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14.12.09

My Dear Readers:

Tomorrow morning, I fly back home to Sioux Falls, beginning what will amount to over 10,000 miles worth of travel, one way. I will not be taking my computer with me, and thus, this will likely be my last blog post until I return.

After a series of serious, hopefully thought-provoking posts from this last week, and indeed throughout this entire last semester, I thought it might be time to have a little fun.

As we know, Christmas is upon us, and with it some truly awful music. I usually dislike the holiday season (not the holiday itself) for this very reason. Indeed, 92.9 in Waco, post-Thanksgiving, blasts nothing but terrible Christmas music day in and day out - I suppose in a way of celebrating Advent? "Feliz Navidad" gets played several times a day, unfortunately, as well as horrible celebrity versions of "O Holy Night," "Silent Night," and any other Christmas song with "night" in the title.

This year, however, has seen some truly terrible music, and I thought I'd give my blog readers a bit of a laugh by sharing some of it. This is a bit of a departure in tone for the blog, but I hope that you, my readers, will consider this as a gift of laughter. I look forward to returning from India with the tales of my neighbors who live 10,000 miles away, and what we can do to help them.

Thank you for reading and supporting my adventures in following Jesus. I know that He truly is the "reason for the season," as horribly cheesy that may be.

Without further adieu, I present to you the top three worst Christmas songs and music videos on the planet.

From music legend Bob Dylan, we find the incredibly inscrutable song "Must Be Santa," the video for which appears to take place in a 19th century brothel. It's two minutes and fifty one seconds of almost pure torture.



From the era of the 1990s boy bands - a point in my life I'd rather not acknowledge - we have the Gap/Old Navy commercial with homeless people that is 'N Sync's "Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays." Gary Coleman's even in it!



And my pick for the worst Christmas songs on the planet? It could just be that I have a strong dislike for everything Lady Gaga, but this takes the cake. I can't even bring myself to post the actual video, but the song is "Christmas Tree" by Lady Gaga. The fact that I feel the need to put a "WARNING: ADULT CONTENT" on that video should say something. Euphemisms abound. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Ugh.

And now, because I feel the need to cleanse the palate from everything Lady Gaga, here's one of my favorite hymns. It appears on a Christmas CD, but is not technically about Christmas. I accept it as such anyway.

Sufjan Stevens' version of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing":


I hope you enjoyed this break from the seriousness of my blog. Take a moment this week and go read the birth story of Christ (in either Matthew or Luke), and celebrate the day that Love came down.

Merry Christmas.

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PS: If you want updates on my trip as I travel, follow my twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dianndia

13.12.09

A Literary Perspective

In my favorite C.S. Lewis book - The Great Divorce - he presents a fantastical journey from hell to heaven, emphasizing both the glory and Love of the Father.

For those of you unfamiliar with the work, what happens is essentially this: our narrator wakes up in a grey town, hops on a bus because, well, there's a queue and what do the British do but queue well? The bus goes up and up and eventually emerges out of a tiny crack in the soil in this broad sweeping green country. Those on the bus discover that they are not solid as they thought they were, but instead mere 'ghosts.' They then meet the 'solid people,' those residents of the green country beyond the mountain (heaven), and discover that they must learn how to be solid, or return to the grey towns (hell). Being solid means giving up portions of one's self, learning how to love in the proper ways (Lewis has an entire other book dedicated to that subject that I also strongly recommend: The Four Loves). And that's essentially the plot - they walk around and meet the solid people and learn various lessons about becoming solid, or to put it in non-allegorical terms, becoming a functioning member of God's Kingdom in Heaven.

Alright, now that you are somewhat oriented, I'd like to discuss on particular image from the book that's been popping into my head a lot in recent months. Usually, it's the chapter on intellectual sin that sticks out to me - the two ghosts spent so much time discussing God's nature when they were alive that they never got to know God Himself. That should stick out to most theologians and those who discuss God in the classroom a lot.

But lately, as I said, a completely different image has been on my mind. There is a chapter toward the end of the book about a "solid" lady who is described as possessing such beauty and love that the narrator tells us: "Only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face." The narrator wonders if it could be Eve, or Mary, or one of the great women of Christian tradition, but no, she is merely Sarah Smith of Golders Green. An unknown in her time on Earth, she has become greatly glorified in Heaven, but not in a self-aggrandizing manner. She (and all the solid Spirits, as they are called) all point in their glory to the source of such wonder, to the source of Love, the Father Himself who is bringing the Dawn.

At this point, I think it'd be best if I let the description Lewis gives her speak for itself: "Every young man or boy that met her became her son--even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter. ... There are those that steal other people's children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives. ... And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them."

This is the model I want to imitate - it is a saint of heaven in whom the love of Christ has manifested itself so abundantly and so greatly that, while she was unknown in her lifetime, she has found glory and abundance in the love of the Father through Christ.

Should we be seeking this glory?

Yes, but not for ourselves. That is the paradox of the Gospel - any time we begin to think of ourselves as somehow a source of love, we begin to turn away from that true source of love. This is something Lewis touched on again and again. In order to love rightly and truly in abundance, we cannot detach ourselves from that source.

I believe that Lewis concludes his short novel with this image of a saint who loves so rightly and so freely as a reminder to us that though we may not have a soapbox to stand on and preach God's Word, we may not be able to go to Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park and shout the Gospel out, we may not even have the chance to stand up in church and talk about God's love, we can still be a great force for the Gospel. Little, unknown, Sarah Smith, loved everyone and everything around her in such a way that they became family, that they were inspired to become better 'lovers' themselves.

Galatians 3:2-4, The Message Translation:

"Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God's Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren't smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!"

12.12.09

South Africa 2010?

My freshmen took their final today, and I spent the afternoon grading it. As a result, I haven't had a chance to put together a post until, well, now. So in lieu of a written post to make your eyes hurt more, I'm posting this video that will hopefully challenge you to think about loving your neighbor, and our mission in India. It is two weeks from today that we will be meeting, and two weeks from tomorrow (Sunday) that we actually fly off. CRAZY.

Now, as a short introduction to the video, those of you who know me are already aware that I'm a big football fan. No, not that football - REAL football, as in football that actually involves a ball and feet. We call it soccer here in the States, but everywhere else calls it by its proper name. Anyway, tangent.

South Africa is hosting the 2010 World Cup, and this video, done by a South African celebrity, warns of the increase in sex trafficking that will be made to attempt to meet the demands accompanying an event as huge as The World Cup. It's truly mind-boggling, and something that I, as a football fan, am extremely disheartened by. This evil of trafficking infiltrates even our greatest joys, like seeing England whomp the US in the first round...which will happen. Oh yes, it will.

Invitational Human Trafficking Public Service Announcement from STOP Human Trafficking on Vimeo.

This Public Service Announcement was created by Firestorm Productions on commission by STOP to serve as an invitation to a number of South African celebrities to participate in a similar project. The PSA will be deployed in the form of a viral marketing campaign driving people to STOP's www.2010humantraffic.org website.



Please go to http://www.stop.givengain.org/ to make donations to this cause.

11.12.09

The Hardest Part

Not to brag or anything, but I'm a rather diligent daughter. Living 900 miles away from the town where I spent the first 22 years of my life has done that to me. I call home every afternoon and spent between 20-40 minutes talking to my mom. My dad is a teacher at the State Penitentiary, and is gone from 7 in the morning until around 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon. In the evening twice a week, my mom is usually teaching composition classes at one of the local community colleges. As an unfortunate result, Mom doesn't really have a lot of people to talk to during the day, which is why I call.

So, needless to say, I was a little surprised when I called home on Wednesday to hear my dad answer the phone. Dad's never home at 1:30 in the afternoon, so my first question was "What's wrong?"

"Oh, your mom got in a car accident. She's alright, just shaken up."

After the initial shock of it wore off, Dad told me that Mom had been rear-ended while pulling out of the McDonald's parking lot near our house. My oldest brother, MJ, was in the car with her and they had been getting him a treat because he worked late. The large SUV slammed into her back end and caused a significant amount of damage to the bumper. The man driving pulled to the side, got out and looked at his bumper and then got back into his car and drove away, all before Mom really had a chance to process what happened.

My father was, suffice it to say, upset. Not only did this happen with poor timing, but the snowy conditions made it extremely hard to get the guy's license plate, and thus it's going to be hard to catch the guy. While Mom wasn't injured, someone had threatened the safety of his family, and my dad was angry. This man, whoever he was, became my dad's enemy by committing this act of injustice against his wife and son.

The hardest commandment that Jesus gave us was not "Love thy neighbor." It's pretty darn easy to do that--to look at the orphaned kids in Africa and say, "That is my neighbor; I will love him." It's simple to look at the girl who was sold by her family into slavery and has had no opportunity to even learn how to read and say, "You are my neighbor. I love you."

It is so much harder to look at the man who trafficked her, who put her into that situation, and say the same thing.

It is so much harder to look at the CEO who makes a $1Mil bonus while his factory workers in China worry about where their next meal will come from, and tell him "God loves you, too."

It is so much harder to think of now-dead tyrants--Saddam Hussien, Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin--and realize that, just as Jesus came and died to save me, he died for them as well.

It is, dare I say it, impossible.

But if the Bible teaches us anything, it teaches that favorite verse of the downtrodden, that favorite verse of those who face obstacles in their lives: Luke 1:37: "For nothing is impossible with God."

And that's the very heart of the Gospel; we, as broken, fallen sinners, are utterly incapable of loving our enemies. But with God we realize, as the songwriter Derek Webb put it so bluntly: "My enemies are men like me."

The day after the accident, I called home to talk to my mom again. We discussed the accident, and Mom said something very striking: "I'd just like to talk to the guy. I guess I want to ask him 'why.' Did he not have insurance? Did he think he didn't do any damage? Why'd he drive off?"

That is what it means to love your enemies, my readers. Not to desire revenge on them, and let them remain "that guy" - identity less, an abstraction - but to rather to see him as a human being, to hold out your hand to him when he hits your face, and to offer your coat when he gets cold.

The moment of the Gospel that breaks my heart the most is not Jesus being flogged, not Pontius Pilate washing his hands of the mess, or the crowd crying "Crucify Him!" No, it is that moment we find in the book of Luke, when Jesus is hanging, broken and bloodied on the cross, and he looks up to heaven and cries, "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing."

It is only by this radical, life changing love that we can make a difference and truly learn to model Jesus. It's a complex, complicated, life, and it's not easy, but nothing worth having ever came easily, and this is the hardest task of them all.

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." - Matthew 5:43-48

10.12.09

On Indifference

When I was in high school, I had two activities that I was involved in for all four years: Oral Interp and Debate. For those of you who don't know, Oral Interp is an event wherein one acts out stories by herself, without props or costume. It's oral interpretation of a written story, essentially.

When Debate became more of a priority my senior year, I switched from doing humorous interpretation to an event called Non-Original Oratory. This event, rather than interpreting a story, was essentially the retelling and retooling of a famous speech. The speech that I ran in competitions and eventually went to State with was Elie Weisel's The Perils of Indifference, a speech that Holocaust Survivor Weisel (yes, the author of Night) gave at a White House lecture series in 1999, in front of an audience including Hilary Clinton, the then first lady.

There are portions of his speech that have stuck with me throughout the years. One particular portion deserves to be re-transcribed here:

"Of course, indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction."

And further on:

"In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response."

There is not much more that I can say that hasn't already been said on the subject of indifference. Indifference is, even more than during the 20th century, the great plague of the 21st. It is the reason behind so many "awareness" campaigns, and so many commercials, fliers, blogs (this one included), and movements.

The crying outside the door is so loud that it is remarkable we can sit down to dinner, scrape our plates clean, and ignore it. We have set up black out curtains on our hearts, not to keep people from seeing in, but to keep any of ourselves getting out. We take the easy path - we decide that we won't change things on the large scale, so we do nothing on the small scale.

We become indifferent. Hardened. Callous. Cold.

And then when something shocks us, when we see the planes hit the twin towers, when we see bombings in downtown cities, when we hear of a friend being robbed while she slept at night...we have no concept of how to react. We have remained indifferent for so long that we no longer have a clue as to how to handle real pain, real suffering.

Remarkably, when something impacts here, on our own soil, we are quick to act. After 9/11, we became the world's most patriotic nation, shouting from the top of the mountains how we wouldn't be defeated, we would take action as a nation and respond to this tragedy. When the Oklahoma city bombing happened, we said the same thing. When our friend has something tragic happen, we rush to their aid, helping in any way we can.

We put a face on the issue, when it happens on our own soil. We lose our indifference.

If you are still tracking with me, I would like to take you a little further.

My goal in life (as I have discovered throughout this journey toward India) is to put a face onto those faceless around us. It is when the suffering lacks human quality that it becomes so easy to ignore. That's why we can ignore statistics about 300 million people in Africa suffering from AIDS, 27 million people in slavery, the great numbers of the homeless and destitute in our own cities.

Jesus chose not to remain indifferent. He made the greatest sacrifice of all, not only in dying upon the cross, but in becoming human in the first place. He chose to take on a physical face, a physical body, to come, to teach, to suffer, and to die, all to put a face on this love that God the Father has extended to us. He, as our great model, calls out indifference, puts his arms around it, and loves it into creating a response. He himself said that he would spit the lukewarm (read: the indifferent) from his mouth. If we are working to eliminate the indifference to suffering in our world, and loving those who are suffering, we are stepping forward onto the path of Jesus, following his model.

Case In Point:

A friend of a friend, Brandt Russo, is attempting to negate some of that indifference. His tshirt company, Can't Ignore the Poor, helps the homeless in the US. And this last week, he has stepped out in faith and is putting a face--his own-- on the suffering of millions of children worldwide who are dying of malnutrition everyday.

Brandt is starving himself.

We all know the statistics of starving children in the world--to repeat them here would be superfluous. We all know that more children go hungry and die everyday than most small towns in the US. We know that by the time our head hits the pillow tonight, 30,000 more will have suffered and die of malnutrition, of not having enough to eat.

And yet we remain almost entirely indifferent.

Brandt has decided to change that by putting a face onto suffering himself, by becoming a sufferer. In solidarity with those children in the world who are without food, Brandt has gone on a hunger strike until $15,500 has been raised for medication to deworm 1,000,000 children. Diseases such as tapeworms and various intestinal problems are why a lot of children are not getting the nutrition they need from the food they are eating. With this medication, these children can eat and get the full benefit of what they are eating, can have those nutrients.

Brandt's strike is not going to end world hunger, but it's more than most of us are doing. He has chosen to step out in faith and love his neighbor by experiencing suffering alongside them. Regardless of whatever your personal feelings toward him may be, you have to admit that he's doing a lot more than most of us ever will. He is acting as our proxy, he is showing us suffering right here and now, and he is doing it to help those who have no recourse.

People said Gandhi was ridiculous, too.

And Martin Luther King, Jr.

And the Judsons--the first American missionaries to India.

But they, like Brandt, stepped out in faith, decided to put a face onto the suffering, and chose to love their neighbor.

Will you?

9.12.09

On Redefining 'Charity'

Blood:Water Mission launched their new website on World AIDS Day, along with a video that challenged my perspective on things. It's on the front page of the site.

I'll give you a minute to go over there and watch it.

Go. Shoo.

...

Alright, you watched it? Good.

B:W Mission raises something that, after thinking about it for awhile, I have realized aligns perfectly with my perspective. While I may use the language of "charity," it is not what I am about, at least not in the Americanized, 21st century sense.


"Charity," in America, has come to mean that part of our paycheck each month that can be deducted come tax time. "Charity" is that excess fund that you give away to make some people feel better. "Charity" is a way of separating yourself from the person it goes to. Unfortunately, for the majority of Americans, "Charity" is something expendable, disposable, the first thing to go if the budget becomes tight.

It's time that we take back Charity for what it really means.

For the people I know who do things like sponsor a child, donate to charities regularly, and spend their money trying to make the world better, charity is not simply throwing money at the problem. They have grasped the idea that Charity is not just spending your money on the less fortunate, but it's making a sacrifice so that you can. It's taking the time to realize that the less fortunate are your neighbors and friends, something you have heard me expound upon time and again in this space.

CS Lewis calls the love between God and Man "Charity" for a good reason. "Charity" is not merely throwing money at a problem; it is that self-sacrificing, self-effacing love that brings people together in the love of God. It is an effort to help those less fortunate that causes you to experience something more than just a smaller wallet in your jeans pocket.

We come alongside those less fortunate--we don't just hand them money and deduct it from our taxes. We travel across the world to see the situations of those poor people trapped in slavery--we don't just set up our credit card to have a certain amount coming out of our paycheck each month. We fast from food until $16,000 is raised--we don't just write out a check and move on. We motivate others to love as we love them. We become partners in the fight to help those who are suffering. We suffer with those who suffer.

That is the meaning of charity. While donations to charity are not bad things, there needs to be a level of consideration about what and why you are doing it. God does not function based on guilt; he works on the basis of love. When you consider charity, consider Paul's words to the Corinthians in his 2nd letter:

This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God's people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, men will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

We must always approach what we do with the thoughts of love, of sacrifice, of what our motivation may be.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3: 20-21)

8.12.09

"Free" Clinic

In a week, I'll be flying home, leaving my computer behind. Because I have so many ideas bouncing around in my head, and some time on my hands, I'm doing a blog post a day until I take off on the 15th. Thanks for reading.
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Two Tuesdays ago, I had an adventure of sorts.

Currently, I am one of the millions of uninsured Americans. I am on my parents' health insurance, but due to their qualifications about students and some miscommunication on my end, my insurance is in limbo. But, as it was only weeks until I go to India, I needed to get my medications and immunizations taken care of.

After consulting with Baylor's travel medicine clinic, I had two choices: either go the clinic at Baylor, hope that my insurance gets reinstated in time to pay me back, and pay $200 upfront for shots, not counting the consultation, or go down to Waco's health department and pay for the shots upfront there, at about half the price. Being a graduate student who was unwilling to spend upwards of $200 on things that would hurt, I elected to go to the Waco health department.

I got lost on the way there, which is pretty easy to do, as those of you who live in Waco can attest. After several wrong turns and making a giant loop around Cameron Park, I finally got to the Health Department building. Probably built in the 70s, the building has very few windows, and the staircase reminds me of the staircases in my old elementary school - you know the kind that has spaces between the steps and if you step wrong, your leg would end up hanging five feet above the ground? Yeah, that kind.

The immunization clinic itself is painted a bright, cheerful blue, with signs plastered everywhere. Now, having lived in Texas for a year, you think I would have gotten used to the amount of Spanish in the area, and to some extent I have. I don't blink at the giant Spanish billboard by the CVS, nor at the warnings at H.E.B. saying in both Spanish and English that it is illegal to consume alcohol on the premises.

But the sheer mass of signs surprised me. Every sign posting, warning, advertisement was in both Spanish and English. The forms all had both languages on them, and the nurse who helped me switch effortlessly between Spanish and English as she talked to me and then to one of the fellow clinic attendees. Coming from South Dakota, we do a lot of talking about diversity, but we really have no idea what it is, and the imbalance shown here is remarkable.

To put it bluntly: The clinic for poor people is also the one that is the most racially diverse. Somehow, we still have a system that allows those of a different color than us to remain oppressed, to remain in the poor sections of town. It's clear simply from the way the clinic operates that they deal with mostly minorities. While I cannot logically extrapolate this one experience out into what all free clinics in America are like, it did occur to me that this same sort of imbalance is what takes place all over the world.

Siddarth Kara, author of Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Day Slavery, writes that a major part of the problem with trafficking around the world is that the laws are created in such a way that minorities - in many cases, women - have no options outside of their relationship to the men in their lives. In Kara's conversations with trafficked women in India and Nepal, he heard the same response over and over again: "I can't go back to my family because I have brought shame upon them." The balance of the family structure and the way society is built is tilted against them.

What is our duty then? How do we tilt the balance back to normal?

That's a question I can't answer, and on the large scale, no one can. The way the world will be changed is not through huge, large scale governmental movements. That's what we've been trying, over and over, attempting to legislate a peaceful change. But it's hard to get people to obey a law of peace and love if they do not have peace and love in their hearts. Our best hope for the future, then, is not trusting in the elected officials, not getting behind Sarah Palin or Barack Obama, or hoping that this law or that will finally solve things. Instead, our hope must be in a community of dedicated, peaceful people committed to changing their world and rescuing those who need rescuing. That is why Jesus did not come to be made King; rather, he came to create a community that could work for good.

My time in the free clinic (which was surprisingly efficient for a government institution-I was in, immunized and out in under an hour) highlighted again for me the way that the world is tilted incorrectly, and we, as people of Christ, can work through loving our neighbor, through giving them identity, through giving of ourselves for their sake, to get things balanced again.

There's a quote in the background of an old Audio Adrenaline song that seems rather appropriate here:

Underdog . . . I wince every time I say the word, especially in connection with Jesus. Yet, as I read the birth stories about Jesus, I cannot help but conclude that, although the world may be tilted toward the rich and the powerful, God, hallelujah, in His mercy, is tilted toward us, the underdogs!

3.12.09

23 Days

As of this publishing, it is 23 days until I go to India, 23 days until I hop on that plane and fly 20 hours to see things I never thought I would, 23 days until I encounter what it feels like most of this last year has been leading up to.

Today was the last day of classes for the two courses that I'm teaching, and I found myself sitting back wondering that I am on this side of the semester already. When I stepped into that classroom in August, I had no idea what to expect as nothing can sufficiently prepare you for your first time teaching. I knew that I would make mistakes: I would probably accidentally lie to students; I would probably have poor math at some point; I would probably unintentionally alienate a student or two. And I'm pretty sure that all three of these things happened at some point in the semester.

And yet, I learned. I learned that it's okay to make mistakes. It's okay because we - my students, me, you as my readers, my parents, etc - are all human. We will all make mistakes. We will all screw up. The best part about it, though, is that this is how we learn. I couldn't possibly have learned how to teach if I'd been afraid to make mistakes.

I think this is the main problem behind our powerful apathy toward the world's problems. We are - all of us - complicit in some way in what is going on. We all buy clothes that were probably produced by child labor. We all participate in a consumerist society that also produces nothing (at least, Americans do). We all have walked passed that homeless person on the street without listening. All of us are aware of these problems to some extent, but we also are paralyzed by the idea that one person isn't going to make a difference. We're afraid that somehow, by stepping out of our comfort zone, that we'll make a mistake, we'll say the wrong thing, we won't be adequate.

That's the beauty of grace, though: we aren't enough! We never will be, but God has the grace to forgive our mistakes, to forgive those errors in judgment, those missteps along the way. Can't we have enough grace to forgive ourselves?

Mother Theresa, a famous humanitarian and member of the church who worked in Kolkata (which is one of our destination cities on this trip), once said: "We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop."

As people, finding our way of contributing back, not just to the earth, but to humanity, to the betterment of this world for future generation.

As cheesy and cliche as it may be, if enough drops work together, we get a flood.

Let's create that flood. Find a way to give back, find a way to contribute, and learn to forgive ourselves for the mistakes we will probably make along the way.

During today's last class period, I decided to leave the students with a "last lecture" of sorts. I read aloud one of my favorite poem's - Tennyson's "Ulysses" - which is one of the poems that continues to inspire me. The last stanza of the poem is probably one of my favorites in all of English literature, and it seems fitting to leave here:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

We should never settle, let our mistakes get us down, or be lost in our own inadequacies. Though we are "made weak by time and fate," we are "strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Thank you for reading. I cannot wait to report back in a month and a half with pictures, stories, and motivation to help.
____________

Photo by: Photographer Parker Young.

25.11.09

Giving Thanks

I've never particularly liked Thanksgiving. A holiday centered around food - especially food I don't like - just never particularly appealed to me. For me, Thanksgiving has meant family making uncomfortable comments about my eating habits, gathering around a big screen watching football, and being bored as everyone cheered.

But, the idea that there is a holiday that is, supposedly, centered around giving thanks for those blessings in our lives...now that's appealing. Every so often I try to sit down and count my blessings - meaning writing them out so that I get a visual of what they are (I'm a visual learner, what can I say?).

So, without further ado, here is my list of 10 things I am thankful for in my life:

1. To have the love of a God who challenges, stresses and pushes me to love other people as He loves me.
2. Having parents who were dedicated to showing me that love from the time I was born.
3. My dear friends. Listing names would be far too much, but I will say this: My friend Katy once told me that she noticed that when I get a friend, I treat them like gold. I never noticed it until she pointed it out, but I do want to reiterate the sentiment: You, dear reader, as my friend, are golden to me.
4. My education - I have been blessed to be taught by some great minds, and my schooling has opened a lot of doors for me, for which I am incredibly grateful. (Let's hope I can maintain this attitude when I'm writing checks for student loan payments this time next year).
5. Technology. While in some respects it has provided means to isolate people from each other, it's also provided the means for people to come together. For one, I wouldn't have gone to Oxford were it not for finding the website, and for two, I wouldn't be going to India were it not for stumbling across the trip on Faceless.
6. The generosity of those around me. The little fundraising thermometer in the sidebar there demonstrates how awesome the people who know me (and even those who don't know me!) are. I couldn't be going on this trip without you.
7. Art/Music/Literature. I hate to lump all these together, but really, I'd be saying the same thing about all of them. I believe that God chooses to speak through all means of art, in loud and soft voices, just as he speaks through the beauty of his creation. There is some kernel of truth in most arts, and I am thankful for that.
8. Forgiveness. I make a lot of really stupid mistakes, every day. And if it wasn't for my assurance in the forgiveness of a God who loves me, and a Christ who died for me, and a Spirit which intercedes for me, I would have no hope.
9. Humor. I believe God laughs at us a lot, and I like to think we can laugh right along with him.
10. And last, I'm thankful that, in a world that often seems mired in despair and hurt, we can still look up and have some hope that the God loves us, and that loving our neighbor is a means of showing that love. We are not without hope, as long as we have faith. And I am grateful for that hope.

So there you have it. A nice cathartic exercise that reminds me of how much I have to be thankful for.

What are you thankful for? Leave me a comment and tell me one thing (it doesn't have to be 10!). You may find yourself with a longer list than you thought!

18.11.09

I believe in the holy catholic church.


The other day, I heard a friend comment that she loves the liturgy of a high church service (i.e., Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian), but she wants a church where her faith can remain a private, individual matter. It's her faith, no one else's.

At the time, something about the statement struck me as wrong, but not being able to put together exactly why I felt that way, I tucked it away in the back of my mind, and decided I would think about it more when I didn't have a stack of student journals waiting to be deciphered and graded.

Now, 48 hours later, I'm still ruminating over the ideas of a private faith, and I think I have a somewhat coherent, though incomplete response to the idea.

The most obvious response is that Jesus didn't call us to a private faith.

Okay, maybe that's not so obvious. At the risk of oversimplifying and skimming over 400 some years of history, I will say this: since the Enlightenment, "religion" (in a broad sense) has been relegated more and more to the private sphere, separating itself from the actions of the State, and becoming more and more a matter of private thought. My coworker, then, like most Americans, is merely a product of her time: my relationship with Jesus is just that, mine, private and alone.

However, despite this overwhelming individualism and privatization of faith, Jesus didn't call us to such a thing. He didn't call us to say, "This faith is mine and mine alone, and I don't have to share it with anyone." No! Indeed, he gave us brothers and sisters to travel along with us, to be our companions, and he gave us the Church as the bride to himself, the bridegroom, His Body reflected in our individual natures.

Today in class, my professor read a section from a book I didn't catch the title of, but the sum of it was this: Protestantism is highly individual - it is the relationship of the individual with the individual; it is about a man's relationship with Christ. Catholicism, on the other hand, is about the relationship of the individual as a cell to the ever-growing and working Body of Christ. This, then, is the heart of why the statement of "I like the liturgical tradition but I want to keep my faith private" becomes so ridiculous. Essentially, it translates to divorcing oneself from the Body of Christ.

We Protestants speak a lot about the Body of Christ, but we use it as an individualizing force. I am a hand, you are an eye, that guy's a foot, etc. We each have our own separate distinct roles, which is all fine and good. It's one interpretation of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 12. It is, however, an incomplete image, and allows too much room to say, "Oh, I don't have the gift of compassion" or "I just don't have to love my neighbor - someone else will cover that part." We forget that no matter what the role we may play, the one things that matters overall is that love which binds all parts of the Body together. We allow the Body of Christ to become this amorphous creature that has a million different faces (read: denominations) and a million different hands (read: doctrines), and we don't truly know what Christ looks like.

Catholicism, on the other hand, presents one unified face, but sometimes at the lack of the individual playing a role - there's a large problem (attempted to be solved by Vatican II) of the individual Catholic not understanding the Mass, which is why they go through confirmation. Clearly, however, as exhibited by my coworker, the theology of community doesn't always stick, and therefore the whole concept of the unified Body of Christ can be lost.

Now, this post isn't to bash Catholics or Protestants. It is more or less my own "writing out loud" so to speak, about the issue of the community of the Body of Christ. I have been to two Catholic services in my life, and clearly have no authority to speak on the inner workings of the Catholic faith. Having grown up Baptist, I can only speak to the evangelical tradition in American churches.

What I do know is this: the Body of Christ is one that stretches beyond the boundaries of denomination, it is both transcendent and immanent, and requires that your faith not be private.

It is, therefore, impossible to participate in a church that reflects the Body of Christ, impossible to live in relationship with Him - regardless of whether you view that relationship as an individual with an individual, or as a cell in a much larger Body - without community. I have become more and more convicted of this as I have grown up. The love of Christ is such that we cannot do it alone. Reflected in the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a social reality, and we humans, made in the image of our father God, are impelled to be social, communal creatures.

Regardless of doctrine, creed, or denomination, if you claim the love of Jesus as your own, it will not remain your own.

My challenge: to step outside the bounds, to begin seeing those around you not merely as those you attend church with, or discuss theology with, but as members of this gigantic universal Church that stretches across the bounds of time and space to include all of us who claim Jesus as Lord.

And the mark of those who who belong to this Body of Christ?

Matthew 22: 36-40: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

__________________

Photo credit: Jonathan Kirkpatrick, a dear friend who lovingly puts up with 24 Americans invading his house every fall and spring in lovely Oxford. It is of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

12.11.09

Day in Pictures

Everyday, I make some time to check the BBC News' Day in Pictures to get a literal picture of what's going on the world. BBC is very good about having balanced sources - they usually have one picture from each area of the world.

Today, there was one particularly striking image that I felt the need to share with you. It is a brickmaker in Pakistan, working and making bricks like the rest of his family. The catch? He's probably only about 8 years old.


This small child is spending his childhood making bricks with his bare hands. When I was his age, I was begging for more allowance, complaining that my brother always got a chance to do things and I didn't, and climbing trees. The thought of work was at least ten years off, and even at 8, I knew that if I played my cards right, I'd be able to enjoy what I did. I think at that point I really wanted to be a writer (not kidding).

I wonder what this child thought he'd be. I wonder what sorts of dreams and thoughts go through his head as he does work that would be monotonous and hard for adults. I wonder what life he would want if he had the opportunity.

It is because of the chance of making a difference in a life like this that I am learning how to love my neighbor. I want to be able to provide children like this young boy with a future that actually has hope, one that won't consist of joining their family in the factory, one that would allow them to run and play and be kids again.

Consider it: Would you want your kid to go through these same things? Then why willingly participate in a system that allows such things to develop? I am a heavily fair trade proponent for this very reason. We must be willing to make a change in our daily lives if we want to live out the second greatest commandment - Love Your Neighbor.

I believe I may have posted this before, but it deserves a re-post.

8.11.09

Orphans and Widows

Orphan Sunday from Christian Alliance for Orphans on Vimeo.



This morning, our associate pastor gave a moving and interesting sermon on the idea of orphans in our world. He told a story about how last night he was having a conversation over the health care reform with a friend, and commented that if the Church isn't doing its job in providing for the needy, if the Church isn't picking up Jesus' call to take care of the orphans and the widows, then someone needs to step in.

The friend then commented something that shocked and outraged me at all once: "I don't believe everyone in the church is called to serve like that. I don't believe that we all have a call to help the needy - some just have that gift, and others, others don't."

Instead of laying out a piece by piece argument in response to this rather outrageous claim, I will instead point to James 1:26-27: "If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

If that's not clear enough, here's Eugene Peterson's layman's translation from The Message: "Anyone who sets himself up as 'religious' by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world."

There is no doubt that the Jesus I know has called is calling and will continue to call us to a life of loving those in the most need around us. In calling us to love our neighbor, he is calling us to claim the orphans and widows and 'the least of these,' to look after them and let them know that they are loved, they are our brothers and sisters and daughters and sons. They have a family within the Body of Christ, and with those of us who have been given much to give much to others, they may find a home.

John 14:18: "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you."

5.11.09

"I am become a name."

If you had asked thirteen year old Dianna where she thought she'd be at 23 or 24, you likely would have gotten the typical response of "married, being an awesome rich lawyer somewhere, and ready to have kids." No kidding, I seriously thought I would graduate from college, get through law school in two years, and somehow have a sustained and happy marriage by that point in my life. I wanted to be "The Rainmaker" - yes, the one from John Grisham. It wasn't so much taking a case fighting for the little guy, but rather gaining the fame that would come with a big verdict like the one in the book.

Though by the time I had hit my junior year of high school, the details of this dream had changed - I no longer wanted to be a lawyer, but I wanted to be in law somehow. I thought "political pundit" would be nice. I could be the next Tucker Carlson, complete with an androgynous bow tie. The end goal, however I did it, was to become famous by 30. I wanted to be known by people; I wanted to be recognized on the street and have people take pictures with me. I wanted to be one of the "elite."

Never did it cross my mind that I wouldn't be well known by the time I was 25. I felt a sort of destiny about it - a sense that "this is what God wanted for me." As I grew older, the dream grew smaller - well, even if I'm not a movie star, I could still become a great writer. I'll write a screenplay! Or a book! To some extent, I still hold on to the latter half of that dream, but only partially.

I've come to realize that I've been dreaming in the wrong direction. The goal in life should not be to become famous - fame corrupts, as the recent Balloon Boy saga should highlight, quite obviously. It causes people make stupid decisions, just so that they would be known by others. Honestly, Falcon's dad probably doesn't care that he's getting prosecuted now because he and his family were the focus of the nation for two whole hours! The Heene family is known by most of the households in America. He got what he wanted: Fame.

The dream of 1999 Dianna and 2009 Mr. Heene are essentially the same: to be known and cared about by strangers. In particularly self referential works of art we see this idea highlighted over and over again -- movies like "Fame," and "Chicago," social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook are all about marketing yourself, making yours the name on everyone's lips. It's a particular quirk of modern culture.

We don't want to die unknown; we want to known that someone was affected by us, even if it's in a negative way.

We ALL want to effect a change.

Think about that for a minute: Hold that statement in your mind and let it sit for awhile. Maybe go drink a cup of tea and come back to read what I have to say next.

What if we decided to turn that around? What if we decide that in changing others, we don't care whether or not they know our names, whether or not they even know who caused the change? What if we decide, in donating money to build a new wing of a hospital or in making a law, that we don't need to have our names on it? I wonder, if we removed the possibility of fame attached to charity, how charity would be different.

What if, instead of seeking merely to be known by others, we chose to give others an identity? What if we chose, instead of merely throwing money at a problem and letting someone else deal with it, we actually traveled to that place, met the people there for ourselves, and learned their names? What if we knew that the homeless man sitting outside the local coffee shop is a war veteran who is now living in a motel down by the road, and is being kicked out of every place he asks for money to pay the hotel bill and get food?

What if, in creating art, in writing that song or that essay, our goal was not that people would be impressed by the author, but instead by the Creator? What if we simply focused on pointing others to Truth, not caring if they know who did it?

In trying to truly love my neighbor, I have realized that it means allowing myself to be anonymous, allowing the other person to take precedence over my own desire to be known, and realizing that I am known by the only one who matters.

You cannot love your neighbor if you are the only one with a name, and you cannot worship in community if you don't care to know the community around you.


_________
*Title from "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

In India specific news, I am down to the last on the checklist of things I had to do before my trip, and it is one that will take some arranging - I have to get my immunizations. You also may have noticed in the fundraising thermometer that I'm finally halfway paid for the trip, which was my goal! Thank you! I am, of course, still accepting donations, and the photobook offer still stands, but I'm stoked to see how God has provided for me through you, my faithful readers. Thank you for enabling me, your humble narrator, to go into the world and speak Truth to those who need to hear it, and give identity to the nameless and faceless.

29.10.09

'Our souls will at last sink to hell.'

I'm taking a class this semester that I, honestly, wasn't expecting to be very good. The course examines the rhetoric of women in 19th century America in the various social movements they participated in. Being a 20th century British young adult literature enthusiast (check all the modifiers, there's quite a few), I wasn't really looking forward to taking this course.

I have been surprised, however, by how much I'm finding out about the ways my predecessors in America not only fought for their own rights, but loved their neighbor by fighting alongside them. One particular group of women struck a chord: The New York Female Moral Reform Society. The NYFMRS was formed to battle the rising tide of prostitution in New York City in the early 1800s. These women (and some men) discovered, upon researching the problem of prostitution, which involved on the lowest level simply talking to the prostitutes, that the main reasons most of them became prostitutes was not, as was commonly thought, because they were somehow licentious and devilish women. Rather, most of them were forced to because of economic hardship. Because of the way that laws about the rights of women functioned in 19th century America, a woman found it very hard to make a living once her husband had passed, or if she was unmarried to begin with. Many of them found prostitution to be a good alternative to starvation.

Fast forward to 2009. This is the same situation many women across the world are facing, especially in these economically hard times. As we see numbers of the hungry and the homeless increasing, you can be assured that the numbers of those being forced to sell themselves for sex has increased as well.

Siddarth Kara, author of the 2009 book Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery writes that in traveling the globe to research slavery, "No discovery shocked me more than the extreme level of bias and socioeconomic disenfranchisement that millions of women face across the globe. These factors contribute directly to female vulnerability to slave traders when the surrounding political and economic infrastructures disintegrated." Kara goes on to tell us that in India, 15,000 women are murdered each year in dowry disputes, even though the dowry system is illegal. "Life for millions of women in South Asia is a process of terrible abuse," he writes.

Disenfranchised women, like those we find in various third world and developing countries, are those most at risk for becoming victims of sex trafficking. Similar to the situation of many 19th century women in America, the disenfranchised women across the globe believe that they have no other option, that this is what they must do in order not to starve on the street, or have their family starve alongside them. And like the NYFMRS, we must do what we can to remedy this situation.

What does this mean, then?

In the long run, it means changing the laws to give women more of a chance. It means cracking down on those who buy sex; it means targeted punishment of the men who operate to oppress women and create the demand for sex. It means a change in attitude across the globe.

Surely, these are high and lofty goals, but ones I hope I can see realized. But what little old you and little old me do, right here, right now? Kara offers us some possibilities:

1. Become Aware. Read, research, do what you can to learn about the sex industry and its connections with trafficking. Learn how the world economies fit together, even if it's just a cursory understanding. Begin to realize that the things you purchase, the actions you take, even if you're just one person in Waco, TX, USA, do make a difference.

2. Financial Support. Donate to NGO's. Donate to this trip I'm going on so I can learn more about the issue and do something to help. Kara writes that "Even if sex trafficking ended today, there would be over one million women and children in need of shelter, health care, counseling and vocational training." Aftercare is just as important as, if not more than, rescue.

3. Community vigilance. Pay attention to what's going on around you! In Central Texas alone, there have been around 7 cases of caught and prosecuted traffickers, just because someone in the community noticed something wrong and spoke up.*

4. Write a letter. Contact your Congressperson, tell them to get the ball rolling on enforcing international laws against trafficking, to provide money toward aftercare, to do something to change the disenfranchisement of women in the world today.

These are small steps, but ones that will make a big difference.

__________________

*http://www.slaverymap.com

**Title quote taken from The Advocate of Moral Reform, a periodical published by the NYFMRS in the late 1830s. It was said by a prostitute at a brothel interviewed for the first edition of The Advocate.

22.10.09

And you shall know them by their love.


As many of you know, I teach two sections of freshman composition at Baylor. Needless to say, this has put an interesting stress on my semester. Today, I took about half the class period and introduced the next unit - persuasion. I fortunately kept our discussion from turning into a political debate wherein the whole class disagreed with me, but I did manage to raise the question in some of my students' minds of "What does it mean to love your neighbor?"

I suppose I should rewind a bit.

I introduced the unit with an exercise in audience/authorship. My friend Chase posted an article a few weeks back that I just knew I had to use in class - Michael Moore's Open Letter to Christians in America. In this letter, Moore challenges Christians to think about what the relation between Capitalism and Loving Your Neighbor really is. Would Jesus be okay with some people getting a bigger piece of the pie than others?

Knowing that even just the name "Michael Moore" would raise some guards, I carefully edited it to remove any clues to who the author is, and presented it to my students.

The reaction in the first class was expected: "He's misusing Scripture! What is this? He takes those comments about the poor entirely out of context! He doesn't know his audience very well." Knowing that a debate on the veracity of his Scriptural references would simply take the class too far off track to do any good, I merely wrote their objections on the board, and questioned them. Again and again, I asked, "Did no one find anything positive in the article?" Not only were none of them persuaded, none of them seemed to even have questions raised in their minds about the issue. Christianity supports a capitalistic economic structure, no question.

I, quite reasonably, kept my mouth shut for most of the discussion, only prompting questions to guide them back to focusing on the writing because, after all, this is a comp class. I kept my mouth shut, that is, until the question of what it means to love your neighbor came up. Even then, all I did was ask the question: "Is it loving to take a large chunk of the pie to improve your bottom line? Is it possible to love both money and your neighbor?"

While it shut some of them up, the majority opinion chose to ignore the word "love" in the sentence. I was surprised at how quickly the concept was written off, especially by students whose lives have been surrounded by images of love, the idea that love is the highest possible good, and raised in families who told them, over and over, that God loves them.

What has happened to the concept of love in today's society? What does loving your neighbor look like?

These questions have become a consistent theme in my life, and not without reason. I live in the 16th poorest city in the nation, and I can't go to the post office without encountering a homeless person. While sitting at my kitchen window, I frequently see these two homeless people pushing shopping carts through my neighborhood - they're the same ones each time, and I see them about once every two weeks.

At one point this summer, I took the trash out at about 10:00 at night, and there was a man of about 40 years old rooting through our dumpster. I said hello, and he smiled widely at me, greeting me enthusiastically, seemingly unembarrassed to be found rooting through the garbage. I let him be.

That man, even if he doesn't live in my complex, is my neighbor.
The old lady, leaning on her shopping cart as she wanders through the neighborhood, is my neighbor.
The man sitting against the wall outside the post office telling me he only has $1.34 and just needs a little bit more so he can go buy some food...that man is my neighbor, my brother, my family.

What does it mean to love them? What does it mean to apply to the real world the somewhat trite, continually restated and reemphasized edict of "love your neighbor"? I think that may be the essence of the Christian life - learning how to work out that love for others as God loves us. Why else do we remain on earth when we are "saved"? It is so that we may love others.

Go and learn what it means to love.

(photo credit: Brandt Russo, of the group "Can't Ignore the Poor," taken in Skid Row, Los Angeles)

15.10.09

1 in 6 are Going Hungry.

In lieu of everything I have going on this weekend (despite it being fall break), it seemed that directing you to a CNN article on a report from the UN that 1 billion people worldwide are undernourished would be a better idea than writing right now.

1 billion people means one in six people are without food, and experiencing some sort of food crisis.

Read more about it here.

Thanks for visiting for the blog. Learn about what you can do to help, and do it.

8.10.09

I <3 Fair Trade

For those of you who don't know, October is Fair Trade Month, the month when Fair Trade Certified makes a big push to promoting Fair Trade goods around the world.

For my thoughts on the idea of Fair Trade vs. Free Trade, see this earlier post here.

There are a number of events going on all over the states to celebrate Fair Trade. For example, just yesterday, Boston Dunkin' Donuts had their 100% Fair Trade Coffee available at designated subway stops all along the T (their name for the subway). In investigating Dunkin' Donuts as a company, I discovered that ALL of their coffee is 100% Fair Trade Certified - it's part of the commitment that the company makes to society. It's in part a response to customers, and a commitment the company has decided to make to better the world.

That said, there are a number of companies that don't bother to use Fair Trade. At most Starbuck's, if you want your mocha made with Fair Trade coffee, you have to specially request it. And unfortunately, it's not always available.

This week, I challenge you to think about the products you are buying. If you're buying rice - where did it come from? What hands harvested it? What country produced it? If you're getting coffee, is it fair trade? Was it produced by a company that has a commitment to helping the world, not just making a profit?

Think about it. Where is your money going?

Also, here's an interesting video that has a great analogy from Monopoly. It's a sermon from a Unitarian church here in TX:

Pathways Church: sermon from 06/01/2008 - A Decent Cup of Coffee from Pathways Church on Vimeo.



_____________

Speaking of money...since the announcement last week about my photobook/fundraising push, I have received $310 in donations! Hallelujah! I still need around $500 more to make my out of pocket expenses reasonable, so the donation button is still wide open.

I am also linking to my friend Chase's Blog. If you have already donated to me, and still want to help out, Chase - one of my fellow travelers - is having trouble raising money, and only has 2 and 1/2 months to get almost the entire amount together. If you can help him out even just a little, I know he would very much appreciate it.

1.10.09

October the 1st: An Announcement!


As many of you know, I don't have a lot of time on my hands. Between teaching classes, taking class and doing class reading, I don't have a lot of time to concentrate on funding for India. So I had a light bulb this week.

One of my fellow travelers, Ashley, is learning to be a photographer, and is taking portraits of people for a donation to her trip, and that is her main source of fundraising for the trip.

Now, many of you know, I enjoy photography, so much so that I bought myself a DSLR this summer, and I have been learning how to use it. It is, of course, traveling to India with me, and I will probably have a couple thousand photos to sort through once I get back.

So, what am I to do with very little time, a nice camera, and a ton of photos that I'll have when I get back?

Photo books, of course!

I am announcing today, October the 1st, that for everyone who donates $35 or more (and this is retroactive too), I will make a photobook of my India photos. This means, of course, that you will have an awesome memento of my trip, cool looking unique photos that no one else will have , and the knowledge that you helped send me over there to take them!

You can donate in the sidebar on the paypal button, email me at dianna_anderson@baylor.edu to get my address if you prefer snail mail.

The payment dates have changed, so I now have $1500 due at the end of October instead of $1250 this week. I need to raise about $750 more to be comfortable. So if you want to donate, please do!

(Oh, and yes, that's a sample photo of my photography skill up there).

27.9.09

Bonus Sunday Post!

"It looks like giving a voice to those who don't have a voice. It looks like standing engaged in justice and working to proclaim the truth. It's...what gets me out of bed in the morning."

YOUR HOPE from blaine hogan on Vimeo.

Mars Hill Graduate School responds to the question, "What if you truly loved your neighbor as yourself?"



And now that you've watched that, watch this:

Human Trafficking Film, from Hope for Justice from Simon Dempsey on Vimeo.



Think about it: If we radically love our neighbors, and if we start in our churches, we can change the world.

23.9.09

From the pen of Angelina Grimke:

One of the classes I am taking this semester is Women's Rhetoric in the 19th Century, discussing how women worked to incite other women to work for social justice causes (such as abolition and temperance) and eventually for themselves in the suffrage movement. It almost goes without saying that a lot of the material we read in that class could be applied to the current fight against underground human trafficking and slavery. Indeed, in a long open letter (40 pages) that Angelina Grimke wrote to "Christian Women of the South," there were numerous passages that I underlined and starred as they applied so perfectly to the thoughts of the anti-slavery movement happening right now. So, I will let Angelina do my speaking for me for the rest of this post, and my reason is that you should note how so much of this Truth speaks to a problem still extant in our world today: mainly that we humans have trouble learning the rule of "love thy neighbor." A fight like this requires renewal of belief in that one law - that my fellow human being is worthy of being shown love merely because they are human - everyday.

"[Y]et man is never vested with this dominion over his fellow man; he was never told that any of the human species were put under his feet; it was only all things, and man, who was created in the image of his Maker, never can properly be termed a thing, though the laws of the Slave States do call him a 'chattel personal': Man then, I assert never was put under the feet of man, by that first charter of human rights which was given by God, to the Fathers of the Antediluvian and Postdiluvian worlds, therefore this doctrine of equality is based upon the Bible.

[...]

Try yourselves by another of the Divine precepts, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' Can we love a man as we love ourselves; if we do, and continue to do unto him, what we would not wish any one to do to us? Look too, at Christ's example, what does he say of himself, 'I came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.' Can you for a moment imagine the meek, and lowly, and compassionate Saviour, a Slaveholder? Do you not shudder at this thought as much as at that of his being a warrior? But why, if slavery is not sinful?

[...]

And you are now loudly called upon by the cries of the widow and the orphan, to arise and gird yourselves for this great moral conflict, with the whole armor of righteousness upon the right hand and on the left.

[...]

This monster of iniquity has been unveiled to the world, her frightful features unmasked, and soon, very soon will she be regarded with no more complacency by the American republic than is the idol of Juggernaut, rolling its bloody wheels over the crushed bodies of its prostrate victims.

[...]

Until the pictures of the slaves' sufferings were drawn and held up to public gaze, no Northerner had any idea of the cruelty of the system, it had never entered their minds that such abominations could exist in Christian, Republican America; they never suspected that many of the gentlemen and ladies who came from the South to spend the summer months in travelling among them, were petty tyrants at home.

[...]

What can I say more, my friends, to induce you to set your hands and heads and hearts, to this great work of justice and mercy[?]"


_______________

We received our flight details this last week, so I will be scheduling flights home/to/from Newark within the next few weeks. Our donation deadlines have also changed, which gives me another month to raise more money (Praise God for that!). I now have $1500 due on November 1st, $500 on December 1st, and $500 when we leave. The Donate button in the sidebar is still open and active! And you can watch my donation progress in the little temperature thing, also in the sidebar.

I also have to turn in my Visa application soon, so pray that all of that goes smoothly and I don't get rejected for some unbeknownst to me skeleton in my closet from years back. :|

Thanks for reading!

17.9.09

let my heart be broken by your heartache.

My roommate and I have been making our way through the HBO miniseries from 2001: Band of Brothers. It's an account of E Company of the 101st Airborne, one of the companies in WWII that worked the hardest and saw the most combat. There were there during D-Day, during Bastogne, and made it all the way into Germany and fought the Nazis on their own German territory.

This last episode we watched - the ninth of ten - is titled "Why We Fight," and does its best to answer that question. The men have been fighting the "krauts" - the derogatory name for the Germans - for nearly two years now, and many of them are disillusioned with the hero image that had made many of them join the army in the first place. They have become desensitized to the killing, desensitized to the taking of lives, and are having trouble seeing the people around them as human beings anymore. Shell shock has set in for a few of them, which they handle in either outbursts of anger, drink, or sex, when they can get it. The basic point is: They don't know why they're there any more.

Then they discover why. Out on patrol in Germany, deep in enemy territory, they discover one of the smaller concentration camps. The men cannot believe what they are seeing, and cannot fathom that men would do this to one another. Despite having been involved heavily in the combat, despite having taken many lives themselves, the impact of seeing innocent lives ripped apart and destroyed, simply because of the religion they profess, nearly disables the soldiers. They cannot believe this was happening a few hundreds yards walk from a nice little German town.

And that's the crux: The Germans in the town didn't know. Many of them had no idea that this travesty was being conducted right under their noses, and were as horrified as many of the soldiers when they saw the camp - the soldiers recruited them to help bury the Jewish dead - and the reaction is visibly disturbed.

Now let's fast forward to 2009: Similar travesties are happening, not in isolated pockets, but spread throughout our own backyards and towns. People are being forced into slavery, into working, possibly until they die, by men who see them as less than human, by owners who see dollars when they see another human being. It is the same view that causes tragedies around the world: that one's fellow human being is somehow less than human, somehow matters less because they are not related to you, not a brother or sister or mother or father, at least not in relation to anyone who matters. They are less, somehow, by the separation of time and space from where you sit.

That is the view that gets us into trouble.

We have become far too comfortable with the idea of tragedy. We sit on our comfortable couches, watch an artist's depiction of it, and then turn off the DVD player and walk away, comfortable in our homes, separated from that event by time and space.

We are not separate; we are all a part of the same human race.

That is why I am going to India. That is why I choose to put my hand out to help those in crisis because we can never forget what consequences ignorance and inaction have. That is why I fight.

_______________


That said, I can only help in this fight if I have people helping me. That's the other beauty of "Band of Brothers" - they are soldiers who have become a family through their shared experiences. One way you can share in this experience with me is by supporting my trip, both monetarily and prayerfully. As always, the donate button on the left will lead you to a way to donate online, or, if you feel more like doing some snail mail, you can email me at: dianna_anderson@baylor.edu for my address. Those who donate will get a nice print of one of my photos from the trip after I get back.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for all of your generous help.

10.9.09

"But reasons fail at children without mothers"


In one of my classes this semester, we have been discussing the idea of the division between body and soul, and how that happened because religion was privatized. Reason and religion have somehow become divided. It's a big heady topic, and every Wednesday I come home after class with a dazed look on my face, wondering at my life and how we can possibly work to solve all the problems that the world has.

Then clarity comes. I realize that we simply can't, at least not on our own.

My going to India may result in the change in one person's life, other than my own, and that alone is good.

My friend Anne traveling to Holland to work with a missions organization may only change one person, but that person's life is well worth it.

My brother's friends living in a seedy neighborhood in the midst of Waco, giving prostitutes rides to the grocery store and other places around town, may only change one life, but that life is worthwhile.

Back in 2003, I signed up to go to Belize with my church youth group for my first ever missions trip. It was also my first time out of the country. The youth group did multiple things while there, but one of them was an evening "show" of sorts that was a presentation of the gospel with music, theater, and, yes, puppets. We traveled around to various churches in the area, presenting this show in the evenings. As I was the "theater" person, this was a major part of my work down there, and I was proud of how the show came together. But consistently, night after night, when we opened up the floor for people to come forward, no one did.

Having been raised in a somewhat fundamentalist evangelical church, I thought that I was somehow a failure because our evangelism was supposed to be about "winning souls for Christ," and all that. I didn't realize that by simply living my life in love, I was affecting the children who came around to our campsite everyday and played with us. By allowing them to call me "Biscuit" - my nickname for the trip, named after a type of cookie they have down there branded the "Diana Biscuit" - and by simply listening to them and giving them a treat every so often, I was showing them love.

On one of the last nights that we were presenting our evening show, I felt bad because our tree for the show had been confiscated during a bus ride through a quarantine zone, and we had had to scrounge for a rather pathetic looking branch when we got to the church. I was concentrating a lot on the show being "perfect," that it didn't really matter to me anymore what sort of "souls" were we winning. Despite my own attitude toward the whole thing, that evening an old man came forward. He was probably in his late 60s, though it was a little hard to tell. He came to a life changing encounter with Christ that night, in his much later years of life.

Remarkable.

Even when all reason fails, when we look at the mother homeless in the streets of LA, when we look at the children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic in Africa, when we look hard into the eyes of a child prostitute rescued from the trade in India, even when we want to look around and lose all hope as to why the world is the way it is: We remember. It is by one life that this world is changed - one life changed mine, and my life can change just one. And if I can help just that one, if all of us commit to helping just that one, the world will change.

My AP US History classroom had a small poster on the bulletin board by the door that simply read: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." (Margaret Mead)

Indeed. It is the only thing that will.

For more information about my India trip, scroll down and read some of the other posts on this blog. I should be receiving my flight information soon, and I will be reporting stories about my immunizations (have to update that tetanus shot!) and other preparations for the trip in the coming posts.

(photo from Clint Whitley, fellow Belize participant).

2.9.09

"You and your social justice."

First, a story: A few days ago, I was sitting in the crowded Teaching Assistant office when one of the professors from the department came through asking what teas we would prefer for the departmental teas that happen each Friday. After telling her "Earl Grey," and thinking for a moment, I politely requested, "And if you could, could you look for some fair trade?" She duly noted it on her paper, and time will tell whether or not fair trade tea will make headway into the English Department teas.

My desk mate looked at me with a smile on her face, and said in that sweet Southern accent of hers: "Oh Dianna. You and your social justice." Now, knowing her, these were actually words of praise - I understood it to mean that it was kind of cool (albeit weird, but cool) that I had spoken up. She correctly identified, by her comment, however, that I am one of the few in the department who would bother to care about such a thing. The implicit question there being, "Why are you bringing this 'social justice' thing into the small parts like our departmental tea?"

As I have stated time and again here on this blog and otherwise, it is those little things that make a difference. Making a commitment to support fair trade in even the little things that you drink - like coffee and tea - can make a large difference in someone's life. That is one farmer who is paid a fair wage for the tea leaves he's producing, one more reassurance that the product in your hands wasn't made by hands much smaller than your own, one more step in the fight to end the modern day slave trade.

Jesus tells us outright in Luke 16:10-13: "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?" Essentially, the message here is to be careful how we spend. Though the English department tea is not something I have control over spending for, I can at the very least request that non-fair trade practices are not implicitly supported by asking for a more explicit support of fair trade.

In American culture particularly (though it is very similar in most of the Western world), we have a cavalier attitude toward consumerism: as long as I can get this or that cheaply without much effort on my part, I will do so. It is time that this practice is stopped. By being those people in the office who are examples to others by requesting fair trade coffee or tea for the office pot, by showing large corporations that we refuse to shop there if they are connected with the slave trade, by simply talking to others about the product chain and where the shoes on our feet and the clothes on our back come from, we can begin a change.

We can demand transparency - we just need to make people aware of why transparency in the marketplace is needed in the first place.

Get informed. Get involved.

28.8.09

Religion in the Revolution

Classes began this week, monopolizing my time and making it easy for me to forget about the important things while I'm caught up in the mire of attendance sheets, student emails, and making sure I'm not royally screwing up a lecture on logos, pathos and ethos.

In the midst of all of that, however, it seems that my reading for class has dovetailed neatly with my interests in this trip to India, and with stopping the regime of modern day slavery that affects so many.

For my Monday class - Women in Rhetoric - we had to read a book entitled "Women Called to Witness," about the religious beginnings of the movements that eventually lead to the institution of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, and which began the spirit of abolition and the Civil Rights movement. Many of the early reformers were religious, and were fighting first and foremost for the right to speak and prophesy in church assemblies, which in those days, was scandalous. Once the right to that was won, they coupled the woman's rights movements with those of temperance, moral reform and abolition. In fighting for others, they saw how they could free themselves. Most of those involved in the social justice movement realized that massive reforms were needed if we were going to recognize our fellow human beings as the humans that they are, and fulfill the gospel call to "love your neighbor as yourself." Many of the women involved in the abolitionist movement urged their fellow religious men and women within the abolitionist movement to support the suffragist movement because freedom for one group without freedom for the other was no freedom at all.

See the connection? Everything involving human rights is interconnected: I cannot be truly free while my brothers and sisters in India, in Europe, in Singapore, in North Korea, in Cambodia, in Austin, TX, Pierre, SD, Los Angeles, CA, Queens Borough in NYC and places across the globe, whom Christ dearly loves and died for just as he died for all of our American church-goers, are still in bondage to evil masters. God calls us first and foremost to go to the poor, to the hurting, and to love them as we love ourselves and as we reflect the love of God in our lives.

In the midst of the beginning of this school, do not forget that simple fact.

Angelina Grimke, one of the big names in the woman's suffragist movement of the late 19th century, writes this: "I am sure that the poor and oppressed ... can never be benefited without mingling with them on terms of equality."

They are our brothers and sisters. Let's start behaving that way.

20.8.09

The TX Gov'r is doing his job.

With the advent of teaching and the beginning of the school year, I don't have a whole lot of time to spend writing up a whole new blog post, but I will say this: There have been several instance of human trafficking cases in Texas in the past few years, mainly due to our close proximity to Mexico. Seeing this news story then was quite heartening.

14.8.09

China's Sweatshops in My Backyard.

The Not For Sale Campaign's twitter pointed me to this blog entry by someone in Queens, which I found interesting and informative. I thought I would share that in lieu of a Thursday blog post.

Find it linked here.

6.8.09

The Trip

This last week, I got some update emails from Sarah, the girl at Faceless International who is organizing our trip. She sent us a rough itinerary, and some information about the people who are going.

There are 20 of us - 18 Americans, one Australian, and one New Zealander (Kiwi). Two of the people on the trip are moms coming along with their teenagers, which will definitely throw a different dynamic into the group, but it should be a good one. They will probably end up acting as de facto leaders or something, which would be good for such a large group.

Our Itinerary is as follows:

December 26th - Orientation in NYC

December 27th - Departure flight to Kolkata, India (it's approximately a 21 hour trip, so it will be about 2 days traveling).

December 29th: Arrive and tour Kolkata - see the red light district, Mother Theresa's Order, and visit schools that work with high risk children living in the red light district.

December 30-31st: We'll travel to Vizag, a coastal fishing town in southwest India, where we will visit a school dedicated to helping girls who have been rescued out of the sex trade. This school teaches girls how to make bags and other fun crafts that are then sold online so they can support themselves and keep from having to return to the trade. These are the items sold through the Emancipation Network - www.madebysurvivors.com.

January 1st - 5th: We'll travel to Nellore, a village that is further inland, and here visit a school and work with some of the children who attend it. The school is for the children of widows who would otherwise receive no education - India is still a very patriarchal society, where, in some areas, a widow is expected to throw herself on the funeral pyre of her dead husband. Many have foregone this practice for the sake of their children, but it doesn't mean that the children are able to receive a good education. That's why this school exists. We will host some programs and be shown programs by the children. The email also says that here I can plan on playing lots of soccer and cricket.

January 5th: Return to the United States.

Sarah also writes that: There is a possibility of us participating in some building and painting projects as well for the schools that we will be visiting. However, alot of time will be spent touring villages in India and seeing first hand where trafficking victims come from and the poverty they are trying to hard to escape. Sadly, we will see how natural slavery is in the culture of India. We will drive by workers making bricks on the side of the road. We will see children picking rice with their parents in rice fields. We know its slavery, yet to many in India, its a way of life.

As you can see, this will be quite the whirlwind tour, but well worth it. Your prayer and support are always welcome, especially during the days that we will be traveling. I would urge you to check out Made by Survivors, run by the Emancipation Network, and see what these girls are producing. There's some very cool stuff, and hopefully I'll be able to pick some up while I'm over there.

Thanks very much for reading and for your support.