When push comes to shove.

Monday, July 5, 2010:

 Tonight has challenged me unexpectedly, and I think I need a continuation of my last post: all are invited to come and feast in the Kingdom of God.

I’ve been really struggling with what to do with begging.  The Roma (Gypsy) population in Eastern Europe is totally discriminated against.  It’s horrible.  As a result, they do constitute the majority (if not all) of the people I’ve seen begging here.  It’s especially common for them to send their children out to follow you around and beg for money: dirty, bedraggled kids, who stand there with hands outstretched muttering, “Please… please, money,” and looking utterly pathetic.  I just want to hug them and talk to them, but I don’t know the language.  I don’t give them money.  It tears at me.

On the way to Sarajevo from Banja Luka we stopped at the Bosnian equivalent of a tourist trap—this little town with a ton of food vendors, etc., right by this lovely little stream.  Needless to say, our group of Americans quickly attracted a couple little kids, who approached me with hands outstretched and the now-familiar question.  One girl asked, “What’s your name?” and I responded and asked for hers.  Esmerelda, she said.  I saw her again and again in the 30 minutes we were there.  I never gave her anything.  Two little boys came up to us as we were getting ice cream and asked for money—Melanie and I let them choose a flavor and bought them ice cream cones instead.  But still.  I didn’t really give them anything.

Every time!  I cannot meet a person begging and not be torn apart inside—and yet I ignore them every time!  Of course, I rationalize and wrestle; I know all the reasons not to give monetary handouts.  I know it’s not an effective long-term solution.  I know it sometimes just allows child abuse.  I mean, I remember one day in Cambodia actually seeing the kids run from our bus back to their dads, who were just lounging in the shade watching and angrily greeted their kids’ empty hands.  I was furious at that moment.  But I also remember, in Cambodia, walking past three beggars as we left the killing fields, and then getting on our shiny tourist bus and driving away from two examples of humanity in need.  Only one of those examples was already dead.

But even though I know the reasons not to just hand people money, I can’t help but read my Bible and feel like when Jesus says things like what he says in Luke 6:27-38 (go look it up, right now, seriously), he means it. 

So what does that mean for the Roma woman who tried to rob me tonight?  (A group of us were walking back to the hostel when suddenly I felt something, so I turned around and saw two women right behind me; I saw one of them whip her hand out of my backpack, leaving the pocket dangling wide open.  I had only put pens in that pocket, but still, I was rattled.)  I just zipped my bag up, grabbed on to it, and walked on.  I should have stopped.  I should have said I loved her.

All are invited to feast in the Kingdom of God.  Including those of us, like me, who are too wrapped up in our own security to love people who desperately need it.

Luke 6:27-38

“But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.  If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.  If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic.  Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.  Do to others as you would have them do to you.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them.  And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?  Even ‘sinners’ do that.  And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you?  Even ‘sinners’ lend to ‘sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full.  But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.  Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons and daughters of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Do not judge, and you will not be judged.  Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Give, and it will be given to you.  A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.  For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Home.

I forgot how hard it is to go home.

I'm sitting up late at the dining room table at my parents' house in Iowa. Weird, I've never referred to it as my parents' house before. Maybe it's because my room is gone. Well, technically it's still there, with its green-painted walls and overloaded bookshelves--but the room is filled with the stuff of our foreign exchange student (which is awesome; I am entirely glad she is filling the space with life). But it's weird, you know? It's weird to return home after two years away, two years in which I've changed more deeply than I can express, and to settle back into the space that once formed and comforted me. It's slightly unnerving--like trying on winter sweaters when October rolls around, and the long sleeves and cozy wool feel unfamiliar, foreign, confining. There's something just--well, weird--about returning home.

Yet there's something utterly charming about it too. I still squeal with delight when I cross the Mississippi River and drive into the soaring tree-covered limestone bluffs of Iowa. There is something wonderful about parking in front of my family's red brick house and getting out of my car to be bowled over by the frantic yelps and excited licking of my dog. There's something reassuring in dinnertime conversations that flow naturally for an hour or more, with my brother and sister and I resorting right back to the teasing, joking chaos we grew up creating. Something about Iowa will always be home for me.

But the reality is also that this place is no longer really home. Home is also vanReken Hall, and City Hope Church, and the political science department offices in DeVos, and Supper House at St. Alphonsus, and the #6 Rapid. Home is Jack, and Alyssa, and Grassroots, and the KHvR Barnabai. Home is people and places and memories. I read a great quote on facebook (yeah, yeah) and it's been toying at me this evening. It's a quote from an author and anthropologist named Miriam Adeney. It speaks for itself.

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”

Pictures from Vietnam.

Rice paddies, everywhere.



Memorial of the My Lai massacre.



New friends in the park.



Resting in Hoi An.



Boats on the beach near Danang.



This is how I remember Vietnam.

Lenten musings.

Vietnam taught me this. I spent January wondering about God, to be honest. I wondered how he could have been present in a place where children were slaughtered and pregnant women poisoned by Agent Orange. I wondered what he would have to say to us Americans, who left museums full of our guilt and got onto our sleek tourist bus and drove easily away. And I wondered why this Buddhist country had grasped forgiveness in a way Christians often fail to do. But this quote hit me, strangely, long after my return. I still believe in God.

"I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the Cross.' In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who is immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered the world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us." John Stott

Well, well, well. She has a gosh-darn blog.

This is a horrible idea.

I'm sitting on the floor of my dorm room, surrounded by piles of notes and articles on NATO and Bosnia, beginning a blog on the last day of the semester.

Procrastination? Just maybe.

But it was either that or stare aimlessly out the window for another fifteen minutes. I'm watching the snowflakes dance as they're buffeted by the wind, and contemplating just how serious I am about running today in the below-zero windchill. I'll go... in a few more minutes.

So instead of doing anything productive, I'm sitting here on the floor beginning a blog. I kind-of despise blogs, but I think the honest truth is that I'm enticed by them. I've always had a journal, and this typing thing is significantly faster than writing, as sad as that may be. I've promised to start a blog for the adventures soon to come, and we'll see how serious I actually am about maintaining it.

Ideally, I'd love to have this blog serve as a record of the doors God opens and the story he writes in my life as I begin to explore the world. I hope that anyone reading it is as amazed as I am by the ways God still works. It's Advent, after all, and we wait for Christ's return in a world of brittle, broken fragments. Come, Lord Jesus. Come and heal our broken world. And make us into people who see it with your eyes.

Because the really awesome reality of my life this semester has been just that. Over and over and over, God has said, "Look, Kelly. See that crack of light? Pay attention. Notice how it's getting bigger? Glimpse the world beyond it? I want you to run through that door. Go, Kelly. Knock, and I'll open it. Dare to enter into what I have for you." I don't always like hearing that, to be honest. It scares me, because I realize that my life is going to soon look significantly different. I'm spending a large part of 2010 alone, outside of the United States, and outside of my comfort zone. On the one hand, my story is wonderful; on the other hand, it is just one of many. I find great joy in that. God is doing stuff in our world, in the lives of other people, for whom life is just as exciting and complex and deep and real as it is for me. That blows my mind. And so I'm an open book, an empty slate, a blank page. And I'm curious to see what God writes.

"I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free." Psalm 119:32.