Preparations - Long post

Well, two more days, and then I awaken for a plane ride. (I'm not sure about that last sentence. To awaken is intransitive in Swedish - how is it in English? Maybe the present tense is awake. Yes, that sounds better. I awake for a plane ride)

I have been preparing. Apart from studying a little Xhosa, (Oi, what mixed up language I will have in three months or a year!) I spent today packing a suitcase, which I believe will be able to hold all of my possessions for up to a year. I have to give a lot - all - of the credit for this accomplishment to my mother, who is blessed with the ability to warp space inside suitcases.

I've spent the last two weeks reading a text for my sociology course (Development and Social Change, or "Why the author thinks you should be angry with America." But some of the critiques are well-founded), getting vaccinations, buying malaria medication (thank heavens for local grocery stores that give 11 months of malaria medication for $27!) setting my finances in order, and so forth.

The most important preparations I have undertaken, though, have nothing to do with travel at all. These past two weeks have been so much slower than my previous thirty, even with travel preparations. I have had time to sleep, to relax, and most importantly, to study and think.

Pondering has yielded rich rewards. Gordian knots I had thought impervious to steel have obediently unwound themselves. I don't doubt the general course of the past year - it has been better and more intense than many other years put together - but I feel I am through it now, and ready to begin another. In the past two weeks, my unanswered questions have been answered; the wounds of my soul have been salved, my mind has been set at rest. The benefit of pondering has been illumination.

Take a scholarship application, for example. I was surprised today to find that I could articulate my goals cohesively. I know what I want to do; I feel I understand my spiritual responsibility in my career, and I believe I have several appropriate ways to enter the field. Here's a short excerpt from the essay I'm submitting tomorrow:

I plan to establish and improve systems of education around the world; specifically, I want to work with Muslim communities around the world and establish schools that encourage children to practice a non-violent form of Islam. If I am able, I will work with the Chinese government to establish culturally appropriate schools for Uygur populations in western China. Alternatively, I will work with the Indonesian government and USAID to establish schools promoting moderate Islam in rural areas of Indonesia. ...
Personally, my experiences living abroad have expanded my perspective on morality, on ethical behavior, and on friendship. Exposure to multiple cultures and lifestyles has helped me to become a better person; most importantly, such experiences have informed and enhanced my religious belief and behavior. I feel that international experiences have helped me to draw closer to my God, and to better understand His divine influence in my life and in society at large. That increased understanding, in turn, has given me a greater interest in education globally. I believe that I have a religious duty to serve my fellowman, and I feel that my personal calling is to serve through the international development of education. Therefore, my interest in international affairs and global issues is centered on the development of education and is tied very directly to my faith and to the performance of my duty to Deity. ...
I intend to encourage cultural understanding and personal development through my academic and professional career. Through that increased understanding, I intend to invite peace in volatile regions of the world. I plan to develop working relationships of trust and understanding with leaders of communities and governments; through such understanding, I hope ultimately to help prepare the way for individuals to receive the blessings of the Gospel.

I could not have written that a year ago. I didn't have the vision of it.

Another example:
I recently read Stones into Schools, by Greg Mortenson. Apart from being a personal hero, I think that Mr. Mortenson is the closest example I have of what to expect in my life. A good friend and mentor challenged my plan for the future; he counseled that I will want a different set of plans when I have a family. I already knew that this was my calling, but the book opened my eyes to how my family life will likely be. Though it is not ideal for everyone, I know that it will be ok for me. Indeed, I believe that this career is what the Lord would have me do, so this arrangement will be ideal for me. Another friend reminded me, after I had come home - If you're where the Lord wants you to be, that's the safest (and I'll amend that to best) spot for you to be. She's right!

Best of all has been this realization: all of my experiences of the past year, when I have done right, have helped prepare me for the adventure I embark on now. I feel no fear, only a low and growing excitement. I intend to come back better than I am, and I feel that this truly is the beginning of greater things to come.

We shall see!

"And so came the dawn, like a page turning on a new day. He looked to the East and saw only light. He looked in his heart and felt only happiness" - Songs at Daybreak, Michael Taylor

As a test, I'm also including here some pictures from the past little while. These are random; again, this is only a test.

Me, fresh off the plane coming home

Sailing with my little brother. Afterwards, I went out on my own in a little boat with black sails, and managed to capsize the thing twice. Fortunately, I also managed to right the boat twice. :-D

At a young men's activity on international cooking, I taught the young men how to make fufu and egusi soup; I learned on my mission from some wonderful Nigerian and Ghanaian friends.

This is me, demonstrating how to eat the soup. Take a lump of the fufu, roll it into a ball with the hand you're holding it, put an indentation into it using your thumb, and then use it to scoop your soup. It's a manly thing in Nigeria to just swallow the thing whole without chewing (you leave the meat in the soup until the end and eat it separately, so you don't choke); the bigger the piece, the more manly. Of course, I had to demonstrate. :-D The young men loved it, and fortunately, we didn't have to perform the Heimlich on any of them. :-D

Here's the egusi soup, in a slightly out-of-focus picture

And, the audience feedback. (One of the young women stopped by as well) I would suspect they were just being nice, but they all had a lot of fun eating it, and a good number asked me for the recipe.

Renewal

It's time for a fresh start.

I've been thinking about my life right now. I'm slated to go to Africa in the next few weeks, and I'm still waiting to find out about travel in Indonesia.

More importantly, though, I have a chance to rewrite who I am, to cast a new mold for myself. I look forward to this more than the travel or the research. Or, more accurately, one of the reasons I look forward to the travel is for this opportunity. I hope to gain the benefit of two new cultural lenses, and to use the new perspective to pare away more of the bad from my life, and to develop more of the good.

I get to start afresh and create a new reputation as well, a new set of expected behaviors. I think I understand the appeal of the French Foreign Legion: no past, no expectations, except those of the army itself. Or of the Veil - no matter the mistakes from before, we have a chance to start anew. Our past still affects us, of course, but the fresh start removes us from the immediate string of our prior behaviors and leaves us only with tendencies, for good or ill.

And so, off on a voyage of self-discovery! To explore the ocean sea, to discover uncharted lands, ... to find a new world! (Sid Meier's Colonization, opening sequence)

And even if I come back immediately after Africa, let the journey continue. I come back to the poem:

Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. "Passage to India," by Walt Whitman

It must ever be so. If not, what is the point of life? Not to see the sights, but to become; metaphorically to travel, to explore. Even married - shouldn't each day be something of a new adventure? A new learning experience? Should I not become better each day than the day before? Should not each day help me come closer to Christ?

And so, off to the sea, to the wilderness, to the sky! I dare not rest; onward, my soul, exploring! That, quoting Longfellow, one day we may offer "from [heaven], serene and far, a voice... like a falling star: Excelsior!"

Excelsior and Passage to India

I'll write on these later. At the moment, they must suffice. Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. "Passage to India," Walt Whitman "Try not the Pass!" the old man said; "Dark lowers the tempest overhead, The roaring torrent is deep and wide!" And loud that clarion voice replied, Excelsior! "O stay," the maiden said, "and rest Thy weary head upon this breast!" A tear stood in his bright blue eye, But still he answered, with a sigh, Excelsior! "Beware the pine tree's withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche!" This was the peasant's last Good-night, A voice replied, far up the height, Excelsior! At break of day, as heavenward The pious monks of Saint Bernard Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, A voice cried through the startled air, Excelsior! A traveller, by the faithful hound, Half-buried in the snow was found, Still grasping in his hand of ice That banner with the strange device, Excelsior! There in the twilight cold and gray, Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, And from the sky, serene and far, A voice fell, like a falling star, Excelsior! "Excelsior" - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Seconds

I've been struck lately by how all of life happens in seconds. Thousands of little decisions flow past us like so much water. The channel of our life is cut by seconds, flowing over our decided course. Occasionally, we have those life changing, path changing opportunities - for a second, and then the choice is made and we go on. Even if we take some time to consider, that's the choice. As Pres. Wilford Woodruff said, to paraphrase, - "We do not tread twice the same water in a stream." We can ignore, but not escape, the value of life in "every, every moment" (Our Town, Oscar? Wilde).

This semester has happened in seconds - so many thousand seconds for this assignment, so many hundred seconds for this meal, so many tens of seconds for this thought. So many seconds procrastination flows into hours, evenings, days. A second of action precedes another, and another, and the job is done. If nothing else, I've learned that seconds are what make up minutes, hours, days, months, semesters, and a year.

I've been home a year now - but what I remember are seconds. A feeling in this moment, or a thought in that. A succession of seconds here- not necessarily continuous - like a slide show strobe, flashing relationships by. Agonizing seconds of doubt, redeeming moments of faith, forgiveness, and courage. The second of a decision confirmed; the number of seconds to realize that fact.

Decisions -what am I doing this moment? Is it right? What is the best use of the next moment? Will I do it? five, six, seven, nine, 15 seconds. Were they worth it?
I don't want to belabor the point - but how much more then, the words, "I need Thy presence every passing hour. None but thy grace can foil the tempter's power! ... Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day! ... Change and decay are all around I see: Oh, Thou who changest not - Abide with me!"

Disturbing

In class today, we watched a section of a television show about parenting methods. Two mothers switch households (to some degree) for two weeks, and the viewing public watches the highlights. The experience literally turned my stomach - I felt physically ill after the first ten minutes, when we stopped watching.

First, the parents presented as extremes - a family of "pirates" (I honestly wish I was joking) that never cleans, and a family in which everything in the house is labeled, efficient, and clean, assaults the Gospel ideal of parenting. Organization is not the opposite of laziness - they're only obliquely correlated - nor is organization and order the opposite of love. The presentation of the two "extremes" was what I found distasteful, as if living in a structured environment is as distasteful as living in one where the people catch fleas from their dog. Dante described it better perhaps than I have - pandemonium is a characteristic of hell; to add to that, order does not require oppression.

What of freedom? What of creativity? Try working in an environment of instability and disorder, and tell me that you are more creative and at greater inner peace. Karl Marx made that argument with his choice of living conditions and lifestyle, and lost three children as a result of it. (Note: Not all who lost children at the time, nor all who currently live in squalor, choose to do so; Marx had the resources not to, and chose to anyway. At least that's my judgment, you call it as you like.) He described losing his children as some of the worst experiences of his life - is that worth a few extra minutes each day of creative expression? Again to Marx - the price he paid in time lost to depression associated with losing his children while writing his seminal works was far greater than would have been the time to, say, make a budget or find a new home, or to give his children needed medical care, or even to earn the money to make those options possible.

Another argument, from the class discussion: organization isn't worth the few minutes you save. Here is the counter: neither is laziness. Being lazy is trading a few minutes of one activity for the few minutes required for a better one - three minutes of sleep versus three minutes of cleaning your bedroom. It's the same false doctrine as "we're not going to force our children to be like us." As if parents could! But whether they accept it or not, parents encourage their children one way or another; far better to encourage the freedom of self control and self development than to encouragement the oppression of sloth, filth, and the self-appeasement of the senses.

A related, infernal line of reasoning is that, "I choose to go my own way, rather than God's way." The lie is that we are going our own way; we are not, but instead choose to follow the devil. Our own way is whichever way we choose, but we cannot cut our own path; we can choose our actions, but not the consequences of our actions.

Perhaps, most disturbing: why would I ever seek this out as entertainment? Why would I ever tolerate this in my home? I don't watch tv very often, and now I am very glad of it. What depravity, what excess would lead me to enjoy watching two people be subjected to others choices; to enjoy seeing people inflict upon each other intense social and emotional pain; to not only encourage that suffering through the creation of the show, but to revel in it, to enjoy it, and to laugh at it?

Maybe I'm taking this too seriously, but I don't approve of this type of "emotional Colosseum."

Quite frankly, it makes me sick.

Love: The Risk is Worth It

I'm currently writing a paper on a piece of Swedish literature - Det gaar an ("It's alright") I'm going to update this post as a I write, but one of the characters, Sara - whom I once thought was like a girl I loved! - disparages marriage and commitment as, at best, unnecessary between two who love each other, and at worst and most often as a constraint that binds two people together even during tough times when they don't, can't love each other.

What a fantastically hopeless view of love! I'm just coming out of a relationship, where she I and both loved each other; but because of divine instruction, we needed to break up. We did. Even so - the point of love is that it lasts, through thick and thin. Love is like faith - it is a decision that is not to be given up during tough times. What I felt for my former girlfriend was the beginning of a commitment - inspired by the happiness I felt with her up to that point - to be with her through both happy times, and times when I was not as happy. What is love that leaves with unhappiness? No love at all. If love only exists with infatuation, then love is nothing. But it is not. Love is strengthened through weathering adversity, when that is chosen - the presence of trial certainly doesn't negate it.
Sorry - this post probably doesn't make sense to those who haven't read Det Gaar An. Simply, this: I loved someone, and even though it didn't work out and breaking up has hurt, it was worth it for me to love, and I state absolutely that it will be worth it for me to love again.
So there!

The test

"Good timber does not grow with ease - the stronger wind, the stronger trees."

This is something I've been pondering recently -why are things so hard sometimes? And this is what I come up with: Abraham had to climb Mount Moriah, and to be willing to sacrifice his only son in order to become like the Lord. Joseph Smith taught that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all we have cannot produce the faith necessary for salvation (not an exact quote).

In other words - it has to be hard. If it's not, we cannot develop the strength we need, or the faith we need, to become as the Lord, and we, would that we become.

Fortunately, the Lord doesn't leave us despairing, but gives us hope, by revealing to us enough to confirm our faith and to help us carry on.

I really like this picture - I think it says it all. "The Voyage of Life: Manhood" by Thomas Cole.