Wednesday, August 4, 2010
A Day in the Life
A Day in the Life
Monday, August 2, 2010
Camp Adak, Signing Off
Likes and Dislikes
Seeing a brilliant night sky unpolluted by manmade lights
Riding my bicycle along quaint country trails
Enjoying the hospitality of loving friends and neighbors
All the crazy insect life!
Watching small animals grow into big ones
Learning a new language
The beauty of a rising African sun
Experiencing a vast, green countryside
Riding boda-bodas
Worshiping in fellowship with fervent believers
Living in direct connection to the land
What I don't like:
Cassava
Tribalism
Helplessly watching the incessant spread of disease
The lack of art, education, and intellectual stimuli
Slavery to land, climate, family, ignorance, and suspicion
The bizarre lack of wildlife
What I like about the USA:
FREEDOM! The freedom to move about, the freedom to learn, the freedom to achieve, the freedom to create, the freedom to change!
Modern and accessible health care
Innumerable careers
Written history
Mastery over nature - technology, innovation, agriculture, resource management, machines
A government that offers services and promotes order with little corruption (in comparison to Uganda, that is - hehehe)
What I don't like:
Patriotism
Self-centered culture
Pharisee Christianity
Pollution
Separation from the land
Safe living - life without risks
Digital distractions
The overwhelming lack of brotherly love
Friday, July 30, 2010
From Despair, to Disinterest, to... Hope
Contaminated water. Malaria. Domestic abuse. Post traumatic stress disorder. Theft. Orphans. Widows. Alcohol abuse. Every day, everywhere. Every homestead, every person feels these evils. Yet, I find it astonishing and horrifying that these evils slowly and stealthily thread their way through my consciousness, establishing themselves as normalcy. When one first confronts such suffering, the pain cuts deep - deep to the heart. You cry out against the wrongness, the corruption of that which should be. But as one presses on, further into the corruption, one begins to accept the status quo - no matter how bad it is. When your 37th interviewee complains about having no money to send children to school, you calmly note the problem in a logbook, say that you're sorry, explain why you can't help, and pray for them - a prayer that has been refined about 50 times, become cold and routine through repetition.
The first widow you meet tells of her struggles, and you are brought to tears... the 20th widow's story is a few points of data in a notebook.
It becomes easier to say 'no.'
But it shouldn't. It should never be easy to see the brokenness of the world and shrug your shoulders. We should never be numb to evil. The pain should be there - every single time. The only thing worse than despair is the unfeeling of indifference.
Wolterstorff writes, "Suffering is the shout of 'No' by one's whole existence to that over which one suffers... And sometimes, when the cry is intense, there emerges a radiance which elsewhere seldom appears: a glow of courage of love, of insight of selflessness, of faith. In that radiance we see best what humanity was meant to be."
How does one walk the line - the line between despair and acceptance? For the Christian, that line is the only option - Hope. Hope lies between despair and disinterest. Or, rather, Hope lies beyond despair and disinterest. On the Via Dolorosa.