On Aliens, Israel, and Immigration

*Warning - This may be a long rambling post with much incoherency.  But if it's any comfort you're not the crazy one, it's me. It all makes sense in my head!*

I have been ruminating and germinating this post for a long time in my head - and by long time, I mean at least a week.  Every so often the thoughts start pouring in, but I haven't gotten a chance to put them all together until today.

In the past few weeks several significant international and domestic events have occurred that have caught my attention.  I also had the opportunity to view the movie District 9.  And in only a way that my brain would do, all three things have connected themselves in my brain.

First comes Israel and all of this state's happenings in recent days.  I could not contain my absolute abhorrence when I learned about the raid on the peaceful, pro-Palestinian flotilla that was seeking to bring aid to the Gaza strip - an area that has been walled off and ostracized from the rest of the world for the past three years.  Nothing goes in or out of there and meanwhile, the innocent Palestinian civilians are left to starve and claw their way to survival.  And how did the state of Israel react to this gesture of humanitarian aid?  By shooting live bullets into the ships, killing at least 9 people and wounding dozens of others.  Worldwide condemnation followed this act, but it stopped there.  Even as a second flotilla tried to deliver aid and they were captured and turned back, nothing other than a promise for Israel to conduct it's own "inquiry" resulted from all this worldwide condemnation.  No, protected by the powerful Israeli lobby in the United States, nothing of any significance that would result in the alleviation of the terrible plight of these Gaza Palestinians, has happened.  In fact, the United States refused (REFUSED) to condemn Israel's actions.  And the United Nations - the farcical organization that it is - stayed up all night in negotiations over the "wording" of a resolution that expressed condemnation over the raid.

This is WRONG!  The injustice of treating people in this way because of their political or religious affiliation is wrong.  Of any people in the entire world, Americans should be the ones most up in arms over this injustice!  And yet our words remain handicapped because anything that is said against Israel or calls out its military injustices and policies against the Palestinian people is seen as traitorous or anti-Semitic.  Helen Thomas, the 89-year old White House correspondent who has been a fixture of the White House Press Corps for over 5 decades, had her career end in flames last week after making remarks against Israel and its right to exist as a state.  But if you examine the context of where Thomas's remarks come from - a woman who covered the White House and sitting presidents before an Israel existed and who extensively understands how it came into being, mainly through it's own use of terrorism, the guilt of the West over the Holocaust, and the ambivalence of the British to maintain any kind of continued presence in the Middle East - you understand that there may be an element of truth in her remarks.  But I'm not here to debate whether or not Israel should exist as a state, for the reality is that it does and it is not going away. 

What I am most upset about is the rampant racism and apartheid that the Israeli state formally practices against the Gaza strip, especially since Hamas came into power.  But the worldwide uproar over the raid on the peaceful flotilla should give Israel pause and if they are smart, they will begin to change their policies of hatred.  After all, shouldn't Israel, of all nation-states, extend understanding and humanitarian aid to their neighbors?  As a people who suffered through the hatred and unthinkable atrocities of the Holocaust genocide, shouldn't they recognize and work towards policies that seek to build up another nation, instead of oppressing it to the point that they continuously create militants (and I'll call them militants here, not terrorists) who want the destruction of their state?

I've been in such a turmoil over this - so much so, that I stayed up to watch Charlie Rose's interview with Mahmoud Abbas, the current leader of the Fatah faction in Palestine who had visited the White House to talk about the current situation in Israel and Palestine.  It was a fascinating interview, creating the opportunity to hear from the "other" side, so to speak, on what they want for peace to exist.  Too bad that this interview was shown on the local WETA PBS station at 1:00am in the morning.  So much for spreading dialogue.  On the other hand, thank God for a station like WETA that would put such programming on the air.  Otherwise we would only have programming like the "No-Spin Zone" likes of Bill O'Reilly or the liberal crap of Keith Olbermann.  Can you tell that I have no respect for the media and the way that they report international events?

But you know what else? This practice of systematic hatred isn't just regulated to the land and policies of Israel.  It is propagated in our own country.  Don't believe me?  How else do you characterize the passage of the new Arizona immigration laws and the other laws that they seek to pass?  And how they want to jail illegal immigrants in "tent cities"?

Seriously America?  Are Americans truly going to let a new-age apartheid system spring up on our own shores?  The shores that we have fought for in blood - the blood of immigrants nonetheless - so that freedom can be experienced by all people?  Why should we limit the rights of a person to become a naturalized citizen of our country that was born on the shoulders of immigrants from all walks of life?  All great innovations, all privileges that we take for granted today came to us because our grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents traveled from some place overseas to start a new life - to have a chance to earn a living and experience a quality of life that no one else in the world gets to experience - true and utter freedom to do whatever the heck we want, whether it be waste our life or make it into something.  Why are we now going to deny others the capability to earn a living?  To have a chance to NOT live in third-world poverty - to earn a living?  And if we do indeed deny others this chance, what are we going to do to help these individuals?  Are we going to try to propagate some kind of backwards isolationism thinking and do nothing to help others of the world - like other "first world" nations, Austria and Australia (my own sister, a college graduate cannot obtain a job as a library aid because of the racism rampant in Australia)?  Doesn't that completely fly in the face of our global and interconnected economy? Isn't that what partially led to 9-11 in the first place?  And hasn't any isolationist policy we as a nation have ever practiced backfired on us?  Or are we just going to become a nation of a bunch of Gangs of New York?

And while we deal with how to treat legal and illegal aliens in our country, perhaps we can use a movie about aliens, apartheid, and xenophobia, District 9, to illuminate our way.  I don't want to spoil too much of the movie for those who haven't seen it, but it is a phenomenal film in the way that it dissects these issues in the context of the fantasy-realm of an alien population stranded on Earth.  Tent cities are erected and aliens are forced to live in a shanty town in the middle of Johannesburg, based upon Soweto and its history within South Africa.  And in spine-chilling way, the film examines what life looks like when the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak.  It may seem kind of random to mention such a film in the same post as my rants on Israel and immigration policy, but the way it speaks to the issues of xenophobia, apartheid, and basic humanitarianism and how they are extremely relevant in the context of those two issues, prompt me to recommend it unequivocally.

What I hope for most of all is that common human decency and justice will prevail in the end.  I hope that someday Israelis and Palestinians will be able to experience the peace that South Africa found through its Truth and Reconciliation Committee.  I hope that everyday Americans will take a step back from their anger over funding health care and education for illegal immigrants and see that these are human beings like ourselves, like our ancestors, who just want the opportunity to experience a life like we have.  And that those same Americans who want to send these illegal immigrants back to their own countries, will step up and take the jobs that we gladly let them procure.  And that the opportunity and freedom that we have fought so long and hard for will be experienced by all people, regardless of their race or religion.

Thoughts for a Rotten Wednesday

First of all, I probably shouldn't be posting any kind of blog post about my thoughts this week because I generally try to stay away from blogging, or Facebooking, or any kind social media communication, or really any kind of communication at all, when I am in a rotten, depressed kind of mood because people generally take it the wrong way.  And I also don't believe in expounding ALL of my thoughts and feelings in Web 2.0 form.  So suffice to say, though I am having a rotten day, augmented by rotten, dreary, rainy weather, I will not dwell on the rotten state of my being for the rest of this post, and instead focus on the few things and thoughts that have crossed my path this week that I find worth spreading the word about.

1 - The concept of hope has been something that I feel has been coming across my path for the past couple of months.  To be honest, I've never really understood what hope is about - much like I never really understood what the concept of a heart was until I was enlightened through some of John Eldredge's texts.  For someone who can have a hard time in dealing with the abstract at times, something as nebulous as "hope" has always sounded like an empty sort of optimism - like it is a tireless attempt to always be positive and always an attempt to find the silver lining in whatever circumstance you find yourself in.  But I'm learning that hope is much, much more deeper than just a half-hearted attempt to see the bright side of things.  Through various readings I've run across, this concept of hope is slowly revealing itself to me.  One reading that I want to pass along is from a dear friend, Emily Thompson.  Her latest blog post poses some great questions and thoughts about hope.

2 - I've just recently started reading Donald Miller's blog and I have to say that I'm really enjoying it so far.  He had a really interesting post today about whether not our personality influences our theology.  Check it out and leave him a comment!

3 - Lost Thoughts:  First, I think you should check out Jeff Jensen's "Countdown" post on EW.com.  It is one of his better posts and thoughts about what is going on in said Lost world.  Second, I think the Willy Wonka poem that they are using in the promos offers a clue as to what is coming in the next few weeks.  Here is the verse in total:

There’s no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going…
Not a speck of light is showing
So the danger must be growing
Are the fires of hell a-glowing?
Is the grisly reaper mowing?
Yes, the danger must be growing…
And they’re certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing!

Isn't that great?? I think it pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about these final episodes - I have no way of knowing where we are going with this thing.  I'm just along for the ride at this point.  I have heard that some people will die before the show's end and here's my prediction for the next major death - Kate.  I don't think Ms. Austen is going to make it off the island, which sort of resolves the Kate-Sawyer-Jack love triangle, by removing the main element of the triangle.

I also don't think that Desmond is dead - I don't think Sayid shot him.  I don't think that FLocke appeared as Christian Shepherd to Jack - in fact, I don't think FLocke is any of the "ghosts" that have appeared on the show.  And I think that the real John Locke's soul is still within his body that the Man In Black is apparently inhabiting and maybe there is a war going on within his soul, a la, Stephenie Meyer's "The Host". 

4 - I hate answering the telephone.  Especially on a rotten day in which it seems to ring incessantly. (Whoops! Sorry, my rotten mood snuck in there - my apologies.)

5 - This past weekend I got to take a group of high school girls to DC.  I really had no agenda for the day, other than to go visit the National Gallery of Art, which I'm sure they were all dying to go to :).  But something that I've always heard, but honestly have rarely done, is that as part of "contact work" with high school kids, invite them along with you to something that you were planning on doing - even if it's a mundane errand like laundry.  Well I decided that I wanted to go into DC, and so invited them along, and wonders of wonders they all wanted to go!

Then the fun part started...

As we were Metro-ing into the city (and sitting in crowded trains waiting on track delays), the girls came up with a game among themselves in which if they didn't answer a question correctly, they had to ask a stranger to do something with them - like, ask 5 strangers for a high-five.  This quickly evolved throughout the course of the day from just a dare to assigning each of us with a task.  I just let the girls run with it - they were being much more creative than myself and were having a great time coming up with these tasks.  They assigned me to get a stranger to do the "Bend and Snap" with them, a la Legally Blonde.  I wasn't sure that we were actually ever going to do our assigned tasks - the girls were talking and talking about it the whole day.  But then, as we were walking on the National Mall, one of my girls took it upon herself to make her's happen, and promptly got a photo of a piggyback ride on a stranger's back.

The gauntlet was laid.  I knew that we now had to make this happen and everyone had to get in on the fun.  Please note - it is not in my personality to ask random strangers to do random things and take a picture of it.  But really the Holy Spirit must have taken over because there was an infusion of confidence and boldness that took over and helped the girls to accomplish their tasks.  It was an unexpected opportunity to lead them in something outrageous - something that only usually happens at Young Life camp.  It was so fun, really cool, and helped build a memory for these girls that we will always have.  It may not "look" like anything about Jesus was talked about, but believe me when I say, He was there.  That's probably the coolest thing about being a Young Life leader - you get to see Jesus show up in the most unlikely places and at the most unlikely times.

5 - More MuteMath love...they released a beautiful new song called "The Fight".  Check it out.




And that friends is all I have for this week.  Sorry for the rotten mood diatribe - this Thoughts for a Wednesday caught me in a funk. And so I'm taking Scarlett O'Hara's words to heart today..."After all...tomorrow is another day!" 

Book Review: Where is God When it Hurts?

Where Is God When It Hurts? by Philip Yancey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I believe this book should be an absolute must-read for anyone who professes the Christian faith.

A sentence like that usually rings hollow to me, but honestly, there is nothing hollow about this book. I wish I could physically take the words from the pages and permanently implant them in my brain because there is so much truth to them.

The main point of the book is about suffering and pain and it attempts to address some of the common questions about the subject - why is there suffering, how do you deal with suffering people, what are the ramifications of suffering, how do we do even more damage to suffering people?

Yancey begins his book by explaining the benefits of physical pain by taking us on a journey through the lives of lepers who, because of their disease, no longer feel any pain - and the damage that occurs to them because they can't feel pain. From there the book delves into where is God in suffering, examples of suffering people, and then flourishes into an explanation of how God has suffered, the hope that we have in spite of our suffering, how we can use suffering to transform our lives, and why Christianity - of all the world religions - is particularly equipped to handle suffering.

Yancey limits his tome to just dealing with people in physical pain and suffering. He mentions mental anguish only in how it relates to the physical pain of people and how it causes them to question a loving God, and not as a subject in and of itself, but the lessons and advice that he draws from dealing with people in physical pain can certainly be brought to those that deal with emotional and mental pain and suffering.

What I loved most about this book is the reminder to Christians of the hope inherent in the resurrection that allows us to cope with suffering. That death is Not the end, and death doesn't need to be "accepted" - death is painful and hurts, but because of Jesus, it has been overcome, and because of Jesus we get to share in that victory. I also loved how Yancey reminds us that for a moment in time, God put on flesh in the person of Jesus and came to this earth, and suffered with us. Every time that Jesus encountered a suffering person, He not only healed them, but He also transformed them. And now we have the Holy Spirit, God within us, who hears our suffering groans and brings them to the feet of the Father and Son.

The other thing that I loved about this book is how it gives advice on how to help suffering people. You cannot go through life without encountering suffering people, and Christians, in particular, are called to be the body of Christ to these individuals. But how do we, imperfect people with even more imperfect words, help the suffering? It is a hard question that Yancey addresses with particular insight and I feel better equipped for it.

My only wish is that I had read this book a long time ago, for I've seen, lived with, and tried to walk through suffering with a lot of people. I just hope that going forward I will be able to overcome my own revulsion to pain and suffering and walk alongside those broken hearts and bodies, offering the real and true hope of Christ to those I have yet to encounter.

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Undone

All I can say at the outset of this post is that I hope I can capture the magnitude of all that is inside me right now - all that I am learning, and all that I have learned - about my Creator and how real He is to me these days. 

And part of me hesitates to go forth and proceed with this post.  It frankly feels awkward to write about my experiences with God.  Shouldn't I just write about, expound upon some of the awesome experiences I had last month?  Write about Red Bull BC One, or any of the other many wonderful things I got to experience?  Or crafting another tale about how there was a second mouse this past Monday?  Sure - I could do that.  But it would also be hollow and shirking one of the important aspects of this blog to me, which is to share a little that God is doing in my life.

Frankly, He has undone me.

Today in particular, I am feeling especially vulnerable to His love.  I don't know if it was the blue sky with white clouds, or the barren beauty of the trees in winter, or seeing these pictures of some friends of mine who have gone through a mighty struggle to bring their family together, or the post that accompanied the pictures, or reflecting on the true power and hope of the resurrection during my morning reading time, or processing through the meaning of suffering with the help of Philip Yancey in his wonderful tome, "Where is God When it Hurts?" during my lunch hour.

Perhaps the feelings of my heart are best summed up in this quote: "Every experience of beauty points to eternity." ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

How do I put into words the way my heart leaps when it sees a barren tree?  When that tree reminds me of the complicated beauty of life that lies underneath all the gloss and greenness of the leaves?  That the twisting beauty of each branch is like a thread that reminds me of my own complicated twists and turns.

How do I share the tears that spring forth when I read these following words from Philip Yancey's book on suffering and wonder if in my "Christian" sophistication I too have lost the power and hope of the resurrection and fail to share that with all those that I interact with?:

"On the day before Thanksgiving of 1983, Martha died. Her body, crumpled, misshapen, atrophied, was a pathetic imitation of its former beauty.  When it finally stopped functioning, Martha left it.  But today Martha lives, in a new body, in wholeness and triumph.  She lives because of the victory that Christ won and because of His 'body' at Reba Place, who made that victory known to her.  And if we do not believe that, and if our Christian hope, tempered by sophistication, does not allow us to offer that Truth to a dying, convulsing world then we are indeed, as the apostle Paul said, of all men most miserable."

How often I forget that Truth in my life.  That the hurts in my life, the wounds of my heart, will be healed and made anew.  And that this is the power of the resurrection - this life isn't the end.  Yes, we can begin living eternally here and now, but the wounds, the suffering, that we accumulate along the path are not the end.

This journey is filled with so many twists and turns.  In the span of one year I have gone from the lowest of lows to the highest of heights - and yet, my Father was there in all of it - even in His silences and distance.  And the thing is, unknowingly to me, Christ transformed my suffering.  He used it to reach a place of depth that I rarely visit on my own.  And because of that discovered depth, I feel the peace of His blessings to a greater degree than I ever have before.

How do I share with you, reader, the oppressive darkness and despair that covered my soul this past summer?  How do I explain the feelings of a broken heart from dashed, wrecked, ruined hope?  Praying desperate prayers, clinging to a thread of faith, though every logical fiber in my being said "what's the point?" and "is this even real?" How this was the second time in my life in which I have had a real crisis of faith?

And then how do I explain praying daily for my Lord to strengthen my hope just a few months later and rejoicing beyond words in the life that I have been blessed with?

I am so thankful.  Thankful for all that the Holy Spirit has revealed to my heart lately.  Thankful that in every experience of beauty that I have been blessed to go through, He has spoken to that hurt heart and given it healing, revealing a little of Himself in each instance.  Thankful that He was (and is) in every smile from a friend.  Thankful for a wonderful family that is as constant in their presence as He is.  Thankful that He is teaching me about real forgiveness, humility, suffering, and most of all love in all of these things - A true love that knows me - that sustained me through the dark.

So, here, at the end of this post, I hope that I have been able to communicate some of the true majesty and true mystery of my Lord.  He has undone me this year - in more ways than I will ever be able to explain here - and I will keep praising His Name, thanking Him for doing so.

Exquisite Simplicity

Is there anything more beautiful or soul-satisfying than the beginning of spring or fall? Here in Virginia, both seasons usher in the long months of winter or summer. But for a few brief weeks the weather and everything in nature converge together to bring forth some of the most exquisite beauty that can be found or experienced.

This past weekend saw nature shine forth in all its glorious simplicity and gift us with glorious weather. You couldn't sit inside. And in being outside, with the sun shining forth its rays, the breeze whisping through your hair, and the glory of a bright blue sky bursting at the seams, renewed hope entered my heart. I can't say what the hope is for - maybe it is the knowledge that all the beauty and glory of nature is just an echo of what awaits all of us in heaven, with Jesus. C.S. Lewis spoke of heaven in The Great Divorce, describing it as just that - something that was brighter, sharper than what we see here on earth.

There were just a ton of ways that God spoke to me this weekend - through Father DeMartino's sermon on the Prodigal Son to the verses we looked at in YL leadership, especially John 1:5

"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can never extinguish it"

(NLT). This shouts out hope to me, the hope that both is a product of and fuel for faith - Hebrews 11:1

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

And hope and faith are what I need now - now at the "turning of the tides"...