgetting about the car and others completely-- I shudder at such a contrast in experiencing the lions who stared into my eyes only inches from the road. I could have sat there all day with those animals in the Serengeti, just watching and listening.

It is not only at the clearing of white noise that these moments come though. Sometimes they come with a light breeze or laughter or taste or some sight or sound in nature or a form of art; sometimes just with a deep breath I feel as though I could sit there all day and just breath as though I haven't in a long while. With the surprise value that comes with these moments also comes a feeling of wonder at how much has gone blurring by that I've missed? That I could have found so much life, beauty, love and wonder in if I wasn't so expeditiously on my way to the scheduled matters?

On a lighter note, the circle of life...

2007-07-12T05:25:00.003-07:00

Having just returned from Safari in the Serengeti, I thought now would be as good a time as any to give a brief up date on some unique things I have experienced up to now. On the off chance that you ever carried any noteworthy expectation for the quality of my writing, it might be better for us all if you just play this one by ear, because that's about the most that can be said about the effort that I put into writing it... whatever that means.

Going along with what I have previously mentioned, the comfortable living conditions of the missionaries has also included, at it's best borderline gourmet food, and all other times nothing less than what can commonly be found in American homes. However, outside the missionaries homes my stomach is a great reminder that I am still in Africa. In the villages the staple foods have been rice (this being the greatest because it was a really good year for rice) and ugali, a sort of thick cornmeal base dough (though much less of this and other corn products because it was a bad year for corn). with one or both of these staples accompaniments might include one or multiple selects from beans, boiled greens, cow chopped into small chunks (I describe it this way because they more or less skin the cow and then just start chopping, intestines, bones, traditional meats, fat) boiled in lots of oil and tomato, or the same might be done of a goat; at times we've received a whole fish to pick from (apparently the best meat is at the head by the way, which is saved for honored guest like ourselves); another item we often receive is a bowl of oil-boiled whole Daga, which most of you reading would probably know as minnows (tiny, bight size fish)-- and in case you were curious, as far as fishy smelling fish go, Daga are strong competition for first. With the tomato tainted oil base that almost all meats are prepared and served in, one either pours it over the big dish of rice, or with rice or ugali mold it in your hand to dip it the oil-- other than the rare occasion that we are given a spoon, everything is eaten with the Right hand, all things handed between people are also with the right hand (the left hand is for the butt)...yes, I am left handed.

Where drinks in the villages are concerned, there is usually some form of water around, but unless it is bottled there is always a questionable gamble about the safety of drinking it... most often the the gamble is stacked against you. Other than that we might receive some hot chi tea, but usually without milk.

As far as eating in restaurants go here, there is a strong Indian population here so I have had the opportunity to eat some great Indian food (great by my mouth's standards, however my bowels often beg to differ--as they do with the food in the villages).

On a related note, I have also killed (by way of decapitation) a rooster and a fat-tail sheep. the missionaries wanted the interns to have the experience of having to kill for food as is almost always the case with villages here, with few exceptions. However, when it came down to it I was the one that did the sawing. It sucks that we have to kill animals to give our body what it needs. some wouldn't understand this sentiment, but people attribute some sort of intelligent emotional system to their pets by observing how they react to the way we treat them, so why not animals that aren't pets? Moreover, I don't think it was part of God's original plan for creation, but that's another conversation.

Last but not least is my Safari to the Serengeti. For any who don't know, the Serengeti is a very large area in Africa where African wildlife still run free. It has been declared a sort of park with certain laws and guarded by rangers, such as no hunting, no getting out of the car accept in selected areas and no unlicensed entry, but there are no fences. So we drove through in a land cruiser with a roof that raises so we can stand and saw just about all the African animals one could as for, in their natural habitat. It is the time of season for migration so we saw maybe a million Wildebeest and hundreds of thousands of Zebras, and many of the animals had fairly recently had their babies as well so we were able to see young giraffe, Zebra, Wildebeests, lions, warthogs, crocodiles, antelope, elephants, baboons etc... We also saw hippo, cheetah and leopard, ostridges, love birds and some other really magnificent birds.

As a disclaimer, I feel really unable to here grasp in text (or even later in voice) my experience of being in the Serengeti, though for those of you for whom that just won't do, I will make a small attempt and hopefully throw in some pictures later.

I used the word magnificent ending with the birds because there were so many and I don't want to take the time to name them all nor am I able, though if I were to use one word to describe the experience as a whole, magnificent in its greatest weight of meaning would be it. At times I could forget that we were not in some sort of drive-thru zoo because the animals were so relaxed and just looking at us (they have grown use to cars to some degree), however the slightest thing would remind me that this was just life for them. Things like seeing wildebeest fight or cross the river; baby warthogs run behind their mom in a single file; a lioness hunting a herd of wildebeest; at sunrise coming across a few lions (males, cubs, and lioness included) right next to the road, relaxing and picking at the fresh kill they made earlier that morning and looking into the lion's eyes; listening to the near by sounds of wildebeest, zebra, hyena, and the deep roar of lions while resting in my tent at night; Even just seeing a colt giraffe running beside us for a few seconds as we drove past a whole family, seeing all of this was a magnificent, refreshing, reality check--sometimes frightening and sometimes borrowing--breath of life to me in ways I can't describe.

deceiving myself

2007-07-07T00:37:00.000-07:00

happy 07/07/07 everyone.

last week the other interns and I went on a four day survey trip to the towns Shinyanga and Kahama a few hours south of Mwanza. The purpose of the trip was three main parts: to see other towns in Tanzania, perhaps to see what sort of aid or mission work is being done other than Church of Christ, and to gather information oh these towns as possible locations for long term missions for whoever might consider.

As far as information gathered I don't feel the importance of recording it here at this time, however the trip did greatly effect me and it is to that affect that I wish to write.

While we were in the towns I began to be overwhelmed by all that was around me; by the conditions that all of these people live in day and night, the only condition that most of them have ever and perhaps will ever know, along with countless generations before them. I was overwhelmed by the contrast of their living conditions to my own that I have grown up with (and continued in as I drove through the towns in an air conditioned Land Cruiser) and so many others so excessively comfortable throughout the world, and that we have allowed this contrast for so long. The panic attack began to set in, deep inside as their lives became more and more real to me and less and less could I understand how us "superior" species can do this; I could only ask "why?!" Moreover I was not only feeling them more vividly than ever but it was as though I could feel my own comfortable and self preserving life battling against the feeling of their lives within me and I felt as though my spirit was being torn and broken. I became claustrophobic of the minimal conditions around me, both for it being all the people around me had and at the idea of myself in their place; I was able to image myself in their place in a more real way than I had ever before and I didn't know what to do with it.

I'm sure I am sounding redundant but that is because of my in ability to describe what I felt. A felt, vivid reality of the pain and evil in the world (and in myself) and the very real contrast of the Kingdom of God(love) and what a life accordingly means came weighing in on me like a rising ocean current,drowning me. It became hard to breath, hard not to run, hard not to cry and burst in anger all at once.

-----------------------------------
Yet, as I was reflecting on this in my journal I recalled all the ideas about Africa I have had before that time in the town and wondered at how much I talked (to others or myself) about going to Africa to live and changing my life style and giving up everything... and wondered at how much all of that was just to convince myself that I really cared more than the masses; to comfort myself with delusions of really doing something about_______.
"Do not be deceived, do not flatter them and their life and do not make a martyr of myself; our lives are different beyond the very meaning of the word."
I am actually not saying that I no longer think I could live in Africa or give up everything only that I have a clearer reality of what that would mean and how far my life is from that as is. I do not think I will be coming back to America talking about how miserable I was in the villages, in fact I think this makes really displacing myself more truly possible and better for the world around me than before.

frustration and a new love.

2007-06-20T23:37:00.000-07:00

Since I last wrote, culture shock has began to set in and I have just been trying to figure out what is actually going on around me and how to approach it (the culture here, the economic conditions, and the missionaries in their approach), to which I have not only been constantly busy but have felt very illiquid to make a post about.

I have come to realize that this internship isn't set up to be like I had hoped and expected it to be (even though I keep telling myself I didn't have any expectation coming in). I came hoping simply to live among the people here and see and be part of their daily lives; to learn who they are and let them know who I am; to build relationship. I wanted to see something different, to see a different culture and maybe a different Christianity. I wanted to get outside myself.

For the most part this hasn't happened. I have been wrestling with a lot of frustrations and I fear I will sound very disgruntled and even harsh when I tell about them, but I feel I need to in order to give reality to where I am now.

One of these factors that I didn't expect is that the missionary families all live in a sort of suburb of the city of Mwanza--which is 1 million people-- and in generally nice houses, even by American standards. They work mostly with people in villages and have to drive one to 5 hours just to get to most of these villages. Bwiru, the suburbish area in which they live and I am staying isn't without difficulty I assure you (after all, This Is Africa), but generally speaking, I feel removed. when I am in their homes I feel no different than if I was in an American home (other than the power frequently and unexpectedly going off). I didn't expect that the missionaries would live in mud brick huts as those in the villages, but I didn't expect to be so guarded.

The far away villages that we drive to everyday are always new as well, so it has been hard to build relationship from repeated visits. Moreover, when we are in the villages I can't speak much of the language other than greetings, so I mostly just sit quietly listening to sermons or conversations that I can't understand and usually go completely untranslated. I also feel the American way of "doing" church and the mission "field" terminology around me and working its way into the village churches here and it keeps me up at night. That's another conversation though.

I wrote in my journal that my time in the villages has been the greatest feeling of a formal environment that I think I have ever felt. This is in part due to the language barrier so which makes me feeling unable to speak-- I am good at not making the effort to have conversation with people and keeping to myself, but I don't want that anymore. But the formal feeling has more do to with cultural customs that are much more prominent here.

The first of these which has really tended to frustrate me at times is that everywhere we go we are received as very formally honored guests. In the Sukuma language the word for "guest" comes from the same word as that of "gift", of which a guest is one of the greatest, along with the honor of being able to show hospitality to one's guest. This includes them insisting we sit in the only chairs while they are on the ground; sit in these chairs in front of everyone during worship service, and eat the choice food, while the amount and quality of food lessens the younger the family member (children just above animals in some ways). This has really been frustrating to me at times when all I want to do is talk to them and play with the kids or football with anyone, and learn about what there lives are like on a daily basis. I can't explain my frustration at times toward this formal feeling in the context of the missionaries coming on church business are honored. I was looking at the wrong way though.

I have also been frustrated in how I feel removed from everyone else (other than missionaries) who live here in Mwanza as a whole. I particularly feel this on Friday nights when I can here the party going on at the near by pub and think about who the people were that Jesus spent time with, while I am safely gated in the christian home. Or how I drive hours everyday to go to villages, when I might be playing with kids from the mud huts right behind our house. So much of the world goes through things everyday that I hardly know anything about, much less can I say I know how they feel; I don't want to feel removed anymore.

But as I have begun to get past my own frustrations and expectations for this trip (many are still there, I have just learned to get past them), I have began to really appreciate their hospitality greater than any I have experienced. They see us as a great gift and the opportunity to give the best of themselves and what they have as a gift just moreover, and I can't get my mind around that when they have so little to give and the adults, and especially their children, are severely malnourished. they farm for their food they eat and for any money it might get them to sell it, and here we are eating so much of it. I have no place to reject their gift though, I realize I am not above allowing them to love in a way I have never emptied myself to, and they don't even think twice about it. I think part of my resistance to this all (and Satan battling against me) is that I am trying to avoid thinking about this difference but rather can comfort myself in thinking about 'how selfish I wasn't' in not taking the starving people's food and gifts right then. Trying to avoid thinking about all that I'm not doing and what of my life and things I'm not really giving, but rather we think to ourselves "keep it, we don't need your gifts, we've got ourselves covered...".

I am realizing how much I do need their gifts. I am humbled beyond words in their honoring me. I have been thinking even further about my own comfort and realizing how much more I still have that I will have to give before I have "emptied" myself as Jesus did.

This hospitality and kindness isn't even so much a Christian custom either, as it is just the way they are. In fact, everywhere I go people treat me with great kindness simply because it is good. almost everyone I have spent any time with are like those one or two people in Sunday school, or social club, or work, or where ever that everyone knows and who is the most out going and good at making new comers feel welcome.

This may be really long and not written well at all, but it has helped me to reflect on all that has been going on and I pray that anyone who takes the time to read it will be as blessed as I have been with what I am learning... Those of you who have skipped through don't get the prayers or the blessing; there's a lesson for you to learn. lol...

the above line...

2007-06-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

Since I created this blog and the name of it, "IN TRANS[IT]LATION", I have gone throughout and ended everyday with the undeveloped concept that produced that title which goes something like this:

That everything is a translation of and in translation by the things around it and, in the same fashion, are always in transit within it's translators and in its translation of other things. To explain how I see this to apply to humans I will speak in reference to myself. I am something of a compilation, unique in original design perhaps, to begin an ever constant translating process. I am constantly translating, refering less to conscious thought but rather my very design or existence. in regards to conscious translating this might also be described as my perception, but again, this doesn't quite satisfactorially grasp my thinking; of every relationship, sound, sight, touch, taste, smell, emotion around me, my very being is a translating process. I am a sort of version of everything around me.
This then brings me to myself as a translation. As I am constantly translating so also I am an ever changing translation, in appearance, word, interests and action. In all these can be seen and are themselves the translated compilation of everything around me. Even now, the words that I write are a translation of all that has shaped me to this point, and in your reading of them you are translating me.
Consequently, As there is often gaps of thought and seemingly inexpressable concepts between different laguages, so also is the case with me. I am an incomplete translation of that around me, there are certainly gaps, but always refining, hopefully toward clearer translation which materializes in my personality, word, deed and emotion.
Naturally I am always In Transit --"naturally" meaning day-to-day physical activity. To elaborate though, this also has to do with me finding an importance in travel and exploring new translations different than my own, that I might improve my own.
Moreover, this idea of being "in transit" comes from my inability to find a rational or otherwise justifiable argument on which to build a case for any given object, territory or accomplishment as my own and thus my right. It seems to me that for everything we make use or pleasure of, there are others that have come before us in some fashion that might at least stake equal, or to be more realistic more claim, and to which the privilege or credit of such is due.
Thus I am simply a constant guest or borrower of resources and time, and therefore accept these with thanks and by grace (for the time that I can). Freely and gladly willing to share to the last, that another might find it a gift likewise when I am finished and gone.
It is only necessary at this point to make a brief mention that I also mean "in transit" in regards to my ever changing mental capacity and processes.
Finally, "In Transit" speaks of the encompassing context that I view this life in, which is a story; more specifically a narrative. I have come to view all of history and existence as a story with an advancing plot and the life that I lead as a small intrical (not sure about this spelling) role within. The constant translating and translation that I am determine how I read the story, both in finding my personal role, and who the narrator is whom I believe is telling it--whom which all of my translations have given voice to the One God of Israel.
That said, I am apt to believe that perhaps the unique design as which I might have began is a translation of the narrator himself.

As this applies to this blog, it represents a sort of front page of the most current translating efforts and translations within me throughout my travels. It takes on its title to remind both myself and the reader that I am just a rough draft, as is everything I write here, of my own efforts to understand and grasp the wiser persons and more magnificant concepts, sights and other experiences that I am the vague compilation of and may my acknowledgement always go as I try also to understand the person that I am with each new translation.

out of the country... a few times over.

2007-06-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

This is my first opportunity to write and it is really long and I am still jet lagged so you may want to skip down, to where there is a line gap and says "Tanzania:"
I've just finished my second full day here in Mwanza Tanzania, but let me back track a little first, to my first out of the country/Europe experience.
I will worn you now that I am likely to romanticize these stories a little, but that is part of the hearing about my experience aye? That it is through my eyes and my words.
I had one day in London so I took the train from the airport to Peddington station--honestly, I didn't know where I was going and it was probably obvious to most but I think I fooled some that I belonged though. I walked out the nearest way I could find and found myself in Westminster Little Venice for the day, which is exactly what it sounds like. I think my favorite part of it though was where a little alley led between apartment buildings to a little square that was made into a green house and organic market of sorts. There were beautiful plants everywhere, a very classy indoor/outdoor organic cafe' and a quaint little wood shed with a grass roof with fresh bread, jams, spices, cheeses, and wines. It was terrific to say the least, and right in the middle of the city. I fell in love with that quaint little piece of town and thought about how great it would have been to live in one of those apartments over looking the garden on one side and town and the little Venice river on the other, then I remembered that this was just a very little piece of London, much less Europe, and I need to keep my whits about me.
Honestly this wasn't my first memorable London experience though, that would have been when the flight attendant offered me wine on the jet and i declined it thinking she didn't realize I wasn't 21... I shouldn't flatter myself. that only happened once though...
my first memorable land experience was losing my ipod on the bus that shuttled us from the jet to the airport. quick huh? I am open to the idea that maybe that was God didn't want me to be distracted as I can be and to experience things in Europe and Tanzania in full thought and able to hear him around me.

Tanzania:
When I arrived in Dar es Salaam, I found that my flight to Mwanza wasn't changed from the original date I was suppose to leave, on the 27th. I arrive at 7am and the soonest flight I could catch was 6pm. A guy at the airport that helps tourist out with planning trips and showing them around also helped me realize my problem and took me into down town Dar to a market. In short it was a good experience to see the city but mostly to have that time with David (which is what he told me his name is, but I think his Tanzanian name is something like Duidu). We talked about family and American business vs. Tanzanian business and I even had a conversation with our Muslim taxi driver through him, apparently about why we don't live 900 years and such anymore like early Old Testament stories. From what I understand, he said it was because everything we eat and drink and breath is so processed now that our bodies aren't as healthy; I think he also connected it with sin at some point, but the translation was hazy. At any rate, I agreed with the general principle, but I wasn't so sure if that was quite why we don't live 900 years anymore. I don't know why though.
Yesterday in Mwanza I was able to begin studying language, Swahili and Sukuma, Swahili more for in Mwanza and Sukuma is more what most of the villages use. I really like the languages, but it has definitely been difficult to keep up, especially without and note book so far. I was was able to play soccer with a bunch of guys here which which was brilliant! they welcomed pretty easily and asked me to come back every night; yeah! they play every night. lots of'em! I'm stoked! I also heard I missed the Africa qualifying match for the world championship or some other between Tanzania and another country which was held in Mwanza (and nothing like that ever comes to Mwanza), so...
A few things off the bat that have been new experiences for me are that there are people everywhere! Everywhere people because people walk everywhere and thus, with all of that foot traffic there are markets and things set of outside everywhere. I don't have anything profound to say about that just yet really; we've almost hit a few in the land cruiser, but I've really enjoyed always having someone to wave at while driving by, especially around the villages, and I am already feeling that I will be very lonely in my car back in America.
Today we went to the village Edonda though, which was surreal and so very real. on the way we stopped by the home of a man named Charles showed us the grave of his 4 month old girl and then hosted a meal of sweet potatoes. Charles has 17 kids I think, by two wives, one of which he took to care for after his brother died. Unfortunately, even though Charles is a leader in the Church by his way of life, it won't officially acknowledge him since he has two wives.
from there we continued to the village where they also insisted on us eating with them a meal of beans and rice with Chi and milk (we actually ate right before we left town). Then we watched and listened to many of the kids sing and dance for us, both before and after A missionary, Calvin gave a lesson. being there to listen and watch those kids, and see how 10s of them chased our car and were so excited about us being there, it was an experience I didn't know what to do with but to smile and express any return thanks and excitement that I knew how.
Sorry it's so long, but I felt the need to catch everyone up, and also just to get it all out of my system. Hopefully they will be shorter from this point... mostly.