Hope for Japan

In Edinburgh there is a famous meeting point on the Royal Mile, where for hundreds of years people have gathered to hear a caller deliver the news. But for as long as this mini-news-tower has been around, it has had one obvious flaw: the news is 3 days old. It's kind of like the Newspapers of today, it's yesterdays news (or in this case, yesterdays old news). The 3 day delay used to be because the news was carried from London and would, of course, take 3 days. Today it's 3 days late just to observe tradition. 


If you can imagine how a person in 18th Edinburgh may have felt about their knowledge of world events, than you have a clearer picture of my feelings. You'd think with 5 BBC channels running 24-7 commercial free news, I'd have some idea what's going on around me. Sadly, if work isn't taking up most of my time, Teen Mom is (if you don't know what Teen Mom is, than you're not wasting your life). Long story short, I rarely catch the news. Recently I've been trying to stay informed. The first piece of world news to reach us, as it happened, was unfortunately the earthquake in Japan. I'm sure back home you're all up-to-date on the situation. I'm learning now there are all sorts of problems associated with it to worry about, most prominently the exposed radiation towers in Sendai. 


So, while I have no new thoughts or information to report on the situation, I thought I would share a brief email exchange with a Japanese friend I made here. I enjoy reading her emails for their oddly formal phrases and awkward english. Im pretty sure she just puts Japanese into Translator.com or something, lol. 


Her name is Nobuko and she is a Peace Studies student at the University of Bradford. Apparently there are only something like 5 masters programs for Peace Studies in the world, and Bradford is one of the best. While the students are from all over the world, and of every different political and religious background, many of the ones I have met have been Christians. They make up most of the non-traditional church service I go to called "Soul Space." Nobuko and I first met a couple months ago on the Soul Space retreat. Nobuko is Christian, a minority in her country, which is mostly made up of Shinto Buddhists.  You can see her in the random video I took that weekend. Since then we have been exchanging emails. After I heard about the quake I wrote her just to make sure her family was ok. 


She wrote: "Fortunately, all of my relatives are in safe area at that moment. But many Japanese are still suffering from their broken lives, so I just keep on praying for unbroken hope arriving on their darkness."


What a powerful statement. And the way she wrote it (intentionally or not) forms a picture in my brain; like some kind of bird flying above a destroyed city... and instead of flying on to some other landscape, the bird swoops down and makes its home among the wreckage.  And this bird is light and peace and hope. The arrival of a hope that says, "This. What has and is happening here; is not the end. Trust me."


A few days after the email I was looking back through my journal and found an entry about hope I had written around Christmas. I don't remember writing it, but I'm glad I did.

"I sometimes feel like hope is a luxury for the naive. But hope takes determination, consistency, fortitude and courage... to believe through ALL things that Christ is still on the throne. God, I don't know what this next year will bring for me, but you gave your son so that we might have hope." 

My prayer is that the people of Japan might have an unbroken hope, which descends like a bird who makes it's home among the wreckage... because its wings first carried it high enough to see the sunrise that's coming. 

Step Away from the Doughnut!: And other tales of self destruction

There's an old adage that says, "Wherever you go, there you are." 

"The weight of lies will bring you down," sing Folk rocker's The Avett Brothers, 

"The weight of lies will bring you down, and follow you to every town. Cause nothing happens here that doesn’t happen there. So when you run make sure you run to something and not away from- Cause lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere."

What are they saying? In my opinion, each is simply a way of saying you can't run away from your problems. 

Before this year I subscribed to a lie; a lie about the very nature of what I believe and who I am. My great grandmother Eve bought into the same lie, except she turned to apples, whereas I turned to chocolate. 

The lie is powerful. 

It's old too. It began in the garden, and now passes the time lurking around malls and supermarket aisles (particularly the magazine section).


The lie is this: who you are, where you are and what you have been given is not good enough. There's something better than what God has to offer. Unfortunately this lie is easy to believe. After all, we're told it's true a thousand times a day; from magazines to adverts, the media says we aren't good enough and if we ever want to fix that we need to buy more useless stuff. In the bible Peter warns us against this kind of thinking. He cautions, "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” 


If it sounds dark, it's because it is. Im convinced when you aren't sure what you believe about life and about yourself, you can start giving into all sorts of destructive habits.So, recently I began asking my self these questions: What do I believe about myself? About my life? About God? Self help guru Geneen Roth helped me begin to answer that question. "To discover what you really believe," she says, "pay attention to the way you act -- and to what you do when things don't go the way you think they should. Pay attention to what you value. Pay attention to how and on what you spend your time. Your money. And pay attention to the way you eat."

I emphasized EAT, because Geneen Roth was supposedly the first person to make connections between a persons eating habits and their emotions (in her book "When Food is Love"). The quote above was taken from her newest book, "Women, Food and God."


It sounds crazy to look at how you eat to answer those kinds of hard Life questions - but I did. Honestly, for me it makes sense. Ever since my Senior year of high school, I have struggled with weight issues. When I was younger I played so many sports I never had to pay attention to my weight. Then I went to university and things went downhill, fast. First there was the freshmen 15, then I got a bad case of the sophomore 10, and so and so on... The weight gain came as a packaged deal, along with depression and regret. Fully aware of the irony, for so long now I've felt like someone running on a treadmill - no matter how fast I go, or how long I keep up the effort, I go nowhere. My last year at school was the worst. I isolated myself and crippled the present with the past. I felt like because I gained so much, I couldn't (or shouldn't) do the kinds of things 20 year olds like to do. As a result, I fell even deeper into depression - since I felt like I was wasting my youth. I write this in the past tense, keenly aware it affects me in the present. I thought it was possible to leave all these thoughts behind in America, but "wherever you go there you are." 

My flat mate Marie gave me a journal right before Lent. It's a Freedom* journal, with prompts helping identify things that keep you in bondage, emotional and other wise... It begins by asking you what your dreams are, what's stopping you from accomplishing them, etc. Then goes on to list all sorts of negative beliefs about yourself and God, and asks you to circle ones that apply. At one point it starts an open sentence, 

"This makes me realize I might believe..." 

I filled in: 

"I am fundamentally not a good person, and I can never have a new beginning."

After I wrote it, I sat back, shocked at this thing I had just written. Where did I get these ideas about myself? Everything I've ever claimed to believe about God and how He loves us as we are is all true, and yet I put pen to paper and come up with this?

Now I realize exactly where this comes from. It comes from dozens of failed diets. It comes from lingering at mirrors too long. It jumps from the pages of  magazines, and climbs across the living from the TV. You can say it a thousand different ways and it will always mean this: My weight has caused me to believe I am a problem that needs fixing. Let me say this again, me, not the weight, is a problem which needs fixing. And apparently I don't think there's anything I can do about it. 

Have doughnuts really done this to me? A few chocolate binges later and I have lost all hope in life? All defining sense of self? It's the lie. But here's the truth: 

"It's never been true, not anywhere at any time, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale. We are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water who need these physical vehicles to get around. When we start defining ourselves by that which can be measured or weighed, something deep within us rebels."

I should mention I wrote this in my journal before Scotland. If you happened to read the entries afterwards than you'll know I learned something very important on that trip: God does deliver on his promises, and in my last post I realized my life has changed, and that a new beginning is possible. I refuse to believe any longer the number on my scale has the last word about my life. Neither will I believe that junk food is  better than what God has to offer. 

I confess to you I need to change. But not in the way that makes you somehow different from who you are, but brings you back to who you really are. "Change happens when you understand what you want to change so deeply that there is no reason to do anything but act in your own best interest (Geneen Roth)." 

"Let us draw near to God with a sincere 

heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful."

-Hebrews 10:22-23

Destiny

Today something strange happened.

I looked down at my palm and realized it has a new line! I knew eventually new wrinkles would form, but this is a whole new line! 


Down my entire hand. 


It's only on my right pam, but you can see it forming on the other one. When I noticed this it brought an old memory to mind. On our third day in England we went to a meeting of Muslim/Christians to plan a joint youth event. We met two 20-30 something Muslim girls there, who we stayed up all night talking to about every possible subject you can imagine. (I wrote about this meeting in an old blog.) That night,one of the women, Saj, told me in Islam there is a belief about your destiny, which in Arabic they call Qada wa qadar. Muslims believe that Allah knows our fate, and yet we have the free will to make our own choices. The exciting part is some choices change our fate forever. According to Saj our destinies may seem unchangeable, but like the line in our hands they can change. She claims, after a serious period of health problems when she rediscovered her faith, the lines in her hand LITERALLY changed. 


Has this year altered my destiny? 


I'd like to think so. Because the truth is, this work I'm doing, these kids... I am so in love with this place and the people we have met here. What ever my life would have been without this year, it never will be. I have changed my Qada wa qadar, the lines in my hands, and my heart forever. 

Kilts, skiing, Haggis, Robert Burns - why Scotland kicks you know what...

Edinburgh

St. Gilies, Edinburgh

Aviemore

                                             Carignorm Mountains, Aviemore

Inverness

                

                    Loch Ness Monster, Loch Ness, Inverness

Tyree

Glasgow

For ten days Marie and I backpacked around Scotland. It was perfect. God showed up all over the place. In every place we saw a different part of what makes Scotland, Scotland. We met people from around the world in Edinburgh. We saw incredible natural beauty in Aviemore, and the uniqueness of Inverness. The highlight of my trip was Tyree, a magical island off the west coast where we learned the meaning of hospitality from Emma, Lynn, Judith and Sandy - the latter, a couple who let us stay in their home. 

I will never forget it. 

Finally, we got to see the artistic edgy side of Scotland in Glasgow. Just before we got there we saw that Will and Kate were in Edinburgh for St. Andrews Universities 600th birthday. 

Because that’s the kind of place Scotland is- it appeals to backpackers, hikers, artists, theologians, authors, kings, queens, drinkers and thinkers...

The land of Robert Burns, JK Rowling, Mel Gibson's once great career, etc. 

I had the time of my life. In fact this whole year has been the time of my life. Yesterday Marie and a few friends we’ve made here went out lunch. Over lunch we started to realize that we only have 4 months left with one another. All of us almost started to cry. Later that night, I realized why this year has been so extraordinary. Yes, it’s partly because the excitement of living in a new place,new people, etc etc... obvious reasons included. But more so, because I suffered a sort of death in 2009. I never thought I would recover, and if I did, I knew I would never be the same. 

God, fortunately, is in the ‘hope’ business. As Rob Bell likes to say, “We know after every Friday there’s a Sunday commin’.” Simply meaning, it may look like a death, but we know it’s gonna lead to a resurrection. 

Everything about this year has brought me back to life. I’ve found a way to tap into joy, and not just a momentary every-things-going-right kind of joy. I mean the kind of joy Paul talks about in his letters from prison. “Joy is believing that God is up to something, even in this.” I don’t claim to have it all together, or to posses some kind of saint like humility... I’m broken. And life will still be hard, and it will still take work. I’ll fall. But hopefully I’ll keep getting up again.

All of my feelings about this year, were summed up in one early morning praise service I had with my ipod on the ferry from Oban to Tiree. At 6 am, alone, outside on the deck, watching islands pass on either side, I listened... 

“And what was said to the rose to make it unfold, is said to me here in my chest, so be quite now and rest... here is our King.”