A Thousand Questions

Through a friend I got to see this video. It confirms my sincere questions which I almost don't dare to speak out loud. I wrote out the text that is used in the video because she says a lot in only 10 minutes time.


( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiNBmNl88Pk )

Back before Creation;
Before the formation of all that is, there was;
You. God. Yourself.
Perfect. Complete. Needing nothing.
But did you look out at that empty sky;
with a lonesome ace for something more?
Something yet to be born, unformed?
We’re you reaching for us? We’re you reaching for me?

* A thousand Questions *

Let it BE you said and with that one command it was all underway;
Light and energy;
Gravity, synchronicity;
Orbits and galaxies;
Comets hurtling down the lactic highways
A space time ballet!
A thousand years but a day;
A brand new planet!
Hot with the fires of Creation;
Light thunders constructions;
Cells replication
DNA-code
And made it command of how to grow
Make yourself at home woman and man!
Walk the length of the land.
Scale the mountains, run the rivers;
Drink from the springs, let your free will wonder down from the pathways of this garden called Eden!

But wait, wait, have I got this straight?
We gave it all away.
We traded it away in a strange transaction.
The forging of the first weapons;
The spilling of first blood;
The trampling and trashing of paradise along with the gift, to pieces with a BANG!

So now the need of intensive care;
So now the rape of a star strip pair;
So now the cities get birched to slumps
So now the right is a suitcase puns.
Why? Why? Why? Why? WHY?

Why is a promising life ripped away?
Just when it catches stride and runs free
Take rattling counts and soldiers get cut down and never getting to say goodbye. Why?
Why are kids sleeping out in the cold?
Spreading out their mats on the side of the road?
Down in the dust, unable to trust or try with no tears left to cry?

WHY?!
How did it feel God?
When you walked this cracked shell of a planet?
Cried like a broken hearted
Shallow like the perfection of what was supposed to be
Up against the brutality of our reality.
Why? Why? Why?

(Girl singing)
“This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; His hand the wonders wrought.”

How many prayers are rising up, right now?
How many hopes are balanced on You?
God, your ancient story says you gave up your life, your flesh and your blood.
For love?
And as your story goes, you’re still reaching.
You watch over the grieving.
You capture every side.
You measure the space between every heartbeat.
And there’s a promise that wise it’s way through every weathered page
Of feast for the hungry;
The delivery of the captives;
Healing for the desolate;
The final satisfaction of justice, making all things new!

Hope in the clinics where the sick hold on;
Hope in the school and the holding cells;
It echoes in the halls of the hospitals;
Hope rises up in the cities and the warzones;
Hope in the courtroom and in the broken home;
In the seminaries and the suborn highways;
In the alleys of the homeless and the hungry;
In the shacks that omits and the compounds;
On the farms where the soil is hard and dry;
In the streets where the grieving mothers cry;
With the AIDS-orphans stare up at the stars;
Where the captives pound on the cell walls;
Through the goldmine, towns and the factories;
In the ghetto’s, in the prisons, in the cemeteries!

So where is it?
I don’t see it!
I don’t get it.
The fulfilment of the promise.
I don’t see it down here in the middle of the fear!
What hope can remain in the depth of this pain?
I don’t see it!

The earth is groaning night and day;
A song of human slavery;
Of dark decease and poverty;
Of children in captivity!
God that’s the sound that comes to ME!

Are you still far and way on high?
Still staring out at that empty sky?
Still reaching out with that longing hand?
I hear no voice and I don’t understand!

I know about theology.
I know You gave Your Son for me.
I know You’re wrapped in mystery.
I get ‘invisibility’.
But I still see their misery.
I hear their voices haunting me!
Saying who will come and set us free?
Who will come and set us free?
Who will come and set us free?

(From all over the world)
Here am I, send me
Me voici, m'envoie (French)
Ich bin hier, sende mich (German)
Είμαι εδώ, με στέλνω (Greek)
Sono qui, lo trasmetto (Italian)
私は、送る私をここにある (Japanese)

“This is my Father’s world. The battle is not done.
Jesus you died, we shall be satisfied.
Earth and heaven be One.”

Hier ben ik, stuur mij (Dutch)
나는, 보낸다 저를 여기 있다 (Korean)
Estou aqui eu, emito-me (Portuguese)
Здесь я, посылаю меня (Russian)
Aquí estoy, me envío (Spanish)
Etc...


Here am I…

Thoughts - October 16th 2008

Thursday (October 16th) already, I cannot believe how time is flying.
It is the weirdest thought to think it has only been 5 days so far on one hand and on the other hand it seems like I have lived here before and it has been years.

Life in this continent is everything different than I was ever used to.
I keep questioning myself how the heck I am going to bring my experiences back to the Netherlands. All those 23 years of what I was used to...
Now that I have seen parts of Kenya, I realize life can be a complete 180 degrees different than what or who I am.
Yet...a very important yet - all these people I see on the streets or the people I have the privilige of to meet - are all the same also.

No one can choose where to be born.
I have been given the amazing privilige to be born in a warm and loving family where I know I am safe and where I have been taught very valuable morals that make me a healthy balanced person.
At the same time, my surroundings in my culture in the Netherlands 'teach' me to rely on 'things' or 'people' or 'situations' or 'truths' which made me the way I am right now.
All I did and do is normal to me. Showers, refridgerators, the quiet streets at night, the structured and organized way of living, my breakfast-lunch and dinner days, the way of interacting with peers: E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G!

People here in Kenya are also not given a choice of where to be born.
Their simple, more 'back to basic' way of living they are bound to is amazing and almost unbelievable.
To me, this 'back to basic-thing' is one of the things that makes me cry the most when I think about it. For there is a longing in me so deep to also just dwell in Holy and Loving values.
Even now when I actually have a moment to write down my thoughts and let it come to me...

It is the beauty I see here in the value African people still have and we in the Netherlands have lost. As I can only speak for myself...I don't own a certain peace or warmth and smile or look in my eyes, thankfulness or joy - that people seem to have here.
It's just not in me. I have not been developed in that sence and it makes me sad and desperate to learn it still. This is my prayer.

Imagine you're standing on a street in Kenya, where cows, goats and people, walk, run - and (almost) every person spots you. The primair thought that crosses my mind is: "Why are all these people noticing me? They look at me as if I am different. I wonder for myself what goes through their mind. Then, I realize - I am surrounded with people with only another colour of skin. People, only raised in a different culture. Humans, just as me - but who look at me. What do they think of me?
Do they despise me? Are they jealous?
I, I personally would think negatively 'Oh, there you have another Mzungu who has all this money and comes over from her wealthy country check us poor people out...'.

The opposite seems to be true though, really. At least in my experience.
What I see is a loving way of respect. They look at me respectfully.
When I wave at children I pass on the street, they start smiling, giggling and wave back.
They seem happy to see me?
This respect, this love and joy, this kindness and goodness - is something so undescibable to me -that it makes me just sad. Why would my first thought be so negative?

I realize I'll go back in less than 2 weeks and I'll be back in the surrounding with people who have never had the experience for themselves as I am having right now. I thought I didn't need such an experience to be enthousiastic about my own job at Compassion and in a way I think I could easily have done my job joyfully for another few years - but this experience is changing my life upside down. It's shaking me and it makes certainties shiver of thoughts I thought I had settled.

There are so many more things to write about. From the second we arrived at Nairobi airport until this very moment I am sitting here - we as the group have been going all over to places. To me - it's more important to try and grasp the thoughts and feelings and changes this is setting in me.

I talked with Anthony over the LDP-dinner (Leadership Developement Program).
For him, as he grew up in one of the slumps in Kenya and was also one of the 'average' Kenyans who I see on the streets this very day... he, individually had the joy to come to the Netherlands and see the differences himself, just as I am experiencing the differences here in Kenya for myself.
Trying to combine 2 worlds in your head is impossible.
How can you, when you haven't lived and experienced it when you have never seen, smelled, heard, touched, tasted any differences.
He knows the culture-'shock' we're experiencing for he had the exact same experience in the Netherlands. But then the other way around.

Through pictures and little filmmaterial I hope to show who ever is reading these posts and is interested - what I am talking about.

You know how in a dream, you try to explain a person sometimes what you have dreamed but while you're sharing the story - you come to realize the story doesn't make any sense? The structure of the dream, the combinations of situations...in the dream it all made sense and it seemed all so real. But once I share my dream with a friend, they look at me as if I am speaking another language.
That same way is how this experience is to me and how I am afraid I won't be able to find words and expressions to show those of what I've seen and experienced.
I am experiencing an experience which I cannot just explain with words. Nore with pictures or film. All those films, documentaries and stories I've heard through people who've had the similair experience - it won't capture the experience and changes that are taking place in me. Not in completion...

But I am happy if only a part will come across...

0,001% of October 16th 2008

Mzungu me (Kenya part I)

Full day number 1 in Kenya. Here I actually am. As I am sitting here in the Business centre of the Fair View hotel - I just got back from my first day of the Compassion Vision trip-week here in Nairobi Kenya.
The flight went wonderful as I amused myself with the newest movies. Jaaahh! :-)

It is truly the weirdest and most unbelievable thing to be here. It seems like a different world that I have been before. I feel comfortable being here and it almost seems as if I know all the people that I meet here. On this first day with the most fresh and newest impressions I'm trying my hardest to find the right words for the things I am seeing and experiencing.

Yesterday, October 11th 2008, we were picked up from the airport by Susan and Jim, two WONDERFUL people from the Compassion Kenya office! They both work for the tours and travel-department. I stepped outside of the airport to our van and a nice warm breeze was welcoming me into Africa.
Oh my gosh, I feel sooooo white and mzungu here! I think it is just general that people are looking at each other, but I notice it so sharply here in comparrison to the Netherlands because back home, people live so much more with there eyes towards the street.
After a good night sleep at a very nice and friendly hotel here and after some breakfast we were picked up by Susan and Jim to go to a homevisit. I visited a 16 year old boy, Daniel who is in project 317. He LOVES soccer and we were being told he had a soccer match that evening. As we (Hugo, Annemiek and me, Susan and Mercy (a projectworker) walked through the small red-mudded alleys towards his home - we were welcomed into the home of Daniels mom. A super friendly lady who was so honoured and grateful to have us over. It was for me a typical picture of a poverty home. Laundry hanging outside, Goats and beautiful beautiful children, I think there were like 8 of them. They just finished their lunch and we went inside to talk a little. The mom told us she was single and mother of 5. She was grandmother of 4 children, who were also there. The children were seriously too adorable. I just wanted to pick them up and squeeze them, oh my!

After about half an hour there we went back to the project and the church, which were next to each other and there is where about 2,5 hour (if not longer) church service started. Hugo already warned me that Kenyans love their equipments as to microphones and speakers and so they make full use of its volume! MY EARS!!! And the Lord-AH!, Said-AH! That He-Ah! Loved-Ah! The world-Ah! so much-Ah!...etc. :-)
It was a very African experience I think.

For myself I just try so hard to not be too much the touristic mzungu. I have no clue how to behave around such a different culture and I am told so many different things of do's and don'ts that it confuses me. I've already made up my mind, I'm just going to be me. Mzungu me.

Love, poverty and my new favorite word: within.

One weekopening at my work at Compassion my co-worker showed us this Documentary called "The Shadows of Virtue". Sometimes I have this thing where in a film or song SO MUCH is being said, that I want to see it several more times to really grasp what they're saying. This is what happened to me while watching this DVD.

Every person formulates or communicates different and this intriges me so much, esspecially looking at WHAT they're saying or questioning or wondering. The true questions are similar to what goes and runs and doubts through my own mind on a regular basis.

To give you an idea:
I quote:
"The Shadows of Virtue is an introspective look at the actions God's love compels us to take in response to the crisis of global poverty.
- What are the complexities and pitfalls of learning how to love across cultural, economic, political, religeous and racial barriers?
- How do we honor and value those in need without objectifying them?
- Can we avoid the temptation to fixate upon a single virtue rather than love itself?
The lessons to be learned here are applicable to all - not just in the context of what is happening in the Third World, but what happens in our communities, our homes and our hearts.
The Shadows of Virtue will illuminate this fundamental call to love others as an end unto itself."
End quote.

This documentary is no longer a documentary on a DVD to me. It's a creative and real way of expessing human desires and struggles in our mind and hearts concerning the bigger 'poverty-questions'.
The more I think about it, the more I start to realize 'poverty' is a VERY big word.
As where I always thought it's those beautiful African half dressed kids on a sandy road with flies around their faces...I now realize it's in what light we decide to see poverty. Poverty is all around. The closest poverty is in my own heart.

I can say - by going through this mind-process for myself in all these questions - I believe God is present. Everywhere and all the time. Here, in our civilized western wealthy world in where I just snap my fingers and it's been given but where at the same time I lack a depth of trust and faith in the uncontrolable - and He's also present in what we so call 'poor, opressed Third World'.

I realize I have to stop thinking I can simply Copy-Paste my thinking unto others. Who ever!
God says He chooses to be present IN the poorer. I start to believe God doesn't tell us this so clearly because he want to give us a guilt-trip or something - I believe God tries to teach us the 'friendly' insight in that we probably 'get' God wrong if we don't bring the two 'worlds' in balance.
Weigh them of: Underdeveloped world but yet a faith that makes me bow down versus Developed world who gained know-how throughout history about structure, planning, management etc.
Poverty probably won't be solved. Not the way my heart desires. Because let's face it. I strive perfection, constantly. Nope, in this world...that hardly excists. What I do have is hope. In this hope I'm gaining faith and trust that God is present and in control. Because believe me! - I am some controlfreak.
Saying I believe is one...trying to act upon it and standing within it is a second one.

Here are now some of the notes:

“You get, all together, different results when you, yourself, the whole of your being, is involved in what your are doing; when you are giving support, when you are visiting these people, when you are counselling them, when you are doing ABCD.
You get different types of results.
It is not an easy thing to describe; when you do something out of love, the results are different than when you do something out of pity or out of duty or out of concern.” (Judith Bukambu)

* There is kindness in Love; but love and kindness are coterminous.
* And when kindness is separated from the other elements of Love, it involves a certain fundamental indifference to it’s object,
* And even something like contempt of it.
- C.S. Lewis -

Love, according to Greg Boyd (USA):
"Love is ascribing worth to another at cross to yourself."
"Christ-like Love is ascribing unsurpassable worth to another at cross to yourself."

Love, according to Judith Bukambu (Tanzania):
What does it mean, to love orphans, widows, people that are infected with HIV-AIDS etc.?
“Giving up oneself willingly and freely but led by Christian Love.”

Love, according to Emmanuel Mbennah (Tanzania):
Love is the reality within me; virtues are the expression of that love.
Virtues may be simple, things that I do but maybe I don’t do them out of love. Maybe I do them for other reasons. I can show acts of compassion even if I don’t love.

“If you divorce any virtue of love, what you get is a behavioural definition of the virtue.
You get something that looks kind or that looks generous or considerate but in fact it is not motivated by love, it’s just external behaviour that’s motivated by something else.”
(Greg Boyd)
Paul (from the Bible) says: “Unless it’s motivated by love – it’s altogether worthless.”

* We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless.
* The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.
* We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
- Mother Teresa -

4 kinds of poverty according to Emmanuel Mbennah (Tanzania):
1. Spiritual poverty
2. Social poverty
3. Physical poverty
4. Economic poverty

“Tell me what you think about ("your") money and I can tell you what you think about God.”
- Billy Graham -

As annoying as I think he puts it because Tony Campolo is too much of an evangelical of some sort of Christian to me that makes me frustrated...if I face it for real...the man has a point... }:-(
Tony Campolo explains how usefull it would be if everyone asked themselves the following questions:
Lord, what is the vision that you have for me?
What dreams do you have for me in life?
What gifts do you want me to use?
How do you desire for me to spend my money, my resources, the car that I own, the house that I live in, the clothes that I wear?
Person: "So, You want me question every dollar that I spend?” Answer is: Yes.

“Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.”
- Martin Luther King -

“Relationships based on obligation lack dignity.”
- Wayne Dyer -

Greg Boyd explains the following in a metaphorical kind of way where a child in poverty could say:
“If in fact you are not motivated by ascribing worth to me, but rather you’re motivated because you want to get some guilt off of your chest of something, you may actually be looking down on me. You may even be distaining me. I am a problem that you are trying to solve.
And so in the very act of helping me out, - “yeah, I’m glad you gave me the food” – but in fact you may have contributed to the further de-humanizing me.”
(Greg Boyd)

Christ is the mystical presence in the poor and the oppressed (Matthew 25).
Christ chooses to be within those people.
(Greg Boyd)

“Since all comes from Him, since the very possibility of our loving is his gift to us,
And since our freedom is only a freedom of better or worse response.”
- C.S. Lewis -

In order to be effective in addressing poverty you need 3 things, according to Emmanuel Mbennah (Tanzania):
Our understanding of poverty has to be more complete, more comprehensive and more sound, because how we conceptualize poverty influences the plans and strategies we develop to address it.
See if we are truly and genuinely committed to the poor.
Be sure the political culture / orientation is more people centred.
People often become items – not a priority.

“Every love should produce virtues, but not every virtue is produced by love.”
- Emmanuel Mbennah -

Beneath my floorboards.

Good questions to ask ourselves sometimes could be:
Am I really real to my outside world?
Can I even?
What does it really mean to be transparant?
How or who am I in my naked true self?

This song of Sufjan Stevens was played about John Wayne Gacy jr. on Sufjan's album 'Come on feel the Illinoise'. It left me with the weirdest feeling. Looking at this clown in the picture...if a person would ask me the story about this man - I wouldn't guess him to be a serial killer of 33 young men.
Sufjan questions himself: Am I in my best behaviour just like him? What makes me and you different, better or healthier that John Wayne Gacy Jr.?

You should listen to this song again if you will and read the lyric with it...

Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy Jr.
His father was a drinker
And his mother cried in bed
Folding John Wayne's T-shirts
When the swingset hit his head

The neighbors they adored him
For his humor and his conversation
Look underneath the house there
Find the few living things

Rotting fast in their sleep of the dead
Twenty-seven people, even more
They were boys with their cars,
summer jobs

Oh my God Are you one of them?
He dressed up like a clown for them
With his face paint white and red
And on his best behavior
In a dark room on the bed
he kissed them all

He'd kill ten thousand people
With a sleight of his hand Running far,
running fast to the dead
He took of all their clothes for them
He put a cloth on their lips Quiet hands, quiet kiss On the mouth

And in my best behavior
I am really just like him

Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid...

Yammie Yellow raisin-Coconut cookies

For those who have tasted them, know how wonderful they are. It's takes about an hour in total to make this heavenly quality food. I won't be this momma who puts up all these cooking recipes now but without knowing about these cookies, you're world is not complete! (Ugh!)

- Little less than 2/3 Cup of butter
- Little less than 1/2 Cup of white caster sugar
- 1/4 Cup of normal sugar
- 1 bag of vanillasugar or one Teaspoon of vanilla-aroma
- 1 egg
- Little more than 1/2 Cup of flower
- 1 teaspoon of bakingpowder
- a little bit of salt
- 1/3 Cup of yellow raisins (washed)
- 1/3 Cup of grated coconut

Mix it all together really well and roll them into cooky-shapes.
Shove 'em in the oven (preheated for 10 minutes) on 350 Fahrenheit, bake the cookies between 10-15 minutes. Enjoy!

Men and women =

The difference: