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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.
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Photo by: Photographer Parker Young.