Christmas VayKay is over...

...and here's what I did, pretty much entirely with my sister!
-Watched movies!
-Kung Fu panda
-The Tale of Despereauxeshds
-Spaceballs
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
-Bolt
-Independence Day
-Robin Hood: Men in Tights

-Went to Virginia beach!
-Sand
-Cold!
-Pictures

-Went running!
-In our new neighborhood
-At a park (injured my right instep, still hurting!)

-Made plans for a road trip this weekend!
-Lexington Park, MD . January 1st
-Turkey Neck Road, Western Maryland . January 2nd
-New York mfer! . January 3rd
-Philadelphia, PA . January 3-4
-Harrisburg, PA . January 5-6
-Pittsburg, PA . January 6
-SoCo, MD . January 7

-and after some fa-la-la-la-laing

-ORLANDO, FL . January 17
-Georgetown, D.C. . January 19
-The Lawn, D.C. . January 20 INAUGURATION!!!

-Made plans for a west coast plane trip towards the end of January!
-KATIE BEHRENS, Oregon!
-BRIAN DUFFIELD, California!

The sky's the limit, and so is my bank account! So hopefully conversion rates between the won and the dollar clear out in the next 3 days :)

What What!

So let's do this thing!

Colin the Bartender

Colin is the best conversationalist I have ever met. He could speak intelligently on any topic without ever saying anything that could offend anyone's sensibilities or politics. He keeps up to date on current events, business, and sports by going through three newspapers in different languages every morning. And on days he is not working, he reads novels and books on topics that interest his clients. On this night, Colin was able to participate in a brainstorming session on how to give Steve dysentery the next time I saw him.
Colin's incredible skills as a bartender boil down to selflessness taken to the point of mysteriousness. One leaves the Ritz Paris having had a fantastic time, having bonded with one's friends and fellow patrons, but without any knowledge of Colin Field as a person.
"Are you married, Colin?" I asked.
"Yes. But not always on duty," he charmingly replied.
Everyone laughed. None of us actually thought Colin did or would cheat on his wife. He was just telling a joke, one he might have told before to a different crowd of mostly foreign businessmen. Colin deflected the question about himself by giving everyone at the bar a laugh. Then he was off to greet a couple who had just entered the bar.
Colin never gave us any information that would allow us to size up his character. his focus on service prevented us from having to know him and might explain why everyone loves him.
-Vali: Meeting the Best Bartender in the World; "The Ridiculous Race"

The age of inflation

I know that we've all seen them. They tend to pop up every holiday season and often stick around until next year. Sometimes prone to accidental stabbings and always a sign of developing taste. That's right. Inflatable lawn ornaments. The quintessential decoration for people who can't be bothered to actually put some effort into the appearance of their property. Just unwrap, throw onto the splotchy part of your lawn, plug-in and enjoy for 30 seconds until you get bored and go back inside to eat Doritos and play your xbox 360.

Today my sister and I were driving home from a jog when she told me to stop the car and drive back, there was something she wanted me to see.


That's right. Ladies and gentlemen, on your left you will see an inflatable Carousel. Not just inflatable, but also rotating. Pretty soon inflatable lawn ornaments will be totally interactive; you'll be able to jump and swing and wrestle and kick and slide in your own front lawn, just like in those inflatable obstacle courses that you used to go through on high-school graduation night! But that's not all, now your Christmas can be made complete with something that I find mildly less offensive.

For those of you that don't know, someone got really creative and decided to take the leg lamp of Bob Clark's own Christmas Story and turn it into a decorative icon to adorn the lawns of old school enthusiasts. I can respect that, but the moment someone decides to take this too far and apply it to something sacrosanct like church or breakfast, well that's the moment I'm gonna lose it.

Maybe I'm wrong though. I mean with the trendy spread of global warming and shortage of snow, perhaps this is just what the doctor ordered because we can no longer make snowmen. Long gone are the days when all we needed to be considered innovative was furniture that could be crafted with the use of your mouth. Granted, there's far morn innapropriate things out there that can be inflated with your own exhalation, but I wonder what will happen next? Grass/Dirt men? Lawn-legos? Only time will tell.

Going to the beach

This morning I had my first run in a year with my sister. I was really proud of myself for getting through it and now she wants me to do a 10 mile trek with her. Time to get back in shape.

Also, because it's the day after Christmas we figure that it's the best time of the year to go to the beach. Nevermind that there's a windchill factor of -8 degrees. Nevermind that the clouds have smothered the sun. Nevermind that the earth has never been farther from the sun, ever. WE LIVE in Virginia now, we are THIRTY minutes away from the beach!! This is awesome!!!

"I have discovered the paradox that if you love until it hurts, there is no pain, only more love." -Mother Theresa

I'm sitting here in my mom's new house drinking a glass of white zinfandel and sitting in the most exquisite armchair that has ever graced my buttocks. Ironically enough to my current post in the lap of luxury, I'm also watching the old Jesus movie, "King of Kings". Drinking wine while watching the impoverishment and death of Jesus doesn't seem to go together in my head - it's about as proper as putting a baby in a room filled with gorillas and knives, hopefully you just don't do it.

So while watching this movie I was struck by a couple of lines. Particularly I refer to the scene featuring the sermon on the mount. Jesus responds to a member of the audience who says "I see flesh and blood, how am I to believe that you are the son of God?" I'm pretty sure the quote isn't found in the Bible, but in the movie Jesus responds with the build up of "If you don't believe in me, believe in my work." It's a great idea to go along with my previous post yesterday about rhythm, just doing the right thing even if you don't have the faith - but it brought me to an even bigger idea about love.

In King of Kings I saw something of love that went beyond the popular idea of nihilism that's being adopted by many Christians. The idea of loving others without condemnation; simply saying that everything is OK and that Jesus & I still love you to all of the premarital sex-ers, meat-eaters, nationalists, adulterers, pedophiles, drug users, and corrupted. But I don't think it's that easy now. Love needs to go beyond judgment, it needs to surpass the all encompassing idea of love is the most important thing. Love the homeless, love the widowed, love your neighbor, take another swig from your wine glass.

See I think that we are called to love others at a cost to ourselves, not just this communalistic sort of 'oh I'll take care of you if you need something,' but more of a denying to and of yourself. I should be going out and finding situations that require me to love others more than just hand-outs and volunteering. Love should be a test on the things that I find most comforting, not what I find most convenient.

Jesus talks about how hard it is for a rich man to enter heaven, it's as possible as it is for a camel to squeeze it's way through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:16-24). This calls for sacrifice! This requires the man to relinquish his comforts so that he might be spared from distraction and engage the most important task!

In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus himself asks his father to take the cup of God's wrath away from him (Luke 22:42). I feel like this is the degree of love that should strive for, being placed in a situation where it outright hurts to love and in turn being forced into prayer.

Love in a sense, being the premium of Jesus' message pertains to giving up your own comfort so that you can undertake the perspectives of others:
It's not about working with homeless people. It's about becoming homeless yourself.
It's not about an offering. It's about a commitment to give of yourself.
It's not about defending how you feel when someone disagrees, it's about loving them even though they don't understand you, and helping them to receive your love.

So now I sit here in front of a computer, looking at an empty glass of white zinfindel in a new home and I wonder how I'm going to show this sort of love to others, especially on Christmas. I hope you have a great one.

Staying in tune with God's rhythm

It's Christmas Eve. I hope you're having a great one. While things are going right and wrong around the world by way of family feuds and zucchini pie, I come to think about what defines a Christian. After all I'm sure you know one or two people that make you think twice about what makes a Christian. Like how there are some people that aren't Christians, but they act more like Jesus than some Christians you know. With arguments rising up about the environment, changes in politics, food consumption and international poverty, I thought that a moment with Rob Bell could do me some good. Maybe he'll have something to say to you too.

Where's the Beef?

Take one high powered projector,
One country in political turmoil,
Two self-motivated individuals,
Several buckets of Cass,
and you'll see how it was right here.

Eat it

The best clothes that I've ever had are the ones that are given to me. Not so much that great pair of jeans that you can buy at the salvation army, but more so the shirts that have been thrown away because their owners don't wear them anymore. It's cheap, it's memorable, sometimes it smells until you put it in the washer twice. Whatever the case it puts meaning into the things I wear. I love talking about where such and such a piece of clothing comes from and being able to talk about a person rather than H+M or Express.

So I propose an alliance. A secret alliance. To trade clothing, save money, and make stronger relationships.

The only teacher who is worth anything to you is your enemy.

After many conversations tonight about stupid things, really, a lot more of it has had to do with toppings for taco salad and variances in theology; I come to the idea that the person who will teach you the most in life is the person who directly opposes you. Groups of students to teachers, Mano a Mano a la Mujer, Mano a Mano a la job, driver to demanding passenger, you vs annoying guy in grocery store line, Sox vs. Yankees, flat mates.

The person that provides us with the most discomfort has a strong correlation to the strongest lessons that we can learn.

And then there was light!

Ok, let's do this thing!

B.K. Seven Years Ago...

Seven Years Ago..

I was in the amazon this past weekend, and while I was there I got into a deep conversation with one of the bigger honchos of study-abroads in Ecuador. He told me the worst thing that he ever had to deal with in all of his years of doing this program. We were sitting out in hammocks under a tent canopy when he told me about how 7 years ago a female student was raped when she took a trip down to the South of Ecuador with an exchange student that had studied at her school the year previous (and that she lived at the house of in Quito during her semester abroad).

There was a lot involved with the story, like how she had been drinking for the first time, about how a friend of her host sister's brother had taken advantage of her, and about everything happened hours South of Quito, where anyone she knew could have helped her. After it happened she wandered out to the highway and rode on buses for approximately 30 hours, and as the story goes with most rape cases - if evidence is not collected after the first 24 hours you can sit pretty on the fact that you will have to kiss any hope of a case goodbye. However, the man who told me this story then went to the police to address the situation - unfortunately he discovered through police reports that the young man who had committed the rape was the son of a woman who was running for office, and whose uncle was an officer in a neighboring precinct. So this guy couldn't be touched. The man who told me this story then told me the darkest thing that he had admittingly ever done in his years working with the program.

The woman told him that her parents would essentially disown her and blame her for the incident if they ever found out it happened, so with no other way to achieve retribution he paid two detectives approximately 50 dollars each to keep tabs on the guy who raped the exchange student. For a few days they sat outside his residence and watched him as he'd leave home to go to school. In time they trailed him down on his daily commute and pulled him over for a talk. After denying his own identity the two detectives took him into the station and "shoved his head into a toilet full of shit. You see there's this toilet that they never flush at the police station, where they tell the prisoners to go to the bathroom...essentially it's a wonderful interrogation tactic. I told them to make sure that he paid for what he did, and he knew exactly why it was happening."

This was hard for me to hear, it's not what I was taught to do in the case of rape counseling, but then I recognize this man's motivation and I understand his intense rage about the entire situation.

He told me that the rest of the students who were there that semester (all female) were very protective of the woman who had been raped for the rest of their journey. After the semester ended both he and his wife tried to stay in touch with her, but eventually she just vanished, contact stopped and he has no idea what happened to her. Hardest for him because he cared for her like a child as he no doubt did for everyone that came under his care.

But then that is part of life. That is the harsh way in which some people come and go like dust in the wind. Not a strictly bad thing, but unexspressibly painful for everyone involved.

And it happens a lot more than I'd like to think.