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| Hey Friends... So it may say that I`m reading Labyrinth right now, but I`m actually not. That one was finished and traded in last week. I just didn`t want to put yet another Richard Foster book up on my xanga site. Nevertheless I`m going through Foster`s Celebration of Discipline right now. If there is any place or time in my life to take baby steps in leading a more disciplined life, it is probably here, where my distractions have been cut to a minimum and the opportunities I have to make changes in my life abound. I`ve begun focusing a lot this week on prayer, mainly because my prayer life sucks and I noticed that I have begun to get really bothered whenever it comes time to pray over a meal and the oh-so-familiar, ¨Dear Lord, thank you for this day and for this food¨ spills out of my mouth without me ever really thinking about it. Oh, and also because deep down I know I`m skeptical that prayer even works... I mean, I know it works, but it kind of works in the same way that Tylenol works for me... it clears up headaches just fine, but they were probably going to go away anyway... At least... that`s how I see prayer. I`ve realized that prayer for me is something slightly awkward, something you do with other Christians over meals and when something REALLY BAD happens... and that`s just pathetic. I don`t envision the members of the early church, or the Old Testament pillars of faith, holding hands with their families and asking the Creator of the Universe to bless their food. Hmmm... well actually I do envision them doing that, but I don`t envision them thinking that that has anything to do with actual serious prayer. I read about people like Brother Yung in China and the way that he relied on prayer the way I rely on rice and chicken, and somewhere along the way I think I`ve missed the point. Prayer to me is a, ¨add some of this for good measure¨, while prayer to him is a lifeboat. C.S.Lewis, in one of the best sermons I`ve ever read by him, talks about the joy and merriment that can be found in good company. But, he remindes us, that good company can only be found in people who, from the outset, have taken each other seriously. I think somewhere in there lies my problem. I`d say about five percent of my weekly interactions with others can be categorized as ¨serious¨, and of that five percent about three minutes of it may be spent in prayer. Why can`t I change that? Why can`t I be serious, or at least sincere, with eighty percent of the people I see, and of that time, why can`t I pray for people like I`m handing out candy? I don`t mean kill the fun and start the bible studying, I mean why can`t good hearted joy flow from genuineness and caring. I realize I`m probably losing my audience right here (my mental audience at least) but for the sake of actually writing an entry on this thing I`ll just push through and learn to be more articulate later. But what I`m getting at is that deep down I think my prayer life sucks because I`m afraid to open that part of my life with others, which is exactly where a good portion of my prayers need to be, so when I do pray it is superficial and harmless, because to pray for anything else would involve some serious conversations and some admitions about problems with my family and about my struggles with sin and about the stumbling blocks that I don`t seem to want to get over... and all of that just seems to be too much. But what if... WHAT IF... C.S.Lewis and Thomas Merton and Richard Foster and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Brother Yung and the host of other inspirational members of our faith are right, and the moment we allow ourselves to go to that place with other people we become free. We suddenly are enabled to give our problems to God, I mean really give them, and we are suddenly aware of each other in a much much more personal way, one that enables true love and friendship and joy to pass among us. To me that doesn`t sound Bible study-ish, that sounds like joy! Actually it sounds like Heaven. My Lord God, i have no idea where i am going. i do not see the road ahead of me. i cannot know for certain where it will end. nor do i really know myself, and the fact that I think that i am following your will does not mean that i am actually doing so. but i believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. and i hope i have that desire in all that i am doing. i hope that i will never do anything apart from that desire. and i know that if i do this you will lead me by the right road though i may know nothing about it. therefore i will trust you always though i may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. i will not fear for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
-Thomas Merton
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| Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend - it must transcend all comprehension. Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. Martin Luther said that, right around the time he decided his cloistered life of piety wasn`t at all what God wanted for him, and he resolved to return to the world and live among men. So he nailed up his thesies and went about his way. I find that terribly comforting at a time when not knowing is basically the only thing I can be sure of from day to day. Hi friends, I`m sorry I haven`t updated this thing in so long... but I`m not really. We`ve been in Argentina since... well... since my last entry... and having a splendid time! Buenos Aires is perhaps the hippest, hoppinest, don`t stop dancing till the sun comes up, kind of place in all the Americas. (Sorry Brazil, I haven`t seen you yet) So we`ve been having a good time of it. We`ve met up with several different missionary groups down here, the Grace Brethrens, who are so similar to everything in Indiana it`s creepy... and very comforting at the same time, and the Word Made Flesh folk, who are as hip and trendy as the city they live in. We went to a football match the other day with one of the WMFers and witnessed a cultural explosion of cheers and curses and screams and howls and sweat and shoving and all that other great stuff that has made football the second religion to the multitudes of people who don`t have Direct TV. It was fairly unforgetable :- ) I`ve put down a deposit on a small room in an apartment building where I`ll be living in February and March, with a young Argentinian couple and their 8 month old son. They`re all very sweet. I`m looking forward to those months of single-minded study and focus on my spanish, in the hopes that maybe I`ll be able to use some of that in a job back in the states. But, as usual, bewilderment seems to be my mood of choice, so we`ll just have to see how all those plans work out. On the home front things aren`t so good, which always makes me feel nostolgic and slightly selfish for not being around to jump in the fray, but I rest assured that things are never up to me anyway. Right now I`m at an internet cafe in San Telmo, and trendy neighborhood in Buenos Aires, and I brought my journal with me so I would have lots to write about, but now that I`m here the last thing I feel like doing is writing. So I won`t | | |
| So I finally managed to coax some money out of the cajero automatico (ATM) here and now I can afford to come back and finish my entry... Where was I? Argentina! Right, we made it to Argentina! After waiting in the immigration line at the border for several hours we are now in La Quiaca... hanging out at a cozy little hostel and licking our wounds in anticipation for the upcoming bus trip to Salta. The bus trips are actually getting better now because with each one that we take I know we are that much closer to never needing to take one again. We have 7 hours to Salta, then 18 hours to Mendoza from there, another 12 hours to Cordoba, and then somewhere around the same to Buenos Aires... where we anticipate being for the next several months. I am excited beyond all get out to be there... from what we`ve heard it should be a great place to stay for a while, and believe me friends, if any of you want to take a little trip south I would be overjoyed to host you! And that`s that. On a more introspective side, I`ve been doing a lot of writing lately which has been surprisingly enjoyable. I`ve been making little logs in my journal about the places, people, and things we`ve been seeing, but i`ve also begun writing down some of my more obscure dreams. I`m not really sure why, perhaps because I so rarely remember my dreams that I`m taking advantage of the extra clarity while I can, or perhaps it`s to flex my creative writing muscles from time to time so i don`t get rusty. Whatever it is it has been fun. And of course I still write down anything that strikes me from the books I`m reading... which are all still great. I`m breezing through Water For Elephants right now, which has also been really really enjoyable, one of the top three from my trip so far, although I`ll admit I wrongly pegged it as a bored-mother-who`s-kids-are-off-at-college-and-is-tired-of-reading-Better-Homes-and-Gardens-magazines-kind-of-book. That`s it... i`m done.
Much Love | | |
| I have exactly 4 minutes and 47 seconds before this computer kicks me off and the guy up at the counter asks me for more money... which i don`t have. In developing world language, that actually means i have about 2 minutes of typing and 2 and a half minutes of waiting for the page to load... so friends... this will be quick. After several eventful yet relatively uninteresting nights in La Paz the three of us took a bus (yes another one) down to Uyuni to see the infamous salt flats of Bolivia! We stepped off the bus, which was also conveniently our worst one yet, like riding an earthquake, and looked around to find ourselves pretty much back in California... desert-wise... not people-wise. So we skipped the salt flats, we didn`t really care about them anyway, and hopped onto a train to Argentina. And we`re here now. Dang I have to go, i totally should have done this earlier... oh well, next time. | | |
| Remember a while ago I mentioned how buses represented something of a spiritual journey for me... and how introspective I became while riding in them? I officially recant all of that... well... semi-recant. I think at this moment on the long long road that is my life, i´d be pretty happy to never ride in a bus again. As of today I have thrown up once on a bus to Lima, had explosive diarrhea on a bus to Mancora, and now been sat on by a mother carrying her three year old son which, strangely enough, was probably the most uncomfortable of all of those occurances. We set off from Cusco, Peru, hoping to cross the border into Bolivia and end up at Copacobana. To do so, we had to take a bus through the town of Puno, on the Peruvian side, which has seen a good bit of rioting and road blocks in the last several weeks as farm workers petition the government for more money and subsidized food. We weren´t particularly worried about our safety, as the riots were relatively non-violent and the road blocks mainly a means of letting people know that they were aggrivated. We asked around and discovered that there would be a day of no protests, and we quickly booked our tickets and settled in for a long haul. Unfortunately, to add to our troubles, Bolivia is also relatively unstable at the moment. The US embassy is advising Americans to not enter the country, but if we should decide to, we will also be required to pay a 135 dollar entry fee and verify that we have had our Yellow Fever vaccinations, two things we weren´t particularly keen about. Seeing as our options were pretty limited, we nevertheless set off to see if we could make it. As we boarded our bus in Cusco, things immediately seemed to be a little off. They marched all the passengers out of the bus station, through the rain, and down a dark alley to our waiting bus. We found our seats and settled in, only to find out that they had overbooked the bus and there were several women (with their infant children tied to their backs) left to sit in the aisles... for the next 10 hours. Several of the passengers, including us, began to complain, both that these women had to sit in the aisles of the bus, and that we would be unable to get to and from the bathroom, which can be pretty essential on a 10 hour bus ride. Amidst the complaints the bus roared to life and we took off. As people struggled to readjust to the cramped conditions, Micah found himself holding one of the women´s children, and I found myself underneath another one who was attempting to find room in the aisle for her child, her bags, and herself. We did the best we could, although my frustration bounced back and forth between these women who were making the bus ride uncomfortable for all of us but who probably couldn´t afford to buy a ticket (for 15 bucks), and the bus operators who had carelessly overbooked the bus. Fortunately after about 30 minutes a Peruvian couple behind us got up, got their stuff, handed their tickets to two of the women in the aisle, and angrily left the bus. We managed to spend the rest of the night in relative peace. The next morning our bus was arriving at the Bolivian border. Through the night we had made it past the unmanned road blocks and now were entering the delicate phase of border crossing and corrupt police. As we neared the border our bus slowed to a stop as several hundred people, fanned out across the landscape, slowly walked towards us. The passengers of our bus timidly looked out the windows as these people picked their way across fields and dirt roads, not really giving us much of their attention, but instead turning around every once in a while to look at what seemed to be another hundred or so people walking about 50 yards behind them. I couldn´t really understand what was happening until I noticed that several of the men walking were picking up stones and putting them in long slings. Every once in a while one of these men would turn around, wind up, and let loose a stone at the people walking 50 yards away behind them. It suddenly occurred to me that we were witnessing some sort of riot/protest between two differing groups of people. Our bus sat idle on the road, trying to go unnoticed, as hundreds of people, on both sides of us, grabbed stones and slung them at each other. There was no shouting, no crying, no blood that I could see... just men, women, and even some children, walking as if taking a Sunday afternoon strole, as rocks the size of fists occasionally rained down around them. The first wave of people passed us, and that is when I noticed a dog, lying dead in the middle of a field that these people had just walked through. I think that was the point that my brain finally rebelled against the information my eyes were giving it and said, ¨this is just too weird¨. As the stones flew around us, our bus started up again and we moved on to Bolivia. We didn´t have yellow fever vaccinations, we didn´t have photocopies of our passports, we didn´t have a clue. 135 dollars later, and an additional five more dollars to cover our ¨mandatory¨ yellow fever shots (which we were supposd to receive at the border but never got) we were hearded back onto our bus and officially welcomed to Bolivia. At that moment burning wreckage from a damaged alien spacecraft could have fallen out of the sky and smashed into our bus and I wouldn´t have been surprised. Weird shit happens when you travel, and although I keep telling myself that, I never seem to be prepared when it happens. I think that´s why I love it so much! Two hours later, Micah, Jana, and I huddled together in our hotel room in Copacobana and offered a prayer of thanks to God for keeping us safe and bringing us to this beautiful country, and a prayer of petition for the upcoming elections and the future of our country. Although both seemed to turn out okay, I still have to remind myself that all of this, protests, buses and travelling safety, Obama, and even the life of dogs caught in the crossfire, lies in God´s hands. With that knowledge, I sleep in peace... | | |
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