i don't want to forget....

I came across this image yesterday as i was researching pictures for a project i'm doing for WorldVision. It's a young man who has suffered some of the consequences of the Darfur conflict.

I can't get it out of my mind. I don't know what to do with it.

I'm ready this book called "the dangerous act of worship" by mark labberton. it's about worship in the context of God... but it really doesn't have much to do with music and services. He says our major response in worship to God scripturely is micah 6:8... to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. He says that the north american churches silence and uninvolvement with world justice issues and local justice problems comes from our lack of true worship. we are focused on the astethical things, and not the things of God's heart, which is what worship is to help bring us too.

i think he is totally right.
so i'm seeking how to live this out.

but this picture....
it's horrible. i don't have words to cope with it. and this kind of abuse and suffering is so prevelant in the world. i want to hold onto this picture cause it totally takes out the legs from under me.

i live in a culture that keeps pushing me towards the ridiculous and shallow. i should know more about paris hilton and who's hot or not instead of what it means to be truly human. i'm told to keep buying ridiculous shit for myself (skymall!) instead of learning how to give to those in need. this picture gets me to the heart of the debate really quick.

therefore, i don't want it to leave me.

i hate that i'm so groomed to resist suffering and pain.
but the truth is... at least in this lifetime, this is where we find God and we can save our souls from a meaningless spiral downward into self indulgence.

i wish i knew this boy.
i pray for his life.

Miscellaneous Awesome

I had the wierdest day today... and as i'm sitting here going through stacks of paper... i just want to write it down. mostly to get it out of my head befor i go to bed...

* i had the strangest dream last night. i wish i wrote it down this morning when i could have remembered it all. in the dream some accident had happened to me and my friends. i had gone into a coma (although i did not know this). when i woke up (in my dream) i found out that i had lived and everyone else had died. it was very sad. the saddest was not knowing and having my other friends tell me what had happened while i was in a coma. i woke up very sad this morning. i wanted to tell my wife in the darkened bedroom... but i didn't want to bum her out either

* i went to prayer. i meet with a group of people on tuesday mornings and we pray.... mostly for the city, but our lives come up as well. it struck me this morning how many of us are in transitional stages right now. in fact all of us were. new jobs. new homes. new communities. new geographical locations. transitions are always hard because the rythym of your life is off and eveything seems very up in the air.

* my friend brian was visiting from california so i let him have my care today as i was working a lunch shift at the green lake bar and grill. we stopped by my studio on the way to work to drop off some art supplies and to pick up a painting that my manager wants to buy. i also gave brian another painting that was just sitting around. he loved it. it was one of the VW paintings.

* my manager today said that when he gets back from greece (which he's leaving for in a week) he wants to go out with me and justin ( the bartender) and get really drunk. i told him i was game but i wasn't a fun drunk. i just get tired. but if we went karoaking....

* my coworker megan gave me these random encouraging words today... about how much she likes working with me and she thinks i'm awesome. it's wierd when you feel uneventful, even blah, and yet there are people around you who perceive you differently....

* i got off of work and skateboarded home... still wearing my tie.

* brian was at home when i got there and we cruised over to green lake for a swim. i usually swim half the lake, out to this buoy, and then back. he kept right along and almost beat me. while we were out there, i had totally forgot to look out for crew boats.... and while we were sleeping them came by. the boat people get a little cocky... they have the mentality that they own the place. i whistled in mockery of them....

* driving brian to the airport.... he gave me a bunch of cool music this week. we were listening to some gabriella and so and so (can't remember)... which is kickin classical guitar music. brian asked, "how do you classify this kind of music?" I said that you could make a "miscellaneous awesome" folder.

* while we were driving, we were in slow traffic driving on this over pass by the downtown. down below, i saw these two dudes beating up another guy. he had blood coming out of his mouth and he yelled "help!" to the cars passing. i yelled "hey" out my window, but the other two guys didn't stop or flinch or anything. i saw the main aggressor just deck the guy across the other guys face. i couldn't stop though. i was in moving traffic and about 25 ft above them. we just had to keep going. it was so depressing. we both felt sick to our stomachs with powerlessness.

*holly and i made tacos together for dinner. we invited about four other people to join, but nobody could come. we were the only ones around....

* our friend annie just moved in down in the basement apartment. she is super swamped, as we all are, and there is a lot of cleaning and fixing things that needs to happen. especially her bathroom. we basically need to scrap the whole wall in the shower and tile it. also the light was broken. we rolled to fred meyers and got the paint remover. we fixed the light but i spent time scrapping and scrapping.... it has to be one of the most suckiest jobs i've done. it's still not done though.... not for a while. so annie has to come up and use our bathroom. i think she's cool with it. we just want her place to rock. we are excited to have her her.

*holly wants to go to bed and i'm writing this blog. so i should end.

not a monumental day in the history of man. but just a strange one to live.
if you read this whole thing, you have a better attention span than me.

SMALL

i was at a christian music festival last weekend painting a fifteen foot mural over the weekend. it's kind of weird for a painter to be there i know.... but i was in the worship tent. there are a lot of things that come to mind when i use phrases such as "christian music festival" and "worship tent".... it actually kind of gives me a stomach ache. if you were to ask me what i thought it was that i was doing, i would tell you that i was asked to listen to God and to make an art piece on what i heard and saw from Him. and that's just what i did.

this might also be a strange statement, but God has been training me over the last years in the prophetic. now when we talk about "prophecy", we are not talking about telling the future. A Prophetic word or speaking the prophetic is just revealing God's word to a person or people. It's always backed up with scripture, so something that God has already said, and it's conveying it in a present way to which God wants to speak to something. so since the nature of what i do is sit and listen to God, and then create what i see, i have come to see that part of what God has me doing is being a prophetic voice for Him. It's not glamorous at all... but it does bring you to crazy places.....

This weekend, the pictures i got were all out of Revelation. so some might think they are future telling... and they could very well be. but do you know what the whole title for revelation is? it's not just "revelation" as in revelations just about whatever. the title of the book is "the revelation of Jesus Christ". (see rev 1:1). so this book is about revealing who Jesus is.

i'll try to post some pictures of the mural and link it to this blog... but the content of the painting coudl be another post. i do think the message was important.

what i wanted to comment on is how God's prophecy is revealed.


so i'm in this tent, off to the side of all the main stage stuff... where rock/alt christian bands are playing their sets and talking about the merch and latest cd.... and i'm by myself most of the days. the first few times i painted, i think there were like 3 seven year olds just hanging out watching me. they seemed to like it. they said they did anyway.

but it was just strange from my perspective. i've been spending all week praying and i'm getting these intense images and scripture passages.... it's all a very intense process. but when it comes time to reveal and create it... nobody's there. the revealing is small quite revelation. at first it was very humbling... because i struggle with wanting others to know the "importance of me" and what i'm doing... so that has to be taken care of. but after we got all through that, i was able to ask the lord what's up with this? why give me all this intense stuff, and have nobody see it?

i started to think back to my readings of jeremiah, isaiah, and ezekiel... thinking of all the strange things that god asked them to do. things like build minature cities or rip clothes and other odd things. i wonder how many people were around to see these things? probably not many. and there was for sure no grand music sountrack playing and non of it was on the jumbo screen at a packed out arena.

it took place in small ways in the midst of all the busy bigness of our lives.


i think we are often looking for God's voice in big obvious ways. and the big obvious ways that we get information or hear from others are through large media outlets and events. so we see christians adopt this same format and use these outlets for sharing their message. and i'm not saying that that is wrong. But in my short life with God, and as i come to know Him more and more, and see how He works, it seems to me that He is speaking and revealing things all the time... it's just not always on the "mainstage".

so we can go through life looking to the mainstage for God's messages.... and it might be on the outskirts in small ways. ways that we don't even recognize or give value to. but when His word and will have come to pass, we will see in retrospect His communication all throughout our day.

we just missed it.

my prayer is for eyes to see Him in the quiet small ways all around this life.
my hope for you is the same thing. May you hear and see an infinite God speaking into a finite loud world with His whispering small ways.

turning 30

i turned 30 yesterday with no big hub bub or fireworks show. Sometimes you think big events are supposed to happen in big ways... but most of the time they just pass like everyday events. It feels like a big deal to me though. Maybe it's my hope of something different. It's a new decade... the 20's have gone. They were great, but kind of a bi-polar decade. Great ups, painful downs.... I've heard that your 30's are a little more even keel. I hope so. I also hope they bring in a stepping up. Doing art, learning to be an artist... these things have been difficult. And not that i dont' think they won't continue to be that way... i guess i'm hoping to a least jump up to some new level of success and to keep moving. I feel like i've been in a rut lately. so who knows. that's my prayer anyway.

This is totaly cliche and cheesy, and not even good theology... but one thing that gives me hope is that Jesus didn't start his "ministry" until he was thirty. Now i'm not trying to say that 30 is the holy number to get your life going... but it does say something about timing, maturing, etc. i'm not going to write a book about it, it's just something that gives me a little hope in the possibilities of tomorrow.

with that... welcome 30's....

Kenay - i love my team

i just wanted to say that i really enjoyed my team that i went with on the Heart for Africa trip. We all had our little american/canadian quarks that we dealt with... but all in all they kicked butt in the work that was given to them, and they loved the kids and people with full hearts.

you can be my wingman anytime.

mad love

scott

Kenya - GRATITUDE

GRATITUDE

One of the things i like about cross-cultural experiences is how much it shows me that i have been molded by a certain culture. More pointedly, american culture. We all are affected by the culture in which we grow up in, wherever it may be in the world. The crux is we adopt this stand point as normal, and that all others outside of that are weird or even worse, wrong. I think it’s a totally beneficial investment to take yourself outside of your culture so you can examine your beliefs, your habits, your actions, and see how they stand up in the face of another society.

One of the things i hear over and over on this trip is “these people have so little” or even “they have nothing.” This statement is true by the standards in which we live in the united states. Most of the people we interact with have two sets of clothes, they live in a house either put together with mud brick, cut stone, or tin sheets of metal. Most have a dirt floor. They have a piece of land that they farm. And some have animals such as goats, chickens, and if you are lucky, a cow. So to our standard of living, where we all “must” have an ipod, they do have very little.

This is how a lot of the world lives though. But let’s not go down that road. What strikes me about this situation is the reaction from the americans who come across this situation and see the demeanor of the people who live here. They are shocked to find on the faces of people joy and gratitude. I will say that you see hardship, pain, and need. That is there as well. But the people that we met with on the whole, at the orphanage, at churches, grandmothers in their home.... they were full of joy.

This was shocking to our group. Many exclaimed this in our nightly debriefing times. I found this curious. I share some of the same responses, so it’s not a foreign thought to me. But i guess in my previous travels i have already delt with this question of joy in the face of hardship.

I think why this attitude is so shocking to us is because we equate material possessions and standard of living with the amount of joy we have. And why wouldn’t we adopt this stance? We are fed this everyday. The one thing that i have come to discover about america is that we are a people who are trained to live in a state of discontent. Everything that is fed to us media wise – print, audio, television, movies – has a goal to make us feel like we lack something, and that something which is the answer to our discontent is the thing that they want us to buy, watch, or adhere too. You can see this all around us and you can even hear it in the way we talk. Ever heard of shop therapy? Because of this, our equation for gaining joy has been placed in the consumption or attaining of goods.

The rural Africa that we were in stood in the face of this belief, and it took some of our group by surprise. I think this is because people started to see something deeper in the spiritual lives of the people we were around... something that calls out our own consumer spirituality.

(before i make my point, i want to just say that i don’t think that these people should have to stay were they are at because they have joy. There are grave injustices going on in the poor places around the world. These people may have very little, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. And i’m not talking about having a GAP and a Whole Foods move down the street, and eveyone given an IPOD. But these people have a lack of clean water, sanitation complications, and a very difficult time achieving any kind of decent education. These kinds of things should be available to all peoples around the world. I’ve heard some americans comment on the joy of the people they have met and have decided that all is fine because these people express joy in the midst of the situation. This is a stupid and callous response. One’s response to a situation does not mean that the situation is fine. Ok... off this tangent.)

What i think that is is GRATITUDE.

What i hear overwhelmingly in the language of Africans who trust in God is a deep belief that God is gracious and loving, and has them in His hands. Many of these friends live on a day to day basis.... living in a state of hope and seeing their needs taken care of everyday. They do not speak about their consistent paychecks and their hope in their investments which will take care of them when they retire. They speak of an individual (who they seem to know well) who knows their situation, who knows what they need, who hears their sorrowful prayers and they celebratory songs, and they live their lives with their hands open.... trusting in this unseen Father.

We might scoff with the simple-mindedness of this lifestyle. It’s comical in the face of the complex world that we live in. And yet those of us who comment on this find ourselves spirituall empty and lost, continuing in our rat race for acceptance, worth, and meaning in the pursuit of material things.

The fact of the matter is living in the tension of hope for tomorrow leads us to a deeper spirituality of faith, trust, and love. And from that we adopt a lifestyle of gratitude.... which gives us a deeper joy. I’ve come to understand that the world of plenty and choice that i live in can squelch the spirituality and relationship with God that I hope to have in my life. I have to make conscious choices in what i buy, how a spend, my stance on wealth, what i read, what i listen too, etc etc. not because i’m some anal nit picky christian who lives his life with a arrogant stick up my butt. No. because i can see the framework of hedonistic pursuits can lead me to a dead soul and a joyless existence.


“ Not that i speak from want, for i have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and i also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstances i have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”
The Apostle Paul, Phillipians 4:11-13

“Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is god’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
Paul, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

day 3 in kenya

Friday july 13

It’s 4 am and i’m wide awake..... which sucks cause at 5pm tonight i am going to be dead tired. The jet lag is annoying this time. I guess i always forget about it. but we have an hour and a half bus ride to the tumaini orphanage and all i want to do is nap during that time. I should have brought some caffeine pills.

It’s day three of being here. We are in a town called varnaisha which is about three hours north of nairobi. We are staying at a hotel that is simple and pleasant.... holly and i have a full size bed that we are sharing which has been delight.

Our team is working at the tumaini orphanage. The orphanage is two buildings which houses about 50 orphans. Most of these kids have become orphans because their parents have died from AIDS. They figure that there are about 1.2 million orphans in kenya due to AIDS, which is a staggering number.

The team is split up into groups and people are doing a variety of things. Most worked in the field planting crops. One of the great things about kenya is that you can plant food all year. The orphanage is very into sustainable gardening.

My job has changed over the last two days. I thought i was coming in a doing about 6 days of work with kids – art lessons and having them make pieces that we can sell in the US. Now i have three days to work with them, they want us to repaint the walls in the room we are meeting in, i’m doing a heart for africa mural, and i’m painting three nights during speakers. This is all fine and doable. I think i just get lazy when the jetlag hits in. last night when i was painting during the sharing time, i felt dizzy and nauseous... not fun when painting.

The kids we had yesterday were great. I ran some of the older ones through some drawing exercises and they did awesome. i would like to do more but we don’t really have the time. And i was thinking that learning to draw is hard, laborious, and it can be boring. It’s not boring per say. It’s more like, to play in a concert which is awesome, you need to have hours and hours of practice to get it right. Learning the skills of art is practice practice practice... which looks like a lot of eye studies and learning how to see the world and translate is to a medium. Anywho, i don’t want to bore the kids.....

I’m not sure what to even write about right now. This trip hasn’t been anything epic for me. Not that it should be but i guess there is some part of you that believes you should be having these “ah” moments all the time. Others who have shared have had them.... i guess the poverty for them has been very eye opening, and that’s great. What do you do though when you’ve already experienced it? i feel like i’m here to accomplish a job and i want to do it well. frankly, i don’t feel like i’m that stellar of an artist to do it, but that’s just the artist self-doubt creeping in. or the enemy.

I just wish i could sleep so i could be 100% today.