MLK day: Paul’s Letter to American Christians

When I first read this, I almost cried. Sitting here in this coffee shop staring at my computer screen, I had to struggle just to keep the tears from pouring out of my eyes. I think that we often forget what the world, and especially America, lost when Martin Luther King Jr. died. We certainly lost a leader who was passionate not only for racial equality but also for the heart of the American church, which he saw rightly saw as backwards. I weep today, in thankfulness that a man like King once dared to live like he did, and in sadness, that his living was cut short.

But think of the progress that he enabled! For that I have great joy.

Enough of my blabbering. Here’s his speech:

Paul’s Letter to American Christians, November, 4, 1956:

I would like to share with you an imaginary letter from the pen of the Apostle Paul. The postmark reveals that it comes from the city of Ephesus. After opening the letter I discovered that it was written in Greek rather than English. At the top of the first page was this request: “Please read to your congregation as soon as possible, and then pass on to the other churches.”

For several weeks I have worked assiduously with the translation. At times it has been difficult, but now I think I have deciphered its true meaning. May I hasten to say that if in presenting this letter the contents sound strangely Kingian instead of Paulinian, attribute it to my lack of complete objectivity rather than Paul’s lack of clarity.

It is miraculous, indeed, that the Apostle Paul should be writing a letter to you and to me nearly 1900 years after his last letter appeared in the New Testament. How this is possible is something of an enigma wrapped in mystery. The important thing, however, is that I can imagine the Apostle Paul writing a letter to American Christians in 1956 A.D. And here is the letter as it stands before me.

I, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to you who are in America, Grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

For many years I have longed to be able to come to see you. I have heard so much of you and of what you are doing. I have heard of the fascinating and astounding advances that you have made in the scientific realm. I have heard of your dashing subways and flashing airplanes. Through your scientific genius you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. You have been able to carve highways through the stratosphere. So in your world you have made it possible to eat breakfast in New York City and dinner in Paris, France. I have also heard of your skyscraping buildings with their prodigious towers steeping heavenward. I have heard of your great medical advances, which have resulted in the curing of many dread plagues and diseases, and thereby prolonged your lives and made for greater security and physical well-being. All of that is marvelous. You can do so many things in your day that I could not do in the Greco-Roman world of my day. In your age you can travel distances in one day that took me three months to travel. That is wonderful. You have made tremendous strides in the area of scientific and technological development.

But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress. Your poet Thoreau used to talk about “improved means to an unimproved end.” How often this is true. You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality. You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture. Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brotherhood. So America, I would urge you to keep your moral advances abreast with your scientific advances.

I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an unChristian world. That is what I had to do. That is what every Christian has to do. But I understand that there are many Christians in America who give their ultimate allegiance to man-made systems and customs. They are afraid to be different. Their great concern is to be accepted socially. They live by some such principle as this: “everybody is doing it, so it must be alright.” For so many of you Morality is merely group consensus. In your modern sociological lingo, the mores are accepted as the right ways. You have unconsciously come to believe that right is discovered by taking a sort of Gallup poll of the majority opinion. How many are giving their ultimate allegiance to this way.

But American Christians, I must say to you as I said to the Roman Christians years ago, “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Or, as I said to the Phillipian Christians, “Ye are a colony of heaven.” This means that although you live in the colony of time, your ultimate allegiance is to the empire of eternity. You have a dual citizenry. You live both in time and eternity; both in heaven and earth. Therefore, your ultimate allegiance is not to the government, not to the state, not to nation, not to any man-made institution. The Christian owes his ultimate allegiance to God, and if any earthly institution conflicts with God’s will it is your Christian duty to take a stand against it. You must never allow the transitory evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.

I understand that you have an economic system in America known as Capitalism. Through this economic system you have been able to do wonders. You have become the richest nation in the world, and you have built up the greatest system of production that history has ever known. All of this is marvelous. But Americans, there is the danger that you will misuse your Capitalism. I still contend that money can be the root of all evil. It can cause one to live a life of gross materialism. I am afraid that many among you are more concerned about making a living than making a life. You are prone to judge the success of your profession by the index of your salary and the size of the wheel base on your automobile, rather than the quality of your service to humanity.

The misuse of Capitalism can also lead to tragic exploitation. This has so often happened in your nation. They tell me that one tenth of one percent of the population controls more than forty percent of the wealth. Oh America, how often have you taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. If you are to be a truly Christian nation you must solve this problem. You cannot solve the problem by turning to communism, for communism is based on an ethical relativism and a metaphysical materialism that no Christian can accept. You can work within the framework of democracy to bring about a better distribution of wealth. You can use your powerful economic resources to wipe poverty from the face of the earth. God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty. God intends for all of his children to have the basic necessities of life, and he has left in this universe “enough and to spare” for that purpose. So I call upon you to bridge the gulf between abject poverty and superfluous wealth.

I would that I could be with you in person, so that I could say to you face to face what I am forced to say to you in writing. Oh, how I long to share your fellowship.

Let me rush on to say something about the church. Americans, I must remind you, as I have said to so many others, that the church is the Body of Christ. So when the church is true to its nature it knows neither division nor disunity. But I am disturbed about what you are doing to the Body of Christ. They tell me that in America you have within Protestantism more than two hundred and fifty six denominations. The tragedy is not so much that you have such a multiplicity of denominations, but that most of them are warring against each other with a claim to absolute truth. This narrow sectarianism is destroying the unity of the Body of Christ. You must come to see that God is neither a Baptist nor a Methodist; He is neither a Presbyterian nor a Episcopalian. God is bigger than all of our denominations. If you are to be true witnesses for Christ, you must come to see that America.

But I must not stop with a criticism of Protestantism. I am disturbed about Roman Catholicism. This church stands before the world with its pomp and power, insisting that it possesses the only truth. It incorporates an arrogance that becomes a dangerous spiritual arrogance. It stands with its noble Pope who somehow rises to the miraculous heights of infallibility when he speaks ex cathedra. But I am disturbed about a person or an institution that claims infallibility in this world. I am disturbed about any church that refuses to cooperate with other churches under the pretense that it is the only true church. I must emphasize the fact that God is not a Roman Catholic, and that the boundless sweep of his revelation cannot be limited to the Vatican. Roman Catholicism must do a great deal to mend its ways.

There is another thing that disturbs me to no end about the American church. You have a white church and you have a Negro church. You have allowed segregation to creep into the doors of the church. How can such a division exist in the true Body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at 11:00 on Sunday morning to sing “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name” and “Dear Lord and Father of all Mankind,” you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America. They tell me that there is more integration in the entertaining world and other secular agencies than there is in the Christian church. How appalling that is.

I understand that there are Christians among you who try to justify segregation on the basis of the Bible. They argue that the Negro is inferior by nature because of Noah’s curse upon the children of Ham. Oh my friends, this is blasphemy. This is against everything that the Christian religion stands for. I must say to you as I have said to so many Christians before, that in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.” Moreover, I must reiterate the words that I uttered on Mars Hill: “God that made the world and all things therein . . . hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.”

So Americans I must urge you to get rid of every aspect of segregation. The broad universalism standing at the center of the gospel makes both the theory and practice of segregation morally unjustifiable. Segregation is a blatant denial of the unity which we all have in Christ. It substitutes an “I-it” relationship for the “I-thou” relationship. The segregator relegates the segregated to the status of a thing rather than elevate him to the status of a person. The underlying philosophy of Christianity is diametrically opposed to the underlying philosophy of segregation, and all the dialectics of the logicians cannot make them lie down together.

I praise your Supreme Court for rendering a great decision just two or three years ago. I am happy to know that so many persons of goodwill have accepted the decision as a great moral victory. But I understand that there are some brothers among you who have risen up in open defiance. I hear that their legislative halls ring loud with such words as “nullification” and “interposition.” They have lost the true meaning of democracy and Christianity. So I would urge each of you to plead patiently with your brothers, and tell them that this isn’t the way. With understanding goodwill, you are obligated to seek to change their attitudes. Let them know that in standing against integration, they are not only standing against the noble precepts of your democracy, but also against the eternal edicts of God himself. Yes America, there is still the need for an Amos to cry out to the nation: “Let judgement roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”

May I say just a word to those of you who are struggling against this evil. Always be sure that you struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons. Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

In your struggle for justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking justice for him as well as yourself. Let him know that the festering sore of segregation debilitates the white man as well as the Negro. With this attitude you will be able to keep your struggle on high Christian standards.

Many persons will realize the urgency of seeking to eradicate the evil of segregation. There will be many Negroes who will devote their lives to the cause of freedom. There will be many white persons of goodwill and strong moral sensitivity who will dare to take a stand for justice. Honesty impels me to admit that such a stand will require willingness to suffer and sacrifice. So don’t despair if you are condemned and persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Whenever you take a stand for truth and justice, you are liable to scorn. Often you will be called an impractical idealist or a dangerous radical. Sometimes it might mean going to jail. If such is the case you must honorably grace the jail with your presence. It might even mean physical death. But if physical death is the price that some must pay to free their children from a permanent life of psychological death, then nothing could be more Christian. Don’t worry about persecution America; you are going to have that if you stand up for a great principle. I can say this with some authority, because my life was a continual round of persecutions. After my conversion I was rejected by the disciples at Jerusalem. Later I was tried for heresy at Jerusalem. I was jailed at Philippi, beaten at Thessalonica, mobbed at Ephesus, and depressed at Athens. And yet I am still going. I came away from each of these experiences more persuaded than ever before that “neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come . . . shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.

I must bring my writing to a close now. Timothy is waiting to deliver this letter, and I must take leave for another church. But just before leaving, I must say to you, as I said to the church at Corinth, that I still believe that love is the most durable power in the world. Over the centuries men have sought to discover the highest good. This has been the chief quest of ethical philosophy. This was one of the big questions of Greek philosophy. The Epicurean and the Stoics sought to answer it; Plato and Aristotle sought to answer it. What is the summon bonum of life? I think I have an answer America. I think I have discovered the highest good. It is love. This principle stands at the center of the cosmos. As John says, “God is love.” He who loves is a participant in the being of God. He who hates does not know God.

So American Christians, you may master the intricacies of the English language. You may possess all of the eloquence of articulate speech. But even if you “speak with the tongues of man and angels, and have not love, you are become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”

I got this here:

http://www.mlkonline.net/christians.html

You can find other speeches by him there too.

Connecting with Avatar

With the release of James Cameron’s Avatar on the eighteenth, we may very well see cinema change forever. The film is a landmark. So says Cameron. Xan Brooks of The Guardian reports that  fellow directors Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Alien) and Jon Favreau (Ironman) have similar things to say. However it seems that public interest hasn’t quite caught up with Avatar’s rumored potential, and that could spell doom considering that the release date is two weeks away. For goodness sake, Twilight: New Moon has more buzz AND the number one spot in the box office (for reasons why this in particular should not be, click here). Since Avatar is looking to be the most expensive film of all time, a box office bomb may just ruin any cinema-changing potential, at least in the way that Cameron has described.

Cinema will change with Avatar. The quality of the advancements Cameron has made, the way they are received by audiences, and the subsequent success (or failure) of this “landmark” film will determine that change. The new tech that Cameron invented for this movie truly is landmark. It overcomes many of the shortcomings in CGI that we have seen, for instance, the lack of human emotion in the faces of computer generated characters and the inability of directors to visualize the actors in the non-existent environments, and goes a step further by immersing it all in rich 3D. This alone is changing film.

And I don’t think that it will be the failure of all this fancy new stuff that will kill this movie. Certainly failure is dependent on many things (script, acting, storyline, etc.) and Avatar will be subject to the chance of any of that going wrong (duh.). But if this new tech has anything to do with it, I don’t think it will be because it doesn’t work in a technical sense.

It will be because we just aren’t ready for it.

Special effects in movies have, until this point, maintained a place in film that we feel very comfortable with. They have nestled themselves into this nice little corner where we can look at them and our heart starts to beat a little faster and our imagination gets stimulated just a little bit. And when we leave the theater we lean over to our friend and say, “Did you see those effects? They looked almost real!”

What Avatar will challenge, for perhaps the first time in the history of computer generated characters, are two words in that statement: “looked” and “almost.” We have been able to walk away from movies that heavily feature CGI characters (Star Wars Episodes I, II and III come to mind) and dismiss those characters in ways that we cannot do with actors in traditional films, because they were never, not once during the entire movie, real to us.

Really great movies, the ones that stick with us and haunt our thoughts, are the ones that convince us, even just for the few hours that we are part of the movie, that those characters actually exist somewhere and the conflict or joy that we witnessed on screen actually happened to them. Its an emotional attachment that is passed primarily through the character’s faces, wherein we feel and see almost all of our human emotion. Would Its a Wonderful Life still be a Christmas classic if Jimmy Stewart hadn’t been able to convey the intense emotion in the way he did?

Avatar is daring to make us connect emotionally with completely alien characters. That might just be a little too much for us to handle.

Why I’m Vegetarian

You know, at school it was a pretty normal thing. You don’t eat meat, so what? It’s not like the meat in the cafeteria resembles anything edible anyway. You just joined up with that small community of people who chose to abstain for health or ethical reasons. People were used to hearing about it and it wasn’t all that far out of the norm. Perhaps when the most popular philosophy teacher in the school puts forth a logical argument for such a diet people just begin to accept it. Sure, every once and a while someone would jokingly call you a filthy hippie or say “ohhh” in that special kind of way that really means, “oh, so you’re one of them…” but it just was what it was. You were put into the same category as those who were fasting from TV or video games or who got up for breakfast every day, and few people you told gave it a second though.

Now I’m out in the real world. It’s a little different, but I should have expected that. For one, there are proportionately a whole lot less of us out here. I think I know one vegan and two vegetarians in this area, and the vegetarians are my co-workers at EMS. There is also a whole lot more questioning, especially since my social sphere seems to be more or less comprised of conservative Christians, who (and I admit this unaccusingly) seem to align non-meat diets with liberalism. I have had to give a full reasoning for my diet on numerous occasions.

The thing is, this vegetarian thing I do is based not on an “animals are people too, how could we hurt them” reasoning but instead on the biblical calling for us to care for the earth. First, let me put it out there that I don’t have a problem with eating meat and I do not have a problem with using animal hide for clothing. After all, God himself made Adam and Eve’s clothes from skins after the fall. It is not the using of the animals themselves that I find troubling. Instead, it is our modern food production system and the unsustainable and simply unethical practices that are utilized in processing the mass quantities of meat the world indulges in that I find issue with.

Now we can agree (as Christians) that man was sent, by God, to care for His earthly creation in constant worship of Him. In the NIV Genesis 2:15 says that man was put in the garden to “work it and take care of it.” The NASB says “cultivate and keep,” while the Message says to “work… and keep it in order.” “Care,” “cultivate,” “keep in order,” these words carry a sense that the things we do to the earth and everything in it are to be focused around continually making things better. Check out this definition for “cultivate.”

Quite frankly, the mass production of meat products in modern food culture just does not do this. Not only are the modes of production unsustainable in view of the health of the planet (see this article on greenhouse gas emissions from the meat industry), but the methods in which the animals are kept, grown and slaughtered hold no respect whatsoever for the sanctity of God’s beautiful creation (Check this youTube video).

You may say, “animals are just that, animals, we can do whatever we want with them. God put us in this position of authority for a purpose. He doesn’t care whether they live or die.” If so, you might want to look at the last few verses of Jonah. God is not indifferent about the death of his Creation.

Every single facet of our lives as Christians should be directed towards fulfilling our purpose here on earth. That means that our efforts in life should not be just directed towards stopping abortions and finding a cool church with good music. We cannot excuse some of our actions because we feel something else has more importance at the moment. This thing we call our “calling” is not pick and choose. It’s a whole body sort of thing, and I think we’re really screwing it up.

And you know what? I don’t have it perfect either. But I’m working on it, because this is a process. We are working towards complete reconciliation, will you join?

 

And for another great perspective on Christianity and environmentalism check this out.

 

 

Songs and Centuries

I have this question, and although only time will ever be able to answer it, I like to toss it around every now and then.
We all know what songs from history have stood throughout the ages. We know what has remained even though the time they were made in is long gone. The Beatles, The Stones, Dylan. We know the popular songs that have stayed popular more than 40 years after they were recorded.
So what I wonder is this: of the songs that are recorded today, what will remain after 20 years, 40 years, 100 years?
I don’t think we can say that it will just be the popular songs. Todays top 40’s are just too temporary.
Not to mention that, musically, they suck.
Sure, we can all say that Coldplay will be remembered. But what else? Will rap songs be the future classics? Will any “indie” stick around?
Who knows?

Reflecting with Bryant

Still thinking a lot about Rwanda. Bryant and I shared some thoughts, and I thought they were valuable. Here are snippets of our email conversation:

Hey Sam.
I just read your blog posts from Rwanda and now the travels in the EU. Really good stuff man. Thank you for sharing about the time on the wall and your struggles.

When I look at what we did and tell people about it I really do feel like a glorified Christian tourist. I can come up with tuns of excuses in my head of why that is just not true: we were there to love the people, we were just there to see things so we could tell others and get them to donate, we were meeting our brothers and sisters in Christ; but what ultimately matters and why were we prompted to go on this trip and why was Mike prompted to lead the trip?

I am not sure.

Rwanda is in need of dignity, life chances, and basic sanitary and health standards, but possibly more importantly healing. One thing that this trip brought came only in the last night. I am so thankful for Gloria sharing the struggles with mercy and how she could recognize and feel the tension between the tribes instantly. The problems run deep and because of that I do not think that someone from the outside can do much. We can deal with the first three things above but most likely not with the last. For Rwanda to move forward they need to heal. All we can do is pray that God would rise up the next leader in reconciliation to come and open the discussion for reconciliation with wisdom.

What was our purpose in Rwanda? Why did we spend 2,500 dollars in airfare to get there? I have no clue, but I am a changed person because of it. I hurt when I see American culture be so self indulgent and because of that become so devoid of joy and checked out of reality. But I heart also knowing that there are little children and strong adults in Rwanda living on what we consider to be a part time week of pay.

So, I am going to move forward without answers. I went. So what? I now live with that knowledge and those feelings and will take that forward not necessarily looking to make a world shaking change, but being ready if the opportunity presents itself (Dr. Bird said something like that on the trip and I thought it was really wise).

Bryant,
Thanks for your thoughts man, and I would love to talk to you about this more, but it is certainly hard I do on this tiny screen of mine.
And I definitely think you’re right. We have to move on, take what we saw an what we learned and let it influence how we live every part of our lives. If there’s anything that I’ve seen so far that has come from the trip, it is that we are awakening interest in others about the country and about the rest of Africa. Everyone seems to be interested in our experience, and when they hear they only become more interested. That is a result we can rely on.
We should find some way for everyone to get together and talk again, or even share our thoughts on life after the trip. If anything, we need to be encouraging each other not to forget and not to compartmentalize the trip with so many other things in our past. I know it won’t be anywhere near the same, but maybe we can set up some kind of Internet forum where we can all share our thoughts. Or maybe we should all just start emailing back and forth.
I do know that I miss everyone really bad, and I miss Rwanda too.
___

So, what are we to do? How do we not forget? And how do we help bring about the changes that we saw Rwanda needed so badly? Its been almost two weeks and I have no idea still. I don’t really even like thinking about it because it makes me want to return so desperately.
But giving up and moving on are two things that I and the rest of my team cannot do. We just can’t.
How do we stay in Rwanda without being there physically?

Eighth on Travelling

We have gone from Dublin southward, and then worked our way back north, again through Dublin and on to Northern Ireland and Newcastle, Co. Down.
I’ll start in the south, with castles and ghosts, but it’ll be quick, because the good stuff is in Newcastle.
Foulksrath Castle is a 16th century fortified house, like many others that were built across Ireland. Most are in extreme stages of disrepair, although some are lived in and some, like Foulksrath, are both lived in and put before the wide eyes of travelers with a few spare euros. We were those travelers, and I think that in retrospect we consider those euros well spent. Just spending the night in a castle was an experience. The spiral staircase snaked it’s way up from the very medieval dining room (complete with shields an long wooden tables) past rooms for reception, the owner, girls, couples, and finally the boys, sixty or so steps round and round and up and up. We were even able to get on the roof by way of a “secret passage” that led out of the boys room. Sneaky of us.
That night around a bonfire we sat with Austrailians, Spaniards, and Tahitians (from Paris) and listened to the owner, Jack, as he told about Ghosts in his castle. On the parapets, up and down the stairs, seeping through the cracks in the stones, his ghosts sat by, made the castle smell like flowers, watched the countryside from the roof, and gave him an icy touch. They were decorations and we were watching with our ears as he led us on a tour. He would roll a cigarette and push it between his lips, lighting, sucking, and squinting under bushy white eyebrows, telling of his ghosts and asking us about our countries and our travels.
But we left after a night and eventually we ended up in Newcastle, a beautiful town in Northern Ireland. Here mountains meet the sea like a boy meeting a girl for the first time on the playground, sitting side to side while holding dearly to what makes them them. The town of Newcastle has wedged itself calmly between the two, and finding that there us not quite enough room there it has begun to spill out of the natural junction and into the valley.
We met the Millers, Cambell and Kristy, at the bus station and they took us by the Morlough house for a last night bonfire with a team from Cincinatti. It was a good introduction to the town, with the sun setting over water and the fire warming our feet.
We are staying in their guest house, which they made for people just to come and visit. We wake up in the morning and we squint across their neighborhood and down to the town and the water. Sometimes, when it is more clear, you can see Scotland.
We longboarded some, we ate chili and talked with Cambell about Munice Alliance and about ministry and about coffee and about Ireland. We met their friends Mark and Angie and played Guitar Hero. Apparantly Mark was a Foundation PA a few years back when he was a Taylor. It’s weird that I have this connection with four or five stages of leadership from my floor in Samuel Morris.
Today we hiked. It was astounding. Bare, green mountains and clear, clear streams and wild sheep. All played with coldly by a strong wind ripping through the peaks. We’re going back to camp.
I know that I have used the word breathtaking a lot in describing. But do you know what it feels like to wake up in he morning, look outside and realize that you lost a breath somewhere a few seconds back? This place is stealing my air. It can have all it wants.

Travels, seventhly (and father’s day)

Today is father’s day, and since I can’t be home to give my sorely missed father a present or even a hug, this post is dedicated to him. He’ll have to wait for his present and hug until I get home in three weeks.
Whew, that’s a long time. I hope he can hold out. I hope I can hold out.
The past three days have been spent in Ireland, two of them have been in Dublin, and the last one in the historic town of Kilkenny. We have seen cathedrals, castles, and many pubs.
Dublin was a cool little city, but after two days we felt like there wasnb much more to do. We explored quite a bit, seeing almost all we could in downtown, excepting the book of kells and the long room in trinity college, we are going to have to see that on our way back through. After obligatory pints of guiness at a traditional Irish pub, which we took special care to select so that we wouldn’t just find one filled with a lot of forgein tourists, we also discovered the Trevor is not very fond of Guinness.
Apperantly Britney Spears is also a big deal in the emerald isle. While longboarding through Dublin friday night we ran into a mass of people flooding back from one of the areas near the water. By the time we had reached the venue we had figured out, both from tshirts and from the age range and disgustingly smutty attire of the crowd, that the princess of pop herself was here. We didn’t stick around long.
One bus to Kilkenny, and we had a wealth of parks, cathedrals and castles to entertain us. We were going to camp tonight, but upon finding that the castle hostel we came down here for was about 10 miles outside the city, we shacked up at the tourist hostel in town and bought plenty of food, both for breakfast this morning and for lunches the next few days.
More soon,
Dad, I miss you terribly and I love you. I can’t wait to see you when this trip is over. Happy fathers day!

Travels: Reflections

Two nights ago I sat down and journaled for the first time since leaving Rwanda. The time produced some interesting thoughts, which I would like to share. I think they might shed some light on why it appears I didn’t take so fondly to Paris.

And here it is: The Eiffel tower was bigger than I expected. It was really impressive. But still, as I stared up at it I realized how ugly it really is, although it is held as such a fascinating icon of culture. It really doesn’t live up to the hype, despite it’s size. It is an image, projected worldwide, of the unparalleled beauty of Paris and of parisan culture. Yet on closer observation it is nothing butthe jumbled, messy workings that allow tourists unfettered access to it’s crossing iron heights and everything inbetween. Perhaps the tower was beautiful before, when there were no elevators crawling up it’s insides or when there was no green netting strung everywhere so protect suing tourists. But even if you take int account these additions, the ugliness is still there. It is still just huge iron scaffolding with no heart.
Sadly, that seems to reflect how i feel about the city-all of it- the people and he sites and the cafes. There is nothing but an image of beauty. Therein lies the main difference between Paris and Rwanda. Everywhere you went in Rwanda people smiled and loved life. In Paris, I saw hardly any smiles, and none as heartfelt as those I saw in Rwanda. How can a culture that has seen so much pain and poverty have so much more joy at it’s heart than one of the foremost and most influential cities in the world?

Travels (the makeup edition)

So I’m behind in informing this inanimate site, and in turn all of those who are reading this, of all that I am seeing in my far flung adventures. I’ll use some forthcoming downtime to attempt to catch up.
So today was our last day in Paris and tomorrow will be our last day in France. I’m really ok with that. However, today was pretty good. In the process of trying to work out our immenent escape, we were able to visit the Arc De Triumphe (sp?) and the Louvre. Both were highly impressive. The Arch was giant, with a huge French flag swaying with the city wind suspended beneath the main opening. There is a really interesting contrast between the intricately carved gigantic arch and the multi-laned traffic circle that swoops around it. There is so much traffic that underground walkways are provided so that tourists (like myself) can get beneath the arch without risking death in the circle.
The louvre was highly impressive, not so much for the works of art themselves which are housed within, but for the sheer volume of the works. I found myself marvelling more at the amount of paintings lining the walls or at the building itself. It is gigantic, with guilded and painted ceilings. Hall after hall in one wing is lined with baroque, rennasance and classical paintings; and in another, roman, Greek and Egyptian statues. I have never seen so much art concentrated in one place before.
We tired quickly of all these very similar works of art, and making sure we saw the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and the painting that is the album art on Coldplay’s Viva la Vida, we walked back out through the shining glass pyramid into the sunlight. A short walk later we had ducked beneath one of the famous “metropolitan” signs and we were again underground, riding the subway for the second to last time before leaving Paris.

The Sixth Part: Travels

Today and yesterday have been a mad combination of seeing the sights of Paris and desperately trying to figure out how to get out of here. This place is expensive, and the way want to take our journey is making it difficult to plan our next step. However, I think we have it down, and we are flying (via Ryanair) to Dublin tomorrow.
We somehow managed to still see a lot of the city, despite our increasing struggles with planning. Yesterday we walked outside the Louvre, yet were not able to go inside because we had our hands full of food that we were not willing to throw away. Also, we figured they wouldn’t look fondly on our longboards hanging off our arms around all that pricy artwork.
So we decided to go to the Eiffel Tower, which seems to be a must see here, the cultural icon it is. We were able to longboard down sidestreets to get to it, weaving inbetween poles and people. It is much bigger than I thought it would be, with its metal crossings and stairs and beams reaching high above the city, as if it has been trying for years to slowly pile up metal to reach the heavens, and it is running out of strength to get things to the top anymore.
Paris is cool and all, but I’m ready to be gone. Its expensive and crowded. Ugh.