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| someone requested that i put some of my creative writing stuff on here. i've thought about writing on here again from time to time, but it just hasn't happened. i'm curious as to if anyone still subscribes/reads. so, does anyone?
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| so, there were no comments on here about my story. sad day. i know at least one of you read it (thanks brandy).
i would guess that the handful of you who may or may not still read this might be wondering about the book i've put in the "currently reading" thingy. no, it's not the type of book i'd read on my own. i've written on here about my sister being in the naval academy and the ways that has challenged both her and i in trying to continue to be loving brother and sister while having very different worldviews- ones that have affected and continue to affect the directions of our lives. well, she has read a few books that i've recommended or at least endorsed, and she seemed to really want me to read this one, so i figured it would be a good way to sort of connect with her by stepping into her world a little bit (it is basically the true story of a navy seal who's team gets killed in afghanistan and he, the only survivor, is chased and goes through all kinds of crazy stuff to come out alive). it challenged me in a lot of ways to sort of put myself in the shoes of people like the author- the very texan guy (okay, everyone from texas is "very texan", but this guy is VERY texan) who's wanted to be a navy seal since he was like 11, is a strong patriot and staunch conservative, and has the sort of assumed christian faith you'd expect the type of guy i just described to have. very different than me, and also very different than the people i generally hang out with or the authors i generally read.
quick book review before my thoughts-
not written well at all, full of the sorts of cheap shots at "liberals" that i expected, all told in the hard-ass military tone that marine type people always seem to tell their stories in, but... the content is very interesting. i enjoyed reading about what these crazy seal guys have to go through to be seals, and what happened to this guy and his team is really unbelievable. i also enjoyed reading about what had been going on at his parents' house in texas while he was mia. in a nutshell- the first half of the book is pretty much a drag to get through despite the interesting seal training stuff, and the second half is hard to put down because the story is so crazy.
so...
i guess the first and maybe the biggest way that reading the book affected me was in sort of seeing where these folks are coming from. even the pot shots against "the liberals" forced me to actually think about the way this group of people sees different issues. for example, one of the issues he spends some time on (mostly in angry rants about the liberals and their liberal media) is that of the rules of engagement. a lot of military guys out there seem to feel like they are likely to be charged with murder and pranced out as a heartless killer in front of the world in the media if they kill a civilian iraqi or afghani (or whatever the case may be) because of a split-second and possibly life threatening decision they have to make. they also say (i think rightly) that the iraqis and afghanis know the rules and know how to manipulate them against the american soldiers making it extremely difficult for them to do what they are there to do. i had a talk with my sister and my mom about this before i read the book and thought it was pretty ridiculous that they thought the rules of engagement should be eased, but now i feel like i've sort of walked around with a group of soldiers and faced that life threatening decision. i still hold the same view i did before, but the other side doesn't seem quite so ridiculous, and i can understand why it can be frustrating as an active member of the military. i guess there are probably a lot of issues like that where i've been put in another's shoes and shown a new perspective.
the book also reminded me (as i often forget) that despite my pacifism and my personal convictions, american soldiers and people who support them genuinely think that they are doing something very good. fighting for the united states is something that they think is honorable, important, selfless, godly, and just overall good. i know that's obvious, but i often forget, or at least act as though i've forgotten. i might even understand how and why they think that way better than i have before. i still think that as a christian i should be completely non-violent, but i understand better why others feel differently and strongly about it.
this in mind, it's even harder to know how to react to military folks. how do i remain strong in my convictions without slapping these people in the face? they do indeed sacrifice a lot, risk much, and work very hard at their task, and i don't want to disrespect that at all by saying something like "i wish you didn't do that for me" because i undoubtedly benefit from their actions, but at the same time i do think that as christians we should be willing to face the consequences of non-violence (namely a violent death at the hand of our enemies). difficult.
i guess i also realized just how frightening and real that violent death is. the thought of being chased down by crazy fundamentalist religious fanatics and tortured or even just shot to death with ak-47s is very abstract until put into vivid story form. in such form, it is very frightening, and i'm not sure that if put in the situation i would be able to follow through with what i preach. i hope that i would, and if i'm not strong enough to now, i pray that i will be someday, but it is a truly scary possibility which some (mostly military folk) have had to face. it's hard, realizing the reality of it, to expect folks to be willing to roll over and be crucified in such a way. for a minute there i was almost considering the idea that defending ourselves is okay, but i think i mainly considered that option out of fear, not because rationally, spiritually, biblically, or theologically it seemed better.
this is getting sort of long...
i guess the last thing i'll mention is this: despite my new understanding of the other perspective and everything that goes with it, i feel as strongly as ever that christianity and the military do not mix well at all. there was a part of the book where this guy and his team, who were at least in this instance snipers, had to decide what to do with a group of goat herders who stumbled upon them while they were hiding in preparation to take out a taliban leader. these goat herders were not military personnel and posed no immediate threat to the team. eventually, they were almost definitely the ones who tipped off the taliban as to their whereabouts, and the seal team figured that that would happen. if not for the herd of goats that they wouldn't have had anywhere to put and/or the fear off the "liberal american media", the seal team would most certainly have just killed the goat herders, and the author maintains that they should have done so. as he said, it was the right purely military decision. as they were trying to decide, though, even he talked about his christian side saying that he should let them go. he sort of disregarded that side of himself in the decision, and that's exactly my point. in order to make good military decisions, you have to forget about what you should do as a christian. christian decisions and military decisions do not coincide. now, the official united states military teaching is that in the same situation, you let the goat herders go (they are teaching this to my sister at the naval academy), but it seems to me that without outside pressure from the media and other things, the right military decision would clearly be- kill them. the primary objective is to protect yourself, your team, your company, your country, etc... as christians our primary objective is to love the Lord and love our neighbors as ourselves- and the samaritan is our neighbor. obviously it gets very messy when you start talking about protecting our other neighbors- our teammates, fellow citizens, afghanis oppressed by the taliban, etc..., but in this situation and the in the overall military dictum, it seems to be- it's either you or me, so i'm going to kill you. it seems pretty clear to me that in the same situation Jesus' response would be (and was) ...so go ahead and kill me.
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| I posted this in the craigslist writing and literature forum and got mostly positive feedback. It needs a little bit of editing, but I thought I'd share my first completed creative work with my xanga friends. I'd love to hear feedback (good and bad).
-----------(I just re-posted the revised version of the story; still looking for some feedback)-----------
Get Well, Marie
It was hard to tell what was wrong, but easy to see that
something wasn’t right. Around the
corner from his small, inner-city church laid a 15 year old boy with no
shoes. The boy’s large Raven’s jacket
and dark, heavy jeans would seem odd in the summer on many blocks, but in this
neighborhood it was standard attire. Fashion
aside, the clothes covered most of his body, including his face. Still, there was something about the way that
he was laying, an awkward twist in his body and an unnatural, repetitive sway,
which signaled pain.
“Pastor John,” as he was lovingly called by community members, was
rushing back to the church from the donut shop a few blocks away. He had a sermon to finish, and there wasn’t
much time left before the service was set to start. Marie, a single mother in her mid-twenties,
had called to say she was going to miss
church for the first time
in three years. For the last two years
she had insisted upon spending her own money to buy donuts, hoping to inspire
people to stick around and chat after the service. She came up with the idea after hearing one
of John’s sermons on the importance of creating a healthy community through
fellowship. John was carrying three
boxes of donuts and a get-well card he had grabbed at the convenience store
next to the donut shop. He planned to
have everyone at the church sign the card so that he could deliver it that
evening when he went to visit Marie and her son.
Having his hands full somehow made John feel even more
rushed than usual. He took short, quick
steps and was using his chin to keep the card from sliding off of the top donut
box. It was almost miraculous that he
even noticed the boy; most of his field of vision was blocked by pink
cardboard.
John had lived in the neighborhood long enough to make out
what had happened within a few steps of seeing the scene. A couple of steps after this recognition, he
stopped. He peered down the alley where
the boy lay just yards away. He was
already chiding himself for the inadvertent thought that had popped into his
head, “I wish I hadn’t seen him.” John
knew he had to help the boy and was trying to decide the best first step when Marie’s
card started to slide toward the edge of the donut box. He turned his head quickly and caught the
edge of it with his chin before it fell to the ground. When he raised his eyes from the card he
caught sight of the church, which he guessed was a 30 second scurry away, and
made up his mind to rush inside, call 911, and run back to help the boy.
When he got to the front door of the church, he tried to
decide quickly whether or not he would be able to grab the keys out of his
pocket and get the door open while still balancing the donuts and the card with
just one hand. After a few moments of anxiously
walking in place in front of the door, he set his load on the steps and turned
to unlock the door. He felt a bit silly
for needing to go to such great lengths just to get the door open, but he did
it quickly and brought the donuts and card inside and set them on a table in
the foyer. He ran to his office and
dialed 911.
As he waited for an answer, he thought about how he would
incorporate this story into his sermon.
He knew that he would have to talk about it, even if it was just to
explain why his sermon wasn’t up to the usual standard. His thoughts were interrupted by the
responder’s voice on the other end of the line.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“A boy has been mugged just down the street; we need an
ambulance right away.”
“What is your name please?”
“John”
“Where are you located?”
“I’m at First
Church on 4th St. The boy is just around the corner in an
alley.”
“What is the nature of his injury?”
“I… I don’t know. He’s
lying on the ground writhing in pain.
He’s been mugged.”
“Is there any further threat to the boy?”
“Uhh… I don’t think so; he’s alone in the alley.”
“Is there a number we can reach you at in case we get
disconnected?”
“The church number is 555-7347, but I won’t be able to
answer because I need to get out there and help the kid.”
“Sir, I’m going to ask you to hang on the line while I send
help.”
“Okay, but please do it quickly, I need to get out there.”
As John stood in silence waiting for the responder to return,
he began to realize how serious the situation was. He started to get nervous about the
well-being of the injured boy. The boy
had been alone in the alley for several minutes since John had discovered him
and for an indefinite amount of time before that. He started to regret his decision to come
back to the church, leaving the boy alone.
He wasn’t thinking about his sermon anymore.
“John?”
“Yes; is someone coming to help?”
“I have dispatched an ambulance and a police unit; they will
be there shortly.”
“Okay, can I hang up then and go to the boy?”
“Is there any way you can stay on the line? Do you have a mobile phone?”
“No; cell phones are… well it’s not important; no; I need to
hang up.”
“It would be best if you stayed on the line and out of
danger.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t do that, I’m going to go now. Help is on the way?”
“Yes, but sir…”
John hung up the phone and bolted out the door and down the
street. As he ran, he cursed himself for
forgetting to grab the first-aid kit but decided it was too late to go
back. When John rounded the corner and
saw that a young, Mexican man had flipped the boy over, his eyes grew large,
and he prepared to tackle the man. John
took a few hard steps in his direction before realizing that the man was one of
the newest members of his church, and that the man’s wife was kneeling next to
him, weeping loudly.
Manuel and Graciela had come to John’s church three times
before and had been on their way once again when they came across this
boy. Manuel had taken off his outer
shirt, most likely the nicest shirt he owned, and was using it to put pressure
on the knife wound in the boy’s stomach.
Manuel’s arms and chest were covered in blood. Graciela was stroking the lifeless boy’s
forehead and shrieking.
John had spoken with them after church once and remembered
that they had only been in the country for three months, having come in order
to have their baby on American soil. As
John replayed the conversation in his head, he recalled asking how the birth
had gone and being told that the baby was doing well. At that moment John spotted the baby in a
secondhand baby basket behind Manuel and Graciela in the middle of the alley
next to a make-shift diaper bag that looked like it had been recklessly thrown
to the ground. A snapshot of three pink
donut boxes and a get-well card sitting neatly on a table in the foyer of the
church flashed into John’s head.
John stood staring at the scene in stunned silence while
Manuel screamed, “¡Socorro! ¡Socorro!” to anyone who would listen and Graciela
prayed desperately in Spanish. John was
still staring when the paramedics arrived and failed to resuscitate the
boy. They announced that he had lost too
much blood and declared him DOA.
By the time the police reports were filled out and the
paramedics had left, everyone who planned to attend John’s church that morning
had gathered in the alley. John gave no
sermon, and instead of having a normal service, Manuel and Graciela led the
church in prayer for the boy, his family, and the person who had murdered
him. They also prayed for John.
It was dusk when John finally left the alley and went to
visit Marie and her son. He didn’t bother
to bring the card which would sit on top of the donut boxes in the church foyer
all week as the donuts went stale. Marie
was thankful for the visit.
The following Sunday, Marie found the unsigned but well
intended card when she and her son brought fresh donuts into the church and threw
the stale donuts in a dumpster around the corner. This week, John had prepared his sermon long
before service was set to start, and it was almost as fresh as the donuts.
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| it's been a while...
i guess maybe i should give a brief update on the summer. i don't know why, but that seems to be appropriate.
briefly- went on a fairly crappy trip to australia, back to durham for as little time as possible (i think about 30 hours), moved out to michigan, had a great time in michigan with rachel but couldn't find work, went to ca with rachel for a week, had about as good a time as possible there with her, my family, and the pruitts, she went back to mi and i went to catalina, had an amazing time in catalina as always (but wished rachel could have come), came back to michigan and am once again having fun with rachel and looking for a job. i'd say the summer had a slow start but is turning out to be fairly excellent. i wish i had more time everywhere (except maybe australia). contact me for questions/details/job offers if interested
onto the thoughts...
i've been thinking of writing a blog on patience for a while now. it seems to me that a great deal of the world's problems would be solved or significantly improved if people could learn to be patient. i usually have some trait or self improvement in the back of my head as i go through life, and just thinking about that thing consistently tends to help me adopt that trait or improve that part of myself. for a while now i think that thing has been patience. i'm not sure if i'm improving much, but the more i think about it the more i realize how impatient i and the majority of the people around me are. i think it affects just about every part of our lives.
it's hard to remember when i started thinking about patience, but i think a major part of it's development as a concern for me was the focus on sabbath during the fall last year. we read abraham heschel's book on the sabbath (which i highly recommend), and it reminded me how overrated efficiency can be. if we keep in mind that inefficiency is okay (although efficiency certainly has its place), it is much easier to be patient.
think about how much impatience affects the world. if we were patient we'd eat less fast food, drive less, get angry less, have less car accidents, listen better, understand more, read more, write more, share more, rush into marriage less, divorce less, make better decisions in general, have less stress, have lower blood pressure, be less busy, chew longer, miss less, live simpler, need less entertainment, spend less money, use less gas/electricity, sleep more, hate less, etc... if you just think about it for a few minutes you can probably come up with 100 more things that patience would improve upon. even better, wait until you are upset, frustrated, stressed, angry, or in any sort of difficult situation, and then think about how much better that situation would be if you could find a way to just be patient. i've sort of been doing that lately, and it's pretty amazing how many of my problems are caused or increased by impatience.
it doesn't take much to explain what patience is and why it is important- it's pretty simple. the more difficult thing is figuring out how to actually be more patient. fortunately (haha) god has given me many opportunities to practice my patience this year. i won't list them all out again. apart from the forced things, i've voluntarily tried a few patience building things. last semester i tried to stop or severely decrease how often i ate out (not for the purpose of patience, but patience was sort of necessary on the side). more recently i've tried to be more patient driving. on the way out to michigan i tried to go a few miles per hour slower than i usually do (and stopped trying to do so about half way here). now that i'm here i'm trying something similar- people in michigan all drive like 5-10 mph below the speed limit for some reason, so i'm trying not to be frustrated by that and instead to set my cruise control at exactly the speed limit during the 25 minute drive i do in each direction most days. now that i'm resigned to doing it, it's not as frustrating as i thought and is actually kind of nice. these are small things, but seeing virtues as habits, i think doing small things intentionally can help to establish a virtue and ultimately lead to acting virtuously in more important situations. i'm not sure if i'm becoming more patient, but i feel like i am, and i am finding more and more places where i need to be every day.
one of the difficult things about trying to grow in an area is that doing so has a way of highlighting other people's shortcomings. it's hard to sit quietly while others do the exact opposite of what you're trying to do. more than anything the last few months have taught me how impatient just about everyone around is. fortunately, learning patience has actually helped me to be patient with impatient people, i think. while i've definitely noticed how impatient everyone is (including me), i think i've been better able to bear it even when people (including me) are impatient. it seems that patience can even help us to be less judgmental.
anyway, i hope i'm actually becoming more patient. i've noticed times where i've been able to be patient when i probably wouldn't have been previously, and when i have been, it has been much more peaceful. it's hard to explain, but just recognizing impatience and deciding to be patient instead feels really good. it's very calming. give it a shot sometime.
i'm not really happy with this post. i feel like i've had many better things to say about all of this but haven't gotten around to writing anything until now. it will have to do, though. maybe the positivity makes up for the lack of depth/ poor writing/ cheesiness :)
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| i feel as though i should post on here that brandy talked dr. hall into letting us into the class i was complaining about in my last post and that i got invited to live at the iradell house (an intentional christian community in durham) next year. in the meantime craig keen returned my email strongly suggesting i consider transferring to nazarene theological seminary and i have really bonded with my roommates here. life has a way of working things out to make decisions as difficult as possible...
i welcome any and all advice
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