Birthday Business

Hi Friends,

My birthday is one month from today, and my mother has begun asking about celebrations. These largely center around food in my family, but you may recall that a few years ago I decided to "donate" my birthday to a different organization every year. Here's how it works: no presents, no presumption, and no pressure! "No presents" indicates that I have more than enough "stuff". "No presumption" is included because I feel awkward assuming that people are going to be turning up beaming at my door, arms overflowing with gifts. "No pressure" summarizes that I am going to take advantage of social convention to let you know about causes I consider worth supporting but I don't expect you to contribute. Deal?

So...for 2013 I am participating in a fundraising walk with Zoe, an organization that works to rescue and restore children who have been sex trafficked in Thailand. I'm brand new to a relationship with this organization but have been invited to be a part of the Hope Rising team. Hope Rising is a burgeoning organization in Ventura that will provide a much needed role of training service providers and faith communities to work with survivors of human trafficking. Click here to go to my fundraising page and read more.

Thanks for your time!
Katie

August Adventures

Building Houses

And where does a wise man build his house?

When choosing our crafts for a recent Haiti trip and purchasing supplies, we estimated at about 50 children in attendance. Surprise! We had closer to 150 and soon scrambled for replacement craft ideas. One morning I partially revised our lesson to talk about the parable of the wise man and foolish man who respectively built their houses on rock and sand. We taught the children and translators the song (falling over at the end was a huge hit) and used one of our few remaining craft supplies to construct popsicle stick houses. Well, the children couldn't quite grasp that glue is not instantaneously adhesive, and the popsicle sticks were too large to fit on the curved plates. Plus, we only had a couple of bottles of glue and a handful of glue sticks, so we had to individually glue every child's house. There was confusion and consternation in the ranks! As I was dashing about spurting five dabs of glue onto strange geometric configurations, I doubted the wisdom of this particular theme. Maybe I should have spent more time and come up with a better idea? The craft seemed more frustrating than fun. Then a sweet boy walked over to me beaming and handed me his house. His roof was perfectly angled. He had drawn three windows and a door with a handle. Most importantly, he had the patience and wisdom to let his glue dry! He knew he had completed the assignment well and wanted to gift me with his creation. Friends, I left the church with that plate in my clutches, carefully crammed it into my carry-on, and carted it back to my room in Southern California where I took a picture to remind me of this verse:

Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. 

Psalm 127:1

The generous builder on the previous day

Your Love is Strong

A beautiful song for the middle of the week. 

His love is strong!

Stronger than the erosion of time

Stronger than our fears

Stronger than poverty

Stronger than storms

Stronger than a kick to the face

Leaning

This comic strip captured a current drifting of thought--do we study and teach history because it gives us the illusion of control? In other words, do we believe that understanding the decisions and forces that directed humanity to its current state in 2013 will allow us to influence the future? Yes, I do recall being taught the phrase: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Still, I'm not buying it. This motivation for interpreting history seems almost farcical. It is absurd to suppose that humans are 1.) remotely capable of accurately assessing cause and effect on a global or even societal scale and 2.) wise and unselfish enough to use any insights to "fix" our patterns of brutality and prejudice and wastefulness. 

Last week a new acquaintance prayed a familiar verse* over me: "And God, let Katie not lean on her own understanding as she makes decisions, knowing that You direct our paths." Despite memorizing this verse at age seven, there are very few days when I do not lean heavily on my own understanding. I am terrible with any activity requiring physical agility, hand-eye coordination, or mechanical aptitude. Basically, I rely on my own understanding all day long because intuiting and processing information (primarily people-oriented information) is where I am comfortable. It seems like an affront to say that I am supposed to give up the area in which I feel most capable and useful.

The good news for me and for all of us is that this verse is not instructing us to disregard our own mental faculties or gut instincts. Rather, our own understanding is not to be our main support. It is a faulty structure. As we study history, try to understand what makes our loved ones tick, read about current events, decipher training manuals, and so on and so forth, we cannot rely on our understanding. It will fail us every time.

History is incredibly fascinating to me on both an individual and societal level. Humans have the same essential story-line with incredibly diverse circumstances. Every person is born from the physical union of one man and woman, has a sex, has physical needs to eat and sleep and shelter, has emotional needs to learn and connect, interacts with other beings, and finally dies. Many personality psychologists postulate that there are only a few basic personality types that form differently based on our wildly diverse environments. Melding those individual stories into explanations of culture and society is even more complex and elusive. Still, learning about history is indeed valuable. It is useful not because it will help us control the future, but because it confirms the timeless divine instructions for human interaction. Reading about genocides and oppression and tracing their history of prejudice and selfishness may help convince us of man's incredible capacity for evil, but such a perverse lineage is not necessary for instruction. Our Father has already told us how to behave and what to prioritize. We must trust God when He says to care for the poor, welcome the alien in the land, and protect widows and orphans. We must trust Him when He says not to deprive a worker of his rights, to honor the lowly, to universally "love your neighbor as you love yourself." 

History is a corruptible testimony; our understanding is faulty; but God's instructions remain true and trustworthy.

*"Trust in the Lord with all of your heart 

and lean not on your own understanding. 

In all your ways, acknowledge Him, 

and He will direct your paths." 

Proverbs 3:5-6.