i quit... almost

on august 16th, we signed new contracts at our school for this school year. we had to fight for these jobs on june 30th, the day before we returned to the states. and upon returning to jordan, things just got more and more stressful. the school doesn't have a good philosophy of education. it doesn't support the teacher as an educator. and we continually are given shoulder shrugs from the principal when questioning things that don't make sense, letting us know that it doesn't matter what we think. in all honesty, every teacher is at the end of their rope right now.

yesterday, i threw in the towel. we both did. the feelings that things will never get better left us feeling hopeless. i knew i could do better. i'm qualified for many jobs that i would thrive in and in some ways enjoy much more than this stressful environment. i decided that quitting was the best option.

i've been in this spot before. when i was in california at my first job, things at the church were beyond hope. the senior pastor was un-supportive. i didn't have control over my ministry. despite my love for the students, the leaders, and the church, i couldn't see past the difficult working relationship with my "boss". so i quit, and ran away.

i've said many times over the last 5 years that if i was in this situation again, i would make a better choice. i would stick it out. i would work to make things get better. i would fulfill my commitment and be an adult. but here i was, again, facing the same issues and making the same choices. my head was clouded by difficulties.

today i sat at work and wrote a resignation letter. my plan was to give it to the principal on sunday. i wasn't sure what i was going to do next, but i knew i didn't want to deal with this crap anymore. but as i sat there, contemplating my future, i realized that i hadn't changed. i was the same person i was 5 years ago, ready to throw my reputation and my work away because it was hard.

i decided i owed it to the church in california to stick this one out. like i'm redeeming my past failures. i love the students and my co-workers. i love my friends and the community group on friday nights. i know my work here isn't done. i am anxious for the school year to start and to get back into the swing of things. i don't know what next year will bring, but i know that for now my place is at the school, teaching math, history, geography, and p.e.

please pray that this year can be more fruitful than the last, and that i can learn from my mistakes and trust in jesus more.

ramadan kareem

today is the fourth day of ramadan, a holy month of fasting observed by about 90% of the population of jordan (that's a non-scientific statistic by the way, i just made it up based upon 97% of the population being muslim and about 7% of those being liberal or non-observant muslims, in my experience). jessey, christina (our roommate) and i are fasting for the first time together during ramadan, and it is probably our 17th tuesday of fasting this year.

i was thinking today on our balcony (which is surprisingly cool compared to the rest of the apartment) about fasting and why people do it. in the tradition of ramadan, people fast in solidarity with the poor and out of responsibility to God. throughout jordan, and most of the middle east, people are all on a level playing field of food for a month. no one eats, drinks, smokes, or has sex during daylight hours. then, at the iftar (which is a call to prayer at sunset), people gather together to break their fast and read from the qu'ran.

i've noticed already, and we're only 4 days in, that people get very irritable when they aren't eating or drinking or, in our case especially, smoking all day. its understandable. you're denying your body of what it needs (or wants), and this denial distracts the mind. normally people are very polite and easy going, but when this fasting hits, they treat you as if they couldn't care less about you. often times, people are just biding time until the iftar, or worse (in my opinion) sleeping all day and eating all night, thus avoiding the point of fasting altogether. it becomes a religious duty, not a spiritual necessity. this is not the case for all who are fasting. the goal for many is to gain control over the body in order to become a better person.

i can't say i completely understand fasting. for most of my childhood, fasting was either frowned upon or limited to a certain activity that we would be challenged to fast from in order to get closer to God (i.e. television, video games, etc.). this motivation for fasting comes out of guilt that our priorities are out of whack and we need to get them refocused... and in my experience it never worked. in fact, most of the time i would find myself thinking more about watching television while i was fasting from it. it never drove me to get closer to God.

i know very few people who fast anymore. and even fewer who know why they should be fasting. i remember my pastor fasting for a month and only drinking juice, but i don't remember why he was fasting. i think he was fasting for clear direction from God. i hope he got it. i was always told that when a person fasts, he should pray whenever he feels a desire for food. i felt like this was a secret formula for getting rid of cravings, but that also never worked for me whenever i tried fasting from food.

but i can't deny the importance of fasting as a spiritual discipline. from moses to the early church fathers, fasting was an understood part of the spiritual life. i think people do it for many reasons, either for answer to prayer, deliverance from sin/oppression, spiritual weight loss, or closeness to God.

i think of fasting in this way: whenever i deny myself food for a day, my body gets very angry with me. this is because my body is a sucker for food... in fact my body needs food to give me energy and to grow and be healthy (although growing isn't what i want to be doing these days). when i notice my physical need for food, i remember my spiritual need for God. i remember my inability to survive without him, and my priorities get straightened out again... and perhaps i even submit myself more to God each time. but i do know that this weekly reminder that i am nothing if not for God is a healthy thing.

so tonight, after the sun sets, jessey, christina, and i will begin eating a meal together, praying for God's peace and direction... along with millions of others who will be breaking fast at the same time. hopefully our fast is not in vain. i don't think it is.

what is community?

when we arrived back in amman, we had 2 roommates. this was planned, of course, but still marked something new in our 6 years of marriage. our roommates are also friends of ours, emily and christina, who both live and work here in amman. we're entering into this thing called "living in community" and we don't even know what its supposed to look like.

for instance: how do we clean the apartment effectively without slacking in doing our own part? how do we pay the bills/rent? should we split the rent and bills 4 ways and share the rest of our money in common? what do we do when someone doesn't pull their weight? being friends, what happens when we end up hating each other? do we keep our arrangement, or do we salvage our friendship? what does community living look like? are there rules? should we look at ourselves as individuals who live together or as a body of christ trying to do life together?

we shall see. tonight is our first house (family) meeting. it should help us sort out some of these details. community living won't be easy, but it could be good for all of us to grow up a bit... like we need to.

overwhelmed

the feeling of being overwhelmed is difficult to explain. i've been feeling this way many times recently, and for the most part, i am grateful for the feeling. i've been overwhelmed negatively in these 2 situations in the last 2 weeks:

1) when jessey lost her job, and i lost my summer pay and my guarantee of a job upon our return to jordan on the day before we were to leave for our summer break. this created an understandably overwhelming sense of inadequacy and stress on both of our lives. over the course of the next 7 hours, we brainstormed what actions we could take, as our first legitimate life-plans had just fallen completely apart. then we got a call from the school, and after a brief meeting, jessey had her job back and we both got our summer pay. this overwhelming feeling didn't leave until 10pm that night.

2) when, on the same day, i picked up gifts from our friend to deliver to his wife and 2-year-old daughter, who is fighting brain cancer and is getting free treatment in the states. the mother and daughter are stateside, while the father and 2 sons are stuck in jordan, desperately trying to get visas just to visit their mom/wife and sister/daughter. i cried leaving my friend as i saw the look of pain on his face that he might not get to send his peace to his wife. i hated that.

these are the situations that i've felt overwhelmed in a positive way, with true and deep-felt emotion that i haven't been connected to in a long time:

1) when the right students were selected as "model students" and recognized in front of the whole school on the last day. i held back the tears, thanking God for these two amazing kids.

2) when the 3 Qu'ran teachers stood up for jessey and went to the palace to fight for her job while we were overwhelmed with stress at home. i was absolutely blown away by their generosity and again i cried while leaving the school, thanking God for these 3 amazing women.

3) when we got to play our music with some amazing bands, who were comprised of real down-to-earth humans who were without pretense and full of grace. i was humbled to be sharing the stage with them, and in awe of the ability of music to bring people from so many different places together, to celebrate and to sing.

i guess the best way i can describe this feeling is a weight in the chest that won't go away. when its negative, it can lead to doubt. when it is positive, it strengthens our faith and our ability to live the next day. i am thankful that i have been priveleged with this feeling and look forward to more feelings of "overwhelmingness", or whatever it would be.

ya haram... news from the jordan times

what's the point of this?

WADI AL MALEH, West Bank - Exercising its authority as an occupying power, the Israeli army has begun breaking up bedouin camps in the West Bank where the nomadic herders have grazed their livestock for years.

Two dozen families have been displaced so far in eviction operations this month against low, black tents dotting the parched hillsides of the northern Jordan Valley.

Palestinian officials say some 200 families are threatened.

Israeli authorities, enforcing what the Human Rights Watch group calls a "heartless policy", say the bedouin are being moved for their own protection from areas in military fire zones.

Their dwellings may only be tents, but to bedouin living by a spring they call "sweet water" they were home, until they were scooped up and dumped in a broken heap by the shovel of an army mechanical digger.

Animal pens were flattened and scant bits of bedding and ramshackle furniture were piled in the open.

"We have been living on this land for seven years," said Mohammad Kaabneh, a 38-year-old father of nine. "The soldiers told us to move because this is a military zone. But we've nowhere else to go. And then they came back this morning."

The eviction is a strange exercise: There are no houses for the army to demolish as it would in other cases deemed illegal construction, so the herders can just re-pitch their tents.

A spokesman for Israel's military-run civil administration in the West Bank said it has been trying for some time to persuade the bedouin to move to safer locations.

"When this failed, we warned them that they were endangering their lives by setting up tents in the middle of a military zone and that they faced evacuation," the spokesman said.

Danger

Last month, the army erected signs on bedouin dirt roads here with the warning: "Danger. Firing Area. Entrance Forbidden."

Eviction notices were issued, with no right of appeal, and families were told to move within 24 hours. Three weeks later soldiers arrived without further warning and broke up the camps.

Some of the herders say they have lived on the land since the 1950s, and are so far refusing to quit the area.

The dangers are real. "I lost my son," said Qadri Daraghmeh.

The 19-year-old was killed by a blast in January 2008, he said, and army investigators said it was a mine left behind after an exercise. "But there is nowhere else to go," the farmer said.

A few hours after the soldiers left, Kaabneh's family had moved just a couple of hundred metres away, rigging up an open-walled tent for shade against the hammering heat. Their goats took shelter under a big palm, using every inch of shadow.

"We'll just rebuild, like our neighbours over there did immediately," he said, pointing to a family tent he said had also been uprooted just a few hours earlier.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who visited the area recently, said the Israeli military might demolish the camps, but "we build, because this is the only way for our people to stay on their land".

"We are determined about this and you will see," he said.

Human Rights Watch noted that under an Israeli army order of 1970, people living in a military zone can be evicted without a court order except for those designated "permanent residents".

Palestinian officials say two army-training areas take up about 150 sq.km of land in the area. Since it was declared a military zone "years ago", Human Rights Watch said, evictions could have been ordered any time. There was no explanation why they were being carried out only now.

Daraghmeh said many families do have documented title to the grazing, including his own "from my grandfather". But the Israeli High Court has ruled that since the bedouin are "pastoralists", they cannot be considered permanent residents.

Bedouin locals said the Israeli army and officials have told them they will all be moved out of the zone in due course, meaning perhaps 2,000 people in hillside camps scattered on either side of a winding road for some 20 kilometres.

Camps, settlements

There are six Israeli army camps in the area, said local Palestinian official Aaref Daraghmeh. There are also several Israeli settlements including Rotem, Maskiyyot and Mehola, which the World Court has ruled are illegally built on occupied land.

Almost every big splash of green on fertile land among the hills off the main highway through the Jordan Valley is Israeli-made. This is agribusiness, not kibbutz homesteading.

The date-palm plantations, vineyards, cattle feedlots and turkey farms operate on a highly commercial scale.

The bedouin farms, by contrast, are not much more than subsistence operations.

"We have been here for 15 years," said Amal Qasem, who lives in a couple of big tents with her barefoot children, with a dozen calves avoiding the noon sun in a small, shaded corral.

"We take water from the spring there. But now settlers come to use it like a pool and tell us to go away," she said. "I'm afraid the army will soon come and kick us out."

19 June 2009

few and far between

my blogging has been tired lately, as i have been.  my apologies.  instead of trying to formulate a coherent thought-provoking blog, i will just give you the highlights from our last month of life:

1.  exhaustion from school.  2 weeks and 2 days of classes left, and we are ready to be done.  things couldn't get any crazier than they are right now at school.

2.  moved into a new apartment.  we now can walk to school and don't have to take care of a cat.  its also very nice.  we're happy with it.

3.  we shared good news in strange ways at school this past week.  ask about that when we get home.

4.  i wrote a song about prime numbers.  also booked a show for July 31st in east peoria.  you can hear the new song at www.myspace.com/bobandmarie

5.  i finished reading god & empire by john dominic crossan and began reading the formation of hell.  i also am close to finishing a little book called becoming the answer to our prayers by shane claiborne and jonathan wilson-hartgrove.  take these as suggestions or books to avoid.

6.  starting a new family... in a few months.  2 daughters on the way!

(daughters means 2 of our friends pictures above are moving in... sorry moms!)

7.  wadi mujib.  perhaps the coolest thing we've done yet in jordan.  basically its hiking through a canyon in a river and up waterfalls without any equipment or guide.  injury-prone people should avoid this at all costs.

8.  umpired a few baseball games.  not too rewarding, but it was nice to be around the game again.

9.  started playing chicken foot dominoes and can't stop.

10. appeared via video at chris and lauren mackey's wedding... i hope that was fun.

we'll be home in a few short weeks, and we can't wait to relax, ride bikes, and hang out with everyone.

a whole new world...view

i (jeff) was eating lunch outside the other day with some of my fifth graders. the smartest girl in the class asked me, "what did you want to be when you were a kid?" i responded that if professional baseball and basketball fell through, i wanted to be a marine biologist. she pondered. then she told me she wanted to be a doctor for a long time, but now she wants to join the army so she can kill the israeli settlers in palestine.
me (to self): what!? are you serious!? you would rather kill people than heal people?
i asked her how this vocation would make the world a better place. she said something about how if there were no settlers then the world would be a better place. i agreed. sort of. i reminded her of our conversation in health science class about how violence just breeds more violence and that her violent solution would really be creating more of a problem. i informed her that she wouldn't be able to change the world for the better by creating more violence. i hope she heard me.
yesterday, jessey was in her 2nd grade class when a student saw her ticket for seeing the pope (who we pontificated with on sunday). he seemed to get excited about the ticket, until he exclaimed, "i hate all non-muslims!" jessey, being the quick-witted person that she is, responded, "really. so you hate me then?" he was stunned. his theological framework had been broken, but it could quickly be repaired. he said, "i don't hate the one's i know. i hate all the non-muslims i don't know who want to trick me!" later in class, this student drew a picture and showed it to jessey. he said it was the pope and the scribbles were him killing the pope. shocked, jessey said his drawing was like her making a drawing of her killing the prophet. again he moped.
our task is daily, and it is difficult. but it is worth it. little drops of truth are the only way we can help to put out these fires, but the light will eventually overcome the darkness. first application.
second application: how are we/you guilty of making the same types of outrageous statements about a group of people we/you know little to nothing about? these kids are not coming up with these ideas because they are evil or violent, but because their parents and their spirtual leaders are giving them these ideas. how do we do the same to our children? when a black president is elected? when a muslim woman is appointed to a staff position in the white house? do we say something about the end of the world, or about how these are lesser people? we need to be careful that our speech is always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that we can be found blameless. something to think about.