Africa returns...

Summer reading. Something I once looked at as a task that hung over my head, something unimportant that I'd put off until I absolutely had to sit down, and read all 300 pages at once, fighting off sleep and distraction. Well when faced with Barbara Kingsolver's almost 700 pages of The Poisonwood Bible, the options were a little bit narrower, more like cliffnotes vs lots of time. But this book hasn't felt like so much of an obligation after all. It's actually scaring me how real each page of the story feels.

You see, I just spent almost 3 weeks in Africa. 8 days in burundi, and a week and a half in South Africa. Burundi borders Rwanda, and Congo (and a few more countries, and the deepest lake in the world- lake tanganyika). Well lets start with Rwanda. In the past year I've come to hear about the one million people killed in the time span of 100 days because of genocide the hutu's vs the tutsis, and for some reason i can't remember which side was doing all the killing. But at any rate, this became so real. One pastor spoke of the time a little over 10 years ago when hundreds of people fled churches in hopes to be safe from the killing, when all they found was a preacher telling them to pray to jesus before they got killed, so they'd atleast go to heaven. The thought makes me sick; shaking hands with people who witnessed such mass murder, and still find it in themselves to praise the lord, is very difficult and somewhat beautiful.

The fact that people can live through such tragedy, and years later, live a somewhat stable life... i definitely respect them for dealing with more then i could ever imagine. So I was reading today, the story of a missionary's family in the Congo, and the hardship and the change, and the struggle with the crux of religion itself, and I seriously felt like I could've written bits and pieces of that story with my own short-lived experiences. Not only does one character end up going to Johannesburg (which i stayed in for 4 days), another character goes to Emory (a college I'll apply to), and the characters all were born into knowing only christainity as THE way and like that's me too. Just read this:

"To live is to be marked. to live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know."

i went through a short time of rebellion while in burundi, because i honestly felt like rejecting all of christainity. The message was such a blur to me. I dont care who's getting into heaven, I care about who people are and what people believe and what makes a good life. You know it's hard to think you could grow up somewhere else and believe things totally different, based solely on the place you were born into. As an act to find the truth, and either prove or disprove the place i grew up in, i've been somewhat skeptical, but overall trusting the way i feel and the way others feel through my/our experiences. i dont think blind faith is that respectable, blind faith led people into planes to crash into the world trade center, those people wanted god to like them, their god, that they grew up with. Religion can make people do some crazy things. (okay AND the fact that they hate the US for lots of reasons...)

So I'm all about some sort of awareness, like don't hide the good or the bad in anything. Don't accept something until you believe it, and can see how maybe it's for the better that you do believe. It seems like everything I've taken in lately points to existentialism, this feeling that the world is everything and nothing all at the same time, and i live for the times when the world is everything. where everything matters. but i dont like to be confined to a set of beliefs... so i'll take what i can from Jesus, and from books and from my own EXPERIENCES which i love and know to be true.

something about having my own words to rely on, and not just another interpretation is refreshing, and brings about purpose. I'm here to live, and feel, and think, and love people. And thats about all i have figured out.

call me crazy, but all i'm being is honest.

-jodi