I bleed scarlet and grey

Ouch, Canada.... that almost hurt. :p I'm not so senseless in my great love and affection for The Ohio State that I would pretend that our entire campus of 65K operates at an Ivy school level of academic competence.

It's been a while since I've blogged, so I'll update on where I'm at.

I am officially back at the Ohio State University and just finished my first full week of classes. I'm PSYCHed to be back in the dorms, on the campus I love, and listening to intoxicated students scream O-H! I-O! outside my window at 3AM in the morning. I'm also completely exhausted from IV, school, and myself.

I love being on this campus. I love the students. I love the culture. I'm loving the pioneering work that our IV chapter is doing and my ministry. I'm taking a Soc of Religion class, a class on Social Movements, Racquetball, and loving it. I'm doing my thesis on multiethnic christian spaces with my field work focusing on my chapter and both really excited and grateful for the opportunity to conveniently combine two of my favorite things.

But its all a bit much right now and I've been struggling a lot with stress and anger these past few weeks. I'm stressed to the point that I'm feeling stomach and back pains and possibly having anxiety attacks. I've never experienced stress like this before. I've become angry at everything from God and my past to white culture to my own friends for their materialism and consumer culture mentality. I've started praying the liturgy at least twice a day, which has really been helping my prayer life and the stress level.. (My staff has decided that our leadership team should learn to grow in prayer this year so we're all praying the liturgy and psalms on a 3 month cycle. Can I say, the liturgy is hot.) I'm interpreting the anger as real signs that race, my past and future, and consumerism(?) are specific areas that God wants to redeem in me and is doing a work already. Being angry is okay for this reason; it just takes a lot of energy out of me.

My class on social movements is a graduate level course so we aren't tested on the incredible amount of reading we're assigned but asked to apply concepts and write lots of papers. For the class, each student selects a social movement to study and write on and I'm considering choosing the liberation theology movement in Latin America (for obvious reasons). That or something on community/neighborhood organization. Part of this week's reading was on the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) movement (a labor movement, mostly pre-Depression). I was sitting in Caribou Coffee reading about the persecution that IWW members incurred and was getting really worked up. I was really surprised by my reaction, but very grateful for it. I've been asking God to grow in me a heart more like His, where poverty and the poor are concerned, and I think He really is working on softening my heart. I had been wondering whether God had really heard that prayer this summer and so nearly crying into my textbook in the middle of a coffeeshop was really encouraging to me.

Lastly, props to Mr. Sean Prorak. I thank God whenever I read your updates on your struggle to discern God's path for you among the poor...... and I am remembering you in my prayers when I pray for the poor and oppressed. (every Saturday morning, according to the Book of Common Prayer.) Be blessed.

I got myself an ivy that has grown so out of control that my mother has started to amputate its legs.




Oh yeah, I'm going to Urbana. :)

Go Blue

This is mainly for Alice's benefit, but I'm sure others might be interested as well.

The ranking of the top 500 universities by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University is out again this year.

"The annual poll published by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University bases its findings on several criteria of academic and research performance including Nobel prize winners, frequently cited researchers, scholarly articles that appear in Nature and Science, and the per capita performance of the institution. Shanghai Jiao Tong University established the rankings to assess the performance of Chinese universities relative to their global peers. In recent years, it has become a widely followed measure worldwide."

The bottom line is that "The" Ohio State University punches in at a respectible 66th overall ... but The Univeristy of Michigan is #21 baby! Of course, my own school is "only" 90th.

Anyway, if you want to find your school (or not find it ... as the case may be) go here
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2006/ARWU2006_Top100.htm
your browser might need to download software to translate the Chinese characters.

Prayer Request

This Friday our chapter is going to have a missions night to promote Urbana. I'm going to be sharing along with other students in our chapter who went to Kenya, Thailand, and Chile. Pray that we would be able to share our experiences effectively and that students would become excited about God's heart for missions and really consider going regardless of external circumstances!

Muchisimas gracias!

Looking ahead and being overwhelmed

This passed Thursday my parents called me to update me on the goings on of my family and home town area and one thing that came up was a company that has people working at it who my father knows. So he said he would get me contact info for it and stuff. It’s an oil company, so it is one of the possibilities I have been considering; but it just seems like my future seems so much more important now then it did before. Whatever skills I choose to develop in my few years of work in the US are going to be the ones I can most easily transfer to the people I work with. Now my current three main possibilities with advantages of each are: oil, I can get into many closed countries easily; pharmaceuticals, I can learn how to make cheap medicines for people; waste treatment, I can help these communities to develop good, clean water works. And still then there are more possibilities with such things as food processing where I could learn how to make healthy clean food for the people I work with.
I’m very grateful for how much God has led me already; but now as I see better how more things can be applied to the benefit of those who I work with, I’m just getting more and more confused as to what exactly I’m supposed to do. On one very good note God has been very faithful recently in sending people to talk to me about things that actually listen and pay attention when I talk about my experiences and my future, so I’ve been having better opportunities to talk with people about these things; but at this point that has really only opened up more possibilities. I’m really hoping that as I start to check into these things God will close doors that I’m not supposed to take, but right now my future just seems so wide open. I know that this would be a lovely problem for some people, but when I think about the fact that I will be transferring skills to people who would have no chance to receive these skills I get so afraid of screwing up God’s plan for me in these people’s lives. It may be foolish and prideful to think that I can screw up God’s plan, but it seems plenty real to me at this major cross roads of applying for internships which will decide what skills I have to take to people in urban slums…please just pray that God would lead me and that I would listen and have confidence in the decisions He leads me to.

Recordar y Compartiendo

Hola equipo!

I feel my re-entry update is long overdue, but now that school is finally starting up for me this week, I can delay no longer. Despite how long is has been, I still have some thoughts I have been saving up since we’ve been apart that I wanted to share with you all. Being back at home, initially it seemed as though every little thing here, in the realm of home, reminded me and made me think of Mexico. The following are a few anecdotes of some of my Mexico-recalling experiences:

My first morning being home I went out to eat breakfast with my parents and afterwards we stopped at Home Depot to pick up some supplies they needed to complete painting the house-exterior, the summer project they ventured into while I was gone. While there I came across some blue painter's tape. *Flashback* to the failed search for the painter's tape at La Casa de los Amigos, to assist in decorating the upstairs room with maple leaves for Canada Day. / I laughed at myself as I stood in the store realizing that a silly thing like painter's tape had sent me into a memory of Mexico.

During the second week of being home, I finally set a day apart to do some serious quiet time and debriefing. That day I took a walk to the park not too far from my home carrying, most importantly, a lunch and my journal. I spent several hours where I did nothing but think and write, which got me in a much better place than I was that last night of debriefing in LA. Then as I walked back home I was noted the street name “Cerca Blanca” and later noticed the “Vending Prohibited” and “Dumping Prohibited” signs along an area beside the empty roadside. With Mexico on the brain, it was such a strange sight to see. Such a contrast from trash-lined and vendor-enveloped streets of D.F. - I was so conflicted- I was not sure if I should be sad that there were no little old ladies allowed to set up their means of livelihood (selling food) along the street or if I should even be glad about my trash-free roadside. Still unresolved, yet interesting to have had that thought process going on at all- I now had a perspective on the matter that I never had before- a Mexican perspective.

Every year at the end of August my mom's family gets together for a reunion at Mission Bay's Tecolote Shores. My Mom's birthday also falls near that day, so we brought some cake and decorations to celebrate at the bay. Supplied with balloons and string a few of us proceeded to string the balloons onto a strand. *Flashback* The last day of the summer program with the kids my site, the Sisters of AMEXTRA got to help decorate the pavilion in the Central Plaza of Xona. We were preparing it as the location where the kids could present all the songs, dances, and theatre performances they had been learning to their families. It was there that I practiced the technique of tying balloons to twine and then stringing the line up around the area for festive decor. / Back at Mission Bay, someone had started making the strand by using the string to tie to the balloons. I let them do it their way, but whenever I had a balloon ready, I tied the balloon around the string as I had learned in Xona; an insignificant difference in technique really. Yet to me, it was another occasion where I had to smile to myself, just being reminded of Mexico.

During the last few quarters of school before the trek, I had been going to the homeless shelter in downtown San Diego with a friend of mine. Eventually I reconnected her and we went down there one evening to serve dinner to the women staying in the overnight shelter. On one of the weeks we went in September, after we were done, the shelter employee who was supervising that night popped in to meet us and say hello and such. During that introduction, she said something about it being a pleasure to meet us. In that moment where it would have been appropriate to say “same here,” or something to that effect, for some reason my mind was coming up with “tambien” as one of my response options. I managed to say something to get by, however it was after the exchange had already passed that I realized I was trying to come up with “Igualmente.” Yep… Mexico in the subconscious – a month removed from the source, but still hanging on.

Last story just for fun… featuring “the awkward chair.” At work, my group has a meeting every Thursday at 2PM to keep track of our progress and that sort of thing. One week, it was hardly a minute passed 2 o’clock, when I walked into the conference room to find that everyone else was already there, and the only seat open was right next to my supervisor who leads our group, in other words, the only seat open was “the awkward chair.” I had to contain myself as I thought about the “awkward chair” next to Nick during our cozy talks on Globalization at the Tepotzlan hostel and in the library of la Casa. But sadly, no one was around at the time to understand that inside joke… so I had to share it now.

LOOKING BACK AND LOOKING FORWARD...again. It was tough having to go back home with a lot of my Trek-thoughts unresolved, especially when it was already hard enough just having to say good-bye to everyone. But since then I have reached a place of acceptance and understanding of what God had for me on the trek. However I won’t go into the extent of that here, as this entry is already too long. Just know overall, that being in Mexico and being with all of you changed me – it changed my perspectives in so many ways and expanded my knowledge of God, who Jesus is, my brothers and sisters in Christ, the U.S., Mexico, people in poverty, and the list goes on. Plus, since the end of the Trek, I also changed my mind about going to Urbana. I realized that I had decided against Urbana, because of the cost and travel, before I even gave it a chance. After the trek, I finally gave it some consideration and it didn’t take much considering to feel God’s confirming pull to go. I look forward to seeing many of you there!!

So my trek family, I have enjoyed remembering Mexico with you. But (I’m sure you agree after this lengthy entry) that’s enough for now

Continue follow God wherever you are and wherever he leads you. And…
DON’T FORGET TO REMEMBER.

Love,
Misty^

Happy Independence Day!

Hey guys! I just wanted to wish you all a joyous Mexican Independence Day!

Have your cake and eat it too

It is unsurprising that the idea of "prosperity gospel" has been fostered in one of the most consumeristic/capitalistic societies and one of the most religious ones - it is syncretism at its best.

The hard question must be asked of Christians claiming to be blessed by God in terms of possessions ... do you have your possessions because of divine intervention or because of the socio-economic system in place in America that enables most middle to upper class people to have a "an abundant life"?

Also interesting is how John 10:10 is automatically interpreted to mean material abundance ... again, unsurprising interpretation in an overly materialistic society - a case of reading the surrounding culture into the text.

Another favourite response of mine is people who tell me that it's good to see how the poor live so we know how blessed we are ... again, the logical conclusion to this statement is that God chooses to bless Western countries with material wealth, but not poor countries (or poor people within Western countries) - this would include keeping in place systems of injustice that help create wealth for the elite (and keep it there). Or perhaps it is us humans who keep these systems in place, keep people in abject poverty, and refuse to distribute the wealth of creation ... as God is grieved all along.

Anyway, a timely (pardon the pun) post Sean ... this is one of the more important clashes within the Church this century - especially with huge growth of prosperity gospel movements in "developing" countries.

Glad to see Rick Warren speak against it. I don't agree with Warren on everything, but I am happy that he has discovered a passion for social justice in the past few years. It's good to have someone of his influence speak against the prosperity gospel.

This just hurts...

I'm so afriad of what this could cause people to believe among Christians and Non-Christians alike.

The only good I could see coming from this is if the rest of the church gets outraged enough to change the way these churches are functioning...this is not trekalicious.

Mexico City Urban Trek 2006

At Last, A Victor in Mexico

Must -- be -- first -- to --post --election --results.

For those who don't know, I'm bloggin' more consistently about Spain and such here:

¡No-Manches!

. Just in case you're interested. And, I can also put you on my up-dates list: There are two you can receive: normal up-dates and spiritual-info-saturated up-dates meant to supplement each other. Let me know if you want both or either.

But as a summary of the aforementioned up-dates, I'm in Salamanca and doing pretty good. Looking to find a Christian Fellowship and church. You can help me pray for those things. As well as fluency. I should be posting pictures and such soon! (When they find and send me the other half of my luggage.)

Not sure what to do with all the things I learned in Mexico. But I have restrained my impulse to shop and spend tons of Euros. And I have set the modest goal of intentionally loving for the sake of loving some of the people in my team. I’ve been mindful of my entry posture and keeping up with prayer. Managed to get a Bible today so I’m feeling a little better. But it’s still hard without someone watching me to keep me accountable. Still fresh off the plane at this point, though and I hope I can start re-processing, and thinking about the culture I plopped down into.

Lots of love, as always!

My Recent Experiment

Hey y'all!

I really don't know where to start...I've been having kind of a difficult re-entry, in part because I haven't been able to transplant the personal healing I experienced in DF to El Paso. I think I've fallen into a lot of the same traps I was in before I left; however this time I'm not planning on staying there. I think though that most of the issues I've been having can be attributed to the fact that I've been driving myself into the ground since I've gotten back. I've felt a lot of pressure to "get back into the swing of things." School must go on....IV events have to start up and since I'm chapter president this year I feel as though I have to "hold it together" for everyone else in the chapter and when I lose it I feel like a really crappy leader. I know in my head that I can't keep it together and that God alone can, but I just wish my heart would get the news. Unfortunately, I'm feeling really apathetic about school some days I just want to bail and help out with flood relief in Juarez (we've been getting insane amounts of rain around here lately), but I keep telling myself that my degree will be a useful tool soon.

Despite these difficulties I'm not all doom and gloom. I've been getting a lot of support from the chapter and our women's small group has started off well. Yesterday I took my first step in "experimenting" and "exploring" (the words I kept hearing from God all summer) by going to a new church. I didn't want to because I've always been a denominational transient---a perpetual visitor--having been everywhere but belonging nowhere. Even though I was having issues with the church I had been attending for a year, I didn't want to leave it because it was an area of stability in my life. However; I went, feeling unsure of everything and as I looked up at the liturgy up on the screen and listened to the rock music reverberating through the cathedral I finally admitted to God how tired I was. Tired of searching for stability and indentity in everything but him. So I sat and cried through the announcements, birthday blessings, communion, and the benediction---understanding at this point of physical, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion that I am fully unable to function--deficient but for God who is filling me, restoring me, and refreshing me.

In the next few weeks I'm going to try and get plugged in as a volunteer and begin the second phase of experimentation. Here goes something....

Hope y'all are all doing well!

"Just what the hell is a buckeye?" and other ridiculous questions you've always had about Ohio..

Midwest Midterm Midtacular
NEW YORK, August 23, 2006

"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" travels to the heart of America's most hotly contested swing state to cover the Mid-term elections. "Battlefield Ohio: 'The Daily Show's' Midwest Midterm Midtacular" will be taped at the Roy Bowen Theatre at the Ohio State University and will air nightly at 11:00 p.m. from Monday, October 30 through Thursday, November 2. Host Jon Stewart will be joined by his team of award-seeking commentators and correspondents as they seek to answer the age-old question: Just what the hell is a buckeye?

This marks the fifth time the series has made a road trip -- Philadelphia and Los Angeles (2000) Washington, D.C. (2002) and Boston (2004) -- and continues its critically-acclaimed and award-winning "Indecision" coverage. The series first earned its political stripes during the now-infamous 2000 election, receiving an Emmy Award and a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for its year-long "Indecision 2000" coverage of the race for the White House, feats repeated during the critically-acclaimed series' "Indecision 2004" election reporting.