Five Days In

Hey everyone! Internet access has been much more difficult than I had anticipated before being here.  Forgive the delay in this update. 

Travel and Arrival
We arrived in Ethiopia on Friday evening around 10 p.m. (Addis time)  The trip over was uneventful, except to say that it was long.  The folks on the ground here have learned to give teams a day or so to rest before sending them to work, so we spent Saturday at a retreat center on a lake near a place called Baba Gaiyu (sp?).  We hiked to the top of a volcanic cinder cone, sucking wind because of the altitude (or maybe just because I'm in pathetic condition).  Village children crowded around my camera whenever I lifted it, and then insisted on holding my hands while we walked back to the compound.  They laughed at me making faces at them, or walking funny.  Then came the awkward reality of going back inside the walls of the compound, leaving all the children on the other side of the steel gate.  The truth is, most everyone here, whatever their means, lives behind some sort of wall; whether it's cinder block topped with broken glass, corrugated metal, or eucalyptus poles.  Sunday we went to the international church, ate lunch, then headed to an open house at the home of Andy Warren, leader of the HIV/AIDS project here. 

Driving through Addis to get to the mission guest house where we're staying, one is immediately bombarded with all things present in a developing country:  dirt, choking diesel fumes, thousands of people, animals and vehicles held together by who-knows-what, all sharing the same travel lanes.  It is obvious that the city is poor, the city is crowded, the city is a complete and total mess.  That assessment sounds like an impersonal comment on the department of public works, or the need for Addis to have such a department.  It is the assessment that can be done from the window of a car by a guy who has been in the city for all of two days.

Monday-Tuesday
Nothing from my life experience could have possibly prepared me for what I've seen these past two days.  We left the Addis that can be seen by car, and walked into the communities (kebele's) that comprise 80% of the city.  I don't feel qualified to write about it yet, but I will tell you that I have no category for the level of poverty and suffering that I've seen.  We've been visiting in homes with residents who are beneficiaries of the HIV/AIDS program here.  And what has been so emotionally potent for me beyond the stench and the squalor, is the faith of those who are surviving.  The program beneficiaries, for the most part, are amazing survivors, badges of humanity, clinging to hope.  I've also met some amazing Christian workers, Ethiopians and internationals working together, pushing forward for the difference they can make to a few, while there seems little hope for the many.

The thought came to me while I was walking, going in and out of tiny dwellings:  this is not a refugee camp – this is not because of a war, or a hurricane.  This is permanent.  Dr. Paul Farmer makes mention of a Haitian proverb, which says, in essence, "God gives, but does not share," meaning: God gives enough abundance to humanity for everyone, but he does not force the distribution of it.  It is the responsibility of people to share.  I don't claim to understand anything about this place, or the "why" of it all, but this idea makes some sense theologically, because it is true of our salvation.

God created a perfectly balanced earth, which men promptly threw into disorder.  God provided a solution (the redeemer), but leaves it to us to make it (him) known.  "How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" (Rom. 10:14)

I don't know all the history of this place.  There is probably plenty of blame to go around from previous generations in both hemispheres.  But where there is adequate sharing of salvific wealth, places like this cannot continue to exist.  That leaves us to sort out our responsibility in all of it. 

movie magic

Having had the opportunity to write and produce a little music, fool around in the theater, and just suck whatever I can out of performance art of any kind, by far the most energizing work I've done is with visual media, -the moving picture variety. That isn't to say that the arduous process of making a film (what some director described as pushing an elephant up a hill) can compete with the momentary adrenaline that comes when performing live music. There's nothing quite like it when band mates and audience are locked together in a moment of concert-ed energy. But beyond the moment, seeing a film project come together is incredible. The power of the story that emerges can easily upstage the reality of what really is.

Movie magic, when you're watching a film, is what happens when you are transported to another place, time or perspective on the world. Now, when you're on the set of a project, "movie magic" is what you keep telling yourself, -reassuring yourself, will happen once you take a mediocre performance or bad light or poor audio, and mix it all together to make it greater than what just happened in front of you. Add some filters, compress the audio, give it a sound track and it's just, well, -better. That's why I like my iPod. Let's face it, walking through an airport is just way better when there's a sound track. Otherwise I'm just wading through a crowd waiting to get my luggage. With music playing, I can at least imagine that my life is a movie. And here's the thing: I actually believe it is.













I think God is the amazing director who is weaving together thousands of stories, pre-production storyboards and shots which bring to life the script he's written about all of us. I travel on Thursday not knowing which story I'm being sent to notice, or what my role in it is. I guess this tension drives some folks crazy. When I can remember that my life is God's movie about his work with me, I prefer this tension to trying to figure everything out ahead of time.

The temptation of "movie magic" when going to a place like Africa is that it would be really easy to turn on the camera, show some pictures of people living in misery, pick the right music and then think we've accomplished something. "All of the folks at home" will watch and be amazed. But what about the real people there, whose families and communities, -whose lives have got to fit together somehow in this grand picture?

For the praying folks reading this, I guess I'll ask you to pray that we find whatever true story it is that we're supposed to be telling, and that we'll tell it with dignity and promise. That the joy and love and life which is just bound to be there would come out clearly and that God's humanity would be seen as such. When we find that story, then by all means, bring on the soundtrack and the filters.

Kurt Dutra and I love the film, "Buena Vista Social Club." The truth is, he loved it first and showed me what to love about it. It's a film shot in Castro's Cuba, but it isn't ABOUT that. It's about love, life, music, relationships and the joy that is there when humans share those things. It's been our template for telling stories from places like Sandtown. Sure, when you turn on the camera, you're going to see some difficult things if they're there, but that isn't ALL that the story is about. The story is about people, God's people. Whenever humanity is out and about, there's a mess of joy mixed with suffering, heroism mixed with corruption. I think these stories can help us figure out who we are, who God is, and ultimately, who we were intended to be.

Even a hack like me can use media to make things look better (or worse) than they really are. I think when God is directing, maybe things are actually better than they look.

one week from today...

One week from today I'll be in the air, probably just about to cross over into Europe, or still over water. Our flight leaves from Dulles, International. From there, after a brief fueling stop in Rome, I'll join a medical team with members from New York City, Tulsa, Birmingham and Columbia, South America. The Columbian Doc actually lives in Miami, but I'm not sure if she's a U.S. citizen so we might as well make this team international. I'm travelling with another film maker, Dan Gerding, a 26-year-old talent from my home of 15 years, Baltimore.

Rev. Paul Warren, team leader and pastor recommended we read Tracy Kidder's MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS in preparation for the trip. The story catalogues a Harvard Doc's work among the poor in Haiti. 20 pages in I responded somewhat emotionally, feeling as though I could easily be swept back in to that "life on the edge."

The easiest way for me to describe the past two years of my life would be to say that I "have not been living in Sandtown." Sandtown is most "correctly" described as a distressed urban community. Our last 13 years rounded out 20 of what for our family was a "call" to live and work in a community development setting. One doesn't just leave a call like this. One must be released. Two years ago I was released to pursue other opportunities.

Reading Kidder's book I felt more like a recent escapee... Like one who has labored to get back to shore from particularly rough surf, still lying on the sand, but not out of reach of the biggest waves. I started wondering if this trip to Ethiopia would be the big wave that picks me up and drags me back in...

Sort of a sad way to look back on a call, a ministry. I think I trust God more than that. But we are frail and selfish, and I have enjoyed these two years, and the absence of those things which used to define me: poor, inner city, pastor. I have been prospered - and I do mean that in the passive voice. We have been lying down in green pastures, my family and I. But the lingering pathologies (or is it Christian conviction?) of 20 years of community development leave me yet uncomfortable with my relative wealth. So we'll see.

I'm quite certain God has his own reasons for my being on this trip. Our immediate assignment, though, is to tell the story of an HIV/AIDS mission working in the Lideta and Bolle communities of Addis. We've done what pre-production we can, have auditioned our gear and rehearsed what and how we'll carry it.

We leave in a week.