Just Like That Night

A couple of years ago I found this Haitian nativity, hewn from a piece of wood.  A man named Calem carved it. He signed it in pencil on the back.  Simple. Plain. Beautiful. Just like the night it all happened.

We All Have Stories

Here's a picture of the group that met in Haiti a few weeks ago to discuss the way forward for a new hospital for the island of La Gonave.  That's me, third from the left, the guy Air France must have thought wouldn't need clothes that week. They did give me that very nice "Air Team" T-shirt to wear for the week, though.

I’ve heard on the news the last few days where the volume of Christmas card mail the post office is seeing has been cut in half over just the past couple of years. Our own mailbox supports this research.  Not too many cards come now-a-days.  Not surprising, and we can’t blame folks, can we, in these Facebook, Skype, and Twitter days of ours. Not even to mention texting and email and blogs. It is quick and easy and free to send a personalized, even animated, online greeting to someone. Facebook reminds me when it’s your birthday, so I don’t forget. And, I must admit, I love getting dozens of “happy birthdays” from my Facebook family of friends, friends I never would have heard from otherwise.

What has been lost in the transition to cyber, however, (at least so far) is tradition. The tradition of sending hard copy Christmas cards is quickly disappearing. Grabbing a handful of Christmas cards out of the mailbox has gone the way of the milkman’s daily delivery of milk to the doorstep.

Use to be, only old people reminisced about the good old days. Nowadays you don’t have be old at all... the good old days were just ten years ago. (Ah, don’t you just remember way back in the days before YouTube?). Pretty soon, “the good old days” will be measured in months. (Don’t believe me?... iPad-3 comes out this February, less than a year since iPad 2 was released, and just two years after the very first iPad).

Some folks are digging in, resisting the social networking scene.  I resisted, too, for a short time  But I have decided to embrace it. Twitter and Facebook serve as today’s water cooler, where people hang out.  Blogspot is the campfire of our times, where our stories are told.  I guess it’s not a matter of Facebook vs. the water cooler, Blogspot vs. a campfire.  Because in the end, it’s about the community and telling our stories.

We all have stories, like me wearing the same clothes for a week.  Now that's a story.

A More Realistic Rendition

Saturday morning. It snowed last night. Christmas tree is lit.  I'm on my second mug of strong, black coffee (why, Haitian, of course). In front of me on the coffee table are two ethnic nativities (I have collected many over the years). One of them is first ethnic nativity I ever purchased. I found it in Haiti in the early 90's during one of my early trips.

It's interesting how inanimate objects invoke nostalgia.  Our tree is full of sentimental relics of Christmasses past.  My little Haitian nativity is such a relic, too.  It reminds me. It reminds me that Jesus is not mine, but ours. That He came not to be just my personal little American Jesus, held close for safekeeping.  He's Dede's Jesus. And Miss Vero's and Maitre Rousvel's Jesus too. And Jean Tinne's and Aldo's and Mme Sami's and Madame Felicien's and Merline's and Jean Rony's and Mickenson's and Jean Bena's. Jesus is Emmanuel. God with US, not God with just me. He is Emmanuel to the people living in the huts on the salt flats and up in the tiny mountain villages. His birth is celebrated not just in my cozy, comfortable American church, but in precious groups of worshipers all over the island of La Gonave, too.

Sometimes when I set out my Haitian nativity, with its coconut stable and crudely carved manger guests, I wonder if maybe it, in its stark simplicity, isn't a more realistic rendition of how it was.

Howdy Partner

Howdy Partner.

I have progress to report, along with a challenge for those interested in making a significant and immediate impact on the island.

The sad reality is that fewer than 10 percent of households on the island have access to a latrine. In one cluster of villages where there were over 400 homes, there was only one latrine. ONE. It's no wonder that diarrhea (typhoid fever, cholera, worms, hepatitis, among others) kills more kids here than any other disease.

The good news is that people here are getting it, and are responding en-mass to our message of how important latrines are to the health of their families and village, and to the deal we offer to them that if they dig their pit, we will provide them with the cement to build a commode base. In one village (~100 households) every home now has a latrine, and by the end of this month, another village will have 100 latrine use.  Word around here is that this statistic is unheard of in Haiti.

The exciting problem we have now, though, is that the message has spread much faster than we thought it ever would, and right this minute about 400 families (scattered across some 20 villages) have dug pits, hoping that we will extend the offer to them too.

What's exciting is that there is no question that this will translate immediately into fewer diarrhea-related illnesses and deaths. We already noticing decreased illnesses.

The challenge I'll throw out to all of you out there in blogland is this... can you help me buy the materials for these 400 latrines?  The cost is 20 bucks per latrine.

  Through the end of this year (just 4 weeks!) we will designate every gift coming through the paypal button on this blog to help us build latrines.  $20 - one family gets a latrine.  $100 - five families. $2000 will provide an ENTIRE VILLAGE with latrines.

Our long term goal, of course, is to see every one of the some 10,000 homes on the island to have a latrine. This statistic alone will send shock waves across Haiti, and I think we should do it.  Any partners?

I get home on Monday after a week of meetings here in Haiti. I am SO encouraged, so energized to continue the work I feel called to do.

Beauty Beneath

Friday starts a new series of meetings here in Haiti.  The first half of the week we gathered people together for input into how the new hospital on La Gonave should look and function. When the hospital opens in Spring, 2013 it will not only be a new day for the facility itself (structure, appearance). It will also be a new day for the way the hospital functions and operates on a day to day basis. Both levels of change are sorely needed and we are really excited to be moving toward that day.Tomorrow (Friday) starts a new two days of discussions, with new participants gathering... several organizations who have the mutual interest of helping bring transformation to the island.  We come from different angles and bring different things to the table, but we come to collaborate and join resources, skillsets, and energies to get the job done.

I was able to spend an hour or so snorkeling out in the coral reefs this afternoon. Exhiliarating. So much beauty just beneath the surface.

Just like La Gonave.

Summit

My body is tired (brain, too, come to think of it). A half day of travel and a half day of catching up with friends, colleagues, and fellow development workers as we have gathered from all parts of the US. There are a few Scots here too. Tomorrow morning we'll be joined by the Haitian contingent (the hospital doctors, nurses, and administrators) of our summit as we begin to establish a new and improved way forward for La Gonave's only hospital: Hopital Wesleyenne d' La Gonave. Interestingly we're not meeting on at the hospital, not even on the island.  That's probably good.

We're staying in a mission guest house in Montrous, on the mainland, right on the sea. The ocean is about a hundred feet from me right now, the island of La Gonave 12 miles out there. As soon as I submit this post, I'll shut the lights off and hope that an ocean breeze keeps me cool as I sleep.

In addition to the work of the summit, I hope to start catching up on some writing while I'm here.

I hear President Clinton is in country too. (He must have heard I was going to be here). I sat next to a guy on the plane who was attending the Clinton Global Initiative meetings being held today and tomorrow. He owns a high-end chocolate company and buys cocoa beans from all over the world and is looking at Haiti as a possible future source.  We had a long coversation. I told him about Starfysh, he told me about cocoa growing.  We exchanged cards.

Enroute

I'm enroute to Haiti again tonight. This is my first time using in-flight internet which is pretty cool. I still cannot wrap my brain around how one can click his fingers on a keypad while traveling at 600 miles per hour at 35,000 feet in the air and click send and immediately have his message available for people down on the ground to read (Why did I say still?... as if I am expecting to one day comprehend it).

I will spend this entire week on the mainland, save for Thursday when I hope to get out to the island for the day. The first half of the week will be spent in discussions with all those involved with the hospital rebuild. ("Rebuild" is a misnomer. It will be a totally new hospital). The second half of the week will be spent sitting down with other people and organizations who have projects going on on La Gonave. I am excited about both meetings and feel privileged to have been invited to these summits.

I hope, in addition to the meetings which are the main thing on my agenda, that I can also start to catch up on my writing, which has gone woefully wanting (and I am hearing about that).

Our November newsletter is in the process of going out in the mail (snail- and e-). It was too long and we have decided to email-publish it monthly starting in January, 2012.  We'll still do occasional snail mailings, but they are expensive to do (paper, printing, postage, time), so they'll go out maybe quarterly.

I am excited that Starfysh's communication piece is coming together and people should really start to see a big change for the better in the quality and frequency of what we're doing.

It is Good to Gather

Doesn't seem possible that a year has passed. On a blustry, snowy evening last November, a bunch of friends braved the elements and joined me in an airport hangar for the official launch of this thing we had decided to call Starfysh.  Today, exactly one year and one day later, folks continue to gather around this campfire of an idea that maybe... just maybe... something significant is in the works.

The Starfysh board of directors met this morning, in the same coffeeshop... in fact, at the same table in the same corner of the coffeeshop where we first met a year and a half earlier.  I didn't think about that until just now, typing this.  I would have certainly mentioned it this morning had it come to mind. I am nostalgic, if nothing else!

Today, people continue to gather, inspired by the same vision that brought us out at the airport a year ago: that together... as a gathered people... we can make a difference.

Just last night I swung by one such gathering.  Someone, whose name I'll not share (let's just say her initials are Denise Johnson) had organized a road race, inspired by the TV reality show, "The Amazing Race." The race took a competetive group of racers through a series of photo stops and roadblock tasks through the busy downtown district of Grand Rapids. They called it "The Amazying Race."

Just a couple hours ago I received a call from Denise saying they had raised over a thousand dollars for Starfysh, and asked that we use it to get clean water to La Gonave.

In our gather-ing we become a force for good. A force that is much stronger than the simple sum of our parts.

It is good to gather.

I was Thirsty...

"I was thirsty...

... and you gave me something to drink."

It's Both/And

Well, after a year of planning, we were finally able to start a program of feeding hungry kids.  We had to cut down the size of program we initially had planned because we would not have been able to continue to fund it at the pace we have been receiving funds.  But small is probably better in the early going as we learn the ropes.  Nothing wrong with taking our time and doing it right. We learn as we go.

The pictures at left were taken last week during the first feeding, a trial run.  It went really well!  I was a bit worried about order and control and stuff like that, but it was absolutely orderly and controlled.

We are feeding one hundred kids in this particular village. We hope to begin soon to feed children in a second village of about the same size.

In doing development I suppose there is probably nothing particularly strategic or sustainable when it comes to feeding hungry people. I mean, these kids are going to wake up hungry again tomorrow, right?  What I do know is that malnourished kids are sick kids and that it's hard to learn when you're sitting there hungry, and that while we set about the painstaking tasks of development it won't hurt to love on people along the way.

Besides, as we feed we will be bringing trees and garden seeds and farm animals to their homes. In the future, then, they won't need people to come to feed them. They'll do just fine on their own.

Development and compassion need not be mutually exclusive activities. It's not either/or... it's both/and.

If It's Glamour We're After...

Two great friends, Aldo and Dede

I suppose it's a bit unreasonable to think that in these hard economic times one could make a go of a business whose sole purpose is for the benefit of someone else, not us.  But there you go.  On one hand we see so many well-thought-out, well-funded business plans falling flat.  On the other hand, the simple, perhaps even silly notion that a few folks here in the States might be able to bring transformative change to an island of people they'll never meet... seems to be gathering steam.

I've had the pleasure of being witness to both ends, both here and in Haiti.  And, while it is fun and busy and all that here in Michigan, the true exhiliaration comes when you can see the fruits of our Stateside efforts borne out in a precious village whose people know (and care) nothing about golf outings and tax receipts and all that stuff.

Just days ago I wandered through the white tents of the cholera hospital where, just two days prior, my friend Jean Tinne's grandmother had died of that quick and horrible disease.  Sadly, Jean Tinne had to bury her the same day, her and the evil Vibrio that claimed her life. I hugged Jean Tinne and told him how sorry I was.

Days ago I returned to an obscure, yet precious mountain village where just months ago there were zero household latrines, and now there are 54 (out of 91 households). Our goal is for 100%. The deal we have made with families is that if they dig the hole, we will provide them with cement for the slab cover and the toilet.  They are enthusiastically taking us up on our offer.  Thanks to community development missionary Lowell Adams for doing the hard work in transporting literally tons of cement up the treacherous mountain roads.

Mundane? Probably.  Unglamorous? Absolutely.  But so what?  If it's glamour we're after, we should stay at the Ritz.

I need to catch up on my posting.  So much to share...
Blessings,
Steve

A Kid's Joy

About as far removed from our rushed, stressed, complicated way of life as you can get, are a bunch of kids in a little Haitian village who know nothing of American politics, the global economy, or who won the Emmy's.  They're unaware of 9/11, Adderall, and Ambien.  They just are.  Their concerns aren't global, they're local. Extremely local.  Like will I eat today? Will anybody in my family get sick today? I wish we had a school.  Stuff like that.

I learned something in a little mountain village in Haiti last Monday.  I learned that it takes more than struggle and hardship to take away a kid's joy.  I was lucky enough to capture a few moments of it here...

First Impressions of the Children of Mare Koshon

Mare Koshon

A week ago today I jumped on a motorcycle and headed to the mountains with a couple of good Haitian friends.  They had been telling me of a tiny village up there where there was great need. So I said let's go.  The road was brutal all the way up.

When we finally got close we parked the bikes and walked toward a stand of mature mangoes where we heard some commotion.  In the cool, dense shade of the trees were gathered a bunch of young children. The ground was dense with old and brittle mango leaves.  It was impossible to walk quietly.  I learned that the children gather here under these trees about three times a week to sing and play and to be read a story out of a
Bible story book.

Mme Diwork

I later learned that there is no school here (Mare Koshon they call it) and that they fetch their water from about a mile away. I did not see much in the way of garden crops or animals. No electricity, of course.  91 homes. They told me they had a church but I didn't go to see it.  They told me there had never been a medical or dental team come to their village. The woman whose land the mango trees were on was 85 years old. Her name was Madam Diwork. Born, I calculated, around 1926.  Man.  Her deep wrinkles betrayed her hard life. She had defied the life expectancy odds of living here.  I wondered what all she had seen.

They tell me Mare Koshon means "standing water where the pigs go to" and they walked me to a field that for some reason, did not drain water well even though we were at some altitude.  It was boggy with a fair amount of standing water. I never saw any pigs.

I have a few videos of my time there and I'll post them when I figure out how. You will enjoy them, I'm pretty sure.

You can't find Mare Koshon on a map. I figure that's because it's tiny, plus no one much knows its there.  But now I know it's there.  My time there was one of those alive, exhiliarating, pinch me experiences you have every so often. Mare Koshon is a precious place with precious people whose needs are basic and severe. I figure I'll be back. Probably soon.

Stopped back by the cholera hospital today. Pleasantly surprised to see just four patients there. They were all quite ill though,m and I wouldn't be surprised if on guy doesn't survive the night.

I'm glad to be able to blog from where I am, but it's difficult on this dinky blackberry, plus I can't post pics from my blackberry to my blog. I have posted a half dozen or so on facebook. For some reason I can do that.

Tomorrow I'll trave by boat down the coast to visit a tiny seaside village. Can't wait.

Blessings,
Steve

Much to Catch Up On

It's tough to type long narratives on a 1 x 3 inch blackberry keyboard with type font in the negative numbers but I'll try my best while in Haiti these next couple of days. I know from my earthquake days that folks like to hear directly from the front lines.

I haven't blogged much for the last several weeks and there's a reason for that... So much going on. Guess it's why you don't see many interviews of athletes while the game is going on.

Much to catch you up on... Talk to you from Haiti tomorrow.

Steve

Haiti Rocks

Whenever I return home from Haiti, the TSA and customs people at the Miami airport give me weird looks when they see the large rocks I have stuffed into my luggage.  Most people returning home from the Caribbean bring back jewelry and rum.  I usually bring home coffee, occasionally vanilla.  Almost always I bring home a few rocks.  I mean, there's nothing contraband about them, and they have to let them go through, but that doesn't stop them from backing up the xray belt a time or two.  Every time they say to me, "Is this bag yours? We need to look inside."

The snow-white rocks in the upper picture come from the north shore of La Gonave. They have been made smooth from thousands of years of ocean waves washing over them.  I have wondered how many swashbuckling pirates have trampled over them on their way out to their ship.

This middle picture is of a couple chunks of earthquake debris I picked up.  Iconic, don't you think, of a country that has been laid so low.  "Ayiti kraze," someone said. "Haiti is broken."

In the bottom picture are rocks I picked up in the middle of La Gonave where we hope to locate a base camp for our work in the future.  I'm not a geologist, but to me they look like old coral, which makes me wonder if ancient La Gonave may have been an underwater reef.

I love pictures and I sure take my share of them, but they're a poor substitute for holding relics like these in your hands, which I just have to do every once in awhile.  You just have to wonder what all they've seen.

Acting Routinely

“[He] does more than practice medicine.  He doctors people.  There’s a difference.”  Charles Kuralt

I long ago came to realize that I might never “get it right.”  Today, I know it for fact:  I will never “get it right.”  I’ll always be just “practicing” medicine.  I suppose that the same can be said for everyone.   We’ll always be just “practicing” in life.  Never quite getting things perfect.

I guess in a sense we're all practitioners.  Practitioners of our work.  Practitioners in our relationships.  Practitioners of our faith.  We never do get things quite right, do we?  We’re not perfect.  What’s more, we never will be!  The good news is that all this imperfection is all as God expects.

The use of the word practice these days almost always connotes the idea of trying to get better, or “get it right.” It is natural, of course, for those of us involved in sports or music to use the word practice to communicate the idea of repetition in order to get better.  After all, “practice makes perfect,” right?  What team will take home the trophy who has not, through tedious repetition, practiced the execution of different parts of the game?  “Practice your free throws,” I’d always encourage my kids.  And who wants to hear a song played by someone who has not practiced it?  Artists practice and experiment with different colors, shapes, and materials.  Fly fishermen practice tying flies.  My golf game stinks because I spend no time practicing at the driving range or putting green.

The word “practice” comes from the Latin practica which, at its very essence, means to “be used.”  For example, if we say that a kitchen or garden utensil is practic-al, we imply that it is use-full, or literally, full of use.  The word, even though it is used as an adjective here, conveys a strong sense of action.  Of course the verb “to practice” is an action verb. Even the noun “practice” (eg. a medical practice, or a legal practice) very literally, then, means a routine action.  To “practice” medicine, then, is to “act routinely” in the area of medicine.  To “practice” law is to “act routinely” in the area of law.  The “practice” of faith is to “act routinely” in the area of faith.   Be careful here, don’t equate “routine” with monotony, drudgery or vain repetition.  My family practice is anything but monotonous.  Oh, I show up every day, and I “act routinely,” lest my patients lose confidence, but “acting routinely” for me is a daily dose of variety, challenge, and excitement.  Likewise, the “acting routinely” in the area of faith in Christ should not and need not be drudgery.  Indeed, the practice of faith in Jesus Christ brings variety, challenge, and excitement, not in spite of “acting routinely” but as a direct result of “acting routinely.”  Routine can be the source of great blessing!  God’s intent is that routine would be a blessing to us, not a curse against us.

The primary reason that we “act routinely” is out of obedience.  God calls us to an active, vibrant, use-full practice of our faith.

“This has been my practice:  I obey your precepts.”  Ps. 119:56

A Practicing Faith

After med school comes “residency,” that essential part of every young doctor’s career where “head knowledge” meets “street smarts.”  I remember the day well, back in July, 1988:  my first days in the hospital after graduating from medical school.  I remember the painful realization that all the “stuff” I had been cramming into my brain the past 4 years was not yet enough to equip me to be a good doctor.  What first year intern doesn’t dread the “pimp” sessions when the attending physician grills him at the patient’s bedside about all the possible etiologies of the patient’s abdominal pain?  I remember well my first day of medical internship.  It was during “rounds”  the attending physician asked me (in front of about four or five other young doctors),  “Doctor Edmondson," (and the inflection in his voice when he said “Doctor” proclaimed loudly that he really had his doubts), “list for me the possible causes of this patient’s congestive heart failure.”  The ten seconds that followed were the slowest ten seconds of my life.  Time stood still for ten seconds.  Deer in the headlights time.  In an act of mercy, his eyes lifted their gaze from me to the rest of the group, who managed to come up with what he was looking for.  Why didn’t I have all the answer to that question?  I should have known the answer to that question.   His eyes panned back to me and, in a reassuring tone, I remember him telling me, “you’ve got it all up here,” placing his hand over my frontal lobe.  “What we need to do,” he said, “is to get it from here” (frontal lobe), “to here” (moving his clenched fist and placing it over my gut).  What I lacked was the gut.  Not guts.  Gut.  And I learned gradually over the years that it would come.  Head knowledge would transform into gut instinct.  That first preceptor in the clinical phase of my education taught me... not facts so much (I had those, or so he reassured me)... but he taught me how to use those facts to make a difference in my patients’ lives.  He taught me how to process the raw material (head knowledge) into something that would be useful to me as I stood at the side of the bed of a critically ill patient.  The patient, I learned, could care less if I got an A in “pulmonary.”  The patient cared a lot if I could prescribe therapy that would save his life.

“Bible smarts” isn’t enough (ask any Scribe).  Faith in God goes way beyond head knowledge(consult any Sadducee).  And lip service certainly doesn’t cut it (ask any Pharisee).  What a waste it would be for a graduating medical student to hang her shingle on her bedroom wall and never allowed her “head knowledge” be translated into improving the quality of people’s lives.  Similarly, how tragic is it that there are those who have an understanding of the Christian faith and seem to know all the right answers, yet who bear no fruit through the exercising of their faith in ministry to others.  How can we grow in faith if we don’t enter the “patient rooms” of life and allow our Great Preceptor to mentor and mold us into ever-learning, ever-maturing, and ever-reproducing practitioners of our faith?

I want to be an ever-maturing practitioner of my faith.  The moment we stop maturing in our faith, we start stagnating in our faith.  Fruit isn’t borne.  Hot turns to luke-warm.  Zeal gives way to boredom.  Might as well hang the shingle on your bedroom wall. 

Living Being

I've been thinking recently about what it means that God created us in His image, His likeness.

The understanding of a living organism must go beyond knowing how it is structured (its anatomy) to how it functions (its physiology). And as amazing as our Creator has created our anatomy, it is equally amazing to see how he has created our physiology.

“The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Genesis 2:7

Here in Genesis we see the distinction between anatomy and physiology. When God “forms” he creates our anatomy. When he “breathes into” our lifeless anatomy, we become living, breathing, laughing, digesting, metabolizing, smelling, seeing, hearing, growing, thinking, hoping, indeed physiologic beings. The term “living being” used here is significant. Don’t gloss so quickly past the phrase that you miss its significance. Could it be that when God created us as “living beings” that both words, living and being, might carry equal weight in how we bear His image? When God forms us from dust we are yet, and very simply, a “being.” Only when He breathes into us are we transformed into a “living being.” The very act of God’s breathing His breath into us is just as much a part of our creation as is the forming us from dust. God created you by forming you AND by breathing into you. Form equals anatomy. Breath brings physiology.

“God created man in his own image.” Gen 1:27

Note carefully, it does not say here that God created man in his own form. It does not say that we were created to resemble him in a strictly anatomic way, although that is part of it. When it says we are created in his own image, the function (physiology) He created us to possess was also intended to bear His image! Form and function. Anatomy and physiology. Out of dust, and from His breath. What we are and who we are. All deliberate, necessary components of image of the God.

When God first created man and woman, they bore His image, His likeness. They were “living beings.” They were like Him in their being; they were like Him in their living. They were like Him anatomically; they were like Him physiologically. Later sin would corrupt both aspects of that likeness: form and function, being and living. Anatomy fell corrupt: to disease, decay and death. Physiology fell corrupt: to disorders, derangements, and disharmony. Today, we still bear the corrupt scars of sin. No one is immune.

"Living beings." It’s the "living" part we have the most problem with. We chalk up the three-score-and-seven aspect of our existence, our "beings," to fate or luck or lifestyle choices. But we struggle with living, really living. God-centered, purpose-filled, full-of-meaning living. Who among us doesn’t want to know that the life they’re living counts for something, that they’re not the result of some cosmic accident?

“You have made known to me the path of life…” David

“This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Deut. 30:19-20

Choose life? Is life a choice, like choosing whether I want dessert or not? Can I really decide whether or not to have life, like deciding if I want to accept a job offer?

“I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full.” Jesus John 10:10

It is clear: God, in Jesus, wants us to have life. But He allows us to choose whether or not we want this life. “The work of God is this,” Jesus tells us, “to believe in the one he has sent.” “He who believes has everlasting life.” John 6:47 The implication is that it is possible to be, to exist, but not to live. Note that Jesus is not saying, “He who believes will have an everlasting existence.” Who wants to live forever if it is all just existence that has no purpose or meaning?

It is possible to exist without living, partial image-bearers of God. Just vague representations. Some years ago I visited the Museum of Art, in Chicago, when the Egyptian exhibit came into town. I especially remember standing in respectful awe in front of many of the mummies on display. I was fascinated as I gazed at the skeletal remains of what, thousands of years ago, was a living, breathing human being. I was intrigued by some of the features that were preserved: the leathery tissue left covering the skull and face, providing a sense of the facial features. Hair, still attached to the scalp. Fingernails. Vague representations of a life lived. Kind of spooky. Very real.

In what sense are we just vague representations of what God initially created us to be? Vestiges of “better days”? Bodies still intact, but whose “life” has long since departed? Spiritual corpses?

A slogan made popular by the pro-life movement simply states, “Choose Life.” In like manner, God makes it abundantly clear: “Choose Life!” Life is a choice! We don’t have to live. God doesn’t force it on us. We can go through life simply existing. But Jesus says He has come that we may have life… a rich, meaningful, physiologic, image-bearing, purposeful life! Rick Warren surprised the publishing world by the enormous and long-lived popularity of his book, The Purpose Driven Life. But think about it. Is it really any surprise that the number one need in all of our lives is for purpose? Purpose that transforms merely existing into abundant living? Purpose that breathes life into the corpse of our existence? Purpose that busts us out of the museum of dead corpses into a world of relationships and growth and meaning?

Wanting to Want To

Two-year-olds are much smarter than most of us think.  Alex is a good example.  A few months ago Alex came in with his Mom for a routine check up.  After my physical assessment, I looked at his growth chart and started talking with his Mom about Alex’s developmental milestones.  It was a good visit, no red flags.

Now, most two-year-olds are still in those high-absorbancy “pull-up” diapers, one of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century.  The only problem with them is that they are so easy and so convenient and they keep toddlers so dry that the incentive to potty train is lost.  I mean, why bother learning how to use a toilet when these pants work just fine?

Alex must have thought so.

I brought up the issue of potty training with Alex’s mother.  Not so much for the purpose of encouraging her to get on it, as much as to open it up for questions she might have about the process.  As it turned out, she had the “big boy potty” sitting on the floor in the bathroom at home but Alex wasn’t expressing a whole lot of interest in using it.  Invariably, every discussion about potty training eventually leads to this conclusion, and you’ve heard it a thousand times:  “They’ll do it when they want to.”  Doesn’t matter what you say.  And Child Psych 101 notwithstanding, a child won’t potty train until they get good and ready.  It’s kind of one of those “you can lead a horse to water…” laws of early childhood behavior.

Alex was familiar with this law.  And he was paying attention to the conversation between his mother and me.  The reason I know he was listening was that the second I said to his mom the proverbial, “He’ll do it when he wants to,” Alex chirped in, “I can’t want to!  I can’t like that!”

There was great wisdom in Alex’s words that morning.  What Alex’s little two-year-old mind understood, and what parents through the generations have found out, is that reason and logic aren’t enough.  Persuasive skills fall short.  Shame and guilt are counterproductive.

When Alex shouted, “I can’t want to!” he was admitting that, in this instance…potty-training… he would rather comply out of an inner desire rather than out of obeying a parental edict.

“I desire to do your will, O my God;

your law is within my heart.”  Psalm 40:8

Do we ever, like Alex, want to want to, but can’t?  Where does the “want to” come from and how can we get it?

When God tells us, “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4) could it be that God is telling us that when we place our faith in Him He will instill desires within us?   That when we place our faith and delight in Him He will reward us by putting the “want to” in us?

Last word is that Alex is still not interested in the “big boy potty.”  To be sure, Mommy and Daddy are ready for him to make that decision.  (Hey those pull-ups aren’t cheap!).  But they are patient.

Just like God is with us.

“He is patient with you,

not wanting anyone to perish,

but everyone to come to repentance.”2 Peter 3:9b

Buying Presence

The catch-22 is this:  on the one hand we want so badly to be about the work (and only about the work) of helping people. To help them dig out of their despair, to bandage their wounds. To, as Jesus said, visit them, clothe them, and give them something to eat.  But the thing is, we must first be there. Not just get there, but be there.

It's a love/hate thing, sort-of.  Because while I love the notion that we will soon have our own place (the last installment of our guesthouse furniture is currently enroute: bunkbeds, mattresses, shelving units, etc.), at the same time I feel like my time is stolen from being with the people I love so much. (I remember telling our board in one of Starfysh's early organizational meetings that things like fundraising and such don't charge me up nearly as much as being in Haiti, being with those we would help.

But the long view of "being there" requires more than showing up now and again.  If we are to make a lasting impact, we must invest in presence.  In a fully-equipped, comfortable guesthouse, ready and waiting for those who would come and invest a few days or weeks or months of their lives down here.  In the vehicles needed to move compassion about the difficult terrain which is La Gonave's.

As we do all this, of course, we are laying program groundwork (water, agriculture, feeding, medical care), which is, for me, way more fun. The time is coming soon when the center of gravity of time and resources will begin to shift from readiness to implementation. In fact, I see it already happening. Happy day!

Finally, I need your help folks.  We need rugged island transportation.  We have received two like-new 4-wheeler ATV's that are currently enroute down.  These will be of enormous value to us in moving about the island.  What we are still waiting for and desperately need next is a couple of heavy duty, 4-wheel drive, diesel trucks.  They wouldn't need to be new, just in good condition.  We will "lift" the bodies of the trucks up a ways, so they can navigate the rough mountain roads in moving supplies and people to where they need to be.  If you can ask around for us, or pull some strings, or know someone who would want to make a monster difference in the lives of a bunch of desperately-poor people by donating one, please send them my way.

Buying presence.  It's what must be done if we are to deliver radical, transformative change to this land.

Golf Scramble a Great Success

Golfers, start your engines!

We had a great day on the links today.  Perfect weather.  Fun golf.  Fun contests.  Lots of prizes.  Great steak buffet. Promoted our clean water initiative.  All proceeds from our outing today will be used to help us provide clean water to families on La Gonave.

Good stuff.  There will definitely be a "Second Annual" next year.

Thank you golfers who came out and volunteers who helped make the day great. Thanks to sponsors, too, for your support.

Hanging out with friends (some new!) at the golf course

God 101

“For the eyes of faith, every created thing manifests the grace and providence of Abba.

                                                                      Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

We’re all signed up for God class. Sometimes we're spending time in the Book.  More often, we take field trips. Sometimes group field trips, but usually field trips just by ourselves.  Today's assignment:  “Look for signs of God.  Report your findings.”  We find that clues are everywhere and it looks like He’s still on the move!  Twigs are broken and His tracks are still wet.  Seems He’s everywhere.

The assignments and tests are all open-Book.  Sometimes we get A’s.  Sometimes D’s.  Often we just plain flunk the exam.  We forget to study.  We forget our Book.  We lose our #2 pencils.  We forget we can work together.  Our Professor says, though, that as long as we stay in the class, we’ll get through the course.

The course: life. God 101.  Independent study, done together.  Life, a course in knowing God.  

Manifold Witness

“Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father.

Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above

Join with all nature in manifold witness

To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love”

                                      Thomas O. Chisholm

God has made us privy to so much more than the people who lived when Jesus walked the earth.  You’ve got to know that God, in His eternal I AM-ness, knew about telescopes and computers and dinosaurs and atoms and quarks and the internet and E=MC2.  God knew (and knows) about undiscovered truths of the day.  As we unearth these yet-to-be-discovered truths, we dare not discard them as not having originated from God, just because the Scriptures haven’t spoken of them.  Rather, we take newly-discovered truths and see what light Scriptural truth sheds on them.  Real truth will neither disprove nor discredit Scripture.  It might challenge our previously-held interpretations.  But that’s our issue, not Scripture’s.  The Word of God is true.  Truth cannot be untrue.  The fact that my little cauliflower of a brain has not yet comprehended (nor will ever!) the wonders of the Creator of the universe in no way minimizes His greatness.  In fact, my puny understanding only accentuates His greatness.

What a freeing concept!  We are free to discover.  Wherever we find truth, we learn a bit more about God.  (If astronomers should discover trees on Mars, it would not threaten our view of God; it would only serve to enlarge it. The only faith we would lose is the faith we have placed in our own puny attempts at understanding an infinite God).  We wake up each morning with a new eagerness to find out a little bit more about God today.  God speaks to us directly through Scripture, through the impressions of His Holy Spirit, and through the truths of the day, none of which are mutually exclusive.

We can know God and have relationship with Him through Christ Jesus.  And we can know about Him through His creation.  God’s creation gives witness to His nature and character and personality and attributes.

“All nature,” the song goes.  “Manifold witness.”  Each choir member has it’s own unique “voice” to add.  Every planet.  Every star.  Every tree.  Every animal.  Every insect.  Every rock.  Every molecule and atom.  Yes, every electron of every atom in the universe spins at the direction of the Director of creation’s choir.  The bazillion individual choir members are blending their voices in harmonies of praise, each telling their own, unique story.  Each witnessing to God’s character.

We, too, sing.  Every one of us each have our own unique set of insights about God.  No one’s life is like another’s.  Our life experiences, even those of people very close to us, are wildly different.  We each have a unique voice to bring to the choir.  Singing together our voices blend in rich harmonies with all the others (brothers and sisters, mountains and molecules, galaxies and snails). What a variety!  Manifold witness.

Evidence

“What on earth are we missing?”   Philip Yancey, Rumors of Another World

There is a subtle, yet important distinction between “evidence for God” and “evidence of God.”  If we’re collecting evidence for God, it’s as if we’re trying to prove His existence.  In observing the evidence of God, on the other hand, we are getting to know the God we already know is there.  I need no evidence for God.  That evidence is the witness of His Holy Spirit inside my being.  But I desperately long for evidence of Him, for the sense of His presence.  While I may intellectually agree that He is present, I also want and need to feel His presence in and surrounding my life.

F.W. Boreham in his 1997 essay, “The Quest,” said it well:  

“The footprints of God! It certainly proves that there is a God: but I want more than that. Robinson Crusoe found a footprint on his island: yet how little that footprint told him! Was it the footprint of a black man or a white man; of a friend or of a foe; of a man or of a woman? He could not tell. I want more than a footprint. The lover is not satisfied with the footprint of his lady: he wants her! I am not satisfied with the footprint of God: I want him! And science, failing to reveal him, failed to meet my soul’s deep need.”

We seek clues… not to build some airtight case for God.  We seek clues to discover “His eternal power and divine nature.”  God has set us loose… free to explore his visible creation for the purpose of knowing Him better.