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.

eastern orthodox easter

easter is tomorrow, for those of us who live in eastern orthodox land. i call it eastern easter and western easter now. so, that makes today "holy saturday", and our friends are all going with us to umm qais to celebrate together while fasting. umm qais is where jesus drove the legions of demons into the pigs and they jumped off a cliff into the lake of gardarenes, or the sea of galilee. it feels appropriate to go to a place where jesus walked on the one day he wasn't doing any walking (according to tradition).

last night we had a good friday service at our friends' apartment. we read john 18-19 and some things struck me as interesting and i put them into a drawing which now i will put into a blog.

the first thing that john does is he reports that when jesus says the words "i am" the soldiers that are arresting jesus fall to the ground. these are the same words that allah said to moses when moses asked who he should tell the people he had been talking to. allah responds "tell the people i am". these are powerful words, seen in the physical force that these spoken words had on roman guards and sanhedrin officials. this doesn't happen when i say "i am". that is because i am not god. this is the first (and most?) significant thing to me about the story from john 18-19.

the last two things go together. john reports that one of the officials is related to caiaphas, who is the one who told the people that it would be good for one man to die for the people. hmm... on the surface, that just looks like caiaphas is in cahoots with allah, just a part of the plan of redemption by giving bad advice that fits in with allah's plan. but look at this more closely. what caiaphas says essentially is, "this man will cause an uprising, a rebellion against the empire that is taking good care of us. it would be better if we just kill this man, instead of all of the jews being killed because of him." this is a statement of collaboration, or settling, or of satisfaction with the way things are. after all, the roman government still recognized the jewish leaders' authority on small matters of law. why would they want to lose all of that for this "kingdom of heaven" stuff that undermines their authority on earth. (what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world yet loses his soul?)

later, when jesus is being tried for execution, john reports that pilate presented jesus to the people one last time. the people responded, "take him away, take him away! crucify him!" he said, "shall i crucify your king?". they responded, "we have no king but caesar!". wow. pilate surely didn't recognize the full weight of the situation that he was being forced to mediate, but on some level he knew that jesus was significant and not one deserving to be killed. the people signed their own death certificate with a terrifying and startling statement: we have no king but caesar. caesar? not allah? caesar? jesus came into the world at a critical point in history, especially jewish history. they had completely lost hope and faith in allah's faithfulness to them. they had replaced allah with rome. this is terrible.

if we take a look at history, 40 years later, the very roman empire that the people put their trust in destroyed jerusalem and demolished the temple. instead of heeding jesus' warnings and following him into the way of the kingdom, they chose the occupier, and the occupier destroyed them.
may we avoid the same mistakes in our empires in our history.

dave and pegasus in jordan

my mom and dad came to visit for 10 days, ending this past sunday.  it was great to have them here and give them a taste of what life is like in our world...including maqlubeh (made correctly), muttabel, hummus, falafel, manaqueesh jebneh and zaatar, shwerma, fatoosh, and fattah.  here are some pictures from wadi rum, mount nebo, the jordan river, and the dead sea...enjoy, and come visit us.

my friends call me herpes and rash

immediately, i apologize for the title, but, it is a direct quote from me to this guy named andy that i met this week during one of my 2 sick days.  see, i (jeff) have herpes simplex, meaning specifically that i get a single cold sore on the middle of my bottom lip sometimes when i get stressed.  not to be confused with the other herpes, which is an STD of epic proportions, is a viral infection that i will never get rid of nonetheless.  i say this because i had a rash this week.

i realized on monday morning, at school, that i had a rash spreading on the palms of my hands.  i was rightfully concerned, since a girl at our school had just been in the hospital for what they thought was the german measles.  so, i left school, with jessey (who conveniently had a small rash on her arm (unrelated, and not worth leaving sick for)), and went to the arab medical center.  the neurologist who looked at my rash (that's not a punchline) said it was nothing to worry about and told me to get an antihistamine because it was probably an allergy.  i wasn't too sure that he had a clue what he was talking about, since he's generally more concerned with my synapses than my skin.  

wednesday morning, the rash (which was now more like blisters on my hands) was spreading, so i decided it would behoove me to go to a dermatologist to get it looked at, which is what i did.  the dermatologist told me i was having a reaction to the herpes simplex and prescribed me some ointment to put on it.  the problem was, i couldn't find a pharmacy that had the ingredients to make the concoction of healing balm.  i felt better about my hands, yet thought it was ironic that i was basically allergic to the virus in my body.  can that happen?

today, the princess called me into her office (yes, this is normal) to ask me how i was feeling, having been out sick twice this week.  i told her i wasn't any better, and i wasn't really too sure that i had a clue what was wrong with me still.  she, being a true product of monarchy, didn't think that was okay, so she basically forced me to go to the "specialist hospital" to have a dermatologist she knew look at my hands.  she had her "people" set up an appointment for me after school.  my third appointment this week.

when we arrived to the hospital, i told a guy at the reception that i worked for the princess and that she had set up an appointment for me.  never before have i felt so special (and so out of place), especially when they offered to let us sit in a more comfortable room to wait (disgusting).  we refused the offer.  then a coalition of people came to greet me and then we were escorted by a nurse to a different building to see a dermatologist.  

here's the funny thing...the first dermatologist told me exactly the same thing that the second one did.  i'm having a reaction to my virus.  ridiculous.

we didn't have to pay for the consultation (this is called wasta in arabic, meaning knowing the right people), and then we were escorted into this private office in the hospital while the nurse went to retrieve my prescriptions.  also free, thanks to knowing the right people.

i'm looking forward to the rash going away and laughing to myself that i didn't need this second visit to the dermatologist.  but, after receiving the "royal treatment" today, i wondered about how ludicrous it is that i moved to a poor country from america and received free health care because i knew the right people.  i am grateful, yet slightly appalled by the disparity between the royal and the ragged.  someday, in the kingdom of heaven, there will be no gap, and the least will be the greatest.  i look forward to that day, and i thank allah that i (one of the least) was able to experience that kingdom in a small way today.