Biting People.... You Just Want To Sometimes

I laughed and laughed...... 

"Pancho was a nice guy, but he had no resistance againt disaster. When things started to go wrong he unraveled. On time he borrowed one hundred sucres to buy corn, the last one hundred sucres that I had to live on that month, and then he found that he couldn’t quite make the effort. He spent three days sadly smiling and nodding on Segundo’s store porch, delicately sipping aguardiente and talking about fate, That was one time, come to think of it, when I felt like running down the street biting people, and especially Pancho."  (Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen)

When It's Hard To See Their Lives.

"I broke one terrible night when Rufo, Ramén’s young brother, arrived at the house begging me to bring medicine for Ramon and Ester, who were suddenly burning up with fever. Carrying aspirin and a thermometer, I walked up the beach through the waves at high tide, under a billion blazing southern stars, the most furiously beautiful night of my life. But the contrast of that night with the utter squalor of Ramon’s house, the sweating bodies, the babbling delirium, their childlike faith that now that I had come everything would be all right, the pathetic collection of objects they had piled in bed around the...  so knocked me out that walking back along the beach I began to cry as I hadn’t cried since I was six years old. What finally made it funny was that I couldn’t stop and had to stay on the beach for almost an hour, embarrassed to go wailing through the sleeping streets of Rio Verde, announcing the fact that I was cracking up.... and the possibility that they were dieing filled me with terror."
(Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen)

The International Workers Dilemma With Locals

"There was real dissatisfaction in Rio Verde about the job I was doing, and every day I heard reports of my favoritism. Rumors reached me that a couple of old wise guys who knew all about the Peace Corps were telling everyone that I was making money off the people, that the chickens I sold should be gifts, and that the loans I was making did not have to be repaid. It was part of my job to give people money, they said.
It was a curious, back-biting time. Everyone was angry, and jealous of Ramon and Alexandra, who were each selling about ‘ forty eggs a day." (Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen)

Fattening The Ego With Holiness.....?

"It had never dawned on him that the vitally important thing was to drop his ego, that the ego fattens on holiness just as much as on worldliness, on poverty as on riches, on austerity as on luxury. There is nothing the ego will not seize upon to inflate itself."

DISCIPLE: “I have come to you with nothing in my hands.”

MASTER: “Then drop it at once!”

DISCIPLE: “But how can I drop it? It is nothing.”

MASTER: “Then carry it around with you! You can make a possession of your nothing. And carry your renunciation around you like a trophy. Don’t drop your possessions. Drop your ego.”
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Faith, With A Lack Of Respect For People's Humanity

"Perhaps this is the hardest lesson of resurrection-centered spirituality: to look upon ourselves and others as free, responsible persons. Instead of creating more freedom, all of us unwittingly erect impediments to it—impediments such as neurotic fear, pressure, threats of punishment. The tragedy of our attempts to compel others to be virtuous by force or subtle manipulation is that these efforts are so prevalent in our lives, so characteristic of our relationships with others that most of us, most of the time, are unaware of the problem. We do not perceive that we betray a basic lack of respect for the humanity of those with whom we deal, and that this lack of respect is the essential problem with the use of authority in the church and in the home.
If we really knew the God of Jesus, we would stop trying to control and manipulate others “for their own good,” knowing full well that this is not how God works among his people. Paul writes, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). " (Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Trained Cowards - Or Free Believers?

"There is profound awareness that the fundamental secret of Jesus was his sovereign respect for human liberty. He never tried to make people virtuous against their will. This is the essential betrayal. The institutional church is untrue to the law of its own “being” whenever it violates freedom. Whenever any authority figure seeks to suppress freedom, he or she is thereby setting himself (however unconsciously) in opposition to Christ and his church. God created us in his own image because he wanted free, responsible service. When the virtue of obedience is reduced to a pattern of domination and submission, we produce trained cowards rather than Christian persons." (Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Tired of Repetition? ????

When you are trying to teach a community new skills..... One gets tired of repeating  himself.

"My God, I was tired of talking about chickens." (Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen)

Christians And Non Violence - War

Oops... but our nations do.....

"No longer do we take the sword against any nations, nor do we learn war any more since we have become sons [and daughters] of peace through Jesus who is our author instead of following the traditional customs, by which we were “strangers to the covenant.” (ORIGEN OF ALEXANDRIA)

No Path To Faith..... Just A Person To Walk With.

"Jesus Pilgrims are people who don’t always know how to follow or where they’re going, but they know who they’re following and going with. In fact, for Jesus followers, the path is not a trail, the path is the person." (The Well Played Life. Leonard Sweet)

The Bridge of Life - why fear it?

"The whole world is nothing but a very narrow bridge. The main thing is not to be afraid." (Rabbi Nachman of Breslov)

Dull Sermons, Meaness, And New Cloths?

"There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean. We think that we can change our clothes only. (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Settling For Incredible Dulness

"There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Where We Are....

"We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on the surface." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Give Me Truth.....

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Money is not required to buy one Necessary of the Soul

"Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

A Case For Simplicity. ... Even If You Have The Money

"The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, "and lo! creation widens to our view." We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Don't Trouble Yourself Over Friends????

"Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

In Which We Stop Bitching About Life.

"However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Hearing A Different Drum

"Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Living More Liberal Laws

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Life Outside The Cabin.....

"The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

I Left Because I Had Another Life To Live.

"I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Thoreau Says, "Explore Thyself"

"If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Being Alone......

"What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Animated Clay

"They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Transgressing Our Limits

"We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Never Get Enough Of Nature

"Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness—to wade sometimes in marshes ...
At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Knowing No Shores But Their Own

"To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world, And mortals knew no shores but their own." ( Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Open The Door Jailer, Dismiss The Case Judge, Dismiss The Congregation Preacher!

"Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, recreating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how it is exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south hill-side echoes to no vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another year's life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors—why the judge does not dismis his case—why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

The Green Blade To Eternity

"So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

A Living Earth

"The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; ... " (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Why Not Verify Radical Claims?

"It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads.

"I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Impressions Of Unanswered Questions

"After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what—how—when—where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Just Sit With Others... And Whittle...

"Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them,... There we worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable here and there, and building castles in the air for which earth offered no worthy foundation. " (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

I Want To Be A Man Like This...

"A true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress.......
He is perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any I chance to know; the same yesterday and tomorrow. Of yore we had sauntered and talked, and effectually put the world behind us; for he was pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus. Whichever way we turned, it seemed that the heavens and the earth had met together, since he enhanced the beauty of the landscape. A blue-robed man, whose fittest roof is the overarching sky which reflects his serenity. I do not see how he can ever die; Nature cannot spare him. " (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Faith Sees Better Things?

Liking a life like that......

"I think that he must be the man of the most faith of any alive. His words and attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed as the ages revolve." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

The Alternative Way......

"Too often we idolize the messengers and quote their sayings but miss the essential message of their lives: living the truth at whatever cost. As we live the truth, our lives build a convincing case that there is in fact an alternative way, and that abiding in love is the only way." (Jim Palmer. Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion To Find God.)

Focusing On Numbers Stops Feeding Hungry.... shifts to Motivation of Complacent.

"When you become focused on numbers, what ever numbers, once we're focused on numbers then it is not about the hard core person, the really passionate person, it wasn't about feeding the hungry, it's about motivating the complacent. It's about saying and doing and having enough entertainment that we are drawing people here who aren't really serious about the journey.

I had lunch with a man yesterday. One thing he said to his pastor of a growing mega church is, "The thing I most mistrust is you won't say the thing now that might offend two hundred people and they leave because now can't make it work financially." (Wayne Jacobsen. The God Journey Podcast. "The Numbers Game". June 20th, 2014)

Every Situation Had a Judas....?

“Every issue facing the church today has a slippery Caiaphas, a vacillating Pilate, a betraying Judas, and a centurion who will drive the nails because it’s his job.”

~ Lloyd John Ogilvie

Enjoying The Success Of Others

"I consume the world’s resources, seeking my own success without consideration of its effect on others. Abiding in love keeps in check my own consumption of the world’s resources and promotes ecological sustainability and material modesty. Abiding in love allows me to see the success of others as an inspiration rather than a threat. Being content in the spiritual resources God provides enables me to live life less driven by consumerism and consumption." (Jim Palmer.  Wide Open Spaces: Beyond Paint-By-Number Christianity.)  

What If It's About More Than Religious Events?

"It was a startling revelation for me to discover that "becoming like Christ" was not adding an increasing number of religious activities to my life, but being guided and governed by a totally different way of living and interacting with others in the world." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Pennies Do Count- For The Majority

"To residents of rich countries, the amounts of cash changing hands in market transactions may seem so small as to be inconsequential. However, the pennies this Ethiopian farmer earns from selling her wares on the street in town each week can make the difference between subsistence and starvation."

(The Business Solution To Poverty : Paul Polak & Mal Warwick)

Crushing Miracles

"Humans have a bizarre way of squandering our miracles and crushing them into unrecognizable dust." (Anna Lind Thomas)

When Poor Have Solutions

"Don’t look at poor people as alms-seekers or bystanders to their own lives.... Always set out by purposefully listening to understand thoroughly the specific context of their lives — their needs, their wants, their fears, their aspirations." (The Business Solution To Poverty : Paul Polak & Mal Warwick)

Pickle Brine Love..... And Learning To Love Again

"We all have that friend who endured a shitty ‘romance’ for many years before it finally went down in merciful and excruciating flames, and now they practically spit pickle brine when someone mentions the possibility of a new love.

I don’t think that’s too far from how I feel about church.

Which makes sense. Church and love are the two places we open ourselves up wide, where we trust people to care for the most tender, hopeful, and defenseless parts of our hearts as if they were their very own.

Which makes sense. Church and love are the two places we open ourselves up wide, where we trust people to care for the most tender, hopeful, and defenseless parts of our hearts as if they were their very own. And just like love, sometimes that trust is misplaced. Sometimes the people we let in later reveal themselves to be sick to their very souls, manipulative, or darkly wounded. Sometimes it goes horribly wrong.

The natural, healthy response is to kick that person out and lock the door, then brick the opening over so they can never get back in. A battered and abused heart needs the time and space and quiet to heal. Often that’s the only way.

But then later, much later, a new love shows up. Or a new church. One who seems very different from the last. One who seems to know how to care gently. What do you do? How do you know?

I went to church today, and I liked it. And that scares me."

(Mark Love)

The Unfinished Story of Africa - A Story I'm Not Ready To Tell.

It's how I feel about Africa..... a story can't be written yet, because it is unfinished....

"..... I was approached by two American agents who wanted me to turn it into a book. It is not the first time this suggestion has been made to me. I have always replied that I am not ready and that I am in the middle of a story that is not finished..... This is what I said once again. I am too busy to live my life in Mali to be able to stand back and write about it. .... So I wrote a couple of chapters and spent quite some time on this, without much conviction however. My attempt was rejected by the agent that had been soliciting me . Apparently my effort lacked narrative drive. It may well be true and I am the first to acnowledge that I am not ready to write about my Mali life yet, but nevertheless rather annoying ". (Sophie.  Djenne Djenno. Swedish lady running a mud hotel in Djenne Mali)

Sinking.... While saving the World.

Peace Corps worker in an Ecuadorian village....  I've had days and weeks where this kind of feeling like this in West Africa. Can't explain it. Just have to live through it. Time seems to be about the only thing to get through. No cheap tricks, mind games, or reasoning take the feelings away. 

"During one six-week period when I was playing big role of Big Daddy, the Peace Corps Volunteer with the answers, the whole experience turned into a rout. Toward the end, instead of running all over comforting and advising people I was moping around the house finding deep and personal meanings in Hamlet’s famous soliloquy. I was hoping that someone would pick me up and gently rock me back and forth for a few hours.

What happened? It all began quietly- a time of vague depression, dissatisfaction, sadness, a neurotic apprehension. For one thing, I guess: I was beginning to get inside the town, becoming very emotionally involved with everything. For another, and mainly, I wasn’t eating very well. I was eating better than anyone in town, with imported tomatoes and bread from Esmeraldas; I had the money to buy a can of tuna fish every evening—that party food which was reserved for days of fiesta —and I was buying eggs, too. I was probably the only person in town who was eating eggs, ... I knew what the trouble was, but I was unable to rationalize my way out of the situation, and life darkened day by day."
(Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen)

Poverty Locks The World From Untapped Human Potential And Freedom From War

".... you may feel, as we do, that poverty is humankind’s greatest shame. But if you consider the matter for a moment, we’re sure you would also agree that the scope and persistence of poverty doesn’t just raise questions about the moral character of the human race. There are practical considerations, too. Consider, for example, the horrendous waste of human talent. How many scientists, physicians, teachers, business innovators, gifted artists, and brilliant community leaders might emerge from the bottom billions if they were freed from the shackles of poverty? How much might all our lives be enriched if the 2.7 billion people who face the constraints of severe poverty today were given opportunities to fulfill their potential? Consider, too, the prospect that the end of wide-scale poverty might lower the level of conflict in the world. Ethnic hatred, intercommunal violence, and religious extremism flourish in communities where few people are well educated. Moreover, the lack of economic opportunities and the institutionalized oppression prevalent in many political systems go hand in hand with violence, terrorism, revolution, and war."

(The Business Solution To Poverty: Paul Polak & Mal Warwick)

Discolored: Is Any Human Discolored?

"Brister Freeman, ...... he had some title to be called—"a man of color," as if he were discolored."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)