Archive for October, 2008
My Dad is in Nigeria 7.22.08
My Dad is in Nigeria and he sends me messages from his phone everyday reporting on the trip. When he is in Africa the life he leads makes sense.
He talks a lot about the Children who will now go to school because of the work being done in the village. The times of prayer and celebration taking place along with simple times of meals prepared over an open fire or walks to get fresh water are moments of joy.
I enjoy how simple his messages are:
There are some simple things I take for granted and am reminded of them when I watch him live.
1. Playing is easy, it is easier to play than fight.
(I see this in the way he interacts with underprivileged children here and abroad)
For my father service is not a duty, it is a privilege. Service is something held to the highest value when it comes to how we should interact with the poor. The type of service we give must be contextually appropriate to the individual or community. For example, in Nigeria he will interact with Balloons and laughter with the children in the village who spend most of their time working or surviving. Education is what most of the children want, they will work if given the chance.
In the States my father has mentored a boy for most of this child’s life. This boy does not have a father and his mother never had the skills to nurture him. Most recently, my Dad told me of a long conversation where this teen told him he was Bi-sexual. My Dad listened with an nonjudgmental ear as this boy described the feelings of isolation and loneliness.
When I listen to my father, when I watch his life, I am so thankful to know him.
You see I used to be a youth pastor, I was going to change the world. Now I struggle to change the lightbulb, with out my wife, most things I start would never be completed.
Fear
I have been thinking about fear lately. Halloween is a time where people embrace the “scary” and have fun with the idea of horror and death. The community I grew up in disapproved and even went as far as to judge those who participated in Halloween. Currently, I am kind of ambivalent to the holiday, but last night a friend asked a question to those who don’t allow their children to participate in the “trick or treat”. How do they introduce the ideas of death and scary to their world view? This person experienced Halloween as an opportunity to do that with their children.
I do not have children, so I am not sure how I will handle introducing the idea of death and scary things as part of life to them in their formation. However, I think it is time to bring more of the scary things into our conversation.
What is it we are afraid of?
Why are we afraid of those things?
Take the economy or the state of the world. It is a scary thing… People did exactly what they were told to do by the experts and invest in secure money markets and they lost their security. It begs the question of what do we find our security in?
I find a lot of security in my relationships, relationship with my family and community.
I experience fear in the form of anxiety and it arises sometimes as a motivator and other times as an inhibitor. Either way my analysis or thoughts about emotion are part of my search to understand who I am. I have a core belief that looks like this: When I understand why I feel certain things I can control my actions. When I understand, I am not afraid…
I grew up in a family that did not allow me to participate in Halloween. I wonder how I might be different if Halloween was used to introduce the scary things to me…
I tend to be a reactive person, which does not work well in a community environment. A person who is filled with anxiety tends to over re-act or obsess over ideas, causing an increase in the very emotion they want to control.
Granted emotion is only a fraction of who any one person is, however it is the part that seems most real at times. Thoughts, relationships, roles we play in everyday activity are other parts of our whole. Never-the-less there is still the need for me to understand why we feel certain emotions.
