así es….de mi punto de vista, pues

has anyone ever had success with making tofu using lemon juice or vinegar as a coagulant?

it’s getting hotter. i can now put on shorts and a t-shirt in the morning and not have to put another layer on top.

i have a $5 Zimbabwean note. amazing, seeing as now they’re printing $100 trillion notes. and businesses are accepting currencies from other countries. nuts.

why are there always so many questions in development? should there be this amount of questions in normal daily life too? normal daily life being defined as your home environment…

sigh. off to chiaucingo.

I’ve been reading a book called, “The Journey of Desire,” by John Eldredge. It’s made me think a lot and it’s also gotten me rather excited. So I’m going to cut and paste some of my journal entries from the past week into this and I would welcome comments and responses.

I think I should also read “The Divine Conspiracy,” by Dallas Willard. Eldredge quotes from him a lot. This being one of the quotes:

To one group of his day, who believed that “physical death” was the cessation of the individual’s existence, Jesus said, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Luke 20:38). His meaning was that those who love and are loved by God are not allowed to cease to exist, because they are God’s treasures. He delights in them and intends to hold onto them. He has even prepared for them an individualized eternal work in his vast universe.

The life we now have as the persons we now are will continue in the universe in which we now exist.

George MacDonald: I think we shall be able to pass into and through each other’s very souls as we please, knowing each other’s thought and being, along with our own, and so being like God.

That’s awesome! Eldredge then goes on to describe heaven as being like a Jewish wedding party. The rugs are rolled back, there’s tons of food and everyone’s dancing. There will be so many people to see and talk to and we have all the time in the world to do it. I feel like now, at parties, I really only talk about superficial stuff with people in part because there are so many people to see and talk to that I don’t want to take the time to just talk to one or two people about something more in depth or real because then I won’t get to talk to anyone else at all.

Then Eldredge uses the Yeats quote again…the one that I think I’m going to put on my wall:

And the people came together
and the people came to dance
and they danced like a wave upon the sea.

So what if heaven is all about doing work that you love to do, in an incredibly beautiful place where people are open with each other, where there is no shame or grief or rejection and you get to be with people you love? I think sort of one of those collective artists’ studios where there are a whole bunch of people working and everyone has their own space that they can do whatever they want with. But in heaven, you wouldn’t have to worry about selling your art to have money to eat or a place to sleep because there would be enough food. And there would be places to sleep and you wouldn’t have to worry about it.

If you loved to cook and garden…that’s what you would do. If you loved to lead exercise classes…that’s what you would do. What if you loved to lead exercise classes for disabled people? And there are no disabled people in heaven? I suppose that would be just as joyous for that simple fact—there are no disabled people in heaven. What about people who love nursing? Or those jobs that are sort of ‘fixing’ jobs, like plumbing or doctoring or such things? They won’t be needed, will they? What will they do? Maybe it is that whatever your hobbies are that you can’t get enough of in your free time, that will be your work in heaven. Because heaven without anything to do sounds pretty boring to me.

So those are the journal entries…let me know what you think…

Lollipop and Creme Puff

I had to follow my childhood tradition of naming the pets after foods. Lolli and Puff for short. They´re only about five weeks old and cried constantly for the first two days away from their mother, but they seemed to have adjusted fairly well. Both kittens are pretty adorable and are rather funny to watch play together.

i´ve just gotten back from sweating buckets in Nicaragua and am sitting in the freezing Mexico City office feeling sleepy and waiting for my bus this evening to go back to Olinalá. we had a meso-america mcc retreat for the last four days in Managua, Nicaragua. i´d never been to Nicaragua and, seeing as i didn´t see much of the country, it´s mostly just another stamp in the passport. that´s not completely true. we went on a boat ride on Lake Nicaragua, walked about a tourist town for about a half hour, went to a market, a view point and an exhibition on Sandino (of whom the Sandanistas are named after). the rest of the time was spent in meetings and socializing amongst the other mccers, which was utterly delightful. well, the socializing was delightful. the meetings were good in a very different way.

the retreat focused on spiritual development. the leaders were two people from one of our (Mexico´s) partner organizations who specialize in bringing together people from different religions, mainly Protestant, Catholic and Mayan, in a safe setting where people can talk about their beliefs. mccers often have a difficult time worshiping in foreign cultures. i rarely go to church in Olinalá because i have a really difficult time understanding the priest, the singing is not what i am generally accustomed to and the images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and all the other saints are very distracting to me. so i mostly just read books about spiritual things and sing hymns to myself.

i found a number of the exercises that we did very interesting and fairly helpful. we did a lot of small group work in addition to self-reflection exercises. there were a number of exercises that we did that took me out of my normal comfort zone, such as staring at other people directly in the eyes. there were two circles, one inside the other, and the circles stood facing each other. we then had to look at the person directly across from us in the eyes for about thirty seconds to a minute without saying anything. this is a very intimate and rather awkward thing to do with people you don´t know very well. or even with people you do know well. it gets easier the more people you do it with.

we had a hymn sing (claro) and a talent show, both of which were wonderful. i greatly miss both four-part harmony and humor that i can understand. the Guatemala team had two impressive entries in the talent show. the first was a retelling of the Christmas story, told in Spanish and then retold, through a helpful internet translation website, in English. hilarious. the second entry was a song written by the Guat team about their team, with a very catchy chorus of, ¨MCC will set you free. MCC is where you want to be.¨ it was great and, of course, very true. caley (mexico salter) captured the entire thing on video, which will hopefully be available for viewing in the relatively near future.

i had not particularly been looking forward to the retreat, for some odd reason. generally i jump at the chance to visit other countries. i was pleasantly surprised on a variety of levels by the retreat. it was particularly nice to visit with other mccers that, though in different countries and cultures, are doing similar work and are in similar situations (in terms of dealing with things such as loneliness, boredom, questioning development work and what we´re doing in general). plus, i got to play some ultimate frisbee and listen to some amazing singing voices. how could that combination have resulted in anything but delightfulness?