done.

(sleep!)

"Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe. As it distinguishes between truth and opinion, so it distinguishes between truth and idolatry. All nations are tempted-and few have been able to resist the temptation for long-to clothe their own particular aspirations and actions in the moral purposes of the universe. To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one thing, while to pretend to know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations is quite another. There is a world of difference between the belief that all nations stand under the judgment of God, inscrutable to the human mind, and the blasphemous conviction that God is always on one's side and that what one wills oneself cannot fail to be willed by God also.

"The lighthearted equation between a particular nationalism and the counsels of Providence is morally indefensible, for it is that very sin of pride against which the Greek tragedians and the Biblical prophets have warned rulers and ruled. That equation is also politically pernicious, for it is liable to engender the distortion in judgment which, in the blindness of crusading frenzy, destroys nations and civilizations-in the name of moral principle, ideal, or God himself.

"On the other hand, it is exactly the concept of interest defined in terms of power that saves us from both that moral excess and that political folly. For if we look at all nations, our own included, as political entities pursuing their respective interests defined in terms of power, we are able to do justice to all of them. And we are able to do justice to all of them in a dual sense: We are able to judge other nations as we judge our own and, having judged them in this fashion, we are then capable of pursuing policies that respect the interests of other nations, while protecting and promoting those of our own. Moderation in policy cannot fail to reflect the moderation of moral judgment."

--Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations

or in the name of democratic capitalism.

have just rediscovered grits. amazing. am currently bobbing head like an idiot and tapping my foot. and mouthing the lyrics at blazing speed. in the middle of the coffee house. boo yah! also found street-brit hip hop group The Streets. good stuff.

six pages of my last fifteen pager done. i'm going to bed. tomorrow is writing day. and after that comes a lot of finals. i am very tired.

i want to eat real bananas. do you?
i want to fly to tanzania. do you?
i want to swim in might rivers. do you?
i want to sit on a warm rock. do you?
i want to talk about hippos. do you?
i want to jump off waterfalls. do you?
i want to sip chai with maziwa. do you?
i want to eat at the HastyTasty. do you?
i want to make music with Mike. you too?

let's go!

sigh...why did we let it go by so fast?

---

p.s. but...!
i'm sitting in Houghton's brand-new and very charming coffee house, listening to my friends Jon and Jon and Alan and Blaine and Mike and Aileen play improv jass Christmas tunes. that's incredibly cool :) now all i need is some caramel apple cider...who wants to buy me a caramel apple cider?

Went and saw the Nutcracker last night, performed by a rather impressive Russian ballet troupe. Very cool. The world is full of beauty. Sometimes that beauty takes the form of fairy tales, and the beauty is the excitement of mystery and possibility that fills every day.

In another note, a friend of a friend double majored in ballet and AIDS relief and education at a major ivy league school. good grief.

I am listening to Five For Fighting's "America Town" album. In spite of all the scorn certain women have heaped upon the band in general and "Superman" in particular, I'm increasingly impressed and thinking, hmmm...

I think I'd like to buy this CD. Perhaps its the stress...


--Recipe for Futility:
One 15 page case-study on Imperial Japan through the eyes of Robert Jervis' Security Dilemma.

One 5 page paper on political theory in Herman Melville's Billy Budd, for the charming and harsh Herr Doktor Meilaender.

One 8 page paper on East African Folklore, for my favorite professor. Except it's several months overdue.

One 8 page paper. For my senior seminar. hmmmmmmm...

And four finals. Four blue-book finals.

An ominously sore throat and swollen lymph nodes and achy head.

Blurred vision.

I am going to die...

but not yet. not today. today, Hans Morgenthau and John Mearsheimer are on my side. and if not, Thomas Merton will always be my friend.

"Oh, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste
with a distempered appetite. To be generous,
guiltless and of free disposition, is to take those
things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets..."

-Lady Olivia, Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare may have been a dirty man, but he was brilliant too, and he knew human nature. Nothing makes you a prisoner like self-centered pride or arrogance, and nothing makes you free like laughter.

with a satisfied smile, i clicked the little spell-check button at the top of the night's effort. i wrote nine pages of reflection on Tanzania and me and philosophy about life and culture and it was a pleasure to write and hopefully just as pleasant to read. oh, i am immensely satisfied. it's good to write something and feel like a competent writer again.

i was skipping along quite nicely, telling the dictionary to ignore words like "Arensen" and "homestay" and "Wasafwa" and "intercultural studies" when suddenly my spell checker popped up the word "Kenote" which is really strange because Anne Kenote had absolutely nothing to do with my Tanzania experience; she hadn't even learned to say "Hujambo" and kupiga "Hodi! Hodi!" yet. How did she get into my paper? and then I remembered seeing her near my computer with that mischevious little smile on and I thought, wait a minute...

and here's what I read smack in the middle of a paragraph about Dr. Arensen's old friend the Commissionary (and his wife) in the Sudan and his avid love for checkers:

"Right in the middle of important, pressing business or entertaining visitors they would stop for an hour of games and tea and cheerful, inane banter. Then they would up and get back to business, filling both with ample gusto. And I think that Anne Kenote is the coolest, whatever I was writing about, I now count as rubbish because the thought of the illustrious Anne takes over all previous thoughts a man can entertain. So that’s all. Grade me as you will but I refuse to recant. I will die with these last words on my lips..."

And I'm very glad that I spell-checked this document before printing it up and handing it in. And Anne Kenote is a hilarious and creative individual (by the way, in case you run into Anne, make sure you say it like "Comma", not "Can" or "Fanny." She hates that.

Josh Miller got up and read this poem at tonight's poetry reading in the beautiful atmosphere of our new coffee house. It's beautiful. It's a fight every day to try and reach out past the common alienation and loneliness and make the connection and find some sense of shared humanity, and some days the fight goes better than others.

Tigger's Lament

No one understands me, I tell you

I'd quit bouncing if I had the choice;

but I'm imbalanced, hyperactive

why don't you try being

the sole representative of your species, and see

how you turn out?

Instead of sympathy

I get Owl's platitudes, Rabbit's constant nagging

Pooh's too stupid, and Piglet's too worried

to really listen; Gopher's too busy,

Eeyore's depressing, and I'm tired

of invading Roo's family life.



Sometimes I wish

Christopher Robin would take me out

of the Hundred-Acre Wood

and put me back where I belong

where the gods weren't so cruel to leave me

isolated--a place with she-Tiggers to marry

that feels like home.



But that's just story-book thinking.

So I'll keep bouncing through fields and trees,

trample Rabbit's garden, singing my songs

of feigned happiness hoping that someday

the lie becomes truth.

by Josh Miller

a little moment of Shakespearean greatness from the weekend.



'the making of the madman' and a look I like to call 'blue steel,' for the latest 'derelicte' show.

Here's an interesting thought from my old friend Tracy's blog:

"Saturday, December 04, 2004
We went to see The Gondoliers yesterday because our friend Dan Walter was performing in it. Janelle makes these signs that spell out "SEXY DAN" so we could hold it up during curtain call. However, I lost the "N" that I was supposed to be holding during the second act. Next thing you know, we were jumping up and cheering and holding up a huge sign spanning an entire row that spelled out 'SEXY DA!!!' "

hmm...as some of you know, I'm performing in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night tonight...just a thought.

:)

John Leo, in "The Loudmouth Emmys" (US News and World Report, December 6th, 2004 edition), a hilarious and yet very, very sad synopsis of the worst in American political rhetoric.

"Natalie Mains, apparently surprised that many Dixie Chicks fans hated her famous anti-Bush comments of 2003, said, 'I realize I'm just supposed to sing and look cute so our fans won't have anything to upset them while they're cheating on their wives or driving around in their pickup trucks shooting small animals.' Then she complained that the political climate is 'so the opposite of me as a person and what I believe in.' It's just about opposite my personhood too, Natalie."

there's nothing like grace to make a bad day rock. now...back into the foggy mystery.

Dustin
Lindsay
Chris Jones
Cheryl
Rachel :)
me

for the rest

much thanks to jonathon gitelson

now...who do you think of?

'Till shade is gone, till water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder's eye on the last day' ... that is how long the Aiel say they'll fight.
-- Ingtar, The Great Hunt, by Robert Jordan

and that's how long, it seems, i'll be writing this paper.

jonathan gitelson is impressively artistic...

"I have already explained the nature of civil liberty: and, with respect to equality, the word must not be understood to mean that power and riches should be equally divided between all; but that power should never be so strong as to be capable of acts of violence, or excercised but in virtue of the exercisor's station, and undert he direction of the laws; and that, in regard to riches, no citizen should be so sufficiently opulent to be able to purchase another, and none so poor as to be forced to sell himself. (Footnote: 'If you wish to give consistency to the State, bring these two extremes as near as possible towwards each other, and allow of neither excessive wealth nor beggary. These two states, naturally inseparable, are dangerous alike to the common welfare; the one gives birth to the favourers of tyranny, the other to tyrants, and they traffic between them with the public liberty; the one buys it, and the other sells it.') This supposes on the side of the great, moderation in wealth and position, and on the side of the lower classes, moderation in avarice and greed.

"This equality is deemed by many a mere speculative chimera which never can be reduced to practice. But, if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we ought not try at least to regulate it? It is precisely because of the force of circumstances tends always to destroy equality that the force of legislation must always tend to maintain it."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

thoughts:
rebuttal of Adam Smith's invisible hand?
based on the idea that a society in which one person is not free is a society in which no one is free?

it reminds me of the principle put forth in feminist theology, whereby a people deny and lose their humanity when they deny the humanity of another. in objectifying and demeaning women, we objectify and demean ourselves, losing our place in the created order...

i want to be a connoisseur of life

so, downright one of the best movies ever: "As Good As It Gets."

best thing about it? the sheer unpredictability--it feels like real life and yet it's still beautiful.

best quotes: while, the dog has the best ones, and they're all untranslatable. How about Melvin Udall, "I'm drowning here, and you're describing the water!"

best simple symbolism ever in a movie. and best demonstration of trust and betrayal, confidence and forgiveness.

okay...time to study for East Asian History and Politics' one question blue book exam tomorrow. hoorah!

friends, i have bad news.

i was perusing TIME, which someone had kindly left in the basement restroom of the library, when his smiling face leapt out at me from the obituaries page.

Howard Keel, star of the most amazing musical movie ever to have graced the silver screen, died of colon cancer. The dapper, courageous, visionary Adam Pottamie of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is no longer with us. But his inspiration and model will live on for all buckskin-clad bearded men with hearts of gold fearlessly trying to find their way (and a wife) in this all too harsh world.

we pause for a moment of silence.

in honor of Eli Knapp and Timothy Inge, it's time to try a haiku. this one is called "Honda" and it's about a little feisty unpretentious prancing beauty of a bike with a big 600cc heart.


wind whips sharp--playful
empty road beckons and yawns
alone, alive--free


and a little free verse

my own red rocket
would go with me.
spread out our wings and
blur this scenery away.
too much anxious power
wrapt up purring in
too little a frame
calls to the itch
aching in my bones
to give speech in speed--
with deep cry to deep--
and run and run
in wind and road and sun
as sunset calls to sky
burning in the day's end.


well. a bike would be really nice right now.

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his sould? Or what will a man give in exchange for his sould?

Don't run from suffering; embrace it...What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?

-Jesus of Nazareth

The Franciscan friars visiting our campus this week bubble over with life; I feel like a pale shell next to them, to the life they have. What does it profit a man to spend his entire life running after the impulses dangled in front of him if his entire frenzied, frenetic, restless life is soul-killing suicide?

What are the things that give us real life? Their joy comes from the simple fellowship of poverty: no television, shared meals, communal possessions, shared manual labor, shared ministry--that coveted hiking fellowship that I remember so dearly from the trail. Their spiritual wholeness comes from hours spent daily in prayer, communal celebration, solitude, meditation, study, submission to authority and worship--carefully examining the soul and by grace pushing back the self-destructive habits and ideas that strangle out the life of the soul.

All this for the price of poverty, chastity, and obedience...

"The only container into which grace and mercy are poured out is that of trust. We ought to be leaning so heavily on Christ that it is plainly evident that if He were not there supporting us, we would fall." --Brother Columba

want to read something truly amazing? Check out Anna Letton's poem of the day. very true and amazing thoughts.

"The Pearl Harbor attack has, until recently, been regarded as the supreme act of treachery and no words were vile enough to describe its perpetrators, The facts which are available today indicate that it was not, perhaps, such a "day of infamy" as it seemed. The dastardly Japanese villian made lots of warning noises before he broke into the American maiden's bedroom, and there was really no excuse for her having left her chastity belt undone." --Mosley, Hirohito.

[wince]

wow. you have to love British wit.

[comment on the incredible wealth of information on matters of state in antebellum Japan gleaned from personal diaries]

Statesmen in Japan must have nothing in the way of personal lives, be incredibly sleep-deprived, and think upon their daily actions and conversations with such hubris as to believe their every conversation worthy of memorialization. How could they have gotten any sleep or relaxation if they spend every minute running back to their rooms and scribbling down conversations verbatim, every day. Holy crap! No wonder they went to war--how are you expected to make rational decisions when you spent all night carefully annotating and analyzing and scribing the actions, conversations, menus, circumstances, and demeanors of the day before?

And historians must have absolutely no experience in diary-writing themselves, to take at face value for historical evidence everything said statesmen pen in their diaries. Good lord, there is no one to whom it is more important to appear reasonable, grand and just that to one's self--diaries are notoriously generous to the authors. Of course you think Hirohito was a kind, helpless, doddering old gentleman who fought hard for peace but was surrounded and railroaded by corrupt and evil army politicians into starting World War II in the Pacific--all that we know about him comes from diaries from his most loyal, devoted servants, people who loved him. Geeesh!

Well...anyone want to talk Japanese politics, 1848-1945? Anyone?

ps--the following piece of poetry, written by Japan's Meiji Emperor, was read by his grandson, Hirohito, and the Showa Emperor, in one of the final Imperial Councils in the last tense days of summer, 1941 (if devotedly loyal and tragically sad diarists writing to memorialize the Showa Emperor to posterity can be believed...)

"Yomo no uni
Mina harakara to
Omou yo ni
Nado namikaze no
Tachisawagaruramu"

("The seas surround all quarters of the globe
And my heart cries out to the nations of the world.
"Why then do the winds and waves of strife
Disrupt the peace between us?)

Robert Mosley, Hirohito: Emperor of Japan.

i had a big idea
i had a crazy eye
i broke the sacred seal
i told a lazy lie
i've had my conscience bent
i've had my patience tried
i've been up in the desert and
down by the riverside

will the eagle fly
if the sky's untrue?

do the faithful sigh
because they are so few?

remember when i cried?
remember when you knew?
remember the look in your eyes?
i know i do

and count the stars to measure time
the earth is hard, the treasure fine
to the sea, ill crawl on my knees

feel it coming in
feel it going out
water covers sand
blood covers doubt
so i begin again
again, the healing bow
there was a time when i might have surrendered, but not now

consult the cards to measure mine
the earth is hard, but the treasure fine
at the sea, ill wait on my knees
at the sea, ill wait on my knees
at the sea, ill wait on my knees

Dig, Jars of Clay

****

so I took this week off from people because i needed perspective. it's a strange thing to detox yourself of entanglements--to pull yourself (or just be pulled) out of all the little hectic social constructs and demands and games and remember who you are away from everyone else, and especially away from the ambitions you have when you are with people. it's like i've become someone completely different, and i'm starting to question a lot of the choices i've made this semester, this year--choices of priorities and goals and worst of all, i think, ambition and and the choice to take a stance of control.

i don't really know what to think; just that it's too easy to get lost in the sea of demands and the conflicting claims of a thousand games and obligations that come in community; i needed to gain some perspective and God gave me the chance to do that this week. it's odd sometimes how only being crippled or broken can make you do that.

well. i'm back. sort of. you never know when i'll get that crazy glint in my eyes and escape to the hills with a pack of ramen and a sleeping bag. or just take a vow of silence. now there's an idea...

Conversation of the Day and Amazingly Profound Person of the Day go to Lindsay Musser, delivering these gems in complete snappy Musser (c) deadpan:

Dan: You're right, I had a great day yesterday.

Musser: Do you know why you had a great day yesterday, Dan?

Dan: Gee, I dunno, Lindsay--because Jesus loves me?

Musser: No Dan. Jesus loving you has nothing to with good days or bad days. Believe me. You had a good day yesterday because you saw me while doing laundry.

Yup. Thank you Musser and Brautigam for making lunch so much more than really, really bad Chinese food. (Brautigam's comments are of so shockingly out of place and inappropriate a nature as to be unprintable, even with the low, low publishing standards of waybread.blogspot.com--but if you really want to know, just ask me why I fell off my chair laughing at lunch today).

"In the meantime, as a sop to the masses, as well as the the Diet and the press, they recommended the election as the new prime minister of one of the grand old characters of Japanese politics, Marquis Okuma. Okuma was well into his seventies, lived in great luxury, and liked nothing better than to relax with a jug of sake and an armful of beautiful young concubines. He was known as the Sage of Waseda becaue he has founded the university of that name, but was apt to make light of learning. The same young fanatic who had killed Viscount Mori had also thrown a bomb at Okuma and blown off his leg, but the new premier was so eccentric that he had cheerfully subscribed to the building of the assasin's memorial: 'He was a great patriot. He meant well.' "

--Leonard Mosley, Hirohito: Emperor of Japan.

Nothing makes the joy of studying early twentieth century Japanese political life more enjoyable than the fact that is it written with that peculiar British flair for droll wit, compelling narrative and a seemingly careless precision in word choice.

Have you ever had the feeling that someone else is living your life?

In a moment of random curiosity, I did a google search on my name. (trumpet fanfare) "dan holcomb" brings up waybread.blogspot.com as the first result. wayyyyyyyy cool. (other interesting results: some guy named Dan Holcomb was shot and killed in West Virginia, and his case went all the way to the Supreme Court there...whoa...)

but to continue. I saw a site with my name on it (no shocker, common names...there's a Daniel Holcomb who sells real estate in Lansing, Michigan...shudder. I will never sell real estate). I did a double take. The title of this site was in Kiswahili...strange. There aren't that many people in the world choosing website titles in Kiswahili. It's not exactly a language that everyone gets a chance to learn. I had to check it out. After all...I also speak Kiswahili.

Voila'!

I ended up at publicpixel.com, on a page entitled "matunda ya macho," which featured a number of short films including one entitled "The Dan Holcomb Experience."!!! Can you believe it...there is another white Dan Holcomb out there who cannot dance but refuses to admit it, speaks swahili, and says things like "baba yangu ni mulevi." And is an internationally aware Christian!

AND...this publicpixel.com, I discovered, is a meeting place for internationally-minded individuals with commentary on international happenings and links to hundreds of webpages, including one on "Ukimwi"--the Swahili word for AIDS. Aware of social justice issues...I'm beginning to feel a kinship here...

Well, further research discovered (I get excited just thinking about it)...

www.danielholcomb.com

I'm serious. Try it out.

Well, I had to learn more. One of the other links off of publicpixel.com was RVA's (That's Rift Valley Academy, to those of you non TCK-savvy individuals) graduating class of 1997 webpage. A quick search revealed the incredible truth:

In 1997, I graduated from the Rift Valley Academy, in Kenya (!?!), with Heath Arensen. The brother of Blake Arensen, my Swahili teacher last year here at Houghton College, and the nephew of Dr. Jonathan Arensen, my anthropology professor with whom I studied in Tanzania for four months earlier this year. Who taught me most of the swahili that I know. Do you want proof? here. Check for yourself.

So let's recap. Daniel Holcomb grew up in Africa, went to the Rift Valley Academy (a name that lives on in reverence by all jealous non-TCKs) during the Arensen/Adkins dynasty, speaks Swahili, loves rock climbing, works at a camp, has a bitter sense of anti-pop-Christianity evidenced through humor, and now travels the world including Egypt. Wow. That's stinkin amazing. Throw on top of that the fact that publicpixel is his webpage, and he is a much more incredible photographer and web designer than I ever will be. And he's chillin' out and doing pretty cool-looking things in the northwestern United States. I'm a little in awe...

So the real question is now...

do I email him?

Cheerful people are continually telling depressed people to buck up; who knows what God may do. This is positively worthless to a person who is broken by what God has not done: what has slidden into the past. It needs to be rephrased: who knows what God has already done, secretly, smilingly, that remains to be revealed.

Sometimes hope is revisionist history.

dang
so once you finally acknowledge the persistant meddling existence of this God guy, and you grudgingly admit to needing him, and you just open your life a crack and let him start tinkering with "just this one thing," the next thing you know...

all the bets are off. it's cliched because it's true: THIS changes everything. it's like some perspective shift in a movie when the camera spins 180 degrees, then spins another 180 degrees, alters color perception, whirls again, and all the old black and white blurry pictures take another dimension of focus, and then another, and then another, and the pace of the film has picked up so incredibly much and every five seconds there's an "oooh" or an "AHHHHHH" or an "oh, ouch..." or a "look out!" and the changes are coming so fast it's impossible to keep up, and you don't know whether to be scared or excited or laughing or what because something so much bigger than any pattern you've ever imagined is beginning to emerge and you've just seen one itty bitty corner that is so tremendously bigger and shocking than you've ever imagined...

it's like kayaking. and the river just surged to flood stage. it's class five with no eddies and no place to get out and nothing to do but paddle impotently and scream. this nice controllable walk with God has become something alive of it self...

raging
breathtaking
shocking
ripping
roaring
full of loss
full of grandeur
wild beyond what is reasonable
horrifying
totally past high-stakes
terrifyingly
heartrendingly
beautifully
exhilirating.

and really really scary. because everything stable and secure (even if a bit angst-inducing) just got tossed and the dice are rolling and only God (if he does) knows what will emerge from the maelstrom.

everything i thought about myself and about life is being totally reevaluated.

reborn.

"I think Bush deserves this victory because he fought a war for the USA. I don't know why Muslims grieve at his victory because there is no difference between Bush and Kerry. And US polices towards the Muslim world will never change." [emphasis added]
Yasir, Mirpur, Pakistan

"The people of the USA have proved that despite the atrocities in Abu Ghraib jail and the murder of thousands of people in Iraq, they will keep supporting injustice. This election result is a nightmare for the whole world."
Hilal Bari, Lahore, Pakistan

"I am shocked how America couldn't select such a genuine and passionate leader as Senator Kerry. God bless our world. How would the founding fathers of America feel about their land becoming such a Christian fundamentalist country?"
Tim Karman, Singapore

"Well I'm in the minority I guess but I'm so happy. These difficult times require clear leadership, dedication and strength. Kerry didn't have any of those qualities. Bush is the only one who could lead America."
Fiona, Paris, France

"Bush's victory has made the world quite clear. It is all of us now, Europe, Africa, and Asia, against them."
Irgi, Jakarta, Indonesia

"Well the right man won, that's for certain. Mr Kerry was a worthy opponent and the country is evenly divided. But only one of the two men is committed to the vision that the only long term answer to the powder keg of the Middle East is to clear the scene of tyrants and allow the people there to grow decent, lawful, representative governments. For his courageous stand on "other" people's freedoms, not just that of Americans, President Bush is among our greatest presidents."
Joseph Stern, New York, New York, USA

"Many Canadians are dismayed to see Bush stay for a second term in the White House. George Bush doesn't know how to deal with the rest of the world and thinks the stick and the carrot policy is the most appropriate, especially with Arabs. His policies have turned many people against America."
Wael, Toronto, Canada

"After Bush's victory, I think the US forces will withdraw. But not before they have passed through Iran or Syria!"
Ali Mohammed Jum'aa, Kirkuk, Iraq

From the BBC webpage of responses they have recieved from accross the world, via email, concerning the George W. Bush's reelection. (thanks for the link Katrina!)

to bounce off of flicker, the biggest question that I am accustomed to answering without even thinking is the simplest and most fundamental of all:

Who is my neighbor?

When I am hiking with STEP or Highlander adventure trips, the answer is incredibly easy: it's something I have no choice over. My community is my kids, and their neighbors are the eight other people arbitrarily assigned to that group. You cannot ignore them, clique them out, or simply choose to spend your time with someone else. And you most certainly cannot ignore what is increasingly becoming obvious to you: their amazing beauty as human beings in the image of God, and their needs and faults as ordinary people.

But when I am not hiking, my neighbors are my choice. They are the people that live in my suburban neighborhood, the worshippers in my upper-class church, the parents at my private school or in my homeschool support group, and the coworkers in my office. If I want, I can spend my entire life around people who are easy for me to live with, relate to, and love, without even making a conscious choice to do so.

The problem is, the most challenging and fulfilling relationships I've ever had were on the trail with people I either couldn't stand, or was sure I would never feel comfortable or loved around. They were so alien and often intimidating that I never would have chosen them for my neighbors. But the richness that came out of a whole group of radically different people with no other choices for fellowship was so beautiful compared to the blandness of my little homogenous groups that I was awed and brought to tears at the beauty of God's diversity. I was humbled before a God who's creativity so shockingly and refreshingly transcended my comfortable space.

It is unquestionable that once we have chosen a neighbor, and become involved in their community, it is almost impossible to not love them and minister to their needs. The question we will either embrace or ignore for the rest of our life is, simply, who will we choose to be the neighbor to?

After seeing the needs of Latin America, Cuba, Africa, the inner city, the outcasts, the poor, the trafficked humans, will I make them part of the patterns of my life--living in their neighborhoods, shopping in their markets, going to their churches, living in their world--or will I carefully or unconsciously allow myself to be insulated from their lives and their needs, avoiding their presence so that I will not stand condemned for failing them as my neighbors?

Who is my neighbor? For the best missionaries and happiests Christian I know, that answer is the people of the Rukwa valley of Tanzania.

whoa...

so I didn't have enough writing to do with a blue book exam and all today, so i spent the last hour or so (maybe two...sheepish grin) writing what for all intents and purposes is a paper. an essay. good lord. to save you having to scroll through it, i put it up at another blog of mine. be warned...it's really really long. and probably not worth reading.

"From an organizational perspective, it is not surprising to find evidence of serious accidents in the Indian nuclear and missile programs...On January 4, 2001, Indian defense secretary Yo gendra Narain led a special inspection of the Milan missile production facility in Hyderabad. The Milan missile00a short range missiel normally armed with a large conventional warhead--had failed in test launches and during the Kargil War, and Narain was to discuss the matter with the palnt's managers and technical personnel. For reasons that remain unclear, the electrical circuitry was not disconnected and the live conventional warhead was not capped onthe missile displayed for the visiting dignitary from New Delhi. Wehn the plant manager accidentally touched the start button, the missile launched, flew through the body of one official, killing him instantly, and then nose-dived into the ground, catching on fire and injuring five other workers. The defense secretary was shocked, but unharmed. The official killed was the quality control officer for the Milan-missile program."

Scott D. Sagan, Indian and Pakistani Nuclear Weapons: For Better or for Worse?


"To be clear: none of this is meant to deny that the sheer horror of nuclear war is impressive and mind-concentratingly dramatic...It is simply to stress that the sheer horror of repeating World War II is not all that much less dramatic or impressive, and that powers essentially satisfied with the status quo will strive to avoid anything that they feel could lead to either calamity. World War Ii did not cause total destruction of the world, but it did utterly annihilate the three national regimes that brought it about. It is probably quite a bit more terrifying to think about a jump from the 50th floor than about a jump from the 5th floor, but anyone who finds life even minimally satisfying is extremely unlikely to think about either."

John Mueller, The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons.

the real disadvantage of deconstructing your culture is that you end of like Socrates. you criticize, ridicule, and the way everyone else does things in herds without thinking about them, but then you have to admit that you don't really have any better ideas...still working on those...yeah.

as a side note, John Locke views the conjugal society (that's marriage) as the product of a social contract between a man and a woman. In Lockean political theory, social contracts take shape according to their purpose; the only rational purpose that can be derived for such a union from the Laws of Nature is that of procreation. Why procreate? In order to propogate one's genes, according to Darwin, but Locke insists that we procreate because in return for birthing and governing children until they become old enough to reason for themselves, children will honor their parents and take care of them in their old age (not from any inherent altruism, but because they want the inheritance from the parents).

Soo...that's a pretty cold look at the world. And it means that the marriage, according to Locke, is only solvent as long as it is needed for the procreating, protection and education of children to maturity.

One might instead take the functionalist sociological perspective and say that marriage is an institution carefully socialized into the members of a society in order to provide a stable unit for the procreation and enculturation of children, thus ensuring the survival of the society. Status as an adult, romantic notions of love and marriage, sexual legitimacy, and religious obligation and emotional attachment are tools (lures as you will) to bring men and women into this arrangement.

Sigh. All of this deconstruction just rips right through beauty.

Most recent political theorists emphasize the depravity and individuality of mankind. They don't talk a lot about loneliness, the need for fellowship, community, and belonging, affirmation, laughter, celebration, beauty. and romance. In reducing life to the material essentials of survival, they often forget the reason for survival: for people who no longer have to struggle to live often surrender all that progress and kill themselves.

Yes, the men and women of mankind are dirty, fearful, self-serving individuals who will subordinate pretty much everything to surviving feared threats. But once survival has been achieved, we go right back to those other things: we need them. Too many theorists miss that very real aspect of other human needs and desires than just survival; so Locke misses a very many good reasons for conjugal society.

Not the least of which, according to CS Lewis, is laughter.

So...questions. Just for kicks and giggles.

What is the purpose of marriage?
What criteria does one use to find a partner for this joint endeavor?
How does one persuade this partner to enter into this agreement?
Do these processes make sense in light of their goal?

And why is it that fifty percent of these ventures fail in our society? Why do we do things the way that we do them, as a society? What are our motives, conscious and unconscious, as individuals, for playing these games?

And my favorite:

Taking into consideration a lack of knowledge about the future, a lack of understanding of the opposite sex, an impossibly wide field of candidates (in this very small world), a complete inability to predict personal changes in self and other over the next sixty years, clumsy and ill-advised courtship institutions, the sheer overwhelming power of arbitrary notions such as physical beauty and romantic attractiveness, not to mention undiscovered psychological preferences skewed by positive and negative interactions with members of the opposite sex over the course of life, and the individual's ingrained and sometimes dysfunctional social behaviors from years of living in sometimes painful and sometimes rewarding social systems, the inevitable build-up of the presented, social self...

is there any way you can expect twenty-somethings to make intelligent decisions about these sort of things? it's a wonder than fifty percent of these marriages do survive.

1. eating donuts is good

2. eating free donuts: priceless

3. celebration is the lifeblood of community

4. community is essential to faith

5. faith and laughter are very good friends

6. if you aren't laughing or crying, you aren't listening.



ps--to whom it may concern, I now declare a change in theoretical orientation. I used to be a realist with a grim dash of constructivism. i can no longer justify that perspective, helpful and formative as it may be. i am now a feminist/radical/marxist. yes, you heard that right. i am a feminist. and a marxist. and a radical. maybe a liberation theologian, in my own special way.

why? because as the astute Ms. Winter observed, realism, liberal thought, and constructivism are not about people; they are about nation-states and ideas in conflict. They are about power, coercion and control. They are about systems, systems to which the theorists are too fond of and too comfortably attached. They are the view from the inside.

So it is that we see nations fighting nations, comfortably directed by the ideas and men at the top, who are kept quite safe. Why is it that we are willing, for the security of "my innocent six-year-old son," to cheerfully and righteously bomb some poor Iraqi woman's six-year-old son? How is it that one child is a casualty of war while the other is a tragic loss?

It is because theory sees states, nations, people-groups, and ideas in conflict--but not people. Individuals. War is not the clash of nations but people killing other poeple and burning their houses, usually poor and defenseless people.

History written by the victors is not complete; nor is political theory by the powerful, nor is economics by the rich. And if you look for my king, you will find him with the lepers, the slaves, the sexually exploited, the desperate poor, the broken, the lame, the blind, the crippled...

it is true you will find him with the rich, the healthy, the joyous, the redeemed and those whose lives have been in one sense or another rescued from the wrack and ruin of the world, of the state of nature. For truly, nothing is more alienating and soul-killing than the state of nature. but he does not stay there.

his eyes are constantly outward; they look over the walls of good institutions where a semblance of hope has been carved out of the despair of the world, to those who are outside, or worse, underneath. he ever looks to bring the outsider in, and the troubled to peace. he is not content with security and peace when those outside do not know these things.

and if the walls by which we know peace and prosperity are built on the insecure and poor, he humbles them. if the gates are shut and locked, he blows them down.

the view from the inside is incomplete; in that sense it is a lie until it joins the view from the outside and the view from underneath. then it comes closer to the perspective of Christ. and that is my goal as a Christian: to see the world as Christ sees it, to celebrate when he celebrates and to mourn when he mourns and to smite with angry wrath when he...

we'll work on that.

Tony Campolo: "Francis Fukiyama was wrong; democratic capitalism is not the last great idea of history. The Kingdom of Heaven will be the last great idea of history--The true End of History is Christ."

The Alpha and the Omega.

----

I don't care if it's an anarchic international system with competitive securtiy interests and unavoidable conflict. I don't care if we live in a Hobbesian state of nature.

There is no peace without justice, and there is no justice without shalom and reconciliation.

End of discussion. There will be no compromise on this definition. Completion of conquest and subjugation will no longer be tolerated as an alternative definition of peace. Yes, I know that's how we did it in America...

But there must be a way for the peoples of the world to still the discord without silencing the discordant voices themselves.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo mama
i know more about Japanese feudalism than i ever...
wait a minute: i mean, yeah, that exam did pretty much consume my every waking moment this week...but it was fun!

hmmmmm....four years into schooling, and i'm actually getting into the spirit of higher education. for one, i can still remember (i still want to remember!) the stuff i studied for the exam AFTER the exam is done. weird...

well, it's good that that's done, because we're heading off to DC this weekend, to visit rafiki zetu Mike "Mickle" (shudder-vomit) Diercks, the happily engaged one. And we'll go to the North American Christians in Social Work Convention. And we're leaving tonight, so I don't have classes tomorrow! Booo Yah, think I'll go visit Georgetown and check out their masters program, on the odd chance that I can find someone to cover the tab!

In other news, I found the perfect yearbook quote, mangled it down the required size (how can you seriously expect anyone to say anything significant in 275 characters or less? really? I should definitely bring in Dr. Oakerson on supporting arguement there...if you can't do anything worthwhile in your lifetime, how are you supposed to say anything worthwhile in 275 characters, and that's counting punctuation and spaces too--better use long words.)

Here's a quote that didn't make the cut sheerly due to length, but is in fact very very awesome:

"Are you not thirsty?" said the Lion.

"I'm dying of thirst," said Jill.

"Then drink," said the Lion.

"May I--could I--would you mind going away while I do?" said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked for the whole mountain to move aside just for her convenience.

The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

"Will you promise not to--do anything to me, if I do come?" said Jill.

"I make no promise," said the Lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.

"Do you eat girls?" she said.

"I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

"I daren't come and drink," said Jill.

"Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion.

"Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then."



"There is no other stream," said the Lion.

--CS Lewis, The Silver Chair

so I have this little private blog where I dump all the posts that are too rambling/raging/personal/inane/depressive and I feel good because it's just a scribbling board for myself. until I realized today that under my profile is a handy listing of my most recent posts, including the "FOR DAN'S EYES ONLY" ones. Ooops. glad I rectified that! it's kind of like making faces at yourself in the mirror and then remembering that the mirror is really a store window and everyone is watching...

"Almost invariably Western leaders claim they are acting on behalf of "the world community." One minor lapse occured during the run-up to the [First] Gulf War. In an interview on "Good Morning America," Dec. 21, 1990, British Prime Minister John Major referred to the actions "the West" was taking against Saddam Hussein. He quickly corrected himself and subsequently referred to "the world community." He was, however, right when he erred." --Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations?

Jon Stewart did a brilliant job yesterday, on the Daily Show, critiquing a statement by George W. Bush in which the President indicated that Iraq was the logical next choice in the war on terrorism. Stewart noted that actually, there is more evidence for terrorist backing from Saudi Arabia (most of the 9-11 hijackers were carrying Saudi passports) and Iran. There is, actually, very little linkage between Iraq and terror.

"Experience suggests that the prevention of state failure depends almost entirely on a scare commodity: international political will." [emphasis added]

Robert I. Rothberg, Failed States in a World of Terror.

This, of course, applies to most instances of international intervention. In the American discourse, Iraq is an enemy, Saudi Arabia is a friend, and Iran is not a threat. In the American discourse, Iraq is feared and Israel is not; one is allowed to posess weapons of mass destruction stolen from America, and the other is sacked at the mere speculation of seeking the ability to build such weapons. The fact of the matter is, even the war on terror is subject to and directed by questions of political feasibility.

Iraq found itself at a critical juncture in world history: the American public was spoiling for a fight, Iraq was already percieved as an enemy, America had economic interests in the area, intervention was justifiable for humanitarian reasons, and the legitimacy of her government was publicly questioned. Iraq's main mistake was not belonging, like Saudi Arabia, North Korea and China, to gentleman's club of world politics.

so...my blogs are beginning to look increasingly like my papers, and my papers are beginning to sound increasingly like long blogs.

i think somewhere between Tanzania and hiking philosophy I completely lost the ability to be anything like a disciplined academic.

Once More, this is a brilliant, brilliant individual who happens to also be thinking just what i'm thinking but so much better:

hansypansy

"Hi Mum and Dad,
It seems like a long time since I've written. I've been waiting for some things to coalesce, and waiting, and waiting, and studying madly (yes, I really am--not just covering up lots and lots of procrastination) and so far nothing really has coalesced except for the grace of God and a growing sense of confused wonder.

one of my favorite books is called To Say Nothing of the Dog. Connie Willis wrote it, and I feel like Ned the protagonist: I have to get shuffled off and stuck in the middle of a nighttime thunderstorm in a half-complete cathedral in the 12th century so that whoever's in charge can actually fix the problem I've been trying to solve since the beginning of the book and have only been mucking up.

except that the Grand Designer is using my fixation with one problem to muck around in all sorts of wonderful ways in my life and teach me all sorts of important things and fix tons of internal stuff i didn't know was broke...without actually doing anything to make things better in the one problem i'm fixated on. all that other stuff is really nice, boss, but [edited] is what i wanted you to help me out with, dagnabbit. :)

i really am smiling right now. so, i think, is that mysterious presence out of the corner of my vision with the just-possibly-mischevious twinkle in his just-barely-visible eye.

the only thing that's coalescing right now is the grace of God and my growing realization of its all-encompassing presence. i feel like i jumped off one skyscraper to another, missed, am now hovering strangely in midair, midleap, and just found out that i'm in my underwear and now i'm desperately hoping that no one miles below will look up and find me out until i can sort my way out of this strange limbo. but i'm getting used to the limbo, too, and it's a heck of a lot better than plummeting to a messy, and embarassingly unclad, end. and maybe whatever it is that's holding me up here has some kind of master plan that involves...staying in this odd unresolution for a while.

well...that's wierd. but i'm a wierd guy. and in celebration of that wierdness, check out the lovely picture of me on my friend tagan's bloggything.

Robert Jervis, "The Compulsive Empire" (Essential Readings in World Politics, Karen Mingst and Jack Snyder, 2nd Edition.)

"Put simply, power is checked most effectively by counterbalancing power, and a state that is not subject to severe external pressures tends to feel few restraints at all. Spreading democracy and liveralism throughout the world has always been a U.S. goal, but having so much power makes this aim a more realistic one. It is not as if the Middle East has suddenly become more fertile ground for American ideals; it's just that the United States now has the means to impose its will. The quick US triumph in Afghanistan contributed to the expansion of Washington's goals, and the easy military victory in Iraq will encourage an even broader agenda. The Bush administration is not worried it's new doctrine of preventative war will set a precedent for other nations, because US officials believe the dictates that apply to others do not bind the United States. This is not a double standard, they argue; it is realistic leadership." (emphasis added)

The United States is criticized for intervening all over the place in order to advance their own interests. I contend that the United States, in order to do any good in this world, must marry humanitarian interest to the realism of world and domestic politics. If President Bush capitalizes on public outrage against terrorism to meet humanitarian goals in Iraq and finish a job that was left undone after the Persian Gulf war, then so be it. Even humanitarians have to be opportunists.

Heres another thought. When you need someone to get the job done, someone you can trust, you turn to your friends. Of course, if those friends happen to be old colleagues, such as Halliburton & Co, well, that's immediately construed as dirty politics. So this begs the question: I know nothing about VP Cheney and the Halliburton scandal. But isn't it a bit odd to immediately assume wrongdoing in the awarding of contracts? Maybe Halliburton happen to be the men for the job...

Tonight's inspirational thought is taken from John Mearsheimer's "Anarchy and the Struggle for Power," an essential text in international relations.

"Bedrock Assumptions:
"The first assumption is that the international system is anarchic...There is no 'goverment over governments.'
"The second assumption is that great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability, which gives them the wherewithal to hurt and possibly destroy each other. States are potentially dangerous to each other, although some states have more military might than others and are therefore more dangerous. A state's military power is usually identified with the particular weaponsry at its disposal, although even if there were no weapons, the individuals in those states could still use their feet and hands to attack the population of another state. After all, for every neck, there are two hands to choke it."

"Now, as our Lord above says, 'Everyone who commits sin is sin's slave', and that is why, though many devout men are slaves to unrighteous masters, yet the masters they serve are not themselves free men; 'for when a man is conquered by another he is also bound as a slave to his conqueror.' And obviously it is a happier lot to be a slave to a human being than to a lust; and in fact, the most pitiless domination that devastates the hearts of men, is that exercised by this very lust for domination, to mention no others."
St. Augustine, City of God

There's just two ways to lose yourself in this life
And neither way is safe
In my dreams I see visions of the future
But today we have today
And where will I find You?

In the economy of mercy
I am a poor and begging man
In the currency of Grace
Is where my song begins
In the colors of Your goodness
In the scars that mark yur skin
Is where my song begins

These carbon shells
These fragile dusty frames
House canvases of souls
We are bruised and broken masterpieces
But we did not paint ourselves
And where will I find You?

Where was I when the world was made?
Where was I?

--Swithfoot, The Economy of Mercy

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

--William Butler Yeats

very, very happily, it is time to pack up and leave. packed up i have already, to leave is tomorrow. it's interesting to pack up with the speed and sure thorough efficiency of routine, with the perspective of a short vacation added to the exhiliration and depression of leaving the intimate, laughing, safe STEP community into the bigger, bustling, blurring depths of college life. i'm not really that eager to get lost in the Houghton crowds again.

but we have no control over the seasons; rather, they sweep us along, and we are caught up once more from our happy eddies into the currents, with no inclination if we will ever find place to eddy out again and rest. it is good that there is joy in challenge and above fear as well as joy in safety and rest.

the next challenge: Highlander. 12 days in the woods with a select brave few from this year's incoming freshman class. it'll be good to work with college age kids for a change; one of my friend's little brothers is in my group, and the others look promising too. we'll go rock climbing, play around on the ropes course, do all sorts of challenges, play games, go swimming, hike, hike, hike, canoe, canoe, canoe, and probably talk a lot too. and sing super-fun songs.

and afterwards, when it's college time...i'll have fun freshmen to sit with in the cafeteria, too! because when you're an old senior, no one loves you anymore...

so...hi. how's life? good... good...glad to hear it. the kids? all right, nice, nice...business good? right, of course...so...ummm...how about the Tigers, yeah? the Tigers...good stuff those Tigers.

pish tosh. i cannot hold a conversation for the life of me, unless it's about food, lighting campfires, or the many strange and wonderful things that happen on the trail and are only comprehensible to those truly strange people who drive three hours in order to climb out of the van, eat bad food, carry thirty or forty pounds of said food and gear on their backs for forty miles in a big circle to climb into a waiting van and drive right back to the beginning of the trail in order to run three stinking miles. for the sheer pleasure of it. to quote "Dad" from the immortal "Calvin and Hobbes," after a long bike ride through hail, rain, smog, potholes and dangerous roads for no suitable, practical or even emergency purpose:

"I love the sheer hedonism of the weekends."

And now it is off to more hedonism. Today we prepped gear and planned routes (hiking, canoeing, and emergency evac). Tomorrow...we prep even more. Sunday is go-day: we abscond with our seven young, impressionable incoming freshmen back to the only place i feel comfortable anymore: the woods. soon every stroke of my paddle and every mile under my forty-five pound backpack with take me farther from all those strange-smelling people living in boxes and always changing their clothes and hiding from the sun all day.

it will be good to go back even if only because i own no deoderant and am very sensitive to my armpit reek when the people around me have covered their God-given pheromones with chemicals.

school afterwards? oh boy...i think i might stay in the woods...

so, in random bored browsing, discovery can happen.

"Beware the glamour of internationalism!! Internationalism is just as bad as nationalism. That lure of wanting to be or being proud that one is a citizen of the world and making that one's whole identity is a big mistake. An internationalist has access to all cultures and countries but does not have any accountability to live in accordance to the rules and laws of that country. They sit and observe peoples and cultures without any thought to their own--like a fly on the wall. They may say a lot and offer advice and criticism but not actually do anything to change the situation. They may be well-read, well-travelled and have tasted a variety of food all over the world, but their love for these places don't deepen, in fact their relationships are the same way--meaningful on the surface with painfully shallow roots."

thankyou, hansypansy, God bless your little anonymous self, and save me from a horrifying life of detatched observation.

Home. I am going home. Finally. Let the road stretch out long and open and wild and free in front of me and I will show you the meaning of speed.

"But the more I think about loneliness, the more I think that the wound of loneliness is like the Grand Canyon--a deep incision in the surface of our existence which has become an inexhaustible source of beautiy and self-understanding.

"Therefore I would like to voice loudly and clearly what might seem unpopular and disturbing:  The Christian way of life does not take away our loneliness; it protects and cherishes it as a precious gift.  Sometimes it seems as if we do everything possible to avoid the painful confrontation with out basic human loneliness, and allow ourselves to be trapped by false gods promising immediate satisfaction and quick relief.  But perhaps the painful awareness of loneliness is an invitation to transcend our limitations and look beyond the boundaries of our existence.  The awareness of loneliness might be a figt we must protect and guard, ecause our loneliness reveals to us an inner emptiness that can be destructive when misunderstood, but filled with promise for him who can tolerate its sweet pain...

"Perhaps the main task of the minister is to prevent people from suffering for the wrong reasons.  Many people suffer because of the false supposition on which they have based their lives.  That supposition is that there should be no fear or loneliness, no confusion or doubt.  But these sufferings can only be dealt with creatively when they are understood as wounds integral to our human conditions.  Therefore ministry is a very confronting service.  It does not allow people to live with illusions of immortality and wholeness.  It keeps reminding others that they are mortal and broken, but also that with the recognition of this condition, liberation starts." 

--Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

hah!  after purloining the enemy vehicle, raiding General Dollar's supply depot ("Salute the General!"), and awaiting the appropriate moment while honing our combat skills on the X Box, John-Mark "That Darn Cat" Kane and Danny Lee "O'Malley the Alley Cat" Holcomb began their preparations:  under cover of darkness they armed their weapons, deftly hoodwinking enemy spies into thinking that all was calm on the Western Front.  When the perfect moment was at hand (3:00 am, naturally) we boldly penetrated behind enemy lines, armed with merely one Z-290 Glade Air Bomb, Six M-49 Toilet Paper Grenages, 84 Diversionary X33 Air Balloons, 23 Stealth Water Bomb Mines, a Princess Leia/Amidaala puzzle-poster to confuse the enemy, 4 A130 Crepe Paper Rolls, one sinister Z-10092 Spider-Man Blowup Chair, one bottle of C39 "Irish Spring Body Wash" Floor Lubricating Booby Trap, one bottle of F458 Extra Sudsing Dish Soap for the enemie's Bathing Facilities, and a brightly colored fishy shower curtain because we are, after all, in touch with our feminines sides.  

They never even stirred from their peaceful slumber...which was a pity because we went through all that effort to tie their doors shut, employing admirable stealth and the sort of incredibly complicated knots that would make Captain Jack Aubrey himself green with envy...

Some doubted our resolve.  Some doubted our intelligence.  Some touted the never-ending vigilance of the female race.  They thought we could never enter and exit unnoticed with so much equipment and so few soldiers.  They feared none would come out alive. 

Mission:  Impossible, they called it...

but we say...

Mission:  Accomplished.

--General Katsparoff 

Rukwa Valley, March 2004:
this is how you do the hokey pokey, little children.

"Introductory books and teaching materials on missiology or anthropology or the history of some non-Western area of the world never fail to make me laugh. There will be a few introductory paragraphs, describing the general features of the country or people-group to be discussed--and then there will be an earnest, po-faced explanation to the student or initiate that 'family is very important to the Mbongo people' or that 'Chinese culture is highly collectivist' or that the 'swamp dwelling Mudscratchers put the needs of their community above personal preferences'. Such facts are presented in a way that implies that this is somehow a noteworthy distinctive of the people about to be studied. Perhaps it is less painful to the audience to speak this way, and to allow the truly shocking realization, namely that only one culture has ever thought or acted in any other fashion, to remain, like the truth about Father Christmas, an undiscovered, dreadful secret...
"When did we Westerners start to change into individualists and why?"

--Meic Pearse, Why the Rest Hates the West

in a moment of rare editorial genius, the puzzled moose decides to return to the original intent of this blog: bringing to mind thoughts worth thinking.

"No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man's despair may become, as long as he continues to be a man his very humanity continues to tell him that life has a meaning. That, indeed, is one reason why man tends to rebel against himself. If he could without effort see what the meaning of life is, and if he could fulfill his ultimate purpose without trouble, he would never question the fact that life is well worth living. Or if he saw at once that life had no purpose and no meaning, the question would never arise. In either case, man would not be capable of finding himself so much of a problem.
"Our life, as individual persons and as members of a perplexed and struggling race, provokes us with the evidence that it must have meaning. Part of the meaning still escapes us. Yet our purpose in life is to discover this meaning, and live according to it. We have, therefore, something to live for. The process of living, of growing up, and becoming a person, is precisely the gradually increasing awareness of what that something is. This is a difficult task, for many reasons."
--Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

okay, so if your STEP co leader lofts extra tabs of superstrength laundry detergent into your room from the safety of the kitchen and refuses to come any closer because you just unpacked your dirty wet wool socks which you wore for six days of a ten day hiking trips...

is that a bad thing?

:)

I'm baaaaaack!

and I'm wearing a manskirt and a clean t-shirt and I can't smell myself or last night's campfire! wooooohooooo! I just read Tanzania emails and it's good to know there's someone else out there who shares memories and experiences that no one else does...there's nothing like knowing that someone else just ate at the Hasty Tasty Too!

for those of you who actually communicated with me over the past ten days while I was gone...you have no idea how much it meant to come home and hear from you. it pretty much made my night (that and the fact that we're watching the Last of the Mohicans!)

peace!
dlh

Clean underwear (after the Ohio incident...I will never forget them again). Three lighters. Scrounged birchbark. Tent. Sleeping bag snug inside plastic. Journal. The Horse and His Boy. Stove. Fuel. Steel Wool. Three water bottles. Can opener. Knives. Emergency Insulating Layers. Clean socks. Wool Socks. Boots. Sandals. Missions/Global Relief and Development reading. Two pens. Four tennis balls. Travel alarm clock. Watch. Z-Rest foam pad. Hat. Three t-shirts. A pair of shorts, pants, and swim trunks. Four packstraps. String. Tales of the Kingdom. Bar of soap. Deoderant? Nah. CupBowlSpoon. Rain Gear. Sweater. Glasses case. Emergency Whistle. Compass. Map. Bandanna.

All that in one backpack! And I act like I'm packing light.

Tomorrow: we leave on ten-day STEP. My pack is ready. Am I?

We'll see...

...tomorrow.

Dan

ps--it would be so cool to get back from STEP in ten days and find an email from you. such events pretty much make my week. just a thought...

-dlh

So, basically, this summer I have no days off. Sorry mom...we're looking at half-days scattered here and there, July 11th and maybe the 12th; it looks like the 25th-26th is clear so far, and then it's STEP II until the end of the summer at August 6th. Then it's back to Houghton by the evening of the 12th for Highlander.

Here's the recap: I'll be leading groups/prepping for STEP/leading STEP every day this summer except July 11th, 12th, 25th, and 26th, subject to change should outside groups decide to sign up for the ropes course. Naturally, those days will be filled with the revelry of writing papers from the Tanzania semester.

Note to the world: I'm looking for a way to leave Houghton the afternoon/night of August 6th in order to visit home in Michigan. If someone would like to loan me a motorcycle, I'll pay for gas, change the oil/brake fluid/spark plugs, and do my best to tune it and clean it up, and have it back by August 12th.

In the news, today is the last day before the final plunge: tomorrow we begin first STEP: our six-day hiking program for kids too young to go on the ten-day trips. Into the adventure!

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

the next person to make uninvited insinuations, leading inquiries, comments, hints, suggestions, or snide remarks about the present or future prospects in significant relationships with the opposite sex will recieve a rude, swift, painful yet just kick to the mapumbu. It's none of your kitomba business. Thank you for your time.

So, in contrast with the last spate of lengthy, thoughtful blogs, I will now indulge in verbal brain vomit. Life is good. I just got my Tanzania pictures yesterday, and they are worlds better than I had anticipated. As soon as possible, I will be putting together an online album. Until then...here's a little photodocumentary on my hair.


short. smooth. suave. shiekh.


still well-trimmed... (why are his eyes glowing red?)


hmmm...that's a lot of hair...


and.....BUSH-TESTOSTERONE-MADNESS!


with a deft trim...balance regained!

ummm...that was really random. Toodleoo!

630 alarm clock
631 bleary response: snooze
636 snooze again
642 snooze again
644 shorts, shirt, accumulated sweat from a week's running.
645 bandaids over blisters, socks, running shoes.
650 the morning air is cold
655 centerville road. i am at the head of the pack. barely. heart bubbles with glee.
700 still centerville road. still uphill. still at the head of the pack. adjust to longer strides. pulling away from the pack. i love this.
710 downhill; finally, joyfully, playfully.
720 walk. stretch. shower. stretch again. apologize to calves.
800 wait for breakfast.
830 feeling lean, mean, hungry and very impatient for breakfast
900 Breakfast! appease the empty stomach!

and so the day begins. it will end at seven, or eight. we will teach each other new group games. we will sing camp songs. we will talk: group dynamics, alpha males, scapegoats, runaways, medical emergencies, blister care, bear bags and favorite trail recipies and 101 ways to make tuna helper and pasta taste different the 42nd time around. then the ropes course: setup, tear down, gear rescues, cutaway rescues, emotional rescues, debriefing techniques, framing by isomorphs, alternative scenarios, spotting, belaying, and playing.

lunch. dinner. cocoa puff bars and mezo-tech bars and why salsa is God's gift to the backpacking chef. Leave No Trace camping, the toilet talk, keeping order on the trail, building shelters, lightening safety, bear safety, solos, maps, compasses, fitting backpacks and chosing menus. exhaustion.

night falls. staff bonding. risk, settlers of catan, rook, xbox, master and commander. olympic diving. laughter.

1000 open the climbing wall. music. ropes and knots and ATCs and crash mats. give kids the harness talk and the helmet talk and set them loose on the wall. watch and laugh and remember what it was like to be in high school. make obstacle courses with chairs and ropes and tennis balls and crash mats when the kids leave.

midnight. close up. drive home. sink deeply into sleep, with a smile for wonderful days that leave you tired enough to sleep wonderful nights.

So. Houghton has been so kind to place their classroom computers in lockdown so that no one can install and play games on them. Fair enough. But I can browse the internet, and watch slideshows of Tanzania pictures* roll by on the projection screen. Good enough. The hunt for a massively powerful, unsecured computer suitable for my gaming whims continues.

It has been almost two weeks since returning to the Untied States, and I almost feel normal. Almost. To be candid, I wonder if I will ever feel normal again. I'm stuck somewhere between a vanished (and probably illusory) carefree childhood and a one-year countdown to the very scary reality of...freedom. It suddenly, irrevocably, becomes my turn. Choose and go and make something of your life and I, for one, am not ready.

Thankfully, this worry will soon be drowned out by other, more pressing stressors, and then I will get tired of stressors and get on to the more important task of enjoying the good labor and good leisure in front of me. Sunday STEP training begins, and I am, as usual, timid, overwhelmed, and about to bolt, but holding on and gritting teeth.

For the uniformed (aka...those who were not lucky recipients of my support letter) STEP is a summer ministry of Houghton College. We take groups of 10 local children who otherwise would never be able to dream of affording an outdoor adventure program and go on a backpacking trip that includes rock climbing, a solo reflection experience, ropes/challenge course and cooperative games experience, and an emphasis on personal growth and maturity. I get to lead these groups all summer; it's a great opportunity to do my favorite thing: help people talk through and deal with personal/social problems and grow. If the kids get to see Christ in me or my co-leader...so awesomely much the better. For many kids, we will be the only Christians they get to know beyond the stereotype.

So...I'm excited. If you are, or want to be, email daniel.holcomb@houghton.edu and I'll attempt to tell you more. We rely heavily on the support of generous people, through encouragement, donations, and prayer, so feel free to write and join in.

That's all for now; for those of you expecting or demanding letters, they are coming, especially after watching the Tanzania slideshow. For those of you not...maybe there'll be a surprise...

Dan



* password: tanzania

Just for the record, I am home. Here are a few short thoughts from the road:

-There is nothing more amazing than the Sahara desert from a window seat, 39,000 feet up. That's over 7 miles, which would be an incredibly sweet freefall. Flying over the mountains of Southwestern Europe was pretty incredible, too. But nothing beats the sheer blinding intensity of a perpetual field of ever-varying clouds. I'm awestruck just thinking of it.

-In a moment of reverse culture shock: the world out there often looks at America and sees the attitude reflected in Detroit Metro: we are big, we are powerful, we are the only ones around; any problems that you have with inefficiency, incompetence, poor design or sheer ugliness are not very important to us because we don't give a damn. Comparing Heathrow and Detroit Metro...I kind of agree with them at the moment.

-To balance: all that must be stated is one oxymoron--British cuisine. Fair 'nuf; very good to be back in my homeland.

-I used to think jet lag was for wimps. I have now discovered that I am, in fact, a wimp, and I have no problem going at being tucked into bed at eight o'clock, same time as my little sister.

-Worcestershire (pronounced "Woostersure") Sauce flavored airline pretzels are the tastiest treats ever. I can still taste them.

-Whoever thought up the Yorkie Chocolate Bar's amazing slogan, "Yorkie: It's Not For Girls," and subsequent teasers ("Not Available in Pink," "Not for Handbags" and "Don't Feed the Birds") is brilliant. Ever girl I know, upon seeing one, buys it. Just to spite. Except, of course, for this one. The world is chock full of stupid people; thankfully most of them are not only harmless, but downright hilarious.

-The world is really, really big, and there is so little time to explore it all...

-Speaking of little time; I arrived Tuesday and I'm leaving Monday and I want to spend it with family and friend, not on the internet.

-Tanzania people: Nilifika salaama Marecani, baada ya safari bora na njema kabisa! Nilienda Rukwa bonde, nikasafari Bongo, nikakaa Iringa mjini na niliwasalimia wanafunzi wapya katika Masumbo. Nampenda ninyi, na nakukumbuka kila moja mwenzangu. Upenda na neema na salaama!

I leave you all with this wonderful sentence which I myself constructed out of Kiswahili:
"Naombe kuku kukukumbuka."

Cheers!
Dan

Alive!

For real this time. As London appeared before us, from the lofty vantage point of BA Flight 046, the confident Scottish voice of our pilot informed us that one of the landing gear tires was reading...well...flat. No worries, he informed us, there are three other tires on that landing gear, but, just as a precaution...

The cabin crew pulled out their little orange emergency hats with CREW written on them in big letters. Maybe so we could identify and stone them for their wrongdoings once safely on the ground. We went through a few safety drills and shuffled around for more convenient access to the doors upon "landing" (more vivid scenarios were flashing through my head, filled with such words as "pile-up", "fireball", "shredded", etc.). Naturally, the quick thinking and clever BA flight attendent chose me (such a fine judge of character) to sit near the door at the back of the plane and take her place just in case, in a worst scenario of worst scenarios, we actually did have a "problem" landing and in that "problem", the plane needed to be evacuated, and in that problem the flight attendant had been incapacitated to the point where she could not open the door, activate the slide, etc. ("If I'm unconscious or have broken arms or something, just unbuckle me and kick me down the slide." Sure Leslie, sure...I'll abort my dive for the door long enough to give your broken body a good, swift kick...)

Naturally the volunteer fireman in me was jumping up and down at the thought of real "excitement" (read: disaster, fire, traumatic injuries, CPR (my mask is in my carry-on bag! Yes!). And, just as naturally, with our heads between our legs and flight attendants screaming over and over again "BRACE! BRACE!" and the roar of the engines and the air brakes thundering and the tires screeching...

we landed sweetly and peacefully with a barely perceptible bump and swerve. Everyone sighed cheerfully, and the captain recieved the heartfealt applause of his crew, and they handed us little preprepared letters of apology for the inconvenience that they had prepackaged on the airplane just for emergencies such as these ones. On a side note, I couldn't help but laugh (a little morbidly) at the thought of hundreds of little, burning "We would like to apologise...You have chosen to fly with British Airways and we are deeply concerned we may not have met your expectations on this occasion..." letters wafting accross the runway through smoke and pall and destruction and the little, itty bitty charred tail of a Boeing 767-300 sticking our of the ground in the background. There's a contingency plan for everything...

At any rate, we had an exciting landing, and we didn't have to circle at all, waiting for permission to land. So if you were flying into London yesterday evening and got delayed...HA HA! I got there first :)

So here I am safely, sitting in Helmut's flat and wondering what to do today in London. I think I'll go grab some fish and chips, and maybe visit the Imperial War Museum. Or go play rugby in a park somewhere...

Tomorrow will be another plane ride, hopefully uneventful because it is a nice, large, new Boeing 777 and we are over all that water...it's all right though, because I know how to swim. In other news, it'll be terrifically difficult to decide which movies to watch; Kill Bill Vol. 1 is the obvious choice for the first, but then it's between Return of the King, Mystic River, the Last Samurai...it's a tough choice! On the other hand, I have my own screen, so I could just go and channel surf between all of them...

At any rate, I will be home tomorrow eve...and that is as good as anyone could ask for.

Cheers!
Dan

Wow...
I just spent a dollar bill. In Iringa! Which is good because I'm almost out of shillings :)

This is, oddly enough, my last week in Tanzania. Actually, my last few days. Fittingly, I am sick. I just started taking antimalarial medication today. I almost got away...

I had a very touching reunion last night: I snuck up on the night guards at Masumbo, Hassan and Madenge; they were my Swahili teachers and friends during my studies. We would sit around the cooling heat of the stove and stumble through conversations and word definitions and talk about life and religion and girls. Wonderful guys; I'm so glad to finally be able to converse well in their language. Okay...maybe not well. But now there are no awkward pauses, searches for simple conversational topics...and they're not always struggling to figure out how to explain complex Swahili words to someone with the vocabulary of a two-year old.

Then we drove to town with Edjidi, the world's greatest driver and car mechanic, and another one of my swahili teachers. Edjidi...anaweza. We had a great time laughing and talking and remembering the times he was teaching me swahili AND how to change tires on a ten-ton vehicle at the same time. I surprised him by waiting for him up front in the truck and mimicking his gravelly voice: "Habari za leo, wanafunzi?" His face was priceless.

I like being in a world where facial emotional expression is encouraged. The looks on all three of my friends faces were priceless: grinning from ear to ear, stepping back in surprise...seeing me again made their day, and they stopped everything to whoop and holler and laugh and hold my hand and just let me know that they were happy to see me. That's really cool...I will miss those guys.

I also like being in Masumbo again when students are here. It's odd though. I lived at Masumbo with twenty-five other young white people...so I don't really look for particulars to identify them. So I look over to Dave's old tent and see a tallish guy with dark hair and think, oh, Dave! But it's not...so far I've "seen" Jess, Erica, Tegan, Michelle, Pascoe...the list keeps growing. It's kind of sad. I miss my old Masumbo family...

That said, what could be more fun that seeing old friends from school coming to Masumbo, for the first time! Their enthusaism is so awesome, and their naivete is fun too! I remember the first time I stepped out of the Green Bomber into Iringa town to be besieged by all sorts of vendors. Most of them know me by face now, and I can slide right through them with a few reflexive lines of kiswahili...but not the first time. What fun! And to swap news of Tanzania with news of the states: so much fun. I'm glad I stayed to greet the newbies!

So joy mixes with sadness and satisfaction with regret. Today or tomorrow I will say goodbye to Iringa town, and the Tanzania adventure (for that is truly what the last five weeks have been) will be over. As the cast comes out for the final curtain call, I think of every one of them with the fondest of smiles and gales of sidecracking laughter: Mike the incredible tentmate, Dave and Dave and Christian and Tim, the coolest travelling roadshow ever, the supportive friends and family back home, Andy and Suzie, Teddy and Kim and family, Abel, Doc and Mom Arensen, Eli and Linda, the Amazing Adkins(es), the Danes, Moyers and Phillipses, the crazy Moyer children, all the womenses in all their amazingness, the thoughtful and kind senders-of-valentines and birthdaycards, Edjidi, Abbas, Joseph, Tumaini, Hassan, Mzee Madenge, the How People Growers with all their opennes and caring and wisdom...

the applause swells and swells and swells. cheers to you!

I'm alive!

(I write this all the time in the subject lines of emails home. Sometimes mommy worries...oddly enough, my host-"mom" here, Suzie, tends to worry quite a bit when it's been dark for hours and I'm not back yet because I made some fascinating new friends in the marketplace...)

(This is the same Suzie who is singing something lovely and classical and soprano-y in Italian or Latin in the living room right now. It really is the random things in life that are the most enjoyable. Like the game of Risk with the Danes last night.)

(I swear they were working together! Stinking Vikings and their incomprehensible language! Sure, right, just "discussing the weather," uh huh! Hah! I won anyway!)

(Okay, so enough with the parenthetical comments...)

I really am alive, and I feel it, too. Today I walked into town with three deaf-mute Tanzanians, ordered lumber cut to size, and got a discount after complaining that the finished products looked more like spaghetti than building materials--in Swahili. Picked up a hand-powered drill and some screws, and spent the afternoon working with my hands. Suzie needs some large, durable wooden boxes for the craft shop; I have loved building things since my first Lego castle. I scrounged up a screwdriver, handsaw, an old file, a ruler, and a pencil, pulled out my handy-dandy Leatherman multitool, and set to trying to make squares and rectangles that don't look like kindergarten drawings.

Lets say that I feel rather proud of my accomplishments, yet simulateously very awed at the work of real carpenters. My hands are pleasantly weathered, my arms are happy and tired, and I have been creative today!

By far the most enjoyable: eight months of language and culture study have finally paid off. The locals now laugh at my jokes instead of my linguistic blunders. Instead of being a helpless child in this culture, I am now a potty-mouthed twelve-year old. :) I'm actually semi-functional! It's really a thrill beyond all thrills to realize that, as long as nothing really disastrous happens, you are capable of living in a completely different country (not Canada) and even relating to the people there.

By far the least enjoyable: having to explain really embarassing aspects of American culture and politics and foreign policy to bemused Brits and Tanzanian taxi drivers (Oh! You come from America? I saw a picture on the internet of an American woman soldier torturing a naked Iraqi man! Why do the Americans hate the Arabs?)

And then MTV was on during lunch at the Hasty Tasty Too...sigh. It's easy to understand all those vehemently self-righteous "No, I'm Canadian!" people.

Cheers!
Dan

Dear [you],
I'm very sorry for the last post. It's very long. It might not make sense...just one of those epiphanies inspired by an amazing lecturer/writer with a wildly cool British accent.

Speaking of wildly cool British accents, I'm currently staying in the home of Andy and Suzie Hart; Andy's a veterinarian doing all sorts of interesting animal- and non-animal-related projects with the Anglican church of Tanzania. Suzie is charming mother who is running an amazing arts and crafts workshop where disabled people are finding meaningful employment and Christ while making really cool things with beads, recycled cardboard, elephant dung, and plant fibers. I've spent a lot of time with their friends, Philip and Fiona. Philip is a theology professor with permanently off-balance glasses who is unmistakeably the British reincarnation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Very soon I shall be unrecognizeably shaved, dressed in clean, unrumpelled clothing, and speaking with a culturally refined accent in a compelling and confident tone of voice about world politics and rugby. I shall not tackle cricket as the natives themselves do not understand it either...

Yesterday we built a solar cooker. Hoping against hope that it will catch on: the use of charcoal and wood fires for cooking is ruining the forests of this beautiful country, and the lungs of the beautiful and industrious women who cook in it. The cookfire smoke they inhale is the equivalent of smoking two to three packs of cigarettes. Per day. And charcoal is expensive...the sun is cheap.

We doubt: will people want this new technology? We laughed yesterday; in our frustration with people who refuse new technologies and techniques, we forgot ourselves. The water we drink is filtered and boiled, much like all the other expatriates in Iringa. The difference with our house is that we set our water out in clear plastic bottles on a sheet of bati (roofing metal) and let it sit in the sun for a day or two, depending on cloud cover. It's scientifically proven to be more effective at killing harmful organisms than boiling water for ten minutes. And, it saves over ten dollars a month on the electric bill. And, it my opinion, it's easier than taking care of pots and pots of boiling water.

How many people in the expat community have copied this? After months of watching this new technique, and visiting and drinking the water with no ill effects? None. We enlightened, change-loving Wazungu, just like the frustrating Tanzanians, refuse to adopt something new until it catches our eye, or necessity forces change...irony is wonderful. We had a good laugh. Human nature is amazing sometime in the ways it absolutely defies logic.

In other news, Philip, Andy, Fiona, Suzie and I sat down the other night to watch an absolutely charming (British, of course) movie: Love Actually. Basically, it's ten different, interwoven stories following people as they approach Christmas and deal with...well...as little Sam says, "What could be worse than the total agony of being in love?" Love is so many different lights: a man chosing between his wife and his secretary. A widower and his lovesick stepson. A jaded old rocker without friends. The Prime Minister and his househelp. A writer who speaks no Portuguese and a maid who speaks no English. Two body doubles. The lonely best man. Not all of the endings are happy...but they are all amazing.

The best part of watching, of course, was the setting: London. The Brits were all very amused every time I shouted, "Oooh! I've been there." But I have!

Cheers!
Dan

"...Rights and duties, it might be argued, are simply corollaries of one another, so it does not much matter which system we propound. One may teach that 'you must not rob Mary as she walks down the street' or that 'Mary has a right to walk down the street without being robbed.' Whichever code is followed, the same result: Mary may conduct her business safely.

"I should counter that this is by no means the end of the story, for the two systems of moral catechizing produce very different states of mind in those who imbibe them. But let us meet this objection (that rights and duties are virtual equivalents) on its own terms by looking also at more immediate results. As a test case, let us consider the debate about the moral status of abortion.

"Supporters of the permissability of abortion deploy many arguements, but central to them all is that of a 'woman's right to choose what to do with her body'. Christians and other moral conservatives who standardly oppose abortion counter with their own slogan: 'the child's right to life.' Whose right will win?

"In the world of politics and moral debate around us, the victor in this argument is pre-ordained. The women who wish to 'choose'--to say nothing of the feckless boyfriends and anxious parents who wish to urge them on, and the much larger numbers of people with an interest in the availability of abortion to underwrite their 'sexual freedom'--are with us, voting and articulating their opinions. The unborn children are unable to speak and are reliant only on those who care about them and are unencumbered by anticipating a need to dispose of the consequences of their own sexual indiscretions. Hedonism wins: the child dies.

"Now let us recast the debate in the language of obligations and duties. Who, in this circumstance of an undesired pregnancy, has an obligation to whom? Again, the winner is pre-ordained. It is the child. For clearly the woman and her sexual partner--and perhaps others too--have a duty to nurture and protect it. To argue otherwise, it would be necessary to say that the child has a duty to die so that the mother and her partner (or relatives, or society) are not inconvenienced.

"Now it is not completely ridiculous to insist that, in certain circumstances, a person does indeed have a duty to die. Such a duty is implied, for example, when a war criminal who pleads that he was 'only following orders' while under a threat to his own life is sentenced anyway. The person who finds himself in such an extreme situation has a duty to die rather than to participate in such foul actions as constitute a war crime.

"But the situation of an (unknowingly) unwanted baby in the womb is not such a circumstance. In any case, the baby is unable to fulfil such an obligation in his or her own person--only to have it imposed from outside by the surgeon's knife. To speak of a 'duty to die' in such a case is presumably nonsensical.

"If we frame the question in terms of human rights, abortion wins. If we ask instead about moral obligations, the child lives. In both cases, the 'answer' was already present in the question.
--Meic Pearse, Why the Rest Hates the West

The man is brilliant. I wish I had the wherewithal to type the entire chapter, but there is neither space not gumption for such a copyright infringement. One of the reasons, according to Mr. Pearse, that there is such a divide between Westernized and non-Westernized cultures is that in the massive shift to modernity and modern thinking, the West has left behind any sense of innate moral obligation and replaced it with innate moral rights. The language of morality and philosophy then focuses on the rights of the individual rather than his duties; any sense of duty is shifted to the larger, amorphous whole of 'society' or 'government' or...anyone else, at any rate. So we speak in a hilariously contorted language of passive verbs: children ought to be cared for, the sick and the elderly ought to be given provision, the wronged ought to be given justice, the poor ought to be provided for...

And never once do we say, 'We ought to care for our children. You ought to be an honest businessman. I should provide for the poor, the widowed, and fatherless.' In Meic's words,

"Support without supporters, care without carers, provision without providers; to relapse into normal, active verbs would be to highlight the obvious: that moral action requires moral actors--an so to revert to personal obligations. To avoid this uncomfortable reality, public discourse through the Babel of the media adopts a curious duck-speak on moral questions, as if it is all a matter of better 'systems' and bureaucracy without any of us having to accept that we have duties...and that we have failed them.

"But people with no sense of obligations are people with no sense of personal sin. It is no wonder that Christians are quite unable to evangelize effectively in this environment--without, that is, resorting to shallow emotionalism or blandishments about the 'benefits' of 'coming to know Jesus.' If I have no obligations...I cannot envisage myself as a sinner, not even before a holy God. The central thrust of Chrisitan evangelism is thereby rendered ridiculous.

"Little wonder that the sense of personal sinfulness, even among Christians, is largely superficial...We see ourselves overwhelmingly as sinned against, not as sinning; as standing in need of a little therapy, more self-esteem and some assertiveness training, not of forgiveness."

I hope this makes as much sense to you, out of context, as it did to me. We live in a world where people are taught that they have rights that ought to be met. Where problems are not my problems, but the problems of a society or system that doesn't make it easy or profitable for me to love my neighbor. Here there is a tragic imbalance: I am owed (by whom?) whatever I have a right to; but what do I owe? Nothing.

If I owe nothing, than the dirt and smoke, the pall of destruction that wreaths our world is not my fault; it's your fault, and if not yours then someone else's: that amorphous system, those powerful people, the circumstances that made me who I am. I have a right to something better than this...not an obligation to make the world better than it is, an duty, a stewardship that I have failed.