Looking ahead...

The best part about this time of year (aside from finally escaping from a seemingly endless winter) is being able to look forward to the many great things that happen in the summer. It seems I always have a handful of events to look forward to and this summer is no exception. Here's my planned itinerary for the coming months:

• June 4-7 - San Diego, CA for a development conference for work--will be attempting surfing for the first time!
• June 9-12 - Portland, OR for Hooch's wedding (sometimes he also goes by Jimmy)
• June 12-15 - Seattle/Tacoma, WA--Katie and I will drive from Oregon and visit with our dear friend, Erica, who traveled to Uganda/Rwanda with us in '07. It'll be my first time in the state of Washington. MAYBE we'll even drive up to Vancouver, BC...maybe.
  
• July 9 - Hamilton, ON for my friend Jess' wedding
  
• July 15-17 - Norwich, CT for another friend's wedding! This time it's for Eric and Beth. Katie and I will be staying with our friend Jillian in Nyack, NY!
• July 19-22 - New York, NY with Upward Bound. This will be the 5th time I've done this trip with my good friend Eileen and a group of 11th graders-to-be. Should be great!

These are just the things that I know about now! This list is almost definitely for my own benefit, but it's fun to look ahead. Of course, I'll also be frequently in Buffalo and Toronto as per usual. Summer of 2011, I'm ready for you!

April

I'm like many people I know--I don't like the transitions between seasons. I'm one of those people that wants the weather to just make up its mind. I love each of the four seasons in their full glory. That's a big part of the reason I enjoy living in the Northeast. But the in-between...that's just frustrating to me (a reason I am not particularly fond of November). We (everyone who shares this sentiment with me) often see these times as drab, uninspiring, and ugly. However, today God offered me a different perspective.

This afternoon I took a walk in which I ended up in the woods. Sometimes you just need a walk in the woods without a plan. My end goal wasn't to have some deep thoughts to share, but rather, to simply get my butt out of my apartment. It wasn't especially warm out, but the sun was shining. One of those days where you feel like you could stay outside forever, but your ears still get red and your nose gets a bit runny. Once I was in deep enough I stopped to look around and listen. Less than half of the ground still had snow on it, but only in the shadows where the sun hadn't gotten to it yet. The tops of the trees swayed from the wind that hadn't made its way down to me yet. The only noises I could here were the trees aching and my boots crunching on snow and leaves. It was beautiful. Often, clarity comes in moments unplanned.

While I was there I didn't want full-blown spring. The sight and sound of this 'half season' was perfect. Without wanting to be too philosophical, it reminded me of where I am; this current season of my life. I'm nearing a time where I have to make decisions. Will I stay put or move on to a new place, a new job, a new life? What today did for me was help me to realize that the transition between seasons is not only necessary, but it's beautiful too. It sets the stage for the next season, in all its glory, to be something to behold.

Japan

There was a sadness that came over me yesterday as I saw footage on the news, not only because of the images of despair and destruction, but also because there are people in this country that say that Japan somehow deserves this because of what they did at Pearl Harbor in 1941. It's unfathomable that people can say such awful things.

Sure, the events of Pearl Harbor were reprehensible, but so was our response of a-bombs. The fact that a small minority of people still hold bitterness towards Japan is unbelievable to me. Additionally, most of these vocal idiots are too young to have even been alive at that time. Perhaps this hatred is being passed down through generations much like racism is. Perhaps they just want to be different. Perhaps they enjoy shocking people. Whatever the reason is it doesn't change the damage this does.

During my short time in Japan this past November I was amazed at how hospitable everyone was. I experienced such a warmth from the people and really enjoyed my time there. Not that my reaction would be any different to the tragedy there if I hadn't visited, but it's just a more vivid picture in my mind after being there.

My heart breaks for you, Japan. I wish I could do so much more.

R.I.P. Rick Martin

I never watched Rick Martin play, but I went to preschool with his son, Corey. From the age of 10 (when I first started really watching the Sabres) I always heard his name. My mom and grandma would talk about 'The French Connection,' the line Martin played left wing on with legends Rene Robert and Gilbert Perreault, with great affection. He's been part of the story of Buffalo sports since the early 70's. As a kid I would see his #7 banner hanging in the arena beside Robert's #14 and Perreault's #11 and not far from Tim Horton's #2. They all seemed larger than life to me and it was like they looked over the always changing Sabres lineups throughout the years and kept watch over the ice. They were the constants, the immortals. They were always there. Now Martin joins Horton cheering the team on from a place further away than the arena. R.I.P. Mr. Martin.
(Photo by Steve Babineau, Getty Images via Montreal Gazette)

Night

I love night photography. It's the type of photography that excites me the most. I'm not someone that takes a lot of photos anyway and I almost never take photos of every day events. I take photos when inspired and for me to feel inspired it usually means I'm experiencing a unique place, time, or circumstance. Skylines, lights, and impossible night skies never cease to get me excited.

I'm not sure why I have such a strong response to the night when I look through a camera lens. Maybe it's because by virtue of how the picture needs to be taken I'm not just capturing a quick snapshot in time, but rather, several seconds of time strung together into one moment.

Maybe it's movement that I find so compelling. The science of motion in art form. Being able to see something in an image that is never displayed in reality. Or perhaps it's how they have a dream-like feel to me.
Or maybe it's simply the different sort of challenge this type of photography demands. Getting everything right in split seconds. The shutter being open long enough (but not too long), the right aperture, the proper ISO. The moment I see before I even take the first shot is what draws me there, but the experimentation is what keeps me there.

Whatever the reason may be, I love it. At the risk of sounding philosophical, images like these remind me of the many intersections our lives make with others if only for fractions of seconds. I think there is something really beautiful about that.

Hurt

I feel hurt when a part of the population within this community makes my job, recruiting students to this place, much more difficult than the inherent challenges already make it by being so reckless with what they say and by criticizing all possible minutia.

Another 'thought from the shower'

Traveling gives me perspective (and motivation). I think I'm better in my friendships and I'm better at my job if I've been traveling. It both fills my mind with new things to think about and also clears my mind of unnecessary thoughts I seem to get bogged down with. I never lose the urge to travel and I think that if I'm not traveling, even every once in awhile, I get bored and antsy.

Can anyone relate?

It's not my decision!

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the notion of "God's will" and how it seems so many people use it as a reinforcement for the decisions they make.

The way I see this manifest itself most often is in my job in admissions for a private Christian college. The springtime marks the time of year where our accepted students let us know whether they'll be enrolling at our school or at another school. Often times, reasons for going elsewhere include issues with finances, our location (we're pretty rural), or they've decided to pursue a major we don't offer. But a common thread with many of the students is the idea that it's "not God's will for me to go there" or "it's God's will for me to go to this other school." In reality, I know that often the reason is that this student doesn't want to go to school in the country or that this student just liked another school better. Of course, they are often too timid to own up to the real reasons.

Once someone states that their decision is "God's will," it ends the conversation. What can one say to that? "Well, God told me that the exact opposite is true!" Of course not. Don't get me wrong, I fully believe that God does call specific people to specific places and specific things. But have we taken this too far?

I've recently been really trying to figure out what I believe to be true about my relationship with God and our respective relationships with Him. I guess, the conclusions I've been coming to are that God isn't interested in dictating our lives as if we have no control over what happens to us. So many Christians seem to live like God's will is some sort of nebulous force that directs us in major (and minor) decisions as if every decision has a RIGHT choice and a WRONG choice. You're either IN God's will or you're OUT. Really?

Can we agree that God wills for us to be obedient to his commands? Can we agree that "living in God's will" can mean that we're following how God would have us treat each other and pursuing Him with our minds and our actions?

If I make a decision because I believe it's God's will that I make that decision and then I start feeling discontent after a time, does that mean it's no longer "God's will?" Like I said, I believe God can and does call some people to specific things, but I think that more often than not, God invites us to make our own choices. And I think something for all of us to try to do is to OWN those decisions once we make them. Let's also be honest about the reasons we make decisions and let's not make "God's will" the automatic fallback response.

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.

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.

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...

"...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.

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."

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.

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.

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.