I’m back. I’ve said it so many times now, but here I am actually writing about it. I have now been back for 2 weeks.
It’s weird how quickly I learned to readjust. No culture shock whatsoever. I expected there to be some residual shock from all that I experienced: dengue, floods, diet, 100% humidity, spiders, snakes, cockroaches, etc. but there was nothing at all. Instead, I just went back to life as usual as if I never left.

Still haven’t seen many people trying to work through family stuff. Not really fun, but so goes life. Anyway, going to Santa Barbara to go wine tasting tomorrow and from there, celebrating the 4th with some friends in Hermosa Beach. Who knows what happens from then on…

I am going to say something bold. But then again, you have probably already grown accustomed to my outrageously bold statements anyway, so here I go:

The problem with the poor, isn’t with the poor, but with those who suffocate the voices of the poor.

There are some serious implications to this statement. First of all, it assumes that the poor aren’t poor simply because they are lazy, stupid, or just plain unassertive; it does the opposite (without ruling out that they may display those attributes). Secondly, it gives responsibility to those who have the ability to facilitate changes, something I have grown increasingly convinced of during my service with the Peace Corps.

So, what am I trying to say?

People excel in systems that are designed to help them excel, not to cut them down in a sort of competition that intends to kill opponents. I remember hearing once that competition didn’t mean defeating the opponent, but making the opponent better as they make you better. The difference between the two is an attitude shift. One is intended to stunt or prevent the growth of another, the other is to endorse it, to facilitate it. What I am trying to reconcile however, is the idea that a personal drive to succeed will motivate people to become the best in their field, however, it is only in cooperative helping of one another that we can accomplish a level of group success. After all, do we really want to be tyrants in a world where relationships are the ultimate key to happiness?

So what am i trying to say on my soap box? Well, first of all, the poor shall be held responsible for their own actions, however we, as people who have the fortune of options cannot ignore that in lieu of our passion to succeed, we push others down instead of creating spaces for them to rise up – and that is precisely the problem the poor face the most.

As I live poorly with the poor, I find myself in a position where I am forced to listen, and that’s where I think it all begins. Yes, they are not the most polished of public speakers, nor do they always know how to deliver messages effectively as they stand on their own soap box as if they were filibustering congress, however, if we take the time to listen, we will find out that they have intelligent arguments that make sense and solutions that might create a positive outcome. As one friend said, the problem with the poor isn’t that they exist, but that they are concentrated in masses. Now, I don’t completely agree with that, I do agree that if the problem the poor creates is in their concentration, I do think that we need to look to create openings and spaces for them to be productive.

Ah whatever… It’s time for me to just take a breather… let’s talk about this sometime. What do you say?

I never understood half of what the Beatles sang about, but I always appreciated their music. Their use of abstract analogies and their references to historical or personal events seem to allude me constantly. I just don’t really connect to music like so many people I know do. Either way, I still appreciate the music as my feet brush across the pavement on my iPod.

I can’t stop thinking about community. I wonder how many other people are out there wondering about the implications and consequences that community has on lives and the world. The more I think about the idea of community, the more I find myself growing in my obsession of it. Its one of those things that whether we choose to acknowledge its importance, we will have to face the realities that whether we accept shallow community or put enormous efforts into deep communities will make a significant difference in our lives – as well as those that we are connected to (and remember, we are all only separated by 6 degrees).

So community, how would one define it? After all, our definition of one thing will determine how it plays out in our lives – especially if we have an internal locus of control where we believe that to some degree that we can create our environment through our effort. I believe that community today, as accepted by most people, is nothing more than people experiencing stuff together. It doesn’t have to go much deeper than dinner, a shopping trip, a day at the beach, a hike up a mountain, or going to an event together. Heck, if you know someone slightly more than that, you can just do the same things for several consecutive days and laugh at the various experiences and humorous thoughts that people have. However, I think that we sell ourselves short when we do so.

I’m obsessed with John Piper and Tim Keller. Anyone who has more than 10 conversations about my Christian faith will quickly find out that I would gladly marry either of them (even though they are old, balding men). I am totally straight, but I find their depth incredibly sexy. In fact, I almost asked Tim Keller if I could rub his belly and kiss his head. I refrained myself because I thought myself to be a little intoxicated by the message he gave when I visited Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. But one thing I constantly hear them challenging people to do is to think deeply. They want people to have substance to their life as a whole – from the emotional, to the mental, to the spiritual. After all, what good is it if we are like the weak branch that just blows with the wind; we must thrive to break the wind as the wind is fickle and does not know itself where it wants to go. A lot of people tend to think that faith equals the dismissal of reason, study, meditation, historical analysis, and deep thought, but that is just a contextual assessment, not the prescribed norm. A slogan I like is from Apologetics.com where they “challenge believers to think and thinkers to believe.”

And that is what I feel like is lacking from our communities today. Living in LA (or most of the developed world), it doesn’t take much to realize that we have choices. We have the opportunity to meet so many new people that people have become disposable in this world to us. Think about the divorce rate and it doesn’t take much to be convinced. Everyday in LA, as you walk the streets, listen for the buzz, or go online to Metromix or Goldstar, it isn’t hard to find new places to meet new people. I went online once for speed dating events in LA and in one week, I calculated that I could meet 300 people if I worked the scene diligently. Just take 10% of that and you still have 30 people! On top of that, you can find interest groups – almost like sub-culture cults within any major city. People with a certain type of car can find a race club, there are motorcycle clubs for those who like everything from Harley’s to Hondas, there are dance studios for the beginner to the expert, the art scene is open for people to join its circle, religious circles are always looking for people to join their congregation, and the list is endless. The options for community are beyond measure and if you want to go a step further, there are denominations of each thing. Take a look at the amount of car clubs out there or denominations of churches within Evangelical Christianity (although with Christianity, I do think that the priority should be based on Truth). The options are limitless.

In Panama with the Peace Corps, you get the total opposite affect. Living in a small village, you can’t escape the community you are a part of. If there is anything I do, the entire town knows about it by the evening. Goodness forbid that I fall on my butt while walking through the mud or fall off a bike, the gossip chain is unforgiving and I will hear about it for the rest of my time there. “Ray, do you remember when you fell off the bike into a puddle of mud and it looked like you pooped your pants? Ha! That was a funny day, Ray!” But as much as it can get annoying, there is something incredibly beautiful about it. People aren’t focused around events so much as they are focused on people. In LA, events keep us busy (we meet based around things to do), but in my village in the Peace Corps, we meet based on who will be there. There is nothing that goes on anywhere without me hearing about it from 10 people before I hear about it from the person that it happened to – unless if it happened to be me. Its to the point that family consumes several hours of the day, no, it consumes the majority of the day. The amount of time parents spend with their children here would be unheard of in the US (except with homemakers). On average, I estimate that the family will spend at least 8 hours a day together in the same physical space. If you spend 8 waking hours with anyone, you are forced to interact with them. That interaction benefits people because it causes them to become people centered instead of event centered.

Think about the last time you went out? In America, we have a fascination with going to places like baseball games, going out to eat dinner, going to clubs where you can’t hear people talk, or watching a movie. The sad thing is, the same spirit exists in my village. They try to find things to keep themselves occupied from being bored. How do I know this? One guy said it best when I asked him why he got married so young, “I was just bored and thought I might not be if I was with someone.” I recently asked someone from the US how many deep friendships she had, and the amount of them shocked me. We discussed the definition of deep friendships and when we were both satisfied with what we considered to be deep, she said, “Zero.” What am I trying to get at?

We lack depth in relationships. I hesitate to call it intimacy, because even the word intimacy doesn’t quite capture it – although only 2 in 10 couples really reach a level of intimacy that both are satisfied with in marriage (no wonder people are getting divorced!). The difference between intimacy and depth is that intimacy is subjectively objective where depth is objectively objective. Two shallow people may find each other and go as deep as they have ever gone before and consider that intimacy, but if you think and pry hard enough, you will be quick to determine that they are not deep. Depth is objective in every way, and we know that because depth can be tested – especially through time. Depth is the ability to think beyond the experiences and the fun stuff of life, the emotional stuff of life, and the hard stuff of life, and find the objective meaning behind it all. In other words, we have to find a reason that supersedes reason in everything. This can only be done through a measurement of depth that everyone would agree upon, and that includes the agreement of the really deep people. We are not deep if the really deep people don’t think we are.

But can we live without being deep? Of course! Most of the people that live are like that. They aren’t rooted so they sway. Or they are so defensive and rooted in themselves that they never really let anyone in. Either way, they lose the end game because they never experience the freedom of peace that the ability to breathe lets you have. The thing about depth is that it allows us to grow thick roots and thick trunks. It allows us to weather the storm and control the hurricanes of our lives. It guides us and helps us not make the silly mistakes that we shouldn’t make, and the mistakes that we have no control over, we learn to quickly rise from them. It shows us that life has meaning and always keeps us finding unique expressions of that meaning. We discover truth, love, and hope in something we may not have thought existed in the past. But most importantly, it teaches us to love others as a person worth an infinite amount. It gives us the ability to put ourselves aside and put the other person ahead of us. It helps us to be the challenge to the world to be better, to love better, to help, and to lead. Depth creates a hunger for more of the good, wisdom, and truth. Depth develops into a love that goes beyond what we see today.

We need depth in community. I think about the differences and similarities in my community here and my life in the US. There isn’t much. In the US, we have options so we have no excuse because we can find people who really “fit” us well. Here, we don’t have a choice but to focus on people, but even then, we try to find other points of focus because, well, depth takes tremendous effort. I want to see people move towards a love that only comes from reaching deep into truth and extracting everything that it has to offer. Then, I want to see it exhibited in love and service to other people. What do you say? Anyone with me?

One life, trying desperately to make it deeply count.

Ok, so I just buzzed through my friend Jeannie’s blog and I will have to comment that BLOGGING IS A FRICKIN’ ART. I don’t know what it is about good bloggers, but one look at a good blog, you find that yours pales in comparison. I was enamored by her wit and charm for pages upon pages as she expressed her love for Jay-Z, comfortable Pajamas, yarn colors, and Moby. When I returned to write this, I felt like a fumigated weed trying to survive through a storm of herbicide. Snorrrrrrrrre…

So, I’ve been in my site for about 2 weeks straight without leaving to take a day trip and I’ve hit the time where the world seems to be shrinking in and collapsing onto me. I literally have jungle fever – but substitute jungle for banana.

Before I left Chicago, I downloaded a whole bunch of movies and TV shows, courtesy of my friend Daniel’s roommate, John. I actually just uploaded them onto my computer from data CD’s he’s compiled and it was great. I downloaded a bunch of Curb Your Enthusiasms – seasons 1 – 5 – and the more I watch the show, the more addicted I get, and the more I find myself acting like Larry David (NOT a good thing). I’d not want to know the guy because of his crass inappropriateness, but watching him struggle to get out of uncomfortable situations only to find him in deeper and more awkward situations is pretty funny. I frickin’ love that show.

But I must say, I am an addict. I am an addict to running. I still hate it with all my guts, but I enjoy the feeling I get after I run. Two days ago, I ran for 32 minutes straights. I’ve NEVER done that ever before in my life. And since I run about the same time everyday, the political representative generally drives by as I am running and with his entourage, they stick their hands and heads out the window and holler at me while flicking their wrists like I am doing something incredible. Needless to say, it gives me a slight boost of energy to go a few more minutes than I usually would. For some reason though, my ankles and calves hurt more than anything. I don’t know why, but I just can’t seem to shake the pain. I stretch, and do all sorts of different things, but yea, can’t shake it. Got any suggestions?

Ok, time for me to get on to some work. Teaching kids how to be better people today and tutoring a girl in English before she heads off to college in Veraguas. Yea~

One life. Running to make it count.

There are few moments that give you as much satisfaction as watching a light bulb switch on in someone’s life, especially if you are the teacher or the catalyst. Today was a great victory for a Peace Corps volunteer.

The day began like every other day. I woke up, drew water out of my water catchment tank, did my morning ritual of brushing my teeth, washing my face, and playing a game of Monopoly on my iPod, then I headed out. Someone was supposed to visit me in the morning to have a conversation in English, but she didn’t show so I thought my whole day was going to be like this. Days “like this” are usually really slow and miserable and are usually caused by people not showing up to their appointments or on time to meetings. You wonder to yourself why you joined the Peace Corps and stretch as far as you can to find something to fill the emptiness and the realization that you are alone in this community of people, some of whom still think you are a tourist (which is preposterous because at least for me, I could think of at least 20,000,000,000 other places that I’d rather be on vacation to). But you go on nevertheless, knowing that the emotions that the circumstances place you in get shorter and shorter and you find an yourself getting closer to an equilibrium that would make Barack Obama look nervous on any given Sunday (if you didn’t get that, one of the words that people would describe President Obama as was calm and cool throughout the entire election process). So that’s what I did, I just went about my day as if I was going to have a good day, and guess what, I did.

Here’s what happened.

First, I ate lunch at my old host family’s house. It was the usual rice and beans, but I am ok with it. Any food is good food to me now and I almost lost my need to “optimize” everything about my life. For example, I wouldn’t eat anything but organic because I thought it would optimize my health. After all, outside of genetics 60% of your health is diet whereas only 40% is exercise. I wrestled with the kids before lunch so it really built up an appetite and when it came time to eat, I whipped out my ‘geem’ (Korean dried seaweed – sounds terrible, but its absolutely fabulous) and told them all to try it. The dad liked it, the mom preferred not to eat more than a square inch worth of it, and the kids ate it simply because I did – even though they didn’t like it. It was really funny watching the youngest one Kevin try to put rice in it and eat it because the rice isn’t sticky and every time he took a bite, it would fall out the other end.

After lunch, I left because of how hot it was inside the house. I can’t believe how hot the days are here. It’s quite unbearable. I think the temperature goes up to 95 degrees with 100% humidity. It feels like a constant sauna and I think I sweat more when I’m just sitting still because when I walk, the light breeze cools me off slightly.

As I contemplated going to rest beneath a tree, I decided to walk over to Rufino’s house. He’s one of my favorite people here. He’s always buying me soda and asking me vulger questions and teaching me Spanish in a vulgar way. His pride and joy was teaching me the word ‘meter,’ which means to insert or to put in. I swear I wasn’t thinking what he was trying to say until he raised his eyebrows and pointed to a girl across the street while he kept on saying it. Nonetheless, I haven’t forgotten the word and have actually used it many times.

As I arrived, they were all sitting under the rancho, a hut type of deal without walls. It’s made of four wooden posts that hold up a thatched roof made from palm leaves. One of the people present was Yasbeth, Rufino’s daughter, and one of my prize pupils in my leadership class. She asked me how I was doing and then went on a rant about how much the leadership class I gave helped her. She just came back from a two week training seminar and most of the things they covered were things that she learned from my course. Of course being proud that I had done something of some relevance, I kept asking her to elaborate on how my seminar helped her and in the end, she said that she was leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the class. Then she asked me when I was going to give the next class and if I could give it sooner than later. I told her that I would think about it and that it required full participation from the couples because it was a course on relationships and marriage. She asked me if her boyfriend didn’t want to attend, if she could attend alone. I said she could, but she would be on a different level than her man after the course in what she wanted in regards to intimacy. She said that she would convince her boyfriend to participate.

After feeling good about myself, I went off on my jog. I’ve been running everyday now for about a week and it feels good. I can now run 25 minutes straight without needing a break, although today, I only made it to minute 18. The sun was way to hot and there wasn’t enough breeze for me to take in through my pores. So I called it quits and decided to head back, but stopped at my friend Rufina’s house (no, she isn’t related to Rufino). I called one of her sons over to get me some coconuts, so we walked the three minutes to the batch to cut some down. I drank 5 and my belly was beyond full.

On the way there and back, there is a log bridge that we have to cross, no more than 7 feet. On the way back after guzzling down the coconut juice, as I was crossing the bridge, the wood collapsed and I fell into the cow poop path. There is a ditch about 6 feet deep into a path where cows sometimes pass and there was a ton of cow poop in the ditch at this time. Fortunately for me, my shoes and clothes broke the fall so I didn’t have to worry about getting any of it in my mouth – unlike last time when I kicked some into my mouth accidentally and couldn’t stop spitting for hours. The three others that were with me laughed as they find this sort of thing funny and I laughed with them. When we got back to the house, I told them what happened and they told me I was fat. I was befuddled, but smiled nonetheless.

As I washed myself off, I got settled into a hammock while we talked future plans. Now, if you think that the first conversation I had today made me proud, wait until you hear this one. Rufina is the head of my women’s bread baking business – in a nutshell, she is the engine that keeps it going. After all, we are here to create sustainable projects and after having a conversation with the Korean American guy, Sam Yoon, running for Mayor in Boston, the one thing we are really here to do as Community Economic Development Consultants is to organize the people and create organizations in which they can work. So that’s what I did. I met with several women and ended up with 5 at the end with Rufina as the engine. We persisted with the bread baking business starting with 30 pieces of bread and growing to 300 per production day. From there we increased production days, and now we are going into the chicken raising business. We got 300 chickens from the government as well as 12 bags of feed for the chickens to grow and from what I understand; it takes about 3 months for a chicken to grow to satisfaction. From there, we can sell each one for $5-6. We still have to calculate how much feed costs are, but after these next couple of months, we should have a pretty clear estimate of how much of the profits we will need to reinvest into the business. That’s cool, but here’s the really cool part: the women I worked with decided all on their own to donate half (that’s 150 chicks) to another group of women who got inspired by their bread baking results. So now, we have two women groups working in conjunction with one another – where one is doing both the bread baking and raising chickens, and the other is raising chickens. But that’s not all, they then went out and decided that since all of this started with the help of other people (mainly me and Rufina), they will donate $20 each to another micro enterprise at the end of the year so that they can give someone else a hand up as they were given. It’s like Pay it Forward! Now someone tell me that this ain’t cool. This is why I joined the Peace Corps baby!

Now, if people who are living off of nearly nothing and are accustomed to feeding a family of 9 on $50 a month are willing to give $20 of their earnings at the end of each year to another group of financially struggling people, why can’t we as Americans who have such lavish spending habits cut down a little and give a little more? I think we can.

One life. Enjoying how I’m making it count.

Yesterday, I woke up and clogged my toilet. I was like a mechanical engineer trying to find ways to unclog it, and through my ingenuity, I succeeded. With that being said, I will never ever use those colored pencils again. They are gone, going, gone. Just kidding, I didn’t clog my toilet, but I did have to flush about 50 times because my pee wouldn’t go down the drain. The lack of water pressure and the small drain are not best friends and are constantly at odds against each other.

I’m pretty used to life here I think. I know because the sight of cockroaches doesn’t bother me anymore. In fact, two days ago, I fumigated my house and a militia of cockroaches scattered into the open spaces and popped over like popcorn on their backs. I’d say about 25 came crawling out in surrender only to realize that I had poisoned them a few minutes prior. So, I grabbed my broom and swept them out of my house. The annoying thing is, the next day, yesterday, there were another 15 or so roaches that decided not to come out the first night. It was gross. I was happy for the entire day until I got home last night and spotted 3 more dead and 4 more playing on my cereal box. Damn roaches.

But I had a great nap yesterday. I think I can live on a farm when I go back to the US. I know this because yesterday, I fell asleep on some chicken feed yesterday and took a 2 hour nap. When I woke up, I was surrounded by little chicks pecking around for some food. But the cute thing was, Angie (an adorable and plumpy 10 year old) took advantage of my nap and drew me sleeping. I looked Chinese in the picture and my body was crooked, but it was really good. I’ll have to post up a picture someday.

I’ve been running more. I started about 2 weeks before I went back to the States and when I got back, decided to run everyday. Its something I dread looking forward to everyday. Its my time to be alone and run with my thoughts – and on my way back, I walk and talk to God. It’s pretty cool because I hear all sorts of different sounds that nature makes.

Regarding work: Yesterday, I met with my association that I was sent here to work with to see if we could make progress as all of our crops were lost. I also was able to speak to the woman who invited me and spent several hours with her, just talking life and planning new ideas. In fact, the bread business I helped start is now going to diversify – we are going to start breeding chickens. With the success of the bread business, other people now want to join and be a part of it all. So now, we have two groups that will be breeding chickens. This should be fun. I also taught a girl who lost 3 fingers how to use the computer. She is really smart, but unbelievably shy. I can only imagine what the kids would say to her. People are also awaiting my next course. I’m really impressed with how much interest people have in my courses – especially since the next one is going to be on relationships and marriage and I will rip the men a new one.

But I’m liking the monotony of things. It sounds terrible I know, but I’ve never been ’stuck’ anywhere for a long time like this. I have to learn new ways to have fun, new ways to keep myself active, and new ways to pass the time. A friend of mine said that she can never really keep track of where I’m at, but here I am, in one place, living life, doing what I do.

This was one choppy post.

One life. Taking it one day at a time to make it count.

I just got back from the US after my first trip back. I have just a few thoughts, but a ton of feelings about being back. But before I go into that, I have to write about my trip back.

My flights alone totaled up to about 7 hours of airtime. But as soon as I landed into San Jose, it took me 14 hours on one bus before I got to where I needed to be. I landed at 11:49a and got to my destination at 4:00a. Yes, that was one brutal ride. I ended up meeting a couple of missionaries though on the way and we pretty much had a 14 hour conversation comparing travel stories and experiences. The couple does missions training for local pastors and helps the locals develop leadership skills and plant churches. What a great need they fill! It was a great time and I really appreciated what they were doing here in Panama. It made me glad to know that there are people who dedicate their whole lives to a worthwhile cause and trust God for their finances and provisions. Unfortunately, the next day, I had to wake up at 7, which left me with 3 hours of sleep and a very tired mind, body, and soul.

Madeline and Kyle’s wedding was beautiful. It was a smaller gathering (still at least 100 large), but really intimate. You could tell that almost everyone there was extremely close to the family and it meant a lot for both parties that they were getting married and that the guests could come. It made me think about my own life and my romantic life and wonder whether or not that sort of luck will happen to me someday. Madeline was the precious princess she I have always known; poised and elegant. Her dress was stunning and even as they gave the speech she told the world that the wedding was for them. Everything was perfect about the day and she embodied an excellence in internal beauty was was well displayed externally through everything from her dress to the colors on her eyes. I will definitely have to find someone who impresses me as much as she does someday in the future. Kyle was a little boy about to get the greatest present in the world he’d been looking forward to his whole life. On his face was an endless smile and his heart was clearly on his sleeve. He was of course, a super-stud and his golden tie and vest symbolized the heart-of-gold that he possesses. I can’t even explain the joy he must’ve felt, as he is, if you get to know him, a guy’s guy. Oh the things love can do to people – it’s great.

My lips and face almost cracked off while I was in Chicago due to the dry weather and being back in humid weather feels great. Everyone told me I brought Panama’s weather with me as the week before was freezing and horrible. I never thought I’d be so positive about heat and humidity (I’ve always loved the cold weather and was always against rain), but here I am enjoying the moisture in the air. It feels like I’m in a sauna that I can live in. My spirits are renewed and my energy has returned.

Much thanks to everyone who made my trip one of the best and most meaningful trips of my life. The conversations we had and the words we shared filled the spaces we were in with love, hope, and joy. I am grateful for each and everyone of you who opened you home to me, fed me a meal, took me out, or even offered to take me out – I wish I had more time to see everyone and eat a meal with everyone.

On faith, hope, and love.

The thought refuses to escape me. And “these three remain: faith, hope and love. Of these, love is the greatest.”

I can’t stop thinking about this phrase. I find myself completely enamored with the idea. The idea that love surpasses faith and hope is astonishing for several reasons. First of all, love is something of an exchange, a gift that we give, but something we must first receive. It requires that we truly see the other person for their worth, not just their status or what they can offer us. We must look within their lives, beyond the clothes, looks, job, beliefs, history, and habits in order to see that value within them. It is only then that we can move forward in loving someone. In order to give it, we must first have it. Love is both an emotional experience and a deliberate choice. But of all things, it is something that pushes the other into the center stage – where we can find beauty in sacrifice, empathy, service, and genuine care.

As I live from day to day, meditating on the Word of God through prayer, I am discovering new meaning to this passage. It would at first seem that faith is the most important thing. After all, everything apart from faith is sin and it is faith that we are called to have when it comes to Christ and his Kingdom. God calls us into a dependency of Him, something I believe is the perfect definition of faith. To have faith means to hold on to a promise or a commitment that someone made to you regardless of the circumstances that seem to swallow you whole. It is to believe that the other person is trustworthy and good to follow through. It isn’t just about motives, but about the realization of the motives. It is to understand what their intentions are and then to embrace them. To have faith means not to believe blindly, but receive with open hands the truth that was set forth and shared with us. It is trusting that their actions are congruent with their words. It is a security. The difficult thing is that we are constantly battling between the tensions of two sorts of faith in this era: the material faith and the saving faith.
Faith must be based on facts. It doesn’t have to be based on evidence. What is the difference? Facts are the truthful objective statements that exist whether or not we accept them. Fact: we are all broken beings in need of saving. Evidence is something that we can utilize to verify the facts. Most crime scenes provide evidence, but it usually requires time and dedication to find the clues to what happened. Evidence is sometimes deceiving and at times manipulating, but what we hope for in the search and discovery of evidence is that we will find hints or pieces to the puzzle of Truth (with a capital ‘T’). Evidence sometimes exists and at othertimes, is nowhere to be found. What really matters is whether or not we rely more on evidence or on facts. Its easy to depend on evidence because it is tangible, but as mentioned earlier, sometimes, evidence is nothing more than a red herring. We must not forget that faith is a dependency that must be based on facts and nothing more.

I have lived with a material faith for quite some time now. Living in America, you realize quickly that without financial stability, you can kiss your lifestyle goodbye. We rush to adjust our lives, values, and motivations around this economic system and try to get ahead by learning how to make all the right choices. We seek out experiences that will put us in the lead and find ourselves competing with people we’ve never met for jobs we really don’t want. Grades get in the way of intimate relationships when we enter high school and life zooms by without a unique memory. Every year looks like the last until you go to college and then those four years become a monochromatic sequence of time as well until you find your job. You hit the age of 21 and graduate, find a job and from then on, whether you stick with one job or try out 6 jobs until you find something you think might be worth spending your time on, you convince yourself that you are spending 9-14 hours a day in a worthwhile way. You make close enough friends to get by, but you don’t have the sort of relationships and friendships that you know your heart yearns for, has yearned for. Life is a blur, you get married to someone who seems to become your roommate where you do everything down the line and split the duties 50/50 instead of truly becoming one and living for each other. Love fades, but a kid comes along and even more years go on – the kids bring such joy. You continue to work so that you can fulfill your visiion from college and provide a healthy and happy lifestyle for your family. Your children go to a decent school in a decent neighborhood and have no exposure to the realities of the injustice in the global world, let alone the inner city. Your dependency is fully on your ability to perform, to earn money, and to maintain a level of living where your marital conflicts won’t become inflamed by the stress of limited finances. Life has become comfortable and secure, thanks to the economic and material system of the world.

Now, if you believe in God, you don’t forget his share and give him the 10-15% of your earnings as a tithing offering, but that’s ok. You make more than enough anyway. That extra 10-15% we give as an offering would either go to the church or added to your retirement account or the new Jet Ski you’ve been wanting to get.
It is so easy to fall into the traps of the world. I remember justifying to myself as I walked out the back door into my garage debating whether I should take the BMW or the Lexus that I was living a life of faith. Turning the car into the restaurant where I would eat a $100 meal that I wouldn’t hesitate to think twice about as each piece of meat melted in my mouth had become routine. Going out to shop at stores that you see the celebrities with the enormous publicity bank accounts was once something that made me think twice about, but no longer did it cross my mind when I spent $300 on a wallet that I would replace in a year. I worked for a lifestyle that most other people do as well and the normalcy of it all was blinding to me. I had no clue how my life of comfort was making me bitter. We must consider the object of our faith before all else, because the object of our faith will determine the values we hold and the values we hold will determine the outcome of our decisions and our lives.

Hope works the same way, except it doesn’t create a present addiction like faith does. Hope, is faith in the future. I have thought about what it means to hope and like faith, hope can become perverted. It is, like faith, also a beautiful and absolutely empowering concept. It gives us a confidence of the future and a comfort in the unknown. It gives us a sense of security that things will be all right, regardless of what the current outlook looks like. It gives us a light at the end of the tunnel. And like faith, if hope’s object isn’t hope-worthy, we will end up with a false hope or even a negative one. It will lead us down a path of decay as our minds will lose any sense of sanity and our souls will wither away. Hope is what makes the future meaningful.

Let’s face it. We don’t live in a perfect world, so if we continue to hope for imperfection, it doesn’t really give us much to be joyful or positive about. The hope that Christ offers in the Cross and the hope that all things will be redeemed to perfection is the greatest hope one can ask for, but just as we learn, it isn’t easy to hope in God. In fact, from the perspective of those who don’t know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the same God of Paul the Apostle and of John the Baptist, there is no hope in perfection, only in the idea that things might get better. Time becomes an issue to those who don’t have a hope in God because time is the only factor that keeps us from getting there. We try to do and perform to the best of our abilities to realize that hope within us, but we find that we cannot accomplish what we want or get to the point we are trying to arrive at. And if we do get there, we find that we need to hope in something else, because the human condition quickly gets used to it all and everything gets old quickly. Let’s face it, we can never be satisfied in something that isn’t infinitely quenching.

Here’s what is interesting about these three things. If we look into the passage, we find that the context of the chapter is love. 1 Corinthians 13 is the famous chapter that gives love attributes by which we can determine whether or not we live in our out of love. More interesting about the passage is that everything we experience as people to develop faith and hope will eventually cease when “the perfect comes.” As this perfection comes, we will find ourselves with a clearer vision of reality, that God loves us completely and without conditions, and in the knowledge of that, we learn to love God and others.

How good these three are. At times, I wonder if faith and hope were necessary to begin with. It appears that the first two are pointers to the third. Somehow, the fall of man created a need for us to live in faith and to have hope, as they are the means by which we can grow in love. But then again, we are held up and sustained by God in all things and there is much hope in that as well. It is a mystery to which I have yet to discover and tap into its depths. To love, we must depend on God to provide us with the capacity. To hope, we must understand that there is something greater, and that something greater gives us glimpses into God’s promise and provision for our future, and the knowledge of the reality to be received allots us with a love for God for His goodness, mercy, grace, and righteousness. How love endures through all the pain, hurt, and sin of the world, we will never know. Its an eternal mystery I am looking forward to spend eternity to find out.

My hope is that this makes sense.

One life. Making it count.

You NEVER know where the day will take you. One moment you are finishing off a nice refreshing run, wiping off the last droplet of sweat off your brow as you converse with a neighbor about the baseball game; the next, you find yourself in a situation you wish God didn’t allow to happen. The sad thing is that the thing that should never happen happens often.

The day began like it has for the past week, gloomy mornings with a light rain to keep me guessing if the clouds will move in our favor or against us to bring even more bothersome rains. This isn’t the sort of rain people look forward to either. In Southern California, we complain when it rains even though we badly need it because we don’t want to be bothered by nature. Here, nature has pillaged the town and left no crop standing. Everything that was planted, then replanted due to the floods in December, has been lost, again. Fortunately, this time, the rain clouds went off to bother some other poor community that hasn’t been bothered by over 8 straight days of rainy, gloomy days.

In the morning, I went to Changuinola (the provincial capital) with a community member to look into starting a Panama Verde club within my site. I got up, brushed my teeth with the water I had collected the night before in the rain, and dressed myself in my usual mangy attire. As we finished the meeting, I decided that I did NOT want to head back to site right away so I met up with a couple of other volunteers and ate lunch. We had pizza and it was yummy. Anytime I can get away from rice and beans, I take the opportunity without taking a beat. Unfortunately, the pizza didn’t really agree with my stomach so I have been having problems with it since. The chocolate that I can’t seem to stop eating probably isn’t helping either. I’d say that I consumed about 2 pounds of chocolate today.

Around five, I decided to head back on a bus. I arrived home and immediately changed into my sleeveless New Balance running shirt, Abercrombie gym shorts, and my cow poop stained Nike’s. This has been the outfit that I have been wearing for the last week. The water doesn’t stop pouring down so my clothes don’t dry; therefore, I have no clean clothes to wear when I am lounging around at home. I really smell with these clothes on, but who am I trying to impress? I go on a run, plugging my iPod into my ears and turning on a sermon by John Piper on the importance of defending those who are defensless and weak. As I returned, I visited with several of my favorite people in site and listened to the baseball game that was going on between my province Bocas del Toro (currently ranked number 1) and Colon.

After listening for too long and hearing the name of the local Disputado, Benicio Robinson a hundred thousand times too many, I fared well to my friends and headed down the road. The baseball games here are sponsored by the local politicians and this being an election year, every candidate puts out all the stops to make sure they either get elected, or re-elected. Benicio is the current ticket holder and paid a good chunk of change to get his name inserted into every play – ‘It’s a pinch hit! Benicio Robinson, the man you can trust. He is going home! Benicio Robinson wants you to know that he will meet your needs. Strike out! Benicio Robinson understands your needs.’ Need I say more?

I stopped by several houses to greet some of the members of my community and as I was nearing the store, randomly decided to turn around and say hello to a teacher friend of mine who has 5 wonderful kids that when I returned from the second flood evacuation, gave me a standing ovation and shouted so loud that I caught the neighbors peering out their windows and doors trying to figure out what was going on. It was quite the warm reception. These kids were simply excited because I was back; not because I was going to give them something or that they were expecting something from me, but simply because they were happy to see me. The thing is, I don’t think I’ve visited their house more than three times during my time in the community. It really did wonders, therapeutically for my soul to be wanted.

As I approached Yesenia, she was sitting by the well in front of her house with a red nose. She was sniffling with a tissue in her hand so I assumed she had a cold. Most people are dealing with some sort of illness right now. Our mutual friend, Anderson was sitting with her. He was waiting for a bus to come around so that he could go tend to some family matters in the provincial capital. It was dark and unlikely that he would catch one. I greeted them both and since I thought she was sick, I asked her how she was feeling and if she needed any cold medicine. She sort of laughed, gripping her phone tightly, and just proceeded to ask me how I was doing. I said I was ok and pressed to ask her how she got sick – I had no idea she was actually crying. She told me that the climate changing and the constant rains had caused it. At that moment, her daughter Estella came out of the house sniffling and where she would normally give me a big hug and shout my name, she just looked at her mom and then went back inside. I asked her if she was sick too because at the moment, they looked more like they were sick than they were crying. She said that Estella had been crying. I asked her if Estella was being disobedient, which seemed an odd question to ask because she is an incredible girl. Yesenia laughed and said nothing. We continued with small talk until Anderson’s bus came to all of our surprise and he dashed off.

A minute of silence passed between myself and Yesenia on the verge of awkwardness because I could tell that something was up and that this supposed sickness was more of a rouse than anything else. At the end of a minute, she asked me if she could be honest with me. I had no idea what to expect, but I said yes. She then told me that she was actually crying and not sick, and for the same reason as Estella. She told me that they were going through personal problems; family problems. As soon as she said family problems, I knew what had happened.
She burst into tears saying that she had invested so many years, so much time, and made so many sacrifices in her life for this. And out of nowhere, for something like this to occur, she felt lost and kept asking me how she could find peace. She was in a serious situation and she needed to make a decision. I told her that she would do the right thing and that she needed to turn to God. God is the only source of true peace – I’m done with the mumbo jumbo false substantive peace that comes from decieving yourself or trying to convince yourself of something that you don’t really want to be convinced of. I wondered for a moment as to whether or not it would be appropriate to pray with her, but I decided to hold it in and just pray silently as she just let it all out. She had no one to talk to and didn’t want the rest of the community to know what was going on. We spoke for five hours – well, she spoke, I merely listened.

I hate the infidelity of men, the lack of character in these generations, and the stupidity of the idea that people are disposable. I hate that people don’t make wise decisions when choosing guys and I hate even more that men are irresponsible. I hate that guys are generally after one thing and that women can’t see it. I hate that good guys finish last and that women have to learn the hard way. I hate that women have to hurt because of the immaturity of men. There is no excuse anymore. It doesn’t matter – there is no excuse for infidelity. I hate that money, power, prestige, and a lack of class seems to dismiss wrongdoings of men. I burn with hatred for the sin of infidelity.

Yesenia and her husband have been married for nearly two decades and have five children. She is a special soul and different from most Panamanians. She views the future and takes into account the importance of disciplining her children. Furthermore, she takes extra time out of her day to help kids who are struggling in school and her house is always full with her neighbors’ kids who are over to enjoy the atmosphere of the house. I’ve never seen her say that she cannot do anything for anyone and anytime I ask her to do something, she complies. She is an incredible woman who loves to help people and encourage people – and has the humility to ask how she can improve as a person. Before we found out about the bastard cheating on her, I had made an announcement to the community that I was going to do a marriage/relationship seminar. She asked if she could participate to see how she could become a better wife. My heart aches for her and the more I think of her and all the precious women like her, the more angry I get at the majority of the worthless men out there.

Here’s my challenge to you men. Stop being worthless and give reasons for women to lose faith in us. Let us respect women and cherish them for the simple reason that they are our sisters in the human race – made in the image of God. Let us increase our own standards for what it means to be a man and change the status quo. No longer can we denegrate ourselves to mediocracy and pathetic attempts to be cool or pursue our physical pleasures.

On behalf of men, women, please accept my sincerest apologies.

I recently looked through my previous entries and noticed how dark I have become after joining the Peace Corps. I guess I had a lot of stuff to be stripped away of from the material to the physical comforts and my absolutely ridiculous passion for luxury.

On Facebook, there has been a recent note that has been going around where you ‘tag’ your friends and write 25 random things about yourself to others. My friend Daniel, in all his wit, selected 25 friends and wrote one thing about each of them. This is what he wrote about me: “Oh A-Ray-A-Chang, the Chang Banger. He once decided to work at the Armani outlet for a couple of weeks to get the discounts. Then again, these are supposed to be interesting facts, and anybody who knows Ray would not be surprised by that. Ooops.” Now, as much as I laughed out loud while reading it and enjoyed the thought that people relate luxury to me, I am realizing how much I hate the fact that it is true. My life should look different, and I have been a poor witness and a poor steward in the things that I have bought and the lifestyle I have lived before coming here. I know that I am not over the high-brands that I have grown to appreciate and love over the years, but I also know that I need to get over such shallow pursuits of nothing – even though I’d like to think that I look really good in Hugo Boss and Armani. Its sad how much I have fallen in love with such futile things.

We are flooding again though. The rain just doesn’t seem to stop here. The community members are beginning to blame me, telling me that every time I come back, the town floods. This is the third time the town has flooded and the fields have become ruined. If I wasn’t so sad that my community keeps losing their livelihoods, I’d be laughing because of how ridiculous this is. This time last year, the water source had dried out because of the lack of rain. When I think about that, I’m glad that it’s been raining. Who knows how horrible I’d smell if I had no water to bathe with, even though the water that comes out of the faucet is always brown and dirty. It’s like taking baths in chocolate water – at least chocolate milk would leave your skin feeling silky soft. Try Quik with water sometime, it’s gross.

Fortunately though, I have a rain water catchment system. I have started to collect Dasani and Aquafina bottles. It’s amazing how those two brands of water made their way here. Coca Cola is truly amazing (who makes Aquafina?) – their reach is incredible. So everyday, I wake up, grab a bottle that’s been filled with rain water and brush my teeth with the toothbrush that a cockroach has probably been playing with during the night. How do I know? When I go out of the house for several hours, the cockroaches appear in my favorite places: 1. my sink where my cookware and toothbrush are, 2. my bathroom where I do my duty and usually find myself naked to take a shower, and 3. my bedroom where I walk in the dark to find my bed. I use my iPod as light to scare off any bugs that have found a nest atop of my Thermarest and stinky sheets.

Speaking of stinky. I have devised a system where I take showers out of a bucket. And here’s the awesome part – the bucket showers are warm water! Yes folks, I heat the water up before I bathe now so I don’t have to shiver when I am bathing. It takes me three full pots to be heated with boiling water, but its worth the 25 minutes before I take a shower. Now, I enjoy scooping up my water with a small plastic bowl that used to be filled with dishwasher soap out of a 5 gallon paint bucket. Plus, I conserve water this way. It’s win-win. I win and so does nature. Unfortunately, after I do take warm water showers, I sweat immediately after I get out because the temperature isn’t favorable to my body heat. What can I say, I’m just a hot beast.

I hate how serious I’ve become. It feels like I don’t know how to have a good time anymore. I’ve become an old man. In fact, I just want to sleep all day and rest. Is that so bad though? Really… Someone pour me a scotch or a glass of red. Please.

I’m an all or nothing sort of guy. People who know me know that I live on one extreme or another. In friendships, I hate the type of friend you hang out with all the time, but never really truly know because they guard themselves off. I’d rather just be a contact or a good friend, nothing really in between. Hang out buddies drive me nuts. In dating, I either want to be on dates one or two, or in a long term relationship. Dates three to whatever are just annoying. They just seem to fill the gaps of time. I think that by date two, I generally know whether or not I want to be with someone. That’s why most of my dating relationships never go past two dates. Correction: all of my relationships over the past 6 or 7 years have never gone past two dates. In knowledge, I either want to be in the newly discovery stage or in the expert stage. I hate being in the middle where I know enough to discuss something, but not enough to really add new ideas to the conversation. In work, I either want to be the CEO or nothing at all. What does this all mean? It just means that I have been ignoring the middle ground that exists and as much as I’d like to avoid it and have tried to, I simply cannot.

Of course, the problem has been me all along (as it usually is). In my faith quest in Christianity, I have always admired two types of people: the people that were truly saved by an impossible grace from the worst sort of lives (drug addicts, people who were abused as children, people who were raised in the hardest of conditions, etc.) and the people who have lived their lives perfectly. An example of the former would be the sort of pastor that you’ll find serving in a compassion ministry that focuses on outreach to the person that they once were. An example of the latter wold be the sort of pastor that you find raised in a Baptist background with a series of preachers that preceded them. Of course I’m being a little too general, but you get the point. The thing I admire about each of them are that they lived in either extreme. It almost seemed like they skipped the middle ground. For them, it was a 180 transformation. I’m not saying that they didn’t experience pain or hardship, that they didn’t suffer or struggle, but that in the line of faith, they were either there or they were on the complete other end of the spectrum. There were no questions as to how much God knows or why suffering exists in the world. The questions came after their arrival into faith – something that I am questioning in myself. I wonder if I have arrived into faith or if I am living in a horrible self-deception.

I know Jesus lived and I have studied and found conclusion that the Bible is unbelievably accurate and consistent. That means that I really have had to decide whether or not Jesus was a liar, a lunatic, or truly what he said he was, Lord. The reasons for faith make sense as a Christian, especially since the great battle is generally within ourselves, as to whether we want to be God or let Him be who He already is. In other words, I have come to a peace within myself that I am not the Ptolemaic center of the universe, but that God is the one who holds it all in His hands, as difficult as it is to accept. I have also come to accept that what is, is not what should be, and not what will always be. But even when I know all of that, I have lost a sort of innocent faith that requires a blindness to all the information while delicately holding the truth in a cradle. At times, I fear that I have found too much evidence to have faith and that my faith has become stale because of it.

I don’t want to live a life where I am certain of the facts of faith and not experience it. The two extremes I have noticed so often are that people experience the information they know. They are not cluttered by the knowledge, nor are they calloused to it. It seems to kneed out the knots of apathy in the lives of so many people that truly live our their faith whether or not they know all the answers or facts. I want to be sold out that I can’t help but live it, breathe it, and dream it 24/7.

So the middle ground of faith.

What I’m saying is, I hate the process, I always have, but I know I always won’t. Its a very real aspect to faith that I need to learn to embrace. And the reality is, that its the ability to live in the present. I admire people who can learn from their past, consider the future, and fully live in the present, but that is one ability that I have found myself lacking in severely. If there was a point of pride, I’d consider myself one of the best at learning from the past and dreaming up an imaginative future, but shamefully, I always miss the present. It was the same in every experience I have ever been a part of. And that might be why nothing is ever good enough.

I compared everything to my idea of the best whether the best existed or not. Outside of great food, there has never really been anything that I described as perfect. Maybe that’s why I love to eat at such high end restaurants or completely infamous hole in the walls. Food seems to be the only thing that if done right, cannot disappoint me. But with every school I went to, every program I have been a part of, every church I attended, and every organization I worked with/for, something has been completely and utterly wrong. I never found myself satisfied because I always wanted more and I always wanted it better.

My mom had a dream of me before I left, and whether you believe it or not, the accuracy is astounding. I was on a bike riding down a road. I peddled so furiously that I didn’t take notice of the oncoming traffic or the things I was passing on this road. Everything was a blur and I was always in a hurry. When I had arrived, I found myself severely cut and injured on my leg as I had been swiped by a truck while peddling and it was only when I had stopped that I noticed the injury.

While praying for me, my friend Maddie wrote that she saw a compass with a needle that kept spinning wildly. It spun in every direction and kept on spinning until it finally landed on the North Point and just stopped. She attributed it to my many passions and finally finding a singular passion while I was here.

Both of them rang true for me and resonated in my soul. So much so that yesterday, I called my mom and Maddie to hear their voices. I wish I had told them everything that was going through my mind, but even as I write this, I am struggling to find the words to write.

My pride has killed me up to now. My invulnerability to become a subject to the process and to embrace the present. It hindered my learning to really only hear what I wanted to hear. It stopped me from truly experience life as it was meant to be experienced. In the present.

I can’t do it on my own. At the end of the day, I am learning to be humble. To stop rushing a million miles an hour and to take the time to step back and smell the flowers. My prayer is that God will teach me to enjoy the present and all that it encompasses.

Middle ground, here I come.

One life, letting God make it count.