tyler.

My friend Tyler leaves for Uganda in six days. First of all, lucky him. Please be praying for him as he goes as well as consider supporting him in his venture. 

In addition, check out WalkWithUganda. More later on that. 

a prayer.

this from the Taizé service last night:

"Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in scripture and in the breaking of the bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen..."

The Taizé Community

Burgundy, France

www.taize.fr/en

a painting un-paintable.

last night,

we ran out of the woods

bared from winter's cold into the

clearing. faces flushed with the valley's wind

and our beating hearts we stared 

into the fire of the Cumberland sky, 

eyes ablaze with heaven's light.

i wondered if gods were 

pitched in battle behind the blue 

hills as the clouds turned orange and pink, 

reflecting the fury beneath that far

horizon.

pink light graced the cross which 

overlooks the valley, a silent watchmen 

over a valley sleeping in peace. and our 

faces tinted the same pink from blood which 

beat furiously through our veins, 

we watched in awe. 

we turned, left the sky's battle behind,

to run back to open arms and warm rooms,

heated by that same love and passion

that paints the sky.

why...

is it so easy for me to escape my pain from seeing

and so impossible for you to escape your pain from living, 

when the pain from which we both run

is yours?

to the families, warriors, leaders, rebels, soldiers, aid workers, refugees, and whistle-blowers in eastern congo right now...

i pray for your liberation. 

and that we will blow our whistles unceasingly. 

fallingwhistles

Falling Whistles is a non-profit organization trying to raise awareness to the horrors, sorrow, and rapidly escalating violence in the Congo.

www.fallingwhistles.com

Excerpt from Sean's journal about a trip to meet Laurent Nkunda, general and charismatic leader of Congo's CNDP rebels. 

Get involved. 

May we blow the whistles unceasingly. 

GO (home)

This is about withdrawal and culture shock. or whatever "it" is. 

We held an invisible children screening tonight of the new documentary GO. 

A friend brought me home. And I walked up to my room, opened up my computer, put "Heaven" by Angels and Airwaves on, and began to write. Not that I have anything to say.

GO is the documentary about students who went to Uganda with Invisible Children after winning a competition to raise money for schools affected by the war in Northern Uganda. (see invisiblechildren.com) These students from all different types of backgrounds and all different places around the US "go" to Uganda to witness firsthand the reality of the situation. 

And two things always happen when i see it again. when i see it move. 

i turn off completely. 

or i get this knot in my chest and i can't talk or can't think except this blinding, spinning movie of images and places and names and people and feelings and just the... africa. 

tonight it was the first. but it went back and forth between the two. and heaven is playing still... i think it's on its fifth time through... and i'm remembering hearing it the first time in the bed at momma tom's and on the bus from arusha, TZ to dodoma, and again on the train ride of death... and the words always going through... the song about life and death and the pain that's everywhere. 

Do you see the hills beneath the clouds? 

The stars as trails to lead you out...

Can you sense the pain? It's everywhere

And if you try, you'll never care

And the love you had when you were young

Is right outside for all to come

if you see the light break through the clouds and fire up the distant towns....

I don't have anything to say really. Just random. It all comes rushing back. Like wind in my face or water across my back. 

The hard part is the pain and the suffering and the deplorable conditions we saw. Because it's on the tv in front of me. And the girl next to me gasps, but I didn't feel anything. The girl off to the left moans later on, and I look at her, and she's crying. And I turn back to the screen and see blood and bodies in the street and the face that was destroyed by war. Am I just dead inside? Or even more alive? And then I remember what it was like before I saw it in real time, real life. When I got the sick feeling in my stomach that's coming back even now... And the picture of his head that I'm scared to show flashes on repeat through the eyes in my head... the picture i took from behind a lens. that photo is all i have now.... but i saw it with only the lens of my eyes. against the green backdrop and the red dirt and the boy to his left and the yellow shirt and the fly on his left eyebrow and the dead eyes and the pain. of the burns. 

and the world spins. and i get sick. and cry. 

i'm coming back. little boy whose name i don't know. the man with his ribs showing. the boy kigoma's streets. the baby in bujumbura's. david, vianney, miracle, peter, james, regina, samuel, cliff, john, hannah. i'm coming back. not because i can help you. not because i can save you or make your life better. but because i have to. because we are human. both of us. all of us  together. and when i forget you, my humanity fades. 

i'm coming back. because you know what it means to be alive. you talk to each other. you know silence. your hands are dirty. but your spirit clean. 

i'm coming back. because the sky is huge and the dirt is red. i feel free and alive. and riding that piki into the sunset amongst herds of zebras and buffalo... wind on my face, through my hair. 

i'm coming back. because my liberation is bound up with yours. 

"if you come to help me, then you are wasting your time... but if you come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together."

please stay, don't go... 

heaven. 

when i walked into my room, 

the walls were orange, ablaze

with light off the leaves 

through the windows. 

when we didn't have a watch

it started as a cool thing to do. "yeah man, let's sleep outside for a week." 

but it's become something more. maybe it's an escape. 

but God knew we needed to slow down. 

so it's become a place where we fall asleep 

with starlight on our faces, 

and wake up to the sunrise. 

wake up as the earth rolls over

and lights orange and red trees with soft rays.

then we sit on the view and be

still. 

and my friend at the green house said that you come back with your packs and get your mountain man breakfast and look around at all the kids stumbling in and you feel so alive and think, "take that, bitches, i just slept under the stars last night." and there's no better thing in the world. 

made me laugh. 

sometimes i lay awake and in those soft moments before sleep, there's something of clarity. and i see where i'm at and where i'm going, if only for a second. that happened a couple nights ago, and i saw my life and realized it was november; realized that yesterday was august 20, and that yesterday seems like it could have even been september 28, 2007, with a father holding the guitar that british airways wouldn't let me bring and a mother's tears mixed with one last sweet embrace. and the last year flashed before my eyes like the pages of my journal when i sit and flip through, too scared to slow and read them, but magnetically pulled in nonetheless. and then the memories come and speed up to something like light speed and my stomach gets knotted and scared and i start breathing faster and faster and it doesn't stop and then... my head drops and my throat closes and i'm exhausted. and sometimes it seems as if i don't want to remember. but i do. 

sometimes it really feels as if life is happening to me. 

though i've had times of peace and rest and even stillness in that year of my life, overall it just seems like a wintry day, where the sun comes up and goes down and you didn't even take time to stop and notice. a wild ride. an out of control car on a dark road. and i don't want life to happen to me. i've been thinking the speed of my life of late has a lot to do with all the other things that are stealing my joy, like a beginning of a crack or the stream that first breaks through the rocks. 

i woke up this morning in my sleeping bag and rolled over to see the soft morning light dancing through blowing leaves on the faces of loved friends, and i had this deja vu. in the cumberland forest on the edge of the plateau. 

and i missed the days when we had no watch. when there wasn't a phone with the time and messages from far away. when all there was was the life and the death and sun and the stars and the sky and you. right there. in my lens. standing there in front of me. 

and it was simple and real. and i could find the stillness. and i knew myself. and i didn't wake up and have to get away just to be me again. 

so again, here i am and i struggle with the balance of who i was, who i became, who i came back to, and who i am, deep inside. but i know it's in the journey and in the journey we're getting closer to something and farther away from something else. it's beautiful. and it's real. and we're learning. and moving. God, life is beautiful. 

tunapenda maisha. 

strangers in a foreign land. on our way home. 

calm and swirling. 

peace. 

Renewed fighting in DR Congo.

This is a link to today's BBC article about the renewed fighting in Eastern Congo. Right before Jill, Bethany, and I traveled into Congo in February of 2008, a large peace deal was signed by many of the rebel groups in the North and South Kivu regions of Eastern Congo. Since that time, the peace has held somewhat. Lately however, fighting has begun anew, causing over 100,000 Congolese to flee their homes. Many are caught in between the lines of the UN peacekeeping force and the rebels, preventing relief agencies such as MSF, OXFAM, and Merlin from being able to reach them. 

Images are from the BBC. 

For more information see today's BBC article about the fighting: "UN fears grow over Congo unrest."

For historical background, see the chapters on Congo and Mobutu and the Rwandan and Burundian conflict in: The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith. 

The BBC article has links to other articles about the present conflict. 

mysterious ways

i'm exhausted, but the world... 

is beautiful. when you 

slow

down

enough to see it. 

on the flight up to calgary, we looked out the window and watched as the plane chased the sunset around the horizon, leaving behind strips of color that washed the tops of the clouds with orange, yellow, and then that gray blue that happens after the colors spin off and away. those colors caressed our faces, and turned the hair that red-gold. 

but then, the moon started chasing us. maybe it wasn't the moon, but the moonbeams reflected off the river far below, winding its way along next to us. and those moonbeams just danced along, twisting and turning far below...

as we sat, speechless, 

the light lit our faces, 

and there was that 

gleam in our eyes

pure wonder. 

"johnny take a walk with your sister the moon

let her pale light in to fill up your room

you've been living underground eating from a can

you've been running away from what you don't understand,

love

it's alright, she moves in mysterious ways."

then that last night, the cold wind blew across the wheat field where we had been not six hours before, spinning through the grain lost in the love and the joy. geoff stopped the van on that dirt road and we stood. the four of us in a line gazing up into the ether, as aurora flickered. her lights waving across the stars, almost akin to the wheat waving in the cold, north wind. 

so we stood, silent, 

her undulating light

moving in those

mysterious ways.

i just didn't

understand.

"johnny take a dive with your sister in the rain

let her talk about the things you can't explain

to touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal

if you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel.

on your knees

it's alright, she moves in mysterious ways."

and tonight, after coming down off the rocks, we climbed those stairs to the edge of the plateau, to gaze across the valley below... as the fading sunset threw its paint across the horizon. we stood and watched, and reed said the star was blinking. jupiter rose up in the south, and for the first time in my life, i saw the oranges turn into yellows on their way to the blue. but in between the yellow and blue, the sky turned green. a band of green, just like in manalive when chesterton awes you by his words, about the sierra nevada sky. 

and i slowed down, silent

eyes on that green band

sunset's bracelet, as she pulled 

her hand away

into the darkness

of night. 

"one day you will look back 

and you'll see where you were held how

by this love while you could stand there

you could move on this moment, follow this feeling

it's alright, she moves in mysterious ways.

lift my days, light up my nights, 

love."

the earth, she was just

a'praising the one watching

it all. she, silent and still

while we were too loud, 

too full of noise

to notice

and those pictures are all stuck up in my head and i've no words to describe them. 

because true beauty and love and passion are just too big for words. 

america: god bless america?

Rob Bell and Don Golden: Jesus Wants to Save Christians, 122-123

"America controls nearly 20 percent of the world's wealth. There are around six billion people in the world, and there are roughly three hundred million people in the US. That makes America less than 5 percent of the world's population. And this 5 percent owns a fifth of the world's wealth. 

One billion people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water, while the average American uses four hundred to six hundred liters of water a day. 

Every seven seconds, somewhere in the world a child under age five dies of hunger, while Americans throw away 14 percent of the food we purchase. 

Nearly one billion people in the world live on less than one American dollar a day. 

Another 2.5 billion people in the world live on less than two American dollars a day. 

More than half of the world lives on less than two dollars a day, while the average American teenager spends nearly $150 a week. 

Forty percent of people in the world lack basic sanitation, while forty-nine million diapers are used and thrown away in America every day. 

1.6 billion people in the world have no electricity. 

Nearly one billion people in the world cannot read or sign their name.

Nearly one hundred million children are denied basic education. 

By far, most of the people in the world do not own a car. 

One-third of American families own three cars.

One in seven children worldwide (158 million) has to go to work every day just to survive. 

Four our of five American adults are high school graduates.

Americans spend more annually on trash bags than nearly half of the world does on all goods."

and...

"The US accounts for 48 percent of global military spending."

God has blessed America. 

35,000 children died today of a preventable cause, meaning that America, this place about which all the above is true, could have done something. 35,000 children. That's 1500 an hour. That's 24 a minute. That means that 1 child around the world dies every 2 seconds. Most under the age of five. And we could have done something about it. We have the funds. We have the resources. We have the food. We have the medicine. Yet, we did nothing. 

Wow. That puts it in perspective a little bit. The kids died today. But at least we're secure. And that's what happens when we accumulate stuff. When we have so much. We have to preserve it. We have to defend it. That's where the 48% of global military spending comes in. In Everything Must Change, this is what Brian McLaren calls our "suicidal system." The security, prosperity, and equity dysfunction. And there's so much more that goes into it. (see Everything Must Change, Jesus for President, and Jesus Wants to Save Christians.  

And the only thing I know to call all that is evil. 

evil. dark. broken.

And for now, I'll leave it at that. 

ninakupenda.

1) spend time looking at clouds.

2) learn swahili.

3) paint. write. photograph.

4) inspire. 

5) study salgado.

6) move people to feel. 

7) find david. 

8) bring vianney to sewanee.

9) pursue awakening. 

10) love.

come awake from sleep, arise. 

you were dead, now come alive.

wake up, wake up.

open your eyes. 

climb from your grave, 

into the light. 

bring us back to life. 

arise. shine, oh shine. 

on the plane ride, the moon chased us, it's light bouncing along around the river bends. 

in the cold of the morning, the sky was softly aglow with the new day's light, chasing away the dark.

next to the wheat field, the northern lights teased us, inviting us back to watch the undulating colors of the night. 

and nashville turned red-gold, clouds silhouetted against a blue purple sky. 

then that one star... it stayed right there. constant and bright. 

must've gotten lost....

i'm not sure what started it tonight. but whatever it was, it was deep, and dark, and cold. 

i am here. and you are there. and we are not in that other there any longer. and tonight, i just can't do it here. it seems as if i either need to be there with you or there with him, that boy on that street up from the train station in kigoma, tanzania whose head was torn and broken. fingers chopped. hair burned. ear torn half away. shoes with holes and big enough for my feet. swallowed his stunted feet. his stunted feet at the bottom of bony knees visible through holes. 

he looked. up at me with large eyes as my fingers opened with the twenty bob piece falling through the gaps into his open palm. two cents here. all i had though. and somehow he knew that. and turned his eyes upward at me with tears that said asante sana, mzungu. it was good. true. real. 

and right now here, this here without you, doesn't feel real. tonight, i just can't. i can't open up books. wade through a drama in spanish about the women's place in nineteenth century spain. write a graph about the changing ecological community of red maples taking over red oaks. sift through ancient words about erotic love in the symposium. i just can't. can't learn from those books when all i want to do is live brutally and truly.

 i'm sorry that tonight they are making me mad with their good voices and perfect hair and beautiful clothes up on this mountain in this bubble. i'm just having trouble loving them because i must be prideful enough to think that i've seen it all. the world out there and somehow that makes me over them or better or older. i just want them to see it and truly try to live too. so i just can't do it tonight. the books. be amongst them, silent and burning inside.

not with the fact that those 35,000 children died today. unnecessarily.  and we could have done something about it. with our medicines, money, and technology. but we didn't. and i didn't. 

so i wish you and i were there. because that was right, then. on that island in the wind that you said shook us out of something or shook something out of us. with the white waves and dark clouds. and five months of what felt like life. 

it's killing me right now. but maybe tomorrow you and i will both remember that light on the water we saw from above that night. and then love someone in our respective here into life. because for now, that will have to be enough. because it's all that i've got. 

and to him, tell him i'm coming back. i'm trying to. as soon as i can. i hope to see him soon. with you in the wind and the color and the adventure and the life. 

fall in sewanee has to be nature's explosion of glory and beauty before the onslaught of cold winter. fall is cheerful, expectant because it knows winter must come... it needs winter to recycle life. and spring will come. but fall... it's beautiful and each day we walk and turn our faces up toward the blue above. and we catch and store all those rays of life and light and all that's in between. and i'm not sure yet how to capture it and put it in my memory because right now it's just too beautiful to wrap up in a package and send it home to mom. 

i'm in the process of unlearning all the things i've taught myself. because fall here makes us grow backwards, digging our heels in to the pure bliss of these three weeks when it's sunny with a high of 75. and now, the leaves are turning red-gold, sort of like my hair. and all these sunsets we watch wrapped in our coats and these pure mornings we hurry through to class are just like those mountains in Miller's Through Painted Deserts that pour forth praise to God without ever having to say a word. and those mountains, our sunsets, the rays of light spinning off of All Saints', and that sky all scream of glory. and they don't need us to notice, because they'll do it anyway. 

yesterday, as the sun's rays passed below the steep, i watched as three girls ran around in the leaves. and they gathered the red ones and placed them on the benches in the random patterns of their youth. and they had not a care in the world, because no one's told them that there's anything wrong in the world. then mommy called, and they raced after her, competing for her free hand to have and to hold. and i wondered how long it's been since i grabbed mommy's hand and pulled it down because my red hair was just below her hips. and now i'm wondering what that Will would have to say to this Will. what did he spend his days doing? where'd he go? how many legos did he eat and how many forts did he build? how many t-shirts did he stain with his clumsy hands or rub through the mud on the way to dinner? tickled by daddy to wake up, and carefree as shorts legs flew barefoot into the pile of leaves. 

thanks to fall, this Will is beginning to remember, and grow backwards again. dazzled under blue skies that are mine. it's been a strawberry swing september and october's gonna be the same. Jesus said those that are like the little children will find the kingdom. and i'm learning that physics, and humanities, and books aren't gonna teach me that. but maybe blue skies and red-gold life will. 

africa, i came to change you, but instead you changed me.

so it was a year ago today

that i set foot upon your red dirt

for the first time.

and i still haven't figured out

what you've done to me or

why you call to me. 

and i don't have words to express it. 

or even colors to paint you, or

chords to play.

but no one understands why i'm intense

about you. because i can't get you out of me. 

or the smell off of me. 

i guess you feel like home. 

and you're a long way away. 

a really long way. 

so bring me back to you. let me feel

the dirt between my toes. lose my

head in the vastness of sky.

get washed in the electric rain.

in the colors of naivasha's sunset.

in bunyonyi's storm. 

but, for now, show me how to remember

how to make you part of me here. 

how to balance.  

you know it's so easy for me to 

forget all you taught me

to forget me.

and show me how to turn those things

into love. kind of like how, in you

we saw love. 

because this world here is broken too

so until i return to you, here i should

try to love.

and i know i say that a lot, but i really

believe it, and if i live it, 

i'd try and bring it back to you. 

until then, my friend, don't ever leave

my heart or my head. i'll keep believing

that i'll see you soon. 

"if you come to help me, you are wasting your time...

 but if you come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then

let us walk together."

purple

i guess it was like fingers of color that were reaching past 

the tops of the trees and resting upon the top of all saints. 

and the clouds were a solid wall of fire. 

an endless purple... brilliantly deep.

and the purple melded into oranges and yellows

competing for the glory of the color 

that was able to grace the spires of the cathedral

but i think the purple won. 

and as i watched...the sky went dark. 

turned black. 

because it knew that no one cared.