A few church on the street bible studies ago I ran into an old aquaintance. I'll call him Jami and he had no legs. He was quite intoxicated and foul mouthed so naturally he fit right in. Just short of a year ago Jami had witnessed a murder and was now being summoned by the courts to testify. He told us there was no way in hell he would actually testify because on the streets that would make him a snitch. And you just don't do that.
I watched Jami talk and I watched the others try and comfort this stumpy, cursing human. Silently, I tried to to picture what he had actually gone through. He held a dying a man, propped up against a dresser, he listened as this man fought for breath until oxygen was no longer enough. He watched him grow still. Jami talked about how this man was a good man, wrong house, wrong time. The man was simply looking for a rock and a prostitute, not his vastly unnoticed death.
Jami swore up and down that this man was good, just fallen on hard times. He also mentioned that his friend, at the present time, was probably burning in hell.
Oh the tales of a drunk man, but that night I believed Jami. I believed him because it made him cry, because somewhere lost inside of this man was a child who wished that people didn't have to die. There was a sober man that recognized the value to life; and a darkness inside of him that led him to believe that he had outgrown love.
I don't want to believe in hell. I think of things in the world, atrocities, genocides, war. I think of women who feel they have to sell themselves and all the men that are killed on the streets. I think of justice and the voidance of justice in the dark places and I wonder,
how life like this could be so different than hell.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Rainy Day
I did not want to run the yellow light
I would have rather sat at the green;
if only for a change.
Prosperity befalls me and I'm suffocated by my own indifference.
Your creativity annoyed me
and yesterday was the first day I was not scared to die.
So many days have passed since I've updated this, I'm not real sure anyone really reads this anymore, I admit they were probably much more exciting while I was in Africa.
Life is good though; everyday is a struggle to find a place, a purpose to cause every
thing to make sense. But what I'm learning is that really, it never will. It's hard learning how to be happy. Realizing that good things can happen without strings attached. That there will always be a mystery to contentment, and that is letting go of knowing everything.
I have to admit, international development work appeals to me still, but I think it's because it is somewhere else than here. It's somewhere I can run that seems nobler, a greater, just cause to work towards. It's simpler to feed a child than to cure domestic abuse. It is easier to build a well than to hold an angry child.
What's hard is taking the yoke I've been given.
What's hard is opening my eyes to the world that's been placed around me.
The lost, the hurting, the hungry, the angry.
What's hard is accepting that I can have joy, that I really can be happy serving this world, instead of trying to create my own in a place that allows me to escape everything I need to heal from on the inside.
It has been trying,
no doubt.
But undeniably freeing.
Let there be craw fish.
I would have rather sat at the green;
if only for a change.
Prosperity befalls me and I'm suffocated by my own indifference.
Your creativity annoyed me
and yesterday was the first day I was not scared to die.
So many days have passed since I've updated this, I'm not real sure anyone really reads this anymore, I admit they were probably much more exciting while I was in Africa.
Life is good though; everyday is a struggle to find a place, a purpose to cause every
thing to make sense. But what I'm learning is that really, it never will. It's hard learning how to be happy. Realizing that good things can happen without strings attached. That there will always be a mystery to contentment, and that is letting go of knowing everything.I have to admit, international development work appeals to me still, but I think it's because it is somewhere else than here. It's somewhere I can run that seems nobler, a greater, just cause to work towards. It's simpler to feed a child than to cure domestic abuse. It is easier to build a well than to hold an angry child.
What's hard is taking the yoke I've been given.
What's hard is opening my eyes to the world that's been placed around me.
The lost, the hurting, the hungry, the angry.
What's hard is accepting that I can have joy, that I really can be happy serving this world, instead of trying to create my own in a place that allows me to escape everything I need to heal from on the inside.
It has been trying,
no doubt.
But undeniably freeing.
Let there be craw fish.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
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
Saturday, March 15, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
My new friend
I bought a cactus a few days ago.
I haven't had much luck keeping flowers alive.
I named her Tinkerbell.
I haven't had much luck keeping flowers alive.
I named her Tinkerbell.
Friday, January 25, 2008
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?
"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?
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