I Am Not Harry Potter – Adjusting to the Ordinary
Hello there! Ever since I returned to the States about one month ago, I’ve been busy putting my life together. It’s been a wild ride of late nights and even later mornings, surfing jobs online speckled with informational interviews, watching movies and perusing books – the majority geared towards those of us in our mid-20’s, and just wondering what on earth am I doing, or should be doing.
It’s weird being back. I have a lot of pent-up frustration, and I don’t really know why. There’s certainly a lot of stress with moving and not having a job. It’s like I’m looking for some unique purpose for being here, and while that mindset may have worked as a missionary in Kenya, it only exacerbates the frustration of an unemployed college graduate.
I don’t really know what I want to do, and that’s the most frustrating thing about it. I’m not content to just sit around and enjoy my free time. I want to do something meaningful and worthwhile… I also want to make money and support myself.
In times of self-doubt, I watch movies and read books to identify with heroes. One such recently popular (an oxymoron?) hero is Harry Potter. His ‘exceptionalism’ sets him apart from his peers, yet also creates exceptions for him in the minds of others. Whatever Harry Potter does is OK precisely because he is Harry Potter. We see this time and time again, with characters such as James Bond 007, Jack Bauer (of TV series 24) and Sydney Bristow (of Alias).
I think this idea of ‘exceptionalism’ is a lie, a fantasy we often live vicariously through our heroes but rarely in our own lives. ‘Exceptionalism’ makes for great stories, drama and conflict, all a far cry from our perennial puttering of today. And if I begin to take exception to living as others do, of trying to be different and set myself apart in my own culture, I foment the flames of frustration as my fantasy world collides with reality.
Being in Africa was ‘enough,’ perhaps simply because there’s something special about being there to live for a year. Whenever I don’t know a song on the radio or who were the best sports teams last season, I can use the excuse, “Oh, well, I was in Africa.” People understand without really understanding.
But being in Charlotte is like a weak excuse, or should I say the easy choice, as I decide what it is I really want to do. There’s nothing special about being here, about driving a car, going grocery shopping, being white and middle-class – most people around me are (or at least appear to be) the same. Do any of us really know what we really want to do?
There’s a Buddhist saying, “Wherever you go there you are.” In other words, you determine your own happiness by meditating on your own state of mind, and praying through the thought-walls in order to feel the warm flowing softness of God’s love.
One of my goals in Kenya was, and is now, to build my character. To me, building character means becoming a more patient, knowledgeable and poised person. Yet character is shaped by the community around us, as the sociologist James Hunter notes in A Death of Character. We form and learn character in the society we were brought up in.
Emily recently came to Monroe, LA, with me to visit my grandparents and relatives. We had a fabulous time being hosted by the finest of Southern hospitality, and Em got a brief peek into my early upbringing. Just as Monroe and her people had an effect on my life, so do my surrounding circumstances build or break my character today.
Character building is the active pursuit of reconciling our souls with our circumstance; what’s happening inside our self with what’s going on outside. We must remain true to ourselves as well as what is true in the reality around us. To pursue this integrity, we must walk not simply by sight and with a growing sense of faith.
As long as we’re looking for exceptions, we will have trouble focusing on community. Let us look for commonality rather than ‘exceptionalism,’ seeking humility before pride.
October has arrived and I have a job working part-time with EQV Development doing site acquisition and zoning for cell phone towers. I took the job due to its flexibility and because I’d like to work in urban planning, in both the physical and political design of our communities to promote what they should be: a community of interacting persons.
I feel refocused in my graduate pursuit. I remain interested in development, from both the third and first world perspective. I would like to work with communities and churches here in conjunction and in context with communities in the developing world, working together in mutual partnership so that both sides benefit… and sacrifice to make this world a better place.
There is a hero of mine who had nothing exceptional about him. He lived as others lived, eating and drinking with the poorest of the poor. When he did do something extraordinary, like restoring sight to the blind or raising the dead, he told others not to make mention of his deed. I want to be more like this hero, this person, this Jesus.
So as I go about my day-to-day life, I trust God to give me the eyes to see and ears to hear the peaceful beauty of the ordinary.
Sunday, October 15
Sunday, October 8
Walking Together with Integrity
[This text has been taken from a sermon with the same title. I had been invited to preach at my grandmother's church, First Presbyterian, in Monroe, LA, and this is what I had to say. Scripture: Psalm 26, Hebrews 2:5-12]
The last time I read these words in Psalm 26 was during a devotion in late February. I was staying in a classy hotel in Uganda, relaxing after a day in the field. After taking a quick swim in the pool and surfing channels via satellite, I suddenly stopped to remember the days events. I had led a group of American visitors to a traditional African village, complete with mud huts and bare-naked babies, showing them how their money as donors and fundraisers had gone to improve the lives of these communities. Yet sitting here in on my bed in the hotel room, I felt a world away.
Where was I? Today I had been in a place where the closest water source was miles away. This evening I was in a place with so much water I could dance in gallons of it. I had been in a place where children’s infectious stomachs bulged and hunger dulled curious minds. Tonight I was surrounded by kids laughing and throwing French fries at one another. The women THERE stooped under the weight of wood and water. The women HERE had porters to carry their bags. Where was I?
I knew that in this world there were dissimilarities. I knew that in this world people lived differently from one another, that there was disparity. I knew when I returned to the U.S. most people would have cars, be employed and send their kids to school. Not so for most here in Africa. Yet I wasn’t ready to see these two worlds within one country, let alone one day. Where was I?
If I were going to walk with integrity with these people, both African and American, I needed to be truthful to who I was as well as where I was. So where was I?
To start from the beginning, I was in Nairobi, Kenya, near the Horn of Africa on the Eastern side of the continent, serving for one year as a PC(USA) Young Adult Volunteer. I came over to Kenya with six other volunteers, from a group of about 50 spread over ten countries. Hundreds of churches throughout the US, including First Presbyterian of Monroe, support and send out these volunteers each year.
I worked in cooperation with Church World Service, a faith-based, non-profit American organization working in community development throughout the world. My job was to visit various community projects using funds to build a dam, drill a borehole, teach HIV/AIDS awareness, improve agricultural techniques, ETC. There I would interview family members before returning to the office to write a story incorporating their wtory with the larger community project.
My life was full of COMBINING contrasts. In Sudan, I took notes on a computer while the participants of a peace seminar took notes with pens and paper… that we had provided. In Tanzania, I flew over islands of fisherman using wooden boats to eek out a living. In Kenya, I would lug a water bottle to a site only to meet a woman who had carried a 5 gallon jug 10 kilometers to cook for her family that day. In Uganda, I would take visitors into an African village only to relax in a hotel in the evening. At every turn and in every place, my integrity was put to the test.
In the Psalm we read today, David exhorts God, shouting, “Prove me, O Lord, and try me; test my heart and my mind.” David is determined for God to test his heart and thus prove the integrity of his faith. And so am I determined to match what I saw with my mind with movement in my heart. Oswald Chambers wrote, “I must reduce myself until I am a mere conscious man.” Notice he did not say a more conscious but a mere conscious person.
I wonder: Have we ever asked God to test our integrity? Do we match what’s on our hearts with what’s on our minds, and with what’s on our minds with what’s on our plates. In other words, having integrity means matching one’s faith with one’s actions.
God so loved us that he gave the world over to our care. So testifies the Psalmist as quoted by Paul in Hebrews:
“What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
Or mortals, that you care for them?”
Matthew Henry states that a Christian “walk in his [or her] integrity, yet trusting wholly in the grace of God.”
In Hebrews verse ten, we see God’s love “bringing many children to glory” under one parent, Abba. And For this reason Jesus is not ashamed, yet in fact delights, in calling US his brother and sisters, saying, ‘I will proclaim your name in the midst of the congregation, I will praise you.’ “
So who, and not what, are you praising today? Who are you proclaiming in front of everyone? Perhaps it’s your mother, father, son or daughter. Perhaps it’s someone living or someone no longer with us. Whoever this person is, however, is someone you know, with whom you have a relationship. Only by knowing someone can we truly walk with them in integrity.
So how was I doing? I’d written some stories on the good work being done by our partners with Church World Service. With the help of some friends back home, I had sponsored a few Kenyans in getting further education. I even donated some books to a local vocational school for AIDS Children in Uganda.
Yet now that I have returned from Africa, I don’t remember the places or things I did as much as I remember the people I met. I remember Oliver, a security guard at my apartment, who is also 24 years old. He had moved to the city after his parents died of AIDS, and now lives in the slums and commutes by walking 5 miles each day for a 12-hour shift to support his two younger brothers. I remember Sam, a colleague and close friend of mine who showed me how to turn the yearnings of my heart into thoughtful and worthwhile proposals to help the entire community. I remember Joyce, whose smile always brightened my day and whose warmth reminded me of god’s love here in Kenya even as I missed my family and friends back home.
And that’s the beauty of relationships: they don’t break down into an expense sheet or payroll. A name brings up memories of special moments, not simply a name to whom a check should be written. Relationships are more about what is unseen than what is seen. And after all, we live and walk by faith, not by sight.
When I was younger I read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” The book is quite interesting in getting people to do what you want, but true friendships are always a blessing from God. We don’t have control over who specifically becomes our friend or our foe. However, we can choose with whom we spend our time.
How are you spending your time? And with WHOM are you spending time? Is it in personal connections or with personal computers? Are most of your friends like-minded on “the issues” or well-minded of others’ concerns? Are we giving of our time as well as our talents?
One thing I’ll never forget about Africa is the walking. Once we were in the community, we walked side-by-side with our partners and community members to see the good work they had strived to accomplish. I remember we were standing outside one household, listening to the project coordinator Grace, a Ugandan, explain how this family was benefiting from a goat-rearing program. Another woman hobbled over, an infection swelling her foot and causing her to stumble. Her husband had died of AIDS, but not before infecting her and leaving her two children. Now with this foot infection she was not able to go to the market to sell her vegetables, and she could not afford surgery. Her name was Mercy. Lord, have Mercy.
Where is the Mercy in your life? Where is the Grace?
Not all of us can go to Africa, but there is a Grace and a Mercy here today. Next week I’ll be walking 5 kilometers in a Crop Walk, helping to raise funds for precisely those people I walked with less than a year ago. In our culture, we’ve lost the art of walking. If I took a quick poll, I would guess 9 out of 10 of you drove in a car to get here, myself included. Yet it’s those who are unable to drive, the elderly and the youth, the poor and the downtrodden, that we should be reaching out to so “they” becomes “we.” So let us get out of cars, out of our fast-paced lives and perhaps errant errands, and find someone to walk with. And may we do so with integrity, getting to know the other person just as God already knows both of us.
Before Christ suffered for all of us, he had dinner with the least of us. He celebrated with the filthy, drank with the intolerable and healed the disease-ridden. And he called them by name: Lazarus, Matthew, Margaret, Zacchaeus, and many others.
This morning, God is calling your name. Won’t you have a relationship with him? Won’t you have a relationship with his children?
PRAYER:
Lord, help us to be grateful in the good times, and grace-FULL in the bad ones. We live by Your Mercy as well as Your Grace. May we share these gifts with others through the challenge of friendship, knowing we are able to love others because you first loved us.
The last time I read these words in Psalm 26 was during a devotion in late February. I was staying in a classy hotel in Uganda, relaxing after a day in the field. After taking a quick swim in the pool and surfing channels via satellite, I suddenly stopped to remember the days events. I had led a group of American visitors to a traditional African village, complete with mud huts and bare-naked babies, showing them how their money as donors and fundraisers had gone to improve the lives of these communities. Yet sitting here in on my bed in the hotel room, I felt a world away.
Where was I? Today I had been in a place where the closest water source was miles away. This evening I was in a place with so much water I could dance in gallons of it. I had been in a place where children’s infectious stomachs bulged and hunger dulled curious minds. Tonight I was surrounded by kids laughing and throwing French fries at one another. The women THERE stooped under the weight of wood and water. The women HERE had porters to carry their bags. Where was I?
I knew that in this world there were dissimilarities. I knew that in this world people lived differently from one another, that there was disparity. I knew when I returned to the U.S. most people would have cars, be employed and send their kids to school. Not so for most here in Africa. Yet I wasn’t ready to see these two worlds within one country, let alone one day. Where was I?
If I were going to walk with integrity with these people, both African and American, I needed to be truthful to who I was as well as where I was. So where was I?
To start from the beginning, I was in Nairobi, Kenya, near the Horn of Africa on the Eastern side of the continent, serving for one year as a PC(USA) Young Adult Volunteer. I came over to Kenya with six other volunteers, from a group of about 50 spread over ten countries. Hundreds of churches throughout the US, including First Presbyterian of Monroe, support and send out these volunteers each year.
I worked in cooperation with Church World Service, a faith-based, non-profit American organization working in community development throughout the world. My job was to visit various community projects using funds to build a dam, drill a borehole, teach HIV/AIDS awareness, improve agricultural techniques, ETC. There I would interview family members before returning to the office to write a story incorporating their wtory with the larger community project.
My life was full of COMBINING contrasts. In Sudan, I took notes on a computer while the participants of a peace seminar took notes with pens and paper… that we had provided. In Tanzania, I flew over islands of fisherman using wooden boats to eek out a living. In Kenya, I would lug a water bottle to a site only to meet a woman who had carried a 5 gallon jug 10 kilometers to cook for her family that day. In Uganda, I would take visitors into an African village only to relax in a hotel in the evening. At every turn and in every place, my integrity was put to the test.
In the Psalm we read today, David exhorts God, shouting, “Prove me, O Lord, and try me; test my heart and my mind.” David is determined for God to test his heart and thus prove the integrity of his faith. And so am I determined to match what I saw with my mind with movement in my heart. Oswald Chambers wrote, “I must reduce myself until I am a mere conscious man.” Notice he did not say a more conscious but a mere conscious person.
I wonder: Have we ever asked God to test our integrity? Do we match what’s on our hearts with what’s on our minds, and with what’s on our minds with what’s on our plates. In other words, having integrity means matching one’s faith with one’s actions.
God so loved us that he gave the world over to our care. So testifies the Psalmist as quoted by Paul in Hebrews:
“What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
Or mortals, that you care for them?”
Matthew Henry states that a Christian “walk in his [or her] integrity, yet trusting wholly in the grace of God.”
In Hebrews verse ten, we see God’s love “bringing many children to glory” under one parent, Abba. And For this reason Jesus is not ashamed, yet in fact delights, in calling US his brother and sisters, saying, ‘I will proclaim your name in the midst of the congregation, I will praise you.’ “
So who, and not what, are you praising today? Who are you proclaiming in front of everyone? Perhaps it’s your mother, father, son or daughter. Perhaps it’s someone living or someone no longer with us. Whoever this person is, however, is someone you know, with whom you have a relationship. Only by knowing someone can we truly walk with them in integrity.
So how was I doing? I’d written some stories on the good work being done by our partners with Church World Service. With the help of some friends back home, I had sponsored a few Kenyans in getting further education. I even donated some books to a local vocational school for AIDS Children in Uganda.
Yet now that I have returned from Africa, I don’t remember the places or things I did as much as I remember the people I met. I remember Oliver, a security guard at my apartment, who is also 24 years old. He had moved to the city after his parents died of AIDS, and now lives in the slums and commutes by walking 5 miles each day for a 12-hour shift to support his two younger brothers. I remember Sam, a colleague and close friend of mine who showed me how to turn the yearnings of my heart into thoughtful and worthwhile proposals to help the entire community. I remember Joyce, whose smile always brightened my day and whose warmth reminded me of god’s love here in Kenya even as I missed my family and friends back home.
And that’s the beauty of relationships: they don’t break down into an expense sheet or payroll. A name brings up memories of special moments, not simply a name to whom a check should be written. Relationships are more about what is unseen than what is seen. And after all, we live and walk by faith, not by sight.
When I was younger I read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” The book is quite interesting in getting people to do what you want, but true friendships are always a blessing from God. We don’t have control over who specifically becomes our friend or our foe. However, we can choose with whom we spend our time.
How are you spending your time? And with WHOM are you spending time? Is it in personal connections or with personal computers? Are most of your friends like-minded on “the issues” or well-minded of others’ concerns? Are we giving of our time as well as our talents?
One thing I’ll never forget about Africa is the walking. Once we were in the community, we walked side-by-side with our partners and community members to see the good work they had strived to accomplish. I remember we were standing outside one household, listening to the project coordinator Grace, a Ugandan, explain how this family was benefiting from a goat-rearing program. Another woman hobbled over, an infection swelling her foot and causing her to stumble. Her husband had died of AIDS, but not before infecting her and leaving her two children. Now with this foot infection she was not able to go to the market to sell her vegetables, and she could not afford surgery. Her name was Mercy. Lord, have Mercy.
Where is the Mercy in your life? Where is the Grace?
Not all of us can go to Africa, but there is a Grace and a Mercy here today. Next week I’ll be walking 5 kilometers in a Crop Walk, helping to raise funds for precisely those people I walked with less than a year ago. In our culture, we’ve lost the art of walking. If I took a quick poll, I would guess 9 out of 10 of you drove in a car to get here, myself included. Yet it’s those who are unable to drive, the elderly and the youth, the poor and the downtrodden, that we should be reaching out to so “they” becomes “we.” So let us get out of cars, out of our fast-paced lives and perhaps errant errands, and find someone to walk with. And may we do so with integrity, getting to know the other person just as God already knows both of us.
Before Christ suffered for all of us, he had dinner with the least of us. He celebrated with the filthy, drank with the intolerable and healed the disease-ridden. And he called them by name: Lazarus, Matthew, Margaret, Zacchaeus, and many others.
This morning, God is calling your name. Won’t you have a relationship with him? Won’t you have a relationship with his children?
PRAYER:
Lord, help us to be grateful in the good times, and grace-FULL in the bad ones. We live by Your Mercy as well as Your Grace. May we share these gifts with others through the challenge of friendship, knowing we are able to love others because you first loved us.
Monday, October 2
A month in, a month out
It's been a month at home in Delware and now a month on my own in Charlotte, NC, since I returned from Kenya July 27th. I spent August getting my life together: purchasing a 2003 Toyota Matrix, securing a lease for a house in Charlotte and packing out, packing in for the move down South. Then in September I jumped into the hardly-wonderful world of job-hunting, with a little soul-searching mixed in.
Now it's October, and tomorrow I begin a part-time job with EQV Development, a company that builds cellphone towers. Here's a link to an article about a guy who does what I do, minus the high-wires. I'm hoping the job gives me a good taste of what working in city planning would involve, and if I want to combine my M.Div with some studies in urban development.
It's been a tough month (Sept.), fluctuating from just getting a job to pay the bills (like waiting tables) to really searching for something that might interest me further down the road. Thankfully, I have very supportive friends and family, as well as the finances to spend a month looking around for something that interests me. At times I felt I was a stubborn college-educated American, refusing to work for less than $10/hr. At others I felt I wasn't fully following God's call to do more with my education from Davidon and experience in Africa.
In the midst of these life struggles, I've enjoyed time with friends whom I haven't seen in over a year. I have especially enjoyed living closer to Emily, and our relationship deepens by the day.
In the depths of woe God's graces abound. May it be also with you.
Now it's October, and tomorrow I begin a part-time job with EQV Development, a company that builds cellphone towers. Here's a link to an article about a guy who does what I do, minus the high-wires. I'm hoping the job gives me a good taste of what working in city planning would involve, and if I want to combine my M.Div with some studies in urban development.
It's been a tough month (Sept.), fluctuating from just getting a job to pay the bills (like waiting tables) to really searching for something that might interest me further down the road. Thankfully, I have very supportive friends and family, as well as the finances to spend a month looking around for something that interests me. At times I felt I was a stubborn college-educated American, refusing to work for less than $10/hr. At others I felt I wasn't fully following God's call to do more with my education from Davidon and experience in Africa.
In the midst of these life struggles, I've enjoyed time with friends whom I haven't seen in over a year. I have especially enjoyed living closer to Emily, and our relationship deepens by the day.
In the depths of woe God's graces abound. May it be also with you.
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