Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Irony

It turns out that Real Analysis is good for something, if for nothing more than an as excuse to practice my Spanish skillz with a Chilean. I spent the last year of my life hating RA and determining to show it who was boss by not dropping out. A lot of the other students were grad students from other programs, such as electrical engineering and economics. In particular, a Chilean econ grad student at NU was taking the course. I didn´t personally know Álvaro, but I knew he was Chilean. I thought that was cool, because I was going to attend school in Chile. Álvaro did the most of anyone to single-handedly scare me about the Chilean language. I happened to hear him animatedly speaking in "Spanish" (Chilean) one day in the econ department with another Latino. I understood a few words of the sentences I heard...

Fast forward to yesterday. I was roaming the campus of PUC Chile, where I go, and as I walked through the Hall Universitario, I saw a familiar face. There was no doubt that it was Álvaro. I almost walked on as though nothing had happened, but I couldn´t. I caught his attention and asked him if he went to Northwestern. We ended up chatting in Spanish for a few minutes, in which I learned that he went here for his undergrad, and he´s here over the summer visiting home and his girlfriend. Funny how you can spend a year in the same classroom with someone and never say a word to him, but when you see him 5,000 miles away from your university, something changes. It´s a small world, after all.

Friday, August 21, 2009

3/4


Here is a picture of what I did today. Yes, you guessed it: I had a snowball fight with a polar bear in a blizzard! Okay, maybe not. I did, however, go skiing in the Andes. The picture above, while not actually a photo I took, does resemble a bit what the ski resort looked like: the sky was drab, the slopes were treeless, and a light snow was falling.

I had a great time, and not just while flying (or somersaulting) down the mountainside. On the bus ride there I sat next to a German. We talked in English the majority of the trip, but occasionally my new acquaintance would say something to his German friends across the aisle, sometimes in English, sometimes in German. Behind me were an Austrian and an Australian, conversing in Spanish but occasionally lapsing into English because it was easier for both. Nearby were several of the Brazilians, from whom I could hear snippets of conversation in animated Portuguese. I didn't hear the French girl and the Belgian girl speaking any French, but maybe I just wasn't close enough to them. Who knows? All that I know is that I love environments like these. Partly, I just love languages, as anyone who knows me well could probably attest. Partly, I'm very impressed with the language abilities of some people. God knew what He was doing when He led me to this program.

Unfortunately, not every part of the day was so grand. Our bus got stuck on the snowy road within sight of the resort, and it took perhaps 20 minutes and some tire chains before we arrived at our destination. Once we got there, we first realized that we needed to get signed in before we could even use the bathroom. Interesting. Perhaps more interesting was the fact that although we were a group of 51, and had already sent in our information, the ski resort hadn't reserved sufficient equipment for us. After being given a boot 3 sizes too small, deciding that just wouldn't cut it, and waiting around for perhaps 20 minutes for someone to assist me, I was directed to a little building nearby where they had bigfoot sizes (it really is true that Chileans are small on average). I think I used the second-largest boot size they had!

Since it was already 1:00 pm, a lot of us decided to eat lunch before heading to the slopes. I scarfed down the grub and decided to hit the slopes. I could have taken a 90-minute ski lesson, but since we were only going to have 3 hours or less of ski time, I decided that my previously learned "mad skillz" would have to suffice. I headed up the nearest ski lift to start off. I made it down the first hill without majorly wiping out. That was good. Then I saw a couple of other folks from our group, so I went up with them. I stopped after the first lift, because I wasn't exactly ready for the black or double-black diamond material at the top of the mountain. Good choice, John. I made it down again, although this time I may have taken a tumble; let's pretend I didn't.

I was thoroughly enjoying myself and trying things that were a bit harder, when I saw the Austrian girl I mentioned earlier. We decided to ski for a bit together, as it's always nicer to have company. Perhaps I should add that she grew up in the Alps and has been skiing her whole life--minor detail. [Perhaps I should also add, on a completely unrelated but interesting note, that she speaks "4 1/2" languages. Her English is almost perfect and her Spanish is fluent; she speaks German natively and also knows Russian. Apparently, she also speaks half of French.] So we went down a medium hill, and decided to ride up again. This time, I decided I would be adventurous and go a bit higher, try something a bit harder. So we hopped on the T-bar lift and headed up, up, and away. The nice thing about ski lifts is that there's really not much of a way up. Once you're at the top, you kind of need to just go down, unless you want to spend the rest of your life sitting on top of the Andes. I didn't. So after a few grandiose photos with plunging valleys and steep slopes in the background, and a few tips from the expert, I took the plunge.

Well, I took about 20 yards of it, anyway. I tried to slow down, and I did. The only problem was that I lost my skis in the process. Unfortunately, I repeated this act many times. There's a fine line between being stupid and overconfident on the one hand, and freaking out and rendering yourself useless on the other. I erred on the latter side, which made for a very, very slow time down the steepest part of the mountain. It also meant that I looked something akin to the Abominable Snowman after the first 100 yds, as I couldn't keep on my feet. I felt sorry for my poor Austrian friend, who was very patiently coaching me as I kept failing. Finally we veered off to something more average, where I felt less like an obstacle lying on a mountain and more like a skier. As I neared the bottom, I decided to stop and take a photo or two of the landscape below.

Unfortunately, my pocket that should have been safely guarding my camera was left unzipped. Although I never found the exact whereabouts of my camera, I can only relinquish it as my donation to the cordillera. I'm glad I bought a cheap one at Wal-Mart. I miss the photos I had taken a lot more than I miss the camera. Maybe that story explains the photo at top. :D

On the ride home, I sat next to a girl from Alabama who studies civil engineering and Spanish, and who hardly knew what snow looked like before today. We talked about a variety of topics, including Spanish and, most importantly, Jesus. It turns out she is a Christian, too. God is just as real here as He is anywhere else in the world, and He keeps reminding me of that simple fact in a variety of ways.

As for the title, let's just say that although my camera may be in a better place, I still have my wallet, my phone, and my U.S. passport. It was a good day.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Please don't stop the music


I have many things I want to write about, but unfortunately I don't have as much time to write those things as I might like. It's worth mentioning, though, that today I bought a guitar. It doesn't work very well, but then again, I bought it for $10,000 in Chilean pesos (a little under $20 US), so I'm not complaining. At least I have a modest outlet for my musical impulses now--I'm very grateful for that.


Wednesday, August 12, 2009

obsession

--------------------
Another sleepless night
I'm turning in my bed
Long before the red sun rises
In these early hours
I'm falling again
Into the river of my worries
When the river runs away
I find a shelter in your name

Jesus, only light on the shore
Only hope in the storm
Jesus, let me fly to your side
There I would hide, Jesus

Hear my anxious prayer
The beating of my heart
The pulse and the measure of my unbelief
Speak your words to me
Before I come apart
Help me believe in what I cannot see
Before the river runs away
I will call upon your name

Jesus, only light on the shore
Only hope in the storm
Jesus, let me fly to your side
There I would hide, Jesus
-------------------

It´s interesting to me how songs, like the above from nuestro amigo Fernando Ortega, come back up after years. I still remember--with a fair bit of melancholy, I admit--sitting in my room, or better yet, lying on the bed, listening to and soaking in all the FO music that I could get my hands on. Although I don´t listen to him as much anymore, his songs shaped me and inspired me in those early- and mid-teen years. I thank God for how He used those thoughtful songs to work in me and help me think joyfully and thoughtfully about Himself.

Right now, I´m again being encouraged by those same songs, as I sit here on my bed some 5,000 miles from Minnesota, just thinking and talking to God. Maybe part of the reason my body won´t sleep is the fact I took a late nap today; maybe it´s just the fact that my mind is running in overdrive right now. Either way, I figured it couldn´t hurt to just write for awhile.

Yesterday morning, on the way to school, I started reading Tozer´s The Pursuit of God. Although I haven´t read much so far (and in spite of the many distracting editing errata in this version!), already the book has challenged me in where I´m at with my relationship with God right now. Let me explain. Tozer begins by talking about how, in his day at least, there were many people who seemed to understand truths about God, but who didn´t exhibit a thirst or longing after God. They slavishly studied God and built programs supposedly meant to glorify Him, but without the simple focus on and awe of God that He wants from us.

I know I need God right now. The convergence of various events and circumstances in my life right now show me that more than ever. However, I don´t want to realize this and run to religious activity as a "cure." I don´t need religion. I don´t need stuff. I don´t need good things. I need God. The one who created the world, the one who formed me, the one who chose me as His own, the one who is love--this is the one whom I crave. I want to be captivated by Him, and only Him. I want to have a sense of wonder before God that goes beyond intellectual curiosity and that consumes every part of who I am.

How do I do this? I am a broken person. I run to other things than God when I am down. I have sins and weaknesses that tend to make me pull away from God and His people instead of toward them. Haste and anxiety sometimes keep me from letting God lead me in His time. I see present and past hardships and failures in my life, and I get discouraged instead of going to my Redeemer and seeing what He has to say about who I am.

On another note, how does delighting in myself fully in the Lord and finding my meaning and fulfillment in Him play out in a world where my attention is constantly called by the things at hand, and in a new culture where I want to apply myself to get every drop of cultural and language experience that I can? What does loving people in my life look like when Christ is my obsession?

These are not just rhetorical questions that I want to ask in a moment of thoughtfulness and then forget. I want to grapple with these things. Some things in life are simple enough that you can understand them right away. It doesn´t seem like I´m having a lot of those in my life right now :P. But that´s okay. Some things are worth wrestling with. There´s a reason that Jacob wrestled with God all night... maybe it´s a match he lost, but it was worth it. He wasn´t letting go until he had figured out what was going on, or at least until he got a blessing. I want that attitude. I don´t pretend to have things all figured out, but that´s not what God calls us to do. He calls us to seek Him with all of our hearts, promising then that we will find Him. He calls us to love Him and love people. His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Tesoros de la biblioteca de PUC Chile


¡Olé! No tengo mucho tiempo para escribir esta noche, pero tuve que compartir con ustedes la joya que tuve la suerte de encontrar en la biblioteca. ¡Había acerca de una docena de libros de Tintin en español! Pedí prestado a dos para practicar tanto como para revivir mi juventud en la casa de los Curries. Es todo. Chao, hermanos.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Laying aside every weight

This entry is long overdue for several reasons. Not only has it already been over two weeks since I said goodbye to Minnesota and headed halfway across the globe, but also the analogy that came to me two weeks ago has come back again and again to me. Here it is.

I wish I were a light packer. Sometimes I do well at that, but often my belongings are all too gaseous when I embark on an adventure--I let them fill all the available space. In the case of my trip to Chile, that meant packing two large luggage cases almost to the 50 lb limit, as well as lugging along my overstuffed backpack and my laptop case. Perhaps I should have let the picture speak for itself. Anyway, as soon as I got off the Megabus in Chicago on the first leg of my journey, I realized all too quickly what a pain it was to lug all of my baggage anywhere. Even the few blocks from Union to Ogilvie station made me feel like an old man. As I passed the morning in the Evanston BK with my junk conspicuously piled around me, a verse kept going through my head, or rather a portion of it: "let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us..." The ESV puts Hebrews 12:1-2 like this: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."


One thing I know for sure: if I had to carry around the luggage that I had with me before it was whisked away to my 767, I couldn't handle it very long. I like to think that I'm not a wimp, but after a few blocks, I was beat. The only thing I wanted was relief from that weight I was carrying. I began to think, "What if I carried spiritual baggage around with me all my life?" Answer: that would not be cool at all. Not only might that baggage consist of sins that I could hang onto, but as my Cru discipler last year aptly pointed out, the verse categorizes weight separately from sin, indicating that they are not the same. Are there ways in which I might be carrying around a hundred pound backpack of some useless pastime or toy in my life which, while not a sin, is keeping me from living the "high life" that God intended for me spiritually? If so, there's one thing I know for sure. I want that backpack in the dumpster.

Another interesting thing to notice is how universal that baggage is. Whether it's greed or excess of drink or poor habits or trivial pursuits--whether one is in Chile or China or Chicago--baggage is easy to find. Thankfully, wherever man can be, God is there too. No matter where we are, He is there to take that baggage and not only let us walk free but give us the wings of eagles to soar for him. Okay, weird anecdotal moment. This is crazy. Right as I started writing that--no joke--the song "Peculiar People" by Mute Math came on my headphones. First line of the song: "We will fly with the wings of eagles." Coincidence?

Let's be honest with each other and with God, recognize those weights and sins in our lives, and with the help of the One whose burden is light, let's throw them away and learn to fly.