Flashback.

You ever see a movie where a character sees, hears or touches something that sparks a vivid flashback? Something will fall on the ground in front of the actor, or someone will use a particular word or phrase, and there will be flashes of scenes from the character's past or from earlier in the film? It usually happens with something that seems insignificant that ends up being significant, and it's usually accompanied by sort of nondescript "flashback" sound effects that are never used to describe anything else. I assume that you've seen enough movies to know what I'm talking about.



Well, in real life, there are no sound effects.



I learned this by way of having a conversation with a little Colombian girl named Yiselis. This came on the evening of my last day as a short-term staff member at Proyecto Libertad, a missionary base located on Isla Tierrabomba off the coast of Colombia. I had just spent five weeks doing hard, hard work and hanging out with the locals, and I was sitting on the front porch of the base, looking out into the bay. The sun had just gone down, and I could begin to see stars coming out. The bay in front of the mission is big enough and lonely enough at night to be really good for people who like to stare into the expanse and wonder about their lives. Being such a person, I frequently spent extended periods of time doing this at night. It was my last night at the mission, so I was really into it at this point.



She came up by the porch and sat down and we talked for a moment. We quickly came to discuss the fact that I'd be leaving in the morning. She asked me if I was excited to return home. I told her I wasn't.



I told her I wasn't, but there wasn't any genuine sadness in my saying it. I was trying to manufacture the feeling because I thought that it was what I was supposed to feel. I was sitting on the porch about to leave a place I love, about to leave a bunch of people to whom I had become connected, and I couldn't muster an ounce of emotion.



Instead of sadness, my mind was occupied with a strange and steady contentment. I knew that my time at the mission, for the moment, had come and gone - and though I had no sense for what was to come next, other than that it was to take place in Minnesota, I knew it was right and that I needed to know no more about it.



But I told her I wasn't. She responded: Por que no?



Little kids are awesome. They have no sense of consideration or propriety in conversation. If you say something to a child and it doesn't make sense to her, it will be questioned or rejected, forcing you to examine it. You don't want to go home? Oh, that's stupid. Why not?



Porque me gusta estar en la isla.



I like to be on the island. Again, my response to her question was rejected: pero Dios te necesita en tu propio pais.



"But God needs you in your own country."



God needs me in my own country. ...aaaaaaaaaaand flashback!



At that point I flashed back a little over three years, without any cinematic flashback sound effects, to a moment in my life I will never, ever, ever forget.



I was sitting on top of the roof of an orphanage in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, right next to the border it shares with El Paso, Texas.

If you are close enough to the border, you can sit on top of the roof and see something striking. Juarez is a poor, poor, crime-ravaged border town. El Paso is not. In Juarez, there are not many lights. Sitting on the roof of the orphanage, you can see the sparseness of the lights in Juarez, and then you can clearly see the border - immediately on the other side of it is the rich, developed land, teeming with lights and with people that are about a thousand times more well-off than the people on the Juarez side. It'll make you think, not that some of us ever need any prompting to enter the world of maddening introspection...



I was sitting on the roof, and my good friend and former roommate Drew was sitting next to me.

Drew is a missionary. It's just who he is, and anyone who knows him could tell you that. I am not. I have a lot of experience with mission work, but I am not the same thing this guy is.

So we were sitting on the roof, staring into this beautiful and unsettling juxtaposition. This was right at the end of our short experience at the orphanage, and I was (surprise!) working on manufacturing some emotion, as it seemed appropriate. I was trying to really want to be a lifelong missionary like some of the people I saw around me. It seemed like what I was supposed to do, to get really inspired and selfless and devote my life to the service of others.

So Drew and I talked for a few minutes, staring at the border and all its lights. Eventually, I stopped trying to feel the way I was supposed to feel, and I just sat there and stared. Wasn't thinking about a thing in the whole world. At that point, Drew asked me, with his gaze still fixed on the lights of El Paso:



Isn't it so much better on this side?



Somehow, in that moment, I resisted the urge to say what I thought I was supposed to say (and the greater urge to respond in a way that connected with what my friend was feeling), and I responded without thinking about it for even a second:



"I don't know. I think they need me over there."



I'll never forget it. It just came out of me.



And I meant it. I honestly believe, despite the number of international experiences I've had, how well I've functioned in them, and what they have meant for other people, that there is some reason I'm supposed to be where I am.



I couldn't begin to tell you what it might be. I don't get the sense that I do much here. I've spent a lot of time trying to positively influence young people, but I don't hardly even do that anymore. I've spent a lot of time trying to positively influence people in connection with my church, but I've recoiled so hard from the effects of my time being a "really good Christian" that I don't know when I'll ever do anything like that again. I don't do much of anything significant here.



Come to think of it, apart from physical evidence of my presence in other countries in the form of medical centers, latrines, homes or cement floors, I don't get the sense that I've done much in any of the "theres" either.



But somehow I still believe that I am (for the moment) where I need to be. The answer I gave to Drew's question was incredibly honest. It just came out without my mind devoting any attention to it.



I couldn't begin to tell you why, but I believe it.

Death.

Some friends and I drove down (which means "south" if you live far enough north) to Iowa today.

At face value, this might seem like a fun little field trip. We did end up having a good amount of fun, but this trip was founded on highly unfortunate circumstances.

My friends Ann and Taylor, who recently moved to India to do two years of mission work, have come back stateside to be with family because Ann's sister passed away. The funeral was today and so my friends and I drove down (again, south) to support Ann and Taylor, as being uprooted immediately after putting down roots in a foreign country because of the death of a loved one is probably one of the more difficult things through which one can go. Hell of a sentence, that one.

The funeral was in Webster City in a big, solid Lutheran church that was erected in 1953. The way that I know the church was erected in 1953 is that there's a big stone slab built into the outside wall with "1953" etched into it. My observational skills are unmatched. I've seen those things on multiple churches, but I don't think I've seen them anywhere else.

There was a sermon preached by a minister who sounded just about exactly how a non-Iowan might expect a small-town Iowan Lutheran minister to sound.

Oratorically, he wasn't the most captivating guy ever. I'm not bringing this up to knock the guy, but rather to give you an idea of how difficult it may have been for him to hold the attention of several of the funeral's attendees solely on the merits of his public speaking ability. I'm not pointing that out to knock the guy, either, but to give you an idea of how gripping his subject matter was for me when he got to this point:

Sometimes a person dies and, for a while, the only thing we can think is why? Why this person? Why now? Why in this manner? Why something that seems so wrong? Why not something that seems more right, more fitting?

These sorts of questions are especially appropriate in the case of Ann's sister, Emily, whose mind never developed past a certain point, leaving her mentally much younger than the 34 years she lived on earth. She had a series of seizures, her brain went without oxygen for several minutes, and all normal brain activity ceased. Her family made the unenviable decision to remove life support and Emily stopped breathing and died peacefully. When the minister started pulling out the whys, though I had never met Emily and was not in any way connected to her life, you better believe I was paying attention.

This line of questioning by the minister reminded me of my favorite co-worker, whose name is Gustavo. He's from Oaxaca, Mexico, and he's short enough that a lot of us in the kitchen just call him Pequeño, which means "small." Gustavo is possibly the hardest-working man I know, in addition to being hilarious and more than a little bit feisty. More endearing to me than all of these things is his big heart. He genuinely and deeply cares for the people around him.

Gustavo and I will talk about things of a religious nature every now and then, as we share faith in the same God. When we do, things often come to a line of questioning like that of the Iowa minister. Gustavo is a very sensible, reasonable person, and that quality works together with his big heart to frame these sorts of questions in a way that hits me much harder than when other people ask them. Additionally, we're often talking in Spanish, and so I'm concentrating harder on each word and its meaning.

He'll ask me why. "Por que, Jon?" We'll talk about his ailing mother and Gustavo, who wears his heart on his sleeve will ask me why. We'll talk about large-scale human suffering and I'll see how much the troubles of others can hurt him and it just punches me in the gut. I just stare at him and say "no se." I don't know. I can never answer his question. In that situation I can't get past empathy and start articulating thoughts on a complicated matter.

I don't know why. I can't answer the whys. All I can say to the whys is that I know that God understands it better than I do, is more compelled by human suffering than I am, and is more capable to deal with it than I am. That's enough to keep me walking. It doesn't always convince the other person in the conversation.

But I am comforted when I think about certain realities of death. Regardless of how much death can confuse us - Why? Why this person? Why this way? Why do they have to suffer? Why must we lose them? Why did you let this happen? - regardless of how much we think God has to do with our death, whether by permissiveness or deliberate action, regardless of how wrong it seems that we die, often in ugly, grueling, and terrible ways, regardless of the worldly circumstances surrounding our death and whether or not God was interacting with them...

Whatever was wrong about when or how or how soon or how tragically we die, something will be right. Whenever I die, God will then do whatever is most pleasing to him to do, whatever is most right in his eyes to do.

How much time and energy do we spend on that here? A lot of the people I spend time with spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is most pleasing to God to do with their lives, trying to figure out what God's will is for their lives.

When Jesus taught us to pray, he asked God to let his will be done. Whenever I die, that will happen. I will be removed from the influence of the things of this world and be placed in the hands of the most wise, most skillful and most compassionate of caretakers.

Something will be right. Something will be made absolutely right.

Drops in the River.

My friend Taylor is a good man.

I met him at a park on a mild August evening. He was grilling hamburgers, helping out at an event put on by the young adult ministry from my church. We were introduced to one another and made a few minutes of small talk. He knew what he was doing on the grill. In that situation it's just knowing when to flip and remove pre-formed burger patties, but you can tell a guy who knows what he's doing even from easy stuff like that if you're paying attention.

Some time later, we eventually got to talking about making ginger ale. I have no idea how this happened, but I thank the good lord above that it did. Taylor and I not knowing one another very well at all and Taylor wanting to learn how to make ginger ale led to my coming over to his place on New Year's Eve of 2007. His wife Ann, who is wonderful, had to go to bed early to wake up early for work and Taylor didn't have any plans. I considered going to a party to which I was invited by a friend, where my main objective would have been to get to know a girl for whom a couple friends thought I'd be a good match. Spending some time to get to know Taylor instead of chasing a girl is one of the better decisions I've ever made. I showed up around nine with a bunch of ginger root, some sugar, club soda and cranberry juice - Taylor had told me that Ann loves a little cranberry juice with her ginger ale.





Making ginger ale is extremely easy and extremely delicious. All you need is ginger, sugar, water, and club soda. Saying that it's "making ginger ale" isn't entirely accurate; it's actually making a ginger syrup which is then added to club soda to make the equivalent of ginger ale. Heat equal amounts of sugar and water in a pot. While the sugar and water are heating, peel the ginger. This is done quite easily by scraping it with a spoon. Chop the ginger up and add it to the sugar and water mixture. Let it boil in there for about 15-20 minutes. Remove it from the heat and strain the ginger out. Now you've got a nice concentrated ginger syrup. Add it to club soda to taste. Good with a little lime as well.


We started talking while we were preparing the ginger syrup. At the time, I didn't know how easily the ginger could be peeled with a spoon, so we used paring knives. I also didn't know that removing the ginger's skin isn't very necessary at all. It was tedious, but both of us are the type who enjoy the process of food preparation too much to be annoyed by it. As we leaned against counters and talked a bit, the boiling ginger syrup filled the house with the smell of fresh ginger. There aren't a lot of things that smell better than fresh ginger. After the syrup had reduced enough, we strained it, made a couple of drinks and sat down.

We talked about a lot of things, among the first of which was how stupid it was that I was going to go chase some girl I didn't know at a New Year's Eve party. In disbelief at how stupid it was, I was telling Taylor about how dumb I felt about it. Rather than trying to convince me to think otherwise, he talked about how it was stupid and about how coming to his house was way the hell better. I liked that about him.

Taylor cut right to it, and it was easy to do so with him, even that early in our friendship. That same night, we talked at length about a difficult decision I was in the process of making. I was about to stop attending college for a number of reasons. He listened, weighed what I had told him, and gave me his honest opinion on it. I quickly learned that as good as Taylor was at messing around and having a good time, his ability to connect with people and to get to the heart of a matter was far more impressive. We sat down together and talked about the deeper and more important things in our lives - an activity we would share countless times in the months after that.

Taylor and Ann are moving to India for the next two years to do missionary work (they have a blog set up on which they will chronicle important events). They leave this Thursday. A few nights ago, I stopped by their house to sit and talk with them, to get to the heart of matters one more time before they leave. Just me and a couple of very, very good friends talking about life and God and all the things that make us happy to be alive and to know one another.

Though I couldn't be happier that they're doing what they're doing, I'm met with a deep sadness at the thought of not seeing them for so long. They are the truest sort of friends.

The knowledge that I'll go so long without seeing them has made me think about all of our times together and has brought me to this realization:

There are few things that feel better or more right to me than to sit and connect with people, getting to the heart of matters. That process of drawing people together through the relation of thoughts and hopes and sorrows and experiences might be the most gratifying thing I get to do in my life. Being involved in youth and young adult ministry, I get to do it a little more than some people - but I don't get to do it nearly enough.

My favorite Fleet Foxes song suggests that days are just drops in the river to be lost always. I feel like the days when I get to do this are the part of the river where the current is most swift, where the river is most forceful and has the most potential to change the landscape ahead of it. They seem to me the most significant and noteworthy - but I don't get to do it nearly enough.