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.