Times Like These: Making sense cents

You’ve heard that conversation. “the way the economy is today…,” or perhaps “war is the price we have to pay in this dangerous world.” Economic crisis, war, environmental exploitation: choose your poison that excuses us from being able to do anything. I, like so many of my peers, know the true woe of our times: school loans. :)

So I’ve been trying to figure out how to make sense out of my life while still making cents. I’m trying to worry a little less about making cents, because if it makes sense than maybe it’ll make sense not to make so many cents. Part of that’s led me to look into how the arts go along with community development and, well, my life. It’s also meant me meeting with (awesome) professors and friends, though there’s many more I ought to see (hit me up!). Doing that led me to learn about a guy called Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb.

He’s a Palestinian Christian. Cool. He’s the founder of the International Center of Bethlehem, whose initiatives include an academy and a college. Awesome. The Center has a focus on the arts, both in its schools and as community-creation, especially as a way to have “co-existence.” Epic. He’s also the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church. Jesus Christ.

No, seriously. He talks about him. A lot. Jesus Christ, that is. He gave a sermon stateside in 2003 about 1 Corinthians 1:18-25: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” I really agree with and appreciate both his message and how he shares it, but I can’t help imagining how his rhetoric and examples might not go over well with others. I had to hold back from cutting out “controversial” sections to get to “the main point,” but I held back (mostly) so you could decide for yourself. Torrey people, would Torrey be pleased? ICS people, is his gospel-culture focus good? Art people…idk, but isn’t it awesome how art interprets gospel? Politics people, what power plays should Christians be game for, do you think? All people…what do you like, what don’t you, how has or hasn’t it changed how you look at Christ/the cross/Israel/Palestine/Muslims/the verse? Read well and give your opinion. Pretty please.

His project is about how we take this dialectic of us versus them (us finding message of power of God, them finding message of foolishness). His question, if I can paraphrase, asks if we don’t wrongly find in the cross simply a message of us being right and so powerful, and them being wrong, instead of the power of God, which is, to put it colloquially, like, way better. But now I’ll let him speak for himself, in his second anecdote and point:

The second experience which shed a new light on us and them in relation to the message of the cross was totally different in nature. From November until February this year a 24-hour curfew was imposed on Bethlehem by the Israeli occupation. …. No one is allowed to leave his or her home, neither children to go to school, nor workers to go to work, and not even to go shopping except for few hours a week. Imagine entire families, millions of people sitting at home, doing nothing. So as center, we developed the idea to challenge some of the artists during this time. … so as to overcome their depression and imprisonment. We announced on the local radio and TV stations a painting competition on the topic of “Christ in the Palestinian Context”. In February this year 16 artists submitted their paintings. After reviewing all the paintings we couldn’t believe our eyes. 60% of all artists who submitted their paintings were Muslims. … It was interesting to see that so many Muslim artists dared to paint a biblical figure, something actually forbidden in Islamic theology and spirituality. More amazing was that all of the Muslim artists except one submitted a painting of the crucified Christ. None of the Christian artists had the cross as the theme of their paintings. … Isn’t it interesting? We know that in the teaching of Islam, Christ was not crucified. For Christ to be crucified means really nothing else than for God to be on the losing end, and that is impossible in Islam. God is greater than to be a loser. We can say with Paul that for Muslims the message of the cross is nothing but foolishness. But why did these Muslim artists paint Christ, the crucified? They took the risk to betray their religion; they took many risks upon themselves since all the paintings were exhibited in our Gallery publicly for a period of one month. I couldn’t but think of one answer: When they thought in their suffering what the most meaningful message is for them in that context, they couldn’t but think of Christ, the crucified. The message of the cross was for them so powerful, that they were ready to take the risk to paint the crucified Christ. In that moment they discovered that that message of the cross is more powerful that any wisdom or religious teaching they were taught. In God sharing their bitter destiny they find strength, comfort and power. It captured them, it captured their imagination and their minds. Also this experience taught me that the distinctive line between us Christian and them Muslims is not as clear as we think. Sometimes they see the power of the message of the cross clearer than us, who can easily get used to it.

Okay, time out for a second. Partly because I want you to fully digest that, and partly because this little interruption mirrors an interruption I had at the same place while reading. Just a sentence or two after the paragraph above I heard the voices of my mom and our little 6-year-old neighbor friend singing Hillsong in the other room… “My God is mighty to save, he is mighty to save, Forever, author of salvation, He rose and conquered the grave, Jesus conquered the grave.”

Nice timing, huh?

Well, I kept reading after that, so you should too, if the timing is right, as he goes to his next point:

The dividing line between us and them is not one related to faith only, but to power as well. The message of the cross has always to be related to the context of power relations. The powerless interpret it differently from the powerful. It is for those marginalized, weak and powerless within the Corinthian congregation and within our times that the apostle proclaims the message of the cross as the power of God. “Them” here refers to those who think they are wise and strong. For those strong the cross is nothing but a nice decoration, or even sometimes a cover for their ideologies. For a frightened Christians in the catacombs making the sign of the cross on their bodies is a sign of faith in the crucified Lord. But for Byzantine soldiers to engrave the cross on their helmets is a sign of a triumphant ideology. The last two and a half years were very, if not the most, difficult years in our lives. We never felt so powerless like when the F16 airplanes where roaming over our cities and striking our neighborhoods. We know how the people in Iraq now feel. Never did we feel so powerless as when the Israeli tanks invaded our populated towns and cities, approached our houses and started firing. Several tanks were stationed around our compound. For 13 hours without much interruption. One was stationed in the front of the house, another on the other side. When the tank in the front would fire, we as family would run to the backside of the house. When the one in the backside would fire we would all run to the front of the house. When both were firing at the same time, we thought the end is near. My mother was praying, my wife screaming, my children crying. Our neighbors were killed by the soldiers, a mother and her son. For 37 hours the other son was holding the hands of his mother and brother, crying, “my brother and my mother have forsaken me.” You feel so forsaken, not only from the World but even from God himself. We know how the Iraqi civilians are feeling these days. We know what conflict does to the souls, bodies and spirit of people. Yet never did I feel the power of the resurrection as in the last two years. This is not to glorify the suffering, it’s a curse, it’s harmful, it’s ugly, and the psalmist portrays his experience of exile as a refugee as feeling the wrath of God. It is this experience which Christ on the cross had when he cried, “my God, my God why has you forsaken me?” But the power of God manifests itself in such a context. It was when we felt left alone, abandoned, helpless and powerless that we were granted new power. The Israeli military forces destroyed our compound, yet God gave us the determination to rebuild it. The mighty forces of destruction lost their power over us. Wasn’t this your experience in the US also? Wasn’t it that on 9/11 when the two towers fall, when your country was so vulnerable, that you experienced something from the power of the resurrection as well as the solidarity of the world? What a difference to the context now. Isn’t it that when we strive to dominate and when we think we are powerful, that we will prevail, that we stumble and become foolish? The power of God can’t be found outside the cross. The resurrected Lord is the one who still carry on his body the wounds of the cross.

This is already quite lengthy. Thanks, friends, for those of you who read. As curious as I am know about what you think of his rhetoric or politics or artistics, honestly I’d most love to hear about Christ on the cross, and what you have going on in your head about that. Because my head’s a bit dizzy trying to sort out Christ from culture and God’s power from politics, as well as also then seeing where those things actually really do intersect. Oh yeah, and while we’re at it, of course there’s the application of how they intersect, and how then they should intersect in our lives while we’re trying to make sense and make cents.


How epicly overwhelming.



But chin up, at least we don’t have to worry about vampires and werewolves…




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Full-text of the sermon
http://www.mitriraheb.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=252:1-cor-1-18-25&catid=27:ensermons&Itemid=28


Good third-hand description of the center and its college
http://www.globalministries.org/mee/projects/international-center-of-bethlehe.html


Movie being screened September 30th that you can attend in L.A. with Biola peeps

http://littletownofbethlehem.org/

recalculating

I just got out of a really complicated relationship. I mean, the communication was terrible. I don't even know if we were leading each other in the right direction. It's like, even if we had the same destination, we were taking such different paths. Even though we said we had the same end goals, I couldn't see how our short-term steps were getting us there. Her name is Gloria. She is my mother's GPS machine. :) Like so much of our time together, she and I are now recalculating our routes.

Last week I went on a trip to Cleveland with my mom for my (great) aunt's birthday and to see family. I got to walk through a tropical forest of butterflies in a greenhouse, recount favorite pokemon with my younger cousins and watch Evan Almighty with my mom, as well as play a LOT of guitar. But I also got to drive in rain and lightning, where I couldn't even see the road lines on the freeway, through six-way intersections of death, and with two and sometimes three different voices telling me two and sometimes three different directions to drive. Bwah!

I cried. Several times. Much like a little girl :) I was already stressed out by other navigations I was making with, you know, my life. Job searches and heart searches. Rejections. Recalculations. If I take professional rejection this hard, then I shudder to think about personal rejection!!!

Anyway, Gloria and I really do have a complicated, love-hate relationship of our own. I could only get her to show me the immediately next direction, and not the one after that. And it freaked me out, because I wanted to know more, to be prepared for the next turn, to get in the right lane. It was too much like my life! I don't really know how to prepare for the next turn, cuz I don't know what it will be yet.

Well, every time I went the wrong direction, Gloria would say "Recalculating route." Insert choice words of frustration. That's right. I called her a poopie head. Gasp! Anyway, as much as I hated that, I kind of learned a lesson from it, too. Sometimes, I heard her say recalculating with a certain kind of annoyance, like "wow, the wrong direction again?" but other times it was more of a cheerful, bemused "wow, what a trip!" Obviously, Gloria is a machine, with a pre-recorded voice, so neither is true. Unless there's a vast conspiracy. But barring that possibility, I just read my own emotions into her voice. Regardless of that, she kept recalculating.

And I kind of want to be like her. I hate recalculating, because it implies you went the wrong way. But sometimes actually we were going a different way, that one of our relatives had told us to go, and it had to recalculate accordingly. Of course, most of the time we did go the wrong way. Either way, as much as she annoyed me, it was comforting to know she'd always be able to recalculate and find a new way to get to the destination. And she'd never just give up. How inspiring.

So, maybe I only get to know one direction ahead at a time for now. Or maybe not even really that. I just know the general direction I should drive in. God's more of a compass-type than step-by-step kind of guy. Yeah? Maybe. Either way, I have a lot of recalculating to look forward to. If you do, too, sucks for us :) But not really. Only if we let it. Either way. Anyway.

As a random side note, apparently anyways is a colloquialism and not a real word. While anyway, despite how horrendously weird it looks, is a real word. Yucky. Just look at the y's, on yucky, too. How weird. Gross. Gross.

longboarding...no fear?

I'm a coward. I've known that for a while, but it always amuses me. Luckily, being a coward doesn't stop me from being brave, though it does make it harder. Longboarding has been really cool this summer, since I'm not exactly comfortable speeding down hills. Don't get me wrong, it's exhilarating. It's just like heart-attack fun.

My old housemate, Chelsea, helped me learn how to go over those rain gutters all over La Mirada, the ones that go across a street and are about two inches wide and two inches deep. It's pretty easy if I don't just get scared and bail. The thing is, as plenty of you probably already know, it's all about having the speed. If you're going fast enough, gravel, rocks and even rain gutters can't stop you. But if you're not going fast enough, and if you're not committed enough to the board, either the board stops and you fly, or you stop and the board flies.

It kinda reminds me of what another friend of mine, Christina, said to me back in Jr. High. I was briefly - ever so briefly - on the soccer team, and I was trying to kick the ball away from her. I failed. Several times over! Afterwords, she told me I just had to commit, to choose when I was going to take it and fully take it. None of this dancing around.

And so, being me, I think of life, and my future, and being brave about going for new opportunities with enough speed and energy and commitment - instead of being hesitant or uncertain. I just had to giggle to myself, because I'm not a great longboarder, soccer player, or ....liver??? No, I'm not a great liver :) But I think I know how I can get better, at all of the above. Besides, practice makes perfect, right? As long as you're giving it your all, at least. Well...and as long as you're not being all perfectionist when you say perfect. Heh.

Did you see?

You cannot see anything from the road. More strictly speaking, all you see is an ordinary village. Boys run out to meet you, each begging that you choose him as a guide... My guide's name was Tadesse Mirele and he was a schoolboy. His school was closed, everything was closed - there was famine... Tadesse said taht he hadn't eaten anything in several days... "Sir?" "Yes, Tadesse?" I replied, "I'm listening." "Be my helper, please! I need a helper!" He looked at me, and I saw then that he had only one eye. A single eye in the haggard, frightened face of a child.

A while later Tadesse suddenly grabbed me by the arm. I thought that he wanted to ask me for something, but then realized he was only preventing me from falling into a chasm. For just below was a church carved out of stone...so that Muslims invading these lands could not spot them from afar...

"Look, sir!" said Tadesse, pointing down to the courtyard in front of the Church of the Savior of the World... A dozen or so meters below where we stood, in teh yard and on the steps of the church, surged a crowd of lame beggars... The people below were so tightly squeezed together, their crippled limbs, stumps, and crutches so tightly intertwined, that they formed a single crawling mass, out of which dozens of arms stretched upward like tentacles, and, where there were no limbs, innumerable gaping mouths extended upward, waiting for something to be thrown into them. As we walked from one church to another, this gnarled, moaning, expiring creature below crept after us, and from it dropped every now and then an inert, already lifeless member, abandoned by the rest.

There had been no pilgrims here in a long while, to throw down their alms, and these cripples were unable to get out of the stony chasms.

"Did you see, sir?" Tadesse asked me as we made our way back to the village. And he said it as though to suggest he thought this the only thing really worth seeing.


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This is an excerpt from The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski. A true story. It's a book that greatly impacted me, though reading through it again reminds me of things I've forgotten. I find it so powerful that his guide, who wants to make sure he saw, has only one eye. And that before the boy asks for a helper, Ryszard tells him he is listening. Makes me ask myself if I see, if I listen. I wonder about, as pilgrims, how we sometimes think we are going to places like the Church of the Savior of the World to meet God in places of beauty, only to find him in places of suffering.

God, give us new eyes and new ears, so that we may find you in the people all around us and in our moments of pain as well as joy, in the shadows as well as in the sunlight. Amen.

want a burger?

I was just beginning to walk up the steps to my apartment after longboarding home from work, when the family directly below us called to me through the window: "Want a burger?" Maybe an hour later, I finished watching Family Guy, talking about Justin Bieber and talking in English/Spanish with the mom, her three kids and one of their friends. All because the mom was sweet enough to invite me in and share a meal with me.

A couple of nights ago I got to hang out with some Torrey peeps. We started the evening off with pancakes - Pittle style - and fruit kebobs and toasty bread and fire alarms from a hilarious cooking fail. It was so fun to be in the kitchen with people, both before the hang-out in preparation and during. And it was really sweet to share a meal with them.

I've already been exposed to some of the literature and talk about the power of hospitality and sharing the table with people, but it just kind of struck me strong today. I felt a lot of community and love from being invited in, and it gave me the opportunity to see another side of the family and of my friends. It made me...at home, even in the sense that I wasn't in a hurry to go running off to find my future.

It was a nice feeling, considering that running off to tomorrow is what I spend a lot of my time doing: searching for, applying for and interviewing for jobs (getting passed over for jobs!). Today I realized what a good, weird, cool place this is to be right now, that I should be a little more still and chill about tomorrow in the meantime of today. Of course, that's easier said than done.

I know I've been more irritable and just plain out of it because of letting the uncertainties weigh on me more than they ought. But I'm trying to do that whole "trust God" thing. I've heard some people call it faith, or something :) It's easy for me to worry about how I need a job/career after the summer, as well as a second job during the summer. But it's silly of me, when I should be grateful to have a job at all. And a home. I journaled today that I would stop giving space and voice to that fear. So of course tonight I had already started doing it again. Then I saw a homeless guy, with the cardboard message "homeless. hungry. God bless." Shut me up good, but also opened me up good to the fact that it's not enough to have faith that God'll take care of you, but that God'll still take care of you if you take care of others with what he gives you.

On that note, anyone up for burgers? Pancakes? Call me up :)

How to Serve - according to a Franciscan intern

What happens when everything you have to give isn't enough? I'm applying for this Americorps position with a Franciscan volunteer program, and read the blog entry of an alumni from the program, as she discovered where her limits were and realized she couldn't rely only on herself. Here it is:


Every day when I step in front of my two E.S.L. classes, I peer at my students with a sense of wonder and admiration. While each student’s culture and language is drastically different from the other, their lives are similarly courageous. One student arrived in Pittsburgh from western Africa where he earned his M.B.A. in his own language, but desired to escape his prejudicial country. Thus, he came to America in order to learn English from scratch and eventually earn his PhD in business. Sitting near him is a student from Guatemala who grew up in a country where 20+ different dialects of Spanish are spoken. He had a difficult time learning to read and write in his own language because his grade school teachers taught in a different dialect than him; thus, he finished school at a sixth grade level and worked on his home farm for self-sufficiency. Across from them is a married couple who came from a refugee camp in Nepal where they learned basic English in the ‘safe’ confines of a camp for 10+ years. A few months ago, they came to America where they finally live in a physically safe home, but don’t necessarily feel or speak as if they were at home.


Each morning and evening, as these adult students come in for a two-hour long English lesson, their facial expressions clearly illustrate the wonder and expectations that they can not always verbalize to me. Questions such as, “How will she be teaching me English today, since I can not verbally express my specific needs and desires to her?” “Will she be my friend seeing how lonely I am in this foreign country? Can we be friends since we can not always speak?” “Will she be sensitive to my fears?” “Will she challenge me?”, or, “Will she go slow enough for me?” “In her youth, will she treat me as the respected adult that I am?” Initially coming into this year, I possessed a lot of zeal and enthusiasm to respond to each and every one of these questions and expectations.... Responding to each of these student’s unspoken questions and needs comparatively seemed like nothing, and fully responding to them is what I thought it meant to live the Gospel and to serve God and his people.


Soon, however, these tacit questions and expectations began to weigh very heavily upon my heart. Balancing the different students’ cries for “Challenge me more!” with the “Please slow down!” seemed impossible. Multiple students began asking for my phone number to “hang out” after work, but balancing my already an day of full-time work with God, family, a boyfriend, community members and friends was just stretching me too thin... In the midst of this experienced inner chaos and feeling of failure, I started to dread seeing my students and teaching in the classroom every day. The pressure to “measure up” ... felt emotionally and physically unbearable. And finally, I believed that I couldn’t really teach well... So how was I supposed to serve people if I couldn’t give to them what they needed? How was I to respond to the Christian call to serve God and his people if serving God and his people just seemed like too much to handle?


For the first three months, as I continued to grow in apathy and fear toward teaching my beginner E.S.L. class, God was simultaneously beginning to transform my call to service. The transformation of service began slowly and subtly through reading a few books by Henri Nouwen, by talking with my close housemate, Jaimee... A moment of clarity occurred one morning when my housemate Jaimee and I were talking about a few books we had recently read together by Henri Nouwen. Before we ran off to our service sites, she shared with me a beautiful insight regarding service that she had read the night before in Henri Nouwen’s book, “Adam.” “Laura, I’ve realized that it’s not so much about what you do, but it’s who you are that matters to people!” This shared insight struck me as quite simple but valuable... Perhaps the most important aspect of my service was not to create the perfect lesson plan, to adequately entertain my students, or to impress my supervisor and co-workers. Perhaps the most important aspect of my service was to first be open and present with my students in the classroom, and to listen, be interested and engaged in their everyday lives during class.


... The distinction I made between the words "for" and "with" finally marked the beginning of a unique kind of service for me. As I was acting out the definition of for to my students..., I noticed that...I cupped my left hand almost lifelessly facing the palm upwards. I then swiftly swooped my right pointing finger from my right side into the left palm. My right pointing finger became very tense. As I spoke, I illustrated to my students, “I have a gift for you!” SWOOP. “I work for Goodwill.” SWOOP. “I am here for you.” SWOOP. After acting out this word several times, I noticed that it was the right hand that did all the movement while my left hand remained open to receiving, but dull and motionless, time and time again receiving the rapid pointing finger from the right hand.


About 10 minutes later, I acted out the word with. Both of my hands were gradually brought together in a rested fashion in front of my chest. The students watched my hands with ease as one finger naturally folded over the creases of the other. Each knuckle provided a necessary support for the two hands to remain fully balanced, folded and rested together. One hand was not pressing too hard onto the other, but neither hand was pulling away, either. “I like to eat bread with butter.” FOLD. “Everyday, I eat dinner with my family.” FOLD. Or, my favorite, “I am here with you.”…FOLD.


Driving home that night, I was mesmerized by this distinction that I naturally made between the words for and with. As I mediated upon these words in a short morning prayer, the image of Jesus Christ on the cross had become much clearer in my mind, and God had provided a sudden revelation regarding love and service: I am to be the image of Jesus Christ in the world, the image of Jesus Christ crucified. Jesus serves us not only by dying for our sins, but He serves us by dying with us in our humanity as we die with him in his humanity. He calls us to die, to struggle, to laugh, to work, to love, and to live with him and with others in all our humanity together. The crucifixion provided for me a new way of unifying both an active and passive service and love of God and of others.

Reflecting back upon my hands when describing for and with, I realized the mistake I had previously made service to be. I had seen myself as the “right hand” in the definition of “for”. I had made myself the privileged, college educated, ambitious young Christian; fully alive, fully available, and fully on fire, who was giving gifts for the weak, the lifeless, and the dull of the world, “God’s precious people” you could say. They were the “left hand”. Although I had good intentions in my service, I was completely blind to the fact that I was serving people mostly for me to have the opportunity to serve; for me to have the opportunity to be the “right hand” and to do something for someone.

...John Michael Talbot beautifully said in his book, Reflections on St. Francis, that in serving, “We intentionally make ourselves smaller than others…The lesser brother genuinely sees the good gifts of others, and helps them to realize the full potential of those gifts. We must see the good in all people, and the gifts that each person holds as their own unique gift. In this sense, everyone has a gift that no one else has. Everyone is “better”, and everyone is equal. Only then can we genuinely realize our own gifts as well.”


How am I to serve, and how am I to follow Jesus? I am to serve and follow by first folding together with Christ’s crucified hand – for to serve is one human, wounded hand giving, supporting, holding, resting, and receiving from the other human, wounded hand. All is well; in the midst of our poverty and our giftedness, we remain folded together with God and with each other.




You can go here to read more entries: http://www.changeaheartvolunteers.org/Pages/Adayinthelife.html. This one was "The Power of Listening" by Laura McGee.

Switchfoot. The Sound aka John M. Perkins' Blues

Click here to read about John M. Perkins life sound.



The Static comes in slow
You can feel it grow
Our stream of conscience flows
Under the streets below

Ooooh

Ooooh

The rivers made of sound
Still running underground
Runs like a silent flood
We run as thick as blood

Can you hear it rise
Up from the ground
Can’t drown it out
Can you hear it now

This is the sound of a heartbeat
This is the sound from the discontented mouths
Of a haunted nation
We are the voice of breaking down

Can you hear me?
This is the sound of the desperation bound
By our own collisions
We are the voice of breaking down

The static comes alive
Beneath the broken skies
John Perkins said it right
Love is the final fight

Oooooh
Oooooh

Let it rise above
Rise above
There is no song
Louder than love

This is the sound of a heartbeat
this is the sound from the discontented mouths
of a haunted nation
we are the voice of breaking down

Can you hear me?
This is the sound of a desperation bound
by our own collisions
we are the voice of breaking down

Down

Let it rise above
Up from the ground
Can't drown it out
Can you hear it now

This is the sound of a heartbeat
This is the sound from the discontented mouths
Of a haunted nation, we are the voice of breaking down

Can you hear me
This is the sound of the desperation bound
by our fallen condition, we are the voice of breaking down

This is the sound
This is the sound