The Conflict is the Story @aj-zeilstra - Tumblr Blog

Please stop trying to scare me

I’m tired of the line I’ve been hearing from some of my friends recently. When we discuss the problems that the US is facing the diagnosis I often hear from those on the right is

“People don’t listen to each other anymore. Why can’t we just talk about our differences?”

In most cases, they are right. An open dialogue is the best chance we have at understanding another person’s viewpoint and learning how another person interprets the world.

However…

Nationalism, racism (with Nazism and white supremacy as sub-categories), xenophobia, and all forms of bigotry, are not viewpoints that deserve to be entertained and discussed.

These are not philosophies whose merits bear analysis. They are manifestations of fear. They are group Fight or Flight responses. Like clammy hands or butterflies in stomachs, they are remnants of when our animal brains were focused on one thing: survive and reproduce. Or, to borrow a phrase, preserve our heritage.

Any ideology that excludes or demeans those who are different is based in fear of the Other. And fear all too often manifests itself as aggression.

So no,

I will not listen to those who would try to make me afraid of my friends, coworkers, and neighbors.

I will not let groups like those represented at Unite the Right in Charlottesville pretend that they are brave warriors fighting for an ideology.

They are fragile and they are frightened and they are freaking out.

Here’s what I will do:

I will have conversations about why this fear exists.

I will acknowledge fear in myself and others and seek to assuage it.

I will resist the systems that perpetuate this fear and the men who profit from it.

I will educate myself and others.

This is a public health crisis. The illness is psychological. We must stop entertaining it and begin treating it.

Brought to by Aldi, Death Cab for Cutie, and Pabst

“Yever see someone who looks jist like someone yew know?” he asked, his mouth wide with teeth that looked like a skyline at night, jagged and separated by dark spaces.

“Of course,” I replied.

He waddled across the parking lot. “Buddit just caint be. Was another tahm, nother laff. But thas yew.” He used a massive finger connected to a massive arm to tip the bill of his denim cap upwards so he could look me in the eye.

I wanted to ask what he was like. Was he happy? Did he make the people around him glad he was there? Did his laugh ring out? Was he missed when he left?

I wanted to ask if he would be pleased to be compared with me. Me, with hair greasy from being tugged on? Me, with bad habits and shaky finances? Me, with holes in the pockets of my jeans from sitting on stoops and curbs and park benches? Me, tired.

I wanted to ask if I could walk in that man’s shoes. Could I handle his trials with the same strength and resilience? Could I triumph where he didn’t? Could I handle success as well as he did?

I wanted to ask why he was making me think about these things. All I needed was tortillas and spinach. I wanted to spend $3, not an evening obsessing over the histories of strangers. I wanted to live life without comparing myself to others

“I do it all the time,” I said.

We were two paces apart. Close enough to embrace. Close enough to lunge. He backed away towards his truck, nodding. I’ll never know what he was agreeing with.

I got back in my car. I forgot about the tortillas and spinach and went to the gas station for beer. I don’t know what I’ll eat for lunch tomorrow. The girl at the counter called me “love.” I was full of questions.

when you’re feeling down:

take a deep breath. then another one. breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth like your mom used to tell you when you weren’t feeling good. consider that the air you breathe may have been exhaled by Abraham Lincoln during the Gettysburg Address, and then breathed in by the leaves of a mighty oak tree. it could have mingled with the perfume of Cleopatra. it could have given flight to the monarch butterflies as they float above continents. you are participating in an incredible story.

take a sip of water. take two, it’s good for you. consider that the water you drink may have fallen as rain on the head of tyrannosaurus rex. it might have sprayed George Washington and his men as they crossed the Delaware River on Christmas Day. it may have washed Leonardo’s brushes after he painted The Last Supper. you’ve got history within you.

tonight, take in the stars. consider that the earth has hurled through space at 67,108 miles an hour, spinning you round and round at 1000 miles an hour and got you where you are just in time to see that light reach it’s final destination, a billion years after it left its star. your eyes are the last place that little beam of light will go, after traveling so far to get to you. the light lives in you now.

take a look at your hands. move your fingers around. notice the muscles moving beneath your skin. consider what your hands are capable of. you could build a house or plant a flower. you could create music that’s never been heard before. you could write a letter. you could lace fingers with someone you love. rub your thumb and forefinger together. be slow and deliberate. notice the canyons and ridges of your fingertips. consider that nobody but you will ever feel exactly what you’re feeling. you are so special.

take a look at your life. consider how statistically improbable you are. the odds of a person being born to your parents, sitting in the room you’re in, with the background you have, knowing all the people you know, are slim to none. but here you are. you are a champion.

when you’re feeling down, remember that you are loved. sometimes things are hard and we struggle to put one foot in front of the other. but you are made to be great. as Jack Kerouac said, “Though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are still pretty glorious.”

World History: Introduction

Back in 2015 the world was in rough shape. Conflicts, both foreign and domestic, were tearing us apart. Pakistan and India wanted to blow one another up. A group called ISIS, made up of a lot of very confused people, was killing anybody they could get their hands on. An angry man named Kim Jong Un, dictator of a place that was once called North Korea, was starving his people and throwing tantrums and threatening to drop big bombs on anybody who didn’t like him. (A dictator was someone who had all a country’s guns and money and food and didn’t want to share any of it)

Kim Jong Un, North Korean dictator.

We were still reeling from the Holocaust and the Cold War and 9/11. We just couldn’t figure out what to do with ourselves after all that. Folks were strapping bombs to the chests of toddlers and putting guns in the hands of teenagers. Here in the United States police officers just couldn’t quit shooting black people, if you can believe it. All over the world people were running about, hurting each other’s feelings and hurting each other’s bodies and hurting each other’s brains. They had chopped down most of the trees and were experimenting to see just how dirty they could make the air and the water and which animals they could totally do without. Things were not looking good.

Then something very exciting happened at something called the United Nations. Back in those days the job of the United Nations was to tell people just how horrible they could be to one another before they would face consequences. They decided which ways of killing lots of people were ok and which were not, among other things. The leaders of the United Nations decided that the idea of world peace that dreamers had been talking about ever since Cain slayed Abel might actually be something they’d be interested in. So they had a contest to see who could come up with the best idea to bring it about.

Flag of the United Nations

Doctors and lawyers and military men and politicians and technology giants and writers from every corner of the world came out to share their ideas. Here is a summary of a few of the propositions that got some attention from the United Nations.

Proposition 1: Fund education

Proposition 45: Build more nukes

Proposition 46: Get rid of all nukes

Proposition 131: Criminals should be sentenced to life in prison on their first offense

Proposition 172: Everyone will be given a laptop computer. Of course this would require a lot of new infrastructure, bringing LTE wireless capabilities across the globe, and I guess we’d need more reliable electricity in a lot places so they could charge the things, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. Think of the jobs it’d create!

Proposition 196: So cannabis, right, most people call it marijuana or whatever but you can put it in brownies and I promise people who eat those brownies will not be in the mood to fight for like 2 or 3 hours.

Proposition 206: Everyone should carry a firearm at all times.

Proposition 220: The whole world ought to be on the same drugs we give American school children that make them unexcited, uninterested, unhungry, uncurious, unambitious, and unlikely to cause problems. We could put it in the water supply.

Proposition 248: Everybody should read my book, it’s really quite good and only costs $22.95 but if you have an Amazon Prime account you can get free shipping.

Proposition 249: So there’s this thing called Scientology and what happens is you get hooked up to this electrical thing and you tell it your problems and there’s somebody called Xenu who sent these aliens to come and live inside the volcanos and… shit, I can’t keep it all straight, but maybe we could give that a try.

The 250th proposition was given by a small girl from the United States, of all places. We don’t know her name, unfortunately, because nobody thought to ask. Everybody thought her idea was a lot of cockamamie on account of how she was young and a girl and so on. People in 2015 didn’t think much of children, or of girls, no matter how old they were. Her idea, however, is now famous. It was this: everyone will wear a t-shirt on which they’ve printed five things that they’re quite fond of. The shirt could be long sleeved, short sleeved, or no sleeved, cute or plain, baggy or tight, colorful or not. Soldiers could wear it over their bullet proof vests and business men could wear it under their blazers but over their ties, but it must list five things which they love. The girl was laughed out of the United Nations, and the topic of world peace was tabled indefinitely.

As we all know, the girl’s idea did not die there. Back in the United States people began making the shirts the girl thought up. It started in a rural school in South Carolina, we think. Students began to realize they had things in common with people they never expected to. You see, people all over the country used to avoid speaking with someone based on their skin color, their clothing, or who they loved. Some of the earliest recorded t-shirts said things like SLEEPING IN, GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES, COMIC BOOKS, FIREFLIES, and PIGGY BACK RIDES.

Some parents, likely in attempts to look young, began to make t shirts of their own. When the parents dropped their children off at the houses of their new friends they met other parents whose t shirts said things like SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL or FOLK MUSIC or BLACK COFFEE or, simply, MY CHILDREN. The t shirts proliferated throughout the state, likely because South Carolinians had been some of the people most resistant to liking people who appeared to be different. The shock and joy of being mistaken was thrilling for them!

Like a virus, the t-shirts spread as people travelled and came into contact with others. Soon the whole country was infected with t-shirts. People began to smile at one another in the grocery store and at the post office. They struck up conversations on buses and looked up from their cell phones at restaurants. The shirts started cropping up in Canada and Mexico, then jumped the pond into Europe. They spread east and south into Asia and Africa, respectively, with children always being the first to catch on. People began making a shirt for each day so that if you saw a person every day of the week you’d learned 35 things that person loved. Things like SUNSETS or CLEAN DRINKING WATER or ELEPHANTS or MECHANICAL ENGINEERING or NOT BEING HUNGRY or HOLDING HANDS or MUSCLE CARS or PEOPLE WITH FRECKLES were emblazoned on people’s torsos.

A standard t-shirt circa 2016

Perhaps the most amazing thing was that relationships formed between people who didn’t have a single item on a single t shirt in common. Just knowing that other people cared about things was enough. Up until that time people had been too preoccupied to realize that being a person was sufficient to warrant a little decency. They needed a t-shirt to show them that all people have hopes and dreams. They didn’t know that everyone’s heart was susceptible to breaking, just by virtue of the fact that everyone had one. They didn’t consider that everyone thinks and feels, perhaps not about the same things, but they think and feel nonetheless. After being awoken to this truth they stopped poisoning the waters, because there would come a day when other people who care about things would need to drink them. They stopped dreaming up ways to kill lots of people at once, because they realized that each of those people had lots of very nice things to go on living for.

And yes, sometimes people still cut others off in traffic or break into homes that aren’t theirs, and sometimes they even commit acts of violence against each other. But those acts are remnants of days gone by, days before we realized that to be a human was to be a companion in the act of living with everyone else.

As I write the introduction to this history book my own t shirt says:

FIREWORKS KURT VONNEGUT CAMP FIRES PILOT G-2 0.5 mm PENS THUNDERSTORMS

I wonder how many of you reading this might be fond of the same things.

AJ Zeilstra, editor

On Tillman Hall, History, and Being Butt-Hurt

I’m an alumnus of Clemson University. I’m working on a master’s degree at Winthrop. Seeing Winthrop’s Tillman Hall helped me feel at ease at a new school where I didn’t know anybody. Every time I go home, because that’s what Clemson is to me, I get chills when I drive past Tillman Hall on 93.

The image of Tillman Hall recalls to my mind autumn days laying in a hammock under the burly oak trees by Bowman field. It’s where the officially unofficial Clemson disc golf course begins and ends. It’s where generations of students have broadened their minds and prepared to impact this state and this nation. It’s the background of ESPN’s College GameDay. It’s on the front of post cards, it’s on the back of t-shirts, and it's in the center of so many minds and hearts.

That’s what the building is. That’s the spirit of the place that so many have fallen in love with, and nothing that this world could bring or anything someone could do can ever take that away from the Clemson Family.

Believe it or not, nobody wants to. The issue at hand is not about taking things away from Clemson University. This issue is about extending the spirit of Clemson, and of Winthrop, to all those who would seek it.

“But Aj, it’s history and tradition and whatnot!”

I know. History is important. In large part we are a product of those who came before us. There probably wouldn’t have been a Clemson College without Benjamin Tillman. We’ve got that to thank him for. He was integral to the agriculture industry all across the state. Props for that too. But if we are going to hang our hats on history we should look closely at the story it tells.

On March 23, 1900, in a speech to the United States Senate, Benjamin “Pitchfork” Tillman, speaking of black men, said:

...As to his “rights”—I will not discuss them now. We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be equal to the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him. I would to God the last one of them was in Africa and that none of them had ever been brought to our shores. But I will not pursue the subject further...

In 1902 Ben Tillman punched another Senator in the face. Repeatedly. He was censured and suspended from the Senate.

He got the name nickname “Pitchfork” for threatening to stab the President of the United States with one if he didn’t fix the economy.

The stories and the quotes go on and on. Ben Tillman was a racist man. A violent man. That’s history. Those are facts. It’s all a matter of public record. This is not a man that represents what Clemson stands for. This is not a man who embodied the values of the High Seminary.

Here’s a little bit more history. The name “Tillman Hall” was bestowed upon the building in 1946. It was built in 1894. The name of the building isn’t really all that historical.

A little more history, if you can bear it: there are people alive today who remember when they were legally prohibited from entering certain stores, restaurants, schools, movie theaters, pools, museums, and on and on and on. There are people alive today who remember when they were not deemed fit to drink out of the same water fountains as white people.

Clemson didn’t admit black students until 1963. There are people alive today who were told they couldn’t be a part of the Clemson Family because of the color of their skin. These people are your neighbors, your coworkers. These rememberers are the parents and grandparents of your classmates and your friends.

Consider what the following words mean in light of this rather recent history:

This movement to change the name of Tillman Hall isn't coming from an abstract, far away branch of the Politically Correct Police. The protest was generated by colleagues, classmates, friends, and neighbors with real names and real hurt, members of the Clemson community who love the University and want the name of its most iconic building to represent what Clemson strives to be. To tell young people to leave if they feel uncomfortable, that they must not like Clemson if they don't like Tillman, to belittle the feelings of discrimination is to display remarkable levels of ignorance.

Clemson needs some healing. We all need some healing. Maybe changing the name of Tillman Hall will help. I don't know, I don't have all the answers.

I do know that choosing ignorance and refusing to hear the voices of those who seek dignity and equality is like burying your head in the sand. I will always be proud of Clemson. I want everyone to be able to say that.

Let me Reminisce

The thunder is moving east, a great unseen train, so heavy and deep it is sound that you feel. The clouds are rolling in to intercept the last few rays the sun threw out before setting, blanketing us in an early nightfall. Lightning and lightning bugs are as dissimilar as two things with the same name can be, but as the sky is starting to flash and great spears of light and heat and energy hurl themselves towards the earth the Coleopterans drift, flirting with the girls, dancing and blinking and winking.

When I was a kid I would catch lightning bugs in an empty coffee can. I’d stabbed seven holes in the lid with the pocket knife my dad’s work gave him so the bugs could breathe. I’d sit in the grass and watch them blink through the translucent lid, the blue of it turning their yellow lights green.

Usually I released them but on one evening I needed them. Completely inconspicuously I smuggled the glowing can in under my t shirt, having to keep them a secret from my mom who, as a rule, was opposed to bugs in the house. I had at the time a frog named Weiser. He’d had a roommate named Bud, but Bud kept looking at Weiser like he wanted to eat him. So, I evicted Bud, but helped him get settled in a pond near my house. I had a zero tolerance policy on cannibalism. Weiser had been through a lot, and I knew that the lightning bugs would improve his mood.

Carefully, carefully I put the bugs in there and replaced the lid on the aquarium before any could drift away. With all the lights off I jumped up onto my bed and looked starry eyed at the utopia I’d made. Weiser was transfixed too. He looked around and must have thought he was home in the wild, which is exactly what I intended.

Then Weiser ate em. He gobbled them up, and the most amazing thing happened. Weiser glowed with the combined light of what had to be at least a hundred distressed lightning bugs. I swear every speckle and spot on his skin was projected onto my ceiling, like a negative of the night sky. I was in awe. I lay on my back and with my finger I connected the dots of new constellations, ones that will never be seen again.

Now the storm has come and gone and there is a cacophony of frog songs in my back yard, snapping me out of my flashback. None of the singers seem to be glowing though, not that I can see. I’d like to make myself believe that planet Earth turns slowly, and all that, but that was almost twenty years ago. Like Moses after coming down from Mount Sinai, Weiser stopped glowing. He died. We moved. My dad and his pocket knife moved out. Lightning bug populations are dwindling. I don’t even think they sell coffee in cans anymore. Now, with White Russian in hand, I wish I would be in awe from time to time. Glowing moments are fleeting, so I will echo Kurt Vonnegut and say to myself and to my mom, who I suspect is the only one that reads these, “I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”

If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

The Baby Jesus Grew Up

Jesus' parents weren't married.

One time he was at a wedding and his friends were having so much fun that they accidentally drank all the wine. He made more so they could keep on celebrating. Oh, he used the ceremonial jars to hold the wine.

He grew up in a bad town. People never let him live that down.

He went camping a lot. He was a vagabond.

His best friends were rejects and outcasts. He hung out with hookers.

Religious people hated him. Like, hated him.

He broke just about every cultural rule.

He caused a huge scene at church. Multiple times.

He was killed in the most degrading, humiliating way people had dreamed of at the time.

If you're thinking that you don't belong, that you don't fit in with the religious crowd, I think Jesus would say that's a good place to start. Jesus was a pariah. He was an adorable little baby once, but then he grew up into a revolutionary.

This is Fiction

Listen: It was Alexander Jonas’s birthday. He had successfully ridden his planet, which was Earth, around the sun twenty four times. During most of those twenty four laps people had called him AJ.

The morning of his birthday AJ was chain smoking clove cigars in a cemetery. Now, when we think of the people who typically visit cemeteries in their free time, two types of people come to mind: those dressed in their Sunday best adorning the graves of those they’d begun to lap with flowers, and those dressed all in black having adorned themselves with chains and bits of metal poked through various fleshy parts of their faces and nipples. AJ was neither of these types. He was dressed in a plaid shirt many had criticized him for wearing too often and shorts whose butt he had begun to wear through. He was there neither to pay his respects nor to perform any occultist ritual, but because he figured the residents were least likely to feel obligated to wish him a happy twenty fourth lap.

AJ sat with his back against a stone column and stared at his shoes as smoke swirled, whirled, danced in and out of his field of vision. His shoes looked like this:

Just as he had sat through the butt of his shorts he had walked through the soles of his shoes. He tried to remember all the places he’d left bits of his sole behind but couldn’t remember anything other than the cemetery.

In the background of the footage of his shoes was a monolithic grave marker with the letters C, A, L, H, O, U, and N chiseled into it. AJ adjusted his lenses to bring the stone into focus. Aside from the fact that it was a seven foot tall marble slab the marker was unassuming. There was no epitaph, no mention of family or even an expiration date.

Listen: John C. Calhoun had been the Vice President of the United States of America. His son-in-law founded a university. AJ used to know that but he’d forgotten everything, even the locations of his sole.

AJ wondered if he asked very politely whether CALHOUN would scoot over so that he too could have a place to rest. Twenty four hours make a complete day. Twenty four laps could make a complete race.

At the fullness of time two other racers entered the cemetery. One was a lady, dressed in her Sunday best bearing flowers to adorn the grave of someone she’d begun to lap. The other was an old man dressed in shorts and a plaid shirt. They walked past the column supporting AJ, none the wiser that they were not alone. The woman placed her flowers and knelt in the grass. She began to whisper to the retired racer six feet below her. She whispered things about how much better all the places he’d left his sole were, just for him having trod there. She told him he had kept the faith, he had fought the good fight. He had finished the race.

While the woman was whispering the old man walked up to the grave that said CALHOUN and traced the seven characters with his finger tips. After doing so he turned and saw AJ leaning against the column.

“Hello” said the old man. The woman in her Sunday best came and stood next to him.

“Hello” Alexander Jonas said. “Today is my birthday.”

The woman smiled. The old man shuffled his feet. AJ looked at the old man’s shoes. They looked like this:

“There will be many more, I hope.” said the old man. He and the woman left then. AJ finished his clove cigar and went and traced the letters C, A, L, H, O, U, and N with his fingers. The marble was smooth as glass. The letters were gritty. A single glassy tear rolled down AJ’s gritty face. Then he turned and left bits of his sole in the cemetery.

Birthday boy, @tmcglaun says "I'd really like to up my instagram followers to 300." (Taken with Instagram)

Okkervil River (Taken with Instagram at Visulite Theatre)

I love Kurt Vonnegut (Taken with Instagram)

Stories are good things.

Last week I had dinner with my cousin and his wife. He’s really smart. We started talking about books, what we liked to read, who we’d read, that kind of thing. He told me that he preferred reading nonfiction, because so many interesting things had actually happened, it made more sense to read about them than to read about things that people had made up. I see his logic, but I disagree.

I think written stories are the truest and most effective form of communicating ideas. In stories we can crawl inside another person’s head at the same time we let them inside our own. Truly good stories have a way of trickling their way inside our hearts and residing there. A story can help us to realize truth more intimately than a news bulletin or a lecture. A story can move us as deeply as a symphony, and can make us feel as tangibly as can a touch from a loved one.

Stories are important because in their reading we can be another person in another place in another time. We can take on another consciousness. We can live in worlds that have never existed, that we wish existed, or that we pray never do.

Catch-22 cracked me up, made me think, made me feel, made me depressed. Breakfast of Champions helped me to see all people as unwavering bands of light. 1984 made me fall in love, made me value freedom of thought. Dexter made me think the Fed Ex man wanted to kill me. Harry Potter helped me to recapture my youth, and The Idiot helped me to understand Jesus.

I think you should read fiction. As much as you can. Don’t ignore history, but take time to read things that come from the depths of another person.

What stories spark your imagination and make you feel things? Someday I want to be a writer of those stories. That’d be cool I think.

I don't think I use this site correctly. I like to write things.

So here's a photo of a guy I want to be like. He wrote stories and essays and loved Jesus and smoked a pipe.

I'll keep my hair though.

Thank you, Stanley

These things come back to me like the flashbacks you see in those crime scene TV shows. Memories, off color and slightly grainy like they always are, won't let me rest. A word, a smell, a song, a touch, they fasten my feet to the floor and everything inside of me tries to be in the poorest country in the western hemisphere, where things make sense.

We went to a handicapped orphanage. That's probably not politically correct. We went to an orphanage with several children who had lost limbs in the earthquake. Good God, you've got to experience this place. It's like lies hold no sway. The lie that we seem to have sworn an oath to maintain, that we must attain, accumulate, accessorize, prove, earn, and flaunt is laughable in this place. I watched a black boy with a white plastic leg play soccer. I pressed on the strings while a boy with one arm strummed a guitar with reckless abandon. I was loved by children who have none of the same resources to draw on that I do. I was taught the gospel by a bunch of kids whose Jesus does not compete with the gods of the American Dream.

I was kind of sort of the worship leader for our trip, and I have never been more humbled than I was in that role. Trying to lead the saints that I went to Haiti with stretched me in ways I had never bent, and I was far from confident in myself. Our group gathered with the kids at this orphanage, and I pulled out the guitar we brought to try and lead some songs, feeling none too confident. I do this thing where I tell myself I'm no good a lot, I'm actually pretty good at that, and just as I was getting to all the really compelling reasons why I suck, a song began to rise. Not from me, not from anyone on our team, but from a boy at the orphanage. His name is Stanley.

Stanley sang in English. He spoke truth without trepidation, and when you hear something real like that you know it because it makes all the fake things inside of you quake a little bit. This is how Stanley preached the gospel to me, the missionary. Everyone needs compassion, a love that's never failing, let mercy fall on me. Everyone needs forgiveness, the kindness of savior, the hope of nations. Savior, he can move the mountains, my God is mighty to save, he is mighty to save. Forever, author of salvation, he rose and conquered the grave. Jesus conquered the grave.

So take me as you find me, all my fears and failures, and fill my life again. I give my life to follow, everything I believe in now I surrender.

Savior, he can move the mountains, my God is mighty to save, he is mighty to save. Forever, author of salvation, he rose and conquered the grave, Jesus conquered the grave. Shine your light and let the whole world see, we're singing for the glory of the risen king.

I lost it. I hung my head and wept while I played along. You see, to me it makes perfect sense that Jesus would love these children. They are destitute but grateful. They are loving and humble. I understand that, because anyone would love them. It's the fact that Jesus loves me that I cannot grasp. You see, I'm a wreck of a human being. I know just how mighty I am to sin, and I honestly wonder if Jesus really is that mighty to save, but to hear from these children that Jesus overthrew death itself, and reached to the bottom of my mutilated soul to be with me felt true.

I don't know where you may stand, and really I don't have to know. I'm not the Judge, I'm not the Jury, all I do is bear witness to what I've seen, and what I've seen is that our only shot of feeling like a whole person is to love and be loved by Jesus. I'm still learning how to be loved, and it is the most incredible process of discovery. I wish so deeply to be with you while you discover too. I want you to have incredible moments of depth and clarity that you can relive, and I want you to never feel unloved or unworthy again. I want you to meet kids like Stanley who will change your life. Want to talk about it?

Haiti Ruined my Life

Because everything I see makes me think of something else.

Right now I'm sitting on the porch of my apartment, the rain kisses my feet and, like so many other things do, it reminds me of the most redemptive ten days of my life. Don't ever go to Haiti if you don't want your life to change.

My bike is locked to the fence in front of me, my laptop is on my legs, my ipod sings in my ears, and my blackberry buzzes in my pocket. Isn't that disgusting? A cup of coffee steams by my side and the smoke from a clove is dancing it's way up to the clouds that are emptying themselves of water and pent up electricity as fast as they can.

Last week in Haiti 23 people died in floods because they live in tent cities on the sides of hills. My girlfriend Kathryn told me that she showed grown men how slinkies and etch-a-sketches work. You and I live in a world that some people literally cannot imagine.

I've wanted to write about my trip ever since I got back, but I just can't figure out where to begin. Maybe I can just tell you some stories.

Bouncing around in a large white truck, two dozen large white people watched as a city sprinted past our eyes, not giving us the time to process the things we were seeing. It seemed to me as though the people in Port au Prince had built a beautiful city and then one day woke up and forgot how to live in it. Buildings stood unused while people set up markets on the narrow sidewalks, keeping their backs to the buildings as though they were just returning the cold shoulder the crumbling buildings had given them. The Haitians looked up at us as we passed and greeted us with brilliant smiles, waving their welcome. Children shouted "blan!" as we passed, giving voice to the thought that if we are honest was below the surface for much of our time. "We are the only white people here." The Haitians are blessed not to have the racial tensions that we still have to deal with here in the states, so in a country populated almost exclusively by blacks, whites are rarities, nothing more sinister.

We made our way away from the city and in the outskirts we found that there was an orphanage nearby, so we decided we'd stop by, the people at the orphanage receiving no heads up. Climbing down from our truck we started walking down a street that was flooded with stagnant water, a lime-green liquid highway. We picked our way from rock to rock as a dignified Haitian lady came from the other direction, kicked off her shoes, hiked up her dress and forded the standing river. I felt a little bit silly.

We made it to the orphanage and walked in through a gate made of sheet metal, and were greeted by sixteen beautiful children. These kids who had no idea who we were or why we were there rushed to us with open arms and puckered lips. They wanted to be held, to touch our hair and skin. It was large scale love at first sight. The man who started the orphanage welcomed us into their home, a look of profound gratitude on his face, before we even had the chance to tell him who we were.

You have to know that my keyboard is now misted with tears as I recall this scene for you.

The founder told us that after the earthquake he, his wife, and son, saw that the only thing for them to do was to provide for the children living on the streets with no place to go. So this man, this hero, built a house with his own two hands so that the kids in his neighborhood could have a place to live. Meanwhile he lives in a tent in the front yard. The craziest thing about it is he would never consider himself a hero. People were in need, he had to do something. That to him is no great act, but simply part of what God calls all those who know him to do.

Now that I've gotten started I could write forever, so maybe I'll have to pace myself.

I'll end for now with this thought. Don't feel guilty for the things that you have, I know that we work hard for them. Let's just realize that it's a bunch of bullshit compared to the things that God has prepared for us if we would just let go of the things that we are clinging to and open up our hands so that he can take them in his.

Approaching New Things

My two new roommates are from Sri Lanka. They are the nicest people you could ever hope to meet, and I know they have been privy to a world which I have never known. I'm hoping that while living with them I can learn something. I want to learn about their culture, how people live in other parts of the world. I want to know what they value, why they are here, and what their home is like.

I probably ask the most inane questions. We split a bottle of wine on the porch and I just kept pumping them for information. The whole time we were talking I was just dying to know if monkeys lived in Sri Lanka, but I didn't want to sound like an idiot, so I still haven't asked. I do know that they value family much more than we do here in the United States. We are brought up to try and get away, forge our own ways in the world and make names for ourselves, but they are just the opposite. They live with their families as long as they can, sometimes even after they've gotten married. I can tell that they really miss their families a lot.

Today one of my roommates was wearing a shirt that said "Jesus Rocks." I know that he is Buddhist, so I asked him where he got it. He laughed and said it was given to him, and that it was the last time he would wear it. That didn't offend me too much, because I probably wouldn't want to wear a shirt that says "Buddha Rocks," but then again I wouldn't wear one that says "Jesus Rocks" either.

I think that to understand myself, and my place in the world, what my life means, what Jesus means, it will help to have a broader view of humanity. It's like looking at a scene from a different angle. You see things that you never could have from where you were standing before, and I'm convinced that the more we see of humanity, the more we see Jesus. We are, after all, made in his image.

Sacred v. Profane

Friends and Family,

Cool things are happening here in the hills of South Carolina. I’m trying my hardest not to graduate from Clemson, as college is too much fun to leave behind willingly. There are few times in life where you have such freedom to learn about anything you want, and I’m doing my best to take advantage of this. I’m taking an introduction to religion course, in which we are studying various theorist’s ideas about why people are religious, what role religion plays in individuals and in societies, and what they believe the future of religion will look like. Recently we studied a guy by the name of Emile Durkheim. He argues that all religions begin by separating the things that are profane from the things that are sacred.

Profane things, he says, are those things that we do every day. The mundane, ordinary, run of the mill things. The sacred things are those that are set apart, they are special and meaningful. The sacred things make for good stories. Durkheim says that our days are dominated by the profane. Although I’m not so sure I agree with his idea of the origin of religion, I think he’s right about the amount of profanity in my life. I’ve decided that I want to do more sacred things.

I have been given the opportunity to go to Haiti this December to work in an orphanage called Alex’s House in Port Au Prince, helping children make Christmas presents for their friends and for any family members they are in contact with. Our goal for this trip is to love the Haitian people, really love them, by going and being with them in their state of need, much like Jesus did for us. The state of Haiti has been in the media for some time, but the people are in need of much more than money. They need to know that Jesus loves them relentlessly, and the only way to meet that need is to go and show them.

Paul, one of the authors of the New Testament, talks about how we understand love in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. He says that we, broken people as we are, see love about as clearly as if we were looking in a dim and dingy mirror. But when we meet Jesus we will know love, because we will be seeing Love face to face. I believe that when we serve other people in the name of Jesus it might just cast some light on that mirror, and we will get to catch a glimpse of love in its truest form. I have seen a lot of love in this dark mirror, and I am longing to see it face to face. I long for you all to see it too.

Will you consider helping me show Jesus’ love to the people of Haiti? The total cost of my trip is $1400, and payment is due on the first of December. This amount of money is almost beyond the imagination of a humble college student such as myself, and is even more inconceivable to the people of Haiti. I know that God is faithful though, and I would be so grateful for if you feel moved to help me with the cost of this trip. I understand that financial support may not be in the realm of possibility for you, and so I have an even more exciting possibility for you.

Please pray for me and for our trip. God has given his people a spiritual community, and we have the great opportunity to be involved in what he is doing all over the world through our prayers. Please pray for the kids from Alex's House, that they might see the beauty of God's love in stark contrast to the broken world we all live in. Pray for the nation of Haiti, that it would recover and the people would be able to live with the dignity that God desires for all of us. Pray for me, that I might love people well, and in so doing might help people accept the love that Jesus has for them.

If you want to know more about Alex's House check out their website here. If you want to know more about the trip, what's happening with me, or want to know how to help me financially please email me at [email protected]

I am inviting you to do more sacred things with me. This is where I am beginning.

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