chronicles of hope

And it's here...

2010-05-09T03:09:00.000-07:00

find me and my new and proved-to-ring-true thoughts at www.sacredimperfections.wordpress.com

Sianara, blogspot!

new blog coming soon!!

2010-05-05T21:54:00.000-07:00

so the Festival of Faith and Writing pretty much changed my life and i've decided i need to start writing more as really it's the only thing that keeps me from going completely insane. or rather it's the only thing that makes me accept my insanity, even laugh at it. so stay tuned, i'm gonna transfer some old posts over there and get the links and blurbs and pics all set up and then i'll post a link here!

What I've Learned Thus Far

2010-04-12T20:38:00.000-07:00

*I wrote this for my 'Forging the Kingdom' aka 'International Development' class. We were supposed to write about our experience working with our assigned Community Based Organization, but I chose a different approach.*

This year at Wycliffe College has given me deeper insight into what it means for Christians to live out and work for social justice. Unfortunately the CBO I was assigned to work with, Prison Fellowship Canada (PFC), had little to do with this enlightenment, although I was blessed to be partnered with Rick and Ellie who I have deep respect for. The LEAP II training was valuable to an extent, as I learned how important it is for an organization to be able to articulate their goals in such a way that allow a particular vision to be realized. However, the only work I did with PFC afterwards involved mere editing and re-editing the PD MAP so it could meet the standards of World Vision, and this was slightly frustrating. Mere semantics, it seemed, was key for the donors to be aware of the precise aims (resiliency, hope, economic and relational ‘progress’) that would ‘most certainly’ be reached in a stated allotment of time, so the funding would keep rolling in to keep the project afloat. And I began questioning how exactly in is that one can rate, measure and assign a monetary value to such things as resiliency and hope, and if that is somehow an incredible adventure in missing the point. It is our mandate as followers of Christ to live and breathe compassion, mercy, and justice whether or not any “progress” is made for the people we are working with. As Paul said in 1 Cor. 3:6, we are to plant the seed and God alone makes it grow. Sometimes there will not be measurable ‘progress’, and this will most certainly be frustrating, but it won’t make our efforts any less valuable in the eyes of the Lord. As Oscar Romero once said

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own [emphasis mine]

I learned this semester that the Results Based Management style of development work is not a framework that I’m very comfortable working in. It’s too bad that it seems to be the only one that World Vision operates within, and thus too bad that they are the organization that is mostly responsible for teaching our only development class. If I had any suggestion for Wycliffe, it would be to recognize that there are other ways of seeking after social justice and we need to be hearing the voices of those operate from those perspectives (like Mary Jo Leddy or the folks at the Catholic Worker, Word Made Flesh, or even the Jeremiah Community).

For me, the paradigm-shifting education happened in my other classes, such as Theology of Culture, Towards a Christian Political Economy: The Writings of Bob Goudzwaard, and Postmodernity: Towards a Biblical Worldview, all taught by the brilliant and wonderful Brian Walsh, and Ethics of Wealth and Poverty taught by Reginald Stackhouse. In these classes my mind was opened to realize that Jesus did not come to earth to merely bring personal salvation to our individual little souls so that we could go to heaven when we die. While personal salvation is important, it is an incomplete picture of the whole Biblical Story, which is far more of an epic and sweeping narrative than this. Jesus came to restore shalom to a broken world.

Shalom – a beautiful Jewish concept that I have fallen in love with. It means ‘wholeness,’ ‘deep peace,’ or ‘complete harmony’. And this shalom is to cover all of creation – a restoration of justice, goodness, and light; a reversal of poverty, injustice, oppressive societal and global structures, damage to the earth, idolatrous economies, and all of our relationships – with God, with others, with our communities, and with the planet over 6.5 billion people call home.

Brian Walsh taught me, among many things, that Christianity is to be subversive – a threatening and radical opposition to the dominant economic, political, and cultural powers that are trying their hardest to squeeze all the shalom out of our world for their own selfish gains. We are to fight against the forces of materialism, consumerism, individualism, oppressive global capitalism, greed, the commodification of sex, unjust political policies and practices, violence, and the desire for economic progress at all costs, to the detriment of our global neighbours. In the words of Bruce Cockburn (who Brian taught me to have a deep appreciation for), we are to “kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.” And how are we to do this? Well, we must to more than critique or condemn the dominant culture. And it is not enough to try to be relevant to it by creating so called ‘Christian’ versions of the same stuff (aka Jesus-branded products, music, books, etc.) Andy Crouch says in his book Culture Making that we are to create new culture. We are to live in such a way that is a ‘city on a hill’ for the masses to see and be in awe of. We are to live holistic, shalom-inducing lifestyles that will “invoke and embody the alternative” in a wide range of human practices, as Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw prophetically wrote in their book Jesus for President. Meaning, as a litany from Wine Before Breakfast said,

If the powers render you homeless, build homes.
If the powers reduce sexuality to a commodity, enter into faithful covenant.
If the powers rob you of your children, then take them back.
If the powers create domination, then embrace sacrifice.
If the powers despoil creation, then plant a garden.
If the powers take away your wealth, then give away freely.
All of this is ‘kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.’

We are to infuse our lives with practices that restore shalom to every dark corner of our world. If we see the lack of shalom anywhere, be it loneliness, poverty, confusion, or a need of any kind (for a home, for a friend, for a new couch), it is our God-given mandate to restore shalom to that situation as best as we can – by having compassion, standing along side people in their struggles, and trying to find a way to meet their needs so that they can live the kind of life that God created them for – a life of flourishing and deep community that brings love, joy and peace. We must be faithful to our covenantal calling – to be God’s people by doing his will on earth – restoring shalom, bringing healing to places of brokenness, and thereby erecting signposts of the Kingdom as we do it with smiles on our faces and light in our eyes.

Yesterday I went to a conference on ‘Kingdom Economics’ at People’s Church and I bought a book by David Dark called The Sacredness of Questioning Everything. The title pretty much sums up what I’ve been told not to do my whole life because we are supposed to have faith. But questioning is not the opposite of faith, I’d say apathy is. Questioning can lead to a faith that is deeper, more raw, authentic, and passionate, a faith that has no choice but to spur us into action. Action that can bring comfort, healing, justice, hope and love to those who need it most. And as we do so, we begin to reflect the Imago Dei more and more with each step.

One thing that I’ve been questioning this semester is the word “development”. It started bugging me during Brian Walsh’s class, Towards a Christian Political Economy: The Writings of Bob Goudzwaard. Goudzwaard’s main thesis that he exposits in all of his writing is that the West has given itself over to the idolatry of ideology: the ideology of economic and technological progress at all costs. He begins his book Hope in Troubled Times with a parable:

In the eighteenth century, a European explorer happened upon an island in the South Pacific almost completely denuded of vegetation, trees, fresh water, and animal life. The island, named Rapa Nui by its inhabitants and Easter Island by the explorer, was populated by only a few unwell people and by hundreds of gigantic, spectacular stone-sculpture idols. Even now the best engineering minds have scarcely grasped how the islanders could have sculpted and positioned the colossal statues. According to the few survivors, though the island had been fertile and had supported thousands of inhabitants, the chiefs and priests had promised that stone gods would deliver prosperity the likes of which had not been seen before. The people had been seduced by a kind of progress that becomes a mania, an ‘ideological pathology,’ as some anthropologists call it. Caught up in that mania, the islanders gradually off-loaded their practice of caring for each other and the island to their stunning stone creations, the perceived source of their prosperity. But the stone idols, spectacular marvels of human engineering, exacted a punishing revenge instead. Chillingly, their insatiable demands for resources consumed their makers and the island’s once abundant life.

The book argues that in a vastly different environment, contemporary “ideological pathologies” not unlike the one that ravaged Easter Island lie at the foundation of some of today’s seemingly irresolvable global problems. The spectacular forces of Western progress today – unprecedented marvels of human achievement such as contemporary market forces, technological development, scientific progress, the state, and power unleashed – have become elevated to the status of position just like the stunning stone idols on Easter Island. We have allowed this idolatry of ideology to consume us so that we are willing to do anything to protect our economic interests, even though we are ignoring the needs of 2/3rds of the world’s population. It’s like we are about to sit down for dinner with our extended family, yet we tell 7 out of the 10 of us, those who are the most vulnerable, like the children under six and the aging elders, we tell them that they must go sit outside in the cold while we gorge ourselves on an abundant feast as they blankly watch us with hungry gazes. That is what our insatiable desire for more, for better, for richer, for stronger, is doing to the human family, and it is disgusting.

The word “development” implies a sort of “progress,” and the economic and political models we teach to the Majority World are ironically the ones that have gotten us into this idolatrous predicament in the first place. With sky high deficits, economic collapses happening all the more often, and billions of dollars spent on warfare to secure Western “interests”, just what do we think we have to teach the people of the Majority World? It is not feasible for the entire world to consume as much as we do – the Earth simply has not enough resources for everyone to overindulgence. Goudzwaard’s book Aid for the Overdeveloped West is a cry for the West to seek help – to see the world as it really exists, and that our overstepping our boundaries – our buying into a global economic structure that cyclically perpetuates the widening gap between the rich and the poor, that divides labor between the haves and the have nots, forcing the poor to sell us their resources and make stuff for us for cheap, and then charging them insane amounts of interest when they have to borrow American dollars in order to buy things on the global market – to the extent that the poor countries are transferring more money to the rich countries in debt payments than they are receiving in humanitarian aid and relief, the fact that we are overstepping God’s boundaries like this is disgusting. It’s unjust, and it has splintered bits of broken shalom mashed to pieces all over it. We are the ones that need help – to value people over profits, community over enterprises, and life over luxury.

One final image that Goudzwaard painted for us in Hope in Troubled Times was the difference between the two economies – the one of this world that is marked by ruthless competition, greed, ethno-centricity, and injustice, and the other economy, the one that is rooted in values of covenantal faithfulness, jubilee, taking care of the widows, orphans, aliens and marginalized, one that is content with our daily bread, and does not hoard treasures on this earth that are destroyed by moths and maggots. The first economy is represented by a circle, because it is cyclical, it perpetuates itself, it takes on a life of its own and possesses its makers with a force that seemingly cannot be stopped. The second economy is represented by the cross. This symbol illustrates that the only possible way to break out of the circle is to accept the reality of the cross. The cross represents the only genuinely anti-ideological stance. All efforts to survive and maintain overindulgent life at any cost must be crucified, following Christ’s example. Jesus died in complete poverty, in the renouncing of all earthly power, renouncing his own interests, and in the abandonment of his divine identity. In dying he became stronger than the powers of the kingdom of darkness, which seduce and imprison people and nations in their relentless search for wealth, power, and a sure identity built up with glimmering stuff.

Which brings me back to my first lesson, why Jesus came to earth. He came to restore shalom, to defeat the powers that are controlling our world and return creation to the state that it was breathed into existence to be – a world of justice, harmony, peace, and covered from East to West, North to South, Minority World to Majority World – in love. May we seek to show compassion, mercy, and love to those who need it most – regardless of the end results that we may never see, and regardless of whether or not people ever ‘develop’ according to our standards – but soley because as we do so, we reflect the Image of our Creator ever so brightly, becoming more human in the process.

Easter Vigil

2010-04-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to the most intense, beautifully dramatic, ancient feeling, creative, awe-inspiring Easter Vigil at Church of the Redeemer in downtown Toronto. My breath was taken away.

When I arrived the historic parish was in partial darkness, and I was given a candle and a bell, and stumbled down the center aisle to sit with my friends, who thankfully were looking for me too, or else I would have been stumbling in the dark for quite a while. As I sat down I took in my surroundings: dark, ancient feeling stain glass windows, the high medieval arches, the cold, cobblestone walls contrasted with the rich, robust, mahogany beams.

Within a few minutes the Reverend appeared, our friend Andrew Asbil who has presided at Wine Before Breakfast, and he was dressed in pure white,almost glowing priestly vestments. He slowly walked into the center spotlight, looked solemnly over the congregation, and said,

"It all starts with a cry."

He was talking about a newborn, who enters this world almost intuitively feeling the weight of the misery that is to come, and echoes it all with a cry. He went on to talk about his own children (this is an Anglican priest, remember), and how often they have cried out to him in the night many, and how tonight, WE are those children, crying out, "Aaaabaaa! Where are you? Why did you leave?" For in the darkness between Good Friday and Easter, Jesus had died, and we were left here, and it was almost as if God himself had left.

The lights went down and he left the stage, and a procession of the candle-bearers, deacons, cross-bearer (i don't know if that's their real titles but it works for now), dressed all in white robes, came down the aisle, and the candle-bearer, Amy Fisher's friend, who was the cutest little 36 year old I'd ever met, raised her tall candle high, and chanted eerily: "The li-ght of Chriiiist" and the congregation responded, "Tha-anks be to Gauuuuud" and this happened three times during there walk down the aisle. We all had to turn towards the cross as it was coming down, so our backs would not be towards it. Then the deacons who were holding smaller candles lit the candles of those sitting on the end of the pews, which so happened to be me, and then we solemnly passed the light down the pews.

What followed was the telling of the entire sweeping epic of the Scriptures, from beginning to end, through chant, scripture readings of creation, the exodus, captivity and exile, and the coming of the Liberator, the Christ, all accompanied with the most incredible choir that made the stories come alive with their sound effects (wind, rushing water, dissonant sounds and awe-filled wondrous sounds), plus exotic instruments, steal drums, instruments i don't know their names. Then there were incredible old familiar gospel songs like "Dry Bones" "I went down to the River to pray" that were quite peppy and we all sang along. It was incredibly moving, and i felt like i was part of a world renowned dramatic performance.

Then came the renewal of our baptismal covenant. We had to affirm again our belief that as God liberated the Israelites from Egypt, and as Ezekiel say the resurrection of the dry bones, so we buried with Christ in his death, are risen with him in newness of life, liberated from the curse of sin and alivened with the Spirit. Then the entire congregation was sprinkled with water using these fir tree branches that were dipped in water. As the choir sang, the priest walked solemnly around the whole church, dipping and sprinkling us all. My heart pounded and then soared, pounded and soared. I was loving this.

The dramatic climax was equally as incredible: The priest declared that "He is Risen!!" and the congregation all rung their bells loudly and shouted, "He is Risen indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia!" speaking "Alleluia" for the first time since Ash Wednesday. We kept ringing them as the choir sang a bright and glorious chorus, as the lights all came on and as the altar, which had been stripped bare on Good Friday, was redressed with bright tapestries, and flowers were brought up to adorn the altar from all sides, and our priest friend Andrew was adorned in golden and blue stitched priestly vestments. Stunning! And how fun to ring those bells, with 500 others, for like 10 minutes!!

Then was our first Eucharist celebration of Easter, and then the priest completed his homily which he had started in the beginning: Christ is here, he is alive, our cries have been answered in him, there is hope.

We sang more, the choir sang more, we finished with some historic, rich prayers, and then the party began! Live music, wine, good food, and great new friends to meet! I love this church!

And so I came home, inspired, and having to write the prayers for our Easter celebration today, I wrote this:

Easter Sunday Prayer Litany
'River'service at St. Anne's Anglican Church
April 4, 2010

One:
Glorious Risen One, today we rejoice that you did not leave this world in darkness, but you came to awaken it to new life with the eternal light of your presence,that you showed us the way to everlasting harmony with You, with all of our sisters and brothers, and with all of creation. We rejoice that though you entered into the darkness of good Friday, and though you allowed for the full wrath of the powers of this world to be unleashed upon you, that was not the end of the story. Because you arose from the grave, we can say together:

All:
Light is stronger than darkness
Love is stronger than hate
For we know that our Redeemer lives
And we’ll stand with him on that day

One:
Living Savior, indeed we do rejoice that you did not remain in that cold, dark cave,
forever to be forgotten in the dusty pages of history. But as you rose you defeated the very power of death, and with it, you loosened the grip of sin that had held all of creation. We pray, Lord, that all those experiencing today the lingering effects of that curse, those suffering from isolation, oppression, persecution, and infinite sadness, that they may find fresh strength in the good news that this need not be the end of their story. For we remember together:

All:
Light is stronger than darkness
Love is stronger than hate
For we know that our Redeemer lives
And we’ll stand with him on that day

One:
For those who lack food, work, or a home, for those who seem to have lost their way, for those who are sick, in pain, or are grieving, for those who fear the future, for those who fear the present, or are paralyzed by fears from their past, may you comfort and strengthen them, and may we remind them, in word and deed, that because of this day, Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, Oh death is your victory? Where, Oh death is your sting? Thanks be to you, oh God, who has given us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord. For it is true what we proclaim together:

All:
Light is stronger than darkness
Love is stronger than hate
For we know that our Redeemer lives
And we’ll stand with him on that day

One:
But in the meantime, Lord, before that day, we remain in a world that seems to be overcome with darkness and hate. We hear of wars, of earthquakes, of famine, of disease. We pray for your healing presence Lord, to rush through the nations, for peace to become more than a distant dream. We pray for your wisdom to flood through the minds of our nations’ leaders, that they may advocate for the weak, the poor, for those in distress, and for the crying earth. And let us find comfort that this is not the end of the story, but we await the final act of the drama that is yet to come, when Christ will come again to restore Your Reign of Peace forever upon this earth. Until then, we pray that we may always be reminded, that because You have risen today:

All:
Light is stronger than darkness
Love is stronger than hate
For we know that our Redeemer lives
And we’ll stand with him on that day

One:
All this we pray in the name of the Father our Creator, the Son our Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit our Sustainer.

All: Amen.

Wine Before Breakfast

2010-03-17T20:10:00.000-07:00

So I was asked by my *favourite* professor Brian Walsh to preach at Wine Before Breakfast, an alternative morning Eucharist Service that he coordinates at Wycliffe College every Tuesday morning at 7:22am. It's the most amazingly creative, intelligent, musically gifted, justice-seeking and Jesus-loving community that I've ever been a part of. It's liturgical and ancient-feeling, yet on any given week the band (which is phenomenal) is playing U2, Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, or Alexi Murdoch, and sometimes Taize, hymns, and worship choruses. The litanies are all written by members of the community. And there's Eucharist each time, a common cup and loaf passed around as we serve each other. It completely nurtures my soul.

And so naturally I was *terrified* when Brian asked me to preach. It was in December, the day after my oral exam in his Theology of Culture class, and he emailed me to say that he was making a pastoral suggestion - that I should be preaching at Wine Before Breakfast. I was overwhelmed with both fear and joy, mostly because I completely adore this brilliant man, and also because the last time I preached, I well, had to say that I was "sharing" because that church didn't believe that women should preach. Also, everyone who had preached so far at Wine Before Breakfast was uber creative, intelligent, and all getting their PhD's or already had them, and I felt totally inadequate. But, with hesitation, I agreed. And then prayed a lot, and started prepping early. The passage he gave me was Mark 14:1-11, the anointing of Jesus by Mary of Bethany. It could not have been a more perfect passage for me - there is SO much in this on issues I'm passionate about, like women, poverty, and worship; I could have written a book! But alas, I wrote an 11 minute (exactly) sermon, and here is, for your reading pleasure:

In Memory of Her
Mark 14:1-11 (click here for the text - it will help, trust me!)

On my first day at Wine Before Breakfast back in the fall, I saw a familiar face. It was the beautiful face of my old roommate from my undergrad at Queen’s University, whom you all know as Amy Fisher [a member of our community]. We hadn’t seen nor talked to each other in 6 years, and the first thing that I knew I had to do was apologize to her. You see, back in those days, Amy was on her was to being a Salvation Army Officer, aka pastor, and back then I was under the impression that this was just plain wrong. The multiple churches that I had be raised in, all conservative, mainline Evangelical – the longest denomination that we had belonged to being Baptist – all had the policy that only men could be pastors, elders, and deacons. This was, I was told the natural order of God, and it was all I had ever known, so for me, the fact that men were the leaders was as normal as the fact that only women could give birth – it was their God-given responsibility – it was just the way it was. For, I was told, first God created Adam, than Eve. Men were the head, women were the body. Men were rational, and thus natural decision-makers, and women were emotional and sensual, and thus better suited for nurturing, helping roles. Jesus chose 12 disciples – all male – and thus established an apostolic succession that only included men.

I don’t have time today to address the various problematic hermeneutics that are used in every one of those passages to come to the conclusions that my former churches did. However, the scene that Mark portrays in the reading today clearly shows that Jesus didn’t care much about what was considered to be the “normal” social structure of the day – the patriarchal society in which men occupied all the positions of power and authority, and women were treated as little more that cattle – property to be owned, objects to gain pleasure from, machines to produce an heir. This is not how Yahweh had intended things to be.

For in deliberate and heightened contrast to the (male) scribes and chief priests who were conspiring to have Jesus killed at the beginning of today’s passage, and the (male) disciple Judas who betrayed him for a sack of coins at the end of the passage, Mark tells the story of a woman whose symbolic action would cut to the heart of what it means to be a true disciple of Christ and an heir to his coming Kingdom.

It was Passion week, the beginning of the end. And just as Jesus had finished describing the destruction of the seemingly-permanent Temple – as Andrew Asbil so beautifully explained to us last week, Jesus now seeks to tell his followers that this very thing would also happen to him. He was the temple that was about to be destroyed. Jesus would soon embody what he has been teaching his followers about discipleship all along – self-sacrifice, self-denial, “taking up the cross” – losing your life to find it – all of this would be epitomized in Jesus’ act of surrendering his life at Calvary.

Jesus chose for the Passover and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread to be the scene in which this final conflict will take place – here we are “plunged into the deepest heart of Jewish symbolic life” - these feasts were a reminder of Israel’s liberation from slavery and oppression in Egypt, through the wilderness towards the freedom of the Promised Land. New Testament scholar N.T. Wright notes that Jesus had been acting as the new Moses, doing striking things that were signs of the coming freedom (healing the sick, casting out demons, giving sight to the blind, and elevating the marginalized). And in this story it is no different – Jesus was eating at the home of a leper, once again not caring about the “normal” social barriers of the day.

Enter a woman, Mary of Bethany, who boldly disrupts the gathering of the men, and with one exorbitant act of extravagant, uninhibited worship, broke a jar of fragrant, costly oil and intimately pours in over Jesus’ head.

The disciples and the other men were shocked, for the symbolism would have been clear- everyone in the room would have understood what she was doing. Ched Meyers notes in his commentary on Mark Binding the Strong Man that she was anointing him as King – for this was an illusion to the stories in 1 Samuel 10 and 16, the anointing of Saul and David by Samuel the prophet. In her act of love and adoration, not only was she declaring Jesus King, but also she was assuming the office of a prophet – one who speaks and acts for God. A woman – speaking and acting for God.

The men in the room were indignant – Who does she think she is? And so they reacted with fake piety, pretending to care for the poor. And Jesus rebukes them, telling them to leave her alone, that she has done a beautiful thing to him, and “the poor you will always have with you.” Now, this line has been used by many Christians to justify their apathy towards the continued existence of poverty, but their interpretation is a rather a horrid twist on what he is really saying. Bryant Myers, VP of World Vision, notes in his article "The Poor Always With Us?" that Jesus is mirroring the statement in Deut. 15:4 – “there shall be NO poor among you, for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, IF ONLY you will strictly obey the voice of the Lord your God.” But they DIDN’T obey God, which is why there ARE poor among them now. Poverty was NEVER God’s intention, there had always been more than enough resources to go around, if only they had been faithful to their covenantal promises, of Jubilee, not hoarding their daily bread, and other commandments of mercy, hospitality, and justice. But they weren’t faithful, and so Jesus is SHAMING them by saying that there will always be poor because they’ll never fully hold to their covenantal promises. Which is the very reason that Jesus needed to come for them at all, and be anointed by this woman as King.

With her action, she had understood not only that he was King, but that he was a good King –one that would die for the ones he loves– as she was also, as Jesus pointed out - preparing his body for burial.

She understood that he was unlike all the Kings that Israel had ever known – he would not rule by control, manipulation, domination, or brute power – but he was a servant king, a suffering king, a self-sacrificing, loving, compassionate King – and thus, she understood what all of the (male) disciples could not – their Messiah was going to die.

And thus, he was worthy of such an elaborate sacrifice on her behalf – over a year’s wages it cost – it would have likely been kept aside and sold by her family in time of need – it was her savings, her family’s only security in case of a crisis.

In lavishing it on Jesus, she was releasing her grip on her very security – like us withdrawing all the money in our savings account, or liquidating our assets, cashing in our RRSPS, selling the family jewelry, or precious heirlooms that have been passed down through the generations – and giving it all to Jesus in worship, adoration, and declaration of his Kingship.

THIS is the true nature of discipleship. Not arguing over who would be first or who would have the most authority like James and John, and certainly not giving into cowardice for monetary gain like Judas, or for fear of the crowds, like Peter. True discipleship was embodied by this woman in a costly, extravagant, beautiful, fragrant love for Jesus, a love that beckoned her to relinquish all that which made her feel secure. This over-the-top display caused the anger of those in the room. But she didn’t care – her act came out of her deep insight into WHO Jesus truly was, and out of her abundance of love for him. She abandoned all that was so precious to her and poured it over his head, in an act that declared him the true King over Israel, and the true King over her life, and a King that could be TRUSTED because he was GOOD.

My friends, today I am not that woman. In fact, these days I find myself feeling rather uncomfortable, or even embarrassed, when someone seems to know or worship Jesus in a way that I consider to be over-the-top, extravagant, or even slightly emotional. Perhaps it’s the aversion I have to not being labeled an “emotional woman,” or aversion to the theology and politics that tend to come out of some of the churches that solely encourage a personal, intimate relationship with Jesus, and seem to forget that he also came to bring good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, and justice to the oppressed. I feel that these days, I resonate more with the disciples who wanted the woman to just go away, and were rather angry with her exorbitant act of devotion. I tend to want people who talk about or worship Jesus in a way that seems too intimate, too unnecessarily demonstrative to just be quiet, stop it or put those hands down already, you’re embarrassing yourself! Or me.

But I haven’t always been this way. I remember once being a slight resemblance of that woman, back in the days when Amy Fisher was my roommate. For despite all the things that now irk me about those churches I used to go to, one thing they taught me was how to intimately love Jesus and worship him with all of my being, despite what was going on in my life, despite the depression or the confusion or the lack of direction, or lack of faith. To lay all that I am, all of my security and my insecurity, all of my broken SELF, at his feet.

For despite how over-the-top that woman’s actions must have seemed, Jesus was so moved by the beauty of her “embarrassing” extravagance, that he promised that wherever the gospel would be proclaimed in the whole world, what she had done would be told in memory of her. Yet, sadly, she has not been remembered, for the story has been overlooked as merely a nice thing done by an unimportant woman, rather than a powerful act that cut to the very heart of discipleship when all the “important” others missed the point. May I then suggest, my friends, that every time we eat the bread and drink the wine together in memory of him, that we also give our fragrant, lavish, self-abandoning adoration of Jesus - in memory of her.

holidays that make you feel like crap (?)

2010-02-17T14:52:00.000-08:00

Three occasions I don't usually pay attention to - Valentine's Day, Family Day (here in Ontario), and the beginning of Lent - were all smooshed into the last few days, and they all tried really hard to make me feel like crap. On the 14th, I got a FB wall post from a guy I know saying "happy singles awareness day," my roommates all left me alone to be with their closest kin on Family Day (mine are currently in London, India, and Chicago), and Lent - well, you feel like you have to give up things you love.

I admit, my younger self would have given in to the evil plots of these days. Usually I hate V-day and shrug it off as a mere hallmark holiday, designed only by candy, chocolate, and flower companies to make a quick profit from the foolish and love-struck. In my even younger days i would have spent the day feeling sorry for myself that the only card i got was from my father, signed with, "Don't worry, you'll always be *my* valentine." But as I grew older, cynicism, i thought, was much wiser. Write it all off due to corporate manipulation, as smugness and self-righteousness is much better than loneliness.

As for Family Day, well, this is relatively new in Ontario and I've been away for the last 4 years, so we have no tense history together. But my younger self probably would have been sad that my nieces and nephews live so far away, and my parents were in India, and I don't ever see my cousins anymore, and my grandmother didn't get the last letter I wrote to her before she died.

And lent - well, this would have only conjured up vague and ill-placed sentiments about giving up chocolate, or giving up complaining (in my philosophical-ish days)for reasons I wasn't really sure why. It had no terrible place in my past, but it wasn't really important either.

But happily I am able to report, all three occasions failed in their attempts to drag me down. Tried as they might have, I beat off their efforts with a stick I like to call optimism.

I decided to redeem Valentine's Day by celebrating it's original intention - the people who I love in my life - rather than being sad about the people who aren't or angry at corporate manipulation. So I created a hand-made card for my non-romantic Valentine's Day date Trenko, an old friend from Queen's whom I kinda love to death. We had a good old fashioned date - made dinner, complete with wine, went to a movie, and talked and laughed for hours. Good times! At church the next day I gave out little loli-pop heart flowers, which I also made out of construction paper by hand, thank you very much. Even though a certain someone, who I may or may not have had a crush on at one point, commented that he hated V-day and burned one of the heart petals in the palm-ash fire we had outside (a tradition of the Anglican church, to burn last year's palm Sunday branches in order to get the ashes for Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent). Still, I remained cheery. And when another boy - who, of course, i don't have a crush on - overdid it a little by showering me with candy (my favourite, though - baby sour keys!), a store-bought sickly-sweet and sparkly card, and multiple card-board cut-outs of hearts and cupids, I remained rather calm, un-cynical, and appreciative. Afterwards, Chinese food with a table full of great friends to celebrate the Lunar New Year (also, it was Transfiguation Sunday, how's that for a jam-packed Post-Modern 3-in-1 celebration!) topped the day off with me feeling full and rather contented.

As for family day, I celebrated it with my brother (um, in the Lord) Kyle from Wycliffe, who drove more than one hour to see me and stayed for two nights on our living room futon. We watched multiple episodes of the Office, the phenomenal film Whale Rider, Martyn Joseph and Bruce Cockburn videos, read NT Wright articles out loud, danced to the new Josh Garrels song Zion and Babylon, ate all those sour keys, and made veggie pizza. When a boy called for me (the same one who showered me with gifts - and by the way, cannot speak hardly a word of English, being brand new to Canada from Mexico!) - he answered the phone, and we told him he was brother - perfect! Brother Kyle left after our meditative morning prayer service the next day at 8:08am, and as he drove away I somehow felt like I was part of the greatest family ever.

And now it is the first day of Lent, and this year, it is rather deep and meaningful. I belong now to a church that is very liturgical in it's practices, St. Anne's Anglican Church in Toronto (River is the name of the service - it's very creative and justice-seeking and wonderful). It's liturgical in the sense that it follows the ancient traditions of the Church in order to celebrate the whole story of God in a very rich and symbolic manner. The lectionary calendar is followed, meaning every day, week, and month, pertains to a certain event in the story of God as written in the Scriptures - the Creation, the Fall, the Exodus, the Wilderness, the Waiting, the Exile, the Liberation with the coming of the Messiah, the Crucifixion and Redemption, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Future Hope - so that in one year, you've re-lived it all together as a community. So now we are in the season of Lent - the Wilderness, the Waiting, the Preparation for the Messiah culminating in his surrendered life, at Easter, and subsequent Resurrection, defeating the powers of death, slavery, and exile, and bringing restoration, redemption, and hope to the people of God.

So those are a lot of big words, and even bigger concepts which I am struggling still to understand - the mystery of it all is great. But this year, I am giving up something big in order to prepare myself for Easter - social connectedness, a.k.a, Facebook. It might seem like a silly thing to some, but honestly, for me, i pretty much love being in the loop, connected, wittily bantering with and sharing links and articles and vids and pics with friends. However, recently it's gotten to the point where I waste hours on Facebook, and not always because i want to be "social," but because I basically want to edit and control my image . With a new profile picture, a new quote, another comment here and inside joke there and witty one liner there, I become too obsessed with how I am perceived, that I micro-manage by online image to death. And it's starting to make me feel rather ill. So. I'm going to spend the time more wisely, doing the read and studying like a good seminary student should, and praying for the wisdom to not freakin' care so much about others think, and start caring more about how others are doing.

And so, holidays that would have at one point made me feel like crap, I throw my glass of water (that is now half full) in your face!

India

2009-10-10T02:28:00.001-07:00

Jesus thirsts

2009-01-15T00:31:00.001-08:00

As some of you know, I’m leaving for India next Thursday, January 22nd. I am not going as a tourist, but as a seeker of Christ with a strong desire to be changed by serving the poorest of the poor. This letter is to share with you how I made the decision to go, what I will be doing there, and also to ask you if you’d like to partner with me as I go, through prayer, finances, or both.

This trip has been mulling around in my mind since last year around this time, when I first read the book "No Greater Love" by Mother Teresa. Through her selfless life of love for the poor and dying in Kolcata (formerly Calcutta), she came to know Jesus in a most disturbing yet beautiful and deeply intimate way.

One of my favourite quotes is from her chapter on prayer. She writes,

“I shall keep the silence of my heart with greater care, so that in the silence of my heart I hear His words of comfort and from the fullness of my heart I comfort Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor.”

In Matthew 25:35 Jesus says,

“For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me... for as you did to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”

I would like to invite you to send me on your behalf, to go visit Jesus as he lays dying in the Missionaries of Charity homes, to offer him a drink, to comfort him and be with him as he returns to his Father in Heaven. Through this experience I hope to gain a deeper perspective on what it means to know Jesus by serving the "least of these," and return with the humility and insight to encourage others to press onwards towards the goal of knowing Christ and making Him known.

The practical details of the trip are as follows:

I’ll be in India month total, from Jan. 22nd – Feb. 22nd. The first two weeks will be spent volunteering at Mother Teresa’s Homes for the Dying in Kolkata (Calcutta). My duties will include bathing, feeding, and looking after the practical needs of patients who are dying of such diseases as tuberculosis and leprosy. While these seem like daunting and drudgerous tasks, I'm looking forward to a good dose of humility as I take care of the poorest of the poor in their final hours.

I'll be then flying to Bangalore, in the south of India, on February 7th to teach English at the ACTS Institute. "ACTS" is an acronymn for Agriculture, Crafts, Trades, and Studies, and it is in these areas that the students are trained, alongside theology, and Biblical Studies. The students are preparing for a life of ministry in various Indian communities, but also are in need of "tent-making" skills to provide income for their families, as the communities are usually too poor to support them financially.

My father and my church from home, Harvest Bible Chapel in Barrie, Ontario, have been connected to ACTS for a few years now. My parents visited the school for the first time in 2005, and I visited them there for 10 days. We'll be returning together for the second time, and my father will teach theology and Bible and my mother and I will be teaching English. Although India is technically considered an English-speaking country, most of the students at the ACTS Institute are from poor villages that speak a variety of dialects, and English is rarely even heard. It is crucial that the students develop their English skills, as all of the ministry-related instruction, such as Bible and Theology, is done in English. As well as teaching, I'll be spending my time getting to know the students, building relationships with them, and assisting them in their community projects (children's Bible camps, etc) in the surrounding villages.

As for the financial details of the trip, I'm budgeting as follows:

Airfare: Busan-Kolcata, return : approx. 1.5 million won ($1500 CDN)
Kokata-Bangalore, return : approx.100,000 won ($100 CDN)

Food and Lodgings, 4 weeks: approx. 400,000 won ($400 CDN)

TOTAL COST: Approximately 2 million won ($ 2000 CND)

The reason I'm asking for financial support is three-fold: I'm in the process of saving money for seminary starting next year, and I'm trying putting all my savings now towards that. But more importantly, I think that when people give financially to a project such as this, there is a deeper sense of connection between the go-er and the senders. I would love to have the support of my spiritual family, so they feel like they are going with me, and I feel like I'm going on behalf of them. Also, using other people's money gives me a sense of responsibility, like I will be held accountable for how I use it. And I would like to be held accountable, for using my time and resources on this trip to serve Jesus and to serve others, and not simply to go to a cool new place for my winter vacation (not like there is anything wrong with that, of course, but that's just not the purpose of this trip).

Besides financial support, I would love for you to support me in through your prayers. Please begin praying for me, that my heart will be right, that I will be teachable, humble, and hard-working, and that I truly learn what it is like to serve Jesus through the poor. And please pray for those that I come in contact with, be it other volunteers, the patients, the students, or other travelers, that Christ may use me to shine His light into their lives.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, and for considering supporting me in this. My thoughts and prayers are with you all.

Your sister in Christ,
Jen

p.s. donations can be made through pay pal (login, go to the “send money” tab and enter my email address - jengal4@gmail.com), or by giving to me directly this Sunday (for those in Korea).

Beware of Community

2008-09-15T01:46:00.001-07:00

I was 12 years old when I developed my first phobia. My brother had passed down his newspaper route to me, and being an eager 12 year old, desiring independence and a big-kid identity, I embraced the job with enthusiasm. Riding my bike through my partly-rural Canadian neighbourhood and delivering the local newspaper, The Barrie Examiner, made me feel older and more mature than my 12 years. I often felt like I was watching myself perform the task. There goes that smart young woman, with wind blowing through her hair, tossing those newspapers so effortlessly. What a care-free girl, cool she must be!

As you can imagine, I found myself making enemies with many of the neighbourhood's Labs, Golden Retrievers, Poodles, and German Shepherds. Territorial by nature, and protective of their master's turf, I was to them nothing but a persistent intruder. They couldn't understand that I was doing their master a service, and that they should welcome and appreciate my efforts. No, rather, they chased me. And barked. And bared their razor-sharp teeth. At first it was a game to me; being from a dog-owning family i thought nothing of the creatures - I considered myself a natural dog lover. So I just rode, ran, and jumped away faster than they could. Until the day I had a western-style stand off with the next door neighbour's German Shepherd named Bud (after the beer). He had me shaking in my boots, tears streaming down my face while i held my bike in between us, acting as a shield from his slobbering, snarling, angry growl. And then it happened: I took one step away from my bike, turning my back on him to make the run for home. He lunged forward and sank his teeth into my then-not-so-meaty butt, and didn't let go until my squeal alerted his master who then called him away from me. I limped home, shaking more than ever, tears soaking my quivering lips, and thus was born my fear of dogs.

It took me many years to get over that incident, and many stages of dog-phobia-rehabilitation by many sources to help me love dogs again. They smell fear! Act brave, even if you don't feel brave, my dad would say. Dogs need a leader, they need to know your intentions, who the boss is, I would read. If you want to enjoy the benefits of their company, you must be willing to get close, to be confident, to pretend you love them, and eventually, you will, I would tell myself. Eventually, it worked, and today I am able to walk by any sized barking dog and remain perfectly calm. I'm even proud to be the loving momma of a darling little Maltese puppy named Bailey. (He's no German Shepherd, I know, but it's a start!) His companionship, playfulness, loyalty, and adoration are worth all the pains it took me to challenge my fear and overcome it.

I also must confess another phobia that developed in my childhood: community. No really. I have been scared to death of deep, authentic relationships with multiple people at the same time. Once upon a time, I think around the age of 6, I remember thinking that people were really normal and fun to be around. And then it happened. For about the longest, most painfully lonely and fearful 11 years of my life, I was bullied, controlled, taunted, and manipulated by my peers. I was the class loner, the class clown, the class target, and the class loser. I was told I wasn't hip enough to be in the all-girls Cool Club, I wasn't fast enough to play first-basemen in baseball, I wasn't worthy enough to deserve the friendships anyone at school. I was told that I was ugly and nobody liked me, that my parents should have aborted me, that I ruined people's days by showing up at school. I could go on and on about how Steve Ellors*, the class hunk and eventually valedictorian, would pay first-graders to throw rocks at me, and how Anita Padon*, the coolest girl in the class, would turn everyone against me and manipulate them to not even look at me. And thus, I developed a dreadful fear of people. I thought they could just see how abnormal I was, how ugly and nerdy I was, how selfish I was, and I would just hide from them.

It's taken me many years to get over those incidences. At times I didn't think I would ever be able to interact normally with people, as I just didn't know how for the longest time. My community-phobia-rehabilitation has included therapy, anti-depressants, biblical counselors, prayer, the support of loving family members and friends, and lots and lots of tear-stained self-help books. And all these things have taught me plenty. I've learned that because God is in community with Himself in the Trinity, and we are created in the image of God, we are created for community. Being in authentic relationships with others is necessary, literally, for our survival. I've learned that true community is created when we are selfless and seek to meet the needs of others before our own needs, as modeled by the entire life of Christ. I've learned that community requires risk, the willingness to just get out there and try, even though you might get hurt. But most importantly, and most recently, I've learned that true community, true relationships, create a mess worth making. Relationships are messy, difficult, hurtful things. They can be full of misunderstandings, judgements, betrayals, and conflict.

So why bother? Well, why did I bother to get over my fear of dogs? Because I saw that the benefits dogs could bring to my life far outweighed the safety of my fear. Likewise, relationships with others, though painful at times, are capable of enriching our lives in ways that nothing else can. They drive us closer to our Most Satisfying Relationship by forcing us to cry out to Him for wisdom, strength and the power to forgive. They act as mirrors that show us how we are not yet like Christ, so we can strive to grow in specific areas. They reveal to us our shortcomings so that we can grow and be the kind of person that we never imagined we could be: more loving, more forgiving, more gentle, more selfless, more Christ-like than we ever dreamed possible. And in the close, sweet times, they teach us much of love, joy, peace, laughter, trust, and the bliss that only pure intimacy with others can bring.

Community is a dangerous, scary thing, and it is not to be entered into lightly. Many of us have been burned at one time or another by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable with someone who ends up betraying our trust. But we cannot survive without it. In fact, we will never fully be alive unless we chase it, and when we fail or get hurt, to continue, in God's grace, to get up, dust ourselves off, and chase it again.

May the Creator and Imitator of Deep Relationships grant us strength, wisdom, and grace to beware of community, and then dive in head first.

Me, Nikki, Dan, and Clayton on our recent camping trip

*names have been changed to protect the people involved, who, by the way, i completely forgive and wish the best for

to hell with writer's block

2008-03-06T06:54:00.000-08:00

so i haven't written anything in an ENTIRE year due to this mythological wall that has been blocking my creativity, so i've been telling myself, and i'm SICK of it telling me what i can't do!!! so i'm just going to write about whatever comes to my mind and we'll see where this goes...

so i'm currently re-adjusting to celebrity-ship, according to my facebook status, by returning to my position as, insert pretentious British accent, "Professor of English Language and Literature" (if you can call "Worldview 2 - Intro to English Coversation" *literature* , here at Kosin University.) Yes, that's in Korea. And yes, I'm still here, it's been 2 1/2 years, but that's a whole other blog post.... The thing is, I've never felt so ridiculously and quite shallowly *idolized* by so many people. I walk into a building, and i am welcomed by waist deep bows and screams and hyper-quick waving hands and many lines such as "Hi Professor!!!" and "I love you!!" and "Hello!! Hellooooo!!!!" It's just insane. Today I (and the other foreign English Professors) were called on to welcome the English students back for another semester at an opening Chapel service (it's a Christian university, btw), and the SCREAMS were so deafening, you would have thought Wentworth Miller walked in the room(or ok, Brad Pitt for you non-Prison Break people - and, side note - good for you, i just found out they KILLED SARA and i've never wanted 51 hours of my life back so badly). I've almost started to picture myself as some high-fashion skinny little Hollywood goddess, struttin' her stuff down the freezing cold cement hallways, and then I catch a glimpse of my reflection in some glass doors and I see nothing but a pasty-white, plumper-than-normal, older version of myself, wearing something i never EVER imagined myself in - a pinstripped chocolate brown suit that i got made in Thailand for a price i should have put towards my debt and darn-it! - i don't even like the cut of it anymore. But despite the delusion, in the end, it *is* endearing. Because I ADORE my students. This week back at work has been so much better than I expected. After returning from a blissful 3 week holiday wandering around Thailand (which was SO divine), I was fearing that Depression would welcome me back with its cold, ugly familiar arms. He (depression has just *got* to be masculine) opened them up for an embrace late last week, especially after i found out that my dear old high school friend had been killed while skiing, in an avalanche. I wanted to go home and say goodbye, to properly remember her, to be with her family. But there was this problem of a giant body of water called the Pacific in the way....blast.

And THEN there was this whole deal at the Professors retreat, an hour away at a fancy-smancy hotel in Gwanju. Three things that REALLY irked me happened: 1) They announced that they were cancelling the fine art program (stab in the heart! I think the arts are SO incredibly worthwhile and desperately needed, but this culture simply does not value them - "no job for art students! can not become rich!"). 2) A woman working for a broadcasting company, while addressing us Professors, encouraged us to "teach the students to have an obedient heart while new in the workplace, not to express their ideas and opinions." Awesome. *Please, no independent thinkers! No creative ingenuity! No democratic mindsets! Obedient, subserviant little clones, only, for us!* And 3) A woman who was supposed to give a speech on the school's sexual harrassment policy (a gov't requirment) skirted around the issue by giving a 5 minute schpeel entitled, "How to do Mathematics" that mentioned SQUAT about sexual harrassment and too much about men and women being "different" because they have different centers of gravity which can be figured out by some ridiculously complex math equation. 5 minutes of this, and i'm waiting for her to address the seriousness of sexual harrasment, but she doesn't - she just wraps up her neat little speech about gender differences and sits down, with a hearty *applause* even, by the entire Korean faculty, all straight-faced and nodding with approval! The foreign staff all just looked at each other, with jaw-dropping stares and fits of laughter - like we just could not *believe* that just happened. So there's this culture for ya: hatred of the arts, love of obedient little workaholic slaves, and suppression of anything slightly related to sexuality. SO, needless to say after that, Depression was running straight for me, as I was thinking, "WHY do I work in this country again??" But i rejected the embrace and decided that, after all, I have a LOT to keep me content in this country. Since working at Kosin, I've made a LOT more Korean friends than I've had in the previous 2 years in Korea (I had been doing the typical English Teacher thing, hanging out with other English Teachers who were, just, way too comfortable). And they are *delightful* . So fun, and giving, and loving, and so it's easier to love Korea when there are Koreans that you just *adore* . Along those lines, I'm learning more about living in the present and enjoying the people who are in my life RIGHT NOW instead of longing for past relationships or dreaming of future ones. I have a job that allows me to befriend people from totally different cultures - Kenyan, Cambodian, Fiji-an (i don't know what that culture is called), and Korean, of course. Yep - there's many international students here - its cool! SO i guess what i'm trying to say is that despite the cultural, er, *differences* , and the overtly enthusiastic response to my blonde hair and blue eyes, I'm deeply, deeply BLESSED to be in the position I am and I refuse, from now on, to accept any other ideas about it. Freaking blocks and walls and ugly embraces, you can control me no more.

the least of these

2007-02-21T08:49:00.000-08:00

Last week I taught Jesus how to knit. We sat on the dirty cement floor of his small, plain, concrete-block house, the sun streaking through the torn flowered material that was his door. I had bought him some brightly-coloured yarn, needles, and a knitting book filled with trendy patterns, and had meekly presented them to him as his five half-clothed children gathered around, curiously rumaging through my bag and playing with its contents - an iPod, a Latin American Spanish phrase book, a camera, a pair of sunglasses, some lip gloss, and lots and lots of yarn. Fumbling through directions in Spanish and Creole, I slowly taught him (with lots of hand gestures to copy me) how to cast on, purl, change colors (he had trouble with this one), cast off, and sew up the finished product - a lime green, teal blue, and chocolate brown-coloured camera case that he could sell at the local fair-trade art co-op. Every hour or so we'd stand up to take a break, and I'd go outside to play with the kids and their friends on the dirt roads of the Haitian community they were apart of on the north shore of the Dominican Republic. Having gone there to visit my friend who works in the community and to do what I could to help, it was my desire to provide him with a skill that would help him put some food into his children's bloated stomachs. Throughout the four days, after I hiked up to his shack on a hill, as he was stitching away, the Spanish phrase book came in handy as I sought to discover a little about his life. As we talked, joked, and listened to music, we became friends. I grew to love the kids, too, as we jumped rope, drew pictures with sidewalk chalk, and played Cats and the Cradle. On the last day, I gave them some clothes, soap, crayons, paper, and other gifts, and as I decended slowly down the hill towards the rest of the village, I realized that I had come to know the Friend of the Poor in a way I never had before.

Now replace Jesus with Romona, a Haitian woman who works at La Tienda, Rachel's fair trade art co-op, and you have what Jesus talked about in Matthew 25:44-46:

Then they also will answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' Then he will answer them, saying, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

Through the reading of two very profound books (see below) and my experience with Ramona, I realized what Jesus was really saying here. On the Last Day, the very authenticity of our salvation will be measured not by the soundness of our theology or by what we claim to believe, but by how we treat "the least of these" in our society. By responding in love to the deperate needs of the poor, the lonely, and the rejected, we are literally responding to the God-Incarnate himself. Jesus becomes alive in the eyes of the lowly, and by reaching out to them we are opening ourselves up to a deeper undestanding of the gospel and intimacey with God that we could never know otherwise. Read the Gospels, and you can't miss that Jesus was all about befriending the forgotten, the lonely, the most-gossiped about, and the rejected. Translate that into modern culture and you will get the homeless, the poor (anyone trying to live on a non-living wage), the abused (emotionally, sexually, physically, or economically), the "socially awkard," the "loners," the "sexually loose," the "unfashionable," the "annoying," and the "fill-in-this-blank-with-whomever-you-seek-to-avoid." He sought them out not to patronize them with charity or write them a cheque to ease his conscience, but to befriend them, live among them, and share with them the love and grace of their Creator. This is the radically compassionate character of the God of the Bible. This is the very nature of the Upside-Down Kingdom of Jesus, of which we are all gently beckoned to be a part of.

There are two books that have shone the light so brightly on this urgent message that I was greatly disturbed with my own self-absorption and complacency. They helped me to see that I have been so focussed on my own existence and "issues" that I have not been fully denying myself and radically following this Way of God, that is to look so counter-cultural that it brings hope, love, and justice to a world full of cyclical injustice, cut-throat competiveness for money, power, and popularity, and abandonement of the desperate. They are:

1) The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne

Highly readable, intensely inspiring, and disturbingly challenging, the author of this book is the Founder of The Simple Way, an intential Christian community that lives in the poorest ghettos of Philadephia. Believing firmly that Jesus meant what he said in the Beatitudes (blessed are the poor, meek, lowly, hungry and thirsty for righteousness, etc.) and how he lived his life (seeking out the forgotten, abandoned, and rejected to love and meet their needs), the Simple Way seeks to befriend the poor and homeless, fight against the social injustice against them, and actually meet their needs by sharing with them their food, clothes, and other resources. Having gone from the jail cells in the inner city to the slums of Calcutta to the war-torn neighbourhoods in Iraq (on a peace mission), Shane's semi-autobiographical work will seriously cause you to question why the heck you've been sitting on your butt. If you're comfortable with where your life is now, don't read this book. It may cause you to want to actually follow Jesus, which could, as Shane says, wreck everything.

2) God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It by Jim Wallis

For those who are frustrated with the self-righteousness ignorance of the Religious Right and doubtful still of the cynical Left, this book will help you see that God is not a Republican...or a Democrat, but cares about how we deal with poverty, the environment, war, injustice, and many other issues. He talks about the danger of claiming that the evildoers are "out there" and not within our own actions and policies, and claims that our faith should motivate us to stand in the way of injustice, needless violence, disregard of the environment, tax cuts for the rich, abandonement of the poor, and make our voices heard on every individual issue instead of being loyally partisan, and if God is on one side or the other. A must-read for people like me who love to talk about the two biggest taboo topics out there: religion and politics! Or for those who are simply seeking clarification as to how Christians should be involved in politics in a way that shows the world the love, grace, and justice of God.

If anyone in Korea is interested in starting a book club with either of these books, let me know, I'd LOVE to hear all your prospectives on them and discuss all this more, and then actually go and do something about what we learn. We can have it at my new apartment! Go here to order from within Korea and receive it in 10 days.

To those who are still reading, you deserve a medal. Thanks for reading about what I've been learning. May the God who loves the least of these surround you in all you do this week.

Peace,

Jen

p.s. Click on the flickr badge on the right to see the rest of my pics from the trip, plus some old pics of nepal i took years ago that i just recently came across, which actually just emailed to Shane to have published in his new book, Jesus for President. Check out his website for more details.

Koranglish

2007-02-11T12:19:00.000-08:00

Well, its been four days since i landed in the Dominican Republic, and I'm just starting to train my tongue to stop speaking Korean when I know I need to communicate something in Spanish. I´ve been automatically responding with "Ney" (Korean for "yes") instead of "Si" and "Kumsumnida" (Korean for "thankyou") instead of "gracious." People here must think I´m from some crazy little European country whose language they´ve never heard before. haha. Although, I have decided that I am enrolling in Spanish classes as soon as I get back to Korea (how´s that for ironic), because I LOVE the language and have an eerie feeling that I will be needing it one day. I love it here. The people, music, food, and buildings are so full of life. Being with Rachel has been so comforting, rejuvanating, relaxing and inspiring - like simultaneously coming home, going to church, sleeping in, and enrolling in school. Even though much time has passed since we last saw each other, we are still the same together. We really love each other, and its been nice just to rest in that. She has felt blessed by all the gifts, cards, and presnts that have been sent with me, which has been a blessing to me as well to see her feel so loved. And seeing La Tienda has been wonderful. Everything inside of it - the women included - is soooo enchantingly beautiful. We´ve only been into the village once so far, the rest of the time I´ve been helping Rachel get some much needed away/relaxation time, with no complaints from me! So we´ve gone to the beach 3 times, and have just read, knitted, painted, sat in charming little beach-front restaurants, and talked. It´s been wonderful. I´ve been knitting some examples of iPod/camera bags to use to teach our sole knitter tomorrow at la tienda, I´m excited (the bikini idea is out, since Rachel didn´t think it was simple enough, plus it might not sell seeing as alot of the packages to sell are sent to churches/mission organizations...boo!). So, tomorrow will be great to spend real time in the co-op with the women...

Until next time....ciao!

Baby Got Book

2007-02-01T20:22:00.000-08:00

freakin' hilarioius. that's all i have to say.

not enough headspace for this mind traffic

2007-01-23T21:38:00.000-08:00

so among the normal i'm-only-home-for-6-weeks activities, like going to aqua-fit with mom and grandma every morning, eating lots and lots of homemade maple syrup chili and timbits, scheduling in friends' visits like they are doctor's appointments, driving all over ontario to see friends and their newest baby or boyfriend or marriage vows (not always in that order), flying to montreal to a) feel like i'm in Europe, seriously, b) kiss random people i meet twice, and freak out if it ends up on the lips cuz i didn't know which cheek to go for first, and c) see my ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, who also happens to be my good friend from korea (don't ask), planning a trip to the dominican republic to visit my best friend's art co-op, yes, people, among all this (see pics here, btw), i'm making three major life decisions that require countless hours of tumultuous thinking.

A) where the heck do i work when i get back to korea in march?
B) where the heck do i work in September?
C) how the heck do i deal with all the political, spiritual, social (mis)information that keeps attacking me constantly over here?

possible answers:

A) this depends on a lot of factors. what's more important to me- working hours? money? job satisfication? vacation time? location? what would be most important to you? well, my dad, being the statistical engineer that he is, drew up this table with all the possible factors and i rated them all and they he did some fancy smancy formula thing and it turns out the job that won is the job with the best hours and job satisfaction and vacation time. but what about money? that is why i'm sacrificing time away from home to go to korea anyways : my end goal has always been to pay off debt and then save money for my masters. but i feel like being debt-free has become an idol, to which i sacrifice job satisfication and fun . Is being debt-free and saving money worth working at a slave labour school where i completely disagree with their philosophy of education? even if it's short term? what about trading $400 a month more for 2 months vacation? or good hours in dognae (far away from everything) vs. bad hours in haeundae (close to friends and beach)? what's worth more?

B) An International School in India or Busan? Adventure or Comfort? Starting over or building deeper relationships?

C) I don't know. Too many opinions, books, news channels, commentaries, people telling me what to believe or who to believe or how to live. Information overload, thanks in part to this media-crazed culture, whose ban-wagon i have recently jumped on. like by getting my new google homepage, where i've linked over 5 different media sources, all saying different things about the same person or event or ideology. somebody, please just shoot me. or at least just tell me what to believe. i just want to live in peace and do what is right! but who know's what that is anymore....Even within the boundaries of "Christianity" I'm annoyed at the "evangelical conservatives" and the "agnostic/liberal/emergent" types. It's hard to trust anyone these days, and i find myself sceptical of everyone's opinion for some reason or another. if only i could fast all forms of media for a few days....no tv, books, internet....how would my mindset change? does one need all this information? hmmm....the dominican republic is fast approaching.....saweet.

J.

home sweet home

2006-12-30T22:02:00.000-08:00

so after 20 odd hours of flying, landing, getting off a plane in some random city that is not my final destination, going through customs, trying to convince the customs people that NO, the 15 odd gifts that i so foolishly wrapped and tried to take on the plane do not contain illicit drugs, porn, liquids or WMDs, getting back on yet another plane, taking gravol to knock me out, wavering in and out of consciousness amongst the sounds of screaming babies and crying toddlers, and headache, headache, headache....i am HOME. weird how i feel like i've left home at the same time. how is that possible?

anyways, the 6 hours that i've been home have so far been quite entertaining - my neice and nephews were quite willing to unwrap the WMDs - ur, i mean Winnie-the-Pooh (same-same) parcels, and that got the ball rolling for a exchanging presents blitz, which resulted in my family loving their mementos from Korea and me with some sweet new clothes from....get ready - Costco. yeah, my parents surely know where to shop for high-fashion merchandise - but really these clothes are actual kinda cool! i'll just have to avoid that "place drop" when someone compliments me - "hey, love the sweater, where'd you get it?" "oooh, in this fabulous little boutique in Canada called (with a French accent) "Cos-coo." You should go there some time. I bought this right after i went on a dog-sled through the exotic desserts of potato fields, during a crazy little maple-syrap festival they had going on. It truly was an adventure to remember."

so then I had a home-cooked meal by my mom and listen to my brother talk as if he was on drugs. or so i thought at first, seeing as he was going on and on about this documentary he saw on the internet about how 9/11 was a conspiracy because A) the twin towers were rigged with explosives that caused the collapse of the buildings, and B) all these reports have been hidden by the US government to scare the Americans into supporting the War on Terror. Now if you knew my brother, you would also assume that he was on drugs, because normally i am the conspiracy theorist in the family while everyone else quietly listens and politely attempts to change the subject to something other than politics. so this was fun for me - we watched these documentaries and swapped theories. And all of a sudden, i have a heap-loads more respect for my elder sibling. Oh, how America brings people together...

so now i'm wide awake while my family sleeps, and i'm gonna finish some marking. yes, for my school. yes, they same one that i finished working for yesterday, and who (wahoo!) paid me all my severance pay. i need to hand them in via email by Monday, as reports go out on Wednesday and i had no time to do so this past week. So why not take advantage of my delirously jet-legged frame of mind and give my kids their final comments? And if they end up sounding a little, um, odd, I mean, really, what can they do?

i loved this christmas

2006-12-26T10:18:00.000-08:00

it all went so fast. on december 24th, 2006, 18 of us, armed with bagfulls of food, including my own homemade eggnog (a drink totally unheard of here), candy canes (again, sooooo difficult to find and thus totally appreciated), and everything needed for goodies, snacks and a full-course omelette breakfast, gifts, stockings, pillows, blankets, and games, cabbed it up to a beautiful dalmagi apartment (in the "posh" side of Busan) to have a sleepover. we laughed, we danced, we did secret santas, played dutch blitz, poker, and bible trivia (haha), built puzzles (ok they did - i have no patience for those horridly intricate things), took pictures, exchanged gifts, and played with our new toy guns and numchucks (ok that was the boys.) i was able to give my girls the photo albums that i made for them - wrapped in korean rice paper and completed with a hand-carved coaster i glued on top - and filled with memories from this year -numerous parties, nights out, norae-bongs (kareokee rooms), paintball, small group, exploring, and just hanging out and laughing and talking and playing. then we had a huge breakfast, napped, and went out for indian food (not exactly a chrismtas tradition but delicious enough for me!) the night was topped off by yet another (different) party in dalmagi. good times had by all. it was a phenomenal way to end my year here, and it made me really excited to come back again to everyone in March.
Though i AM super excited to come home!! 4 days!!

see more pics here!

typhoon surfin'

2006-11-19T20:34:00.000-08:00

k, this pic was from about 2 months ago, where me and Aussie Nathan took advantage of a typhoon's waves and went for a little surf. We forgot our cameras, so we asked a kind Frenchman to take our picture with his camera and email them to us....and we just got them now, and with them come flooding back the memories of that epic stormy day...

I wanted to go surfing, because I heard that Busan was the only city where you could really get decent waves in all of Korea. Being the seasoned surf chick that i am (hahahaha...I'm from Southern Ontario, people....haha), I thought it would be no problem for me to get back into it. After all, I learned how to surf in Maui of all places, which I think should make one automatically a pro surfer, or at least...good. And so I phoned my friend that I thought would also be good, basing it only on the fact that he is from The Land Down Under. Let me just say, as cool as we look in our snazzy wetsuits, we both proved to be an embarrassment to both the Golden Coast and the Golden Isle. Nathan got up once or twice for a 2 second ride and I got up...*sigh*....nil. Apparently, it's all about "timing" and being able to "read the ocean," both which, seemingly, I suck at. Ah well. I still had fun, and got a couple belly rides which I didn't want to ruin by attempting to stand up. It was still good to be out there in the water, floating around with my fellow wanna-be surfers and a few actual ones who were kind enough to let us know that "it just takes time." Apparently an intense desire to be cool and a closet full of surf clothes just doesn't cut it.

a fantabulous 3 day weekend, and i love korea again...

2006-11-13T08:58:00.000-08:00

surprises! korea's full of 'em. like for instance, on thursday evening, my supervisor comes to my classroom and tells me that classes arecancelled for the next day. Cancelled! This was a major shock, because my hagwon closes for absolutely nothing usually. Like, we were open for Children's Day, Buddha's Birthday, and all other national holidays, and even during a crazy typhoon, which most hagwons were clossed for. And so what major catastrophe did we close so suddenly because of? The death of the prime minister? Nope. The sudden attack of North Korea? Ha - no, most Koreans are so completely unconcerned about that. We closed for the 2006 second annual APEC fireworks show. And yes, APEC was not even in Korea this year. But it was last year around this time, and so this, apparently, was good enough reason for Korea to drop an estimated 1.2 billion Won (approx. $1.4 million CAD) for a 30-minute, insanely overdramatic fireworks extravaganza.

Now you must understand, Koreans love their fireworks. Every Saturday night of the summer there is a show at the beach, just for the heck of it. Plus, there are adjijis (older korean men) selling various types and sizes down at the beach for anyone to buy and set off at any time throughout the year. It's a regular couple thing to do - the boy sets off fireworks and the girl giggles, or people aim fireworks at each other's feet to get them to DANCE (i don't recommend that though, the last time i did that i got some fortune-teller adjiji in the ear - he wasn't too impressed). So I've gotten quite desensitized to the awesomeness of fireworks...but man, this was a spectacle.... but I'm not talking about the actual fireworks....they were all amazing and such, but even more so, the PEOPLE were insane. 3 million people crowded around a little beach - up in trees, on tops of the rooves of coffee shops, apartment buildings, hotels, and trucks. I went on my motorbike, planning to meet friends there, and my cell phone didn't even work because of the amount of people and cellphones. So I ended up running into other lost foreigners to enjoy the show with, and took lots of pics. Notice the multitudes of cellphones being used as cameras...funny (koreans also love their cellphones).

But the craziest part of the evening was after the show was over, where i almost got stampeded to death....3 million people all trying to go in the same direction = ridiculousness. People's mere ruthlessness comes out in moments like these. I was shoved, pushed, tripped, poked, and prodded like cattle. At one moment, an ambulance drove by with a women inside who had been trampled on (yikes), and people were taking the opportunity to get through the crowd by running as fast as they could behind the ambulance, in the empty-pavement-wake it left behind....and then there was me on my motorbike trying to get home, weaving in and out the millions people who were walking in the middle of all the streets within a 5 mile radius of the beach...and joined with a train of about 5 other motorbikes, i managed to get home unharmed and without harming anyone... in about an hour (i live 20 normally from this beach). good fun. and that was only friday night...

saturday - PAINTBALL!! soooooooooo fun, i felt like i was a kid playing at camp....a group of about 15 of us got all dawled up in korean military camoflauge and played capture the flag in a beautiful forest off the coast of song jung beach, just 10 mins north of my apartment...see the pics here.

i had to leave early to go to work, as i'm teaching for 3 hours on saturdays now at my hagwon for overtime pay...but it was the BEST class ever - full of almost fluent, talkative, opinionated 15 year olds about the varying philosophies of education in the world - mainly US vs. Korean. Had a phenomenal talk centered around this quote:

"Don't let school get in the way of your education." (by some dead guy, probably)

We talked about WHY they all feel its necessary in korea to get only 3-5 hours of sleep a night and do NOTHING but study between the ages of 4-25, with NO vacation time and NO extra-curriculars and NO life outside of the monotonous cycle of school, hagwon, study, bed, school, hagwon, study, bed.....we talked about the PURPOSES of education - to train for life - and how the most important things are learned outside of school - like in friendships, making mistakes and learning from them, and in just living life and enjoying it....i got them thinking, i think, and we had a great convo about it....for the first time in a while i felt completely rewarded as an educator, as someone who opens minds ever so slightly to think a bit out of the box. a great way to spend a saturday evening!

sunday - church in the am, dancing with the most precious little korean girls in the world...and aubrey, too, of course :)....and THEN...hung out with the coolest people in the world all day in a beautiful apartment over looking the ocean, and went exploring on my motorbike with my new friends sacha and kevin....we raced, we went down random roads, we avoided seriously ridiculous long lines of traffic by driving on the sidewalks....way fun....and perfect weather for it - it's still very fall here!

good weather, good fun, good education, good friends...and just like that...i'm on a korea high again....(quick, ma, take a picture!!)

-J.

new pics!!

2006-11-07T02:48:00.000-08:00

go here!

how living in korea makes me feel better about myself

2006-10-30T10:39:00.000-08:00

1. it doesn't take much to make me feel like the funniest person in the world. like for instance - i drive a motorcycle. and i'm a girl. and i have blonde hair. OH MY GOD - LOOK AT HER!!! SHE'S DRIVING A MOTORCYCLE!!! AND SHE'S A GIRL!!! AND SHE HAS BLONDE HAIR!!!! THAT IS SOOOO FUNNY!!!! LET'S LAUGH AND STARE AND POINT TO SHOW OUR AMUSEMENT!!!!! awesome. also, taxi drivers and starbucks servers and the like find it humourous whenever i speak any korean. i KNOW - it's SO funny!!! she knows how to say "please turn left here!" wow!

2. i am constantly feeling respected as a woman. like everywhere i go, people are telling me, "oh, so beautiful! so beautiful!" in the same breath that they ask me if i am a prostitute. well not in so many words, but they ask me if i'm russian, which here means, "so how much?" oh, plus there's the little matter of me teaching all the younger classes because i'm a woman. because naturally, women are better with younger kids, and older kids respect men more. even though our male teacher is a qualified elementary school teacher and i'm a qualified high school teacher. it's just so logical. and not sexist at all. (hehe, she said "sex!" quick! pretend we don't know what she means! play the language barrier card!")

3. i consistently feel validated as a serious educator. like for instance today, my supervisor told me that there have been complaints that i am not working through the textbooks fast enough. k, so my TEN YEAR OLD children who go to school from 9am-11pm are supposed to go through 8 pages a day, and that's only for MY class. then they've got 2 other classes to do homework for, in which they have to memorize like 100 vocab words, which they will forget by the end of the hour after the test and which they will never know how to use in a proper sentence. and THEN they've got to do their homework for Science Hagwon (academy), Computer Hagwon, and Math Hagwon. Yet I should be giving them more homework. Because piling on more work and showing the parents they've finished 400 pages in 6 weeks is totally the point of education. COMPRENDING something? RETAINING information? Actually being able to have a free-flowing conversation? What's all that? Complain! That darn teacher isn't pushing my child hard enough! He's actually ENJOYING her class!!!

4. the number 4 has always been my lucky number. it's my birthday (January 4) and has always been my sports number on teams and such. here the korean word for 4 is the same word for "death." some buildings don't have the floor number 4, they change it to "F," because nobody, apparently, wants to live on the floor of death (can't figure out why). also, when i wanted to get my phone, and they asked me what number i wanted, i said "4444" and they gasped and said no! i guess they figured it would go over well - "call me! 010- 4572- death-death-death-death." perfect.

5. i feel the love from my students. little truth-telling weasels they are. "teacher! today shirt so ugly!" "teacher, what is THAT?" (pointing to a large red zit on my face). "teacher! you look like alien with 1000 babies in your stomach!" "teacher! you sick? you look sick." "teacher! that black sweater makes you look like witch!" just what every girl wants to hear. now excuse me while i go slit my wrists.

ah korea.....gotta love it.

J.

bye bye blogger

2005-08-19T01:57:00.000-07:00

well, blogger has served me well, for this period of investigating my long-hidden computer geekness within....my new blog is

here

check her out!

so long folks!

love Jen

a new look

2005-08-06T22:23:00.000-07:00

well, things are changing. so i thought, why not give my ol' blog a face lift? a wise soul told me just the other day that it is i who choose to be scatter-brained. perhaps this is true. so i am seeking to living afresh, with a mind set on the future...anyone who knows me well enough might have some inkling as to the meaning of my new title. feel free to ask, if you're curious.

so i leave for korea in 3 weeks. wow. i'm feeling a mass of different things - excited, scared, but right now, most of me feels like i'm being pulled by someone a lot bigger than me, someone named Responsibility, and i'm skidding my heals, resisting the change. i love kingston.... being in chicago, as great as it has been, makes me eager to go home. to my house, my street, my soren, my church, my girls. i don't feel ready to go....and i'm not talking practical details. but then again i was ready as ever to go to Maui, and disappointment awaited me. so perhaps this will be a great thing. i'll be independent like never before in my life. i'll actually be making money instead of going further into debt! i'll be with kids everyday, and my sole task will be to making their learning fun and meaningful. i can't wait to meet my kids! i already have so many ideas. i'll be teaching, btw, ages 7-12. crazy. i have a feeling i'll be learning lots about patience.

that wise soul told me something else that made a lot of sense to me. he told me that there are never problems, only momentary glitches. i've been feeling sort of uneasy lately, like i want to get on with a debt-free life, like, now. but i think i've realized that my thoughts regarding how i think my life should go are irrelevant. God may want me to experience a lot of things in these next two years that i wouldn't have the opportunity to before i go to seminary (the plan, btw, is to go to Regent seminary in Vancouver once i can pay off my debt and save enough to go for 3 or 4 years)...the older i am when i return to school, the more meaningful and insightful questions i can ask. and living in another culture, learning another language - man, that will offer me many riches, i think.

everything will work out great. for those who pray, i ask you pray for me in the coming weeks. pray that my soul will be calm and i will trust that God is closer than my skin, and i am never alone. Pray also for a community in Pusan that i will grow to love as much as the one in Kingston. And to all you Kingstonians, i love you. And if you love me.....hehehe....you will TRY and come to my party next week! Thursday, August 11th at 8:00 - a Wine and Yummy-Things party...at Rhonda's house, just down the street (colborne) from my old one - I'll get the # and email you all. If anyone from outside of kingston wants to come, do! it will be great. i cannot wait.

between now and isabella, many things will change. but you will not, o Maker. and i beseech you, come, and do life with me till we get there, and teach me how to live the things i know.

-J.

sleeeeeeeeepy

2005-08-05T21:19:00.000-07:00

all my thinking and playing and running around at the multiple parks and pools and libraries with my neice and having debates with the "extra narrow-minded legalistic imperialist", as my brother's best friend likes to be known as, and his mates at the counseling center today wore me out....i will post a very extensive and enlightening post tommorrow. you'll see, the angels will sing at the wonder of it.

chicago is good though....... a very vacationesque time i am having.....

-J

widgets are my new best friend

2005-08-02T20:42:00.000-07:00

ok - how COOL is this - i'm on my brand new ibook right now and my brother downloaded all the newest mac software and I am discovering how fun widgets are! for all you PC folks who have not yet converted to the simplicity and eloquence of macs - widgets are these cool little tools that you can put on your dashboard that make your life a little easier - like i'm writing this from a widget called "dashblog" and i don't have to go to my blog to do so! or i have mapquest widget or a recipe make widget and i have time zone widgets for korea and toronto, plus currency converter widgets - and a widget that puts little flowers in a jar when i get new emails! whoever thought being a mac geek would be so much fun!! k, i'm gonna go play some more now....

-J

I'm going to South Korea!!

2005-07-26T19:18:00.000-07:00

Well, finally, folks, today I accepted a job (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhheeeeheeee!!!) in Pusan,(or Busan, the P and B and the same in Korea) South Korea! It is an amazingly beautiful southeastern coastal city, yes right on the OCEAN, and it has mountains and rivers and places to hike and climb and scuba dive and stuff....i know like 5 people from my church who have been there and they all said that it was really a very earthy, cultural, historical city...a big seaport....so WAHOO!!!!! I'm very excited....this guy, my recruiter from Korea, phoned me today and answered all my questions and it turns out he's from Austrailia and he too is a Christian! So he said that there are a lot of English-speaking churches in Pusan which are very good....yeah - thanks, God!! And the package is great - i'll be able to save quite a bit because they pay for EVERYTHING....rent, airfare, medical - it's great! For all of you who care to learn more about this city that i'll be spending the next 12 months of my life in, the website is www.pusanweb.com - check her out!

so....the dealio pour moi for the next few weeks is:

1. since, as some of you know, i'm no longer working at the Lonestar (something about me being too scatterbrained, Ryder???! it's all good though!), I'm officially leaving kingston this thursday, will go home to Barrie (to my parents' new house!), sort stuff out, and pack.

2. then, i'll go to Chicago with the 'rents for a week and visit my brother and niece and nephew and celebrate their birthdays.

3. next, i'll return to barrie, and paint my parent's new house to earn some mula, and hang out with the Willow Day Camp crew and some Harvestites (!!)

4. then, i'll RETURN TO KINGSTON FOR A KILLER GOODBYE PARTY ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 11th - all you kingstonians better be there!!!!! (will fill you in on the details soon.) then I'll watch Jared get ordained at Next on the sunday, and say my tearful see-ya-later to my dear dear kingston.....:(....but redeemingly get to spend the weekend in k-town with my BEST FRIEND in the whole wide world - love you Christy!

5. then go back home for 5 days, pack pack pack and all that jazz

6. then i'll go to Esther and Dave's wedding on August 20th...my 4th one this sum...

7. finally, i'll FLY OFF to Korea on AUGUST 25th!!!! Yeah...its a frikin 21 hour flight and then a 6 hour trainride....but the coolio thing is that my Korean friend who lives next door to me will be in Korea and will come with me to Pusan and stay with me for a bit!! sweetness, i KNOW....

so Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm really really excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think in honour of this new chapter of my life I will start a brand new blog....I'll keep y'all posted....on when and the addy, etc....this random thoughts thing is getting a little....well, SO last year....

k, love you friends!
-J.

i'm just overqualified, folks....

2005-06-27T23:33:00.000-07:00

so I've been offered positions in both Busan, South Korea, and in "various locations" in Taiwan - both teaching kindergarten-elementary kids....and yes, I am thrilled, but dang - it was just way too easy to sink these jobs!....I basically sent my resume, picture, and cover letter all over (although i avoided Iran this time:)) and then I started getting massive amounts of badly-written, horrible english emails from everywhere ("Hi Jen! we like resume, i would love talk on phone soon. We like come Korea." - and I was like: geez, these people reeeeeally need my help....) So anyways, I had a phone "interview" on Sunday with a woman from Korea, and she was basically begging me to come -she kept saying that with my qualifications and experience I would be an excellent asset to the school - it's cuz I have a B.Ed, and most ESL teachers just have any old B.A. and a TESL certificate....but anyways, I felt like I could've demanded a limo to pick me up at the airport and free season's passes to the nearest ski resort and she would have agreed....anyhoo, that i did not do, but basically the job is mine for the taking, and it seemed like a decent one....I always swore that I would not go to Korea because I've heard horror stories about it - but most of the bad jobs are in crazy concrete-jungle Seoul teaching business men, and Busan is a smaller city right on the ocean farher south - I've been told its a lot "earthier" and "relaxed," and its a fishing port apparerently...so this all seems much more me....and the Taiwan one is through the other guy who offered me the UAE job before the school crapped out on them....

BUT, I'm holding out for the UAE...I feel it is where God is leading me....there is sooooo many reasons now why I want to go to the middle east, I really just want to be involved in Arab/Indian culture, and I want to travel in Egypt and Israel, and the church there is apparently wicked because there are so many young people from all over the world - like S. Africa and Britain and Austrailia - how cool is that??? ...so pray people, cuz I could be hearing wrong.

love you all,
Jen

p.s. the silly thing that allows for easy commenting stopped working, I'll set it back up soon...so just email me for now!

Jahan's offer and a brand new ibook

2005-06-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

so all week this is what i've done....sat in my room, on my dad's LOUD, old, crappy '95 PC laptop and sent out resumes all over the world - taiwan, korea, poland, iran, UAE....and then i realized halfway through the week....hmmmm, maybe i should only send my resume to places that i really WANT to go to, instead of just everywhere...reason? oh, i got a phonecall from a guy in Ottawa who is conducting phone interviews for a sketchy job that i applied to in Tahran, Iran....yep, so i look it up on a Lonely Planet site, and it says, of the city, "Iran's capital is definately not the most beutiful place in the world, as the pollution, crowds, and traffic jams are much of the focus....but the museums are great." wonderful...i may be hot, sick, clausterphobic, and wait in traffic for 3 hours a day, but hey! at least i get to see some ancient iranian jars that nobody cares about. sweet! ....no, none the less, i'm not calling this guy back, and i think i'm going to stick to more appealing places to send out my resume.....my next door neighbour tim took the photo for it and he did quite the fixin up on it, so needless to say, when the people who hire me meet me for the first time, they're going to be like "who ARE you? how did your skin get so pourous and blemishy and your teeth so yellow?" ha...oh well, by then i'll have already signed my contract, suckers....

in other news, i have a new ibook! well, technically, my brother should have it by now....my dad bought an Mac ibook G3 for me for grad and he's getting it sent to my bro in the states and i'll get it in July...i'm sooooooo excited cuz then i'll actually be able to listen to music and upload pictures and see what being a MAc geek is all about....i've always wanted to know....

ah, one more thing....if you all think about it, pray for the Raponi's - David, especially....pray for peace, forgiveness, understanding, and the nearness of God. Pray for me, too - that I will be forgiving and peace-bearing and understanding. Pray that God will be near me.

thanks, y'all.

i'll say goodnight, not goodbye.

J.

the classy pick-up

2005-06-14T00:53:00.000-07:00

k, funniest thing EVER - so after kind of a sketchy weekend, i had a great hilarious shift at the Lonestar tonight...
the best thing in the world is to have fun with your tables....so these four guys come in and order two pitchers of Keiths...and we're joking around and such about stuff, and then i ask them if they want more chips...they say no, because they're too warm, and its too hot outside...so they ask if i can make "ice chips" so i tell them i'll see what i can do....so THEN, i come back with half a bowl of chips with a mountain of ice cubes on top - ha! twas funny....but folks, the story doesn't end there....

so the guy tries to pay with a credit card, and afterwards, as i'm going to pick up the slip, i noticed that he left me his number on it, saying "call me"...but the hilarious thing is, he left me the wrong slip so i'm thinkin that i'll have to pay for this bill...so i run out to try to find him , and he's gone...so then, my great friend Sheriff says, "hey, why don't you call him, and let him know?" so i'm of course, all game....so i call him and leave a msg, to the effect of, "um hi, Peter? this is Seniorita from the Lonestar...um, yah, i just thought i'd let you know that its pretty smooth of you to try to pick me up and then leave me the wrong slip, so now i have to pay for your beer. way to go. hey, so if you don't mind coming down to the Lonestar and giving me my 38 bucks, that would be great. thanks!" ha....so it turns out, i didn't have to pay for the beer but i just lost the tip...still...sooooooo funny...

on another note, i have the best friends in the world. seriously, i'm loving my girls these days....the last month hasn't really been steller for me...and my truest friends have really showed their true colours....here's thanking God for Christy, Kathy, Sarah O., Emma, Anne, Esther, Jessie and Anna....you girls rock and i'm thrilled to know you...its nice to have friends that you know you can count on...and even when we all make mistakes, forgiveness is jumping at the door....and that's sweet to know.

and now for sleep.
i love Sheriff, btw. :)

J.

unlikeness

2005-06-14T00:49:00.000-07:00

The lesson of my life thus far: God is more concerned that I am different than that I am popular. He doesn’t want me to blend in, to be like everyone else. I am to be odd. Separate. Independent. I am to respond differently to catastrophe. I am to look differently, to have a unique perspective. I am to think differently. I am to work differently. I am to ooze unlikeness. I am to turn the other cheek. I am to love those who wish me harm.I am to forgive and carry on. I am to respond with grace and humility, and if that means to receive a little injustice on this earth, so be it. God is in control and one day His justice will be complete. Great I Am, praise you.

Too bad to carry through with this is much less romantic than proclaiming my intentions….

Father...do it for me?

J.

its a start, but only that

2005-06-12T14:20:00.000-07:00

i'm glad that the problem of the third-world debt is making international headlines these days....for those of you who know nothing about it, here is a great intro article found on cbc webpage:

www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/06/10/african-debt050610.html

click on the "in-depth" link - it provides a great overview for the problems and solutions surrounding the third world debt.

pray for our world leaders, that they would make wiser and more selfless decisions that would benefit our poor global neighbours.

may we all seek to think globally, act locally, and serve the poor in our own communities first.

J.

a closed door

2005-06-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

so i didn't get the job in the UAE...i called the guy last week and he said that they received some devastating news from the school - apparently they are switching to a British curriculum and are now hiring only British ex-patriates to teach there. ah well, though, it wasn't meant to be. i'm always excited when there is an obvious block in my plans like this because i know that God has something better....what, though? don't know right now. i'm sending out my ESL resume to places in the UAE right now (Dubai, i think) and all over rural Taiwan. The guy who recommended me for hire said that he would for sure hire me for a Canadian language institute in Seoul, S. Korea, but I'm not sure I want to live there...when i was there last year for a bit on the way home from Nepal, i remember not liking the concrete-jungle-ness of it....i need trees, and water, and preferably, mountains and dirt roads....so anyways, we'll see. keep me in your prayers, pray for wisdom and clarity of mind to make a healthy decision that will grow me and that i will love...

love you all,

J.

thankyou tim forbes

2005-06-10T23:55:00.000-07:00

so after a looooooong day at work, all i have to say is this:

life is way too short to abort friendships...we need all the ones we can get.

my next door neighbour tim gave me the best advice that i've heard in a long time: true friendships are not self-aware - they just are. you don't analyze them, you don't chase them - they just exist. if its this complicated early on, cut your losses, because its not going to get any easier.

so don't abort friendships but don't fret over the ones that abort you? i don't get it. i don't want to be aborted at all.

Cheers (from Lonestar) said last night, "people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime."

whatever. am i too greedy if i want all three?

feels closer to bliss

2005-06-03T22:51:00.000-07:00

wow...sooooooo much to tell i don't even know where to start! so say hello to your brand new granduand!! (no, i didn't spell that wrong, apparently Queen's is too pretentious to spell the word how the rest of the world does.) Yep, i graduated yesterday - well, okay - there is a funny story here - um, i didn't actually GET my diploma but i got a tube like everyone else but with a piece of paper in it that said something to the effect of "um, Jen, you suck. you forgot to pay your $36.75 in library fines, and because the University is so needing desparately that money you can't have this piece of paper which is the key to your future unless you pay it to us. haha."
yeah, such is my university career summed up.

i'm workin at the Lonestar which is going fab - i love it and it's so fun and the people make it so worth it....I'm outside all day in a cool cow-girl like outfit introducing myself in broken Mexi-spanish and doing singing human pyramids for people's birthdays - what more could one ask in a summer job?

no news yet on abu dhabi - pray people - cuz i really want this job! i'm still awaiting a second phone interview and the guy in TO keeps telling me it'll be "any day now" but it's not really up to him anymore - i have the feeling i'm competing with tons of people from all over canada so who knows....i'm chasing other leads in the same area though - because my heart is so set on going to that country - i've been reading Middle East travel guides and studying a bit on Islam and I really really really want to go there....

going to abi and chris' wedding tomorrow and camping overnight in the open field where they are getting married - jared spent tonight turning his cowboy shirt into a clerical collar - like a priest collar - dude - this hippie wedding is going to be so much fun...!!!

so yeah, life is good and i'm feeling great....much .....um.....different than the last post....eek...i'm loving kingston and next and my friends to death and am so glad i am here this summer....

k i'm out! must finish knitting abi and chris' wedding present (shhh...i'm knitting them his and her bikini/undergarments - bright red with blue stars - i cannot wait till they open it!)

p.s. abi is my next door neighbour who also was in my small group at Next and who was also my pottery instructor...she's a really great girl...

k now i'm really out!

now we see through a mirror dimly

2005-05-31T20:58:00.000-07:00

nothing is what is seems...nobody is who they seem....is there anyone out there that can be fully trusted? is the world a safe place for a girl such as me? too trusting, too fragile, too willing to care for those types who treat my heart like a ping-pong ball, like a piece of useless rubble...God, bless them, as with all those who seek me harm…but please… not yet.

I’m beginning to understand why the Buddhist philosophy is so inticing ….i really wish that this all was an illusion and that there is no really is no spoon, no pain – it is all in my head, and I can breathe and will it all away….but, no….too many regretful mornings remind me that the brutal reality is that it that reality really does suck sometimes…

my deepest fear is that he was right...that they all were right...am i really that undesirable, that easy to toss aside without a second thought or a twinge of sorrow or regret ? Just when you think you are getting stronger, a person who you thought was on your side steals your confidence by switching teams and batting amongst all your life-long opponents that you have spent endless years convincing yourself that they were all in the wrong because you are indeed worth something….

So now I am through. Through, through, completely through. My two seconds of boundary-less self-pity and I am through. I refuse to allow my over-analyticalness to blind me to the fact that all is well with my soul because God is near me. He is closer than my skin and he is whispering to me….. that now I see through the mirror dimly, but one day I will see Him face to face, and I will understand…..thankyou God, that you know me better than myself and that this will be good for me…..and so - I will not waste the pain – no – I will learn, and grow, and change, and become… weaker….yes, for strength is over-rated… it is when I am weak, and vulnerable, and helpless – then alone am I strong….what good does self-confidence ever do but pollute your mind with the lie that you are ok on your own? That you need not to change or learn a thing or recklessly abandon your soul to God? No,I need you God, and thank you for this humble reminder that you are all that i could ever need. I will be confident in You and of Your plan to mold me and shape me remind me of what my focus should’ve always been…...Your work of renewal on this earth…..

From the Message, 2 Thess:

Live at peace, knowing that God is in control. Remember, he picked you out as his from the very beginning. You are included in the original plan of salvation through the bond of faith in the living truth. Stand firmly, then, feet on the ground, and head held high…hold fast to what you have been taught, for it is the way of Life.

Amen.
Moving on, here I come.

the PERFECT weekend

2005-05-05T20:11:00.000-07:00

DSCN3053
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

ah....what an amazing time away....i spent the entire weekend with my bestest girlfriend in the whole wide world, Christy - I hadn't seen her all year cuz she was doing an internship for a trend forcasting company in NYC..so it was soooo great to spend some quality time with her.....I picked her up in T.O. on friday and then we went to corduroy's wedding (a friend from camp, the pics are down a bit), and then she came back to barrie with me....we went to a wedding shower on sat, and then visited friends all night, and just had an excellent time full of laughter, intense giggling sometimes, tears, and many soul-bearing chats....i feel so blessed to have her in my life and i thank God alone for her....you're awesome, Chris!!!

Barrie girls

2005-05-05T20:05:00.000-07:00

DSCN3043
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

ah....soooooo awesome to see erin and sarah....we love these girls to death and hurray cuz erin is in love with a boy from australia! she met him at YWAM and he's living in the Osborne's basement for the time being.....how perfect.....so this was at annie's shower (who is marrying my friend matt and she's from cali!)...it was a perfect way to see all the women and girlies from Harvest/Willow...a very elegant afternoon....

Charlie's Angels!!!!

2005-05-05T20:03:00.000-07:00

DSCN3044
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

yep, we are smokin'!!!! after the shower, christy and i headed to the end of saturday church to find cam and sarah so we could have a good ol' gab fest with sarah...sooooo great to catch up and tell our stories from the year....love you girls to death!!!

Happy Birthday Ash!!

2005-05-05T20:00:00.000-07:00

DSCN3045
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

After coffee with sarah we headed down to Jack Astor's for ashley's b-day...it was good to see the Harvest/Bethel crew and catch up.....!

Jackie and Nathan's Wedding

2005-05-05T19:59:00.000-07:00

DSCN3034
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

what a gorgeous beautiful wedding! in a green house in New Market - what a great idea. Jackie (aka corduroy) was one of my best girls from camp, whom i adore and miss so much, and Nathan Laverty i've known forever...i like dated him in grade 7! (i went with his family to Blackcreek Pioneer village for our first date - ha!!) anyways....a fabulous cute wedding - they're both skaters so they gave out little mini skateboards for the boys and candles for the girls....but screw that...i snagged me a skateboard....:)

introducing Lucy Charlize

2005-05-05T19:55:00.000-07:00

DSCN3036
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

in between the ceremony and the reception christy and i went to visit my best friend from highschool, becky cripps, and her new baby girl! and i cannot believe how much jackson has grown! he's like 2 1/2 now! crazy eh??

le bride et moi!

2005-05-05T19:53:00.000-07:00

DSCN3038
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

here is the darling jackie and me....what a babe eh? (the bride's not that bad either) :)

clover and jem!

2005-05-05T19:51:00.000-07:00

DSCN3039
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

my darlin former co-counselor, clover (she sometimes goes by shannon). it was soooooooooo good to see her - here i was crying because it was super emotional because i forgot how much i love her and jackie!! camp was way too fun that summer, eh girls? i took out my old pics and was sooo grateful for all the fantasticle memories we made....ben at night, moby in the morning, dancing to "His girl," singing to "feels like home" and roxy roxy roxy....ah....tear...

me and mr. laverty

2005-05-05T19:47:00.000-07:00

DSCN3040
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

here's the father of the groom - my dear sweet friend mr. laverty...i cannot believe his speech...soooo funny..."nathan is like peanut butter....sometimes he's crunchy, sometimes he's smooth, and sometimes he's just spread thin.....but there was somethin' missing...and then jackie, came along, and she was like the strawberry jam that completed the sandwhich...." ha!

mark and me

2005-05-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

DSCN3041
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

no, i'm not suddenly back in Maui...the wedding was at a green house so there were fresh flowers like....everywhere....this is my good friend formerly known as SPAZ (camp name)....it was wonderful to see him and laugh with him again! ah, spazzy....

jeremy-beremy

2005-05-05T19:41:00.000-07:00

DSCN3042
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

what a wild one!!! the party is just gettin started now.....i cannot BELIEVE jeremy is getting married in august!!! the third of the laverty boys to get married in one year....craziness...

scott from halifax

2005-05-05T19:28:00.000-07:00

DSCN3025
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

no, i'm really not naked here....but this is me and scott from halifax at the tirnaog on our last party night as education students....boo hoo that i'll probably never see him again....it feels soooo weird to say "have a nice life!" to people that are too cool. take care, scotty...keep me posted, bud!

Happy Birthday, Davide!!

2005-05-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

DSCN3024
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

aren't i the coooooolest friend by knitting him this rad wristbad? yeah, i thought so...

education formal!

2005-05-05T19:23:00.000-07:00

DSCN3021
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

no more con-ed! the last five years of my life are O-V-E-R....it is soooooo ridiculously hard to believe....i'm excited to move on but sad that i will not see all these peeps anymore... :( here's kailey, jess, matty, me, and gregors...love you guys...!

trist and ad

2005-05-05T19:21:00.000-07:00

DSCN3023
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

hey...member when i walked in on guys...??

trist, me, and jessie-girl

2005-05-05T19:20:00.000-07:00

DSCN3019
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

my girls! trist was my rez buddy (member the slippers and pregnant-jonesin' phase??)...and jessie girl has always been one of my best girls....she's here for the sum still - yahoo!

me and hambley

2005-05-05T19:18:00.000-07:00

DSCN3020
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

i met this kid 5 years ago in frosh week...soooooo sad that i won't just be seein' him around anymore....good luck in the yukon or wherever the freak you end up buddy...love ya!

me and laura bora

2005-05-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

DSCN3016
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

ain't we sweet! i love and miss laura bora very much - she was a great housemate and funny little thang...kisses laura..

portfolio-smortfolio

2005-04-25T20:34:00.000-07:00

who the heck has ever heard of a teaching portfolio???? (k, education students - you don't count)....so today i feel much better and am back to my old, procrastinating self....i seriously think that procrastination is an incurable disease -it's been a part of me as long as i can remember and has not gone away....case in point : tonight I: had a nap, ate delicious veggie tacos, talked to Davide on the phone, talked to my parents on the phone, phoned my friend who just had a baby girl (congrats Beck on Lucy Charlize! - what an adorable name, eh???) emailed, browsed the web for an hour looking at knitting patterns, went to get mango smoothies with my housemates, watched the Bachelor, watched Super Nanny, cleaned my room, emailed some more, and now i am blogging - like everything under the sun except for the 4 projects i have to do in the next 48 hours....egad, when will i learn???????????

last 3 days of university, here i come!!

-J.

sunrise, sunrise...

2005-04-24T19:28:00.000-07:00

...looks like morning in your eyes.....ahh...how I love Norah Jones....she reminds me of driving back home to Barrie from Ottawa in the summer with Christy...so peaceful, so in love (with the fact that I was no longer letting love get to me), and so excited about the world outside Barrie ....today was a really emotional day, because last night was my last university formal ever, then there was a loooooong staff meeting at the lonestar with hundreds of people that i don't know, and then my mom told me that she was really sad that i was not coming home for the summer and about all the people she saw today that i miss.....i really am sad that i will not be at home this summer...i'm sad that my housemates are leaving, I'm sad that Davide and Binny and all of the education people are going away and i love them, I'm sad that things will be really unfamiliar in the next couple of weeks....am i really as adventurous as i like to think? i hate change....nothing makes me happier than people who really know me, who i don't have to pretend with, and who love me anyways....and whom i can really sink my life into and love in return....and this always takes time....some longer than others, but some almost instantly....why do i want to go to Abu Dhabi next year? and then to Vancouver? so much change.....

thank you, God, that you are constant, and you require change for me to grow, to evolve. ease my mind.

by the way, my new lonestar name is - perhaps a sign of new beginnings? - Sunrise....

-J.

introducing the newest Lonestar employee....

2005-04-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

......me! Yep, folks, just one day after i went in and dazzled them with my.... wits, the Lonestar (a fabulously and scarily busy patio restaurant on the water in K-town) hired me to be a full-time server, starting next week! crazy! So, i guess I'll be staying in K-town for the summer, which I'm reeeeeeeeeally excited about - I've always wanted to! (For those of you who have been following my summer happenings, I decided to ixnay the job at the School of English, cuz it turns out they only wanted me to work for August, and I can't pay off my frikin' OSAP with that teeny weeny paycheck....cuz it's super hard to find jobs without lying about the fact that I'm not available in Aug...and lying makes baby Jesus cry...). Except I'm sad that I won't be seeing the Barrie crew that much, but what can ya do....i'll be back for a few days here and there....so now I'm happy and sad and nervous and over-gleed and sentimental all at once.....ah - emotional overload! must go eat chocolate....mmmmmm....chocolate.....

-J.

decisions, decisions...

2005-04-19T07:23:00.000-07:00

i really should be stressed out, but I am not: the Lord is good. As I reflect back upon the last few months, God has been my guide (my sherpa, if you will!), my comforter, my teacher, my provider, and my everything.....At the Biblical Counseling Centre in Chicago, I learned so much about being true to his Word, and to worshipping Him before all the other things that so easily become idols in my life: acceptance, security, popularity, pleasure, and....politics!!!.....Lord, may I learn to seek you first and listen to other's perspectives and always assume that there is something to be learned from the other side...left-wing, right-wing - does it all really matter how we label ourselves?? Sometimes I feel like the most liberal amongst conservatives, and sometimes I feel like the most conservative amongst liberals....I see the perspective of both sides (most recently I've discovered that not all conservatives are ignorant, money-grubbing, self-righteousness pharisees), and you know what? I think it is more important to focus on people, and on the type of person I am, than political ideals....sometimes these intertwine, i know, and when it does I will seek to be a positive voice, standing up for the things and values that I believe are right..... but mostly, i am just really sick of the whole debate - i can and will be friends with people regardless of their political affiliation....for i am neither liberal nor conservative, I am a struggling child of the Father trying to figure out what He wants me to do with what i know, with what i have, and with the time he's allotted me....may I always seek to have a humble heart and listen more than i express my opinion.

as for the decisions....Barrie or Kingston for the summer? There are way too many relationships that I am not ready to say goodbye to in Kingston....all the people at Next church have become a family to me, and this summer seems like the last opportunity I will ever have to live in Kingston and be a part of these people's lives....yet there are so many people that I love and miss at home, too....despite the "drama" of last summer, t and j are dear to me, along with my family and all the people at Harvest and Bethel....i love and miss you guys....and if I am going to Dubai for the next two years - I will not see them for a while either...

despite it all, God will use me and be with me wherever I go, of that I am sure....I feel peace knowing that He will make the best out of any decision I make, and it will all work for good in the end....I have an interview at the Lonestar (a hugely popular and ridiculously busy patio-restaurant down-town kingston) today so however that goes I will take as a sign to stay in k-town or go home....

to anybody who has comforted me, supported me, taught me, and laughed with (or even at) me....I love you dearly and am praying for you....!

love Jen

ta da!!!

2005-04-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

blanket pics
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

so, my loyal bloggy fans, THIS is the one and only reason for my absense over the last...what - month?? when i said i was obsessed with knitting, i meant it - and this is my first completed project! it's a baby blanket for Kath and Jared's brand new baby boy....it took me like 80 hours because i used such fine yarn, but i loved every stich of it...and now my hands are craving something else to knit!

oooohhh!!!!! ahhhhhhh!!!

2005-04-09T06:58:00.000-07:00

blanket pics
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

isn't it stunning?? see if you can guess which side (left or right) i started with...it has like a million more mistakes....!

(hint: it's not the right) :)

introducing the stylish Nathaniel Zechariah Siebert

2005-04-09T06:54:00.000-07:00

blanket pics
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

it was sooo great to have Jared, Kath, Soren and Nathan come to visit....what an adorable baby and a great weekend playing with Soren and visiting with Kath....love you girl!

OC stands for obsessive compulsive

2005-03-14T22:54:00.000-08:00

wow.....long time no blog....and i have to confess, people....I've found a new love. yes, its true folks, I've been unable to blog because I have recently (ok not this weekend but last) discovered the long lost art of...... knitting. K, seriously kids - don't laugh - but I'm obsessed!!!! Even now, as my hands are typing this, they long, they YEARN even, to be knitting. I don't know really how it happend, it just, sort of....happened. It all started when I went to Borders with my brother and his fam to go to a Bethany Dillan concert (k, WHO books a show in a freakin BOOKstore?) and I've never really heard of her so I start to wander and come across this wicked book called "Stich n' Bitch." The title made me laugh because my next door neighbour abi and I haved joked about starting a Stich n' Bitch with our friends - its where people get together and knit or work on their other projects and eat food and have a good ol' girly time (yes, Davide, you can come too - I know you want to :) ). So anyways, I bought the book and it turned out to be the coolest book in the world - full of step by step instructions and cool articles and awesome patterns - for like, wristbands and cell phone holders and bikinis and bandanas and stuff....so the next day I got out my brother's yarn and needles (yeah, he went through his knitting phase in highschool - yes, you can laugh at him), and learned how to make all these patterns and then the other day I went and bought my own yarn and needles and I haven't been able to get enough of it! I've already made a bandana and a cool striped camera case holder and now I'm making a surprise for a friend (hmmmm.....I bet you're all hoping its YOU, aren't you?? Well, you'll just have to wait and see!!!! Eeeeeeeehahahahhahahah!!! (k that's a wicked witch laugh.)

yeah. so besides that, I was REALLY sad to leave the Biblical Counseling Center on Friday....I absolutely LOVED it there and will miss everyone so much - I love you Don!! - (I'm still in Chicago until Wednesday though and will first going to Barrie and will stay there till sunday and then be coming back to k-town on sunday). anyways, God taught me soooooo much by being at the center and and feel like a new person but I will have to explain that in more detail later.....cuz, like, I'm jonesin' for some knitting right now.....

lates!
-J

good news!!!!!!

2005-03-01T20:41:00.000-08:00

crazy me
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

so this is my reaction after hearing the news via email today that i have been offered a position with Queen's School of English to be a monitor for the summer.....hurray!!!! So basicially I'm living in rez with the international students who have come to learn English, as well as designing and implementing extra-curricular activities for them in order to help them get to know Canadian culture and improve their "social English" - and have fun of course! this includes taking them on fun weekend trips to Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, and camping and canoeing and stuff, plus i'll be designing fun language workshops for them during the week - hurray for a fun summer! Plus it'll give me great experience working with ESL students to pump up the ol' resume for ESL jobs overseas next year! Thanks, God!!!! And hello kingston in the summertime!!!!!!!!!!!!

McFun??

2005-02-27T19:08:00.000-08:00

McDonalds
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

okay....so after a crazy busy week at the Centre, I'm exhausted and looking for something fun and relaxing to do on Saturday....the day started out ok by me babysitting my neice and nephew as my brother and sister-in-law went out on a date....but THEN...Holy Crap. We went to a McDonald's Birthday Party for a two year old girl - one of Anna's little friends. HERE ME PEOPLE - NEVER EVER GO TO A MCDONALD'S BIRTHDAY PARTY....I had a headache about 2 minutes after I got there...it was complete CHAOS...children of all sizes, tempers, and ages running around the playplace running and yelling and shrieking and crying and biting each other....i admit, i did have fun playing with my neice and nephew (like this pic) and taking my neice up the tunnel thingy, but man, did i have to fight our way through that thing and protect Anna from the trillions of sugar-rushed kids who were climbing over her and pushing past me (ME - a 25 YEAR OLD, got pushed over by two little 6 year old girls!!) and all the adults were just ignoring the kids and talking and eating their Big Macs and SuperSized Fries and Extra-Large Cokes like all of this was all in a middle-class American parent's day's work! So after like 3 hours, I caved and ate some chicken fingers (I KNOW) and some fries and left feeling bloated, exhausted, and rather annoyed. But, we had an hour's drive to the City...where I got some replenshing rest.....which redeemed the sitch a little before our night out on the town....

Ooo-Ooo-Ooo-Ah-Ah-Ah!!

2005-02-27T18:35:00.000-08:00

Rainforest Cafe
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

yep, that's what a monkey (and, apparently, his cousins the guerilla) makes.....me, Anna, and my sis-in-law Jen outside the down-town Chicago restaurant of our choice.....The Rainforest Cafe...it was pretty funky inside.....all jungle-like and loud and stuff......crazy but fun! (no, I'm not being sarcastic this time).

Yeeee-Haaaaaaw!

2005-02-27T18:33:00.000-08:00

my niece and nephew
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

Ah, a woman after my own heart.....Anna and me looking through the Safaria Gift Shop waiting for our table....

Jungle Fever

2005-02-27T18:30:00.000-08:00

Rainforest Cafe
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

So our safari begun by simply stepping through a magical wardrobe called a "revolving door" which landed us among waterfalls, such as this one, and real-life-looking moving animals like snakes, guerillas, and elephants....i think the place scared the crap out of anna, but hey, how toddler friendly is a place with moving crocodiles and talking snakes?

pretty fishy

2005-02-27T18:21:00.000-08:00

Rainforest Cafe
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

nope, I'm not suddenly on a scuba-diving adventure - this was a fish that was one of like a trillion in these HUGE-mugous aquariams that lined the entrance into the eating area.....craziness.....hmmm....feed a small country, or, import millions of exotic fish for our restaurant.....hmmmmm.....tough choice!

Look Anna, a fish!!!

2005-02-27T18:17:00.000-08:00

Rainforest Cafe
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

oooooohhh! ahhhhhh!!

my only prince charming

2005-02-27T18:16:00.000-08:00

Rainforest Cafe
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

despite my brother and sister-in-law's attempt to set me up, Mr. Froggy here is the closest thing I've come to so far with finding a soul-mate in Chicago. He was real friendly, though, but didn't speak a word... Hmmmm...maybe that has it's benefits......:)

the windy city

2005-02-27T18:13:00.000-08:00

blue chicago
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

so after the restaurant we decided to check out the chicago blues scene.. our options were a bit limited with the kids, but we found this great all-ages place that played live blues in a family atmosphere (which means no alcohol and no smoking, i discovered)....so here's me in front of the the place with the sparkling city laughing behind me....

my one-eyed lova

2005-02-27T18:10:00.000-08:00

blue chicago
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

here's the band....they were sooooooo good and the woman's lyrics made me laugh....like, "my one eyed lova, yeah, he left me for a one-legged woman....yes he did, now....so people ask me darlin, what are they gonna do to me? but ya know, honey, i ain't worried, cuz, well, she can't run and he can't seeee..." hhahahaha...anyways, i left feeling satisfied that i had soaked up some true Chicago culture....which, sadly, was 20 minutes after we got there cuz we had two cranky tired babies with us....yeah....remind me not to have kids any time soon....

goodbye blues

2005-02-27T18:05:00.000-08:00

blue chicago
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

a cool painting that was on a side of a brick wall on our way out....and that completes our night on the town!

Anna Grace!!

2005-02-27T18:02:00.000-08:00

my niece and nephew
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

Meet Anna Grace - my crazy pyscho energetic neice who is full of energy and fun to play with...we've bonded lots and I teach her to play with her food and stick her tongue out while chewing....much to the joy ofo her parents...:)

Auntie Jen and Micah

2005-02-27T18:00:00.000-08:00

my niece and nephew
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

meet my nephew Micah!! He is a sweetheart...so laidback and giggly...it's great to get to know him more being here....

my alt prac

2005-02-27T17:58:00.000-08:00

my alt prac
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

Here's where I'm doing an internship.....I'm loving it and am actually learning quite a bit...so many people's lives are being transformed here, it's neat to be a part of it...so far I've been sitting in on counseling sessions, making phone calls, and taking a Foundations of Biblical Counseling course, which requires a lot a lot of reading...it's interesting though!!

welcome to the bible belt of chicagoland

2005-02-27T17:51:00.000-08:00

chicago pics
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

so here is me being forced by my brother and dad to play the most ridiculous Bible game i have ever seen - it was a christian version of "Life"....the goal is to get to "Heaven" and avoid going to "the Lake of Fire" or even worse.......dahn dahn daaaaaaaaaaaaaaahn - "Backslider's Valley" (Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkk! Oh no! not there!!! please, God, not Backslider's Valley!!!!!!!!!) So in order to get to Heaven you have to acquire, in this order - Conviction, Salvation, Assurance, and Santification Cards....and along the way you do "typical christian things" like get baptized (ok,understandable), go to church (alright, got it), and protest outside an abortion clinic (????????????? Hmmm.....never done - nor wanted to do - nor seen the purpose of - doing that). it was sooooooooo cheesy and it made me kind of embarassed to be a christian, but what can you do - at lease it made me and my dad and mom laugh, which made my brother angry and confused, but hey, you can't please everyone i guess...:)

-J

mom and me

2005-02-27T17:35:00.000-08:00

chicago pics
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

so this is my mom and me very tired after our long drive (11 hours) to chicago....needless to say, we we happy to get there....:)

the last night at the tirnanog

2005-02-24T19:34:00.000-08:00

tirnanog last night
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

my best girls from first year - Tristan and Jessie and me at the Tirnanog on our last night together in K-town till April....love and miss you girlies!!!

kareokee time

2005-02-24T19:32:00.000-08:00

tirnanog last night
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

so the entire Faculty of Education went to Kareokee at the Tirnanog on the last night before our alternative practicum....a lot of us won't see each other until April - till we're back in classes after our spring practicum....so it was VERY fun, yet VERY sad at times too!

a couple of blondes-turned-brunettes

2005-02-24T19:29:00.000-08:00

tirnanog last night
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

and here's Lea-Ellen and me - good times...girl - i miss ya and am praying for you in China!!

still friends!

2005-02-24T19:22:00.000-08:00

david and me
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

ah, this is a funny pic....david looks quite annoyed but i'll assure you he loves piggy-backing me home from pottery class! hehe... love this kid more than ever; it's nice to have a friend who is more pyscho-somatic than me :) ....most of the time....

p.s. for the most entertaining and enlightening "history" of jen and david see the January archives

david, anne and me

2005-02-24T19:16:00.000-08:00

david, anne and me
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

here's us on a chilly walk back from pottery class - anne lives next door to me with abi and she is from Germany! sweet girl, and so funny....!

jamie and me

2005-02-24T19:14:00.000-08:00

jamie and me
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

this is me and jamie miller - one of the most hilarious, gracious, actively principled, and compassionate people i know. he came over for some sweet potato quesadillas the other day.....mmmmm....jamie is going to Nepal next year (most likely) to work on some water-system related stuff...so i'm giving him my "christian contacts" over there...and me and Jessie might go visit him (after we meet at the Taj, of course!) Hurray Jamie, you're the bomb!

-J

the BEST history group in the world!!!

2005-02-24T19:01:00.000-08:00

history group
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

ok, so everyone, meet my history group (minus Pat, see below), history group, meet everyone. (from L-R: Raina, Esther, me, Dena, Lea-Ellen). so these people are the reason i went to my history curriculum class every week- not because of what we learned (or didn't learn), and deffinately not because of the exciting...ahem... atmosphere (poor Proffessor Bob). We had tonnes of fun and became more of a...family...by the end of this in-school session....ah, the goodtimes....our reoccuring "genocide throughout the ages" bullentin board theme, the "dichotomy of Dena (see her blurb below)", Lea-Ellen's "ruined" presentation ("well, for those of you teachers who DON"T want to challenge your students with Jen's mind-map, you can give them the following definition"), Pat's phone prank ("so, Dena, what's your driver's license #??"), crocheying, cross-stiching, Bob's looks, the curse of the half-moon table (Me: "Is it because we're loud and laugh alot?" Bob: "So, anyways..."), applauding whoever shows up, Hotel Rwanda, tirnanog....the list never ends....i miss and love you guys....Dena watch out for those druglords, Lea-Ellen wash your hands a lot (to stay clear of the diseases), Pat get your sleep (within reason, now), Raina have fun with your bro in TO, and Esther be sure to do SOMETHING!!)

love, Jen

p.s. below is an intro to all of the history group members, except for Dena cuz i don't have a pic of her alone, so I'll just say this: HAHAHAHA...a great, mysterious girl who knows how to laugh at herself and take charge of a history rocks project (i owe ya girl),,,,we'll forever wonder how you've made it through life without a driver's licence, and how you can ingeniously unite the two opposing worlds of fashion and development work....:)

Pat - the often absent member

2005-02-24T17:56:00.000-08:00

Pat - the often absent member
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

so here is Pat - the often hung-over-or-just-plain-lazy member of our history group (k, the guy LIVES in the same building as our class but somehow never quite makes iton a regular basis)....he made us all choke up by pretending to know what was going on, getting angry at that "girl" for no apparent reason, and by playing poker late late late every sunday night (who DOES that?) this pic was taken later as Pat (surprisingly) didn't show up to class during the last week of school.

Raina

2005-02-24T17:50:00.000-08:00

Raina
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

and here is the artiste Raina, who planned out the Holocaust bullentin board behind her....she is quite talented in watercolours, crocheying (sp??) and making me feel like an idiot when I ask enlightening questions :)

Lea - Ellen

2005-02-24T17:47:00.000-08:00

Lea - Ellen
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

and here's the gorgeous Lea-Ellen - who just happens to be in China at this precise moment - this girl is one of the most actively principled and hilarious girls i know - she made history fun times

esther cross-stitching

2005-02-24T17:38:00.000-08:00

esther cross-stitching
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

and here's how the lovely esther passed the time - cross stiching some flowers for her grandma.....awww.....seriously, though, good call es - you gotta do something to pass the time in that class!

pottery class

2005-02-24T17:33:00.000-08:00

pottery
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

here's my dear friends Jessie (who just scored a teaching job in INDIA for the next two years teaching grade 1!! Yeah, we're going to meet at the Taj Mahal I think if I'm in the UAE!) and David at pottery class....I am starting to loooooooooooove pottery - it is so fun and relaxing! Though I'm not the best at it, it is super fun anyways! Especially with these two guys in my class.....haha David is toooooo funny...he told us his thoughts one class "molding, molding - I can't believe I'm only guy here - smoothing, smoothing - I'm the only guy here - just a little more edging now - I'm the only guy here." HA -don't worry, mio bel precipe, you are VERY masculine!!! :)

-J

lyon's cottage - my shadow

2005-02-24T17:11:00.000-08:00

lyon's cottage
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

lyon's cottage - david skating

2005-02-24T17:10:00.001-08:00

pottery and the lyon's cottage
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

the lyon's cottage - landscape

2005-02-24T17:10:00.000-08:00

pottery and the lyon's cottage
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

the lyon's cottage

2005-02-24T17:07:00.000-08:00

pottery and the lyon's cottage
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

ok, this is going back a few weekends...this is me up at the lyon's cottage (let's see - abi, who is standing next to me in this pic, is my next door neighbout and pottery instructor, and her mother is Sue, who is a professional potter as well. Her father is David, who teaches at the invisible college and is the man who I've discussd the globalization issues with. The whole family goes to Next Church, where I attend. Anyways, it was a GREAT day of skating and enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. On the way back we had a great discussion about the future of the Invisible College (David is thinking of starting a Christian Studies College in Kingston), and also, we discussed the possiblity of having a coffee house at Next to raise awareness of Fair Trade Coffee (and also raise money so we can serve fair trade at Next) which I might be involved with when I get back to K-town. What a great family - I admire their principles so much, and the way they actually live them out is refreshing.

happy master's chris!

2005-02-22T21:06:00.000-08:00

lyon's party
Originally uploaded by hollograms.

this is going back a week or two, but here is chris all dazzled and surprised by getting his master's in urban planning...relation to me? a friend and the finance of my next door neighbour/pottery instructor, abi

a born-again vegetarian

2005-02-18T17:37:00.000-08:00

well, dear friends...today marks a special day for me. I've "officially" decided to do something that I've been thinking about for awhile.....and after a couple weeks of talking to friends, praying for wisdom, and then today after coducting some research, I've decided to become a vegetarian. Why, you ask?? Well, I now believe that a primarily plant-based diet is one of the the best ways to demonstrate my care for and stewardship of God's creation - including the animals, the earth, our starving global neighbours, and my body. Let me give a brief explanation of each (for more info visit www.goveg.com and/or www.jesusveg.com ) :

the animals - Due to the increased demand for meat and other animal products, many traditional farm settings where animals run free and healthy are quickly being replaced with factory-style farms where both "efficiency" and animal cruelty is high. In these mechanized indoor settings, the animals are heavily crowded and routinely treated in a inhumane manner. (For more info on this, go to www.thevegetariansite.com ) I believe that God wants me to care for His creatures and to defend them against all forms of unjust and cruel treatment. While I believe that God may allow people to eat meat where the animals have previously enjoyed a healthy and free life, I do not believe He would be pleased with the Western world's manner of inhumane treatment of His beloved creatures for the purpose efficiency and, ultimately, profit.

the earth - The earth's land, grain, and water resources are being depleted in order to raise animals quickly for the purpose of slaughtering them. The typcial meat-eater's diet consumes 14 X more water and 20 X more energy than a vegetarian's diet (see www.christianveg.com ). Also, 37% of the world's grain, and 66% of the USA's grain is used to feed animals that would otherwise eat other forms of food.

our starving global neighbours - It takes more grain to feed animals than people. The grain that is being used (see above) to feed the animals could be used to feed the world's poor. Also, because land, water, and other resources are limited, growing demands for meat increases the cost of all food, and the world's poor become increasingly unable to afford food of any kind.

my body - It's simply healthier! Evidence shows that those who follow a plant-based diet consisting of the right amount of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes (beans, lentil, soy-based tofu or textured vegetable product (TVP) have a dramatically lower incidence of heart disease, cancer, and stroke, among other diseases (see www.thevegetariansite.com ).

So that's why I've made this decision. The way I see it, the more people that make the decision to not eat meat (and we are blessed to live in a society where that option and mountains of delicious meat alternatives are available), the lower the demand will be for meat, which will result in the closing of factory-style farms, more natural resources and food available for people, especially the global poor, and we'd all be healthier! Plus, I've already found from cooking primarily vegetarian recipes over the last couple of months (3 girls that i lived with were vegetarians), I've realized that if being veggie does anything to me, it forces me to be creative in my cooking, which has been soooooo fun and yummy!

Anyways, while I haven't eaten red meat in a while, I have a feeling that this is going to be tougher than I thought - I already had to pick the pepperoni off a pizza today that my dad made, and that was a bit hard.... so wish me luck and feel free to hold me accountable!

and, as always, let me know your thoughts!!!

love,
-J

on globalization

2005-02-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

"The point is not to seek to change the world for its own sake. The point is to be accountable to the Creator of the world by being responsible with the knowledge, time, gifts, abilities, and resources that we've been given so that we may better love our global neighbours as ourselves. If everyone engages in self-reflection and honestly seeks to do this, the world will be changed as a mere side effect of this greater aim."
-me

Lately I've been thinking a lot about globalization and what my dutiful christian response should be to it.....I've been taking a 5 week course by David Lyon, a friend from Next Church and a professor of Sociology at Queen's, entitled "Thinking About Things." It attempts to think Christianly about some tools of Western technology - the car, computer, cell phone, digital camera, etc, and how they affect our relationships with others and with the world.....it has been very enlightening, and I really believe it is a God-sent, because I have been praying for a long time for someone to come along who is well educated about the issues surrounding globalization (transnational corporations, sweatshops, coca-colonization, and the problem of 2/3rds global poverty, and all the injustices surrounding these things), and is also a deeply committed and wise biblical christian. I am looking forward to talking more to David about these issues, and he already has given me some christian literature on them, which i am excited to put at the end of my long list of "must-read" books....i think i might have to pump them up a few notches. :) At any cost, taking this course has strengthen my desire and given me passionate confirmation that I am to go to seminary, and I believe that Regent college in Vancouver is the way to go...David has taught out there, and I've heard great things about it.....I want to take a Masters of Christian Studies with a concentration in either Applied Theology, Interdisciplinary Studies, or Cross-Cultural education....we'll see...

Lord, grant me wisdom and courage as I seek to learn, grow and be responsible with things you have entrusted to me.

more thoughts on this to come...

-J

Hotel Rwanda and the Good Samaritan

2005-02-08T21:34:00.000-08:00

Wow. There are almost no words to describe the things that are running through my head after seeing this movie. For those of you who have not yet seen it - GO SEE HOTEL RWANDA....like TONIGHT. It was a powerful and moving portrayal of the horrible genocide that took over 800,000 Tutsi lives by the Hutu tribe in Rwanda in 1994. To see a trailer visit www.mgm.com/ua/hotelrwanda/main.html

I am a History teacher. I teach my students that it is important to understand the mistakes of our past so that we will not be doomed to repeat them. This fall I taught the Holocaust, the Jewish genocide that took over 6 million people's lives for no other reason other than than the fact that they were Jewish. For some reason, human pride took on its worst form as one group of people thought that they had the right to deem another group inferior and kill them off. According to a recent CBC poll, most Canadians do not even know the extent of the Holocaust, or the vague details surrounding where it took place or why. Almost all had little or no recollection of Canada's disgusting Anti-semitic immigration policy during the 1940s, which allowed no Jewish refugees into our country - we even turned a boat of refugees back into the hands of the Nazis! And then, 50 years later, Canada and the world proved that they had not learned their lesson....and again we turned a blind eye....this time towards Africa. The fact that new reports were coming back to the West while the massacre was taking place, and diplomats were were shaking their heads, but yet NOT ONE COUNTRY sent in intervention troops (sorry - except for a few days in order to escort some white rich people out) is absoluetly appalling - what have we learned?

I recognize the temptation to think that there is nothing that we can or could have done - for these things happen so far away....but, and forgive the cliche, we need to, right now, and within our sphere of influence, BE the change that we want to see in the world. Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan to teach of the ideal relations between people- especially supposed enemies. If you remember correctly, a Jewish man was robbed, beaten, and left for dead. Two people passed by, one a Levite, and one a priest (someone who you would expect to help), and both justified their actions - "What can I do? I'm just one person," I'm sure they were thinking. Or a plethora of other excuses that I'm ashamed to admit I identify with: "I'm too busy." "It's not my business." "Someone more suited will help him." "I'm sure it's too late - he's most likely already dead." "God will punish the criminals - in His own timing." All these excuses are simply ways to get out of our responsibility to our neighbours, to help them, to speak for them when they have no voice, to protect them from oppression and greed and hatred. Who finally helped this Jewish man? His enemy - someone he least expected. It is clear from this story that Jesus said that everyone - from the people in Rwanda, to the children working for Walmart in sweatshops in Haiti, to the beggar that annoys me every time I walk down Princess Street. EVERYONE on this planet is my neighbour and it is MY responsibility to reach out to them. Lord, please, help me to be the change that YOU want to see in this world. And help us all to wake up and stop repeating the same tragic mistakes.

Tsunami Relief Carnival

2005-02-05T14:56:00.000-08:00

Last night the students from the Faculty of Education here at Queens put on a fun-tastic carnival to raise money for the Tsunami Relief....I volunteered as a face-painter and had tonnes of fun! The event was a great success.....

So here's Esther and Dave displaying their beautiful new works of art....:) yes folks, that is a sheep on Dave's face...

And here's JR Flash and a young beautiful girl that he just rescued....

and here's some cute little girls who's faces I painted!

Tir-nan-og

2005-02-05T14:41:00.001-08:00

Good times at the Tir-nan-og on Thursday, here's Carol, Dena, and Lea Ellen...too bad they DITCHED me to single Jann Arden's Insensitive ALL BY MYSELF!! that's ok, girls, i found new friends....

And me and Emily!! This girl rocks and may live with me this summer!

procrastination can be fun!

2005-02-05T14:21:00.000-08:00

well, this week i had lots of work to do for a change.....and i tried to work really really hard, but i was just too distracted....yeah so here's me taking a break from my essay research and...yes, building a kinder surprise toy...

and here i am playing with my new alien spaceship....hee hee...that was fun...:)

the new Hot 116

2005-02-05T14:13:00.000-08:00

Here are my beautiful new housemates, Laura (beside me) and Lindsay.
Lindsay was my frosh leader and Laura has the pyscho-somatic desire to
organize everything.....like the fridge and the cupboards.....she's
crazy, but we love her anyways!! :)