Perfect Timing

1 There is a time for everything, 
       and a season for every activity under heaven:

 2 a time to be born and a time to die, 
       a time to plant and a time to uproot,

 3 a time to kill and a time to heal, 
       a time to tear down and a time to build,

 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, 
       a time to mourn and a time to dance,

 5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, 
       a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

 6 a time to search and a time to give up, 
       a time to keep and a time to throw away,

 7 a time to tear and a time to mend, 
       a time to be silent and a time to speak,

 8 a time to love and a time to hate, 
       a time for war and a time for peace.

 9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-14

Homeward Bound

"There are two ways of getting HOME; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place."

~ G.K. Chesterton

Finding Stillness

For the past six months this has been my desk, my waiting room, my view point, my place of meeting, my quite coffee shop corner, my couch, my bench in the park, my classroom, and my tree that I day dream under. I feel like half of my time here has been spent getting to train stations, waiting for trains, crying about missing trains, sitting on trains, reading on trains, listening to music on trains, thinking till my mind hurts and my thoughts are blurred on trains, and walking back home from trains. My thoughts go through my head about as fast as the train cars speed down the track, the same scenes burned into my memory turning over in my mind like a silent movie, and somehow I don't think that even if I tried I could find words that could adequately describe to anyone the pictures I see. Sometimes this feels like my prison. I don't really enjoy the inescapable reminders of things I would rather forget or ignore that follow me in these times of lonely transport. But somehow inside I know that I need this. I need the silence, the stillness. I need to fight it out, me and God, my thoughts like small informal prayers. Maybe there really was a reason why I was so scared of empty silence all this time. It is where where we face our giants, we stare down our past, where we keep our eyes right on ahead to contemplate the unknown, and where we tear apart the places of our hearts and souls that go unnoticed or are conveniently not addressed. When I think about meeting with God I think about sitting on a train. I am alone, there is silence, out the window things pass quickly by me, but I am still. This doesn't happen often, maybe not many times before in my life. I have avoided it, but here it finds me. I have a feeling that if for no other reason, God wanted me here so I would sit on trains, so I would find stillness that I could not avoid, so I could find Him. 

Different Names For the Same Thing

"Alone on a train aimless in wonder 

An outdated map crumpled in my pocket 

But I didn't care where I was going 

They're all different names for the same place 

Your ghost just appeared with the scenes from the summer 

I have no words to share with anyone 

The boundary of language quietly coos 

All the different names for the same thing 

There are different names for the same things 

There are different names for the same things...

-Death Cab for Cutie

Death in Munich

"I descended a dusty gravel ridge beneath the Bixby Canyon Bridge,

and soon I eventually arrived to the place where your soul had died...

Barefoot in the shallow creek I grabbed some stones from underneath waiting for you to speak to me...

And the silence, it became so very clear, that you had long ago disappeared.

And I cursed myself for being surprised that this didn't play like it did in my mind..."

I have been waiting for this opportunity for a long time, and it finally came to pass that I was standing 10 feet from a stage where one of my most revered bands, Death Cab for Cutie, stood poised to play. The lyrics to "Bixby Canyon Bridge" came streaming through the microphone, my heart leaped, and the reality of being just an ear shot away from the poet himself, Ben Gibbard, made me surge with that elation that only comes with experiencing a song your heart resonates with, not through headphones or speakers, but live. 

After a long journey, first an hour and a half bus ride from Strakonice to Prague, two hours wandering downtown Prague, drinking coffee, a gingerbread latter to be exact, to wake me up, and then a car ride with Lucka, Nate, and Hannah from Prague to Munich, we arrived. We got lost, we asked for directions, we found the venue, we waited for parking, gave up, drove a ways a way, found a spot, and got out into the freezing winter air. After a dinner at Pizza hut (yeah, I know, not my first choice and blatantly American) we walked, chilled to the bone back to the venue, an awesome place tucked away off a main street in the center of the city, and got in line to enter. We made friends with fellow Americans braving life in Europe, stood, waited, chatted over the sounds of all the Europeans combined, and shivered as our toes felt the bite of the bellow zero temperature. Small sacrifices for the chance to experience music through a torn veil, face to face, feeling the sound surround you, the bass beat in your chest. All our excitement grew in contrast to our comfort as the time drew closer to the time for the doors to open. 

We enter, rush to the front. We want to smell the music, taste it, have it touch us. The opening band, Frightened Rabbit impresses and entertains, their quirky drummer mostly to deserve credit for this. Despite the frequent application of expletives, I must confess my favorite song of theirs was one entitled "Keep Yourself Warm". Though said in the most crude way possible, the song rings with truth. Paired with a powerful and dynamic melody, this song deserves attention. This was my first experience with this band, not my last. I'll take their Scottish accents and provocatively poetic lyrics for a spin again and again. The best is yet to come though...

The openers finish, walk off quickly, and as the stage is prepared we wait eagerly. I know that my expectations are much too weak to prepare me adequately. I can't believe I am here. What an unlikely memory to make. Life feels beautifully strange, as it frequently does here. 

I don't think I can describe what happens in between. I have heard these songs so many times, but somehow I feel like I am just hearing them for the first time again. The audience as a chorus, singing back the words to the stage. I have always thought that this must be one of the most rewarding feelings for an artist. Somehow they have written a song so specific that it pricks the hearts like a needle and yet so big that hundreds of people can simultaneously connect with it. The set list is long, most of my favorites included: "Grapevine Fires", "Transatlanticism", "Title and Registration", "Your Heart is an Empty Room". Some new ones to savor: "405", "Movie Script Ending", "Laughing Indoors". I have already added them to my collection. I wish he would tell the stories behind these songs, but they are stories in themselves, they stand alone. I am curious though still. The acoustic stillness of "I Will Follow You Into the Dark". A four song encore. I can be satisfied with this. 

We drive home. I am tired, I start to doze, drifting in and out, a sermon playing in the background, then music, Hillsong United, Bon Iver...I lose track. Snow is falling outside, its cold, its still, it seems like a dream, a winter lullaby. Everything is poetic in these moments. My ears can't stop ringing from the words sung tonight. I swear that man is a genius at expressing the human soul. Sometimes I feel like he ripped pages form my journal and put music to them. Or is it the other way around? I often feel like I have inadequate words to express myself, or maybe that I don't even know what it really is that I long to tell the story of, but when I hear songs like those of Death Cab I feel like a script is added to the film of memories in my mind. The words don't always match up to the moving lips, but the emotion is all there. Maybe those words are what I wish I could say. If I could write a letter to you I would send a playlist with it to fill in the wholes, to clean up the mess. The best songs are those that haunt you, that play along to your thoughts and tempt you into moods. 

I get home at 4am. I am exhausted. I brush my teeth, wash the make up off. Did this all really happen? As I go to bed everything feels the same, but I was in Munich three hours ago. 

Here are some pics of the concert. Thanks to Nate and Lucka's camera. I wish you were there.

Relive this concert with me and take a listen...here is the set list:

Thoughts on a Return

So this one is long but I haven't posted anything in a while. A lot has been happening and some ideas just need to find release...

Today marks one month until I return home. A seemingly miniscule amount of time when reflecting upon the past six months I have spent away. As much as I have been attempting to be fully present here, my mind has not ceased to dwell upon what my life will be like when I return. I guess that it is only natural to think about the next step before we have taken it. God has changed a lot in me over the past six months, a lot that four years of university and the building up of my intellect could never do. That intellect has not disappeared, but has been illuminated by experience, a deep leaning upon God and a humbling of any prideful claim to ability or power I once thought I had. I used to want to DO big things, now I want to BE in whom God is doing something big. At times I feel a guilt for not being one of those people who seem to effortlessly do extraordinary things, that reek of compassion, that are driven, that change things. I actually started to study Development at university because I thought that the only noble thing to do with one's life was to serve others, to help those who cannot help themselves, and to improve another's life. I still desire these things, I just see them a bit more holistically now. I had it in my mind four years ago that I was going to graduate university, join the PeaceCorps, and move to some village in Latin America. Now I am in Strakonice, Czech Republic hanging out with teenagers, playing card games, eating in high school cafeterias, and having sleep overs. A bit of a detour. I have to confess I have struggled with being here, with being in a place so comfortable, so developed. Or rather just to not be involved in directly working with development. It seems that a part of my heart still dwells in that former vision for my life. In a way being here feels like a cleavage from my passion for development, but this passion is but a symptom of greater ones. You see I am beginning to become convinced that I should mind more how I live rather than what I do. Not to say that what we choose to do has no effect. Being here has taught me something of the radical affects of living life as ministry and of seeing all opportunities as spiritual. Of not seeing a difference between personal life and public ministry. Both are personal, both are my living act of worship. So as I think about going home, I think about how I want to live, what patterns that have been started in my life now that I want to continue, what kind of follower of Jesus Christ and lover of people that I desire to be transformed into. I don't think Jesus called us to do something I think he called us to be something, to be something so radically different from our surroundings that regardless of what we do we would be living lives that produce transformation and change. When I think about going home I think about what I am going to do, where I will live, what will be important to me. I know that in my heart God has placed a passion and a desire to advocate, to see justice happen, to improve the lives of others, to see people's needs met. I see a few ways that I can act upon these passions. But lately something really transformative has taken hold of my heart and I am starting to think that God doesn't just call me to sacrifice some of my time in my schedule to do things to help others, but to live in such a way that my life is not separated from what I care about. I could volunteer at a homeless shelter, I could be a leader at a youth group, I could be a mentor for refugees, I could do any number of noble things. Or I could live in the same apartment complex as refugees, I could choose to live in the forgotten and run down neighborhoods, I could actually be friends with the youth around me, spend time where they are at, do the things they like to do with them. I think both approaches are necessary, but I have learned here that there is a great freedom in living ministry and not just doing ministry, in loving and serving others as an interwoven action of everyday activity as opposed to a formal interruption to it. Ministry looks like inviting people into my home,  like watching movies and having sleep overs, like playing Dutch Blitz around the coffee table, like eating pancakes and watching Beyoncé music videos on Youtube. How awesome when ministry is life. When serving another looks like living life with them, like friendship. Just because in a month my "job" won't specifically be ministry doesn't mean that my life has to stop being that. 

How I view poverty and oppression must change too. It would be too shortsighted to see these things as simply existing in the physical realm. In fact, the reason why they exists in the physical world is because they originate in the spiritual. I want to be one that, as Isaiah 58 describes, looses the chains of injustice, that sets the oppressed free, that provides for the poor, and shares with the hungry. I know that when God says this he is most certainly speaking in literal terms, but their is a deeper spiritual reality to this. I am starting to see that we cannot separate the physical need form the spiritual. They are married together as one. So if I am going to be about one I must be about both. Their is no exclusivity in God's notion of freedom from the perversions of life like poverty, oppression, and injustice. Freedom from these things must be spiritual above all. I need to see things from a spiritual reality, even poverty, especially poverty.

I have always loved the way that words can invoke transformation in our hearts and spur us towards action. Here are some words that challenge me, words I want to live by:

"What is therefore our task today? Shall I answer 'Faith, Hope, and Love'? That sounds beautiful. But I would say courage- no, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth. Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature...we lack a holy rage- the recklessness that comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets,  and when the lie rages across the face of the Earth...a holy anger about the things that are wrong...To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God."

~Kaj Munk

"We cannot do great things, only small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it."

~Mother Teresa

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved." 

~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage, and wisdom moves the world."

~Ammon Hennacy

"We need converts in the best sense of the word, people who are marked by the renewing of their minds and imagination, who no longer conform to the patterns that are destroying our world...What the world needs is people who believe so much in another world that they cannot help but begin enacting it now."

~Shane Claiborne

"For children are innocent and love justice, while most are wicked and love mercy."

~G.K. Chesterton

A Reminder

"But thanks be to God! He gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain."

1 Corinthians 15:57-58

One of the most discouraging ideas that can creep into one's head is the notion that what she does is without effect or purpose. Lately this has been increasingly tempting for me to believe. Often I ask myself what all I do really adds up to. I want to see the fruit of my labor, to see some product or result. I don't think that this is all that uncommon of a desire. We all want to have evidence of the value of our efforts. Often we work for the results, for what our labor produces. Honestly, I cannot say that I have seen the results of my labor in any traditional sense. It is strange for me to grow accustomed to a "job" that essentially has no distinct parameters or description other than to pursue and love youth so that they may encounter Jesus and come to a right relationship with God. I am not even so certain as to what this looks like in a practical sense. This is something I am figuring out. I am used to working for a wage, or as a student to work for a grade, but to labor without a clear idea of success is difficult. Being here is not easy for me. Often times, I feel a deep longing for home, for the familiar, for family, and friends. If I had no purpose in being here, my discomfort and struggles in being here would be pointless. However, there is purpose, but this purpose does not exist because my labor has results that I can see. I have read the verse from 1 Corinthians that I quoted above many times and have found great encouragement in knowing that my labor in the Lord is not in vain. That is a nice concept, but without an understanding of why our labor is not in vain it becomes a shallow, but beautiful idea. Something to be written on a placard or printed on a mug. This past week I went back and read all of the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians and I realized something that I had never noticed before. The whole chapter speaks about resurrection, victory and newness, freedom and forgiveness. Paul essentially says that if resurrection is not possible, if Christ did not raise from the dead, then we are fools to be pitied above all others and that we do not have salvation. The resurrection is the very cornerstone of our faith and the very thing that gives us victory from sin and death. I noticed something else though about resurrection. The verse I quoted above says to let nothing move us, to give ourselves fully to the labor of the Lord, knowing that it is not in vain, but why? The key to this verse is the previous statement "But thanks be to God! He gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore..." Oh, that sweet "therefore" that is so characteristic of Paul's writing. We should stand firm, we can know that our labor in the Lord is not in vain not because it produces results that we can see or because it produces results at all, but because we have victory in Jesus Christ. Laboring for the Lord is a response to Christ, to the power of his resurrection in our lives, not because we are expected to achieve something on our own or of our own, some success to testify to the validity of our service. Our labor is not in vain because there is already victory in it and it is motivated by something that is unchanging, something that happened not in vain, but to bring us into a relationship with God, free from sin and from human regulation. What a peace it is to labor not in vain, but with freedom and with victory. 

Arizona On My Mind

I absolutely love my landlord, Mr. Divis. He is simply one of the nicest landlords that I have ever encountered. Not only does he regularly stop by to give us jars of homemade pickles or fresh chives and parsley, but he actually engages us in conversation. Which must be painful for him considering the pathetic level of my Czech abilities. So yesterday he stops by to see if we want to buy fresh eggs from him. We now have over two dozen brown eggs sitting on our coffee table. He starts having a conversation with Leah, who he affectionally calls Maruska. 

Mr. D: "Hey Maruska! How are you?"

Leah: "Oh, I am fine."

Mr.D: "Do you want to buy some eggs?"

Blah Blah Blah...

Mr. D: "Hey does she ski?" (he points at me)

Me: (To Leah) "No, not really. Unless you count that time I ran into another woman while going down the bunny hill."

Leah: (To Mr. D) "No she doesn't, she is from the desert. She is from the state of Arizona."

Mr. D: "She is? Oh, I knew  a girl from Arizona. Do you remember Ruth Leah?"

Leah: "Yeah I do. I forgot she was from Arizona."

At this point Mr. D leaves the apartment and comes back in about five minutes with a book for me. The book is "Arizona On My Mind". A collection of pictures from around the state. Seriously, what a sweet man. Looking at that book made me really nostalgic. Pictures of sunsets, lightening storms, down town Tucson in all its glorious ghetto splendor, the mountains, Bisbee, my favorite quirky mining town, etc. Oh, Arizona! How I love thee. 

Whenever I am away from Arizona I always miss it. I will defend that desert land and its beauty to anyone. I have still not seen a sunset that can top the ones I have seen there and the mountains still hold for me a certain beauty, one that has been carved into them over year and years. I wonder if I will ever be able to get this place out of my heart. So here's to Arizona. Yes, you are on my mind. 

The Czech Scarf

I really like wearing scarves. Yes, I am from a desert where the temperature rarely gets cold enough to validate wearing one, but never the less i own a ridiculous amount of scarves. I even wear them with T-shirts, which didn't used to be cool when I first started doing it, but is now acceptable, especially if paired with some skinny legged jeans and an indie looking shirt. I still don't have the skinny legged jeans thing down (believe me, I have tried) but I can really rock a scarf with confidence and I listen to indie music, so that should count. Right?

Well, when I am in a new culture I like to acculturate myself through picking up on the fashion of the country. In Guatemala this was a challenge considering it would have been slightly offensive, not to mention ridiculous, for me to wear traditional Mayan costume, but here it is different. Anyways, of all the "in" fashions here in the Czech my favorite is the "druggie" scarf (named so because it is generally associated with hippies and druggies who often wear them. I have always wanted to be a hippie, at least in theory, so this is great for me). I finally bought one and have felt instantly more Czech, and, if I say so myself,  look pretty cool when I wear it. That is depending on your definition of cool. These scarves are everywhere here. Absolutely everywhere.  It is like a symbol of Czech youth and style. However, this scarf seems to be showing up other places also.

Last night I was watching Heroes, my one connection to American popular culture, when what do I see? A czech scarf! One character is banished to some unnamed remote part of Africa

where he is approached by an African (I know this term is really broad, but I don't know specifically where he is from) man wearing wearing a Czech scarf (See picture).

Obviously, this scarf is not exclusive to the Czech Republic. In fact, I know that its origins are of another country, I am told Egypt (that makes sense) but still, I was so excited to see it being rocked out on the show. Yes, the scarf is officially cool now and apparently very versatile. If the African man can wear the Czech scarf in the desert, then I can work it in AZ for sure. Wait a minute, I will be in Colorado. Oh, well, I guess the point is that I am bringing this fashion home. The perfect Czech/African/American accessory whether hot or cold. 

Bratislava, Slovakia

Fortune Cookie

I opened up my Bible today and out fell a fortune from a cookie I ate a month ago.

It reads: Der Humor bringt Dich in schwierigen Situationen weiter, verliere ihn nicht.

Oh great, I can't read German.

Wait a minute...I flip it over and...

In English this time: Don't lose your sense of humor. It helps you through difficult situations.

Finally a fortune cookie that tells the truth. I have to remember this for times such as when I forget to label the prices on my fruits and vegetables and I have to struggle through my limited Czech to tell the girl at information about my slip up while the entire line waits for me. Or the times when I get on the wrong train and end up miles away from where I want to be. Or how about when I get yelled at in Czech because I am texting and standing in someone's way but don't realize it because I have no idea what she is saying. Each day I face moments where my foreignness makes me feel ignorant and foolish. But I take heart. Really all I can do is laugh. Thanks fortune for reminding me.

Presence

"A loving Personality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees of the garden and breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person in present, speaking, pleading, loving, working, and manifesting himself whenever and wherever His people have the receptivity necessary to receive the manifestation."

A.W. Tozer

The Pursuit of God

There are a few things that have become more apparent to me as I have gotten older. One is that I don't know as much as I think I do, and the other is that I desperately need God. I need to experience him in more than an intellectual way. I need to know him as a father, as a brother, as a friend. I need to find my self in his presence, not simply viewing the brilliance of his glory through through a veil of self imposed distance. It is immensely easier to be contented with such a distance when there are so many noble things to fill it. I have always been a runner. By that I mean someone who runs to one thing or another, to one friend or family member to share my pains with, my joys, my thoughts, desires, and burdens. I seldom find my place of rest in the presence of God. When trouble strikes, when pain pierces my heart, when a burden comes that I cannot carry on my own I am all too quick to pick up the phone and call a friend, to escape in some activity or company of people, to busy myself so as to forget or to postpone. Being here, away from all the common comforts and pleasant distractions of my "normal" life, has only made it unavoidably evident that when it comes down to it, it really is just me and God. As I walked home from the train station the other day I started to cry. The ironic thing is that I had just gotten back from a great weekend with a youth group I work with. However, as I walked home by myself and in the quite of my own thoughts a sense of being completely alone came over me. I wanted to grab my cell phone and call a friend to reassure myself this was not true and to set my mind at ease, but I realized that with all of my good friends being across the Atlantic Ocean that this was not an option. So I kept walking, wiping tears, and avoiding eye contact with passers by. I prayed. I prayed with more honesty than I have in a long time. I prayed to God as if  he was my friend on the line. Not with eloquence or with well phrased requests and adoration, but with simplicity and honest pleas. I have always been drawn to the Psalms because of the way they portray and express unhindered human emotion and experience. I mean, the psalmist was one messed up and confused man, crying out to God and asking why he has forgotten him in one breath and in the next praising God for his abundant goodness and proclaiming the great deeds of the Lord. But aren't we all like this? Grasping for God and yet at the same time cursing him for his supposed distance or distraction from us, form our needs. I want to pray to God as the psalmist does, with shocking confidence and vulnerability. He does not hold back, he doesn't pretend, he doesn't reserve his prayers for only praise but for confession, for admitting his great doubt and need, for honestly laying his most painful experiences of his heart before God. The psalmist doesn't offend God with this vulnerability, he confesses his belief in his presence in his nearness to his need. He cries out to God knowing that he is not crying out in vain, his cries are expressions of trust, expressions of utter recognition that God is among him, within him, near to him, intertwining himself in our deepest desires, pain, and burdens. Intellectually I know this is true of God myself. I know that he is forever present and intimately aquatinted with all of me, but I don't act this way. I act as if I need something more, as if God were distant and uninterested, incapable of meeting my needs or untrustworthy with my pain and supplications. The reality is that I will always treat God as distant as long as I accept him intellectually but refuse a relationship with him that is experiential. In other words, I must experience God. I must experience his presence and simply know that he is there. A.W. Tozer writes, "God is so vastly wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can , without anything other than himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is. " This is what first drew me to God and this truth is what must sustain me in my relationship with him. I regret that the only thing standing between me and the presence of God is my own self living on unrepentant and uncruicified, to steal the words of Tozer. Coming into the presence of God requires a coming out from behind the veil of ourselves, but the death of self is painful. I think what I am experiencing here is a little bit of this death. Though I am resistant and I complain whole heartedly for having to go through it, it is a death that I cannot escape. It seems impossible to be here and refuse to be in the reality that I can experience God's presence. God is a knowable God, a God that has always chosen to be present among us, to be aquatinted with our sorrows, to know fully the pull of temptation. After all, was Jesus not Emmanuel, God with us, the Word that dwelt among us? God "is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:27-28). If only I would realize how truly present God is. What difference that would make. 

Ontoño

 Has entrado al otoño 

me dijiste 

y me sentí temblar 

hoja encendida 

que se aferra a su tallo 

que se obstina 

que es párpado amarillo 

y luz de vela 

danza de vida 

y muerte 

claridad suspendida 

en el eterno instante 

del presente. 

By: Claribel Alegria

List #2: Thanksgiving

I find at times when it seems things seem difficult, when I would rather mourn that which I don't have, it is better to be deliberately thankful. These are some things I am genuinely thankful for right now here in the Czech.

1) My roommates: Leah and Bonnie

2) My fellow ESI's

3) Erin 

4) Melissa

5) My Strakonice girls: Eva, Naomi, Lucka, Leni, Zuzka, Kakuse, Jana, Lydie, Hanicka, and so many more lovely ladies that teach me and encourage me.

6) Great neighbors: Alca and Martin

7) Friends and family that I know are praying for me and love me back home

8) Conversations on Skype at 1am

9) All the JV staff

10) Exit 316 Club

11) Elim Church and Youth Group

12) Getting emails from people I care about

13) The beautiful Czech countryside

14) Having time to simply love people

15) That my job is to build relationships

16) No homework

17) I have time to read

18) The All Star Girl's Bible study

19) The fact that I am growing up through staying young

20) The simple wisdom and encouragement of teenage girls

21) Cesky Budejovice Youth Group! (Kikina, Marketa, Martina, Dr. Eddy, Sarka, Anicka, Bara, Katka, Lukas, Marek, Honza and Petr H., and so many more awesome people!)

22) Trains

23) Having time to really think

24) Being humbled by everyday tasks (i.e. grocery shopping, going to the store, sending a letter, etc.)

25) My lovely flat and the park outside

26) Having more than I need

27) The fact that my roommates are always willing to eat my cooking experiments even when they fail miserably

28) Tea houses

29) That everyday I learn something new

30) That I can finally understand a lot of what I hear

31) Leah's translating abilities

32) Great Indian food

33) Learning how to be a conservationist Czech style. This culture is so creative with how they reduce, reuse, and recycle. I even turned a spaghetti jar into a fancy change container.

34) Laughing and making random comments with Leah when we watch movies

35) The leaves changing colors

36) Everyone in Tabor, especially Lenka

37) For being part of something bigger than myself

38) Being able to travel around CZ to visit old friends

39) God's abundant goodness and provision

40) families that shower their hospitality on me and show me what it means to live in community

I think that is enough for now. I am thankful that there are so many more things I have to be thankful about.

2x3 Campaign: A Generation Waits

Next Generation from Josiah Venture on Vimeo.

One Percent from Josiah Venture on Vimeo.

FALLing Slowly

Soul Graffiti

Some Graffiti straight from the streets of Strakonice courtesy of my favorite socially conscious, intellectual, and delinquent friend, Marcel and other unknown rebel artists. 

List #1: Things I Miss

1) Driving

2) Eavesdropping, or rather understanding the language around me

3) Used bookstores

4) Bookstores that sell books in English

5) My books that are in a box in my parent's garage

6) Going to class (That's right, I said it.)

7) Mexican food: El Guerro Canello, late night Los Betos, and Lerua's Green Corn Tamales

8) Teriyaki sauce 

9) Caramel Lattes at Espresso Art

10) Coffee dates with friends

11) Mid-week brunches at Blue Willow with Michelle

12) Having money to buy new music

13) Hanging out at friend's homes for no reason

14) Pool hopping

15) Monsoons

16) Tucson, especially 4th Ave., downtown, and South Tucson

17) Hiking on Mt. Lemmon

18) Shopping at 17th Street International Market

19) Arguing with Jenna about Economics

20) Talking with Michelle about anything and everything, especially poverty and the disabled

21) Intellectual conversations

22) Newspapers in English

23) Knowing what is going on in my own country

24) Feeling self sufficient

25) to be continued...

A Lust for Lists

I realized something today. I really like making lists. I make them for just about everything. Half of my day is spent making lists, on paper, in my mind, on my computer. The other half if usually spent trying to complete the tasks on that list. That is if the list is my "To Do" list. I think I make about two or three a day. I make grocery lists, lists of memories, favorite moments, I make play lists, book lists, lists of things I can't forget to tell people, lists of things I wish I could forget, lists of things I want to do, lists of dreams, lists of places I want to go, lists of things I love and hate, and lists of things I miss. Don't ask me why. I really don't know. Lists seem so counter to my personality that dislikes order and predictability, but somehow it is my way of summarizing what my mind says to myself in many words, but what I convey in just a few, possibly even just one. When I get frustrated about not being able to explain something, I write a list. Somethings require explanation, but others...

1) Well, 

2) they

3) can 

4) be 

5) summarized

6) with 

7) one

8) word.

9) One

10)word

11) that

12) explains

13) what 

14) possibly

15) many 

16) simply

17) could 

18) not 

19) do

20) in 

21) any 

22) better

23) way. 

This blog will be one more place for lists. Those things I want to say, but can't explain, or don't need to. A way to log my thoughts and organize the chaos in my mind. 

Living Stones

"As you come to him, the living Stone, rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Chris. For in Scripture it says:

'See I lay a stone in Zion,

a chosen and precious cornerstone,

and the one who trusts in him 

will never be put to shame.'

Now to you who believe, this stone is precious...You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:4-10)

What a strange and peculiar concept, to be a living stone. There are times that I read verses like these and I wonder what such imagery could really have to do with me. I mean, what does it really mean to be a "living stone". How could anything, being by definition inanimate, without life, be living? It seems a bit oxymoronic to me. Here are some observations I have compiled in the catalogue of my mind about stones: 

1) While stones themselves are not living and have little purpose on their own, together stones comprise things in which life dwells, things that encourage and support the survival of human beings and society. They form apartments, arenas, government buildings, houses, walls, streets, monuments. Essentially life lives within the community of stones, the cooperation of stones, each serving their purpose, fitting into their place, and joining together to be a part of something bigger. As each stone takes its place upon the foundation, fitting themselves to the cornerstone they create a place for life to dwell. Life is in the community. Life is in the building, the temple, if you will. 

2) Stones cane be molded. Though they appear unchangeable and firmly established, they can be altered, can be chipped away at, can be transformed. Take sculptures for example. All sculptures began as mere blocks of stone, plain, simple, lacking any beauty, and definitely absent of life. But have you ever spent time really looking at a sculpture? When I was in Italy I stood before one of the most famous sculptures in the world, the David. I can tell you one thing for sure. That sculpture was not stone, it was life. No one looks at a sculpture like that one and sees a stone. They look at a sculpture and they see life, they see art, they see emotion, passion, and movement. The thing that amazed me most about the David was his eyes. People always say that you can see into a person's soul through their eyes and that is exactly what I felt like when I looked into David's. I know, it is just a sculpture, but in its eyes was captured the very emotion of the moment it was carved to represent. Those eyes had life. The important thing to note though is that a stone only becomes a sculpture when the creator has chiseled away all the useless and excess parts of stone. Only after the sculptor has spent hours, days, months, sometimes years carefully making life out of death, movement out of stiff solidity, form out of rigidity. A stone only has life in regards to its sculptor, its creator. A block of stone is simply that, but once the hands a creator, a sculptor, painstakingly makes his marks upon it, life is breathed into it and it become a representation of a beauty that is not its own. It is a reflection of the one who created it. It in itself is nothing. 

3) Stones are only useful in the construction of something if they are molded and fitted to the cornerstone. Stones do not determine the shape of the cornerstone, the foundation, they are fit to it. 

So what does this all mean? Well, I can only say what significance it has to me. We, as living stones, were created to be part of something larger than ourselves, a community, a chosen people, a royal priesthood. Apart form each other we simply stumbling blocks. Together we are the church in which life dwells. Not simply a building, a physical construction, but a spiritual dwelling place where life resides, where Christ resides. As living stones we are only useful to this community, we only have life to give to this community after life has been sculpted into us by the removing of our death, the chiseling off of all our useless and ignoble extremities that cover and hide the life within. Only the sculptor can give us live. A stone cannot carve itself. As we are carved we are molded to fit the cornerstone, who is Christ. If we resist being fit to the cornerstone we will weaken the building, the temple, and we will make it susceptible to all forces of destruction.  All living stones are most importantly founded upon the living stone, the living cornerstone. May we as living stones, be unified to be a dwelling in which life is found, founded upon the cornerstone, Christ. This is the church, this is the body, this is the bride. 

Something Worth Understanding

"For when he who doubts can only say 'I do not understand,' it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat 'You do not understand.' And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding." 

- G.K. Chesterton

The Everlasting Man

I finally did it! I completed a journal. It actually has writing on it from the first page to the very last. I am no Anne Frank or anything yet, but it is a start. To many of you this may seem like a small accomplishment, but if you knew me you would know the significance. You see, I have in my possession, well, actually in my parent's basement, at least six half finished journals. Though it is one of my greatest strengths, I have never been fond of writing. Maybe it is that my mind works faster than my hands can record my thoughts, or that my handwriting is typically illegible by the untrained human eye, or that I have just been too lazy to collect my thoughts in written word, or possibly it is the fact that I am a horrific speller (thank you Lord for the blessing of Spell Check). For whatever reason, I have never been fond of actually using my journal for its intended purpose. Yes, I have ceremoniously toted it around with me to provide my Bible with the companionship of another paper based product, disguising my lack of enthusiasm for writing by furiously filling its pages with quotes and song lyrics. Don't the words of artists much greater than I express more perfectly the emotion and experience of the heart? Surely this is true. Well, partially at least. However, it has been my habit to avoid actually writing down any of my own thoughts. Of course I have never been short on words, that is, spoken ones. In speaking words I feel a freedom. No one records your spoken words, you can alter, refine, and correct your spoken words. You can say 'surely I did not say that' or 'you misunderstood what I said' and so, like a poetic chameleon of sorts, adjust and suit your words to the situation, to the interpretation, to the audience.  Spoken words do not remain solidified in memory and time as written words do. No one can go back and read them. No one can mark them with corrections as a grade school teacher does to a child's homework, taking her dreadfully infamous red pen and dramatically circling all the faults and mistakes. You get the point. Of course this argument has its faults. Actually, the truth is that I can remember with painful exactitude many of the words that have been spoken to me over the years. They burn in my mind sometimes like haunting melodies of truths I would rather forget. However, the illusion remains: if I don't write them they won't be permanent. 

My journal is currently sitting on my book self. As if it even deserved a position next to the words of Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Between the purple leather cover lay pages of words, my words. No they are not as elegant as those of other greater authors, but they are mine. They are honest. Possibly it is because I find few other forums to express my thoughts, being a foreigner in a country whose language I do not speak with few friends with attentive ears, that I have taken to writing them down. Or maybe I have finally stumbled upon a truth that I should have realized a long time ago. I think what scares me most about a journal is not the fact that my words are placed permanently on a page, but that in writing them down there is a certain expectation that in them will be found some hidden wisdom, an answer to the question or problem that first propelled me to begin an entry. However, what I find most often is that what I am left with is more questions. While I write, my ideas don't get narrower, they expand, they become greater, they become questions themselves. I think that sometimes questions scare me. Having a question means that there is something that needs clarification, something that I don't understand. In the past I have prided myself on understanding, on feeling like I have some insight or wisdom. I now see that this was all a matter of immaturity. You see, the closer I come to know God, the more I experience in my life, the more books I read, the more people I speak to, the more I seek understanding, the more questions I have. Maybe the difference now is not that having questions doesn't scare me, but that I don't see questions as negative things. In fact, I think I should be more concerned for not having questions, for believing falsely that I have it figured out. In reality what wisdom can I boast of? As I encounter God I don't see him as smaller, I see him as greater than I ever did before. If as we got closer to God, if as we studied what the Bible says about him, if as we prayed and searched we found our searching leading to something, or rather, someone more reasonable, more recognizable, more able to compact and to summarize then I think that I would rather give up searching now. What value is there in believing in something that is no greater than our own imagination, than our own limited knowledge? Sure it would be safe, it would be easy, it would leave us feeling comfortably in control, but it would have no real power, no mystery. I don't know if you would agree, but I find that the things that scare me the most are those that are actually worth giving my life to. I don't mean that we cannot open wide our mouths, or rather minds, in search of truth and not find something solid to close them down upon. God has made himself knowable to us, he has revealed himself that we might come to know him and in him have true life. Life with mystery, with questions, with a recognition of a truth that, while at the same time being too great for us, encompasses and expresses all our human experience. I agree with A.W. Tozer. He explains, "To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned by the too-easily satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart." How I love that description, "children of the burning heart". How I long to be one myself. I think coming to terms with having questions is the beginning. 

So, yes, I finished a journal. I have the temptation to look into it hoping to find myself at some greater point of wisdom and understanding than when I began, but I know that is not what I would discover. Rather, I have something greater. I have questions. Questions that serve as evidence that, yes, I am am a "child of the burning heart", a child that is not satisfied with simplicity and wisdom that I can safely understand. How funny it is that Jesus calls for us to come to him as children. I think I understand a little bit more what he meant when he said that. Maybe in coming to God what we really need to to is express 'I do not understand' and in that utterance come to recognize that what we don't understand is all the more worth the pursuit for that fact. Most books, if they are truly good, if they really say anything of value, leave their reader not with a conclusion, but with a question. Not that I am comparing my journal to such a great book, or to any book at all, but I think the same thinking applies. I finally found the value of journaling, of why we bother making our thoughts into written word. Because writing is a form of searching. In it we find some answers, but even more so, we benefit from unearthing questions. Writing is a way of me saying 'Lord, I do not know' and a way of my hearing God reply 'You do not know'. Yes, this that I do not understand, this alone, is worth understanding. 

Reorganization (First Steps)

Just a little mental picture for you: Its 1 am. I am sitting at the train station in Bohumin looking utterly pitiful and crying because I just realized that I had lost my wallet. I had just missed my stop because I failed to notice that I had to press a green button to open the door to get off. Instead I just stood there looking out to where I needed to be as the train started pulling away. I have never felt so helpless. How does one shout for help when she has no idea what the word even is in a language she barely knows? It is amazing though what kind of courage will well up within a person when faced with certain trying situations. After getting off at the next station and asking (by asking I mean fumbling through the few Czech words I know to get some semblance of a point across) an incredibly nice man for help I got on another train to get back to the stop I had missed and then boarded another train to my final destination. I was in the clear, or so I thought. I arrived at the train station to find it under construction and nearly completely deserted aside from a few questionable construction workers. Sounds like a great place for a scene from one of those horribly tacky teen horror flicks. I had prayed that someone would miraculously be there to pick me up even though I was hours later than I was supposed to arrive. No such luck though. As I sat on my luggage on the verge of a complete freak out, some uncharacteristically bold part of me came out in full force. I walked right up the the creepy construction worker and asked if I could use his phone. Amazingly he allowed me to use it and in a brief 30 minutes I was in a car on my way to training  with my friend Lucka and my team. Needless to say, this was not the welcome I had expected to receive my first day of the next six months of my life, but how seldom we get to chose how our adventures begin. Many times they are just as unpredictable as the adventures that got us there. I didn't have much time to think before I left for the Czech. One day I was in a bridesmaids dress watching one of my best friends walk down the aisle, eating mediocre catered food, and dancing to songs I  haven't heard since prom. The next moment I was lying in a hotel room in the Czech wondering how I got from donning a cap and gown at graduation to preparing for ministry in Eastern Europe. Well...now the shock of it all has worn off and reality is slowly setting in. I really am here, just as I had planned to be. For some reason reality doesn't seems to become real until it slaps you on the face. I have to admit it has been a bit difficult to reorganize my thoughts around this new life I am leading, a life that has little in common with the one that reflected the hurried and chaotic rhythm of academia, a fact I am grateful for. The objective now is to embrace fully this new beginning, this opportunity to experience what it is to live in eager expectation of the unknown knowing that, God willing, I will not leave unchanged. I am not sure that I know what it means to be an ambassador of Christ, but I know what it is to be used despite this fact. So here I go. One step in front of the other. That is how all journeys begin.