Living in Truth

Structure-less Thought-Reflections from India

2011-09-14T22:35:00.000+05:30

India. Autorickshaws and incense from temples and ikons of Ganesh. Hot, sweet, creamy coffee in tiny paper cups and the acrid, foul scent of ditches and alleyways. Exhaust from huge, multi-colored busses and the scent of delicious curries wafting through the hallways every time we leave our apartment.

India, smiling, welcoming, open and yet profoundly mysterious, profoundly hidden, strange and alien. Dark, dark temples beneath their massive, mountainous roofs and strange, strange idols. And even these mysteries are merely indications, pointers towards a deeper mystery: Brahman, Brahman, Brahman, beyond karma and concept and yet ever-present in every face, every scent, every flash of light. Brahman, Brahman, Brahman, the eternal omnipotent One who spoke all things into being and who upholds the universe by the Word of His power. Brahman, Brahman, Brahman, eternal and glorious, Lord of the Worlds, rab al-alimiin, ar-rahman ar-rahim, malliki youm id-din. Brahman, Brahman, Brahman, made known in the face of Jesus Christ. No man has ever seen Brahman. The Son, the only Son of Brahman, who is in the bosom of Brahman, He has made Him known. To know the Son is to know Brahman, to know moksha.

Namaste, India. Namaste. I recognize the God in you, I recognize God’s image and His real presence, I recognize the eyes of Jesus in your dark eyes. Teach me to love Him better through loving you. Teach me to lead others to him through teaching them to love you.

A Response to Offensive Forwards

2011-03-17T07:17:00.000+05:30

Several days ago I received a forwarded e-mail about Muslims that I found extremely offensive and sad. To many of you who roughly fit into my age and religious demographic I suspect the experience is fairly common. The e-mail came from an older man who I deeply love and respect. We have radically different opinions on any number of issues, but I always have and always will look up to him as a mentor, and someone who has gone to great trouble to invest his time, his energy, and his love in making me the man I am today. Let's be unequivocal about that. This post isn't about the person who sent it to me.

The forward was titled "Shocking Pictures!!" and opened opened with the line:

These photos remind us what Islam is about. Not the peace loving "religion" the liberals discuss. Kill non believers and take over the world!

(The grammar of that one alone should give you pause)

As I scrolled down I saw image after image of people holding signs such as "Freedom go to hell", "Europe is the Cancer - Islam is the Answer" and "Europe You Will Pay - Your 9/11 is on its way!" The forward closed with the following words:

Why would ANYONE think that we should be at war with such nice, peaceful Muslims?!

You need to forward this one to everyone! These pictures tell it all!
Muslims have stated that England will be the first country they take over!

THESE PICTURES ARE NOT SHOWN ON AMERICAN TV OR IN AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS, but were forwarded by a Canadian friend who thought all Americans ought to know!

As I said, these kinds of forwards are probably pretty familiar to many of you. Despite their claims to be bringing out secret or suppressed information they are pretty common amongst certain groups of people and get widely disseminated to their friends and relatives. So, to those of you like me who find these e-mails disturbing or offensive, but who want to find a way of responding in love, I offer the following response. I hope many of you find it helpful, and to those of you who might be inclined to send along such forwards, I hope it may give you some pause. I've removed the name of the person who sent it to me and specific references to him.

Dear Friend,

This isn't the initial e-mail I intended to send in reply to the forward that you sent me. A quick google search immediately gave me hundreds of images of "Christian" protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas (The ones who protest at military funerals and events associated with the “homosexual agenda”) lofting signs with slogans such as "God Hates America", "Thank God for 9/11", "Thank God for Dead Soldiers", "God is America's Terror", and "Planes Crash God Laughs". A handful of those images: that was the e-mail I was going to send in response - to illustrate a point. But in the end I decided such a callous and sickening perversion of the gospel didn't deserve any more publicity.

As a person who I deeply respect and admire, whose wisdom, generosity, and many more qualities then I could name I look up to I'm shocked and saddened that you have used your position of influence to publicize an e-mail which is so offensive, dishonest, and – well frankly the word that first came to my mind was juvenile. This set of images is given with no larger context, no background other than a brief nondescript statement of the location, no broader discussion of Islam or Muslims, of the position of Muslims in Europe or indeed anything other than a self-satisfied smug sarcastic jibe at those who would ever describe Muslims as "peaceful" and a claim that "these pictures tell it all." Nothing could be farther from the truth than this second statement, and my respect for your wisdom assures me that you agree with me. In themselves these pictures tell nothing other than a bare stating of the events at which they took place. Just as flashing a slideshow of “Christian” protesters wielding signs like those I mentioned says nothing about what true Christianity is and what the people down the road in the local church think, so these pictures in and of themselves say nothing about Islam or the Muslims who you or I might interact with. They are only a shock tactic designed to prey on our baser impulses.

I’m not trying to make an argument about Islam. This e-mail forward made no argument to respond to; no concrete thought that could be interacted with. All it did was seek to bludgeon the minds of those who saw it through fear. Don’t misunderstand me, I see the radicalization of some Muslims and the antagonism that many of them bear towards Western culture as a serious issue. The possible connections between this radicalization and the Qur’an are another serious issue. Confronting terrorism and violence generally is yet another serious issue. These are all deeply important and deeply concerning problems, but it is their very importance that should push us to approach and discuss them with respect, intelligence, and maturity. We should examine these issues carefully and form arguments and opinions based on knowledge, not simply assume something is true because we can scrape up an image which seems to support it.

Above all we should always remember that as Christians our first goal is the glory of God and the display of the gospel. What does it say to those on your e-mail list when they receive something like this from a source they trust and respect? What messages does it send to them about how they should interact with and treat their Muslim neighbors? Does it send the message that they should love Muslims, that they should share the gospel with them, that around Muslims they should be an example of Christ-like conduct? Or does it instead send a message that we should look at Muslims as a danger, a threat, to be feared and avoided rather than to be loved?

Do these pictures and the sentences with them sadden the viewer at the violence that has taken hold of the men and women’s hearts depicted and thus bring us to repentance of how we ourselves have harbored hatred and violence, causing us to pray the tax collector’s prayer of “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner?” Or does it rather promote the attitude of the self-righteous Pharisee standing in the temple (or church) and saying “Thank you Father that I am not like other men. Thank you Father that I am not like Muslims?”

You and I likely have very different opinions about the relationship between Islam and violence. Both of those opinions may be well-informed and intelligent. Either of us may be wrong. Both of us are likely wrong in some respects. The substance of that discussion would take another correspondence entirely. But I hope that no matter our differences of opinion we can agree that the importance of the issue, the high emotions involved, and most of all Jesus’ commands to love our neighbors as ourselves and do unto others as we would have them do unto us will make you pause when thinking about sending such forwards, particularly to those who look up to you and respect your opinion as I do. Would you want an Atheist (or a Muslim, for that matter) forwarding e-mail slideshows of “God Hates America”, “Planes Crash God Laughs” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” as proof of the brutality and inhumanity of Christians? My suspicion is that the very thought is revolting to you. Then let us treat others how we would wish to be treated.

Love,

Jonathan

18 Days that have Changed the World

2011-02-13T01:55:00.000+05:30

Over the past three weeks the people of Egypt have done more than overthrow a tyrant, more than shatter decades of oppression through the sheer power of their collective will – they have changed the world. They have changed the world the way that Gandhi changed the world, the way that Martin Luther King Jr. changed the world: through expanding our vision of what is truly possible.

It would be a mistake to take the past 18 days in Egypt as a simple object lesson of any kind. There was peaceful protest, but also violence; the protest have overthrown a dictatorship, but replaced it with a (ostensibly temporary) military junta. This is not a movie it’s real life, and the messages of real life are always more complex than simple sound bites or clever maxims.

Having said that though, I would like to point out a few simple parallels from which one might draw some lessons. In 2002-2003 George W. Bush decided that he wanted to spread democracy in the Middle East. There was some talk of Weapons of Mass Destruction but let’s not be naïve. If the war was about anything more noble than controlling the world’s oil supply it was about “spreading democracy and American values.” His solution was to use the full might of the American military to overthrow one of the region’s most brutal dictators. To date the war in Iraq has gone on for eight years and inflicted a horrible cost in human lives: over 4,000 Americans and more than 100,000 Iraqis. And still the killing continues, back and forth, reprisal for reprisal, and in many ways it is only sheer hope which gives us any vision that thing will ever be what they were intended to be.

In 18 days, the people of Egypt have done what America, with all its blood and treasure, could never do. The past 18 days have not been without their casualties: 300 Egyptian families have lost fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and countless more have emerged with scars that will last their entire lives. But think of what they have accomplished in those 18 days! And they have done it not through violent revolution, not through civil war, but through simple direct action, by making their will known and refusing to settle for anything less than victory.

Violent revolution has been tried in Egypt. From 1981 when a team of assassins murdered President Anwar Sadat through the 1990s when various radical groups attempted to undermine the Egyptian government through attacks on tourists and assassination attempts against Mubarak himself – all to no avail. The government met their violence with violence, and in the end all that remained of their grand revolution was the body count.

Theologian Walter Wink speaks of the “myth of redemptive violence” which defines much of our thinking about regimes like Egypt’s prior to the past 18 days. The central idea of the myth is that violence is the necessary response to injustice and oppression. Violence in and of itself may be reprehensible, but it is necessary in order to achieve redemptive ends, to bring about peace, justice, and freedom. The myth is summarized best perhaps in old latin phrase “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” or “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.” The people who commit acts of injustice are violent, and the only response is to meet their violence in kind. This is not bloodthirstiness but simply a “realistic” view of the way the world works. It’s why we build tanks and nuclear weapons, and it is what is fed to us from podiums and pulpits when our leaders decide to go to war.

As I watched the events unfolding in Egypt I thought of the myth of redemptive violence, and the thousands of brave young Egyptians who had bought into it over the past thirty years. That they were brave no one can doubt – no matter how reprehensible their actions. But they were deceived by the myth of redemptive violence, deceived into thinking that if only the right person could be killed, then all would be well. But the dirty little secret of violence is that it is never a zero-sum game; a simple matter of killing the evildoer and going on with your life. As many wise people have said violence breeds violence, in those whom we call evil and in ourselves. And what is more the powers of this world – the powers of injustice and oppression who thrive on violence – they know this game. They know how to respond to attacks from violence because to them it is second nature. But against the cry of “Salimiyya! Salimiyya!” – “Peaceful! Peaceful!” as the people of Egypt chanted over the past three weeks, they are defenseless. They are trapped within the bounds of their own small minds, trapped into thinking that a lack of violence signifies a lack of willpower, that an unwillingness to kill only indicates weakness. And so when met by an unshakeable will that will not play their game of kill or be killed they cannot understand or overcome it.

And so, faced by a strength they cannot match, dictators, oppressors and occupiers fall: in Tunisia, in Egypt, and maybe more in the weeks and months to come. Against all the odds, against all the powers of the world who stand or fall on the myth of redemptive violence, the myth of “stability”, the myth of peace through war the people stand and show their strength: the strength not to kill but to stand in the face of killing and refuse to be intimidated.

I have friends who have spent the past three weeks in Tahrir Square and I have never been prouder to know them, never been prouder of being the friend of a people who have shattered once again our old ways of thinking and given us a sense of what is truly possible. Shukran, ya Masr – thank you, Egypt – for doing what few people in the world have had the strength to do, and in so doing for opening the eyes of the world to where strength and power truly lie: not in the machine gun, the riot squad, or the secret police, but with people who peacefully refuse to be bought our satisfied until they are given justice.

2010-02-12T23:57:00.001+05:30

We are all receiving Charity. There is something in each of us that cannot be naturally loved. It is no one's fault if they do not so love it ... You might as well ask people to like the taste of rotten bread or the sound of a mechanical drill. We can be forgiven, and pitied, and loved in spite of it, with Charity; no other way. All who have good parents, wives, husbands, or children, may be sure that at some times -- and perhaps at all times in respect of some one particular trait or habit -- they are receiving Charity, are loved not because they are lovable but because Love Himself [Christ] is in those who love them.

- C.S. Lewis, from his book, The Four Loves

2010-02-10T06:29:00.000+05:30

I know I have given Derek Webb shout-outs before, but I just happened to listen to his 2004 album "I See Things Upside Down" and fell in love with his music all over again. Lyrically challenging and contemplative, musically talented and elaborate. Listen to Derek Webb. That is all.

The End of a Love Affair

2010-02-06T05:30:00.001+05:30

(If you read this, please read all the way to the end. It's important)

I didn't think it would ever come to this.

I thought that I knew what it took to make a committed relationship work. I was smarter than those others in my age bracket who naively thought that the sudden stir of emotion that swept through them, that "love at first sight" was anything more than a hormonal surge conditioned by millions of years of evolutionary history.

I knew better.

I knew that meaningful relationships take hard work, dedication, and a willingness to let one's feelings go for the sake of the other. They take self-sacrifice. Because only in the grit of self-sacrifice does one grow to truly value something.

These were my values, the guiding lights with which - some two years ago - I approached a new commitment. I approached it cautiously, with both eyes open, knowing that, despite the doubts and warnings of my friends, this was something which would be worth the sacrifice.

But in the past three days I've come to what I think may be one of the most important conclusions of my life.

Even I can't take some things. And as much as my beloved deserved to be cared for, I deserve to be cared for too. And there has always been someone who was waiting for me, promising that she could care for me like I had never been cared for, that the hard work and sacrifice that I was pushing myself through was nothing but a masochistic attachment to a relationship which had been manipulative from the beginning.

And so it's over. I've made what was probably the hardest decision of my life and ended it once and for all.

I have thrown away my Zune...

...and downloaded iTunes.

Culture of Disrespect

2010-01-27T20:59:00.000+05:30

I suppose it's sort of been Americans' reputation for time out of mind to be vulgar and disrespectful (at least in Europe) but our political culture certainly hasn't been helping. I was browsing the internet this morning to see where I could find a place to watch the State of the Union address tonight and was really almost shocked by the bitter - and really incredibly immature - vitriol that gets spewed out about our President. Chock it up to racism if you like, and for some people I'm sure there are things going on on that level but I'm more inclined to attribute it to our lack of a "grown-up political culture" - an unwillingness on a popular level to engage issues maturely and interact respectfully with those with whom you disagree.

This isn't just a right-wing issue - I think you definitely saw much the same kinds of immaturity and disrespect from the left during President Bush's time.

I am guilty as much as anyone of disrespecting those in American political life with whom I disagree but I want to make a personal commitment to try and work against that. As Dr. Dave in Egypt used to say: "Empathy and mutual respect do not equal agreement." Holding strong convictions is not mutually exclusive with showing care and respect for those with whom you disagree.

2010-01-26T22:36:00.000+05:30

Life in Amreeka is full of empty spaces.

Jumpstart

2010-01-15T22:46:00.001+05:30

So after a stretch early last year where I was rather proud of my blogging - 6-10 posts a month, my idea of enough to get the critical thinking benefit of regularly structuring my thoughts and experiences without being internet-obsessed or getting out of touch with day-to-day life - I've fallen out of practice. But, now, in a new place (Denver) with a new life pattern and new experiments on the horizon I've decided to devote myself to a new effort on this blog. The 6 of you who follow on blogger and the 19 who have me in your google reader rolls should get excited ;).

I'm also considering whether to focus my blog-writing in a more particular direction. One of the lessons I've learned about myself over the past couple of years (particularly in my efforts late at my time at Gordon to organize a student group on campus) is that I have a tendency to want to include EVERYTHING in every effort that I do. In and of itself I don't think that's a problem, but it becomes an issue when what I want to do becomes so indistinct that nobody really has a clear idea of what I'm getting at.

I like what Robert Pirsig calls the high country - the big questions; the indistinct, uncertain answers, where only a few trails have been blazed. But occasionally I have to remind myself that while excursions into the high country are good for the soul it's in the low country that life is actually lived.

Attempt at Poetry...

2009-12-16T22:12:00.000+05:30

...after a long hiatus for which there is no particular reason. I think I just stopped writing for a couple of weeks, and of course after that the pause takes on an inertia of its own and one really has to be motivated to write something. There's a lot to say. I leave Cairo tomorrow and my mind is preoccupied with a number of things in relation to that.

But, for now, since there are half-packed bags sitting all around my apartment calling me, I'll simply share something that I found while pulling all my things out. I scribbled it pretty quickly on a piece of blank paper a while back and it hit me with new resonance when I read it again now several months later. Take it for what it's worth.

The Opaque Soul Prays for Transparency

Language games withstanding

I discover deep within the grand

And sovereign one - the love that all by nature must adore

Obscured

As in a mirror, darkly -

A guide in occultation and Eclipse

While I, inspired

By this faintest light

In agonistic struggle try

In all I am to give myself

A faint translucent element.

Transparency I cannot attain

But let me train my ego

To scrape at all that

Makes my soul opaque

That, though confused and indistinct

Your truth may gleam

And I may be the smallest conduit

Of love.

Peace

2009-10-11T00:06:00.000+05:30

To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.

- Thomas Merton

Death, Success, and Peace (Part 1)

2009-10-07T16:38:00.000+05:30

We begin every morning at MESP with a devotion – typically organized by a student, though occasionally Dena or Heather or I will take the lead on it. These take on many different forms: meditations on particular scriptures, times of song, discussions of important spiritual issues, etc…

On Thursday we had a particularly meaningful devotion that sparked a lot of discussion throughout the day and whose concepts are still in my mind. It was particularly relevant to my own thought process over the past few weeks as I’ve started to think about job-searching for the time immediately after I get back into the States in December and everything that comes after that. The devotion centered around a discussion of three basic, related questions:

“What do you want to do before you die?”

“How do you define success?”

“Do you have peace?”

I said little during the discussion itself, but the period provided an opportunity for some serious reflection on the lessons I believe God has been teaching me over the past two or three years. These have come in a variety of ways – through scriptures that have stood out to me, experiences which have powerfully defined my paradigm, and books which have opened my eyes to a new perspective on these primarily. After the devotion itself I had a long discussion of the questions with a handful of the MESP students during and after lunch.

On the first question: we of the West, spoiled by our success, have often in our popular expressions of religion and culture de-centered the reality of death and the fleeting nature of life. Thus, questions related to the popular formula: “What if you were to die tonight?” (A widespread tactic for scaring people into salvation that was ingrained into me at Christian leadership camps in high school) have a particular counter-cultural power. They wake us from the illusion of immortality with which our economic and scientific success have inculcated us.

For the religious (more specifically for those in the evangelical subculture, as that is the one I’m most familiar with, though perhaps the pattern is more broadly applied across American Christians), bringing up death’s immediacy is typically used as a powerful tool for convicting the believer, not necessarily of one’s moral failings but more of one’s complacency when it comes to the religious mandates of the faith: prayer, study of scripture, and, above all, evangelism. I can think of no better example than the first chapter of the book Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper, in which Piper tells the story of a man who accepts Christ into his life at a very old age. The man rejoices in his newfound salvation but immediately begins weeping as he thinks back over his life and cries: “I’ve wasted it! I’ve wasted it!” How to avoid the man’s fate then becomes the theme of Piper’s book. The immediacy of death is an opportunity for guilt.

For the more secular in American society, a reminder of death’s immediacy is a call to throw off all conceivable bounds of rationality and restraint and “live like you were dying.” While the specifics of this mode of life are rather vague one common theme seems to be trying out all of the most life-threatening activities imaginable, most commonly skydiving. For more details see the film “The Bucket List” starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson or just listen to Tim McGraw’s song “Skydiving” about ten to fifteen times a day (As those of us without CD players in our cars were forced to do for months at the height of the song’s popularity a few years ago).

The answers which my students gave to the first of the three questions largely seemed to fall in either the former or the latter category. Some expressed a desire to share the love of Jesus with Osama Bin Laden, while others spoke of hang-gliding and travel to exotic places. I can’t fault their idealism – it’s quite inspiring – or their desire to live adventurously. But, as one of the students pointed out, we all seemed to be approaching the question from a very Western, very American perspective that lacked somewhat in maturity. I certainly don’t claim to put my own perspective in a different, greater, “more mature” category than theirs. If anything, I was only able to articulate my own thoughts on the subject after listening to and attempting to de-construct the things my students said. And it was in the course of discussion afterwards that I truly managed to make my thoughts coherent. But the discussion did make me think of many of these insights that have come to me through my reading and experiences.

So, my own thoughts on the first question: First, I’m reminded of a story attributed to Martin Luther. Someone asked Luther what he would do the next day were he to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that at the end of the day he would die. Luther, without any hesitation said: “I would plant a tree.” The questioner was mystified at this response and asked the reformer why. Luther responded: “That’s what I had planned to do tomorrow. Whether I die at the end of the day makes no difference.” While I have some serious issues with Luther on a variety of other issues, I think he makes an excellent point here about a life well-lived.

The thing to remember when thinking about death is that far from being a calendar event or the conclusion of a particular stage of life it is an ever-present reality. You and I may die at any moment, through causes dramatic and noble or mundane and banal. When I finish writing I will go down from my flat and walk to the Cairo metro, a trip which will involve crossing several of Cairo’s busy streets, at any of which I may be hit by a car or microbus and instantly killed. And there is nothing more natural than this. We fear death and yet it is perhaps the most essential part of our nature. When we are born nothing is certain except one thing: one day we will die. The western world, with its preoccupation on eking out every possible instant of physical life, is in radical disconnect from the way which humanity has lived for all of its prior history and in which much of the world still lives today.

I think death must be re-centered in the west, so that questions of “what will you do before you die?” don’t strike us with such power and cause us to re-think the direction of our lives. And attendant on that is a radical re-thinking of our mode of life. Americans have too often bought into the fiction that they are owed seventy to eighty years on this earth and anything less is unnatural. And there is a certain rhythm of life which is based on this assumption. Thus when the assumption is swept aside by an illness or an accident our whole mode of living topples to the ground and we fly into religious guilt or hedonistic “living like you were dying”. This is what is unnatural.

So: “what do you want to do before you die?”

Nothing.

And everything.

Nothing because I denounce as false, as based upon this unrealistic Western view of life a checklist of things, religious or hedonistic, which must be ticked off in anticipation of my death. Everything because I seek at every moment to truly live out the joy and beauty of my divine calling.

A Myth

2009-09-22T17:57:00.000+05:30

The command was “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

But this was too hard, and so we humans reasoned our way to a loophole: “…unless you will be killed.” Then “will" became “perhaps you may” and grew to include any and all offenses imaginable. And ever so slowly we widened the loophole until the command itself became unrecognizable, a brief declaration at the head of an ever-lengthening list of possible exceptions. For we lacked faith.

And human beings fashioned an idol in their own image. It was an idol of many names. They called it the nation, and sometimes the state, and sometimes both. Sometimes, confirming its divinity, it even took the name of God himself. And this idol and its many cults of worship were seared into the minds of all mankind. And for this idol we once again re-fashioned the great command, adding to our long list of exceptions and interpretations: “Thou shalt not kill…unless the nation-state asks it of you.” For God was distant and his commands austere and we humans yearned for idols. God’s command was simple and naïve and we wished for some divine intermediary to comfort our itching ears with talk of tribes and borders and security. We would bring the idol offerings to sate its hunger, and the idol would bless our massacres.

Then in the fullness of time God sent his Son, the perfect divine interpreter, the image of the invisible God, the perfect Word of God who was with God and was God. And as we gathered at his feet the Son ascended the mountaintop and in a loud voice said: “You have heard that it was said to those of old ‘You shall not kill.’ But I say to you…”

There is a pause. At last! The words left out or forgotten by the distant God on the law-giving mount of old will finally be added! At last the loophole will be canonized and the nation-state given its rightful beatification. And who better to anoint High Priest of this cult than this grand divine interpreter! Men will bow to such a man.

Yet when he speaks there is a strange dissonance in his words. The Son of God speaks not of the clarifying insights of the centuries, the long list of exceptions and qualifications with which we have ameliorated God’s first word. Nor does he even mention the glorious idol of the nation-state and its divine authority.

He says: “When you are angry, you have already murdered within your heart.”

And thus with one stroke the grand interpreter puts to an end the chippings of the ages at the imposing divine imperative and instead places the sovereignty of God’s command over the deepest ground of murder: the human heart.

His words cut to the quick and silently, with growing frowns, we are forced to acknowledge that all of our many exceptions to God’s command were indeed as he has said: nothing more than the many incarnations of our deep anger: We were angry in our hearts, and so we fashioned the self-protecting loophole. We were angry in our hearts and so we built a collective idol that would bless and sanctify our anger. We were angry in our hearts, and so we killed. And so, as his words continue - “love your enemies…turn the cheek…forgive as you have been forgiven” - a horrible thought arises: what if God’s command was true just as he gave it, devoid of all our clarifying insights and exceptions?

Yet this answer is anathema to the ears of humankind. For we have grown accustomed to our massacres, our wars, our “self-defense.” They have become as dear to us as our own lives, and we love them because we love ourselves. They give us meaning and purpose in a world where the purposes of God are hard to understand and truth seems impractical and idealistic.

And so, by the command of the glittering idol of the nation-state, for the sake of peace and “national security” we killed the Son of God. And humanity could breathe easily once again. For with him dead we may canonize, we may interpret, we may with scholarship and principle and theory free ourselves from the sovereignty of the command and allow the anger in our hearts its freedom and full expression and kill without his convicting voice sounding the command of God.

Love is the Most Practical Thing in the World

2009-09-16T02:54:00.001+05:30

What is practical? Think it out. The way we are living now, the way we are teaching, the way our governments are being run with their corruption and incessant wars - do you call that practical? Is ambition practical, is greed practical? Ambition breeds competition and therefore destroys people. A society based on greed and acquisition has always within it the spectre of war, conflict, suffering; and is that practical? Obviously it is not...

Love is the most practical thing in the world. To love, to be kind, not to be greedy, not to be ambitious, not to be influenced by people but to think for yourself - these are all very practical things and they will bring about a practical, happy society. But the teacher who is not dedicated, who does not love, who may have a few letters after his name but is merely a purveyor of information which he has picked up in books - he will tell you that all this is not practical, because he has not really thought about it. To love it to be practical - far more so than the absurd practicality of this so-called education which produces citizens who are utterly incapable of standing alone and thinking out any problem for themselves.

The difficulty with most grown-up people is that they have not solved the problem of their own living, and yet they say to you, "I will tell you what is practical and what is not."

- J. Krishnamurti

New Semester

2009-09-06T02:48:00.000+05:30

Our fall semester students arrived a little over a week ago, and since then it's been one thing after another (Most days during Orientation week Dena and I get into the villa around 8 AM and leave around 10:30 PM). And though I do love my job, this weekend has been a good break from all of that - church, ultimate frisbee, and lots of good time spent with my neglected Egyptian friends.

Though I do get tired from the long hours, of course - and my job, while there are parts of it that I really love, also involves a lot of mindless work (printing, photocopying, stapling, etc...) I have just been struck over and over again throughout the past week and a half by how grateful I am for the opportunity to live and work here that MESP has given me. And hearing a new group of students once again being told the ethos and purpose of their time here just reinforced for me how wonderful it is to be working for an organization whose mission I support and whose ideas I'm fully behind. MESP isn't flawless - and being an employee instead of a student has certainly disabused me of some of the idealistic notions I had about it - but it is an excellent program, an excellent organization, and really does seek to change the lives of its students in the best possible way. I'm privileged to be a part of it.

2009-08-28T04:08:00.001+05:30

I think if we spent less time trying to be good and great and noble and more time just trying to be decent the world would be a much better place. And if everyone in the world taught their children to be decent instead of be good there would be peace tomorrow.

New Podcast

2009-08-13T14:39:00.000+05:30

Check out "The Moth" for a great podcast that I've become addicted to over the past week or so. The Moth is a show in New York and San Francisco that started out as a group of people gathering in a guy's living room to tell each other stories. Since that time they've grown to two mainstage performances, and they also tour around. Anyway, the show consists of of people telling unique 10-15 minute stories. Most of them are really funny, and many are incredibly moving.

A day in the life...

2009-08-11T20:35:00.000+05:30

6:30 AM: Alarm begins sounding
6:32 AM: Alarm is turned off
7:00 AM: Get out of bed
7:02 AM: A critical decision made in the negative (i.e. NO shower before Arabic class. Ahmed Zaki can survive seeing my hair all greasy and messy)
7:10 AM: Breakfast - Half a melon, toast, peanuts/raisins, and Indian Masala Chai
7:35-7:55AM: Walk from apartment to The Fajr Arabic Language Center in the Dokki neighborhood through the huge fruit and vegetable market along Soliman Gohar street.
8:00-11:00 AM: Arabic class with Ahmed Zaki, my heavily-bearded instructor who every day without fail takes a twenty-minute break to walk down the street to the mosque and pray. He speaks no English, so if I don't understand something and he can't explain it in Arabic we've worked out a complex system of charades and motions which, almost without fail, in the end lead to me understanding.
11:00-11:20 AM: Walk back to my apartment.
11:20-11:45 AM: Shower, make myself presentable, drink my second cup of tea, walk to the villa
11:45 AM -6:30 PM: Work at the villa - reading and responding to e-mails, reading articles for the course readers, organizing things and doing other semester prep (And lets be honest, doing a lot of things like writing this blog entry and reading NYTimes op-eds) also, in the course of this time drink my third, fourth, and possibly fifth cup of tea. Somewhere in there eat lunch.
6:30 PM: Walk home, get a snack and my sixth cup of tea. Play guitar or read for a little while (Either "Think on These Things" by Jiddu Krishnamurti or The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I know, I know, go ahead and say it, I'm a bleeding heart liberal. They're both great books.)
8:00 PM: Prepare and eat dinner (Fuul, something with pasta, or chicken on occasion)
9:00 PM: Arabic study and review
10:00 PM: Social life - either meeting friends at cafe or having someone over to my flat
12:00 AM: Talk to Kandyce on gmail chat before bed
12:30-1:00 AM: Bedtime

Lessons in Simplicity

2009-08-04T20:41:00.000+05:30

Just got back yesterday from a wonderful week in Siwa with my good friend Ismail - a great conclusion to my month of vacation/travel this past July.

While the natural beauty of Siwa is undeniable I think the thing that impressed me about the place over and over again wasn't the barren beauty of the great sand sea, or the glorious sunsets over the oasis, or the wonderfully cool water of the springs. What stuck with me was the lifestyle of the people who live there - something that I've missed on my prior visits there. This time I was living with a family, and thus, even as an outsider, got a look into Siwan society.

I think in many ways, the Siwans have discovered the secret of living well while living simply. The oasis and its abundant natural water resources have made it a major agricultural center, and for time out of mind the Siwans have lived off the land - producing the best dates and olives in all of Egypt within five miles of the Great Sand Sea. They work hard - farming dates, olives, and all the other fruits and vegetables of the oasis is certainly no easy task. But the pride and satisfaction in the agricultural lifestyle is clearly evident in how they speak of their "gardens."

Their houses are simple - basic mud brick or white stone structures (Both materials produced entirely locally). Furniture and other possessions are minimal, with families sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and sitting rooms arranged with a circle of cushions around the room's perimeter. The floor of the guest room where I stayed was made of heavy carpets put down over the sand. Every meal I ate was home-cooked, with no packaged or imported products and all, or nearly all, the products coming from local fields and orchards. The fare is basic: home-made pita bread with cheese and jam for breakfast; seasonal fruits, rice and molokhea, a savory red sauce called "ara" and sometimes chicken or beef for lunch and dinner - but delicious. I always approached mealtimes eager.

While some might view these simplicities as impositions, I found a relish in the rhythm and clarity of life that they brought out. My first day in Siwa a number of my friend Ismail's relatives were visiting and so, after a delicious lunch, we all leaned back in our cushions and the uncles began a series of vigorous discussions (All in Siwan - a language derived from Berber with some borrowed Arabic words) while one of Ismail' younger brothers brought in a small propane stove, teapot, and container of tea leaves and the oldest familymember present meticulously brewed a pot of tea. Our entire afternoon was spent in similar fashion - some of the uncles napped, some talked. There was a pot of tea, then Sprite, then a second pot of tea, mango juice, a third pot of tea...

I had many long discussions with my friend Ismail about life in Siwa and I was impressed by the deep content that he showed in our conversations - a content visible in the faces of his family too. The life is hard, but perhaps it is the difficulty itself, the reliance and sense of connection to the land that comes from a life based around harvest, that gives it its sweetness. Perhaps too the joy is in being so close to such intense beauty - lakes and springs and bright green palm orchards side by side with sand dunes and barren rocky mountains. My first night in Siwa Ismail, a few of his friends, and I drove out to along a causeway to an island in the middle of the Oasis and laid out a mat to lie on and watch the stars. The sky was brilliantly beautiful, so clear in this place far distant from the glare and haze that I've become accustomed to in Cairo (As Ismail said: "You can barely see the sun in Cairo, how will you see the stars!").

I think there's something in the Ruskin's third principle (As explained by Gandhi in his autobiography): "A life of labor, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living." A life of clear and honest work, connected with the land, where one's livelihood is connected to one's basic physicality can be a source of so much more joy than the supposed freedom of choice that modern industrialized society provides for us.

Modernity has given us many precious gifts, but attendant with and even inherent within these gifts has been an increasing disconnect with the natural harmonies and rhythms of physical existence which the deepest parts of our souls long for. We have constructed societies in which we may almost forget that we are physical beings, that we are part of a physical reality, part of an ecosystem, of a larger planetary life. And while the forgetting is easy, its consequences create an abiding restless discontent and longing for something purer, realer.

Scattered thoughts only...but things which are continuing to go through my mind. I welcome other people's thoughts.

Shameless Self-Promotion

2009-08-04T19:43:00.000+05:30

Check out this opinion-piece that I wrote on the commercialization of religion that got published and even specially featured in the Art and Culture section of the website IslamOnline! It's the article entitled "Religion - On Sale Today!" in the blue box in the middle of the site. Not gonna lie, it's a pretty big thrill - not to mention incredibly intimidating - to see my writing put side-by-side with commentary by people like Dr. John Esposito (One of the foremost experts on the Middle East today! What?). The Art and Culture editor, who I've met a couple of times through MESP, has asked me to keep contributing, and I'm certainly looking forward to it. Feel free to comment either on IslamOnline or on here if you have any thoughts.

Farewell

2009-07-29T17:11:00.000+05:30

I'm no good at goodbye...

I've spent a wonderful month traveling across the many places my heart loves with the woman my heart loves - all in all a great combination. I've had three weeks in India loving on a couple groups of beautiful kids (And, you know, getting engaged and all that) followed by a week and a half in Egypt and Israel/Palestine celebrating my engagement with friends in Cairo and showing my beautiful fiancee around the Old City of Jerusalem. It's been a time that I know I'll never forget.

Change/departure/separation is a natural part of existence, but some goodbyes just feel deeply wrong. How can I say goodbye to you when you are such a part of who I am?

But for now Kandyce and I have returned to the standbys of our all-too-lengthy long-distance relationship: gmail, skype, and letter-writing - poor substitutes, but comforting nonetheless. I'm deeply grateful for the many ways we still have of keeping connected.

And I'm also re-connecting with my life here in Egypt after a month spent basically disconnected. I'm leaving tonight to spend a week at the Siwa Oasis swimming in the cold springs and going out into the desert with my good friend Ismail. When I get back I start in-depth preparation for next semester, as well as an intense course of Arabic study for three weeks. All of that will go until the day before the students arrive (August 26th), after which, of course, I'll have a new semester keeping me more than occupied until December, when - though I still can't quite believe it - I'll be leaving Egypt.

For now, though, I need to go dig out swim trunks, sunglasses, and sunscreen. Siwa awaits.

What Matters More

2009-07-16T21:05:00.000+05:30

You say you always treat people the way you'd like to be
I guess you love being hated for your sexuality
You love when people put words in your mouth
'bout what you believe, make you sound like a freak
'Cause if you really believe what you say you believe
You wouldn't be so damn reckless with the words you speak
Wouldn't silently conceal when the liars speak
Denyin' all the dyin' of the remedy

Tell me, brother, what matters more to you?
Tell me, sister, what matters more to you?

If I can tell what's in your heart by what comes out of your mouth
Then it sure looks to me like being straight is all it's about
It looks like being hated for all the wrong things
Like chasin' the wind while the pendulum swings
'Cause we can talk and debate until we're blue in the face
About the language and tradition that he's comin' to save
Meanwhile we sit just like we don't give a shit
About 50,000 people who are dyin' today

Tell me, brother, what matters more to you?
Tell me, sister, what matters more to you?

"What Matters More" by Derek Webb, from his new album "Stockholm Syndrome".

This song is amazing. And the debate about it in the evangelical sub-culture will be almost entirely around the use of the words "damn" and "shit" (With a sub-argument defending their views on homosexuality) while the actual message will get lost in the white noise...which is, of course, the point of the song. D Webb's pulling in a long-time Tony Campolo standby: "I'm going to tell all of you three facts: One, 30,000 people died of starvation yesterday; two, almost all of you don't give a shit; three, you're all more offended that I used the word 'shit' than you are that 30,000 people died last night."

Powerful message to think about. The album's phenomenal - a real step forward for him musically as he moves decisively away from the stripped-down acoustic feel of his first three solo albums. His 2007 album "The Ringing Bell" with its late sixties "Abbey Road" feel was a transitional point on the way but the rapid electronic beats of "Stockholm Syndrome" complete the move. But of course, as you would expect from D-Webb, the album is really about the messages of his amazing "punch you in the gut" lyrics. In this as well "Stockholm Syndrome" is a big step up from his past albums. I remember one of my friends criticized the "Mockingbird" album as far too didactic - sacrificing art for politics. Mockingbird is an excellent album, but that is a fair criticism. In Stockholm Derek largely rectifies this lack, linking the powerful messages seamlessly with musical creativity.

Derek Webb is without question in my mind the most intelligent, most honest, most creative Christian musical artist out there.

Home Again

2009-07-16T20:30:00.000+05:30

...back where men sit on the corners smoking water-pipes and playing dominoes all day long.

...back where people don't think it's weird that I drink my tea loose-leaf with no milk and three and a half spoonfuls of sugar.

...back where my friends say: "Oh, we're going to the airport at twelve? Let's go out afterwards!"

...back where I buy fresh mangoes and grapes on the corner, potatoes and onions down the street, and Fayrouz next to the mosque.

...back to forests of satellite dishes on every roof as far as the eye can see.

...back to gray-black hazy smog (yeccccch)

...back to stumbling around in my very broken and halting Arabic (Surprisingly comforting - after going from a place where I speak absolutely none of the language to one where I can understand quite a bit and speak a little)

...back to friends and community and so much here that makes me come alive.

Back in Cairo!

Life in Bapatla

2009-07-12T14:51:00.000+05:30

I haven't written on this nearly as much as I did during my last trip to India - my time's been split between the beautiful kids here, my parents, and my fiancee (yes!) Kandyce (Hmm - I'm still getting used to that word, but I definitely like the sound of it).

A few of the best memories thus far - aside, of course, from the best of all, which I talked about in my last blog post:

On "Jon and Kandyce Engagement Day", the day after our celebration, we took all 200 of the kids from the orphanage to the beach. Now, as the orphanage lacks a bus, Babu had rented the services of two lorries - huge trucks - one for the boys, one for the girls. While our parents gratefully accepted Babu's offer to drive over in his car Kandyce, Grace, and I all jumped in with the kids - screaming and shouting and having a wonderful time the whole way there.

The ocean itself was a perfect temperature, warm enough to be comfortable but not warm to the point of the "giant bathtub sensation". We split up sides of the beach, and the boys began to strip down into various states of dress and undress - the entire spectrum, from some older boys jumping in the water in slacks and button-downs to many boys jumping in butt naked. It was wonderful, though Babu held us back from going too deep (most of the kids can't swim).

I think it was the ride back, though, that was my favorite part. About two minutes from the beach it started to rain - softly at first but rapidly becomin sheets of heavy drops that stung when they hit your face. We were all soaked to the skin, but the boys and I just laughed and called out every time we saw lightning. I was standing next to Babu (One of the orphans, not the director), and every time an autorickshaw drove by we would lean over and spit onto the roof just as they went by.

Yesterday was another favorite memory. A few days back Kandyce was giving me a haircut on the front porch when one of the employees walked out and offered her the use of some electric clippers. She declined, but all of us started talking, and, after talking about it with Babu, decided to attempt to de-louse and give haircuts to all the kids before we go - de-lousing for obvious reasons, and the haircut to save the orphanage the huge amount of money they have to pay to get a barber. Kandyce, Grace, and my mom volunteered to cut the girls hair and I volunteered to give out buzz cuts with the clippers to the boys.

It sounded so easy - I've given my fair share of buzz cuts, and so doing it for a hundred kids couldn't be that hard, right?

We started at around 8:30 AM with the smallest girls - soaping them up with de-lousing shampoo and trimming their hair down to short bobs...I finished with the oldest boys around 7 or 8 that evening!

And - well, let's just say I saw more lice on just one of those kids than I've ever seen in my entire life.

It was incredibly fun, though. I think most of the boys had never had their hair cut with an electric clipper before, and they were all terrified of it until I held the bare steel clipper blade against my face and said: "Look! No pain! VERY silly to be frightened!" They laughed all the way through their hair cuts.

This afternoon I also wrote a new song on my guitar. It's an audience interactive song and goes something like this:

(For the full effect, picture me sitting surrounded by a circle of small Indian boys)

Chorus
D G
I like eating lunch
D A
I like eating lunch
D G
I like eating lunch
D A D
I like eating lunch

D G
My favorite lunch is... (Point at small Indian boy at which point he shouts out "Bread!" "Mango!" "Banana!" or something like that)
D A
My favorite lunch is... (point)
D G
My favorite lunch is... (point)
D A D
My favorite lunch is... (point)

Chorus

Everyone got that? I love my life...

The Engagement Story

2009-07-09T12:25:00.000+05:30

Hey all,

For those of you DIDN'T get the following story in an e-mail:

Dear Loved Ones,

It's yet another hot and steamy day in Bapatla, this little town on the coast of southern India where Kandyce and I, along with my parents, her mom, and another friend of ours are staying. There's a crowd of smiling children hanging around outside the door waiting for me to emerge from the relative coolness of the dining room, where open doors and a ceiling fan keep a
tolerable breeze blowing through. At select moments you can just catch a hint of the sea - only five kilometers or so distant - in the smell of the air.

The past few days have been a blur of activity, crazy, complex, but all centered around a single moment that both of us will remember for the rest of our lives.

On the evening of July 4th, I asked Kandyce to marry me.

For most of you, I imagine this won't be a surprise. While Kandyce and I had only been dating for a short period of time, the two of us have been close friends for several years, and, when that friendship blossomed into something deeper (Quite a story in itself!) both us knew that this was the direction we wanted to be going. I've known that Kandyce was the kind of woman that I wanted to marry for many years. Those of you who know her well will understand.

Over the past six-seven months Kandyce and I have been intentionally asking the hard questions, exploring the depth of our relationship and seeking God's will and guidance, as well as the guidance of the people in our lives who we trust and respect. And again and again this plan for our future has only been confirmed. The time hasn't been easy - as many of you know, in
January, shortly after we started officially dating, I moved to Cairo, Egypt to work for the Middle East Studies Program - a job which will keep me in the Middle East until this December - but the challenges of a long-distance relationship have been an incredible blessing to us, a chance to be intentional about growing and deepening our relationship in preparation for taking this next step.

We were both blessed deeply when Kandyce was able to visit me in Egypt for a week at the beginning of March - a wonderful chance for me to introduce her to Cairo, a place which is so close to my heart, and to be a part of MESP, my job and my community in Cairo which is such a wonderful blessing to me. We're both looking forward to returning to Egypt when we leave India in a couple of weeks.

So, in the weeks after Kandyce's visit I decided to start acting on the intention that I'd had since we started dating, and wrote Kandyce's parents to request their permission to ask her to marry me this summer while we were together in India. Their blessing - along with the blessing of my own parents - was something that was extremely important to me. The lazy speed of the Egyptian mail service kept me in desperate suspense for several weeks, as my first semester working at MESP came to a close and the time for our departure to India began to get closer and closer. I started to consider just e-mailing them, to give my over-wrought nerves a break. But
then in mid-May Kandyce's mother got in touch with me and let me know that they had received my letter, that I had their blessing, and that they were looking forward to welcoming me into their family.

The minute I had that, I bought the ring I had picked out weeks before. As per the information I'd known from Kandyce for some time (Long before we were even dating - but again, that's another story) it was a white gold solitaire, size six - simple and yet elegant.

We both arrived in India on June 25th, and had a wonderful first week at the BIRDS farm in southern Andhra Pradesh, meeting kids who both of us sponsor (And all of you should as well. Check out their website to find out how) and spending time with Kandyce's mom and friends Jess Rodgers, Kevin Wellwood, and Grace Farson. Then it was a night train to Hyderabad to visit the OM base where Kandyce has a number of friends from her job at the Dalit Freedom Network and do some art projects with kids in impoverished villages. We also made a couple of late-night trips to the airport to pick up my parents - and, with my dad, an important little white gold size-six item in the money pouch around his neck.

We arrived in Bapatla on the morning of July 4th. This place is incredibly dear to both of our hearts. This is the place, in many ways, where Kandyce fell in love with India and, seeing the passion and joy with which she poured herself out on the kids here, this place is one of the places which made me fall deeply in love with her. Our hearts are both in Bapatla, and so, as I told the people here, this was the only place in all the world where I could kneel down and ask for her hand.

Since Kandyce's good friends Jess and Kevin were leaving on the morning of the 6th, I planned to propose on the evening of the 5th. Envisioning a quiet, intimate proposal on the roof of the orphanage followed by a small celebration with the kids, I asked Babu, the director of the orphanage, and Johnson, an evangelist and someone who works here, to help me arranging
things with the kids. But in India they don't do things small. A small celebration with the kids quickly turned into a planned feast with songs, all of the pastors from the surrounding area, and hundreds of guests. And that evening Johnson whisked Kandyce and I away to the nearby city of Guntur to buy us (Against our loud protests) a new set of clothes - a formal shirt and pants for me and a gorgeous blue-green sari for Kandyce. Kandyce and I, both of whom had been looking forward to a much more intimate moment, were grateful, but taken aback (And, of course, my surprise was blown - Johnson tried to say: "Well, we're buying clothes...in case we have a function. Suppose we have a function - what sort of sari would you like?" A wonderful man, but not the subtlest.)

And so I decided to move things up. After returning to the orphanage that night - when everyone else had gone to bed Kandyce and I were sitting on the front porch talking. I asked her if she would come up to the roof and, as we whispered to each other about our love for this place and our gratitude for all the events that had taken place since we were here last a year ago,
I knelt down and, heart racing, told her how much I loved her, how much she meant to me, and asked her to marry me.

And she said yes! Quickly followed by: "As long as you promise not to make me eat eggplant!" (A reference to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera" which we both read last fall).

I hadn't informed anyone of my change of plans, and so everyone at the orphanage (Along with our friends and parents) were still expecting a proposal the next evening in the lead-up to the big celebration. Kandyce and I even briefly considered me taking the ring back and going through the proposal again the next night, to keep our moment the night before a secret
just between the two of us. But we decided it would be much more fun for her to keep the ring and see how long it would take everyone to notice that there'd been a change of plans.

Now, our parents and friends are perceptive people, but Kandyce did manage to sit all through two hours of church AND breakfast the next morning before ANYBODY noticed! In fact, we had to quite forcefully point out the fact that something was just a little bit different about Kandyce's hands before anyone said anything.

And then, that night, came the celebration. A huge tent was rapidly erected on the field outside the orphanage with some two to three hundred chairs and a raised stage inside. A band (Drummer and keyboardist) was reserved, and a massive sound system set up to carry the sound of the function to every corner of the town. A huge banner was erected behind the stage proclaiming the "Joyes (yes, 'J-O-Y-E-S') Engagement of Miss Kandyce Jean Kingsley to Mr.
Jonathan Craig Pinckney." And, as a function like this would be inconceivable without a feast, some one hundred pounds of rice and gallons of curry were cooked to go with it.

And then at six, just as the heavily-involved process of getting Kandyce "sari-ed" finished, we walked to the stage arm in arm to get engaged Indian style.

I won't go into all the details of the ceremony. Kandyce and I spent most of it whispering commentary to each other (Until one of the pastors called us out) and smiling at the rows and rows of beautiful children sitting below the stage and enthusiastically giving us two thumbs up whenever we glanced in their direction. There were introductions in alternating Telugu and
English, a wide variety of songs, an engagement message from my Father enthusiastically translated by the effervescent Johnson, more blessings from more pastors than I can remember, and finally, at the climax, Kandyce and I rose to exchange garlands of flowers - an Indian tradition. We were both rather startled at that moment, because the Lutheran priest who was standing at the time held up the microphone and asked us first: "Do you have any objection to this person, and do you love them very much?" and then, after our affirmatives, continued with: "Do you accept this person as your life partner?" To which we both also assented. The verdict's still out on whether we might have accidentally gotten married - though my dad, also a
pastor, assures us that, as the priest never said "man and wife" we aren't actually married, just "very, VERY engaged...the MOST engaged couple I've ever seen."

The garlanding was followed by the unveiling of a three-tier cake proudly emblazoned with: "Happy Birthday Jonathan and Kandyce!" and topped by a massive mechanical candle which, when lit, opened into a huge pink lotus flower (Which also, by the way, was playing the tune of "Happy Birthday"). Kandyce and I fed each other pieces of cake (Steering clear of the fly which
had met an unfortunate end on the lefthand corner), and I fed both my parents and Kandyce's mom. I also, very distinctly, heard Johnson at that moment call out: "Feed your wife!" which I count as a serious piece of evidence that he pulled a fast one on us and got us married without us
knowing.

When the service was over there was a huge dinner, and then, when the several hundred guests had slowly made their way out of the orphanage, Kevin, Jess and I pulled out a package that they'd picked up in Hyderabad and, with the kids from the orphanage watching for the balconies, set off a fireworks show to conclude the nights festivities.

Babu - the director, gave the kids a school holiday - "Jon and Kandyce engagement day" - the next day. We're wondering if, in the future, the date will remain fixed (July 5th) or if instead, like Labor Day, it will be moved to the Monday closest to July 4th each year.

That's all for now. Look forward to pictures and even some video of the ceremony in the next few weeks as our travel plans allow. We'll be heading to Egypt in two weeks, and making a brief trip up to Jerusalem a few days after that. We love all of you, and are so excited to continue to share our lives with you as the two of us walk together in this wonderful path that God has laid out for us. Blessings and peace be with all of you, and keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we keep all of you.

With much love,
Jon and Kandyce

P.S. Please know that we would have loved to call each of you and let you
know in a more personal manner than a mass email, but we thought you'd
rather find out now via email than have to wait. :)

T - 8 hours

2009-06-24T13:18:00.000+05:30

Till I board Emirates flight 0954 for Dubai, and from Dubai on to Hyderabad! My bags are packed, minus a couple of last-minute necessities (toothbrush, etc...). I've said my goodbyes - some for three weeks, and some for a much longer period, as several of my good friends will be going back to America while I'm gone. Now all that's left is a final check of my apartment to make sure I haven't forgotten anything, and then several hours of restless anticipation until the time comes to catch a taxi to the airport.

I'm incredibly excited to have the privilege of going back to India and loving on the sweet kids at BIRDS and the orphanage in Bapatla. And to have the even greater privilege of sharing these beautiful places and people people with my parents, who will be coming for the last two weeks I'm in India.

But, let's be honest, I'm excited most of all for walking into the Hyderabad airport at nine o'clock tomorrow morning and seeing the beautiful smile of my best friend, the woman I love, my sweet precious habibti, shining once again in my direction. I can't wait to be with her in these places that are so dear to her heart, and make every bit of her come alive. It's a privilege just to stand next to her and watch the love that just pours out of her towards the kids. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with her in the first place!

So now, off to try to keep myself occupied somehow until I can jump on that plane and go to her. Next blog post from India!

From the Sayings of the Desert Fathers

2009-06-21T01:29:00.000+05:30

One day some of the brethren came to see Abba (Father) Antony and among them was Abba Joseph. Wishing to test them, the old man [Abba Antony] mentioned a text from Scripture, and starting with the youngest he asked them what it meant. Each explained it as best he could. But to each one the old man said, "You have not yet found the answer." Last of all he said to Abba Joseph: "And what do you think the text means?" He replied: "I do not know." Then Abba Antony said: "Truly, Abba Joseph has found the way, for he said: I do not know."

Stockholm Syndrome

2009-06-19T21:21:00.000+05:30

I am psyched about the release of Derek Webb's upcoming album "Stockholm Syndrome" and simultaneously intrigued and annoyed by the viral marketing method that D Webb has chosen to release the album through. I'm not going to give anything away - those of you interested are just going to have to do what I did - start at www.derekwebb.com and work your way through the puzzles from there (Or cheat by doing google searches and finding other people's blogs that explain how to find everything).

Notes From Underground

2009-06-19T16:45:00.000+05:30

Just finished "Notes From Underground" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the largest in a collection of Dostoyevsky's short stories which I'm reading now. I won't try and write a full-fledged review - suffice it to say that I was blown away by it. The depth and perception of the psychological analysis as well as the power of his social critique through the lens of the "underground man" has given me a whole new respect for Dostoyevsky, though he still stands short of Tolstoi as my favorite Russian author (Sorry Sasha!). The underground man is both incredibly disturbed and incredibly relatable - a figure who isolates himself from all unique and real human contact and obsesses over every tiny social interaction because he is addicted to the literary idea of himself, himself as hero, which can not be reconciled to the actual conditions of his life. But more torturous for him still is that he sees the absurdity of his own life - sees that he is living in a spiteful, misanthropic position, but that this very realization, this hatred of his position, only deepens his misanthropy. The story closes with this powerful statement:

"I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that, perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why we don't even know what living means now, what it is and what it is to be called? Leave us alone without books [TV, movies, mass media] and we shall be lost and in confusion all at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being humans, humans with our own real bodies and blood; we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace, and we keep trying to be some sort of fairy-tale universal beings. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea."

One of those passages I just had to read again when I was finished. Everyone read more Dostoyevsky.

Obama's Speech in Hindsight

2009-06-17T02:47:00.000+05:30

It's been about a week and a half since Cairo shut down to received President Obama. I had to make a quick trip to the Indian Embassy that morning, and it is - to date - the only time I have ever had to show my passport while in Cairo. And I had to show it twice.

There's been widely divergent reactions to the speech amongst the people I've spoken to - Muslim and Christian. Many of the Christians, particularly those from the Coptic Church, who struggle with issues of discrimination and minority rights, have told me overwhelmingly the same thing they've said before: Obama is being too nice to the Muslims. He needs to be "stronger" - usually translated as being more confrontational and militaristic. And while Obama did mention the issue of the need for religious freedom, most of my Coptic friends were deeply suspicious of his respectful tone towards Islam, which many in the church view (like their Republican brethren across the pond) as inherently violent.

You can't blame the Copts. I've heard stories that - were they my own experiences- would doubtless deeply color my view of Islam. While outright persecution exists, it is extremely rare. What's more prevalent is a widespread blanket of social isolation (Serious social dependency between the two religions is rare) and resultant discrimination by the majority towards the minority. The situation is similar to discrimination towards racial minorities in the United States - humbly, I would say from everything I've observed and heard that it's much more about the social dynamics of distinct majority-minority populations. It's about sociology, not about religion. Religion is one of the cards of distinction that plays into the social dynamic - not the root cause of the social dynamic. That's certainly an arguable assumption, but it's my two cents.

My Muslim friends took issue with a few different things - though largely they appreciated the respect and clear desire for dialogue and continue in their widespread admiration of Obama as a man who's leading America in the right direction - a man who they can respect and work with, who can bring real answers to the problems of the Middle East. The speech had credibility. President Obama pulled no punches but spoke clearly and honestly of the history that is involved in the issues, the interests on both sides, and the difficulties towards reaching solutions. However - and on this I agree with them - on the core issues there was only the hint of policy change, not actual policy change.

Naturally, this lack of concrete policy shift displayed itself most prominently in regards to Israel. President Obama stated long-term US policy goals clearly and forcefully - two States, an end to violence, and an end to settlement-building - and with much greater credibility than his predecessor (For those of you who don't know, while Pres. Bush made much of his vaunted support for two states, he simultaneously in 2004 sent a letter to Ariel Sharon that could be boiled down to "Ari! Buddy! Don't worry! I have to say this crap to satisfy the peaceniks. Just let the settlements have 'natural growth' and all will be well"). However, his stated objectives lacked the concrete teeth of policy consequences. There was no: "Settlements must end now...or we will do x." Which leaves me - as much of a supporter of my President as I am - skeptical of his promises to move the US towards a more evenhanded position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Personally - minus the fuzziness of concrete policy change - I thought it was an excellent speech. I give him a A+ on presentation and a B on policy, rounding out the speech's final grade to a strong A-.

NB - The idea that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim, and further than this, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, or one who has "aligned himself with the policies of the Muslim Brotherhood" is frankly ridiculous. The fact that such a view can be propounded not just by the crackpots on the fringe but in a major news publication in the United States by Frank Gaffney, a former assistant secretary of defense (Under Reagan) and graduate of one of top schools of international relations speaks only to our nation's widespread ignorance, ethnocentrism, and islamophobia. Gaffney's article and those like it are reminiscent of nothing so much as the reactionaries in the 60s and 70s hunting for Satanic messages by playing rock songs backwards. Were you to tell anyone - Muslim, Christian, Muslim Brother - on the streets of Cairo that you would be laughed all the way back across the Atlantic.

You know you live in Egypt when...

2009-06-17T01:47:00.000+05:30

...your day trip on the weekend involves four micro-busses down to the oldest pyramid in the world.

...7 PM begins to feel like early to mid-afternoon.

...you measure the amount of sugar in your tea not by spoonfuls but by the length of time you tip the container into your cup.

...it makes your day when you see the first mangoes at the fruit seller on the corner (I did, I swear! Today! And it was awesome!)

Random

2009-06-13T17:06:00.000+05:30

Has anyone discovered an easy way of ensuring that one's flash cards are all the same size? My latent OCD-ness is chastising me for the uneven sizes and curved borders of my Arabic vocabulary cards.

Also - just so you know, it is freaking hard for a lefty to use scissors. Especially repeatedly.

Also - Damien Jurado sings to my soul.

Also - who knew that math could be comforting? In comparison to trying to learn Arabic, beginning to study for the GRE has been a breeze!

Also - in a mere 11 days I will catch a glimpse of bright blonde hair across the crowded sea of Indian faces in the Hyderabad airport, see the first momentary flash of blue-green eyes, the first glimmers of one of the million smiles that I love...

That's pretty amazing.

People and things I am blessed by:

2009-06-11T02:08:00.000+05:30

My beautiful beloved Kandyce who gives my whole life a purpose and joy that I've never known before. My incredible Egyptian friends here in Cairo, who have welcomed me and made this place home. My family, who love me and support me even when I'm across an ocean. MESP - for letting me come to this place that I love and giving me work that I believe in. The energy and passion of Cairo. The peace of Anafora. My fellow MESP alums here in Egypt. Diaa Nashed. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Edward Said. Khalil Gibran. Soren Kierkegaard. Bishop Thomas. Air-conditioning (It's bloody hot in Cairo). The stars last night. The brilliant yellow moon last night. Kareema and how she takes care of all of us through her amazing cooking. Ashraf. Speaking Arabic with Romany. Greeting more and more people on the street each morning as I go to work. A growing peace and confidence in my life here in Egypt. The group of students that I've been able to show around over the past few weeks. Bileela (the most heavenly breakfast food ever invented). Fayrouz (the world's most amazing soda). Feteer. The amazing number of snack shacks scattered around the streets of Cairo. The fact that every restaurant in this city delivers.

And more things than I can mention...

The Assassination of George Tiller by America's Domestic Terrorists

2009-06-02T15:43:00.000+05:30

For those of you who haven't heard, the "Culture of Life" just claimed it's most recent victim. Dr. George Tiller, a long-time target of "pro-life" groups and right wing political figures (most prominently Bill O'Reilly) was executed at the doors of his church in cold blood by Scott Roeder, the latest successor of the line of Timothy McVeigh, Paul Hill, and Eric Robert Rudolph.

Frank Schaeffer - son of former evangelical heavyweight Francis Schaeffer and author of Crazy For God, a book detailing his personal story of moving from a card-carrying member of the religious right to one of its sternest critics - wrote a very perceptive article on the collective responsibility of the "pro-life" movement for these tactics of assassination:

"In certain passages [of Schaeffer's Father's book A Christian Manifesto] he advocated force if all other methods for rolling back the abortion ruling of Roe v. Wade failed. He compared America and its legalized abortion to Hitler's Germany and said that whatever tactics would have been morally justified in removing Hitler would be justified in trying to stop abortion. I said the same thing in a book I wrote (A Time For Anger)...like many writers of moral/political/religious theories my father and I would have been shocked that someone took us at our word, walked into a Lutheran Church and pulled the trigger on an abortionist...hyperbole from the pulpit from religious leaders, be it from my father or from President Obama's former pastor the Rev. Wright, is par for the course. But once in a while someone "does something" about it and then everyone says that they were only speaking metaphorically or "spiritually" when they called for violence or for the overthrow the state or when they said things like 'God damn America!' or that 'abortionists are murderers like Hitler!'

"Angry speech has become the norm in American religion from both the right and the left. Words are spoken which -- when taken seriously -- lead directly to violence by the unhinged and/or the truly committed."
(Emphasis mine)

Among the most committed children of the religious right who are nourished by these views and propagate them is the Army of God, a loosely-affiliated group which eulogizes murderers of abortion providers and directly advocates the use of violence to stop legalized abortion. Their website today is boldly emblazoned with a banner that says: The lives of innocent babies scheduled to be murdered by George Tiller are spared by the action of American hero Scott Roeder. George Tiller the Babykiller [Bill O'Reilly's common sobriquet for Dr. Tiller] reaped what he sowed and is now in eternal hell. Psalm 55:15 Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.

HBO produced an excellent documentary on this organization entitled "Soldiers in the Army of God" available here on youtube almost in its entirety. It's disturbing, yes, but mostly I find it deeply, deeply saddening. It breaks my heart to see the message of Jesus turned into such hideous evil. Some quotes:

"Even homicide is justified when it is necessary to protect human life. I haven't conspired with anyone to destroy these people. I INSPIRE, not conspire."

"There are people who are wondering 'what do we do?' Well, we do what Paul Hill [murderer of an abortion provider and one of his security escorts] did...stop the abortion with a bullet, if that's what it takes." -Both quotes from Bob Lokey, Army of God

"I felt God wanted me to kill the abortionist. I knew it because God's Word requires it...and in my circumstances, that was the appropriate thing to do. I felt that God had called me to advocate for the justice of defending unborn children with force." -Paul Hill

Evangelical figures such as James Dobson, John Hagee, or Pat Robertson (Or the spin doctors like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh who are making fortunes out of manipulating their followers through their angry, bombastic media) will doubtless issue statements widely condemning Scott Roeder's actions on May 31, but they are simultaneously enabling and empowering these kinds of actions through their rhetoric. People like Paul Hill or Scott Roeder are simply connecting the dots put there for them to connect.

Because, in the end, thinking about Scott Roeder, and watching the figures connected to the "Army of God" in this documentary I was struck, not by their madness, but by how much their worldview makes sense. It is a totally coherent perspective carried to its logical end. The majority of us find comfort in holding contradictory viewpoints. But radicals carry a single idea, a single perspective, to completion. I referenced this idea in April. The young man Jonathan O'Toole who is a common thread all through the documentary epitomizes this search for consistency to me. He says over and over again that he wants to believe in this cause, he wants to follow it, and he wants to follow it wholeheartedly. And the environment that he's been brought up in, which says that violence to counter violence is acceptable, implies that the logical thing to do, if you truly, truly believe the rhetoric about abortion, is to use violence to stop it.

This is not the faith that I love, and not the Jesus that I follow. The faith that I love says that we overcome evil with good, and the Jesus I follow even as he was being murdered said: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

The church in America, the religious right, has failed its people when people feel that this kind of activity is acceptable. There must be a renewed message in our churches of the demand of the gospel that Christians never take up arms, that we love our enemies, and that never, never, never is violence acceptable. And this must come not in hindsight, not in retrospect, not in "Oh God, we never thought someone would actually go through with what we were saying." We must weep over how far we have lost our way, and we must work with all our might to find it again. We must love our brothers and sisters in organizations like the Army of God, and we must love our brothers and sisters in Planned Parenthood. This is the message of Jesus. It is simple, but it is the hardest thing there is.

"Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven."

What it's all about

2009-05-31T15:30:00.000+05:30

Two days ago I was at the Sisters of Charity facility in Garbage City with a group of students from Spring Arbor University who are here in Cairo for three weeks. This place is so dear to my heart but between the end of the semester and then getting caught up with Arabic and different plans with friends in the few weeks in between the end of the semester and the arrival of the SAU trip I hadn't made it out there in a while.

The trip to Garbage City is always sobering for me - the contrast between the relative comfort of my life in Cairo and the lives of my friends - both Egyptian and American - with the abject poverty of the garbage collectors, or zabaleen who live in Garbage City. The streets are narrow - some paved, some simply dirt packed down by countless trucks and donkey carts piled high with the cast-off rubbish of a city of 20 million people. The ground floors of the houses are filled with huge piles of finely-sorted trash - plastic bottles in one room, fragments of cloth in the next, etc...

In this place, the Sisters of Charity building stands as an oasis of calm, quiet affection and care. I greeted the elderly doorman warmly, and led the group of students upstairs to where the babies and disabled children were playing.

There was a new little girl there - one I'd never seen before because the last time I was there, she wasn't born yet. Little Habibha (The name means "Her Beloved" in Arabic) is about two months old and still tiny enough to fit comfortably in the crook of one of my arms. I fell in love instantly, and as soon as I got her held on tight for the whole time we were there. Her huge, beautiful brown eyes had that incredible sense of wonder in them that you can only see in newborn infants for whom the experience of life outside the womb is still very new and confusing. Her tiny hands could just barely wrap themselves around one of my fingers. And the smile that lit up her chubby face when I tickled her neck completely melted my heart.

There's something incredibly beautiful about infants - something pure and clean and straightforward. Not to idealize them, of course - trying to take care of a child of any age will quickly dissuade anyone of their grandiose ideas about the innocence of youth - but there remains a wonderful beauty even in a baby's screams. A baby's cry speaks of it just as much as a baby's smile.

I struggle with what it means to love people - truly and fully and completely. Because this is why we're here, this is our purpose in existence: to love God and others with all of our being. But we humans, myself included of course, like to make that difficult. What's real love? Is it an ideal? Is it a practice? What does it look like to love another? We like to complicate the question, to convolute things to the point where we actually have arguments about whether it is loving to shoot someone down in battle or not. Because if we can't really answer the question, then we are excused from the obligation. Countless people for countless generations have done it - choosing to settle for pragmatic half-measures or empty ideals.

But with little Habibha in my arms, I felt such a sense of peace - a wonderful sense of rightness and wholeness. Love may get complicated when you hit five or so, but for a baby like Habibha love is simple. Love is soft whispers and a gentle but safely firm hold. Love is feeding you when you're hungry and patting your back when you're fussy. Love is tangible and real, given and taken in smiles and laughter. And our most sophisticated understanding of the concept falls short of the depth of the simple love given by and accepted by a child.

2009-05-28T00:05:00.001+05:30

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Testing

2009-05-27T14:07:00.001+05:30

It's time to put up or shut up. The global community is testing to see whether President Obama is going to follow through when the chips are down. North Korea is testing him in regards to weapons testing, Ahmadinejad is testing him on the nuclear question, and Netanyahu is testing him on settlements. Is he going to do anything different from those who have come before? Particularly in regards to settlements - is President Obama's rhetoric of evenhandedness just that? Does he have the balls to stand up to the Israelis? We'll see.

Struggles With Abortion

2009-05-26T19:49:00.000+05:30

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had a new struggle over the issue of abortion. I was raised in a strongly pro-life conservative evangelical environment - and so held powerful pro-life convictions by default - but as I've moved away from many of the other ideological assumptions that environment entailed I've let the issue of abortion fall by the wayside. But recently I've become convicted once again that simply not thinking about this is not intellectually or morally acceptable to me, and so have begun to struggle to form a new and better-informed position.

I do still hold to the basic idea of the pro-life movement that the essential question on the legality of abortion is whether the fetus is a human being. Whether, in fact, as an angry young man shouted at President Obama recently: "Abortion is Murder." There are many other central issues which relate to abortion: Poverty, women's rights, our understanding of privacy, understanding and misunderstanding of sexuality, etc... But on the question of legality the first issue that must be established is the humanity or non-humanity of the fetus. However both basic positions which tend to be espoused on the issue: “life begins at birth” for the pro-choice and “life begins at conception” for the pro-life seem to me to be inexcusably simplistic. The one: “life begins at birth”, when it comes down to it, defines one’s humanity based on one’s location. The same fetus, in all other respects identical - but outside the womb - would be considered human. But the other gives the same level of humanity to a fully-grown adult and to a two-cell zygote. Both seem scientifically and logically incomprehensible to me, and seem to be held more to make a political point than through any kind of real honest inquiry. I have deep frustrations with both sides, which I'll try to illustrate a little before going on to my own very tenuous thoughts on the issue.

A note first: my criticism of the pro-life movement is going to be more detailed than my criticism of the pro-choice movement. This isn't meant to indicate my closer affiliation with one side or another - I've simply grown up in the arms of conservative evangelicalism, and so I'm much more familiar with and thus have much more to critique concerning the pro-life movement.

The pro-life movement paints itself as the champions of human life – using popular attention-grabbing terms like “genocide” and the “silent holocaust,” or holding signs outside abortion clinics that depict the shattered remnants of an aborted fetus. But something smacks false about their claim to be the champions of human life - something is not quite right when the same protesters go out and express their unswerving support for the death penalty, for military build-up, and show little or no concern for the other crisis-level “life issues” in our world today: global poverty, war, corporate injustice, nuclear weapons, human trafficking, the list goes on and on…while many in this movement do speak, with tears in their eyes, of the death toll from Roe V. Wade, few seem to have been bothered much over the past several years by the death toll from Bush V. Gore.

All of this has led me to wonder: Is it truly the death toll that bothers the champions of the pro-life movement? Is it truly a desperate desire to save innocent lives from slaughter? And if so, why aren’t James Dobson and Pat Robertson on the board of Planned Parenthood championing wise and responsible family planning and a wider availability of contraception? Why aren’t condoms and birth control pills handed out for free at the doors of every “pro-life” organization? This would seem to me a much more effective way to lower the abortion rate and save the unborn lives which the pro-life movement seems to be so focused on saving than simply voting Republican every election cycle and hoping that some day enough Supreme Court justices will be appointed to overturn Roe V. Wade.

Forgive me if this is offensive, but it seems to me that the pro-life movement would like abortion outlawed so that they can stop thinking about it. The deeper issue of unplanned pregnancies can fall by the wayside once the law is on the books.

To be fair, there are many wonderful people in the pro-life movement, primarily women, who have recognized that anger and blind political reflex is not enough and thrown themselves whole-heartedly into the construction of “Crisis Pregnancy Centers.” But these people are fighting against a flood put in place by their own compatriots within the socially-conservative pro-life movement. When, as was the case in my own environment and the environment of many of my fellows raised in the evangelical movement - sexuality is simultaneously demonized and idealized, and contraception is seen as part of the problem (As the Pope so succinctly stated recently in regards to AIDS) young people are left with a twisted, over-spiritualized, incomprehensible view of their own bodies which is either incapable or barely capable of translation into real world ethics and intelligent decision-making. The result is much higher rates of sexual activity and pregnancy within young people who identify themselves as evangelical or socially conservative (For statistics to back this up and a well-written analysis of this problem, see this article from the New Yorker last November). And it also leaves the largely evangelical pro-life movement propounding an ethic of life whose rationale is incomprehensible to those who don't share their basic assumptions. Thus, they limit their effective audience to those who agree with them on a host of other worldview issues - and fail to give those who agree with them the information and tools to make wise choices.

There’s a well-known story of an insane asylum which tested whether its patients had been cured of their afflictions by assigning them a simple task. The patient was given a mop and a bucket, and ushered into a kitchen whose faucet were running at full blast, spilling out and covering the floor with water. The patient was instructed to clean up the water in the room. If the patient simply took the mop and began to try and clean, the doctors knew that he or she was still insane. The cured patient, before doing anything, would walk across the room and turn off the faucet.

At the same time, the pro-choice movement, in it’s championship of choice and “reproductive health” has stood by and watched as an inexcusable, horrible evil has been committed. I think there's really no other way to put it. I do sincerely believe that partial-birth and late-term abortions, when the fetus has developed brain waves, when it can feel pain, when it is viable outside of the womb, are unequivocally murder. I have yet to hear a single argument which can convince me otherwise. And the most noble desire to protect young mothers who are unprepared to raise children doesn't make that go away. It is a noble desire! A VERY noble desire! Margaret Sanger said: "No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body." This resonates with me powerfully. And I, of course, as a man can't begin to understand what being faced with the choice of an unplanned pregnancy is like. It is not my place to stand in a place of judgment on that. Were I in their place I would probably do the same. And I have nothing for compassion for them. But I think on this there is a definite legal issue that must be faced. A life is a life no matter where it is.

While I'm still uncertain about a lot of this I do think that an informed view on this question has to be based on the basic issues of human fetal development. And, when it comes down to it, I think the central issue of development is mental development. As moving as it may be to hear that a 5-week old embryo has toes, I hardly think the posession of toes determines one's humanity.

Here are some bare developmental facts (All obtained from a single source, feel free to criticize, but please cite me better sources - I really do want them). To some people these will sound basic - but they were things that were new to me, never taught to me:

"Conception", far from being a single moment, is a process that takes nearly 48 hours from the time of intercourse to the creation of a zygote, the basic two-cell organism which develops into an embryo.

(An interesting note. It's estimated that more than 50% and possibly almost two-thirds of zygotes "abort" spontaneously - cease developing and instead become a part of the placenta. If the champions of the pro-life movement truly believe that "life begins at conception" - that a zygote is a full-fledged human life - then why doesn't this horrify them? Why aren't they putting their money into developing means of preventing this plague - without any competition the most deadly in human history - which is destroying over half of the world's human population?)

At 2 weeks after fertilization the zygote implants in the uterus, and thus in incapable of "twinning" (dividing into two zygotes) or of reverting into part of the placenta.

At 7-8 weeks an embryo has a basic three-neuron circuit and can respond to stimulus by reflex. This doesn't mean that it can think. It just means that the embryo has the basic building blocks of a nervous system.

At 20 weeks the part of the brain which integrates the nervous system - the thalamus - is fully developed.

At around 25 weeks an embryo has an intermittent recognizable EEG pattern. In other words, at this time an embryo in a sense meets the legal requirement for life that a person lacks when they reach clinical and legal death (Defined as the lack of an EEG pattern in the United States). The EEG pattern At around 25 weeks an embryo is first "viable" - able to survive outside of the womb.

I'm not saying any of these milestones are the point at which a human being acquires its humanity. A scant search of internet resources is hardly an adequate means of determining that. But I think understanding the developmental process is the startingpoint from where to address that question.

We all need to join together in humility, put aside politics for a moment, and truly put our cultural and intellectual power into articulating a meaningful answer to this basic question of when life begins. I think there is something wrong with our dialogue when a search like my (admittedly brief) scan of resources available on the internet revealed almost exclusively "Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments" and vice versa.

And while we put our mental powers into answer this question we need to put our monetary power, our powers of advocacy, and our political power behind ensuring that young people know the truth about their sexual choices through intelligent, thoughtful sex education, that contraception and family counseling are available for those who need it, and that young women with unplanned pregnancies have all the resources they need to carry their babies to term and care for them in an environment of love and support once they are born.

I continually seek to better my understanding on this, and so I welcome others' wisdom and input. Please know that my intent is not to offend or antagonize, but simply to speak what I believe to be the truth.

The 2nd Amendment

2009-05-20T01:34:00.000+05:30

So tonight I was hanging out with one of my Egyptian friends and the unlikely subject of guns came up. I mentioned that there are actually a lot of guns in America, that the 'right to bear arms' is protected in our constitution. He looked very confused, and so I quoted the second amendment to him - well, I said something about "the right to bear arms" that I think vaguely resembled the second amendment - and explained my own very limited, very liberal understanding of the founders' intent behind putting that in the constitution.

My friend looked at me with astonishment and said: "What? And you think we're violent?"

Just food for thought.

The Ballad of The Child of Empire

2009-05-14T18:44:00.000+05:30

So, on our last night at MESP this semester, we had a talent show, for which I decided to write a song incorporating the many catchphrases which Dave, my boss, scatters liberally throughout his lectures and his daily life, and which really, in a lot of ways, have defined MESP for the past seven years (It's hard for me to picture what next semester, when he won't be there, will be like). One of the students took a video of me playing the song, and I thought I'd put it up here. Those of you who are MESP alums will really appreciate it, I think, though everyone else might be a little bit mystified. Enjoy!

First Week of Summer

2009-05-05T23:07:00.000+05:30

My first semester of MESP students left Cairo a little over a week. It was a tough goodbye - a final dinner, pictures of the semester on the projector, a drive through the midnight-lighted streets of Cairo, a MESP staff gauntlet giving a final hug to each student as they passed by on their way through the security checkpoint at the Cairo airport. And then, like that, it was over.

I wrote something in my journal once about saying goodbye that comes to my mind at times like this:

Goodbyes are the ultimate anticlimax - one wants the perfect words, the perfect way to conclude, to finish it all off, and instead you stand there; silent, awkward, or mouthing clichés - the same old basic lines over and over again - wishing profundity could match itself to the particulars of one’s schedule.

But while the students are gone, I've still managed to keep myself pretty busy - mostly with catching up and spending time with my Egyptian friends who've been neglected in these last couple of weeks. Life in Cairo has a wonderfully unique flavor to it, and every day is new and different. For an idea of this, here's what my life over the past week or so has looked like:

Wednesday: Made it back from the airport at around 3:00 in the morning, and slept in very late, then read and played guitar until the late afternoon, when I took a taxi downtown to meet my good friend Alissa Walter for dinner at Fuul Mahrous, a wonderful hole-in-the-wall restaurant on the back roads of Garden City (One of the nicer parts of downtown Cairo) with, in my humble opinion, the best fuul in Cairo. I couldn't stay long, though, because the day before I had promised Omnia - a friend of Andrea's - that I would attend the closing celebration of the Face-to-face program at the Nubian club that night. I'd never attended the face-to-face program - a language exchange program where Nubian Egyptians and foreigners get together to talk and practice their English and Arabic - but Omnia is a friend, and has helped us with getting Egyptians for our MESP buddy system, and so I had promised to go. It was quite an experience - the program facilitators were passing a microphone around to get testimonials from people who participated, and Omnia, who knew I had never been there before, handed it to me. I protested that I'd never been there before, so couldn't offer any opinion about the program, but she refused to take the mic back until I had said something, so I gave a quick affirmation of how wonderful the program sounded and handed it back. The awkwardness of the evening quickly dissolved, though, when a few of the Nubians brought out drums and we split up into male and female groups to have a huge dance party.
I headed home around 10 and my friend Ismaeel came over to finish the night with the movie "Syriana."

Thursday:
Had a more quiet day doing things in the office until that night when I met Dena, who I'll be working with next semester, and our friends Ramy and Wa'el downtown and drove to a Syrian restaurant called Abu Umar for dinner. The dinner was only the prologue of the evening, though, because a little while after we got there Ramy turned to Dena and said: "Dena, I have a question for you. Are you a feminist?" Ramy and Wa'el have had a number of conversations with Andrea about gender issues - it's something that Andrea feels passionately about - and I think Ramy wanted to check and see if he would be having the same conversations with Dena in the future. And so, with that intro we launched into a two-to-three hour conversation about women's rights, feminism, gender roles, and whether women should hold political office.

Friday:
I spent the first half of the day giving my flat a deep cleaning, the kind of cleaning that ends up involving shoving most of my furniture into a back corner of my living room - but was interrupted around lunch time when Meghan, one of the MESP students who stayed a few days later to get a flight to Ukraine, where she's spending the summer, asked if she could come by and drop off some things that she needed to store somewhere for the summer. We were talking while she was over, and she told me that she was going shopping for an external hard drive, having found that, unlike most electronics, these were actually cheaper here than in the States. I've needed one of those for a long time, and so together we discovered the "Compu City Mall" a second and third story maze of tiny computer shops with the dim lighting and narrow alleyways of an electronic Khan al-Khalili.
I spent the evening at an ahwa with my dear friend Muhammad (Or Moe, as he introduces himself to foreigners) and two of his friends: Ahmed and Moustafa. While Moe speaks pretty much perfect English, Ahmed and Moustafa speak next to none, and so the language of the evening was almost solely Arabic. We talked about the costs of university education, video games, American movies, and car accidents - I can understand much more Arabic than I have vocabulary to respond to, so, while I could generally follow the thread of conversation most of my contributions were limited to smiles and nods of affirmation, or an occasional basic comment. I finally excused myself around 1 AM, to protests from all of my companions, who asked me why I was going home so early. I explained that all of my furniture was still shoved into a corner of my flat, and I needed to finish cleaning before I went to sleep.

Saturday:
Spent the day in one of those rare reunions of all seven of the MESP Fall '06 alumni who lived in Cairo this year. The first of us - Kirsten - was returning home, and we want to get together one last time. Over the course of the summer almost all of us will be going back to America, leaving just me and one other who's pursuing her Master's at American University in Cairo. For this second bid goodbye of my week we spent the afternoon at the park by Al-Azhar university, one of the most beautiful green places in Cairo, then dinner at Spectra Cafe, a long-time MESP favorite where all of us have a lot of memories, and finally eucharist at St. John the Baptist Episcopal, where all of us have come together during our time here. Then the girls returned to their flat and, after a quick stop in Agouza, my friend Micah and I jumped on a train heading south of Cairo to Beni Suef, the city where Micah teaches English with MCC.
We got in late and sat in his frankincense-scented room in the upper floors of the Moltroneya (the Bishop of Beni Suef's residence) until the wee hours of the morning talking about philosophy, life in Egypt, and how the story of Daniel in the Lion's Den embodies Gandhi's principles of Satyagraha (I have a blog post on that brimming - stay tuned).

Sunday:
I was rudely awakened only briefly after falling asleep by the pre-dawn call to prayer delivered with a volume and vigor I've never experienced before. In Cairo I live right next door to a large mosque, but that muezzin could never match the intensity with which the one in Beni Suef belted out: "Prayer is better than sleep" in passionately intoned Arabic. I chose not to heed his advice, and fell back asleep soon after he finished.
Micah and I woke up again at a much more reasonable hour, and he showed me around Beni Suef. We crossed the Nile and ate pizza at a Coptic retreat center and talked about the things that Micah's learned in his time here. He's been here longer than me - since last August - and, while I'm close to the halfway point of my time, Micah is, in many ways, just beginning the final lap before he goes home in late July.
Later than afternoon Micah and I boarded a micro-bus down to the town of Bebba to see our fellow MESP alum Phil Jackson. While in Cairo it's fairly normal to see foreigners in Beni Suef Micah is one among maybe four or five foreigners, and in Bebba Phil is not only the only foreigner in the town, but also the only foreigner who has lived there in many years (if ever). So, needless to say, on the micro-bus there, Micah and I attracted a fair amount of attention. The whole way down there was a running commentary in Arabic going on with the driver and passengers proferring suggestions as to who we were and what we were going in Beni Suef and Bebba. This only abated slightly when Micah rolled his eyes and told them in Arabic that we could understand what they were saying.
Phil had to proctor a handful of placement tests for his conversational English class, so we spent the evening sitting in on that, but it was really great to be able to see him in his element there - and sparked a few daydreams in my head about teaching in a place like Bebba some day. Maybe...insha'allah.

Monday:
Woke up early in Bebba and Phil and I caught a micro-bus up back up to Beni Suef and then a taxi out of downtown to Madrasa Toufiq, the school run by the Coptic Church where Micah teaches. In a mode reminiscent of India Phil, Micah, and I were shuttled around to the various classrooms to sit at the front and take questions from the very enthusiastic children (For many of whom, Micah is the only foreigner they've ever seen). Among the most popular were "Do you love Egypt?" "What is your favorite Egyptian food?" and "Are you married?" And my heart melted into a puddle when a class of thirty eight year-olds belted out a collection of nursery rhymes with a gusto that I haven't heard since Bapatla. We Americans returned the favor and sang "The Old Woman who swallowed a fly" and "This old man he played one." Every time I visit a school in a developing country I'm reminded of my urgent need to learn more children's songs...
I had lunch with Micah and Phil, and then, after sitting around the train station for a train that was running on Egyptian time (i.e. an hour and a half late), I made it back up to Cairo. Then it was a couple hours in the flat, and I was off to Giza to play guitar with Wa'el (Who lives on, yes, Pyramid Street). We'd talked about playing together all semester, but never got around to it until now. Wa'el taught me the "Oriental Beat" strumming pattern, and we played Egyptian worship songs - interspersed with me sitting down and showing Wa'el's brother, Moheb, pictures on facebook of all the weddings I've been to in the past couple of years. He's a wedding planner, and was looking for inspiration (And was very impressed by the photos of my sister Erin's bouquet). Around 1:30 AM we got hungry and decided to go out for dinner to "Pizza King", a favorite of their family, and ended up staying there for almost two hours talking about Muslim-Christian relations and US foreign policy. Wa'el and Moheb are actually more conservative than I am in that regard, and I found myself in the rare position of having to respond to a defense of the War in Iraq from an Egyptian! Just another reminder that opinions in the Middle East are far from monolithic and we should always be careful about making generalizations. I made it home around 4:00 AM...I love my life.

Tuesday:
Finally walked down to Fojir language center in Dokki to ask about signing up for Arabic tutoring. Since my availability is a little scattered, and I didn't have much money with me, I was expecting to walk in for twenty minutes to hear about the prices of tutoring and then walk out with a: "I'll be back with money tomorrow or the day after." But Moustafa, the guy I spoke to, was very encouraging, and, after we discussed tutoring and I showed him my availability he said: "Ok, you will take the placement test right now, and start classes tomorrow afternoon." I was a little shocked - I hadn't eaten lunch yet, and wasn't really feeling up to intensive testing, but decided since I was already there I might as well. Two and a half hours later I was registered for tutoring, had left a deposit, and was scheduled for my first tutoring session tomorrow at 2.

Wednesday:
Came into the office around 11 and worked on photocopying student semester evaluations until it was time for me to walk down to Dokki for my first Arabic tutoring session. My teacher and I were fast friends, even though he pulled a joke on me early on in the course of introducing himself. He told me he was married with five kids and another one on the way, and then, later, when I referred to this, he looked at me and said: "Are you crazy? I'm not even married, how could I have five kids?" I panicked for a second, trying to think how I could have misunderstood what he said before, and stammeringly tried to backtrack before he burst out laughing and told me he was just making a joke. With that as our introduction, we launched into the first lesson, three hours of solely Arabic. It was tough - but it's exactly what I need and I was very grateful for it. I'm looking forward to continuing the lessons over the next few weeks.

So there you have it - life goes on, even with no students here. And I love it because each day gives me a dozen new stories, a dozen unique experiences that I can remember and treasure about this place and this time that I love.

Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence

2009-04-28T19:31:00.000+05:30

This speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will change your life.

2009-04-23T00:55:00.001+05:30

The Muslim world gets on board with the Christian Contemporary Music movement!

Ha

Why is it that the things my country exports are always my least favorite things about it?

(In this case, sub-par music given a venue because of its religious content)

2009-04-22T21:04:00.000+05:30

Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear ... Christendom adjusts itself far too easiliy to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Book List

2009-04-22T19:42:00.001+05:30

So, a couple of the students, having seen me with my face constantly stuck inside a book on bus rides, plane rides and such over the past few months, and hearing talk constantly about Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, and Arundhati Roy, asked me for a list of my favorite books. Now, this is an impossible question for me to answer, but, because they asked, I made up two lists of ten books: Ten books that will change your life, and Ten books that are really good to read. Both lists included the prefix "An nonconclusive list in no particular order." Here are the lists if anyone is interested:

Ten Books That Will Change Your Life

1. Works of Love by Soren Kierkegaard
2. The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
3. The Inner Voice of Love by Henri Nouwen
4. The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne
5. The Life of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer
6. War is a Force That Gives us Meaning by Chris Hedges
7. The Ascent to Truth by Thomas Merton
8. The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
9. Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing by Soren Kierkegaard
10. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider

Ten Books That are Great To Read (Nine novels and one autobiography!)

1. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
2. Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
5. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
6. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
7. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
8. Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
9. My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
10. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

As I said these lists are increidbly nonconclusive and in no way represent my "Twenty Favorite books". If you asked me to give you the same list again I might change a few titles here and there.

Mythology and Morality

2009-04-18T17:02:00.000+05:30

I’d like to begin with two quotes from Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli journalist and the author of The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, and The Accidental Empire, a book on the beginnings of the Israeli settlement movement in the occupied territories in the aftermath of the 6-day war in 1967. Mr. Gorenberg has spoken to our group many times, and I have a huge admiration for him and the way he thinks. I'll begin with commentary on the first quote and then, at the end of this post, use the second quote to illustrate my conclusion.

“Religion can interact with history in two basic ways: mythically and ethically.”

"The average sane person believes many contradictory things at the same time...politics is the story of people moving back and forth between the multiple positions that they hold."

I was raised as a child of myth. As a faithful Sunday School valedictorian it was a point of pride to me that around age 9 or 10 that I could successfully answer all of the questions put to me by my Sunday school teachers. Not just the easy ones, either; I aced questions that involved names such as Haahashtari and Ish-Bosheth. The stories of Noah, Moses, and David were significantly more familiar to me than Power Rangers or the Ninja Turtles. Of course, the fact that my family didn’t own a TV at the time was a significant part of that, but my family’s daily reading of the Bible and my weekly dose of salvation history on Sunday mornings (sanitized a little – even the most skilled Sunday school teacher couldn’t keep the attention of a crowd of raucous 8 year-olds when mentioning something like circumcision) on their own provided probably a deeply powerful paradigm with which I grew up to interpret the world, a paradigm which I believe would have held whether or not it had serious competition.

While mythical narrative wasn’t the sole subject of my evangelical religious instruction, it was by far the bulk, and definitely the aspect which stood out most prominently. Perhaps that is inescapable. Children interact much easier with stories than with ethical principles, and David shooting a slingshot at Goliath resonates much more powerfully with a young boy rebelling against his parents’ anathematization of toy guns by pointing long sticks at his brothers and shouting “bang” than “blessed are the peacemakers” does. One might invoke St. Paul’s oft-quoted analogy from 1 Corinthians: we can’t expect children to be ready for “solid food” before they’ve had their “milk.”

But there’s a danger in the power of myth, especially in the teaching of myth to children, who don’t have the means to appropriately integrate the myth into their worldview.

A note first: my use of the word “myth” to refer to the Biblical narratives is not intended to address the question of their historicity, but rather to speak to the use to which they are put within the Evangelical subculture with which I am familiar. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “myth” as "A traditional, typically ancient story...that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people." This is the functional definition of myth, and it is the definition upon which I am operating in this post.

Myth is helpful when it enables us to better understand and interact with the ethical and theological principles of our faith through the concrete illustration of essential archetypes. But when the teaching of myth overwhelms the teaching of ethics, the hierarchy of values in our religion becomes radically skewed.

For example, consider the popular televangelist John Hagee, who makes his bread and butter – and multi-million dollar ranches, but that’s another discussion – from serving as a conduit for people to interpret a morality from their exalted biblical mythology: in this case the morality of Christian Zionism.

Any number of quotes from prominent Christian Zionist figures, including but not limited to Hagee and his compatriots in the lobbying group CUFI, illustrate this function. Take, for example, this quote from a publication put out by the long-standing Christian Zionist organization International Christian Embassy: Jerusalem:

Our position is best identified as “Biblical Zionism,” which…looks beyond the evolving concerns of ‘political’ Zionism in our day and views both the Jewish people and Land of Israel as chosen by God long ago for purposes of world redemption. Thus we have the interest and fate of the entire world in heart and mind when we defend Israel’s restoration to her land.

The quote begins with a mythological assumption: viewing “both the Jewish people and the Land of Israel as chosen by God long ago for purposes of world redemption” and from that assumption moves on to a moral imperative: “defending Israel’s restoration to her land.” This is justified because in this mythological framework, this moral imperative has “the interest and fate of the entire world in heart and mind.”

Christian Zionists are often criticized as being bloodthirsty, or seeking to accelerate the timeline of the end of the world. As someone born-and-raised in the evangelical subculture from which the Christian Zionist movement has arisen, I have a much more benign in some sense but much more critical interpretation: Christian Zionism in America allows evangelicals to subject their morality to their mythology, and thus serves as a comfort in the increasing moral complexity of the postmodern world. The parallels are easily drawn from biblical narrative, and the imperatives are free both of moral tension and of significant personal sacrifice.

It’s not that Christian Zionists are immoral people. They have simply been taught to accept a particular ethical hierarchy which subjects morality to mythology. And in this regard, their ideology is essentially a-moral. This may seem like a semantic distinction, but it is central. If something is immoral, it operates against moral principles. If it is amoral, it operates independent of moral principles.

As a committed believer in Christian nonviolence, I would make the argument that in many senses, the same applies to the baptism of violence by the church, at least by the evangelical church in America today. It is a subjection of clear-minded moral interpretation to a mythological framework. To illustrate anecdotally: the two most common objections I personally receive to my position by fellow Christians are as follows:

“What about the Old Testament, where God commands people to kill entire nations?”

“At the end of the world, God’s going to come down and kill all the evildoers, so how can violence be wrong?”

These are not questions of morality, but questions of mythology, stories from the beginning and stories from the end. Again, as with Christian Zionism, my point is not to speak to each of these arguments as such, but to illustrate the paradigm – the mindset – from which they arise. I have never heard the argument made that Christian Nonviolence is immoral. From the evangelical perspective, the primary objection to nonviolence is that it is not perceived to conform with the movement's mythology.

In my opinion, this is flawed reasoning. Our myths should be the illustrations of our morals, not the other way around.

And this brings me to the second of my quotes from Mr. Gorenberg. Despite my many criticisms of evangelicals, I think that, with a revolution in the movement's view of mythology, the evangelical movement could be one of the world's great forces for peace and justice in the world. Because, as a believer in Christian Nonviolence, I honestly do believe that the moral teachings of Jesus embody the perfect social and ethical system. And the example of Jesus stands in direct opposition to the subjection of morality to mythology. Evangelicals are, by and large, passionate about Jesus, and passionate about "following" him. This a supremely moral position.

En Route

2009-04-15T21:51:00.001+05:30

Back home! I'm working off of free internet in the Amman airport waiting, once again, for a flight to Cairo. The past two weeks in Israel have been incredibly busy and incredibly moving. I'm hoping to do a lot of writing over the next few days, so, insha'allah, I'll get a few productive blog posts out about my time in Israel.

Thoughts From Yad Vashem

2009-04-03T19:48:00.000+05:30

In this place you hear the groans of the broken heart of the world.

How do you describe an indescribable horror? How do you capture something that is so deeply engrained within the collective suffering of a race, and indeed, within the collective suffering of all humanity, that any description rings hollow?

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Jerusalem, is devastating to those who will allow themselves to open their hearts with any authenticity. It brings the visitor to a state of silent shock and horror, for it shatters our myths and dashes our hopes, and says: “No. No, a nation set out to destroy another and there was no outcry. A band of psychopathic criminals were given carte blanche by not just Germany, but by almost all of Europe to slowly squeeze into extermination an entire people. And the nations who were not conquered stood by and did nothing. We closed our doors to the refugee ships, hid behind our oceans, and only when our own strategic interests were threatened did we respond with violence.”

This is humanity at its deepest death. The 20th century and its quest for ever better and more efficient forms of slaughter epitomized.

This is humanity's cry against the unholy union of nationalism and xenophobia, and their bastard children of racism, bigotry, and hatred. And this is humanity's condemnation of the nation-state and it's myths of security and peace. The state traps the powerful and the powerless in its web of violence: the powerful in a place where lives are nothing, abstract, mere numbers in grandiose schemes of the national interest, and the powerless in the Nuremberg defense. It allows men like Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann to throw away the lives of millions, for they themselves will never have to do the slaughter, and tells the men who must do the slaughtering itself that they are doing the right thing, for even if their conscience should protest, they are doing their duty, and "following orders."

The heroes of the holocaust are those who said: "No! I do not see nationality, I do not acknowledge the national interest. I see only humanity. I will not comply and become an instrument in the hands of those to whom a human life means nothing." The Jewish populations of Denmark and Bulgaria were saved almost in their entirety because of the actions of a courageous few who bravely and nonviolently refused to comply with the Nazi regime.

But in the plaza just as one leaves the museum, the place where Israelis celebrate Holocaust Memorial Day, there are two reliefs, whose contrast tells a very different story.

On the right is a relief entitled "The Last March", which portrays Jews being led away to the gas chambers. The group is diverse: men, women, children, religious and secular, old and young - all segments of the Jewish population. Their faces are downcast, their eyes empty. Behind them one sees the merest shadow of a Nazi helmet driving them on to their death. The message is clear: "We were led like sheep to the slaughter."

On the left, however, is a very different relief. A handful of figures encircle a single central character. Bold, rippling in muscle, his face set in stern determination, stands Mordechaj Anielewicz, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. He and each one of his compatriots radiates strength, power and defiance. And in their hands are weapons of war.

The message is clear. For the Jewish people, and indeed for all people faced with violence and injustice, there are two options. One may cowardly march to one's death "like a sheep to the slaughter" or one may resist with violence. One may kill or one may be killed. Choose your path. There is no other option.

This message resonates particularly when one thinks about its placement in the state of Israel, where the Holocaust is a central, if not THE central event in its national shared consciousness. The State sends its message clearly. If we do not fight, if we do not use violence, then we are choosing to be destroyed.

A lot more could be said about that. But that's a few thoughts to start from.

In Old Jerusalem

2009-04-02T01:11:00.000+05:30

The narrow streets and ancient houses take on a significance far greater than their quaint appearance...every alleyway another battle line in an endless war for territory. Good people on both sides are caught in the middle, caught in the designs of schemers, and themselves transformed into schemers, their desires for peace, for God, for the villages and olive trees of their grandparents turned into violent urges for oppression, domination, and death.

The Orthodox Jews say that Jerusalem is where Heaven and Earth meet each other. And one feels that too here, a deep sense of the presence of the unseen bursting forth from every stone. But if Heaven has reached down to this place, then Earth has been ripping away from it, with guns and bombs and all man's ingenious ways of slaughtering his fellow man.

Perhaps that is why we pray for the peace of Jerusalem...

2009-03-26T15:47:00.000+05:30

Interesting op-ed piece by Nicholas Kristof, my favorite NY Times columnist. I find particularly interesting: "The predictions of experts are, in the end, only a little bit better than random guesses...the equivalent of chimpanzees throwing darts at a board...indeed, the only consistent predictor was fame - and it was an inverse relationship." In other words, the more famous an "expert", the more likely he/she was to be dead wrong.

"Experts" are entertainment pieces, ideologues who we keep listening to even though they're usually wrong because it's much more interesting to listen to an impassioned ideologue than it is to listen to someone who says consistently: "Well, this is a complex situation with many factors that we can't necessarily accurately predict."

Shout Out

2009-03-26T15:03:00.001+05:30

We have an epicly long travel day: flying south to Antakya, driving to the Syrian border, crossing into Syria, and driving again until we reach our hotel at the city of Hama. Between the airplane and multiple busses it promises to be exhausting and so, to pass the time, I've put together a lengthy "Going to Syria" playlist. It's got a few selections from my standards: Iron and Wine, Damien Jurado, Nick Drake, etc... but I've also tried to branch out a little and pull in some great bands that I don't listen to as much normally but which will be enjoyable and stimulating for the plane and bus rides:

Most prominent: The Canadian orchestral-indie band Arcade Fire. I'll admit it, I picked up on Arcade Fire at first because they were fashionable, but since the release of their second album: "Neon Bible" they've really grown on me, and I've been incredibly impressed both with their musical ability and the powerful spiritual and political themes that they capture with their music. The emotional landscape of Neon Bible is grand, majestic, powerful, and bleak; dwelling on the darkness and paranoia of post-9/11 western civilization, it's scale epic, the esoteric poetry of its lyrics haunting and intriguing, demanding multiple listens. Perfect for today's multiple hours of travel.

Favorites? Antichrist Television Blues, My Body Is A Cage, and Intervention. Those all made the Going to Syria playlist...check them out.

Turkey and the Nationalist Myth

2009-03-25T16:31:00.000+05:30

We just returned from our tour of Anit Kaber, the tomb of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern state of Turkey. It's a massive monument to the foundation of the Turkish state, and a prime example of what Dave, the MESP director, likes to call "civil religion". There's a cult of personality surrounding Ataturk here in Turkey; children say a pledge of allegiance to him every morning in school, his picture adorns pretty much every building in Turkey, and his words on any and every subject are revered and treasured (Much like the sunna of the Prophet Muhammad). Ataturk is the symbol of the unity of the Turkish state, and, in the words of his successor, President Inonu "The ideal example of modern human life."

Anit Kaber is the epitome of this cult of personality, and its attendant nationalist mythos. Below the mausoleum is the museum of national liberation, commemorating the struggles of the Turkish people in World War I and in the War of Liberation which followed it. The struggles are embodied in three vast murals depicting the major battles which Ataturk commanded, and a series of paintings depicting the surrounding events and major figures in the Turkish war of Liberation. Stirring patriotic music and the sounds of gunfire play in the background, and the paintings are dominated by the calm, cool, handsome face of Ataturk.

I was particularly struck in this section of the museum by a single painting which represented the atrocities allegedly committed by the Greek forces which occupied the city of Izmir and the surrounding area. The painting was brutal and violent, dominated at the center by a crowd of Greek soldiers holding their bayonets high above a crowd of women and children in traditional Anatolian dress. To the left a woman stood bare-chested, with the scars of bayonets visible above her collarbone, and another greek soldier standing over her - the implications clear. To the right, a Greek Orthodox priest held high a crucifix, while behind him the minaret of a mosque burned.

It is us v. them, the essential formula for any nationalist myth. Our enemies came here and they were brutal, they raped our women, they killed our children, and they did it at the instigation of their religion. And Ataturk, Ataturk saved us from that.

But the museum goes on. Once you emerge from the graphic scenes of revolution, you enter the hallway describing step by step the radical social reforms enacted by Ataturk just after the formation of the Turkish state. Islamic dress was outlawed, religious orders banned, the Turkish language changed from Arabic to Roman script, and countless other reforms. The message is clear, over and over again: We were diverse, and so we were weak. We were backwards, and so we were defeated and our land taken from us. Our people bled and died so that, through these secularizing, westerning, "modernizing" reforms we could be strong, and never be subjected to the barbarism of our invaders (see previous paragraph).

This kind of mythos admits no dissent. To argue with Ataturk's reforms is by implication of the nationalist myth to put oneself in direct opposition to the sacrifice of those who died "so that those reforms could happen". It is the justification for Turkey's top-down authoritarian secularism, government "for the people, in spite of the people" in the words of one Turkish journalist. Anit Kaber embodies the Turkish state, and particularly the Turkish military's raison d'etre.

One of our students here, with whom I've had a number of discussions, defined nationalism in a way that really resonated through my mind over and over again while walking through Anit Kaber. My paraphrase: "Nationalism is a shared misconception of history by which a political order is justified."

It all comes down to one's history, how one interprets the past post-facto. In George Orwell's words famous words from 1984:

He who controls the past controls the present

He who controls the present controls the future

Or in the words of Ataturk:

Writing history is just as important as making it.

Sobering Realities

2009-03-23T19:31:00.000+05:30

A few articles were recently sent my way that reminded me over and over again why I believe so strongly in the gospel's message of peace and don't buy all the glorified idealized nationalistic rhetoric that is used to justify warfare. War destroys human character, and those whom it doesn't slaughter outright it destroys spiritually and emotionally, brutalizing them into a barbarism. These articles are from Gaza, but the same could be pulled from any number of conflict zones around the world.

This article is from Ha'Aretz, an Israeli publication, and outlines the specifics of some attacks on civilians in the recent conflict in Gaza.

And this one is from islamonline, a major media source here in Cairo. I've met several people who work for them, they're very moderate (In other words, this isn't a fundamentalist news source). This is the aftermath of war, human beings brutalized and victimized by their own baser instincts. It's disgusting and deeply saddening. Here's the same story from Ha'aretz.

What Christ Demands

2009-03-20T00:39:00.000+05:30

Something that I am reminded of over and over again here in the Middle East is the essential sameness of religion. Whether Islam, Judaism, Christianity, or even Hinduism, Buddhism, etc... all major faiths throughout history follow a certain social pattern and conform to certain norms: Radical founders with transformative messages which are then encoded and systematized by their followers into a system that ends up supporting and encouraging the very social order which they were intended to transform. Religion is enculturated, and the messages which emerge from it, the emphases which the religious within the culture choose to emphasize, conform very nicely to the historical legacy of the culture in which the religion is present. Cultural and political interest trumps religious ideology without fail, and the religious will fervently slaughter all those necessary if they feel threatened.

The faith which I am trying to live up to, Christianity, claims to believe in and incorporate the teachings of Christ, and further than that, claims that this Jesus Christ is "The Way, The Truth, and The Life, no one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6), the "Image of the invisible God" (Coll. 1:15), and "The author and perfector of our faith" (Heb. 12:2). This Jesus, who we respect so much, lived a life of radical nonviolence, simplicity, and peace, and the model of salvation which he gives us is one not of conquest, but of love, a love which sacrifices itself for the sake of the other. It is a love which, even in the moment of ultimate suffering, looks to its persecutors and says: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34). And yet we are NO DIFFERENT. We follow the patterns of every other faith ever to exist, without fail, and those who are considered heroes of the faith, who are looked up to, who get books written about them and whose example we are encouraged to follow are typically those who follow the world's pattern of domination and suppression more than any other.

THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH

If there is any worth in our religion, then WE MUST BE DIFFERENT.

If Jesus is God, and, to use the evangelical language, we have a relationship with him, then why do we look so different? Or, to use the more traditionally Christian understanding, if the church is the bearer of Christ's truth, why does the truth it propounds seem so different from the truth of its founder?

What if we burned with the love of Christ the way we burn with anger, the way we burn with judgment, the way we burn with zeal for doctrines? What if we decided to burn our idols of nationalism, materialism, ethnocentrism, and war, and threw ourselves into the arms of the infinite? What if we lived our lives free of hypocrisy, free of halfway efforts, and full of truth, love, and satyagraha? What if we took up our crosses and followed Jesus to the hurting people and places of the world?

Nietzsche said: "In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross."

As a child in an evangelical household, I had a passion for "sharing my faith" with the one or two children in my life not raised in similar households. And I recall one of these conversations in particular because I never figured out an answer to it. The two of us were having a heated discussion, and I was making all the apologetic points that had been engrained into me when my friend turned to me and asked me about an adult we both knew, who had been in the military for many years, and proudly proclaimed himself to be an evangelical Christian. Indeed this person said that he took his faith very seriously, that it was the centermost part of his life, and was very intentional about "sharing his faith", bringing up the subject of Christianity. Indeed, I looked to this person as an example to me of someone who was a true warrior for the faith, a real devoted, passionate Christian.

My friend turned to me and said: "So he's a Christian? So he follows what Jesus says? Do you really think if someone slapped him on one cheek, he would turn the other one?"

I was caught off-guard. I muttered a standard evangelical response: "Well, we're all sinners, and he's working on that."

But even as I said it, I knew I myself was sinning through my dishonesty. This person I knew, and indeed the faith I knew, didn't believe in turning the other cheek, not on the personal level, and ESPECIALLY not on the nation-state level. He believed in retribution and war. And he didn't see this as a flaw in his faith, a sin which he needed forgiveness for, but something that he would be justified for. Indeed, those opposed to this model of retribution were the ones who were suspect in his, and my, faith.

So I refuse to accept the answer that this is simply people working through their sins, God working in sinful people's lives. If there was repentance, shame, confession for these sins, then this would be credible. But no, the indicators are the opposite. The church for the most part baptizes and glorifies the violent, the oppressive, the brutal. This thing called Christianity, this thing which claims to love its God and its neighbor, is hypocritical.

I recognize my own culpability. I am not a Christian. Not a real one. I have a heart full of violence and I free-ride on the benefits of slaughter done for me in years gone by and today around the world. But I take hope in this parable of Jesus:

"What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work today in the vineyard.'

'I will not,' he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, 'I will, sir,' but he did not go.

Which of the two did what his father wanted?"

"The first," they answered.

Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him." (Matthew 21:28-32)

I have said no to Christ's example. I admit that. But I am seeking, seeking that God may change my heart and some day give me the courage to truly take up my cross and follow Christ.

Leaving Today!

2009-03-18T14:28:00.000+05:30

In a few hours I'm jumping on a plane for Istanbul! Until then I'm feverishly trying to finish up all the last-minute things that I've either forgotten or put off until this point, and desperately hoping that I'm not forgetting something really, really important, as seems inevitable. Pray for us over the next four weeks as we gallivant around the Middle East. I'll write on here as I can.

Momma T

2009-03-13T19:44:00.000+05:30

I just finished reading "Come Be My Light", a collection of writings by Mother Teresa. It made a splash in the news when it was first published because it revealed that for most of her life Mother Teresa had lived in a state of intense "Spiritual darkness", devoid of any feeling of the presence of God, and sometimes despairing of his very existence. I'll spare you a lengthy book review: the book was good, if rather didactic. Father Brian Kolodiejchuck (try to pronounce that one!), an associate of Mother Teresa's, and the writer of the commentary which weaves together the letters and other personal writings collected in the book, is the postulator of the cause for Mother Teresa's beatification and canonization (or so I have learned from the back jacket of the book), and tries clearly in his commentary to use his interpretation of her spiritual sufferings as a means of furthering that cause.

Her writings are beautiful, though, and deeply convicting. Near the end of the book there was a beautiful litany of praise to Christ that I was particularly struck by:

Who is Jesus to Me?

Jesus is the Word made flesh
Jesus is the Bread of Life
Jesus is the Victim offered for our sins on the Cross
Jesus is the sacrifice offered at the Holy Mass - for the sins of the world and mine
Jesus is the Word - to be spoken
Jesus is the Truth - to be told
Jesus is the Way - to be walked
Jesus is the Light - to be lit
Jesus is the Life - to be lived
Jesus is the Love - to be loved
Jesus is the Joy - to be shared
Jesus is the Sacrifice - to be offered
Jesus is the Peace - to be given
Jesus is the Bread of Life - to be eaten
Jesus is the Hungry - to be fed
Jesus is the Thirsty - to be satiated
Jesus is the Naked - to be clothed
Jesus is the Homeless - to be taken in
Jesus is the Sick - to be healed
Jesus is the Lonely - to be loved
Jesus is the Unwanted - to be wanted
Jesus is the Leper - to wash his wounds
Jesus is the Beggar - to give him a smile
Jesus is the Drunkard - to listen to him
Jesus is the Retarded - to protect him
Jesus is the Little One - to embrace him
Jesus is the Blind - to lead him
Jesus is the dumb - to speak for him
Jesus is the Crippled - to walk with him
Jesus is the Drug Addict - to befriend him
Jesus is the Prostitute - to remove from danger and befriend
Jesus is the Prisoner - to be visited
Jesus is the Old - to be served

What a wonderful, beautiful picture of Christ the way he spoke of himself: "Whatever you do for the least of these my brethren, you do to me." Like Mother Teresa said in another place: "We are called to recognize Jesus in his most distressing disguises."

Leaving Soon/Turkey

2009-03-11T16:00:00.001+05:30

We're t-minus one week out from the travel component of this semester and I'm beginning to get really excited. I think at heart I'm really a travel junkie...one big reason this job appealed to me, and I can't wait for the excitement and the challenge of journeying around the Middle East again.

This semester's travel will, on the whole, look similar to the trip that I took my semester. We fly from Cairo to Istanbul next Wednesday, tour the major sights and get a crash course in Turkish politics and society from a number of Turkish politicians, journalists, and academics. Some of the major issues include the place of religion in society...the AK Party, which currently runs the Turkish government, has been described as Turkey's Republican Party. They are somewhat religiously-directed, more socially conservative, and skeptical, if not directly opposed, to the secularist ethic which was bequeathed to Turkey by its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. In fact, Turkey's high court, dominated by secularists, heard a case this past summer which could have ruled the AK Party illegal on the grounds that they were attempting to subvert Turkey's secular government and replace it with an Islamic government. More recently, Turkey's AK Party Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, attacked Israel viciously in regards to its attack on Gaza this January, which has led to some interesting re-shuffling in the foreign relations of Turkey in relation to the rest of the region.

Turkey is also dealing with questions of history and identity: In his campaign, Barack Obama promised to support official US recognition of the Armenian Genocide during WWI as genocide, something which is anathema to Turkish national identity. Turkey, with their emphasis on a single national identity, is also trying to address the question of religious and ethnic minorities. A bloody war between the Turkish government and ethnic Kurdish rebels in the southeast near Iraq was fought in the 90s, and, while a cease-fire has been in place since the Turkish government arrested Abdullah Ocalan, the head of the largest Kurdish separatist group, the PKK, occasional violence still breaks out.

While I'm really looking forward to the speakers - Turkey's political landscape is unique and fascinating - I'm also really looking forward to the country itself. I love the desert here in Egypt, but the dust and the pollution of Cairo can be wearing after a while. Istanbul is a beautiful green city, reminiscent of Seattle, and the fresh air and gorgeous landscape will be incredibly refreshing.

God's Mercy

2009-03-10T14:13:00.000+05:30

A few weeks ago I had a day off from MESP and so trekked out to Garbage City, a slum outside of Cairo whose economy revolves around collecting and sifting through trash to find anything that can be salvaged and re-sold. The Missionaries of Charity, Mother Theresa's order, have a facility out there that we send students to each week. They follow the mission of their founder: to bring Christ's love tangibly to the poorest of the poor. In Garbage City that means three big things: care for the elderly, the infants, and the disabled young. All of these are cast off by the society around them, either as undesired or simply as too costly to care for.

I went to play with the kids...there's so many more babies there than the sisters and the Egyptian girls they employ can possibly care for, and its a privilege to be able to help them out in some small way. Plus, I just love playing with little kids, and there's nothing, nothing that can make my heart sing so much as making a crying baby smile and laugh.

I've been there a few times over the past couple of months, and gotten to know a few of the babies' personalities: Moustafa is generally quiet and will play on his own, Hoda will lie there contented but will smile and laugh if you pick her up, Jon is more playful and will climb all over you, and little Phoebe will cling fiercely to anyone who will pick her up and cry if she is ever set down again.

Soon after I got there one of the babies started wailing. I walked over, picked him up, and started walking back and forth with him, patting his back and shushing softly in his ear to calm him down. He would have none of it, and began wailing even louder, and squirming inside my arms. I tried again, holding him gently, trying anything to quiet him. He wrenched an arm free and smacked me in the face.

The moment passed, and I didn't think much of it until a few days later, when I was having a discussion with someone about the nature of mercy and God's justice. One of our MESP students had led a devotion that morning that had touched on the nature of sin and redemption, and used that formula that I referred to a couple of posts ago (finite sin x infinite God = infinite guilt and wrath). I was raised on that formula, know it and its arguments well, and could probably find a good handful of verses that would back that up...at least when looked at through a particular interpretational framework. But recently something about that has been bothering me, something about the logic of it, some dissonance in the concept of an infinitely offended God.

My mind went back to the screaming infant that I had held a few days before. Now, I'm generally not a physically confrontational type. I can't say that I've been hit in the face that many times (At least since outgrowing the stage where my younger brothers and I engaged in some pretty vigorous wrestling matches). But I think I can say with relative confidence that were someone to walk up and hit me in the face, without any good reason, especially if it were someone who I was only trying to help, I would most definitely be offended, angry, and think that they deserved some kind of punishment. And most people would probably say I would be justified in giving them a healthy smack in return.

So why wasn't I angry and offended when this kid hit me? Why didn't I lift a hand and give him a good smack him in return?

The question's laughable. Of course I wouldn't strike an infant. The very idea is offensive to every moral impulse in my mind. And why would I be angry? It's an infant, for crying out loud! Grow up! My own understanding, my own character, is so much more developed than the infant's. To be offended by anything that it does to me would be small-minded and petulant.

So here's the question. How can I have the moral clarity to know that it is fundamentally unjust for me to be angry at this child, fundamentally wrong for me to retaliate, and any punishment I might inflict must be for the purposes of education and redemption, while a supposedly infinite, omniscient, and loving God takes his superiority as a reason to be infinitely offended? How can I be more moral than God?

The traditionalist will say that it is God's justice which demands his wrath, and quote the formula I mentioned at the beginning. But this is using a simplistic idea of the word justice. The moral, spiritual, and developmental differences between myself and that infant are miniscule to the point of nonexistence in comparison to the difference between a human being and God. Why is it that the infinity of God somehow makes him subject to our actions, forced to be offended by them, instead of able to transcend them? This is reducing God to a sort of reactionary force of nature, rather than an infinitely perfect personality.

We are all less than infants in God's eyes, so much smaller than we could possibly imagine. Is God not big enough, knowing enough to recognize this?

Perhaps his "wrath", his punishment, is meant to teach us? But this is not the doctrine I was raised with, not the doctrine put forth. That doctrine is "Sinners in the hands of an Angry God". And if God's punishment is redemptive, to teach us the consequences of our actions, what do we do with the doctrine of Hell, infinite punishment with no chance of redemption? There can be no reason for infinite punishment save infinite offense, the transcendent perfect God feeling himself infinitely wounded to the point where justice demands eternal torment.

God as outlined in this way seems to me to not be the beautiful, merciful, compassionate God who tells us not to be offended but to turn the other cheek (So that you may be perfect: "as your Father in heaven is perfect!" Matthew 5:48). The God "compassionate and gracous, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love" (Psalm 103:8). He seems petulant, irritable, and reactionary. This is not the God I know, and not the God made known in Christ.

Refreshing

2009-03-10T01:38:00.001+05:30

One of the great joys of my past two months here in Cairo has been the stark contrast between the view of America/Americans two years ago and now. I remember vividly the almost universal response to the revelation of my identity as an American:

"Oh! American! BUSH! A very evil man. He is a Muslim-killer."

This was usually followed by a quick reassurance that I myself as an American was not only welcome but loved, and that: "We just hate your government. We hate what your government does."

Now, the almost universal response to: Ana Amriiki (I am an American) is something along the lines of.

"Oh! American! OBAMA! Habibi! Very good man!"

It's really been striking, and incredibly encouraging, for me to hear over and over again a confirmation that my vote in November (In a swing state, no less!) was well-cast. And this has been universal, everyone from government figures to the fruit seller on the corner.

One US diplomat who spoke to the MESP group both this semester and my semester as a student was a particularly powerful example of this. Two years ago before coming on MESP I was dead-set on a career in foreign service. This diplomat's talk was one of the major factors in convincing me to abandon that career. He spoke despairingly of being forced by the nature of his job to defend a foreign policy pursued in arrogance and ignorance, of continually thinking of resignation but remaining to at least attempt to try and somehow stem the tide of increasing alienation and militarization in US foreign service.

This semester, the moment he walked in the room, I could sense the change in his demeanor. He spoke eagerly of the early initiatives of the Obama administration and its demonstrated willingness to listen to and engage with the players in the region; something woefully lacking in the past administration, and his hope for repairing the horribly damaged relationships of the past eight years.

I've said this before on here, but President Obama makes me proud to be an American and at least gives me hope that we as a people can rise above our small-minded ethnocentrism and superpower bullying to using our power and influence in humility and in a way that is to the benefit of others, that seeks to understand rather than to impose, and to dialogue rather than to dominate.

2009-02-23T00:26:00.000+05:30

Pray for Egypt. Tonight there was a bombing in the Khan Al-Khalili, a popular tourist market here in Cairo. Thank God, I'm fine, and none of our students were anywhere near the area. It's sobering, though...the bombing took place just outside of a mosque I've visited several times, and in an area where a number of our students had been as recently as last night. More later.

The Transcendent God of Love

2009-02-16T21:00:00.000+05:30

Heresy is the obverse side of the church. Wherever there is a church, there must be the conception of heresy. A church is a body of men who assert that they are in possession of infallible truth. Heresy is the opinion of the men who do not admit the infallibility of the Church’s truth.

Heresy makes its appearance in the church. It is the effort to break through the petrified authority of the church. All effort after a living comprehension of the doctrine has been made by heretics. Tertullian, Origen, Augustine…were heretics. It could not be otherwise.

The follower of Christ, whose service means an ever-growing understanding of his teaching, and an ever-closer fulfillment in it, in progress toward perfection, cannot, just because he is a follower of Christ, claim for himself or any other that he understands Christ’s teaching fully and fulfills it. Still less can he claim this for any body of men.

To whatever degree of understanding and perfection the follower of Christ may have attained, he always feels the insufficiency of his understanding and fulfillment of it, and is always striving toward a fuller understanding and fulfillment. And therefore, to assert of one’s self or of any body of men, that one is or they are in possession of perfect understanding and fulfillment of Christ’s word, is to renounce the very spirit of Christ’s teaching.
...
The sermon on the mount or the creed. One cannot believe in both.

-Leo Tolstoy "The Kingdom of God is Within You"

It is a glorious moment of liberation when one realizes that one need not comprehend God to love him. And that this realization has actual consequences.

The incomprehensibility of God is a dogma of the church. But giving something like “incomprehensibility” the position of dogma is a logical fallacy and a blasphemy. Using terms like “infinite” in order to make mathematical calculations about sin (finite sin x infinite God = infinite guilt) is a sub-Christian and sub-human conception of a God who is intensely personal and intensely transcendent, a God who can be loved but not be understood, a God who can be known but not proved. Terms such as infinite, omnipotent, etc… are at the core apophatic terms, terms that speak, not to what we know of God, but rather to what we do not know. They are meant to be breathed in a whisper of awe, not forcefully proclaimed as an axiom of a theological discourse.

Theology has its place. But when theology rises above mysticism, when the cult of the God who is known overcomes the devotion of the God who is loved, when theology becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to an end, when the study of God is practiced as an exercise of exclusion rather than a passionate exaltation, then we have lost our way.

To study God does not mean one loves him. These are not mutually exclusive, but they are also not synonymous, and because of the great confusion which often conflates the two, suspicion of the former is warranted.

Marx said famously and perceptively that “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” My own adaptation? “Theology is the opiate of the religious.”

What does this mean? Simply this: That through theological discourse the religious deaden themselves to the simple commands of their faith, if, by nothing else, then by the simple fact that theology is, by its nature, an undertaking that, if elevated, becomes endless. One might spend one’s whole life (And countless Christians throughout the centuries have) attempting to precisely define the relationship of the trinity (Does the Holy Spirit “proceed” from the Father or the Son or both?), or arguing over whether Christ’s righteousness is “imputed” or “imparted”, and suddenly find, at the end of one’s life, that, because one needed so much time to work out one’s theology, one had never really gotten around to that much more difficult, costly, and sacrificial endeavor: loving the God one was attempting to define, and loving one’s neighbor as oneself. One had read endless books on the appropriate way to love God and others, but never actually reached the point of going out and doing it!

It is easy to convince oneself that one is loving God by reading about Him, by writing about Him, by refining one’s orthodoxy. For surely one must know who one is loving? We all acknowledge that we must love God, but to do so we must have a starting point, a place to begin, something to establish before we take on the actual work of loving. And so we define, we circumscribe, we analyze, we comment, and our God becomes more and more a collection of formulae who we know by his list of attributes rather than by his immanent presence. And these attributes, attempting, as they are, to describe something indescribable and contradictory, are always up for revision. There is always some new heresy to refute, some difficult passage to interpret and reinterpret ad infinitum/ad nauseum.

The theologians endeavor is not, in itself, a negative thing. Perhaps even more estranged from the transcendent God of love is the cheap, postmodern God of one’s own creation. The theologian, at least, admits that one must work towards understanding God. The charismatic denies this, rightly proclaiming God’s immanence and the centrality of relationship, but is not willing to undertake the cost, the difficult journey, of truly loving God and loving others. He adores God, but the God he adores never challenges his understanding, never disturbs his mind, and but rarely asks him for more than is easy for him to give. The God he adores is the God he wants to have, the God he has created in his own mind, who reflects to a tee the image of his worshipper, with the same values, personality and prejudices. The charismatic disdains the “cold” theologian, and urges him to cast off the restraints of formula and mind with which he has bound God and abandon himself to a cheapened “cloud of unknowing” which comes not from the mystical emptying of oneself to become open to the God who is infinitely beyond, but from a deliberate shuttering of the doors of the soul from any contradictory understanding.

Infinitely above these both stands the transcendent God of love, the God known in the mystic’s prayer to be more than all the attributes we can give to him, the God who is both profoundly simple and profoundly beyond everything we can ever imagine; the God made known in Christ; the God who says: “Love me! It is this simple, but it will cost you everything. Love me, and love the men and women that I put before you. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.”

This is Jesus’ great commandment, and this is the sum, the whole, the only reason for our existence. We exist to love God and love our neighbor. It is our sole purpose, and everything else is secondary.

In these cynical times the God of love is often denounced as weak. The word “love” has been cheapened, and those who claim they serve the God of love have helped it along its way. For many who hold fast to orthodoxy, the God of love is out of fashion. God the judge, God the master, God the creator, are preferred…they ring truer to our inherent desire for domination, and something in our pride stirs at the sound of these grand titles. But deeper than that, remember that, for us, these are passive terms, terms that, while wrapped in our conception of strength, allow us to remain inactive. If God is judge, we need only avoid those things which lead to judgment. If God is master, we need only submit to his mastery. If God is creator, we need only thank him for our creation.

But if God is love? If God is love, and he calls us to be like him (“You must therefore be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect” Matthew 5:48), then following this God will demand a life lived not in passive avoidance of evil, but in active pursuit of total unconditional love; love of abandon, love which demands our entire being.

Phil Rizk and the injustice of Gaza

2009-02-16T20:57:00.000+05:30

The following is an e-mail Phil Rizk sent out this morning.

Today is the fourth day of freedom after my four day imprisonment. Every once in a while I am hit by the incomprehensible contrast between absolute freedom and absolute confinement. During those four long days I didn't do much else but be interrogated, sleep or try to sleep.

Before I go into any other details I want to say shukran, thank you, really. I am overwhelmed by the response of family, friends and strangers all around the world during my imprisonment. As the stories started bombarding me after my release it was hard to take it all in. I have no words to express how grateful I am to so many. At one point one of my interrogators- they called him "Malek"- ended a session by saying, "the next time you will tell me about all these international relationships of yours," I had no idea what he was referring to. I really believe that the pressure from so many places and people made a big difference and resulted in my quick release.

Diaa Gad, 22 yrs, is an Egyptian blogger who was taken the very same day I was. I had spoken to him for the first time a few days before Egyptian "state" security kidnapped both of us from difference places. Diaa had called to ask about details about our march to Gaza. As we knew our phones would be tapped I told him we could not gave any details over the phone and asked for us to meet the following day in person. He never called again but his name came up during interrogation- again with "Malek"- who asked me what I knew about Diaa and then proceeded to tell me word for word what I had said to him on the phone that day. Diaa does not have many of the luxuries that I have being bi-national and having lived abroad. At this point he is still in custody and his lawyer and family do not know his whereabouts. The campaign that was started for me needs to move to him and others. These sorts of actions are completely illegal and yet a common occurrence in Egypt. Currently there are thousands in Egyptian jails without trial. We need to stand up and reject these actions. This brings us back to the start of those four days...

I was held for four days- blindfolded, barefoot and handcuffed almost at all times. When I arrived they told me to forget my name I was now number 21. The psychological pressure was intense though at no point was I physically harmed. At the time of my arrest I was protesting the siege on Gaza. This is a criticism aimed primarily at Israel but also at other countries that support this siege including Egypt which keeps its borders sealed except for rare exceptions. My four days of imprisonment are nothing compared to the months and years of siege on Gaza, which is nothing else than forced imprisonment. The Gaza Strip is a different form of concentration camp. No Palestinian- whether students, the sick, businessmen and women- can travel beyond its borders and Israel permits only a very very few internationals to enter. These- mainly journalists and NGO workers like I used to be- remind me of zoo visitors that take pictures and talk about the terrible conditions of the animals in their cages but then leave, in the meantime Gaza remains the same. According to the UN 85% of Gazans are reliant on food aid, again like animals in a zoo they are fed and kept alive, but barely. Leaked reports from the Red Cross recently reported high percentages of malnutrition of children especially in the refugee camps- 70% of Gazans are refugees from 1948. The purpose of our protest march was and continues to be to raise awareness of the ongoing siege on Gaza building on the momentum of protest during the Israeli military onslaught on Gaza at the start of this year.

Your outrage about my unjustified imprisonment mirrors my outrage about this ongoing injustice done to the Palestinian people. If our governments and representatives the world over will not change the status quo we- the multitude- must mobilize, on the streets, in the cyber sphere, in government, in schools, anywhere to call for change. Such an outrage changed South Africa not that long ago and it can change the injustice carried out against Palestinians today.

Email us your ideas and actions here: info@togaza.net
Follow up with us here: http://www.togaza.net/
Read on here: electronicintifada.net and here: Tabulagaza.com

Philip Rizk Released!

2009-02-12T19:31:00.001+05:30

quick note. Phil Rizk was released by Egyptian Security and is, as far as I know, relatively unharmed. Phil is one of the fortunate few that, due to diplomatic pressure and the wide publicity of his case, has not simply disappeared. However thousands of Egyptians have been routinely abducted by their government, as is allowed by the emergency laws put into place in 1981 after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. This state of emergency has never been repealed, and the Mubarak government has used it to silence any major voice of opposition. This has been used most forcefully against the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, but, as evidenced by Phil Rizk's arrest, the Egyptian Security services are not shy of abducting anyone who is perceived for any reason to pose a threat to the government.

Phil Rizk has asked that protests that were scheduled to be held asking for his released still be held and be directed towards applying pressure on the Egyptian government to lift the siege being imposed on the more than a million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip with only the barest minimum of basic needs.

Free Philip Rizk!

2009-02-11T01:03:00.000+05:30

This Friday, Egyptian State Security arrested Philip Rizk, a grad student at AUC here in Cairo as he was returning from a solidarity march with the Palestinians who are currently suffering in Gaza. Philip is an Egyptian/German citizen, but studied at Wheaton, and has had a relationship with MESP for a couple of years. After graduating from Wheaton Phil moved to Gaza to do relief work, where he lived for two years. I met him during my semester as a student at MESP (He came and spoke to us while we were in Jerusalem) and was completely blown away by his maturity, his passion, and his devotion to his ideals. I deeply admire and respect him. His arrest is a grave injustice.

Fortunately, a lot is being done to pressure the Egyptian government to speedily release him. To find out more about what you can do, check out the facebook group started by his family. Pray that he will be released quickly, and that Egyptian security will treat him well. Being arrested in Egypt is a scary reality...the security forces here are known to practice torture, and to routinely just "make people disappear".

SIWA!

2009-02-04T01:17:00.000+05:30

Tomorrow I get to leave Cairo for the first time since coming here, and, while I love this place, I am super, super-excited. We'll be taking a bus out into the Sahara to this little oasis town called Siwa, which is very much still a center of bedouin/berber culture...Andrea and I have been reading about the culture a little bit, and it's incredibly fascinating.

A couple of fun facts from our book on Siwan culture:

Siwa used to the be the site of an oracle in ancient times, who was so well-respected that none other than Alexander the Great made the trek out into the desert (No small thing in the days before air-conditioned busses...even with one of those, it's going to take 10-12 hours through open desert to get there).

Until 1820, there was only one family in Siwa that spoke Arabic, much less English or any other language. Everyone else only spoke Siwan. Even today, because the society is so insular, most of the women, who are very heavily isolated from outside society, speak only Siwan, or possibly Arabic.

Until fairly recent history, marriage of grown men to boys, similar to the practice of Ancient Greece, was not only socially acceptable but was a widespread phenomenon. Men paid higher dowries to marry boys than they did to marry girls.

And so on, and so on...

But, I've got to admit, while there's all sorts of interesting sociological stuff about Siwa, I'm most excited about getting the chance to go out in the desert on Friday, see that surreal and intensely beautiful landscape again, go sandboarding, relax in the hot springs, and then spend the night out in the desert. It's going to be INSANELY cold, though, so I'm packing about ten layers. More on all the adventures out there when we get back!

Just Getting By

2009-01-31T13:12:00.000+05:30

(Wrote this yesterday evening...)

It’s a quiet weekend for me in Cairo today and tomorrow. Well, perhaps quiet isn’t quite the right word. A New York Times article about life in Cairo once described the average decibel level of noise on the city streets as roughly equivalent to continually standing right beside an approaching train. My experience bears that description up. The horn is a universally appropriated device by Cairo drivers, and beneath the cacophony of horn-soundings, the motors of the ancient busses and ubiquitous black-and-white taxicabs sputter and roar. While most streets are littered with cast-off waste, Egyptians have a unique sense of repair and recycling…most taxis one sees roaming the streets could easily have been constructed originally in the 1950s, and the troubled roar of their engines bears witness to the hundreds of thousands of miles they have roamed. And there are people, always people, crowds of pedestrians all chatting in rapid Arabic, store-keepers shouting at them to engage their attention, and the high-pitched nasal cry of “Aish!” as a skinny Egyptian in his late teens walks beside a cart piled high with freshly-baked pitas. Even throughout the night, I hear the sound of screaming cats, car horns, and loudly-shouted guttural Arabic invectice from the ahwa, or coffee-shop, seven stories below my flat.

It’s been almost a month since I moved into my flat on Mohammed Ouf street (Or Abdel-Raham Pasha Ouf st, or Rahman St, depending on which map you're looking at) in the Agouza neighborhood of Cairo. The newness of it has largely faded in favor of a regular daily and weekly routine revolving around my job as a Program Assistant at MESP, a handful of Egyptian and American friends from outside of the program, and, of course, two or three books which I continually working through. It’s a comfortable routine; as we’ve gotten into the regular rhythm of the semester my workload has diminished, and I get to spend a lot of time sitting in on the lectures and events that shaped my time here as a student. I’m deeply grateful for that.

This weekend, as I said, is quiet…in that regard. The 29 MESP students all decided to be a part of an optional trip to Alexandria for the weekend, and, in the continued interest of helping them adjust to living life independently in Cairo, Andrea (My fellow program assistant) and I decided to let them go on their own, leaving us with a completely free weekend in Cairo.

I took advantage of my freedom today by sleeping in (I woke up at 8 due to the schedule we have at MESP, but refused to submit to that, and quickly fell back asleep), having a leisurely morning, and then this afternoon taking a walk around Cairo…ostensibly to visit “The Diwan”, a bookstore in the nearby neighborhood of Zamalek, and possibly to go shopping for some new jeans (My only pair recently got a significant tear in them thanks to a clay pot with jagged edges at one of the mosques we took the students to), but in reality more to engage in one of my favorite activities: people-watching.

I live on the top floor of my building, and, while I make myself climb the stairs at least once a day, most of the time my journeys in and out are facilitated by what I, and most MESPers affectionately term a “Ghetto-vator”: A tiny elevator with no door on the inside and which slows and groans mournfully when more than one person attempts to use it.

On the ground floor of my building, along the street, are two tiny grocery stores, a barbershop, and, as I mentioned before, an ahwa with a tile patio with wooden chairs populated by older Egyptian men wearing leather jackets and gallibeyas and drinking tiny glasses of hot, strong tea with diabetes-inducing levels of sugar in them. The bubble of hookahs, or shishas, is constant, from the early hours of the morning when I go to work to my latest return home, and the sweet, faintly apple-scented smoke fills my nostrils every time I leave my flat. I went there once, but when my “friend” Ahmed who works there tried to get away with charging me 20 pounds for a cup of tea (About ten times what it should cost), I decided to re-locate to another ahwa down the street. It’s simple, there’s at least one ahwa on practically every street corner in Cairo.

I also live next door both to the neighborhood mosque, an impressive structure with three domes and two minarets; and the local Coptic church across the street, a somewhat less impressive structure whose bells compete with the muezzin’s call to prayer. This is typical of Cairo, a pattern one will see repeated over and over again: a Mosque built just next door to a church, and built just a little bigger, with minarets designed to come just a bit higher than the peak of the church’s bell tower. Once upon a time it was a law that churches couldn’t be built taller than mosques, now I think it’s simply remained that way from tradition and social pressure.

I walked past the mosque and through a parking lot to the edge of the corniche, or river-side road, a busy thoroughfare wide enough for several lanes of traffic…that is, if Egyptians believed in lanes of traffic. The government has attempted to paint lanes on some of the larger highways, but their complete disregard by the populace en masse doubtless discouraged further work. Something as arbitrary as a painted lane could never capture the adventurous spirit of the Egyptian taxi driver, who weaves freely from one side of the street to the other at frightening speed, all the while chain-smoking cheap Cleopatra cigarettes and gesticulating wildly to emphasize his derision for the rising price of government subsidized petrol.

Riding with these wild dare-devils is an experience in itself, but perhaps even more intense is the process of crossing the street in front of them. Egyptian taxi drivers, and indeed Egyptians in general drive with a speed and urgency foreign to any other aspect of their sociable, laid-back culture, and something as insignificant as a pedestrian crossing the street in front of them by no means slows them down. The key to surviving a corniche crossing is boldness and commitment. At the slightest opening, you make your dash, and commit fully to it. Any second-guessing, and the chance will be gone.

Crossing the street in heavier traffic also involves a sort of stagger-step weave, dashing past a bus and then quickly stopping short as a taxi flies by before walking the rest of the way across the road.

I made it across the corniche safely, and walked up the stairs to the 6 October bridge (Commemorating Egypt’s “victory” in the 1973 war with Israel), my route to the island of Zamalek: an upper-scale area of Cairo comfortably separated from larger Cairo by twin channels of the Nile. Zamalek houses the Cairo Opera House and a healthy population of American and European expatriates, all of whom studiously avoid making eye contact with other foreigners they see on the street (For the rationale behind this social phenomenon, see “Stuff White People Like” 71

I made it to the Diwan just as my throat was beginning to get parched from the dust, and I sat down in their café for a Fayrouz, the most heavenly soft drink in existence (made in Egypt!). I hadn’t planned on staying at the Diwan long, so I hadn’t brought anything of my own to read, and their books weren’t permitted in the café, so I just sat and tried to eavesdrop on an Egyptian mother’s conversation with her two kids at the table behind me as an Arabic exercise. As is the case most of the time most of the conversation escaped me, but I did manage to pick up the general gist: the mom had told her son he could get one thing, one thing only, which he was protesting. When she stood firm, he said in a huff: “Mafiish haga helwa henna!” (There isn’t anything good here!) and stormed off. I’d just finished my Fayrouz, so I didn’t mind.

I didn’t buy anything at the Diwan, but browsed for awhile, and read the first chapter of “Holy Cow”, a hilarious book about India recommended to me by my habibi Kandyce before leaving. I hadn’t passed anywhere that looked promising for buying jeans, so I decided to take the long way back to my flat, and walked along 26 July st (Commemorating the military coup which overthrew King Farouk and issued in Egyptian independence in the 1950s).

A number of soldiers were gathered along the street, their AK-47s resting on the sidewalk; glazed, bored expressions on their faces. I don’t blame them. Egypt suffers from chronic “under-employment”. To keep employment low the government employs more people than it has jobs for, leaving literally thousands, probably tens of thousands of Egyptians in jobs where they literally show up and do nothing all day. It’s a holdover from the grand days of Arab socialism under Gamal Abd Al-Nasser (If you don’t know who Gamal Abd Al-Nasser is, he was the charismatic first president of Egypt and a prime candidate for the position of Antichrist for apocalyptically minded dispensationalist Americans back in the 60s), and a part of the unofficial deal between Egypt’s series of autocratic Presidents and the general populace: keep us employed, keep bread cheap, keep our families from starving, and we will not complain about human rights abuses and rampant corruption. Egyptians are, for the most part, just getting by, but as long as they can just get by they’re satisfied.

Egypt as a country in many ways is just getting by. Corruption and political repression, funded by billions of dollars in American military and political aid to the Mubarak government, have stifled economic and civic development underneath a blanket of cronyism. And so people…just get by, just make it from one day to another. The taxi driver does everything he can to keep his ancient wreck running, mothers in black veils sit at streetcorners hawking tissues, and the zibaals, or trash-men, sift through the waste of the privileged rich to find anything that can be re-sold, re-cycled, or made into something worth having.

An Al-Jazeera special described Egypt as “A Nation In Waiting”: a nation just getting by as they wait for the winds to change, for the political and social environment to provide the opportunities for them or their children that now simply do not exist.

Many get tired of waiting, and those who can emigrate in droves; to Europe, to Canada, to the United States. But visas and plane tickets are expensive for a family just getting by, and for most waiting is the only option. Waiting, and watching, and hoping for something new.

Students!

2009-01-16T02:40:00.000+05:30

The MESP spring '09 group just got here yesterday! They're a great group of kids, and while I'm still, of course, in the process of getting to know everyone, I'm really liking the group dynamic that we have already. I think it's going to be a great semester.

It being orientation week does mean, though, that Andrea and I are basically swamped from when we get up to when we go to bed...not necessarily incredibly intensive work, but just lots of it. I think over the next week I'll basically just be going back to my flat to sleep.

It's great, though...so much fun to see this process that I went through happening again for all of these kids. I can't wait to see what happens next. I'll try and write more about it when I have time.

Irony? I think so...

2009-01-08T00:46:00.001+05:30

That my last time in Cairo, when I really had no responsibilities, I went the entire four months without a shade of ill-health, and this time, when I actually have significant responsibilities, I've gone from having a fever to a sore throat to now being so congested that I can barely breathe in the space of less than a week. That is irony.

Other than that, things in Cairo are going well. Andrea and I are making good progress on preparing things for the students' arrival (A week from today!), and tomorrow are trucking into the Mugamma, the looming soviet-era center of all things bureaucratic in Cairo, to pick up applications forms for the students' visas (And my one-year visa). I've re-connected with a number of my friends from my semester here (Out of the 25 students who were here that fall, 7 are living in Cairo now!), and am working on improving my Arabic before the semester starts.

Working on a real blog post about life here in Agouza. Post that soon...

Like You Never Left...

2009-01-03T18:51:00.000+05:30

I slept for most of my flight across the Atlantic yesterday, the string of airports: Charlotte, Chicago, Amman all a vast blur of rushing crowds and the loud disembodied voices directing them. I read, starting and finishing Chris Hedges' War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (Absolutely phenomenal, by the way. Check it out), and thought only vaguely about the import of this trip...it's finality. Only a handful of moments along the way distinguished it:

At the Charlotte ticket counter:
"Now, I don't see a return date here...when are you coming back?"
"Oh...it's just a one-way ticket."

The plane from Amman to Cairo, sitting beside a friendly Egyptian man named Amad, and stumbling around with my word or two of Arabic...

And then, then waiting in line at immigration, the official thumbing through my well-stamped passport, checking my former Egyptian visas carefully before confirming their expiration and directing me over to the Bank of Egypt desk to buy a new visa. A moment of grabbing my bags, deflecting the multiple offers of taxis, and then Diaa, the assistant director, striding towards me across the airport lobby, and I was well and truly here.

Diaa and I talked non-stop the whole way back to Agouza, and my eyes roved out the windows, taking in the insane traffic, the crowds, the brightly-lit mosques and marketplaces. I was struck by how familiar it all felt, how, despite two years of incredible change and growth in me, Cairo felt very much the same. And when we got to Agouza, the familiarity was ten-fold, every turn, every street full of memory...the sandwich place on the corner, the sheykh shop (So-named because of the proprietor's full, lustrous beard), the MESP villa, and the intern's...oh wait, I mean, MY flat.

Diaa and Ashraf (The MESP general handyman and master of all things maintenance-related) showed me around the flat, and I was struck over and over again by the SIZE of it, and all of it purely my own. Raised in a family of six kids it was rare during my childhood that I had my own bedroom, much less my own kitchen, bathroom, living room, and TWO bedrooms. In fact, come to think of it, this year will be the first time in my entire life when I've lived in a house/apartment entirely my own...raised in a huge family, living at Gordon with 1-3 roommates, and then living in Beverly with Frog and Chris (And Matt at the tail end of my time there). Now, when I go home, there will be no one there to sit down and talk with, no one to share my day with...it makes me sad. I don't think I'll spend a lot of time there; it's too lonely. I'll be spending my days at the MESP villa or with the students...and if I must go back to the flat, it'll be to have other people over there.

I'll post pictures some time when I get a chance, but just to give you a mental image: My flat is on the seventh floor of an apartment building about two blocks away from the MESP villa. The door is painted bright red, with a big golden doorknob with the Arabic word for God on it in the exact center. Two somewhat feral cats are perpetually running around the landing outside my door, and looking at me with suspicion in their crazed eyes. I haven't named them yet, but plan on doing so once we get a little more acquainted.

My door opens into a medium-sized dining room, with a table for four just to the left of the door, and a sort of dresser with a mirror on top of it along the wall. I've put most of my books on top of that dresser. Straight through the dining room is the living room, with couches wrapped around all four walls, and the TV off in one corner (Diaa was profusely apologetic that the TV only picked up three completely Arabic channels, but I assured him that I wasn't really interested in watching TV).

Around the corner to the left of the dining room as you enter the front door is the kitchen, fully-furnished with a sink, gas stove, microwave, refrigerator, and a handful of dishes and spices left behind by previous interns.

Coming out of the kitchen, to the left is a hallway that leads down to the bathroom, with a bedroom on each side. I installed myself in the bedroom on the left, with a big double-bed and dressers for someone with ten times as many clothes as I own along the left-hand wall.

Today is a day off for me, a day to unpack and adjust. I had lunch at the villa with a group of students visiting from Lee University, and then, after finishing my unpacking, walked around Agouza, making sure that I really did remember everything.

It's surprising to me how much I simultaneously feel comfortable, at home, and also feel completely...terrified at the thought of the next few months. It will be a rough adjustment process, remembering all the little details of life here, especially with picking up Arabic again, but that feeling of home comforts me in the middle of it all.

Tomorrow morning we have our first staff meeting of the semester, and my job begins in earnest.

Leaving Star House

2008-11-30T00:05:00.000+05:30

I'm writing today from the computer in the staff office at Star House. It's Thanksgiving weekend, and our kids have scattered to the four winds, visiting family or potential foster parents and leaving the house completely empty until this evening. I've been here alone since six this morning, minus a couple of hours in mid-morning when Chris, my replacement, showed up to talk about what the morning routine is like. I've done all the cleaning jobs I can, written up a menu for the house for next week, and made a whirlwind tour of Market Basket picking up all the necessary food for said menu.

Now my duties until the end of my shift at 3 revolve entirely around the silvery-grey staff cellphone sitting on the desk to my right, ready to jump into action if any of our kids, out on their visits, begin to escalate and need to be returned to the house. It eerily reminds me of those long, long summer overnight shifts at public safety back at Gordon, where nothing, absolutely nothing happened. Who knew that, in such rough economic times, there's still quite the market for people to sit around doing nothing! Fortunately tomorrow, my last day at Star House, will be different, as one of our kids will be coming back tonight and will be here to keep me occupied.

It's been a tough, wonderful, horrible, moving, challenging three months working here. I've been bitten, cussed out more times than I can think of, restrained a girl who had twenty pounds on me (And is only 8! Ask me about it some time...), just barely dodged butterknives, books, and chairs from being thrown at my face, and much more. And I've been embraced and praised, had kids call me their "best pal" and their "favorite staff", and had beautiful pictures drawn for me with a priceless inscription scribbled in crayon in the center: "Thank you for making me safe". I've raced bikes, planned out day trips, played arcade games, and gone all the way to Nantucket and back to deliver a kid for a camping trip. Every day has been different, unique, with its own learning experiences, its own biting, emotionally-draining challenges and and its own wonderful, priceless joys.

I'm sad to leave. It almost feels like I've just begun to get the hang of this place, just begun to get comfortable with the kids, just had them begin to get accustomed to me. The three kids we have in the program now are all comfortable with me. We've developed our own little rituals and constant conversational topics: rock music with R, comic books with J, hypothetical situations and home repair with the other J. I haven't grown any happier with waking up at 5 AM to get ready for work, but I have stopped dreading entering the only somewhat-ordered chaos of the house. I've become a "senior staffperson"! The high turnover rate (sad but true) has made me one of the more experienced home counselors still in the program, and over the past few weeks since my morning partner Meredith left the program, I've been working on training my replacements, filling them in on that vast multitude of unofficial information which typically ends up being infinitely more crucial than the formal training in house policy which we all receive. Star House has taught me a lot, and transformed a three-month period that I looked at this spring as "dead time" until I could leave for Egypt into a deeply meaningful experience which I'm very grateful for.

But I'm ready to leave. I think I realized how ready I was on Thursday, when, for the first time I was on the verge of breaking into tears at work, and had to desperately hide my feelings until my shift ended. It's a long story, ask me about it if you want to hear more. And my heart, which has left pieces of itself strewn across the globe: Egypt, India, North Carolina, Colorado, keeps calling out to be re-united. The whispers have been quiet, but they've been growing louder and louder. This job has been deeply fulfilling, but while I can appreciate all that I've learned, I know that this isn't what I'm meant for, what I'm meant to devote my life to. To children, yes, but as a home counselor, no. That's not who I've been made to be. I've loved it, and done my best to excel at it, but something inside me dreams and yearns for something more.

And what is that? God knows. But I haven't the faintest. Just putting one foot in front of the other, first to North Carolina, from there to Egypt in January and India in June, and trusting Him for the rest.

Works of Love

2008-11-11T04:01:00.000+05:30

I finished my second reading of Works of Love by Soren Kierkegaard, one of the greatest books of Christian philosophy and practice ever written, in my opinion, a couple days ago, and wrote this, in a slightly different form, in my journal in response:

It is liberating, more than anything else, to think about love; love in the purest sense, the purest possible sense: that is to say, love of God and love of one’s neighbor. This is liberating both in relation to purpose and in relation to happiness...Purpose? What is our purpose? Love one another. Love your neighbor. Love the one whom you see, who has been laid out in front of you. This alone, and learning to do this well, is more than enough to occupy a lifetime. Now, add onto it that in everything you must love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Of course the two are intertwined, but still, they are two distinct goals. Two insurmountable goals, two goals to which one can never reach an end. But, while they are insurmountable, while one can not ever master them, but must forever be striving with oneself to master them, they are immediate. They are always present, and always easily found. The ways to grow in them are not hidden or complex, they need no formulae or ritual (Though ritual is one of the greatest ways of deepening one’s love), you must simply love. Simply love.

And for your happiness? Simply love. Love others. This is the greatest fulfillment and satisfaction, if you can train your eyes to see rightly. Love your neighbor, who can never be taken away from you. No matter where you go, if you truly love your neighbor, your love goes with you. And this is the world’s greatest joy. To love is the greatest, to be loved the second. God seeks to remind us always that we universally have the second, and sent his Son that we might have the first.

Jesus came that we might have life, and have it to the full. He came to be our way, our truth, our life. No man may come to the Father save through him, for he is love, and we shall never reach the Father save through love. Love overcomes evil through the sacrifice of itself, through honoring the other and presupposing love within the other. Love overcomes evil never through compulsion, never through the inevitability of logic. As Kierkegaard says, to truly be certain of love is not to love. Jesus came and taught the lesson, Jesus came and brought the sacrifice, but he would not cast it in our faces. He would not call down the kingdom with ten legions of angels. He would not selfishly call forth our love with glories beyond our imagination. No! He loved us too much for that. He hides himself and says: “Will you love me? Will you love me as I bear a cross, and promise one for you? Will you love me with purity and singleness of heart, though none will understand your love?”

“But Lord! You yourself may make it understandable. Simply be reasonable in your demands, be practical, be utilitarian. Say the words a little clearer, show forth the example a little stronger, cast the kings of the earth from their thrones, bind the devil with a ritual, and then we will know to love you.”

What sadness in his eyes as he hears these words, and he who was love himself must say: “It is not me you love.”

First Thoughts in the days of Obama

2008-11-07T00:20:00.000+05:30

I had to go to bed early on November 4th. It's an occupational hazard of waking kids up for a living, and I knew that it had to happen, but that didn't make it any less disappointing that after literally two years of watching a slowly-shrinking group of people campaign for President, I was missing the final moment.

The kickoff for the Presidential campaign came, interestingly enough, from Joe Biden, who said he would run all the way back in March, 2006. The first to drop out, if you remember, was Tom Vilsack, former Democratic governor of Iowa, who announced his campaign on November 30, 2006 and, after the only hype generated for his candidacy were a handful of cracks on The Daily Show involving his last name and the Aflac duck, subsequently dropped out on February 27, 2007, just two weeks after a little-known Democratic junior senator from Illinois announced his own unlikely bid for the Presidency.

I had heard rumors about Barack Obama, or at least heard the name, mostly from a friend of mine in Egypt from Illinois who spoke glowingly about him. I was going through something a personal political revolution at the time, and so the impressions didn't really stick. I personally got to know Barack Obama through his memoir: "Dreams from My Father", which I bought in a discount bookstore and read on recommendation from another friend. If you haven't read it yet, pick it up. He wrote it several years ago, before anyone knew who he was, and it is phenomenal; well-written, moving, passionate. Anyone can invent a sympathetic persona for themselves when they're on the national stage (See Sarah Palin). And anyone can write a book when ghostwriters are cheap and readily available (See John McCain and Mark Salter!). It takes a truly extraordinary man to write a book like "Dreams From My Father".

I haven't read any of his other books, mostly because they were written when Barack was clearly on his way at least to national prominence. There are too many good books out there to read the ones written for political advantage. Maybe if I get a chance I'll pick up "The Audacity of Hope". I had to read McCain and Salter's "Hard Call" for a book review I wrote for the Tartan and that was more than enough campaign literature for me.

I had my doubts about Barack Obama, primarily when he made a speech promising strikes against Pakistan if the US had actionable intelligence as to the location of Osama Bin Laden, but as the primaries began and I watched him handle everything thrown at him calmly, presidentially, I knew I'd found a man who, when I cast my ballot, I would feel proud to be putting my support behind. And as I heard Barack Obama speak about my country, tell his story that never could have happened anywhere else; I felt a pride in this unique little place called America, a deep pride that didn't deny or denigrate my love for the rest of the world, for Egypt or India or Palestine, that didn't arrogantly and bombastically proclaim the xenophobic and ethnocentric superiority complex of the Republican party or the country music station (No offense to my Republican or country music-loving friends, I know you are decent people, but listen to your spokespeople and hold them accountable, it's true). For so long the Republican party and the Religious Right had controlled the definition of what it means to love this country. Barack Obama shattered what it means to be a decent, patriotic American.

It was wonderfully, wonderfully liberating. When I heard Barack Obama speak, I believed in America again. Believed that we could be a nation that handled its influence responsibly, be a nation that treasured its uniqueness and yet didn't hold itself in arrogant superiority over the rest of the world. And I felt proud to be a part of that nation.

My absentee ballot came too slow for me to cast a vote in the North Carolina democratic primary, to my chagrin (I am a registered Independent, and intend, for the foreseeable future, to remain so, but NC allows independents to vote in party primaries), but I watched eagerly as Obama moved through the primaries and, on my birthday in June, sealed up the Democratic nomination.

He's a flawed man. Very flawed. And I was very disappointed many times throughout the campaign. Barack Obama is no savior, and I have some fundamental disagreements with him. But I do have faith in his strength of character, and I think he will be one of the finest Presidents that our nation has had in a long time.

So we catch up to the night of November 4th, and I was crouched over my laptop with the lights off, eyes glued to cnn.com as a wave of blue slowly descended across the country from Maine moving south and west. Some of the pundits called it at Pennsylvania, but I held out until Ohio flipped blue. And then, doing the math over and over again in my head, I went to bed with a smile on my face. It's been eight years of arrogance, secrecy, corruption and war. But with this phenomenal man and his beautiful family moving into this White House tainted by sin, I can feel a new rejuvenating wind blowing through America.

Sweet Release

2008-11-03T20:42:00.000+05:30

That all of this is nothing but listening to the master Poet, that the yearning for truth and beauty was the voice to follow, and that believing and following for love and love alone was the lesson waiting to be discovered all along.

Thy mercy, my God is the theme of my song.
The joy of my heart, the boast of my tongue
Thy free grace alone from the first to the last
Hath won my affection and bound my soul fast

Without thy sweet mercy I could not live here
Sin would reduce me to utter despair
But through thy free goodness my spirits revive
And he that first made me still keeps me alive

Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart
Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart
Dissolved by thy goodness I fall to the ground
And weep to the praise of the mercy I've found

Great Father of mercies, thy goodness I own
And the covenant love of thy crucified son
All praise to the Spirit, whose whisper divine
Seals mercy with pardon and righteousness mine
-John Stocker

Al-Qaeda's Candidate For President

2008-10-27T21:33:00.000+05:30

It's not just President Bush's endorsement that John McCain is desperately trying to hush up these days. A number of news sources have reported that Al-Hesbah, a popular website linked to Al-Qaeda, recently issued a statement issuing their own endorsement of sorts for Sen. McCain and talking about the advantages of planning a last-minute pre-election terrorist attack in order to push US voters to vote for McCain. Nicholas Kristof did an excellent op-ed piece on this in the New York Times.

Why would the movement which Sen. McCain has repeatedly described as America's number one enemy and the greatest security priority of our day very unequivocally state their preference for a McCain presidency? McCain has pledged to continue fighting them, continue devoting the full pressure of the United States military, the greatest destructive force known to man, to attempting to destroy them. It is a widespread belief amongst most of America that, in the words of a commentator from Fox News I heard once (I don't recall his name, so you'll have to take my word on it): "All of America's enemies fear and hate John McCain, none of America's enemies fear and hate Barack Obama."

Well, the answer is simply all of that which I just mentioned. John McCain has, in no uncertain terms, pledged to not only continue the bombastic, xenophobic attitude towards the rest of the world which has characterized the Bush presidency, but, if anything, has promised to exacerbate this attitude, and draw into starker contrast the black-and-white divide which the administration has attempted to draw down the population of the world. See Gov. Palin's commentary on foreign policy (criminally scant as it is) if you're unconvinced.

The only people who this disrespectful attitude towards the rest of the world, particularly the Muslim world, benefit are Al-Qaeda and it's ilk, who, in McCain and Palin would have the perfect recruiting tools for the next four, eight, or (God forbid! Oh, it's chilling...) sixteen years. An America led by John McCain will become increasingly hostile towards the Muslim world, will continue to expand our list of enemies, and will most likely prove devastating to the Middle East peace process. Sarah Palin's declaration that "It's clear who the good guys and who the bad guys are on this one" (See the link about foreign policy above) would be the prima facie evidence of that. John McCain's courtship of John Hagee and his reactionary, hate-peddling organization Christians United For Israel is further evidence of it. Anyone who approaches Israel/Palestine that blindly is doomed to swift failure and devastating consequences.

We are at a critical moment in the Middle East peace process. With Ehud Olmert out of power, Tzipi Livni unable to form a new Israeli government, and elections looming, it is essential now more than ever that a strong, informed, and balanced US influence on the negotiating process be present. Barack Obama, a strong and committed Christian who nevertheless speaks respectfully of Islam and promises to engage meaningfully with Muslim leaders around the world, promises that.

The "War on Terror" is not something that can be won with tanks and missiles, it will only be won when there is meaningfully cross-cultural engagement and an attitude of respect and evenhandedness. The Bush administration's attitude towards the Middle East has justified every Al-Qaeda propaganda video, has proved them right! McCain promises even more of the same, and the price will be paid in blood.

Today's Prayer

2008-10-13T19:30:00.000+05:30

Father, make me real.

Let Us Keep The Feast

2008-10-10T03:38:00.000+05:30

Yesterday morning I was bitten. Twice.

I like to start the story out that way when I tell my friends here because it's a sure-fire attention-grabber, allowing me to run into the mundane details of a morning at Star House which quickly devolved into chaos with kids attacking each other, a couple of restraints, and yes, a thirteen year-old girl biting me as she tried to get past me to scream profanity at one of the other girls. Ask me if you want more of the details.

The morning was topped off when, as I was backing out of the driveway at Star House after all the kids were at school I came a little too close to a Beverly Public Works truck and knocked my driver's side rear-view mirror off the side of my car. I was able to stick it back on, and it hasn't fallen off again, so it wasn't too serious, but it didn't do wonders for my outlook on life that day.

Now, since I work on Sunday mornings, Wednesday afternoons is the time I take the Eucharist at Christ Church. The service is normally administered by my friend Brian Barry, who's currently a deacon trying to work out how his ordination is going to work (The politics of Anglicans and the Episcopal church is quite complex...). As a Deacon, and not yet a full-fledged priest, Brian doesn't have the authority to celebrate the Eucharist, and thus our service on Wednesdays is what's called the "Liturgy of the Pre-sanctified" in which we take elements which have already been consecrated by a priest in a previous service. However, yesterday as I sat down in the beautiful old Christ Church chapel I looked up and was surprised to see Father Bergner, one of Christ Church's priests, presiding over the service.

Wednesday Eucharist is an intimate affair, not many people are there usually, so after the passing of the peace (Ask your catholic or Anglican friend), we all go up to the altar rail for the rest of the service. With Brian, it tends to be pretty short, since we skip the prayers of consecration and pretty much go straight to the distribution of the elements. But since Father Bergner was there today, we had the entire liturgy of the Eucharist. And maybe it was because I hadn't heard all of those words in so long, but something stood out to me about that service. Something profound, something incredible, something immeasurably holy.

I was raised non-denominational with Baptist leanings. We took communion once a month, and I, little pagan, made a game out of it. The trays through which we got the "wine" had tiny plastic cups arranged on them in concentric circles (My compatriots raised in American Evangelicalism doubtless know what I'm talking about). I arranged a scoring system in my head for however close to the center of the tray my own cup was, and felt my heart pounding if the centermost cup was still available as the tray started moving down the row of chairs where I was sitting.

All this to say, no offense intended to my low-church friends, but the holy sacrament of The Lord's Supper never meant much to me. It was just the weird thing we did once a month, a way to remember Jesus. Since we spent most Sundays talking about Jesus in one way or another, it seemed rather redundant to me, and it meant that Sunday morning lasted half an hour longer than usual, and so was kind of a bother.

Not till I began celebrating the Eucharist in the Anglican church did this ceremony start meaning something to me. And yesterday, I truly felt the deep strength of Christ's avenue of grace in the Eucharist. As Father Bergner consecrated the elements, as he spoke the words of the gospel, I felt my heart beat faster, as he held up the wafer of the bread, inscribed with the sign of the cross, I felt the presence of something other, of the divine presence in a deeply tangible way.

Holy and gracious Father: In your infinite love you made us for yourself; and, when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you, in your mercy, sent Jesus
Christ, your only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all.

He stretched out his arms upon the cross, and offered himself, in obedience to your will, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world.

On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, “Take,
eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.”

After supper he took the cup of wine; and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and said, “Drink this, all of you: This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you
and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.”

Therefore we proclaim the mystery of faith:
Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.

We celebrate the memorial of our redemption, O Father, in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Recalling his death, resurrection, and ascension, we offer you these gifts.

Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him. Sanctify us also that we may faithfully
receive this holy Sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace; and at the last day bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal kingdom.

All this we ask through your Son Jesus Christ. By him, and with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honorand glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. AMEN.

And then, kneeling at the altar, as Father Bergner finished the consecration, held forth the elements and said: "Hallelujah, Christ our passover is sacrificed for us!" I knew I was saved, saved all over again, saved every day from a thousand sins and shortfallings in my own nature, from the psychoses and emotional destruction that have ravaged the kids I work with, from the chaos of that morning and every other morning that would ever be like it.

And I was hungry, so hungry that I had no choice but to respond: "Therefore let us keep the feast!"

And taking the elements I had to smile because I felt that life abundant, that life overflowing, welling up within me, and I heard those amazing, amazing words: "Behold, I am making all things new!"

Work Stories and Thoughts

2008-10-03T23:04:00.000+05:30

The past few days have really reminded me of the challenges and rewards of the kind of work that I have right now. It's been a study in contrast, between the individual kids and between the different days as well. A story:

Yesterday morning I was beginning to enter wind down mode at work...all five of our kids are in school now, so all of our kids are out of the house by 8:30. We had three out and two kids left, when J, one of our boys, asked me if I could get his allowance money out of his lockbox. Kids aren't allowed to take stuff out of their boxes before school, which J knows, so I just offered him a gentle reminder. He asked if it would be okay if he just got his money out to count it, not take any out, and I said it would be okay as long as there was a staffperson (Either me or my fellow morning staffperson Meredith) around. His box of money is...I think originally a tackle box, with the different compartments filled mostly with pennies and a handful of other coins.

J has some mental challenges, and so as he was counting his pennies he got confused and asked me to come over and help him out. I came over and began counting for J quietly in my head while he and I talked about his morning, which had been very good, and I asked him about school. Final count was around 200, and I was getting ready to put all the coins back in the tackle box and lock them up again when J abruptly reached in and scooted about half the coins aside. He then looked over at me and asked for a plastic bag to put the coins in. I reminded him of the rule about lockboxes in the morning, to which he responded very matter-of-factly: "I want staff to give this to poor people."

I was surprised, and I said: "What do you mean, J?"

"Poor people...people...people who don't have anything at all."

I asked him several times, just to make sure we both understood that if he gave the money away he wouldn't be getting it back. One of the other kids overheard our conversation and said: "Hey, you should give it to me!"

J shook his head vigorously and said: "No, I want this money to be for people who got...who got NOTHING."

I don't think I could have been more proud of him if he was my own kid...

Then, of course, there was this morning, which was absolute chaos. It began with one of the kids, whose bus comes first, refusing to get out of bed and screaming at me for half an hour, had another kid getting restrained because we were afraid she was going to hurt herself, and ended with another kid screaming profanity at all and sundry, and attempting to enrage the other kids by attacking the dirtiest details of their pasts. It's not her fault...a few weeks ago she started having what the nurse thought might be a physical reaction to one of her multiple medications, and the doctor decided to cut everything off, cold turkey, no more mood stabilizers, nothing. Since then she's just had this uncontrollable aggression towards everyone who comes into her path, and this need to prove herself, to act like she's in control of the situation.

After separating her from the other kids, I sat down in the door of her room. She grabbed a rubber band and started aiming it at my face. I didn't move.

She said: "Aren't you afraid?"

I shook my head.

"Why not?"

"Because," I responded, "I don't think you really want to hurt me."

She shot the rubber band at my head. It was a pretty small one, and didn't hit me too hard. I rubbed the spot but stayed sitting where I was. She looked quizzical: "Didn't that hurt?"

I shook my head again: "Not really. Look, (Her name), why don't we talk about what's going on? You woke up really well this morning, you were having a good morning, what made you so upset?"

"Shut up, you motherf***ing asshole!"

"(Her name)? Come on, what's going on?"

"Shut up, you motherf***ing asshole!"

We kept going like this for a few minutes, all the while with her grabbing various implements from her room and brandishing them at me, asking me if I was afraid, and me continuing to repeat: "No (Her name), I'm not afraid, because I think you're really a good kid, and you don't really want to do anything to hurt me."

Finally, we ran out of time because she had to go to school...I don't know if my talk had any real effect...she was still pretty upset when she left, and was still screaming at me and calling me an asshole, so there definitely wasn't anything different on the surface of things, but in the end that's not what it's about.

What is it about? Well, to put it in a cliche that might seem a bit cloying, it's about love. And, more than that, it's about love no matter what. Star House has taught me so many important lessons about love, but I think the most important is that the true difficulty in loving people isn't loving them when they do things that hurt you, or loving them when they screw up their lives, its loving them when they don't want you to. It's loving when they're telling you to get out of their lives, when they're attacking everything you've done for them or even anywhere near them, when they're telling you that you're hurting things. It's being guided by love and doing the right thing outside of results.

I think this is part of what Jesus means when he talks about loving your enemies. It's hard loving someone who's hurt you, but that's not really what I think the essence of what Jesus is talking about is. You can be hurt by people you love, in fact personally I think it's inevitable that you'll be hurt by the people you love. What's truly hard, what loving an enemy means, is loving where your love is not wanted. Because that's what an enemy is, right? Someone you have a mutual antagonism with, someone who doesn't want anything from you except to beat you. And there's a comfort in accepting that relationship, accepting that antagonism, and simple resting in the knowledge that you can't get along with everyone.

But that's not what Christ asks of us. He tells us to love our enemies, to love where we are not wanted. He himself, is, of course, the example of this. The narrative of salvation is a gracious God coming where he is not wanted, delivering those who do not want to be saved, loving universally despite the fact that he is not loved back. As St. Paul says in Romans, God shows his love for us in that, while we were sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). What makes the love so extraordinary is not the level of the sacrifice, though that is beyond imagination, it is the objects towards which the love is directed. Love not for merit but in spite of it, love not because of our righteousness but because of our sinfulness, love not on the basis of what is offered to the lover, but because of what the lover can offer the beloved.

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven." (Matt. 5:43-44).

This is an extraordinary love. May Christians, little Christs, live up to it. I know I don't. But by God's grace, I'm trying to learn.

Revealing Priorities

2008-09-26T01:35:00.000+05:30

"I find it extraordinary that the US can find 700 Billion dollars to bail out Wall Street, but the entire G8 (Group of 8 industrialized nations) can't seem to find 25 billion dollars to save the 25,000 children who die every day of preventable diseases."

-Bono

Sometimes it takes moments of crisis to reveal where people's priorities really are. An economic crisis that might effect the lives of the fat cats on Wall Street is resolved in two weeks. The continuing deplorable crisis of unnecessary extreme poverty and its consequents, disease and famine, continues for years without meaningful action. Of course, one is more inclined to help out one's golf buddies, particularly if it can be cloaked in the shroud of "saving the world economic system."

Don't get me wrong. An economic collapse emanating from Wall Street would be devastating, and government action is needed. But even more so does our conscience demand that the continuing devastation of extreme poverty be met with meaningful action, both governmental and nongovernmental. Furthermore, I find it disgusting frankly that the immoral and irresponsible lending practices of Wall Street which have sparked this whole thing are, in essence, being rewarded, or at least, protected, and the millions they've made and continue to make will remain invincible bailout or not. And when some Democrats in congress attempt to include legislation in the bailout plan which would curtail (From, say, 12 million to 9 million) the salaries and bonuses of the CEOs whose companies will receive bailout money the rest of Congress cries foul. God forbid Richard Fuld, CEO of Lehman brothers, should have to forego another 22 million dollar bonus, like he got last year. We can't have that! That would be unfair!

In conclusion, a adapted wordfrom the Sermon on the Mount for Dick Fuld (Lehman Brothers), Edward Liddy (AIG), Herbert Allison (Fannie Mae), and all of their friends whose lives over the past few weeks have taken a turn for the worse:

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where housing market downturns destroy, and where opportunistic lenders break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, invincible from the whims of an immoral market system. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

And may God have mercy on all the gamblers, thieves, and hypocrites (like me).

Currently

2008-09-22T06:48:00.000+05:30

I'm listening to Over the Rhine
Inhaling Sandalwood incense
Drinking a glass of Merlot
And reading poetry by William Butler Yeats

Try that combination some time. I highly recommend it.

Some favorites from WBY

To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing

Now all the truth is out,

Be secret and take defeat

From any brazen throat,

For how can you compete,

Being honor bred, with one

Who, were it proved he lies,

Were neither shamed in his own

Nor in his neighbors' eyes?

Bred to a harder thing

Than triumph, turn away

And like a laughing string

Whereon mad fingers play

Amid a place of stone,

Be secret and exult,

Because of all things known

That is most difficult.

Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen (Part V)

Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the leveling wind.

Come let us mock at the wise;
With all those calendars whereon
They fixed old aching eyes,
They never saw the seasons run,
And now but gape at the sun.

Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked - and where are they?

Mock mockers after that
That would not lift a hand maybe
To help good, wise or great
To bar that foul storm out, for we
Traffic in mockery.

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

And that is all.

A Savior on Capitol Hill

2008-09-13T04:12:00.000+05:30

Lately, I've been really resonating with Derek Webb's album: "The Ringing Bell". The whole album is excellent, really reminds me of late Beatles, particularly "Abbey Road". And, over the past few days, I've found one song particularly relevant. Here's a great music video, courtesy of youtube and Derek Webb's myspace page:

I'm sick of it. Sick of all of it really: the framing of the argument, the personal attacks on the opponent, the taking of quotes out of context, the divisiveness, and the sheer, unadulterated bullshit. And it's saddening to know that at the heart of it are two relatively decent men who both at least came into this race as uniters. Obama at least has held on to the mantle of uniter. McCain and his new "barracuda" Sarah Palin (Her word for herself, not mine) have thrown all that out for the bad old days of the culture wars, and have pitted themselves as "middle-class values v. elitism" banking on the numerical advantage of the former. It's bad old politics that's shameful and hypocritical from a man who claims to put "country first". McCain's become the kind of politician that he once despised, bald-facedly lying and scrambling in any way possible to win the election.

As for Obama, I still truly admire the man, but this latest ad is immature and frankly offensive. It's 60 seconds of mocking an elderly man for nothing but being old and a little confused when it comes to computers. Democratic strategists are calling it a great success.

And this is what disgusts me about American politics. It ruins, yes ruins, otherwise generally decent, respectable and qualified people. It demands that they shove their positions down to the lowest common denominator, that they rely on people to be ignorant rather than encourage people to intelligently approach the issues.

Anyone who approaches things differently gets this "elitist" label, and somehow becomes "out of touch" because he doesn't lead everyone in a rousing chorus of "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition".

Barack Obama made an angered cry of "Enough!" in response to the McCain camp's latest round of gutter politics. Let's hold both sides to that, and refuse to be moved by these insulting ads that appeal to our ignorance. A few months ago as the nominations were becoming clearer and clearer I was overjoyed. On both sides. I've admired Barack Obama for some time, and John McCain has impressed me in the past. Both seemed focused more on seeking to appeal to people's better angels than the Mitt Romneys or Hillary Clintons of the nomination battle, both more civil towards their opponents, and both more interested in bringing together the United States of America than in gambling on the demographics. I was looking forward to watching the two debate each other.

Now, while I'm still planning on watching the debates, I don't know if I'll be able to make it through the whole thing without turning the TV off in disgust. Inevitably there will be a question about Sarah Palin, in which McCain will try to bullshit us into believing that his choice of her was anything more than a cynical ploy towards those moved by the Hillary Clinton campaign (Cross-reference some of McCain's extremely negative statements on Hillary Clinton during the Republican nomination contest with the glowing portrait of her now. It'd be funny if it didn't involve the fate of our country.). Inevitably there will be a question about experience, where Obama will try to bullshit us into believing that four years in the Senate can really prepare you for the Presidency. And when it comes to the actual issues, the ones that actually matter, real positions will get lost in sound bites driven by the desire for applause. McCain will continue to put forth following Osama Bin Laden to the gates of Hell (but not into Pakistan) as the central feature of his foreign policy and Obama will continue to offer stirring calls for hope and change with the details rather sketchy.

It's not that either of them are stupid, or even diabolical, as some of the anti-Washington hacks out there would like you to believe. No, it's that deep down we WANT them to be this way. Obama has detailed policy plans for his agenda of change, and McCain does have a more comprehensive foreign policy. I personally happen to vigorously disagree with his foreign policy, which is a big reason for my support of Obama, but that doesn't take away from the fact that he has one. But who could be bothered to sit down and actually read these things? I mean it's September, and all of our favorite shows are coming back on! Xenophobic stereotypes and simplistic sound bites are much easier to understand and get excited about than a thought-through policy agenda. And the public, which, let's remember, is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy, would largely much rather be talked down to, be appealed to at the level of their gut fears and hopes than actually use their brains.

So America, if you find yourself decrying the vicious partisan politics of this election, whether you're an Obama supporter enraged by McCain and Palin's "gutter politics" or you're a McCain supporter enraged by Obama and Biden's "disrespectfulness", look no further than the mirror. We have chosen for things to be this way, and if things are to change, it's not the media, it's not the "culture of Washington", it is ourselves who must begin it.

That's how democracy works. It functions appropriately only when the public is engaged, when the public cares enough about things like civility and intelligent discussion, and refuses to be caught by stupid red herrings like Obama's middle name or McCain being out of touch because he's not computer literate. We're adults here, people, let's act like it.

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

2008-09-08T18:57:00.000+05:30

I haven't posted on here in a while, mostly due to the fact that, for the past week and a half or so I've been transitioning into my new job as a home counselor at the Star House here in Beverly, a transitional home for children who have been victims of abuse or neglect. It's been incredibly challenging and rewarding already, and definitely one of the most intense things I've done in my life.

A little background first. Star House is a relatively new program, having only come into existence around five years ago. It's partially publicly funded and partially privately funded, with a long-term goal of one day being completely privately funded, which would give them significantly more independence in how they operate. The kids who go there are referred there by the DSS (Department of Social Services), after which Linda, my boss, looks through their files and determines whether they're a good fit for the program. If she determines they would be, and that they wouldn't be a threat to the other kids, then we bring them to Star House. A treatment plan is worked out to help them work through their issues. The end goal of the program is family reunification if possible (To that end, Star House also does work with parents). If that's not possible, then the goal is to get the kids to the point where they could be placed in an adoptive or foster home. The amount of time kids spend in the program varies, depending on how their treatment goes, but the average is usually about a year.

As a home counselor, I'm responsible for taking care of the kids during the hours that I work, planning out and supervising activities with them, intervening in arguments and other crisis situations, and generally just making sure the kids are following the rules and playing well with each other. I work in the mornings, so most of my responsibilities have to do with getting the kids ready for school, fixing them breakfast, that kind of thing. The home counselors are, in the words of Linda, the "front lines" in Star House's work, there as caretakers and positive role models, the primary factor in "milieu therapy", that is, providing a positive life space where children can learn new social skills and coping mechanisms.

And now here's the part that breaks your heart.

We have five kids in our program right now, ranging in age from eight to thirteen. Out of those five, four have been victims of sexual abuse, a couple of them in fashions so horrible that I still can't quite bring myself to look these kids in the eyes and believe it. One of our kids, one of four siblings in his own family, was forced by his parents to have group sex with them and the other kids. He was nine or ten at the time. Another one was prostituted out by her mother, probably when she was around eleven years old. Another one, a sweet little girl who just turned eight and suffers from a serious, intense depression, just disclosed to us that she was raped by her mother's boyfriend.

And the thing that will break your heart is that these kids are only the tip of the iceberg. Last year over 114,000 children were reported as victims of abuse or severe neglect in Massachusetts alone. Out of those, approximately 5 per cent were victims of sexual abuse. That may seem like a small number, oh, only five per cent? At least, it seems small until you do the math. That's almost six thousand kids. Six thousand children in Massachusetts alone, much less the rest of the country, much less the rest of the world, who have been raped or otherwise sexually abused, had their childhoods ripped away from them. And that's only the ones who were the reported, the ones that DSS managed to catch.

And the thing about violence, particularly violence towards children, ESPECIALLY sexual violence, is that, unless it is squarely addressed and dealt with, it becomes self-perpetuating. My first full morning shift, within half an hour of showing up to work I was already in over my head as one of kids, who's twelve and already bigger than me, had locked my fellow home counselor (And the only other staff person there) in our med closet and was pounding on the door and swearing at her. When she finally got out he started attacking her and remained agitated an enraged until we managed to get him on the phone with another staffperson who he's close to, who managed to talk him into calming down. The trigger for his attack had been a nightmare the night before, where he dreamed that his mother, who viciously abused him, had come to Star House to kill him. He doesn't have the capabilities to deal with the emotions that these nightmares give him, and unless we can intervene he takes it out on the women around him. He's not a bad kid. He's a sweet, caring kid, who time and time again has asked me how I like my new job, who is so eager to help others and craves attention. But because of the abuse he's suffered, he struggles against this insatiable aggression.

The night before that, where I was shadowing a shift, we had a girl go on a suicide watch, after she put up a huge sign on the wall that said: "KILL (her name)" and tried to get a knife from the kitchen. She's told us over and over again that she has no hope that her life will ever get better, and threatens to kill herself repeatedly.

That was my baptism of fire. Things aren't always that intense, and there are definitely moments playing with the kids where I think "Wow, this is so much fun, I can't believe I'm actually getting paid to do this!" And then there are the moments like Saturday morning, when one of the kids was standing there screaming "Shut up, motherf***er! Shut up motherf***er!" at me over and over again. It's a job with a lot of contrasts. And it's definitely worn on me this first week. But I'm learning to adapt to it, to not take the attacks personally, and to learn to work with and love these kids on the level that they're at.

It's definitely given me a whole new respect for parents, and my own parents in particular, who made the incredibly brave decision to home-school all six of their children. It's wearing to work with kids, to have to repeat yourself over and over again, to feel kind of like you're beating your head against a wall as you try to get them to do things like share, pick up after themselves, and play nicely with each other. Yes, the kids I'm working with do have their stories and their issues, but they're also just kids and that in itself makes looking after them a challenging job. Forty hours of it a week wears me out. I can't imagine how my home-schooling mom has done it twenty-four hours a day for the past twenty-five years. Anyone who doesn't think of full-time moms as anything less than saints is an idiot.

Yes, I still hope to have kids myself one day. Working at Star House hasn't dissuaded me of that, if anything, it's confirmed it for me. I'm exhausted when I come home from Star House (And not just because I have to get up at 5 to be there) but it's a good exhaustion, a rewarding exhaustion. But I've definitely been given a healthy appreciation and respect for the intense difficulty of being a parent, and the huge responsibility of raising kids in a caring and loving home. It's not something that anyone should take lightly.

Space

2008-08-22T00:38:00.000+05:30

I sometimes wonder about the whole idea of "personal space" that is so big in American culture. It's really quite odd, if you think about it, and quite arbitrary too. It shows up in how we build our houses, how we stand in groups, in buying cars and having our own bedrooms.

One funny example...I remember going to Singing Beach with a few of my friends. The beach was practically empty, but we had to walk nearly halfway down the entire stretch because there was a single other group of people playing frisbee near the parking lot and, as social convention apparently dictated, planting ourselves anywhere not an equal distance between other people would violate their personal space.

Another example. One time soon after I came back to the States from Egypt I was walking a friend's dog through my parents' fairly average middle-class suburban neighborhood when a sudden feeling of anxiety came over me. I started sweating, my heart started pounding, and from somewhere deep inside me came the intoxicating "fight or flight" rush of adrenaline. I was confused more than anything else at first, and looked around, trying to discover why I suddenly felt so anxious and afraid when I realized that, probably for almost the first time since going to Egypt three and a half months before, I was completely and totally alone in a wide empty space, with no human beings even visible in the distance.

Things like that didn't happen in Cairo. The necessities of a city of possibly as many as 20 million people (The census data's a bit fuzzy) surviving in the middle of a desert means a huge deal of crowding together. From the air, the city looks a bit like a giant hive, everything is so close together. And, of course, while on MESP I shared an apartment with seven other guys, and a room with two. Times alone were brief and sporadic.

It could have been wearing, but it wasn't. Very quickly I grew to appreciate the closeness, the forced at first, but then increasingly natural intimacy of our community, and the almost overwhelmingly sociability of Egyptian culture. I always felt safe in Egypt because I was never alone, never isolated. I could walk from the center of town to our apartment at one or two in the morning because there would always be people around: groups of friends, families and couples taking in the social atmosphere on the Nile bridges or groups of older men laughing and playing backgammon while smoking hookahs at the street ahwas.

This intimacy applies very directly to the more commonly thought-of idea of personal space too: the degree of physical closeness in one's interactions with other people. It's quite common for Egyptian men to walk down the street holding hands, or to sit with their arms around each other, or show affection in other very physical ways. And despite the mystification of many tourists ("How can there be so many gay men in such a conservative culture? I didn't think there were gay Muslims!") it really doesn't have anything to do with homosexuality. Don't get me wrong, there is a gay subculture in Cairo, but it's still very much in the closet. No, Egyptian culture in general just has a much freer attitude towards the whole idea of touch and physical space (Within the same gender, of course. Across genders, things are much, MUCH more strict).

Why do Americans treasure this idea of personal space? What's so appealing about space? We take it for granted that the bigger the apartment, the bigger the house, the better. Those with the resources make their houses and their yards as big as possible, acres and acres of empty space between them and the closest neighbor. Miles to the nearest non-residential area. To get there you must enter the isolated chamber of your car. And inside the house everyone with their own bedroom, their own television, computer, and contact with others kept to a minimum. And then we wonder why depression is so endemic to middle and upper class life here. We treat loneliness like an unintended side effect of this prosperity. No, we've made loneliness a status symbol! The more money you have the more space you have, the more separation, the more isolation.

Don't get me wrong. I treasure the times I spend alone, with a good book, with my guitar, with my prayer beads; time to contemplate, to meditate, to let the chaos of day to day life clear from my system so I can think clearly. But God save me from ever reaching a frame of mind where I demand my "personal space", form a bubble around myself and shut everyone else out. There's no satisfaction or fulfillment in that. Fulfillment comes from relationship, and it's awkward and messy, inconvenient and demanding, and worth every second of it. Plenty of "great" men and women have been empty men and women because they always kept their "space" and never let anyone close to them.

Thoughts on the Saddleback Civil Forum

2008-08-18T22:34:00.001+05:30

I just finished watching the CNN coverage of the "Saddleback Civil Forum" hosted by author and evangelical sub-culture phenomenon Rick Warren, and came away with some thoughts on the two candidates, faith in America, etc, etc... If you'd like to watch the forum itself, you can see the whole thing here at CNN.com.
Before I say anything about the forum itself, I should say I think it's foolish and simple-minded for anyone to pretend to approach politics from a completely neutral standpoint. Thus I feel it's appropriate to admit the biases which I bring to the table. I do my best consciously not to let these biases effect the way in which I approach the truth, but to pretend that I'm invulnerable to their lure at the very least on a subconscious level is to be inexcusably immature and naive. So, I should say that at this point I do intend to vote for Barack Obama in November, and believe that he will be a better President than John McCain. That's not a blanket endorsement of Obama or the policies he supports, he and I have some significant and very real differences, but that is the direction that I'm leaning at this point.
I was also a bit disinclined to take Pastor Warren completely seriously, perhaps unjustifiably...I have a distrust of "evangelical bestsellers", a distrust that was strengthened by my experience of Rick Warren at my graduation ceremony, where he was the speaker. It's not that I have anything against the man, he seems like a decent person and he's done some great work, particularly in Rwanda, I just felt...well, I suppose rather similar to the way people feel when a movie star is asked serious questions about their views on foreign policy issues. You know, a person being given respect and influence they don't really deserve. My (admittedly scant, I haven't read his books) experience of Pastor Warren had given me nothing to indicate that he was the kind of thinker or leader who really merited my, or really the general public's, attention. That sounds harsher than I intend it to be...let's just say I didn't start watching the forum with very high expectations.
Pastor Warren met and exceeded my low expectations at the very beginning with an urgent call to his congregation and those watching to view this forum as part of a larger attempt to restore civility into political discourse in America. I really appreciated that; I think it's embarassing and shameful how immature and hurtful American politics can be, and, can I say in all fairness, John McCain's latest ad campaigns, which have sought to ridicule Barack Obama for being a celebrity, or mocked him by taking quotes out of context to make him appear to have a sort of messiah-complex arrogance, have done nothing to improve the level of our public discourse.
All that to say, I admired Pastor Purpose-Driven for saying that much directly and forcefully about improving the civility of public discourse.
So, what about the interviews themselves? Well, the media has been quite focused on the question of "who won?" here at Saddleback, and thus by implication, gains influence in the evangelical demographic. I don't think it's nearly that simple, but, at the risk of sounding simplistic and/or partisan, I'll break my impressions down into two simple observations.
1. Personally, I was much more impressed with Sen. Obama's answers, I found them more thought-out, involved, honest, and personal. You could see this simply in how quickly the questions went by. During Sen. McCain's interview, which followed Obama's, Pastor Warren was forced to ask two or three extra questions to compensate for the brevity of Sen. McCain's answers as compared to his opponents.
2. Politically, though, I think you have to give the night to McCain. And that was, of course, to be expected. Despite McCain's ostensible problems with evangelicals, stemming largely from their widespread support for Romney and Huckabee before those two dropped out of the race, he was on Republican home turf here, and you could feel the home-field advantage in the air, from the applause at McCain's use of popular evangelical catchphrases to his easy comfort in telling anecdotes and going off-topic. While both candidates freely strayed from the questions posed to them, McCain did it with much more ease and much less justification. He could feel the sympathetic crowd just as much as anyone else, and freely made use of it.
Obama had a much rougher time, and while he was still the talented public speaker that he is, his longer answers showed a fair degree of struggling to paint out common ground with the Saddleback Church crowd. This ranged from questions concerning his faith and worldview into more direct policy issues like abortion and foreign policy. Obama illustrated his own inexperience in addressing the evangelical crowd by his lack of evangelical formulations, and thus came across, it would seem to me, as much more detached.
Perhaps Obama's biggest slip-up (And something that doubtless we will be hearing about for the rest of the campaign) of the night was on the issue of abortion. When queried concerning the specific time when an unborn child achieves human rights, Obama, who is pro-choice, quickly acknowledged that there are a number of perspectives on the issue and then proceeded to say that, for him, the issue was "above my pay grade." The joke didn't go off well, and while the Senator did proceed to offer a lot of helpful suggestions about how pro-choice and pro-life Americans can work together to reduce the number of abortions, that one comment clearly offended and stuck in the minds of the overwhelmingly pro-life audience.
The whole "catchphrase" issue proved McCain's advantage in the audience again and again, as the two candidates espoused almost identical views on several subjects, most prominently same-sex marriage (They both define marriage as "union between one man and one woman", support civil unions, and believe the issue should be left to the states), but Obama got some clapping and then awkward silence, while McCain got a roaring ovation purely on evangelical-specific rhetoric. But all in all, I was disappointed with McCain's clear reliance on recycled stump speech material, including a complete non sequiter rant on offshore drilling as the road to energy independence and the dusting off of his old "Follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of Hell" speech (Which, by the way, Jon Stewart did a great bit on, about McCain promising to follow Bin Laden to Hell, but not to Pakistan. It's hilarious). I think John McCain is a great politician, a fine leader, and would, let's say, be a much better president than the current one. But it saddens me to see him trumpeting this cheap, empty stumping, Reagan name-dropping (Always a popular and meaningless tactic in Republican circles...kind of like condemning big business or racism in Democratic circles) and saddens me even more to see people letting him get away it. And they say Obama is the one with no substance!
This is the problem with American politics. We want easy answers to complicated questions, and reward the people who give them to us, whether that's on the right, left, up, down, whatever. Those who don't get condemned as "waffling", "indecisive", and, that most biting of all political put-downs: "Elitist". Nobody wants to hear: "Well, these are complicated, multi-faceted issues that have no easy answers and that we'll have to struggle gradually with over the next several years." Or, even worse: "Well, that's something that, as President, it's not really my function to deal with, and, no matter what my policies are, they'll have little impact."
A few things Pastor Warren said in the course of the interviews really damaged the good opinion I'd gotten of him from his call for civility at the beginning. One of the most damaging came, I believe when he was asking the candidates why they wanted to be president (I could be wrong on the precise moment, though, my notes are a little unclear), and Warren went on to describe the President as the person in the United States to whom we commit the stewardship of: "Our freedom and our security, economy and environment, everything!" This monarchical, expansive understanding of the presidency runs contrary to the constitution and at least to my understanding of the Christian faith, and is extremely damaging to the way we view our elected officials. The President, just like a congressperson, senator, or any other elected official, is a person with a specific task and specific areas of influence and responsibility, not a king to whom we're committing our lives and souls. Part of living in a democracy is an independence from that cult of personal allegiance. We should elect a President based on what he can actually do based on the way the job works, not as a blanket authority figure over every areas of our lives.
I also took issue with Pastor Warren's assumption, not even contention, but simple assumption, of the political ideology of "American Exceptionalism", that is to say, the assumption that America is a nation "more blessed than any other nation", a nation closer to the will of God than any other. Now, admittedly, Warren's brand of American Exceptionalism is much more altruistic and benign than, say, George Bush's, and he framed his American Exceptionalism mostly in terms of responsibility to help others (White man's burden, anyone?), but it still maintains what I think is a simplistic and materialistic view both of the world and of God's blessings that can be highly damaging, and denigrates the work of God in other parts of the world. Obama and McCain both espouse pretty forceful American Exceptionalism, as one has to if one wants to be electable in this country (Remember our preference for simple answers?), so this isn't a partisan issue, though I will say I prefer Obama's brand of it to McCain's. I think it's one that every American needs to take a hard look at before they start spouting off phrases about how the United States is the greatest country of all time. We need to recognize that evil isn't something "out there" but something that we have our own particular brands of that we need to work on, and that it's ethnocentric to claim that we have the biggest claim in the battle of good versus evil.
Pastor Warren asked both candidates a question about the nature of evil, and what should be done in response to it. McCain quickly associated evil with "Islamic Extremism" and told us he'd chase Osama Bin Laden to the gates of Hell. Obama said that evil is pervasive, and can be found "in Darfur, in the streets of our cities, and in parents who viciously abuse their children. And it has to be confronted squarely." He also emphasized the need for humility in confronting evil, and that we must examine our own actions when we think we're fighting evil. I think that view's much more honest, and in the end much more effective.
There was much more, but for that, I would suggest you follow the link at the top and judge for yourself. It's worth it.

Nick Drake

2008-08-16T03:38:00.001+05:30

My advice for the day: Listen to Nick Drake. That is all. Forget about everything else you have to do today and listen to all of the Nick Drake music you can get your hands on legally or illegally. He's been dead a long time, so copyright infringement can't hurt him, right? Nick Drake's music and poetry is so beautiful...he sings with a haunting, lilting disconnected tone that fits wonderfully with his lyrics. His story too is compelling, the artistic purity of it: A man who was captured by beauty too powerful for him, an artist and a poet who the world was not worthy. For those of you who don't know, Nick Drake was a young musician and poet who recorded 3 albums of intense "autumnal" beauty in the late 60s and early 70s. The albums passed by almost unnoticed during Drake's lifetime because his severe shyness and depression kept him from playing shows or doing any kind of publicity (Drake only ever gave one interview, and it's only a few sentences long, and was known in the recording studio to play facing the wall so he wouldn't have to embarass himself playing in front of anyone else). Drake lived the last few years of his life in a severe state of disconnect from the world and everyone around him, sort of living with his parents, but often disappearing for days at a time only to show up at a friend's house with no explanation, stay there silently for a couple of days, and then disappear again. Drake recorded his last (And most people consider best) album, "Pink Moon", alone with his sound engineer during two two-hour night-time recording sessions. He then dropped the tapes off at the front desk of his record label without a word of explanation and walked away. The tapes, unmarked, stayed at the front desk for days before anyone realized what they actually were. Drake died a few months later from an overdose of his prescribed anti-depressants. The jury is still out on whether it was suicide or a tragic accident. There was no suicide note, though some people have tried to find a note in the cryptic metaphorical poetry of "Pink Moon". His family maintains that Drake was actually happier in the weeks before his death than he had been in years, and that his death was a tragic accident. We'll never know.
Perhaps most beautiful of it all is that his music is not dark, not full of anger and bitterness, like one would think, and some of it, songs like “Time Has Told Me” or “Northern Sky” (Two of my favorites) overflow with this wonderful joy and innocence. There’s a certain melancholy to it, but it’s a melancholy more of the division between dreaming and waking, the melancholy of the prophet or the painter, filled with beautiful visions that the world can never live up to. His music is, more than anything, gentle. It’s so gentle that it’s not quite human. There is no vestige of the bestial anger or crass animal-passions that color and bring vibrancy to so much music, classical or modern.
Anyway, so, everyone, listen to Nick Drake. You won't be left unchanged.

Here or There?

2008-08-14T18:08:00.000+05:30

Let's play a game. I like to call it "Here or There?" and find it to be a fascinating expose of all of those ugly skeletons of ethnocentrism and realism (The political philosophy, not the practical outlook on life) which dictate how we think about the world, politics, and our fellow man. More than that, the game illustrates that dirty little secret that, for most people, geography, more than anything else, dictates not only the value of a human life, but the very moral framework of which that value is a part.
First, an example from the past. A farmer with five or six children is faced by the looming prospect of war. Worse than that, invasion. A foreign power, who nevertheless claims a right to the land in which the farmer lives, is sending troops to assert control over the farmer's homeland. This man, however, is a peaceful man, who resists violence. However, when a battle takes place outside his home, he shelters some of the native troops, giving them medical attention. In response, the invaders label him as one of their enemies, and kill one of his children. The farmer responds by forming an underground insurgency against the invaders, raiding their convoys, killing their soldiers, and in any way possible resisting the invasion. This resistance is underground, controlled solely by the farmer with no outside authority, and occasionally involves brutal murders and other extremely violent tactics.
So, now here's the interesting part. Is this man a hero or a villain? Well, in the original story, he's a hero. Or at least, the vast majority of people familiar with his story would call him a hero. Because the preceding paragraph is my summary of the plotline of the movie "The Patriot", starring Mel Gibson, a story, ostensibly, of the heroic stand against British injustice which was based on the true story of Francis Marion, an underground insurgent against the British during the American Revolution who was known as "Swamp Fox". The historical account of Marion's life is rather different from the movie, of course, but the general story is quite similar. If anything, the actual history is much grittier, much less heroic. And Marion is a hero of the revolution, widely acclaimed in American history, in fact, someone who, in the near future, is expected to get his own monument in Washington, DC. He is described as an American hero, a patriot, and has parks, towns, counties, etc... all named after him.
So, now we play "Here or There". We'll keep all the details of the story the same: the peaceful farmer threatened by invasion, reluctance towards violence eventually replaced by insurgency, eventually victory. The exact same decision-making process, with same "moral" motivations. Now we jump from revolutionary war-era America to one of two places within the past few years: Southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006 or the outskirts of Baghdad during the past five years or so. Is our not-so-hypothetical farmer still a hero? Remember, he's driven by the exact same motivations: A peaceful man whose home is invaded by a foreign power who claims a right to be there, the man resists violence at first, but when his family is threatened by the invaders he becomes violent and begins underground fighting against the occupation. Now, hey presto! By the magic of "here or there" our hero of the revolution has become a terrorist! Or perhaps an "islamo-fascist"? Or a "religious extremist", or any of a multitude of convenient titles utilized to claim that people largely driven by very simple motivations are instead violent by nature of ideology, and thus evil.
It's a load of bull really. There are a handful of fanatics out there who are really motivated by some kind of apocalyptic vision of violent jihad, and they try to spread that vision as much as they can (Empowered by the violence spread to their homelands), but the vast majority of people who are getting the terrorist label these days are much simpler people with much simpler motives. We want to complicate their motives because that makes them alien, makes them foreign, and makes violence against them justified. More than that, it confuses a basic reality of human interaction which the policymakers in the White House would like to have us ignore: Violence breeds violence, and war gives birth to war.
You can play "Here or There" on the larger scale, too. Take the current conflict in Georgia, transpose a little over thirty years ago, and put it in Israel. 1973, Israel is attacked by Egypt, with Anwar Sadat, the President of Egypt, claiming the traditional Arab grievances against the Israeli state and attempting to take back the Sinai, which had been taken from Egypt six years earlier in the Six-Day War. At first things look poorly for Israel, so the United States, claiming its longtime alliance with Israel, etc, etc, and claiming that Israel's territorial integrity and indeed very existence is in question, begins airlifting in massive amounts of military hardware to support the Israelis. Israel quickly gains the upper hand, and nearly wipes out the Egyptian Third Army in the Sinai.
So, now we play "Here or There" and go to Georgia. The similarities in the story are quite striking. A close U.S. ally is invaded by a hostile neighbor who claims the ally is involved in humanitarian offenses. Except in this case the threat is ten, a hundred, a thousand times for serious. Israel had nuclear weapons in '73. Not only does Georgia have no nuclear weapons, but their enemy, Russia, has the world's second-biggest nuclear arsenal. Israel and Egypt had rough military equality, even perhaps a slight advantage on the Israeli side. Making any comparison between the Russian and the Georgian military is really laughable. After hostilities ceased in '73 Israel maintained its territorial integrity. Just today, the Russian foreign minister said that Georgia's territorial integrity is a thing of the past. And what about Georgia's status as a close US ally? If anything, in geo-political terms Sakashvilli's Georgia is a MORE faithful ally than Israel. Georgia had 2,000 troops in Iraq until they were invaded, more than any country other than the US and UK.
So,"Here or There", what does the US do? Israel gets massive airlifts of military aid and direct US intervention to stop hostilities. What does Georgia get? Well, the President took a few minutes off of watching Michael Phelps in Beijjing to slap Vladimir Putin on the wrist. And now, after a kind-of, sort-of ceasefire which still leaves Russia in control of the two breakaway regions of Georgia Pres. Bush has begun to send in some humanitarian help. Think about the outrage that would have come if the President had only sent in aid to Israel after a cease-fire was signed which left Egypt in control of the West Bank!
So what's the point of all this? Am I trying to justify the insurgents in Iraq or simply engage in the popular sport of Bush-Bashing? Not at all. Far from it. I think violence like that of the insurgency in Iraq is reprehensible and evil. As I said before, violence breeds violence. And while the President certainly leaves plenty of room for vigorous criticism, the principle that I'm trying to illustrate has little to do with him in particular as president. It's something that would be true of any president.

There are two things I'm trying to illustrate through this helpful game. First, the violence which we condemn and the violence which is acclaimed, sanctioned, even idolized here in America, the "righteous violence" either of our ancestors or our foreign policy today is, when it all boils down to it, largely the same thing. The only difference is that, in the one case, those perpetrating the violence are on the side that our cultural metanarrative has deemed "good" and in the other case, the perpetrators are on the side we've deemed "evil". And the primary factors in determining this isn't any transcendent value but simply race and geographical location. And second, the areas into which we put our violence, to which we devote our tax dollars and our lives, are driven not by ideals, by devotion to ideas like "territorial integrity" or sticking to allies who have been faithful to us, but by the expediency of the moment and the gritty calculations of realpolitik. Don't let politicians bullshit you otherwise. As my foreign policy prof., himself a defense contractor for the Pentagon, once told me: "For every foreign policy decision there's a good reason...and then there's a real reason."
And that's why, partially, over the past few months, I've come to the conclusion that my ideals and my faith demand that I become a pacifist. Because violence is evil no matter which side of the cultural narrative its on. What that means for me I haven't completely figured out, nor do I claim to be able to stand on moral high ground myself. As a citizen of the United States, a taxpayer, etc... I'm just as much a beneficiary of violence as anyone. Gandhi once decried the hypocrisy of the conscientious objector who had no problem devoting himself to the nation-state which operates under a regime of violence during peacetime, but suddenly developed pacifistic ideals when his own personal security was threatened. All I know is that, as a Christian, as a disciple of the Prince of Peace, I have a responsibility to not fall for the cultural lies which justify war and violence, and to stand against violence no matter the cost.
I resisted making that step for a long time, and told my friends I was "hovering around the edges" of becoming a pacifist, mostly because I knew the obligations that would come if I made that decision, and I didn't want to make it only to jump back into the easy safety of the world's myth of redemptive violence when an intellectual or physical difficulty came up. But this spring, soon after reading Walter Wink's "The Powers That Be" (Which I highly recommend), I had a moment that felt like another conversion, a sudden clarity of vision that I, laugh at me if you like, attribute to God's inspiration. And then I knew, not in the fragile logical construction of the head, but in my deepest center of feeling and emotion, I knew existentially, fully, that this rejection of violence was both what I did already believe, and what I must believe and stand for.
I've been thinking about this a lot in the past couple of months, particularly as, having just graduated, its time for all of the idealistic decisions made in college to show their worth by their fruit. We'll see.

2008-08-12T21:05:00.000+05:30

There's nothing quite like Anglican inside jokes. For instance, last night right before we all went to bed I think the guys in my apartment spent fifteen minutes laughing uncontrollably about someone calling 1-800-COLLECT and asking for the collect of the day. Ask your Anglican/Episcopal friend.

Of course, maybe the reason this was so funny to us was that, one, it was late and we were all really exhausted, or two, for the past hour and a half Ben and I had been having absolute blast creating an online dating profile for our longsuffering apartmentmate Chris at the hopefully-named website http://www.plentyoffish.com/ (Ben's suggestion). Chris protested, loudly at first, then softer, and finally submitted (Reluctantly, he's still not so keen on the idea) as we plied him with questions about his interests, preferences, and where he would go for a first date. All in all, I think the profile, which, ladies, let me assure you, is accurate, speaks for itself. Ben and I have both assured Chris that when he ends up happily ever after with someone from the site, he officially owes us for the rest of his life.

Of course, not everything over the past couple of weeks has been quite so smooth as Chris's love life to be. For instance, at this point, I'm still looking unemployed come September. Good news on that front, though, I have an interview at the Salem Mission for a job as an attendant, and, if the job doesn't work out, then I'll already have the contact and can just move in there when my money runs out! I'm also looking into the possibility of working as a home counselor at a transitional home for kids in Beverly, something that I'm particularly excited about, as I'd really like to work with kids again. We'll see. Masha'Allah...that's an Arabic phrase that means "What God has willed". Haha, it's quite a versatile phrase too, expressing one's faith in God, one's resignation to hard circumstances, or...one's appreciation of beautiful things and/or people in God's creation. I remember one time in Egypt we were on the train going south to Aswan and the conductor coming through kept ogling the girls and saying "Masha'allah! Masha'Allah!"

I started reading Karen Armstrong's "Islam: A Short History", and when I'm finished with that I'm planning on picking up Jeffrey Sachs' "The End of Poverty". I'll let you know how they turn out.

Fully Alive but Undirected (And Thoughts on Simplicity)

2008-08-02T21:34:00.000+05:30

Note, before you start reading, this blog post started out as just thoughts on my day and life these days after coming back from India, but then moved on into a somewhat involved train of thought on simplicity and what it means to live a life of Truth, inspired by my reading of Gandhi and Kierkegaard. So, be prepared, and feel free to cut to the end, if that's what you're interested in, or leave off when I get on my soapbox somewhere in the middle...And please, if you have insight on any of these issues, or any of the ideas resonate with you, or you violently disagree with me, or you're offended by what I have to say, please, please, please send me an e-mail (jonathan.pinckney@gordon.edu) so we can talk about it. These ideas are burning me up inside and I have to talk to someone about them...so, with that prolegomenon, on to the actual post...

I woke up this morning so sore all over that for a moment I just had to lie there and contemplate the consequences of simply staying where I was. But the insistent soundings of my cell phone, doing double-service as alarm clock, finally spurred me into action and I sat up, throwing off my light fleece blanket and twisting my neck left and right. The long succession of pops brought a welcome (however misguided, I know it's not the healthiest thing to do) feeling of relief, and after a few more quick stretches, I felt the vestiges of sleep falling off of me.

The soreness could have something to do with sleeping on the floor for the past week and a half since getting back from India, but I think a more likely theory is that, not having done any real heavy lifting for the past month (Dragging suitcases full of art supplies on and off Indian trains doesn't count), my body is in full-scale revolt against my return to a regular weightlifting/running regimen. It's been a rough adjustment, but the shortness of breath that comes after only running a couple of miles is very unwelcome, and I always think better when I'm exercising. The physical activity has been a major part of my effort to break out of the post-India funk and return to some degree of mental and emotional normalcy...

The past week and a half has gone from the fog of jet-lag and the joy of reunions to a restless laziness and mild depression at feeling empty and undirected to...over the past couple of days, an adjustment and reconciling to the current shape of my life, the gradual coming into tempo with a new rhythm of life.

Maintaining motivation in the midst of this new rhythm has been a difficult task, and sometimes I feel kind of like a waste of space. I haven't found a job for September-December yet, though I have started making inquiries and have sent out some resumes and filled out some applications. So I kind of feel like I'm just aimlessly floating around...

I'm almost finished reading Louis Fischer's "The Life of Mahatma Gandhi", a book I'd gotten a couple of years ago but hadn't yet sat down and read. I figured coming back from India would be a good time to do it. It's an excellent biography, striking that perfect balance between expose and elegy which are appropriate to the life of such a great man. Fischer praises Gandhi for his amazing discipline and devotion to his ideals of truth, godliness, self-denial, and non-violence, and criticizes him for his many flaws. He comes to Gandhi's life with no ideological axe to grind, other than the honest desire of the biographer to accurately portray life. I admire that.

The book has me seriously thinking about simplicity, and what steps I should be taking to live a simpler life. Gandhi's example in that regard is among the most exemplary I know, and a crushing rejoinder to the many justifications of luxury which come into my mind, and, I know, into the minds of others like me who struggle with such questions (i.e. "My lifestyle demands it!" "I have to live this way to be relevant." "I can have a greater impact if I save my money." etc...). Gandhi was one of the most influential public figures of the 20th century, a revolutionary icon who transformed the way we think about resisting violence and oppression, and he lived most of his life in a small mud room on a communal farm, dressing in a loincloth and eating a simple and strictly vegetarian diet of fruit, vegetables and nuts (With occasionally some goat milk thrown in, one of his weaknesses for which he was always somewhat ashamed).

Experiencing poverty in India (And simultaneously reading Kierkegaard) had already got me thinking along those lines. I think I mentioned before, Kierkegaard says that truly Christ-like love does not place itself as a benefactor over the poor, but rather following Christ's example directly associates itself with the poor, becomes one with them, destroys any dividing wall of class or materialism. Thus truly Christ-like love, true Christianity, is simplicity, detachment from material concerns, poverty. For more, read the sermon on the mount, in Matthew's and Luke's gospels. That was Gandhi's favorite passage of Scripture. Indeed, he said something once, when asked if he was a Christian (Which orthodox Hindus were forever accusing him of), to the effect that if the Sermon on the Mount were truly lived out, truly the essence of Christianity, then he would be a Christian. But the actions of Christians so clearly did not follow the teaching of Christ.

I remember once I overheard a conversation (I was in the room, but I think was playing guitar or something, and so wasn't participating in the conversation) where two of my friends came to the conclusion that we as Christians (Well, Evangelicals at least) had solved the problem of right practice in Christianity, that, as far as doing what God wanted us to do, we had it pretty well down. Thus the great battle for our age was maintaining orthodoxy (Small "o" orthodoxy, that is...I'm not talking about the Orthodox church).

I didn't say anything at the time, mostly because, as I said, I hadn't been participating in the conversation and didn't want to jump in at the end. And while I disagreed (Quite strongly) with their conclusion, my reasoning on the subject was framed very differently, and so for all of us to be speaking about the same question would have itself been a highly time-consuming process. But I'll spare you the questions about the individuality of faith (Between God and the Christian there is no question of a battle for the age, or civilization, there is only the individual, see Kierkegaard or C.S. Lewis's The Weight of Glory for more on this), church history, whether we can ever say we've reached right practice while still alive in a world tainted by sin, etc, etc... and move to a simple description and question which I think illustrates my view on the issue.

Our Lord and example was a homeless itinerant mystic with a bad reputation for running with the wrong crowd and corrupting the morals of the youth while bad-mouthing (In very forceful and undiplomatic terms) the hard-working and devoted religious leaders. When advising his followers about how to live, he urged them towards strict non-violence, not only in their personal lives but also in their actions towards an oppressive and brutal foreign occupying power, condemned responsible saving, spoke very strongly against family values (To the point of sometimes telling his followers that a life lived by his example required them to hate their own familymembers), and ordered them to abandon their businesses and livelihoods (A move quite harmful to the economic foundation of any society) and instead, quite literally, become beggars without any monetary security for themselves or their families. He scoffed at those who justified their large incomes through equally large donations to charity (And doubtless got buildings and charitable organizations and college campuses named after them), condemned any distinction made in public or private based on income, and refused to accept as his follower even a truly righteous man whom he loved if the man would not first sell off all of his possessions, give the proceeds away, and become a penniless mendicant.

Not only this, but this mystic claimed, not only to be God, an incredible claim on its own, but to be, himself: "The Way, The Truth, and The Life". Note, he didn't say that his teaching was these things, he didn't say that acceptance of the doctrine concerning his death was these things. No, he HIMSELF, his life, everything he did and said, was the way, the truth, and the life.

So, in view of all of that, can Christians ever, much less today, when the income division between the rich and poor are the highest in history, much less in America, where, compared with the vast majority of the world's population, even our poor live in luxury, claim to have mastered right practice in Christianity?

I contend that to live and die for orthodoxy and bourgeois morality is easy. Millions, even billions of people have. If you can objectify Christ, make him an idea, a principle, the two-natured Son of God and savior of the world, and, on the side, the vindication of whatever the current system of social organization and moral rectitude may be, and then stand for those principles, you may immediately live fully satisfied in your right ideas without ever really inconveniencing yourself. If you are confrontationally inclined, you may fight violently for these right ideas, in rhetoric and action, may shout and scream and isolate yourself from those who disagree. These are easy things to do, and they satisfy an inner urge to stand for something, to have a meaningful direction to one's life while still living by the principles of the world, the most prevalent of which is the spirit of violence and domination. History witnesses that mass slaughter in the name of the Prince of Peace has always been a popular activity, and the frequent commentary of many modern "Christian" leaders (One thinks in particular of a former televangelist who once, when speaking on how to solve the problem of terrorism suggested that the United States "Blow them all away in the name of the Lord") proclaims that the activity has not gone out of style.

It's much harder to live and die for Truth. Because Truth is subjectivity. That is to say, Truth can not be related to as something purely objective, something "out there", an idea like the principles of mathematics or the number of US presidents which you may affirm with all of your being, but which does not connect to you as a person. Truth is something which you as an individual must directly relate to, which must have impact and meaning for your life. Truth as subjectivity implies relationship, something which must be true for you and in you. To "know Truth" implies that one lives "in Truth". If one does not live "in Truth", and remember, Jesus himself, his "Way" is Truth, then one does not "know Truth". Truth must be lived for it to be true.

Before I go on, I should say directly that these aren't original thoughts...mostly from Kierkegaard (See Practice in Christianity for a more detailed going into this line of thought), with bits from Bonhoeffer and other Christian thinkers who I respect, as well as, of course, Gandhi himself and his teaching and example.

So what's the point of all of this? I'll be honest, I understand that question very little. And if there are accusations in those preceding paragraphs, there are as much accusations of myself as they could ever be accusations of anyone else. I think it's just important to approach the question of what it means to be a Christian, or indeed, what it means to really seek Truth, from this perspective. Truth, like love, isn't real unless it expresses itself in action. And, on the question of simplicity, which started me on this line of thought, the Truth is the life of a homeless mystic who gave everything away and told anyone who wanted to follow Him to do the same. Take that as you will...wrestle with it. I'm trying to...in my better moments.

I think one of the most foolish and dangerous things (In the Christian context, and that's purely what I'm speaking about) I ever heard was an evangelical pastor's justification for...I think it was war, but the same principle could be applied across any number of issues, accumulation of wealth, marriage, etc... Anyway, he said, almost offhandedly, seemingly ignorant to the incredibly import of his words, that the life of Christ, since Christ was God, was a special calling that we as ordinary people weren't really meant to try and live up to. Amazing, how in a single stroke this man of God completely eviscerated the faith of which he claimed to be a champion! How wonderful! Thank God that all of those pesky facts about Christ's life: his celibacy, his non-violence, his life of poverty, were merely his own special calling as savior, and we, since we are safe as admirers of His teaching, may now live moral lives by the system of which we choose. We need not, indeed, we can not imitate Him. We can only admire Him, and "believe" in Him.

Kierkegaard has chilling words for this man, and anyone, like me, the worst of all, who consciously or unconsciously falls victim to his way of thinking: "It is just as easy to reckon as the stars that the person who only admires the truth will, when danger appears, become the traitor."

And that's what keeps me up at night...

To Be Read, As Written, in a Jet-Lagged Funk

2008-07-26T02:37:00.000+05:30

Everything since leaving Delhi is something of a fog...going by taxi, plane, subway, train, and finally a walk from the train station in Beverly up the back stairs to my apartment...getting confused and thinking I was locked out of the apartment before finding my way in, going back into work, seeing friends...all of it a blur of activity strangely lucid in the early morning and gradually fading further and further into opacity as the early afternoon moves into evening and my body urgently reminds me that, the bright sun above notwithstanding, it is, in fact, 3 in the morning and I should have been in bed hours ago. My one overwhelming sentiment of the return: Jet-lag sucks and I'll be glad to be over it.
Some author who I can't remember wrote something about jet-lag, describing it very vividly as waiting for your soul to catch up with you...I can see the aptness of the metaphor.
A few things from out of the fog:
1. As of two days ago I am the proud third resident of apartment 2, 346 Cabot Street, Beverly, Massachusetts. Most of my possessions had already taken up residence there before I left for India, piling in a corner of the back room to await my return. As of now, since we're still in the process of figuring out which bedroom I'll end up in, and moving the other guys' stuff around, I've simply added my stuff from India onto the pile and have been sleeping on the floor. I did, however, unpack my turntable, and successfully hooked it up to the stereo in the living room. Sweet vinyl, I have returned to you...
2. I've also gone back to my long-time job as a dispatcher at Public Safety at Gordon, which, during the slow summer, mostly just involves finding ways to keep myself occupied. This, hopefully, will pay the rent as I look for something a little more permanent (But not too permanent...just permanent enough to last me till December).
3. Last, and most importantly, I've been welcomed back into the loving arms of all of my dear, dear friends here in Massachusetts, who have already reminded me that, no matter what, there are always people who love me and will be there for me to laugh with and tell me about their lives and to hear my stories. And that means a lot.

Last Post From India

2008-07-21T23:09:00.000+05:30

It's my last night in India. Tomorrow we pack, relax a little, and ride a cab to the airport. So, tonight...last thoughts from India...
First, we went to the Taj Mahal today, and, though the ride from Delhi to Agra (The city where the Taj is) was long, the pollution stifling, and the non-Indian entrance price a whopping 750 rupees (Divide by forty to get the dollar amount), it fully lived up to expectations. It was breathtakingly beautiful...the world's greatest monument to lost love. The building itself, the grounds, the buildings on either side, all are perfectly symmetrical, and the walls glitter with designs fashioned from stones from around the world. The sheer size of the building is staggering, the intricacy and exactness of every detail of its construction is breathtaking, and its history fascinating. Not a lot of things are worth the hype. This is.
Our driver from Delhi to Agra had a favorite phrase that I think is appropriate: "In India...everything is possible."
This place has opened up new possibilities for me, new passions and joys, new ideas and people to love and friends who I want to come back and see again as soon as I can. Who knew?
I struggle with possibility. Sometimes I think too many things are possible, and I'll get stuck in the endless place where everything is possible, never making a choice, never making something necessary, but trying to maintain my freedom through shadowy possibility. I've felt that way sometimes here, but now I look at it in a new light. So much joy has been made possible here...and at the same time made new things necessary, opened up not an endless array of choices to stay stuck in but rather new roads to walk down and explore.
Everything is possible...
Suddenly things which a month ago would have seemed far-fetched (Like coming back next summer!) are very distinct possibilities. Who knows? We'll see...
Things I won't miss about India:
"Hello! You want cool drink, keychain, hashish?" (And basically being seen as a profit target)
The smell of excrement in public places
Being forced to be suspicious
Large insects
Always feeling like I stand out and am defined by arbitrary characteristics like skin color

Things I Will Miss About India
The kids (Well, really, I do already)
The food (Oh lord, I will miss the food)
Feeling challenged, feeling like I'm really doing something which stretches me

And the internet cafe's closing...so that's it. India has been amazing...next post from home.

Last Stop: Hippies and History

2008-07-20T11:57:00.000+05:30

We left Varanasi night before last for our last train ride in India...this one in less luxury than our trip to Varanasi, as, instead of a two-tier AC sleeper car, we traveled on a three-tier non-AC car. We had a couple of friends on the floor as well, a mouse that darted back and forth behind our bags and a cockroach nearly as big as the mouse that sauntered about, much more confident in his chances of survival. After all, as the urban legend goes, when all of humanity's madness finally reaches its inevitable end and we dissolve in a mushroom cloud of our own xenophobia and paranoia, it shall be our humble cockroach compatriots who shall inherit the earth.

Unless, of course, we manage to stomp on all of them first...I never understood that part of the urban legend...how is it that something I can squish with my sandal can survive a nuclear holocaust?

Well, this one survived, anyway, despite his arrogance. I tried squishing him, but he dodged my clumsy attack and scurried underneath the seat, waiting for me to fall asleep before emerging again to feast on our crumbs.

Anyway, cockroaches aside, we still made it safely to Delhi, and, via a taxi which overcharged us mercilessly, made it to the Hotel Vivek, in the washed-up hippie haven of Paharganj, roughly midway between Old Delhi and the city center of New Delhi. I had been rather concerned with our hotel, as I made the reservation myself, based only on reviews on hostels.com and the hotel's website, which seemed quality. On the taxi ride I made mental notes about what to do if the hotel turned out to be, in Kandyce's words: "Super-sketchy". But when we made it the lobby was marble and A-C, and our rooms, while their miniscule size matched the cheap price we paid for them, were still clean and secure. One of the employees was calmly smoking a joint on a couch outside of Kandyce and Kathy's room with a beneficent smile on his face, but you can't have everything.

Walking around the main bazaar last night was something of a surreal experience. I was wearing a green linen shirt which I picked up in Varanasi which I guess gave off a particular vibe, because I was offered pot I think...six times. I haven't been offered pot so many times since I walked along Myrtle Beach with my friend Judah (Who's black) and realized how racist people can be, and how much people's assumptions about you color how you experience life. I laughed it off this time, and politely declined. Judging by the look of most of the tourist crowd here (And there are A LOT of them) though, the dealers won't be suffering too much from the loss of my business.

We didn't really do anything major yesterday, just walked around the bazaar, did a bit of shopping, and relaxed. Today we're going to do some more major sightseeing, visiting the Red Fort in Old Delhi, as well as Jamia Masjid, the biggest mosque in India, which is nearby. The Red Fort in particular will probably take a while, so we're leaving off specifically planning out anything else, but we might take a trip south and visit the India gate and some other places in New Delhi. Then tomorrow we take a day trip south to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, and Tuesday pack up and leave! It's hard to believe. I'm sad to leave, but ready to as well. I could stay at BIRDS or at the orphanage in Bapatla for months, indefinitely, helping out and playing with the kids, but this whole hotel/sightseeing thing gets old pretty quickly.

I'm particularly excited to see the mosque...I haven't been inside one in a while, and I'm excited to show the others all the little things about mosque architecture and such that I learned on MESP.

This morning we had our own little church service. J-Craw (Jon Crawford) read us a passage from Matthew and a quote on it. The passage was the story of the women putting the perfume on Jesus' feet and Jesus saying "The poor you will always have with you" etc... We talked about that for a long time, how that's misinterpreted as an excuse for laziness on issues of poverty and social justice, and trying to get more at what Jesus means. Shane Claiborne says that the question we should ask is: "Look at the church now...do we have the poor with us?" If not, something's up. As Christians we should be associating ourselves with the poorest of the poor. Kierkegaard says that real love, love like Christ, doesn't give charity, doesn't assume the identity of benefactor, but rather identifies itself directly with the poor, becomes them, just as Christ became them.

Alright, need to go meet the others so we can find an auto-rickshaw and head up to Old Delhi...last chance for me to get you something from India...send me an e-mail and I'll see what I can do!

Heartbreaker/Train Ride

2008-07-16T18:44:00.000+05:30

Our last day at Bapatla was a heartbreaker...on both sides. Like at BIRDS, we all fell in love with the kids there, and in Bapatla actually got to spend a good deal more time with the kids than we had at BIRDS. I miss them a lot, especially my little girl Prabavati, and all the little boys that I would play on the playground with. A lot of the kids cried when we left, too, and they all told us to come back, and to never forget their names. I told them I would remember them, and that I would try my hardest to come back.
We had a few...interesting episodes with the teenage girls too, almost all of whom flirted pretty heavily with me and Jon throughout our week there. Kathy once whispered to me: "Now you know what it's like to be a rock star."
Some of them really touched me...while at the same time making me feel incredibly awkward...we were doing an art project with the kids right before we left and Priyanka, who's probably around eleven or twelve years old, asked me how to spell my name. I told her, and she ran off for a minute before coming back with a picture of a house with "Priyanka and Jonathan" written on it, and a heart around it. She tried to give it to me, but I just said: "Uh...no, I think you should keep it." And I quickly tried to find something else to do...
One of the girls also told me that I had a beautiful smile: "A...little sugar smile!" And told me that I was never allowed to forget her. Ayyo...
My last time with Prabavati we were playing with chalk on the courtyard, and she started writing out the English alphabet. She would say a letter and then I would write it. We went fine until we got to "J". I wrote it out and Prabavati indignantly said: "No, Ahna (Big brother)!"
I was a bit indignant myself, until Prabavati grabbed the chalk from my hand and proudly drew a line across the top of the letter, making my scrawl into correct upper-case "J". I felt properly chastised.
I'm writing from the sweltering basement of an internet cafe on a back street in Varanasi, one of the holiest Hindu cities in India, and the site where many Hindus, if they can afford it, come to die, so that their ashes can be cast into the Ganges from the Ghats along the banks.
It was a tiring trip getting here. We left Bapatla at around nine o'clock and drove two hours to the train station in Vijayawada where, after a great deal of running around, confusion, and fear that we didn't have seats reserved, we finally said goodbye to our friend Johnson, who had shown us around and looked after us in Bapatla, and boarded the train to Varanasi.
Now, in case you didn't know, Bapatla is in Andra Pradesh, in southern India. Varanasi is in Uttar Pradesh, in the north, and actually pretty close to the Nepali border.
The train ride, like I mentioned before, was a killer...it ended up being around thirty-two hours. So we went to bed one night, spent the whole next day on the train, slept on the train that night, and then got off early the next morning. It didn't help that it was pouring rain when we got to Varanasi...and for a minute we were afraid the train wasn't going to stop at the platform (Kandyce jumped off early...the rest of us, per the immediately after shouted instructions of the conductor, waited, only to find the train not slowing down...it stopped at the far end of the platform). But I found us a taxi, and we made it to the Vidyashram Southpoint School, where we're staying while we're in Varanasi, without any more problems.
We've had a tour of a few temples so far, and tomorrow are going to see if we can arrange a boat ride on the Ganges...

Leaving Again/I need kids

2008-07-13T21:34:00.000+05:30

I think C.S. Lewis said something once about what it's like to be a young man, to want to conquer the world, to be something, to exist in the realm of possibility, to be free and unfettered. Lynrd Skynrd (And literally hundreds of other rock bands) said it somewhat less eloquently, but no less powerfully...
But, Lewis says too, there's something in a man that longs for stability, for all the peaceful blissed out domesticity, for wife and children and something solid underneath his feet. Something that the explosive adventurous side tries to suppress, but that is just as much a part of our nature and never really goes away...
I'm pretty satisfied with the first one right now, but these kids here make something ache inside me, something that doesn't want this to end, and would trade whatever this nebulous thing called "freedom" or any of the other ill-defined romanticized things that rock stars dream about and that I stretch my fingers at in my restless days in a minute if it meant I could...well, really just hold a baby in my arms and say: "Hey you, I'm your dad. Let's get to know each other."
All those things that scare me don't seem scary when I look at the kids here. Not easy, of course, hard as hell, probably the hardest thing I'll ever have to do, but worth every second of it. Sucks that a long protracted process (Beginning with "Hey let's get coffee some time...oh, and you like Damien Jurado, right? Because if you don't, this isn't going to work out.") has to happen first.
The girls here were asking me last night if I had a "close friend", and when I said no, and they asked why not I simplified a much longer answer and just said: "Well, I haven't met the right one yet." Which, for some reason, was hilarious...I don't know.
Tomorrow...tomorrow night we take the train to Varanasi. We've estimated the train ride at somewhere between 24 and 30 hours...lovely...but we'll be in a two-tier AC car, so it'll be pretty comfortable. Honestly, I'd be ready to just forget about all the touristy things, all the monuments to things long dead and gone...I've got kids here who are starving for love, and hosts who are some of the kindest and greatest people I've ever known.
Ayyo, as they say in Telugu (Roughly it's something like...oh hell, but less profane, more like a default expletive of frustration)...
All of us are still healthy, which is something of a miracle...though Kandyce has been feeling a bit under the weather the past couple of days.
Only nine more days. Makes me sad.

This morning

2008-07-12T13:15:00.000+05:30

Drawing with a bunch of the kids...Prabavati was very focused on the auto-rickshaw she was drawing on her paper. I leaned over and tickled her really quick:
"Ahna!"
"Not me...Vani-Chelli!"
Prabavati, in all her four year-old dignity, shook her head disapprovingly and went back to the auto-rickshaw. I tickled her again...her face broke into that huge silent laugh and she gave me a glare while pointing her finger at me. I innocently pointed at another boy and said: "Basha!"
"No, you!"
"Not me."
"Yes!" (Pointing at me)
"No!"
"YES!"
This went back and forth for several minutes, as the other kids came over and showed me their drawings. Then we made a peace treaty and Prabavati relocated to my lap to finish the auto...until I started tickling her again.
I think I might be a bad influence on the kids here...Basha, the boy who I had wrongfully accused, started poking me with a pencil and when I turned to him he pointed at another kid and said: "Yes Bob!"
(Well, technically he said "S. Babu" but it sounds so much like "Yes Bob" that Kandyce, Jon, and I have christened S. Babu as "Yes Bob")

New Kids to Love On

2008-07-10T21:41:00.000+05:30

We've just finished our second day at CHIT (Children's Homes in India Trust), and, I'm happy to say, I've found a little sister for Raavi, Pahraj, and Small Hands to look after when I bring them all home with me. Her name's Prabavati (I call her Prabavati-Chelli, "Little sister Prabavati" in Telugu, the language they speak here), she's probably about four years old, though it's hard to gauge with a lot of the kids here because they're so small, many of them from malnutrition. Anyway, Prabavati is about four, really shy, and the cutest little girl on the face of the planet. She doesn't talk a lot, and when I tickle her or do something that makes her laugh she doesn't really audibly laugh, her face just breaks out into this beautiful uncontrollable smile. She's shy, but she's feisty too, and sticks up for herself when the boys try and push her around. And when we're all sitting around she usually comes up and sits on my lap, resting her head against my chest and smiling her priceless little smile. We built a house in the sand outside of the orphanage here this evening, Prabavati teaching me the Telugu names as we built: "House?" "Iluu"..."Door?" "Boka"..."Window?" "Vindowuu". That is something of a rule in Telugu...if it's an English borrowed word, just add uu on the end of it. For instance, dress is "Gownuu", Beer is "Beeruu", so on and so forth.
The kids are helping learn a few Telugu words and phrases. This morning it was raining, so the kids didn't have school, and we all sat around while they taught me numbers. I'm not going to even try to learn the script...it's far too complicated for just a month's stay...but I have picked up a few basic phrases that make the kids and our hosts here happy.
We'll be teaching some art classes to the kids here in the next couple of days, like we did at BIRDS, but so far it's just been playing with them. Which, all in all, I think has been one of the most rewarding things about this whole trip: Getting to give these kids, many of whom have gone through horrible, horrible things (Two of the boys here watched their father kill their mother...two of the girls saw their mother killed, and then were sent away to live with their Grandmother, who was part of the sex trade in Mumbai), attention and love and validation. Plus, I just love playing with kids...especially kids like these who haven't been driven into faux-adulthood by cynical pop culture and over-stimulation. Innocence isn't the right word for it...maybe simplicity would be better, a simpler outlook on life, in the most positive sense of the word. We can have fun with the simplest things, show love through the simplest ways, without the profiteering mediation of mass media and materialism.
Our trip is more than halfway over, which really makes me sad. I'm just scratching the surface here, just beginning to make friendships, and soon we'll have to leave. But, as I told Kandyce last night: "Coming here was the best decision I've made in a really long time." And I stand by that.
I have a new favorite novel...not absolute favorite, but it's definitely up there in the top ten or so. It's called "The God of Small Things", and is by an Indian writer and political activist named Arundhati Roy. I picked it up at a bookstore in Hyderabad, and read it in a day a half. It's the story of an Indian family, primarily revolving around a pair of twins, Rahel and Esthappen, and addresses themes like caste, westernization, religion, and really a lot of the spectrum of what life is like for different kinds of people in India. It was particularly interesting and meaningful for me because it takes place in Kerala, the southwesternmost state in India where a couple of my best friends are from, the state with the highest Christian population in India (Nearly twenty per cent, most of them Mar Thoma Syrian Orthodox, who trace their church's ancestry to the Apostle Thomas, who evangelized South India at the beginning of church history), and the first state in the world to democratically elect a communist government. I believe it's still run by the communist party, though they haven't been continuously in control...it's got a really fascinating history, and a lot of that gets weaved into the book. Check it out if you get a chance.
I'm reading "An Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire", also by Arundhati Roy, right now...it's a book of scathing essays on American global corporate Imperialism. I don't agree with everything she has to say, but she makes some very good points, and I'm enjoying the book.
We've got another four or five days here at CHIT in Bapatla, before we start the last leg of our trip and go up to North India to see sights in Varanasi and Delhi (And yes, the Taj Mahal). All in all, while the touristy stuff will be fun, at this point I'd rather just stay with the kids. But, insha'allah, perhaps I will be back next summer (Mumkin with my family! I'm trying to talk them into it) between semesters at MESP. More on that another time.

OM and additions to the crew

2008-07-05T23:11:00.000+05:30

So, I'm still very broken up about le eaving BIRDS...our time there was phenomenal, admittedly slow during the days, but getting to be with the kids was something that I'm going to hold on to for a really long time. I've already started planning my next trip in my head...you know, between semesters in Egypt, that plane ride home...a ticket from Cairo to Delhi couldn't be that much, could it?

But, we've been having a good time since leaving BIRDS at the OM (Operation Mobilization, an interdenominational Christian group that partners with DFN, the organization Kandyce works for) base in Hyderabad. There a couple of other American teams here as well, so last night we celebrated the 4th of July by buying a bunch of sparklers and small fireworks and setting them off on the roof of the dormitory we're all in and singing the star-spangled banner and a whole bunch of other patriotic songs. There's just something about celebrating American holidays as an expat...you know, I think we need to be fiercely critical of our country, and I think American Exceptionalism, militarism, and nationalism are cancers in the soul of humanity and the American church...idolatry really, which disgusts me...but, at the same time, in my heart, I really do love my country dearly and am deeply grateful for many of the things I was brought up to learn as an American. There are definitely parts of our culture which I think should be worthily admired. But we need to always remember that the nation fades, the nation passes away, and our first allegiance is to God, and then to our fellow man, regardless of race, religion, nationality, or any of the other labels which we place to divide ourselves from others.

Anyway, all that aside, 4th of July with the other American teams was great fun, and I've enjoyed getting to meet other people who've decided to spend their summers out here.

On that note, we've picked up the fourth member of our own little group, Jon Crawford, who was one of the leaders of the Gordon India trip, which just ended. We ran in to him at BIRDS, but he left with the Gordon team for their final days of debriefing in Bangalore, and just joined us after we came to Hyderabad. He'll be with us for the rest of our trip, through Bapatla, Varanasi, and Delhi, and it's been fun to have a roommate. Introductions have a bit of awkward humor added into them ("And this is Jon...and Jon."), but he and I have been having fun talking high church stuff...our first day at OM we joined one of the teams for morning devotions, and after the prayer Jon and I both crossed ourselves...and then kind of exchanged a look for a minute. He's a Lutheran, and is actually planning on going to seminary and becoming a priest once he graduates from Gordon. Anyway, so that's been fun.

We made a trip to the Charminnar monument this afternoon, which is in the Muslim section of Hyderabad, and Jon and I went into the mosque to look around. I had a great time, with flashbacks of Cairo going through my mind all the time...can't wait for December! My heart is getting torn, though, because I'm really loving India as well.

July 4th

2008-07-04T20:06:00.000+05:30

Oh, and Happy Birthday America.