The Children, Vignette #’s 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Vignette #2:
Teaching the 3, 4 and 5 year olds today we had to reprimand several of the little boys for talking and gesturing with each other about stabbing people with knives and about slitting people’s throats with same.
Vignette #3: Little E., four years old and speaking with a lisp, when the topic of class discussion got on “Obeying our Moms when they Ask us to Wash up, or to Go to Bed”, talking eagerly and excitedly to everybody in the class about how he has 3 Moms!
Vignette #4: Sharing Who Jesus is with the children, verbally, in small groups of four or five, through use of the “Evangel-cube” and how eager all the children are to hear and “do” the cube over and over again, never tiring of it, and breaking in to help tell the story, and how they love to handle the cube themselves, in turn, and help tell bits and pieces of the story.
Vignette #5: How the children were all big-eyed when I introduced the new Crayola crayons all the way from the Estados Unidos, and how worried they were about the possibility of accidentally breaking the new crayons. One little guy said, “Oh no! The point of my crayon is breaking!” when it was only blunted the tiniest fraction through him starting to use it on his color paper…
Haiku #8. “Goodbye”
Haiku #8. “Goodbye”
by NinadeSusOjos
Dread word! Don’t say it.
Hurts too bad again. Shut up.
Pretend that this is normal.
The Children, Vignette #’s 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Vignette #2:
Teaching the 3, 4 and 5 year olds today we had to reprimand several of the little boys for talking and gesturing with each other about stabbing people with knives and about slitting people’s throats with same.
Vignette #3: Little E., four years old and speaking with a lisp, when the topic of class discussion got on “Obeying our Moms when they Ask us to Wash up, or to Go to Bed”, talking eagerly and excitedly to everybody in the class about how he has 3 Moms!
Vignette #4: Sharing Who Jesus is with the children, verbally, in small groups of four or five, through use of the “Evangel-cube” and how eager all the children are to hear and “do” the cube over and over again, never tiring of it, and breaking in to help tell the story, and how they love to handle the cube themselves, in turn, and help tell bits and pieces of the story.
Vignette #5: How the children were all big-eyed when I introduced the new Crayola crayons all the way from the Estados Unidos, and how worried they were about the possibility of accidentally breaking the new crayons. One little guy said, “Oh no! The point of my crayon is breaking!” when it was only blunted the tiniest fraction through him starting to use it on his color paper…
From “Finding Calcutta” by Dr. Mary Poplin
“They do not analyze the worthiness of people or the cause of their poverty – they simply (reach out) as quickly as possible to the best of their ability. To the missionaries, poverty is first a spiritual problem and only secondarily a political one. (Teresa of Calcutta) said, “I won’t mix in politics. War is the fruit of politics and so, I don’t involve myself, that’s all. If I get stuck in politics I will stop loving. Because I will have to stand by one, not by all. That is the difference.” – p. 50, “Finding Calcutta” by Dr. Mary Poplin
“One result of (the missionaries’ first-hand knowledge of poverty) is that they do not treat poor parents as the enemies of poor children. They value and seek to serve the whole family.” – p. 57, “Finding Calcutta” by Dr. Mary Poplin
From “Finding Calcutta” by Dr. Mary Poplin
“They do not analyze the worthiness of people or the cause of their poverty – they simply (reach out) as quickly as possible to the best of their ability. To the missionaries, poverty is first a spiritual problem and only secondarily a political one. (Teresa of Calcutta) said, “I won’t mix in politics. War is the fruit of politics and so, I don’t involve myself, that’s all. If I get stuck in politics I will stop loving. Because I will have to stand by one, not by all. That is the difference.” – p. 50, “Finding Calcutta” by Dr. Mary Poplin
“One result of (the missionaries’ first-hand knowledge of poverty) is that they do not treat poor parents as the enemies of poor children. They value and seek to serve the whole family.” – p. 57, “Finding Calcutta” by Dr. Mary Poplin
Hospitality
The idea is not in vogue this days excepted in its co-opted meaning of working in or getting a degree in the hotel business. There’s an historic sense for hospitality that goes way back in the world of simpler times. Over the past many years, the unique life and work my family’s been in through our children’s growing up years has afforded us a front row seat to the change in people’s ideas about hospitality, in North America. We’ve become MARKEDLY individualistic there! For most people, there, no longer is one’s home and kitchen thought of as, in part, a life tool with which to help to be happy, and facilitate the lives of others (even strangers!). No longer is even the word “hospitality” thought of as a practice to help people connect with each other and give happiness to each other, or as a way to serve those in need, or as a way to worship God! Rather, it’s thought of as a basket description for visual and culinary pleasantness!
Maybe this is partly because doing hospitality is HARD. I think it’s hard – not for everybody but for many people, including myself in recent years, and I think few people are naturally good at it! We all want to be naturally good at it, like my mom and dad are, but, we’re not. You know what, though? We could work at becoming better at it and achieve more skill at, and commitment to, hospitality, if we decided to personally prioritize doing so and if we asked God to help us. We KNOW it would be God’s will for us – this is all THROUGH the Bible. Oh we love to idealize and romanticize the idea of hospitality, but, from loads of personal experience in this years ago – I know what a mountain of work it is. But, that’s the case with many things, and, with hospitality – it IS a two-way street – you DO get to make new life friends through it, and renew and deepen longstanding relationships. Fantastic, a bonus, a frosting on the cake. It’s powerful, for connections. What is the whole world crying out for, these days? More authentic connection in community…
I think it’s easier to practice in some contexts than in others. Sadly, in middle-class suburbia (whatever that IS, exactly, anymore) in North America these days hospitality has become DIFFICULT to do. Why? People tend to have so much. Expectations are high in the areas of choicing, comfort and abundance. The idea of what it IS has gone more toward “entertaining” rather than opening one’s heart (and home) in a concentrated ATTENTION of offering to give to the stranger to ENCOURAGE that person. A little offering , of who you are and what you have, and what you have prepared in love, be that ever so simple. There’s not a modicum of trust anymore, and also, there’s WAY too much attitude of keeping up with the Jones’es. How can a person practice hospitality joyfully and without over- stress when COMPARISON is in everybody’s minds, including their own?
Here in Bolivia hospitality could be SUCH a wonderful tool for us, if we would avail ourselves of it. People would come to us, people would open up to us. It would, still, be a MOUNTAIN of work but what’s worth doing takes WORK, and this is an idea that would be effective here. We know it, from much past experience. I want to get back into it and with a few innovations of my own on what my patterns with this used to be, go FORWARD into the future with it!
Remembering my “Aunt” with Joy
This, in the photo, is my “Aunt” Marabelle Taylor, a close family friend and colleague of my parents in Cameroun. When I was 19 I bumped in her truck down interminable red dust roads by her side, spending part of a summer learning from her in the context of a small internship for one of my university classes.
Aunt Marabelle was a cross-cultural worker with a huge God-given, life-long love for and commitment to underprivileged children and teenagers and their relatives. She saved hundreds, maybe thousands of orphans from the Babimbi Hills region of French Cameroun during the Basa terrorist uprisings of 1960 – 1965 and their long and horrible-for-children aftermath. Originally from the U.S., she was a nurse and invented high-protein baby and child “physical salvation” formulas out of local, easily-available ingredients like canned sardines and powdered milk and pulverized Australian spinach, to bring the war-starved orphans back from the brink of death. She became well-known in the nation in the sixties decade for being able to work her benificent “magic”, bringing a fragile infant back to health when nobody else could, and Camerounians in the aftermath of that war brought her orphan babies from all over the region and beyond. She spent 40 or 50 years serving in Cameroun, eventually retired and returned to America, lived to an extremely ripe old age and is now “graduated” to Jesus’ presence, joyful and problem-free for eternity with Him. What I remember most about my Aunt Marabelle is her love for me and her love for Jesus.
The other thing that most impresses me about her is the way she always seemed “charmed” and safe, no matter what happened to her and in spite of what many might term an overly adventurous and spartan life. I will never forget waking up each morning before the crack of dawn, from a hard borrowed bed, in one of her friends’ little flea and mosquito-ridden mud huts with a thatched roof, to the scrape of her placing the water kettle over the gas burner to make us each a hot cup of stale Nescafe! Meals seemed to consist mostly of canned sardines and crackers bought by the side of the road. She went through her days cheery and singing, traveling a tremendous amount, helping care for each of the beloved orphan babies, their extended families, small kids and “adopted” Camerounian high-school-aged “daughters”, two of whom she named “Agnes” and “Sweetheart”. Never choosing to marry, Aunt Marabelle had the biggest and most loving (to her!) extended family – from what I could see at the time it seemed to consist of the majority of the population of southern French-speaking Cameroun – of anyone I have ever known. One time, when I was 19, her Camerounian driver, Ibogo dozed off at the wheel and wrecked her vehicle – that’s what the photo shows. Aside from scrapes and bruises, both of them escaped unharmed. Thank God.
My Aunt Marabelle quietly, unassumingly, unsentimentally pointed every person she came in contact with to Jesus, trusting only Jesus hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly to take CARE of her AND HER WORK, in His love plan for all the peoples of the world. This mindset allowed her to live with peace and joy.
She did talk of Jesus, softly, a lot. And she was silent sometimes too…….
Aunt Marabelle, you’ve been gone for awhile now, but I feel like I’m STILL learning SO MUCH from you! Thank you for including me in your life and letting me learn from you!
Haiku #8. “Goodbye”
Haiku #8. “Goodbye”
by NinadeSusOjos
Dread word! Don’t say it.
Hurts too bad again. Shut up.
Pretend that this is normal.
Beatrix Potter and ART and transferring the concept of Painting from drawing to WRITING and Photography.
” It is all the same, drawing, painting, modelling, the irresistible desire to copy any beautiful object which strikes the eye. Why cannot one be content to look at it? I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad time come over me it is a stronger desire than ever, and settles on the queerest things, worse than queer sometimes. Last time, in the middle of September, I caught myself in the back yard making a careful and admiring copy of the swill bucket, and the laugh it gave me brought me round.” – Beatrix Potter on her own drawing and painting.
I feel the same way, not about drawing and painting, though I wish I could (!), but about WRITING and PHOTOGRAPHY!
The Textile Museum in Sucre (the first one). (before it got taken down, moved and diminished.)
From “Finding Calcutta” by Dr. Mary Poplin
“They do not analyze the worthiness of people or the cause of their poverty – they simply (reach out) as quickly as possible to the best of their ability. To the missionaries, poverty is first a spiritual problem and only secondarily a political one. (Teresa of Calcutta) said, “I won’t mix in politics. War is the fruit of politics and so, I don’t involve myself, that’s all. If I get stuck in politics I will stop loving. Because I will have to stand by one, not by all. That is the difference.” – p. 50, “Finding Calcutta” by Dr. Mary Poplin
“One result of (the missionaries’ first-hand knowledge of poverty is that they do not treat poor parents as the enemies of poor children. They value and seek to serve the whole family.” – p. 57, “Finding Calcutta” by Dr. Mary Poplin
Epifania’s Story (Part 3)
In the middle of the difficulty of her life, Epifania shared the following, “I’m praying for my husband, Antonio, that God change his life. And I believe that God will change him. Two months ago, when we traveled out to tend our flocks and gardens in Inca Casani, I was surprised to find Antonio listening to Mosoj Chaski. He had borrowed a radio from his sister! I didn’t say anything to him. I was even more surprised when Antonio gruffly asked me why I had not taken a gift of potatoes to Radio Mosoj Chaski for the radio’s anniversary in April.” With tears in her eyes, Epifania continued, “my daily life is hard but I will never leave my God who has saved me. I have the hope to one day show up at Mosoj Chaski with my husband, praising God together.”
Food and Drink
” Jesus answered, ‘ It is written: Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'” Matthew 4:4
Haiku #8. “Goodbye”
Haiku #8. “Goodbye”
by NinadeSusOjos
Dread word! Don’t say it.
Hurts too bad again. Shut up.
Pretend that this is normal.
Beatrix Potter and ART and transferring the concept of ART from drawing to WRITING.
” It is all the same, drawing, painting, modelling, the irresistible desire to copy any beautiful object which strikes the eye. Why cannot one be content to look at it? I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad time come over me it is a stronger desire than ever, and settles on the queerest things, worse than queer sometimes. Last time, in the middle of September, I caught myself in the back yard making a careful and admiring copy of the swill bucket, and the laugh it gave me brought me round.” – Beatrix Potter on her own drawing and painting.
I feel the same way, not about drawing and painting, though I wish I could (!), but about WRITING and PHOTOGRAPHY!
The Textile Museum in Sucre (the first one). (before it got taken down, moved and diminished.)
Vignette # 7 from the Children
#7 Amanda, 5 years old, kept complaining to the adult monitor that some of the little boys kept calling her a SPIDER (araña)! They kept insisting that they were not! (a lot of these little ones seem to have lisps and slight speech impediments) Several of the other kids chimed right in and they all had a little philosophical discussion about it.
The Children, Vignette #’s 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Vignette #2:
Teaching the 3, 4 and 5 year olds today we had to reprimand several of the little boys for talking and gesturing with each other about stabbing people with knives and about slitting people’s throats with same.
Vignette #3: Little E., four years old and speaking with a lisp, when the topic of class discussion got on “Obeying our Moms when they Ask us to Wash up, or to Go to Bed”, talking eagerly and excitedly to everybody in the class about how he has 3 Moms!
Vignette #4: Sharing Who Jesus is with the children, verbally, in small groups of four or five, through use of the “Evangel-cube” and how eager all the children are to hear and “do” the cube over and over again, never tiring of it, and breaking in to help tell the story, and how they love to handle the cube themselves, in turn, and help tell bits and pieces of the story.
Vignette #5: How the children were all big-eyed when I introduced the new Crayola crayons all the way from the Estados Unidos, and how worried they were about the possibility of accidentally breaking the new crayons. One little guy said, “Oh no! The point of my crayon is breaking!” when it was only blunted the tiniest fraction through him starting to use it on his color paper…
Enjoying George Herbert
Yesterday while continuing my project to gradually and systematically weed through, organize and de-clutter our apartment, I was dusting a bookshelf and happened to come across an old college textbook on 17th c. poetry. Feeling wry fondness for the faded green hardback, I pulled it and dipped in.
I came across a George Herbert poem, actually several of them, already marked up in now-faded pen, by the “me” of years ago, and they touched my heart, spoke to me, even YET, and YET AGAIN! Especially this one!
JESU
Jesus is in my heart, His sacred name
Is deeply carvèd there, but th’other week
A great affliction broke the little frame,
Even all to pieces, which I went to seek:
And first I found the corner, where was J,
After, where ES, and next, where U was graved.
When I had got these parcels, instantly
I sat me down to spell them and percieved
That to my broken heart he was “I ease you”
and to my whole is JESU.
-George Herbert, a pastor in the 17th century.
The Children, Vignette #’s 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Vignette #2:
Teaching the 3, 4 and 5 year olds today we had to reprimand several of the little boys for talking and gesturing with each other about stabbing people with knives and about slitting people’s throats with same.
Vignette #3: Little E., four years old and speaking with a lisp, when the topic of class discussion got on “Obeying our Moms when they Ask us to Wash up, or to Go to Bed”, talking eagerly and excitedly to everybody in the class about how he has 3 Moms!
Vignette #4: Sharing Who Jesus is with the children, verbally, in small groups of four or five, through use of the “Evangel-cube” and how eager all the children are to hear and “do” the cube over and over again, never tiring of it, and breaking in to help tell the story, and how they love to handle the cube themselves, in turn, and help tell bits and pieces of the story.
Vignette #5: How the children were all big-eyed when I introduced the new Crayola crayons all the way from the Estados Unidos, and how worried they were about the possibility of accidentally breaking the new crayons. One little guy said, “Oh no! The point of my crayon is breaking!” when it was only blunted the tiniest fraction through him starting to use it on his color paper…
Vignette # 7 from the Children
#7 Amanda, 5 years old, kept complaining to the adult monitor that some of the little boys kept calling her a SPIDER (araña)! They kept insisting that they were not! (a lot of these little ones seem to have lisps and slight speech impediments) Several of the other kids chimed right in and they all had a little philosophical discussion about it.
Wow! Too deep for me, but so good! (more Keller books gleanings)
still on the topic of suffering:
I would consider this to be the nugget in the center of the Christian belief about pain and suffering in the world.- La Niña de Sus Ojos
“The Christian understanding of suffering is dominated by the idea of grace. In Christ we have received forgiveness, love, and adoption into the family of God.
These goods are undeserved, and that frees us from the temptation to feel proud of our suffering.
But also, it is the present enjoyment of those inestimable goods that make suffering bearable. Scheler writes, ‘It is not the glowing prospect of a happy afterlife, but the experienced happiness of being in a state of grace of God while in the throes of agony that released the wonderful powers in the martyrs.’
Indeed, suffering not only is made bearable by these joys, but suffering can even enhance these joys, in the midst of sorrow.” – Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, Tim Keller, pp. 29-30, Penguin, 2013.
a very new and young assembly we went to visit and help with, with their own traditional musical instruments
GlobeRoamer 