kygal88's Xanga

Incarnational Love

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:06:38 GMT

"He so loved us that for our sake He was made man...Who made man; was created of a mother, whom He created; was carried by hands which He formed... cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He the Word without Whom all human eloquence is mute."
-Augustine, Sermon 188 2,2

Russian Snowfall

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:26:36 GMT

Well, we had our first snowfall on the mountain this past week. I woke up around 4 in the morning to peek outside my window at the untouched blanket. So beautiful. However, my roommates pointed out that it's only exciting for a day... and then it gets sloshy and annoying to walk through. I disagree. The giddy shrieks of laughter that come from the students who have never seen snow in their lives keep me optimistic and young :)

Photo via Rachel Cohen

It's exam cram time. Finals are scattered from Monday through Thursday and then two of my dear friends, Kat and Colby, are getting married on Friday night. I have no exams to study for, thankfully, so I'm staying in town to work as campus librarian for the week and attend the wedding. Lots of friends from Maryland and Oklahoma should be in town, so I'm super-excited to spend time with friends I don't see often.

Also, the past few days have been spent with one of my new friends, Marta, from Russia. She is in America for a month, and has connections with my church here in Chattanooga. I offered to host her here on campus for a few days and show her around. She's been studying English for 7 months, but speaks it almost fluently! I still spent the weekend trying to enunciate and speak more slowly than normal :) It was so interesting looking at my campus and lifestyle from the perspective of an visiting immigrant. Completely different spin. Hm.

Caught In Between

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:53:36 GMT

You know that feeling of being caught in between?
The changing of season.

A new season of my life is on the horizon. But I'm not there yet.
Caught in the inbetween. The interim.

The literal seasons are in transition as well here on the mountain. I love walking through a blanket of yellow and red leaves on my way to class. The wet and the fog... the brisk, fresh air that steals your breath away. Yes, change is good.

One of my favorite things during this fallish-wintry time is falling asleep with the window cracked open. The air is so cold that our small dorm room is freezing by morning. But I love waking up to the feeling of the wind on my face (well, my forehead really... I'm usually so buried under the covers that that's all that's visible.)

Each morning I'm the first to wake up in our dorm room. Liv's alarm goes off around 7:00 next to my head. I groggily hand it to her and doze off for 20 more minutes. Then it's a test of self-control in order to hurry out of my cozy cocoon and tiptoe across the icy tiled floor into the adjoining room, so as not to wake my three slumbering roommates. You really have to approach the situation like you would ripping off a BandAid... just throw off the covers and run so that it's over quickly with the least amount of discomfort.

What's one of your favorite things about this time of transitioning seasons? You can interpret the question as literally or figuratively as you'd like :)

Fumbling

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:57:11 GMT

Untitled #46 by Jessica Bruah

As a compulsory list-maker, sometimes my days are filled with post-it notes.
And then I have to fumble through them all to figure out what needs to be done first.

Perhaps I need a hot pink "priority" post-it note, so I can just find the important one.

Open Sesame: Activism and Preschoolers

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:40:51 GMT

So, you've been wondering why all these Sesame Street characters have been woven into your Google homepage this week, eh?

Well, it just so happens to be the show's 40th Anniversary.

I was actually excited to see Cookie Monster stuffing himself in the center of my computer screen, because he's actually worked his way into my Senior Intergration Paper (SIP) this semester. Now what could Cookie Monster possibly have to do with my SIP topic on art as a means of healing and restoration? Well, I'll tell you...

Since the very beginning, the preschool television show Sesame Street has been a social activist force. “The show arrived on the heels of riots in Washington, Baltimore, Cleveland and Chicago, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr… It was intentional from the beginning to show different races living together,”[1] said David Kleeman, exectutive director of the American Center for Children and Media. By characterizing the show’s set with a lower-income, urban atmosphere, the show catered to a diverse group of preschoolers who needed to understand and visualize what a world without segregation could look like.

Forty years later, the children’s show has been broadcasted in an additional sixteen countries and regions around the world. However, Sesame doesn't "dump" Western culture into each country in which it is broadcasted, but it creates a specific curriculum to fit the context of each unique culture. The Sesame employees many times travel to an international location and rely on the locals. These local people are equipped to identify what issues need to be addressed and how the show should be presented so that the community will respond positively.

In Palestinian territory Kosovo, Sesame supported peace in the midst of Albanian and Serbian ethnic tension. The show aired clips of preschoolers from both ethnicities in an effort to educate the other group and to stir up empathy. In South Africa, Sesame introduced an HIV-positive Muppet to break the stigma and attitudes surrounding the AIDS issue there. But not only does Sesame address political issues, it meets difficult topics such as death head-on. In addition, the show regularly hosts children with illnesses and Down syndrome and has launched an obesity awareness campaign called Healthy Habitats for life.[2] The discernment and insight that Sesame has exhibited for the past forty years has surely been a large contributing factor to their international success. Since what the children see on the show reflects their own unique environment, Sesame proves to be and effective teaching tool.

[1] Kleeman, Newsweek, p.55

[2] Guernsey, Ibid, p.57

The First Three Notes

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:52:29 GMT

Everyone needs a little Maria in their day.
I just love how huge this gets :)

In Spite of Fear

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:02:59 GMT

One of my roommates, Olivia, showed me a postcard the other day that piqued my interest. It was an advertisement that began with this insightful question:
Is there something you feel you can't say in a church?

Anne Jackson, an avid writer and advocate of recovery and justice, is working on a new project entitled Permission to Speak Freely: Essays and Art on Fear, Confession, and Grace. She is compiling artistic submissions (photos, postcards, letters, etc.) that are in response to the aforementioned question: What are we afraid to speak of in religious circles? Many pieces of artwork express feelings of estrangement from God and the church based on past sin or brokenness in their lives. For fear of being harshly judged by fellow Christians, most are submitted as anonymous confessionals.

Jackson is highly active in empowering those who seem to have no voice. Her website states, "She contributes to various blogs like Christianity Today and Deadly Viper Character Assassins. Anne has also written for PurposeDriven.com, Willow Arts, Outreach Magazine, Catalyst Groupzine, and a variety of other publications. She is a licensed and ordained lay pastor serving under the leadership at Cross Point Church in Nashville, as well as a speaker advocate for Compassion International."

While I admire her drive and commitment, I don't know enough about her thoughts on the matter. The website doesn't go into detail about how this issue is addressed. While I think that her project is presented as a challenge for us to be honest in order to encourage healing and restoration, I'm not sure what she is advocating to be that means of healing. If simply "speaking freely" is her form of ultimate healing, then she's only gathered together a group of disgruntled and broken people who now feel free to grumble about how the church is not meeting their needs. However, if she is encouraging a more biblical honesty as a means to forgiveness and restoration in Christ as the ultimate healing process, then I think she's right on target.

Either way, her project raises a relevant issue. How freely do we confess to one another? I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers rich insight in his work Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith and Community.

The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community…

The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power…It can no longer tear the fellowship asunder. Now the fellowship bears the sin of the brother. He is no longer alone with his evil for he has cast off his sin in confession and handed it over to God…Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God in the cross of Jesus Christ.

In confession occurs the break-through to the cross… Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation. It hurts, it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to pride. To stand there before a brother as a sinner is an ignominy that is almost unbearable. In the confession of concrete sins the old man dies a painful, shameful death before the eyes of a brother. Because this humiliation is so hard we continually scheme to evade confessing to a brother. Our eyes are so blinded that they no longer see the promise and the glory in such abasement.

The Cross of Jesus Christ destroys all pride. We cannot find the Cross of Jesus if we shrink from going to the place where it is to be found, namely, the public death of the sinner. And we refuse to bear the Cross when we are ashamed to take upon ourselves the shameful death of the sinner in confession. In confession we break through to the true fellowship of the Cross of Jesus Christ, in confession we affirm and accept our Cross.

Born into Brothels

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:38:31 GMT

Last night, upon the recommendation of a professor here, I watched this incredible documentary film, Born into Brothels. The audience is taken on the journey of New York photographer, Zana Briski, who travels to the red light district of Calcutta, India. She spends years living with the women there and over time forms relationships with the children who are born into this line of prostitution.

The children are enthralled with Briski's camera, and she soon finds herself teaching them how to use a point-and-shoot. This film documents the children's growing experience in photography and their struggle to escape brothel life. Their work really is astounding. Since the film has been released, the children have sold much of their work and have been enrolled in good boarding schools.

I was excited to see art in action, bringing about change and justice. The kids' personalities shine in the film, and they'll tug at your heartstrings. It's a beautiful display of redemption. To learn more about their story and what has resulted from the film, visit http://www.thinkfilmcompany.com/brothels/.

You can also visit http://www.kids-with-cameras.org/aboutthekids/ to see where the kids are now (three years later) and to sample their photography.

Cupcakes and Internships

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:26:36 GMT

Now I can just see your little minds wondering.
Just to calm your fears right up front: No. I am not interning at a bakery.
I will not be making cupcakes for a living.
But I suppose there are worse things to do with your life.

Last night my roommates and I all sat on our dorm room couch at about 11:30 PM in our PJs, each holding a gigantic cupcake. Michelle (fondly called "Mish") recently had a birthday and we were intent on celebrating in style. Gigi's cupcakes are known for their whimsical but enormous nature, so needless to say, the experience was nigh perfect. Here are a few of these lovely creations...

On a more serious note, I've been thinking about the future lately. This does seem to happen quite a bit during one's senior year of college. In May, the education, art, business, and history departments send a group of students to New York for three weeks. The students and faculty live in a hostel and treat the trip as a May term experience, thus divying out college credit, projects, hands-on-experiences and more. The education department, in particular, gives eight internships to students who desire to work in an urban schooling environment.

Mustard Seed School is located in Hoboken, NJ, about 5 miles from Manhattan/Chinatown. As their facebook page states, the school "was founded in 1979 to address the educational needs of the urban community by educating students in an intercultural, interdenominational Christian setting. Mustard Seed School has an intentional mission to the urban poor."

This kind of work is certainly where my heart is. The internship, for now, is something that I'll be praying about. The future... who knows?

Point of View

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:45:40 GMT

What do they really think of us?

Photo via hazy jenius

This morning in my Community Development class "Living and Working in a Multicultural Context," Professor Corbett showed us this insightful video. The clips show a montage of people from around the world who were asked to describe the U.S. in three words.

On the left-hand side of the screen, you can read a comprehensive list of words people used.
When listed according to popularity, the top three words were "Diverse. Freedom. Ignorant."

http://www.pbs.org/pov/apps/threewords/fr_usainthreewords_pop.php