we were born for this

1.11.2011

President Jimmy Carter declared that the most pivotal catastrophe of the millenium is the growing chasm between the rich and the poor world wide. When 1 in 2 people lives on less than $2 a day, it makes the privileged "world" we are familiar with actually pretty small, eh?

the more i live, the more I get lost in the numbers of this world. you ever feel that way? there's a lot goin on with 6 billion people milling around all over the place. whenever i get a bright idea for myself, i get exhausted just imagining how i will stand out in a crowd that size (hey, we can't all be Taylor Swifts, ya know?). But there is one direction that is failproof... when I direct my energy towards helping those that can't help themselves.

whether you associate yourself with Jesus Christ and Christianity or not, the Bible is a fantastic read, but I'm gonna break it down for you: love God, love your neighbor, thats it. Jesus surrendered his immortality to live with us in our world and demonstrate just that- he encouraged us- GO and do likewise.

we have shining moments where love prospers (after tragedies primarily- but how ironic is that, it takes a something terrible to spur love?). One day a jet liner crashes... wait scratch that, if 100 jetliners crashed and 26,000 people were killed, the media would be all over it and we would all be forced to reflect and reassess our perspective toward life and others that day. But we get back to our own daily grind pretty quickly. Well, what if I told you its a fact that 26,575 CHILDREN die every day from poverty related causes. WHAT- How are we allowing that to happen EVERY day? That we don't treat this as an emergency-that's our crisis, but we don't, because they aren't oUr kids.
but our biggest mistake towards each other must be that we are indifferent to one another. Don't depersonalize the millions of faces of poverty.

"if you...spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will be like the noonday." isaiah 58:9-10

we were born for this, its not the government's job, its not the 'called's job, God asked us all, we should be the first responder to love.

the hole in the gospel by richard stearns is a read worth your time

against all hope

{11.19.2010}

Do you remember the holocaust of WWII? I remember freaking out in history class, that it took us (america) so long to intervene and stop such corrupt twisted behavior. How can so many people be killed and it go unnoticed? You can't pretend that kinda stuff is not happening and look the other way.

For so long I also maintained the assumption that Nazi Germany and their concentration camps were a one time tragic event against one people group... such an ignorant thought. Holocausts and genocide still plague our world. Struggles against severe cultural prejudice still leave bodies in heaps and piles, or worse, surviving people are subject to prisoners of the most dehumanizing acts.

Genocide in Burma has left hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee to jungles and across borders to Thailand and other neighboring countries (some even to America with the help of World Vision, my parents even adopted a Burmese family).

Hope keeps these desperate people alive. Aid from struggling organizations and missions might sustain them a little longer. The people that are not eliminated are sold as commodities, many of them as factory and field workers, and many, many more into the sex industries of Thailand, Cambodia, and elsewhere.

I have such a hopeless feeling myself, but the relentless smiles and struggle for survival that these people possess draw me toward their redemption. Not to mention, what kind of people are we if we just look away?

Against all hope,

Abraham believed...

Deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do.

But on what God said he would do.

romans 4:8 (NIV & The Message).

I am going in January, I want to be a voice for the people that have none...

**these photos are not mine

24 years

{11.8.2010}

24 Years of hard walking and calloused eyes

unforgiving pavement haunted by the echoes of refrains come and gone, decoratively concealed with a managed ficticious perfectly practiced smile.

24 Years of writing and rewriting

definitions assigned by ineligible authors, input rendering life and death, authoring reality for yet another purposed life

24 Years of chasing sunsets

incessantly fading, tripping on an oblivion of treadmills in search of approval, groping around a perplexity of fallacy

24 Years of stop and go sprints

to launch this kite off into an airstream of freedom, to be weightless, and float on the soft swells of clouds straining against the single string holding it prisoner to earth.

But

24 years brought a new emancipation

hidden in the yellow and orange October woods of Georgia, a dawn treading dance that neither looked to the left or to the right for steely cold stares or nods of validation

24 years glanced over her shoulders, just for a second

and laughed at the rebellion of 19 and cried at self hatred and abuse of 16, 24 clung to the broken 22 and smiled at the innocence of 10.

24 held a box over her head

and hurled it to the ground with a choked laugh of hysteria, a freedom anthem 24 in the sky with diamonds and a pocket full of songs and new found liberty.

24 squinted against new boundless boundaries

pressures, expectations, rules, sizes, carbohydrates, and other restraining taboos flew out the window into the shrapnel of a 100 wars.

24 flew a new flag

of discovery, of questions, of intimacy, of self discovery and gratitude, all under the umbrella of one love, a creator holding the hand of a child walking into her destiny.

☮ ☮ ☮

i dare someone to write a pop song about this

Hey guess what- you want it? You got it. You feel it? Then do it. You crave it. Consume it. Follow your heart- go crazy. You deserve it! (sarcasm font).

Here's a thought: everything is permissible for me but not everything is beneficial (Paul in the Bible was the original writ).

Self denial allows you to dip into the spiritual and the spiritual might just be more fulfilling than all that s#@t you think is gonna change the way you feel.

Day 18 of a 21 day fast

why don't we fast more...

Jesus demonstrated the good life, we should try it more often

to life

{8.7.2010}

I won't do it justice. I can't. Not even with the finest vocabulary in all of the land.

Neither will a camera, especially not my point and shoot. And since my feeling is that the government here would make it difficult to upload unscreened videos, I will do my best with words from the images that my starving eyes have consumed: (cue an Enya song for dramatic effect, go ahead, youtube that ish!)

Rice fields stretch for miles, gingerly plotted green grids dotting sanctuaries of water that perfectly reflect and mirror the blameless, rapturous clouds of felicity sauntering along tree lines bordering dignified ancient mountains. An occasional unassuming farmer is harvesting the crop donning the conical paddy hat while dirty kids ride rusty bicycles along the crude muddy road. But I don't care how dirty they look, there is still a polished air about them where no frown has ever crossed their determined faces. The looming mountains that form a bordered frame around this scene laso in all shades of green. There is no other color in the spectrum that contends for real estate here. Unadultered, the only adjective that belongs is 'lush.'

But this scenery is only a back drop. Weaving in and among the rice fields, we made our way over make shift bridges hovering on top of cat fish farms to a clearing of bamboo huts and cement buildings that comprise Child Life. Precious children of all ages call this place home, sans parents, only a handful of volunteers drift around like elementary school lunch room monitors.

And these children are precious, believe me, but they are also especially clever. These are the 'Artful Dodgers' of Asia. These are the street kids that hover on the border of Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) and beg. These are the kids that are notorious for their habit of pacing around, rarely without sniffing a plastic bag of glue attached to their faces. Its a lose-lost situation. They are starving, dirty, and wandering the streets begging, but you give them money, they either sniff glue with it or have to hustle it off to the older kids that run the network of gangs. It is beyond an unsafe life for them.

The glimmering light of hope is the safe haven tucked back deep in the rice fields where Child Life has harbored these children and given them survival and an education. But when you talk about 'invisible children', these kids are absolutely elusive. The biggest problem is they can't belong in their home country (usually Burma) because of the oppressive militant government and injustice of poverty, but Thailand doesn't want them either as they bring their misfortune and poverty into their country. So where do they belong?

I see it as one world. Erase the borders and see that we are all just trying to pursue life. Who will claim these prodigal footloose children?

**the photos used in this blog are not mine, I had to borrow until I can upload my own.

pineapple farms

I wish I had a wrecking ball and a bull dozer to tear down language barriers like Berlin Wall style. When you have so many questions and curiosities, sign language and pantomiming won't get you far. Or will it?

Today we flew from Bangkok to Chiang Rai in Northern Thailand. It was about an hour flight but the minute we landed I already could draw a deeper breath. Lush mountains and rice fields blanketed the scenery for miles. Low clouds hung mid way up the mountains exposing their faces in a higher atmosphere. A sight that makes you want to grab the closest vine and swing through water falls and tree canopies.

From the air port we met the director of the Mirror Foundation. Our transportation was a caged in bed of a truck. Imagine Jim Carey in Ace Ventura Pet Detective when he is driving in the jeep and throwing his head like he maneuvering rough terrain and picture us, minus the acting. Our rollercoaster ride on roads like I have only seen in Costa Rica led us up into hill country. One word: breath-taking, like a thief this landscape will rob you of oxygen and leave your eyes pleading for more gorgeousness to seep in.

Mirror works with the hill tribe people that have fled neighboring countries and crossed over to Thailand looking for work. I was able to record copious footage of these gracious people ( I tried to upload videos today but the internet is too slow so I will wait until wifi speeds up to share... sorry for all the blank posts and false alarms just sit tight!) There are about 100 volunteers that come for a month or two or up to a year to help educate these people and work with them to gain citizenship. These volunteers come from all over the world to give of their lives to helping assimilate these immigrants and refugees into a functioning and self sufficient life style.

The children were so pure, brimming over with smiles. I only wonder when that demeanor will begin to fade away with harsh reality. Here's the thing; we live in the same world, but we don't. We do physically, but not socially. In the world that these kids live in, not too long after they turn about age 10 they will be pressured to help earn money for the family. Boys are more encouraged to study than girls, so because their education is important, the girls go to work to support. These darlings are sent to the city where there are more jobs and when they are unable to find jobs because of a lack of citizenship, education, cultural knowledge, or vocational skills, there is little left than to be completely taken advantage of.

I immediately scooped up the first child I saw and just wanted to hold them. Of course my mind was reeling with uncertainties; what if these people just think we are a group of white people that pass through thinking we are better than them, wanting to take pictures, play with their cute little kids, have a little travel tour experience and leave. But the neat thing is that beyond all race, culture, style, religion, age or philosophy every person in our group completely meshed with this village. Our group has every flavor from Hindu, Jew, Christians, Agnostic, Eastern thought ages 17-40 and yet we all sense the overwhelming value of human life and so we are only able to exude a love beyond ourselves to these people. It is so natural and so after sharing a meal in their hut we all took polaroid pictures ( My prized photo is with a toothless man smoking his opium pipe and wearing an Indiana Jones hat) and then did a native tribal dance around the fire with all the women.

I don't know exactly what they were singing in their native language but I was gazing up at the stars and feeling the love of God pouring from the thick black night sky on these people confident that they have a hope and a future. Love is a toxic remedy that when shared and can change one life at a time. I would rather spend my energy while breathing on this earth loving these people and rescuing them from the traps of vulnerability then concern myself with monthly payments and a destined career path. After all, i dunno maybe its over used, but here is an easy acronym that when in doubt WWJD.

stay tuned for moreeee and vids!

refugee camp: typical summer experience?

Do you ever stop and wonder; how did I wake up in this life?

Today I walked through settlements of refugees and illegal immigrants that have fled their oppressive countries in order to survive and yet their "survival" is working in a factory for 21 hours straight with abusive managers watching their every move to make sure they are productive or worse sent out on fishing boats for 3-6 years at a time where they are tossed over as shark bait if they are weak or less useful.

We met with the Labor Rights Promotion Network; essentially a group of people that advocate for the rights of immigrant workers that cross the boarders into Thailand. Before you sigh and click to another blog post with more interesting pictures or a youtube video that will make you laugh in 20 seconds or less, I dare you to be uncomfortable for a second.

I don't know what the solution is. There is no easy out. But there are people in our world that are forced to run to another borderline because military coups have over thrown their country's government countless times and set up corrupt regimes that make life torturous for the citizens just trying to get by. Thailand is packed with desperate people in these circumstances. 70% of the immigrants in Thailand are from Burma (Myanmar). Typically they are brought over by a broker that will charge them about $400 USD per person and then sell them to a factory or boat owner that will work these people to death. Kids as young as 7 are slaving away next to their parents.

Where are the police or boarder control you ask? Oh they perform raids on the factories here and there but their only job is to remove the people again and because kids are under age, they are often separated from their parents and thrown right back over on the other side in danger of being trafficked again.

Where do we even start to help? These people don't have a home and just because they are vulnerable and desperate people delight in making money off of their exploitation.

My only take away of you taking time to absorb this information might just be that you understand when you think your life is hard, I guarantee you wouldn't complain to these people.

I will try to post my videos and pictures of these beautiful people later. rushin around.. more later.

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