My team and I are doing our training tomorrow. I've been preparing some interesting stuff. Part of our training includes the stages of cultural identity formation proposed by Myron Lusting and Jolene Koester.

Unexamined cultural identity-one’s cultural characteristics are taken for granted and consequently there is little interest in exploring cultural issues

Cultural identity search-involves a process of exploration and questioning about one’s culture in order to learn more about it and to understand the implications of membership in that culture

Cultural identity achievement-characterized by a clear, confident acceptance of oneself and an internalization of one’s own cultural identity

Reading stuff like this through out the year has made me think a lot about "white culture", white cultural identity and what the relation is between race and culture...

Scholars have suggested that the cultural identities of many European Americans, in particular, have remained largely unexamined, a consequence of the power, centrality, and privilege that the European American cultural groups has had in the United States.

As Judith Martin, Robert Krizek, Thomas Nakayama, and Lisa Bradford suggest,

"This lack of attention to white identity and self-labeling reflects the historical power held by whites in the United States. That is, whites as the privileged group take their identity as the norm or standard by which other groups are measured, and this identity is therefore invisible, even to the extent that many whites do not consciously think about the profound affect being white has on their everyday lives."

Hmmmmmm.....

Help stop the genocide in Darfur....

"After reflecting on the genocide in Rwanda, the Senator Paul Simon said: "If every member of the House and Senate had received 100 letters from people back home saying we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response would have been different."

That's a powerful statement. It means that we had the power to stop the genocide in Rwanda, but that too many of us chose not to act. It also means that we have the power now to stop the genocide in Darfur if we do choose to act."

one small act...

I'm back in Vermont and it's the final stretch, baby! 6 weeks and counting!

Uh-huh!! Ooooh-yeah! (doing the Napoleon Dynamite dance...)

Why am I always too busy when I come home to visit? I asked this rhetorically as I was leaving my sister's house tonight and she answered matter of fact, "Because it's a short of amount of time." And I was like, "oh yeah." :-)

In other news...
As my sis's fam and I were eating at a restaurant tonight I was struck with how excessive this American life is. We were chit-chatting and I looked down at my salad fit for three. And even though I continued with the conversation, I felt a bit sick about the excessive and often blissfully ignorant lives we live. Stuffing ourselves into obesity while others starve. I almost had to stop eating. I felt fat, bloated...wasteful.

On a less serious note, I'm excited to share my plans with you all in the near future. Things are coming together, so I think I can share more details soon.

good news: i'm in san diego! (yeah!)

bad news: i'm sick. (boo!)

But i'm still having a good time...pictures to come....

This is a good week. I'm even a bit giddy! Today I'm driving down to NYC with a handful of other SIT students to attend the Sustainable Development conference being put on by Columbia. I'll be back from that Wednesday and then Friday I'm flying home to San Diego for spring break.

yeah!!!!

And then after I get back from spring break I'll essentially have about a month left of school! Thank you, Jesus! That is such a sweet thought (beaming smile)! I still have a ton of work to do in that last month but it's still a sweet thought nonetheless (still beaming)!

And it's going to be interesting to go this conference where the school of thought about development is quite different. It's going to be healthy for us to hear perspectives that would make some of our teachers either faint or howl.

I was listening to a speech Jeffrey Sachs was giving on the village project he's involved in and certain things he said were textbook examples of what many of my teachers think is wrong with main stream views on development.

I had the full on angry SIT commentary running in the back of mind as I was listening to the speech as if one of my theory classes was in my brain and I could hear their gasps of unbelief and disapproval. I almost cried out, "Watch out, Jeff, for that rotten tomato!" but then realized he was safe in my computer. :-)

Ever wonder what the heck is Joyce getting her MA in anyway? What's that woman talking about?

What is Sustainable Development? (this will give you a working definition because you know how everything is debatable and controversial in academia-specially in this field)

Sustainable development is a process of developing (land, cities, business, communities, etc) that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" according to the Brundtland Report, a 1987 report from the United Nations.

Take a Sustainable Development quiz...you know you know whaz up (after being informed on my blog-right? uh...yeah)!

Listen to an interview with good old Jeffrey Sachs, author of "The End of Poverty", on the current state of Sustainable Development.

thank you terror
thank you disillusionment
thank you frailty
thank you consequence
thank you silence

thank you, jesus, for all i have right now

Ever wonder what you, little ole YOU, can do in the fight against poverty or AIDS? Feel powerless and insignificant when it comes to these issues?

Hey, you can play your part little by little as a citizen. For example, sending emails or calling your senator about these issues. You can be informed about these issues and what to call about by getting on this list.

Have you ever called your senator? It's easier than you think.

What is The ONE Campaign?
ONE is a new effort by Americans to rally Americans - ONE by ONE - to fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty. The ONE Campaign is engaging Americans through a diverse coalition of faith-based and anti-poverty organizers to show the steps people can take, ONE by ONE, to fight global AIDS and poverty.

edit: hehe... This kind of sounds like a 6th grade civics assignment or something. But I'm serious, people! :-)

News, news but sorry no booze....

Well, I just wanted to let you guys know that I might be doing my internship overseas, so that you won't be too surprised if it works out. For quite a while, I changed my mind everyday about the direction I wanted to go after my on-campus phase here was finished (May 19th-ish!). Mostly, I just wasn't sure the direction God wanted me to go in. I've known for quite a long time that I was eventually heading overseas as a long term Christian worker. I've wanted to go into full time work overseas for a while but feel the Lord had been telling me to wait.

A couple months ago I was debating if I should work with a secular nonprofit org or a Christian nonprofit org. But now it seems I've gotten a peace about moving towards what I really want to do.

Hmmm...this is all very cryptic. I guess that's because things are still in the works. But all that babbling was to say please pray for me as I seek God's will in all of this. I so easily try to take the reigns of my own life and I need your prayers and advice as I seek Him.

And the second bit of news is that I'm going to Montreal with some friends this weekend! (It's just a three hour drive...so we're seizing the day. ooh-la-la!)

This has been one hard year but even in the midst of my worrying and anxiety hope often still wells up in my heart. In my wrestling with self-absorption, self-pity and inertia, the certainty that I'm learning something, that I'm being trained shines quite beautifully in my mind. It's this idea that has really served as a turning point for me.

Life is challenging. Ministry that transforms people also transforms you in the process and as we've seen in many cheesy sci-fi movies transformation can be painful. When I've chosen to see this year with its various difficult circumstances through the lens of training, everything seems clearer. I feel tougher and more resilient.

I've cried a lot but I've also prayed my brains out. I've fought spiritually and won but also lost. But that is what the spiritual life is really about anyway. I've often felt like a failure this year but ironically these pressures have produced a brokenness that has reaped more earnest and consistent prayer than I've prayed in a long time. And then there's the hope that I'm walking out into new territory. When something dies in you, even though it's painful there is the excitement of the resurrection.

"I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." John 12:24

This chick is sooo funny... How she personifies her animals reminds me of Ro. It just seems like a very Ro-ish thing to do.

DC baby! In front of Washington monument....

more random thoughts..

I think I'm getting sick. Even at 7:30pm I seriously considered going to bed because I was so tired.

It seems I often unwittingly live in places with activist/socialist leanings. Even though I don't see myself as fitting that mold entirely at all, it seems that I must be one deep down as I always end up in areas like that. (ex. Portland, Vermont)

I was reading some of my poems online tonight and realized that I haven't posted any since 2004. It's not that I haven't written any poems in the last year because I have. It's just that...it seems I've hit a wall with my poetry.

Most of my poetry over the last couple years seems like a broken record to me. It's always the same thing. It's like I'm trying to get past something but instead I just keep repeating the same theme. And for my journal that's okay because that's the way I deal with my raw emotions. But I haven't posted any of it because most of it annoys me. hmmmmm....

Check this movie out....

Weird. Right now blogger isn't showing the comments I made under my pictures. Anyway, the snowmanless house is where I live right now. It's my Vermonter house. :-)

Right now I'm actually staying with Sandy in Baltimore for my break. Trying to do stuff that I don't normally do like email and load pics while she's at work. Her growing bump is SO amazing. Makes me want to have babies right now. hehe

If you look at my "more pics" link you'll see some new pics I've recently uploaded. (sorry no pics of sandy's bump yet)

You know one thing the West coast has down? Clean bathrooms. And something amazing and oh so novel here on the East coast-paper seat covers. Apparently this beautiful invention has not occurred to the East coast because they don't have them in any bathroom (except for maybe the airport)! So the result is lovely pee covered toilets everywhere. Even the nicer places.

Vonderful.

So that's one pleasant surprise whenever I go home to CA-wow, the bathrooms aren't landmines of grossness that I have to navigate with utmost care lest I catch some disease!

This is my Vermont house.

Winter in VT.

Sorry I've fallen off the face of the planet. I just finished Spring 1 at my school which is like a mini semester. So the last couple weeks I was trying to finish papers and projects. Now I'm on break and will be going back for Spring 2 next week. This week I'm going to catch up on emails.

yeah!

you gotta love, Bono!