update from ambs / elkhart

hello.

I’m going to try to get back to saying things here.

punctuation is now my day job so at night when the lights are out and I’m up late writing for fun because that’s all I know how to do anymore i make significantly less promises, the punctuation hopefully doesn’t matter as much here anyways - I just hope to be understood and to write things that might make sense and might - if not pointing at some greater grander truths - at least give some insight into the “oh, he’s off at grad school” description which seems impossibly lofty and purposely vague. really, what’s a blog anyway other than some small or great baseball-bat swing at meaning, the home runs end up as books anyway.

I don’t remember the last time I wrote on here but it was something about being in the middle of my work in sweden, which wrapped up for the most part at the end of june but carried on a bit into july so I could make peace and spend a few more coveted “normal days” with my lovely friends and take a few more last long walks across a cow pasture I’ll long associate with feelings of home. I don’t know what’s more to say about all that except that it was wonderful and beautiful not just for a lovely place to live but for that melding that comes with community and all the lessons we learn from living together and talking over coffee, how I now no matter where I go feel like I have a family across the sea who I hope to see again shortly. and of course I hope that all had some lasting impression on other people and I can count a list of life lessons i’ll hope to incorporate going forward, etc. all over the world you see people trying to turn life into lists, and I feel like that’s what I’m supposed to be doing here - “top 10 lessons I learned teaching the bible and drinking coffee and living in community on the western coast of Sweden” but the more I live life the more I’m convinced that that approach is bunk and instead of some systematic philosophical take-away I’m left with stories and anecdotes of lovely people and a heart filled with great love for them and the glimmers of Christ we all saw through each other - and a hope that in whatever way big or small my presence in our work together contributed and left them with a sense that in my view they are of great worth. And the stories are great, and none of the internet’s business, and in my heart we’re still in that rented car on some slick icelandic highway feeling like ships sailing, and I’m on a train with a ticket someone gave me, and we’re out on rocky shoes and life feels just filled to the brim with wonder.

I’ll remember playing truth or dare by the sea, and all of us choosing truth for every single question because all we really wanted was to learn the deep things about each other (and because the north sea is cold after sundown even in the summer)

and holding all that close, I’ll look forward.

I’m in Indiana now, settled into my own place and slowly over the course of a few weeks it begins to look less like an empty apartment with shipping boxes in it and more like a home. for all of my homesickness and culture shock in this exceptionally loud and unsubtle place that is america, it’s good here and my settling has been helped by some kind new friends and a few old ones. I’m encouraged by these mennonites who are so intentional in what they do and how they think, in a way which inspires excellence out of me. 

And why am I here? Well, the briefest of answers is that if all goes well, I get a title: “Master of Arts in Peace Studies”. this too feels impossibly lofty, so I’ll say it another way. I’m going to take a good long chunk of time and I’m going to think about life, in a lot of different ways ultimately hopefully leading to some consistent answers about deep questions, about what peace is and what it looks like, and also about how we who are so ridiculously presumptuous enough to call ourselves the children of god might actually begin to work in ways that contribute to that peace instead of running around doing bible stuff hoping you all think I look good. In other other words, I’m going to be spending the next two years reading a whole lot and writing a whole lot and listening to particularly wise people with the hopes that that helps in the continual process of transitioning us into a people of some understanding and some good things to say in response to a world that in so many respects is otherwise chaos. we’ll also be making meals together and taking walks and planting tomatoes and striving to love each other like family and to find those moments where in each other we see traces of God. 

and all of this is exciting and wonderful and terrifying and expensive and with hints of a resolution that hasn’t quite become clear yet. I hope and work for that understanding, and I also hope for stories. I come from a narrative people. It's not so much a checklist of tasks to be done as it is a road to walk down.

more soon, much love.

austin.

September/October ministry update

Dear friends,

Hello for the first time in a while! Much has happened since my last update online, so before I begin any of my updates for the year I probably ought to catch the blog up to date for those of you who I haven’t been able to correspond with in the last months. So this is a long one! I'm hoping to keep these every two months; if you'd like to keep updated on my goings-on you can subscribe on the left via email, RSS, or through blogger if you have an account. If you make it to the end there'll be pictures!

The first thing I should mention is that I graduated from my school of biblical studies! It was a long year, one like one of our wonderful trails here in the west of Sweden that stretches long past the horizon, and once completed the traveler looks back on with both a sense of accomplishment and also relief. And it was wonderful. Our last few months hold many memories for me both of studying the bible and of going down to the sea with my friends just before sunset and jumping into the cool water of the north sea, of seaside campfires, of a sun which would hang just above the sky seemingly endlessly until the late hours of the night and rise again before we would wake up. It’s hard to quantify just yet how my studies have changed the way I look at the world, because they indeed do so in so many ways. Knowing the truth changes much, sometimes it’s hard to see it in myself as much as in my friends.

All that time I was wondering what might be next. Studying the bible pushes one along in these thoughts, as so much of it encourages a sense of urgency: Go, help, love, do something good, figure out what these words mean practically. Where should I start? I’m still working on the more permanent answer to that question, but at one point I realized that sometimes the best place to do so is to go through the door that is opened to you to serve and to love. Some time into the school my school leader Matt knocked on my door and asked me to consider the option of coming back to Restenäs for a second year and serving the base and the school as staff for the full next term of SBS. I wasn’t able to answer right away, but both through prayer and through my own thoughts I realized it would be as good a way to start as any, and so I soon accepted the offer to come back and staff. 

Once all 66 books were finished I was able to go home for the summer and rest for a short time and spend time with my family and friends - the quality time that those of us who live cross-culturally appreciate in a way that we once took for granted. I was home in America for about 8 weeks, and got to see a lot of friends and spend time with my family. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to come back to the states, so I’m very grateful for the generosity of my parents in buying me a ticket. If I saw you this summer, let me tell you what a joy it was! For those of you who went even a little out of your way to see me, my summer wouldn’t have been the same without you. For those I didn’t get to see, come visit! You’ll always have an available bed at Restenäs if you make it this far.

Another long flight and I was back at Restenäs again, and as I got back the whole summer felt like a dream. Immediately we as a staff faced a great challenge: As Matt and Dima were planning the school over the summer, we had 6 applicants. Visa issues and red tape got in the way of 3 of our students, and as we approached our deadline we only had 3, which is not enough to make the school work financially. None of us were quite sure what to think, and I found myself drawing contingency plans for a year of my life, questioning everything, reexamining my own motives and willingness to serve in whatever way was needed rather than the way I had expected. As we as a staff look back on this, we’re all grateful because it put our attitudes in the right place, put a fire under us to do whatever we were to do well. And just as we came to these thoughts and to our deadline, we found ourselves with a last-minute applicant. We’ve since had one of our staff decide to join the school for the full 9 months and we’ll also be adding a student in January - an option available to those who have completed the 3 month bible school offered in the spring. 

Our students have been a joy so far. We have students for this term from 5 different countries: Belgium, Germany, India, Norway, and Sweden, and aside from myself we have staff from Canada, Ukraine, Korea, and Sweden. As we’ve gotten underway and gotten through our first few books it’s been exciting every day to see the word come alive to our students, to see them gain the new understanding of God and of the bible through the inductive method that I got to experience last year, to see the bible in context and realize what it means for the way we live our lives and what the words meant to the original recipients of the letters and books. Our theme this year comes from the book of Galatians, in which Paul tells those believers to “walk in step with the Spirit”, patterns of living which cause us to live lives filled with love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Life on base with so many different people from different backgrounds and perspectives gives us all plenty of opportunities to grow in these patterns! This year has many lessons for me to learn as well as teach.

So here I still am, in the middle of a cow pasture along the west coast of Sweden. Being on staff means a few different things: I will be preparing teachings on some of our books and giving lectures during our class times, and I’ll be doing my share of grading the work of our students and helping them out with understanding the text and the assignments whenever I can. I’m also our school’s representative in the operations meetings for the base where we organize work duties, and I’m also a part of the team that operates the café and provides fika some nights of the week. I live in a big yellow house called Bjorkbacken where most of the unmarried men on base live, and as our autumn turns to winter we’ll be loading the furnace with wood each day and keeping the place tidy for guests. I take part in the staff meetings on base and help out in some of the base functions - in a few weeks we’ll have an international night and I’ll be talking to people about Thailand. 

Another thing that is a bit different this year is that I actually have some free time! My duties keep me busy, but my commitment is (only) for about 35-45 hours each week and I get my nights off and some weekends too. It’s been so much fun living here and actually having some time to make friends and cook meals and have fika. I’ve also gotten away a few times - A few of us were able to travel to Örebro and listen to a full day of lectures by one of my personal heroes of the faith, the anglican bishop N.T. Wright. My notes are elaborate, but my favorite memory of the day was when I was sitting in the front row before the lectures began and he sat down next to me and introduced himself to me. 

I also was able to travel to Iceland for a weekend to take part in a meeting to pray for the country and for the city of Reykjavík and learn about the place and about YWAM’s involvement there. We corporately conversed about the future of YWAM in Iceland and in northern Europe and also went into the streets and talked to people about what their thoughts on the state of the country were. We were able to meet with our ministry’s founder, Loren Cunningham, and with all of us together it felt very similar to a family reunion, both with old friends to reunite with and new ones to get to know. Iceland is wonderful and I hope to be back soon - we will be sending teams from the mainland for a week in May and If I can afford it I’m hoping to go back them.

I can see I’m getting a little long-winded here; if you’d like to know more about what I’m up to feel free to ask. I would like to share a few of our prayer requests: 

• That we as a base and as a school would strive toward a collective excellence in loving one another and growing towards a spirit-filled life.
• That our students would be strengthened to persevere in their studies and to stay motivated towards not only the completion of their assignments but also their own personal growth and understanding of God and of their own callings and identity.
• My own personal walk; both in the short term, that I would continue to grow towards righteousness, and that God would speak to me about where the next steps should be after graduation at the end of June.
• That I uphold my staffing commitment with integrity and do the best I am capable of in serving the base and our students and preparing my teachings.
• Finances for our base - there is a constant need for financial support for upkeep and to make everything work, as all of us rely on support for our own livelihoods.
• Our students’ tuition. In YWAM we all rely on God for our finances; If anyone would like to sponsor one of our students let me know and I can connect you. 
• The students our current schools: aside from SBS we currently have schools in discipleship, prayer, and communications. For growth, provision, protection, endurance.
• For our upcoming schools: In the next two terms we will have discipleship schools in English, Swedish, and Korean and 3-month schools in worship and bible studies. We pray that God will send students to Restenäs for these schools! If this might be you you can find more info at ywamrestenas.se. 
• For my language learning, as I am hoping to get better at Swedish this year. 
• My personal finances: I’m still looking for my full support for the year, and yet my supporters have been so very good to me and I should have enough to get to christmas from my current level of monthly support and the one-time gifts I’ve received. If you’d like to help me make it through the year you can contact me via email. If anyone would like to donate airline miles that would be a tremendous blessing as well.
• Also, my iPod's screen cracked and is almost dead after 5 long years of faithful service, if anyone has one they aren’t using anymore it would be a big blessing. I’m also hoping to get a basic swedish cell phone to keep in contact with my swedish friends and for work.

Thanks so much for reading! If you’ve gotten this far I’m really blessed at your care for my words. I’d love to be in touch; I’m available online, through phone, as well as through post. (Letters are the best!)

• email/skype/facebook: roberts.austin@gmail.com
• Post: Austin Roberts/Restenäs 239/459 93 Ljungskile
• U.S. Phone (Google Voice): 1-816-419-0399

With love and fika for all,

Austin

As promised, Pictures!

Bishop N.T. wright with my school leader Dima

Bjorkbacken, my home for the year

Some of our staff members at a wedding

My housemate Viktor dressed up for the wedding

Josefine the goat getting into trouble

My friend David in Alingsås

The coast in Ljungskile a few kilometers from my house

the seaside in Reykjavik

Reykjavík from the steeple of the lutheran church

Restenäs staff with Loren Cunningham in Reykjavik

My friend Linn dressed for an adventure

My studies in Sweden

Hello again!

I had meant to write an update sooner. My studies have been keeping me very busy, but I wanted to write a bit again and let everyone know how things are going with me. Thank you all for your continual support, both through your thoughts and through your prayers, and for those who have sent letters and those who have supported me with finances. These all mean much to me. I haven’t updated in a while, so I just wanted to say that things are going really well. Things are cold here in Sweden, but the days are slowly becoming longer and warmer. It is a joy each day to see the sun rise a little earlier and set a little later, and we have each other to keep company with and our studies keep us busy. 

I'd like to do my best to describe to you all what I’m actually doing out here, and why nine months out in the countryside is such a perfect setting for my studies. Most of our class consists of free time to work on our assignments. However, we do spend somewhere between one and three mornings a week in class being taught about the book we are currently working on, covering the structure and historical background of the book as well as the lecturer’s understanding about how the book ought to be interpreted and applied. Here is a basic description: In the School of Biblical Studies, we use what we call “The Inductive Method”. While there are other ways to study the bible inductively, we use a format that we follow for each of the books. Sometimes we have special assignments, but aside from some minor changes here and there our study of a book will usually go something like this:

• We will start by reading the book aloud in one sitting. For the larger books it can be quite a challenge to get through, and we will read together and trade off chapters or listen to a recording and read along.
• Color coding the whole book using colored pencils in our bible. The colors correspond with different observations we make, which vary depending on the book, such as people who are described and commands that are given. We all were supplied bibles to begin the school, and as the year goes on our white pages are slowly becoming a rainbow.
• Using a computerized charting program, we make simplified titles for each paragraph, and then print those out into a chart where we trace the structure of the book. We divide the book into segments, and then combine those segments into sections and divisions. In doing this for each book, we’re able to see the way the book is structured. 
• We will write a summary a few pages long about the important information about the book. Some of this will come from the book itself, but it will also come from research about the authorship and historical background of the book. We will cover some of this information in class, but some of it will come from bible dictionaries and commentaries. The purpose of this is that in order to truly understand a book, one must consider who is writing it and who it is being written to. Some of the differences this makes are surprising!
• For each segment on our outline, we make a chart. In filling out this chart, we make more detailed observations about what is happening in the passage, and from those observations we interpret what the passage would mean to the original readers. The goal of this is to understand what the passage means for us, finding the truth behind what is being said that is timeless and can be applied to us. 
• In all of these previous steps, we are studying the bible in order to understand what it means and how it affects us, so the next step is to apply it! We will write two essays – one on how the truth of the book affects our worldview, and one on how it ought to be practically applied in our own life. Aside from writing about it, we are also encouraged to commit to changes in our lives and to take actions not only for our life after SBS but also in our daily lives.

And there’s the work for one book! We will do this roughly 60 times - a few of the books are combined, there are special assignments for some of the books that will be somewhat different, and we study the book of Psalms in weekly assignments as we go along. And things are going well. I miss you all, of course, but I'm busy enough that the time seems to fly by. In a given week we might spend 50 to 60 hours between working on our assignments and attending class and serving through our community work duties. And life here is also very good. Life on the base is wonderful, and we have a peaceful community with my classmates, our staff, the staff and the students of the other schools here on the base, the support staff on the base, and the families who live here. It is a diverse family, and a wonderful one. We learn much not only from our studies but also from our life with one another. My life is wonderful, and I am learning to be content with what I have, because it is truly good. I was able to travel over my winter break to central Europe, and and I’ll also be able to get off the base and go exploring in a few weeks when we have our spring break. But for now, I am here, studying the bible and chopping wood and washing dishes and sharing life. I hope things are well with everyone.

Here are a few pictures! There are plenty more on my facebook account, so feel free to check those out as well.

Voyaging out onto the frozen sea by my house

A nice sabbath afternoon spent down by the sea.

A Restenäs sunset over the icy sea

New years eve along the Danube in Bratislava, Slovakia

Our Christmas card! This is my Restenäs family, as of december.

Tack för att läsa! Hej då!

Swedish Update #2

Part I: Why I am spending a year of my life living in an orphanage studying the bible.

If this season along the banks of the Skaggerak is a chapter in my life, it is a part of a book of my life, one that started in September of 2010, and it started with a choice. I was lying in my bed, facing the imminent terror of graduating college and not knowing what was next. The dilemma I faced was centered both around how uncertain all of life can feel and about what it meant when I believed to myself that I was a Christian. In a way, the second part was easy - It didn’t trouble me that I was a Christian, I had come to a point in my relationship with God that I knew that was what I needed, but I didn’t know what that implied for the actual patterns in which I lived my life. I found myself torn between how safe and easy it would be to just go and find a job somewhere, earn some money, be comfortable. I knew in my heart from the beginning that this wasn’t going to be an option for me; life is too short and too filled with wonder to squander on comfort and security. The other option was to legitimately give up all resemblance of a normal life and legitimately depend on God and earnestly try to fulfill his commandment: to love him and to love others. 

A premise tempted me, though, one perhaps more dangerous than before. Live wild and free, for a year or two. save some souls, feel the air as it radiates off the hot pavement of a long road - then pack it in, go home and be normal. Get some degree that assures me a comfortable life. I am convinced that this is the more dangerous lie for me, because of how nice it sounds. But it worked for good, getting me out of the door. I spent those lovely seasons in Kirksville and Thailand, enjoying every minute of the air through my skin, as though I needed to get it all in before the road ended in some place of comfort where I didn’t have to think so much about how life can be so beautiful and yet so ugly, so joyful and yet so sad. But through the whole thing, something even more dangerous and wonderful happened. I realized that I had been set free, free from normal. As a good friend of mine put it, “We have enough people choosing the life that comes to them when they don’t put up a fight, and I don’t intend to be one more.” And it was as if I was climbing a hill, thinking that the place I was reaching towards was just over the ridge, and when I came to the peak, before me the path of discipleship stretched endlessly into the future, across a thousand peaks and into the horizon. None of that is to say I have my whole life figured out, I don’t. I don’t even know what happens in July when I finish my studies here. I only know that I want to be kind, not as a hobby but as something I do with my life. I gave up that normal life, and the new one is as exciting as it is terrifying. 

And there were a few things that occurred to me when I decided to give up the normal life. It meant that I had to trust God to be my provider. It meant that I wouldn’t always be comfortable, and that I would even be risking my neck, knowing that if God is real whatever happens is his will. I have learned to be grateful for everything. But let us not be naive: it meant that I needed to be equipped. When I would say that I believed in God and Jesus and what it said in the bible, I really meant it, but there was this part of the truth that rang hollow. I believed in it, but I didn’t really know what it said, which robbed me of any sense of authority. I believe in the church, not as a bureaucratic institution but as a literal family. I believe that if the church fulfills its’ calling, we can provide solutions to the great problems of the world. But I don’t think we are what we ought to be, I think something is terribly wrong with what we’ve done here, and I think our generation can fix it. And if I am to speak that with authority, I ought to know what I am talking about. And the thing is, I don’t think this is just for me, I think it’s something at the very heart of discipleship, that most believers neglect at their own expense. That isn’t to say SBS is for everyone, but that inductive study of the bible is for all believers. I am convinced that the reason why the gospel isn’t appealing to many people is that many of the people that proclaim it don’t actually know what it says. I intend to contribute to the solution to that statistic.

So I knew I wanted to study the bible. Here’s why I chose SBS: It forced me to give up all of the bad reasons. It isn’t accredited, so I won’t have a shiny piece of paper to wave around to anyone to show how qualified I am. It isn’t preparing me for some specific occupation. It’s preparing me for life. SBS is an inductive study, which means we emphasize with everything what it actually means for the way we live our lives. Every day I am confronted truth that I’m forced to deal with. I don’t know what happens from here, but I know that what I’m learning is important because what I’m learning is about who I’m becoming.

Part II: The Restenäs Life

It’s hard to know what to say in a way that could translate, so much of it it feels as if one would just have to be here. 

I am grateful to God. for everything. For the little patch of Sweden I call home, for this place and these people, for all of the people and places on all the paths I have traveled that brought me to here. I’m grateful for the morning walk to breakfast, hours before the sun will rise, to eat muesli and drink coffee and appreciate waking up as a sort of an act of worship. I’m grateful that I get to do this, to set aside time to grow and to wonder and to rest and to explore. I’m grateful for the path to the sea, the path to the mountain, for undiscovered corridors and attics filled with wonders, like flags and newspapers in swedish from a century ago. I’m grateful for long walks into town that take me over large hills, and how from the top of them I can see the ocean, and for the detours along the path that let me walk along the rocky coast. I’m grateful for fika, the lovely Swedish tradition to emphasize how important it is that every day we make time for each other. at 10:30 every morning the entire base (and all of Sweden) drops what we’re doing and we sit at a table with one another drinking coffee and sharing life together. I’m grateful for how hard it is, how studying the bible 50 hours a week pushes me and forces me to grow, and how there are days that I wake up and I don’t feel like it, but I find the strength to do it anyway. I’m grateful for how cold it is getting, how short the days are becoming, how our scarves and coats become more and more mandatory. I’m grateful to have a home, a room that overlooks a lovely valley, and the feeling that I can settle for a while and invest in this community. I’m grateful for how simple my life is for this season, how I never have to drive anywhere and all of my meals feel as if we’re sitting around a family dinner table. I'm grateful for how kind people can be, for friends who take care of me when I'm sick and who share life with me. I’m grateful that learning about the meaning of life is my job. I’m grateful for relying on I’m grateful for all of the many people I miss so dearly, because the longing reminds me of how much I love them. And I’m grateful for Jesus Christ, who not only saved me from death, but saved me for a life of meaning and beauty. I am grateful for the life I have, and I am excited to find out where it goes from here.

There’s more I could say. I find it hard to write because I’m very busy studying the other six days of the week, and life is too short to spend so much of it on the internet. If you want to know more about my life in this season, actually get ahold of me! Send me letters! Draw me pictures to put on my wall!

Austin Roberts / SBS Sept 2012

Restenäs 239

459 93 Ljungskile

Sweden

(All YWAMers depend on support and are basically unemployed vagabonds. I am committed to providing for my school, but if you want to help let me know! If you can afford but a postage stamp, send me a letter and say hello and that would be blessing enough. End of plug.)

pictures only prove you can't convince.

Hello again, dear readers. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? It has been a long summer, one I decided to take a sabbatical from blogging for, and now the summer is over and I will do my best to bring you inquisitive ones up to speed with where I am now.

Greetings from my new home. I’m sure at some point pictures of my new home and my family here will come, but I will indulge myself with a description. I like that better, because even if I could transport you to where you could fully picture this place, to stand in a photograph isn’t the same as to dwell in a place. I live in a small village in Sweden called Restenäs. It is about an hour’s walk to the closest town, Ljungskile (pronounced Yew'ng-skeelay). All around me are bouldering hills and clouds and wildgrass and tall trees. I live in a big brick building called Solbacken, which began its’ life as an orphanage but now houses disciples of all kinds who come here to Restenäs to study in the various schools that are taking place. We have four schools going on right now as well as many people who live here in positions of ministry, so the whole campus is alive with people of all kinds from all places. Our collective home for this season consists of a large handful of buildings which dot the circumference of a large field where several cattle endlessly chew away at tufts of wildgrass. Across the road and through many yards of wooded glen, there lies a saltwater bay, and beyond that the island Orust, and beyond that the Skaggerak straight which connects the North sea to the Baltic. The sea is filled with plankton which shimmer out with bioluminescent light when one runs their hands through the waters.

Every morning begins before the sun has made its’ way over the hill, and by 6:50 I’ll be bundled up and on my way across the field to our dining hall for breakfast. All of my days are filled with all sorts of wonderful disciples and servants from all over our lovely planet that fill my life with joy. I get three lovely meals each day prepared by our cooks Maarten and Pierre, and I have a warm bed and our village has wonderful trails that allow us to see all the pastures and hills that surround us. Every morning we have fika, that grand swedish tradition where all of us sit down as a big family for tea. All of our days are spent in fellowship - walking and having fun, fulfilling our daily chores. My chore is to help run the café in our main fellowship building - brewing fika and cleaning so that everyone can have a place to fellowship. In addition to this - the reason I'm here, in fact, is a nine month inductive study of the bible through the School of Biblical Studies. It's going to be a long and lovely winter.

To have a home on this earth is one of those most tenuous and special things for me, and I can’t say how grateful I am to get to have one here for a time. I will speak more of all of these things later, dear friends. I’m glad you’re reading! I don’t know how often I’ll be able to update and muse during these next few seasons, as things are about to get very busy. Give me grace as I do the best I can, and if you haven’t subscribed do so as this is the most frequent way I will be updating. More to come soon.

Tack för läsning!

unread books and unwritten essays

Creating something beautiful and meaningful is hard. I know I haven't blogged in a while and it's no accident; I've made a few basic attempts and thrown them out. I find that whenever I "want to create something beautiful" I end up with rubbish, and it's only when I let the chaos take over and the order of the universe throw something beautiful in my lap do I have any odds whatsoever of coming up with something that someone else would gain anything from reading. Otherwise this whole thing, writing in general, becomes politics. "What can I say to somehow win people over?" It's all vanity. Therefore I must approach this whole business not like a general bent on conquest but rather like a meek child staring into the night sky, filled with all its' distant unreachable stars, shouting a verse into the universe in hopes of coming up with some meaning to it all. This isn't just a metaphor, I actually did this once, in the middle of the night with the new moon bringing clarity to all the sparkling stars and the peaceful riverside along the Nam Kading river as it merges so peacefully into the Mekong. And it was odd how such a scene takes the shouts out of my mouth and reduces me to whispers. And even if that's all I have to work with, here's a few whispers into the darkness.

I'm back in America now, and it's always a thing that causes me much inner wrestling; not so much the specifics of the place itself but what it represents in my mind. 'Home', perhaps, and many of the things that word might imply, but also the old self, the me I used to be. I walk down roads I've walked before and I think of the ways my mind used to work and what used to matter to me. The unimportant things I used as foundations for my decisions, the selfishness that seemed to cripple me. It's as though I find myself in an old faded photograph from a time a part of me never wanted to remember. There's this weird irrational fear in the back of my mind that the mystic properties of the place itself might cause me to relapse, to take a step back into the old me that was capable of such silly and damaging mistakes, to be so careless and thoughtless and foolish. I had these same feelings last summer when my entire world seemed to be falling apart, so I printed out about 40 pictures from better times in my life as a sort of a constant reminder that the past happened - even the good parts. especially the good parts. And it gives this neglected room some color and some warmth in spite of itself.

It's odd to me how a bedroom can take on a sort of mythical symbolism to it. It's "my room", this brick of space about 12 feet by 10 feet by 8 feet that's specifically designated to me. As one inhabits a place for a decade or two all of the charachter of it begins to bend to the character of the one who occupies it. The dings in the walls and the new paint job from when the 8-year-old version of me would have temper tantrums and kick the wall until it was brown. The old furntire, some of which was given to me and some of which was cast off by others, only to be rescued. I have all these books in my room. Stacks of them, and the sad thing is that I haven't yet gotten to most of them. I wonder if I'm really the best steward of them, wonder if I should give them away so they might get read and appreciated by someone who doesn't spread themselves so thin.

The old things intrigue me in a new way. What was once the future is now the past, and what once seemed so mysterious and dangerous and risky now feels conquered. This feeling that I made it to this point in spite of all of life's twists and turns gives me hope as I look ahead, into the dark speckled night sky that is our future, something that at once seems both so mysterious and yet so inevitable.

the things you carry.

The old things ending are only a sign of something new.

Ohh, haven't forgotten about you, friends. I've actually written a handful of drafts for different blog ideas I've had floating around, but every time I ultimately decided this wasn't the venue. I'm pretty sure that most of my readers are in some way related to me, and so this seems like an odd place to discuss what how my heart is broken for the sexual slaves of southeast asia and how this is a dirty broken world that has a way of leaving one jaded about where it's headed. So many of my experiences here have been very profound, and yet in a way it's very hard to make them translate. I do my best to put you in my shoes, but with much of this stuff you'd just have to be there. There's the easy gross-out stories about getting vomited on in the middle of a twelve hour bus ride or what it's like to use a squatty potty, but I think those miss the point. I've gone through some really uncomfortable stuff, true, but oh, how the joys do outweigh the sorrows. So instead, here are some thoughts. And the funny thing about them all is that so much of it are tiny little lessons, the little things one picks up over the course of a day. But they all add up somehow into a grander wonderful truth, and life made beautiful.

It starts here: With everything in life worth doing, there's this moment. You take the step that can't be undone, can't be partially refunded, where suddenly there is no going back and undoing. It's no longer ideas, or plans, but what you're doing with this part of your life. And for me it meant to get on the plane, one that sends you far away from everything that seems normal to you. and it's just you, sitting there by yourself. and you feel very alone, helpless, and nervous. Don't panic, it gets better from here. The hardest part is over. And yet so much of the wonderful things that can happen in our lives hit the roadblocks here. Often it feels like too much work, too much to give up, just to get to this point. Getting past that moment is a prerequisite for living well.

A true friend is something precious. The kindness of strangers is a humbling and life-affirming thing that restores my hope in times where I feel like accepting cynicism. I have so much gratitude to the friends I made along the way. Living in community is just beautiful, and can't be replicated. The way a group of strangers can turn into a family is something to be treasured. Being so far away from home, it's nice to have a few familiar faces to see every once in a while. Many of the things that seem like they'll be a big deal about living in a new culture, the things about comfort and food and what you will and won't be able to buy - that's the easy stuff. Being a tourist is easy, living somewhere is different. It's hard and frustrating, but it's beautiful and it's worth it.

Designer clothes and luxury cars are boring. All-inclusives are for those who don't want to actually experience anything. Many people don't understand what gives things value. There's a beauty to the dirt of humanity. We're all just dust anyways. There are few things that are as shocking as just how little care is given to the poor in this world and how little people think about where their money goes when they spend it. Scrapping your plans and having to do something completely different can sometimes be better than anything you could have planned ahead of time. If you really want to live fully, you have to accept that sometimes it will be smelly, sometimes it will be uncomfortable, sometimes you'll feel very alone. If you aren't ready for that, stay home. Sometimes the experiences won't be happy things, and they won't be nice or pleasant at all. Sometimes life can downright hurt, but the whole trick to joy is to take even the bad things and use them to get better and to learn. I'm learning to appreciate the good in everything.


It's weird to pack everything up, to see everything in your life fit into a few bags. But that's ok. it was never the stuff that made life fulfilling anyways. What I really carry with me are the stories, the memories. thousands of pictures. places I'll remember all my life. And most of all, the people, and the way they changed me. I love Thailand, and I'll miss this place very much. Mostly I'll miss the people. I have been shown amazing kindness, and my time here has changed me for the better. Those who've been a part of my life in the past six months, thank you so much. America, see you soon!

Other things I should mention.
What I've been up to: Traveling. When I was booking the plane ticket last august I decided to stay late, and booked my return flight about 8 weeks after DTS ended. Originally the plan was to stay in Bangkok the whole time, find something to do. When I made the decision to pursue a School of Biblical Studies in the fall, it meant that suddenly the next year and a half of my life is looking very busy. So I decided to take a break, and took two trips, taking up about half of my time. I went to Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos on the first trip and Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore on the second trip. It's been crazy, and while I scribbled journal notes all along the way I'll probably save those thoughts and stories for elsewhere. But it was good. My mind works better when I'm moving, which is as it should be. And in the last few days being back in Bangkok with not much to do, I see it's been good that I had something to keep me occupied.


What's next: I'm going HOME. On Wednesday. I'm going all out and I'll be scraping my heels to the finish line. My amazing charles schwab use-it-anywhere-for-free debit card, which is ever so handy and I'm so grateful for, expired at the end of january - so I made one last final withdrawl at the end of last month to cover all my expenses to get me home. I'm down to 254 baht with 3 days to go. (I'll need to save basically all of it for the cab ride to the airport at three in the morning, so if anyone in Ramsong wants to buy me a meal, let me know!) I do have a loaf of bread, though, and some coffee grounds, and a can of baked beans (leftover from my flood survival kit), and some peanut butter. Gonna make it, kids. As soon as I get home I'm going to sleep for two days, and then subject myself to CCF spring break. I'm pretty excited about seeing many of your lovely faces. After that I have a window of about six months. It's gonna be good, I've applied for a few internships and will otherwise plan on finding some job somewhere (can't be too picky, I suppose). If anyone has any ideas, or is looking for a housemate, let me know. Then, if all goes well, Sweden in mid-september. More on this later.

I do love you all, by the way. Thanks for reading and caring.