Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works

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Nicaragua Trip Journal: June 2008

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

::Here are most of the pages from the journal I kept on my recent trip to Nicaragua. Some pages I did not include, and on some pages that I did include, I blurred out chunks of text I didn't wish to share with the world. Most of the comics aren't going to make a lot of sense, or be terribly funny, for anyone who wasn't on the trip or hasn't gone on such a trip in the past. However, you can look through it and get a sense of some of the things we did as a group.::

Nicaragua 2008: June Trip Journal - Upload a Document to Scribd

Labels: cartoons, journals, nicaragua, nicaragua 2008, travel

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A Nica report for those who want to know.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

If you were to ask me how Nicaragua was so far, I would probably give you the weather report answer: Hot. Humid. I'm dripping wet.

(OK, I veered a bit into personal hygiene...)

But we're all good. It's going well, and our first day, though very relaxed, has been good. I've enjoyed connecting with my Nicaragua friends, and have had a good talk with a friend that I met on the last trip. The girl I have been sponsoring for a few years is also spending the entire week with our group, and she brought her violin along. She is just learning to play it; her entire family is very musical. She played for me, and then I played a little on it. It was a good moment for both of us. We also have a new interpreter who is a really sweet young woman.

Our schedule is pretty relaxed, but we are planning a food distribution and have already taken some people to the doctor/dentist. Tomorrow we'll be taking a number of people to the market. Tonight, church. (And, since we'll be asked to sing in front of the church, I suppose our little group had better learn a song in the next hour). We will also have a free day in which we are planning on taking some of our Nicaraguan friends to the beach.

I did the morning devotions, in which we talked about how God is a God of small things, and how looking at the "big picture" often causes us to lose sight of the important small things God asks us to be obedient in.

Now, if you were going to ask how the traveling went yesterday...that would be a very different story, one that ranged from major mechanical difficulties, cancelled flights, running through airports, and sighs of relief as we barely made boarding.

But that was yesterday, and it ended up being a day of small miracles in which we all made, our luggage all made it, the van rental went without a hitch, we safely drove to Leon, and were snug and dead tired in our beds by 11:30 last night.

So, all is well. The group is having a great time joking with each other, and I have to say: I'm liking the small group feel. We're getting along great.

::For those of you who have gone on past trips and want a quick list of what we've done so far: Tip Top Chicken, swimming pool. I know you wanted to know.::

Labels: nicaragua, nicaragua 2008, travel

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Thank you.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I've not made a huge mention of the upcoming trip to Nicaragua that I'm taking. I think I've only briefly mentioned it a bit...

Anyway, to the person who sent me financial assistance to go on that trip, a personal message:

Thank you so much. The final amount of money that I was to send in...I did not have. At all. After going through the mail today, I found your check and it, along with my "economic stimulus" check, came to the exact amount. I'd been praying about it.

Your gift -- you! -- were a blessing. Thank you for helping me and allowing me to continue to help my Nicaraguan friends. Thank you, thank you.

Labels: charity, friends, nicaragua

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Here to help.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

A couple of weeks ago, a friend from my Nicaragua trips emailed and wondered about a cartoon I'd drawn from the 2007 trip.

I'd drawn it on the back of a Tip Top restaurant place mat. It was at the end of a seriously long, tiring, and strained week and a half in which the entire group look like they'd been run over by various trucks.

We were tired.

I drew the cartoon hurriedly, obviously exaggerating a bit, though it wasn't too far off. It was an attempt to not only illustrate our tiredness and the humor of it all, but the concept we Americans tend to have when we come down on such trips.

You know, the idea that we're here to help, and then we work in such a flurry of activity that we end up needing help while at the same time not always being so helpful despite the energy expended.

That kind of thing.

Anyway, to see the larger image, click on the picture above.

Labels: cartoons, nicaragua

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Something beautiful, something wounded.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

::Read the background of this post here. The video embedded in this post is low-quality and compressed and the music/photos aren't lined up as they should be in the full version... it'll only be online for a short while.::

They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious
-- Jeremiah 6:14

What is the message? What is my prayer?

My prayer is always -- always -- that I might see.

Be Thou My Vision.

Why do I go? Who is it for? Am I afraid of forgetting? Why is life unjust? Why don't I see the beauty? Do I try to bring help and healing superficially? If I do nothing, do I really have vision? Is blindness little more than seeing needs and hurt as nothing?

More than anything, in spite or because of my questions, I want to do something beautiful for You. Because I love you.

Labels: music, nicaragua, nicaragua 2008, religion

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Filtered light, like water.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

Photo by Travis Rohrer.

I need to remember the quality of hindsight. It's always clearer.

It always sees things as they are, not as they were. Hindsight may be looking back, but it sees, strangely, not in past tense.

It sees as it is, not was.

Since I've been home from Nicaragua, I have spent about 80 percent of my waking time sifting through discs of photos, and piles of video footage. My eyes are a little bleary, and last night I crashed around 2 a.m., falling asleep on top of my bed in my clothes, pulling a blanket and my cat around me.

After a while, I started to see the trip as mere clips and footage and still shots that I had to organize into various videos for different purposes: a funny video for the group members, a photo montage with music for the church presentation, and a short video with footage showing a little of everything we did.

But then today, as I was going through all of the photos I'd collected, I came upon this one. It was taken by Travis, and it really caused me to stop and look.

I don't remember this moment. In fact, my back is to the light and the rest of the group is busy singing or looking at song sheets. I don't think any of us saw this moment like it was in this photo, the way it was captured through the filtered lens of Travis' camera.

I was in the moment and didn't even see the light.

If there was ever a sobering footnote to my life, that's probably it.

I read my initial post, written upon immediate arrival back home just a few days ago, and I understand that though it is what I felt, I didn't see everything fully; I won't, probably, for years. Going back over the video footage that I shot, I realized I didn't even have any idea of what I was seeing through my own camera. I see smiles and hugs, and hear off-camera talk that I missed completely. I see subtle gestures and glances and the odd little tics each group member had. I hear my own voice and laughter, and understand there was so much more that I missed!

I've come to understand and even accept, with some dismay, that human nature is to never really live in the moment. I purposefully work very hard to grasp the now -- Julie! I would think as I sat out in the early morning breeze of the silent courtyard, reading my Bible. Remember this! How it sounds, how it feels, what you think, what God is telling you! How you love this experience, these people, your group friends! -- but even at my best I see, with hindsight, that I was grabbing at water.

There was a time when I was fascinated with thinking about the use of water as a metaphor in the Bible. I came to some kind of understanding of how to look at water as a stand-in for life.

I can't grab water. It always slips through my fingers. But even then, my hands stay wet for a while and I can look at what's left and understand just a little bit more about the nature of what went away so quickly before I could study it. I like that.

It doesn't make me sad, so much, when I understand the nature of it. That doesn't mean I'm not still thirsty.

So I like this photo. I was in the light, filtered through trees and lens and time, even if I didn't know it. In it I see what's past now, but I know I was there and some of it still lingers and makes it present. And that's beautiful.

Labels: nicaragua, nicaragua 2008

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Having character without being a character.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

My mom, after reading my initial post upon returning from Nicaragua, forwarded* me a devotion, by Phil Ware writing for Heartlight.com, that she gets in her email each day. This particular installment, on February 11, featured Proverbs 2:11. Ware wrote:

My greatest mistakes have been made in haste, when I didn't allow a little prayer time to consider what I was going to do or say.

The devotion contained a short prayer at the end, which included this:

Forgive me Father, for I fear that I am more often a "character" than I am a person of character. Forgive my selfish desire to play to the crowd. I confess that I sometimes try to be witty and popular, rather than being a person of discretion, understanding, and integrity...

"I know that being careful of what I say, is important to me...God made you special to be his vessel, and it isn't dependent on the behavior of others. Listen to what God is saying to you," mom said in the email.

In a conversation with a friend after this year's trip, I discovered a similar level of hurt regarding teasing.

"What we should do next year," I told her, "is have some kind of 'safe' word or something that meant we wanted to be serious for a second. I didn't feel like I could ever talk about anything serious with some people because it would be met with joking. I'm sure others felt like we did, too."

You know, I am better than I used to be, in this regards.

As I get older, I have slowly learned that I don't have to throw out every witty retort that comes to mind (and there are an awful lot). I find myself merely smiling or saying something so far from witty that I probably come off as a dullard. I used to be really sharp and "witty" with everyone and just threw out everything that came to mind with no thought as to how it would hurt. I really do hold most of that in now, though I slip up frequently.

I find this extremely difficult.

Words and witty comebacks are what I'm good at. It's my defense and my weapon and the only way I can retain thick skin and not get hurt. It's a terrible thing to have that as a "skill" because controlling it... well, go read the book of James. Not saying anything and just smiling or being "dull" means I don't put up the shield and that I let the darts hit. I don't return fire for fire, joke for joke.

Painful. Hard to exist. People say things like "can't you take a joke" or "where's your sense of humor?" or "I'm just joking, having fun" or, worse yet, "you used to be funny."

I'm trying to control my tongue! I want to yell back. Which I can't do, since...I'm trying to control my tongue.

I end up walking around wary and sore and still struggling to control my tongue knowing the next round will commence before I'm ready.

I've noticed in the past few year or so, as I've tried to curb what I say, that I'm getting hurt more by people by things I would have been able to laugh and shrug off and return with a pointed blow. I'm not sure how this works, but I don't think I should return to where I came from even though I can't say I like this new way of existence.

In moments of thinking how I would like to be as a follower of Christ, I tell myself I would rather seem to be a dullard than maintain my reputation for slicing and dicing with verbal skills. But, in the actual presence of people when I feel like I can easily return as good as I get or if I feel like someone is getting the best of me and I'm cornered and feeling hurt and I can't find a way to be humble about it and just let it go...I sometimes forget that and neglect to do what Ware talked about in his writing. Besides, I admit that I don't want to be thought of as dull. I want to be thought of as smart and witty and funny. It's about all I have going for me, I think. People walk away from dull people, and I want people to talk to me, you know.

Somewhere, I think (hope), is a middle ground where I don't have to be an idiot or lose my sense of humor, but I also don't have to take pot shots at people and hurt them. I do not want to hurt people. I want people to feel safe when they come to me, needing to talk about something serious, knowing I won't abuse the privilege or use that against them in a "joke" later. I love to joke around, but I know how joking escalates. Control! So difficult.

Ware is right: I have rarely ever, ever, ever been regretful of times when I held my tongue and said nothing. But I have had more than enough cleanup work and regret from all the times I opened my yap and put someone in their place.

--------------------------

*Yes, we do live in the same house but forward emails to each other. I'm better on "paper", which is something I have to work on. I say more if I write it out than I would ever speak.

Labels: family, nicaragua, nicaragua 2008, personal, religion

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Working while distracted.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

Mainly, I'm distracted.

Annoyed, and distracted.

It's most remarkable how little interest I have in things that were important just two weeks ago. I wish I could say I'd keep this unfocused focus and not fall back into the same ruts, but I know with time this will pass.

As it is now, I'm not interested in visiting the same web sites that sort of ended up being a trap. I have, in my stack of mail that I'm sifting through, letters from Senator Byron Dorgan and Senator Kent Conrad in regards (I'm guessing, since I haven't yet opened them) to a recent issue with the local post office. I have piles of tax forms from various places of employment or charities that I've sent money to. I have a bank statement. Magazines. A stack of old to-do lists I'd written before leaving. A design job waiting for me in my inbox. Emails from random people with requests for discussion, to hire, and to just talk about something I've written on this blog. There's a stack of 16 books by my bed (as is the usual state of my bedside reading) that I was dying to leap into just a few weeks ago and now seems Ecclesiastical in pointlessness.

Today, back at my "real" job for the first time since arriving home, I could barely focus.

Customers. Phone messages for people wondering if the jacket they'd ordered was ready. Dealing with Network Solutions to rectify a domain forwarding issue, drawing a caricature for a customer's shirt design, listening to the loud embroidery machines churning out jackets and caps, and writing HTML code for the store web site -- it just didn't interest me at all. On break I found an email from our ISP in regards to a reset I'll have to do with the router due to some wacky outage issues our home network is experiencing. And then, as periodically happens, I got involved in an email exchange from someone taking issue with something on this blog -- this time from a post almost two years old on a topic that seems hilarious pointless and ridiculous -- and I was supposed to care.

I admit that I don't.

I really don't care.

Apathy is no place to exist permanently.

My mind is set on something else that I can't quite put my finger on. People who have never been on such a trip joke about it being the warm weather and ending up back in this sub-zero cold. Or maybe they attribute it to the food and the "fun", as if I went to Cancun to sit under a beach umbrella, completely not understanding what it is to be on one of these trips.

"How was your trip?" they ask, and I get annoyed.

My trip? It was neither mine, nor just a trip. To me, it's the wrong question. The question makes no sense, so how am I to answer it?

A friend emailed me yesterday, and expressed something similar to my own frustration, which is me getting annoyed by the questions and the difficulty in getting back to normal here, working, while very much unsettled and distracted.

How am I supposed to care about the thread count in an embroidered design, or a letter from my Senator, when I just experienced spiritual and personal highs and lows stripped from of my comfort zone? How do I get back to "normal" when, for two weeks I woke up every morning with a purpose and now feel like I'm waking up without?

Impossible.

I can't respond eloquently to people wanting to know what I did on "my trip" because some people want a list of accomplishments that are measurable ("we built this and that"), and some people feel a friendly obligation to inquire about any kind of travel ("the weather was nice, and the food was good") and I have to figure out a way to answer these kinds of inquiries when, in the truest sense, this experience had nothing to do with either of those answers.

What should I talk about? The relationships? The plans thrown out and the blessings thrown in? The hurt? The realizations? The friendships? The personal growth that happens in fast forward? Those moments with the group that I never understand the value of until I'm home and it's too late and I'm kicking myself for not realizing the treasure it was?

I've discovered, over the past few years, that most people are only interested inasmuch as they know I went somewhere and are being polite. Which is fine. Very few, really, want to hear the gritty details that I can't quite birth with concise words. They have no frame of reference or experience for such a trip, and are only asking and inquiring as best they can. It is my job to understand this.

So, I have to find a way to answer kindly, while unsettled and distracted and a little annoyed with myself for being unable to pinpoint the source of my inner discomfort. Part of me wants to keep some of it for myself, to ponder in my heart, like Mary, and I'm reluctant to share. And of course, a great part of me is sad, wanting to still be with the team down in Nicaragua; talking about it is painful.

Like resurrecting the dead.

I sort of stare at the pile of mail and bookwork and responsibilities I have to catch up on, and can't even begin to process.

Do I really care about a two-year old blog fracas with an upset random reader, and a grumpy internet router?

No. I don't. I really don't care.

Labels: my life, nicaragua, nicaragua 2008

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The word of our testimony.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 3 comments link this post

Oscar, having just given his testimony to the group.

"And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death."
-- Revelation 12:11

Oscar, one of our interpreters who, like all of them, because a close friend and a part of our family, gave his testimony during morning devotions. It was a powerful story, and you can download and read his testimony using the links at the bottom of this post.

We talked about the power of our own testimony. Cecil pointed out that a testimony isn't just a conversion story, or a story of coming from the far depths. It was, instead, telling what God has done in our life.

For many years I dreaded being asked to give a testimony because I thought that it had to be a sordid conversion story and I had none to tell. I figured it was a one-time story I'd sit down and write and then, for the rest of my life, repeat it over and over. I grew up in the church and don't recall a specific moment of conversion. I have lived a pretty "sanitized" life in all ways and have nothing to say to make an audience gasp. My testimony, I now see, is God's grace keeping me from being harmed and helping me make good choices by creating a disinterest in me in the things that might do damage. My testimony, my story, changes as God continues to work.

"People can't refute what happened to you like they can argue other points," Cecil said.

Herman, one of our other interpreters, pointed to the story of blind Bartimaeus in Mark 10, and reminded us that Bartimaeus never shut up in an effort to be healed by Jesus.

"People rebuked him," Herman said, "and people may do something to discourage you, too, but don't shut up. Too often we Christians keep our mouths shut."

What Herman said reminded me of an article I'd read a few weeks before our trip. The article, "Practical Atheism", was from World Magazine, written by Joel Belz. He said, essentially, that we promote an atheistic God-free existence by merely staying silent and keeping God out of our everyday conversations. By not giving the word of my testimony, by not keeping God in my ready language and conversations, by not filling all thought and talk with the things of God in some manner, by separating "normal" life from "spiritual" life (there is no separation!), I am giving strength a kind of practical atheism.

For all my general senseless yammering, I'm too quick to shut up. I certainly don't proffer up my testimony, whether it be a brief moment of sharing or a longer story. I don't go around plying people with what God has done in my life. I'm sure being an introvert has something to do with it since I don't generally go around plying people for anything, but part of the problem is that I'm not constantly thinking in those terms. My mind isn't set in a way that sees God's hand in everything but instead allots Him a little here and there and unconsciously relegates the rest to random life or "unimportant" stuff that no one would really care to be bothered with.

About four years ago, Michael had the members of the Sunday School class give their testimony. Now, he'll say he didn't make us do it, but I'll say he "strongly encouraged" us to do it. It was, really, the first time I'd ever stood up in front of a large group and talked for a great length of time (about 40 minutes or so) on what God had done and was doing in my life. The power of sharing my testimony became very real: by speaking it out, I heard it aloud for the first time. Giving the story of my life organization and structure, and forcing myself to look at it with purpose and meaning -- and then speaking it aloud! -- pulled it out of some faint place and made it solid. It was real. God was real. He really did something in my life, and was still doing something.

Coming back from Nicaragua and writing these posts on what God did through the group, is testimony. Writing a blog post about personal struggles in my life and what God is working on, is testimony. Speaking up in discussions and sharing in church or Sunday school, is testimony. Sharing prayer requests aloud is a kind of "preemptive" testimony of faith and belief, if not what God is or will do.

I would very much like to become more like Bartimaeus in his inability to shut up and be more desirous of sharing the word of my testimony, whatever it might be that day. I appreciate Oscar, and how, when I emailed and asked him if I could share his testimony on this web site, responded that he wanted everyone -- everyone! -- to know what the Lord was doing in his life, and what he is still doing.

Links:

Oscar's testimony (PDF)
Oscar's story (PDF)
Video of Oscar's testimony (coming soon)

Labels: friends, nicaragua, nicaragua 2008, religion

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Caring cards.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Making a caring card for someone.

One of Shannon's ideas for the morning kid's crusade/VBS, on the day the children learned about Job, was to have them create caring cards.

Regular blog readers know I'm a huge fan of writing and sending and saving letters and cards and letting people know you care and that you appreciate them by doing that. So of course, I thought the idea was fabulous.

And it was.

The kids had a great time, and we later heard of how proud they were of what they'd made when the went home and showed their parents.

I even made a caring card, sitting down in a circle of kids who quickly swarmed all over me wanting me to help them draw things on their card. My idea was to make a "caring card" and pass it around the group, with it being given to whoever seemed to be having a tough day. I never got the idea to work, though. I didn't get everyone's signature inside and I just never seemed to find the time to explain the idea. (front of card | inside of card)

Don't do that, if you decided to make a caring card. You gotta send it out!

I loved that concept that Shannon came up with for the day's project. I remember, about ten years ago, I was teaching the teen Sunday school class. I had them make cards for people in the church, and then pray for the people as we put the cards in the church mailboxes during Sunday school hour. It was a blessing to the kids to be able to stop being teens in the usual sense (i.e. "what can the church do for me, to entertain me and keep me in church") and start being fellow brothers and sisters in Christ (i.e. "what can I do for those who are older than me to remind them of Christ's love and be an example").

::I have, in the past, made a free download or two available for readers to send out something similar to the idea of a caring card. I'd encourage you to consider sending out something to someone to let them know you care.::

Labels: kids, nicaragua, nicaragua 2008, writing

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"It's a flat area."

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

Click on image to see larger version.

Elias assured us that this different volcano -- Momotombo -- wouldn't be a challenging climb. My concern was that I didn't have good shoes along for any serious hiking. I hadn't brought much beyond flip flops and walking sandals.

"No problem," he said, when we asked him about it. "It's a flat area. You drive right up to it. There's a lake. No problem."

To me, a "flat area" is the Red River Valley, i.e. it's flat. As in, flat.

Kind of flat-ish.

Without incline.

Incline-free.

With the bus grinding and growling down a road that could barely be called such a thing, we arrived at a place that looked like a kind of picnic shelter that contained a flock of hungry dogs. We ate. The dogs did, too.

Then, following our police escort -- a large man who was surprisingly spry on his feet -- we headed down a road which was a gentle climb.

Though it was technically not "flat", I wasn't too concerned. To avoid the awful experience of being the last person straggling uphill from a volcano hike two years' earlier, I trotted right along behind the policeman, almost tripping on his heels. It was after that last volcano fiasco two years ago that I'd started running to get in shape, and I didn't feel nearly as tired as I had thought I'd be.

Near the top of this climb was a young boy on a horse who watched us make our way. Though he and his bony animal seemed innocent enough, I later determined that he was merely biding his time as the Americanos made their way to a place on the path which would dovetail nicely into his evil plan.

He was there to herd cattle.

As we rounded the top of easy hill, I looked down and saw a path of horrifying descent and crumbling, dirt footing.

I turned to Gaylon, slightly mortified. "So this is Elias' definition of a flat area, is it?" I hadn't packed enough band-aids for this kind of trek. I know my klutzy limits. My shoes were not appropriate, as was the same issue with the shoes of a few other ladies.

Nothing to do but go down.

Going down.

(Made me think of an Aerosmith song, which annoyed me.)

And...down we went. About halfway, the young boy began driving his cattle down the steep path towards the crater lake which we were headed towards. I did attempt to film the cattle bearing down on my as my shoes slid sideways on the slippery red dirt, but I can't seem to find the footage on my camera (much like I couldn't find my footage on the side of that hill). Scrambling for some kind of higher ground, the group pulled off to the side and let the animals past, billowing dust and manure in our faces.

A little bit later, I caught my shoe on a rock and fell down. Red dirt and crap all up my shorts and shirt. I'd later fall on the way back to the bus, on the actual flat road, right after asking Shannon how it was going. I'm famous in my family for hilariously bad falls.

The lake was beautiful, and some of our group swam in it. Because it was a volcanic lake, we were told to stay close to the shore; it quickly drops off deeply, so deeply that, according to our police escort, the best divers from Cuba had not been able to find the bottom yet.

Emily joked about parasites in the water that would cause bloody diarrhea, and there were a few technical difficulties when it came time for some of the women to change into their swimsuits (no changing rooms, obviously, so towels had to be held up back in the trees).

After a while, I told Gaylon I had better start back. I figured it would be slow climbing for me and my crap shoes, and thought it best to get a head start on the group. Gaylon and Lew went with me, and we made decent, relaxed time. I actually didn't get as tired as I thought I would, which surprised me. It reminded me very much of when I took my niece Brenna hiking up high in the Rocky Mountains.

(It also, sadly, reminded me of the movie Predator. I don't know why. Maybe the whole Central American jungle thing. It annoys me that such things come to mind.)

Though I believe we must reconsider our understanding of a "fun" and "free" day, I admit I had fun. It was fun to joke around with everyone, and to fall down in front of Shannon with perfectly bad timing. It was fun to see that beautiful lake and experience stopping on the trail and looking around and seeing the canopy of trees and the sky framed above them. It was, certainly, nothing I'll likely experience often and was truly off the beaten path.

(Well, actually, part of the problem was the path was too-well beaten. Annoying bovines.)

Later, Elias said he'd described the volcano and lake in such selectively deceptive terms because he hadn't wanted to scare us away from the experience. I can see his point; had I known of the sharp grade and the poor footing, there is no way I'd slid, fallen, and shrieked my way to the bottom with the shoes I was wearing.

I think, the next time someone assures me that a situation is "no problem", I will immediately believe otherwise.

Flat area, indeed.

Links:

See a cartoon about the day at the lake as described above.

Labels: cartoons, nicaragua, nicaragua 2008

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Cristo team.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Two beautiful boys, part of Christ's Team.

"He who is not with me is against me..."
-- Matthew 12:30

I'm known for getting into discussions and arguments on various Christian and theology related topics.

I usually kick myself for wasting the time after it's all said and done since little is accomplished beyond everyone becoming more entrenched in their own ideas and multiple bridges being burned. I rather tend to forget the simple idea of Luke 9:50. A similar idea resurfaces again in Luke 10:16 and 11:23. It also appears in Matthew 12:30 (as show above). Essentially, the line is clear: we are either for Christ or against Him. Nothing in between.

Really, I spend a lot of time -- as do other Christians -- splitting hairs about the degree a person is "for" Christ versus the degree they are "against" Christ when Jesus himself did not make such quantifiable distinctions. I throw out a lot of flak and end up muddying the clarity of those verses. We are either for or against. If I am not for, I am against.

As we were passing out food to families in the community we were working in down in Nicaragua, I happened to glance up and notice the words painted on the side of the home we were standing in front of: Cristo Team.

I liked that.

Simple. Clear. Not over-wrought and mangled.

Christ Team.

Isn't that it, really? Not "I am Assembly of God" or "I am Reformed" or "I am Arminian" but, instead, "I am for Christ."

I am on Christ's Team.

Labels: nicaragua, nicaragua 2008, religion

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Restoration for a moment.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Awaiting a plate of food.

"A miracle in healing is not the conjuring of some magic, nor a disruption in the created order, or something supernatural. Rather, healing exemplifies the redemption of fallen creation, the restoration of the created order, the return to the usual, the normative, the natural."

-- William Stringfellow, A simplicity of Faith: My Experience in Mourning

Instead of providing a little snack for the children during the four-day children's crusade, we provided a full meal at noon. The story isn't in our change of mind or heart or in the logistics and reason for doing it. I'm not going to make a fishes and loaves analogy, either. The story is the miracle of small things and all things, the restoration Stringfellow talks about, and how we see through a glass darkly.

The usual question I ask and hear on these trips to Nicaragua is why I am so blessed in the comforts of earthly life and why our Nicaraguan friends have to struggle and do without. How can I throw $3 away at Starbucks and how the same amount might be a day's wage on the farm in Nicaragua?

I have no answer. Never have.

"It would be easy to wallow in 'why'," I said during one such discussion. "I could focus on the inequality and question God into my own spiritual oblivion, and be none the wiser. It doesn't change anything and only keeps me from changing."

The big, obvious prayer for a miracle would be that God would lift the poor out of poverty, restore justice, and perhaps, if I dare admit that I think it, punish me for having a comfortable life of spotty service to Him that I've done nothing to deserve.

He will restore. The last will be first. Blessed (even if I don't see it) are the meek, the humble. The weak are strong. In death there is life.

I don't get it, not really. Even during one of Cecil's last morning devotions, when he characterized these kinds of paradoxes as "dynamic polarities" -- Total free will and totally predestined! Jesus, totally man and totally God! -- I knew I could only grasp the understanding that such a concept existed while not really grasping the concept.

I would not have eaten the food we prepared for the kids because I don't really know hunger in the realm of not knowing if I'll get to eat again. All I saw was the chicken that landed in the huge pot of just-finished boiled noodles, and the barely-washed plastic cups and forks with a suspicious, greasy residue after multiple days of use.

The food went out of the kitchen, the kids ate and drank noisily, and they left with full stomachs. That's the story, the little commonplace miracle of hunger subsided. It was the restoration, momentarily, that I wait to see in a large scale when I wallow in "why, God, why" instead of seeing the small works of His hand, the small works that mimic and point to and are part of something larger. Does it really matter if I don't see the larger? Does that change the situation or the need or the call to obey?

The real question, maybe, isn't one of the easy, obvious why -- why are things unjust in this life? why don't you do something, God? why do I have so much and others so little? -- but instead, why do I continue to see the abnormal injustice as the normal and miss how the miracles, big and small, are a peek on the other side of the dark glass?

I keep thinking there's another way to see the inequality and the injustice and the concept of restoration according to God's plan, but after too long, I easily fall back into the laziness of wallowing in why. It's pretty tough to function in semi-understanding, and a lot easier to ask unanswerable questions that make me feel miserable and blind me to the small miracles.

You know what? I don't know why. If you can't stop asking it, at least pass around a few plates of food and get in on the moment of restoration before it fades away.

Labels: nicaragua, nicaragua 2008, religion

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If Travis were a mother...

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

Travis, resting in God's love.

...he would have a son named Whistler.

My suggestion, to avoid a similar photo, is to take the advice of the rest of your group and use sun screen to avoid the affects of severe Klingon-inducing forehead sunburn which swells and stretches tightly and debilitates you and forces you to zonk out in a rocking chair in the back room of the pastor's house to catch a few fitful Z's while the person with the video camera has access to you and also has an art history background and sees the humor in the scene which immediately made me think of this painting (Whistler's Mother).

Labels: art, friends, nicaragua, nicaragua 2008

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Thank you for this life.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 4 comments link this post

Molly and Juanita, praying for a woman.

"The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."
-- John 10:10

The idea of being pro-life has become wrapped up in a debate of abortion, but I've always felt that being pro-life was the ultimate result of being a follower of Christ.

What is pro-life anyway?

Towards the end of the trip, the group split up and walked to houses to hand out bags of food and to pray with members of the household. Cecil, Chad, Emily, and I went on one last food donation to a family that lived near the church. During his prayer for the young mother, a woman with many kids and little else, Cecil said many good things which I can't remember now.

And then, at the end of the prayer, he said "thank you, Jesus, for her life."

I would not be surprised to hear Christians who consider themselves pro-life to also find themselves in discussion on the excessive numbers of children and young mothers and mouths to feed. With compassion and love, we might find ourselves suggesting ways to efficiently bring the excess of birth into a more financially stable realm. I found myself participating in a discussion on birth control and such issues one night.

"Do they have access to birth control?" one team member asked. It was a valid question, since the talk leading up to it was on how a married couple from the community we were working in did not want any more children, leaving us wondering exactly how that would be accomplished realistically. They are a very loving family, and it is not as if any of us were even considering anything that would remotely suggest anything that wasn't pro-life.

But again, what is pro-life? Is preventing a life, even if it saves a child from an existence in misery and poverty, pro-life?

It seems to be a larger concept than just an interpretation of abortion or of controlling the number of lives brought into a world in which I, a Westerner with a limited understanding of the storehouses and blessings and plans of God, deem a nuisance at best and irresponsible at worst.

I suppose at some point, if this were a discussion with live people in real time in which I didn't have the floor like I do here in this post, the talk might cut me off before I could get to the end and could veer off onto tangents of unwed mothers, women having children to trap men, families with children with different fathers, families already stretched to their limits and not able to support more mouths to feed, the need for education on reproduction and responsibility and all the things we call our obsessive need to control the size of our own families for convenience sake -- it could easily go that way. That, however, is exactly that: tangential.

This is not that discussion.

This is, instead, about trying to understand what it is to truly be pro-life, to be in support and love and understanding of the value of all life free of judgment and logic. It is about seeing value in life beyond the limits of financial feasibility, beyond the limits of productiveness, beyond the limits of my definition of what is a "good" life, and what kind of life should be allowed to grow dim and die or to never even start out of "compassion's" sake.

"Thank you, Jesus, for her life."

"Thank you, Jesus, for this life."
"Thank you, Jesus, for my life."
"Thank you, Jesus, for your life."

So Jesus has come that we might have life and have it more abundantly.

Abundant life.

I used to think of that in terms of existing life being lived to the fullest, but I wonder if it doesn't also have another meaning: that life itself should be in abundance. The light that is life.

Jesus is the life. Not a life, but the life. The law of the spirit of life in Jesus that frees me from sin and death.

He gives life to our mortal bodies, it says in Romans 8:11, and so I start to see that being pro-life is all-encompassing, something that completely changes how I view everything: that a view of life should extend far beyond the mortality and reality of this cursed earth. That only considering how a life will start, exist, and wane as a mortal is not a view of life at all. That I must understand a love of His life, the giver of all life, not stopped or started by a pill or a decision or an accountant's view of how things ought to balance out when it comes time to feed and clothe.

Do I thank Jesus for the lives that seem unnecessary or burdensome? Do I inwardly groan and judge when I hear another baby has been born to a woman who can't support it, or do I give praise for new life? Do I thank Jesus for the possibility of more life or do I think of logical ways to curb it so that things are more manageable according to my own understanding of the laws of human limitation?

So I was standing there, my hands at my side, praying along with Cecil, hearing him simply thank Jesus for her life while not dwelling on the apparent unfair trappings of it, realizing that I hadn't been thanking God for such lives, but rather focusing my spiritual energy on the fruitless debate of why my life seemed better and how God could be so unfair and if it wouldn't be better if He'd show some mercy and stop bringing children into this kind of world.

Pro-life is something I've not yet come in to, I now understand.

Labels: nicaragua, nicaragua 2008, religion

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Nicaragua Trip Journal: June 2008

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A Nica report for those who want to know.

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Thank you.

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Here to help.

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Something beautiful, something wounded.

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Filtered light, like water.

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Having character without being a character.

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Working while distracted.

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The word of our testimony.

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Caring cards.

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"It's a flat area."

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Cristo team.

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Restoration for a moment.

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If Travis were a mother...

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Thank you for this life.