So I was asked by my *favourite* professor Brian Walsh to preach at Wine Before Breakfast, an alternative morning Eucharist Service that he coordinates at Wycliffe College every Tuesday morning at 7:22am. It's the most amazingly creative, intelligent, musically gifted, justice-seeking and Jesus-loving community that I've ever been a part of. It's liturgical and ancient-feeling, yet on any given week the band (which is phenomenal) is playing U2, Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, or Alexi Murdoch, and sometimes Taize, hymns, and worship choruses. The litanies are all written by members of the community. And there's Eucharist each time, a common cup and loaf passed around as we serve each other. It completely nurtures my soul.
And so naturally I was *terrified* when Brian asked me to preach. It was in December, the day after my oral exam in his Theology of Culture class, and he emailed me to say that he was making a pastoral suggestion - that I should be preaching at Wine Before Breakfast. I was overwhelmed with both fear and joy, mostly because I completely adore this brilliant man, and also because the last time I preached, I well, had to say that I was "sharing" because that church didn't believe that women should preach. Also, everyone who had preached so far at Wine Before Breakfast was uber creative, intelligent, and all getting their PhD's or already had them, and I felt totally inadequate. But, with hesitation, I agreed. And then prayed a lot, and started prepping early. The passage he gave me was Mark 14:1-11, the anointing of Jesus by Mary of Bethany. It could not have been a more perfect passage for me - there is SO much in this on issues I'm passionate about, like women, poverty, and worship; I could have written a book! But alas, I wrote an 11 minute (exactly) sermon, and here is, for your reading pleasure:
In Memory of Her
Mark 14:1-11 (click here for the text - it will help, trust me!)
On my first day at Wine Before Breakfast back in the fall, I saw a familiar face. It was the beautiful face of my old roommate from my undergrad at Queen’s University, whom you all know as Amy Fisher [a member of our community]. We hadn’t seen nor talked to each other in 6 years, and the first thing that I knew I had to do was apologize to her. You see, back in those days, Amy was on her was to being a Salvation Army Officer, aka pastor, and back then I was under the impression that this was just plain wrong. The multiple churches that I had be raised in, all conservative, mainline Evangelical – the longest denomination that we had belonged to being Baptist – all had the policy that only men could be pastors, elders, and deacons. This was, I was told the natural order of God, and it was all I had ever known, so for me, the fact that men were the leaders was as normal as the fact that only women could give birth – it was their God-given responsibility – it was just the way it was. For, I was told, first God created Adam, than Eve. Men were the head, women were the body. Men were rational, and thus natural decision-makers, and women were emotional and sensual, and thus better suited for nurturing, helping roles. Jesus chose 12 disciples – all male – and thus established an apostolic succession that only included men.
I don’t have time today to address the various problematic hermeneutics that are used in every one of those passages to come to the conclusions that my former churches did. However, the scene that Mark portrays in the reading today clearly shows that Jesus didn’t care much about what was considered to be the “normal” social structure of the day – the patriarchal society in which men occupied all the positions of power and authority, and women were treated as little more that cattle – property to be owned, objects to gain pleasure from, machines to produce an heir. This is not how Yahweh had intended things to be.
For in deliberate and heightened contrast to the (male) scribes and chief priests who were conspiring to have Jesus killed at the beginning of today’s passage, and the (male) disciple Judas who betrayed him for a sack of coins at the end of the passage, Mark tells the story of a woman whose symbolic action would cut to the heart of what it means to be a true disciple of Christ and an heir to his coming Kingdom.
It was Passion week, the beginning of the end. And just as Jesus had finished describing the destruction of the seemingly-permanent Temple – as Andrew Asbil so beautifully explained to us last week, Jesus now seeks to tell his followers that this very thing would also happen to him. He was the temple that was about to be destroyed. Jesus would soon embody what he has been teaching his followers about discipleship all along – self-sacrifice, self-denial, “taking up the cross” – losing your life to find it – all of this would be epitomized in Jesus’ act of surrendering his life at Calvary.
Jesus chose for the Passover and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread to be the scene in which this final conflict will take place – here we are “plunged into the deepest heart of Jewish symbolic life” - these feasts were a reminder of Israel’s liberation from slavery and oppression in Egypt, through the wilderness towards the freedom of the Promised Land. New Testament scholar N.T. Wright notes that Jesus had been acting as the new Moses, doing striking things that were signs of the coming freedom (healing the sick, casting out demons, giving sight to the blind, and elevating the marginalized). And in this story it is no different – Jesus was eating at the home of a leper, once again not caring about the “normal” social barriers of the day.
Enter a woman, Mary of Bethany, who boldly disrupts the gathering of the men, and with one exorbitant act of extravagant, uninhibited worship, broke a jar of fragrant, costly oil and intimately pours in over Jesus’ head.
The disciples and the other men were shocked, for the symbolism would have been clear- everyone in the room would have understood what she was doing. Ched Meyers notes in his commentary on Mark Binding the Strong Man that she was anointing him as King – for this was an illusion to the stories in 1 Samuel 10 and 16, the anointing of Saul and David by Samuel the prophet. In her act of love and adoration, not only was she declaring Jesus King, but also she was assuming the office of a prophet – one who speaks and acts for God. A woman – speaking and acting for God.
The men in the room were indignant – Who does she think she is? And so they reacted with fake piety, pretending to care for the poor. And Jesus rebukes them, telling them to leave her alone, that she has done a beautiful thing to him, and “the poor you will always have with you.” Now, this line has been used by many Christians to justify their apathy towards the continued existence of poverty, but their interpretation is a rather a horrid twist on what he is really saying. Bryant Myers, VP of World Vision, notes in his article "The Poor Always With Us?" that Jesus is mirroring the statement in Deut. 15:4 – “there shall be NO poor among you, for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, IF ONLY you will strictly obey the voice of the Lord your God.” But they DIDN’T obey God, which is why there ARE poor among them now. Poverty was NEVER God’s intention, there had always been more than enough resources to go around, if only they had been faithful to their covenantal promises, of Jubilee, not hoarding their daily bread, and other commandments of mercy, hospitality, and justice. But they weren’t faithful, and so Jesus is SHAMING them by saying that there will always be poor because they’ll never fully hold to their covenantal promises. Which is the very reason that Jesus needed to come for them at all, and be anointed by this woman as King.
With her action, she had understood not only that he was King, but that he was a good King –one that would die for the ones he loves– as she was also, as Jesus pointed out - preparing his body for burial.
She understood that he was unlike all the Kings that Israel had ever known – he would not rule by control, manipulation, domination, or brute power – but he was a servant king, a suffering king, a self-sacrificing, loving, compassionate King – and thus, she understood what all of the (male) disciples could not – their Messiah was going to die.
And thus, he was worthy of such an elaborate sacrifice on her behalf – over a year’s wages it cost – it would have likely been kept aside and sold by her family in time of need – it was her savings, her family’s only security in case of a crisis.
In lavishing it on Jesus, she was releasing her grip on her very security – like us withdrawing all the money in our savings account, or liquidating our assets, cashing in our RRSPS, selling the family jewelry, or precious heirlooms that have been passed down through the generations – and giving it all to Jesus in worship, adoration, and declaration of his Kingship.
THIS is the true nature of discipleship. Not arguing over who would be first or who would have the most authority like James and John, and certainly not giving into cowardice for monetary gain like Judas, or for fear of the crowds, like Peter. True discipleship was embodied by this woman in a costly, extravagant, beautiful, fragrant love for Jesus, a love that beckoned her to relinquish all that which made her feel secure. This over-the-top display caused the anger of those in the room. But she didn’t care – her act came out of her deep insight into WHO Jesus truly was, and out of her abundance of love for him. She abandoned all that was so precious to her and poured it over his head, in an act that declared him the true King over Israel, and the true King over her life, and a King that could be TRUSTED because he was GOOD.
My friends, today I am not that woman. In fact, these days I find myself feeling rather uncomfortable, or even embarrassed, when someone seems to know or worship Jesus in a way that I consider to be over-the-top, extravagant, or even slightly emotional. Perhaps it’s the aversion I have to not being labeled an “emotional woman,” or aversion to the theology and politics that tend to come out of some of the churches that solely encourage a personal, intimate relationship with Jesus, and seem to forget that he also came to bring good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, and justice to the oppressed. I feel that these days, I resonate more with the disciples who wanted the woman to just go away, and were rather angry with her exorbitant act of devotion. I tend to want people who talk about or worship Jesus in a way that seems too intimate, too unnecessarily demonstrative to just be quiet, stop it or put those hands down already, you’re embarrassing yourself! Or me.
But I haven’t always been this way. I remember once being a slight resemblance of that woman, back in the days when Amy Fisher was my roommate. For despite all the things that now irk me about those churches I used to go to, one thing they taught me was how to intimately love Jesus and worship him with all of my being, despite what was going on in my life, despite the depression or the confusion or the lack of direction, or lack of faith. To lay all that I am, all of my security and my insecurity, all of my broken SELF, at his feet.
For despite how over-the-top that woman’s actions must have seemed, Jesus was so moved by the beauty of her “embarrassing” extravagance, that he promised that wherever the gospel would be proclaimed in the whole world, what she had done would be told in memory of her. Yet, sadly, she has not been remembered, for the story has been overlooked as merely a nice thing done by an unimportant woman, rather than a powerful act that cut to the very heart of discipleship when all the “important” others missed the point. May I then suggest, my friends, that every time we eat the bread and drink the wine together in memory of him, that we also give our fragrant, lavish, self-abandoning adoration of Jesus - in memory of her.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
holidays that make you feel like crap (?)
Three occasions I don't usually pay attention to - Valentine's Day, Family Day (here in Ontario), and the beginning of Lent - were all smooshed into the last few days, and they all tried really hard to make me feel like crap. On the 14th, I got a FB wall post from a guy I know saying "happy singles awareness day," my roommates all left me alone to be with their closest kin on Family Day (mine are currently in London, India, and Chicago), and Lent - well, you feel like you have to give up things you love.
I admit, my younger self would have given in to the evil plots of these days. Usually I hate V-day and shrug it off as a mere hallmark holiday, designed only by candy, chocolate, and flower companies to make a quick profit from the foolish and love-struck. In my even younger days i would have spent the day feeling sorry for myself that the only card i got was from my father, signed with, "Don't worry, you'll always be *my* valentine." But as I grew older, cynicism, i thought, was much wiser. Write it all off due to corporate manipulation, as smugness and self-righteousness is much better than loneliness.
As for Family Day, well, this is relatively new in Ontario and I've been away for the last 4 years, so we have no tense history together. But my younger self probably would have been sad that my nieces and nephews live so far away, and my parents were in India, and I don't ever see my cousins anymore, and my grandmother didn't get the last letter I wrote to her before she died.
And lent - well, this would have only conjured up vague and ill-placed sentiments about giving up chocolate, or giving up complaining (in my philosophical-ish days)for reasons I wasn't really sure why. It had no terrible place in my past, but it wasn't really important either.
But happily I am able to report, all three occasions failed in their attempts to drag me down. Tried as they might have, I beat off their efforts with a stick I like to call optimism.
I decided to redeem Valentine's Day by celebrating it's original intention - the people who I love in my life - rather than being sad about the people who aren't or angry at corporate manipulation. So I created a hand-made card for my non-romantic Valentine's Day date Trenko, an old friend from Queen's whom I kinda love to death. We had a good old fashioned date - made dinner, complete with wine, went to a movie, and talked and laughed for hours. Good times! At church the next day I gave out little loli-pop heart flowers, which I also made out of construction paper by hand, thank you very much. Even though a certain someone, who I may or may not have had a crush on at one point, commented that he hated V-day and burned one of the heart petals in the palm-ash fire we had outside (a tradition of the Anglican church, to burn last year's palm Sunday branches in order to get the ashes for Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent). Still, I remained cheery. And when another boy - who, of course, i don't have a crush on - overdid it a little by showering me with candy (my favourite, though - baby sour keys!), a store-bought sickly-sweet and sparkly card, and multiple card-board cut-outs of hearts and cupids, I remained rather calm, un-cynical, and appreciative. Afterwards, Chinese food with a table full of great friends to celebrate the Lunar New Year (also, it was Transfiguation Sunday, how's that for a jam-packed Post-Modern 3-in-1 celebration!) topped the day off with me feeling full and rather contented.
As for family day, I celebrated it with my brother (um, in the Lord) Kyle from Wycliffe, who drove more than one hour to see me and stayed for two nights on our living room futon. We watched multiple episodes of the Office, the phenomenal film Whale Rider, Martyn Joseph and Bruce Cockburn videos, read NT Wright articles out loud, danced to the new Josh Garrels song Zion and Babylon, ate all those sour keys, and made veggie pizza. When a boy called for me (the same one who showered me with gifts - and by the way, cannot speak hardly a word of English, being brand new to Canada from Mexico!) - he answered the phone, and we told him he was brother - perfect! Brother Kyle left after our meditative morning prayer service the next day at 8:08am, and as he drove away I somehow felt like I was part of the greatest family ever.
And now it is the first day of Lent, and this year, it is rather deep and meaningful. I belong now to a church that is very liturgical in it's practices, St. Anne's Anglican Church in Toronto (River is the name of the service - it's very creative and justice-seeking and wonderful). It's liturgical in the sense that it follows the ancient traditions of the Church in order to celebrate the whole story of God in a very rich and symbolic manner. The lectionary calendar is followed, meaning every day, week, and month, pertains to a certain event in the story of God as written in the Scriptures - the Creation, the Fall, the Exodus, the Wilderness, the Waiting, the Exile, the Liberation with the coming of the Messiah, the Crucifixion and Redemption, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Future Hope - so that in one year, you've re-lived it all together as a community. So now we are in the season of Lent - the Wilderness, the Waiting, the Preparation for the Messiah culminating in his surrendered life, at Easter, and subsequent Resurrection, defeating the powers of death, slavery, and exile, and bringing restoration, redemption, and hope to the people of God.
So those are a lot of big words, and even bigger concepts which I am struggling still to understand - the mystery of it all is great. But this year, I am giving up something big in order to prepare myself for Easter - social connectedness, a.k.a, Facebook. It might seem like a silly thing to some, but honestly, for me, i pretty much love being in the loop, connected, wittily bantering with and sharing links and articles and vids and pics with friends. However, recently it's gotten to the point where I waste hours on Facebook, and not always because i want to be "social," but because I basically want to edit and control my image . With a new profile picture, a new quote, another comment here and inside joke there and witty one liner there, I become too obsessed with how I am perceived, that I micro-manage by online image to death. And it's starting to make me feel rather ill. So. I'm going to spend the time more wisely, doing the read and studying like a good seminary student should, and praying for the wisdom to not freakin' care so much about others think, and start caring more about how others are doing.
And so, holidays that would have at one point made me feel like crap, I throw my glass of water (that is now half full) in your face!
I admit, my younger self would have given in to the evil plots of these days. Usually I hate V-day and shrug it off as a mere hallmark holiday, designed only by candy, chocolate, and flower companies to make a quick profit from the foolish and love-struck. In my even younger days i would have spent the day feeling sorry for myself that the only card i got was from my father, signed with, "Don't worry, you'll always be *my* valentine." But as I grew older, cynicism, i thought, was much wiser. Write it all off due to corporate manipulation, as smugness and self-righteousness is much better than loneliness.
As for Family Day, well, this is relatively new in Ontario and I've been away for the last 4 years, so we have no tense history together. But my younger self probably would have been sad that my nieces and nephews live so far away, and my parents were in India, and I don't ever see my cousins anymore, and my grandmother didn't get the last letter I wrote to her before she died.
And lent - well, this would have only conjured up vague and ill-placed sentiments about giving up chocolate, or giving up complaining (in my philosophical-ish days)for reasons I wasn't really sure why. It had no terrible place in my past, but it wasn't really important either.
But happily I am able to report, all three occasions failed in their attempts to drag me down. Tried as they might have, I beat off their efforts with a stick I like to call optimism.
I decided to redeem Valentine's Day by celebrating it's original intention - the people who I love in my life - rather than being sad about the people who aren't or angry at corporate manipulation. So I created a hand-made card for my non-romantic Valentine's Day date Trenko, an old friend from Queen's whom I kinda love to death. We had a good old fashioned date - made dinner, complete with wine, went to a movie, and talked and laughed for hours. Good times! At church the next day I gave out little loli-pop heart flowers, which I also made out of construction paper by hand, thank you very much. Even though a certain someone, who I may or may not have had a crush on at one point, commented that he hated V-day and burned one of the heart petals in the palm-ash fire we had outside (a tradition of the Anglican church, to burn last year's palm Sunday branches in order to get the ashes for Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent). Still, I remained cheery. And when another boy - who, of course, i don't have a crush on - overdid it a little by showering me with candy (my favourite, though - baby sour keys!), a store-bought sickly-sweet and sparkly card, and multiple card-board cut-outs of hearts and cupids, I remained rather calm, un-cynical, and appreciative. Afterwards, Chinese food with a table full of great friends to celebrate the Lunar New Year (also, it was Transfiguation Sunday, how's that for a jam-packed Post-Modern 3-in-1 celebration!) topped the day off with me feeling full and rather contented.
As for family day, I celebrated it with my brother (um, in the Lord) Kyle from Wycliffe, who drove more than one hour to see me and stayed for two nights on our living room futon. We watched multiple episodes of the Office, the phenomenal film Whale Rider, Martyn Joseph and Bruce Cockburn videos, read NT Wright articles out loud, danced to the new Josh Garrels song Zion and Babylon, ate all those sour keys, and made veggie pizza. When a boy called for me (the same one who showered me with gifts - and by the way, cannot speak hardly a word of English, being brand new to Canada from Mexico!) - he answered the phone, and we told him he was brother - perfect! Brother Kyle left after our meditative morning prayer service the next day at 8:08am, and as he drove away I somehow felt like I was part of the greatest family ever.
And now it is the first day of Lent, and this year, it is rather deep and meaningful. I belong now to a church that is very liturgical in it's practices, St. Anne's Anglican Church in Toronto (River is the name of the service - it's very creative and justice-seeking and wonderful). It's liturgical in the sense that it follows the ancient traditions of the Church in order to celebrate the whole story of God in a very rich and symbolic manner. The lectionary calendar is followed, meaning every day, week, and month, pertains to a certain event in the story of God as written in the Scriptures - the Creation, the Fall, the Exodus, the Wilderness, the Waiting, the Exile, the Liberation with the coming of the Messiah, the Crucifixion and Redemption, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Future Hope - so that in one year, you've re-lived it all together as a community. So now we are in the season of Lent - the Wilderness, the Waiting, the Preparation for the Messiah culminating in his surrendered life, at Easter, and subsequent Resurrection, defeating the powers of death, slavery, and exile, and bringing restoration, redemption, and hope to the people of God.
So those are a lot of big words, and even bigger concepts which I am struggling still to understand - the mystery of it all is great. But this year, I am giving up something big in order to prepare myself for Easter - social connectedness, a.k.a, Facebook. It might seem like a silly thing to some, but honestly, for me, i pretty much love being in the loop, connected, wittily bantering with and sharing links and articles and vids and pics with friends. However, recently it's gotten to the point where I waste hours on Facebook, and not always because i want to be "social," but because I basically want to edit and control my image . With a new profile picture, a new quote, another comment here and inside joke there and witty one liner there, I become too obsessed with how I am perceived, that I micro-manage by online image to death. And it's starting to make me feel rather ill. So. I'm going to spend the time more wisely, doing the read and studying like a good seminary student should, and praying for the wisdom to not freakin' care so much about others think, and start caring more about how others are doing.
And so, holidays that would have at one point made me feel like crap, I throw my glass of water (that is now half full) in your face!
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Jesus thirsts
As some of you know, I’m leaving for India next Thursday, January 22nd. I am not going as a tourist, but as a seeker of Christ with a strong desire to be changed by serving the poorest of the poor. This letter is to share with you how I made the decision to go, what I will be doing there, and also to ask you if you’d like to partner with me as I go, through prayer, finances, or both.
This trip has been mulling around in my mind since last year around this time, when I first read the book "No Greater Love" by Mother Teresa. Through her selfless life of love for the poor and dying in Kolcata (formerly Calcutta), she came to know Jesus in a most disturbing yet beautiful and deeply intimate way.
One of my favourite quotes is from her chapter on prayer. She writes,
“I shall keep the silence of my heart with greater care, so that in the silence of my heart I hear His words of comfort and from the fullness of my heart I comfort Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor.”
In Matthew 25:35 Jesus says,
“For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me... for as you did to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
I would like to invite you to send me on your behalf, to go visit Jesus as he lays dying in the Missionaries of Charity homes, to offer him a drink, to comfort him and be with him as he returns to his Father in Heaven. Through this experience I hope to gain a deeper perspective on what it means to know Jesus by serving the "least of these," and return with the humility and insight to encourage others to press onwards towards the goal of knowing Christ and making Him known.
The practical details of the trip are as follows:
I’ll be in India month total, from Jan. 22nd – Feb. 22nd. The first two weeks will be spent volunteering at Mother Teresa’s Homes for the Dying in Kolkata (Calcutta). My duties will include bathing, feeding, and looking after the practical needs of patients who are dying of such diseases as tuberculosis and leprosy. While these seem like daunting and drudgerous tasks, I'm looking forward to a good dose of humility as I take care of the poorest of the poor in their final hours.
I'll be then flying to Bangalore, in the south of India, on February 7th to teach English at the ACTS Institute. "ACTS" is an acronymn for Agriculture, Crafts, Trades, and Studies, and it is in these areas that the students are trained, alongside theology, and Biblical Studies. The students are preparing for a life of ministry in various Indian communities, but also are in need of "tent-making" skills to provide income for their families, as the communities are usually too poor to support them financially.
My father and my church from home, Harvest Bible Chapel in Barrie, Ontario, have been connected to ACTS for a few years now. My parents visited the school for the first time in 2005, and I visited them there for 10 days. We'll be returning together for the second time, and my father will teach theology and Bible and my mother and I will be teaching English. Although India is technically considered an English-speaking country, most of the students at the ACTS Institute are from poor villages that speak a variety of dialects, and English is rarely even heard. It is crucial that the students develop their English skills, as all of the ministry-related instruction, such as Bible and Theology, is done in English. As well as teaching, I'll be spending my time getting to know the students, building relationships with them, and assisting them in their community projects (children's Bible camps, etc) in the surrounding villages.
As for the financial details of the trip, I'm budgeting as follows:
Airfare: Busan-Kolcata, return : approx. 1.5 million won ($1500 CDN)
Kokata-Bangalore, return : approx.100,000 won ($100 CDN)
Food and Lodgings, 4 weeks: approx. 400,000 won ($400 CDN)
TOTAL COST: Approximately 2 million won ($ 2000 CND)
The reason I'm asking for financial support is three-fold: I'm in the process of saving money for seminary starting next year, and I'm trying putting all my savings now towards that. But more importantly, I think that when people give financially to a project such as this, there is a deeper sense of connection between the go-er and the senders.
I would love to have the support of my spiritual family, so they feel like they are going with me, and I feel like I'm going on behalf of them. Also, using other people's money gives me a sense of responsibility, like I will be held accountable for how I use it. And I would like to be held accountable, for using my time and resources on this trip to serve Jesus and to serve others, and not simply to go to a cool new place for my winter vacation (not like there is anything wrong with that, of course, but that's just not the purpose of this trip).
Besides financial support, I would love for you to support me in through your prayers. Please begin praying for me, that my heart will be right, that I will be teachable, humble, and hard-working, and that I truly learn what it is like to serve Jesus through the poor. And please pray for those that I come in contact with, be it other volunteers, the patients, the students, or other travelers, that Christ may use me to shine His light into their lives.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, and for considering supporting me in this. My thoughts and prayers are with you all.
Your sister in Christ,
Jen
p.s. donations can be made through pay pal (login, go to the “send money” tab and enter my email address - jengal4@gmail.com), or by giving to me directly this Sunday (for those in Korea).
This trip has been mulling around in my mind since last year around this time, when I first read the book "No Greater Love" by Mother Teresa. Through her selfless life of love for the poor and dying in Kolcata (formerly Calcutta), she came to know Jesus in a most disturbing yet beautiful and deeply intimate way.
One of my favourite quotes is from her chapter on prayer. She writes,
“I shall keep the silence of my heart with greater care, so that in the silence of my heart I hear His words of comfort and from the fullness of my heart I comfort Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor.”
In Matthew 25:35 Jesus says,
“For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me... for as you did to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
I would like to invite you to send me on your behalf, to go visit Jesus as he lays dying in the Missionaries of Charity homes, to offer him a drink, to comfort him and be with him as he returns to his Father in Heaven. Through this experience I hope to gain a deeper perspective on what it means to know Jesus by serving the "least of these," and return with the humility and insight to encourage others to press onwards towards the goal of knowing Christ and making Him known. The practical details of the trip are as follows:
I’ll be in India month total, from Jan. 22nd – Feb. 22nd. The first two weeks will be spent volunteering at Mother Teresa’s Homes for the Dying in Kolkata (Calcutta). My duties will include bathing, feeding, and looking after the practical needs of patients who are dying of such diseases as tuberculosis and leprosy. While these seem like daunting and drudgerous tasks, I'm looking forward to a good dose of humility as I take care of the poorest of the poor in their final hours.
I'll be then flying to Bangalore, in the south of India, on February 7th to teach English at the ACTS Institute. "ACTS" is an acronymn for Agriculture, Crafts, Trades, and Studies, and it is in these areas that the students are trained, alongside theology, and Biblical Studies. The students are preparing for a life of ministry in various Indian communities, but also are in need of "tent-making" skills to provide income for their families, as the communities are usually too poor to support them financially. 
My father and my church from home, Harvest Bible Chapel in Barrie, Ontario, have been connected to ACTS for a few years now. My parents visited the school for the first time in 2005, and I visited them there for 10 days. We'll be returning together for the second time, and my father will teach theology and Bible and my mother and I will be teaching English. Although India is technically considered an English-speaking country, most of the students at the ACTS Institute are from poor villages that speak a variety of dialects, and English is rarely even heard. It is crucial that the students develop their English skills, as all of the ministry-related instruction, such as Bible and Theology, is done in English. As well as teaching, I'll be spending my time getting to know the students, building relationships with them, and assisting them in their community projects (children's Bible camps, etc) in the surrounding villages.As for the financial details of the trip, I'm budgeting as follows:
Airfare: Busan-Kolcata, return : approx. 1.5 million won ($1500 CDN)
Kokata-Bangalore, return : approx.100,000 won ($100 CDN)
Food and Lodgings, 4 weeks: approx. 400,000 won ($400 CDN)
TOTAL COST: Approximately 2 million won ($ 2000 CND)
The reason I'm asking for financial support is three-fold: I'm in the process of saving money for seminary starting next year, and I'm trying putting all my savings now towards that. But more importantly, I think that when people give financially to a project such as this, there is a deeper sense of connection between the go-er and the senders.
I would love to have the support of my spiritual family, so they feel like they are going with me, and I feel like I'm going on behalf of them. Also, using other people's money gives me a sense of responsibility, like I will be held accountable for how I use it. And I would like to be held accountable, for using my time and resources on this trip to serve Jesus and to serve others, and not simply to go to a cool new place for my winter vacation (not like there is anything wrong with that, of course, but that's just not the purpose of this trip).Besides financial support, I would love for you to support me in through your prayers. Please begin praying for me, that my heart will be right, that I will be teachable, humble, and hard-working, and that I truly learn what it is like to serve Jesus through the poor. And please pray for those that I come in contact with, be it other volunteers, the patients, the students, or other travelers, that Christ may use me to shine His light into their lives.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, and for considering supporting me in this. My thoughts and prayers are with you all.
Your sister in Christ,
Jen
p.s. donations can be made through pay pal (login, go to the “send money” tab and enter my email address - jengal4@gmail.com), or by giving to me directly this Sunday (for those in Korea).
Monday, September 15, 2008
Beware of Community
I was 12 years old when I developed my first phobia. My brother had passed down his newspaper route to me, and being an eager 12 year old, desiring independence and a big-kid identity, I embraced the job with enthusiasm. Riding my bike through my partly-rural Canadian neighbourhood and delivering the local newspaper, The Barrie Examiner, made me feel older and more mature than my 12 years. I often felt like I was watching myself perform the task. There goes that smart young woman, with wind blowing through her hair, tossing those newspapers so effortlessly. What a care-free girl, cool she must be!
As you can imagine, I found myself making enemies with many of the neighbourhood's Labs, Golden Retrievers, Poodles, and German Shepherds. Territorial by nature, and protective of their master's turf, I was to them nothing but a persistent intruder. They couldn't understand that I was doing their master a service, and that they should welcome and appreciate my efforts. No, rather, they chased me. And barked. And bared their razor-sharp teeth. At first it was a game to me; being from a dog-owning family i thought nothing of the creatures - I considered myself a natural dog lover. So I just rode, ran, and jumped away faster than they could. Until the day I had a western-style stand off with the next door neighbour's German Shepherd named Bud (after the beer). He had me shaking in my boots, tears streaming down my face while i held my bike in between us, acting as a shield from his slobbering, snarling, angry growl. And then it happened: I took one step away from my bike, turning my back on him to make the run for home. He lunged forward and sank his teeth into my then-not-so-meaty butt, and didn't let go until my squeal alerted his master who then called him away from me. I limped home, shaking more than ever, tears soaking my quivering lips, and thus was born my fear of dogs.
It took me many years to get over that incident, and many stages of dog-phobia-rehabilitation by many sources to help me love dogs again. They smell fear! Act brave, even if you don't feel brave, my dad would say. Dogs need a leader, they need to know your intentions, who the boss is, I would read. If you want to enjoy the benefits of their company, you must be willing to get close, to be confident, to pretend you love them, and eventually, you will, I would tell myself.
Eventually, it worked, and today I am able to walk by any sized barking dog and remain perfectly calm. I'm even proud to be the loving momma of a darling little Maltese puppy named Bailey. (He's no German Shepherd, I know, but it's a start!) His companionship, playfulness, loyalty, and adoration are worth all the pains it took me to challenge my fear and overcome it.
I also must confess another phobia that developed in my childhood: community. No really. I have been scared to death of deep, authentic relationships with multiple people at the same time. Once upon a time, I think around the age of 6, I remember thinking that people were really normal and fun to be around. And then it happened. For about the longest, most painfully lonely and fearful 11 years of my life, I was bullied, controlled, taunted, and manipulated by my peers. I was the class loner, the class clown, the class target, and the class loser. I was told I wasn't hip enough to be in the all-girls Cool Club, I wasn't fast enough to play first-basemen in baseball, I wasn't worthy enough to deserve the friendships anyone at school. I was told that I was ugly and nobody liked me, that my parents should have aborted me, that I ruined people's days by showing up at school. I could go on and on about how Steve Ellors*, the class hunk and eventually valedictorian, would pay first-graders to throw rocks at me, and how Anita Padon*, the coolest girl in the class, would turn everyone against me and manipulate them to not even look at me. And thus, I developed a dreadful fear of people. I thought they could just see how abnormal I was, how ugly and nerdy I was, how selfish I was, and I would just hide from them.
It's taken me many years to get over those incidences. At times I didn't think I would ever be able to interact normally with people, as I just didn't know how for the longest time. My community-phobia-rehabilitation has included therapy, anti-depressants, biblical counselors, prayer, the support of loving family members and friends, and lots and lots of tear-stained self-help books. And all these things have taught me plenty. I've learned that because God is in community with Himself in the Trinity, and we are created in the image of God, we are created for community. Being in authentic relationships with others is necessary, literally, for our survival. I've learned that true community is created when we are selfless and seek to meet the needs of others before our own needs, as modeled by the entire life of Christ. I've learned that community requires risk, the willingness to just get out there and try, even though you might get hurt. But most importantly, and most recently, I've learned that true community, true relationships, create a mess worth making. Relationships are messy, difficult, hurtful things. They can be full of misunderstandings, judgements, betrayals, and conflict.
So why bother? Well, why did I bother to get over my fear of dogs? Because I saw that the benefits dogs could bring to my life far outweighed the safety of my fear. Likewise, relationships with others, though painful at times, are capable of enriching our lives in ways that nothing else can. They drive us closer to our Most Satisfying Relationship by forcing us to cry out to Him for wisdom, strength and the power to forgive. They act as mirrors that show us how we are not yet like Christ, so we can strive to grow in specific areas. They reveal to us our shortcomings so that we can grow and be the kind of person that we never imagined we could be: more loving, more forgiving, more gentle, more selfless, more Christ-like than we ever dreamed possible. And in the close, sweet times, they teach us much of love, joy, peace, laughter, trust, and the bliss that only pure intimacy with others can bring.
Community is a dangerous, scary thing, and it is not to be entered into lightly. Many of us have been burned at one time or another by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable with someone who ends up betraying our trust. But we cannot survive without it. In fact, we will never fully be alive unless we chase it, and when we fail or get hurt, to continue, in God's grace, to get up, dust ourselves off, and chase it again.
May the Creator and Imitator of Deep Relationships grant us strength, wisdom, and grace to beware of community, and then dive in head first.
Me, Nikki, Dan, and Clayton on our recent camping trip
*names have been changed to protect the people involved, who, by the way, i completely forgive and wish the best for
As you can imagine, I found myself making enemies with many of the neighbourhood's Labs, Golden Retrievers, Poodles, and German Shepherds. Territorial by nature, and protective of their master's turf, I was to them nothing but a persistent intruder. They couldn't understand that I was doing their master a service, and that they should welcome and appreciate my efforts. No, rather, they chased me. And barked. And bared their razor-sharp teeth. At first it was a game to me; being from a dog-owning family i thought nothing of the creatures - I considered myself a natural dog lover. So I just rode, ran, and jumped away faster than they could. Until the day I had a western-style stand off with the next door neighbour's German Shepherd named Bud (after the beer). He had me shaking in my boots, tears streaming down my face while i held my bike in between us, acting as a shield from his slobbering, snarling, angry growl. And then it happened: I took one step away from my bike, turning my back on him to make the run for home. He lunged forward and sank his teeth into my then-not-so-meaty butt, and didn't let go until my squeal alerted his master who then called him away from me. I limped home, shaking more than ever, tears soaking my quivering lips, and thus was born my fear of dogs.
It took me many years to get over that incident, and many stages of dog-phobia-rehabilitation by many sources to help me love dogs again. They smell fear! Act brave, even if you don't feel brave, my dad would say. Dogs need a leader, they need to know your intentions, who the boss is, I would read. If you want to enjoy the benefits of their company, you must be willing to get close, to be confident, to pretend you love them, and eventually, you will, I would tell myself.
Eventually, it worked, and today I am able to walk by any sized barking dog and remain perfectly calm. I'm even proud to be the loving momma of a darling little Maltese puppy named Bailey. (He's no German Shepherd, I know, but it's a start!) His companionship, playfulness, loyalty, and adoration are worth all the pains it took me to challenge my fear and overcome it.I also must confess another phobia that developed in my childhood: community. No really. I have been scared to death of deep, authentic relationships with multiple people at the same time. Once upon a time, I think around the age of 6, I remember thinking that people were really normal and fun to be around. And then it happened. For about the longest, most painfully lonely and fearful 11 years of my life, I was bullied, controlled, taunted, and manipulated by my peers. I was the class loner, the class clown, the class target, and the class loser. I was told I wasn't hip enough to be in the all-girls Cool Club, I wasn't fast enough to play first-basemen in baseball, I wasn't worthy enough to deserve the friendships anyone at school. I was told that I was ugly and nobody liked me, that my parents should have aborted me, that I ruined people's days by showing up at school. I could go on and on about how Steve Ellors*, the class hunk and eventually valedictorian, would pay first-graders to throw rocks at me, and how Anita Padon*, the coolest girl in the class, would turn everyone against me and manipulate them to not even look at me. And thus, I developed a dreadful fear of people. I thought they could just see how abnormal I was, how ugly and nerdy I was, how selfish I was, and I would just hide from them.
It's taken me many years to get over those incidences. At times I didn't think I would ever be able to interact normally with people, as I just didn't know how for the longest time. My community-phobia-rehabilitation has included therapy, anti-depressants, biblical counselors, prayer, the support of loving family members and friends, and lots and lots of tear-stained self-help books. And all these things have taught me plenty. I've learned that because God is in community with Himself in the Trinity, and we are created in the image of God, we are created for community. Being in authentic relationships with others is necessary, literally, for our survival. I've learned that true community is created when we are selfless and seek to meet the needs of others before our own needs, as modeled by the entire life of Christ. I've learned that community requires risk, the willingness to just get out there and try, even though you might get hurt. But most importantly, and most recently, I've learned that true community, true relationships, create a mess worth making. Relationships are messy, difficult, hurtful things. They can be full of misunderstandings, judgements, betrayals, and conflict.
So why bother? Well, why did I bother to get over my fear of dogs? Because I saw that the benefits dogs could bring to my life far outweighed the safety of my fear. Likewise, relationships with others, though painful at times, are capable of enriching our lives in ways that nothing else can. They drive us closer to our Most Satisfying Relationship by forcing us to cry out to Him for wisdom, strength and the power to forgive. They act as mirrors that show us how we are not yet like Christ, so we can strive to grow in specific areas. They reveal to us our shortcomings so that we can grow and be the kind of person that we never imagined we could be: more loving, more forgiving, more gentle, more selfless, more Christ-like than we ever dreamed possible. And in the close, sweet times, they teach us much of love, joy, peace, laughter, trust, and the bliss that only pure intimacy with others can bring.
Community is a dangerous, scary thing, and it is not to be entered into lightly. Many of us have been burned at one time or another by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable with someone who ends up betraying our trust. But we cannot survive without it. In fact, we will never fully be alive unless we chase it, and when we fail or get hurt, to continue, in God's grace, to get up, dust ourselves off, and chase it again.
May the Creator and Imitator of Deep Relationships grant us strength, wisdom, and grace to beware of community, and then dive in head first.
Me, Nikki, Dan, and Clayton on our recent camping trip*names have been changed to protect the people involved, who, by the way, i completely forgive and wish the best for
Thursday, March 06, 2008
to hell with writer's block
so i haven't written anything in an ENTIRE year due to this mythological wall that has been blocking my creativity, so i've been telling myself, and i'm SICK of it telling me what i can't do!!! so i'm just going to write about whatever comes to my mind and we'll see where this goes...
so i'm currently re-adjusting to celebrity-ship, according to my facebook status, by returning to my position as, insert pretentious British accent, "Professor of English Language and Literature" (if you can call "Worldview 2 - Intro to English Coversation" *literature* , here at Kosin University.) Yes, that's in Korea. And yes, I'm still here, it's been 2 1/2 years, but that's a whole other blog post.... The thing is, I've never felt so ridiculously and quite shallowly *idolized* by so many people. I walk into a building, and i am welcomed by waist deep bows and screams and hyper-quick waving hands and many lines such as "Hi Professor!!!" and "I love you!!" and "Hello!! Hellooooo!!!!" It's just insane. Today I (and the other foreign English Professors) were called on to welcome the English students back for another semester at an opening Chapel service (it's a Christian university, btw), and the SCREAMS were so deafening, you would have thought Wentworth Miller walked in the room(or ok, Brad Pitt for you non-Prison Break people - and, side note - good for you, i just found out they KILLED SARA and i've never wanted 51 hours of my life back so badly). I've almost started to picture myself as some high-fashion skinny little Hollywood goddess, struttin' her stuff down the freezing cold cement hallways, and then I catch a glimpse of my reflection in some glass doors and I see nothing but a pasty-white, plumper-than-normal, older version of myself, wearing something i never EVER imagined myself in - a pinstripped chocolate brown suit that i got made in Thailand for a price i should have put towards my debt and darn-it! - i don't even like the cut of it anymore. But despite the delusion, in the end, it *is* endearing. Because I ADORE my students. This week back at work has been so much better than I expected. After returning from a blissful 3 week holiday wandering around Thailand (which was SO divine), I was fearing that Depression would welcome me back with its cold, ugly familiar arms. He (depression has just *got* to be masculine) opened them up for an embrace late last week, especially after i found out that my dear old high school friend had been killed while skiing, in an avalanche. I wanted to go home and say goodbye, to properly remember her, to be with her family. But there was this problem of a giant body of water called the Pacific in the way....blast.
And THEN there was this whole deal at the Professors retreat, an hour away at a fancy-smancy hotel in Gwanju. Three things that REALLY irked me happened: 1) They announced that they were cancelling the fine art program (stab in the heart! I think the arts are SO incredibly worthwhile and desperately needed, but this culture simply does not value them - "no job for art students! can not become rich!"). 2) A woman working for a broadcasting company, while addressing us Professors, encouraged us to "teach the students to have an obedient heart while new in the workplace, not to express their ideas and opinions." Awesome. *Please, no independent thinkers! No creative ingenuity! No democratic mindsets! Obedient, subserviant little clones, only, for us!* And 3) A woman who was supposed to give a speech on the school's sexual harrassment policy (a gov't requirment) skirted around the issue by giving a 5 minute schpeel entitled, "How to do Mathematics" that mentioned SQUAT about sexual harrassment and too much about men and women being "different" because they have different centers of gravity which can be figured out by some ridiculously complex math equation. 5 minutes of this, and i'm waiting for her to address the seriousness of sexual harrasment, but she doesn't - she just wraps up her neat little speech about gender differences and sits down, with a hearty *applause* even, by the entire Korean faculty, all straight-faced and nodding with approval! The foreign staff all just looked at each other, with jaw-dropping stares and fits of laughter - like we just could not *believe* that just happened. So there's this culture for ya: hatred of the arts, love of obedient little workaholic slaves, and suppression of anything slightly related to sexuality. SO, needless to say after that, Depression was running straight for me, as I was thinking, "WHY do I work in this country again??" But i rejected the embrace and decided that, after all, I have a LOT to keep me content in this country. Since working at Kosin, I've made a LOT more Korean friends than I've had in the previous 2 years in Korea (I had been doing the typical English Teacher thing, hanging out with other English Teachers who were, just, way too comfortable). And they are *delightful* . So fun, and giving, and loving, and so it's easier to love Korea when there are Koreans that you just *adore* . Along those lines, I'm learning more about living in the present and enjoying the people who are in my life RIGHT NOW instead of longing for past relationships or dreaming of future ones. I have a job that allows me to befriend people from totally different cultures - Kenyan, Cambodian, Fiji-an (i don't know what that culture is called), and Korean, of course. Yep - there's many international students here - its cool! SO i guess what i'm trying to say is that despite the cultural, er, *differences* , and the overtly enthusiastic response to my blonde hair and blue eyes, I'm deeply, deeply BLESSED to be in the position I am and I refuse, from now on, to accept any other ideas about it. Freaking blocks and walls and ugly embraces, you can control me no more.
so i'm currently re-adjusting to celebrity-ship, according to my facebook status, by returning to my position as, insert pretentious British accent, "Professor of English Language and Literature" (if you can call "Worldview 2 - Intro to English Coversation" *literature* , here at Kosin University.) Yes, that's in Korea. And yes, I'm still here, it's been 2 1/2 years, but that's a whole other blog post.... The thing is, I've never felt so ridiculously and quite shallowly *idolized* by so many people. I walk into a building, and i am welcomed by waist deep bows and screams and hyper-quick waving hands and many lines such as "Hi Professor!!!" and "I love you!!" and "Hello!! Hellooooo!!!!" It's just insane. Today I (and the other foreign English Professors) were called on to welcome the English students back for another semester at an opening Chapel service (it's a Christian university, btw), and the SCREAMS were so deafening, you would have thought Wentworth Miller walked in the room(or ok, Brad Pitt for you non-Prison Break people - and, side note - good for you, i just found out they KILLED SARA and i've never wanted 51 hours of my life back so badly). I've almost started to picture myself as some high-fashion skinny little Hollywood goddess, struttin' her stuff down the freezing cold cement hallways, and then I catch a glimpse of my reflection in some glass doors and I see nothing but a pasty-white, plumper-than-normal, older version of myself, wearing something i never EVER imagined myself in - a pinstripped chocolate brown suit that i got made in Thailand for a price i should have put towards my debt and darn-it! - i don't even like the cut of it anymore. But despite the delusion, in the end, it *is* endearing. Because I ADORE my students. This week back at work has been so much better than I expected. After returning from a blissful 3 week holiday wandering around Thailand (which was SO divine), I was fearing that Depression would welcome me back with its cold, ugly familiar arms. He (depression has just *got* to be masculine) opened them up for an embrace late last week, especially after i found out that my dear old high school friend had been killed while skiing, in an avalanche. I wanted to go home and say goodbye, to properly remember her, to be with her family. But there was this problem of a giant body of water called the Pacific in the way....blast.
And THEN there was this whole deal at the Professors retreat, an hour away at a fancy-smancy hotel in Gwanju. Three things that REALLY irked me happened: 1) They announced that they were cancelling the fine art program (stab in the heart! I think the arts are SO incredibly worthwhile and desperately needed, but this culture simply does not value them - "no job for art students! can not become rich!"). 2) A woman working for a broadcasting company, while addressing us Professors, encouraged us to "teach the students to have an obedient heart while new in the workplace, not to express their ideas and opinions." Awesome. *Please, no independent thinkers! No creative ingenuity! No democratic mindsets! Obedient, subserviant little clones, only, for us!* And 3) A woman who was supposed to give a speech on the school's sexual harrassment policy (a gov't requirment) skirted around the issue by giving a 5 minute schpeel entitled, "How to do Mathematics" that mentioned SQUAT about sexual harrassment and too much about men and women being "different" because they have different centers of gravity which can be figured out by some ridiculously complex math equation. 5 minutes of this, and i'm waiting for her to address the seriousness of sexual harrasment, but she doesn't - she just wraps up her neat little speech about gender differences and sits down, with a hearty *applause* even, by the entire Korean faculty, all straight-faced and nodding with approval! The foreign staff all just looked at each other, with jaw-dropping stares and fits of laughter - like we just could not *believe* that just happened. So there's this culture for ya: hatred of the arts, love of obedient little workaholic slaves, and suppression of anything slightly related to sexuality. SO, needless to say after that, Depression was running straight for me, as I was thinking, "WHY do I work in this country again??" But i rejected the embrace and decided that, after all, I have a LOT to keep me content in this country. Since working at Kosin, I've made a LOT more Korean friends than I've had in the previous 2 years in Korea (I had been doing the typical English Teacher thing, hanging out with other English Teachers who were, just, way too comfortable). And they are *delightful* . So fun, and giving, and loving, and so it's easier to love Korea when there are Koreans that you just *adore* . Along those lines, I'm learning more about living in the present and enjoying the people who are in my life RIGHT NOW instead of longing for past relationships or dreaming of future ones. I have a job that allows me to befriend people from totally different cultures - Kenyan, Cambodian, Fiji-an (i don't know what that culture is called), and Korean, of course. Yep - there's many international students here - its cool! SO i guess what i'm trying to say is that despite the cultural, er, *differences* , and the overtly enthusiastic response to my blonde hair and blue eyes, I'm deeply, deeply BLESSED to be in the position I am and I refuse, from now on, to accept any other ideas about it. Freaking blocks and walls and ugly embraces, you can control me no more.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
the least of these
Last week I taught Jesus how to knit. We sat on the dirty cement floor of his small, plain, concrete-block house, the sun streaking through the torn flowered material that was his door. I had bought him some brightly-coloured yarn, needles, and a knitting book filled with trendy patterns, and had meekly presented them to him as his five half-clothed children gathered around, curiously rumaging through my bag and playing with its contents - an iPod, a Latin American Spanish phrase book, a camera, a pair of sunglasses, some lip gloss, and lots and lots of yarn. Fumbling through directions in Spanish and Creole, I slowly taught him (with lots of hand gestures to copy me) how to cast on, purl, change colors (he had trouble with this one), cast off, and sew up the finished product - a lime green, teal blue, and chocolate brown-coloured camera case that he could sell at the local fair-trade art co-op. Every hour or so we'd stand up to take a break, and I'd go outside to play with the kids and their friends on the dirt roads of the Haitian community they were apart of on the north shore of the Dominican Republic. Having gone there to visit my friend who works in the community and to do what I could to help, it was my desire to provide him with a skill that would help him put some food into his children's bloated stomachs. Throughout the four days, after I hiked up to his shack on a hill, as he was stitching away, the Spanish phrase book came in handy as I sought to discover a little about his life. As we talked, joked, and listened to music, we became friends. I grew to love the kids, too, as we jumped rope, drew pictures with sidewalk chalk, and played Cats and the Cradle. On the last day, I gave them some clothes, soap, crayons, paper, and other gifts, and as I decended slowly down the hill towards the rest of the village, I realized that I had come to know the Friend of the Poor in a way I never had before.
Now replace Jesus with Romona, a Haitian woman who works at La Tienda, Rachel's fair trade art co-op, and you have what Jesus talked about in Matthew 25:44-46:
Through the reading of two very profound books (see below) and my experience with Ramona, I realized what Jesus was really saying here. On the Last Day, the very authenticity of our salvation will be measured not by the soundness of our theology or by what we claim to believe, but by how we treat "the least of these" in our society. By responding in love to the deperate needs of the poor, the lonely, and the rejected, we are literally responding to the God-Incarnate himself. Jesus becomes alive in the eyes of the lowly, and by reaching out to them we are opening ourselves up to a deeper undestanding of the gospel and intimacey with God that we could never know otherwise. Read the Gospels, and you can't miss that Jesus was all about befriending the forgotten, the lonely, the most-gossiped about, and the rejected. Translate that into modern culture and you will get the homeless, the poor (anyone trying to live on a non-living wage), the abused (emotionally, sexually, physically, or economically), the "socially awkard," the "loners," the "sexually loose," the "unfashionable," the "annoying," and the "fill-in-this-blank-with-whomever-you-seek-to-avoid." He sought them out not to patronize them with charity or write them a cheque to ease his conscience, but to befriend them, live among them, and share with them the love and grace of their Creator. This is the radically compassionate character of the God of the Bible. This is the very nature of the Upside-Down Kingdom of Jesus, of which we are all gently beckoned to be a part of.
There are two books that have shone the light so brightly on this urgent message that I was greatly disturbed with my own self-absorption and complacency. They helped me to see that I have been so focussed on my own existence and "issues" that I have not been fully denying myself and radically following this Way of God, that is to look so counter-cultural that it brings hope, love, and justice to a world full of cyclical injustice, cut-throat competiveness for money, power, and popularity, and abandonement of the desperate. They are:
1) The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne
Highly readable, intensely inspiring, and disturbingly challenging, the author of this book is the Founder of The Simple Way, an intential Christian community that lives in the poorest ghettos of Philadephia. Believing firmly that Jesus meant what he said in the Beatitudes (blessed are the poor, meek, lowly, hungry and thirsty for righteousness, etc.) and how he lived his life (seeking out the forgotten, abandoned, and rejected to love and meet their needs), the Simple Way seeks to befriend the poor and homeless, fight against the social injustice against them, and actually meet their needs by sharing with them their food, clothes, and other resources. Having gone from the jail cells in the inner city to the slums of Calcutta to the war-torn neighbourhoods in Iraq (on a peace mission), Shane's semi-autobiographical work will seriously cause you to question why the heck you've been sitting on your butt. If you're comfortable with where your life is now, don't read this book. It may cause you to want to actually follow Jesus, which could, as Shane says, wreck everything.
2) God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It by Jim Wallis
For those who are frustrated with the self-righteousness ignorance of the Religious Right and doubtful still of the cynical Left, this book will help you see that God is not a Republican...or a Democrat, but cares about how we deal with poverty, the environment, war, injustice, and many other issues. He talks about the danger of claiming that the evildoers are "out there" and not within our own actions and policies, and claims that our faith should motivate us to stand in the way of injustice, needless violence, disregard of the environment, tax cuts for the rich, abandonement of the poor, and make our voices heard on every individual issue instead of being loyally partisan, and if God is on one side or the other. A must-read for people like me who love to talk about the two biggest taboo topics out there: religion and politics! Or for those who are simply seeking clarification as to how Christians should be involved in politics in a way that shows the world the love, grace, and justice of God.
If anyone in Korea is interested in starting a book club with either of these books, let me know, I'd LOVE to hear all your prospectives on them and discuss all this more, and then actually go and do something about what we learn. We can have it at my new apartment! Go here to order from within Korea and receive it in 10 days.
To those who are still reading, you deserve a medal. Thanks for reading about what I've been learning. May the God who loves the least of these surround you in all you do this week.
Peace,
Jen
p.s. Click on the flickr badge on the right to see the rest of my pics from the trip, plus some old pics of nepal i took years ago that i just recently came across, which actually just emailed to Shane to have published in his new book, Jesus for President. Check out his website for more details.
Now replace Jesus with Romona, a Haitian woman who works at La Tienda, Rachel's fair trade art co-op, and you have what Jesus talked about in Matthew 25:44-46:
Then they also will answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' Then he will answer them, saying, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
Through the reading of two very profound books (see below) and my experience with Ramona, I realized what Jesus was really saying here. On the Last Day, the very authenticity of our salvation will be measured not by the soundness of our theology or by what we claim to believe, but by how we treat "the least of these" in our society. By responding in love to the deperate needs of the poor, the lonely, and the rejected, we are literally responding to the God-Incarnate himself. Jesus becomes alive in the eyes of the lowly, and by reaching out to them we are opening ourselves up to a deeper undestanding of the gospel and intimacey with God that we could never know otherwise. Read the Gospels, and you can't miss that Jesus was all about befriending the forgotten, the lonely, the most-gossiped about, and the rejected. Translate that into modern culture and you will get the homeless, the poor (anyone trying to live on a non-living wage), the abused (emotionally, sexually, physically, or economically), the "socially awkard," the "loners," the "sexually loose," the "unfashionable," the "annoying," and the "fill-in-this-blank-with-whomever-you-seek-to-avoid." He sought them out not to patronize them with charity or write them a cheque to ease his conscience, but to befriend them, live among them, and share with them the love and grace of their Creator. This is the radically compassionate character of the God of the Bible. This is the very nature of the Upside-Down Kingdom of Jesus, of which we are all gently beckoned to be a part of.
There are two books that have shone the light so brightly on this urgent message that I was greatly disturbed with my own self-absorption and complacency. They helped me to see that I have been so focussed on my own existence and "issues" that I have not been fully denying myself and radically following this Way of God, that is to look so counter-cultural that it brings hope, love, and justice to a world full of cyclical injustice, cut-throat competiveness for money, power, and popularity, and abandonement of the desperate. They are:
1) The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne
Highly readable, intensely inspiring, and disturbingly challenging, the author of this book is the Founder of The Simple Way, an intential Christian community that lives in the poorest ghettos of Philadephia. Believing firmly that Jesus meant what he said in the Beatitudes (blessed are the poor, meek, lowly, hungry and thirsty for righteousness, etc.) and how he lived his life (seeking out the forgotten, abandoned, and rejected to love and meet their needs), the Simple Way seeks to befriend the poor and homeless, fight against the social injustice against them, and actually meet their needs by sharing with them their food, clothes, and other resources. Having gone from the jail cells in the inner city to the slums of Calcutta to the war-torn neighbourhoods in Iraq (on a peace mission), Shane's semi-autobiographical work will seriously cause you to question why the heck you've been sitting on your butt. If you're comfortable with where your life is now, don't read this book. It may cause you to want to actually follow Jesus, which could, as Shane says, wreck everything.2) God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It by Jim Wallis
For those who are frustrated with the self-righteousness ignorance of the Religious Right and doubtful still of the cynical Left, this book will help you see that God is not a Republican...or a Democrat, but cares about how we deal with poverty, the environment, war, injustice, and many other issues. He talks about the danger of claiming that the evildoers are "out there" and not within our own actions and policies, and claims that our faith should motivate us to stand in the way of injustice, needless violence, disregard of the environment, tax cuts for the rich, abandonement of the poor, and make our voices heard on every individual issue instead of being loyally partisan, and if God is on one side or the other. A must-read for people like me who love to talk about the two biggest taboo topics out there: religion and politics! Or for those who are simply seeking clarification as to how Christians should be involved in politics in a way that shows the world the love, grace, and justice of God.If anyone in Korea is interested in starting a book club with either of these books, let me know, I'd LOVE to hear all your prospectives on them and discuss all this more, and then actually go and do something about what we learn. We can have it at my new apartment! Go here to order from within Korea and receive it in 10 days.
To those who are still reading, you deserve a medal. Thanks for reading about what I've been learning. May the God who loves the least of these surround you in all you do this week.
Peace,
Jen
p.s. Click on the flickr badge on the right to see the rest of my pics from the trip, plus some old pics of nepal i took years ago that i just recently came across, which actually just emailed to Shane to have published in his new book, Jesus for President. Check out his website for more details.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Koranglish
Well, its been four days since i landed in the Dominican Republic, and I'm just starting to train my tongue to stop speaking Korean when I know I need to communicate something in Spanish. I´ve been automatically responding with "Ney" (Korean for "yes") instead of "Si" and "Kumsumnida" (Korean for "thankyou") instead of "gracious." People here must think I´m from some crazy little European country whose language they´ve never heard before. haha. Although, I have decided that I am enrolling in Spanish classes as soon as I get back to Korea (how´s that for ironic), because I LOVE the language and have an eerie feeling that I will be needing it one day. I love it here. The people, music, food, and buildings are so full of life. Being with Rachel has been so comforting, rejuvanating, relaxing and inspiring - like simultaneously coming home, going to church, sleeping in, and enrolling in school. Even though much time has passed since we last saw each other, we are still the same together. We really love each other, and its been nice just to rest in that. She has felt blessed by all the gifts, cards, and presnts that have been sent with me, which has been a blessing to me as well to see her feel so loved. And seeing La Tienda has been wonderful. Everything inside of it - the women included - is soooo enchantingly beautiful. We´ve only been into the village once so far, the rest of the time I´ve been helping Rachel get some much needed away/relaxation time, with no complaints from me! So we´ve gone to the beach 3 times, and have just read, knitted, painted, sat in charming little beach-front restaurants, and talked. It´s been wonderful. I´ve been knitting some examples of iPod/camera bags to use to teach our sole knitter tomorrow at la tienda, I´m excited (the bikini idea is out, since Rachel didn´t think it was simple enough, plus it might not sell seeing as alot of the packages to sell are sent to churches/mission organizations...boo!). So, tomorrow will be great to spend real time in the co-op with the women...
Until next time....ciao!
Until next time....ciao!
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
not enough headspace for this mind traffic
so among the normal i'm-only-home-for-6-weeks activities, like going to aqua-fit with mom and grandma every morning, eating lots and lots of homemade maple syrup chili and timbits, scheduling in friends' visits like they are doctor's appointments, driving all over ontario to see friends and their newest baby or boyfriend or marriage vows (not always in that order), flying to montreal to a) feel like i'm in Europe, seriously, b) kiss random people i meet twice, and freak out if it ends up on the lips cuz i didn't know which cheek to go for first, and c) see my ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, who also happens to be my good friend from korea (don't ask), planning a trip to the dominican republic to visit my best friend's art co-op, yes, people, among all this (see pics here, btw), i'm making three major life decisions that require countless hours of tumultuous thinking.
A) where the heck do i work when i get back to korea in march?
B) where the heck do i work in September?
C) how the heck do i deal with all the political, spiritual, social (mis)information that keeps attacking me constantly over here?
possible answers:
A) this depends on a lot of factors. what's more important to me- working hours? money? job satisfication? vacation time? location? what would be most important to you? well, my dad, being the statistical engineer that he is, drew up this table with all the possible factors and i rated them all and they he did some fancy smancy formula thing and it turns out the job that won is the job with the best hours and job satisfaction and vacation time. but what about money? that is why i'm sacrificing time away from home to go to korea anyways : my end goal has always been to pay off debt and then save money for my masters. but i feel like being debt-free has become an idol, to which i sacrifice job satisfication and fun . Is being debt-free and saving money worth working at a slave labour school where i completely disagree with their philosophy of education? even if it's short term? what about trading $400 a month more for 2 months vacation? or good hours in dognae (far away from everything) vs. bad hours in haeundae (close to friends and beach)? what's worth more?
B) An International School in India or Busan? Adventure or Comfort? Starting over or building deeper relationships?
C) I don't know. Too many opinions, books, news channels, commentaries, people telling me what to believe or who to believe or how to live. Information overload, thanks in part to this media-crazed culture, whose ban-wagon i have recently jumped on. like by getting my new google homepage, where i've linked over 5 different media sources, all saying different things about the same person or event or ideology. somebody, please just shoot me. or at least just tell me what to believe. i just want to live in peace and do what is right! but who know's what that is anymore....Even within the boundaries of "Christianity" I'm annoyed at the "evangelical conservatives" and the "agnostic/liberal/emergent" types. It's hard to trust anyone these days, and i find myself sceptical of everyone's opinion for some reason or another. if only i could fast all forms of media for a few days....no tv, books, internet....how would my mindset change? does one need all this information? hmmm....the dominican republic is fast approaching.....saweet.
J.
A) where the heck do i work when i get back to korea in march?
B) where the heck do i work in September?
C) how the heck do i deal with all the political, spiritual, social (mis)information that keeps attacking me constantly over here?
possible answers:
A) this depends on a lot of factors. what's more important to me- working hours? money? job satisfication? vacation time? location? what would be most important to you? well, my dad, being the statistical engineer that he is, drew up this table with all the possible factors and i rated them all and they he did some fancy smancy formula thing and it turns out the job that won is the job with the best hours and job satisfaction and vacation time. but what about money? that is why i'm sacrificing time away from home to go to korea anyways : my end goal has always been to pay off debt and then save money for my masters. but i feel like being debt-free has become an idol, to which i sacrifice job satisfication and fun . Is being debt-free and saving money worth working at a slave labour school where i completely disagree with their philosophy of education? even if it's short term? what about trading $400 a month more for 2 months vacation? or good hours in dognae (far away from everything) vs. bad hours in haeundae (close to friends and beach)? what's worth more?
B) An International School in India or Busan? Adventure or Comfort? Starting over or building deeper relationships?
C) I don't know. Too many opinions, books, news channels, commentaries, people telling me what to believe or who to believe or how to live. Information overload, thanks in part to this media-crazed culture, whose ban-wagon i have recently jumped on. like by getting my new google homepage, where i've linked over 5 different media sources, all saying different things about the same person or event or ideology. somebody, please just shoot me. or at least just tell me what to believe. i just want to live in peace and do what is right! but who know's what that is anymore....Even within the boundaries of "Christianity" I'm annoyed at the "evangelical conservatives" and the "agnostic/liberal/emergent" types. It's hard to trust anyone these days, and i find myself sceptical of everyone's opinion for some reason or another. if only i could fast all forms of media for a few days....no tv, books, internet....how would my mindset change? does one need all this information? hmmm....the dominican republic is fast approaching.....saweet.
J.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
home sweet home
so after 20 odd hours of flying, landing, getting off a plane in some random city that is not my final destination, going through customs, trying to convince the customs people that NO, the 15 odd gifts that i so foolishly wrapped and tried to take on the plane do not contain illicit drugs, porn, liquids or WMDs, getting back on yet another plane, taking gravol to knock me out, wavering in and out of consciousness amongst the sounds of screaming babies and crying toddlers, and headache, headache, headache....i am HOME. weird how i feel like i've left home at the same time. how is that possible?
anyways, the 6 hours that i've been home have so far been quite entertaining - my neice and nephews were quite willing to unwrap the WMDs - ur, i mean Winnie-the-Pooh (same-same) parcels, and that got the ball rolling for a exchanging presents blitz, which resulted in my family loving their mementos from Korea and me with some sweet new clothes from....get ready - Costco. yeah, my parents surely know where to shop for high-fashion merchandise - but really these clothes are actual kinda cool! i'll just have to avoid that "place drop" when someone compliments me - "hey, love the sweater, where'd you get it?" "oooh, in this fabulous little boutique in Canada called (with a French accent) "Cos-coo." You should go there some time. I bought this right after i went on a dog-sled through the exotic desserts of potato fields, during a crazy little maple-syrap festival they had going on. It truly was an adventure to remember."
so then I had a home-cooked meal by my mom and listen to my brother talk as if he was on drugs. or so i thought at first, seeing as he was going on and on about this documentary he saw on the internet about how 9/11 was a conspiracy because A) the twin towers were rigged with explosives that caused the collapse of the buildings, and B) all these reports have been hidden by the US government to scare the Americans into supporting the War on Terror. Now if you knew my brother, you would also assume that he was on drugs, because normally i am the conspiracy theorist in the family while everyone else quietly listens and politely attempts to change the subject to something other than politics. so this was fun for me - we watched these documentaries and swapped theories. And all of a sudden, i have a heap-loads more respect for my elder sibling. Oh, how America brings people together...
so now i'm wide awake while my family sleeps, and i'm gonna finish some marking. yes, for my school. yes, they same one that i finished working for yesterday, and who (wahoo!) paid me all my severance pay. i need to hand them in via email by Monday, as reports go out on Wednesday and i had no time to do so this past week. So why not take advantage of my delirously jet-legged frame of mind and give my kids their final comments? And if they end up sounding a little, um, odd, I mean, really, what can they do?
anyways, the 6 hours that i've been home have so far been quite entertaining - my neice and nephews were quite willing to unwrap the WMDs - ur, i mean Winnie-the-Pooh (same-same) parcels, and that got the ball rolling for a exchanging presents blitz, which resulted in my family loving their mementos from Korea and me with some sweet new clothes from....get ready - Costco. yeah, my parents surely know where to shop for high-fashion merchandise - but really these clothes are actual kinda cool! i'll just have to avoid that "place drop" when someone compliments me - "hey, love the sweater, where'd you get it?" "oooh, in this fabulous little boutique in Canada called (with a French accent) "Cos-coo." You should go there some time. I bought this right after i went on a dog-sled through the exotic desserts of potato fields, during a crazy little maple-syrap festival they had going on. It truly was an adventure to remember."
so then I had a home-cooked meal by my mom and listen to my brother talk as if he was on drugs. or so i thought at first, seeing as he was going on and on about this documentary he saw on the internet about how 9/11 was a conspiracy because A) the twin towers were rigged with explosives that caused the collapse of the buildings, and B) all these reports have been hidden by the US government to scare the Americans into supporting the War on Terror. Now if you knew my brother, you would also assume that he was on drugs, because normally i am the conspiracy theorist in the family while everyone else quietly listens and politely attempts to change the subject to something other than politics. so this was fun for me - we watched these documentaries and swapped theories. And all of a sudden, i have a heap-loads more respect for my elder sibling. Oh, how America brings people together...
so now i'm wide awake while my family sleeps, and i'm gonna finish some marking. yes, for my school. yes, they same one that i finished working for yesterday, and who (wahoo!) paid me all my severance pay. i need to hand them in via email by Monday, as reports go out on Wednesday and i had no time to do so this past week. So why not take advantage of my delirously jet-legged frame of mind and give my kids their final comments? And if they end up sounding a little, um, odd, I mean, really, what can they do?
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
i loved this christmas
it all went so fast. on december 24th, 2006, 18 of us, armed with bagfulls of food, including my own homemade eggnog (a drink totally unheard of here), candy canes (again, sooooo difficult to find and thus totally appreciated), and everything needed for goodies, snacks and a full-course omelette breakfast, gifts, stockings, pillows, blankets, and games, cabbed it up to a beautiful dalmagi apartment (in the "posh" side of Busan) to have a sleepover. we laughed, we danced, we did secret santas, played dutch blitz, poker, and bible trivia (haha), built puzzles (ok they did - i have no patience for those horridly intricate things), took pictures, exchanged gifts, and played with our new toy guns and numchucks (ok that was the boys.) i was able to give my girls the photo albums that i made for them - wrapped in korean rice paper and completed with a hand-carved coaster i glued on top - and filled with memories from this year -numerous parties, nights out, norae-bongs (kareokee rooms), paintball, small group, exploring, and just hanging out and laughing and talking and playing. then we had a huge breakfast, napped, and went out for indian food (not exactly a chrismtas tradition but delicious enough for me!) the night was topped off by yet another (different) party in dalmagi. good times had by all. it was a phenomenal way to end my year here, and it made me really excited to come back again to everyone in March.Though i AM super excited to come home!! 4 days!!
see more pics here!
Sunday, November 19, 2006
typhoon surfin'
k, this pic was from about 2 months ago, where me and Aussie Nathan took advantage of a typhoon's waves and went for a little surf. We forgot our cameras, so we asked a kind Frenchman to take our picture with his camera and email them to us....and we just got them now, and with them come flooding back the memories of that epic stormy day...
I wanted to go surfing, because I heard that Busan was the only city where you could really get decent waves in all of Korea. Being the seasoned surf chick that i am (hahahaha...I'm from Southern Ontario, people....haha), I thought it would be no problem for me to get back into it. After all, I learned how to surf in Maui of all places, which I think should make one automatically a pro surfer, or at least...good. And so I phoned my friend that I thought would also be good, basing it only on the fact that he is from The Land Down Under. Let me just say, as cool as we look in our snazzy wetsuits, we both proved to be an embarrassment to both the Golden Coast and the Golden Isle. Nathan got up once or twice for a 2 second ride and I got up...*sigh*....nil. Apparently, it's all about "timing" and being able to "read the ocean," both which, seemingly, I suck at. Ah well. I still had fun, and got a couple belly rides which I didn't want to ruin by attempting to stand up. It was still good to be out there in the water, floating around with my fellow wanna-be surfers and a few actual ones who were kind enough to let us know that "it just takes time." Apparently an intense desire to be cool and a closet full of surf clothes just doesn't cut it.
Monday, November 13, 2006
a fantabulous 3 day weekend, and i love korea again...
surprises! korea's full of 'em. like for instance, on thursday evening, my supervisor comes to my classroom and tells me that classes arecancelled for the next day. Cancelled! This was a major shock, because my hagwon closes for absolutely nothing usually. Like, we were open for Children's Day, Buddha's Birthday, and all other national holidays, and even during a crazy typhoon, which most hagwons were clossed for. And so what major catastrophe did we close so suddenly because of? The death of the prime minister? Nope. The sudden attack of North Korea? Ha - no, most Koreans are so completely unconcerned about that. We closed for the 2006 second annual APEC fireworks show. And yes, APEC was not even in Korea this year. But it was last year around this time, and so this, apparently, was good enough reason for Korea to drop an estimated 1.2 billion Won (approx. $1.4 million CAD) for a 30-minute, insanely overdramatic fireworks extravaganza.
Now you must understand, Koreans love their fireworks. Every Saturday night of the summer there is a show at the beach, just for the heck of it. Plus, there are adjijis (older korean men) selling various types and sizes down at the beach for anyone to buy and set off at any time throughout the year. It's a regular couple thing to do - the boy sets off fireworks and the girl giggles, or people aim fireworks at each other's feet to get them to DANCE (i don't recommend that though, the last time i did that i got some fortune-teller adjiji in the ear - he wasn't too impressed). So I've gotten quite desensitized to the awesomeness of fireworks...but man, this was a spectacle.... but I'm not talking about the actual fireworks....they were all amazing and such, but even more so, the PEOPLE were insane. 3 million people crowded around a little beach - up in trees, on tops of the rooves of coffee shops, apartment buildings, hotels, and trucks. I went on my motorbike, planning to meet friends there, and my cell phone didn't even work because of the amount of people and cellphones. So I ended up running into other lost foreigners to enjoy the show with, and took lots of pics. Notice the multitudes of cellphones being used as cameras...funny (koreans also love their cellphones).
But the craziest part of the evening was after the show was over, where i almost got stampeded to death....3 million people all trying to go in the same direction = ridiculousness. People's mere ruthlessness comes out in moments like these. I was shoved, pushed, tripped, poked, and prodded like cattle. At one moment, an ambulance drove by with a women inside who had been trampled on (yikes), and people were taking the opportunity to get through the crowd by running as fast as they could behind the ambulance, in the empty-pavement-wake it left behind....and then there was me on my motorbike trying to get home, weaving in and out the millions people who were walking in the middle of all the streets within a 5 mile radius of the beach...and joined with a train of about 5 other motorbikes, i managed to get home unharmed and without harming anyone... in about an hour (i live 20 normally from this beach). good fun. and that was only friday night...
saturday - PAINTBALL!! soooooooooo fun, i felt like i was a kid playing at camp....a group of about 15 of us got all dawled up in korean military camoflauge and played capture the flag in a beautiful forest off the coast of song jung beach, just 10 mins north of my apartment...see the pics here.
i had to leave early to go to work, as i'm teaching for 3 hours on saturdays now at my hagwon for overtime pay...but it was the BEST class ever - full of almost fluent, talkative, opinionated 15 year olds about the varying philosophies of education in the world - mainly US vs. Korean. Had a phenomenal talk centered around this quote:
"Don't let school get in the way of your education." (by some dead guy, probably)
We talked about WHY they all feel its necessary in korea to get only 3-5 hours of sleep a night and do NOTHING but study between the ages of 4-25, with NO vacation time and NO extra-curriculars and NO life outside of the monotonous cycle of school, hagwon, study, bed, school, hagwon, study, bed.....we talked about the PURPOSES of education - to train for life - and how the most important things are learned outside of school - like in friendships, making mistakes and learning from them, and in just living life and enjoying it....i got them thinking, i think, and we had a great convo about it....for the first time in a while i felt completely rewarded as an educator, as someone who opens minds ever so slightly to think a bit out of the box. a great way to spend a saturday evening!
sunday - church in the am, dancing with the most precious little korean girls in the world...and aubrey, too, of course :)....and THEN...hung out with the coolest people in the world all day in a beautiful apartment over looking the ocean, and went exploring on my motorbike with my new friends sacha and kevin....we raced, we went down random roads, we avoided seriously ridiculous long lines of traffic by driving on the sidewalks....way fun....and perfect weather for it - it's still very fall here!
good weather, good fun, good education, good friends...and just like that...i'm on a korea high again....(quick, ma, take a picture!!)
-J.
Now you must understand, Koreans love their fireworks. Every Saturday night of the summer there is a show at the beach, just for the heck of it. Plus, there are adjijis (older korean men) selling various types and sizes down at the beach for anyone to buy and set off at any time throughout the year. It's a regular couple thing to do - the boy sets off fireworks and the girl giggles, or people aim fireworks at each other's feet to get them to DANCE (i don't recommend that though, the last time i did that i got some fortune-teller adjiji in the ear - he wasn't too impressed). So I've gotten quite desensitized to the awesomeness of fireworks...but man, this was a spectacle.... but I'm not talking about the actual fireworks....they were all amazing and such, but even more so, the PEOPLE were insane. 3 million people crowded around a little beach - up in trees, on tops of the rooves of coffee shops, apartment buildings, hotels, and trucks. I went on my motorbike, planning to meet friends there, and my cell phone didn't even work because of the amount of people and cellphones. So I ended up running into other lost foreigners to enjoy the show with, and took lots of pics. Notice the multitudes of cellphones being used as cameras...funny (koreans also love their cellphones).
But the craziest part of the evening was after the show was over, where i almost got stampeded to death....3 million people all trying to go in the same direction = ridiculousness. People's mere ruthlessness comes out in moments like these. I was shoved, pushed, tripped, poked, and prodded like cattle. At one moment, an ambulance drove by with a women inside who had been trampled on (yikes), and people were taking the opportunity to get through the crowd by running as fast as they could behind the ambulance, in the empty-pavement-wake it left behind....and then there was me on my motorbike trying to get home, weaving in and out the millions people who were walking in the middle of all the streets within a 5 mile radius of the beach...and joined with a train of about 5 other motorbikes, i managed to get home unharmed and without harming anyone... in about an hour (i live 20 normally from this beach). good fun. and that was only friday night...
saturday - PAINTBALL!! soooooooooo fun, i felt like i was a kid playing at camp....a group of about 15 of us got all dawled up in korean military camoflauge and played capture the flag in a beautiful forest off the coast of song jung beach, just 10 mins north of my apartment...see the pics here.
i had to leave early to go to work, as i'm teaching for 3 hours on saturdays now at my hagwon for overtime pay...but it was the BEST class ever - full of almost fluent, talkative, opinionated 15 year olds about the varying philosophies of education in the world - mainly US vs. Korean. Had a phenomenal talk centered around this quote:
"Don't let school get in the way of your education." (by some dead guy, probably)
We talked about WHY they all feel its necessary in korea to get only 3-5 hours of sleep a night and do NOTHING but study between the ages of 4-25, with NO vacation time and NO extra-curriculars and NO life outside of the monotonous cycle of school, hagwon, study, bed, school, hagwon, study, bed.....we talked about the PURPOSES of education - to train for life - and how the most important things are learned outside of school - like in friendships, making mistakes and learning from them, and in just living life and enjoying it....i got them thinking, i think, and we had a great convo about it....for the first time in a while i felt completely rewarded as an educator, as someone who opens minds ever so slightly to think a bit out of the box. a great way to spend a saturday evening!
sunday - church in the am, dancing with the most precious little korean girls in the world...and aubrey, too, of course :)....and THEN...hung out with the coolest people in the world all day in a beautiful apartment over looking the ocean, and went exploring on my motorbike with my new friends sacha and kevin....we raced, we went down random roads, we avoided seriously ridiculous long lines of traffic by driving on the sidewalks....way fun....and perfect weather for it - it's still very fall here!
good weather, good fun, good education, good friends...and just like that...i'm on a korea high again....(quick, ma, take a picture!!)
-J.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
how living in korea makes me feel better about myself
1. it doesn't take much to make me feel like the funniest person in the world. like for instance - i drive a motorcycle. and i'm a girl. and i have blonde hair. OH MY GOD - LOOK AT HER!!! SHE'S DRIVING A MOTORCYCLE!!! AND SHE'S A GIRL!!! AND SHE HAS BLONDE HAIR!!!! THAT IS SOOOO FUNNY!!!! LET'S LAUGH AND STARE AND POINT TO SHOW OUR AMUSEMENT!!!!! awesome. also, taxi drivers and starbucks servers and the like find it humourous whenever i speak any korean. i KNOW - it's SO funny!!! she knows how to say "please turn left here!" wow!
2. i am constantly feeling respected as a woman. like everywhere i go, people are telling me, "oh, so beautiful! so beautiful!" in the same breath that they ask me if i am a prostitute. well not in so many words, but they ask me if i'm russian, which here means, "so how much?" oh, plus there's the little matter of me teaching all the younger classes because i'm a woman. because naturally, women are better with younger kids, and older kids respect men more. even though our male teacher is a qualified elementary school teacher and i'm a qualified high school teacher. it's just so logical. and not sexist at all. (hehe, she said "sex!" quick! pretend we don't know what she means! play the language barrier card!")
3. i consistently feel validated as a serious educator. like for instance today, my supervisor told me that there have been complaints that i am not working through the textbooks fast enough. k, so my TEN YEAR OLD children who go to school from 9am-11pm are supposed to go through 8 pages a day, and that's only for MY class. then they've got 2 other classes to do homework for, in which they have to memorize like 100 vocab words, which they will forget by the end of the hour after the test and which they will never know how to use in a proper sentence. and THEN they've got to do their homework for Science Hagwon (academy), Computer Hagwon, and Math Hagwon. Yet I should be giving them more homework. Because piling on more work and showing the parents they've finished 400 pages in 6 weeks is totally the point of education. COMPRENDING something? RETAINING information? Actually being able to have a free-flowing conversation? What's all that? Complain! That darn teacher isn't pushing my child hard enough! He's actually ENJOYING her class!!!
4. the number 4 has always been my lucky number. it's my birthday (January 4) and has always been my sports number on teams and such. here the korean word for 4 is the same word for "death." some buildings don't have the floor number 4, they change it to "F," because nobody, apparently, wants to live on the floor of death (can't figure out why). also, when i wanted to get my phone, and they asked me what number i wanted, i said "4444" and they gasped and said no! i guess they figured it would go over well - "call me! 010- 4572- death-death-death-death." perfect.
5. i feel the love from my students. little truth-telling weasels they are. "teacher! today shirt so ugly!" "teacher, what is THAT?" (pointing to a large red zit on my face). "teacher! you look like alien with 1000 babies in your stomach!" "teacher! you sick? you look sick." "teacher! that black sweater makes you look like witch!" just what every girl wants to hear. now excuse me while i go slit my wrists.
ah korea.....gotta love it.
J.
2. i am constantly feeling respected as a woman. like everywhere i go, people are telling me, "oh, so beautiful! so beautiful!" in the same breath that they ask me if i am a prostitute. well not in so many words, but they ask me if i'm russian, which here means, "so how much?" oh, plus there's the little matter of me teaching all the younger classes because i'm a woman. because naturally, women are better with younger kids, and older kids respect men more. even though our male teacher is a qualified elementary school teacher and i'm a qualified high school teacher. it's just so logical. and not sexist at all. (hehe, she said "sex!" quick! pretend we don't know what she means! play the language barrier card!")
3. i consistently feel validated as a serious educator. like for instance today, my supervisor told me that there have been complaints that i am not working through the textbooks fast enough. k, so my TEN YEAR OLD children who go to school from 9am-11pm are supposed to go through 8 pages a day, and that's only for MY class. then they've got 2 other classes to do homework for, in which they have to memorize like 100 vocab words, which they will forget by the end of the hour after the test and which they will never know how to use in a proper sentence. and THEN they've got to do their homework for Science Hagwon (academy), Computer Hagwon, and Math Hagwon. Yet I should be giving them more homework. Because piling on more work and showing the parents they've finished 400 pages in 6 weeks is totally the point of education. COMPRENDING something? RETAINING information? Actually being able to have a free-flowing conversation? What's all that? Complain! That darn teacher isn't pushing my child hard enough! He's actually ENJOYING her class!!!
4. the number 4 has always been my lucky number. it's my birthday (January 4) and has always been my sports number on teams and such. here the korean word for 4 is the same word for "death." some buildings don't have the floor number 4, they change it to "F," because nobody, apparently, wants to live on the floor of death (can't figure out why). also, when i wanted to get my phone, and they asked me what number i wanted, i said "4444" and they gasped and said no! i guess they figured it would go over well - "call me! 010- 4572- death-death-death-death." perfect.
5. i feel the love from my students. little truth-telling weasels they are. "teacher! today shirt so ugly!" "teacher, what is THAT?" (pointing to a large red zit on my face). "teacher! you look like alien with 1000 babies in your stomach!" "teacher! you sick? you look sick." "teacher! that black sweater makes you look like witch!" just what every girl wants to hear. now excuse me while i go slit my wrists.
ah korea.....gotta love it.
J.
Friday, August 19, 2005
bye bye blogger
well, blogger has served me well, for this period of investigating my long-hidden computer geekness within....my new blog is here check her out!
so long folks!
love Jen
so long folks!
love Jen
Saturday, August 06, 2005
a new look
well, things are changing. so i thought, why not give my ol' blog a face lift? a wise soul told me just the other day that it is i who choose to be scatter-brained. perhaps this is true. so i am seeking to living afresh, with a mind set on the future...anyone who knows me well enough might have some inkling as to the meaning of my new title. feel free to ask, if you're curious.
so i leave for korea in 3 weeks. wow. i'm feeling a mass of different things - excited, scared, but right now, most of me feels like i'm being pulled by someone a lot bigger than me, someone named Responsibility, and i'm skidding my heals, resisting the change. i love kingston.... being in chicago, as great as it has been, makes me eager to go home. to my house, my street, my soren, my church, my girls. i don't feel ready to go....and i'm not talking practical details. but then again i was ready as ever to go to Maui, and disappointment awaited me. so perhaps this will be a great thing. i'll be independent like never before in my life. i'll actually be making money instead of going further into debt! i'll be with kids everyday, and my sole task will be to making their learning fun and meaningful. i can't wait to meet my kids! i already have so many ideas. i'll be teaching, btw, ages 7-12. crazy. i have a feeling i'll be learning lots about patience.
that wise soul told me something else that made a lot of sense to me. he told me that there are never problems, only momentary glitches. i've been feeling sort of uneasy lately, like i want to get on with a debt-free life, like, now. but i think i've realized that my thoughts regarding how i think my life should go are irrelevant. God may want me to experience a lot of things in these next two years that i wouldn't have the opportunity to before i go to seminary (the plan, btw, is to go to Regent seminary in Vancouver once i can pay off my debt and save enough to go for 3 or 4 years)...the older i am when i return to school, the more meaningful and insightful questions i can ask. and living in another culture, learning another language - man, that will offer me many riches, i think.
everything will work out great. for those who pray, i ask you pray for me in the coming weeks. pray that my soul will be calm and i will trust that God is closer than my skin, and i am never alone. Pray also for a community in Pusan that i will grow to love as much as the one in Kingston. And to all you Kingstonians, i love you. And if you love me.....hehehe....you will TRY and come to my party next week! Thursday, August 11th at 8:00 - a Wine and Yummy-Things party...at Rhonda's house, just down the street (colborne) from my old one - I'll get the # and email you all. If anyone from outside of kingston wants to come, do! it will be great. i cannot wait.
between now and isabella, many things will change. but you will not, o Maker. and i beseech you, come, and do life with me till we get there, and teach me how to live the things i know.
-J.
so i leave for korea in 3 weeks. wow. i'm feeling a mass of different things - excited, scared, but right now, most of me feels like i'm being pulled by someone a lot bigger than me, someone named Responsibility, and i'm skidding my heals, resisting the change. i love kingston.... being in chicago, as great as it has been, makes me eager to go home. to my house, my street, my soren, my church, my girls. i don't feel ready to go....and i'm not talking practical details. but then again i was ready as ever to go to Maui, and disappointment awaited me. so perhaps this will be a great thing. i'll be independent like never before in my life. i'll actually be making money instead of going further into debt! i'll be with kids everyday, and my sole task will be to making their learning fun and meaningful. i can't wait to meet my kids! i already have so many ideas. i'll be teaching, btw, ages 7-12. crazy. i have a feeling i'll be learning lots about patience.
that wise soul told me something else that made a lot of sense to me. he told me that there are never problems, only momentary glitches. i've been feeling sort of uneasy lately, like i want to get on with a debt-free life, like, now. but i think i've realized that my thoughts regarding how i think my life should go are irrelevant. God may want me to experience a lot of things in these next two years that i wouldn't have the opportunity to before i go to seminary (the plan, btw, is to go to Regent seminary in Vancouver once i can pay off my debt and save enough to go for 3 or 4 years)...the older i am when i return to school, the more meaningful and insightful questions i can ask. and living in another culture, learning another language - man, that will offer me many riches, i think.
everything will work out great. for those who pray, i ask you pray for me in the coming weeks. pray that my soul will be calm and i will trust that God is closer than my skin, and i am never alone. Pray also for a community in Pusan that i will grow to love as much as the one in Kingston. And to all you Kingstonians, i love you. And if you love me.....hehehe....you will TRY and come to my party next week! Thursday, August 11th at 8:00 - a Wine and Yummy-Things party...at Rhonda's house, just down the street (colborne) from my old one - I'll get the # and email you all. If anyone from outside of kingston wants to come, do! it will be great. i cannot wait.
between now and isabella, many things will change. but you will not, o Maker. and i beseech you, come, and do life with me till we get there, and teach me how to live the things i know.
-J.
Friday, August 05, 2005
sleeeeeeeeepy
all my thinking and playing and running around at the multiple parks and pools and libraries with my neice and having debates with the "extra narrow-minded legalistic imperialist", as my brother's best friend likes to be known as, and his mates at the counseling center today wore me out....i will post a very extensive and enlightening post tommorrow. you'll see, the angels will sing at the wonder of it.
chicago is good though....... a very vacationesque time i am having.....
-J
chicago is good though....... a very vacationesque time i am having.....
-J
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
widgets are my new best friend
ok - how COOL is this - i'm on my brand new ibook right now and my brother downloaded all the newest mac software and I am discovering how fun widgets are! for all you PC folks who have not yet converted to the simplicity and eloquence of macs - widgets are these cool little tools that you can put on your dashboard that make your life a little easier - like i'm writing this from a widget called "dashblog" and i don't have to go to my blog to do so! or i have mapquest widget or a recipe make widget and i have time zone widgets for korea and toronto, plus currency converter widgets - and a widget that puts little flowers in a jar when i get new emails! whoever thought being a mac geek would be so much fun!! k, i'm gonna go play some more now....
-J
-J
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