Beyond the Rubble

“The quickest way to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west chasing after it, but to head east into the darkness until you finally reach the sunrise”  – Gerald Sittser

Across the street from my apartment in Sisian, Armenia, is a river that flows to the village where I work and beyond.  It’s beautiful, but the area that separates the river from the path I normally take to school is filthy and cluttered with mounds of garbage.  I’ve always wished I could get closer to the river whenever I go for a run, but it seemed amongst the rubble there was no path to the other side.

By National Geographic

Serving in the Peace Corps has deeply instilled in me the belief that pressing through discomfort or hardship yields beauty and refinement of character.  In a fear-driven modern culture it’s easier and more common to recoil from discomfort or inconvenience, but I think there’s a transformative power that we miss when we allow fear to inhibit our exploration of how we interact with these challenges.

We stifle our growth.

There is true blessing in trial according to James:  “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish its work in you so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (NIV, James 1:2-4).

Not lacking anything.  Well that’d be nice. 

Embracing life’s challenges for the tranformative power they can have in us seems impossible at times.  But the resulting beauty that occurs when we push through darkness to find life can be found all throughout nature: birthing pains are followed by new life, caterpillars endure their cocoons before becoming butterflies, grapes are pressed into wine, and in Christianity, crucifixion leads to resurrection.  

So death leads to life, but in order to get there we have to push through the tough stuff – not avoid it.  Like training for a marathon, we build tolerance and learn to persevere by pushing through our pain, not cowering from it.

Death might seem a strange way to label the action that takes place during a trial, but I think that what dies in us when we overcome a challenge is fear.  It is replaced by trust.  

Today I plowed my way through piles of garbage for a good ten minutes before discovering it:  the beautiful river path on the other side that has become my new running route for its serenity, privacy, and unexpected waterfalls.  Sometimes all we have to do is press through our garbage in order to experience a little bit of heaven on earth.  

Weekly Grape:  Do I find joy in trial?  

More Than Who They Say I Am

An alien beams down from planet Zanzabar and asks you who you are. 

What do you say?

If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us would define ourselves the way that other people define us:  I’m a member of the human race. I’m an American, I’m a teacher, I’m a girl, I’m the oldest child, I’m ridiculously gorgeous, etc.  

Sheila Walsh, a Christian singer and writer, says that when she was asked the same question by her phsyciatrist she listed off several different socially-constructed answers until finally she broke down and said she really had no clue who she was.  

Physciatrist: “That’s right, and that’s exactly why you’re here.”

There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with knowing ourselves the way that society knows us, as long as that’s not all we know.  We should achieve an understanding ourselves apart from social constructs, one that transcends the patterns of this world. 

Our conception of ourselves shapes our conception of life and informs everything that we do.  I think it's true that we can never know another without first knowing ourselves.  By the same logic, I agree with Meister Eckart that “no one can know God who does not first know himself.” 

An experience like Peace Corps provides a great opportunity for self-discovery because we learn the ways that we react to really tough situations.  Its an important time to reflect, experiment, and come to understand ourselves more fully.  

This week I press through the discomfort of being honest with myself, really analyzing the source of all my emotions, and gaining a truer sense of who I am.  I'm going to ask my students who they think they are, and challenge them to think critically about this question as well.

Weekly grape:  Who am I?

Staring Into the Face of a Grape

Being part of a minority is hard anywhere.  In Armenia, if you are not Armenian, you are quite a sight to behold.  People will literally stop (even in their motor vehicles) and stare at you as you pass them on the street.  My 3rd grade students applaud when I enter the classroom.  Peace Corps in Armenia has definitely familiarized me with the well-known celebrity curse: lots of fame and attention but not a lot of privacy.  

It’s not a big deal unless the rest of my day deprives me of energy and I’m just too exhausted to shield my annoyance anymore.  But this minor irritation can’t bother me unless I let it bother me.  I know that I can choose whether or not the constant staring makes me crazy because we choose our thoughts like we choose our clothes.

But we can’t just smile and tell ourselves something (even as small as this) doesn’t bother us.  Even though I don’t like formulas, I think there’s a three-step process involved in pressing through grapes like this one in order to taste the wine:

1. Being honest with how we feel and analyzing the root of the irritation
2. Achieving a depth of understanding of why the issue might occur
3. Accepting the issue as something we can not change (if applicable) and loving through it

The constant staring annoys me because I’m not secure or comfortable enough with who I am.  People here do this because it’s extremely rare that they see people outside of their community and they’re not taught that staring is rude.

The problem of everyone knowing what I'm doing
at all times comes in handy when its move-in
day and I've recruited a bunch of helpers!

These thoughts have helped me come to peace with the staring and to change some of my behavior as well.  I also realized that this particular cultural trait reveals something fascinating about humanity: that we are very curious. We’re curious about a lot of things, and our minds and hearts are drawn to mystery.  When people see me walking down the street, it inspires wonder and awe in them (not because of my good looks, but because they probably wonder what the heck I’m doing here and why my shoes are so dirty).  It’s a good thing – not a flaw – that we should be so full of wonder, because it leads us to ask big questions.

So instead of dodging and recoiling under the pressure of peoples’ gaze, I’m challenged to take the opportunity to expose them to something different and hopefully show them that Americans can be confident, loving people.  This approach at least has to be better than the stare-off contest approach, because I’ve certainly never been able to win one of those with an Armenian. 

Weekly Grape:  Am I irritated by something I cannot change?

You Can Never Go Home

Thanks to Bob, Marge, Casey and Ryan for making me feel at home

The other day a friend and I went to a restaurant called “Flamingo” with an English sign on the door and an English menu.  Its a rarity to find such a place in our small town of Armenia, and its even more of a rarity that such a place would have good pizza.  

My friend Don and I chat about my trip home to my family in America.  As I prattle on about how foreign I felt even in my hometown where everything pretty much remained the same, Don, echoing the great novelist Thomas Wolfe, tells me that I can “never really go home again.”

I start thinking about the immensity of change that has taken place in me since I began my Peace Corps experience.  I think about how all life experience grows, stretches, and changes us in some way. 

The idea that we can never go home resonates with me not only because I feel that my experience has impacted me so much, but also because my conception of what “home” is has so radically changed.  

Snakes shed their skin because their bodies continue to grow while their skin stays the same size.  As we gather more of an understanding of who we are and as meaning shapes the purposes of our lives, our houses remain the same size but we shed our conception that anything tangible can really be considered our true “homes.”

Humans long to find a home that we never have to leave. Lydia Brownback writes, “We can have the contentment of home right now, wherever we are, because home for us is wherever God has us.” 

Some of us have to press through the discomfort of leaving our homes, or our friends and family.  But if our conception of home is grounded in faith, then there’s no verb to worry about, because even if we can never “go home,” we’re actually always home.

The restaurant’s pizza was delicious.  Some things – like pizza – remain so consistently delicious throughout the globe, that home is never more than a hungry bite away.  

Weekly Grape:  Have I found myself a home that I never have to leave?

Do for One

Overwhelmed and fed-up puppy

In the Peace Corps, there are a lot of opportunities to help those in need.  Most of the time I do nothing but feel overwhelmed by how many things I could be doing to help impact my community. In my last entry I wrote about “holy discontent,” and how it can move us to take meaningful action if we allow it to.  But most of the time I’m paralyzed to inaction because my heart breaks for too many things. 

The word “overwhelm” derives from the Old English root word “whelm,” which means to engulf or submerge.  To overwhelm, according to the omniscient Oxford dictionary, means “to submerge beneath a huge mass.”  How often can we identify with a sunken ship, too overwhelmed by the ocean’s magnitude to do anything but barely stir in the muck?

I’m challenged this week to “do for one what I wish I could do for many,” as Pastor Dan Nold claims God would want us to do.  I’ll pet one dog in my village (one who doesn’t bite, hopefully) and maybe ask its owner if I can take it for a walk or give it a bath.  I’ll tutor two girls for free who can’t afford to get help with English because they deserve it.   I’ll spend time with someone who is lonely. 

So many people say they don’t want to do anything about one problem because there are just so many that solving one won’t make a difference.  But I doubt that the one or two people who are on the receiving end of that one problem we do decide to invest ourselves in would see it that way.  

The one puppy I decided to adopt

Pressing through feeling overwhelmed and focusing on smaller changes will prevent me from feeling underwhelmed, which I am doubly afraid of feeling.  Strangely enough the dictionary claims that “to underwhelm” means “to fail to impress or make a positive imact on,” without any mention of flooding or defeat.  Its what happens when we don’t allow our holy discontent to move us to action.  

Mother Theresa said that it’s not about what you do, but about how much love you put into doing it. Imagine how much more powerful it would be to focus on doing less but loving more, instead of on doing more but loving less.  If we saturate everything we do in love, no matter how small it is, we’ll have a greater impact.

We can never know how powerful a plant God will grow from the one seed that we give to Him, or who He will send to help us to water it along the way.  But, as Pastor Dan says, “don’t miss your one because you’re so overwhelmed by the many.”

Weekly grape:  Am I missing the one because I’m so overwhelmed by the many?

Holy Discontent

Sometimes people throw rocks at animals in the street here in Armenia.  Dogs sleep in the freezing cold without shelter.  Calves are taken away from their mothers at birth.  

If you’re like me, those thoughts made you want to leave this page, never come back, and push the ideas out of your mind until they don’t bother you anymore.  I cried the other day because of a dog and spent the rest of the day working hard to forget about it, because I was convinced there was really nothing I could do to help him.  

What does your heart break for?  Mine, for some reason, breaks for animals.  So much so that all of my life I’ve resisted working in shelters or vet care because I over-empathize with their struggle to the point of personal torment.  Over the years I’ve learned to activate a deflective emotional shield whenever I think about animal suffering, the way that I hold my nose when cutting an onion to keep from crying.  Factory farms in the US, for example, don’t bother me, because I force myself not to think about them.  

Maybe that’s the exact opposite of what we should be doing with our short lives.  Pastor Dan Nold, in his last few sermons given at Calvary Church in State College, PA, has reminded me to ask God to break my heart for what breaks His, to allow my “holy discontent” to create a vision for change, and to allow that vision to lead to action.  

Maybe the reason that there are 163 million orphans in the world or that 319,000 children under the age of 5 have already died from preventable poverty conditions since jan 1st is that we don’t allow ourselves to be struck deep enough by our holy discontent.  

Its uncomfortable and painful to allow our hearts to break for someone or something else.  But if we really listen to our heartbreak and make the brave decision to immerse in it, it might lead to meaningful change.  Martin Luther King Jr. did it, and so did Ghandi.  

I’m challenged today to press through the discomfort of seeing animal cruelty and to begin to pray for an action plan of how to postively combat it in here in Peace Corps Armenia.  

Weekly grape:  

Am I letting my heart break for what breaks God’s heart?