I need to go camping

I can't type much b/c I may have broken my hand in a stupid water polo game.

I need to sleep on the ground, under the stars, next to people l love. I need to be around a camp fire, singing sings, being silent. My whole being is rebelling against these walls, the florescent lights, the global problems accosting me...

And I've only been in the suburbs for a little more than a month. Lord, preserve my life.

Home

“You have an idea of what the new country looks like. Still, you are very much at home, although not truly at peace, in the old country. You know the ways of the old country, its joys and pains, its happy and sad moments. You have spent most of your days there. Even though you know that you have not there what your heart most desires, you remain quite attached to it. It has become part of your very bones.
Now you have come to realize that you must leave it and enter the new country, where your Beloved dwells. You know that what helped and guided you in the old country no longer works, but what else do you have to go by? You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. That requires the death of what has become so precious to you: influence, success, yes, even affection and praise.
Trust is so hard, since you have nothing to fall back on. Still, trust is what is essential. The new country is where you are called to go, and the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable. It seems that you keep crossing and re-crossing the border. For a while you experience a real joy in the new country. But then you feel afraid and start longing again for all you left behind, so you go back to the old country. To your dismay, you discover that the old country has lost a bit of its
charm. Risk a few more steps into the new country, trusting that each time you enter it, you will feel more comfortable and be able to stay longer.”

Henri Nouwen

I spent all day today with people who do not have homes. Some of them have been chased from their homes by murderous juntas, some of them have arrived to America only to discover that DuPage county has expensive housing and we cannot provide enough places to stay, some have experienced persecution and oppression by Americans and do not feel at home in their new home...

...what does it mean to be at home?

Jesus Wept

Today I was walking to class from my apartment and I looked down and saw a bandaid on the sidewalk. It wasn't just laying on the sidewalk like trash, but it was actually laid out and attched to the sidewalk in a slightly moronic and ironic statement. At first I wanted to pick it up, because after all, I am the "Boulderite" who yells at her roomates when they refuse to recycle...but after I stood there for a couple of seconds, I decided to leave it where it was.

I think something about the image of a wounded world spoke to me this morning. Someone actually tried to fix the world's wounds with a bandaid! How ridiculous! But then I wonder how ridiculous and useless are our own attempts at fixing the world (e.g. War, NGO development work, Law, medicine...etc.). I mean, they do some good, sure, but how long have our world's problems been plaguing us, and how many of them have we actually solved? Sure, I think we erradicated the Plague, and maybe slavery...but besides that, we have failed as a human race.

That's why Jesus wept. He sees the death and destruction that we are consumed by, he feels the pain of darkness and lonliness, and he knows that we do not know the healer...so he weeps. He stands on the Mount of Olives and promises that this world, even THIS WORLD, will know his redemption and reconcilliation. But it makes him cry nevertheless because we are not yet there.

Life Giving Days

Do any of you have those days that are so life giving that you stand at the end of them and just want to dance? I only have them occasionally, but when I do, man, I praise God for them. I wish I could share the energy that I have right now, the passion, vision, vibrant excitement...

Did you know that cups of tea give life? That Naguib Mahfouz, Thai food, case workers, Water Polo, All-School Communion, poetry, Somali families, babies, prayers, hopes...all give life? It's crazy how we can live when we actually CHOOSE to live the life promised to us. It's incredible how awesome life is when we actually commit to exchanging our ashes for beauty, fear for faith, and curses for blessings. It's amazing how beautiful the simple things are, when you stop to smell them, feel them, hold them. My charge for you today is this: touch a baby, say "a-salaam aleikum" (peace be with you) to a stranger, smile at a random family, help someone you normally wouldn't help, believe me, you can afford it, and take a bath. Unless it's hot, in which case, eat some ice cream.

I sang this song at the beginning of my first wilderness trip at Wheaton, standing on a hill, gazing at the beauty of creation, and I will continue to sing it every day until the end of days:

Through many dangers, toils and snares...
we have already come.
T'was Grace that brought us safe thus far...
and Grace will lead us home.

The Lord has promised good to me...
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be...
as long as life endures.

Rushing about

None of you in this endless internet abyss probably knows me...which is ok. But if you did you would know how prone I am to rushing about. I run around getting random thing after random thing done with hardly a chance to stop and take a breath.

Last night around 11 o'clock I picked up a book I had checked out from the library a couple of weeks ago and started reading it. It was due this morning so I figured I might as well read a chapter or two before going to bed, just to get an idea of what it was about. Around 2 in the morning I turned the last page and settled down into my cold and uncomfortable chair to think about the book I had just read. Anne Lamott, for those of you who don't know, is amazing. Yesterday I had been stuck in my own cynicism, forever unable to think positively about anyone or anything around me. Ms. Lamott told me that it was ok. In a quirky and refreshing way, she reminded me of a God who loves us not in spite of our pain, our insecurity, our mistakes, or our...well, sins; but who loves us, in some ways, BECAUSE of those things about us that we are most ashamed of. She tells the stories of her life in such a candid and honest way that I can't help be drawn in. As the daughter of a single mother I drank up her reflections on being a single mom; as someone who also finds it very difficult to forgive George W., I laughed and fumed with her as she sought how best to love him as a brother in Christ; and as someone who is very often fed up with and sick of American Evengelicalism, she reminds me that I am not alone.

For those of you who don't know me, I love to read. Stories are my life. Yesterday I also finished off the memoir "Three Cups of Tea," and spent the rest of the afternoon day dreaming about how I might also become someone middle easterners trust and adopt into their families.

So after I went to bed last night, the pressure that I had felt building up in my heart slowly released itself and I woke up this morning slightly less nerotic and slightly more capable of grace. As I meandered over to campus, however, my capacity for grace decreased with every step and by the time I stepped into work, I was my old cynical self. It was a step in the positive direction though.



Il-Hamdu-Lilleh

Visionaries

Let sorrowful longing dwell in your heart.

Never give up, never lose hope.

Allah says, “The broken ones are my beloved.”

Crush your heart. Be broken.

Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir

This morning I woke up late, tired from a night spent in Chicago with a friend of mine. This friend is unique—she traveled Egypt with me, we only have seen each other twice since then, and yet we still share enough of a connection to be real together and to share life with each other. “Tory,” she said last night, “last year you were a stick in the mud.”

I think she was right. Last year, in Egypt, I was so serious it wasn’t even funny. Every situation was life or death, every conversation was life changing, and every person I met was destiny. Now, I am not saying that I am any less serious nor or any less intense…but I do think I have mellowed out. Yesterday I spent the whole day in Chicago, a 45 minute train ride from my small town college, getting lost, wandering around, and breathing the stench of a life that I long for. I am so restless. This morning I woke up and hated where I woke up. I hated the bed I was in, I hated the people in my apartment that I woke up next too, and I hated the town I woke up in...With all of my heart I wanted to have woken up in dusty old sleeping bag in the middle of the Himalayas, I wanted to wake up before sunrise to the sound of the ancient call to prayer, I wanted to be surrounded by the reality of life thousands of miles away…and I woke up here. It took a couple of hours to shake myself out of the disappointment.

It’s a hard thing to become content. Especially for a cold hearted, passionate cynic like myself. It’s hard to love those around you, even if they are ignorant, white, upper middle class evangelicals with no more concern on their minds then how they are going to ask their crush out on a SAGA date. And yet, somehow, these are the things of life as well. Something I’ve discovered with my girls—and when I say “my girls,” I mean the 10 freshmen women that God placed in my life during a wilderness trip—is that my vision is not everyone’s vision. I cannot place or force my passion on anyone else. I can try and let it catch—and believe me, I want to with all my heart. I want people to wake up next to me and to meditate over dozens of cups of “chai,” I want people to long for the simplicity of living off of hospitality, I want people to understand the heart of Islam and the heart of Christ…but sometimes I have to ask myself: why do I want them to understand the heart of Islam and the heart of Christ that I understand? Why do I want them to meditate over chai when many of them will learn to sit in silence over a cup of coffee or a bottle of beer in a tattered bar. Insha’allah. Again, this post is just my random thoughts. I don’t even know what I’m trying to articulate but for the simple fact that I cannot judge my brothers and sisters here. I cannot judge the hundreds of perfect looking people coming from perfect churches that walked past me this afternoon as I knelt in some bushes reading about Pakistan and Afghanistan. I cannot judge their designer clothes, their thousand dollar cars, and their tendency to go shopping. Nor, do I believe, should I fight it right now.

Is there a time for silence? Is there a time for simply sitting back and letting the antitheses of all you believe in wash over you? For some reason I have committed myself to not articulating my opinions as passionately as I used too. I don’t know why except for the fact that in Egypt I learned how little I actually know.

I was riding the El with my friend last night and we ended up talking about why Egypt was so meaningful. We couldn’t quite put a definite reason on it, but one thing we thought of was that we encountered something different. We lived among a people, a faith, an environment, a social culture, a political culture, and a belief system that were so wildly different than anything we had ever encountered before. The shock of finding our opposite, of finding our antithesis broke many of us; it made many of our hearts shatter into a thousand pieces. I wrote once from our flat in Cairo that my identity had been shredded and was now laying, like trash, amidst the slums and dirty fields of Egypt. I was rather melodramatic at the time, heck, I still tend to be rather sensational…but the reality of my words struck a chord deep within all of us there. Encountering something wholly “other” made us see ourselves in a whole new light. And we walked away forever changed.

Last night as I sat riding the Metra, the El, and the bus system, I remembered my time of exploring. I miss it so much. I miss hopping on a train simply to see where it will take me. I miss asking people in broken native languages how to get to such and such location. I miss walking through broken neighborhoods, playing with the local kids, and smiling innocently at the women. Ironically, I have inherited from my mother an abysmally poor sense of direction. It doesn’t matter if I have a topographic map and compass, a systematic map of the subway system, or mapquest directions, I never fail to get lost. So it was last night. My friend and I spent an enjoyable time together; all the while I wildly and discretely was trying to figure out where we were.

Sunrises and holy meanderings

For some reason today I was convicted to stop it all, to stop the madness, the rush, the noise…and to simply rest. To be honest, this has been my heart’s calling for quite some time now. To stop, drink a cup of tea, admire the slight breeze that is blowing across the Midwest, and meditate on the simplicity of life. People always ask the question, “Why.” I am not sure that is quite the right question. In getting lost in the question we become lost in life. The right question, perhaps, is “So what?” I am a Wheaton College student, interning at World Relief, passionate about the Middle East and hospitality, in love with Water Polo, more at home in the wilderness and the mountains than I am just about anywhere…so what? I am a woman, a Christian, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a child…so what? I think the end to which all of us should strive to seek is discovering that none of it matters. None of it at all. Our identity is simply a lens through which to view the glory and grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Don’t get me wrong, I believe very strongly in who I am…there are moments, however, where I forget. Where I loose sight of myself, where I get lost on this journey we call life, where I fear the world. I do not intend to spend hours and hours rambling about this, which is just the point. We, as humans, as philosophers, theologians, college students…spend all together too much time theorizing about these kinds of things. So today I was convicted. Well, again, it’s been more of a process that began ever since I set foot on the Sahara for the first time, ever since I explored the pyramids, the great churches of antiquity, the back alleys of the deserts…I was reminded as I looked into the eyes of the gentle old men who spend idle day after idle day drinking tea and smoking hookah that there is more to life than all this. I was reminded that we are not here to accomplish anything. For in ourselves we have nothing inherently valuable to give. If we think that we do, we are fooling ourselves. Instead, we are here to give testimony to what, out of the abyss of the darkness of this world, we have received in light. We are here to rejoice in the light of the world. We are here to bathe in it, to dance in it, and yes, at times, to study it. However, we cannot create light. We can write poetry about it, let it change us, read a novel about it, imagine how it has affected us throughout the eons of the ages…but we cannot create it. We can filter it, create artificial examples of it, hide it, manipulate it, and transform it…but we cannot create it. But so often, we get lost in the attempt to do just that. I don’t know the purpose to which I am writing this. Perhaps instead of the “tales of a pilgrim,” it should be the “musings of an ignorant girl,” or “ramblings of a student,” or, better yet, “the random notes of someone who thinks they know something, but in fact, know nothing at all.” But I hope to one day be on a pilgrimage. I hope one day to have something of substance, some memory that sheds light on the questions of the day. I hope to speak God’s truth as surely as I can make up my own. Perhaps that is why I have chosen to write my tales, in the hope that, unknowingly, I may, in the midst of a sentence, utter some remnant of some ancient truth that rings loud. I don’t know why I feel the need to make this public either. It seems I am finally jumping on the technological advances of the 21^st century. I admit abject uselessness when it comes to most things related to a computer. Maybe I hope that one day the meaningless words of a student might mean something to someone. Maybe by opening my words up for public criticism or admiration, I open myself up for God to hear me more clearly. Who knows. Maybe it’s just a gentle reminder to myself that I do have something valuable to say. Sometimes it’s easy to forget our voices. Even when we’re speaking or writing, it’s easy to forget that we are individuals who have hearts. I may seem contradictory. Perhaps I am; it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been told so.

Well, enough of this. I’m going to go enjoy the wonderful company of a dear friend of mine. The evening will probably involve food, good conversation attempting to get at the heart of things, a nice walk, and lots of cups of tea. We will, in essence, be trying to live. Then in the morning, I will rise and try to catch the sunrise.