I have decided

to be content with the decisions of authority.

It is becoming relatively normal for me to be content with the circumstances of my life over which I have complete control. Ha ha. It never occured to me before that the discipline of contentedness might supercede that position... until yesterday.

I have been PO'd big time with certain decisions that AIM (missions organization) has made concerning my trip next year. (I've used words like "infuriated" just to shed some clarity on my feelings.) They're decisions that really matter... and I think they made the wrong decision.

But here's the rub: will I miserably rebel or joyfully submit? UGH I HATE that choice. But it's one I make either consciously or unconsciously and one that will have lasting consequences.

So last night I gave up.

It's humbling and embarassing to admit my sin but I long for a pure heart before God... and this submission is an elementary step to holiness. So I let go. Who I will be with next year is in the hands of God. I acknowledge that and receive the decision as coming from his hand.

I will give thanks to the Lord for he is good.

So. Onward.

Thanksgiving 05!

Day 1.

Irreducible?

This is a bit overdue but perhaps this thought is all the better for its percolation in my heart.
I read this book called I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti. He is Pakistani writing during Israeli occupation. He spends most of his life fleeing - a wanderer and perpetual immigrant. Because of Israel's destruction of his homeland he finds he really has nowhere to land. He marries an Egyptian woman, has a child (whose ethnicity is... what? he wonders) but is always moving away from them due to deportation issues, etc.
The unifying thread of this work, in my mind, is one statement he repeats over and over as he encounters the many threatening, challenging, discouraging, joyous realities of life.

"Life will not be simplified."

I often wish it would be. I wish there were a finite number of elements I could master understanding of and then be done with novelties. It would be so much... easier... and so much less breathtaking... if life could be simplified. It not only cannot, but, as Barghouti says, it will not be simplified. It will not be less than what it is. Lamentably, what it is includes the mountains, the valleys, the joys and the sorrows, the pain, the horror, the ecstacy...

It is the journey of life created by a God who sometimes seems cruel for engineering this version of reality, this set of unending circumstances; a journey created by a God who also seems wonderful for this version of perpetual discovery, unquenched precociousness...

Unanswered questions.
Unsatisfied desires.
Unsimplified.
(Does that require infinitude?)

"The French are ... Harry"

(don't read that "the French are hairy" because it's this inside joke... ok?)

So I was watching the movie Gigi. It's fabulous.
There is this one part where Gaston goes to his uncle in a rant after having been rejected by Gigi. He says,

"I tell you, Europe is breeding a generation of vandals and ingrates. Children are coming into the world with ice covered souls and hatchets in their hands. And before they have finished they'll smash everything beautiful and decent."

His uncle replies: "Have a piece of cheese."

That is so French. It humorously sums up so much of the way the French deal (or don't deal) with problems.

A really good book with pretty thorough insights on the French (specifically Parisian) worldview is Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik.

Funniest line in Gigi: Her aunt saying of her, "such stupidity is without equal in the entire history of human relations."
That's so something a McCarty would say. drama.

Glitter

At the moment I am having glitter lotion spread all over my calves by a 2 year old. I enhaled practically my weight in glitter today making fairy paper dolls (and the corresponding wardrobe). We had no temper tantrums all day. Sometimes things do seem to sparkle... even if only for a moment.

The quote

(photo by Mikhail Evstavief - of a cellist playing in a partially-destroyed national library in Sarajevo; 1992)

Well, I've kind of chosen a random quote and I'll explain why: I think the question of "what's to be done about wide-scale human rights crises?" is inevitably tied to the questions of good and evil, and, ultimately, the nature of God. Where is God present in these maladies? Why does God allow such rife, manifest evil? Why does God not right the wrongs? These are pretty basic, common questions. But I think that the best summary of Bill Carter's musing and searching in Bosnia can be found in his early ideas of looking for God. We want to see God - so we look in every nook and cranny that we can... and it discovers to us... something visceral and real and horrifying and immanent and beautiful and...

"Beginning at a young age I had a tendency to look for God in the oddest of places. It all started when the preacher said God was everywhere, he was even there when you were sleeping. Especially when you were sleeping. This kept me awake for years.

"I would eyeball the inside of decaying fruit and peer down gopher holes. I would search birds' nests, spiders' webs, and ant colonies. Sometimes I'd follow my brother when he sleepwalked onto the lawn. That seemed otherworldly.

"Then the preacher, who had fat fingers and breath that smelled like mildew said, 'Every step you take God is walking that path with you.' Every step? This made walking slightly daunting. Once after school I went into the field to find a piece of wet ground. Walking slowly, with my eyes closed, I took a few steps and stopped. I opened my eyes and spun around to watch the footprints rise up from the mud and slowly disappear. Maybe that was the Holy Spirit following me. I don't know."

(Fools Rush In by Bill Carter).

So what are we looking for?

And, more, what are we seeing?

Because it's only what you really see;

What you really find

That fuels the fire

Of inquiry, and curiosity

And compels you

To effect change

Because the face of suffering

Is not anonymous anymore

It is no less than your very own.

Fools Rush In

So the Bosnian War. Why are we so ignorant of the dynamics of post-communist countries? Well, there's the obvious answer of censorship... but I think it is more often a situation of wilfull ignorance. We choose to be uninvolved, detached from the suffering of people. That's probably just a form of self-preservation. There is an intense and troubling helplesness that can take hold of someone who is viewing large-scale human rights violations or crises. I mean, what can we really do?

So I read this book (Fools Rush In) by Bill Carter. He's the guy who made the documentary "Miss Sarajevo" - for a reference point. Most of us have heard of that. Anyway, he weaves this story of his own journey into Bosnia, his quasi-humanitarian work, his personal journey & demons... it's well done.

I'll quote from it when I get the book back tomorrow.
But the real question for today is: what can be done? What is our moral/personal/national responsibility? How can we help people (like the Sudanese or North Koreans) without it simply being self-gratifying (but ineffective). I mean, the UN, the US Gov., and probably a great deal of humanitarian aid agencies really just slap a band-aid on the scalpel wound of human suffering. They ship in food but it doesn't get to the people (duh)... so we can at least say we're trying? We do "what we can" even though it's not working (and maybe hurting) because when we put our heads on our pillows at night we don't want to dream about the starving people of Kosovo, Russia, N. Korea, S. Africa, the Congo, Sudan, Tibet, Cuba, etc. Should our troubled minds be shut off? Should we try to drown our concern because "what can I do?" Obviously not. Well, effort isn't effectiveness and people need help. So, what then?

(CW sorry I haven't called you back).