free burma rangers.

Waking up every morning to have coffee overlooking miles of palm forest, sun glinting off a thirsty lake, horses rolling around a soccer field and a gentle haze of Thai steam rising off the mud is one of the most peaceful ways to begin a day. And then the hurricane that is the Eubank family hits.

The Eubanks were kind enough to host us on their massive ranch outside of Chiang Mai, and this is what you get with your morning coffee if you stay with this generous family: detailed conversation regarding whether or not the term "genocide" is correct for the Burmese political situation, slide shows of children who have been shot, and stories of land mines and dying babies and incredible courage. But it's all in a day's work for Dave, who runs what is quite possibly the most intense operation I have ever seen in real life.

The Free Burma Rangers is a covert (ie. illegal) guerrilla relief and humanitarian force aiding refugees fleeing the Burmese Army. It's hardcore relief work that runs like the army, if the army operated with the ends of wholeness and healing. It has succeeded in creating a network of radios that inform villagers of pending attacks so they can escape, but also so world news sources can stay up to date on situations that the Burmese government would otherwise never give them access to. It's dangerous work, and the strength it requires for them to work daily with 5 year old gunshot victims and 8 year old rape victims and murdered infants is honestly beyond me.

When the family isn't on the ground in Burma, they use their home in Thailand as Grand Central Station (to paint a picture, we shared a visit with a British couple and their two tiny boys who run a development program in Afghanistan; an MIT grad student who does communications work for FBR, an FBR soldier on injured reserve, and next week a California Congressman is on his way with a delegation. Quiet? Never). And although it would be more simple and peaceful to watch The View with your morning caffeine, there is something so encouraging and strengthening about spending time with people who have deep faith and who are passionate-- for excellence, for love, for justice and for others-- that a few days hearing some of the darkest stories in the universe somehow wound up feeling like a bigger story of hope being woven throughout hopelessness.

Here's the FBR website, which can explain this incredible project better than I:

http://www.freeburmarangers.org/

good friday.

"...he was mad with a love emboldened by an unseen authority that I simply cannot explain... Is there anything more otherworldly, more supernatural, more hopeful than this?"

i wish church were more like aa.

My Uncle Bruce has a scratchy beard, works construction, drives a motorcycle and runs with a gang of other bikers, laughs with a loud, broken cackle and was an alcoholic for a long, long time. His story isn't unique; don't most families have someone who has overdone it with any number of things? I have another uncle who smokes weed in his yellow schoolbus in Yakima, plays the dijeridoo in a band called Blue Tropics, and has a son with a full-scalp tattoo and a pretty wife with depression problems. But he's never caused a problem. Bruce has. Alcohol controlled his life, and the elephant in the room of my grandparents' house during my childhood created a lot of tension. My mom tried hard to protect my little sister and me from the side effects of such an unhappy heart, and most of the time succeeded in being the buffer between him and the rest of the family. Which is why I didn't know how bad things had gotten until he decided to seek treatment.

Alcoholics Anonymous is famous for having 12 steps to freedom from addiction, and I was an observer from the bleachers as Bruce regained control over his life, one step at a time.

On one trek back over the mountains from Eastern Washington, I couldn't help but remark that Bruce and his longtime girlfriend Jeanette, who had also just finished AA, had taught me more about grace and true community that weekend than going to church had the entire year. The two of them had a tight-knit group of fellow bikers who were also in recovery, and I was amazed at how much they resembled what I'd always hoped the church would look like: they kept each other truthful and accountable. They stuck together. They were honest and kind and firm. They were a community in the fullest sense of the word, and admitted freely that they would not have survived without both AA and the mutual support of the group. They acknowledged their imperfections and continual need for grace, and didn't consider AA a one-shot fixit that cured them of everything that led them to alcoholism in the first place.

Church, on the other hand, seemed to be a place where most people had it all together and didn't let any cracks show. People knew the right answers, which was generally enough to get by (my friend Ryan and I laugh about how no matter what question you ask kids in Sunday School, they pop their hands up and yell, "JESUS!" It's funny until you realize that adults do the same thing, with fancier phrasing). And growing up I always had my "church" friends and my "real" friends-- the people who knew all about what I was really thinking and doing, around whom I could exhale and not edit myself before speaking. It's hard to ask questions in an exclusive club, and that sense of in vs. out made church feel constrictive.

I realized that what I really wanted out of church was what Bruce and Jeanette had found in AA: a group of people who have profoundly messed up and admit it to themselves and their Creator, who live in constant awareness of grace and how much it's worth, and hold each other's hands as they take those humble, stumbling steps towards the light.

Dallas Willard, in The Divine Conspiracy, considers the mentality of AA groups so similar to that which should characterize the heart of genuine Christ-followers that he lists the twelve steps in his footnotes as a basis for developing true disciples. Here are the steps that my Uncle Bruce took to get sober:

1. We admit we are powerless over alcohol-- that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.
4. We make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. We admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We become entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. We humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. We make a list of all persons we had harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.
9. We make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. We continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

What if this list of steps, when applied to a broader context of our entire lives and not just addictions, became a practical guide for shedding our pride and appearing humbly before God and each other? I get goosebumps just thinking about what this life would be like. I get shy when I think about how far from the standard I land. And I get hopeful when I remember that the process, like recovery from alcoholism, is messy and broken, but it's meant to be a journey. Christ asks us to be real, be humble, and be repentant. If that's so, then I want to go to church at AA. I think they really get it.

life together.

Observations on community, from a quiet observer just passing through.

debating together

working together

praying together

being young and loud together

being old and silent together

being. together.

upsidedownmotive

www.upsidedownmotive.net

The brainchild of my friend Peter Drennan, upsidedownmotive is a growing collection of thoughts on faith, social justice, and seeking after a "life in full." We're just starting out; contributors welcome :)

TOO MUCH

I am spending this evening cleaning my closet. It's a parallel exercise with cleaning out my thought life, as well. I'm trying to get rid of the things that don't fit me anymore, belonged to a different time of my life, and that aren't really items I'd like to take with me.

I have way too much stuff.

I sit surrounded by piles of t-shirts, skirts, and pants that I forgot I ever had. I have duplicates! I have near-duplicates! How much stuff can one body wear at once? I'm feeling convicted as my head is increasingly filled with contradictory visions of my life--

One vision has me, with my backpack that holds a month's worth of worldly goods, contentedly skimming the surface of the earth with a few shirts and forgetting that I ever needed more.

The other vision has me wearing the beautiful dresses I always crave, going to fancy places and laughing lightly at things that aren't really real, but are as tempting and transient as cotton candy.

I don't need all these clothes, I don't need so much of what I have and I am tired of the self-absorbed rants that my bank account brings out in me. I'm reminded of the Sermon on the Mount, and especially am moved by the Message translation of 6:25-29;

"If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds. Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them. "

I crave a life of simplicity even as I seem to accumulate more than I need or can even use. How much is too much?

Absolve: v.

sorry for the picture of four old white men as an opener, but i suppose you could call them fairly important...

Northern Ireland and the American South alike saw the 1960s inflamed with an influx of civil rights movements and now, forty years later, both places are still mincing forward in attempts to solidify their own tentative peace. After reading John Perkins’ Let Justice Roll Down, the parallels stood out to me all the more. Perkins is a civil rights superstar and has fought for equality nearly his entire life. This man has a story of forgiveness that is absolutely unreal. Having been beaten nearly to death by racist cops after a lifetime of being tyrannized in mid-century Mississippi, after having witnessed white police kill his brother, after years of being beaten down, physically, economically and socially, Perkins relates how every fiber of his being pulled to reject the entire white community. But at the same time, “I began to see with horror how hate could destroy me—destroy me more devastatingly and suddenly than any destruction I could bring on those who had wronged me… And where would hating get me? Anyone can hate… An image formed in my mind. The image of the cross—Christ on the cross… He was nailed to rough wooden planks and killed… But when He looked at that mob that had lynched Him, He didn’t hate them. He loved them. He forgave them… His enemies hated. But Jesus forgave. I couldn’t get away from that.”

And so John Perkins also felt love and forgiveness for his abusers, for the entire racist and bigoted system that had attempted to hold him down for his entire life.

Things like that make me believe in God.

I ran into Chrissy (the same Chris I mentioned in August) downtown last week and felt the normal swell in my heart when I saw his little smile. Still job-hopping, still in love with the girl he’s dated for a few months (even her baby has started calling him Daddy, a sure sign of true love in Belfast), and still hopelessly stuck in the trap of severe loyalist mentality. Inevitably, the power-sharing topic came up (naturally a popular theme these days: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/08/europe/EU-GEN-Northern-Ireland.php, if you’re interested). I didn’t even need to listen to know what Chris was going to say; in sum: Paisley is a sellout. Adams is still a f***. Prods are gonna have to run at this rate, and we are all gonna need to head to England before *they* take over. Chrissy, having been raised on a steady diet of “anti-Fenian” rhetoric and nervously protective philosophies, really is convinced that Protestants have to stand their ground against Catholic upswings. Power sharing cannot be seen as a step toward workable peace; instead, it is a sure bet that one side or the other is gaining ground (just which side is actually gaining depends on whom you’re speaking with, though). It makes me sad, because I really love this boy. I really want him to become better than his UDA upbringing would have him be. I wish he could see that despite singing the same national anthem and adoring the same Queen, culture-wise Northern Ireland is no more British than Ireland. Northern Irish, both Protestants and Catholics, have carved out a little sub-culture that would not easily assimilate into either Ireland or England.

I also really want Chris to learn how to forgive “the others” for sins that have never been committed against him personally. Perkins talks a lot about how creating victims also perpetuates a group’s own victimhood—essentially, damaging both groups. “After I was beaten by white policemen, I began to see things a little more clearly. I was able to see the needs of white people and what racism was doing to them. You see, I had gotten set to the fact that that the sickness of racism had affected the black community in a way that kept them from functioning as a healthy community. A lot of our people were sick—affected by generations of slavery, oppression, and exploitation—psychologically destroyed. But I had never thought much before about how all that had affected whites—how they had been affected by racism, by attitudes of racial superiority, by unjust lifestyles and behavior.”

Like it or not, Catholics and Protestants are equally at home here in Ulster. And just like for blacks and whites in the American South, they have merely coexisted for far too long. But finding a way to begin absolution is a tenuous process.

“Love fills in the gaps of justice.”
-Shane Claiborne

faith.

Jean is a woman who lives alone behind my church. She has days, maybe hours, to live. Cancer has invaded nearly every part of her frail body, taken her sight, and removed enough of her mental health to make her extremely agitated. She has been moved to a hospice center about half an hour outside of Belfast.
Yesterday, we went to visit her. Jack, Freddie and I (Freddie's wife died ten years ago, and the friendship he's had with Jean throughout the decade has, I'm sure, gotten him through a lot of dark days. They mean a lot to each other).
I have known Jean for less than six months, yet I have never heard her utter a single word of complaint. She used to let me take Carson to her house and look through all her photo albums while she narrated the stories of her family's lives. She never mentioned the pain that was exhausting her, never talked about the weight that was dropping off of her, never seemed to ask why. I thought Jean was old, but discovered that she is not much older than my own parents-- the cancer has taken such a toll that her aging was kickstarted. But still, no complaints.
Jean is lying alone in her hospice room, unable to see and confused, at times panicked. We spent an afternoon by her bed, rubbing her hands with lotion and speaking quietly into her ear, anything to bring a bit of peace to the end of her life. We read long Bible passages at her request. Despite the fact that she can't remember names, she remembered the ends of the stories before they had barely begun. I glanced over at Freddie more than once, suddenly incredibly thankful for the tears he was shedding over his dear friend, for his patient dedication to her, for his wonderful heart.
She asked us to pray. First for her family, for her friends. Not for her until the very end.
With one hand on her head and the other on her heart, praying peace over this woman, it struck me again how real faith must be at certain points in our lives. It is one thing to hope for something more beautiful, and quite another to be at death's door and truly believe that God is waiting for you on the other side.

Chris and I went for a hike in the Mournes last week and had a long talk about what it means to have faith. I tried to explain how many times in the last six months have been difficult and confusing enough that all I could do was ask for enough courage for the next day. And how often, that's all I got. He looked at me and said simply, "I want more than that."
But sometimes I think that if we had more than we needed, in terms of faith or courage or whatever it may be, that we would rely on it too much. It's easy to be self-sufficient; what's difficult is not knowing where you are going to get your grace from tomorrow, or the next day. But having faith that it will be provided just in time.

Our prayers yesterday were short but real. Prayers for courage and for peace in the last hours. I wish all prayers could be like that: simple, quiet, and filled with faith. And I guess that's really all faith actually is: quivery-lipped, hoping-hoping-hoping that everything we've said is true really IS, and clinging to something more than we can see.

Thunderbolts and the Belfast Blitz

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” -E.B. White

That summarizes my first week in Belfast perfectly. We’ve gone out a couple times, danced a ton (to the point of sustaining my first war wound- a swollen knee- after dancing into a stage), and really enjoyed downtown nightlife, but also seen what a challenge my life will be this year. I wish there were an easy way to find that balance of improving things and enjoying them.
As far as the quick rundown goes, I started work the morning after I landed and have been surrounded by dozens of six year olds since then, doing the Crumlin Road day camp (interesting fact: Crumlin Road was bombed by Hitler in the Belfast Blitz of 1941 and the church was rebuilt after having stood there for about 100 years) and this week we're popping over to Woodvale to see our favorites from Deputation. We are living at the Drennans because the house that Peter and I are moving in to has no fridge and no standards of cleanliness…but we’ve gone in with bleach and boiling water, so don’t worry… you guys should still come visit! There’s a guest room! Malia has been having a field day taking video of the place and there will be some serious before and after shots that I’ll post when I’m all done “girlying the place up.”
Last night Malia and I made dinner for the Drennans and sat out in the twilight drinking wine and talking before they got home. I’ve spent a lot of time meeting tons of people in the past week, and each of them has a perspective on the community and the church, the demographics and the teenagers I’ll be working with. Honestly I felt like I had hit an early dead-end, because I kept getting questioned at every turn. At the bars, guys ask, “WHY would you be living in Ballysillan?” And even the Crumlin Road people are warning me, “Wait till mid-year, we’ll see how positive your outlook is by then.” I knew what I had gotten myself into before I stepped onto the plane, but it’s made me seriously question myself.
Just to give an idea of the neighborhood and community I am living in, I thought I’d include an excerpt from some of the reports Jack gave me, because they bring me to my knees in how heartbroken I am for this area and how monumental the task of bringing light to this area truly is:
“Over the years the area has become synonymous with deprivation and hopelessness… 92% of births are to unmarried mothers, 64% of people are economically inactive, only 2% have a degree.” Community complaints include the fact that the Housing Executive (basically the branch that runs placement and construction of the projects, like my neighborhood) dumps “undesirable/problem families” consistently into this area, it is ignored by politicians, drugs run rampant and are propagated by the paramilitaries even more in this economically depressed area, which also perpetuates crime. The youth have no incentive to do well in school because there are no jobs to be had, so it is much easier for the girls to get pregnant at 16 and live off of the state for the rest of their lives rather than struggle to make their own living. With nearly ¾ of the community living on the dole, boredom appears to rule and any sense of purpose or meaning is completely missing here. Even tonight, as we drove home at around ten, people were wandering the streets aimlessly, we passed a sign on fire, kids on their bikes. All looking for something to do, something to be a part of, something that is painfully lacking.
I don’t want to be trite, and I don’t want to be presumptuous. I wonder what makes me think I can prance into a community that is one of the most depressed, psychologically and economically, in Northern Ireland with the supposed purpose of bringing hope here. It is easy for me to talk about hope: when I go home, I have options. I probably have more education ahead of me, jobs that capture my interest, nice housing. A lot of these kids can’t see past their few blocks. Who am I to tell them, guys, you can do better than this! What do I know about growing up in a place where college is never mentioned, where boredom rules, where paramilitaries run the show because they are the only groups that give people a sense of worth, a sense of purpose, and activities to occupy their time? But then I thought back to high school, when I got to spend time with families in Mexico who were overflowing with love and generosity despite abject poverty, and how I was struck by the humble and heavy reliance on family connections and their faith, which allowed them to see past their current situation and focus on the long-term. I still think that economic viability is strongly connected with identity, but I am learning to separate the two, and my memories of Ensenada have really helped me with that.
Yesterday also got me thinking about my own motives. It is one thing to live in the rough area for a one year stint. Malia and I thought, if Christ were wandering around Northern Ireland today, he’d be living in Ballysillan and hanging out with the people no one else wanted to be with. But how brave would we be to humble ourselves at home, in our own element? Would Christ be living at Greenlake, or would he put himself on Aurora or the South Side? I would never dream of voluntarily moving to one of those places, but somehow when it’s not your real life, it’s easier.
I am reading Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton, and he mentions Joan of Arc, saying “She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt… She was a perfectly practical person who did something, while they are wild spectators who do nothing… She and her faith had perhaps some secret of moral unity and utility that has been lost.” Sometimes I think I’m further behind on that idea than anyone. I have a long way to go with learning discipline, learning about a more pure love, and uncovering a lot of my own pride.