mbjones

I’m cleaning out my junk in preparation for a move into an apartment with a girl. Tonight, whilst cleaning out a draw, I came across some random high school papers. One of them was a packet of poetry I had to write in AP English. It made me chuckle to re-read them, so I thought I’d share them here over the next few days. I’ll start with the first tomorrow. Enjoy!

I’m engaged and that means busy, if you didn’t know. There is lots and lots that needs doing and it seems that the majority of my free energy is spent in that direction. And so — that’s meant less time here writing. I’m working on changing that though (and have some things worth writing about on paper already).

Things have been quiet around here lately because I’ve been busy in real life. For a quick update, I’M ENGAGED! That’s incredibly exciting. It is also keeping me busy with planning and such (the wedding is only about 4 months away). So — don’t expect me around here to often. I’ll probably try to post a few life updates and book reviews (I’ve got several I need to do, including The Blue Parakeet).

People also seem to want to talk about politics. That’s another reason I’m not likely to be super active here as those discussions aren’t proving fruitful at all. In fact, it’s brought out truly hateful sides in surprising people. And so this rule I’ve instituted: If you are republican — I’m not likely to talk to you about politics until you admit that (a) Jesus was not a republican (nor any other party as we know political parties) and (b) a Christian can be a Christian and registered independent, another party or even (shocker) democrat.

That being said if you really want my opinion on the political side of things (and pay attention as this will probably be the most I say here), here you go:

I have trouble deciding between the lesser of many evils. While the candidates themselves are not any more evil than you or I, like it or not their campaigns aren’t ever going to match what I would consider the Politics of Jesus because they approach power from a different angle. And like it or not they all have “trouble spots” in their campaigns. Because of that I haven’t fully decided if I’m even going to cast a vote as I’m not really sure my place is to play Caesar. That’s still be prayerfully considered though.

If I do cast a vote — it will not be for the McCain/Palin ticket. From a leadership standpoint, McCain has shown particularly over the past month that he can’t lead his own campaign. How could we expect him to lead our nation? The biggest issue here is his use of FUD tactics (fear, uncertainty and doubt for the curious). I haven’t seen a single commercial or ad or anything from him in quite some time that wasn’t some sort of direct attack on his opponent (most of them being outright lies). Not only that, his mockery of a VP candidate is stirring the pot even more — encouraging chants of “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” at the mention of Obama’s name. These folks are coming to rally’s believing him to be an “Arab” or “Muslim” or “Terrorist” and those flames are only be fanned and honestly its outright despicable. And yet with all of the attack points — he’s unwilling to say these face to face in debates (truth be told, for some reason he seems unwilling to even LOOK at Obama in debates). My stomach honestly turns at the lack of integrity exhibited here and it pushes me even harder towards casting an Obama vote because, through it all, he’s looked presidential — he’s remained calm — and he’s resisted the urge to attack at all costs (most of his ads still are about issues and polices, over 2/3 last I saw). Regardless of who’s elected, I just pray that all of the fear and hate stirred up by McCain’s campaign doesn’t lead to violence; we don’t need that hanging over the nations head.

Back to a potential vote though: Some of the strongest Holy Spirit driven conviction I’ve experienced has been from regret for casting a vote for Bush. What this country desperately needs is change. The neoliberal philosophy driving the current republican party isn’t going to offer that, as our current economic mess indicates. Obama offers an alternative way (with policies that attempt to make a difference in the lives of people) but when all is said and done, I don’t think that is even the change that we need (regardless of how much I might or might not agree with him — there are definitely problem areas with his policy choices).

And so I’m back to where I started this political rant: playing Caesar. Like it or not America is empire. And like it or not, I don’t think Bush is our emperor. We are (right now) as it’s our voice that drives policy. If we want to see real change in America we need to recognize this and be willing to do a couple of things about it. First — recognize the power that drives every government. I’m thinking Revelations 18 is a fitting scripture:

18:3 For all the nations have fallen from the wine of her immoral passion, and the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have gotten rich from the power of her sensual behavior.” 18:4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, so you will not take part in her sins and so you will not receive her plagues,

It’s speaking of the whore of Babylon and how ALL the nations have, well, been with her. What is the voice of heaven telling us to do? “Come out of her!” Played out I don’t have any hard and fast advice for you — I’m still figuring that out myself. At the very least though it should force us to examine our own roles in the political process and how we treat political power. The second thing I think necessary if we want to see real change in this nation is to stop pretending and actually be the church. We need to be ambassadors for the alternative kingdom. That means a whole lot but starts with throwing off the lust that drives consumerism and individualism and replacing it with genuine generosity and concern for our neighbors. Social policy is an issue solely because the church refuses to do this (investing in multimillion dollar buildings for example instead of providing for the widow, orphan, broken and needy in their own midst). More energy needs to be spent here rather than campaigning. In the end being the church really does matter.

Anyways — I think that’s all I’m in the mood to say for the time being. Maybe after the election I’ll have more thoughts. Chances are I’ll be too busy though.

This weekend was NCC’s leadership retreat where all of the leaders in the clusters get together and spend time fellowshipping, worshipping and catching the vision for the coming year. And this year should be exciting as the vision is begin to cement on seeing God move radically in Norman. If you could boil it down to a single verse from the Bible, it would be:

…My conversation and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power…

1 Corinthians 2:4

For surrounding context, Paul is talking to the Corinthians here about how he came to them preaching, and how it wasn’t based upon persuasive words, apologetics, or any wisdom of the world but from power that flows from being concerned with nothing beyond the Christ that was crucified.

It’s exciting to (slowly at the moment) begin to see this played out in Norman. It was evident everyday in Cape Town but here in America the faith level in most Christian communities seems to be non-existent in regards to demonstrations of the Spirit and power (particularly because people a — don’t think it happens anymore which is one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard or b — are afraid because of abuses like Lakeland). But even here in the states where faith seems dead it can happen. As a church, we’ve seen several miraculous healings around town and things only seem to be picking up steam.

What’s important to remember (and what leads to abuses like Lakeland) is that the “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” is intimately connected to mission. It’s in this context of the missio Dei that Paul proclaims it. It’s not designed to center around a single earthly man. It’s not designed to single around getting a single ministry lots of money. It’s designed to spiral out in mission, “so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on the power of God. (vs 5)” Repentance and new life is intimately connected and its terminus isn’t ever just with a single body.

These are exciting times to be in Norman, indeed.

Back to school, back to school/to prove to Dad that I’m not a fool/I got my lunch packed up my boots tied tight/I hope I don’t get in a fight!

Billy Madison

Today I helped work the back to school tent for my work. This consisted of standing around and talking to scared and hopeful students as they prepared to embark on their college careers (and also giving them free stuff: cups and candy in our case).

It brought back memories from when I did this in the fall of 2000. The only difference now though is that everything is much, much smoother and automated. I remember one trouble spot being parking. Today they had that mostly under control with special valet lanes and attendants ready to stuff your junk in big boxes and cart it up to your room. Everything was surprisingly slick. I didn’t see the checkin process but hear tell it was the same: slick and automated. What I was told is that students just swiped their ID and everything was printed out/taken care of automagically.

I’ll definitely miss the quiet that summer brings to campus but the energy with everyone there was quite nice. Campus is a fun place whilst school is in session…

These past few weeks have been busy, busy, busy.

Last week I spent 7 days/6 nights in Las Vegas attending two different computer conferences. The first, Blackhat, was on Wednesday and Thursday. It’s a computer security conference and is quite expensive and formal but quite good as well. Lots of vendors and companies show up and there is a lot of good information disseminated among the attenders.

The second conference is plainly put, one of the best conferences I’ve been to. It’s called Defcon and ran from Friday through Sunday, 10am to after midnight most days. Lots and lots to see and do. It tends to center around computer security but has sessions involving physical security and a range of other things. For example, two of the more intriguing sessions I went to were on corporate espionage techniques and urban exploration principles. Both were just fascinating. A bit of the computer security info from Blackhat is replicated here but is generally better as the speakers are more laid back, open and willing to talk. People watching is also amazing here. There were about 10,000 attendees from what I heard and it’s the oddest mix of academic types, “feds”, and serious hackers. And the setup is also just different. For example, they had a “chillout room” setup for people to meetup with others and relax with different DJ mixing beats all the time.

I also was blessed to be able to spend time with some old friends while there. Thanks to the hospitality of Brian Clifton and his wife, I was able to enjoy a home cooked meal and a trip to In-N-Out with them and Tim Hearon. Lots of good eating and a trip to the airforce base also rounded out my time in Vegas. Much to the dismay of some of you though, I didn’t win any money. I didn’t lose any though either — I made it out with out playing on a single machine or table.

This past weekend was quite busy too. My girlfriend’s BFFE (that’s best friend forever and ever) got married and she was the maid of honor. So, Thursday night I had a rehearsal dinner to go to and then Friday night a wedding. They were both fun though (especially dancing at the wedding).

Here’s to a slow coming week though.

I went to the Dark Knight today with Juli. It is a fantastic movie — definitely the best of the summer so far. And I don’t think anything coming out will be able to beat it. I’ll try to do a full review soon…

Living in Cape Town for three weeks was quite interesting. And we really were living there. We stayed in a rented house (not a hotel, motel or hostel of some sort) and we cleaned (mostly) daily and made all of our own meals. We even got to experience a blackout.

In all honesty, it didn’t feel much different from living in the states. But there were differences.

• Heating: Houses and buildings just don’t have any heating and are poorly insulated, for the most part. In fact — I don’t think we saw any building that had any sort of built in heating. Space heaters in the bedrooms or hot water bottles in the bed were the norm, not the exception. It didn’t bother any of us guys, that I know of, because we generally like it cooler anyways (and it never got incredibly cold).
• Restaurants: Eating out in South Africa isn’t like it is here. People just don’t do it often and when they do, it’s generally a big ordeal lasting hours. We ate at one on the waterfront in downtown Cape Town called the Santana Spur that reminded us of Chili’s. I didn’t think what I had was all that great though. Supposedly you can eat really well though for not that expensive (we were told you could get a really good aged steak for $15 or less). The other restaurant we ate at was the Masi Spur in Masi. It just served meat. Nothing else. We actually ate here twice: the first time we got a platter of pork and a platter of beef and the second time only pork. The pork was some of the best that I have had. It was seasoned wonderfully well and grilled to perfection. It was also nice and tender and easy to eat (the big problem with the beef was how tough and NOT easy to eat it was; it was seasoned well though).
• Mexican Food: Even in grocery stores, Mexican food is expensive and hard to come by. We did find “taco kits” which included soft shells, sauce and seasoning for meat but we never found ANY tortilla chips. They had salsa though.

Grocery shopping in general felt just like it does here. The only significant differences were in the prices of meat (significantly more expensive there) and the prices of fresh fruits and vegetables (significantly cheaper there).

Another difference that’s good to know: they call their stoplights robots. We kept seeing signs declaring, “Robot ahead” and for about a week speculated at their meeting. Someone finally clued us in.

While this hasn’t been a deep post by any stretch of the imagination, perhaps it will help set the scene of Cape Town a little more…

We got into Cape Town on a Friday evening and after some drama, made it back to the team house around 7 in the evening. The longtermers we were working with (Mike and Kalyn Arndt) had a taco soup dinner waiting for us (which was great!). We spent the rest of the evening going over rules and logistically info (as well as some cultural info). We then went to bed in preparation for the morning: our first trip into Masi.

Masiphumelele (Masi for short) is the township were we spent all of our time and while there, we “adopted” the wetlands area, where the poorest of the poor, live. Our first time into Masi, though, we stayed out of the wetlands. At this point we really weren’t entirely sure what we would be doing (and it was a Saturday) so we kept things simple. The reason I mention it being Saturday is that things are a bit on the wild side in the townships on the weekends. Most people that normally work during the days are out and about and the boys are full before the clock strikes noon.

We split into twos (and took a translator to facilitate conversations) and went to the streets of Masi to prayer walk. Rachel was my partner and Vuyani was our translator. We walked all over hitting every major intersection (so said our translator Vuyani). It was both exciting and overwhelming. Masi is a huge place (we are told its home to 30 to 40 thousand folks). Had we not picked an area and stuck with it as we did, I think it would have been too overwhelming. Also lending to feelings of overwhelmment was the weekend atmosphere. It seemed that hardly anyone was working and that everyone was instead looking to have a good time. We were there at 10 am and the Chabeans were already packed (Chabeans are unregulated bars). Many were drunk. Many were high as well (there were several junctures where the smell of weed was overpowering). We also saw one fight outside of a Chabean between two “boys” not much younger than I.

I remember that our biggest prayers were (a) that Jesus would go before us preparing the way, (b) that he would use us to bless and minister to those that we encountered and (c) that he would grant us wisdom and insight when confronted face to face with issues and problems we knew little about (extreme economic poverty, alcoholism, drugs, AIDs, paganism, etc). While on that prayer walk, we had the opportunity to pray for 3 individuals: two ladies and a man. Rachel took the lead with the ladies and I took the lead with the man (whose leg was severely messed up from a car accident). This too is where things started to get intense and real: its really hard to know how to pray in situations seemingly devoid of hope. I so wanted to believe but just didn’t immediately know how to pray. I remember thinking “How in the world is this going to work?”

And thus we encountered Masi for the first time. Looking back, I think God probably worked in our team just as much as He did with the people we encountered (just in very different ways). While not yet in the wetlands with the people we grew to love, it was still eye opening and our own need for God was particularly highlighted. This was good though — we definitely wouldn’t have seen what we did without Him.

As many of you know, I spent most of the month of June in Cape Town, South Africa. We spent the vast majority of our time working in a black township called Masiphumelele (Masi for short). In Masi, 30 to 40 thousand people live in mostly poverty (there are a few nicer places but they are few and far between).

Our first day was spent exploring Masi. We met in the morning, prayed and worshipped for a while and then broke into twos (three’s if you count the translator) and headed into Masi to prayer walk, meet people, and get a general feel for the area. It was a Saturday so we were immediately confronted with some of the deeper heart issues of Masi. For lack of more productive things to do, most seemed to use the weekend as a chance to party. We went out at 10 in the morning and all of the bars were already full and many were drunk. The stench of marijuana was strong in many areas. We even saw one fight break out.

Right from the start, the work needed to be done in this township seemed overwhelming. There were so many issues that people were dealing with, many of them issues we couldn’t fully understand. Along with the aforementioned problems with drugs, alcohol and violence, there is an 80% unemployment rate, AIDs runs rampant, witchdoctors are quite prevalent, and there is any many places just the heaviness of hopelessness (and really, these issues don’t really even scratch the surface).

Despite our fears though, God did move in rather intense and amazing ways. Fruit was seen where once there was no life. We quickly learned that no place is truly hopeless. Look for more stories on what we saw and what we did coming soon.