The Jesus Lizard

Jesus bless the crocodiles, forgive the cobras and all the snakes
Open up your arms to carry all of our mistakes
Forgive the basilisk, forgive the moccasins and adders too
Have mercy on each alligator that never lived for you
I myself hatched from an egg, no white light from above
Just another ancient serpent that never earned your love
But still you find me underneath the rocks and in the ground
I cowered there just short of air and never made a sound
It's true that I'm in love with you, and even in my shame
You wipe away the imperfections and take away the pain
You wrap your loving arms around this wretched thing called me
Your love is all I'll ever need, your love has set me free

-Showbread, Age of Reptiles

Katrina danced with Louisiana

Hey everyone!
So it has been awhile since an update for a few reasons, part of it is because I was waiting to get some things rolling but since some of those elipitcal objects have begun, I will elaborate for you what I'm up to:

I finished the School of Photography I was doing in Hawaii about three weeks ago on March 26th.
That night myself and two fellow photography students, Jim and Cliff, flew out of Kona Hawaii and enjoyed some non-existent airplane food as one last hurrah before we departed ways in Phoenix. From there I ended up in New Orleans Louisiana.

Let me tell you a little about why I'm in New Orleans before I tell you what I'm doing...

The summer before Hurricane Katrina hit I ended up going down south to Baton Rouge for a Christian youth conference and it rocked my world. Basically, at that point, I fell in love with the south, and specifically with Louisiana.

And then, a few months after, the Hurricane's hit. First Katrina, then Rita.
And suddenly, for whatever reason, it became very real to me. The tsunami had hit eastern Asia just shortly before, and natural disasters had ravaged many a countryside and destroyed many a life previously throughout my 17 year existence, but this one, this devastation, came alive. It was unfathomable to me that life just continued in the United States 'as normal' when such an incredible blow to our kinsmen had just been dealt. I was glued to the news. I'd come home from cross country practice and watch the TV and get online and read the news and find out any and everything I could about what was going on in Louisiana.
I could. not. take it.
It ate at me, gnawing and provoking me.
I announced at dinner to my parents one night, that although I was in the beginning of my senior year, captain of the cross country team and making headway on my senior project, I had counted the cost and was willing to enroll in summer school to get my GED, because the pain that was happening only a few days drive away had become unbearable to me and I had to go help. There really wasn't an option any more. I had to go.

Now, parents have a way with wisdom and timing and all that organizational-planning stuff they do, and told me to buckle down a little [go figure!]. However, my Dad was feeling the pull too, and we eventually summoned a team of about 10 people from Cornerstone Community Church in Pullman that headed down to the New Orleans area to do relief work in January of 2007, four months after the hurricanes.
Let me tell you, it was a phenomenal sight.

It seemed [but not just seemed, nearly quite was] as though the only difference in four months from the days the hurricanes hit until then, was that the flood waters had receded and people had piled up all of their [now destroyed by water] belongings into huge piles 8 feet high in front of their homes. A few FEMA trailers had been sparsely distributed but there were still fields that went for miles and miles, full of trailers that would never be used due to ridiculous laws and simply unfulfilled words.

It was a good time, we gutted homes and heard stories, discovered devastation and renewed hope.
But part of me was left there and I desired to go back, knowing that there was still incredible need.

And that brings us to today.
Pursuing my options for after my time in Hawaii was complete, New Orleans popped back up into my mind and so I sent a brief email to some friends that had ended up moving down there after having gone on that trip with me in January. They responded that there was a need for me to come help in the relief work they were doing, and in about a week everything fell in place, me taking that as a sign that God wanted me to get through that door! So away I went!

So basically here's what's what:
I moved down here to the suburbs of New Orleans at the end of March and I live in an RV in the back of a church parking lot.
The church has become a hub for Compassion ministries since the hurricanes, and more specifically, EFCA Crisis Response.
I am a cook.
Sometimes the days begin with cooking at 5:30am and don't end until 9 or 10pm. Usually it's only from 11am until 9pm however. Generally not any less than 40 hours a week [ideally I get a few days off].
I travel into the city on Mondays and help their inner city extension cook dinner, and head down there whenever else they need extra help.
There are missions teams that come through weekly from all over the country to help rebuild homes in the New Orleans area. They are housed at the church [imagine 60 guys sleeping on the floor of the church sanctuary and the women overtaking the youth room, makeshift shower buildings and two washers and dryers, and a normal kitchen with two normal sized ovens and a normal sized sink - they have transformed the normal with God's grace to be able to handle an extraordinary amount of traffic].
I have joined two other amazing women that cook for these teams as well as for the staff that happens to be around.

So with that said, it's a busy time, and a great time and I'm enjoying being able to meet the need they have for kitchen help and am thankful to be here - God has shown me much in the past three weeks that I'm quickly noting are solid foundations.

So that is where I am and what I'm doing! I'm in the process of applying to be on staff with EFCA Crisis Response for a little while, and am a cookin machine livin in an RV. :)


If you'd like to help me out financially, I'd love for you to be able to do so. There is a PayPal link set up here: LINK
[If you're uncomfortable with PayPal, you can do the snail-mail thing here: PO Box 974, Pullman WA 99163-0974]

If you'd like to find more out about the EFCA Crisis Response that I'm with here in New Orleans, follow this link: LINK


Much love
Kaarin

Conspiracy

I think Pullman is a mock city.

I think it's an entire society built up around the college, so that it isn't just some kids in school in the world, but it's some kids in school in a city that they could potentially have a say in.

Like, a land that isn't really true, but builds up confidence to make one believe that they actually could do something if they tried.

Take Wal-Mart for example... how long has that little battle gone on in Pullman for now? Why doesn't Pullman ever grow? Why doesn't the business district grow beyond the local?

Control.

About 15.3% of families and 37.5% of the population are below the poverty line [wikipedia.com], so how is it sustained as it is? Schweitzer Engineering Laboratory and WSU bring in the revenue that the city lacks in funding this controlled environment 'project' of theirs. Perhaps Schweitzer produces what it does for other things more than we know... actually, haha, in all honesty, I've never been told exactly what Schweitzer produces and what it's for. Anyone I've ever asked only vaguely knows it's production of do-hickeys and engineering of stuff.

The students at WSU get to think they have a say in something, that the town is there for them. A 'real place' where they can put into practice what they're learning, a school project, a learning exercise, on a massive scale. They can run for mayor of it, can have a say in the politics and in the business development. And they can. And they do. Only because the city is there for the college. The college isn't there in a city, but the city exists because the college does, and otherwise would have just remained a small farming community amidst a sea of wheat fields.

Alcohol remains stocked to keep some sense of city life alive, and the university provides structure and day activity.

This city knows all of these authority systems are based off of respect and/or fear, but that the former runs itself along a thin line of choices on each of our parts.
That we play a game. And as long as both teams continue to agree to play, things will run relatively smoothly.

Even if one side isn't aware the game isn't real, or that they have a choice to play or not.


Unhealthy.



It's an incomplete conspiracy theory [just for fun].

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Religiosity.

[So I just went through and read people's comments on the blogs from the past three months because I think I forgot that people could do that. So side note, just wanted to say thanks for those of you who have commented. :) I appreciate it lots.]

We've had a lot of talk about having a 'religious spirit' lately on base, [ps: a 'religious spirit' is a bad thing, it judges and condemns when it should not nor does it have the right to, and is all around a negatively associated spirit] and as I was just going through some of my old things I found some notes I'd written down while I was reading Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. And it fully plays in with what's been discussed recently, and I really love Bonhoeffer's thoughts on things.

Snippets from Dietrich:

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Christians always see other men as brethren to whom Christ comes; they meet them only by going to them with Jesus. Disciple and non-disciple can never encounter each other as free men, directly exchanging their views and judging one another by objective criteria. No, the disciple can meet the non-disciple only as a man to whom Jesus comes. Here alone Christ’s fight for the soul of the unbeliever, his call, his love, his grace and his judgement comes into its own. Discipleship does not afford us a point of vantage from which to attack others; we come to them with an unconditional offer of fellowship, with the single-mindedness of the love of Jesus.

When we judge other people we confront them in a spirit of detachment, observing and reflecting as it were from the outside. But love has neither time nor opportunity for this. If we love, we can never observe the other person with detachment, for he is always and at every moment a living claim to our love and service.     

If the disciple makes judgements of their own, they set up standards of good and evil. But Jesus Christ is not a standard which I can apply to others. He is judge of myself, revealing my own virtues to me as something altogether evil. Thus I am not permitted to apply to the other person what does not apply to me. For, with my judgement according to good and evil, I only affirm the other person’s evil, for he does exactly the same. But he does not know of the hidden iniquity of the good but seeks his justification in it.

To everyone God is the kind of God he believes in.

Judgement is the forbidden objectivization of the other person which destroys single-minded love. I am not forbidden to have my own thoughts about the other person, to realize his shortcomings. but only to the extent that it offers to me an occasion for forgiveness and unconditional love, as Jesus proves to me. If I withhold my judgement I am not indulging in tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner and confirm the other person in his bad ways. Neither I am right nor the other person, but God is always right and shall proclaim both his grace and his judgement.

Judging others makes us blind, wheras love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

Christian love sees the fellow-man under the cross and therefore sees with clarity. If when we judged others, our real motive was to destroy evil, we should look for evil where it is certain to be found, and that is in our own hearts. But if we are on the look-out for evil in others, our real motive is obviously to justify ourselves, for we are seeking to escape punishment for our own sins by passing judgement on others, and are assuming by implication that the Word of God applies to ourselves in one way, and to others in another. All this is highly dangerous and misleading. We are trying to claim for ourselves a special privilege which we deny to others. But Christ’s disciples have no rights of their own or standards of right and wrong which they could enforce with other people; they have received nothing but Christ’s fellowship. Therefore the disciple is not to sit in judgement over his fellow-man because he would wrongly usurp the jurisdiction.

But the Christian is not only forbidden to judge other men: even the word of salvation has its limits. He has neither power nor right to force it on other men in season and out of season. Every attempt to impose the gospel by force, to run after people and proselytize them, to use our own resources to arrange the salvation of other people, is both futile and dangerous. It is futile, because the swine do not recognize the pearls that are cast before them, and dangerous, because it profanes the word of forgiveness, by causing those we fain would serve to sin against that which is holy. Worse still, we shall only meet with the blind rage of hardened and darkened hearts, and that will be useless and harmful. Our easy trafficking with the word of cheap grace simply bores the world to disgust, so that in the end it turns against those who try to force on it what it does not want.

[bold emphasis mine]

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blech.

i feel like my last post was titled 'blech'.

welp, this one is too.

tuesday turned in the final project, friday had an exhibition, saturday shot a wedding, today got some sweet sun with some sweet people at the beach and was attacked by a Portuguese man of war jellyfish. when people say they get 'stung' by a jellyfish, that's what they mean. it just stings and stings and stings and keeps stinging, even when the tentacles are off of you. blah.

tomorrow our class is commissioned at the community worship meeting in the morning, have a love feast brunch after, and work on wedding shots and burn back up dvds the rest of the day. tuesday we clean up the classroom, wednesday i have a final meeting with the school leader and get on an airplane with classmates Jim and Cliff and make my way to Louisiana. 

what happens in Louisiana is a little up in the air at the moment. so uhm. i'm... traveling? and in the process of becoming staff with ReachGlobal Crisis Response for hurricane relief just north of New Orleans [but it covers a large area]. 

so i don't really know what i'll be doing quite yet. so is how i go, hey?

those that know my brother, he's coming home in mid-may and I'm stoked about that, not that i'll necessarily be around, but i'm excited to be on the same continent again, so we can phone and text and do those 'normal' things. and my parents church is moving into a new building hopefully this week, so that's an exciting thing. those in the area should go check it out, across from cougar country. :)

in other news, i hope you're all sleeping well and listening to ghetto 80's music.

mahalo.

K

Move.

Basically, I love the people I'm surrounded by.

Here's a little look into what it's like to be in this sort of missions situation as a family, and as a bored father.   :)

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This is a video Malachi made the other day of his daughter Hannah. Malachi's wife Pranee is in the school with me. 

Jim did a photo story on our classmate Amy's husband Phil. He shot it, edited and made the movie all in one day. This is what a photo story is and these are the amazing people I'm blessed to be with.

At the same time, Ashley and I are listening to Becca.

Phil and Amy's website/Phil's blog: link

Jim's flickr.com account: link

Becca's music: link

my photos: link

much love...!

blech.

Classmate Johanna and I had a sweet photo shoot.

The final project is due today, in 15 hours. 

60 photos, most of which are to fit into specific categories [i.e. color harmony, b+w landscape, portrait beyond likeness, something portraying a Hawaiian family, etc.] to be shot, exported and burned to disc and 13 of which are to be printed with top quality, 3 of which to be matted, by ourselves [not by Wal-Mart].

Our exhibition is Friday.

Multiple prints set out on display for a few hours for the public and then torn down that night.

I shoot a wedding on Saturday.

Early afternoon including going back to the beach in the evening for sunset shots.

[I've been praying for a wedding! YAY!]

I move/travel on Wednesday.

Mmmm stress.

At this moment I have two more prints to make, 13x19" and I need to re-burn my images to DVD and matte 3 of the prints. I told a friend I was about 90% done, but maybe that's more like 80%.

I like Jesus. A lot.

I figured you should know.

Basically struggle sucks. It does. But at the same time, I completely hesitate in going so far as to say it 'sucks' because I think I'm beginning to like it...

I know that sounds perhaps somewhat masochistic but it's not. 

Before, when struggle and difficulties would arise it was like "Alright God, I'll lean on you, I need you to get me through this because otherwise all this other crap is going to happen, and frankly, simply, I need your intervention and grace."

But right now, right in these past weeks, the struggle has been hard. Really hard. I'm so broken down and weak. Talk about an [internal] convoluted mess on the floor and there you'll find me.

But I'm stinking falling in love.

None of this crap about "I don't regret anything because I've learned from it all and am a stronger person because of it."

Yah right! I used to subscribe to that magazine.

I regret things. I regret decisions. I regret words I've said.

I don't wallow in it, but I'm also not choosing to pretend everything is better off because of 'lessons learned'.

And really? Are we really supposed to become those stronger people? ... That's another discussion...

But hot dang, if these things that have been tormenting me hadn't been, Jesus and I would still be on the same little road that we were. Which was nice and all, but the place we're at now? SO MUCH BETTER. It's like when something is so good that you're reminded of every reason why you whipped your life around it to begin with.

Like take music for instance.

I won't have been to a concert in months and it won't ever really cross my mind, but then I'll walk past a building and hear the soundcheck of the drums of some concert inside and this insane thrill goes through me and it all rushes back, and I remember how much I love being in those rooms with those dimmed lights with those sweaty people's backs in my face with the fight of keeping my ribcage from being crushed. I remember why I love it. And then I love it all over again.

Or like listening to the same bands over and over and then suddenly you're introduced to a new band with a new style in a different genre and it flips your world and you can't get it out of your mind and the lyrics are revelatory and you go to sleep at night singing those songs and you wake up singing in the same place you feel asleep at and you love it no less the more it is. And it reminds you why you loved music to begin with. It's fresh air to a stale room.

And both of those analogies don't really compare, and quite honestly I've been reading a lot of Shakespeare and I want to link it to his sonnets and how he talks about how if he wrote more eloquently and used all the words possible to describe his love, it would all just deface it because none of it would do it justice, and they'd just be words for words sake. And so he won't say anything because not much needs to be said. Because it is that good. It is too good to compare, too good to describe. Even the most exquisite poetry would devalue it. It just is what it is.

Jesus and I aren't that good, all the time. I mean, come on, it's a relationship, but it's also not a 'normal relationship' because it's not fallible human to fallible human, but fallible broken me to God. But what we are, isn't really describable. And I'm not saying that to be all 'out there' and vague, but how it is to me are like images in my head and it's hard to describe that. If I had words to use, I would. But I don't really, and I apologize for that because then this is all like a tease, "look what I have! But I wont show you!"

Lame.

So, uh, struggle isn't fun. I wouldn't call it that. 

But I'm closer to Jesus because of it. But it's not like a pre-requisite either. It's not like "fine I'll go through this to get closer to you." 

It's like "I want you."

That's it.

Those times that freaking sucked the worst in the past few weeks, I'd sit with him. And we'd talk. And I'd tell him things and he'd tell me things. And just naturally, when you spend more time with people, you get closer to them, but when you spend more time with people when you're going through a rough patch, you get way more close to them.

I'm not just being reminded of how much I love him, but I'm falling in love again and deeper.

And so I'm getting to this point, where when I see struggle, I kinda bypass it. I don't really see struggle. I go through it, I experience it still, but it's not really what I'm looking at anymore... I'm just seeing Jesus and I'm just looking forward to knowing him better. And looking forward for him to know me better. 

And yah.

But I mean, even still, if you felt like it you could pray for me because it still has been rough and I still am freaking weak and I still am human and therefore fallible in all ways. But rough doesn't necessarily mean pray for smooth, and weak doesn't necessarily mean pray for strength. Those aren't particularly what I need. 

In other news, the table discussion tonight was about various people's supernatural encounters and I'm gonna say that nothing is impossible with God. Like, quite seriously, nothing.

I want to know Him more. I want more of this.

And I know I told you I move/travel on Wednesday [26th] and didn't tell you where or why or for what. I know I didn't. It's coming.

I'd really like a home cooked meal. Breakfast actually. Crapes, or ableskivers. 

Mmmmmm... 

:)

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"But it's not like what to do next, it's just like when to do all the rad options God has for me that I could do!" 

- Brad, DTS student a few hours post-outreach, tonight.