"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.

Dar Es Salaam is know as the Bongo (brain) of Tanzania because you need your brain to survive here. Abel and I came, really, for two reasons: a break from living in the bush, and to watch the Passion of Christ. Mission accomplished. First night in town: we ate at Shooter's Grill, a little place with plenty of flava and one-kilo t-bone steaks. While the larger guys worked on expanding their kitambi's, I opted for the more refined meal: prawns served up portuguese style. I have never been so satisfied: spice blended with the tastiest meat in three months. We sat back and thumped our "kabuli ya kuku" (na ngombe, na samaki, na anyama wengine wote) and chatted happily about the church in Tanzania. We even got interviewed for Tanzanian TV!

The next day we tackled mission #2. After wandering around the city doing business, we headed north to the New World Cinema (emblazoned on the outside with the slogan, "Let's Go Movies!"). The Passion of Christ had been extended for another week, and we caught it on the last day. We were the only three people in the theater. Sure, I could quibble on a few of the emphases or details, especially after Life of Christ with Dr. Paige last semester...but who can argue that this is the most awesome story ever. There were only six eyes in the audience, but every one of them, Tanzanian and American, was crying by the end.

There is so much to think about: about sacrifice, about living a noble life, about living for something greater than the mundane or self. But, being an intercultural studies student, two things stick out particularly well. One...Jesus was a carpenter in a "Two-Thirds World" country. He lived in a simple brick house, worked with his hands, had no doctors or nurses or hospitals. There were no movies or TVs or Walmarts. He lived a life much like the one we saw in homestay villages; he can truly say, "Life is more than posessions." One of the things I have struggled with the most in Tanzania is the utter disparity in what Dr. Perkins (the elder) calls "Life Chances." I had the chance for so much more than anyone else: Western Education, Western freedom, movies, music, an awesome house and household, a stay-at-home mom...how does that work? How is it fair? What makes life good, and meaningful, especially when there is so much disparity?

Jesus, too, didn't have those chances. Jesus lived a third world life, and not as a king or a merchant, but a tradesman. Life is more than things, it is more than opportunities...

The other thing I noticed was that Jesus looked a lot like Aragorn. And there is not a lot of time to say much more except that I kept expecting him to whip out a sword and kill people, or fight...but he didn't. He's a different kind of hero than we're used to.