This weekend I was privileged to be a groomsman in my friend Ryan Voogt’s marriage to Shannon De Young. The whirlwind 45-hour trip to Grand Rapids was a great time on all fronts, but the ceremony itself was beautiful. I wanted to share with you the vows they made to one another yesterday in front of God and all those gathered to witness the service. May God give them strength to keep their promises.
The Way of Creation (Genesis 2:18-25): Here at last is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, divine help in a form I understand. You are the image of God for me. God speaks to me in your voice. God looks at me through your eyes. God touches me with your hands. And, in my love for you, I too may reflect God.
The Way of Denial (Ephesians 5:21-33): I take you, Ryan/Shannon, to be my husband/wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until death parts us. Nothing else will have the power, for today I turn away from all other options. Forsaking all others, I commit myself to you. I will seek to serve you with tenderness and respect, energy and intelligence, imagination and love.
The Way of Renewal (Matthew 12:46-50): I take you, Ryan/Shannon, to be my brother/sister in Christ, for this life and for the next. Let our love be loved within the community of his church, and our home be embraced by a household of faith. However much our love for one another deepens, I promise to love God even more than I love you. I ask you to love God even more than you love me, that our growing love for him will draw us closer to one another.
The Way of the Spirit (Romans 12): I take you, Ryan/Shannon, to be my partner in Christ’s service. I will help you develop God’s gifts in you and work with you for the coming kingdom of God. I will listen with you for God’s call on our lives, that our home may be a place where the good news is proclaimed, where justice and mercy are lived, where God’s children are welcomed, and where God’s name is honored. May our marriage give him joy!
7/31/2005
the three Ps and more
Though I’m writing this on July 25 I’m not going to be able to post it for a while. For a week now I’ve been immersed in intense TEFL training (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and team-building activities, along with 250 other TeachOverseas teachers. It’s been a lot of fun, but exhausting too. We’re ensconced at William Carey International University in Pasadena, CA – I’m back in a dorm room, eating at a dining hall! My typical schedule is an 8:00 “Discovery Group” discussion with 5-10 teachers. We have guiding questions each day addressing issues as varied as political perspective and Biblical authority. At 9:00 we move into the large group TEFL session with all the teachers. I’m learning a great deal about how to teach English in these sessions. The most difficult thing so far is the 80/20 ratio of student speech to teacher speech that they recommend for the language classroom. After the big group session we break into smaller, regional TEFL sessions (I’m with Central Europe, for example). After lunch we have a 1:30 session that can cover language and culture of the countries we’ll be working in, team dynamics, or other various things. At 3:45 we find out our teaching assignments for the evening, and we start planning our lessons. Immediately after dinner (if we have time to eat!) we head to our practicum site where we teach our lessons to local immigrants (or fellow teachers if there aren’t enough students). After we get back we have a debriefing of the day with the same small group with which we started.
Needless to say, it keeps me busy. I am learning a lot, though! The three Ps in the title refers to the way the suggest we plan our English classes – presentation (giving students new material), practice (reviewing and drilling the new material), production (student-centered creative language production using new material). The heavy focus is on getting to the elusive production stage (how else can you reach that annoying 80/20 ratio?). This is just the tip of the iceberg – from different learning styles to Bloom’s taxonomy, from classroom management to methods of assessment, I’m getting a crash course on how to be a teacher. What keeps me sane in all this is the interaction with the other teachers – they’re great! I get to have wonderful daily conversations about how Christians should interact with a foreign culture or about the role of traditional grammar in language education (linguistic descriptivists of the world unite!). This is what we talk over lunch – how a Christian should react when placed in an educational system that traditionally disciplines by public embarrassment and shame. I feel very blessed to be in this type of environment, at least until August 22 when it’s off to Budapest!
Needless to say, it keeps me busy. I am learning a lot, though! The three Ps in the title refers to the way the suggest we plan our English classes – presentation (giving students new material), practice (reviewing and drilling the new material), production (student-centered creative language production using new material). The heavy focus is on getting to the elusive production stage (how else can you reach that annoying 80/20 ratio?). This is just the tip of the iceberg – from different learning styles to Bloom’s taxonomy, from classroom management to methods of assessment, I’m getting a crash course on how to be a teacher. What keeps me sane in all this is the interaction with the other teachers – they’re great! I get to have wonderful daily conversations about how Christians should interact with a foreign culture or about the role of traditional grammar in language education (linguistic descriptivists of the world unite!). This is what we talk over lunch – how a Christian should react when placed in an educational system that traditionally disciplines by public embarrassment and shame. I feel very blessed to be in this type of environment, at least until August 22 when it’s off to Budapest!
7/15/2005
ridin’ the rails
As a kid I had a fascination with trains, but then who didn’t? I’m writing this as I ride south on the Amtrak Coast Starlight through California’s Central Valley. We’re flying by apricot orchards, lettuce fields, almond trees, and all kinds of other crops. There are downsides to train travel: it takes a long time, the food is exorbitantly expensive, kids on the train can be incredibly annoying. But what you can’t beat is the view. In some ways it’s even better than a road trip because train tracks go places cars don’t. As we wound our way through the Sierras last night some of the views literally took my breath away. I can’t wait until we get out to the coast this afternoon. I love the feeling of history I get when I ride the train. They have all sorts of old western connotations for me (I half expect us to get held-up by bandits!). Having read enough cowboy novels to know just how important the train was to early westward expansion, I wonder about the train routes. How did one little town get the train station that turned it into the county seat and local hub of industry, while another town got passed over and remains mostly a Western ghost town? Of course these decisions were not usually arbitrary, but it’s easy to get fatalistic about it. Could the train have made a difference for some of those little hamlets? We’ll never know. (For those who are interested, the train just went in between two buildings of the Blue Diamond Almond factory in Sacramento!) The one thing I wish the train still had is a real caboose with an open balcony. How fun would it be to stand outside and watch the country go by with all the smells and sounds that go along with the sights? (Except, maybe, in dairy country) Of course all this Americana might come flooding back in a few months when I’m stuck in Hungary longing for some good old American scenery. Maybe Hungarian trains will have open cabooses.
7/07/2005
nomad
I’m fortunate to be able to spend this week tootleing around western Washington, visiting friends and enjoying the scenic beauty of this amazing state. I went to Deception Pass last night – the channel of water that separates Whidby Island from the Washington mainland and expands out to form the vast expanse of Puget Sound. It’s only about a quarter mile wide, but the water is over 220 feet deep at the base of the channel. This means the massive tides moving through the narrow space give the current terrific power – you can see it in the eddies that swirl on the surface, and the hundreds of whirlpools and “boiling pots.” We saw a harbor seal surface and swim against the current for a few moments before submerging and rocketing out to the Pacific like a torpedo (the tide was going out!). It’s called Deception Pass because Cpt. George Vancouver couldn’t believe that this tiny channel was not a river, but the northern entrance to the sound. When his scouting boat came back with that information thus proving the land mass in front of him was actually a large island, Vancouver thoughtfully named the island for the captain of that scouting expedition, John Whidby.
I’m writing this on the ferry ride from Whidby over to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula (it’s amazing where you can get wireless internet these days!). I haven’t seen any Orcas yet – I guess they’re not too common on this side of the island. I have only a week before I’m off for California and my ESL training, so this chance to see some of the most beautiful parts of Washington is especially sweet. I’m taking lots of pictures to help me overcome the bouts of homesickness that are about 5 months away.
I had an interesting talk with my friend Jon last night about what home means for our generation. We were in the only pub that’s open in tiny Coupeville, WA after 9:00 pm, along with the four regulars. Our chat was informed by a thoughtful book we’ve both read, Searching For Home, by M. Craig Barnes. Jon was a Geography/Environmental Studies major at Calvin, and has spent a lot of time thinking about how different places affect people’s sense of identity, both individually and collectively. Our conclusion (in line with Barnes’) is that many young people today grow up without a sense of home that is tied to a particular place or community. The world of the family farm or small town community is rapidly disappearing, giving way to the impersonal suburban community. Instead my generation finds its sense of identity in relationships. I am not a Pennsylvanian, a Washingtonian, or even an American as much as I am part of a group of friends who scattered all over the world.
On one level I’m thankful because it means we’re not looking to money, status, or possessions to define ourselves, to give us a sense of place. (On a side note, I’m constantly amazed at how little we care about money – it’s ambivalence that borders on irresponsibility.) The problem is that we idolize those relationships and let them determine self-worth. What we want more than financial stability or career success is love, acceptance, and inclusion (and that includes unconditional acceptance – love no matter what we decide to do). The problem, of course, is that our true identity is only found in being a child of God. We are his workmanship, created in his image to do good works that he has planned in advance for us. I may be a nomad, but that is the one home I’ll always have.
I’m writing this on the ferry ride from Whidby over to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula (it’s amazing where you can get wireless internet these days!). I haven’t seen any Orcas yet – I guess they’re not too common on this side of the island. I have only a week before I’m off for California and my ESL training, so this chance to see some of the most beautiful parts of Washington is especially sweet. I’m taking lots of pictures to help me overcome the bouts of homesickness that are about 5 months away.
I had an interesting talk with my friend Jon last night about what home means for our generation. We were in the only pub that’s open in tiny Coupeville, WA after 9:00 pm, along with the four regulars. Our chat was informed by a thoughtful book we’ve both read, Searching For Home, by M. Craig Barnes. Jon was a Geography/Environmental Studies major at Calvin, and has spent a lot of time thinking about how different places affect people’s sense of identity, both individually and collectively. Our conclusion (in line with Barnes’) is that many young people today grow up without a sense of home that is tied to a particular place or community. The world of the family farm or small town community is rapidly disappearing, giving way to the impersonal suburban community. Instead my generation finds its sense of identity in relationships. I am not a Pennsylvanian, a Washingtonian, or even an American as much as I am part of a group of friends who scattered all over the world.
On one level I’m thankful because it means we’re not looking to money, status, or possessions to define ourselves, to give us a sense of place. (On a side note, I’m constantly amazed at how little we care about money – it’s ambivalence that borders on irresponsibility.) The problem is that we idolize those relationships and let them determine self-worth. What we want more than financial stability or career success is love, acceptance, and inclusion (and that includes unconditional acceptance – love no matter what we decide to do). The problem, of course, is that our true identity is only found in being a child of God. We are his workmanship, created in his image to do good works that he has planned in advance for us. I may be a nomad, but that is the one home I’ll always have.
of greed and guilt
As a Calvinist I deal with guilt a lot. It seems like every religious tradition claims guilt as its own (how many Catholic guilt, Lutheran guilt, Baptist guilt, or even Jewish guilt jokes have you heard over the years?). It’s sad to me because the thing to be proud of, the thing we should be fighting to claim, is grace. That’s another post though – the point is I’m good at guilt. My liberal anti-consumerist tendencies have prompted many good things (consistent use of buses, libraries instead of bookstores whenever possible, and trying to get secondhand goods if I can), but I can never go far enough for myself. I’ve trained myself to feel guilty whenever even a twinge of desire stirs in my heart. I (internally) condemn Christians who I see as too affluent (imagine what the majority of the world’s Christians would do if they met me!), because they have nice things.
My point in bringing this up is to say I’ve decided I want an ipod, and I’ve decided not to feel guilty about that. It’s basic but important to say that music’s a good gift from God (as I sit here listening to Jack Johnson I heartily say amen to myself!). The same applies to technology. Obviously not all technology is good (same with music), but it’s a tool that can be used for great good. This means ipods are not inherently evil (unless Apple, as a multinational corporation, is evil – but I’ve decided that I can’t avoid supporting big businesses, nor should I boycott them completely. I should simply be aware of the struggles of small local businesses and seek to support them as much as I can).
The question remains: do I have a genuine need for an ipod? Need vs. want. What is the role of desire in Christian life? Couldn’t the money go toward something more worthwhile? But then, I could healthily survive on only rice, beans, and various fruits and veggies. Am I wrong to spend money on chicken, cheddar, or any of the other “luxury” foods I could live without? These questions genuinely give me a headache.
Another issue in play here is the reinforcement of individualism that comes with the ipod culture. I write this as I sit in a Seattle coffeehouse (The Green Bean) and the two people who sit nearest me are both listening to ipods, socially isolated and cut off even from the previously mentioned Jack Johnson.
For me, it keeps coming back to my robust doctrine of creation. We can affirm the goodness of God’s gifts to us by enjoying them and using them for his glory (how to use an ipod for God’s glory – hmmmmm, that’s “a whole nother” question). When you give someone a gift how do you want them to respond? So it still makes my stomach queasy, and I wouldn’t stand up and publicly declare it in this coffeehouse, but I want an ipod and I don’t feel guilty about it… almost.
My point in bringing this up is to say I’ve decided I want an ipod, and I’ve decided not to feel guilty about that. It’s basic but important to say that music’s a good gift from God (as I sit here listening to Jack Johnson I heartily say amen to myself!). The same applies to technology. Obviously not all technology is good (same with music), but it’s a tool that can be used for great good. This means ipods are not inherently evil (unless Apple, as a multinational corporation, is evil – but I’ve decided that I can’t avoid supporting big businesses, nor should I boycott them completely. I should simply be aware of the struggles of small local businesses and seek to support them as much as I can).
The question remains: do I have a genuine need for an ipod? Need vs. want. What is the role of desire in Christian life? Couldn’t the money go toward something more worthwhile? But then, I could healthily survive on only rice, beans, and various fruits and veggies. Am I wrong to spend money on chicken, cheddar, or any of the other “luxury” foods I could live without? These questions genuinely give me a headache.
Another issue in play here is the reinforcement of individualism that comes with the ipod culture. I write this as I sit in a Seattle coffeehouse (The Green Bean) and the two people who sit nearest me are both listening to ipods, socially isolated and cut off even from the previously mentioned Jack Johnson.
For me, it keeps coming back to my robust doctrine of creation. We can affirm the goodness of God’s gifts to us by enjoying them and using them for his glory (how to use an ipod for God’s glory – hmmmmm, that’s “a whole nother” question). When you give someone a gift how do you want them to respond? So it still makes my stomach queasy, and I wouldn’t stand up and publicly declare it in this coffeehouse, but I want an ipod and I don’t feel guilty about it… almost.
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