until next time

"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true."

-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Houses of snow.

Far along this island of sand
lies a muddy house of snow;
covered with angels and fireflies
and burgundy slippers meant for anyone passing through.
Here lies hope of a home void of normality
and perpetually glittered with the
presence of change.
It's never cold here, although usually it's expected.
Sometimes, though, from the perspective angle,
the angels resemble barrels of turpentine,
the fireflies submarine missiles
and a dying rose bush is what's left of the burgundy.
But again,
it's perspective.
It all sounds familiar, like a story so discrepantly trusted in youth.
As I get older I realize I can learn to see the beauty in such extremes
but this time I'd rather not.
I'd rather take this shitty situation and cry about it.
It's all wrong
and there's nothing I can do.
And in this nonsense
I find myself.
Next to you.
Seeing things not how they are,
but wishing only they were how I want them to be.
I never wanted a house of snow.
Just you.
Please don't go.

My new friend

I bought a cactus a few days ago.

I haven't had much luck keeping flowers alive.

I named her Tinkerbell.

When it snows in Baghdad.

There was an article in the paper the other day that I wish to write about. Only a little though. Basically, I'll just post the article for your reading convenience.

"Baghdad-The flakes melted quickly. But the smiles, wonder and excited story-swapping went on throughout the day: It snowed in Baghdad. The morning flurry Friday was the first in memory in the heart of the Iraqi capital. Perhaps more significant, however, was the rare ripple of delight through a city snarled by army checkpoints, divided by concrete walls and ravaged by sectarian killings.

'For the first time in my life I saw a snow-rain like this falling in Baghdad,' said Mohammed Abdul-Hussein, a 63-year-old retiree from the New Baghdad area.

'When I was young, I heard from my father that such rain had fallen in the early '40s on the outskirts of northern Baghdad,' Abdul-Hussein said, referring to snow as a type of rain. 'But snow falling in Baghdad in such a magnificent scene was beyond my imaginations.'

After weathering nearly five years of war, Baghdad residents thought they'd pretty much seen it all. But as muezzins were calling the faithful to prayer, the people here awoke to something certifiably new.

'I asked my mother, who is 80, whether she'd ever seen snow in Iraq before, and her answer was no,' said Fawzi Karim, a 40-year-old father of five who runs a small restaurant in Hawr Rajab, a village six miles southeast of Baghdad.

'This is so unusual, and I don't know whether or not it's a lesson from God," Karim said. Talib Haider, a 19-year-old college student, said 'a friend of mine called me at 8 a.m. to wake me up and tell me that the sky is raining snow.'

'I rushed quickly to the balcony to see a beautiful scene,' he said. 'I tried to film it with my cell phone camera. This scene has really brought me joy. I called my other friends and the morning turned out to be a very happy one in my life.'

For a couple of hours anyway, a city where mortar shells routinely zoom across the Tigris River to the Green Zone became united as one big White Zone. There were no reports of bloodshed during the snowstorm. The snow showed no favoritism as it dusted neighborhoods Shiite and Sunni alike, faintly falling (with apologies to James Joyce) upon all the living and the dead."

-Christopher Chester

Associated Press

What a universal prospect wonder is; and even more so the things that cause it. It's true that we've all had our breath taken away by beauty, natural beauty. Even our commercialized society encourages serenity in the simple. We decorate our homes and businesses with indoor waterfalls and earth tones. We make cd's dedicated to bringing the sounds of the rain forest or ocean right into our living room. We build huge structures in the middle of natural wonders so that we may look in comfort yet be protected from the elements. We thrive off of the idea that there are things that exist that we did not create. And so what do we do with this dynamic? We recreate it. We domesticate it. We make it in a way that's remakeable and tangible but always knowing full well that really, nothing compares to the original.

Snow. Water falling from the sky on a cold day. Not a new concept. So how can something so easily explained cause such a phenomenon. In the words of Graham Greene "“It was like an armistice with the guns silent on either side: you could imagine the whole world listening to what they had never heard before – peace.”

Peace. It's a nice thought. World peace. It's a good motto, but can we really create it? We say we can. But then we hear statistics of war and dispute and immediately we blame. We blame ignorance and rage, justify our indifference by labeling, and then proceed to pretend that there's nothing we can do. I think this becomes so easily accomplished because we've never quite seen what this whole purpose, peace if you will, looks like. Most of the time we never have enough silence in our own hearts to understand the true tranquility of peace personally. We're always trying to explain away the unknown; we make it logistic and wordy until no one, including ourselves, care anymore. I can remember times when I felt like I had truly experienced peace; moments when I had nothing to say or do, I had no motive or expectations. I just was. But these moments did not present themselves at a round table conversation about politics or theology. They were on mountain tops and seashores; they were times when I stood in the rain and didn't care. Moments when I watched someone reach out to another.

How easily God makes it look. How amazing are these little reminders that none of us are forgotten. Water falling from the sky on a cold day.
Wonder. Peace.

What am I suggesting? Nothing really, (although it would be neat to try a world leadership meeting on the crest of Victoria falls or in the hills of Huang Yao, just to see if it changes the mood) except that peace, void of wonder, is trivial and inconsistent. If we can see wonder in snow, then how could we miss it in each other?

Just like any other day.

"'Hints?'
'Oh, they mean very little in cold print - or cold speech;' he said, shivering in his overcoat. 'And they mean nothing at all to another human being than the man who catches them. They are not scientific evidence - or evidence at all for that matter. Events that don't, somehow, turn out as they were intended - by the human actors, I mean, or by the thing behind the human actors.'...'I am - I really am, God knows - open to conviction.'
-The Hint of an Explanation, (short story) by Graham Greene

This last Sunday was really special. Occasionally at Church on the Street there's a day, that upon experiencing, I know I won't forget. When Debbie, my mom and I arrived at the park it was undoubtedly buried in snow. Because we have such sweet members there were already three guys out shoveling. Everything went smoothly, besides one tussle between our most elderly gentleman and our most mouthy one. I'm assuming the weather was having everyone feel their oats a little. After we were done eating lunch I was able to have a conversation with not only one of my favorite members but also a guy who has been with us from the very beginning. Generally we take communion about every other week and so I had asked this gentleman if he would like to join us. He simply said:
"If only communion could save me."
My fundamentalist, youth group evangelist side began to turn a little in my head, urging me to explain what I thought I knew about salvation and how, if he were smart, he would "make that decision." Good thing love and reality have taught me to shut my mouth. And so we sat on our rain washed pews, drinking lukewarm coffee, neither of us feeling the need to fill the silence. After a few minutes we began talking again. He spoke some of disappointment, of being cold, and how sad he was that faith wasn't enough. Somewhere in between the streets and church outreaches he had been taught that he wasn't good enough. If only he were cleaner. If only his vices weren't so obvious.
I asked him what he was going to do for Christmas.
He said nothing.
That it was just another day.
And suddenly I was jealous.
I was tired of thinking about Christmas.
I was tired of trying to muster up the magical propaganda of this day being more holy than any other; as if devotion at this time of the year meant more. I didn't want to see another nativity scene and I hated the thought of church christmas programs. In my mind I silently burned to the ground all the shopping malls and christian prefixes attached to the holiday.
In America we attribute a lot of worth to empathy. And so I thought, what if this holiday season we became as empathetic as we could to the baby christ?
What if we became weak and vulnerable?
What if we became poor and uncertain of what will happen tomorrow?
Chances are we'd look a lot like the man who saw Christmas as just another day.

I'd be lying if I said my walk of faith has been joyful or even certain. I've been wayward, inconsistent, and irrational and probably a profound stumbling block for many along the way. But everyday I experience these "hints". Hints that cannot be explained by anyone or anything but the spirit that creates them. I've found them to be most predominant in the broken places, in broken people, as if there were anyplace or anyone who existed above these measures.

Yesterday I thought a lot about my friend.
I wondered if he found a warm place and if he perhaps got to open a gift.
I'm not sure he would have cared either way.

And then there's America...

"I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God's way… Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons… I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently." -Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

A good friend of mine sent me this quote earlier in an email. Sometimes I think that I want to be a writer. I think that I really do have something to say; something profound that only I can articulate quite right. And then I read something that actually explains all of my feelings better than I could ever think to.

But seriously. The last few years I've had a rampantly persistent restlessness that, at least in my mind, wouldn't cease until I left everything I've ever known. And so I joined the Peace Corps. I'm so glad I did. I went to Africa and met amazing people and learned about a culture I would have never known about otherwise.

And then I came back to America. And now I'm sitting in a coffee shop studying for test I have to take this afternoon at my new found job: Outback Steakhouse. Outback. So much for integrating back into America slowly. Here, let me serve you cheese fries and a steak. You only have to eat a few bites. Or you can eat it all. Really, it's about choices.

Initially coming back was pretty easy. Although now that I'm somewhat scoping out apartments and thinking about grown up jobs that familiar feeling of flight is prevailing. I like it here. I really do. But I'm anxious and scared of being comfortable. It's been amazing catching up with people but permanence seems so tangible and...well...boring.

Anyways, I work in a few hours so I need to collect myself.

One small change.

So swearing-in happened.

And I should probably mention that I was not a part of it.

Right now I'm sitting in the med unit of Accra waiting to get further information on when my flight leaves.

My flight for America.

Sometimes it still surprises me that I ET-ed. The situation surrounding my decision was not really profound nor was there any one happening that instigated my reasoning.

It's just not for me.

This truly has been one of the hardest decisions of my life. I'm leaving behind some amazing people who have both encouraged and inspired me in ways I didn't think possible. People who sign up for Peace Corps are a different breed. The things that they go through on any given day in this country, and I'm sure any other Peace Corps country for that matter, are things that (and pardon any parents who are reading this...don't worry...your child is safe) could leave the average person unbelieving. They are people of preserverance, passion, and commitment that get little to no recognition and I feel honored to have served even just three months with them.

But they're not why I came to Ghana.
And they can't be the reasons I stay in Ghana.

I've had an absolutely amazing experience and I'd be lying if I said I was completely enthralled with coming back to America. I'm not real sure where I want to be at this point. I have no money...no insurance...no car...but I do have my family and the amazing people at Church on the Street and I do have hope that something, somewhere will feel right.

Maybe I'm running?

It could be true.

But it's my life,
and I'll run from it if I want to.

Right now I have malaria. That was a fun suprise upon arriving in Accra last Tuesday. So I've had a lot of days to contemplate, and re-contemplate recent just events while laying up in the med unit. A very wise woman who I'm sure will be a wonderful volunteer told me right before I left Techiman that no matter what, I should be proud of what I've decided.

And I am.
I know that things are gonna be ok. There are millions of noble causes to devote my life to.
The fun part is finding one that really makes me come alive.

So here I go.

Thank you all so much for all your support. I will continue to update this blog although obviously my link probably won't be "brennainafrica". Maybe you could pray for me as having malaria sucks a lot more than I had imagined. They're going to re-test me again tomorrow and if it comes back negative than I'll probably leave Tuesday.

Hope all is well with you.