A visit to ECHO

Here's a post that actually ran in Plant With Purpose's blog a little while ago:

ECHO: Cultivating Relationships

I recently had the opportunity to go to a demonstration farm called ECHO (Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization) for a week to take a course on tropical agriculture development. Having been a big fan of Plant With Purpose for a good while, it was an amazing experience; ECHO has been a helpful resource for Plant With Purpose over the years, and many of the techniques and concepts in use at ECHO are being implemented in Plant With Purpose’s programs abroad.

The first stirrings of ECHO began in the early 1970’s and continued to develop in the form of projects in Haiti until 1981, when Dr. Martin Price (who continues to live just around the corner from ECHO, remaining active there and now also at the Au Sable Institute for Environmental Studies) joined the organization and helped refocus ECHO’s role as a supportive agency for other overseas agricultural development organizations. Dr. Price warmly invited our class of 19 over to his home for dinner, and it was great to have the opportunity to connect and converse with him. He shared with me some his sometimes bewildering personal journey with God from a promising career in academia to a less certain life path as liaison to agricultural missionaries. His powerful story can be found here.

Our week was a busy one, with our class staying on the ECHO campus and meeting daily from 8am to 5pm, spending most of our time listening to lectures and the rest on the farm or in ECHO’s densely stocked library. Class participants had come from various backgrounds and locales, some being expatriates living abroad at home on furlough, and others being foreign nationals who came just for the class. Still others were just getting their very first real exposure to agriculture and development. We shared meals, got to know each other, and had the opportunity to encourage each other as we exchanged ideas of what we’d love to see happen with the knowledge we were gaining in the class.

One thing I really valued was the emphasis on how to relate to people living in challenging life circumstances that are likely to be very different to those we as Westerners are used to, especially in regard to material poverty. To be able to do this gives these people the dignity and respect they deserve and acknowledges that they, despite their apparently humble existence, have plenty to teach us. Approaches such as these are crucial in setting the stage to form authentic and enduring relationships. Cultivating crops is certainly important, but will only have the chance to produce the desired outcomes if relationships are cultivated first.

I hope to post a series of blogs about my experience at ECHO, so thanks for reading, keep an eye out for future posts about my visit, and feel free to check out ECHO’s website at www.echonet.org.

Renewal (and CRM Worldwide Conference II)

Well, here I am. To describe the last month and a half of my life as busy would be an understatement. I have been to Southeast Asia (CRM conference), Northern California (work), Florida (class in tropical agricultural development), and am now back in Northern California (again to work) for a week before going back to San Diego. Love travel as I do, I’m looking forward to catching some Zs in my own bed for a little while.

The conference was amazing . . . perhaps the most amazing part was that Rebecca and I survived our voyage to Malaysia from San Diego. We tallied up the hours of travel time, door to door, and with the three flights and lengthy layovers we racked up a whopping 60! To estimate that I got 12 hours of sleep would be generous. So though I went without crucial things like sleep for extended periods of time, no bags were lost, no flights were missed (ok, one was canceled, but it all came together), and I think the biggest thing I forgot to pack was duct tape. How embarrassing for a self-proclaimed travel veteran.

The conference itself was amazing: +/- 500 people from 25 countries around the world, all together in Southeast Asia to join their fellows with whom they seek to develop churches through developing people. CRM's vision (as snagged directly from their website) is of . . .

"movements of fresh, authentic churches, pioneered by godly leaders, fired by a passion for their world, compelled to multiply their lives and ministry…so that the name of God is renowned among the nations"

. . . and it was made clear to me that this group of very dedicated people had received a commission from God to make it a reality. My dad uses a fun saying in situations where one is presented with much more than they can take in - "drinking from the fire hose" - and this seemed to be one of those situations for me. I’ve been involved in several ministries of varying natures over the years, and each, as shown by their foci, have their callings and convictions. It was simultaneously invigorating and humbling to experience to get to know so many people offering themselves to the bottom-up building of churches, an often challenging and thankless labor of love.

Though this could be said of just about any situation one comes across in life (likened to the Butterfly Effect), even the briefest meeting I’d have with a new person seemed to open up a world of new possibilities, and it occurred to me that I'll likely be able to appreciate God’s work through this conference for years to come. It was a busy time, full of sessions with other NieuCommunities folks and various presenters with powerful stories of ministry from around the world, but amid all the activity I did find rest here and there. I found renewal as well, and gained some perspective and recognition of context regarding some of the lows of the past year. Hopefully some of what I gained will continue to show up in pixilated form here.

But there is more . . .

I feel like the conference came at just the right time in my life - as I mentioned before, this has been a challenging year. Walking through the peaks and valleys of faith, it is so easy to look at others and have my faith feel so small and insignificant . . . even weak or downright absent at times. I find myself wondering what exactly or, yea, if even if, I believe at times. This can be discouraging.

Back in April, I was in a particular valley. A ball of health and personal issues had begun rolling the previous November or so, and had continued on with only faint and unconvincing signs of slowing down. I have a nasty habit of following the ad infinitum rabbit holes presented by Google, Wikipedia and Amazon without relenting (OCD? perhaps), to sometimes frustrating ends, and a movie I’d received from Netflix had presented me with one of epic proportions. It led me to a number of debates by those Christians and atheists who like to engage in them, and though they seem to me to be poor venues for building the kinds of relationships that seem most representative of the love of Christ, I for some reason am drawn to them as moth is to flame. Could it be like the way people from schoolchildren to those filling barrooms (and now living rooms, sadly) cannot resist watching two men fight? Could be. I used to watch UFC when I was younger, I admit with some shame.

In any case, I ended up reading a book or two and watching some films that dealt with faith and the crises or lack thereof. Whether or not this process reassured me all that much I cannot say, but it did remind me that I’m not alone in my search for meaning in today’s complex world.

And after it all, I can say with certainty that I believe in and have been saved from a life of suffering, in some ways now and in all ways eternally, by Jesus Christ. I want to model my life after His, I sense the Holy Spirit guiding me and empowering me to do so, and I believe the world was created, somehow, by an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient God. These are the things that (I hope) guide my life, both willfully and in ways beyond my will. My linear and analytical mind struggle to simultaneously engage and surrender to these things, but onward I go.

The conference was a glorious time. I received much help from many loved ones in order to get there, and indeed needed every bit of it. It was one of those weeks that will take years for me to absorb the full measure of, if I ever do at all. In fact, so much of life is like that, it’s occurring to me. As I (we!) interact with such a grand world as we have, filled with such an expanse of creation as it is, isn’t it a bit presumptuous to think that we could?

Rest

In about a week from now, I will be in Malaysia with CRM. It’s gonna be an exciting time to be sure, as I can’t wait to connect with people from all over the world who are ministering with CRM in so many different contexts. But along with my excitement comes a bit of anxiety . . .

Even though I’ve traveled internationally many a time, there are the usual pre-trip jitters: do I have everything I need? And if I do, will I actually remember to pack it? Man, my traveling buddy Rebecca and I have a bunch of connecting flights . . . I sure hope we make them all!!

Then, there are some new feelings: what will all these new people from CRM be like? Will I understand their callings and ministries, and will they understand mine, which is still taking shape?

So, there are some thoughts. There is so much to do to get ready for this trip, and much of it has more to do with preparing my heart than preparing my luggage. For this and other reasons, this is a hurried time of life. One of my favorite guides on the road of life is author John Ortberg, who once called his friend and mentor Dallas Willard for guidance on spiritual growth. When asked what one must do to continue their development, and after a long pause, he replied, “Be ruthless with eliminating hurry from your life.” Somewhat satisfied with Willard’s response, he asked what other strategies could be employed. After another repose came, “There is nothing else.”

In my busyness, I have tried with only marginal success to take part in reading Willard’s “The Divine Conspiracy” with some others in NieuCommunities. I can stand to learn much about resting in Christ, and how that kind of rest can complement a life of hard work, shaping such a life as Willard’s. The other night, as four of us were debriefing after having done the Birkman Personality Test as a community (yes, 20 or so of us – it was hectic), my roommate Nick mentioned how I ‘was always working on something’. I agreed, and recognized how much ground I am trying to cover in this season of change in my life. Too much at times, perhaps. I mean, it’s 12:15 in the morning as I write this.

Hard as it may be to understand as being possible in this age of frantic activity, it is my prayer that we all could grow in learning to find time to rest.

Feeling ReNieu'd

What a beautiful morning. We have many of these here in San Diego; sometimes the freshly risen sun, especially at this time of year, is obscured by marine layer clouds for much if not all of the day. But this one is classic, high millibar goodness, the sky blemished with but the rare contrail.

I went in the ocean for the first time in about eight months the other day. It was quite the experience. Ok, I cried . . . and kinda hard for a little while. You see, it has been an interesting year or so.

Amidst relationship loss and physical infirmity (at one point both of my shoulders were killing me, along with my knee and my back - I got very familiar with every feature of the ceiling of the room I was in), I felt lost in terms of vision. As many of you know, I get pretty excited about 'visions' I have at times. Some of them must be at least somewhat legit, because a lot of times others get excited too, and some of them even come to pass as plans come together in various forms. But others seem to be a bit more fanciful, of course, and have yet to come to fruition. I've scorned many a naysayer in my day, but at this point, I like to think that I'm just an enthusiastic guy with a lot left to learn. There . . . that ain't so bad.

So this fall, as things I was only beginning to understand the full gravity of came down heavily upon me, I was pained. As I've had time to digest these things more, the misery of sleeping in the bed of physical pain I'd made myself - mostly from damage incurred via that cursed device they call 'the skateboard' - was at least matched if not exceeded by the spiritual pain I was experiencing.

Striving to view things - from microcosm one's self all the way to the planet and cosmos - in a spiritually holistic manner is quite the challenge. It's so much easier to compartmentalize the disparate and potentially conflicting sectors of any system (on an individual level, one's personal life and professional life. On a global level, industry and the environment, etc.) so they don't rub up against each other in a disagreeable way. Indeed, it is often absolutely necessary to do so when we get to the real pragmatic work of managing a project or solving a problem: the scope is just too wide to try to do it all at once. "You eat an elephant one bite at a time", as my dad reminds me often. So while the endeavor of finding vistas that offer us integrated, encompassing perspectives of that which enters our sphere of awareness seems like the right thing to do, it is anything but easy.

I read a quote by Jean-Paul Sartre recently that struck me, as quotes often do (sometimes I think about compiling all my favorite quotes into some kind of volume, like my own book of Proverbs). Now, I don't know all that much about him, but anyone who turns down being awarded a Nobel Prize has at least a little to teach us all about humility. It succinctly read: "Introspection is always retrospection". With the amount of struggle I endure to memorize what little I can retain, I'm grateful for distilled wisdom - it makes me think of other little pearls I find on occasion. They say the shortest verse in the bible is John 11:35: "Jesus wept".

Before I ended up sitting on the sand in Ocean Beach (a funky little hippie enclave of a neighborhood here in San Diego and one of my favorite places on Earth), I'd struggled to pull my seemingly shrunken and stiffened wetsuit on in the parking lot and trudged through the cold, damp sand to a few feet from the waterline and sat down. It wasn't the kind of day I hoped would mark my return to my beloved marine environment: it was cold, windy and cloudy. But I sat down with my swim fins anyways and got introspective. Which of course turned retrospective. I thought back to when I was a kid and couldn't even touch the ocean without severe anxiety, and how my first memorable wave-riding experience at Twin Lakes Beach in Santa Cruz involved watching, from the inside, the curtain of a wave engulf me and proceed to jam sand and salt water into the furthest reaches of my mouth, nose and lungs. In a manner that was congruous with the cowardice that came to color my youth, I couldn't bring myself to put my head underwater or have my feet off the bottom of the ocean from that point forward.

I remembered my first waves ridden near Capitola at 17, having needed about 10 or so years to recover from my childhood beating. I tried to recall every person I had ever surfed with, every place I had surfed, and all the seasons of life I had gone through as I had finally overcome something I thought I'd live with for the rest of my days. As I did, I was overcome with both feelings of nostalgia and loss and feelings of gratitude and blessing. The sun peeked through the clouds as I waded out into the water, noticing that tears and seawater taste about the same.

In John, Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus. There are reasons behind him doing so that I don't yet understand, but I think mostly it was to join Mary and others in mourning, showing his love for both them and Lazarus in a way they could understand. Paul tell the Romans to "Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn". As I both rejoiced and mourned the other morning as I re-entered the ocean that I loved and had missed so much, I felt comforted. As if Jesus, in the many ways was there with me, as he is now and will be always, wept too.

As I would never have guessed my life would take some of the painful turns it did this fall, so would I never have guessed that it would take some of the comforting ones it has. I found out about a Christian 'missional community' at the end of last summer that was supposedly popping up right in my own backyard here in San Diego. A manifestation of an 'intentional community', where a group of people come together seeking to lead a deliberate, examined way of life that supports a set of commonly held values, I'd been interested in learning more about them for years. At the same time, I didn't want to end up in something resembling some of the bizarre settings you hear about in the news, usually in a rather negative light. As I've gotten to know them over the last nine months or so, the people of NieuCommunities have become dear to me in more ways than I can count.

I felt so renewed as I came out of the water, and am grateful for the beginnings of the return of my physical health. Even more, I feel the stirrings of a return of vision and dreams in my 'spiritual' (read: whole) life. I may always wonder if the greater good, which I believe God has in mind for all of us, could have somehow been served in some way other than what transpired. But as I do, I also look around at a suffering world and am reminded that my problems are dwarfed when contrasted to what many people face daily. I'm accepting that it is my choice as to whether or not I want to come through this time gracefully, equipped to help others face the dark night of their souls as I've had to mine.

Seems like a pretty clear choice to me.

john henry, like a bee

is it possible, in the pursuit of trying to simplify one's life, to make it more complicated? maybe that is the nature of the beast; that all change implies complication of what has been droning on in the name of routine. but what of routine? life seems to follow the path of least resistance, water always flowing downhill and all. but it don't take much thought at all to remember that such paths have not always, or even often, been righteous ones. dare i say they never are? that the good way is never the easy way? Jesus says that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, but in what senses of the words?

like the need to blog, tweet, fb, flickr and more more more in order to feel like one's person is sufficiently available to the world? to be able to mediate one's life in this way for the world to see (and presumably accept?) is a truly modern phenomena . . . i will even call it a pleasure. aldous huxley said that "speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure", and so perhaps to be able to communicate speedily, as with all these newfangled social networking tools, is one perk of modernity.

and then comes the backlash against this modernity, say, in the form of the 'slow food' movement. how strange that those of us who want to 'slow down', 'live simply' and all that still blog? the ultimate irony of this must be me with my email address: johnhenryshammer@gmail.com. those of you unfamiliar with the story of john henry, immortalized time and time again with each rendition of the folk song named after him, will now be learnt of him:

an african american born in the late mid-1800s into a large family, little john and family were abandoned by his father. he knew from a young age that the toil of his hands would somehow be his downfall, and before his father left, he gave him his hammer with the admonition to become a skilled manual laborer, and that the hammer would serve him well in this capacity. john grew into a bruin of a man and capitalized on his physical strength, becoming quite the asset to the railroad building industry that was then booming, presumably finishing the trans-continental railroad. the simplicity of hammer + spike + muscles made him a star, gave him an identity, a livelihood . . . until the fist of technology came rudely knocking at his door.

the foreman brought a steam drill onto the scene to try to streamline production, but that of course would mean the unemployment of the steel drivin' men like john who were providing for their families and themselves. john henry resisted being ousted in such a way, and ended up beating the drill when he challenged it to a spike driving race. he did, however, end up overexerting himself in the process, and like any good folk hero, died for his cause.

but what is so bad about that? having a cause for which one would die is one thing, but john henry's fight seemed as much for life at it ever could be for death. i like a good cup of tea and though good tea usually doesn't come in a bag, i do like the little proverbs that can be read on the little tags that adorn them. one once read, "it is the mark of an immature man to wants to die nobly for his cause, and the mark of a mature one who instead wants to live humbly for it". now, with all due repsect to john henry and all who have sacrificed themselves for their cause, that is a pretty damn good quote.

last spring i was at the cultivating food justice conference, lazing the day by with a friend on the grass, when i spied a dead honey bee. as well all knopw, bees die once they sting, and seem to employ thier sting chiefly as a means of defending their hive and queen. we were a bit saddened by seeing such an endearing creature lifeless on the ground, but then i though aloud, "isn't that what we all want? to have a cause we are willing to die for?"