Friday, October 2, 2009

Futures

My generation is obsessed. With many things really, but with one thing above all else; the question of "what the heck am I supposed to do with my life?!" It's in the forefront of the mind of almost every twentysomething Christian I know. It's what keeps us up at night. We're so worried that we don't take a 'wrong' step in life and we agonize over where God wants us next. It's focused on so much that it becomes a point of frustration, anxiety...panic. The actual question of what we're to do becomes so much of an idol that we almost lust after the answer. In the process, I think, we often stop hearing God completely.

I think about the different perspectives that our parents' generation and especially our grandparents' generation had on their futures. The main issue wasn't what I'm supposed to do, but rather, how can I best provide for my family? Were they any less in tune with God's leading when they were our age? Less able to hear God's voice? Had less of a desire to do God's work? I don't think so.

Which way of thinking is better? I'm not sure one is necessarily better than the other, but there needs to be balance. I think of all of us that are struggling with what's next, I propose we recognize and acknowledge the blessings God has bestowed on us in the present and ask how we can best serve in the here and now. Instead of focusing on ourselves, what if we were to focus on how to be more like Christ? I wonder how many of the things we worry about would no longer be issues if this was our main goal.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

A revelation

I just learned today that the place depicted in one of my most favorite paintings, Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night, is an actual cafe and it's in Arles, France. I need to get myself there before I die.


I think a huge part of why I love this painting is because when I was young, there was an exact replica of this painting done by my father that hung in my grandma's house. The copy was actually so close to the real one that my dad had to register it or something like that so that it wouldn't be mistaken for Van Gogh's original! I haven't seen that painting in years as my grandma has since relocated to Texas and I assume she took it with her. However, my dad knows how much I love it and he said he's willing it to me.

Monday, August 24, 2009

I do my best thinking in the shower

Some people go for walks or runs, some people call up their friends to talk things through, and some people, like me, do their best thinking in the shower. It's usually as I'm taking a shower just as part of my routine, but sometimes, if I'm feeling I need to think something over I'll just hop in when it's not necessary to my physical health but more my mental health. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's just the feeling of being enveloped that makes me introspective.

Recent thoughts while showering:
  • I'm finding that I'm someone that not only likes physical contact with people, but really needs it. I'm talking about hugs mostly, but certainly not exclusively. Without really having physical contact with friends and people I love for awhile I just get surly. It's definitely subconscious, but it really affects me. I've discovered that I express affection and receive affection with my friends the best and most natural way with physical contact. This may sound minor, but I really think it's essential to my well-being.
  • When I'm out somewhere with friends or even by myself, like on my admission travels, I tend to rush through things instead of taking them in for long periods of time. I believe there are two types of people in the world when it comes to this: people who enjoy the world by seeing as much of it as possible in the amount of time given to them and then people who enjoy the world by spending more time at each place. I think I'm the former. For example, I was up in Rochester with some friends a few weeks ago for the Park Ave. Art Festival and I wanted to see as much as I could in the few hours we were there. The three people I was with were much more content to do less things in that same amount of time. They wanted to just sit around! It frustrated me at first, but then I always see the benefit to drinking it all in. I just get in adventurous modes and want to stay in that as long as I can. Sometimes to my benefit and sometimes to my deficit.
More thoughts to follow as they come...

Sunday, July 19, 2009

"...every time I remember you."

Recently I've been thinking back on how much of an impact the people around me have on my spiritual life and my understanding of God. It's been over a year since I've been surrounded by my closest friends at college. Sure, I've seen most of them since, but not all at once and not for much longer than a few days at a time (if we're lucky). There's so much to be said for that community of believers being together in the same place, holding each other up, talking about both the deep and the seemingly trivial in a single conversation. It's been awhile since I've felt that community and I miss it. We were 'church' to each other.

In one of C.S. Lewis' essays entitled "Friendship," he laments the death of one of his closest friends, Charles Williams. He talks about how it effects him and another one of their mutual friends, Ronald Knox:
"In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's reaction to a specifically Charles joke. For from having more of Ronald, having him "to myself" now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald."
Being in community with my dearest friends brought out the fullness of each other. And I believe that they helped me to learn more about my faith. Christianity is designed to be communal. A phrase used in a sermon I heard recently was "intensely personal." There's something so beautiful about that. So often I think we have this image of trekking out on our own in our faith and then (maybe or occasionally) coming back into community to get 'recharged' to 'get back out there.' I just don't think that should be true. Lewis continues in his essay:
"In this, Frienship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each of us has to God."
If what Lewis is saying is true, that by community we can understand the individual more fully, how much more that the Church should be able to understand the personality and character of Jesus while in community? This has just been on my mind since I don't feel like I have that community anymore, at least in the way it had existed for four years of my life. I realize what that looks like needs to change as most parts of life have, if only slightly, changed since then. Part of me just wishes we could all still exist in what once was. Despite those desires, I know God will provide it once again, perhaps in a way that I'll be blindsided by.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Fresh

Lately I've been feeling the need to remind myself of Rwanda. To keep fresh in my mind the things I saw, the people I met, the stories I heard, the sorrow I felt, the hope I encountered. I don't know why now, but for the past few weeks it's been a driving force. I've watched documentaries recounting the details of how the genocide started and was carried out, I'm re-reading Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families, and just overall reliving moments from my time there.

I don't know if it's that sub-consciously I feel that my memories are slipping away. Maybe. I believe that no matter what I do (or fail to do) in regards to my memory of Rwanda, much of it will always be with me. But I don't want it to just be a part of
my past; a piece of wisdom and feeling of empathy I had for a time. I want the hope I saw invade me and bring all the horrors and the miracles to my conscious thoughts throughout my life. Not because I enjoy hearing and remembering awful things, but because I never want those raw emotions to go away. I felt so many things in Rwanda. I felt angry, I felt desparate, I felt vulnerable, I felt hopeful. I saw God's hands moving across a nation. In the Rwandan people I saw despair, endurance, guilt, forgiveness, reconciliation, loss, gain.

I feel a responsibility to renew all of this over and over in my mind. To bring it up and wrestle with it continuously. I'll never fully understand the greatness of God's healing or the extent to which man can be evil, but I got a good look at both of those in the "Land of a Thousand Hills."

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The fruit of Christ's death...

"Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, 'Where are you going?' Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you...I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth...He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you." -John 16: 5-7, 12-13a, 14-15 (emphasis added)
A friend recently pointed out this verse to me and has prompted new life into how I think about Jesus' words here. It's one of those you hear a million times within the Christian faith. That's pretty much true of the entire book of John. But what is perplexing and seemingly counter intuitive about these words to the disciples is that Jesus is saying his leaving earth is the best scenario for them/us. The disciples were fearful of Jesus leaving and probably had many of the same thoughts that we tend to have today 'Wouldn't it just be easier if you were here on earth, Jesus?'

Grappling with the idea that Jesus' ascension was better than if he had stayed is where I'm at. Matthew Henry's commentary helps a bit:
"Christ's departure was necessary to the Comforter's coming. Sending the Spirit was to be the fruit of Christ's death, which was his going away. His bodily presence could be only in one place at one time, but his Spirit is every where, in all places, at all times..."

To know the Spirit is to know God just as Jesus said to know him is to know God. I think it's just easier for us to look to a physical being. It's easier for me, that's for sure. Sometimes I have thoughts like 'it would seem much more concrete of a faith if I could just see Jesus...touch Him, smell Him. But how incredible that God dwells with us, in us? To take what is God's and make it known to us? I'm just at the beginning of tackling this.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

The bright side

There aren't a whole lot of positives to being in Houghton rather than still in Costa Rica. But one of them would be that I'm noticeably darker skinned than everyone around me and that basically never happens.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Comparing apples and applesauce

I write this from San Jose, Costa Rica where I'm spending a few days. I don't know what it is that I love so much about being in such completely different contexts than my own. I almost...crave it. Also, on my way to my villa from the airport I noticed my mind fluttering between thoughts of my present location and Uganda. While Costa Rica and the "Pearl of Africa" could not be more different, certain things triggered me to see the similarities. Things like chaotic city streets (though much milder here in San Jose), smells that I can't even pin down but are etched in my brain, random shops on top of each other, etc.

Perhaps it's partially my fierce desires to go back to Uganda. Perhaps it's that fact that is driving me to create my own Uganda wherever I am. Don't get me wrong, I love Costa Rica and not once have I wished that this were Uganda instead. But I feel compelled, if only for a day, to go back to that place that I'm finding more and more each day was the most formative place in my development.

On a similar but different note, I am fearing and at the same time hoping that my wanderlust will never fade. I'm not even sure why I so strongly want to see as much of the world as I can. I mean, I have reasons, but why is it such an intense feeling? It's not a horrible feeling at all. I rather like it.

To end, Costa Rica is lovely as it always is. It's like an old, dear friend. A friend who's voice is soothing and whose personality comforts. It's easy being here. And sometimes, you just need that.