Idle and Blessed

So, I'm a few posts behind in the queue of my brain, meaning I have to blog about Shane Claiborne before I can move on to more recent things. He returned to his second home, Belmont, a couple months back, and I think he's always so good for us to hear. So I hope he doesn't get tired of coming... Anyway, he talked about a bunch of great stuff, but my favorite was what he said about politics. He said we need to be known for what we're for, not what we're against. The parts of the church that are doing things like burning Qurans, bombing abortion clinics, and holding signs that say "Jesus hates fags," "Repent or be burned," etc, just perpetuate the general associations of Christianity with being against things. And my personal tendency toward those people is opposition, too, ironically. I want to oppose them, publicly denounce them, defend myself and my Christianity, defend Jesus, but I think the better thing is to sing a more beautiful song. Live a...

How many times have walked down these steps? Hundreds, probably. I’m alone, and my mind is reciting Russian phrases over and over, most of which I don’t understand. Cлава Бога...спасибо большое. A strong sense of nostalgia is coming over me. The feel of the uneven steps beneath my shoes, the cool, damp air, the faint sound of little Russian voices in other parts of the building, the view of the looming forest-covered mountains all around the camp. I smile. As I walk out of the dim concrete building I notice some familiar faces on the broken sidewalk. The overwhelming urge to talk to them fills me. “Good morning,” I hear myself say, realizing they can’t understand me. Why am I here? How did I connect with these people last summer, and the summers before that, when we didn’t understand each others’ words? I have to connect with them. As I approach the building where breakfast, worship, and our morning teaching session awaits me, more people crowd around, some mothers cooing to their ...

Two weeks ago today I was in New York City, speed-walking around Manhattan like a total tourist-trying-to-look-local. I always do that, by the way. I always try to look local everywhere I go, and I'm not sure why. That's why in Russia I adopt their lack of facial expressions in public and don't speak in shops unless I know how to say it correctly. That's also why I learned and used more slang than I realized, but I'm kinda proud of that. Anyway, NYC was gorgeous. The big Christmas tree was up next to the ice skating rink in Rockefeller Center, and there were pops of Christmas everywhere. Christmas music playing on Madison Avenue. A flashing Santa five stories up on the side of a skyscraper. Tiffany's decorated in pink, blue, and white, the only colors they acknowledge the existence of, with the dainty trees and carousels on floor three (the "spectacular Christmas floor" according to the elevator man who I almost asked to be my grandpa). And then there ...

I'm writing a paper on Genesis and the Nephilim passage of 6:1-8, and its messing with my mind a little bit. Since the Nephilim passage is a segway into the flood narrative, I'm writing about how the story of people messing up leads to the story of God destroying things. And I was thinking about how God decided to start over with a clean slate, flood the earth and start over, but graciously noticed Noah and let humanity live on through him. And then I remembered how one time when I was little I was riding with dad in that old 1970's bright orange truck he used to have with the little windows by the mirrors that you could push open in the summer time. And we were going somewhere in that truck, and he was telling me about how scientists and people that study the earth have found evidence that the plant and animal life on earth was made and destroyed a few times before this one. There's evidence that there were ecosystems on earth that flourished for long expanses of time ...

So, I'm reading an incredible book and processing an incredible trip to New York, not to mention the wonderful end of the semester is upon me...so I have a good post or two a'brewin. In the meantime, this song will not leave me alone: It’s a long and windy road On the way to freedom It’s a rough and rocky hill To climb sometimes It’s harder than they say Tougher than they think it is To get to the other side I have heard the stories So I’m sure it can be done And some arrive there sooner Than the other ones For most it takes a lifetime Few just over night To get to the other side Jesus, Thank You for patience Thank You for grace Thank You for interceding And pleading for our case Thank you You're committed To doing what it takes To get us to the other side Your love makes me want to fight For the other side Seems like you’d get tired of me After all this time After all the holes I’ve dug Then fallen down inside Still your mercy wakes me With the morning light Inviting me to...

Global Summit week. Lots of languages, lots of encouragement, lots of cool ideas. God's heart for the globe is exploding our hearts. This stuff makes my mind forget time exists. How am I supposed to study for exams and write papers with all this Russian in my head? :)

****A Prayer Written on Thanksgiving One Year Ago**** Giver, You have blessed me with so much. I'm frustrated with myself, with this broken situation humans find ourselves in, because we grab onto things and store them up and have a really hard time doing anything else. I'm like those monkeys or birds who see glittery shiny things and hide them away, you know. It's embarrassing. My plans. My home, my family, my ideas, my school. My food, my money, my friends. My books, my clothes, my computer, my bed, my phone. It's just that I get nervous and heated and defensive when I feel like "my stuff" is in danger of not being mine. It's the stupidest thing in the world. Because none of this stuff is mine at all, it's not intended to be. It's such a curious thing, this human addiction to things and the compulsion to store them up. Especially when I've been commanded and commissioned to do the opposite. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on ea...

Well, you know I'm busy when I forget to blog. On top of being busy, though, I've been thinking about so much lately that it's hard to write about it. I'm kind of ADD about everything. God keeps finding something new to show me every couple hours, before I've digested the last hundred. As I wrote about in my last post, one of the major ways the Lord has been communicating to me lately is through beauty. I would tell you to please go walk to Belmont and stand under the red trees and look up into them and see God, but the truth is that you might not see Him at all. You might just see red leaves. And I would tell you to please get on Spotify and listen to Ronnie Freeman's "Perfect Love" album and hear God. But you might only hear some really cool worship music. I don't know. God has been playing in my life lately with the idea of completion. At the end of my shifts at work, I always grab a case or two of water bottles from the back and set them out fo...

I'm reading some of the best books right now, and I need to recommend them to you. Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen By virtue of being written by Nouwen, this is worth reading. But also by virtue of being about ethics. Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour A Palestinian Christian's account of being forced to leave his home in Israel when the Zionists invaded and Israel became a state. Extremely interesting for its point of view - the tension between Jews, Palestinians, Christians of all ethnicities, and various world powers was/is more complicated than we want to believe. Israel's statehood is more complicated that we want to believe... The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway Don't hate me for loving Hemingway. This book is simultaneously dark and hilarious. Maybe a commentary on people who have nothing to live for? I don't know, that's just what I'm picking up. Fabulous writing. The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith Addresses Biblicism in the church. I'm finding t...

I had a dream a couple nights ago that I went back to Russia. I wasn't ready for it for some reason; I was already there before I decided if I even wanted to go. I remember thinking it was too expensive, but I was having a hard time stopping the whole thing. Traveling was normal and quick, since that particular itinerary is somewhat normal to me now, but I began to realize it was TOO normal. I was going to Russia, but I wasn't leaving home. When I got there, Russia was in my living room, in my house in Spring Hill. Tanya was there. I saw Tima. I held Karina's hand. But the person I was really looking for was Nadya. I walked down the stairs into the bottom level of our house and found her, and we were so happy to see each other we could hardly talk. I asked her where my baby girl was, and she brought her to me so I could hold her - baby Tanya, wrapped in a wad of pink blankets. She wasn't a newborn anymore, and that made me sad, because I realized I won't ever get to...

"I've been thinking about grace a lot. And writing about that. I guess because imperfection bothers me, and I'm realizing just how short we come of measuring up. All of us, even in normal, everyday interactions." Dr. Curtis just nods his head, in that way of his, with his eyes closed and his small frame sinking into the couch cushions. If the vagueness of my ramblings ever occurs to him, he doesn't acknowledge it. I don't really think acknowledging vagueness is possible for him. He just nods, like everything makes sense, everything is worth feeling, everything resonates with him. I'm aware of how blessed I am to have professors like Ben Curtis. Professors who see me as a person and not a number, who know me well enough to have me in their office for conversations like this. Who remember what graduate schools I'm looking at and what my major is. Who offer their advice when I ask and suggest books I need to read. People say there are two sides to every s...

The past few days I have been sending and receiving emails from Russia like nobody's business. I've been obsessed with certain pictures of a certain baby girl: Her name is Tantiana and I love her. She doesn't know it yet, but I do. Her parents, Sasha and Nadya, and Slavik and Tanya have been having a really hard time lately, so I'll extend the request they gave me: МОЛИСЬ ЗА НАС ПОЖАЛУСТА (please pray for us). My "Russia" life and my "Belmont" life have been very, very polarized lately, even with the emails and the difficult Russian class I'm taking. It probably is because I've been so preoccupied with school and the tough lessons God is teaching me here that I can't really remember what it was like to be there, pouring out instead of God pouring into me. I mean, he is always pouring into me, but you know. Somehow I feel like right now, in Nashville, as a junior at Belmont, things are all about my formation and shaping and learning and ex...

My entire being is a jumbled mess of everything. In yoga classes, when you’re supposed to close your eyes and look into your own soul from the outside, I usually just pray instead because I don’t know what “looking at your soul from the outside” really means. But right now I do. And it’s that scene on the news, the helicopter cam looking down on the land where a tornado was. It’s those paintings in the children’s section of the Frist where all the colors are muddled together into brown because kids can’t really use paintbrushes. It’s that sentence you can’t get out so you keep stuttering and mixing words together because you’re nervous. It’s how you would imagine drowning being like if you can see the glimmer of daylight through the water but can’t tell which way is up. That’s my soul. That’s what it looks like from the outside. I’ve been going through the days by swinging in the middle of calmness and frenzy. Silence and screaming. Fake and real. Up and down. I keep thinking either th...

There are some times in life when all of the sudden something explodes and you become a different person. These are the times in my life I have come to fear, expect, love, hate, stand in awe of; in some ways I invite them in, wish for them, pray for them, and in some ways I expend lots of energy trying to avoid them. I think a lot of people refer to these times as crises. Crisis. That’s got to be one of my favorite words, because (side note) I use it all the time about everything, especially when I want to exaggerate, which is every minute. But still, crises shape us in a very strange and unpredictable way, and I feel like if we all just sat down with our neighbors and recalled the crises in our lives we would all get to know each other better, and we would get to know something really important about humanity and about life. Again with the side notes. Last night I met some friends my roommate had over, and we stood in the kitchen for a while and talked about moments of panic ...

Do you ever get frustrated with how hard it is to connect with people? To dance the dance of cultural norms and social graces, work through the limited medium of language, and get over the inner life of our minds to enter into the life of the Other while making ourselves known. Enter dishonesty, pride, fear, apathy, and selfishness, and there's not much hope left for authentic communication. I mean, that's not true. Because somehow we humans still manage to communicate with each other semi-effectively most of the time. My point is just that it can be really difficult. I've been in a phase lately of wishing I could just shed my skin and leave behind the clutter and brokenness of this life. Of myself. I have little patience for imperfection right now. Admittedly that is a problematic place, one that I hope to grow away from soon. But for now, I'm here. I'm reading a book called Soul Making for class, about one man's journey of discovering desert spiritua...

Sometimes it’s the goodbyes that I remember the clearest. I’ve been six times, and the years blend together like the long summer days of a Tennessee August. Hard to sort out in your mind where one ended and the other began. But when I think back on those six goodbyes, I can see snapshots of them all pretty clearly if I try. The first year I remember shaking hands with Slavik and saying “baka.” I remember that because I later wondered if it was improper to say “baka” instead of the more formal “das vidanya,” and it ate me up all year until I realized it wasn’t that big of a deal, and people like Slavik don’t hold it against me even if it was. The second year was the year I cried because Katya left without saying goodbye to me. So Anya called her and let me talk to her on the phone, and I just remember standing there in Anya’s room crying like a fool because I already missed Katya and it was occurring to me I wouldn’t see her again for a year. Years three and four are less de...

Jesus knew I needed to see the UM team today. I'm sitting at Bongo using the internet since the connection at my new apartment is sporadic and annoying. When I walked in here an hour ago, I saw all of the UM staff sitting at a table with our new Missionary Residents. I haven't felt so happy to see Belmont staff ever before. Christy gave me a big hug and then they asked me about Russia and I talked about missions for a while. And then Micah told me to come by the office soon and chat more about Russia, sophomore slump (which in theory should be gone...), and life. I feel like maybe I have a real community here at Belmont, I just forget sometimes. Especially when school hasn't started yet, no one is here, and I'm in a brand new apartment with a brand new roommate. So although I never pictured myself ever saying this, I can't wait for school to start. I can't wait to have people around me who know me, support me, keep me connected, and remind me I have ...

Here are some pictures! The first three are at the orphanage. Orphanage. Eating some ice cream we brought. They wanted a picture with me :) Not at the orphanage - this is Bahgdan, definitely one of my favorite little boys! And here's another favorite - Vitalik with his kitty Moorka!

I didn't start missing everyone until I was about six and a half hours into our Moscow to NYC flight. I had grabbed my prayer journal and started talking to the Lord about how excited I was to go home, but within two sentences my tone had changed to sadness. "I've been excited and yearning for home for a week now. But sitting on this plane today I am mourning the difficulty of this ministry you've given me. I am mourning the difficulty of getting to that part of the world - logistically, physically, and emotionally. I miss my Tanya's. My Nadya and baby girl, my Karina and Rusik and Tima. But I don't see myself going back to them next year, and that breaks my heart and brings me relief simultaneously, because although I desperately love those people, I am tired and my body has been put through the wringer and I miss my home." Conflicted. Mixed feelings are not new to me - I pretty much have mixed feelings about everything in life - but with Russia trips, th...

...I was on the other side of the world. Doesn't it just blow your mind how quickly we can travel around our planet? My body also thinks it's strange. Jet lag is killer. But besides being tired and having a head cold, adjusting back to Nashville life has been very seamless. It's strange how things vary year to year so greatly in terms of how I handle re-entry. The first few years I felt a lot of guilt upon returning to my comparatively wealthy society. After that, I felt disdain for Americanism and discontent with our broken society, having been shown a non-Western view of the world and seeing the benefits of it. Last year I remember a mix of both, but mainly an overwhelmingly emotional adjustment because of missing my families and not knowing how to process my intense summer. This year I feel a lot of peace about being home. That's not to say I don't miss everyone, because I do, dearly. And it's not to say I don't see American excess very sharply having bee...

It's 3:30am in Nashville currently, but the Russia Team is in Moscow, where the local time is 12:30pm. I know they are insanely tired and ready to be here, so I've been thinking about them and praying for them a lot today. And updating everyone about which flight they are on, where they are, or how tired they must be :) I haven't done much the past few days, but instead of feeling rested I feel drained. I think it's because I've done too little. I'm not used to being so inactive, but the people here (especially the women) sit at home a ton. Talking, eating, drinking tea, sitting...It's been great for my language progression and relationships, but horrible for my energy level and health. Another reason I'm dragging is because I need the refreshment of talking to someone in full sentences who understands me. Too much is trapped inside my head and heart. And it's no small thing for me, an introvert, to say that :) Tonight I get to Skype with Mom (crossi...