The stress is building...
Last week was paradise. We trucked happily to Ruaha, bouncing along in the back of the Green Bomber, singing merry songs and playing silly games and having a good time. We sat on porches in front of little stone chalets and watched hippos play twenty feet away in the river while zebra and impala and giraffe came down to water. We ate fine British meals and played bottle-cap poker while watching hyraxes scamper over the rocks. We went on game drives in open-air, stadium seated land rovers while sipping fine soda like Fanta Passion and Stoney Tangowizi. At night the hippos came up from the river and you never knew what you might run into on the path after dark...
Yesterday, we had our own church service, with two guitars and a banjo and an African drum and small clay pots. We played the Danes at soccer and watched a projected movie (a Masumbo first) where men in ultralights followed migrating birds. Today, we were tested on crocodiles and flamingoes babboons and the social life of the incredible naked mole rat. And we prepped. And tonight we pack.
Because tomorrow we leave at the crack of dawn for a little town, accessible only by Land Rover over a motorcycle track, an hour into the hills outside of Mbeya. There, we will split into pairs and walk off into the hills to meet our host family and begin our homestays with the Wasafwa. We will spend eight days sleeping, eating, drinking, and hopefully working and talking with our hosts, trying to make friends and cross cultural barriers and gather anthropological data. No professor, no cultural brokers, no schedules, no translators, nothing but you, your tentmate, and your new family.
Excitement and anxiety...but mostly curiousity. Who knows what the next eight days will bring?

Quick Update:
After a fast and furious week of classes and papers, including four lectures this morning (did you know that naked mole rats live in colonies with a queen, breeding "kings" who are deathly afraid of her, and workers? that some workers are genetically preprogrammed to break free and form new colonies?) we are taking a quick breather. Tomorrow some of us will hike a mile across the fields to a cement-and-thatch building to sing choruses and hymns in Swahili and hear Pastor Evony give the sermon (also in Swahili). The drums will pound and temperature will rise and we will be greatful for every cross breeze that blows our way; the smell of sweat and unwashed bodies packed onto cement pews has become the smell of church to me. But something draws me back every time: Pastor Evony's warmth of heart, the beauty of the praise choruses, the hospitality of the people...and the fact that every Sunday, underneath flowers and strings of styrofoam packing peanuts and surrounded by smiles and ordinary people, my heart is lifted up and I smile too.
Monday we leave for Ruaha, again; three days and two nights of bahaing in Land Rovers and watching for animals. After that, a few days of classes, and then the apex of our journey: we leave for a week-long homestay. We will live, eat, and sleep with our respective host families for the entire week: total immersion. God help my broken Swahili.
Then we go to Lake Malawi to recover on sandy beaches; a week of classes later, we are off for a final week in Zanzibar, and the program is over. So strange to see the end in sight...but very exciting. Because then the adventure of a wholely new kind begins: Travelling Tanzania by bus, working and observing development work in the field, and seeing what it's like to be, in a little way, on my own.

Back so soon in Iringa! It's a rare blessing. Everyone else in Tanzania is trying to be a cool American rapper, so it's time to give a shout out to:
Ben Howard, my hero, for finding me a house next semester. Love ya, bro...
All my housemates, the thought of whom brings a smile to my face. Hope your year is going swimmingly!
Cheryl Winter, for an actual real letter! Awesome! Things are swell, and COD is all over the place. Even used "posit" in a paper on brown hyenas the other day!
Becca Clark, Dave Truesdell, Ryan Alo, and all others who send the amazing valentines + Jolly Ranchers! I ate them all!
All those who take the time to post and write...those are moments of joy in a sea of junk email!
All those Houghton senior who I will not be able to see graduate...keep in touch!

And, a general news brief. I just bumped my plane ticket back until the end of May; so I will be hanging around in Tanzania post-program for a month, helping a local developer with the Anglican Church, returning to the Rukwa valley to teach English to kindergartners and show the Jesus film and maybe piki piki a little, going to Dar es Salaam to observe some new ministries to Muslims, and maybe even going to an Ethnomusicology conference. Maybe. Now all I need to do is rustle up some money for bus fares and such :) I'm super excited about being "on my own" for a little while (don't worry mom...I have good local contacts everywhere). At home or at school, I'm surrounded by friends and family and people my age. A month of wandering will be a good time to develop some perspective, see things through the eyes of new companions: Tanzanians, Muslims, Anglicans, missionary families, or just myself without all my familiar peoples.

I'll be leaving Dar es Salaam on May the 23rd, laying over for a day with a friend in London and heading home on the 25th. By June, I'll be in Houghton, writing my final papers and preparing for a summer leading youth into the wilderness for Houghton's STEP outdoor adventure program. So...for friends at home, let's get together really quickly while I'm home! And for friends at school...I won't be there for graduation...keep in touch. And for friends coming to Tanzania this summer...I might get to see you right before leaving!

Thought of the day, from Walter Wangerin: in Christ, we see ourselves as in a perfect mirror. In His death on the cross, we see the inevitable end result of our lives, laid bare in all its horror. But we also see resurrection. Christ came not just to pay the price of our sins, but to experience our lot so that He could lead us through to the other side. He shows us precisely how a grain of wheat is nothing until it gives up, and dies, and is buried, so that God may cause it to become something wonderful.

Dear Jeff, Josh, Nate, Chris, Aaron, Dave Hough, and Clarky, and all other motorcycle riding friends:
I have a sunburn. Do you want to know why? Because I spent last week as one of the only white people in the Rukwa Valley of Tanzania. The Rukwa valley doesn't have much of an infrastructure: one or two dirt doubletrack roads connecting villages, and a number of cattle trails. Between hills, dips, rivers, erosion, cattle, and encroaching thornbushes, they're pretty tough, rutted, muddy, bouncy roads. Why am I telling you this? Because last week, while you were no doubt ensconced in some school some where, buttoned up against the cold, I was riding a Honda XL125S dirtbike over these roads and through those rivers. It's a real pity you're stuck in snowland. :)

To everyone else: last week was spent on the road to Rukwa and back. It's an intriguing place: difficult to access (our amazing driver had a hairy time getting a ten-ton ex-military truck down the hairpin turns on the rutted swithback down the escarpment) and very undeveloped. Two missionary families are the only white people in a huge valley which stretches as far as the eye can see from where we stood on a granite slab four thousand feet above the valley. We had an amazing time exploring, going to the exploding native church, helping out at an outdoor evangelistic meeting, showing the Jesus film in Kiswahili, and interviewing some pretty incredibly missionaries. We also had quite a bit of fun tangling with their children...it was good to see American kids and goof off with them again.

I look at my hands and my feet and my legs and see a hundred different scratches, bumps, bruises, splinters, thorns, stings, bites and blisters, and I marvel. Each one has a little story to it's own, and each is precious to me. They are the accumulations of an active life, a full life. My muscles are aching and screaming from climbing a mountain and riding for two days over crummy roads. I don't think my fingernails will ever be clean again. I'm still spitting dust from riding the piki pikis. But there is a smile on my face. I think my heart is the same way. Some places are broken, some are sore, some are empty. Some days I feel alive and free and others I am tragically not. Eli Knapp, faculty and friend here, put it best: in our humanity, we are broken, and will never be whole. Some days we are vital and strong, and other days we are not. We gain ground, and we lose it, and gain it back again, and we will never be whole in this life. Only in this weakness can we be made strong.

Closing thought: from Sadhu Sundar Singh: You cannot live life without bearing a cross; if you refuse the cross of Christ, you will inevitably carry another. Pause, and consider: what cross are you carrying? Is it worth it?

Tanzania. These little blurbs are getting increasingly difficult to write. Every attempt brings a flood of images, each with a different feel and it's own narrative. It's hard to find one theme, and impossible to follow it for long before another rises against it.

Three days ago we were sweltering in the Maasai lowlands. In the day we huddled, lethargic and somewhat grumpy, beneath the lifegiving shade of the baobab tree, miserably swatting at the dauntless hordes of Maasai flies. Two days ago we retreated up the long, winding escrapment road to Masumbo, our campus tucked in the highland hills. Trucking down to the river, soap in hand, we swam and sudsed and rinsed and laughed and even shivered a little when the clouds covered the sun. Today we do not swim because that river is at flood stage, and we are bundled in fleeces against the incessant downpour that has turned our yard into a squishy mudpuddle overnight and soaks whoever dares to venture forth.

I can't help but think of the people of Uhambigetu, clinging furiously to the base of the mountain whose springs provide the only drinkable alternative to the undrinkable saline sludge they dig out of temporary wells in dry riverbeds. Two weeks ago, the cornstalks in their shambas were showing too much leaf and too little fruit: sure sign that they are not recieving enough water. They have replaced a tropical forest with their shambas, and in response the October rains start later and later every year. This year, the first rain was the gift of Christmas Eve. Did the rain rain on them today?

In Maasailand we lived for nighttime: we could sit without sweating and move without hopscotching from shade to shade. Even the ever-present acacia thorns didn't seem so bad in the dusk. We ate the evening meal, sang, and danced: first the Maasai way, joyful, energetic, skillful, and atheletic, with a completely vocal accompaniment of rhythmic noises that stir the blood and move the feet and call you to join in with your own grunts and harrumphs and wails. Then in the American way, with giggles and laughter and the clumsiness of amateurs attempting to swing, electric slide, break dance, macarena, train, whatever we could think of to try to the scrounged tape of Congolese rap blaring from the back of the Land Rover. The Maasai joined in with the limbo, and in the improvised strobe light effect of blinking headlamps, smiles were smiled and laughs were laughed.

In the burning heat of the day, we watched the women industriously manage the daily chores, laughing and smacking the cows and roping them deftly while Sangeni, our host, pointed out which goats were born when, and which cows milked which calves, and held forth on the finer points of herd management with dignity and panache. The young men slaughter a cow with same cheerful ease with which Josh and Nate and Chris tear into a dirty carbeurator. They are happy and they are not tied to farms and the constraints of city life and they love it. Little Boma on the Prairie. I wonder if they know that little Juma is hydrocephalic, and the flies that crawl unmolested over the lump between his eyes are foreshadowing a the death that will soon claim his body. The same flies that crawl in and out of the oozing, gangrenous wound that will soon claim Sangeni's lower leg. The smiling and laughing men and women with whom we shared fresh roasted goat and the joys of dance and industrious labor live in a world where a man beats his wives who know nothing of his friendship, and care little for it, for they have the fellowship of the women of the compound. They love their lives, they are proud of their children, of their cows, of the homes they have built with their hands. They enjoy the milking and herding and birthing, the dances and feasts and celebrations: the life of a pastoralist. The very life that requires wide open spaces, a non-cash economy, and low population densities: barriers to effective medical care and education.

The mailbag was a treasure chest by the time we returned to Masumbo. One large box in particular set off explosions of joy and excitement as it brought forth handmade valentines from friends at school, ensconced in an avalanche of jolly ranchers and tootsie rolls. Our hearts were full to overflowing as we remembered and imagined the friends we left at school. All the news lifted our spirits, and I wanted to write back immediately with laughter and rejoicing for friends engaged and friends dating and new excited EMTs and friends reunited and all the stuff and wonder of everyday life.

That same day brought news that a fellow student was dead, in a car accident, and another barely holding on in a coma from the same. Jubilation and awe met squarely by emptiness and terror.

This morning I stood over the river Ruaha on a tall rock. Everything that was familiar, the rock chair where I sit and read half in and half out of the water, the boulders by which we cross to Kibebe, the little rapids that we shoot through and the eddies and wrinkles at the bottom where we catch our breath and play, the sheltered pools where we stand and wash up and the out-jutting rocks we cling to desperately to keep from being swept downstream are all gone. The currents and flows and hydraulics we know by heart are gone, swept away in a mud colored torrent that crashes and boils and roars and sprays this way and that, up, over, around, and back on itself in convoluted twists and turns and patterns too fast and tortuous for the human eye to make sense of.

This is life. The familiar landscape is gone. Something different is here, blowing away everything I thought I knew. It's unpredictable, it doesn't make sense, and it's tragic at times. But it's beautiful, too, and exciting, and standing there what wells up inside is not fear or nostalgic desire; it is wonder and expectant patience. The full story remains to be finished.

Jolts of pain shoot through my brain whenever I stand up too fast. The story my legs are telling me involves some sort of sprinted mile yesterday of which I have no memory. The closest to running I am capable of is the cramped and desperate fifty yard lope to the outhouse. It caused quite a lot of laughter among the night watchmen at midnight last night. And at one o'clock, and two o'clock, and three o'clock and even four o'clock, too. I was grinning sideburn to sideburn the whole time: never have I been this happy in a seated position.

On February 13, 1858, Burton and Speke became the first Europeans to see Lake Tanganyika. Burton had spent most of the journey from the coast swaying in a hammock between two native porters, too sick to walk. Speke was unable to see the lake due to a flare-up of opthomalia. He had spent his time in the hammock, too. Burton was taking only liquid foods because of an ulcerated jaw. Both lasted only a few miles into the return journey before themselves returning the hammocks. Pleurisy and pneumonia brought Speke to the point of raving delirium. At the coast, they convalesced for several weeks before the ocean voyage, Speke by boat for London before Burton, who needed more time to gather strength. When Stanley found Livingstone, the latter did not stride boldy from his tent ("Dr. Livingstone, I presume?") to firmly shake the hand of the dapper journalist. He was laid up with one of many recurring bouts of pneumonia, which would finally claim his life. Stanley was probably not feeling too well anyway.

Times like these remind me that with all that western culture has become rampantly materialistic, self-absorbed, and individualistic, our children do not die of diarrhea. Most the people I have met in Tanzania have no concept for words like "ambulance" and "emergency medical technician." It is western culture that brought into being that angel in distress, Nurse Adkins, with his wonderful chocolate flavored laxatives that (with the help of a mango or two) brought an end to a painful week of debilitating constipation, and all it's attendant side effects: nausea, weakness, chills, muscle aches, headaches, being bedridden.

So it is with great thanks that I sit humbly on the long drop, "driving furiously" in the local parlance, glad to be moving again, and grateful that although disease and ill health is an inescapable part of travel, there are knowledgeable people looking out for me. It's also with a humble realization that I sit here: all over the world people die of diarrhea. Constipation. Malnutrition. Simple medical problems that are unaddressed for far too long. Things that I laugh at. The solutions to these problems are one aspect of western culture that I am cheerfully and anxiously ready to export.

The alarm clock is more of a reminder; we wake up naturally, with the sun around six am. The buzz catches us stumbling into shorts and socks and shoes and ducking into the warming morning air. The dew soaks our shoes within steps as we head for the trail. Our morning run is uphill to the road and back (mileage? this is Africa..."a few hundred meters" might be a mile and might be three). The red dust coats our wet shoes as the sweat pours into our eyes and makes us squint. I have forgotten my glasses, so the mountains are blurry green and grey patchworks in the distance, and the rolling hillsides and fields and rivers are a bit indistinct. We run on the outsides of worn doubletrack, avoiding the ruts and potholes dug by passing landrovers. I jump over one such rut to avoid the acacia branch that reaches into the road with inch-long thorns, begging for a piece of my flesh.

The return is reward for the determination it takes to get to the top without stopping. Downhill is bliss and through a gap in the low trees I can spy the Ruaha pouring through massive boulders upstream of the campus; the sun is just rising over it. We have time for a quick shower and sun-dry before the old cowbell rings for breakfast. Josef and the wapishi have cooked up a special treat: pancakes, devoured quickly with imitation syrup and pineapple jam. There may not be many maple trees in East Africa, but there are plenty of pinapples!

The nine o'clock class bell finds some sitting on logs, reading or scribbling in their journals, while others make small talk over coffee or simply sit and enjoy the morning. I am busily building callouses on my fingers: the one blessing of not having a drum is that Michael has taken it upon himself to improve my guitar playing. The song of the day is "Jesus, Be the Center," a cry that we are learning comes not just from the peace and unity of its simple chords but also from the jarring confusiong of the minor chords that I am hammering from a guitar that Tim has tuned to mimic a banjo.

Dr. Arensen, unless interrupted, like yesterday, by a neighboring biologist carrying a vine snake (poisonous...no antidote, either. But being back-fanged, it has to chew on you a little to deposit its venom...) will lecture for an hour (or two...this is Africa time, event time) on zebra social structure. Tea and pineapple (or mango...your choice) break follows, and then Eli will entrance us for an hour or so with ornithology and our native Swahili teachers will try to explain how each noun belongs to a different class, and each class has different subject and object pre- and in-fixes to be attached to verbs, ad infinitum. We will learn to enunciate properly, because the difference between "I understand" and "I am completely drunk" is the difference between Nime-elewa and Nime-lewa, and Hujambo means "Hello" while Hujamba involves passing gas. That's right...the Jamba Juice coffee houses in America don't sound so appetizing anymore...

Classes break in time for chakula cha mchana...the afternoon meal. The horsemanship people will head off to the farm, while the rest of us will swim in the river (just below the rapids and upstream of the hippo prints we found two days ago), explore the hillside through endless paths, or venture out into the local villages to make friends and practice our kiswahili. Often the local children will come in the afternoon to play net(volley)ball, futbol, or duck-duck-goose (we have enculturated this game into twiga-twiga-fisi [giraffe-giraffe-hyena] and feel proud of our translation skills).

The evening might bring folklore class, or storytelling around the campfire as Bwana Jon shares his African childhood with us, and the folklore students tell tales they have gathered throughout the week. The night will burn on as some play games while others read to the accompaniment of aspiring guitarists. Tonight several of us will gather to read How People Grow aloud. Our college journeys have led us to common places of questioning, discouragement, and doubt, and we are leaning on each other as we try to make sense of both the hope and hopelessness we see everyday.

Lion. As in, large cat, with mane, chewing on a wildebeest skull. It was not ten feet from our front bumper. In cafeteria terms, I could have nailed him with a tater tot, no problem and no chance of missing. And he growled at me when I stood up to get a better picture of his amazingness.

Yeah, I think that works for a highlight right now. Thursday we flew out of London on British Airways; Naomi, the Tanzanian stranger sitting next to me, drilled me in Swahili and prayed for our journey. And we watched the Fighting Temptations. Gospel music and T-Bone running through our heads, we arrived in Dar Es Salaam.

There is so much to say...Dar is stinking hot. We buzzed through a city of ramshackle shops and fenced compounds along the coast to Lazy Lagoon, our home for the weekend. There, on an island of sand and sea breezes in the Indian Ocean, we snorkeled around coral reefs, got to know each other, and adjusted to the time lag, all while being served hand and foot by the amazing staff (three-course meals, afternoon tea, fresh seafood, omelettes and fruit for breakfast...ahhh, paradise).

The next event: safari in Mikumi. We had an excellent day: two male lions, enjoying kills within feet of the road, herds of wildebeest and cape buffalo, reedbuck leaping across the road (how much buck could a reedbuck buck buck, if a reedbuck buck could buck reedbuck bucks?), warthogs, a pride of lions with cubs, baby warthogs and zebras, vultures. I blew straight through two rolls of film.

I rode astride the Hulk: a massive green diesel powered four-wheel drive military transport once used to patrol the Berlin wall. Expertly handled by an amazing driver (the thrice-blessed Edjedi), she conquered mud, sand, water, trees and rocks with fifteen people mounted on top. Quite the beast!

Sunburnt, sore and happy, we camped for the night and continued on to our home base near Iringa: Masumbo, the sound of many waters. Heaven on earth. Tucked up in the Tanzanian Highlands, our Masumbo campus is hot in the day, cool at night, and lush and green due to the rainy season. Mike Dierks and I have a five-man tent, shaded by a grass roof and an acacia tree, that overlooks the little Ruaha river (currently too fast to swim in...something about Class 6 rapids, hippos and instant death...but later when the river goes down we'll be breaking out the inner tubes (: )

Right now, I'm in a sweaty internet cafe in Iringa, on a computer aptly named Tembo (elephant). Our first Wildlife Behavior and Swahili classes went excellently this morning, in our grass-thatched classroom. Our spare time was pleasantly spent with volleyball, frisbee, and books (written material is a prized possession out here...there's already long waiting lists for Meic Pearse' Why the Rest Hates the West, Lewis' The Great Divorce, and Buechner's Telling the Truth. My own copy of Tolkein's The Silmarillion is in less demand...for the time being :). Tonight we will play soccer, and some may enjoy scrambling on the river rocks and watching the sunset. Afterwards...the stars are amazing. We are far away from civilization, and there are so many new constellations! It's absolutely gorgeous...you just have to remember to keep stamping around loudly in order to not surprise a snake :)

My time is almost up...life here is amazing. Eli and Linda and Bryan and the Arensens are amazing staff. I'm very priveleged to get to know them. I am looking forward to learning more about this amazing continent, and I am hoping that God will surprise me during this spiritual, geographical and intellectual journey. Your emails and prayers are greatly appreciated. In the middle of all this grandeur, there are many things from the past few years troubling and wearying my heart that only God can answer.

Kwa heri!
Dan

London in 60 seconds:
St. Paul's: amazing. Choral Evensong @ St. Paul's: priceless.
Buses: what fun...how practical...what a headache...what interesting people...holy crap, are they making out? again?
Streets that don't go in straight lines. ever. simply beautiful.
Parks. Big ones. In the middle of the city. Brilliant!
Architecture: unbelievably impressive.
Art: beyond words...even the Tate Modern was interesting.
Languages: more than can be imagined, and all speaking at once.
Accents: yes, I wish I was born British...I would sound so much more intelligent.
Cultures: incredible variety.
Cultural food: oh yeah baby!
Home-cooked Chinese food and new friends: what needs to be said?
Happy Host Helmut: quite the chap. intellectual, sharp, witty, and speaks with British accent after singing in German.
Street Musicians: talented.
Fish and Chips: greasy and o-so-delicious.
God: Moving mysteriously and powerfully as always.
Legs: Very, very tired.
Heart: Alive and Happy.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeha! What's next?

ps--check out imagestation.com, search for members anonimoose and barefootwonder7 for some of Lisa's excellent digital photography. cheers!

London...what an odd, lively, dishevelled old and interesting gentleman you are. I've spent...well, several days, at any rate (I'm still not over the time zone/jet lag thing) wandering your streets and chasing your buses and hearing your myriad of languages. And wishing o so much to have your accent. Any one of them.

Today will be my last day on your streets for a while. It's been a royal pleasure, sir, and I shall return someday, if I can ever muster enough money for your extravagant tastes. Until then...toodleoo!

4:20 am.

I'm ready.

I don't think I've every felt like this before; church was difficult for me tonight, more so than usual. I had to make the extra attempt to be involved, to make conversation, to care: my heart is looking outward now, to the journey ahead. It will be the longest of my life, and I am loathe to tarry here any longer.

My heart is leaping and overflowing with emotions, dichotomistic and schizophrenic. Naive dreams vie in my head with the corpses of dead hopes, and I am pulled in both directions. Are old things passing away, and all things being made new? Death and brokenness have marked my spiritual journey for so long that I have forgotten what a springtime of the soul feels like, and the assurances of friends aside, I am suspicious of hope.

It matters not. I am travelling again. This long break has left me restless, ill at ease and I am anxious to try my hand at anything. It matters not whether this is to be a joyous or sorrowful journey: it is the same Master who gives us both, and it is to Him that I strive. If He chooses to pour out my labor as a drink offering, than so be it.

But somewhere deep in my heart cries out that the wind is changing, and not all is as it appears...

I/don't get/many things right the first time...
in fact/I am told/that a lot

Now I know all the wrong turns/
the stumbles and falls/
brought me here...

And/where was I/before the day/
that I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it every day, and I know.

That I am...I am...I am the luckiest...

Next door/there's an old man/who lived to his nineties and
one day/passed away/in his sleep.
and his wife/she stayed for a couple of days/And passed away.

I'm sorry, I know that's a/strange way to tell you that I know/
we belong.
That I know...

That I am...I am...the luckiest.

--Ben Folds

a little something to keep me motivated
and
a little something to inspire whatever final papers you're mired in at the moment.
and
a little something I found rather profound and inspiring.

Today's moment of finals despair.

and....maybe it's a good thing that finals aren't some monster of fearsome aspect who one must confront in mortal combat, the result of which can only be the death of one or both...
maybe it's a good thing that life will go on after this week whether I conquer or am banished in disgraceful death from the battlefield...
but right now it just seems to rob the whole thing of drama and excitement. Besides, I think I could take Dr. Oakerson hand to hand...even if the tricky bugger has a mysteriously broken nose.
:)

where i want to be

what I want to be on


a few days' worth of food, a swimsuit, a good book, and a twisty road...work odd jobs for gas money and meals and wash in the ocean. i don't want to be here and i don't want to be home and i don't want to be anywhere that tastes like frustration and emptiness. let me go somewhere miles away from yesterday.

"Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker."
---C.S. Lewis, On Three Ways of Writing for Children

stolen so adroitly from jason's profile...thanks buddy!

why i am no longer a writing major

In The 13th Warrior, Antonia Banderas plays an Arabic diplomat who has fallen in with twelve Nordic warriors. They are thirteen, sworn to defend a small village, and an entire tribe of several hundred mounted, torch and spear-bearing men is charging their way. The proud Norse warriors, drenched in the falling rain, are preparing themselves for one last battle. Despite all their efforts, they have failed to strike at the heart of their enemy, and now their back are to a wall: they have no tricks left, and they will probably die.
The Nordic warriors stands stoically in the pouring rain; the makeshift defenses are as ready as they will ever me. They have sharpened their swords, tightened their belts and boots and bracers, and stripped themselves of every comfort and defense against the weather. They are ready for batter, and as they stand a watch their enemy approach, they join in the determined cadence of an ancestral battle hymn:
"Lo, I see my father.
Lo I see my mother, and my sisters, and my brothers.
Lo, do I see the line of my people, stretching back to the beginning.
They call to me; they bid me to take my place among them,
in Valhalla, where the brave may live...forever."
Their voices rise against the thunder of the approaching hoofbeats, crescendoing in the final silent pause, and the defiant shout of "FOREVER!"

This must be something like what the writer of Hebrews had in mind in reminding us of the legacy of pilgrims who have gone before us. "Seeing now that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us and run with perseverance the race set before us." Let us earn the right to say with Paul and all those who went before us, "I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith."

John 10:14-18
"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me--just as the Father knows me and I know the Father--and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life--only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."

"...the reason that the Father loves me is that I lay down my life..." this is a bit of a stumbling block for me; i'm used to the "Jesus loves me for me," "I don't have to do anything and can't do anything to make God love me more" sort of doctrine...this is a little troubling...exegesis, anyone?