#PrayforParis

What a world we live in. 

The news from Paris today, of a concert being attacked, attendees being held hostage, and the death count slowly rising (127, as of now)- it's a grief that's almost too much to bear. The weight of our wrecked world rests on us today, with a bit more vengeance. 

I am weary. I have only been on this earth for 22 years, and yet I have still lived through some dark, dark times in our history. 

I was 8 the first time I really learned what evil existed in our midst. September 11, 2001. I remember getting out of school early that day, momentarily excited before learning what had happened. 

The ensuing Iraq war- the U.S. invaded when I was 10. By the time I saw that conflict end, almost 4,500 American soldiers had died. 

There have been scores of school shootings on American soil- Columbine (1999), Virginia Tech (2007), Sandy Hook (2012) and countless others. 

I have seen shootings at movie theaters, army bases, shopping malls featured on my nightly news. 

I was alive when the subways in Spain (2004) and the U.K. (2005) were bombed. When I went to D.C. almost 10 years later, I hesitated before climbing onto the metro everyday. 

I've been alive during times of genocide: Rwanda (1994), Bosnia (1995), and Darfur (2003).

And now, violence over race in the U.S. seems to be coming to a head- young black man after young black man being shot by police, riots, police brutality, arson, and college protests all rage on. 

Recently, terrorist attacks have been splashed across my newsfeed, graphic videos and photos of bombings, beheadings, suicide bombings. 

Our world. 

Look how far we've fallen. 

And amidst it all, what do we do?

We respond with a hashtag. #prayforpeace #prayforparis 

We change our profile pic to reflect the French flag. 

We share articles and video clips and picture montages of lighted candles and clasped hands. We say, "our thoughts and prayers are with the victims at this terrible time". 

Is anyone else sick of it?

Friends are sharing pictures, articles, all with the obligatory #PrayforParis tag line. I've seen so many prayers, written in fancy script over calming photos. So many statuses: our prayers are with Paris, pray for peace, praying for an end to this madness, prayer, prayer, prayer.

Is anyone else kind of mad at it?

Borrowing a few words from President Barack Obama (speaking in the wake of yet another school shooting): "Our thoughts and prayers are not enough". 

It's not enough. 

What good are we really doing by sharing that photo, writing that status, saying "our thoughts and prayers are with you"? 

I'm not saying that prayer doesn't accomplish anything. I'm not shaming anyone for engaging with this tragedy on social media (I've done it too). 

But I am saying that I'm sick of the litany of 'our world is broken, pray for peace'. 

How long have we been praying for peace?! 

At what point are we going to admit to ourselves that our world won't be fixed by prayer alone? 

So, maybe instead of saying #prayforparis, we should be saying 'here's how I can help'- and then pray.

 

"Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you." Saint Augustine 

I recommend reading this article about "hashtag clicktivism", where the above image was taken from:  http://www.pedestrian.tv/news/arts-and-culture/hashtag-clicktivism-the-ups-and-downs-of-collectiv/509a7f26-7cc6-4394-8e07-24012aed2188.htm

Bonjour, vazaha!!

 I walk to church. 

I walk to the bus.

I walk to the Printing Press.

Bonjour, Madame! 

Bonjour, Vazaha!

Comment ça va, vazaha?

Tanjombato is slowly starting to feel like home to me... I know my way around my neighborhood, I can take the bus into the city, I know how to order food and juice and laundry soap at my favorite hotely. 

But every day I am reminded that this isn't my home. I'm reminded that this will never be home. I'm reminded that I will never fit in here. 

I will always be the white person, the vazaha- the foreigner. I may live with a Malagasy family, and eat rice 2x a day, and take the taxibe, and eat at hotelys, and speak Malagasy (ish), but I will never shed that identity of being the other.

This isn't a post to make you feel bad for me. Or a post for me to complain about how I'm othered. On the contrary, I'm grateful for this experience. 

Being the other is not new for me. I'm sure most of us can think of some time we were the other- the only Christian in science class, the only person who enjoyed school on the football team, the only gay kid in the youth group, the only disabled person at work... 

But this is the only time I've been the racial other. 

And man, is it different.

It's one thing to be the only nerd in gym class, and it's something completely different to be the only person of your skin color in daily life. 

White people are a rarity here in Madagascar. Frankly, we stick out like a sore thumb. I don't really blame anyone for staring at me, or really even for yelling at me. I even freak out a little when I see another white person.

The thing that gets me is how the topic of race here intertwines with that of colonization. Maybe you noticed- whenever I get "heckled" (for lack of a better word), it's most often in French. 

The word vazaha is Malagasy, it means foreigner. 

But the rest of it is almost always French. 

In 1883, the French attacked Madagascar: it was declared a colony in 1895 until the Malagasy finally won independence in 1960. The French presence is still fairly strong here- there are French tourists, French businessmen, menus are in French, French is taught in schools, wealthy familys speak French, the airline here is AirFrance. 

It's reasonable for Malagasy to associate vazaha with 'French'. 

Bonjour, mademoiselle! 

Comment ça va? 

Bonjour vazaha!

French. 

It angers and saddens me.

"Colonization is violence, and there are many ways to carry out that violence." -Philip Gourevitch

Being associated with colonization leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

I have never clung more tightly to my label of American than when I'm assumed to be French in Madagascar. When people holler at me in French, I usually respond with "Salama!" Or "Manahoana!" (Hi, how are you/good morning). Reactions vary from "Miteny Gasy?!" to broad smiles to a rapid fire string of Malagasy. It is so unheard of for a white person to speak their language that they freak out when I say "hello". And if I say "Mbola mianatra" (still learning)- oh man. That gets me smiles and hand shakes and pats on the back. And almost as soon as I speak those two words in Malagasy, I start hearing "Amerika" being thrown around. Seems to me, Malagasy love Americans- in part because of the Peace Corps, but also in part because we're seen as the white people who bother learning their language.

I don't know very much about colonization yet. I barely know the history of colonization in Madagascar. But I do know it makes me uncomfortable and queasy. And I know that I will be doing a lot of reading and thinking on the topic in the coming year.

Until then, I will keep on trying to exist as an alternative here- not Malagasy, but not a typical "vazaha" either. I will keep on trying to learn to sympathize with being a racial other.

I will keep these two things ever present with me.

Religious Pluralism?

Oh, Madagascar. The land of constant challenges. There have been a few questions I've been working through here in Mada already, but the biggest one right now has been this: 

Is there such a thing as a universal, all encompassing truth; one "right way" to God?  

Forewarning: what ensues is some spiritual wrestling (which is a process, and I by no means am a heavyweight champion) that gets kind of convoluted at times. This is also an incredibly long post, so stick with me and I'll reward you with some pictures. :-) 

I read this blog on Patheos the other day that was arguing that Gods love is a perfecting love- that He isn't content to leave us alone in our sin, but He rebukes and corrects us when we fall back into sin. The author then goes on to say that Christians aren't called to be tolerant, they're called to be loving AND loving people means "standing up for the truth even if people aren't going to like us for standing firm in the truth." Basically, I thought it boiled down to this- if you love someone, you call them out and hold them accountable for their actions. I've dubbed this the "perfecting love model". 

The perfecting love model is an argument I've come up against many times now.

It came up the other day, when I was reading a book I found at Pastor Kirsten's place (Your God is Too Small)-- it said, "We hear, or read, of someone who was 'a real saint: he never saw any harm in anyone and never spoke a word against anyone all his life.' If this really is Christian saintliness, then Jesus Christ was no saint. It is true that He taught men never to sit in judgement upon one another, but He never suggested that they should turn a blind eye to evil or pretend that other people were faultless."

The "coincidence" of running into the same question while just trying to relax and unwind convinced me that it was about time I should work out an answer to it, or at least my feelings on it. 

I have a few issues this whole model... For one, what actually is truth? Right? Isn't the 'truth' (or at least, our perceptions and understanding of it) constantly changing? Even in the hard sciences, where truth is less subjective, we're always discovering new things that change what we previously thought to be fact. (The world isn't flat, there are such things as quarks and leptons, the sun isn't infinite, dark matter exists, etcetera) 

So is there such a thing as truth? And if there is, do you think we'll ever truly reach it? 

I tend to think not...I don't know, I'm reminded of St. Augustine: "our hearts are restless until they rest in you". And I know it is possible to take that to mean we are never satisfied until we are followers of Christ, or any other slew of possibilities, but I tend to think of it like this-- we're always going to be looking for the truth (God, when we get Him right), but we're never gonna find it. We're always gonna be restlessly searching, from now till the day we die and finally rest in Gods hands. Then we'll know truth. 

At least, that's how it sounds to me. 

But for yet another issue, the whole argument is based on the assumption that the speaker (here, the Christian) is the one with divine, absolute truth who has an obligation to share his 'right' truth with everyone else. 

So I looked up some verses about love- Proverbs 3:12, 12:1, and 24:13, John 17:23, Ephesians 5:11, and Hebrews 6:12and 10:24 all kind of support the perfecting love model. Micah 6:8, Matthew 22:37-39, John 10:17 and 15:13, Romans 5:8, 1 Corinthians 4:21, Galatians 5:13, Ephesians 4:15, and 1 John 3:16-19 were ones that all could be used to oppose the perfecting love idea. 

So there's biblical support for it, but there's also verses that could contradict it as well. As it goes, if you cherry pick verses, you can support or oppose anything. 

Regardless of biblical support or dissent, I'm still not convinced that there is such a thing as 'absolute truth'. Doesn't almost every group with a belief system (generally speaking, of course) think that they and they alone have the absolute truth, and that everyone else either has only a half truth or is just plain wrong?

I don't know if I can believe that there is only one right religion, one right path to God, one absolute truth we must follow. Have you read 'The Life of Pi'? There's a quote in there that sums this whole thing up for me well: 

"Mamaji has two passports. He's Indian and French. Why can't I be a Hindu, a Christian, and a Muslim?"

"That's different. France and India are nations on earth." 

"How many nations are there in the sky?" 

"One. That's the point. One nation, one passport." 

"One nation in the sky?" 

"Yes. Or none. There's that option too, you know."

"If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?" 

And I'm not sure at all how that fits into my faith. 

I just really don't think that it's realistic to think that God has revealed to us (Christians, Catholics, Lutherans, ELCA, LCMS, take your pick) alone what His truth and His will on earth is. No one has ever told me straight out that they believe their way to be THE right way, but it's often implied. Every time someone tells me that homosexuals go to hell unless they repent, or that it's so good I'm a missionary now because I can share the "reality of Gods love" with the people I meet here (which has its own disturbing implications, but more on that later)... Every time people use the Bible or the teachings of their church to justify political statements that would bring the entire country into alignment with their personal beliefs... To me, that's just like saying, "well, I think that God says its this way; so this is the right way to do it and I'm going to ignore what you think God says because obviously I'm more right than you." Maybe that's oversimplified, or overly sensitive, I don't know. But I do know that's how I hear it, the way that I read in between those lines. 

And that comes off as arrogant and short sighted; and frankly, unrealistic. 

Because the reality is that we are flawed, imperfect creatures that are always gonna screw it up. I mean, come on, that's almost guaranteed, isn't it? We are a MESS. Why would God leave such a big and important thing like perfecting others or living up to his standards up to us, who are bound to get it wrong? In addition to that, the idea that humanity could ever come close to imitating God (or His will, or His love, etc.) is laughable. We just aren't capable-- and that's the entire point of our faith!!

I can't help but think that this idea of us as being called to love our neighbors by perfecting them is kind of pretentious. In a way, it's like we're elevating ourselves to Gods level. 

All that relates back to another article I read a while back: "You say you believe God is in control, right? Do you really believe that? Or are you worried that you somehow have to make that mean anything at all through your own actions? If His power over the world is in any way dependent on your own, maybe you need to find a bigger god." It's a sassy statement, but also kind of true, right? Why should God, the all powerful, the almighty, omnipotent Creator of the entire universe need US to help 'fix' or 'perfect' humanity? 

This has all been on my mind in context of religious pluralism here in Madagascar. The FLM (Fiangonana Loterana Malagasy, Malagasy Lutheran Church) seems to be in constant contention with the people to whom they're trying to minister to over their traditional religion of ancestral worship. It's very complicated, and I don't pretend to even have the beginnings of a basic grasp on the topic. The tiny bit of knowledge I do have only begins to scratch the surface... But this is what I (think I) do know:

There are aspects ancestral worship that a lot of Christians would say is heresy or going against God and the teachings of Christianity. Some Malagasy would view the ancestors as a kind of a "bridge" to God... Which kind of interferes with the idea of Jesus as our way to understand God better. After all, doesn't the Bible say, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me"? 

And there are aspects of ancestral worship that many of us in the West would call superstitious- the belief that ancestors can curse or bless, holding certain places as sacred because spirits dwell there, etc.  

I also know, from my sociological training if nothing else, that ancestral worship is a large part of the culture here. It relates so strongly back to the culture of emphasizing family, that when Malagasy Christians refuse to participate (especially in famdihana- the turning of the bones), they are often ostracized from their family- the most heartbreaking thing ever, because to Malagasy, your wealth is your family. There is nothing more important than family.

Many people here genuinely want to worship Christ, fully and completely. But the church here (from what I've seen thus far, the FLM especially) seems to be telling them that they have to decide...abandon ancestral worship, possibly lose your family, but gain the acceptance of the church...or stay true to tradition and lose the church. 

Ancestral worship is tradition, something that sets the Malagasy culture apart and differentiates it. Tradition isn't something to be ignored or glossed over- it's a beautiful, unique piece of the tapestry of human belief and history that should be celebrated and appreciated. 

Why can't we integrate the two, Christianity and traditional Malagasy culture? 

Is there truly only one nation in the sky, and only one passport to get there?

Who's to say that their religion doesn't have some pieces of truth in it? And who's to say that Christianity maybe doesn't have the entire truth? What if the only way to know the whole 'truth' (which I'm defining as God) is by combining all of our various pieces of truth? 

What if that's religious pluralism, in its purest form?

So.... That's the whole mess. Kudos to those of you who made it through the entire, jumbled ball of my thoughts.

 But this is what has been running through my mind for a while now. Well in reality, almost forever. Since I actually started thinking at all about Christianity and faith with any sort of intellectual questioning. 

Madagascar just kind of pushed it back up, front and center in my brain, demanding to be seen and wrestled with. 

I hope I didn't offend anyone, or blaspheme too much. I'm only trying to engage with my faith, and work out the questions that've been eating at me. I'd love to hear others thoughts and responses to help form a better theory/opinion, so leave a comment! 

And, FINALLY, some pictures as promised. I hope to get a few more soon, hopefully of my students and my workplaces! Woo! 

Start of the rainy season = the road outside my house is now a reddish brown river. 

The view of my neighborhood from outside my bedroom window. 

A quote shared by my fellow YAGM Merydith, which I fell in love with. 

A snack my host mom, Francine, just brought me... A MASSIVE bottle of water, spreadable cheese, and some little toast-like-cracker things that are wonderful! I am loved. <3

Liver, Fish Fins, and Bananas

Malagasy food is good. It's really not so different from anything I've had before, but there have been a few......new.....experiences I've had with food, some funny, some interesting, some terrifying.

1. When a fellow YAGM and I were at a restaurant and decided to be adventurous and order by which item had the longest name in Malagasy. The waitress looked at us like we were nuts, but we insisted. When our food came, we quickly found out the reason for the strange looks- turns out we had ordered cow tongue. It had a good taste, but the whole thing was a mind game of trying to trick your brain into not thinking about the fact that your tongue was touching tongue. 

2. Ampalibe is the weirdest looking darn fruit ever. It's close to the size of a large watermelon, oval in size, greenish-yellowish-brownish, and covered in bumps. Odd looking fruit, on the inside as well as the outside. A friend and I bought a bag of the flesh of the ampalibe, and wow. What a strange fruit. They're a bunch of segments, pale yellowish flesh in a shape that looks suspiciously like garlic. The flesh isn't that thick, but it's wrapped around a massive pit. The texture of the fruit itself I can only compare to bamboo shoots. It's the closest comparison I've found. It was sweet, but not pleasantly so. It had a very strange, kind of bitterish aftertaste.

^not my picture, but the best I could find online. 

3. I have eaten so much liver here now. More than I ever planned on. If I had gone my entire life without ever once eating liver, I don't think I'd've been too upset. 

4. Ronono soja is delicious. I literally have no idea what it is. None whatsoever. Ronono means milk, but milk means something different than we're used to in the U.S. Soja, as far as I can tell, is something akin to soybean powder stuff. But there's a hotely right outside the church who sells little mini mugs of ronono soja for 200Ariary a piece, and I'm telling you, it's magical. It's hot and vaguely milk-like and overly sweet. We usually get mofogasy with it, which are little sweet, sticky, dense breads made out of rice. If only I could live off ronono soja and mofogasy.....

5. Salad doesn't mean salad here. Salad, to me, is lettuce with some veggies or something. Salad, here, is a.... Kind of like a small veggie tray with various cold cuts of bologna and salami on top. 

6. The first day I was in my new family's house, they asked me what I ate for breakfast. I panicked. All of my Malagasy vocabulary (limited to begin with) fled my brain instantly. I remembered 'kafe' (coffee) and was struggling to find other food words... The only thing coming to mind was 'akondro' (banana). So I told my family I eat coffee and bananas for breakfast every morning. Confession time: I don't like bananas. Well, that's not true. I don't dislike bananas-they're actually kind of pleasant. I've always wanted to enjoy them. But for whatever reason... Any time I take a bite of banana, I automatically feel like I'm going to puke and start gagging. It's bad. As for coffee, well I drink it occasionally and I enjoy it, but it's not really a staple in my diet. But now, since those were the two Malagasy words I remembered, I get an entire teapot of coffee every morning for breakfast as well as being ambushed with bananas at random times: after dinner, at lunch, one time my mom came up to my room in the middle of the day with a plate full of bananas. A plate. Full. Of. Bananas. 

7. You know how everyone has that one irrational phobia? Mine is fish. I am petrified of fish. If it looks anything like a fish, I'm out. We were served a massive, fancy fish at orientation in Antsirabe (complete with head, fins, tail, the whole 9 yards) and I quite literally had a panic attack at the table because the fish was looking at me with its bugling eyes and gaping mouth and ugh *shivers* It makes no sense, but that's why it's an irrational fear. At any rate, my family's served fish 3 times now, and each time it was a damn struggle to keep my cool and not flip out. I've been very proud of my efforts- there's been minimal panicking, and I have managed to eat some of my fish. But lord, my family are pro fish eaters. My dad plucks off the fins and pops them right in his mouth. You can hear them crunching, like some kind of obscene potato chips. My brother, Francio, leaned over the other night and eyed my leftover fish and asked "you gonna eat the head?" He picked that sucker up and just went to town on it, getting every last bit of edible meat from the skull- and probably even some parts that weren't edible. 

8. Do we have musk melon in the U.S.? I don't think I've had it before now, but there is a word for it in English, so maybe. Here, it's called voatongo (I believe), but I call it the potato fruit. I swear, the inside flesh of that melon, when you chew it, has the exact consistency of mashed potatoes. It's vaguely sweet, but mostly tasteless. It's exactly like eating a bunch of mashed up potatoes with nothing else on them. 

"Doxology": noun, a liturgical formula of praise to God

Ry Tompon'ny harena o! 

Fanatitra an'tsitrapo, 

Atolotray anao izao, 

Mba raiso ka tahionao! 

Amen

I've always been in band in school. Choir sounded interesting, but band interfered and it was my first love. Singing was something I enjoyed, but nothing I ever practiced- or felt comfortable sharing with others. 

But as unpracticed as I am in singing, I am much more uncomfortable with teaching. 

So when push comes to shove in my English classes at the FLM, I end up singing. 

At my home church in Tanjombato, I work with a group of level 2 English students (who are amazingly smart and good at English after only 6 months). They usually work through having conversations, so we had a 'get to know you' conversation about likes and dislikes. As an example, I said that I don't like to dance, but I like to sing. And of course, that lead to them wanting to hear me sing. Oof. 

But it turned out to be a good thing-- I didn't know what else to teach them, so I taught them two songs. We learned the first verse and chorus of 'I'll Fly Away' first, and discussed new vocabulary like "glad" and "glory". 

                      ****Aside: it is really difficult to try to explain the concept of glory or gladness in another language. Try it sometime. It really makes you think about what gladness or glory actually means.****

And then I couldn't remember the second or third verses. 

We still had 45 minutes of class left. 

Uh oh. 

In my mad scrambling to try and find a song that was both 1. something I knew well enough that I could teach & 2. easy enough that the students could remember it, the only thing that was in my brain was the Doxology. 

Lutherans are fond of singing it, before offering sometimes... Our MadYAGM group sang it often as a mealtime grace. 

You might know it: 

Praise God from whom all blessings flow, 

Praise Him all creatures here below,

Praise Him above ye heavenly host,

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! 

Amen 

So I taught my group of 15 Malagasy kids the doxology. 

And when we still had time left, we went over vocabulary. 

I asked them to try to translate it into Malagasy, and they came up with this:

Ry Tompon'ny harena o!

Fanatitra an'tsitrapo 

Atolotray anao izao 

Mba raiso ka tahionao! 

Amen

I love it. 

Half of us sang the English, while half of us sang the Malagasy. The words mushed together, our voices melded imperfectly, our pronunciation terrible-- But I believe God wept tears of joy in Heaven to hear us. 

It was beautiful. 

The view of the sunset tonight and the city of Tanjombato,Antananarivo that's just outside my window as I write this blog. I'm loving this place more and more with every passing day. 

Celebrate!

When I get homesick, sound is what soothes my soul. 

This has been a truth for me since college, my solace in times of sadness. Listening is a comfort.

At Valparaiso University, the student body helps put on a contemporary worship service every Wednesday night called Celebrate! My senior year, Celebrate! became my life, my community, and my refuge.

This past Wednesday, I found myself sitting in the WiFi (pronounced wee fee) room of Lovasoa,Antsirabe in Madagascar missing Celebrate! On a whim, I decided to check my Facebook feed-- God must have been in the wires that night, because the first thing I saw was a link to a Celebrate! sermon on SoundCloud my college pastor had posted. 

Listening to his voice, the cadence of his speech, the sounds of that community so far away in Indiana soothed my soul. 

The sermon he gave was on Luke 24. 

Luke 24 is possibly best known for the story of the road to Emmaus, but the best part of Luke 24 just might be the end of it. In it, the disciple realize that Jesus is among them and has been all along- they finally know that he has come back to them. 

My college pastor was addressing the first Celebrate! of the year when he spoke on this scripture. And the message that he drew out of it was this: that Jesus always shows up. He always shows up. Even when we're a mess. The disciples are tired, they're depressed, they're worn out and beaten down, they're doubtful and scared and unsure of where to go next. They're a mess. And Jesus shows up. In spite of their disarray, or maybe because of it, He shows up.

You don't have to have your act together, you don't have to be on solid footing, you don't have to be on your best behavior. You don't have to have anything at all. 

And my pastor related that all back to the struggles of being in college, of being a freshman in college, and how you don't need to have your life together to worship God. It was a perfect message for that Celebrate! community at Valparaiso University. 

But this is what I love about Scripture: it doesn't matter where you're at, God will find a way to speak it into your life and your experience and your context. 

I am a mess in Malagasy church. 

I don't know the words, or what's going on. I can't speak the words even when I do manage to figure out where the congregation is at in the translated service bulletin.

I sit up and sit down at all the wrong places, usually a full thirty seconds behind the congregation. I have no sense of rhythm or time in the flow of Malagasy church.

I sing all of the wrong words to hymns, often resorting to singing some mangled version of Malagasy, or even worse, a strange half-English half-humming version of those hymns that I recognize but don't know well enough to be of any use. 

I mess up the long and complicated offering lines that seem to work in an intricate code that I just haven't been able to crack yet. 

I can't concentrate for the full 2 or 3 or 4 hours of worship that is typical of Malagasy services and often find my mind wandering during the sermon or announcements. 

But. 

This is a comfort to me- that we have the promise that where one or more of us are gathered in His name, Jesus will show up. We have the promise that Jesus will show up in the body and in the blood. 

Even when I'm a mess. Even when I mangle Malagasy church. 

He shows up.

Slowly, I begin to recognize Jesus in the midst of Malagasy church. 

I taste Him in communion. In the sacrament where language doesn't matter. In the body, broken for me; in the blood, shed for me. He is present here.

I experience Him in the laughter of little old church ladies (a universal church staple, apparently) who willingly help the lost foreigner find the right page in the Malagasy hymnal. He is present here.

I see Him in the little children who stare and stare at our group of 10 outsiders- only to break out into broad smiles and fits of giggles when you wave at them and whisper "Salama!" (hello) during announcements. He is present here.

I hear Him in the music; in the beautiful, beautiful sound of scores of Malagasy singing with utter abandon in 10 part harmony. He is present here. 

And finally, I relax into this new place and enjoy the experience. It doesn't matter that I can't understand a thing that happens during worship. I've found Jesus in this community of believers, so different and so similar from what I've grown used to at college. I've learned to celebrate the differences, and celebrate the familiarity. Maybe it's a different type of worship than I'm used to, and maybe I'm still a mess in the midst of service, but Jesus has shown up. 

In the words of my collegiate pastor, "When Jesus is present, life is present and salvation is present- and you are made righteous and worthy and perfect in the eyes of God; even if you think you are a mess. When God's word about you differs from your word about you, God's right. Not you."

So I'm a mess in Malagasy church. But Jesus has shown up. And the entire Malagasy congregation, including the foreigners who are lost and a total mess, is perfect in God's eyes. I may still feel like a mess, but He says that we are all perfect. He's shown up.

And that's enough. 

Link to Pr. Jim Wetzstein's sermon for Celebrate! 

26/08/2015, Valparaiso, IN

'Welcome to Jesus' 

https://soundcloud.com/james-wetzstein/welcome-to-jesus 

#YAGM2015 shadow style

We learned how to wash our clothing by hand this past week with some of the Malagasy women who work at Lovasoa-- it was a lot of fun, but definitely hard work. It'll be some time before we can do as much as these women we saw out on a walk one day. 

Went for a hike and got beautiful views of Antsirabe for our troubles. 

Photos don't do it justice, but terraced rice fields are the absolute most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. There's a rumor going around that my walk to work in Tanjombato,Antananarivo includes a trek through the rice fields and I am soooooo excited! 

twenty one pilots

Music is song.

Music is life. 

Music is escape.

Lately my escape has been twenty one pilots' new album Blurryface. One of the beauties of this band is that they are intentionally vague, in a way that leaves much of their lyrics up to interpretation. The band members are Christian, but they don't label their music as Christian, and they don't write music in an overtly Christian or religious way. 

Different lines of that album speak to me at different times, depending on my context in life at the moment. 

"They say stay in your lane, boy, lane, boy. But we go where we want to."

I've always felt a bit of pressure in the States to "stay in my lane". To fulfill the American Dream- go to college, get a job, marry, have 2.5 kids and a house in the 'burbs. But I think I deviated decidedly from the lane that society would've seen me in when I applied to YAGM. And what a crazy decision and what a life changing experience that's been already.

"I'm a goner, somebody catch my breath. I wanna be known by you."

I don't tend to feel very much emotion, as a general rule. But the Wednesday my fellow YAGMs and I left for O'Hare, I had so many feelings it felt like I couldn't breathe. The weight of my decision finally hit me, and for a few terrifying minutes I felt like a goner- that I was in for more than I could handle and that I wasn't going to make it. But as the van pulled away from that curb outside UChicago, I looked outside and saw the alumni team clustered there, waving and brushing away tears as they held each other. All of a sudden I was struck with the sudden realization that they were there for me, that they were family I never knew I had. And I looked around the van at my country-mates and knew they were also family and that this great network of families would be there to catch me when I fell, to breath for me when I couldn't. 

And then there's my host community at Tanjombato, Antananarivo, a community I still don't know. But I do know that I want to be known by them, and to know them in return.

"But I'm not good with directions and I hide behind my mouth. I'm a pro at imperfections and I'm best friends with my doubt."

Something I struggle with is following God's direction in my life... I'm still figuring out this whole Christianity thing and sometimes I use that as an excuse to hide behind questions. Doubts about a lot of things run rampant in my mind, least of all my own capabilities to be successful in Mada. I'm acutely aware of my own imperfections, of the imperfections in the system and in our world.

"Don't trust a perfect person and don't trust a song that's flawless." 

I'm reminded of an article my pastor once shared with me- in it, the author basically says that the beauty of Christianity is that we are never expected to be perfect. In fact, we are fully accepted as inherently flawed and broken people. There is no way we can ever be perfect, but we are never expected to be. 

On our first Sunday in Lovasoa,Antsirabe our country coordinator (Pr. Kirsten) arranged for us to meet with some professional Malagasy musicians. We were to collaborate some Malagasy-American songs to perform for Bishop Eaton of the ELCA when she visited later that week. We could barely communicate, but we put together three songs: a Malagasy lullaby, an arrangement of 'I'll Fly Away', and The Lion Sleeps Tonight. And our songs were not perfect, and they were not flawless, not by anyone's standards. But it was beautiful. And it was enough. 

"I know my soul's freezing; hell's hot for good reason, so please take me."

Maybe freezing isn't the perfect term, but my heart has been hardened to others- maybe by society, maybe by my own doing, who knows...but I am not very in tune to those outside of myself and my small circle of friends and family. And that's a big part of why I'm here. I don't mean to say that Madagascar is hell (far from it). Instead, this line means to me something along the lines of the refiner's fire, as well as the process of going through that fire in order to come out of it more finished than we were before. And Mada has plenty of "fire" in terms of difficult topics and complicated situations to chew on and think over while we're living in the middle of it all.

Please take me-- In my mind this is a prayer, a plea to God to take me where I need to go, to give me the words when my Malagasy fails me, to direct my eyes to where I need to see, to open my ears when I need to listen, to soften my heart where it has been hardened. 

"Though I'm weak and beaten down, I'll slip away into the sound." 

We're only a week into orientation here in Madagascar, and we've only begun to dissect some of the bigger issues. There's poverty, colonialism, the pervasiveness of western values/language/ideals/etcetera, environmental justice, cultural differences, the list goes on. Though we've only scratched the surface, at times I've been left feeling beaten down and weak with the massiveness of these questions we've started to wrestle with. 

I'll slip away into the sound: my escape is music. That's always held true but it has become even more so here. When I'm lost and feeling horribly out of place in Malagasy church services, I can always sing the hymns and join my voice in with the beautiful harmonies the congregation creates. When the YAGMs were putting together a few songs with the Malagasy musicians for Bishop Eaton, we couldn't communicate at all-- but it wasn't necessary. The music was enough. 

And finally, sometimes I escape into the comforts of listening to my American music. There are times when I can't bring myself to read the Bible or to pray, and in those times music has become my scripture and my prayer. 

"The ghost of you is close to me."

Sometimes I forget this. I need an occasional reminder that we have been given the Holy Spirit to stay close to us. To guide us with a gentle hand on our backs, to breathe life into us when we are weary and beaten down. To open our ears to the music that bears us up, our hearts to the love that surrounds us, our eyes to the beauty that is around us, and our minds to the things that challenge us.

Tools for worship in Madagascar: Bible, Malagasy hymnal, English translation, & individual communion cup 

The Malagasy musicians we were privileged to play with and learn from. 

Everyone involved in the cultural performance that was put on on Friday, plus our honored guests (Bishop Eaton, Pr. Walker, and Rev. Rafael).

One of the many, many beautiful sunsets we enjoy almost daily here at Lovasoa,Antsirabe.

View of the countryside from the hill we hiked just outside of the city of Antsirabe... 

The view of our home from across the rice fields, right before sunset.