on repeat

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At the beginning of this semester, with all the requisite uncertainty of a class schedule with lab times yet-to-be-determined and problem sets that take 1/5th of the time that they will take in a short week or two and no research papers looming just yet, I was feeling good about my time management, and about how I'd pared down my commitments from last year.  Maybe it was the book on boundaries, or how good it felt to live, as one of my friends commented insightfully last year, with "margins," or my new understandings that 1) expectations are not obligations, and 2) being able to do something doesn't automatically mean that you should.  But mostly, I'm convinced, it was God's grace, and his patient lessons on doing the important things, not all the things.  He'd given me a verse from Matthew 5:34--"Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes' and your 'No,' 'No;' anything beyond this comes from the evil one."--and had been teaching me what this meant.

I was involved (in a sort of confusing, nebulous way... oh GOD!! I still really need your wisdom!) in a Christian fellowship, was dedicated to singing in the Gospel Ensemble, and had a job tutoring.  And that seemed just about right.

But I'm still learning, and far from there yet.  Boundaries, and saying no, are a work in progress.  I got an email at the beginning of last week that was mostly a series of questions about whether I'd be able to do several different things, and it was still overwhelming.  I probably should have said no, and been clear, and let it be--but I didn't.  In a sort of misguided concession, I said yes to half the requests, and no to the other half.  And then other things started to come up: mentoring, and volunteering, and whatever else.  Soon I was asking myself not if the things I'd agreed to were what I should be doing, but where I could fit in the time to do them.

This is foolish.

So I've been trying to rectify this, sending out emails to clarify and adjust my commitments, trying to make sure that, even if I'm having to change my 'Yes' to a 'No' (still learning!  teach me, Father God.), at least then the 'No' in my heart will match the 'No' I've spoken--and the same for 'Yes.'  Although I think this passage in Matthew is admonishing Christians to be clear with their commitments and to be able to say, 'No' when it's necessary, I am coming to see that it's also about the sheer importance of having a mouth that says 'Yes' only when the heart is also saying 'Yes.'

Now, to make one vital clarification: Jeremiah (17:9) rightly points out, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?"  So no, it is not enough--in fact, it is dangerous!--to act merely based on our whims.  After all, we are clearly instructed to "live by faith [the things of God, I'd say], not by sight [our fickle hearts and emotions]" (2 Corinthians 5:7).  But there is a still, small voice in our spirits that, as I learned in Pursuing God's Will Together, has long been recognized as the Holy Spirit, who can work through desolation (making us feel uneasy and "wrong" about a decision) and consolation (giving us a profound sense of peace when our decision aligns with God's will).  (The terms desolation and consolation are from St. Ignatius--check it out!!)

So, I'm saying NO to a lot of things these days, almost infinitely more than I used to (since I used to avoid that word pretty carefully).  I know that, as I learn I'll say yes to some of the wrong things and no to some of the right ones--but I trust that God will correct me.

Thoughts on Hands

Today's thought comes from a sermon by Zac Poonen (listen here!):

If your hands are not functioning well together, say, by causing you to drop things you try to carry, it's not because your two hands haven't spent enough time clasped together in "fellowship," but rather because one or both of them have lost connection to the brain from which they receive directions.  Take hands as parts of the body of Christ, and Christ himself as the head, and this is a powerful message to all sorts of churches and fellowships.

Get connected to the head!

things will fall apart without You

So I'm sitting in my room, the lone junior in a hall full of sophomores who have just returned to school today, and man, I am so convicted of this right now: Everything (everything!) will fall apart without Jesus.  There's just no way it stands--anything stands--without Twereduampon, the tree against which we lean and do not fall, as the Akans of Ghana call him.

There's a lot of shouting three floors below me, on the vast, dewy quad traversed by overeager students zealous to make up for summer evenings not spent partying with their college friends.  And I think of the last week of training I've undergone, training as an assistant resident adviser, and how everything's just sheer chaos without Jesus at the center.  How you can keep searching for that intangible sufficiency, searching as you run across the quad with the breathless exhilaration of the night that beckons, for some drug that will quell your insufficiency.  You'll search as you drink (RA rules: As long as the situation isn't "high risk," let kids drink), have sex (RA rules: Just make sure you have a condom, and try not to go asking for the morning-after pill too often), and study (RA rules: Weekly study break.  Go.).

And you'll never find that thing.  It breaks my heart.  The whole spectacle reminds me of Yeats' "The Second Coming"... "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."  Why don't we hear the falconer?  Jesus isn't a thing--He's a person.


"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.  For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross." - Colossians 1:15-20


If I have any hope of surviving this year, it's not going to be because of my RA training.  It's going to be by grace.

Jesus At the Center

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Enough Angst Already

Yep, I've had quite enough of my angsty self in recent weeks, consumed with angsty thoughts about "development" projects-- and how to keep on living when you've lived somewhere very different and aren't sure how much you miss it-- and where (or if) I fit in with certain people and certain groups and certain places and certain dreams.

So I'm choosing to leave that behind and throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and run with perseverance the race marked out for me, fixing my eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who endured the cross and scorned its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God, and consider Him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that I will not grow weary and lose heart!!  Amen.

Theme for the year:

CHOOSE TO SERVE THE LORD

White people in Africa

I have some pretty strong, pretty emotional, and sometimes pretty convoluted thoughts about this.  (And I realize my title is blighted by broadness and bluntness that go both ways: Africa, obviously, is a vastly diverse continent, and white people certainly have all manner of diverse reasons for being in Africa, including having been born there.  But sometimes I think generalizations are more expressive than political correctness.)  So rather than offer a tirade or lengthy exposition, all I'd like to do for now is offer a little intro and share an article that may add a new dimension in your thinking about what Africa is, and what it means, especially when you're the one living there.

I'm tired of hearing people talk about "how happy" people they meet in Africa--or Haiti, or South America, or wherever they've recently come back from spending a week or two--are, "even though they are so poor." Yes, there is material poverty of a different flavor in these places (for simplicity's sake, let's term them the "Global South," since I'm not big in a developed/developing dichotomy) when compared to the United States.  Yes, I've met plenty of happy people in Ghana, Uganda, and Haiti, and many of these people are indeed very materially poor.  And yes, it is definitely a good and humbling thing for me to be reminded on my visits there of just how many things I assume are at least normal, if not essential, for life are actually just obfuscating luxuries that distract from some of the realities of life I'd rather not face.

But it's too easy to release ourselves from responsibility, much less ask ourselves if we in fact do have a responsibility, much less give careful consideration to how we should respond to this maybe-responsibility, by telling ourselves that, well, it's a shame that my friend can't buy food this week because the government decided not to pay rural teachers on time, or that a 10-year-old can't have an asphyxiating tumor removed because government health insurance doesn't cover for surgery and there's no private health insurance in Ghana, but at least they're happy in the midst of their poverty.  To an extent, maybe there is a sort of Pauline contentment going on here: "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.  I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want" (Philippians 4:12).  Or maybe not.  So, even though one journalist's account of his experiences is not authoritative for a nation, I don't think we white Americans (yes, "we," including me!) get to pick which is the answer.

So, too much exposition already, but here's the article:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/29/world/africa/op-ed-chude-jideonwo/index.html

Thoughts?

the things u promise sometime ago

I mentioned in passing a little while back that I should address the idea of obligation at some point... so here goes:

Last spring I struggled a lot with what it means to love people--fully and really, and even when that means not giving them what they want, and even when what they want is you and time with you.  Oh God!--That's painful.  I really want to love people, but let's be honest: my love never saved anyone, ever, so as much as I yearn to be present to and care for people, I have to remember that it is Jesus' love is preeminent, and that my attempts to love can go too far.  (And sometimes, rather than failing by trying to be more than I can for someone, I run the opposite way and am downright unloving in my own selfishness.)  Love is confusing.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.  And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.  If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?  Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. -- 1 John 3:16-18 

How much should we lay down our lives?  Laying ourselves down doesn't mean, I don't think, being totally available to everyone at all times; Jesus, for His part, withdrew to a quiet place many times when there were still huge crowds pressing in around Him.  Is pity really enough?  Because when Jesus was moved with pity, He was also moved, as in to heal or provide food or something.  Or is it more about giving possessions away and not being selfish?  Certainly enough of Jesus' teaching is dedicated to dealing with people who love their possessions more than Him and His people.  But what actions are loving?  What does it mean to love in truth?

There's a small, simple notebook I keep of sermon notes, prayer requests, testimonies, revelations during Bible reading, the ways in which I feel God speaking to me and directing my path in specific moments, and sometimes just desperate prayers.  I wrote in it when I started having this love conundrum.  Perhaps to illuminate how overwhelming it is when people want more of me than I can give, and how confounding it is sometimes that anyone thinks I have much good in me to offer them, I'll share my entry from 28 March 2012:

Oh God.

People are looking for Jesus and they find me.  God!  Help me point them to Jesus.  I'm falling flat on my face. 

I think a little clarification is useful here.  Firstly, I don't think I have nothing to offer relationally, or that it's anomalous that anyone would want to be my friend, or that I don't have fulfilling friendships.  But what I do know, and cling to, is that if there is anything beautiful in me, and I believe there is, it is there because the Holy Spirit made it grow there and because I'm made in God's lovely image.  Secondly, nothing about Jessica can fulfill anyone, but the closer I grow to Jesus, the more I look like Him.  I think the best explanation of why I found myself overwhelmed, feeling like people expected things from me that I could not give them, is that I must have looked enough like Jesus to have been attractive.  Thirdly, I fall flat on my face--every time!--trying to be more to people than I can be, trying to take on others' weariness when it's clear that it's in Jesus, not me, that people can find rest for their souls, and that it's his yolk, not mine, that's easy.  (Fourthly, let it also be known that, in spite of all this, I value human relationships very highly, and affirm wholeheartedly that God created humans as relational beings and that faith is to be pursued in community.)

God answers prayers, usually in unexpected ways, and this was no exception.  The day after I scrawled that desperate little prayer in my notebook, I felt God revealed to me something new; it was like He spoke it to me while I was praying.  On 29 March, I recorded:

When Jesus paid my debt, He paid it all.  I don't owe anyone anything.  At all.

There is a certain perverse understanding of love in which we're constantly trying to pay everyone back.  It's a well-known and widely accepted anthropological theory that gift-giving is in fact just a subset of exchange relationships.  A sense of indebtedness and obligation can be fostered by many things, among them another's actions (the feeling you should reciprocate someone's kind gesture), or another's need (someone needs something that you have, so you feel you should give it).

It's like the agonizing process of making out your childhood birthday invitation list when you're trying to decide if you have to invite the annoying kid in your 3rd grade class just because she invited you to her birthday party the month before.  Are you expected to?  Well, probably, at least by your classmate.  Are you obliged?  No, certainly not.  But might you feel like you are (at least if you're a particularly emotionally sensitive 8-year-old)?  I can't speak for you, but for me the answer is resoundingly "yes"...  This has been something like the background music of my life.  So the idea of not owing people things is radical to me.  But it's also amazing, and liberating--it is for freedom we've been set free, not to be burdened again by a yolk of slavery (Galatians 5:1)--even slavery to others' expectations!  Because Jesus cashed the check for my wages of death, I'm free (Romans 6:23)--and I cannot claim credit (Ephesians 2:8-10) or pay back this debt.  Therefore, I don't respond to Jesus' gift of Himself out of obligation (I actually think trying to pay Jesus back would be sinfully prideful, as if I could equate my sacrifices with His ultimate sacrifice), but rather out of--wait for it--LOVE.  So here we are again.

But this explication of love and debt has mostly been a prelude to what I want to share, that is, a four-part text message I got this afternoon from Nana Sarfo, the chief of Naama, a village nearby Asaam.  After learning that the midwife with whom I was supposed to be working was essentially on medical leave for my entire 5 weeks in Ghana, Nana Sarfo accompanied me on a series of visits to the Mampong regional hospital and the hospital in nearby Kofiase, hoping to gain permission to shadow and research in Kofiase but ultimately gaining nothing more than a lot of dust on our feet and a close-up view of bureaucracy.  Here's the transcript of the text:

Hello akua Afriyie,how are you doing? You are doing great by God's grace.please another batch of SIT [study abroad students] are coming to Ghana this september so i would like to know whether you can get in touch with them,i mean those around your area so that contact them and give them the things u promise sometime ago.my secretary's email is ********@yahoo.com or facebook.i would be grateful if u could give me your email or facebook address.thank YOU goodbye.Nana sarfo Adu-Naama Ashanti

I've been long-winded already, and I'm slowing down, but here's where I've been getting: I remember many conversations with Nana (the name means grandpa or grandma, and is the title of all Ashanti chiefs) about the past study abroad students who came to visit.  Some of them had built a solar panel station for the village to stabilize their electricity; another group had dug a borehole to provide clean drinking water; and one of his particular favorites had bought him a laptop computer, sending it to him by way of the next crop of Naama-bound SIT study abroad students.  He carefully scrolled through each of the contacts in his cell phone, pleased to tell me when each of the Americans had come, and what they studied, and whether they stayed in his compound or nearby.

He'd often remind me of the borehole and the laptop and the solar panels when I'd thank him after yet another fruitless, cramped taxi ride between Asaam and Kofiase and Mampong.  He'd pay the fare and tell me that when I got home I should tell my father about the way he'd taken care of me by accompanying me on these trips, and that when I bought him a gift I could send it with the next batch of SIT students.

And there are others: The pastor of the tiny Asaam Presbyterian Church who wants me to send money for the congregation to build a church on the plot of land they somehow scraped enough money together to buy years ago, but that has sat fallow for so long weeds seem to have squelched the decaying foundation into submission.  The physician's assistant at the Asaam Health Clinic who wants me to apply to an American college on behalf of his daughter so she can study nursing, mostly unaware of the exorbitant expenses and the complicated application and the necessity of the SAT.  The fellow teacher and friend from my Bridge Year who will expect me to contact my fellow Bridge Year students to cobble together the $450 that will pay his school fees for next year, since we've already set that precedent this year.

It makes me weary.

It makes me angry at all the other white people who have traveled to Africa, seen poverty, cuddled some dirty-but-adorable kids as their unbelievably-poor-but-still-so-you-know-happy families stand around nearby, and whipped out their figurative checkbooks to make it all better before going back home to their cable TV and all-you-can-eat buffets.

Sometimes it makes me wish I had a checkbook like that so I could whip it out too.

It makes me want to explain the cost of living (and of college!  and med school!  and shipping!) in the US, sort of to justify it to myself that I haven't bought a laptop or a borehole or a field of solar panels.

It makes me wonder what Nana Sarfo thinks I "promise sometime ago" to give him, since I never told him that I'd buy him anything.

And it makes me wonder if this obligation-free life is tenable outside an abstractly theological realm.



This is probably why I was never supposed to give my phone number out in the first place.  Forget that; I'm frustrated and uncertain and glad that I did.  Love is confusing.

It Is Well

(link)

My sin--not in part, but the whole--

Has been nailed to the cross

So I bear it no more

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul

August Books

I have this habit of picking up books wherever they're lying around and starting to read them, sometimes in the beginning, but sometimes not, without really making a commitment to finish reading them.  I'm just not one of those people who has to finish a book after I've begun, unless maybe it's really good.  So here I present a list (in no particular order) of the books--two of which I've finished, three of which I've started this month, three of which I first began between 6 months and 2 years ago, and one of which has been a friend for quite some time--I'm hoping to read this month.  I'll try to give you an update on how everything goes... (and maybe this will help :) )

1) Pursuing God's Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups by Ruth Haley Barton

This book met me, challenged me, and offered practical perspectives on some deep longings and questions I've been struggling with this summer regarding how to discern God's voice, and how to follow the Holy Spirit's leading not just as an individual, but as part of a body.  On a side note, the author is my dear aunt :)

2) Renovation of the Church: What Happens When a Seeker Church Discovers Spiritual Formation by Kent Carlson and Mike Leuken

So far, so good, though I'm not done yet.  I've enjoyed seeing how God prompted the authors of this book to completely reorient the focus of their church; though at times it's lacking specifics, I've been encouraged by this testimony of God's guidance and grace.

3) A Heart for the Work: Journeys Through an African Medical School by Claire Wendland

I should have finished this long before summer began because it was assigned reading for my Medical Anthropology class in the spring, but in the heat of the semester I didn't give it the attention it deserved. Better late than never?  Inspiring so far, and a very insightful blend of anthropological analysis and a gentle exploration of simple human relationships and experience.

4) A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League by Ron Suskind

Required reading for incoming Residential College Advisers (and Assistants/Alternates, like me!).  The main character, Cedric, is one of the most raw, unapologetic participant-observers I've ever read.  Not to mention I was left with much to reflect on, many blessings to be thankful for, and an unexpected instance or two of identification with Cedric.

5) Christ & Culture by H. Richard Niebuhr

... since Ravonne lent it to me almost a year ago and I haven't finished yet!  (For shame.)  But so far, an interesting and useful explication of secular perceptions of culture.  I'm excited to finish because the title leads me to believe that it should be required reading for Anthropologically-inclined Christians.

6) Reclaiming the Body: Christians and the Faithful Use of Modern Medicine by Joel Shuman and Brian Volck, MD

Hopefully the title says most of it; I'm not too far into it yet, but my mom bought it for me (thanks!) and I am certainly not planning to leave Jesus out of my future medical pursuits--particularly because it's He who led me to pursue those pursuits in the first place--so it should be a good'n.

7) Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition by James K. A. Smith

Another one of those that's been sitting around awhile, having been left in limbo, it was a gift from my parents when I decided to check out Pentapresbycostaterianism, a.k.a. remembering that the Holy Spirit is an actual, real, live, active Person while not forgetting that God's main mission is not to make everything cushy for me here on Earth.

8) Organic Chemistry by Thomas Sorrell

Just kidding.  Mostly.

9) The Bible by God

I'm very behind on my 3-month reading plan, and my prayer is to love the Word, not just get through because I made it a goal... Finding the path of discipline that doesn't cross into obsessive, Pharisaic rule-keeping while not just giving myself a free pass of laziness.