grace.

today i wonder about grace. i wonder what grace is, and what it really means. grace if free should be without limits and boundaries. there should be no exceptions.

if this is true, which i believe it is and should be, then i'm not sure if people can call themselves good. if i was to call myself good then i must define someone else as bad, have someone bad to compare myself too, and in doing that i myself am grouping people according to my own judgments. i am making myself better than others.

i think we understand grace wrong. i think it is about understanding and love. if god's grace is perfect and just, then i think that it doesn't define good and bad...that all men are equal. that one lover of god is no different than another. that one who worships allah is the same as the one who worships yahwah or god. that grace makes all this equal. i think that all men become equal because grace forgives the mistakes. if god is grace, then i think we must learn grace.

slow travels...

For a quick update, we were suppose to fly to Muscat on Friday. At 3 am we got a call saying that we needed to leave at 4 because a blizzard had hit OC during the night and we were afraid we wouldn't make it to Omaha on time to make our flight. So, at 4 am, we left the apartment to go and push our teachers van out of the snowbank it had found itself in. Then 30 minutes later we were on our way slowly trucking. As we were leaving Sioux City, poor ole' prof decides that he must potty now and we make our way up the unplowed off ramp to find a semi and car blocking the pass. Therefore, the three men in the truck had to shuveled the trucks out and the entire 2nd half of the off ramp. Around 8:30 or so, we made it to Omaha airport to find out that flights to Chicago would not be flying out, and we would not make it to O'hare before out flight to London and the next flight we could get to London would be Tuesday. Therefore, we took the 2 hour trip back to OC. Eh.

The next few days were spent relaxing, watching blizzards pass through, and trying not to dwell on the fact that instead of being in -30 degree weather, it was a good 80 in Oman.

Today was nuts! We started out the day thinking it was a day to relax, get our stuff together, wash clothes, but last minute (and I emphasize the word LAST) we got a phone call from our travel agent telling us we can get a flight out of Omaha but we had to leave OC within the next hour. Because of blizzard warnings for the next day, we decided to leave OC...

1.) We were given an hour to repack/shower.

2.) Drew David drove his car into a snow bank and we had to push him out.

3.) We forgot/couldn't get a hold of one of the girls and therefore spent 30 min trying to find her, knocking on a house which wasn't hers, and made her pack so we could get out.

We spent the night at Ohare, in the baggage claim because our 20 hour lay over was too long and they couldn't check our bags all the way through. It was freezing, which tends to be the norm during the winter, and the doors entering the building just wouldn't keep closed. A few of us wandered through all the ariport sections that we could get ourselves in to keep us pre-occuiped, although it was rather boring. I finally found a somewhat warmer place to lay and woke up to the sound of a woman yelling at me, asking for my boarding pass. I thought it was some kind of joke, but it wasn't. Thinking I was homeless, she told me I needed to gather my things and leave the building. Finally I convinced her that I was with the large group, and then she told me I needed to be more careful because I had been sleeping with homeless people. Oh, people. Eventually, and rather slowly, 8 am came and we were able to go up and find ourselves a table or 3 at the food court where we spent the next 6 hours waiting to check in. I was ready to be out of the states.

Finally we made it out of Ohare, to London and to my beloved Oman...

(Dec 25, 2009)


5:00 am: call to prayer. Beautiful, extravagant. Definitely not what I expected...but my expectations were pretty small. However, it was lovely.

We arrived in Oman around 9:30 last night. As we flew over Muscat, the lights looked similar to those of our cities and perhaps it was just my mind in excitement, but that seemed more appealing and beautiful. There we no large sky scrappers, just a sea of topaz and Sapphire diamonds.

Customs was not as bad as Monsma made it seem. Things went smoothly and yesterday didn't really seem to exist. At 6 am we arrived in London, 9 am left, flew 8 hours (which every min I slept) and then it was Abu Dabi and Muscat.

With finals week approaching and my trip overseas drawing nearer and nearer, I find myself not sleeping, for lack of serious time of day (if you are saying then get off here and do you work, I say poo this is my first breather of the week) and for lack of better words, brain farted. Its a cranium full of gas, hot hair, stinkyness and gag me. Therefore, tonight I sleep whether or not my Greek homework is done.

Have you ever found yourself frustrated with yourself, what you have accomplished or what you haven't yet accomplished but need to. I feel as if I should be further ahead, have to be doing better. Now that I feel better this semester I should be able to handle what has been placed before me.

I don't.

What has happened to me? I try, I struggle, I work, but I feel less and less successful, less and less worthy, less and less able.

My Apology...

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1163


If you have a min, or more like 59 min, please listen to this story. If you have a soul Act 1 will move you, maybe change the way you view or nation and some American Christians.


‘Shouting Across the Divide,’ especially Act 1, really upset me. It is not that I have been ignorant to the fact that 9/11 has changed drastically some ‘white’ American’s attitudes towards Muslims, and that many Xians spend a lot of energy trying to make Muslims into these horrid terrorists, their story brought me to tears though. Although I think it is wrong too, but it is one thing to look at Middle East Muslims and blame them from 9/11 but too look at those within your own community, who you have lived with and formed some sort of relationship with, suddenly with the same hatred really makes me wonder what our American idea of freedom is, is this really a free country. Maybe I don’t know what it is like to be the teacher of a Muslim child, or live on the same block as a Muslim family but I do know very well a Muslim and I ache for the thought of prejudices that have been placed on her because of 9/11 when she had nothing to do with the hate crimes. I hear the voice of the girl in the radio and I think of what her teacher did and how as a vulnerable child that shit would have affected me and I ache for her. Her dad, what he experienced in West Bank and then seeing what was happening to his daughter, I ache for him too. At the heart of the Christian and Muslim faith is a vast amount of persons, individuals and when showing anger toward a group your aren’t just targeting the mass but singling out souls. Teachers have a powerful impact in the molding of young minds, in their attitudes toward those they teach, in learning who and what is right, they help create prejudices and that’s what the girls teacher did. Maybe it is impossible to love a single person without loving the whole. Maybe America is sole a free Xian country and the only free people here should be Xians because their faith is truth and the only truth and if we are going to hate on Muslims why don’t we widen the picture and continue hating on the Native Americas and Buddhist, Hindus and Atheists too. Why don’t we go even further and figure out which group of Xians are the right one and hate the others too. I mean isn’t that what America is about religious freedom.


I am not always proud to be an American and I am sorry for the hearts of some.

im not sure really what to say. im being challenged and streached this year beyond belief. somedays im good, able to push though, but others i feel as if im aching, unsure, miserable.

no god but God cont...

Sometimes I think we put too much importance in Christianizing the nations that we forget what it is that God called us to do. I say that because I look at the Crusades, or even now, and we desire to bring Christianity to nations that perhaps thank that they don’t need it because what they have ‘true’ and the amount of pressure we put on converting makes people more mad than accepting. When looking at Medieval Europe during the time on Constantine and his ‘massive-forced-conversion’ I wonder how many people cared about becoming Christian or if it was a way to unite his world. I do acknowledge that he cared to save souls but his conversion is troubling. Many town conversions because people do not know what they are getting into or don’t really understand what exactly they are trying to believe, therefore resulting in a European Christendom’s filled with many micro-Christendom’s. Christians went into war with Muslims to conquer them, save the Holy Land from the ‘enemies’ and perhaps turn what areas they conquer into Christian territories.
From my little historical brief I then find myself drawn into Aslan’s discussion of the creation of a democratic Islamic society and if it is really possible. “Islam has been invoked to legitimize and overturn governments, to promote republicanism and defend authoritarianism, to justify monarchies, autocracies, oligarchies, and theocracies, and to promote terrorism, factionalism and hostility. Can Islam now be used to establish a generally liberal democracy in the Middle East? Can a modern Islamic state reconcile reason and Revelation to create a democratic society based on the ethical ideals established by the Prophet Muhammad in Medina nearly fifteen centuries ago?”[1] What I think we forget though, especially now as our frustration with the U.S. government increases, that as Aslan suggests, this is something that must be done. However, to change a very historically bounding and controlling government that has in place for centuries will take more than some 7 or so years. In order for them to change, they have to find ways around leaders who don’t want this change, find stable ground, stable leaders, in a way a common and united ground. It “cannot be imported, it must be nurtured.”[2] Sometimes I get discouraged with the fact that people discourage the work that we are doing overseas. Yes, I agree that there is a lot being done that isn’t helping, perhaps making things worse, our economy’s having problems, but nurturing them and helping them become successful is why we went over, and by leaving them now, we won’t do anything other than hurt them more. I think that it if we continue helping them, it will be rewarding to be a part of and see the product of their national identity.

*Sorry for the brief history section in the first part. I heart history…and we are getting ready to talk about the Crusades and I am really stoked about that, cause it’s sooooo good, or perhaps interesting to me. Nonetheless, I like history as much as you like puns. History + philosophical history=Hannah’s happiness.



[1] Aslan. No god but God. Pg 253
[2] Ibid. Pg 254.