Experiential Living

Hymns

2011-05-05T00:02:00.002-04:00

I used to play the piano. I took lessons for years; I can read all the notes, I'm just very rusty and not very musical about it. On Monday, I was sitting in the empty camp dining hall finishing my dinner when I decided to pick up the hymnal from the coffee table by the fireplace (no idea why it was there to begin with), take it to the piano, and pluck out some hymns. I played through a good number of them, but I got stuck on "What a Friend We Have in Jesus". When I was in 6th grade, I played that hymn on the trumpet (cornet, really) in a church in Mexico and severely butchered it. Regardless of emotional scarring, the hymn has a message that I don't often reflect on.

What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged; take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer.

Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge, take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do your friends despise, forsake you? Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In His arms He’ll take and shield you; you will find a solace there.

Blessed Savior, Thou hast promised Thou wilt all our burdens bear
May we ever, Lord, be bringing all to Thee in earnest prayer.
Soon in glory bright unclouded there will be no need for prayer
Rapture, praise and endless worship will be our sweet portion there.

My friend Ryan's church organized today as a day of prayer and fasting for Ryan and Kendra. Throughout the day, I found myself feeling like my actions were ineffective in the face of Ryan's cancer. How is my compassion supposed to affect change? As Desmond Tutu writes in Made for Goodness, "compassion, which literally means 'suffering with,' may feel like the most futile kind of suffering. It changes nothing. It holds no hope of changing anything." But, Tutu goes on to write what I need to realize, that compassion brings us in proximity to the Father. And, as the hymn says, "Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer."

I have so little control over my life (less control than I think I have), and essentially no control over the lives of others, yet God remains both infinitely powerful AND my friend. Hopefully, as my understanding of those truths deepens, my prayers will become less circumstantial and self-centered and instead begin to echo God's heart for the world.

"Blessed Savior, Thou hast promised Thou wilt all our burdens bear
May we ever, Lord, be bringing all to Thee in earnest prayer."

It's all connected

2011-04-27T23:17:00.002-04:00

Recently, I've been thinking a lot (but probably not enough) about how interconnected life is. That was a seriously vague statement, so here's what I mean: God's command to love Him with everything and to love others should be at the center of all that I do. Here's why this has come up...

My friend Ryan has cancer. I'm far from a scientist and so I have little concrete knowledge of what cancer is and does, but I know this - cells are growing and multiplying rapidly inside of his body and, if allowed to go unchecked, they would kill him. There is death there. Those cells take away life.

I just spent about 8 weeks traveling the world. On that trip, I encountered people and places and religions and customs I had never seen first-hand. While observing people practice their religions (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) I was struck by how their religious behavior was first and foremost an attempt to appease, and was motivated by fear of a god or gods who give or take away life.

I encountered people whose lives were, by my standards, filled with misery - poverty, sickness, oppression, abuse. Who were mistreated by any host of authorities - from parents to the government. I also met people who were daily working to bring them life (one of these people, who is working to bring life to refugee women in Jordan, writes about here experiences here).

And because I'm finishing my trip with a week at home and have lots of time on my hands, I've been working out rather heavily, pushing my body to the point of extensive soreness for the sake of obtaining health - of prolonging and improving life. The discipline of regular exercise, of eating healthily, of regular Bible study and prayer, of simplicity in what I own and generosity in what I give... all of these things bring life (and were taught by Jesus, essentially) and are things that I find SO incredibly difficult. (Ever looked around at how many Christian leaders are obese... how could we as a church make bodily sins like sexual sins such a huge deal and give ourselves a free pass to be as sinful as we want with our physical condition?)

I was reading an article by Scot McKnight that was recommended to me today, and it stated clearly what I'd been dancing around in my thoughts recently. McKnight is writing about how to bring the gospel to this generation of young adults (me!). He is saying it isn't done through rigid teaching of salvation or hell (sign on with us or pay the consequences) and it isn't found in a merely moral examination of Jesus (social justice means buying Tom's shoes and conserving water). Instead, the message of the gospel is that, while death is happening all around us, because of the cross (and only and always only because of the cross) we who claim Christ can both be redeemed (made alive) and work to redeem. He says,

"The life Jesus lived, the life that made his kingdom vision so appealing and so potently penetrating, was the life that ended up on a cross as an atoning sacrifice. The story of Jesus, the only story the church has ever told, is the same story told by Paul, and Peter, and John, and the writer of Hebrews. It is a story of the Incarnate Son of God who sketched a vision of a kingdom that God wants for the earth ("your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven") and who made that kingdom possible by willingly surrendering himself on the cross for others. And it was the life of a body that came back to life on Easter to empower us to new life as the new creation."

(he also says a ton of other really good stuff in that article that is worth a read if you are in any way involved with adolescents/young adults and ministry... which really should be everybody...)

Most of you who read this are probably nodding right along because you've heard this a hundred times before, but here's what's been hitting me and why it's all connected. I can't continue to make decisions based on what's best for me, what makes me comfortable, what feels good, what is safe. Because Jesus "made the kingdom possible by willingly surrendering himself on the cross for others", my top priority is bringing about that kingdom and God's will on earth as it is in heaven. I cannot continue to segment my life, to claim ultimate life from God and not make letting that life transform all areas of me my daily mission.

the USA

2011-04-25T19:10:00.005-04:00

I don't want to brag, but I'm a fantastic orange peeler (well, I actually do want to brag). I'm currently sitting on the green leather sofa in my parents' living room, eating the orange that I just peeled (yes, the peel is in one piece), and trying to recuperate after doing one too many physical activities today (this is what I tend to do when I have ample free time. Today, I went for a run, played softball with my old high school team, and went to a Pilates class with my mom).

My initial trip itinerary did not include this jaunt to the midwest (instead, I cleverly planned to arrive back in Boston on the 21st and then immediately head south for a week, therefore prolonging the return to the cold as long as possible), but when I found out my good friend Ryan was diagnosed with cancer I rerouted through Chicago and opted for 10 days of glorious midwest spring weather (clouds, rain, cold) rather than the measly 70's and sunny I would have experienced in South Carolina (all jokes aside, the decision was totally worth it).

It's ok, I got some good warm and sunny time in Southern California... you can see my pictures from that trip and from my 14 hour lay-over in Bangkok, Thailand here. It was wonderful spending a few days with my brother and sister-in-law. I don't get to see them nearly enough.

It's strange being back in North Muskegon, MI. Running through the neighborhood I saw lots of houses whose inhabitants I once knew. I worked out a little with my former softball team (same coach, but I only knew one of the girls - his daughter) and at one point one of the girls looked at me and went, "who are you?" Ha. Well, small child, I played on this team... 9 years ago. Still, I'm thankful for the down time to readjust to Eastern Standard Time before jumping back in to camp prep with both feet next week.

I'll work on putting some more thoughts about my trip up soon. For now... hope you're happy, Ben... I updated.

India got me

2011-04-12T00:39:00.002-04:00

I made it 2.5 weeks into my time in India before getting sick (something that I was pretty sure was going to happen to me right away - I was under the impression that everyone gets sick in India)... but something I ate this weekend was more alive than intended, and I spent the entirety of yesterday paying some serious consequences for it (and will probably continue to pay for it a bit over the next few days). Thankfully, I'm staying with some fantastic girls who are taking good care of me, and I'm feeling well enough (kept a package of crackers, some juice, AND my antibiotic down today) to head in to the home this afternoon.

This past weekend was my only weekend in Kolkata, so we packed it full of Kolkata experiences - especially Saturday, which began with a 5AM boat ride on the Hooghly River and ended with the sound and light show at the Victoria Memorial. I've gotten to see a lot of the day-to-day life in Kolkata these past two weeks (commuting with Kari through much of the city) but had not seen many of the tourist things up until this point. Check out my photos from the day here.

With only 2 days left in India, I have hopes to spend a little more time with the girls in the home and to visit another program working on transitioning women out of prostitution by training them in textiles. Then, it's on to Bangkok, Thailand for a 16 hr layover and then to LA.

It's incredible to me that this trip is ending. It's been an eye-opening ride.

I have found them...

2011-04-08T04:56:00.003-04:00

I have found the most beautiful people on earth. For the past week, I have been helping out at a home for trafficked girls in Kolkata. They, ladies and gentlemen, are hands down the most beautiful people I have ever met. I wish you could meet them, too.

The girls are learning English, so I've been creating teaching aids and working with the girls on their vocabulary and grammar (helpful that they need to work on their English, because English is of course the only way that I can communicate with them). I made a game of Memory, and have played it almost non-stop for the past 2 days. Definitely a confidence builder - beating young, Bengali-speaking girls in games involving basic English vocabulary.

Right now, I'm sitting next to one of my most frequent visitors. She's a tall, thin, 11-year-old girl with big brown eyes, a winning smile, and an adorable little voice. We're in the middle of making a friendship bracelet together (who knew that all those skills I learned at camp throughout the years would be SO relevant to my life now). She was also my assistant in the creation of Memory (I drew the pictures and wrote the words, she cut them out; I "laminated" the cards with packing tape, she trimmed the edges), too. We're quite the team.

What I can't get over is how incredibly affectionate and joyful these girls are. When I think about the pain they have experienced in their lives, I am in awe of how resilient they are, and saddened by how much they have lost at the hands of others. My friend Sara's response to my brief description of the girls was as profoundly true as any response could be: "Lord Jesus, come quickly!" Experiences like this make me so very thankful for the people who have devoted their lives to bringing justice in the lives of these girls, and even more eager for the complete justice that will come when He returns. As I sit here laughing and playing, I long for a world where these beautiful girls would never face fear and hurt and would always feel the love and the joy that they are experiencing now.

A journey through "God's Own Country" - Kerala and Tamil Nadu, India

2011-04-04T04:08:00.009-04:00

First of all, let me just say that nothing I can say about India will do it justice. I had heard a lot about this place - have a good number of friends that are totally in love with the sub-continent - but really had no idea what to expect upon arriving. In short, it is a sensory feast (almost overload, but not quite). There are people everywhere dressed in colorful clothing walking amidst colorful shops and buildings, flowers and trees, with a background of car horns, engines, voices, birds, and more. Add in the smells of people, foods, and garbage, plus the feeling of heat and humidity, and you have my sensory interpretation of India thus far. I really like it.

I arrived in Kolkata (Calcutta) at 2AM Thurs, March 24. After doing some necessary kurta shopping, meeting Kari's roommates, spending a day at her work, and packing, we left Saturday EARLY morning to fly to Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, the most southwestern state of India. We stayed the first day with the parents of a Kolkata friend. We were overfed, given necessary trip advice, and shown around the capital. Additionally, we got to visit a home for men with mental and physical disabilities. While patient care was not up to US standards by any means, the almost 80 men in the home were so incredibly joyful and caring to one another. They sang us songs, we sang them songs and gave them candy, and then we spend an hour or so attempting to communicate and laughing a lot with the men.

The next day, after another very large breakfast, we piled in an auto rickshaw (the transportation method of choice for the trip - made a bit more exciting by packing 4-5 people with luggage into the back seat) and then jumped on a train to Varkala, a beach town situated on a cliff overlooking the Malabar coast of the Indian Ocean. For two days we ate Keralan food, wandered through shops, and relaxed on the beach (plus, played lots of Scrabble, Scrabble related games).

After Varkala, we took a 2-hour car ride to Keralan Backwaters, where we enjoyed an afternoon houseboat ride.

A rainsoaked bus ride landed us in Kochi, where we spent the next day wandering around the city and eating good food (again... I hope you recognize this trend). We got an auto rickshaw tour from a friendly guy named Sunny, hung out at the water and helped some pirates operate their Chinese fishing net (definitely pirates because they were consuming significant quantities of rum...), and watched the first half of the India-Pakistan World Cup cricket match before taking an auto first to the wrong train station and then to the right one and boarding an overnight train for Chennai.

We arrived in Chennai at 7 AM and headed to the Chennai office of IJM (International Justice Mission), where some very hospitable interns got us settled in and fed before we joined them for devotions at the office. If you don't know about IJM, check out the ministry here. We spent the rest of the day wandering around Chennai and catching up on some rest before taking another train - this time a 6:30 AM train - to Pondicherry, a French colony on the coast of Tamil Nadu (on the Bay of Bengal).

My interest in Pondicherry came primarily from teaching the novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, which begins in Pondicherry. If you haven't read it, do it. I love it. After checking into our $10 guest house (that's right - 4 people for $10), we set off on an ambitious day's itinerary: meander, eat lunch, meander, cafe, meander, cafe, meander, dinner, meander, dessert, meander, bed.

The french influence was especially apparent in the names of restaurants and cafes. We had lunch at Le Club, went to Le Cafe for chilled coffee drinks on the beach, and ended up at Rendezvous for dinner. When not eating or drinking caffeine, we saw some beautiful european-influenced architecture, lots of pretty flowers, and some interesting animals (including an elephant that gives blessings).

An added bonus was the martial arts performance we stumbled upon. Nothing quite as entertaining as small children wielding large sticks, ribbons, and fire.

On Saturday morning, we hopped on a bus to Ideal Beach, a resort south of Chennai. Look at the picture and judge for yourself:

And Saturday night we got to witness India winning the Cricket World Cup and the celebrations that ensued. Go, India! (I don't have footage of the celebrations, but hopefully I will get some photos from John, a fellow traveler).

We ended our trip with church on Sunday and a trip to Marina Beach, where apparently all the native Chennians (I made that up) hang out on Sunday afternoons. It was a very cool sight.

Now it's time to explore Kolkata, something I'm quite eager to do. Only 17 days left on this adventure... that's VERY hard to believe!

INDIA!!!

2011-03-29T12:32:00.003-04:00

So, I'm in India, and currently we're on a southern India extravaganza.... spending a week in the beautiful state of Kerela and visiting Chennai. I don't have much internet access or time this week to post, but my travel companion John has various technologies at his disposal and will be updating his very cool blog. Check it out!

The Desert

2011-03-22T10:52:00.012-04:00

Sorry for my extended blogging absence. I leave for India tonight and so the last 6 days have been packed full of sight-seeing, trying to fulfill my goal of seeing everything there is to see in the country of Jordan. Additional apologies that this will be kind of a highlight reel from me... I've fallen behind and I just can't catch up.

Most of those sights were desert sights (not surprising considering that Jordan is almost completely desert). On Thursday, I borrowed Margie's car again and did a tour of 4 desert castles in the desert east of Amman. It was good to set out on a little adventure on my own - to try to navigate in a foreign land and find castles hidden amidst miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers) of sand. I understand civilizations that form along large waterways with fertile soil, etc., but these peoples who lived their lives and established civilization among the sand and shrub of the desert are baffling to me.

This is where Lawrence of Arabia lived during the Arab Revolt:

Everywhere I go, I find evidence that the Romans were there first. This is part of a Byzantine church:

Then, on Saturday morning Margie and I packed up and headed south to Wadi Rum to camp with the Bedouin for a night. We arrived early in the afternoon with the intent of spending some quality time reading and reflecting in the desert. Wadi Rum is filled with huge rock formations that are ideal for climbing and sitting on. It is definitely one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

We also got to watch the sunset, moonrise, and sunrise. One of my very favorite things to do is watch the sunset and sunrise!

Then, on Sunday we were off to Petra. Petra was ideal for me because it combines two of my all-time favorite things: history and hiking. We wandered past the main sights and up to the highest peaks we could find. It was a gorgeous day.

Then, Monday we capped off my tour of Jordan with a day at the Dead Sea. Another picturesque day.

Thank you, Margie, for letting me come visit you and showing me all Jordan has to offer!

Mt. Nebo and beautiful people

2011-03-16T06:15:00.003-04:00

Last night was the second time we visited Margie's former next door neighbors. They're a beautiful Egyptian family, Heron and Hannah are in their early 30's/late 20's respectively and they have 3 children, Stephen is 9, James is 6, and baby Margie (named after Margie) is 1.5. They are so loving and so generous. They feed us shawarma and pepsi until we cannot possibly put another bite into our mouths (especially last night when it was liver instead of the usual lamb), then we play card games (I can now play an entire game of Uno in Arabic) and teach each other Arabic/English, then they of course serve us tea. Last night Stephen sat next to me and practiced his English. He's painfully shy and afraid of making mistakes (particularly when his father is around), but he talked about liking basketball and football (soccer) and studying math in school. Then he taught me how to respond when people ask me how I am. James is a clown and apparently he just learned how to ask "what is your name?" in English. After finally figuring out that, "Amy, whasooreem" meant "Amy, what is your name?", I answered. Hilarious. He then proceeded to ask about 10 more times in the same way, "Amy, what is your name?" Uh... James, apparently you already know my name! Hannah insisted that I should stay in Jordan and learn Arabic. With beautiful people like this around, the prospect is appealing (especially because I just got my financial aid statement from Columbia - the numbers on those loans are SO big!).

Yesterday was my first time venturing out alone here. Two of Margie's friends had been traveling around with me before they left for the US, but they left on Monday night and so I am now on my own (until Friday - not that long, really). I decided to be a bit adventurous and borrow Margie's car for an out-of-Amman trip to Madaba, a city with impressive and famous mosaics, and Mt. Nebo, the mountain where God showed Moses the Promised Land and then Moses subsequently died. I got decently lost on the way there and on the way back (the way back was a bit of an adventure - Amman is NOT easy to navigate and I got detoured into who-knows-where. Thankfully, I know the downtown area and how to get to Margie's from there, so I followed every sign I could find pointing to "City Center" - labeled in English, mercifully - and ended up in the balad, the street market downtown), but I made it and had a good day touring around on my own. Madaba was interesting but not awe inspiring, but Mt. Nebo was very impressive. The mountain itself has a monastery and church on top and is quite the tourist location... I paid 1 JD, walked through for 10 mins, then headed down the road about 100 yards to a taller, empty hillside with better views of the Holy Land... the entire thing. At the bottom of the hill, I ran into an enthusiastic German man and another, much rougher looking man. The German asked me to take his picture with this other man and then proceeded to explain that the other guy is a Frenchman who walked here from France. A real-life pilgrim! He told me he began his journey on August 1. Incredible! As I headed up the hill, the German shouted after me that I was headed to a site much holier than the one across the road. The other is for tourists, this is for meditation. Good point, Mr. German.

The mosaic of the Holy Land in St. Gregory's Church, Madaba:

A statue of Moses carved to commemorate the Pope's visit:

The "real" Mt. Nebo from the more impressive hilltop across the road:

At the top, I could see the Jordan River valley from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea and the mountains beyond. I could also look back at the "real" Mt. Nebo and see the tourist buses lined up in the parking lot and the clusters of camera-clad people milling about on the paved paths and looking at the sculpted monuments to Moses and the Pope (who visited in 2000). It all got me thinking about the way we do spiritual journeys - either by consuming them, checking them off, and moving on like the people on the Holy Land Tour buses with their matching hats and fanny packs; or by slowly plodding our way through, being in the experience, taking the time (8 months!) to let the journey shape us, challenge us, strip us down to the essentials (his pack was 50 lbs... he walked for 8 months with a 50 lb pack!), and leave us with experiences rather than mere visual memories. I am seeing the sites much like the fanny-pack clad masses in their bug-eyed tour buses - although I crave the ability to hike through, to strip down and slow down and simplify so I can hear God (I have some desert-filled days ahead of me - desert castles tomorrow; Wadi Rum, Petra, and the Dead Sea this weekend. Margie and I have talked about trying to make it a bit of a retreat - we'll see what we can do).

The Holy Land (see the Sea of Galilee?):

The Jordan River Valley with the Dead Sea to the left (out of the picture):

This morning I found this in the NYTimes. That would be incredible! Let's do it! But then again, we can't because we have this gosh darn God-given call to love his people, and that doesn't happen in the isolation of rural Texas.

I want to learn to live my life like the French pilgrim. To move at a slow pace and to put myself fully into what is occurring at the moment. I want to walk through life and to find people to walk with me. I want to love other people where they are more than I love myself and my accomplishments. I want to make my life about God and about his people and not about me... but I'm so incredibly bad at that.

Deserts and silence and abandoning control

2011-03-14T10:36:00.001-04:00

I'm writing this from an outdoor cafe across the street from Margie's apartment. It's a marble courtyard, surrounded by walls on 2 sides, a blue-roofed awning and cream concrete building on another, and open to views of Amman through trees on the fourth. In the middle there's a small octagonal fountain bubbling away and as I write this the call to prayer is echoing off of the concrete buildings and hills of the city. The call to prayer is beautiful. I've never been in a Muslim culture before, never experienced the sing-song message to stop what I'm doing and pray. This, paired with the minarets that dot the skyline and the hijab worn by the women, is an ever-present reminder that this society is dominated by religion.

From the outside, Islam strikes me as a religion of fear and shame. As a woman, I shouldn't make eye-contact with men on the street (most Muslim women aren't even seen on the streets - aside from going to the markets, they stay home. Men pray in mosques, sit on benches and talk, man shops, drive taxis, smoke sheesha; while women pray at home, cook, clean, and hide). I wear pants and long sleeves and keep my eyes down while men stare and sometimes comment (although much less than on the streets of my neighborhood in Boston).

So many things are forbidden for both men and women - it saddens me to think of a god that is so exacting and merciless that so much time and thought is spent in fear of breaking the rules (yet breaking them anyway - by consuming alcohol, even). A girl that I met through Margie just wrote a blog post about middle eastern men and their power over women - how much of what they do is to control.

Pair all of this with a book Margie gave me to read about desert spirituality - the idea that we find God in the treacherous landscapes of our lives, whether literal or figurative. These places are ones that we cannot control, that bring us to the awareness of our own vast emptiness and God's immense and inaccessible nature. The author, Belden C. Lane, writes, "The dainty and delicate will not thrive well in mountain-desert terrain. A life that is too comfortable or too safe will avoid such landscapes at all cost. Wild landscapes are uncompanionable to the qualmish, to those compulsively anxious to please. They disclaim the false niceties of home, the small lies and pretenses by which an entire life can sometimes be shaped... there the fragile ego loses its props and supporting lines." To me, this spirituality is in direct opposition to the fear and control based faith I see as I wander through Amman and to the comfort and affirmation craving religion we know in America. It's a faith that comes from abandoning every attempt to shape, guide, create, control, describe, and instead silently surrendering.

Lane also says, "words are the fig leaves we continually grasp for in an attempt to clothe our nakedness." We justify, we describe, we rationalize, we talk - we don't listen, we don't surrender our right to shape the situation or control toe outcome and choose to instead sit in silence. Sam Keen writes, "if we cannot name it, we canot control it. Naming gives us power. Hence, silence is impotence, the surrender of control. Control is power, power is safety."

Last night, Margie and I met up with a girl who is traveling through Jordan on a religious press tour. She is Quaker and talked extensively of her interest in peace efforts, of her travels, of her previous teaching experience, and of her dreams of doing big things in the Middle East. She seemed smart, capable, passionate, and driven. Nothing I'm writing here is an attempt to belittle her or her work. I did leave the conversation feeling a bit frustrated, though. So much of it on my part and on hers felt like an attempt to validate ourselves based on what we have done. Because I've been here, I know this; because I've done that, I can tell you this. Being the one who tells you the story gives me the power to shape what you know, how you see me, what I am worth.

When we have abandoned ourselves in God, we are able to throw ourselves without caution into the love of other people simply because we have lost ourselves, our ego, in our love of God and therefore of His people. Lane concludes, "a love that works for justice is wholly uncalculating and indifferent, able to accomplish much because it seeks nothing for itself."

This is convicting stuff when I think of it in the context of relationship with others - how I engage in the work that God has for me to do in the world. What would my relationships look like if I abandoned my attempts to use my words to shape my interactions, others' perceptions of me, to argue my value or to lobby my right to be heard? What if I instead listened to God in silence and for God in the words of others and in return responded humbly to the truth that I hear?

Wadi Bin Hammad and meeting Margie's friends

2011-03-13T04:02:00.008-04:00

Yesterday we set out to hike Wadi Bin Hammad - a river valley in the desert just north of Kerak. It was the first sunny day in a while, and the warmer weather (thanks in part to being in the desert near the lowest place on earth) paired with the beautiful scenery made for a fantastic day trip. As those of you who know me are aware, I'm a big fan of hiking. It was fun for the opportunity to hike down - into the wadi and toward the Dead Sea - for a change.

The road in was steep and winding. We began our hike at 60 K below sea level, which meant Margie's little Toyota Yaris had to bring us down some intimidating grades (with no guardrails. Guardrails are too wimpy for Jordanians, apparently).

After negotiating a bit with the manager of the hotsprings (who will play a part later), we began our hike down the wadi.

Soon, the wadi walls began to overhang us and create an impressive canyon and at times a full cave.

It's hard to see, but there's a ladder in the shadows of the last picture - this is the part where the manager (Abdulla) up top comes into play. We found ourselves on top of about a 10ft waterfall with no good way to get around it (apparently, in dryer seasons you can climb down the waterfall - which is more of a trickle then). While my new friend Nate attempted to fashion a rope out of webbing he had brought (well done, Nate, way to think ahead), Abdulla came hiking up behind us and offered to help us out. For a small fee and a promise of joining him for tea at his farm down the wadi, he took Nate back upstream a bit and then both returned carrying an impressively sturdy and large ladder. Problem solved. We continued down the wadi a ways, stopped for lunch where it opened up into a wider valley, and then joined Abdulla for tea at his lemon farm on a small plateau above the river (his only means of transporting his crop are his two donkeys; the only road - the wadi).

For more pictures, click here.

After hiking out and driving home, we showered, ate a small and unnecessary dinner, and headed to Margie's old apartment to visit her former neighbors, a beautiful Egyptian couple with three young children (9, 6, 1). They fed us a large quantity of delicious shawarma (thus making our earlier dinner unnecessary). After, we played Uno and folded various paper animals, planes, cootie catchers, etc. while Haron (the father) attempted to teach me lots of Arabic (apparently, he told Margie he would speak to me only in Arabic so I would learn). It was so fun and thankfully we get to go back on Tuesday for another visit.

Today, Amy, Nate, and I are headed to the citadel - more Roman ruins, although these are in Amman. I'm thankful for sunshine and slightly warmer weather. It is supposed to get up into the 70s this week!

Weekends are for touring Jordan - Jerash and Ajloun

2011-03-13T03:25:00.006-04:00

My gracious host, Margie, has Fridays and Saturdays off (that's the weekend here, although I'm learning that some places, schools primarily, have split weekends - Friday and Sunday. I'm sure I would hate that) and so we were able to spend the past two days exploring areas outside of Amman.

Friday we drove north a ways to see the ancient Roman ruins at Jerash. Once an important city in the Decapolis, what remains of Gerasa (Jerash) is incredibly well preserved (especially considering the few restrictions they place on tourists wandering the site). For reference on the following map, Amman was once called Philadelphia.
source

As a bit of a history nerd, I enjoyed learning about the various buildings and their uses from my friend, Lonely Planet (although I think my friends got a little bored with my information). Yet, the site is worth wandering even without a guidebook (gasp). This is the only season of the year in which Jordan is green, and the green hills with sheep and goats grazing amidst yellow and purple wildflowers make a beautiful backdrop for massive marble columns.

After wandering for several hours, we loaded back up and drove west another 45 minutes to Ajloun Castle, a 12th century castle built to protect the country against crusader attacks. Although the day was overcast and rainy so our view was obstructed, we're told on a clear day you can see Israel, Lebanon, and Syria from the top.

We decided to wrap up a long day of walking in the cold with homemade chai and brownies and an episode of Glee.

It is surreal to be in this part of the world after having studied/taught/read/heard about it for so long. This is the first time I've ventured outside of the western world. Yet, I've heard stories about the terrain and the people here my entire life. My identity was shaped by events that happened approximately 45 miles away from here (the distance between Amman and Jerusalem, although it takes almost a full day to get there because of the border crossing). This is one small world.

Ash Wednesday

2011-03-09T03:15:00.003-05:00

Growing up almost-Baptist, Lent did not become a significant (or even noticeable) part of my religious experience until college. My experience was much like that of Ted Olsen, a Christianity Today author who writes, "'What did you give up for Lent?' I had grown up in Baptist and other conservative evangelical churches, so my friend's question held no meaning. I figured it was like a second chance at a New Year's Resolution for those who had already abandoned theirs."

These days, my view of Lent is shaped greatly by the ways that I see myself and humanity around me struggling to consume, to desperately hold on to, what we believe will bring us happiness and preserve our lives. Yet it is only through rejecting these fearful indulgences (as relationship with God draws our attention to their selfish root), through relinquishing our pathetic attempts to control and placing our well-being fully in the hands of God that we can get over ourselves, love our God for who he is and how he alone provides rather than for how he makes us happy, and therefore love his world. Although we as humans are constantly deteriorating (ashes to ashes, dust to dust), God is faithfully bringing new life and transformation. Henri Nouwen writes, "The season of Lent, during which winter and spring struggle with each other for dominance, helps us in a special way to cry out for God's mercy. For forty contemplative days, the season of Lent calls us to the wakeful awareness that we are human, we are dust, and we are falling short, but that there is a story reaching beyond our lifetimes, our deaths, and our shortcomings, speaking new life where death stings and tears flow."

What is beautiful about Lent is that it is a time for the community, the body, to together focus on self-denial as a means of better understanding grace. My faith, my salvation is not about me as an individual, it is about us as God's people, and as God's people, we are being restored.

In his poem, "Ash Wednesday", TS Eliot depicts our fruitless ineptitude and the power of God to sustain and save (my apologies for butchering the poem by only including stanzas 1,3, and 6).

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

...

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth driveling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

...

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

So even if you are not a regular adherent to Lenten practices, I encourage you to take time over the next 40 days to reflect on this often-neglected aspect of Western Christianity - self-denial and fasting as a means of expressing our submission to God. Look for real ways in these next 40 days to express your submission to God's greater will.

Settling in in Amman

2011-03-08T02:40:00.004-05:00

Because Margie is working these next two weeks, my days here are mostly my own... well, sort of. One of Margie's friends (Amy) is leaving Jordan next week and so has planned a week full of sight-seeing (things she wants to do one more time). This is incredibly convenient for me, so I'm tagging along for all of it.

Yesterday we met Margie for Iraqi shawarma at a restaurant near her work. It's official - I really love middle eastern food. Then, my new friends (Amy and friend Nate) and I ventured out to King Hussein park to walk around and try to find what signs called the "Islamic Village" and the "Cultural Village". The cultural village ended up being a bit of a promenade with mosaics and other art pieces commemorating important artifacts and events in Jordan's history. A fun little history lesson in a picturesque location.

The view of Amman from the park

A mosaic of King Hussein next to a sculpture (of sorts) depicting important places in the Holy Land

After the park, I met up with Margie to go running, then we ended our evening with a game of Settlers of Catan in a local cafe. Margie ALWAYS wins.

After a lazy morning, I'm headed out with Amy and Nate for some food, ice cream, and souvenir shopping in downtown Amman. Then, I think tonight is Jazz Night for the ladies of this apartment. It's a good life.

The Dead2Red and Aqaba

2011-03-06T04:55:00.007-05:00

My freshman year of college I read the novel Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino. That was 8 years ago, but the prose has stuck with me and colors the way I look at and travel through new places. Here is an excerpt...

Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwlks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask "Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?" the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long bruses up and down, as they answer "So that it's destruction cannot begin." And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, "Not only the city."

If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone puts his eye to a crack in a fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams. "What meaning does your construction have?" he asks. "What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?"

"We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now," they answer.

Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.

The seniors at BTA read this novel and most hate it, so maybe it's an acquired taste, but I love the way that Calvino describes these "cities" - the way they appear is affected by the way that they are built which is affected by the lives and dreams of the people inside.

All of that is an introduction to this - I spent the past 3 days traveling from Amman to Aqaba, a Jordanian city on the Red Sea, by way of a 24 hour ultra marathon relay race called the Dead2Red. (If you want a beautiful description of the race, check this out... it's the blog of Julia, a runner on Margie's team who is also a very talented writer.) The the race began at the Dead Sea and followed a highway along the Jordanian-Israeli border 150 miles to the Red Sea. The slow pace (approx 10 K/hour) allowed me to see much of Jordan's landscape.

Jordan is small and sparsely populated - approximately 6.4 million people live within the 35.6 thousand square mile area (in comparison, NYC has 8.4 million people living within a 468.9 square mile area). South of Amman (and the route of the race) lies expansive desert with sparse cities and Bedouin villages. The landscape is really beautiful, and although riding in a van for 24 hours to get to Aqaba would not be my first choice of transportation in the future, the experience was a good one and at least the surroundings were impressive! Plus, I really enjoyed getting to know the girls on the team a bit and learning more about life for 20-somethings women living in Jordan.

The Dead Sea

Sunset over the Dead Sea (and Israel on the other side)

Sunrise in the desert

A Bedouin goatherd and his flock

The team

The race brought us to Aqaba, the Red Sea, and the Movenpick - a fancy resort with the most comfortable beds, fluffiest pillows, best food, and prettiest beach a girl could hope for. Plus, we spent some time wandering the street markets, getting pedicures, and walking along the seaside boardwalk before taking a 4 hour bus ride back to Amman.

Today (Sunday), Margie is back to work (weekends are Friday-Saturday in the Arab world) and I am taking a day to study up on Jordan and what I want to do while I'm here. Plus, it's nice to have a lazy day after a packed week of travel and adventure.

Istanbul!

2011-03-06T03:00:00.006-05:00

It's hard to believe it's been just about a week since I left cold, snowy NH for my round-the-world adventure. In the past week I've been in 4 countries (US, Germany, Turkey, and Jordan) and seen 5 seas (Black, Marmara, Mediterranean, Dead, and Red). On the plane into Jordan on Wednesday, I had a bit of a Samwise Gamgee moment. When leaving the Shire with Frodo in the first book, Sam suddenly stops walking. When Frodo asks him why, Sam replies that his next step will take him further from home than he has ever been. While this isn't true distance-wise (my trip to Australia the summer after my freshman year of high school wins that prize), this is the longest, most in-depth trip I've ever done on my own and my first time exploring parts of the continent of Asia, the Arab world, etc.

So, I suppose you want to hear a little something about my trip thus far. I'll start with Istanbul.

Despite the cold, clouds, and little bit of rain, Istanbul was an impressively beautiful city. I've been fascinated with this city for years - the heart of the Byzantine and then Ottoman Empires, a city that spans two continents and integrates both European and Arab culture, that mixes a strong orthodox tradition with an almost completely Muslim population, etc. My co-worker Peter and his family just moved back to the states from Istanbul, so he gave me excellent advice on how to spend our short time in the city, and we were able to see a lot of the sites in a very short time.

The mosques:

This was my first time in a mosque! The historic mosques in Istanbul are strikingly beautiful. The impressive domes and minarets on the outside paired with the colorful geometric patterns covering the immense ceilings on the inside makes them some of the most stunning buildings I have ever seen. They're really breathtaking. The most beautiful (to me) is the Blue Mosque or Sultanahmet Camii, which is filled with blue patterned tiles from Iznik (what was Nicaea).

Inside the mosques, visitors (and women who come to pray) cannot go much beyond the rear entrance, so it was difficult to capture the immensity and beauty on camera, but hopefully you get the idea.

Margie and I spent most of Tuesday on a ferry boat to the Black Sea and back. Istanbul surrounds the Bosphorus, the water border separating the European side from the Asian side, and it's 13 million people are spread along the banks. The cruise gave us a chance to see much of the city and to drink lots of Turkish tea to keep warm on the chilly ship deck. Two bridges span the Bosphorus, but many commuters take ferry boats from the Asian side to the European side and visa versa.

In reality, my favorite part about traveling and cities is wandering the streets. Margie and my wandering brought us to the Grand Bazaar (a labyrinth of vendors selling everything from Nike shoes to gold jewelry to ceramics to stuffed Sponge Bobs) and the Spice Bazaar (Turkish Delight, anyone?), down Istaklal Caddesi (the Newbury Street (Boston) of Istanbul with shops and restaurants and lots of people) to tiny restaurants and expansive baklava shops, past vendors selling bagels and roasted chestnuts, and along historic streets as the call to prayer resounded from the minarets towering above our heads.

One of the motivating factors to actually book this crazy trip was a conversation I had with Mary Beth, the director of the girls' camp where I am working, about how international travel changes our lives. When we venture outside of our homeland and culture we are exposed to ways of living different from our own and are forced to set aside our own egocentric routines in order to take in the lives of others. When we travel, we see a bigger God - one who loves these other people just as much as he loves my people. It's beautiful.

Already in Jordan

2011-03-02T16:50:00.002-05:00

The Istanbul trip was a quick one, but wonderful. I had grand plans of updating this blog last night, but apparently blogspot is blocked in Istanbul (or at least in our hotel). No time tonight... much to do in preparation for the Dead2Red Run tomorrow - a marathon relay race from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea (I'm not participating... I'm driving a support vehicle). After, we'll spend the weekend (Friday-Saturday) in Aqaba.

Anyway, here is a link to my facebook photos and I promise a good update when we return to Amman.

Today's the day

2011-02-27T09:30:00.002-05:00

My flight leaves at 7:40 pm. Departure day has finally arrived (hopefully... currently it's snowing pretty hard and we haven't been plowed out).

Amidst the packing and wrapping things up, Rachel and I went snowshoeing yesterday for one final winter-hurrah. Camp got another foot or so of snow on Friday, so the going was a little slow, but very fun. I think we spent most of our time on the ground instead of moving forward. Here is some photo evidence for you:

Books, books, books

2011-02-24T14:12:00.003-05:00

This is not a travel related post. This is more of a wrapping up the past 6 months.

I'm a reader. I have always been a reader (correction: I became a reader at a young age, after I got my first pair of glasses, prior to that I hated reading). This fall, I've read more books than usual, and I thought I'd pass some recommendations on to you (whoever you are).

In the interesting, social science/adolescent section:
- A Return to Modesty, Wendy Shalit: interesting argument for modesty given from a secular perspective. I had not contemplated modesty from a non-spiritual perspective.
- The Price of Privilege, Madeline Levine: a book written for parents about how affluence can negatively affect the development of adolescents and what we should do about it.
- Soul Searching, Christian Smith: a sociological study on adolescents and religion. Packed with research and data and with some very helpful conclusions.

In the spiritual formation section:
- The Radical Disciple, John Stott: it's his last written work, and outlines 8 often neglected aspects of discipleship. I recommend it because it is very simple yet packed with scriptural support and real-life examples.
- Crazy Love, Francis Chan: I had read it before, so it's kind of cheating to put it here, but his direct writing was an excellent resource for my curriculum.
Wide Awake, Erwin McMannus: a great book about god-given dreams (like, the purpose/calling type) from the pastor of Mosaic in LA.
- Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places and Eat This Book, Eugene Peterson: Peterson unpacks scripture and its relation to our everyday lives in a deep yet very practical way. Christ Plays... is the most life-changing book I have read in a long time.
- Ragamuffin Gospel and Abba's Child, Brennan Manning: I had never really gotten into Brennan Manning much, but in the past 2 years I have returned to him several times. He and I differ in how we see the world (I think) and so it has been great for me to learn from his perspective.

In the random section:
- The Unlikely Disciple, Kevin Roose: I just finished this book by a Brown student who spent a "semester abroad" at Liberty University. I really liked it. He gave a very fair portrayal of conservative Christianity. It wasn't what I was expecting when I picked it up.

I'm sure I'm missing some here, but this is a good start, I think.

Wrapping up and getting ready

2011-02-22T11:31:00.006-05:00

One week from today I will be hanging out in Istanbul, Turkey with Margie Davis. It still doesn't feel quite real, but it is. This week involves a substantial amount of packing and planning with some work mixed in. 5 days to takeoff.

This weekend I went to New Jersey to celebrate my Grandma Raws's 85th birthday. She's quite the woman, and in her 60+ years of service at America's Keswick (an addiction recovery and conference center in Whiting, NJ), she has known, loved, and served a huge number of people. It was fun to see people come and celebrate with her (100+ people) at her party on Sunday and to spend some quality time with the family before I head overseas. Here are some highlight pics from the weekend:

My grandma and her four daughters

A sampling of some of my grandmother's handiwork. She sews, knits, quilts, weaves baskets, canes chairs, and more.

My cousin Melia with her nephew Amos. I really love spending time with my cousins and my cousins' kids.

Now, to figure out what and how to pack for this upcoming adventure. Yikes!

17 days

2011-02-10T09:09:00.003-05:00

I leave for my Round the World trip in 17 days... 2.5 weeks. As my project here winds up (I think, finally), and the details start falling in place, I am increasingly excited about it all. I'm finding it difficult to focus my mind on the details of here instead of the details of there.

Yet, I'm also realizing how much there is here. This is the first winter that I can remember actually loving. It's gorgeous here. The frozen mountains, woods, and lake make for excellent snowshoeing scenery and unlike the winters in Michigan, it's actually sunny here a fair amount of the time.

(a picture I took on my most recent snowshoeing excursion)

Recently, I've been writing about spiritual disciplines in the leadership curriculum I'm creating. Yesterday, I was writing about praise and worship and specifically how we can be more active in praising God for all that is around us. In all that's going on in my life these days, I've been feeling pretty too-good-to-be-true blessed.

The next two weeks will be filled with Boston and NJ and hanging out with people who I haven't seen or won't see for a while. Another way in which I am so incredibly blessed.

Solitude

2011-01-18T18:01:00.003-05:00

This is an excerpt from the curriculum I'm working on... a piece that I worked on today and that is very relevant to how I am growing.

Most of us do not naturally enjoy solitude or silence. When left on our own, we often complain of being bored; when a moment is silent, we call it awkward. We fill our car rides, bus rides, and walks with music and we often say things we do not mean just to fill the silence. Ultimately, we dislike solitude and silence because they make us feel alone. Richard Foster writes,
Our fear of being alone drives us to noise and crowds. We keep up a constant stream of words even if they are inane. We buy radios that strap to our wrist or fit over our ears so that if no one else is around at least we are not condemned to silence. T.S. Eliot analyzed our culture so well when he wrote, “Where shall the world be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.”
But loneliness or clatter are not our only alternatives. We can cultivate an inner solitude and silence that sets us free from loneliness and fear. Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment. Solitude is not first a place but a state of mind and heart.
According to Foster and Eliot, both empty loneliness and empty noise are detrimental to our well-being. We will only find fulfillment when we can find solitude in our hearts, and we do that by resting in the confidence that we are never alone: solitude brings us to God. Foster goes on to say,
One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. If we are silent who will take control? God will take control; but we will never let Him take control until we trust Him. Silence is intimately related to trust.
When we trust that God is in control of our relationships, we are able to rest silently in that confidence rather than to fill our time with self-seeking, insecure talk. To be disciplined in solitude and silence does not mean to always be quiet and alone. Instead, it means to speak in community when it is right and God-honoring rather than when we feel we need assurance, and to seek quiet solitude when we want to be with God rather than when we are afraid of being with people. The German theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer writes,
Let him who cannot be alone beware of community… Let him who is not in community beware of being alone… Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.
Like the other spiritual disciplines, practicing solitude and silence both deepens our relationship with God and humbles us. We learn again that the purpose of our lives is not our own interests, that we are futile to provide for ourselves, and when we do we grow in the confidence that God is all that we need.

(excerpts from The Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster)

Blessed, again.

2011-01-17T17:25:00.004-05:00

I have written before about how blessed I am in my life. It's really true. Not only has God given me great friendships that have continued through my most recent move, but he has also blessed me with new friendships that are both fun and challenging. One of the biggest blessings of the past 6 months has been my growing friendship with Craig and Michelle Boronow. Craig is the director of Moose River Outpost and so was my boss during my summers in Maine. Because of that, I knew the Boronows a little... but this fall/winter I have gotten to know them a lot, and I have been blessed immensely by their friendship.

Today, we hiked Mt. Major, a small mountain about 20 mins away from camp. It was a gorgeous, clear, cold, sunny day and the hike was wonderful.

Craig!

The Boronow Duo (I tried to think of a catchy title, something that used alliteration, but I failed)

Michelle!

A lot can change in a week

2011-01-16T23:02:00.002-05:00

I'm resurrecting the blog in anticipation of big things to come (and in recognition of the fact that I should have been writing all along). "What big things?" you might ask. Well, last week was a big one in terms of lining up my future.

On Tuesday, I booked a Round the World ticket with the intent of visiting my good friends Margie and Kari, and my bro and sis-in law Eric and Kathy. While stops are subject to change (mostly to addition), the basic stops include: Istanbul, Amman, Kolkata, Singapore, and Los Angeles. I'm leaving March 1 and will return mid-late April. Obviously, I'll need a travel blog for that endeavor.

On Thursday, I was accepted into the Sociology and Education program at Columbia University's Teacher's College. On Friday I paid my deposit to begin in the fall (if finances, etc. line up). This is huge and a little unexpected (I was sure by this point that I was not going to get in). This means that all my talk of going to grad school actually has a chance of panning out, which is at the same time both exciting and terrifying.

When updating a friend on my life this weekend, I had to laugh. I spent the months of July-Mid January waiting, hoping, praying, wondering, worrying, unsure, etc. about my future plans and in that time nothing changed; I was as unsure of my future on Jan 1 as I was on July 1. Then, in one week, a Round the World trip and grad school became reality. It's overwhelming, really.

I also explained to this friend how when I found out I was accepted to Columbia, I felt guilty. For some reason, so far in my life I have gotten everything I have wanted. I in no way deserve the unbelievable blessings God has given. I felt guilty because so many people I know are struggling to find jobs, figure out their futures, have something work out for them, and here I am getting what I want. I am in no way more deserving than my struggling peers (and in many ways less) and yet here I am in my charmed life.

I'll write more soon (including about snowshoeing and other such winter fun), but for now, if you pray for me, pray that my upcoming pursuits will bring me deeper in relationship with and reliance on God - that focusing on Him and his grace will keep all this in perspective for me.

Farewell, iPhone.

2010-11-08T10:02:00.003-05:00

I have been an iPhone user for two years now, but yesterday I went to the AT&T store, discontinued my data package, and bought the cheapest phone they had ($10 after mail-in rebate).

It's a decision I've been considering for a while, and it was made for a lot of reasons. The primary reason: I'm in what I like to call a period of financial uncertainty. It was becoming harder and harder to justify a monthly expense that I didn't really take advantage of (here in NH, there's not nearly as much "need" as in a city).

There were secondary reasons, as well. As I'm writing this leadership curriculum, I'm realizing how badly I need to learn this stuff, too. My life is fragmented and distracted, I rarely give full-attention to anyone or anything, and the ever-presence of the iPhone contributes to this greatly. I want to learn to be fully present wherever I am (if that makes any sense). I don't want to be able to check my e-mail all the time, to be on Facebook, Twitter, or even read the New York Times. I want to read the news once a day, check e-mail and Facebook only occasionally, and become more present here - reading books, having conversations, or even talking on the phone.

The third reason is one I've been seriously considering as of late... I think I may postpone my move to the big city, stay based at camp for a while, and take some time in the spring (read: a few months) and travel the world. I'm currently pricing Round the World tickets :). If I do that, I definitely don't need my iPhone... unless Rick Steeves has an app.

A problem with perspective

2010-11-04T09:34:00.002-04:00

I was indirectly reading about Noah this morning (I was reading in Luke 17, then pulled out a commentary for some further reading on verses 20-37), and something about the story stood out to me for the first time (I think... it's not so novel, so I may have heard it at some point before): God didn't ever say, "Noah, I'm saving you and condemning the others." Instead, the story (and the passage in Luke) make it seem like Noah's just the only one who paid any attention any more. This is interesting to me because I've been spending more time reflecting on how, to borrow from Brother Lawrence, we practice being in the presence of God. "Noah walked with God."

My view of God, of prayer, remains very utilitarian. I feel something, I want something, I feel obligation, and so I pray. This requires me to shift away from my usual occupation and intentionally place my mind on God. But as I'm reading more from people who spent their lives striving to submit every minute to God, to be in conversation with him every moment of the day, I'm realizing that prayer and being in the presence of God is a tool in my life rather than the state of my heart in response to its desires. Like the people of Noah's generation, my daily concerns and getting my own way is far bigger in importance, far more prominent in my mind, than hearing the voice of God in my life.

What popped into my head as I was praying/thinking through this was Romans 6, being a slave to righteousness, and 2 Cor. 10, taking every thought captive and making it obedient to Christ. My perspective must shift. I must be in continual relationship with God and that must shape my actions, even if it means building a huge boat.

A bit of drama

2010-10-28T13:43:00.003-04:00

It's been a while. As we near the end of fall, the sense of urgency to finish this seemingly inexhaustible project increases, and I have subsequently not put effort into blogging. Regardless, I have a story for you.

This weekend, a friend of mine (Andy) from NYC came up to visit camp. He took a bus to Boston, and I went down to pick him up. I had just gotten my car back from getting some exhaust work done... I had also gotten the oil changed (none of this is directly relevant, but it adds to the saga).

Just after entering the 93 S tunnel on my way to South Station, the power went out on my car (headlights and radio) and the battery and check engine lights came on. I picked up Andy, immediately informed him of my car troubles, and proceeded to get back on 93 and try to make it out of the city before checking things out (hindsight tells me that was a poor choice... I'm not very good with cars). Then, just over the Zakim Bridge on 93 N, in between lanes 2 and 3 of a 4 lane interstate, my car lost all power... it just died... completely. Not good.

We called 9-1-1, waited who knows how long for a state trooper to come (I think it couldn't have been more than 5 minutes, but my clock was dead and in these situations it's hard to get a good feeling for time), were pushed off the road by said state trooper, and were towed off the highway by a very nice tow truck driver.

I called AAA (I am SUCH a big AAA fan), and then my dear dear friend Rachel, who not only picked us up from a Dunkin' Donuts in Somerville but also generously lent us her car for the weekend.

The car repair ended up being pretty pricey, and I wasn't at all thrilled to have my car back in a garage for the 3rd time that week, but that's not the point of this post.

The point is, I am one incredibly blessed girl. Thanks to Rachel's generosity, Andy and I made it up to NH Friday night (only 4 hrs. or so later than planned) and the rest of the weekend was spent enjoying the beautiful fall weather and hanging out with friends.

Mt. Eisenhower

2010-10-19T23:10:00.004-04:00

Some friends and I went hiking today in the Whites. Although our attempt to summit Mt. Eisenhower didn't pan out due to too much snow/ice/wind on the summit, it was a gorgeous day and a really fun hike. Here's a pic or two of the beauty of NH:

180 degrees...

2010-10-18T09:41:00.004-04:00

180 South

I watched this documentary on Netflix last night, and I loved it. Personally, I don't consider myself much of a risk-taker... I'm pretty lazy and afraid of things that have a great potential to hurt... but I really love the thought of throwing-caution to the wind and doing something huge.

Yesterday this documentary was especially kick-in-the-butt because I'm in the middle of writing a leadership curriculum, and so much of leadership is about taking a risk and doing something. Leadership involves going somewhere. But also, and more importantly, following Christ means going somewhere... and leadership is just following, anyway.

Lesslie Newbigin wrote this great book, Proper Confidence: faith, doubt, and certainty in Christian discipleship. Essentially, he's looking at the effects of modern thought (read: post-scientific revolution, post-enlightenment), which makes certainty the highest value and therefore doubt the highest virtue, on Christianity. This thought puts Christianity on the defensive, makes us hesitant to act on our beliefs, drives us to create formulaic theology that does not give room to a living and active God (think Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe here... certainty leads us to want a God that is safe) - this neutralizes us into a passive life. All that to say, after setting all of this up, Newbigin presents a bit of a Christian response... how we should actually engage the scriptures and the world.

Newbigin says, "But, as alwyas, the essential question is this: on the basis of what assumptions are the critical questions being asked? From within the Christian tradition, the answer to that question is that the critical questions are asked on the basis of the fact that the word of God is Jesus Christ. On this basis, the reading of the Bible involves a continual twofold movement: we have to understand Jesus in the context of the whole story, and we have to understand the whole story in the light of Jesus...

There is no way by which we come to know a person except by dwelling in his or her story, and in the measure that may be possible, becoming part of it...

We grow into a knowledge of God by allowing the biblical story to awaken our imagination and to challenge and stimulate our thinking AND ACTING (emphasis added)...

The truth surely is not that we come to know God by reasoning from our unredeemed experience but that what God has done for us in Christ gives us the eyes through which we can begin to truly understand our experience in the world."

(I promise, all this relates to 180 South...)

Reading again this morning in Devotional Classics, this time from Douglas Steere, this struck me:

"There is nothing greater than this constant fidelity. 'The world goes forward,' wrote Harold Gray... 'because in the beginning one man or a few were true to the light they saw and by living by it enabled others to see.' Holy obedience to the insights, the concerns that come, that persist, and that are in accord with cooperation with God's way of love is not only the active side of prayer, but is the only adequate preparation for future prayer."

All this comes together here (I wrote this in my journal this AM): every part of our spiritual life should be propelling us forward, into action. There is nothing we do in prayer/study/etc. for which our response should be to go back to our lives and do what we were already doing. Each encounter with the real, living, active God should change me in some way. Each day that I put myself before him ready to be taught, to get to know him deeper, I should come away having seen a bigger part of the picture that alters my skewed view of reality and prompts me to both further my seeking and change my behavior.

At the end of the documentary, the narrator talked about how trips like his - dropping everything and going off to climb a mountain in Patagonia - are most valuable for the perspective that they give, for their ability to prompt life change (in his case, conservation).

I am far too conservative in my life - I'm too passive - I resist the heart change and therefore the life change that God has for me... this line sticks with me: "Holy obedience to the insights, the concerns that come, that persist, and that are in accord with cooperation with God's way of love is not only the active side of prayer, but is the only adequate preparation for future prayer."

It always comes back to this.

2010-10-14T17:09:00.003-04:00

My current work (writing leadership curriculum) means that I spend hours a day reading and writing about, essentially, what it means to be a Christian (the more I learn the more I am convinced that leading really means loving God and loving others, like Jesus said)... and it all always comes back to the reality that I, on my own, am completely and utterly selfish, but that because of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, I am forgiven and that because of that I am called to love and serve others. It's always all about the cross, really... AND, it's all about what He does in me, not what I do.

I was reading again in Devotional Classics this morning and wanted to share with you a little excerpt from a prayer by Lancelot Andrews, a chaplain to Queen Elizabeth (the first) and apologist for King James I. In all of this decision-making, life-direction stuff, this should be my prayer.

I will lift up my hands into your commandments which I have loved. Open my eyes and I shall see, incline my heart and I shall desire, order my steps and I shall walk in the way of your commandments...

Grant me to worship you and serve you according to your commandments; with truth in my spirit, with reverence in my body, with the blessing upon my lips - bot in private and in public...

Hedge up my way, O Lord, with thorns that I may avoid the false path of vanity. Hold me steady with the bit and the bridle so that I do not pull away from you. O Lord, compel me to come to you...

Help me to receive faith from his miraculous conception, humility from his lowly birth, patience from his suffering, power to crucify the sin in my life from his Cross, burial of all my evil thoughts in good works from his burial. Grant that I might be able to meditate on hell from his descent, to find newness of life in his resurrection, to set my mind on things above from his ascension, to judge myself in preparation of his returning judgment.

More on calling...

2010-10-13T10:06:00.002-04:00

because this is what I'm exploring these days...

We have a group of pastors and their wives here this week. What has stuck out the most about this group is their effusive thanks for everything that we do. Scooping their ice cream last night, I was struck by the stark contrast between their group and others, particularly the college/young adult groups that come up. Last night I received endless compliments, eye contact, thanks for the small task I was doing (and for all of the other things that the Conference/Kitchen staff has done for them, which I really had no part in). With the other demographic, I rarely got even a smile.

We respond in effusive gratitude when we recognize the goodness of what is provided/the provider.

From Julian of Norwich:
"God only desires that our soul cling to him with all of its strength, in particular, that it clings to his goodness. For all of the things our minds can think about God, it is thinking upon his goodness that pleases him most and brings the most profit to our soul...

For we are so preciously loved by God that we cannot even comprehend it. No created being can ever know how much and how sweetly and tenderly God loves them. It is only with the help of his grace that we are able to persevere in spiritual contemplation with endless wonder at his high surpassing, immeasurable love which our Lord in his goodness has for us...

For of all things, contemplating and loving the Creator made my soul seem less in its own sight and filled it full with reverent fear and true meekness and wit much love for my fellow Christians."

One reason that "calling" is about God's revelation of himself and my response is that my calling is not about me or my competencies. If I approach the "what should my life be about?" question from the "What am I good at?" perspective, I am going to end up focusing on my abilities and being frustrated with God when he doesn't seem to be working things out according to where I think I should be going.

Instead, this is a "calling", God is doing the action - it is call-and-response. He leads, I follow. Following requires listening. Following requires humility and a deep gratitude that comes from an understanding of his grace.

This isn't pragmatic - I don't get the steps handed to me and work on accomplishing them. It's not about honing my skills so the power to achieve comes from within me. The more I contemplate the goodness of God, the more I understand his grace, and the more effusively I follow his direction in my life - out of gratitude.

Of course I will end with an excerpt from Valley of Vision:

Return again with showers of converting grace
to a poor gospel-abusing sinner.
Help my soul to breathe after holiness,
after a constant devotedness to thee,
after growth in grace more abundantly every day...
Help me to hold out a little longer,
until the happy hour of deliverance comes,
for I cannot lift my soul to thee
if thou of thy goodness bring me not nigh...
I confide in thee and lean upon thee,
and need thee at all times to assist and lead me.
O that all my distresses and apprehensions
might prove but Christ's school
to make me fit for greater service
by teaching me the great lesson of humility.

What in the world does "calling" mean?

2010-10-12T10:20:00.004-04:00

A good friend and I had a conversation last night about "calling"... determining God's calling in our lives. He had just attended a conference focused on the subject, and the speaker had given the audience two questions: what has God revealed to you of himself through prayer recently? and how does that impact your sense of calling? Implicit in those questions is the statement that we learn our calling through habitual prayer which leads us to know God. Both my friend and I balked at this a little; I'm a studier, reader, formula-follower, thinker. I'm not so good at giving up the control and humbly subjecting myself to the process of God revealing himself on his time.

This morning I was reading from Devotional Classics (a compilation of devotions from influential Christian thinkers edited by Richard Foster), and something Thomas Merton wrote in Contemplative Prayer was very relevant to the previous night's discussion:

"The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God's will and his grace. They are self-confident and even self-complacent. They make up their minds that they are going to attain to this or that and try to write their own ticket in the life of contemplation...

One cannot begin to face the real difficulties of the life of prayer and meditation unless one is first perfectly content to be a beginner and really experience himself as one who knows little or nothing and has a desperate need to learn the bare rudiments. Those who think they "know" from the beginning will never, in fact, come to know anything."

Autumn in NH

2010-10-09T20:59:00.003-04:00

Today was crisp. The high was in the 50s, the sky was clear and blue, and there was a strong breeze all day. After spending the day working in the office, it felt very good to get out and run for a bit in the late afternoon. It really was an ideal fall day.

This place is gorgeous. I took this picture on my way back in to camp.

My current project: trying to master Adobe Photoshop and InDesign so I can design some kick-butt leadership curriculum. We'll see how this goes.

Sincerity

2010-10-06T10:22:00.003-04:00

In this extended time of life-transition, I occasionally find myself allowing my mind to spiral from questions into worry. Last night was one of those times. I typed out an e-mail of it all, intending to send it to a friend, and then realized, the real person I needed to tell it all to was God (not that friends don't help, just that I should turn to Him first). As someone who is paid to think, write, teach about what it means to follow God, I fail in doing it far too much. So, I prayed about it, closed my computer, and went to bed.

This morning, I was reading (again) in the Valley of Vision, and came across a wonderful prayer on sincerity. Here's part of it:

May I judge my sincerity in religion
by my fear to offend thee,
my concern to know thy will,
my willingness to deny myself.
May nothing render me forgetful of thy glory,
or turn me aside from thy commands,
or shake my confidence in thy promises,
or offend thy children.
Let not my temporal occupations injure my spiritual concerns,
or the cares of life make me neglect the one thing needful.
May I not be inattentive to teh design of thy dealings with me,
or insensible under thy rebukes,
or immobile at thy calls.
May I learn the holy art of abiding in thee,
of being in the world and not of it,
of making everything not only consistent with
but conducive to my religion.

I very much want to "learn the holy art of abiding" in Him. That sounds wonderful.

It's a cold, rainy day in NH and I'm really fighting the desire to curl up and take a nap. Guess it's time for some more coffee.

Back in NH

2010-10-05T18:01:00.004-04:00

Sorry for the extended silence. I just got back from NJ on Sunday and am settling back in to my routine up here at camp.

My time in NJ was good; spent quality time with my parents, some cousins, an aunt, and of course my grandmother. Although the doctors are still unsure of what is wrong, she was feeling much better the last few days of my visit, which was encouraging.

While I didn't get as much curriculum writing done there as I had hoped, I did crochet two hats:

Fall has certainly hit New England; the leaves are beginning to change and the weather is nice and crisp. I love this time of year! Here's a picture of the front lawn this evening... you can see the tint of yellow in all the trees. Everyone is welcome to come visit and go on a little foliage tour with me!

Favorite People

2010-09-25T23:42:00.004-04:00

Tonight I had the privilege to sit between two of my all-time favorite people at dinner. I have known Rich and Sue Jarmer essentially my entire life. They've been summer staff at Keswick (the conference center in New Jersey where my mother's family is) since I was very small. Some of my earliest memories include them - swimming in the pool with Rich lifeguarding, coloring with Sue in the lobby of the main building (affectionately called the Big House), etc.

Rich is quite the dry-witted comedian, but also a self-titled ponderer who appreciates thoughtful conversation on any variety of topics. Tonight, we discussed quantum physics, education, and hippies (my mom affectionately calls the Jarmers Christian hippies).

Sue is the sweetest woman you could ever meet. She's a cancer survivor, unbelievably encouraging, and humbly honest about life and God. We wrote letters for a bit when I was in high school and college, and she told me tonight that she's kept one of the cards I sent her in her Bible all this time.

Dinner, and being back in NJ around a lot of people who have known me since I was little got me thinking about relationships and how they change. I'm just now realizing how blessed I am to have the Jarmers in my life, how wonderful it is to be loved by these people. Growing up, I took for granted the fact that these grownups were interested in my life. For too long our interactions were merely them asking questions about me, listening while I told them whatever was on my mind. Conversations like the one I had tonight make me wish I had been aware of how much I could gain from listening to them, to their wisdom, to their hearts for the Lord. Yet, that's the nature of growing up. This is maturing: slowly gaining perspective that shows that it's not all about me.

I wish I had a picture on here to show you just how wonderful they are. Maybe I can dig one up somewhere someday. Gosh, I really want to be as great as them when I'm older.

I can share this... a picture of tonight's sunset over the Keswick lake. A favorite place to pair with a post on favorite people.

New Jersey

2010-09-24T20:15:00.003-04:00

Sorry for a few days of silence. On Wednesday afternoon I began a lengthy trek south to spend some time with my grandmother in NJ. She's been having health problems and needed a family member to come stay for a while. Thankfully, my schedule is relatively flexible and so I could come.

We spent today in Philadelphia at the UPenn medical center. I'm impressed. I find huge hospitals fascinating.

Anyway, not much of a post, just a quick update. I'll try to formulate a better post tomorrow.

Cabin Nights

2010-09-21T16:01:00.004-04:00

During summer camp, both the boys' camp (Brookwoods) and the girls' camp (Deer Run) have cabin night once a week in which counselors come up with an activity for the cabin to do together. Brookwoods cabin nights often involve water activities, sports, and fire. Deer Run cabin nights often involve nail polish, tie dye, and other such art. All fun, really, but that's not the point.

The point is that those of us who are around for the fall have started having cabin nights. Some cabin nights are pre-planned (dinner at games at the Bowlings' (the coolest family ever) for instance) and some are spontaneous (board games in the lawn cottage). All are fun.

Tonight is another cabin night... but just for the girls. We're headed to Barnstead to our friends the Boronows' (Craig was my boss at camp in Maine, both he and his wife are very fun friends) for dinner, Gilmore Girls, and craft time (I want to learn to crochet better and Michelle wants to do some button crafts). If you've read my blog, you know I love the Gilmore Girls. Plus, my first experimentation with button crafts went pretty well.

I am so blessed to be here, to have this time to slow down and enjoy, create, write, laugh... God is so good.

My Reading Problem

2010-09-20T14:03:00.003-04:00

These are the books I just received in the mail. The Freedom of the Will by Jonathan Edwards, an ESV Bible (I use ESV online ALL THE TIME, so I finally bought one for myself), and two books by Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis and Sex.God). I have a reading problem.

It's not that reading is a problem; I love reading and promote reading of all types. It's that I have started to read too many books simultaneously, which cuts down on the enjoyment of each book individually. If only I could stop myself...

The Small Things

2010-09-18T12:00:00.007-04:00

My friend Beth likes to share her favorite things on her blog. I like it because she has fantastic taste and it lets her readers get to know her without her having to say much.

Plus, my friend Jen posted a few days ago about focusing on the routines in life.

So, I've decided to share with you a few pictures of favorite everyday life stuff in NH.

First things first, my space. The miraculous thing was no cleaning/straightening was required for the taking of this picture. I'm trying this whole "keep your room clean" thing. I'll let you know how that goes.

Secondly, the outfit. Not really pictured: my blue cardigan. Last week I made a little trip to my storage and retrieved some books I had been missing and my sweaters. Yes, it's fall in NH and I'm very ready for it. Pictured: my jeans, which I now wear daily because I can, and my new Clarks. I love both.

alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518309066235024162" />

Thirdly, the window seat in my room, plus one of my very favorite books. Valley of Vision is a book of puritan prayers that my church in Boston often uses for liturgy. I really love these prayers. I also love that my current life allows for extended reading time.

So I will leave you with an excerpt from another Valley of Vision prayer:

Thou hast shown me that because thou art mine
I can live by thy life,
be strong in thy strength,
be guided by thy wisdom;
and so I can pitch my thoughts and heart in thee.
That is the exchange of wonderful love -
for me to have thee for myself,
and for thee to have me, and to give me thyself.
There is in thee all fullness of the good I need,
and the fullness of all grace to draw me to thyself,
who else could never have come.
But having come, I must cleave to thee,
be knit to thee,
always seek thee.

I guess it's time...

2010-09-17T14:08:00.005-04:00

I've accidentally clicked the toolbar link to this blog twice today. This, paired with the fact that my current job is to think and write (more on this later) and my new-found determination to live a disciplined life and grow in intentional introspection, has motivated me to finally write something here.

I should start with the informative, because no one seems to know where in the world I am these days.

After three years of teaching high school in Boston, I decided to leave my teaching job and launch into the unknown. The decision was made for myriad reasons. Essentially, I really love high schoolers, but as I became more involved in my school and summer camp programs, I was increasingly drawn to program and curriculum development and student support rather than to classroom instruction. I realized that staying where I was would not allow me to focus on doing what I really wanted to do. So, I think I'm headed to grad school... ideally in sociology and education at Columbia University, looking at how we as educators can better understand diverse students and use that diversity to enhance their education. We could do so much better in "getting" our students... I want to learn how to do that. I say I think I'm headed there because I'm not in yet, so if you think about that, I'd appreciate prayer.

The goodbyes at school were incredibly hard. I really love my students...

Yet, I am fully confident that this was the decision God had for me. I spent the summer directing another high school leadership program, this time in New Hampshire, and now I'm living at camp for a few months, developing the leadership training curriculum.

It's an ideal location. The camp is on Lake Winnipesaukee in NH, just south of the White Mountains, which means lots of opportunities for water and hiking fun.

This picture, taken on a sunrise hike last week, really symbolizes where I am right now. It has been hugely beneficial to slow down and get healthy in a beautiful place with some pretty great people. I miss my Boston life some, and my Boston friends dearly, but I now realize how burnt out I was and how unhealthily I was living my life. My desire in these next few months is to recenter my life around Christ and what he has for me, and to learn to rest in his truth.

I'll leave you with a Puritan prayer I found in The Valley of Vision this week... this is my prayer for now:

O God,
Thy main plan, and the end of thy will
is to make Christ glorious and beloved in heaven
where he is now ascended,
where one day all the elect will behold his glory
and love and glorify him forever.
Though here I love him but a little,
may this be my portion at last.
In this world though hast given me a beginning,
one day it will be perfected in the realm above.
Thou hast helped me to see and know Christ, though obscurely,
to take him, receive him,
to possess him, love him,
to bless him in my heart, mouth, life.
Let me study and stand for discipline,
and all the ways of worship,
out of love for Christ;
and to show my thankfulness;
to seek and know his will from love,
to hold it in love,
and daily to care for and keep this state of heart.
Thou has led me to place all my nature and happiness
in oneness with Christ,
in having heart and mind centred only on him,
in being like him in communicating good to others;
This is my heaven on earth,
But I need the force, energy, impulses of thy Spirit
to carry me on the way to my Jerusalem.
Here, it is my duty
to be as Christ in this world,
to do what he would do,
to live as he would live,
to walk in love and meekness;
then would he be known,
then would I have peace in death.

Yikes.

2010-01-28T22:32:00.003-05:00

This weekend I will be responsible for the care of 3 teenage Canadian boys (basketball players... BIG boys). It will be fun, I'm sure, but right now my thoughts are more along the line of, "really? How in the world is this my life?"

I kind of love it.

Judge me all you want...

2010-01-26T18:27:00.000-05:00

But I love Gilmore Girls. I have a hard time not thinking less of people who don't. I know, I know, that's an awful thing to say... but really, what kind of person DOESN'T appreciate the witty and oh-so-realistic (or not) banter.

For the record, I like Logan and Jess and think Dean is b-o-r-i-n-g.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I really am loved

2010-01-25T13:46:00.000-05:00

This + playlist of my favorite tunes + book on the Medieval Mind = good life.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Back? Happy.

2010-01-23T10:54:00.001-05:00

I may be back to blogging. Perhaps. Here's why.

It's been a rough year. Usually, I try to project (or am) a stable, even-keeled, self-sufficient self. I don't ask (most people) for help and I rarely say I'm not ok. But this year, I'm in transition and that has left me unstable, without the resevoir of "ok" that I've had in the past.

I haven't written because I haven't had the time to think, to know what to say. But now, I'm taking a different approach. I want to focus on now instead of worrying about then. I am so incredibly blessed in my life, and I want to share that with you in the form of some pictures that make my life so good.

This may seem self-absorbed, but here's why this picture... I love driving in sunshine in the winter. It comes from car rides with my mom in MI. She celebrates even the weakest ray of sun, and so now I do. Plus, I love this coat. Vain, but true.

Recently, my friend Beth and I have been texting at 5:45 AM for some morning accountability. We had both been struggling to get up and get good time in the Word, so this is our solution.

Not a good picture, but action shots on the iPhone are hard. This is the BTA boys' basketball team (in white). I've written about them before, but really, I love these boys. This year, they're a group of emotional-wrecks, which has made it an interesting season, but they're making improvements, which is encouraging.

Yesterday, I had coffee with my friend Jeremiah. In almost 2 hours of conversation we covered a broad range of topics, from relationships to Jesus to a bigger discussion on creation-fall-redemption and a provident God. It reminded me that life is so much more than the problems in front of my face. My faith means that I believe strongly that God is orchestrating something so much greater than me.

This week was a thankful, happy week.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Songs that "get" me

2009-11-10T13:49:00.004-05:00

Your Cape - Breathe Owl Breathe
Shine On - Seth Bernard and Daisy May
Rise Up Singing - Daisy May
Looks Like Love - Needtobreathe
Can't Go Back Now - The Weepies

Perspective

2009-10-14T08:09:00.003-04:00

I was reading in Psalm 74 this morning, and I kept rereading these verses:

12 Yet God my King is from of old,
working salvation in the midst of the earth.
13 You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters [4] on the waters.
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
15 You split open springs and brooks;
you dried up ever-flowing streams.
16 Yours is the day, yours also the night;
you have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
17 You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth;
you have made summer and winter.

It's important for me to remember this as I teach, interact with students, and hang out with friends. These verses say so much more than God is in control of my life. They reassert that my King is from of old, from the beginning, and has been working in the world from the beginning. His plan for his people has been in place from the beginning and will be in place in the end.

Oh, man... where do they come up with this stuff?

2009-10-09T07:38:00.002-04:00

(In response to my asking a girl on my soccer team why she looked so sad)
student: Miss, WE'RE not sad, it's just that YOU'RE happy all the time.
me: Really?
student: Yes. It's unnatural. You're always smiling. Nobody smiles that much. It's unhealthy. You're definitely not from New England. You definitely don't fit in here.
me: Well, ok then. Thanks for that!

It's good being a teacher when...

2009-10-06T21:25:00.002-04:00

... Your day begins with your advisees telling you how cute you look (conversely, not so good when they tell you how awful you look).
... Your soccer team wins a game 6-0 because they finally started young what you've been telling them to do.
... Your student dedicates a Brittany Spears song to you when it comes on the radio ("Miss! It's our song!")
... You have a meeting with the Development department (fundraising) in which you get to talk about great kids with great stories.
... You get to take students out for coffee during free periods.
... You help kids with their homework, they get it, and they're excited to keep working on it.

I really love high schoolers. I really love my kids. They're so worth every minute they require of me... It's sad when I get so behind at life that I don't have the energy to really love them.

The Abolition of Man and an understanding of identity

2009-10-04T11:46:00.002-04:00

I've been reading/thinking a lot recently about identity (as you have undoubtedly noticed in previous posts). I'm surrounded daily by students who seem to be feverishly consuming, rearranging, adding to their lives in an attempt to feel good about who they are. I had multiple conversations this week with students who are "too stressed out" and who want to drop some responsibility, requirement, activity because overall they're too tired and miserable to enjoy anything. The argument, across the board, is that there is one activity (a sport, a class, a club) that puts them over the edge, that they used to enjoy but that no longer brings them happiness, and that dropping that sport/activity will allow them to be happy again.

This is so sad! If they continue to approach their lives in this way - evaluating the worth of their activities based on what those activities do for them - they will never find happiness. It's so subjective, so transient, so unstable. In my frustration with a particular senior, I asked her what part of the activity of grading papers, lesson planning, and prepping soccer practices she thought gave me happiness... what does spending hours correcting paragraphs on ancient Egyptians do to enrich my life? Although I was perhaps a little harsh in my presentation, my point was that meaning in life cannot come from what we do... we must realize that meaning comes from something much bigger, something outside of ourselves - that what we do is a product of that ultimate meaning, or a vehicle for bringing that meaning to others, not an end in itself.

In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis addresses this tendency in modern society to base value judgments on either what is rational (the head, cerebral, what can be arrived at by deconstructing to the point of eliminating all things emotional) or what is instinct (the stomach, based only on what makes us feel good, rather than on a standard outside of ourselves). He says,

"The head rules the belly through the chest - the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment - these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal."

And his point is that the chest, Magnanimity, must be based on a standard of what is good that is completely independent of either our rational, deconstructive analysis or our irrational, self-seeking instinctual desires. There must be a greater standard of good that informs both our quest for knowledge and the way in which we seek to apply that knowledge to the greater world around us. He ends his essay with the following:

"The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is not the same as to see."

If, in our approach to our world, we are not seeking knowledge as a means of understanding the opaque behind the transparent, we are completely missing the point. The philosopher Charles Taylor, in his book, Sources of the Self (which I've just begun to try and tackle - it's huge), looks extensively at the modern idea of identity (well, at how the modern view of identity has come about). He also sees man as formulating identity based on what he does rather than on some objective standard outside of himself that informs his view of identity:

"Much contemporary moral philosophy, particularly but not only in the English-speaking world, has given such a narrow focus to morality that some of the crucial connections I want to draw here are incomprehensible in its terms. This moral philosophy has tended to focus on what it is right to do rather than on what it is good to be, on defining the content of obligation rather than the nature of the good life; and it has no conceptual place left for the notion of the good as the object of our love or allegiance..."

It's not about me! I cannot make my decisions based on how I feel or what makes me happy or on what is rationally and scientifically the decision with the least percentage of error. Instead, there is something greater, a universal standard of what is good (which Lewis calls the Tao) that each of my decisions must be motivated by. It's not that making magnanimous decisions rejects the rational or the instinctual, it's not calling us all to be ascetics and to continually deny ourselves happiness... instead, it's this idea that, in my complete self-centeredness, my view of what will make me happy is so microscopic and distorted in comparison to God's view of my happiness, in his complete understanding of the ultimate "big picture" of humanity.

Trust and grace

2009-09-27T21:18:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure how to word this post in a way that won't sound self-seeking, like false modesty. Here goes, hopefully...

I live a very blessed life. God has given me various abilities and has allowed me to see success in using them. I tend to succeed in what I do. This weekend, I was complimented on several different occasions for several different things. I don't like being told how good I am at things - I don't like it when I'm introduced to new people and all that is said about me is how good I am at something. It scares me to be known for those things because it makes me afraid to mess up. If I am known and valued for what I am good at, if I mess up, I'll lose my value, I'll disappoint the people around me and they won't want me around any more.

I think, because of this, I have a fear that my problems, the real Amy, is too much for the people around me. I don't ask for help because I'm afraid that if I rely on other people, I'll be too heavy, they won't want to support me. So, I tell you that everything will be ok, and I do whatever needs to get done, and I internalize it, or journal it, and rarely do I share it. I'll do what needs to be done and I'll joke about it because that's what I think you value.

This, I'm beginning to understand, is evidence that I do not fully understand the work of God's grace in my life. My talents will never be enough to sustain me. This way of living cannot succeed. When I derive my worth from what others think of me, and I convince myself that the opinions of others are based solely on what I can do for them (what I'm good at), I am operating under the mindset that I on my own can amount to something. It's impossible, it's exhausting, and it's totally erroneous.

Instead, I need to continually be brought back to Christ's death and resurrection, the only reason that there is any hope for any true success or genuine restoration on this earth. I need to regain perspective - it's not about me at all, not about what I can do or can't do. Instead, it is Christ that has initiated, begun, and will continue to transform my heart to match his and therefore to use me to bring him glory in what I do.

My friend Jonathan preached today on the passage from Isaiah 6 when Isaiah saw the Lord (well, his robes, throne, and seraphim). He talked about how when Isaiah saw the glory of the Lord he was filled with disgust at his unclean mouth and the unclean mouths of his people. Then, a seraphim took tongs and picked up a burning coal and touched it to Isaiah's lips. Finally, Isaiah heard the Lord ask who would go speak for Him and Isaiah said, "here I am, send me." Isaiah became sickeningly aware of his sin in the presence of the Lord, bit he could do nothing to restore himself, the renewal was all God's. Ultimately, I am vile and worthless, unable to stop my sin, but God sees, God restores, and God sends. It's not about me... It's not about what I'm good at. It's all about God and his plan for renewing his world.

Les Mis and grace... in the education world

2009-09-26T10:24:00.003-04:00

Thursday night was Parents' Night - an evening in which parents attend 6 min. versions of all of their students' classes, get to meet teachers and other parents, and eat finger food (because every event has food). I had two interactions with parents (one positive and one not) in which I was reminded how central grace and imputation are in our everyday lives.

Without getting into details, I'll say this: when we do not have a complete understanding of what it means to be fully and completely redeemed by the grace of God, when we are driven by a fear of failure rather than a freedom that allows us to risk with a confidence that it is not about us, we are crippled by a fear that we will mess everything up. We seek rigid rules, looking for standards to live up to, structure that we can conform to in order to not fail. So afraid that failure will be our fault, we continually try to identify weakness in the structure around us in order to make sure failure cannot be attributed to us. Either we live in constant anxiety that what we are doing will not succeed or we live in constant fear that the rules won't hold up in the end and that there is no way we can possibly succeed.

Students approach tests, papers, etc. with the fear that either they haven't prepared properly, they don't have the skills in the first place, or they haven't been given the tools they need to succeed. Fear of failure prevents them from taking risks, from approaching tests, papers, etc. as an opportunity to use what they know and to challenge themselves to push harder, to piece together their knowledge and apply it on a greater scale. While this is most apparent in the tendency of students (mostly girls) to anxiously dread not knowing the right answer (failure is their fault), it's also apparent in the tendency of students (mostly boys) to find fault in the system and therefore not try, rather than try and fail.

This brings me to Les Mis. My friend Sara sent me lyrics from Les Mis this week in an e-mail, so of course, I had to watch the movie (not the musical, so not quite good enough) and then listen to the soundtrack. Javert, the inspector who spends his whole life trying to bring Jean Valjean to "justice", makes me so sad. Mostly, he makes me sad because I recognize in Javert my tendency to adhere so strictly to rules because rules feel safe. He sings:

He knows his way in the dark
Mine is the way of the Lord
And those who follow the path of the righteous
Shall have their reward
And if they fall
As Lucifer fell
The flame
The sword!

And so it has been and so it is written
On the doorway to paradise
That those who falter and those who fall
Must pay the price!

Javert is afraid of Valjean because Valjean broke the rules and yet is able to experience freedom and happiness that Javert has never had. If Valjean can have this life, it means that vigilance in following the rules does not assure happiness. Instead, Valjean's continual breaking of the rules (Fantine, Cossette, etc.) brings him increasing happiness. In the end, Valjean's mercy to Javert leads Javert to end his life. Javert cannot continue life knowing that the system of laws and rules he has followed is false. He sings:
How can I now allow this man
To hold dominion over me?
This desperate man that I have hunted
He gave me my life. He gave me freedom.
I should have parished by his hand
It was his right
It was my right to die as well
Instead I live.. but live in hell
And my thoughts fly apart
Can this man be believed?
Shall his sins be forgiven?
Shall his crimes be reprieved?
And must I now begin to doubt
Who never doubted all these years?
My heart is stone and still it trembles
The world I have known is lost in shadow
Is he from heaven or from hell?

And does he know
That granting me my life today
This man has killed me, even so?
I am reaching but I fall
And the stars are black and cold
As I stare into the void
Of a world that cannot hold
I'll escape now from that world
From the world of Jean Valjean
There is nowhere I can turn
There is no way to go on

A world of grace and mercy is too much for a man who has motivated his life to following the rules and making others do the same. So.... how do I, as a teacher, help little Javerts become Valjeans before it's too late?

I should be writing a multiple choice test...

2009-09-22T13:25:00.004-04:00

... but I'm not. Instead, I am once again thinking about what I do and why I do it (professionally, interpersonally, recreationally, etc.).

This morning, I met with a new student who is already very behind in my class and who has not yet shown signs of wishing to apply himself. I showed him the multiple assignments in which he did not do the work asked and explained that 1. this level of work will not allow him to pass my class and 2. his demeanor did not indicate a desire to pass my class, which therefore did not make me feel inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. He didn't make eye contact. He barely responded. At the end, I told him that I hoped we could have a positive relationship this year. I was sure he had blown me off. Then, in class today, he sat up, actively participated, asked questions when he did not understand, and provided positively to the atmosphere of the class. He's just a child really... sometimes I need to remember how much they need love AND structure.

Last evening, I was walking through our dining hall and stopped to say hi to two of my 10th grade girls. They had stayed late to work on homework, and they were working diligently. One of the girls asked me if I would look over a paragraph she was writing for another class. This was significant because last year the two of us had spent long hours in my classroom working to help her put her thoughts into coherent sentences and cohesive paragraphs (she doesn't speak English at home and used to believe she would never be able to pass an essay). As she handed it to me, she was beaming... obviously, she wanted my praise more than my advice. The beautiful thing is, her paragraph was really good. She gets it and she knows it... she's getting As and Bs this year instead of Cs and Ds.

Yesterday afternoon, my girls won their soccer game 6-1. The other team was small and never really had a chance, but, more importantly, my girls did what was asked of them and did it well. They played as a team and encouraged one another. They laughed and had fun. They supported the other team.

Sometimes, in my desire to constantly improve, in my high expectations, in my belief that I should be able to meet all the needs around me, I lose sight of what's true. God has placed me here for now to teach these kids how to strive after Him and while doing so to strive for excellence in all aspects of life. I can only do that when I am striving after Him myself.

One week down...

2009-09-11T17:57:00.004-04:00

Thirty something left.

When you put it that way, the school year seems so short. When you're in the middle of the first week of school and it seems like you've been going for forever already, the school year seems fairly infinite. Guess it's all relative. Oh, Einstein.

Once again, I am in a situation which reminds me how deeply relational I am and how that affects me in the work environment. When I don't trust those around me (especially anyone in authority over me), or feel negative tension, I:
1. try to work around it and through it (not confront it)
2. try to bury any emotions I am feeling about it
3. eventually can't avoid any more and break down
4. am finally aware that avoidance is not possible and start to work through it.

Steps 1-3 are highly unfortunate... I must continue to grow in the understanding that I on my own cannot do anything (not fully internalizing that leads to number 1, where I don't want to end up ruining anything so I convince myself that the tension is all on my side or something that I can fix by just flexing who I am). I must learn that a real understanding of the grace of God leads to an ability to let myself be vulnerable around others (which would prevent the idea that showing hurt is showing weakness and maybe people around me won't understand or won't value me any more - #2). I must have confidence that my identity is rooted so firmly in Christ and only in Christ - His providence for me has absolutely no dependence on my strength or my ability to grin and bear conflict (which relates to #3, because regardless of how long I try to hold everything in, eventually it all comes out). I need to have faith that God is in control even in conflict, and that He will work out disagreements for His glory, whatever that may mean (which means I don't have to avoid it - my fears are foolish because He will work it out).

Whew.

Today, my boss gave me a set of sermons on Romans to listen to. I'm pretty sure it's about time I revisited that book.

P.S. I read this article recently and really found it interesting.

Lovely friends in far away places

2009-09-09T07:57:00.004-04:00

One of the downsides of having really cool friends is that they love Jesus and love people so much that they go far away to do really amazing things. I'm blessed to have them as friends, but it's sad that they're so far away. Here are two of them...

This is Kari. We lived together on Third South English at Taylor and worked a summer at Grace Adventures together. She has a huge heart for people, especially women. She loves genuinely and deeply and challenges me to do the same. She is also SUPER cute, very creative, fun-loving, adventurous, and I could go on and on. Currently, she's working in Kolkata, India with the International Justice Mission. I love her!

This is Margie... or Margie Face... or Margie B... or... well, it goes on. She and I also went to Taylor together, and worked at Grace Adventures together. She loves culture and community and people in other cultures, especially the Middle East. She takes on new challenges with a laugh and a smile and a positive attitude and she has a deep faith in God that allows her to love all people and to love them well. Her compassion and her ability to make everyone around her feel loved and important and cool is very admirable. She's cuddly, silly, adventurous, creative, fun-loving, caring... yeah, she's the best. Currently, she's working with Iraqi refugees in Amman, Jordan.

Kari and Margie, you teach me how to trust God, to take chances, to love people genuinely, and to have fun doing it. I miss you!

First day back

2009-09-08T14:05:00.003-04:00

Classes started today. The first day is (relatively) easy. Get the kids where they need to be, introduce yourself, read through the course expectations (to be read: give them a healthy respect for your class if they didn't have it already (to be read: make them tremble in fear when they see you walk in the room)), introduce the course, make fun of students, etc.

The kid part is the easy part. I like the kids and (in general) the kids like me. It's the other parts of teaching that I'm not so sold about. When it comes down to it, I don't really care if sophomore boys understand Shakespeare's use of ambiguity. I like Shakespeare, I think he's clever, but there are dozens of other things I think are more important for 10th grade boys to discuss. For example: who am I (specifically, who am I because of what Christ did), what do I care about (or should I care about), and what am I going to do about that? Can those questions be answered through the vehicle of a literature class? Yes. Is that the most effective vehicle for me? Not sure.

When I began teaching, it was with the plan to teach for 2-3 years to get experience and then re-evaluate where God was leading. Now that I'm entering my 3rd year of teaching, I'm finding myself very torn. I love my kids, I love the school (I think this school is highly effective - it does what it sets out to do and it does it well), I love challenging kids to think, I love Boston... yet, I'm increasingly unsettled in what I'm doing. Is there a better vehicle for conversing with high schoolers (particularly urban high schoolers) about who they are (specifically, who they are because of who Christ is and what he did), what they care about (or should care about), and what they're going to do about it? I'm not sure.

If you're someone who prays for me (thank you), I'd appreciate you praying for direction for me. 1. is this what God has for me after this year? 2. if not, what? 3. how in the world do I go about pursuing something else?

Fear the Lord

2009-09-06T10:47:00.002-04:00

This might be a "duh" statement, but I really struggle to understand how to fear the Lord. Unfortunate, because it seems that fearing the Lord is the basis for so much in the Christian life...

"Do not take advantage of one another, but fear your God." (Lev. 25:17)

"And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD's commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?" (Deut. 10:12-13)

"And he said to man,
'The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom,
and to shun evil is understanding.'" (Job 28:28)

"Who, then, is the man that fears the LORD ?
He will instruct him in the way chosen for him.
He will spend his days in prosperity,
and his descendants will inherit the land.
The LORD confides in those who fear him;
he makes his covenant known to them." (Psalm 25:12-14)

And it goes on and on (especially in Proverbs) in the Old Testament, and even in the New Testament, the early church grew as it was living in the fear of the Lord (Acts 9:31).

Today I was reading Psalm 34, in which the Psalmist says:

"Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days,
keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies.
Turn from evil and do god seek peace and pursue it" (Ps. 34:11-14).

In his book, Favorite Psalms: Growing Closer to God, John Stott says, "To fear God is not, of course, to be frightened of him. Its meaning here is plain from its equivalents, namely, to 'seek' him (v. 4), to 'call' him (v. 6) and 'take refuge' in him (v. 8), acknowledging our helplessness and looking to him for deliverance (compare Luke 1:50)... No one can claim to fear God who does not depart from evil both in word (v. 13) and in deed (v. 14). Nor is it enough to turn away from evil; we must positively do good and patiently pursue peace (v. 14)."

Convicting, because I've become increasingly aware of the amount of foolishness that comes out of my mouth on a regular basis. I talk for the wrong reasons. I want to use my words to impress, to entertain, to make people think better of me. I so often speak as a means of taking from others, rather than speaking as a means of giving love/hope/peace/etc. If I fear the Lord, it is His wisdom that will come out of my mouth, and I won't feel the need to fill conversation with self-seeking and useless words. If"out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks," my heart is not filled with what it should be filled with (Matt. 12:34).

Here's where you come in. If you are in conversation with me, and I am speaking foolishness, stop me. If my conversation seems self-seeking, if I'm focused on me instead of being focused on you, call me out. I genuinely want to be someone who is known for the depth of her love for others, as seen in the way she listens, cares, responds with sincerity. Yet, so often that level of genuine conversation must come from a level of vulnerability to which I am scared to go, from a security that it really doesn't matter what you think of me because it's not about me at all. Hopefully, as I learn to fear the Lord my perspective will continue to shift - I will further internalize that it's not about me at all, so vulnerability is not something to be afraid of but something to welcome, because my identity comes only from Christ on the cross.

Please help me in this.

Sports!

2009-09-05T21:55:00.003-04:00

As most of you know, I'm a big sports fan. It's not so much that I cheer for particular teams, it's more that I just really love sports in general - watching, playing, analyzing, etc. That's why days like today are so great. Today, I watched my BTA boys play basketball in their fall league (we're going to be VERY good this year), then watched US Open tennis (the Oudin-Sherapova match was a nail-biter) and college football (lots of blowouts, of course, but the Notre Dame game was fun) with friends.

It's a really good thing I like sports, because soccer season has started and will consume most of my life for the next two months. I'm not sure I'm ready for this!

The childlike part

2009-09-04T10:03:00.003-04:00

I played Capture the Flag yesterday with 60 middle schoolers... 60 middle schoolers and me (a teaching faculty is apparently not as participatory as a camp staff). At one point, I was being pursued by a very small 6th grade boy. Just as I started to slow up to let him tag me, I started to fall. In the end, he tagged me at the moment I launched forward into a head first slide on the grass. His reaction was perfect: huge smile, loud cheer, inflated ego. He had single-handedly tackled a teacher.

Middle school is a funny group to work with (and thankfully, I only work with them from a distance). The sixth graders come in as kids - they're so excited to try everything (bring on the food relay, let me in that sumo wrestling suit, watch me eat my weight in s'mores), to make new friends, etc. Then, by eighth grade, they're too cool, too tough, too jaded (no way I'll shove a twinkie into my mouth, sumo suits smell, s'mores are too messy). They are already well-aware of how to play the "cool game", how to moderate and adapt their actions to project only the cool part of themselves to others... they've created less-than-genuine versions of themselves and that's what they let others see.

In the book Posers, Fakers, Wannabes, Brennan Manning and James Hancock talk about the importance of childlike innocence in our spiritual lives (in comparison to the carefully edited, well-manicured lives of the Pharisees). They write, "We have spread so many coats of whitewash over the historical Jesus that we scarcely see the glow of his presence anymore. Jesus is a man in a way that we have forgotten men can be: truthful, blunt, emotional, nonmanipulative, sensitive, compassionate - so liberated that he did not feel it unmanly to cry, so secure he could engage anyone head-on and deal with them right where they were. Underneath all our coverup, the gospel portrait of the beloved child of Abba is a man exquisitely in touch with his emotions and uninhibited in expressing them."

In the past weeks, I have repeatedly felt sick about my interactions with others. When I, for whatever reason, begin to edit who I am, I project a sickeningly over-confident version of myself. I talk instead of listen (even though I really want to listen); I tell stories to make myself seem more confident, more in control, less vulnerable to anything. That's the root of it - I project a "tough-girl" image because I don't want people to see that I might need help, that I might not have the answer, that I might not be good at something... because then, maybe they won't really want me around.

I need help in being held accountable to honesty and vulnerability in my life. I need to know that it's ok to risk making a mistake, not knowing the answer, messing up on a responsibility... that my identity isn't in what I do.

I'm a stress-case

2009-09-02T23:13:00.003-04:00

A picture from today.

Apparently a family of turkeys has taken up residence in the school's neighborhood. On the way home from soccer tryouts my girls first chased the turkeys (as pictured above) and were then followed by the turkeys (not pictured). If you knew these girls, this picture would be far funnier... they're funny girls. They're great girls. They're part of the reason I do what I do... the main reason.

Today was day 1 of the middle school retreat (the poor middle school advisors are currently sleeping on their classroom floors surrounded by 6th-8th graders...). Tomorrow afternoon the upper schoolers come. This is going to be quite a fall...

Using the community God has given me

2009-09-02T08:55:00.003-04:00

I sent many of you a message either telling you about this blog, reminding you of this blog, or letting you know I'm resurrecting this blog. Those of you who know me well know that I have some very strong feelings about relationship and community in Christ. Those of you who haven't born with me patiently as I have expressed these feelings need only to peruse past blog posts to get a glimpse (I'm reopening this blog with hesitation, however, because I am slightly afraid of what I may have written in the past). You are the community that God has given me, and I need you to help speak truth into my life. So, I'm asking you to read as I blog and to dialogue with me about where I'm going and what God has for me to do, as well as what in me needs to change in order to be the person God wants for me to be (C.S. Lewis talks about us as blocks of stone, and God's chisel must shape us into the shape he has for us).

As many of you are aware, I am going in to my third year of teaching at Boston Trinity Academy in Boston, MA. BTA is a distinctively Christian school which strives to provide an academically rigorous education to a very diverse population of students (reflecting the diversity of the city around us as well as the diversity within the body of Christ). I love what I do here. I recognize that teaching history and English, coaching soccer, and advising students is a very effective way to do what I feel God has both called and uniquely gifted me to do: equip young people to honestly and intentionally explore the reality of their sinful nature as well as their unique and incredibly, overwhelmingly rich identity in Christ, so they can practically and excellently pursue bringing that transformational message to the world around them. Yet, as I grow in Christ, I need to be open to pursuing new experiences (education, vocation, etc.) that will equip me to more effectively fulfill that calling.

I want to use this blog as a means of sharing with you what I'm thinking, struggling, praying, living through and as a way to hopefully seek guidance from you: people I love and care about, people whose opinions and hearts I respect, people who know me (to varying degrees) completely - both the good and bad.

Today during a faculty prayer time, we prayed through Isaiah 55. I've read this passage many times; my junior year in high school I picked this chapter as "my favorite" (how do we do that... choose one Bible passage as better than the rest?) and have returned to it many times since. Yet, today, one part stood out to me that had never really struck me before.

Isaiah 55:2-3 says,
"2 Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

3 Give ear and come to me;
hear me, that your soul may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David. "

Some of you may not believe me, but I am not a person who welcomes change. I'm not someone who is confident in new situations (although I am someone who appears overly confident in most situations - whether the confidence is genuine or I am merely projecting the confidence as a means of covering over what I see as my faults, things people won't like about me). This passage hit me repeatedly this morning for 2 reasons. 1. So much of my efforts are spent "spending my money" on what I think will enrich my life, make me happy, help others, better the world, yet I truly struggle to stop and really listen to the Lord and eat what is good. And 2. God's covenant with His people is everlasting. It's not me... I'm not an individual. I am a part of God's everlasting covenant. I need to listen to God and merely obey. The weight of change is not on my shoulders, because my shoulders are incapable, sinful, weak, selfish, etc. First, I must listen and obey... secondly, I must listen and obey... thirdly, I must listen and obey... that's it. (In general, I'm awful at listening).

Yesterday I had the opportunity to share a devotional with the faculty. I played the hymn "Jesus Paid it All." I want to put the words here, but if you have access to the song, go listen to it (or YouTube it). I need to be continually, incessantly reminded that my identity comes only from Christ on the Cross and that Christ on the Cross should be the motivating factor of all that I do.

1. I hear the Savior say,
“Thy strength indeed is small;
Child of weakness, watch and pray,
Find in Me thine all in all.”
* Refrain:
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
2. For nothing good have I
Whereby Thy grace to claim;
I’ll wash my garments white
In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb.
3. And now complete in Him,
My robe, His righteousness,
Close sheltered ’neath His side,
I am divinely blest.
4. Lord, now indeed I find
Thy pow’r, and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And melt the heart of stone.
5. When from my dying bed
My ransomed soul shall rise,
“Jesus died my soul to save,”
Shall rend the vaulted skies.
6. And when before the throne
I stand in Him complete,
I’ll lay my trophies down,
All down at Jesus’ feet.

Competitive Conversationalists

2009-03-01T10:34:00.002-05:00

Frequently, I find myself in conversations in which most involved seem to be competing to be heard, to be listened to. We attempt to tell the funniest story, to get in the last word on a discussion, to speak and not to listen. When I notice this in myself, it can usually be traced to a lack of contentment or comfort with my surroundings. Because I feel unsure, I must assert myself, make myself heard, as a means of soothing uneasiness. I regularly notice this with high schoolers. They change their personalities in different groups (kind, thoughtful, intelligent young men become blabbering idiots in the presence of a few girls). Adults aren't normally so obvious, but I often observe this tendency most in those that I am closest to (family especially), and should most often observe this in myself.

My mom gave me a little pamphlet of devotional thoughts from Hudson Taylor, and the one I just read convicted me on this topic. He says:

Oh, to be always in a humble, devout, and consecrated spirit, drawing richly from the fountain of infinite grace, being filled with the fullness of "Him that filleth all in all," continually realizing that Christ is made unto us "wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption," and that we are complete in Him.

Essentially, if I desire to be humble, devout, and consecrated, I must draw from the fountain of INFINITE grace; therefore receiving Him that fills ALL; realizing the wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption that He gives. All this results in completeness in Him.

When in my interactions with others I am self-seeking, needing to present my own ideas and opinions, assuring that I am right and that everyone knows I'm right, and effectively preventing myself from ever learning from others, I am not drawing from the fountain of infinite grace; I am rejecting Him that fills all; I am refusing wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Effectively, I am incomplete without Him.

The boys I keep telling you about...

2009-02-09T22:08:00.003-05:00

This was a full-page article in the Boston Globe on Sunday.

I'm proud of them for doing so well, but I drove 45 mins to watch them play tonight and, although they won, they played lazy. They looked like they thought they could win by just showing up. I often tell the boys that they better be thankful I'm not their coach, because if I were, they'd never get away with their lazy habits.

Why is it so hard to coach kids to give their best 100% of the time, to take every minute seriously? So many of them have big dreams of playing in college, yet don't have the discipline to ever make it that far. I am not very patient with them when they sell themselves short.

My boyfriend

2009-02-04T21:31:00.002-05:00

Well, not really.

I'm spending the next 2 days with this guy, a 150 lb. great dane named Griswold.

He's great to cuddle with.

Little guys become big guys eventually

2009-02-03T16:21:00.003-05:00

I'm currently sitting in my classroom, grading quizzes, and periodically being interrupted by 9th grade boys asking questions about a homework assignment. I'll hear a light knock on the door, and look up to see their goofy 14-year-old faces scrunched into the 5x14 window of the door. I wave them in and listen as they ask their questions in a very round-about, very distracted way. They can't stand still long enough to get a question out. Instead, they shove their hands in their pockets and sway side to side; or pick up something off my desk and fiddle with it; or shift their eyes from the board, to me, to my desk, to the window, etc.

The best part is that sometimes, when they're talking, I get a bit of a vision of what they will look like when they're seniors. When they're a little more aware of their own actions (note: I said a LITTLE). When they're finally as tall as their feet are big, and their faces aren't quite so babyish. It makes me smile to imagine them that way, because I know they're going to be great.

Today at lunch I was drinking a Dr. Pepper. One of my boys came, cuddled up to me, looked into my face, and said, "Miss Richardson, I know you love me. Can I have some?" The answer, of course, was no, he couldn't have any... but I did make him a deal: if he gets a C+ for the Quarter (a small miracle, really), I'll buy him a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper.

I wish you could meet these guys...

Thoughts on Today's Sermon: Pursuing Others' Greatness

2009-02-01T23:58:00.001-05:00

Pastor Um’s words on friendship today prompted me to reflect on how I interact with those around me, those that I would call my friends, specifically in the area of being sacrificial and vulnerable. You see, I am very afraid of depending on friends. While I readily enter into seemingly vulnerable conversations about personal shortcomings and theological struggles, I rarely ever express practical need. My approach to friendship in the past, and all too frequently in the present, is very much the same as my approach to walking on ice. I tread gingerly, in no way wanting to impose the weight of my need on others for fear that I may need too much, and they may let me down.
To make matters worse, I’m a conflict-avoider. My motto is, “It’s no problem.” I’d much rather make excuses for others when they don’t keep their word than ever risk a fight. I can handle being stood up, I can reason away an unreturned phone call or a forgotten e-mail. If it happens too many times, I’ll just make a mental note not to depend on that person again, and move on. It’s my fault, anyway. I’m sure I was asking too much.

If I were to want to, I could tell stories of times my friends and family disappointed me that led me to this current “friendship-challenged” state; personal experience does greatly impact who we become. Yet, I have come to realize that the root of the problem lies not in what others have done to me, but in my inability to trust the sovereignty and love of God and therefore my tendency to doubt that He will use his people to provide for my needs and to greatly enrich my life.

When I think of friendship in the Bible, I am repeatedly drawn to the example of Jesus’s friendship with his disciples. While Jesus’s interactions with his disciples throughout the gospels are lessons in how to be friends with one another, his actions at the garden of Gethsemane the night before his death are maybe the most compelling for me.

Matthew 26:36-38 says, “Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’ He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’”

If you’re unfamiliar with the rest of the story, Jesus comes back a little while later and his friends are asleep, so he wakes them up, asks them to watch out for him, and heads back to pray. When he comes back again, they’re asleep again. He once again returns to pray, and when he comes back a third time, they’re still sleeping.
Now, you may argue that this is a bad example: Jesus’s friends fell asleep. He asked for help and they let him down. This is evidence that we can’t trust others; this is proof positive that people will always let you down. Yet, the point is that Jesus asked.

Other times in the New Testament when his friends let him down, Jesus let them have it. Nobody got it worse than Peter. At one point, Jesus called Peter “Satan”. He definitely wasn’t a walk-on-ice kind of friend. He needed his disciples in order to be effective in ministry. He relied on his disciples for support, and he called them out (brutally, at times) when they failed.

If I’m nice all the time, if I’m obliging all the time, if I’m always helping and never asking, I’m a really bad friend. Part of loving is allowing yourself to be loved. Part of loving is telling my friends when they’ve let me down. Part of loving is asking for help.

Some recent favorites...

2009-01-22T22:18:00.003-05:00

Due to a lack of substantial or meaningful thoughts to share, I thought I'd take a minute to post a few of my recent favorite things (in no particular order).

1. Sweet potato fries - genius. Love them. Trader Joe's makes frozen ones you can bake. My friend Emily made them from scratch for tonight's small group.

2. MI-5 - a BBC crime/intelligence agency show. Matthew McFayden is in the earlier seasons. It's got everything you're looking for - drama, relationships, comedy. I recommend watching a marathon while you're writing too many multiple choice questions for a History exam.

3. Watching NCIS while running - I've begun to enjoy both recently. I never really got into NCIS before, but it's on from 5-6 PM, my fav. workout time, and surprisingly, I run better while watching it (adrenaline?).

4. Sofft shoes and Teko socks (not together) - both are so comfortable. With my foot problems, I need comfortable.

5. Andrew Bird (Armchair Apocrypha) - I haven't gotten his new album yet, but I'm kind of stuck on Armchair Apocrypha right now. So catchy...

I'm sure there's more, but right now, I'm off to bed.

A post on community

2009-01-16T15:00:00.002-05:00

Sorry for the silence. This is an article I wrote about community for my church's blog....

Can authentic community become a reality in a church? (or even in our society...?)
I moved to Boston a year and a half ago after graduating from a small Christian college in Indiana. My college experience was a great one: I played on the softball team and was involved in many campus activities. I had a close group of friends that I had a ton of fun with, but, more importantly, that also pushed me to think deeply and question the world and myself. I couldn’t hide from them, and because they loved me, they were honest with me when I needed it – about my personal life, about my faith, about the world. I felt loved, enjoyed, and accountable.
When I moved to Boston, I knew no one. I came because of a job, and although I knew building new relationships would be difficult, I believed that genuine community is something that everyone desires, so it would be something that I could find in Boston. I believed firmly that establishing a strong community was key if I wanted to make it in my new, grown-up life. I still believe that. And so the search for community in Boston began…
… and continues. So, what do I mean by authentic, genuine community?
At our root, at our core, we all desire to know and to be known, to love and to be loved. By authentic community I mean a group of people in which real love occurs, love that exhibits the qualities of I Cor. 13:

“ Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head, Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always "me first," Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end” (the Message)

When its put that way, community can seem impossible. Yet, if it’s something we desire, it has to exist somewhere.

Then where does community come from?

While community can develop through other means, I believe that true community should come, can only come, through the church. C. S. Lewis said:
“ It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects-education, building, missions, holding services…the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.”
If we stop to look at the way Jesus created little Christs (spending time in meaningful relationship with his closest friends), we see that the process of coming like Christ comes only in the context of community. Jesus was teaching his disciples to love and to be loved, the purpose for our existence.
In one of the few recorded prayers of Jesus, we have both the definition of and the reason for community within the Church. He says:

The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind –
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
So they might be one heart and mind with us.
Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.
The same glory you gave me, I gave them,
So they'll be as unified and together as we are—
I in them and you in me.
Then they'll be mature in this oneness,
And give the godless world evidence
That you've sent me and loved them
In the same way you've loved me. (John 17:20-23)

Community must occur within the church so that we can give the godless world evidence that God loves them as he loved Jesus.

So why is authentic community so hard?

Although I crave community, especially having tasted its power and felt its absence, I must admit that I am bad at creating authentic community. Community requires a level of vulnerability and selflessness that I am often unwilling to give. I want to be loved without having to risk rejection. I want others to know me for my good traits without holding me accountable for my bad ones. I want the benefits of love without the struggle to become lovable. Yet, vulnerability and struggle are necessary parts of community.

In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis expresses this truth. He says:

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wring and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to on one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

So, can authentic community become a reality? Yes, it can, and it must. We as a church are failing in our mission if we fail to establish authentic community. Without it, we cannot give evidence of God’s love and His redemption.

We're more like a family

2008-12-10T18:54:00.002-05:00

First thing this morning one of my 10th grade boys stopped me to tell me he was moving to Florida and that today was his last day at school. When he came to say goodbye after school he told me that he might cry, and, with tears forming in my eyes, I told him it was an appropriate time to do so. I will truly miss him.

My 9th grade girls keep bringing in baby pictures to hang on my wall. When an older student stopped in to ask what that was about, one student replied, "it's because we're family."

After a particularly difficult history quiz this afternoon, one of my girls ran up to tell me she got an 80%. She gave me a big hug and told me history is her new favorite subject. Her first test grade this fall was a 31%. I am so proud of her.

One of the senior boys found out at 4PM that he got into Dartmouth. I was in a car full of co-workers and students when we found out. We all cheered, loudly.

This past weekend my friend Johanna came to visit because the boys' basketball team of the school where she teaches was playing BTA (my school). She pointed out the boys that she teaches, and then asked me which boys on our team I knew. I proceeded to list the boys I taught, and then the boys that I interact with on a daily basis (all of them, really). It's hard to explain. BTA isn't really a school so much as it's a big family. Probably only half of what I do on a daily basis is academic in nature. The rest of the time is spent giving advise, affirming and encouraging, scolding, teasing, and being teased in return.

After days like today it's hard to believe that there are schools that would disapprove of most of the interactions I had with my students today. Too much physical contact (most of my one-on-one conversations involve my hand on someone's shoulder), too personal of conversation, too informal of a teacher-student relationship. Yet, I think it's these interactions that I learn the most from, and probably that they do, too. Even when I can't stand to be around them, I love them.... we're more like a family.

2008-11-24T20:52:00.002-05:00

I finally did it. I've been thinking about it for a long time, and I finally did it. I bought the iPhone. So far - love it. Love having Google at my fingertips. I'm addicted to Google. It has to do with my love of useless info, I'm told. This definitely feeds the addiction.

Next week....

2008-11-20T15:02:00.003-05:00

I will not be responsible for shaping anyone's mind. I will not have to answer the same question repeatedly. I will not have to quiet anyone down with "the look". I will not have to accept papers as they are frantically shoved in my face. I will not be responsible to keep children from running, screaming, shoving, tripping, eating when and where they should not be.

I will read for fun. I will go to bed when I'm tired and get up after 6 AM. I will eat when I am hungry and go to the bathroom when I need. I will have meaningful conversations with people who are my age or older. I will wear jeans.

The wheels, not the engine

2008-11-19T07:37:00.002-05:00

It's 7:40 AM and I'm sitting in my classroom waiting. My 9th grade girls are taking a test today on the Middle Ages through the end of the Crusades. Several promised they would be here at 7:30 for a last minute review before the test this afternoon. No one has come.

Yesterday, in the middle of test review, one of my 9th grade boys raised his hand and asked, "Miss Richardson, what happens if the students revolt?"

Not at all desiring to get into a futile conversation in which I explain that they don't have a choice, furthering his feeling of powerlessness (i.e. encouraging the whole revolt idea), I chose to answer the question in a more round about way.

I began by bringing up a few revolts that we had already studied in Western Civilization. I asked this student what some distinctive characteristics of revolt were (i.e. a group of people who feel oppressed and powerless standing up against those who are doing the oppressing or taking the power). Essentially, to revolt, you need an enemy to revolt against - someone whose goals are in direct opposition to your own.

We then progressed to discussing the goals of students and the goals of teachers... and what do you know? Students and teachers are working toward a common end. Therefore, the teacher cannot be the enemy of the student, and therefore the student can not revolt against the teacher.

So, if the revolt thing doesn't work out because no one is doing the oppressing, what is the more accurate representation of the student teacher relationship (by this time, this student, who was just protesting homework and had definitely not realized what he has gotten himself into is really regretting having opened his mouth in the first place)? A car.

The car is the means of reaching education (the end goal of both student and teacher relates to the student receiving a well-rounded education and being adequately prepared for life). The student is the engine. The teacher is the wheels. An engine without wheels works. An engine without wheels cannot propel a car forward. Wheels cannot do the driving, they must be driven.

This, I believe, adequately expresses the reason I frequently feel powerless as a teacher. When my students learn to see me as being a tool that will lead to success, rather than an authority that is the cause of misery, inevitably they enjoy both school and me more. Yet, because I inevitably require discomfort or hard work on their part, I am initially seen as the enemy.

Conversations like this are not merely for the benefit of the student. I have repeated conversations with students, both in the academic setting and informally, in which we end up discussing our sin nature. When I lose sight of my own sin nature that I lose my patience and feel frustrated with my kids. When I realize that I am no better than them, just maybe a little more experienced in making choices, I can connect with my students and can love them in a way that will help them succeed.

It's almost Thanksgiving!

2008-11-16T21:39:00.005-05:00

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Obviously the spiritual significance of Christmas and Easter makes each important in its own right, but as far as holidays go, I like Thanksgiving the best.

Once Jen and I got to college, we started spending Thanksgiving in New Jersey with my grandparents. We spent several Thanksgivings in NJ throughout my childhood, but since the start of college, it has become tradition. I love being at Keswick for Thanksgiving.

href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_AXbjwFNmZbY/SSDbXSUUuAI/AAAAAAAAAKs/T4S6IzdKxKI/s1600-h/100_1788.JPG">

I love Thanksgiving because there's no hype, no stuff to buy or parties to attend, just lots of good low-key family time. At Keswick, a residential addiction recovery center, there's a church service on Thanksgiving morning. We sing hymns and people share what they're most thankful for. It's honest and often emotional, and it's so good. My grandpa, the one who passed away this summer, used to preach a sermon, and then we would all go to the Big House and eat Thanksgiving dinner together, the staff families and the men in the program.

I'll be there in one week and I can't wait. Keswick's not home, but it's like going home. I think more than one place can be home. At Thanksgiving, Keswick is home.

My life as a teacher

2008-11-14T09:53:00.001-05:00

This exchange just occurred during study hall:

Student: Miss Richardson, have you read the Odyssey?
Me: Yes.
Student: Do you know everything about it?
Me (After a slight pause): Um, no. Not everything.
Student: Oh.

Student then returns to work.

Huh.

My Neighborhood

2008-11-09T00:13:00.005-05:00

It's an unseasonably warm November night, and with my windows open I can hear music and loud conversation from several nearby apartments. It will quiet down in about an hour or so.

Some people don't like living in noisy places, but I'm not one of them. I love the activity of the city, the variety, the people that stand in the middle of the street in the middle of election night yelling and dancing.

It's funny because I also love the quiet. I laying in the middle of a field and staring that the millions of stars. I love listening to the rain on my tent or being woken up by birds singing.

God's beauty is evident in both, I think; He's in the crazy city nights as well as in the tranquil wilderness ones.

Political Elections, Silly Ducks, and Free Time

2008-11-05T15:37:00.003-05:00

Yesterday being Election Day, and my school being a polling place, my boss took the opportunity to declare a Headmaster's Holiday and canceled classes for the day.

I used my day off to accomplish the following:
-vote (and actually take the time to walk to the polling place and stop for coffee on the way back)
-do laundry
-clean my room
-clean my apartment
-read for fun
-watch the election returns with friends
-NOT do any schoolwork

It was the first day in a VERY long time that I did not do anything work related. It felt wonderful.

Because my school is urban and very racially and socio-economically diverse, the election was a bit of a hot topic as of late. Several students were very vocal and passionate supporters of John McCain, many more were very vocal and passionate supporters of Barack Obama (this is Massachusetts and all). Throughout the day today, countless students rushed up to me asking who I voted for. I responded that I don't divulge my specific political preference, but that the decision was very hard for me (and it was). When a fairly heated debate over candidates broke out today in my 9th grade boys' history class, I took the opportunity wax briefly on the beauty of a democratic government. As citizens of a democratic nation, it is both our right and responsibility to make decisions that are in the best interest of our nation. Therefore, we can vote in opposition to one another while still working, in principle, for the same thing. Hopefully the gloating of the Obama supporters and the defensiveness of the McCain supporters (in this school) will soon die down.

We also discussed the purpose of the period of time between the election and the inauguration... ("Actually, Obama is not president yet. Bush is what we call a lame duck... here's what that means...") On of my 9th grade boys got the facts a little backward and later referred to Barack Obama as a silly duck. I laughed.

Thank you, Mr. Gawkowski, for teaching me US History. It was the last course on the subject I took, and somehow, I remember a vast majority of it.

2 more weeks...

2008-10-20T21:35:00.008-04:00

of soccer, and then I think my life may return to some sort of normal. Hopefully.

Driving home from my friend Sara's tonight a lovely thought entered my mind. What if I could have a reunion with all of my favorite people? As my life is now, I rarely have time free to make phone calls and when I do, the list of people to call is infinitely longer than the time allotted to catch up. It's vicious, really. But, what if we could all be in one place? Or, maybe I should tour around and visit everyone. My heart is missing my people.

Here are a few of my favorite pics... if you're not in here, send me a picture of us for me to enjoy!

Huge Social Life

2008-10-03T19:22:00.005-04:00

The past 2 Friday nights, I've been in bed, fast asleep, by 10 PM. I haven't been sick. I feel just fine. It's just that I've been tired, and I COULD go to bed, so I did. Most likely, I'll be in bed before 10 again tonight. It's just how I roll these days.

I wonder if it says something about a person when they choose to go to bed earlier on a weekend night than they do on a weeknight. Perhaps.

Today was a leadership forum at school. Several times a year we bring in someone to speak to our students about how they, as leaders, have engaged their world. Today's speaker was Gideon Strauss, a South African who was an interpreter for the Truth and Reconciliation trials of post-apartheid South Africa. Now, he is involved in several Canadian ministries linking a Christian's responsibility to influence culture with the workforce and economy. He focused his talk on 3 specific ways that we should posture ourselves toward our culture and our world - with wonder, heartbreak, and hope. The response of our students was overwhelmingly positive, and I must say that I went in to the time with high hopes and left feeling the time was better than expected.

I spend approximately 50 or so hours a week with high school students and I am often shocked at their failure to acknowledge, much less actively engage, their culture. For as much as I observe this in them, I'm sure I do the same, I'm just (duh) ignorant. We rarely wonder at the world because we take it for granted. They rarely think about the ease in which they can find entertainment, information, transportation, etc. They fail to wonder at their freedom and privilege, noticing only when what they believe to be their right is unavailable to them. I'm sure I'm the same way.

Then there's the posture of heartbreak. We have to be aware of how the world should be in order to let the cruelty, ugliness, and injustice truly break our hearts. Several times in the past year I have been horrified by my students' tendency to laugh or mock instead of to be shocked or hurt or saddened. Last year, watching a movie in English class, we got to a very intense scene in which a character begins sobbing after his wife dies, and my 10th grade boys spontaneously erupted in laughter - mocking laughter. Students today laugh at everything, mock everything. If you observe the world at a mocking level, you never have to truly engage it and let it influence you. Sarcasm and ridicule are defense mechanisms to prevent anyone (yourself or others) from seeing the truth.

Finally, we must face the world with hope. I must frequently remind myself of the hope of redemption in the lives of my students and of myself. I must look at my students as flawed, as having a sin nature, and must have hope that they can/will be redeemed. I must avoid the tendency to view them as Jonah viewed the Ninevites - to sit self-righteously as my students struggle, unaware of how or what to change. I must have hope that the little efforts we put forth on a daily basis are preparing our students to be culture makers - to drive, shape, improve our world.

My Grandma told me to.

2008-09-19T20:33:00.004-04:00

I sincerely apologize for my extended absence from blogging. I won't make excuses except to say that I am once again caught up in the whirlwind that is school and coaching and I was completely unaware that it had been 4 weeks since I last posted on the blog. Seems much shorter.

Never-you-fear, I will spare you the play-by-play of the last few weeks and skip to a more concise glimpse of where my heart and mind have been returning over the past few days - our tendency to choose comfort over challenge, to choose defense over trust, to choose the safe-but-cheap over the rich-but-hard.

One reason I love teaching high school is that in high schoolers we see humanity at one of it's most delusional yet vulnerably real times. The division between self-perception and reality is so blatantly obvious to the observer (aka the teacher). I learn truths about my own actions by observing pieces of me in my students. It's that point in the year where the newness is wearing off and students are beginning to view the work required of them as an inconvenience at best and a personal attack at worst. Cries of "you gave us too much homework!" and "We'll each pay you $5 if you move the quiz to Monday" echo from classroom to classroom, filling the hall and leaving all involved in an obvious state of annoyance. Being a person who never likes to let the chance for a deeper discussion of morals and behavior slip away, the complaints of my students led to several lengthy, full-class heart-to-hearts this week.

"Let's get this straight: my class is a privileged, not an inconvenience, so don't let me ever hear you complaining again."

I said that today to my 9th grade boys, who were complaining about having to take notes...as if I have some way to upload the information into their brains without them having to do any work for it, but I'm choosing to make them work because I enjoy watching them suffer.

Just because something requires effort does not make it bad. Zero homework is not good, it is wasteful - a wasted opportunity to "work at [what ever you do] with all your heart" (Col. 3:17).

About the choosing defense over trust thing.. I've been learning that one both in and out of the classroom, it's just that I see it so often in the classroom it makes it glaringly obvious outside of it. When I'm teaching, I estimate that I get no more than 80% of a given student's attention at any one time in the class. The other 20+ percent is given to monitoring the behavior of his peers, making sure there is nothing else going on that he should comment on or laugh at. This, I am convinced, is a defense mechanism against failing and against rejection. Several times students have expressed to me that they do not try in school because if they were to try and fail, they wouldn't be able to handle the failure. They care so much that they devote themselves to proving that they don't care at all.

Sarcasm is the most readily available defense mechanism for all of us.

Safe-but-cheap leaves us sickened, feeling disgusted or disappointed in ourselves, wishing we could just be genuine.

They're Back

2008-08-25T21:14:00.003-04:00

Preseason soccer started today... I'll reserve my judgments until a few practices in. Girls showed up, soccer was played, so the day was successful.

The best part - I saw some of my students again today. I forgot how much I love them. It was so good to hear about their summers, joke around, get/give hugs, etc. The kids are the best thing about my job, definitely.

I heartily disagree

2008-08-22T21:57:00.002-04:00

This guy is wrong and should be swiftly removed from the educational community.

Everybody's talking about "community"

2008-08-20T20:57:00.002-04:00

Since my last post I have had 5 lengthy conversations about growing community in Boston, and there are more in the works. Some I have started, and others were total surprises. When my friends Brock and Christina brought up the subject tonight at dinner, I almost laughed, and commented on how "community" seems to be the theme of my life these days.

What makes a community strong? What is a strong community?

The basic answer that I can come up with right now: A group of people that are helping me to be more like Christ and that I can help become more like Christ. It's so simple, but I really think that's what we long for - acceptance and love from people that goes deeper than surface friendship and that helps us to become the people we truly want to be.

Although I understand that community outside of college will be very different than my college community, I refuse to accept people's hints that I should give up my desire for that strength of relationship after college. I think it can happen.

Making it Happen

2008-08-16T10:05:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I ended up spending most of the day on the north shore with my sister and her roommate. I left in the early evening to make it to a leaving-Boston-surprise-bowling-party for a friend. The drive should have taken about an hour, but two and a half hours later I finally arrived at the bowling alley.

I almost decided not to go. The past few days I've felt particularly isolated, something I struggled with this summer as well. I don't quite feel at home with my Boston friends (they're great and fun, but feeling at home takes time) and I feel increasingly more disconnected from my Taylor and Grace friends. Last night, going 5mph down the highway, I wanted to just go home and feel sorry for myself.

Instead, mostly because the bowling alley is 5 minutes from my apartment, I went. Even though I was a full hour late, they had just started, so I jumped right in. It was what I needed - a reality check. My community here in Boston will be as strong as I make it to be. It is through my intentional engagement with others, my effort to deepen friendships, that my community will grow. Even though I wish that others would pursue relationship with me, I cannot fault them for not investing more than I have taken the initiative to invest with them.

This whole being an adult thing isn't all fun and games.

A little small town conversation

2008-08-14T15:58:00.004-04:00

Today I headed to the north shore (northeast of Boston). My productivity in Dorchester was decreasing exponentially and I needed some outdoors/fresh air time. For a few hours (until the clouds rolled in) I sat at a beach in Beverly, reading a book for professional development and soaking up the sunshine in the mid-70s weather.

I was immersed in my reading and listening to my "chill out" playlist on my ipod when I felt the sensation that someone was right behind me. Turning slowly I saw that it was not just someone, but something - a Beverly Police car with a grinning, middle aged policeman was no more than 2 feet behind my chair. After getting over my initial startle and reassuring myself I wasn't doing anything wrong (police in Boston don't really come by to chat), I began what turned out to be an enlightening little conversation.

"Hello." I said, timidly. "Gorgeous day, isn't it?"

"For now," he replied, brusquely, looking off as in to non-existent clouds. "It's raining in Worcester" (Worcester is a good hour and a half from Beverly, but apparently very important to my new police friend).

"Well, I drove up from Dorchester, and it isn't this nice there" (this was my attempt to help him regain the proper perspective and appreciate the weather he had).

"Why were you in Dorchester?" He bluntly asked, almost as if I should feel guilty for having been there.

However, beginning to recognize his short answers and abrupt questions as his way of pleasantry, I replied, "Oh, I live there," in my most pleasant tone.

"Why? It's dangerous."

"Well, parts of it can be but I teach in the city, so I like living there."

My confident and carefree tone was apparently not reassuring to him as he felt the need to clarify. "It's okay teaching there?"

"Oh, yeah. I love teaching there." At this point I inserted my most confident smile, though his concerned facial expressions made me wonder if it was really ok.

"Uh-huh..." His voice dripped with doubt. He then mentioned some crime they'd had at a local alternative school - implying the inherent danger of teenagers, especially ones who aren't like everyone else - wished me a good afternoon, and drove about 20 yards down the beach, where he parked and sat facing away from the water.

Half an hour later he returned, asking if I had seen which direction the lady with the teacup poodle had headed. Apparently, dogs are prohibited on this beach, and belligerent dog owners intentionally ignore his strict enforcement of the rules, earning him a bad reputation with the force.

As we conversed, I searched his uniform for his name, but couldn't find it. Sadly, I will be forced to remember him as my friend, the Beverly cop, even though a name would make this story so much better.

I'm not sure what about this officer stood out to me the most, but I think one of the biggest things was that he seemed so jaded. The weather was gorgeous but wouldn't be for long, the city is dangerous - especially teenagers in the city, the patrons of the beach are out to get him fired, etc.

What would the world be like if we all loved what we did? Were energized by our work? Lovingly engaged our culture, our society, our neighbors?

Can you do (and love) both?

2008-08-14T10:13:00.003-04:00

Or, is it a one or the other kind of thing?

At the end of the school year, I was so positive about teaching. I really loved my first year, I loved my school, my co-workers, and most of all my students. I could see myself there as long as I continued to be challenged and to be used in such a fulfilling way.

Then, I went to camp and I was reminded of how much I love that, too. I love working with high schoolers outside the realm of their comfort zones, I love facilitating development through challenges and experiences, I love working closely with a camp staff, and I really love the times that good conversation is sparked just from hanging out with campers. I would love to be given the opportunity to truly pour myself into a camp program in a full-time capacity.

Theoretically, you can do both. So many people have said something along the lines of, "the great thing about teaching is that you have the summers off to do camp." Yet, I'm not convinced that I'm supposed to do both. This spring, I couldn't spend any time getting ready for camp because I was spending all my time trying to finish the school year well. This summer, I spent no time improving my lesson plans, reading for professional development, looking for new teaching ideas, etc., because instead I was fully involved in camp.

Talking with my uncle about this a few weeks ago, he seemed to think this wasn't a problem. Maybe I'll teach for 3 or more years, then work at a camp for a time, then move on to something else. Maybe....

For now, I'll involve myself fully in whatever it is that I am doing and trust that God has worked out the rest in his infinite wisdom.

Harry Potter

2008-08-11T10:43:00.002-04:00

As mentioned a few months ago, my goal for the summer was to read all of the Harry Potter books. I don't know why I didn't read them in the first place, but as time went on it became increasingly apparent that I had to read them now. I'm so glad I did. They were so good!

Next: Watch the movies.

It's funny how, even as an English teacher, I can forget the power of story. As humans we are fascinated by human behavior, especially when characters behave valiantly or sacrificially - selflessly. It's as if we are most enthralled by what we least understand. I went to see The Dark Knight last week and left feeling similarly. Yet, I'm not sure the Dark Knight told the story in as compelling of a way as Batman Begins. I think I need to see it again to really get a good understanding of it, but part of the story just didn't work for me.

Interesting, then, that so many people flat-out reject Christ's story. Is it because there have been too many selfish people telling that story of ultimate selflessness? Recently in my thoughts I've been exploring the link between selflessness and love. I'm not sure if they can be synonyms or if they are just very closely linked. Thoughts?

Something New

2008-08-09T10:38:00.003-04:00

I couldn't really tell you why I chose to head to a "new" camp this summer instead of going back to Grace. In trying to persuade me to head back to Michigan, my friend Cathey said something about needing something comfortable and safe to come home to after a year of brand new. I'm not going to lie, that would've been nice, but I think one thing I learned this summer is that comfortable and safe aren't synonymous with good - instead, God provides in the new and unfamiliar as well.

Not only was it a good challenge for me to incorporate what I've learned from past leadership training into a brand new setting, to have the chance to restructure, to pick and choose, to start from scratch and see what happened, it was also a good challenge for me to be at a camp in which I had no preexisting relationships. I knew no-one and therefore I could build relationships off of the here and now, who I was and what I was contributing to the community. I was able to take the confidence that I gained from being so deeply loved and fed at Grace, and apply it to a totally new situation.

I got to work with four other incredible people.

And in my need, whether struggling with exhaustion and frustration from the job, or whether grieving the death of my Grandpa and just needing someone to hug, I learned to trust people in my most vulnerable times and realize that they love me because they are a part of Christ's body.

I found out on a Sunday afternoon that my grandpa's organs were shutting down and that they were going to take him off the ventilator and let him pass away. My co-counselor, Paul (in the black spandex above) had the day off and so it was the kids and me for the day. It was overwhelming how supportive and loving they were. Later that night, just after dinner when my mom called to say that grandpa had died, I walked out and sat on the dock and just cried. A few minutes later I heard footsteps behind me. Dustin and Johnny, two of my campers, came out and asked if it would be okay if they just sat with me. I felt so loved.

Daunting, to say the least

2008-08-08T10:49:00.006-04:00

The longer my life continues and I don't blog, the more I avoid it, thinking that there's just too much to say. I'm sure many parallels and comparisons can be drawn from that feeling, but I'm not going to. Instead, I'm going to try to begin to blog about my summer.

First, remember that people who live by the school calendar consider summer to be the time between when school gets out in May or June and school begins in August or September. Camp people consider summer to be the time between when camp starts in May or June and when camp ends in July or August. Therefore, camp people come to the end of their summers before school people do, and school people end their summers before the calendar does. When I refer to summer, I'm probably referring to the time that has passed between the first week of June (when school got out) and now (because I can't very well blog about the rest of it, now can I?).

Secondly, my summer progressed along three distinct yet intertwining lines: my first summer in the wilderness of Maine, my first summer away from Michigan and Grace, and the summer that my beloved Grandpa Raws passed away. You'll see that I reflect from these three places throughout my posts.

Thirdly, I'm not going to try to recap the summer here (be thankful for that). However, as I think of things to share, I'll post them. Pictures from the entire time can be found at my Flickr page - http://flickr.com/photos/amy_richardson.

Now... where to begin... perhaps a bit of first impressions.

Jackman, Maine is the place to be.

To get to Moose River Outpost, you drive 4 hours north in Maine, 2 hours off the highway, and perhaps more significantly - 2 hours past the nearest Wal-Mart. The scenery is beautiful, and there are moose.

This summer I was continually reminded of God's power and sovereignty as I experienced only part of the vast spectrum of his creation - from the ocean to the mountains. While personally I struggled through some things (to be described later), it was assuring to know that the God who made Maine was also in control of my seemingly small existence.

Victory in Jesus

2008-07-23T21:19:00.002-04:00

My grandpa passed away on Sunday night after fighting various infections for about a month. I left Maine yesterday morning and drove all day to arrive at about midnight last night. The funeral service was this morning and there is a fairly large memorial service on Friday afternoon.

The service this morning was very special because it was private - only family, the staff of Keswick, and the men in the addiction recovery center attended. it was held in the little white chapel by the lake that my grandpa loved so much, and it was a testimony both to his love for the Lord and to his love for his ministry. We ended the time at the graveyard by singing "Victory in Jesus," a hymn that the men in the addiction recovery program love to sing, and a very fitting hymn for the time.

"I heard about a mansion, he has built for me in glory,
and I heard about the streets of gold, beyond the crystal sea,
about the angels singing, and the old redemption story,
and some sweet day I'll sing up there the song of victory."

It's really hard for me to put into words who my grandpa was, both as a public figure and as a grandfather. Someone the other day asked me if I was close with my grandpa, and my answer was an immediate "yes!" But it wasn't a closeness that came with spending lots of time together, it was a closeness that came from something deeper than that. Talking with my uncle tonight he suggested that it was grandpa's deep, abiding relationship with the Lord that permeated his relationships with others and allowed so many of us to feel so close. He was holy in what he did. He was a righteous man.

I will miss him in the little things. I will miss him in not hearing his voice when I call on the phone, in not being able to get up early and walk to breakfast with him, in not laughing with him at his dry jokes, and maybe most of all in not being hugged by him and not hearing him say that he loves me. It is easy to love someone who loves you so selflessly and completely, and it's because of his complete love that this is both hard and good.

This blog isn't dead...

2008-07-19T18:44:00.002-04:00

... I'm merely in Jackman, Maine (think - almost Quebec) for the summer and rarely have access to any form of electronic communication.

My grandfather's situation is still critical, and recovery is looking very unlikely. God's plan is perfect as is his timing, but it is hard to be in such a remote place when my family is hurting. I'd appreciate prayer.

I just got back a few days ago from an 8 day sea kayaking trip to Moscungus Bay in Maine. It was gorgeous, and an incredible experience.

I should resume regular blogging sometime in the beginning of August.

When it's hard to understand...

2008-06-26T23:52:00.002-04:00

It's hard to explain what's going on with me, with my family, now. As I mentioned earlier, my Grandfather is in ICU struggling to recover from ARDS. Some days the prognosis is grim, others, like today, we have great reason to hope. Regardless, the frailty of life is evident in these moments.

Additionally, my great-uncle Miles, who has been struggling with Parkinson's disease for about a decade, took a drastic turn for the worse today. His wife, my aunt Grace, is the sister of my grandfather. She returned from visiting my grandfather in NJ to find her husband sick, and it seems unlikely that he will recover. His battle, and hers as well, has been long indeed.

And yet, my cousin Sarah gave birth to a healthy baby boy this morning. This is my grandfather's 3rd great-grandchild, with another due in the beginning of August.

It is hard to see God's plan at times like these, when it seems that everything is happening at once. On Saturday I head to Maine for a month of camp in the wilderness. How can I go when Grandpa is so sick? What about Uncle Miles? Why now? Why all at once?

Driving home tonight from small group, I was reminded of a song that we sang often the year of the big accident at Taylor. It goes like this:

If you say go, we will go
If you say wait, we will wait
If you say step out on the water
and they say it can't be done
We will fix our eyes on you and we will come

Your ways are higher than our ways
and the plans that you have laid
are good and true
If you call us to the fire
You will not withdraw your hand
We'll gaze into the flames and look for you

And through it all, my mind keeps returning to who God is. God indeed is good, all the time.

From MI to MA to NJ...

2008-06-23T22:31:00.002-04:00

I spent the last week at Grace Adventures, hanging out with the high schoolers I spent the last few summers with. It was a great experience and fun to be back with those kids. Monday night of last week I got a phone call that my Grandfather who had been taken to the hospital for a fever and other persistent symptoms had been moved to ICU with ARDS - Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. Throughout the week, his condition continued to worsen, and on Thursday they put him on a ventilator and decided to heavily sedate him. Therefore, when I flew back to Boston on Sat. PM, my sister picked me up and we drove to New Jersey.

I'm currently in NJ, where my grandfather is still in critical condition but stable. I plan to head back to Boston on Wed., pack for the rest of the summer, and then head up to Maine on Sat.

God is faithful and, while this is far from how I expected to spend my week between camps, I am so thankful that I had these days off and was able to come down and spend these days with my family. Grandpa has lived an incredible life of humble devotion to his Father, and I know that our faithful God will heal him if He wills it.

This morning my grandparents' huge family Bible was open to Psalm 104, and I found the words comforting. Instead of speaking of healing or comfort, it speaks of the overwhelming majesty of God. At times when I feel the most worried, or the most sad, it is powerful to remember who God is and to marvel that He chose us to be His children.

Home

2008-06-13T18:12:00.002-04:00

Back in Michigan for a week before stopping back in Boston briefly on my way to northern Maine.

It's summer for sure.

Not anymore...

2008-06-11T21:40:00.002-04:00

It's official. I am no longer a first year teacher. My school year ended at approximately 2pm today, when I finished proofing the last report card and logged out of our gradebook program.

My friend Sara and I then spent the rest of the afternoon wandering Harvard Square, barely able to maintain sensible conversation.

The major goal of the summer - read all of the Harry Potter books.

Mourning broken relationships...

2008-06-09T18:51:00.002-04:00

Over the past few days I've thought, more frequently than normal, about relationships that have been broken. Not breakups, per say, but friendships that once were very close and now are no longer.

Today, I saw a picture of a good friend with whom I am no longer in contact, and it physically hurt. My chest hurt, I could feel the sadness in my stomach, and for a moment I felt true grief. I wonder if that friend grieves the loss of me, too.

To me, broken friendships are evidence of the fall, and the fact that I grieve over the loss of a friend is a symptom of my longing for a better place, a place where petty differences and selfish motives do not keep us from loving as we should. From each one I can learn how to not allow my flaws to prevent me from truly loving, but I cannot seem to go back and restore what was lost.

So, here's to Heaven, where we will love and be loved perfectly.

I do not know what I do not know

2008-06-04T17:20:00.002-04:00

A few days ago I was having a conversation with one of my students, a freshman boy. He was telling me about how when he's a senior he's going to own the school, he'll be in charge of everything, blah blah blah. He's kind of a stick-it-to-the-man, anti-establishment, I'm-an-atheist-because-no-one-else-here-is kind of kid.... he loves rock bands and hates school uniforms. I love him, but he rarely ever makes any sort of a logical argument about anything. Yet, the beauty of my job is that I get to help kids like him form logical reasoning for their variety of strongly held beliefs. So, I started asking him a few questions, he answered some, and then I told him I had a phrase for him to memorize and think about, and I'd ask him about it when he was a senior. I said, "You do not know what you do not know."

He just looked at me, blinked a few times, smiled his fantastic smile, and said, "Miss, that doesn't make any sense."

We use that phrase at Grace. It's part of the Leadership Journey curriculum. It pops in to my mind regularly, and today I needed to be reminded of it especially. Sometimes I feel this heavy need - the need to figure it all out, to work out what's best for my life. I take the mindset that God has entrusted me with pieces, and it's up to me to put them all together. Every decision becomes so much more monumental that way - if I don't put the piece in the right place, I mess up God's plan. But, that's so not how it is.

God is putting all of the pieces together in His time and in His pattern. I need to trust that if a piece doesn't go where I want it to, I'm still ok, because every piece goes where God wants it to.

I do not know what I do not know.

I've moved.

2008-06-02T21:32:00.005-04:00

I'll show whole apartment pictures later, but here are some pics of my new room. It's not 100% done yet, but it's getting there.

Moving

2008-05-30T23:50:00.005-04:00

I moved half my stuff into my new apartment today. I'll move the other half tomorrow morning - the big stuff.

Technically, this will be my 20th move in the past 5 years, if you count all the times to and from camp and college (12th if you don't count the camp moves).

Why are the college/early adult years such a transient time? I dream of the day when I can live in one place for an entire calendar year. I can't even begin to let myself dream about a time when I can live in a place and make it my "permanent" home. It's a concept too foreign, too settled, too grounded for this transitory time of life.

Here are some pictures from my almost-empty room at my soon-to-be-old place. I'll put pictures of my new place once I get it just the way I want it.

uh-oh

2008-05-30T14:30:00.003-04:00

9th grade girl: Where's England?
Me: North of France... North of mainland Europe.
9th grade girl: Here?
Me: That's Africa.

5.5 days left

2008-05-30T06:32:00.002-04:00

School is over in 5.5 days.

While I am very ready to be done with my first year of teaching, I am not so sure I'm ready to go a whole summer without seeing my kids.

This week had its share of frustrations (mainly students who have no intention of doing any work between now and the end of the year), there were also some key moments in which I was reminded both of how much I love my students and of how God's almost imperceptible daily work amounts to big change over time.

Yesterday was a boy day. My next to last class period with these gentlemen. We began English class with a dance-off which culminated in a 6'10" boy and a 5'5" boy doing the worm side by side. Priceless. We then finished our last novel, and they loved it. Not only that, but they were able to write reviews of why they liked it, incorporating more than just, "I liked the book because it was funny." I felt successful.

Then, I gave the 9th grade boys some study time at the end of the day. It was fairly laid back, and began with two of my boys seeking some girl advice. Then, before I knew it, 2/3 of the class had moved their desks to surround mine. They asked history questions, my opinion on dating, who I think will win the NBA playoffs, why the Yankees are doing so badly (ugh)...It must have looked rather odd for passers by to see everyone grouped so closely around the teacher's desk.

This is the class that almost killed me. On several occasions, I was so frustrated with them that, immediately after the bell rang and class was over, I ran to the faculty room, never wanting to teach them again. Yet, some point in the middle of 2nd semester, something clicked. Instead of working against me, fighting against the teacher, they decided that I might actually be able to help them, and that they should do what I asked. It took 6 months, but we got there.

My sentiment throughout the day: I love them.