from the blizzard

ID

2007-11-28T05:10:00.000-05:00

I went camping with some friends recently and had to produce a state ID for the second time in a couple of months (usually my ATM card, which has a recent enough picture of me on it, works for folks). In my driver's license (last renewed when I was 18) I have long hair pulled back in a pony tail, and I'm not wearing glasses. Showing it at airports used to cause a little stir; for the past year or so I've been accustomed to carrying my Dartmouth ID card to supplement when the security attendant quizzically compares the person standing before them (presumably an adolescent boy) with the ID picture (presumably a young woman). The last time I flew, November 1, no one gave my ID a second glance. I was a little puzzled, and then decided it must be because they don't want to broach the gender subject--maybe I'm old enough looking and sounding now that there's a clear difference between me and the ID.

But I had to chuckle to myself when I passed my ID to a Black guy at Yosemite, and he commented, "a skinhead, huh?"

pics -3.5 months on T

2007-10-31T02:08:00.002-05:00

being a stud

i don't have a camera

2007-09-25T23:13:00.000-05:00

so this is the only pic i have of me right now...

more to come soon promise

San Francisco

2007-09-20T13:33:00.000-05:00

is happy!

and oh such a great place to be queer...
hills, climbable trees, thrift stores, used book stores, local organic food, and queerness are in abundance, so i'm beaming :D

10 weeks on T! I just noticed some of dinner's cous-cous got stuck in my peach fuzz so figured it was time to shave it off (first time)...That was fun.
I'm easily singing a low C or B now, and my voice is a lot less crackly, except for when I forget that I've lost my soprano range, and try to squeal. My face is looking a bit more masculine as well, it's funny to look at old pictures of myself and realize that really, I always imagined myself looking more how I look now than how I look in those pictures.

The biggest change since coming to San Francisco is that since I got here I've been read exclusively as male, or I spose by queer-aware folks as a transguy. It's fun, and pleasantly surprising, to suddenly not have my masculinity questioned in the subtle ways that it used to be when I interacted in public w/strangers, etc. before. I'm much less preoccupied with proving my masculinity (or just being read as male), and freer to express gender in a variety of ways. I feel less attached to a fifteen year old's body and freer to be as free-spirited/spunky/jumpy or chill/wise (haha)/mature as I want to be. Thrift store shopping nicely augmented my wardrobe, and I love being able to choose my clothes for the day based partly on how I feel like expressing my gender. As I expected, physically transitioning to male (and incidentally reinscribing the binary) is allowing me to feel more comfortable queering the binary (this paradox sums up a lot of my generation's post modern experience for me...but that's another conversation). Not that pre-T I wasn't, simply through my behavior, queering the binary--because I was, in a very real way. But I was more consciously preoccupied with simply proving my masculinity, whatever that meant, and so my dress, composure, expressions, etc. were more focused towards whatever would get people in my environment to gender me male (at times these different mannerisms could seem subtle, but experiencing several different city and family environments since leaving Dartmouth showed me the extent of this). As my physical maleness is less questioned, (and my physical image matches up with my mental image of myself) I'm able to think of masculinity less as opposed to femininity (ie being read as a boy OR girl) and more as a way of viewing and interacting with the world. (I should clarify that I always intellectually thought of gender that way; I don't tend to think of gender in binary terms--I see it more as a spectrum or collidescope--but was frustrated because it really matters to me that people read me as guy, and that my body feels male). I now have more brainspace to focus on what I've wanted to focus on since I came to understand myself as trans: calling myself out on my sense of male entitlement or for taking advantage of male privilege, exploring a variety of masculinities and figuring out how to be the kind of man I want to be. Lucky for us, this process never ends! hahahah

pre-T

2007-08-16T19:07:00.001-05:00

haha apparently i don't have any pictures of me not doing silly things...

transitions

2007-08-13T12:58:00.000-05:00

Since I apparently lost interest in blogging, I'm turning this into a transition journal. They seem to be the hip thing, and I know I've been grateful to read other FtM's transition blogs...

I hope to update every couple months, or whenever I'm inspired, with pics and whatnot.
So here we go!

I got my first shot of testosterone four weeks ago. No major noticeable appearance changes as of yet, other than some muscle gain in my arms and forearms (combo of climbing and lifting a little). I'm posting some pics of me pre-T.

As for other changes...those have been fun, hehehe. My sex drive tripled, at least. I have to admit I give guys a little more credit now...while I'm sure many women have a similar libido to mine now, the impact a shot of testosterone had was kind of undeniable (and more than I expected). My metabolism increased pretty dramatically as well; despite the heat, I'm often eating probably 1.5 - sometimes 2 times as much as I used to, both in terms of quantity and frequency of meals. I remember when I used to split a box of mac and cheese with my brother...now I down a box easily for lunch, and toss in an apple and a few glasses of milk. Breakfast is easily two bowls of cereal and a few slices of toast; dinner a couple burgers or a footlong sub sandwich...and lots of snacks in between, of course... I'm sleeping about the same amount as pre-T, although that might be because of the heat. My voice is already maybe a third (music third--2.5 notes) down, which I'm pretty psyched about. In terms of passing for male, I often think it's my voice (though it was fairly low to begin with) that throws people.
I just got my third shot, and I've noticed it's a little bit of a swing (I take it every two weeks so my body naturally distributes the testosterone on its own, but for the last few days I've got a bit less in my system), but nothing too annoying.

On the mental front, it feels good to have T in my system. I wouldn't say I ever had persistent severe dislike of my body before living into a trans identity, but this past winter and spring the body dysphoria has gotten intense at times and it's a 180 shift to suddenly be excited about my body. I've been thinking a lot about what 'transition' means for me, and recognizing that as much body dysphoria as I still have, I do love my ever-more androgynous looking body a lot, and can't imagine ever wanting to not identity as trans (ie to identity as a man, rather than a transman). I love asserting my masculinity despite my more feminine appearance (for example, being read as a guy even though I still have a more feminine bone/face structure), and I love that my masculinity isn't attached to a strong female identity (ex, I'm not athletic by day, party girl by night) so it disrupts people even more when they try to identify me. Still, I have to admit I probably enjoy androgyny more now because it IS attached to a masculine identity. I'm queer...but definitely desire to be queer from the male side of the spectrum.

go big...

2007-03-31T17:51:00.000-05:00

It's March 31 and today I climbed a tree barefoot! Four stories up, standing swaying on a branch with my hands in my pockets, I decided I climb trees to see whether or not I should be living. It's a kind of laugh and smile towards whatever holds the universe together (god?). You trust your intuition, your feet and your hands, and commit yourself to the tree. I had a nice conversation with a squirrel, and a bird who accidentally flew into me (no joke!).
A friend read my blog yesterday and mentioned that I'm full of commitments. She's right; as much as I change I'm always fiercely committed to something. It makes the most sense that way -- like in band, when they tell the percussionists to play with confidence even when we're wrong, because halfassing something is always LAME. Better to screw up the piece and take a wooping from the band afterwards than to miss your cue, and punk out of your entire purpose as a percussionist.

...right...

Kris is sticking, forever and ever. Also i'm a guy. so, dealing with that right now. for those of you who haven't woken up one morning realizing your body doesn't fit your gender, it's crazy, but so much fun!
as i told a friend the other day, now is the time i take a beating for all those years i hated on white masculinity hardcore. confronting my whiteness was/is painful, but not too hard really,
and good, because people always perceived me as white, and the more you confront it the more fully you're able to live. confronting my masculinity is like trying to beat up a monster in a dark closet...it's dark, i'm not really sure what it looks like or what it's made of, and most people don't think it's real, even if they humor me...and the more i prove it is real, the more problems i create that have no solutions, at least in the short term.
Since this post now consists of two bad analogies, let me just finish off by saying, that monster is getting BEATEN with a big stick. Or at least dragged out of the closet so everyone can prepare themselves to deal with it.

yeah commitments!

i have a fever

2007-03-06T01:21:00.000-05:00

but capitalism still sucks.

Go play in the snow!

oops!

2007-02-01T10:30:00.000-05:00

i've been MIA, it appears...

i guess there was finals, a little mountain climbing in utah, sitting by the fire at Norpine, christmas in swaziland and new year's in johannesburg, skiing, drumming, sledding, skiing, studying, skiing, drumming, skiing, sleeping sleeping sleeping...

what? midterms??

Remember when groundhog day mattered because it ACTUALLY felt important to determine whether we'd have 'another' 6 weeks of winter? winter just came here last week so... if we don't get another 6 weeks i'm going to be a groundhog myself.

in other news i'm transitioning to a more trans/gender neutral identity with Kris.

and until i have something to say myself, read this blitz from an awesome awesome kid in Students for Africa, it was our dinner discussion last night:

Hey all,

This Jesse speaking, I've stolen the SFA blitz mic.

I'd really like to know WHY you all think it's important to be involved with SFA. If you have principled reasons, what are they? In thinking about my own reasons, I've come up against a scary observation (having to do with self-centeredness and ineffectiveness). I'm pretty sure it's something we've touched on, at least briefly in previous discussions -- it's a topic that's hard to avoid.

I like lots of things/people/places from/in Africa, and we talk about / listen to / watch those things in SFA meetings. I enjoy myself at the meetings, I feel a connection to a place that is important to me (when we listen to music from senegal, or watch a movie about senegal), and I feel I'm working to upset the monotony of America's cultural influence on me. Those are some reasons for me to be involved.

The people are fun and varied -- I'm meeting / have met great people whom I wouldn't have met otherwise.

I think good things can come out of our meetings and activities that could benefit both the campus and, hopefully, people in Africa.

But there's another reason that I'm involved with SFA. It's something that was part of my motivation for going on a Tucker Fellowship to Kisumu in Kenya, for going to China, for choosing a major that focused on Africa, it's something that will be part of my motivation for seeking further education and, finally, for seeking employment in International "Development":

I want to *make something of myself*.

It sounds pretty innocuous when I put it that way. But frankly, I sometimes feel that I, and friends of mine with similar interests, are trying to *USE* Africa for our own personal gain. Competing with other service-oriented people; looking for the most remote service assignment so we can be more "hardcore" or more "authentic". Choosing projects that will look good on a resume, but might not actually do the most for the supposed beneficiaries of the project.

I'm exposing myself to some serious criticism/attack here, but I really think anybody who's interested in service in *this society* has to deal with some of the same issues.

Why do I want to make something of myself?
Should I allow myself to want that?
What motivations should I have for pursuing success?
What is the pressure I feel to do "amazing" things in order to advance myself?
Who defines "amazing"?
Where does that pressure originate?
If my *success* is generated by that pressure, how much does it really help people in need?
Are resumes evil? Are grades evil? Are performance assessments in general all evil?

****************************************

So, what are you using to make something of yourself? to feel better about your privilege? who are you objectifying in your 'service'?

kind of a jarring question...

procrastination is a Fine Art!

2006-11-26T23:38:00.000-05:00

Guys I have a problem!

I have no patience. Or rather, I have plenty of patience most of the time, but at the times when I’m suddenly cognizant of really really needing to be patient, I don’t have it. I get all antsy and I jump around and fidget and when I’m supposed to be reading like 600 pages of sociology or writing a term paper, I instead write massive amounts of slightly comprehensible babbling about various (slightly) philosophical musings! I have 5 hour convos w/friends and I think things are ready to settle for a week (so I can take finals) and then … sneak sneak sneak… **WHAM!!!** a barrage of thoughts and confusion just WAITING to be processed smack me upside the head and I sort of smile and reply, “Well, if you insist.” Then I laugh at the absurdity of existence and pretend that my homework will finish itself as long as I have enough passion.
Next thing I know it’s 4AM and although I’ve been doing NOTHING but ‘working’ for the past 18 hours, I’ve ‘accomplished’ per se NOTHING, although I may have designed a proof for the latest wonder of my small universe.
Generally, I love this state of affairs. It’s intoxicating and addicting, like climbing really tall white pines or jumping face first into snow banks. BUT the *problem* comes when I can’t surround myself with enough people who want to discuss intense things at random hours when we ‘should’ be doing other ‘more important’ things. (Because the argument that understanding our universes is THE most important thing sort of loses flavor when it’s all you do). With only myself to converse with and about, I GO CRAAAAAZY! This thanksgiving break I (purposefully) spent 72 hours with only 1, 2, or perhaps 3 conversations (that would be with other people). The rest of the time I spent more or less in the same room, walking to the kitchen, or playing piano. Guess what happened??!? I read 377 pages exactly and spent the rest of time losing touch with reality, or transcending myself, or something, in some sort of illusory out of body dream world. Inside my own head the speed or intensity at which I was mulling and processing was of no effect! And thus it was a little higher than I think I can even be conscious of right now.

Before I get too far, let me say that I made a concerted effort (unusually concerted for me) this term, from almost its very beginning, to live internally. By which I mean, to not deal with any subject or experience or relationship or thought, without living the time and energy to allow and encourage it to become part of the essence of my being. Some might say, to internalize it. Obviously this isn’t the kind of thing one can sit down and command to happen, so I’m sure there were a fair share of things that slipped by. But I consciously cut down on my activities, tried to penetrate the surface even more in my interactions, and focused on learning to feel, to merge intellect and emotion. At this point I’m speculating that in order to do that for a variety of things, it meant I started to analyze, well, everything, even more than usual. Because in order to internalize something you have to understand where it’s coming from, how it was formed, where it’s going, etc. This generally requires a lot of ‘unpacking’ as I like to say, and tends to upset large aspects of our lives that we once took for granted. Living internally also requires that my typical external-processing (talking through w/friends etc.) be coupled with a different kind of processing, one that is better described in colors and feelings than in words or sentences, I think. Emotionally, it’s been intense and definitely out of control (although I don’t mind, I tend to dislike being in control).

Well, whatever it was I was doing this past weekend, whirling smoothly and rapidly in and out of I know not what, the transition back to my habitual environment (class, work, friends, activities) has been messy. I find myself very wrapped up in my own expectations for the world, which include every person questioning herself and her frameworks and her very reason for existing, rather endlessly and at an (extraordinarily?) fast rate. At Dartmouth we call this “intensity.” I was hoping that some self/emotional processing time would allow me to better dwell in the realities of folks who, for a variety of legitimate reasons, do not prefer the level of intensity that I seem privy to. Instead the opposite happened! I became LESS patient!
And now when I swore to finish the same book I started exactly 5 days ago at this time (then vowing to finish it before bed), I have intellectualized (if you can call it that) away another 25 minutes of my time and 3 minutes of yours. I’m against commodification of time and existence. But I need patience!

Also I’m laughing hard right now, which is good I think. :-D You should laugh too, it’s so healthy!
hahahahahahahahahaha

worship?

2006-11-26T22:42:00.000-05:00

It's almost finals time... here's a disastoriously disorganized rambling, inspired by a (somewhat) recent semi-discussion w/a friend about whether or not i should share my God's Kingdom in a Child poem at an interfellowship campus worship gathering. Some excerpts from an email I sent her:

you know when i wrote that poem i actually had no particular intent to share it (i tend not to about my art--insecurities maybe, or just inexperience), but as i was putting the finishing touches on it i said to myself, i think this is what worship is. not particularly the act of sharing it, but the act of creating it. ok, which i think is what led me to share it in lieu of a sermon at GBCS -- i've started to feel that worship is a conversation, a desire to discern with others, an intentional moment or lifetime to insist on dwelling on thoughts and actions of kingdom building. so sharing the poem was reliving its act of creation, but more importantly instigating the conversation. presenting my identity in an attempt to create space for the identities of others to be present. which is, i would imagine, partially how the idea of preaching came about long ago. but somehow it got all conflated with these silly (masculine?) obsessions with authority, and we started thinking that some folks have more legitimate phonelines to god and should be training the rest of us or something.
however i would pose the question: what is the difference between that (preaching) and our songs? are they not invoking a particular theological framework that relies on submission to authority?; i'm not convinced that the 'participatory' nature of singing along is truly participatory. i certainly don't feel that many of the songs we sing nowadays make any space for my identity. rather they tend to delegitimize my desire to build the kingdom... i suppose these ponderings come from a (somewhat) recent paradigm shift and thereby realigning and reconciliation of my actions in the world and theologies that at their core were designed to rationalize people not taking the kind of action that i take; that at their core pacify us into acceptance of a an unjust world, because 'god giveth and god taketh away' and us sinners are to 'wait for our rewards in heaven.' take the song 'light of the world', for instance -- 'light of the world, you stepped down into darkness, openned my eyes, let me see...Humbly you came to the earth you created, all for love's sake became poor. And I'll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross (2x).' you know i used to love that song -- typed it from memory. at this juncture, incidentally, i find singing it to be almost the opposite of worship.

Rock on South Africa

2006-11-15T08:44:00.000-05:00

South African Parliament Approves Same-Sex Marriages

By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Published: November 15, 2006

JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 14 — Parliament on Tuesday voted resoundingly to legalize same-sex marriages in South Africa, making the nation the first in Africa and the fifth in the world to remove legal barriers to them, according to advocates.
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Forum: Gay Rights

The nation’s highest court ruled last December that South Africa’s marriage statute violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights. The court gave the government a year to alter the legal definition of marriage.

That left the government with three choices: legalize same-sex marriages, let the court change the law by fiat or alter the Constitution, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Under the proposal approved by Parliament, heterosexual and same-sex couples could register marriages or civil partnerships. In a concession to critics, the law also would allow civil officers to refuse to marry same-sex couples if such marriages conflicted with their conscience.

If the measure is to become law, as both sides said they expected, it must be approved by the National Council of Provinces and signed by President Thabo Mbeki.

In many African nations, homosexuality is still treated as a crime. Some impose stiffer penalties for homosexual acts than for rape and murder.

And African leaders have regularly denounced homosexuality as immoral and a violation of the natural order and African culture.

Melanie Judge, the program manager for OUT, a gay rights advocacy group, said Parliament had taken a courageous stance in the face of strong political pressure.

Although some countries recognize civil partnerships between same-sex couples, she said, only the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Canada now allow same-sex marriages.

Ms. Judge credits South Africa’s liberal Constitution with forcing change. “This has been a litmus test of our constitutional values,” she said. “It forced us to consider: What does equality really mean? What does it look like? Equality does not exist on a sliding scale.”

Religious groups and traditional leaders proposed to nullify the court ruling by amending the Constitution. But their bill to define marriage as being between a man and a woman died in parliamentary committee. Steve Swart, a legislator with the African Christian Democratic Party and a proponent of the constitutional amendment, said the Parliament had ignored the views of ordinary citizens — and international norms.

“We are out of step with the rest of Africa and with rest of world,” he said. “The international norm is civil unions, as opposed to same-sex marriages. What happened today conflicts with the views of the majority of South Africans.”

He attributed the 230-to-41 vote for the measure to whip-cracking by the governing party, the African National Congress. One party leader was quoted this month as saying that the A.N.C. expected its legislators to support the bill, regardless of their personal beliefs.

Vytjie Mentor, the party’s caucus chairman, told a South African newspaper, The Sunday Independent, that there was “no such thing as a free vote or a vote of conscience.”

“How do you give someone permission to discriminate in the name of the A.N.C.?” he said. “How do you allow for someone to vote against the Constitution and the policies of the A.N.C., which is antidiscrimination?”

Still, Ms. Judge, the gay rights advocate, said the new provision allowing civil officers to refuse to marry gay couples was unconstitutional and would provoke legal challenges.

“We can’t be in the situation where civil officers can decide who they want to marry and who they don’t want to marry,” she said. “They aren’t able to refuse to marry a black person and a white person. Why are same-sex couples different?”

Election Day!!!!!

2006-11-07T11:26:00.000-05:00

Obviously, I have to post something in honor of THE COOLEST DAY IN NOVEMBER!

As our leaders parade "democracy," let's be reminded that we have some of the most abysmal voting turnout rates in the world. In the recent second round of the Congolese Presidential elections, turnout rates hovered around 80%. In Brazil's elections last week, it was the same story. But we'll be lucky to hit 40% in the U.S. That means 40% of the country choosing leaders for themselves and the remaining 60%. When Kenyans asked me why we reelected Bush, the first thing I say is that for starters, only 25% of our country voted for him. Half of the eligible voters didn't vote. What kind of 'government of the people' is this?

To those who choose not to participate in a system that breeds corruption, insulation, and affluence: what will change by your not voting?

To those who find themselves too busy, stretched, overwhelmed, to take time to get educated and head to the polls: to what end is your activism? Are you struggling for the right of every person's voice? And if so, what are you accomplishing by not voting?

It's a small thing, and it takes a few minutes. Get out there and do it.

relationships are what we're made of

2006-10-20T17:38:00.000-05:00

Wow, this month definitely did not quite happen on African time... it was intense! But good, intensely good.

Most recently was our fall board meeting for the general board of church and society. for some cool stuff on that you should check out awesome Beth's

blog

.
There are, as usual, a few too many things swirling around up in here, so i'll settle on an excerpt from an email i wrote to a friend. Context: we're working on some legislation to bring to the Global Young People's Convocation. It's in Johannesburg, South Africa this december (i'm going! shout out to MN church in society committee for the funding!) and legislation that passes out can go to General Conference from "the young people of the UMC." Anyways, this legislation is at least a shot at saying to the church, if you really want us to be a vital part of who the church is, then we need to be about justice. To be about justice, we need justice to be integral in all resources that are produced for UMC young people.

More context: I have recently decided that relationships change the world. Not only that, but they are the only things that change us, and thus, the world. We're moved because we relate to something, because we identify with something, with someone else. This is a pretty sweet condition to be in, as humans -- it means when we forget each other, we forget ourselves...and the deeper we go into community with one another, the deeper we come unto ourselves. Anyway, I also decided that since relationships are what change the world, anything else that we do to try to change the world should be a means to an end. The end being, of course, to cultivate meaningful relationships. Educational type events, lectures, classes--these things give us background so we can better understand people and have more meaningful relationships with them. But these events are also so easily externalized, we need relationships with people to internalize them.

OK, so some thoughts behind the legislation:

young people are trying to figure out who we are. we're growing up, we're changing, we're moving in society and we're moving society. our relationships with one another are hugely important, but they're getting more and more external. we have myspaces and AIM and big youth conferences where we dance and wave our hands in the air and listen to 'cool' music and eat candy...at youth group we watch 'relevant' movies and read 'relevant' bible study book thingys and do 30 hour famines because we feel like we should do something for the greater good but aren't quite sure what that should be. we're really really focused on doing. i wonder if conservative christian theology is really really focused on doing, in general (whew, here i go, are you sensing the snowball build up? brace yourself for generalations, most of which can be qualified and all of which have exceptions). let me use as an example my friend eric, who i mentioned is having to decide whether to go on his 2 year mission, or maybe even leave the mormon church. we have these uber intense (like 9 hour long) theological debates. basically it boiled down to we realized a major fundamental difference (and the reason he's catch-22'd right now) is that the church of LDS is all about God telling you what to do, and you doing it. God says, don't have sex. so you don't have sex. God says, feed the poor. so you feed the poor. God says, you're a sinner (meaning you inadvertently don't do what i say all the time), but my son took your sins upon himself and died on the cross, so worship us and if you follow my 3 step plan you'll get a) earthly joy b) eternal happiness. So when Eric's in a church that says, God says, go on a mission and teach people about jesus...but he has a ridiculously close friend who has become integral to who he is, who not only identifies as queer (goes fundamentally against the order of the universe, of course--we're supposed to be gods and goddesses when we die, not goddesses and goddesses), but who identifies deeply with all these people all around the world who are suffering because of systems that the church of LDS refuses to confront...eric's stuck. he's scared of what'll happen if he leaves the church...and because of his relationship with me, he can't bare to go on a mission without feeling like his being is ripped in two. he keeps asking, what does God want me to DO, how can i feel peace by DOING what God wants me to...i keep saying, who does God want you go be?? (other than a subserviant minion). what if we're creating, with god, and what matters most is who we are, how we identify with the hurting in the world? doesn't doing good naturally follow?
ok i hate binaries and i think there's lots of complexity between these two paradigms, but eric's situation just hits home for me. his relationship with god was great until he became friends with a real person who didn't fit (and since then, he's suddenly been able to identify with all sorts of hurting mormons--kids who want to commit suicide cuz they're gay, etc.). in the same way, i wonder how many christians happily go along with their christian friends (or with gaps in their lives, dichotomies that they push to the back because they don't know how to confront them) focusing on doing 'what's right' and becoming someone who does 'what's right',

becoming is about stripping away layers. it's about figuring out who we are, which means we realize that who we are is made up of all sorts of stuff in society. those of us who are privileged in so many ways learn to see the world through the lens of those who are oppressed. we realize that we don't just have privilege, we ARE privilege. as young folk, we're crying out for resources that can help us figure this all out. we need study guide sessions that build up our skills and intuitiveness, that help us unpack the societal baggage we all carry, that encourage us to question the unquestionable and to be vulnerable with others so that we may all figure out who we are. as we start to identify with one another, we need resources that help us learn to identify things in society that are stifling our identities. we want to dream a world that works the way our relationships do; we want to dream a world in which every person is valued not by what they do or what family they were born into, but by who they are--which is an incredible creative gift to the community. as we defragment ourselves in our close church and school communities, we want to dream a world that doesn't fragment identities but that helps people become whole, by helping ALL people become whole. We dream a world in which every child has enough to eat, in which every person has clean water to drink and clothes to wear. We dream a world in which all people live without fear that weapons of war will be used against them; we dream of a world in which no person will fear being bombed, in which no person will live in fear of condemnation for who they are. We dream a world in which our connections to one another, and our connections to the land that sustains us, guide us.

peace out --

peace

2006-09-15T12:12:00.000-05:00

Wow, hey guys. Here I thought I posted this two weeks ago...
I'm back at school! Taking 4 classes, (psycho!) but loving life so far and psyching up for some crazy Students for Africa sweetness.

I was talking with a friend recently about what it's like to be at peace; to feel deep peace. He described how his church has taught him that peace comes from the Holy Spirit, and it's characterized by a sense of assurance that what you're doing is right, that you've got it figured out, or that at least you're on the right track. I was surprised to realize my experience with peace has been very different. I experience peace at times when things in my life are most turbulent; when I have no idea how to respond to a situation or how I might be changing. It's been a month since I came back from Kenya now. People ask me if it was life-altering. I usually respond that everything changes my life a little bit; that life is a series of life changing moments. I was brought deeper, for sure. Identities were scribed on my body and my being. Identities of peoples who have been silenced, shoved aside, categorized and understood only by their external 'impoverished' states. When I'm in the classroom, the church, the institution, I see things from their perspective. There's no going back; we're together now more than ever. With this identity comes my own pain: pain born from privilege. It presses in, suffocating until I can't breathe, calling for me to push back the privilege to make space for ALL of us. Seeking a way to work to overturn the systems that created this privilege, I'm tormented by a sense of urgency that so many around me don't understand; I often feel more lost and unsure than ever. I have no answers; only questions. But there is a persistant sense, in this human struggle, that the questions are authentic, bold, and powerful. Out of that pain, and out of that questioning, comes peace.

I was thinking of this when I told my friend,
For me peace is what I find when I see a child smile; peace is what i find when i hear laughter, when i gaze up at the majestic pines, when i dance and drum communally, when i dip my paddle into the water...and none of that is certainty--it may be assuring; assuring me that if our struggle feels entirely in vain, there will still be children smiling, and people laughing, and trees growing, and at least we will have enjoyed life. But it's the farthest from certainty i could get, i think. There is a great risk invovled in my kind of peace. Great vulnerability. A lot of throwing yourself off of cliffs and trusting that love will guide you and people will uphold you. Our uncertainty and confusion bind us; our desire to grow together lifts us up. My peace is characterized by deep maladjustment to the way the world works, and it comes from my connection with those who are suffering, because our burdens are shared. Together we hurt, together we enjoy, and we are living peace.

looking to be grounded, fighting fragmentation

2006-08-12T11:15:00.000-05:00

People've been asking me how I'm adjusting, back to a life of affluence, excess, 'modernized' living.
Mostly I don't adjust. I think, rather, the point is maladjustment. I wonder what kind of sickness would cause us to want to adjust to a life that suffocates so many beautiful bodies beneath us?

Friends and family are perfect, and the environment--at the beach, and now home in the northwoods--is an oasis. The American church, the church in general, looks more screwed up than ever, and Americans more ignorant. It's my own small struggle to dig and find the amazing people and lessons within each.
Nate and friends and I run, skip, wrestle in the water and sand which scrape and clean us with playful bliss and contentment.

Saturday afternoon the pastor tells me there's been a mix-up and I'm not preaching tomorrow afterall. 5 minutes of sharing time, at the beginning of the service, instead. I kind of want to laugh for a long time and then throw him in the lake, but sometimes maladjustment has to take a form of quiet resistance, or it will become condescending. I have no particular right or desire to be pretentious.
I chuckle and think that this situation is much expected--just when I have the most to say, when I'm happy to say it even when most of my audience won't be able to hear it, I'm given 5 minutes. In Kenya introductions take 5 minutes. I swim, looking for a way to present context and theological grounding and meaning at once, and I really would rather not say anything at all. But this is America, and I best learn to say it in 5 minutes or nothing will ever change.

Who would ever want to adjust to this?
I feel prostituted.

drinking tea and roasting maize

2006-07-21T03:14:00.000-05:00

I have a confession to make. I've been corresponding with some friends and neglecting this blog.

Here are some excerpts from some emails...I'm feeling them more than ever now. I don't want to leave in 8 days! I remarked to Diana yesterday (friend from Dartmouth) that I can't remember ever being this conent, in life, in general. Something about being so deeply connected to the earth, the people around me, the struggle and beauty in existence. It's a connection that's easily suffocated in the States. And before you go thinking, "yeah, it'd be nice to live the simple life," let me tell you this connection has little to do with simpleness. There's nothing simple about surviving the way these people survive. What allows me to be content is not the lack of injustice, but working to end it with people who have no choice.
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The more people I meet, the more I realize that to an extent, people are more or less the same everywhere. There are people who are taking advantage of other people; there are people who are honest and trying to do the right thing; there are people who are lazy and people who see themselves as victims no matter what the situation…folks in the slums are no different. Culturally, Africa’s roots to collective society are near and go deep—but they’ve taken quite a beating from colonization and capitalism (more on this in a sec). I point to the communal experience I find in the slums not to say that it’s ok, by any means, that slum dwellers are forced to live the way they live, but to say, first of all, these are real people, with real dreams and real capacity for living life to its fullest, and second of all, we should admire their sense of community and then ask ourselves: why is it we don’t experience that? What are we missing? And what if there is something intrinsic in the way we’re living that keeps us from experiencing that? What if there’s something about the way our lifestyles are steeped in the exploitation of our fellow humans that is antithetical to living in community? What if our need to categorize people based on their economic status springs from a desire to make up for something that we’re unable to provide for ourselves? What if the poor continue to exist because in our commodified state, we need people to pity, sympathize with, and give charity to, in order to make ourselves feel better about being rich and not being any happier than the poor are? These questions bring the injustice of the slums to our front doorsteps…and we now see how both their community and the injustice they experience are tied to our own lived experience.
[“We are all prostitutes, for in a world of grab and take, in a world built on a structure of inequality and injustice, in a world where some can eat while others can only toil, some can send their children to schools and others cannot, in a world where a prince, a monarch, a businessman can sit on billions while people starve or hit their heads against church walls for divine deliverance from hunger, yes, in a world where a man who has never set foot on this land can sit in a New York or London office and determine what I shall eat, read, think, do, only because he sits on a heap of billions taken from the world’s poor, in such a world, we are all prostituted. For as long as there’s a man in prison, I am also in prison: for as long as there is a man who goes hungry and without clothes, I am also hungry and without clothes.” (286, Petals of Blood, by Ngugi wa Thiong’o)]
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so are they happy? b/c it does seem miserable (conditions wise) but perhaps they are just happy inside - it seems like having a community has given them more to look for in life, a different set of values (not materialistic).
Hehehe happy inside…I like that. mmm…it is miserable indeed. These folks are most literally living from day to day, hand to mouth—for example, I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich with Mita today (generally I don’t eat lunch here, because the people I’m with can’t afford it—actually I was just thinking today about how easy it is now for me to go from 8am till 8pm without food or water or even bathroom sometimes. The hunger sort of sits with you, but it’s not gnawing hunger like when your metabolism is going. It’s like, I could always eat, but I don’t need to think about eating. Even seeing food doesn’t bother me. I’m just slightly weaker) oh my, I even forgot what I was talking about. OK, I was sharing a pb&j sandwich with Mita today and I mentioned, peanut butter isn’t so popular here, right? And he said yes, because there aren’t so many peanuts (peanuts are a big crop in West Africa). He continued, since it’s the kind of thing you have to buy at the store, you couldn’t buy it and keep it in your house—in a night everyone would come to eat it and it’d be gone. Eating is the stuff that’s easy to talk about…the beating, the drunkenness, raw sewage, police raids, thievery…these folks are living pretty tough lives. Stay with them long enough and the stories start to come…a woman’s hit by a matatu, arm and wrist a complete mess, ribs broken, blood everywhere, and her relatives miraculously find a way to get her to the hospital, where they are flat out denied treatment—not even basic first aid care—not for scum from the slums…a mother watches her son shot to death by policemen, for thievery…the mother works 12 hours a day as a house girl, the father died long ago, the boy was trying to feed his sisters…less than a month later, the same mother watches her other son beaten to death, his lifeless body shot up by police…
But they are also happy. It’s a kind of happiness that’s kind of hard to explain. It’s a kind of resilience that catches your breath. From yours and my positions, it doesn’t really make sense…but put yourself in their shoes, and really, what else could a human do? They sing, they dance, they chew khat and play football and tell stories to children and laugh, laugh, laugh—with their neighbors, at me, with good friends…being with these folks, who are pretty much always in a good mood, I’m always in a good mood too. And it sounds kind of lame, but it is true that when you don’t expect much to begin with, any progress is fantastic. The best example I can think of is electricity, which is constantly going out here. If the electricity goes out in the States, people get pissed. They lose a project and they’re SO angry they have to do it over. But in Kenya, you don’t sweat it. We even laugh about it. You pick yourself up and keep going…what else can you do? It’s a happiness that doesn’t justify their oppression…but lives in the moment, in today, because it’s what they have.
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I see no divine reason for this kind of suffering. I wake up to Tyrese’s tiny body, curled into mine, shaking from a bad bout of coughing. He’s had TB since he was born. I think, what if someday he gets sick and doesn’t get better? The fear that his life might be lost is real…it’s not all consuming, it’s just wrapped up in the pain of his current, unjust situation, and in the possibility that it could get even more unjust… In this moment, thinking of learning a lesson from Tyrese’s suffering (thinking of me learning, or of him being able to look back on the experience having learned) seems almost satanic. All I want in this moment is this moment—as Tyrese’s body shakes and I rub his stomach, neither the fear nor the pain are as important as the affection we share.
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I spent the night in Majengo with some friends from SIDAREC. Majengo is considered a kind of dangerous area; typically if wazungu (whites/Europeans; singular form is mzungu) come in they’re definitely gone by dark. I’m the center of attention no matter where I go; but this morning at 7am people were greeting me a little crazier than usual, and their greetings carried an air of genuine desire to extend friendship. At the toilets, the attendant didn’t even make me pay, and said with a big smile, ‘people can’t believe you’re here, that you spent the night—we thought the slums were only for black Africans like us. How did you find the toilet? (meaning how did you like it)’ When I replied that it wasn’t too shabby and I was glad it was there (many slums don’t have anything for miles), he asked me to marry him. I told him I had to think about it.
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creating beautiful life

2006-07-10T03:28:00.000-05:00

At the risk of being incredibly boring, I’m going to share a few snapshots (if you will) of my time here. They take place on different days, but I put them in order from earliest in the day to latest…the variety and complexity of the experience of one day here is portrayed in these blurbs.
It's fantastic and I don't want to leave!!!! 3 more weeks... :-)

We’re sitting in traffic, I’m a half hour late and day dreaming, listening to the noises of the city. I hear this quick thud and the woman in front of me screams. I look out the window and I see his shoe first, lying in the curb…then down the sidewalk 10 yards, his body in a pool of blood. Everyone in the matatu (14 passenger van which=public transport) turns to the woman in front of me for the story…I gather from her Kiswahili that a motorcycle was cutting through traffic fast and hit this man as he was trying to cross the street.
I don’t have to speak their language to understand the moments of collective gasps, souls in suspension, mourning, praying, but simple understanding that shit like this happens. I’m surprised to realize it’s not the kind of thing you process in the moment. When it happens, it’s just another scene, like the thousands I see everyday—of children wading in open drainage or crawling through heaps of garbage…of the old man on our road who’s wandering drunk at 9:30am, even on Sunday…of the man with TB who stopped me in Mathare because he hoped I was a nurse…of the crippled woman and her child, who lie on the sidewalk of one of Nairobi’s busiest streets, holding a cup for change…--only this time, it’s probably not a near death scene, but a death scene. Suddenly I understand how murder is possible. When you face death like this, as long as you don’t let it seep into your consciousness, it’s just another scene.
It’s later, when you replay it in your mind a hundred times, when you close your eyes and you see his shoe, his body, that’s when you start to appreciate the value of life. When you start to ask why you’re the one sitting on this couch, sleeping in this bed, and he’s the one whose life ended faster than he could take a breath.

Dennis is an hour late picking me up—he explains he was strategizing with some youth on how he should represent them at today’s meeting with the Chief. Luckily the group waited for us, and shortly after arriving at the Chief’s office we’re escorted in to meet him. The meeting includes representatives from various community based organizations (CBOs) in Mukuru. Their main request is to get a certificate from the chief so they can be recognized as a consortium of Mukuru CBOs. One goal of the consortium is to get a matatu stop closer to Mukuru—the closest stop today is a 15 minute walk, dangerous by night. They’ve been told by matatu drivers that they must upgrade the last stretch of road first…an ideal project for constituency development funds, but their MP is one of the most corrupt, and he’s been sitting on the funds—not a penny spent to date. So they will decide if they should further push for the funds or pursue other options for funding. Dennis wants to be sure youth are involved in the process, and after the meeting briefs me on the recent politics in the area. He’s a veteran of the political process, and I admire his long-term commitment and am grateful for his expertise. Back in the gym at the SIDAREC community center, we lift some weights and talk gender, politics, life in general. He glows when he talks about the youth and how he and the other older youth try to help them realize their talents and potential. Later he comes walking across the yard with a 6-7 year old boy, holds him up to me and says, “I want you to meet my really good friend. My really really good friend.”

We’re drumming like crazy, and all these little kids, from age 1 to age 8 or 9, 40 or 50 of them, are sort of crowded around watching. 6 year old girls with babies on their backs, older siblings holding the hands of younger siblings and friends…Moving, running, pretty soon a few start dancing. These kids can dance like no little kids I’ve seen…runny noses and they couldn’t look cuter in their mismatched, torn sweaters and barefeet…and David says something in Kiswahili, and they all scamper to the far end of the room and stand still, in a group. He’s told those without shoes not to dance…because the uneven concrete rips up their feet.

Farida, receptionist from the SIDAREC main office, comes and introduces me to her two boys—ages 7 and 5, Valentine and Tyrese.
The children form a circle around Farida, David and I as Farida tries to teach me the dance steps. I’m a slow learner, but she’s patient. You have to dance a rhythm to understand it. Even in this completely informal setting, the relationship between the drummers and dancers is like the equilibrium of life. Life is created here, and as I watch David and Farida, I understand that we are all participants in its creation. We continue creating life, amidst the struggle, because creating life is what makes our survival not only possible, but beautiful.

As we walk through the settlement villages for hours, to see the tailor, the second-hand clothing market, the movie theatre, the restaurants (called hotels here), the recording studio, the city council’s community hall and boxing gym (where some of Kenya’s best boxers got their start), stopping to chat with a few folks on the way, David occasionally apologizes when men/boys sidetrack us by talking to me, or shaking my hand, or hugging me. I laugh and assure him it doesn’t bother me. I don’t need to explain how much I hate my white skin sometimes. It’s not a guilt thing—I don’t feel guilty for being white. I resent not the fact that it causes separation between me and the Kenyans, but the way in which it separates. I curse the legacy that has come before me…the parade of white people, given tours through the slums, rarely doing anything good because of it…more often bringing CBOs or NGOs that are too lofty to actually ask the people themselves what they need…or worse, bringing individuals who come for one or two meetings with local youth, proclaiming they want to work on a proposal for a grant, receiving the grant, and never returning with the money…
I long ago learned to embrace the chorus of “mzungu!”s (white foreigner) that follow me as an opportunity to sing back, “wakenya!” (Kenyans). David and I keep a count of the number of children who can follow up their “How are you?” with “Fine” when I answer “I’m fine, how are you?” (although sometimes their laughter is cuter when I reply in Kiswahili).
I smile and wonder if one way to change the minds of white casual racists (my new nickname for whites who don’t intend to be racist but don’t recognize their white privilege (this is all of us to an extent)) is to ship them to Kenya for a couple months. At least then they would be forced to see themselves as racialized human beings.

Christine, Dennis and Benard take me down the road for roasted goat’s meat. The hotel looks like it’s probably a pretty big hang out spot at night. She points to the parts of the goat we want and soon a waiter brings them on a big wooden cutting board, cuts them into pieces, and returns with a plate of ugali and a bowl for washing our hands. We dig in, a ball of ugali in one hand and chunks of meat and bones en route to mouths in the other. My jaw has never had such a work out—my favorite meal in the States, ribs, suddenly seems awfully juvenile. The talk soon turns to the morning’s meeting—we agree the Chief is a worthy one—and politics remains the topic of discussion for the rest of the meal.

I jog home to beat the darkness. It’s 7pm...I haven’t eaten anything since dinner the night before except peanut butter on a hot dog bun at 10:00am; I haven’t drunk anything except a sip of water on my way out of Jill’s apartment (where I’d spent the night after chilling w/her Friday evening). I’m too dusty to sit down, too exhausted to shower, I’ve carried the smell of the slums on my shirt and I think of when Lucy said that more than a few hours a day in the settlements makes you dizzy. I know it’s said with the most compassion, and frank understanding that we can’t just ‘exist’ anywhere. I acknowledge that I shouldn’t feel less of a person because a couple weeks in the slums wear me out. In fact it would be extraordinarily pretentious to not be worn out—because I am a perpetual visitor, and most of those I’m visiting would much prefer to be in my place than their own. By virtue of being in their place, however, they have gained skills and will for survival that I cannot fathom. I think about how there are different modes of existence and while there are no spaces I won’t be in, there are some spaces that I cannot dwell in long enough to be in deep community with their members (community, yes; deep community that comes as the result of shared experience, much harder). I decide that this thought captures the essence of most injustice in the world. Coming to terms with the fact that many more of the world’s people live in these spaces than live in the spaces that my mode of existence will allow me to live in only means I’m more saddened, and more in love with the people, than ever.

I suck some rice down—I could never get tired of this stuff—and some chunks of goat meat—by now it’s 3 weeks old and I alternate between chewing a piece for a minute, and swallowing the chunk whole. I show Margaret (the maid) how to make peanut butter banana sandwich toast by wrapping it in tinfoil and tossing it in the fire (yes, even Kenyans have fires in their fireplaces during the winter).

I read a few chapters of Petals of Blood by Kenya’s one famous author, who’s barely been back to Kenya since he was exiled in 1977 for this book, and whose wife was gang-raped the last time they were here, because Kenyans felt like their story was being told by someone who only thought he knew them…and today, for the first time, I catch a glimpse of how the Kenyans feel. His story isn’t false. The plot is a true plot for most Kenyans—one of exploitation, neocolonialism, and stolen lives. It’s just that when that’s the plot of your life, the plot isn’t as important as the details. The laughter, the singing, the dancing, the friends who are always around and easy to find, the children who smile and hold your hand, the football matches and the weight lifting competitions, the theater—the communal experience. These are the things that can be mentioned, but not made to be the entire stuff of a book. But when they’re what you have—when the ‘tradition’ of yesterday is a tantalizing memory and the tomorrow you dream about may or more likely may not come—they’re what matter.

We’re watching tv, and Eve, Lucy’s daughter, says something like, “but there are a lot of suicides, in America?” And I say yeah, especially among teens, though I’m not sure what the rate is, everyone knows someone…say I would guess it might be comparable to the rate here? She smiles and says, “No no, here it’s very rare. *laughs* People are happy here.”

Prophetic voices are shouting -- how can we not hear them?

2006-06-26T03:50:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with this blog so great guys! (I swear I wrote this entry 5 days ago…but haven’t been back in the office to access the net since). Things are happening kinda fast. I’m still falling in love with Kenya and I’m still meeting all kinds of amazing people! There are far too many stories to share, so I’ve decided to start each blog entry with one.

Damaris lives in the Gatundu region of Kenya and is a mother of four children. When her assistant chief asked her to represent her village on the district’s CDF committee*, she refused—she was much to busy running support groups (for HIV positive women), doing home-based care (where women of the community seek out women or orphans who are very sick with AIDS and care for them in every way possible), and interacting with the area’s youth group (which does support, home based care, and many awareness type activities). The third time she was asked, her village had convinced her how badly they wanted her on the committee, and she agreed. Now, she says, she is a voice for orphans and poor women. She passionately explained that when project proposals come up that benefit those who don’t need the money as much as the more vulnerable in society, she firmly opposes them. Referencing a particular initiative, she stated that if the committee doesn’t listen to her concerns, she’ll “go straight to my MP. Why should I be afraid of him?”
As context for this story, I want to mention that at this workshop (a paralegal training for people interested in helping women in disinheritance cases) some women were agreeing it was OK for their husbands to beat them for being lazy or refusing sex. One argument ensued between a Luo older man who claimed that in the old times, men could never beat women to harm them, they could only threaten them to show they were in charge. But the younger women, who had seen their mothers beaten and perhaps been beaten themselves, were under the impression that the practice was traditional. I use this as a contextual example for how powerful Damaris’ story is.

Now, latest crystallization of further internalizations. Get ready for a rant…. :

If your heart is touched by seeing Africans living in conditions you wouldn’t allow your dog to live in – if you find that Africans stir your humanity, the last thing you should do is try to ‘help’ them.
They don’t need your help.
They don’t need your pity.
I’m meeting Kenyans with better models of NGOs, better ways of galvanizing and empowering, better ways of celebrating each and every person’s right to full personhood, than most organizations I’ve seen or worked with in the States. What these Kenyans need is for the West to shut up, sit down, and LISTEN. NGOs need donors to give them grants that will allows them to become self-sustaining, not grants with strings attached that itemize how they are to be spent. Governments need the freedom to do what they really want to do for their people—freedom from an American Empire breathing down their backs; freedom from billions of dollars in illegitimate debt to the IMF and the World Bank, freedom from foreign aid that comes in the form of expensive experts and consultants who bring fancy machines that governments could hardly hope to afford to maintain, and industry that will benefit local commerce only in their craziest dreams.
I say to you this: If you feel there is any degree of injustice in the fact that you are more likely to commit suicide than to die from diarrhea, which kills countless African children daily; if it bothers you to any extent that the best known novel about Africa is a blatantly racist colonial account written by a white woman (Out of Africa); if you feel, to any degree, that the humanity of Africans is tied up in your own ability to be fully human, then this is my plea: turn your critical lens on yourself. In what ways do you perpetrate circles of ignorance among the affluent? In what ways do you privilege the voices of the powerful over the voices of those at the margins? In what ways do you bow down before the Empire by choosing to consume, by silently consenting to violence when peace is possible, by remaining complacent in the face of apathy and indifference to suffering? Turn your critical lens on the way your church, your school, your volunteer organization contribute(s) to the numbing of the masses by ignoring those within their own ranks whose lived experiences are delegitimized when the institution defines reality. Turn your critical lens on our articulation of the capitalist system, which values the dollar over the child, which replaces our deep desire to be in community with one another with a desire to be better than one another. And then, my friends, turn to your neighbor, your colleague, you’re your pastor, your friend, your teacher, your professor, your fellow students, and enliven their consciousnesses. See them as full and beautiful people, dwell in their realities, and challenge them to expand the borders of their realities as you have expanded yours. Demand that they make space in their world views for the voices of the Africans. And in the spirit of solidarity and profound communal humanity, proclaim that when they disrespect Africans, they are disrespecting themselves. Friends, this is the most powerful thing you can do for Africa. It’s the most meaningful thing you can do for anyone, any people, who are silenced by the powerful.

…  … Please, if any of that didn’t make sense, or if you disagree, or if you think I’m an angry punk with too little life experience, I want to be in dialogue! The usefulness of monologues are so limited. We have much to learn from each other. Likewise, if you’re feeling me, shout it. The benefits of solidarity and community are without limits! Let us never become complacent or silent or comfortable with the way the world works.

* Constituency Development Funds are funds allocated by the Kenyan government to local districts for development purposes. The idea is that those at the local level understand the needs of their community best, and they are supposed to be distributed by a committee (example projects are roads, water projects…and if more women have their way, home based care supplies, youth projects to raise awareness about AIDS, etc.). However, sometimes it is still the voices of the powerful who are heard on these committees, and some MP’s are still using CDF to get themselves reelected—they go around their districts taking credit for projects that are really CDF projects.

rmonkey

2006-06-19T08:27:00.000-05:00

Shoo! my week at GROOTS is done and i moved to stay with Lucy, the director of SIDAREC. She is an amazing woman. Was a journalist for 5 years but decided she wanted to give her life to seeking justice in the settlements. I'm quite excited about spending the next few weeks hanging out here with SIDAREC. Today we visited the community center in Pumwani, one of the settlements. Saw the community library, which they're working to catalogue, and the nursery school (kids age 1 till they're old enough to attend primary school). I'm in a constant state of being impressed by the people i'm meeting. Some of my favorite sentiments:
--How insistent Lucy, and the women at GROOTS, are that being poor is merely a state. They truly understand, in a way that so many folks in the States don't, that people living in the settlements are full of potential/capacity/ability (just as much as any of us) to contribute to kenyan society if only the space is created for them to do so; if only their voices are lifted up instead of being silenced.
--everybody's determination and resilience, commitment to the process, and recognition that if you're just looking for results you're missing the point and only creating short term change.
--the way SIDAREC insists on doing the best it can, insisting that people in the settlements deserve no less than other folks. The library, recording studio, wireless tower, afternoon cartoon time for the kids, trainings, bringing in experts to teach business skills etc...all exemplify taking a preferential option for the poor, the way it should be done. and by the way, SIDAREC only employs people who live in the settlements (although many who were once employed or still are have since moved out and found jobs or are studying somewhere).

i feel like i'm a loafer on vacation compared to the work they're doing.

it was also humorous to be introduced to everyone here as 'the monkey girl'. back when i first started emailing SIDAREC last year, i remember the name that came up on my email was Rmonkey (an old middle school nickname) because that was the name i'd originally set up my email account under and then couldn't figure out how to change. So they got a good laugh, wondering why my last name is monkey. What can i say, my reputation preceeds me.

and i went to my first church in kenya yesterday--a mega church, Nairobi Baptist Church. it was huge. holy moley. lol, i go kenya and i end up at a mega church.

learning from the prophets

2006-06-14T10:31:00.000-05:00

So days have been busy and wonderful! Research is going fantastically; I can't believe this is only my third day here for all i've learned.
I spent the afternoon in Mathare, one of Nairobi's largest people's settlements (what we're now calling the slums--seizing back words and definitions from the Man), and met some of the most amazing women. Women who are changing the atmosphere by holding elected officials accountable, serving their neighbors in need, and partnering with youth organizations that are doing the same (this doesn't happen too often). GROOTS is quite a model for how organizations should operate--the women in the main office do no project implementation, they only serve as networkers and resources, to hook up women's organizations w/each other so they can learn from each other and not feel so isolated.

I promise more in a week, when i have better net access!

Kenya rocks my socks off

2006-06-12T04:38:00.000-05:00

I'm here, it's perfect!

bridges

2006-05-28T19:47:00.000-05:00

I'm happy. I've decided the point of college!
For the next three years, I will learn how to navigate as many different cultural spaces as possible. This is done by cultivating meaningful relationships with people in those spaces, who will teach me profoundly about their experience. Generally, what people do isn't as important as why they do it.
This is part of a lifelong strategy to find my place in building a culture of global citizenship, in the world, and especially in the United States as the dominating power. (as a disclaimer, note that we all need motivatation. this ideal is my motivation for nagivating different spaces. it is not, however, a normative. I'm too ignorant to lay claim to normatives yet! I lay it out as my bias, here for you:)
One goal I had this spring was to figure out how to cultivate that kind of a culture, amidst so much that runs counter to it--capitalism, segregated communities, guilt and condenscension. I went on a little journey, starting with the realization that #1, my place in all of this is to educate those of my own mother culture (this post). 2, I allowed myself to do some introspection in the cultural arena, and the process helped me internalize a decent amount of pain. 3, I was struck again and again by how much better life would be for everyone if we all spent more time w/those whom we don't understand, and especially those w/whom we disagree. 4, I concluded that basically one of the most wonderful things we can do for each other is to let each other exist--to listen, and to learn, seeking to be in real community (this post). I seek to validate every person's lived experience, while critically acknowledging that while our lived experience is valid, it can be made so much better when we refrain from defining reality for others. This means that I am naturally drawn to the spaces of those at the margins, whose realities have been devalidiated and bastardized to make way for the realities of the more powerful. However, if I stay in the margins, what will change? I must also learn to navigate the spaces of the powerful, that i may validate their lived experiences authentically, in order to make room for the voices of the marginalized to be heard. I'll translate; I'll bridge. I remake myself hundreds of times; people will change me, people will move me, we will become together. It will be a dance of narratives. It will hurt sometimes; I will be hurt and I will hurt others. I'll probably be confused most of the time. But that's the point, right? To heal, to be vulnerable...because then, all that is left for us to cling to is the acknowledgement that love is possible, real, and profound, and love is lived in movement towards one another; love is lived in diffusing fear, in traversing barriers, in tearing down walls and in ripping through insulation.

See why I'm happy?

Who wants to join me...

I know it's going to be hard. (so many spaces have left me wounds that are still fresh...) But if it weren't difficult, would we be so quick to fear, and to condemn? Courage, wisdom, compassion...these are qualities that become part of us when we kick down the fences around our own worlds, in favor of not knowing where my reality ends and yours begins.

Finally, I must add that this process by no means allows for paralysis or non-commitment. If we embrace ambiguity at the expense of determined action, we miss the point of embracing ambiguity in the first place!

More on SIDAREC

2006-05-19T08:31:00.000-05:00

I received word that SIDAREC (the NGO I'll be working with) kids especially like Elf, Tom and Jerry, and Scoobydoo. And they don't have a VCR, only a dvd player.

Also if any of you have connections with computer people, i'm soliciting donations of 40-60 GB hard disk drives for Pentium IV, Windows XP computers/processors. They have 30 computers but would love upgrades for 10-15 of them.

Kenya-bound!

2006-05-16T13:42:00.000-05:00

This is where I'll be in 3.5 weeks! (Nairobi, Kenya)
From the Blizzard will become my travel journal at that point.

If any of you have dvds of children's cartoons, SIDAREC would love them. I'd prefer those of the non- American Empire sort. Also if any of you have a cam corder just, you know, sitting around that you might be able to loan to me for...you know, the summer...let me know. Finally if you know anyone who's trying to get rid of a few laptops, SIDAREC could use those too! ;-)

Because we're all a little brainwashed

2006-05-12T23:19:00.001-05:00

Terry Tempest Williams writes in The Open Space of Democracy that she would die, and live her life, for free speech. I’ve decided I agree with her. How she defines free speech I’ll paraphrase as valuing every voice. Let’s be serious here—we all like hanging out with people who think just like us. Friends are important; community is important. But I think those with whom we vehemently disagree have just as much to teach us as those who think like us. This goes beyond “challenging our views” or making us a little uncomfortable with our cocky selves. Truly listening—truly valuing their voices—means we stop taking ourselves so seriously and recognize that maybe God didn’t hand us truth on a silver platter. In fact, maybe truth will be found when we not only listen to those with whom we disagree, but seek to be in community with them.

This can be freaky. We live in a reality that trains us to pit ourselves against others. We demonize our enemies; when we say we “love” them what we mean is we’re going to keep working on them until they agree with us. We go to great ends to close our eyes to the humanity that resides in those who stand in our way. We’ve all got one of those relationships where “we just don’t talk about politics.” We all find ourselves afraid, deep down, to talk to about because we don’t want to offend her, or because we’re afraid he won’t understand. Too often, our fears are justified. When deep pain is involved, sometimes even we don’t realize how much it will hurt when the other person shrugs off our pain because they’ve constructed walls around their own reality and won’t let us in. But if we make them monsters, we forget that they are just as oppressed by their oppressive acts as we are. Who's going to listen first? May God give us the grace, the strength, the endurance, to listen for as long as it takes.

Oh, and Happy Birthday to me. Now I can buy liquor everywhere in Canada, and my age is a prime number. I’ve been waiting for this since I was like, 17.

Darfur, activism, and vacation

2006-05-05T22:07:00.000-05:00

It was a turning point. 30-40,000 people streamed from across the country, to stand for 4 hours and hear the same message over and over again--one we had long ago internalized, but one we never tire of hearing...We are all Sudanese...Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere...This is about embracing our humanity...

600+ students lobbied Senators and Representatives from 45 states; we discovered there are people besides ourselves in the U.S. who can list more than three African countries; we discovered mutual heroes and diverse motivations; we discovered that when we embrace authenticity and refuse to give insulation control over our souls, we do so in community with so many others in so many places.
There is much to be done. But the world is listening now, and for one day, the world listened to thousands of Americans who insisted that the world listen to Africa.

I'm excited, envigorated, surprised and happy.

Sitting on a clean bench, inhaling sweet cedar, watching a squirrel play hide and seek with the flowers, I remembered that this is what privilege means. It means being able to come, rally, and go home to think about whatever I want. It means taking three days of vacation from studying to philosophize, reflect, and dress in fancy clothes so the Hill dwellers will "take me seriously." Privilege is exchanging a few words with a woman who is homeless, dwelling in her reality and crying inside because she has so much to teach me about life, and then walking away, back to my bed and dinner.

There is no joy in this.

Joy is reserved for those who give up privilege...who lose power to the powerless.

Sometimes, losing power can only mean giving up 3 days to advocate on behalf of those who can't speak for themselves right now, because their hell is too real. Always, we must speak to power with the quiet confidence that comes when we are not speaking for ourselves, but for us--all of us. And we depend on the resilience given us by the refugees, and we seize their destiny as our own, and we dream of a time when we will no longer speak from a place of privilege.

Exodus

2006-04-17T15:02:00.000-05:00

Excerpt from the April 13th Speaking of Faith episode:

"Let's talk about the very mysterious name of God, when Moses encounters God in the burning bush he says 'Who shall I tell them I saw?' and the name that comes back now, it's often translated in English 'I am who I am,' I've also heard it translated 'I am becoming who I am becoming.' How do you read what is said?"

Avivah Zornberg: "Literally it just means 'I will be who I will be,' and I think there's no getting around it--some of these translations are just mistranslations...In fact God is being evasive. God is saying I'm not giving you a handle. You want a handle, to say 'I've got Him'--that's a name.
Instead it means I am the very principle of becoming; of allowing the possible to happen."

+ + +

this Easter, do we serve a risen Christ?

2006-04-16T16:23:00.000-05:00

or do we continue to crucify him?

FY 2007 US federal budget projected defense spending: $439.3 billion

"East Africa: Pastoralist Crisis Will Not Be Solved With Food Aid - UN Officials"

Zambia (article is NYtimes select)

Zambia's Plight Goes Begging in Year of Disasters

by MICHAEL WINES. Published: February 23, 2006
NANGWESHI REFUGEE CAMP, Zambia - Hundreds of refugees from Angola's civilwar have walked away from this remote United Nations outpost where most havelived for years, many roaming on foot as far as the Namibia border, 85 milesaway. The journey was not by choice. The refugees were looking for food.
In January, to stretch its thinning supplies, the United Nations cut itsalready basic food rations to war refugees in Zambia by almost 40 percent --not just for the Nangweshi camp's 15,100 residents, but also for 57,000refugees from Congo in four other camps.
The cuts were made after the developed world did not respond to UnitedNations' pleas for help to feed the refugees. Like similar appeals, theywent unheeded in a year of many disasters and what aid specialists call agrowing malaise among donors about such emergencies.
That thousands of war refugees cared for by the United Nations should gohungry for want of about $8.5 million, what amounts to a rounding error inthe budgets of wealthy countries, may seem surprising. But the international system that is supposed to protect refugees from hunger and privation isprone to breakdowns like this one, which has rendered 72,000 war victims inZambia hungry for weeks on end.
The food reductions in the camps prevented the United Nations' World Food Program from running out of rations. But even a brief visit to Nangweshi, agrid of wide dirt roads and thousands of mud huts beside the Zambezi River, makes the cost of the move painfully evident. Only a month after rationswere reduced, refugees have left to seek food and money to feed their families. Malnutrition among the camp's remaining children has risen by more than one third.
One Nangweshi family of 10, its monthly ration exhausted, weathered January's final days by eating leaves plucked from plants growing outside its hut. Other families resorted to begging in villages outside the camp, but the drought last year left local residents so bereft that food or money for needy refugees is scarce. ''It's a matter of priorities for the international community,'' David Stevenson, the Canadian who leads the WorldFood Program's Zambia operations, said in an interview in Lusaka, the capital. ''What could be more obvious than refugee camps?''
Mr. Stevenson said that lapses in international food aid to refugees hadbeen a recurring problem in Rwanda, and that after the earthquake inPakistan last October the World Food Program came within hours of groundingits food airlifts because it was out of cash.

Lapses in aid are often temporary. In February, nearly four months after the World Food Program first sought emergency aid for Zambia's refugees, theUnited States, Britain and Germany made pledges totaling $2.3 million towardthe $8.5 million shortfall. The infusion will eventually allow the programto restore many, though not all, of the cuts made on Jan. 1.Even temporary shortfalls, however, have consequences. The same Zambiancamps that suffered ration cuts in January ran short of food in late 2004,officials here say. At that time, some of the women in the camps turned to prostitution to feed their children.

Meager Rations Are Cut

Few would call the monthly stipend given to most African refugees overly generous. Before the reductions in January, a Nangweshi resident's average meal consisted of 4.7 ounces of nutrient-fortified ground corn, 2 ounces of beans, half an ounce of vegetable oil and a pinch of salt. Three servings a day provided 2,207 calories, the minimum the World Food Program recommends for adequate nutrition among Zambian refugees.Then in January, the diet was pared to 1,400 calories -- the equivalent, roughly, of subsisting each day on one Big Mac, large fries, ketchup and a Coke. Most of Nangweshi's 4,100 families reacted predictably to the cuts. To stretch out their rations, they moved to two meals a day from three, eliminating breakfast. But it was still not enough. In family after family, January's rations were exhausted a week or more before the February food delivery was due. In the camp's medical clinic, a chalkboard tallied the fallout from the cuts: moderate malnutrition was diagnosed in 106 children in January, up from 69 in December; 2 other children had acute malnutrition, compared with none earlier. The clinic recorded a similar jump in late 2004, the last time rations were reduced. Outside, amid the camp's stick-and-mud-walled, thatched huts, virtually every family had a story about hunger. Even before the cuts, ''what we normally receive was not enough,'' said Gabriel Vunonge, the 62-year-old, one-legged patriarch of a refugee family of 13. The reduced ration, he said, ''won't reach.''Virtually all Angolan war refugees have returned home under a United Nations repatriation program. The remainder, all in Nangweshi, are mostly former rebel supporters and guerillas like Mr. Vunonge who fear retribution and are awaiting the outcome of Angolan elections this year before deciding whether to return. In the Vunonge family, the January rations ran out a week before the February distribution was to began. So, Mr. Vunonge took his crutches and, with his wife, hobbled several miles outside the refugee camp to look for work. Three days of weeding a farmer's cornfield -- Mr. Vunonge working with one hand on his crutch, the other on a hoe -- bought the couple 26 pounds of wheat. That fed the family until February rations arrived. Many men ranged much farther afield. In January, the United Nations issued 176 passes for Nangweshi residents to leave the camp. Most walked to Sesheke, a town 85 miles away where a sawmill has long attracted job-seeking refugees. Many more refugees left without passes. In January, for the first time, Sesheke officials arrested 10 newly arrived illegal refugees in the town.''There are still a great many refugees in the area, and the worry at the moment is food allocation,'' said Princess Nakatindi Wina, who represents Sesheke in the Zambian Parliament. ''We hope the government will get a move on and repatriate them soon, back to Angola and Congo, to where they came from.''

Vital Aid Is Left to Chance

Why shortfalls of aid to refugees and other equally vulnerable groups occur at all is vexing. The system that funnels food to the world's needy rests almost wholly on the generosity of the well-off, and each donor's impulse is subject to different forces.''The system is basically a crapshoot,'' Larry Minear, who leads Tufts University's Institute on Humanitarianism and War, said. Fluctuations in food prices, the size of crop surpluses in donating nations, politics in donor and recipient nations, and the inefficiencies of the global aid bureaucracy can all play a role in what aid specialists euphemistically call ''pipeline breaks.''Food shortages have become so regular in parts of Africa that some governments consider them normal, rather than emergencies -- an attitude many aid officials say was at the root of the sluggish response last year to widespread hunger in Niger.Often, as in Niger, money comes only belatedly, after wealthy donors have been harangued by the United Nations or embarrassed by news media coverage of hungry masses.
That is the crux of the problem, many aid specialists say. Support for global emergencies is purely voluntary, forcing humanitarian agencies to gohat in hand to governments, not just to sustain continuing programs likerefugee camps, but for new emergencies like the 2004 tsunami.
''We are professional beggars,'' said one Europe-based United Nationsofficial on condition of anonymity for fear of angering donor nations. Headded: ''Some activities, you can decide whether you want to voluntarilyfund or not. But things like Darfur, like refugees -- for that sort ofthing, we should have a system that produces money faster.''

Coke news

2006-04-16T16:04:00.000-05:00

The latest on Coca-Cola--University of Michigan resumes contract

commodification conquered part 2

2006-04-06T12:46:00.000-05:00

By now, I know the stages well. The weeks and days preceding an important event or deadline--I know my emotions, my jubilations, my moments of stress. Each moment has its place and purpose. Yesterday was the eye of the storm; today the wind started whipping my face and the trees starting falling. A time for doubting, when you seem to have jumped into a lake of ice and wonder how you could have forgotten that not only do you not know how to swim, but the rope intended to pull you out isn't tied to anything. You begin thrashing and can only think about you, your impending doom, and the trees crash along the shore. You're angry that you're stressed, you waste all your time trying to de-stress, and meanwhile the new ice forms around you.

This time it's a series of events, projects, and unfinished conversations. The smallest: Dartmouth Ends Hunger meals week is next week and it's time to fear that we might not accomplish, philosophically, what I would dream to accomplish. Tabling outside of the dining hall is miserable and I'm worried the publicity guy isn't coming through. I start doing things myself, taking on all the loose ends and promising myself I can do it.

I sense the storm. I want to stand up and be a rock.

I recall when souls converged during conversation last night and I order a smoothie. My to-do list buries me. My smoothie slips from my bike and I stop three lanes of traffic, backed up two blocks, to pick up the remains.
I laugh and dare the clouds to rain. I climb a tree I haven't climbed in months; I reach each tricky spot and my shoes slip and I think "this is the storm, this is your test, have you forgotten how to climb?" I think of community and the tree becomes the anchor for my rope; it pulls me from the lake of its own strength and warms me softly.

Brian asks what I'm doing and I think he's too smart to ask such a strange question. I've forgotten most people no longer eat peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches perched 40 feet above ground. Wholewheat has never tasted so good, and eating has never been so fulfilling. Storm Stage is conquered in record time: 2 hours, 33 minutes.

commodification conquered

2006-04-05T23:58:00.000-05:00

Pajamas under rainpants bring home with me when I bike across campus
The ambience is cool spring showers and the sound track is Amelie.
All of life is lived in this moment.
soft couches and laughter, underpinned by our communal conviction to fight that which is destroying life.
Across the street to pack course one of dinner--a salad--hi Tiger, hi Stephanie, bye Marissa, you make my world beautiful.
Just chillin’ at Dartmouth? she asked, and we watched Garden State on a Monday night to guard against schedules becoming obstructions to living.
Reading on a soft cover of fallen pine branches, hearing the rain coming, covering book with t-shirt and taking a nap, waking wet having reached perfection.

experiencing commodification

2006-04-02T15:36:00.000-05:00

Oops. I wrote this a week ago but forgot to post it.

Warning: this post doesn’t hold the answer, or the question, about life, the universe and everything, and it definitely doesn’t draw any conclusions. See my other posts for those. This post is about ordinary, every day life. One of those most important things we forget to question sometimes. It’s also hopelessly long, confusing, and shouldn’t be read into too much, just like some ordinary days.

I went through all the usual motions—grabbed my water bottle, set my red bag within reach, wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and stretched out on the couch, laptop resting on crossed legs. I turned it on, smiled at the seven applications running, and had just double clicked to check my email when I remembered. I was at my uncle and aunt’s for the night; no wireless. For a full thirty-nine seconds I was paralyzed. I maximized and minimized my Spring Break To-Do List four times, stared at my eight open Microsoft word documents with glazed eyes, their titles rendered meaningless. How can I write those essays for that scholarship until I’m certain nobody’s awaiting my reply to an urgent email? How can I settle down to work on that resolution until I know whether or not I’ve heard back from about our latest philosophical problem?

I had tried to prepare myself for this. I refrained from sending any momentous emails in order that I wouldn’t expect any back. Three full days ago I had marked non-internet To-Do List items with ****; I had opened several internet explorer windows in advance so come netless time I could read their content offline. I had even selected classical guitar music on my Itunes to remind myself, come THE MOMENT, to relax and pretend I was in the woods. But when THE MOMENT came, nothing helped. It’s been four full minutes now, and I’m writing this blog entry as some twisted sort of therapy. I don’t think it’s working.

Why do we become so dependent on certain comforts that their absence or malfunction can cause us this much distress?

Earlier today I entered the Mall of America for the first time in years. It was culture shock, to say the least. At Dartmouth we joke about the Dartmouth Bubble; Park Rapids is pretty much the Dartmouth Bubble without the Dartmouth. In both places, I do a good job of ignoring the parts of society I detest—the consumerism, the objectification, the commodification. Sure they’re present, I just don’t have to look at their most obvious manifestations. Walking into the Mall, it occurred to me that I’ve never felt more like an alien. I watched people shuffle, bumble, and hustle, some looking like they were having genuinely good times; most looking like they (a) had forgotten how to smile, (b) wished they were somewhere else, (c) were considering breaking their leg so they could ride around in one of those nifty scooter things (although even those in scooters didn’t have much luck with the crowds). OK, maybe I was reading into them a little too harshly. I know plenty of people who really enjoy shopping—I’ll never figure them out, and I’m trying to be OK with that. But what about the rest of the population, those of us who don’t go every weekend, but don’t mind hitting up the drum shop, or the tool shop, or the mall, every few months?

To paraphrase a wise friend, (that's you, Eric) I wonder how often we do things because we like the idea of us liking to do them.

Our comforts and our habits. These are two phenomena that have been hashed and rehashed by many people more articulate than me. I don’t need to tell you that our culture values quantity over quality (four AIM conversations as opposed to one phone or lunch conversation, for example?). And I don’t need to tell you that we’re good at fooling ourselves into thinking we’re getting quality, when we’re not. (Sure, it’s nice to chat simultaneously with four different people about our latest philosophical/introspective/political/theological musings, and sure, maybe it’s better to at least get to talk to them a little while doing homework etc., whereas otherwise I wouldn’t get to talk to them at all. But maybe in an AIMless world I’d put more effort into making time to talk to them. And maybe that shared space would prove much more valuable in the long run than a few IM chats here and there).

What I do need to ask you, is what impact these comforts, habits, foolings, whatever you call them, have on our sense of community. Walking in the mall—even alongside a friend and inspiration—drew out of me a penetrating sense of loneliness I’ve ever felt. It wasn’t Big City Bustle Loneliness, or Different Culture Loneliness—I’m used to those, they’re even nice sometimes—it was a pervading melancholic loneliness that actually made me want to curl up in a ball and be alone some more. It made me want to start fires, by myself, just to watch them destroy everything in their path. It made me want to ride my mountain bike down the side of a mountain, by myself, just to see where I’d land. It made me want somebody to hold me, but not so that we could be together; rather, so that I could continue being alone and laugh in the face of attempted community.

Sometimes I think modern society will make me a Marxist yet. But even Marx limited the human experience to the material. I’m willing argue there’s more to us than that; I’m willing to hope that maybe a Beloved Community could (and is) help(ing) us discover a more full way to be human. What about our everyday, ordinary lives, is getting in the way of experiencing that Beloved Community? And why on earth don’t we do something about it?

always in a place to create

2006-03-16T01:35:00.000-05:00

My thoughts of late have been centered on place. Place in time, place in the world, place in journey, place in relationship, place in conversation, place in learning, place in language. It's a good practice to step back and take stock of the places I have journeyed through, the places I'm in, the places I hope to find myself in some day.

Nelson, a good friend from high school, visited campus for a few days and as he, Marissa (also from high school) and I converged for some sharing of our places in life, we spontaneously mentioned words that embody our vision, our place in the world, and our hope. We share similar convictions about humanity, and we act on those convictions in differing ways. Nelson's word is synergy, Marissa's sustainability, and mine justice. We joked about making t-shirts and carrying a banner reading We are the Future! but there was deep contentment and seriousness behind those words. They reflect our conviction that we can never accomplish anything worthwhile on our own; our philosophies, actions, and beings are pieces of a whole that is creating something beautiful out of this mess of human existence. Nelson's passion is helping people find their authentic voices and helping those voices mingle and work together; Marissa's is helping us all learn to live so that the earth can continue to sustain us and so that we can continue to sustain each other; mine is helping us create fairer and more just systems so that we may all flourish. One of my favorite quotes from Terry Tempest Williams is "in my deepest moments of despair I am aware of the limits of my own imagination." Those words--synergy, sustainability, justice--reflect our urgent need to fight the despair that has such a grip on this world with communal imagination and praxis.

Those words got me thinking about our place to work to actualize our ideals. It seems that a diverse community is more important than ever because we can only exist in one place. Try as I might to get away from the fact, I will always be white. I will always claim Minnesota as my homeland and I will always come from a Lake Wobegon culture. In this interconnected world, my place carries certain responsibilities that I can't avoid. My place is not to run off to Africa to "help" Africans recreate their identity; my place is to stand up to my own government and demand it treat Africa with justice, so that Africans are allowed to construct decolonized identities (not that such action doesn't require a little running off to Africa...) My place is to listen to my own people, that I might learn from them who I am and that they might learn from me how our sense of entitlement is based on injustice. My place is to learn from the marginalized of our society so that I can speak to power in my culture. The beauty of a diverse community is that when we act in love and mutual respect, we each have a place. We each experience the joy that comes from working with others in different places to discover and bring about common truths.

I linked my title to a friend's blog because her latest entry, and my comments on it, lend meat to the backbone of this post.

To Hell in a Handbasket

2006-03-05T18:40:00.000-05:00

I'm probably breaking some blogger code of conduct, but here's something I just posted on a forum about hell:

Racism.
Sense of entitlement because of wealth, race, religion.
the gospel of individualism.
Heterosexism.
Sexism.
Slavery.
War.
Artificial famines.
Survival of the fittest.
Commodified beings.

"And if you say that someone is worthless, you will be in danger of the fires of hell." These are the things that allow us to say someone is worthless. And because we call these things our gospels, we create hell. Here, now. If you're not suffocated by the heat of the struggle, if you're not burned by the fire of pain, you're insulated. If your eye is desensitized to the starving bodies, it is insulating you; gauge it out. If your hand is reaching to grab for more while your neighbor dies, it is insulating you; cut it off. For it's better to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown hell; than for your whole body to be thrown into the isolation of never knowing the beauty and courage that can be found when you shed insulation and dare to claim the dying child as your own child, when you dare to call her mother your sister and when you dare to love the Christ who is in each and every one.

It is indeed the power in our conviction to follow Jesus that saves us from hell. But hell is not a place to be travelled to; hell is where we relegate those we deem worthless. Sin births death, death to others and death to ourselves, and out of sin is created the hells of oppression and injustice. Thanks be to our rebellious savior, who proved that even the injustices and oppression of death can be overcome by the beauty of life and love.

We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome one day.

And when we, too, being transformed by the renewing of our minds and the holy fire of the Spirit, seek to make Christ's gospel real--here, now--we beat back hell that was birthed by isolation and insulation, and we build God's kingdom--here, now--and love becomes our truth.

Mission 3:16?

2006-02-24T02:25:00.000-05:00

I stopped being a proselytizing Christian somewhere between 'saving' my eighth grade friends from drugs and depression and discovering that there's more to Christianity than Audio Adrenaline's "Mighty Big Leader." But I admit I probably would have thought this was a decent article until relatively recently. It's an OK start; just demonstrates how far the church has to go if we are ever to truly call ourselves transfigured and transformed.
----------------------------------
An excerpt:

Are we settling for less?

Changing the mission mindset of American Christians will be no easy task.
“We have so long perceived ourselves as the bastion of mission-sending, the great North American force going out,” says Bill O’Brien. “And even where we have established partnership, it’s often just a buzzword. In most cases we still have 51 percent of the money and position.”
Mutual partnership between Western and non-Western Christians would turn the traditional short-term mission paradigm on its head. Considering that Christianity is thriving outside the Western world and shrinking in the West, partnership could mean that Western churches begin receiving mission teams, not just sending them.

For instance, Christians from Africa and Asia could teach American Christians how to live faithfully in a pluralistic society without becoming syncretistic.
Believers from countries that persecute Christians could help American Christians learn how to handle increasing intolerance toward believers here.
Followers of Christ from impoverished countries could help American Christians understand the biblical perspective on money and happiness.
...
From "Mission Tourism," by Marshall Allen
-------------------------

How about, Christians from everywhere else could help US of American Christians understand how we continue to screw them over?

There is a fundamental system that the church, as a product of society, is refusing to address: the world is hierarchically ordered, and the industrialized nations are at the top. If Jesus came as the prince of peace for ALL, when will Western Christians understand the death of an African to be as horrible as the death of an American? What does it take for Western Christians to see Christ in those who are marginalized, ignored, forgotten? What does it take for us to stop calling those who are invisible "them," and instead think of them as part of "us"? If we were to truly "do unto the least of these" as we would do unto Christ, I don't think we would come parading our paint buckets and shiny Bibles. If we were to see the face of Christ in the face of every starving parent, I think we would be horrified that our savior can't feed his children while we struggle with obesity. I think the first thing we would ask him would be "how did your situation get to be like this? Why does it continue to be like this? What can I do?"
But when the answer would convict us and implicate a change in lifestyle, it's a whole lot easier to forget to treat people as if they ARE Christ. It's easier to come home happy that the poor people HAVE Christ in their lives. Added bonus when we brought him to them.

Coke kills

2006-02-18T01:01:00.000-05:00

Read about it here.

trees are smart too

2006-02-15T12:23:00.000-05:00

It is February 15th and today I climbed a tree barefoot.
It wasn't entirely intentional. I ate lunch in my favorite spot overlooking the walkway under the Hood museum and just as I was thinking about sleeping for the first time in 29 hours I looked up and it was smiling at me. At first I couldn't get up because it was so old and so big. I was about to give up when the tree told me to take my shoes off, and I listened because it is much older than me, and when I stepped back to drop my sock I found the lone, slender branch, extended straight out above me. Sometimes you just have to remember that trees are smart too.

When I had clambered up and given my cold-shocked muscles a chance to relax I watched the sparse but steady flow of pedestrians beneath me. They thought they were being smart by not looking straight at me, but they didn't know that I was higher than them and I could watch them catch me in my glance, look away, and smile to their scholarly selves. I thought about how silly it is that we spend so much energy avoiding awkward eye contact that might imply a social obligation to be friendlier than we are particularly feeling, or to spend more time with a stranger than we would prefer to lose. And I thought that maybe if more people climbed trees we wouldn't feel so alone.

Oh Cupid tree, oh Cupid tree

2006-02-14T16:32:00.000-05:00

Here is an email correspondance I had today with a friend at Brigham Young University. Hope it makes your valentine's day as hilarious as mine.
------------------------
He wrote:
My RA suggested that i send you a valentine - because valentines day is about as big as Christmas around here. I told him that he didn't really understand and that you would probably laugh me to shame, but he insisted -so consider yourself valentined. Happy valentines day.

I wrote:
Aaaaaw, how cute. And yes, I laughed you to shame--had to read it to my roommates. They laughed too. Happy Valentines day to yourself--watch out for those cupids; we can't have you falling in love before your mission.>> Kristina

He replied:

I don't mean to bother you anymore but i am walking around campus dumbfounded...seeing as this is my first BYU valentines day. You mentioned cupids, there were about 5 of them standing outside the student center todayyelling "We love love - welcome to the love house" and there was another (infull attire of course) in the quad area inbetween the library and studentcenter with a boom box playing love songs, and he was screaming "happyvalentines day." There are of course hearts flying around - people arewalking around handing out little paper heart - heart cookies, papers,valentines, chocolate hearts, even walking hearts with legs - (very tacky).
The best was in Statistics...The quiz question concerned a table thatdisplayed the data from a survey of boys and girls, asking how many thoughkissing on the first date was OK. The question was something like. "Giventhe above distribution, conditional for boys, what percent thought kissingon a first date was OK?" - it was something like 57%
I guess the upside is that the library will be a tad quieter because everybody will be out on their dates :)

I replied:

WOW you just made my day. I am currently happily mired in reading all about gender in rural Kenya and juxtaposing the BYU picture you just painted with the picture of a girl who does 11 hours of household chores a day and scored high enough on her primary test to enter the country's most prestigious senior high school, but might not be able to becuase her father would rather marry her off for the dowry (which would allow him to build the family a new house) made me laugh for about FIVE minutes. I am thinking about the absurdity of existence and there is a certain hilarity in the intense variety of the human experience...kissing on your first date vs. birthing 8 children with a man you've just barely met out of necessity for running the family farm...
--------------------------------

T - 10 seconds

2006-02-08T14:43:00.000-05:00

A few thoughts (mostly explained by Prof. Alverson) i somewhat regurgitated 1.5 hours ago for my anthro exam (hopefully in more words than this):

For precolonial Africans, time = communal space.
It was marked by lived experiences/events in the community: naming, initiation into adulthood, marriage; planting, harvesting, trading. One was never "bored" and one never had "too much too do" or "not enough time." One did not have the experience of "wanting" more than one could have because there was enough for all and in times of hardship all was shared.
In capitalism and market economies, time = private property. It is something that we must fill with productivity, (or if we have the luxury, laziness) because time is money. We are forever seeking to balance work with play (relationships, entertainment, philosophical exploration, learning) in order to live "good lives" and feel fulfilled. Most of us spend much of lives confused about how to do this and "empty," "bored," with "too much to do" and "too little time in which to do it," and we face a constant battle to be content with what we have and what we "have to do."

Gonna lay down my sword and shield

2006-02-04T12:05:00.000-05:00

Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key to Pentagon Plan
By Ann Scott Tyson The Washington Post
Saturday 04 February 2006
Conventional tactics de-emphasized.

The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions US troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.
Major initiatives include a 15 percent boost in the number of elite US troops known as Special Operations Forces, a near-doubling of the capacity of unmanned aerial drones to gather intelligence, a $1.5 billion investment to counter a biological attack, and the creation of special teams to find, track and defuse nuclear bombs and other catastrophic weapons.
China is singled out as having "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States," and the strategy in response calls for accelerating the fielding of a new Air Force long-range strike force, as well as for building undersea warfare capabilities.
The latest top-level reassessment of strategy, or Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), is the first to fully take stock of the starkly expanded missions of the US military - both in fighting wars abroad and defending the homeland - since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The review, the third since Congress required the exercise in the 1990s, has been widely anticipated because Donald H. Rumsfeld is the first defense secretary to conduct one with the benefit of four years' experience in office. Rumsfeld issued the previous QDR in a hastily redrafted form days after the 2001 strikes.
The new strategy, summarized in a 92-page report, is a road map for allocating defense resources. It draws heavily on the lessons learned by the US military since 2001 in Iraq, Afghanistan and counterterrorism operations. The strategy significantly refines the formula - known as the "force planning construct" - for the types of major contingencies the US military must be ready to handle.
(for full article clink on my post title or copy and paste:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020406Z.shtml)
---------------------------------

...down by the riverside
down by the riverside
down by riverside
gonna lay down my sword and shield
down by the riverside
aint gonna study war no more

If this is "compassion abroad," welcome back to the Cold War.
Our press is "free" and our country has amnesia. I wonder what kind of peace, security and democracy our freedom crusades will bring this time?

United by the things that really matter

2006-01-30T02:15:00.000-05:00

I'm listening to guitarist Dean Magraw and it occured to me that he sounds like home. Home, in the sense of Minnesota, for me (he conjures images of the progressive/organic general store where I saw him perform, and firewood, falling snow on soft pine needled ground, stretching Norway pines, bright blue lakes, and a hike with old friends)--but it got me thinking about music in general and why it's been such an important aspect/integration throughout humanity. Music is an extension of our human experience. I associated Magraw's playing with a few simple goodnesses--and maybe these good things are what draw our unjust mess, and beautiful diversity, of human existance together in similar experience.
Through my time at school so far I've meandered through democratization, the Cold War, colonization, geopolitics, 'Third World' development, Africa, gender, resistance movements...the realities of students from so many lives and ways of living...the communal musical experience of hand drumming...the heartening experience of successful activism and of participating in and encouraging bettering the world...the breathtaking splendor of New England early morning hikes, climbs, and skies, the stunning comfort of winter moonlit walks through snow covered evergreens, the envigorating escape of a quick heave into my favorite climbing tree...religion, politics, civil rights, and the passion of Martin Luther King, Jr. and so many activists...theological debates and philosophical arguments...
and at least at this premature time in my human experience my reflection is that with learning comes both a heightened awareness of how little I know and a deeper understanding of some basic premises. No human life should ever be considered expendable, because what we have--all this beauty, all this pain--is so amazing that to deny it to one person is to deny a part of it to all of us. Every human deserves the simple rights to enough food, clean water, a place or realm to call home, and fellowship with other humans. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, perhaps? I can spew theories and realities and problems and solutions...but at the end of the day, what gives me hope and reason to breath is a dream that one day, the "simple" things--the natural environment and our natural companionship and community--can be enjoyed by all.

Intersections

2006-01-26T16:56:00.000-05:00

"I'm not ready to believe that God would will suffering," I said, and we talked about how she knows everything happens for a reason and I'm certain nothing has to happen for a reason and the meaning of both our quests for Heaven looked guant with hunger.
What I didn't realize was that when she took part of me and I took part of her we revealed a small part of the truth that will bring forth the Kingdom we both dream of.
"I'm scared I don't know how to help you," I said, and we talked about what it means to believe in something you don't understand and we searched for rationality in human actions and our explanations shattered when faced with our need to explain.
What I didn't realize was that though his tears were real when I only wished I had the capacity to cry, he felt our human connection and as my burdens became his burdens and his burdens became mine we stumbled upon more beauty than any philosopher could reason into existence.
"I'm straddling a dichotomy between faith and reason," I said, and we talked about how much atrocity faith has caused and how much reason has destructed and goodness seemed to fade into the oblivion of an absurd world.
What I didn't realize was that faith and reason intersect at love, and such an absurdity is all that holds the universe together.

Why I love Dartmouth

2006-01-20T01:01:00.000-05:00

A few sound bytes from my time here (spoken by a wide variety of people): [brackets surround the context that may be helpful].

"It took me forever to find any pregnant worms today."

"OK, good, thanks for your help guys. So here's enough Lasagna trays for 400 people, in this warmer [a 6' tall, 3' deep chest of heaver plastic, resembling a freezer]. See those tiki torches over there? [Points across 500 yards of hilly, icy, snow covered golf course]. Just get this over there and meet me at the welcome tent in 15 minutes." [jogs away]
...[much grunting noise]. "I don't think we can carry this, guys." [snowmobile drives up] "Yes, a lasagnamobile!"

"Well, I sort of told my parents I was going to France because that's where my connection was. Then I flew to Cameroon."

Email correspondance among Darfur Action group exec committee:
"I can't make the exec meeting because I'm having lunch with President Wright...if there's anything i should bring up, let me know."
Response: "I can't make it either because I'm having lunch with Kofi Anaan. If there's anything i should bring up, let me know."

[Insults in the suite go something like this:] "You degenerate jerk!"
"Sorry, it's just been inculcated in me since birth." "I cannot believe you just said inculcated."

"Have you gotten the chance to sign the petition to stop funding genocide in Sudan?" "Well, I'm not sure if ..." [the kid's friend:] "What kind of person are you, man! You support genocide? Sign the petition dude! --Hey, I'm really sorry my friend is such a jerk." [the friend:] "I just wanna learn more about it before I sign, ok? Do you have any more info I could read up on?"

[iceclimbing PE class] "The turn is right here, right by this big no tresspassing sign." "So this is a superfund site?" "Yeah, supposedly has toxic levels of arsenic, iron, and copper. But I've swum in the river, it's fine. Real cool turqoise color. Just don't drink it."

[6 am greeting] "Good morning." "Good night."

[11:16pm] "Hey, is your roommate around?" "Um, I think she's taking a nap."

[1 am] "Are you sure it's not too late?" "Oh, this is an ethnic party. They'll be going strong till 3 at least."

[while covering doorway with red, white and blue postal tape] "She's from Indonesia, right? She'll love the British flag."

"Man, I wanna come but I should probably start this 8 page paper." "When's it due?" "In 5 hours."

[0 degrees Fahrenheit, 10pm, camped 1.5 miles from Hanover on the Appalachian Trail, no fire, 3 inches of snow, crawling into sleeping bags] "Guys, I really have want some icecream." [minutes later]. "We could make it to the Co-Op and back in an hour and a half." [minutes later]. "I'm serious. Let's go."

"Hey, tell me your life story." "Oh, it's not that interesting. I was born in Australia, sailed to the U.S. till I was 7 or 8 and have pretty much spent the rest of my life putsing around the Bahamas."

[band cheer] "2, 4, 6, 8, our team is really great! 3, 5, 7, 9, you all lead petty little lives and live in a cultural wasteland, FIGHT!"

Expendable lives?

2006-01-14T17:32:00.000-05:00

[Albert Camus] could not accept a view of the world in which individual human beings were considered expendable, whatever the end...His sense of injustice was closely tied to his passionate concern that no human being be wantonly cheated of his fragile chance to experience happiness as well as pain, and thereby be excluded from the full glory of life itself.
~Germaine Bree, Camus and Sartre, 65-66.

Pakistan Condemns Purported CIA Air Strike
The Associated Press
Saturday 14 January 2006

Damadola, Pakistan - Pakistan on Saturday condemned a purported CIA air strike on a border village that officials said unsuccessfully targeted al-Qaida's second-in-command, and said it was protesting to the US Embassy over the attack that killed at least 17 people.
Thousands of local tribesmen, chanting "God is Great," demonstrated against the attack, claiming the victims were local villagers without terrorist links and had never hosted Ayman al-Zawahri.
Two senior Pakistani officials told The Associated Press that the CIA acted on incorrect information in launching the attack early Friday in the northwestern village of Damadola, near the Afghan border.
Citing unidentified American intelligence officials, US news networks reported that CIA-operated Predator drone aircraft carried out the missile strike because al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, was thought to be at a compound in the village or about to arrive.
"Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on a false information," said a senior Pakistani intelligence official with direct knowledge of Pakistan's investigations into the attack.
.......
What would Jesus do? I think he'd say screw the Pharisees. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t love them and isn't greatly saddened by their actions. Just means that what’s not God about them is unacceptable to him. Which in the case of the Pharisees, and many of today's politicians and CEO's, was/is a big Eskimo style parka worth of corrupt insulation. For the pharisees, it was corrupt insulation from what the people really needed to be human--not laws or rejection for mistakes (or rejection for who they were), but forgiveness and recognition of innate human worth. For today's powerful, it's corrupt insulation from the consequences of their decisions that certain lives are expendable. We're called to refuse to accept that insulation, to beat it down and to hate it and to live our lives against it, without constraint. Jesus died to show us how.

Prayin till the cows come home: Part II

2006-01-11T21:36:00.000-05:00

Maybe if ever re-read my posts I would say less stupid things. If you don't mind ignoring the first large section of my post (everything before the scripture), I'll try not to lie so profusely in this one.

What really never bothered me is that I don't regularly do the on-your-knees-Wesley-style big-chunks-of-time prayer-thoughts-only kind of praying except when I'm in church (and that's because it's intermingled with hymns etc.) or with a group. Figuring out why without straying into rationalization is tricky, because I'm not sure if I should be doing more or not. But I'll throw out a few possibilities and maybe they're legitimately theological and maybe they're just me being silly. You be the judge. (And we can ask God, too).
I think the biggest reason is because of my lifestyle here at school. Not only is it easy to get some alone time (which I never needed tons of anyway), most of the activities I do involving hefty multi-tasking. I try to keep life as fluid and decompartmentalized as possible--and that's a luxury I can have here. While writing this post for instance i'm working on getting circulation back in my toes (ice climbing class today) by practicing a samba bass pattern to strengthn my kick drum ankle, figuring out the lyrics to an Underoath song, and eating dinner. In a couple minutes a suitemate will walk in and maybe we'll have a discussion about prayer (or whatever she's thinking about). There's no such thing as a "time" for being with God and a "time" for studying and a "time" for having fun, etc...while I indeed seek to balance work, play, study, etc., they flow into one another. In other words, I don't need a big chunk of time with God in the morning to prep me for the day because God and I are chillin all day long. It's a level of consciousness, of constant love, questions, confusion, joy, angst, listening, shared in the space that is prayer. When I learn about a new injustice, I know that my heightened passion and disgust will be sustained by the lifeblood of ubuntu and God's love. When I learn that a friend needs consolation or encouragement and I can't be present, I set aside my own reality for a few moments to dwell with God in hers. I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not like I stop and say "God, be with her" and go about my work; I'm already praying and as I feel the pain of my friend God knows that my prayer for her is real. I don't feel like I'm asking for anything special or like I'm being me-and-my-needs-focused because God is also with me in every other part of my life.
It doesn't mean I don't take time to read daily email devos and at least a few blogs or sermons and it doesn't mean i don't take time to think about my state of mind and to evaluate my day/week/life with God. But because I'm not doing high-stress activities most of the time (well, what is high-stress for me) I don't need to set aside time for meditation and prayer-only, because it's integrated into my life.
Maybe I should add that it hasn't always been this way. For much of highschool I needed that 30 min. of devotional time, for various reasons. And maybe in the future I'll need that concentrated "time with God" again.

OK, that was WAY too much about me. I'm curious--how is it for you guys? How do you define prayer and what place does it have in your life?

Prayin till the cows come home

2006-01-10T22:09:00.000-05:00

OK, i admit it. I'm a sucky pray-er. I've never been the meditative type--sure, i spend a lot of time thinking but my most productive thinking is done out loud, to someone with whom I'm engaged in conversation. I always feel like i'm missing something when I think too much on my own. But honestly, it never really bothered me that the only times i'm solely focused on God in prayer tends to be in church (when i'm surrounded by people who are theoretically praying as well) or when I'm praying out loud in a group. Why? Hopefully by the end of this post i'll have that figured out...

I pulled out the trusy concordance (i.e. biblegateway.com) and thought it was funny that I got 365 responses including 'pray'...one for each day?
Here's a sampling (NIV):
Genesis 20:17Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife and his slave girls so they could have children again
Exodus 8:9Moses said to Pharaoh, "I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile."
Deuteronomy 4:7What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him?
1 Samuel 1:10In bitterness of soul Hannah wept much and prayed to the LORD.
1 Samuel 1:13Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk
1 Kings 18:36At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: "O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command.
2 Kings 4:33 He went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to the LORD.
2 Chronicles 7:14if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Nehemiah 1:4When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.
Job 21:15Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What would we gain by praying to him?'
Psalm 109:4In return for my friendship they accuse me, but I am a man of prayer.
Proverbs 15:29The LORD is far from the wicked but he hears the prayer of the righteous.
Isaiah 44:17From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, "Save me; you are my god."
Jonah 2:7"When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.
Matthew 5:44But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you
Matthew 6:5"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.
Mark 11:25And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins."
Mark 14:35Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him.
John 17:20"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message
Acts 1:14They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.
Acts 10:2He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.
Romans 12:12Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Romans 15:30I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.
2 Corinthians 9:14And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you.
Ephesians 1:16I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.
Ephesians 6:18And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.
Colossians 4:2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.
1 Timothy 2:8I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing.

You know, I think this is going to be a two part entry. Let's think this over, pray about it, and continue soon! :-)

Oh My.

2006-01-07T20:55:00.000-05:00

Gotta say, Pat Robertson does make my life exciting. Too bad he's real.
Found this via www.wesleyblog.com: http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1677557,00.html

A little love

2006-01-06T21:50:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it’s blinding, like on a clear, cold winter day when you look out onto a field of pure, white snow. You throw your arms open and wish you could sprint and never get tired, or that you could climb or shovel or dig or ski or snowshoe or fly. You succumb your body to gravity and the snow encloses you, slides icily down your back and numbs your wrists in between your sleeves and your mittens. And it’s perfect, that moment, because there’s nothing else in the world but you and the snow, and you love it, you love absolutely everything about it. For that instant your mind blurs into the snow and merged, you reach perfection. You take off your jacket because it insulates you too much from the snow…you shiver and let the chill run through you, you embrace the cold and laugh as a snowball bites into your cheek.
Sometimes it’s blinding like the snow, this love for humanity. Because you can’t concentrate on anything except how you love people so much you just want to give them a hug and listen to their stories and watch them be fascinated by physics or Mozart or Shakespeare. You watch them work all summer in a snack bar to pay for their son’s trip to Mexico with his girlfriend, and help them remember to pick up the hot dog buns on their way home from church, and you try to explain that you don’t think you’re better than them, that you just have so many thoughts going on in your head that they don’t want to understand, how can they expect you to be interested in what kind of paper towels work best? And you’re so angry that they don’t care about the rest of the world the way you do and that they worship the American flag as if it were a beautiful savior and it’s blasphemous to say I like Swiss knives better than American knives but somehow that just makes you love them more because they don’t know how it feels to have the world on their shoulders and you don’t know how it feels to love a son so much that you’d work all summer just so he can see Mexico.

Sometimes it’s torture, like in What Dreams May Come when he goes to hell to get his wife and all he wants is to experience what she is experiencing, because he needs to be able to say “I understand and I love you.” Like when their mind only sees work and their body only feels tired and you can't comprehend the pain because bread has never been God for you. Or when their nine year old eyes stare at you from a national geographic and their nine year old hands hold a rifle and their nine year old feet run from a raped childhood and you can't even cry because you love them but there are thousands of them and when you were nine you got stuck in a tree and had to be rescued by a best friend's dad. Or when they're serving life for knifing a kid in a fight and you can blame it on the ghetto or the system but they didn't have to pull the knife and they're not sorry for what they did and you want to forgive them but the kid was your friend's brother and someone should have loved the convict earlier but now the kid is dead. Or when they decide to go to war and they don't tell the truth and the protestors mean nothing and the dead children mean nothing and the trapped civilians mean nothing and the ruined lives mean nothing and they go to their ranch for vacation but you've never flown in your own jet or had lobbyists breathing down your back or fought against 1/4 of the country who thinks your IQ is embarrassing. Or when they enlist and are shipped to fight in that war but don't see a day of combat and when the chance comes all they want is to kill and you want them to be strong and loving but you've never been the target of a sniper's gun.

But always it's perfect, because it's all we have that connects us and it's all we are when our agendas are gone and our walls are torn down;
Always it's right, because without it we can only be alone and we are even less than what we were when we were born because even as babies someone held us;
Always it's just, because what we deserve is to be loved and to love and Always it's what makes us human.

2005-12-30T17:06:00.000-05:00

"THIS IS SO FAST!!! **bump bump** AAAH! TREES! **crash white wash sled flip body flying** ...cold..."

All those things they never taught us

2005-12-30T13:01:00.000-05:00

"Sometimes I think the church teaches silly things around the edges and neglects the most central things of all. What is it to gather around word and sacrament Sunday by Sunday if not to build up the body of Christ for the sake of the world?" ~Don Saliers, Professor of Theology and Worship, Candler School of Thelogy at Emory University.

Being a Christian most of my life really screwed me up theologically. Of course, I say that affectionately, and recognize that given the chance I probably wouldn't have had it any other way. Listening to the Thanksgiving episode (11/24) of Speaking of Faith propelled me to reflect on how my entire pre-16 year old life was built on a severely incomplete understanding of communion and just about every other aspect of Christianity, and further to reflect on how lucky I am that as a high schooler raised in a Christian church at least I was genuinely A.) Christian and B.) interested in politics and learning by practice how to work for systemic change to better people's lives. Several years of bombarding myself with "Christian rock" and attending youth events and camps that were exclusively me-and-Jesus (including some better ones that were me-and-Jesus-and-love-even-the-kids-you-don't-like) meant I was genuinely Christian in the sense that I was "saved" and trying to live by example to "save" others. And there was little, if any, theological connection to my equally genuine interest in making the world a better place (other than the daily prayers I said for persecuted Christians around the world). But when me-and-Jesus theology abruptly had a system failure and plummeted to its death, thankfully I had political activism to keep me active and asking questions about the world. After several months of quasi-mourning the death of my faith I started to wonder if politics and Christianity should have been intersecting and integrated in my life rather than running parrallel. Thus began my journey to discover all those things fundamental to Christianity that somehow they never taught me in church. To date my most important discovery--brought to mind again by the discussion communion--was that they never taught us how to ask questions. For example, my dad--and pastor--probably preached theologically richer than the grip of me-and-Jesus would allow me to understand. But those younger and more hip youth workers and band members who had the most immediate influence on me worked within such a narrow theological framework that even when I was encouraged to ask questions, my questions didn't penetrate the theological wall we erected around us "saved" Christians.
The purpose of this blog is as scattered, complex, and multi-facated as my life, but as of this entry I hope one purpose will be to help me to occassionally make sense of the now swirling and ever growing mess of those fundamental things I never learned in youth group. So that not only can I better learn how to ask questions, I can help other youth question that which they have taken for truth.

Waiting for the ice to break?

2005-12-28T20:10:00.000-05:00

Global warming was the topic of lunch conversation today. I thought of it again as I nearly fell through the ice while skate skiing across Loon lake with my brother. (If you haven't experienced that kind of moment--the kind that paralyzes your breath with panic--I highly recommend it). This time I heard the familiar crunch of my skies through the first thin layer of crust over the snow, and all seemed well as I scanned the snow covered lake immediately in front of me...But when i looked down I heard ice cracking and saw water running over my skies. I laughed a warning to my brother (who was grinning and poking his pole through open water) and used some mad turning skills to get to thicker ice in time to stay above water. Once a hundred yards back, we were able to survey the area and realized that it was easy to spot thin ice (under snow it's bluer and generally not quite as snow-covered) on both sides of the spot we'd tried to ski through. Still, our mistake could be rationalized easily enough...perhaps in the same way the Bush administration and some scientists are rationalizing a lack of human effect on global warming. (Come on, treat me to this one analogy, please?) A few reasons we should have been able to trust the ice: 1) yesterday the lake held an ice fishing contest, several fourwheelers and snowmobiles. 2) we were following the snowmobile tracks. 3) we had just skied over the other half of the lake and even determined via an icefishing hole that the ice was a good six inches thick (2in. required to hold a person). 4) the direction in which we were skiing showed no signs of thin ice within 10 yards or so. Well, any proud Ole or Lena could give you an essay on the flaws of those reasons. It had been 32 degrees for the better part of the week and today, the snowmobile tracks we followed could have been made two weeks ago, the icefishing was one the other half of the lake, just cuz one half of the lake is frozen doesn't mean the other half doesn't contain a hot spring, and while the part I almost sunk through didn't look like thin ice--likely because of deeper snow due to driftage--if I'd just looked up to survey what was going on 10 yards away I would have realized I was skiing across a bridge between thin ice--i.e. i was on thin ice myself. However, I was so focused on where I wanted to go, where I wanted there to be safe ice that by only staring at what was right in front of me, it was easy to convince myself everything was OK. I could only stay in my own world for so long though--pretty soon I was watching the only thing between me and a cold bath disintegrate.
The folks in the great mountains have been watching glaciers melt for years; those on tropical coasts have been witnessing coral reefs bleaching; now the signs are sadly becoming clearer every season around the world. Everywhere is affected now...and we've fooled ourselves onto thin ice. What's really the clincher about global climate change, though, is that as the U.S. bumbles across the ice, we're dragging the world with us. Disgusting.

Christmas talk

2005-12-25T20:48:00.000-05:00

I usually go pretty skinny on notes when i talk, but i somewhat incompletely filled this one in so it occasionally makes sense.

Christmas sermon, Riverside UMC 2005
Scripture: John 1: 1-14.

Good morning this Christmas! I’m deeply humbled to be able to share with you this joyous morning.
So, today we celebrate the coming of the word and the light into the world. It seems prudent to ask some questions. Why is Jesus called light? What does it mean to follow the light of the world? What does it mean to spread that light to all, that all might be children of God?
I’d like to start thinking about these questions by doing a little imagining. Come with me on a picnic, will you? It’s been winter for awhile here, let’s pretend it’s a warm summer day and we’re heading to the river with some family or friends for a nice afternoon. Imagine you’re just sitting down to a yummy picnic lunch when suddenly behind you you hear some water splashing and the sound of someone struggling. You turn around and there’s a person in the water, calling for help! What do you do? (congregation responds…jump in, throw a floatie). OK, so you get the person up on the beach, safe and sputtering, and you’re tending to him when you hear the same sounds of struggling again. You turn around and this time, there are 3 people, drowning in the river. Now what do you do? (grab a friend or family member and go in, etc.) Alright, so it might be a challenge but in pinch you could probably save the 3 people. But no sooner have you gotten them up on the shore than you turn around to loud shouts to see some 15, maybe 20 people in the water. What do you do? (pray, call for more help) What if before you know it, there are 40 people? (eventually someone says… “Go up stream to see who or what’s throwing the people in the river”).
Maybe you didn’t quite expect that answer. I think often we do feel called, as Christians, to jump in the river and do what we can to save those struggling in the water. But when the water is filled with strugglers, and we are doing all we can to stay afloat ourselves, the situation can seem not only overwhelming, but hopeless. Here is where Christmas comes in. Friends, that first Christmas was one big surprise filled with hope. For Christmas is about that journey upstream.
I’d like to visit once again the story as it’s told in Gospels.
A girl, a virgin who is engaged to be married, is visited by an angel and told she’ll give birth to God’s son. Even though it’s a mortal crime, literally punishable by death, to have extra-marital relations, Mary takes the risk and is willing to be God’s servant. Then when it’s almost time for the baby, Mary and Joseph must travel. There is no room in the inn and they are given shelter in a stable with the animals. The newborn Jesus is laid on a feeding trough, on a bed of straw. The angels don’t announce the arrival of baby Jesus to King Herod, or to the Pharisees, as would be expected; instead the angels appear to lowly shepherds—as Pastor Don explained last night, the “nobodies” of society. In fact King Herod doesn’t hear about the birth until some time later, and only through three foreigners who later disobey his selfish orders. Why? When Jesus could have been born anywhere, to any woman, why was he born to a young virgin, and why were his first hours spent in a strange, harsh place in the company of the lowest of society? Perhaps because Jesus came as a savior for all people, not just the rich and the established. And perhaps because in Jesus’ day, the problem upstream was that to be a young woman meant you had few rights and little importance in society; perhaps because in Jesus’ day, to be lower on the societal ladder was to be considered less than human; perhaps his birth was the first confrontation in a long line of confrontations with societal norms that Jesus found unacceptable. Now, we have an entire Christian year to study the many times Jesus directly challenged a system or institution, be it political, religious, or cultural, that was unfair or unjust. Today, may his humble birth remind us to look about ourselves and identify the areas of our life and areas of society in which we have grown complacent and comfortable with the status quo; Christmas should be a time when we look around to find the areas of our life and society in which we are perfectly happy to worship a child who may as well have been born in a hotel or a hospital. Christmas should be a time when we ask ourselves, “Is it okay that 1/6 of the world’s population is severely food insecure?” Christmas should be a time when we should ask ourselves, “Is it okay that the leading cause of death in the world for ages 15 to 49 is a completely preventable disease?” HIV/AIDS/Pneumonia. Is it OK that here in the cold, wintery state of MN, more than 1,000 people turned away from full homeless shelters on any given night? Is it OK that over half of 20,000 homeless or precariously housed Minnesotans are children? Is it OK that 41% are working part or full time and still can’t make enough to afford rental or mortgage?[1] Christmas, of all days, should be a time when the church confronts the world about these unacceptable realities in the same way that Jesus did on that night so many years ago. For most of all, Christmas should be a time when rather than thinking about how to do our duty by saving one or two people from the river, Christmas is the time when we go upriver. And we go upriver in the name of a God who didn’t send a son to preach that we should help people when it’s ‘convenient,’ but in the name of a God who sent his to be born of a virgin in a stable, worshipped first by the lowest of society.
Now it’s easy for me to stand up here and talk about the problems of the world and how we, as followers and worshippers of Christ, are called to confront them. But we all know the solutions are complex—so complex there is much disagreement among even Christians as to which problems are we should confront and how to do so. I’m sure if I asked every one of you the best way to end world hunger, for example, you would have a plethora of suggestions. The problems of Jesus’ time were also complicated, but rather than turn his back he faced them head on—he began his life in the company of livestock and shepherds.
The United Methodist Church has a long history reaching back to John Wesley, who spoke against the institutions of poverty and slavery, of refusing to be complacent in the world. In 1908 the church created a social creed that called for the “abolition of child labor,” and “a living wage in every industry,” among many things.[2] Today, we send delegates to general conference every four years to reexamine our church’s stance on issues ranging from how to be stewards of God’s creation, to how to care for the most vulnerable in society. Our social principles reflect a general consensus that while issues facing society are complicated, difficult, often political and sometimes divisive, to simply stand by and act as if nothing is wrong would be absolutely un-Christ-like. Thus even though we have a long list of principles, and a gigantic book of Resolutions to go along with it, they are not church doctrine and to be a United Methodist doesn’t mean we must agree with all of them. But especially if we disagree with some of them, it is all the more important that the principles be the starting point of dialogue about these issues. I know the Church and Society ministry team here at Riverside is planning on handing these out at some point, they’re just trying to figure out funding and what not. So there are a few in the back if you’d like to take a look for today, and all the principles are on the web at www.umc-gbcs.org.
The General Board of Church and Society, of which I’m a member, is the general board charged with implementing the social principles in the church and in the world. We do that in two ways.
1) We work on behalf of the UM church for policy change in D.C. and in the United Nations in New York.
a. We have the only privately owned building on Capitol Hill. They say that proximity is power on the Hill, and we may not be advisors to the president but there is something amazing about being right next to the Supreme Court building and only a block from the Senate and House office buildings.
b. Lobbying – Of the 24 some staff members of GBCS, 5 could be described as full time lobbyists. They cover areas of civil and human rights, global population issues (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, children, women’s rights, etc.), economic and environmental justice, peace with justice (foreign policy, war and peace issues), alcohol and other addictions and health care, and the United Nations.
c. Resolutions – OK, so there are some United Methodists out there in D.C. working and lobbying on our behalf. What purpose do board members serve? Well, besides holding the staff accountable and helping them determine where we should be more proactive vs. reactive in our work, we’re also able to make resolutions in response to current events. This past meeting in October we passed resolutions to: Stop the torture of prisoners, stand in solidarity with Liberia as it transitions to democracy after 14 years of civil war, and Call for a plan to End U.S. military presence in Iraq
2) YOU! I mean this very seriously. It feels great to be part of a connectional church and know that our church is acting on our statements at a national and international level, but we can do almost nothing without individual support of United Methodists throughout the denomination.
Here at Riverside I was excited to be able to attend a church and society meeting before leaving for school, and I’m psyched that the group is so alive and doing great things for the community and church.
-- But Christmas should remind us that just because we go to a church that already has “that committee” doesn’t mean we aren’t individually responsible to hold in our hearts and manifest in our lives a Christian worldview.
-- Here in the U.S. we are able to make our Christian voices heard by simply calling up our Senators and Representatives and by engaging ourselves in the political process. Check out www.umc-gbcs.org to sign up for weekly action alerts about what’s going nationally, what GBCS is up to, and how you can be involved. We can also affect positive change here in our local community and state. (some political pump up…so often difficulties facing folk in our local community and state can be solved by going upriver and committing to a cause).
And acting in society doesn’t always have to be political. Jesus didn’t always just march right up to Caesar and say, “I don’t like the way you’re running this country.” Rather he lived his life in a way that lifted up those in the margins of society, and in everything he did gave his love for humanity priority over societal or cultural expectations of him.
As followers of that baby in a manger, we must do everything we can to see that the hungry are able to feed themselves; that the naked are able to clothe themselves. And sometimes, this means more than rescuing people from the river—it means going to see why they’re drowning. This Christmas, I pray we do not worship a Christ who might as well been born to a married, experienced mother on a comfortable bed with the help of midwives. Today, let’s celebrate a most unconventional birth and commit again to shake ourselves from satisfaction with the way things are. Let’s worship a Christ child who still, today, gives light to the world by shattering the world’s expectations. And let’s remember that it is us, Christ’s followers here on earth, who must be the conduits for that light. WE must spread the news of his birth; we must share with others the joy of a baby born for all, and we must be living testimonies to the Christmas message of righting what is wrong and speaking out on behalf of those who society would rather forget or ignore.
[1] Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless; www.mnhomelesscoalition.org
[2] http://www.interpretermagazine.org/interior_print.asp?ptid=16&mid=5430&pagemode=print

Time to be Perfect

2005-12-17T19:02:00.000-05:00

Plato was all wrong about perfection. There's no idea world with perfect models of everything.
I've touched perfection. Often it comes when you aren't trying to do anything of the sort, when you're just chilling and doing what comes naturally, when awareness merely means pushing your consciousness higher, higher, to the next level until it converges with the consciousness of another person.
One instance of perfection: I won't confine it or mis-define it by shoving it into the category of "music," because the sound we made wasn't what mattered (although it was pretty cool). Nate was on congas and bongos and i was on drumset. It wasn't quite like any messing around we'd done before, or any jamming i'd done before with other musicians, because this time rather than focusing on what we, as individuals, could "add" to what the other was doing, we were only aware of what happened as the intricacies of our rhythms floated through time and space and created something no person could create by herself, even with a 5-track recorder. We shifted through 4/4, 3/4, 7/8, 5/4, 2/2...together, polyrhythmically, and seemlessly. The time signatures had no beginning and no ending; as he laid, say, a 4/4 conga base pattern and I travelled listlessly in and out of 3/4 and 2/4, he would accent to offset my layers of time and add 5, or 7, to the dimension. The result--the sound that eventually reached our ears and minds--was original and organic and as we danced and made eye contact and laughed we both knew that in that moment, the other sibling would be meaningless without the perfect space between us. It wasn't about what we were creating or producing or performing. It was about how i'd been playing five more years than him and i valued his playing just as much as he valued mine. It was about how Kristina as an Individual and Nathan as an Individual didn't need to exist because it wasn't like we each had something "to offer," it was like as we became conscious that our rhythms were converging and being perfect we were of the same consciousness, in the same dimension of existence, in the same reality. In those moments our playing happened as if it was being done by the same person with eight limbs. In those moments what we created was a small, perfect part of who we were, as two people, as friends, as brother and sister.

ICE SOCCER

2005-12-15T19:49:00.000-05:00

This one's for you, Caitlin.

Today I discovered the BEST game EVER! It even tops rollersoccer, which my brother and Caitlin's siblings invented sometime around 7th grade in the church parking lot. That game was fun because two of us were big (the girls) and the other two were small. So we'd rollerblade to top speed and then accidentally run them over.
ICESOCCER, however, is more egalitarian in nature because it's based on the philosophy that anyone is capable of falling face first, or butt first, when everyone is using the same tiny amount of friction to fight gravity. A close kin to broomball, which is like hockey except with brooms, a ball, and no skates, ICESOCCER is soccer with smaller goals (we used bookbox sized cardboard boxes) played on ice. It's especially awesome after a couple inches of powder, because snow provides some very illusionary traction. Remember 9th grade gym class--whether you were no star, but somewhat athletic, or not athletic at all--feeling such animosity towards the kid who always seemed to beat out her challenger and score goal after goal? Imagine her making the break-away, going for the shot, and eating snow. Everytime. That, my friends, is what makes ICESOCCER the sport of the century. Plus it's even a blast for two people--my bro and i play full contact--because the break-aways happen more frequently (anytime one player falls down) and thus result in more hilarious wipeouts (generally as soon as the still-standing player realizes she might actually score a goal). All formerly supersweet combo soccer foot tricks cause a solid butt-kissing; all carefully aimed shots are foiled by snow, big boots, and a mobile goal; most of all, moving fast of any kind has disastrous implications for all involved. Being in shape is optional, having good balance is no particular advantage, and dignity means being able to laugh the hardest. Finally, I highly recommend playing at dusk with a black and white ball. Then even people with good eyesight are out of luck.

Plastics manufacturing part 2

2005-12-15T12:09:00.000-05:00

This was supposed to go under my question about plastics but apparently one shouldn't have more than a 150 character answer to such a question:

Then once i was relatively successful i would campaign to convince the Kenyan government to stop manufacturing disposable plastics, which end up in the streets holding water that breeds mosquitoes who spread malaria. Wangari Maathai's idea. Check her out.

in the beginning God created snow

2005-12-14T12:29:00.000-05:00

so i like snow. my slight obsession with the cold, winter, and everything frozen sent me on this train of thought: hm. i have time before lunch but not enough to do any real work. hey, look at that cute little button in the corner of my screen...*click* you've done it, kristina, you've gotten yourself started and now backing out from completing the Three Easy Steps to create a blog would just be SISSY. ok, you need a name, one that won't be too serious but will both justify creating this blog and be uniquely you and hopefully not too cliche. *look up* IT'S SNOWING! LOOK AT THE SNOW!! Oh my gosh this is so awesome I'm so excited!!! Oliver (dog), look out the window! Look at it falling!! I can't wait till it's time to go get nate and his friends so we can play broomball on the lake which i just realized with all this snow i must shovel off again!!! WOOHOO! SHOVELLING! *opening the door, happy face, snow face, close door* Ok, a name for the blog. something that explains my ever-present and impossibly too long to-do list, something that represents how i usually have more to say after i should be done talking because i can't help but constantly think of the philosophical and theological implications of EVERYTHING, and something that's a little serious to remind myself that while i may be like a little kid life who often thinks existentially of life as a game, it is a serious game.
In further posts i'll try to spare you drawing out my analogy further. I'll also try to construct better sentences.
For now, i'm hoping this first post is literally coming from out of a blizzard. SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!