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.