One thing I’ve always liked about Americans is their ability to protest peacefully and creatively (most of the time).  This doesn’t happen in many parts of the world.  When I was in Chile protests occurred frequently, and often involved fires, tear gas, and water cannons, as well as massive interruptions of the public transportation system.  Some might say that Americans have it pretty good and there is little to get really riled up about.  In response to that I must point at the Civil Rights Movement.  I would have honestly understood if African Americans had gotten really ticked off and started lighting stuff on fire.  They dealt with a lot of crap from the government and if anybody has the right to protest in that way, they did.  Instead, the Civil Rights Movement was largely peaceful, and accomplished a great deal.

This brings us to the Tea Parties of April 15, 2009.  Sometimes it’s nice to see Conservatives protesting about something for once, and you have to admit the whole idea of the “Tea Party” is fairly clever.  However, can we just do a little side-by-side comparison?  The Boston Tea Party of 1773 was mostly a protest against taxation without representation.  The dumping of the tea was symbolic and principled- Americans would rather go without this tea than pay the unfair taxes.  It involved a certain sacrifice, and it marked the moment where the people finally got fed up enough to take action.  It was an iconic movement that helped launch a Revolution, and I am convinced it is a major reason why tea does not hold the same status in America today as it does in the UK.

The Tea Parties of 2009 are protesting taxes, sure, but it is hardly the same idea.  Whereas the tea dumping had a very clear and specific meaning for the colonial era, this meaning has become much more abstract today.  So, when 2009 Tea Party-goers dump fake barrels of tea in the water, I am not quite sure what they are trying to say.  The bailouts make me very wary, too, and I am nervous about the amount of debt we are getting ourselves into.  However, these protests aren’t going to mean anything if they’re all talk and abstract principles.  Dumping fake tea isn’t going to have as much of an impact because it’s irrelevant.  If we were willing to repair our own GM cars when the warranties sink along with GM, that would be more significant.  Sometimes with capitalism, things fail, and maybe that’s ok.  It sucks that we can’t get a loan to buy that $500,000 house, so for now we’ll just have to stay in our 2-bedroom apartment that most people in the world would kill for.  But you know what?  It’s ok.  It really is ok.  We just need to convince the government that we can handle it.

So why aren’t we dumping our GM vehicles in the harbor instead of fake tea?  I submit that we are really not all that pissed off.  Yet.

The other day I left for work out the front door of my house because our driveway had just been resealed.  As I opened the door, a multiple-page publication fluttered to the ground.  In a hurry, I flung it inside and rushed out the door.  Today I came across it again, laying on the ground.  I picked it up and saw that the title of the publication was “Awake!”  It was full of random articles about spirituality, and the inside cover revealed that it was a Watchtower publication.  I concluded that the purpose behind this pamphlet being stuffed inside my front door was evangelism.

You know what?  I am the last person who needs to be evangelized.  Even though I’m probably not the intended target for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, this type of evangelism infuriates me.  Here’s an idea: let’s go knock on a total strangers’ door.  We won’t waste any time getting to know them, we’ll just tell them how how they should join our religion.  If they’re not home?  We’ll leave a brochure.

Does this type of evangelism ever work?  I would even venture to say it is probably harmful to the cause.  It reinforces stereotypes and is a great way to get people to put up walls without trying to hear what you have to say.  When I was studying abroad in Chile, there was a guy who would go to the Plaza de Armas and read scripture in a loud and accusatory voice every Sunday.  Some people (including me) got angry.  Most just ignored him.  I never saw anyone who actually approached him to learn more about God, or even listened with an interest that did not involve knocking the Bible out of his hands.

Street evangelism?  Door-to-door witnessing?  There’s not a lot that can get me really riled up, but that’ll do the trick.

“Preach the gospel everywhere you go, and, if necessary, use words.” -Saint Francis of Assisi

How I loathe thee, construction barrels.

If I were President, I would talk with countries we don’t like.

Iran, Venezuela, North Korea: I would pay them all a visit. I would show them that I am an agreeable and intelligent person, as are Americans in general. I would listen to their grievances. I would try to understand their situation. I would share my concerns. Then I would try to offer viable solutions.

It’s like, principles of conflict resolution, you know? What in the world is so wrong with trying to solve problems by just talking instead of doing it with missiles after it’s too late? It seems to me like there is nothing to lose, and everything to gain by just having some conversations.

I really don’t understand why Obama is taking so much heat for the idea of talking with Iran. If you ask me, he’s onto something.

There are a few images that will be burned into my brain forever.

A woman came into the place I work yesterday night.  We had about a half hour until we closed so the other two workers and I were starting to clean up and prepare to shut the place down.  There was one other customer there waiting for his food.

Then this lady walked in.

The first thing I noticed about her were her eyes.  She had enormous bags underneath her eyes, and her irises were the craziest things I had ever seen.  They were like, sparkly, or something.  I don’t know if she was wearing contacts or this was some weird effect of drugs, but this lady’s eyes were scary.  And dead.  Her eyes were dead.

This woman walked up to the cash register where I was standing, and asked me if any of us employees smoked.  I had to ask her to repeat herself because I was so taken aback by her eyes.  She repeated her question.  I said “Um, no.  Sorry.”  She walked out.

Everyone in the store stood frozen for a split second, then we all went back to what we were doing.  This lady was clearly looking for something more than a cigarette.  This was a woman whose life had been destroyed by drugs.

And I can’t get the image of her eyes out of my head.

I’ve never done drugs.  I’ve never had the desire to.  And it’s not because of the D.A.R.E. program I went through in elementary school, or the slide shows in high school health classes.  I’d say it’s probably a combination of my faith and the types of people I hang out with.  But it’s also because I have seen firsthand the ravaging effects of drug addiction.  I’ve talked to addicts and I’ve heard their stories.  The desperation, the abandonment, the poverty, and the purposelessness of a life that only has one goal: the next hit.  It starts and it ends with a needle.

Don’t do drugs.

As part of its annual “Celebration of Hope,” which is an attempt to raise money and awareness for the plight of the global poor, my church has challenged the congregation to eat as a poor person would for five days straight.  This basically means that the meal options are oatmeal or cream of wheat, rice and beans, or rice with bits of meat and vegetables.  For five days.  Straight.  I am now on day three of this challenge.

It is not so easy.

Day one was not so bad.  I was actually fine until about 8:00pm, when I started to get really hungry.  My mind immediately wandered to the kitchen, where I could usually just grab something if I was feeling peckish.  But I have really set my mind to this challenge, and I know that the poor don’t have a fully-stocked kitchen where they could just go “grab something.”  So I held my ground, but the hunger was very distracting and doing my homework was a nightmare.

Day two was worse.  The rice and beans I had for lunch were fine on day one, but on day two they were difficult to get down.  I’ve always hated beans.  Also, between my “lunch” of rice and beans and my “dinner” of rice with bits of chicken and vegetables was a period of about nine hours.  I had to go to work from 5-9, so I didn’t eat dinner until I got home around 9:30pm.  These were a long nine hours.  At work I started to feel a little weak and dizzy.  Plus, I work at a salad/sandwich place, so there was plenty of good food to tempt me.  It was a tough day.

I think today, day three, will be fine.  I really don’t have anything to do, so I won’t need a lot of energy.  Days four and five will probably be the hardest for me.  To be honest, I can’t wait for Saturday.  The crappy part is, if this was a real situation, it wouldn’t be over after five days.

Last night I went to work, and since it was a later shift at a slower time it was just me and the owner working in the store for a while.  A couple came in, and it was obviously their first time eating at this place.  They ordered their food and sat down to eat.  After they were done, the woman came up to the counter where the owner was prepping some food.  She explained to him that although the food tasted fantastic, the plastic forks and knives were too flimsy and not substantial enough to cut their food with.

It seems really trivial, but this lady’s comment really struck me.  She started off with a positive affirmation about the taste and quality of the food, but also gave a suggestion as to how we could make the dining experience better for the customers.

I’ve had several jobs dealing with customer service since I was in high school, and let me tell you how scarce these types of constructive comments are.  The fact that I am even writing about this should tell you rare it is.

When most people have a negative experience with a food or retail place, they keep it to themselves.  Then they go home and write a scathing review on Metromix, or tell all their friends not to go to that place.  Others complain loudly and often to the managers about trivial or imagined glitches in service.  Some direct their anger at lower-level workers who had nothing to do with the problem in the first place and have no idea how to fix it or even what they’re talking about.  The result of all this is that many complaints get ignored and negative experiences are not addressed in the form of any sort of change.

Here is the bottom line: if you know how to direct your criticism into a constructive comment, your complaint will get much, much farther.

Have you ever heard the saying “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans”?

I’m not usually a big fan of such cliches, but recently I have found this one to be particularly fitting to my life.  This is a hard one to explain, so bear with me if I start getting vague and abstract.

If you asked me at any given moment in my past if I would lay out the next few years of my life, I would probably have a detailed plan in mind.  However, if you asked me again a few years down the road if my plans actually came to fruition, the answer would almost always be an unequivocal “no.”

I always wanted to go to a school like Stanford or Northwestern, but somehow I found myself at Wheaton College (I know, the “Evangelical Harvard”).  For a while I thought I wanted to be a Spanish teacher, but now I feel myself being drawn toward law.  I never thought I would study in Chile and Paraguay.  I never saw myself working as a camp counselor or as a receptionist at a mental health clinic.  I never really planned any of these things, but they just happened and for the most part they have been the most formative experiences of my 20 years of life.

Ever since I decided to major in Political Science and do the concentration in Pre-law, I have been thinking about the internship requirement I must complete before I graduate.  My plan was to do a legal internship with the government, like with the FBI or a State’s Attorney’s office.  But none of those options really ended up working out.  Then this week an internship with a very prestigious law firm just sort of fell into my lap, and it seems to be a better opportunity than anything I could have planned.

Here’s the point of all this: no matter how hard I try to control and micro-manage my life, I find myself being irresistibly pulled in an unexpected yet exhilerating direction.  There is this feeling that there is something way bigger than me at work.  This is strangely comforting, because I am a mere human being and my life would probably be a total mess if I was the one actually calling the shots.

Maybe I don’t know yet the direction or purpose God has in mind for me, but I do know this: it will be awesome.  And that makes life one big, exciting adventure.

Dear God,

Please cut Chicago a break with the weather.  Please send us sunshine and flowers and baby chicks.  And not just for one day, but for a long, long time.  We desperately need it.  I desperately need it.

Love,

Lorin

“…but it looks good on a resume!”

I hate hearing that.  Unfortunately, I heard a lot of it in high school (replace “resume” with “college application”) and I hear a lot of it at Wheaton, too.

I will admit I have found myself thinking those words, and when that happened it was time to reconsider my reasons for doing that thing.

When resume-building becomes your only reason for doing something, bail out.  Fast.  It will drain you.