Lobster in a Bucket

Not a Podcast, But Close

So here's a little bit of audio from my trek in the Rwenzori Mountains. Let me provide more context. We've just finished a day of hiking that included: waking up at 5:30, starting a 2000 foot ascent of a glacier covered mountain in a snowstorm, clomping along for hours in cramp-ons on the glacier, eating twice, trying to do another day's hike after the summit climb to escape the cold and snow, and finally, hiking in a swamp, in the failing light and eventual dark. The audio is in two segments. Part one is on the summit of the big Margherita, clocking in at 16730 feet. The second is that night, after we've probably burned between 5000-6000 calories. Enjoy. One Caveat, this recording was done with my ipod, rocking a belkin voice recorder, the audio leaves something to be desired at points.

Summitting Margherita-Download file

And

Kitandara Hut-Download file

Narcissism and Religion

I've been reading some Christopher Lasch lately, even delving into some of his stuff available online. He was a very original thinker that consistently criticized the bad behavior of both the Right and the Left.

His most popular book Culture of Narcissism is about force of narcissism at work in American society. But what does this term mean? Is it just selfishness? In an afterward written years later, Lasch does a good job of saying exactly what he means when he uses the term.

Narcissism in this sense is the longing to be free from longing. It is the backward quest for that absolute peace upheld as the highest state of spiritual perfection in many mystical traditions.

Lasch continues to point out that a narcissist in this sense yearns to create an existence based on complete self-reliance. This self-reliance impulse is so complete that it tries to deny the existence of external sources of need, of conflict.

There are two major narcissistic trends in the church today.

One of them, Lasch correctly identifies as fundamentalism. American religious fundamentalism seeks to return Christians, and American society in general, to the fundamentals they were built on. Today’s church and popular culture is frightening to the fundamentalist. The fundamentalist hopes that inner peace can be found through return to traditional America and its traditional values. Fundamentalism, while maybe momentarily prominent in American society, I think is on the wane. It stinks to be raised a fundamentalist.

Josiah has recently blogged about the mega-church, and I did as well about a year ago. The mega-church is an even clearer embodiment of American narcissism. The mega-church seeks to be the total package for its member. It's commitment to provide for as many needs of its members: material, emotional, and spiritual, is what distinguishes it from a normal church. A mega-church's identity is not inherently bound to how well it points people to the gospel. A good mega-church seeks to make the member independent from society at large. This is more uncomplicated life, one without the tensions involved in “living in the world, but not of the world.” The flavor of American Christianity that takes root in the mega-church is not in conformity to what I take the true tenets of Christian faith. The Christian is supposed to take joy in sufferings and trials, not to structure life around their avoidance.

Climbin

I just got back from trekking a big mountain chain. Here are some nice pictures.

First, this was the a shot from our camp immediately beneath a glacier, that led to the summit of our climb, Margherita Peak.

Next is our almost to the summit shot. It's of one of our guides. Alousious, it's pretty sweet because it looks like we're on Everest or something.

And finally, the day after. This is the aftermath of our efforts, my face got so dry, it's still peeling.

That's it for now, but once I get a better internet connection, I'll put up some more.

Comfort

For those who were worrying about my soul.

Accounting

One of my prayer supporters sent the following message to me in response to my most recent prayer email.

Dear Matt:

I have been praying for you every week for the last several months. I have sensed a lack of love for the people you are ministering to and a focus on you rather than them. I will be praying more specifically that our Lord will show you His love for them and for Him and that He will expand your vision and love for them and the children you are ministering too. May our Lord bless you. 2 Cor. 3:5

In life, I think I desire in my sin to live a life absorbed with myself. This has been true both in life in America, and Africa. Maybe because of American culture it’s easier to ignore the self-absorption. After all, if we’re living in a culture of narcissism, self-absorption is just par for the course.

Not only is it pretty obvious when you’re self-absorbed here. It’s also pretty pathetic. Being self-absorbed in the context of poor, under-privileged school students, and super-smart, but needy missionary kids doesn’t have much to recommend itself. I think of some of the times I sing and dance in front of my students, not because I’m in a good mood, but because I really want someone to laugh at me. Blah.

On Dying

I’ve got mixed feelings about the Sunday cover piece from the NYT Magazine. Interesting topic, the avoidance of thinking about death in America, executed a bit blandly. I really didn’t want to hear all that about hospices ad infinitum. It would have been better to straight on tackle fear of death in our culture without the medical care system fluff.

It is interesting the different ways Americans and Ugandans deal with death. It definitely reflects the rational/pre-rational divide in the two cultures (not that one is particularly better than the other. As the NYT article shows, our (America’s) most common way to deal with dying, after denial becomes implausible, is to rely on the magic of modern medicine. Many believe that medicine can cure them of any disease that life can throw at them, betraying the underlying assumption that we’re gonna live forever. The article does make a good point to show that medicine is much better at comforting than curing in these phases. Still, American’s mediate the reality of death through a variety of faith-based recourses to science.

Things in Uganda are a bit more homespun. A long-time worker of the mission is in the final stages of cancer. He was only finally diagnosed a month ago, and so things have been hitting him pretty quickly. A man who led the church for nearly twenty years, immediately after hearing about his diagnosis, packed up his bags and sought the intercession of the kind folks at a local pseudo-Christian cult. In return for his earthly riches, he was promised prayer, which while not-making any guarantees, has cured people before. This sounds all too much like the lengths people in America go with experimental trial cures, alternative medicine endeavors. I think of all the crud Johnny Gunther had to endure in Death be Not Proud.

My point here is not that doctors, and cultists are the same. People, those faced with their own mortality, betray the shallow divide between the rational/pre-rational, by behaving in pretty much the same way.

Raw

For those of you not loving the sleeze....

Slinky

The horned bush viper. Although not an aggressive snake, the bush viper is often deadly when provoked.

Writing Project

Okay. So basically this is the first in a series of essays that I’ve been thinking about doing for a bit. I don’t know when I’ll get the next one done. Hopefully within a week, we’ll see. This is pretty much me, going through an exercise as a writer. Let me know what I can do better. If you have anything particularly scathing to say, tell me about it at matt at chattablogs.com. Otherwise comments would be fine.

I'm interested in exploring the way transportation and infrastructure affects the perception, even the meaning of a place. So here it goes.

Riding #1- a car
September 2004

We travel in a 1992 dark-blue Toyota Landcruiser. It has four-wheel drive, and four wheels, with a fifth just in case. It’s is my first time making this trip, from Kampala to Bundibugyo, my new home. I have been in the country for less than one week, Africa, less than a month. Kampala, as I leave it, shows off a plethora of vehicle dealers. One, if so inclined, could visit upwards of 30 establishments in search of the right bicycle, motorbike, scooter, or sport-utility vehicle. The stretch of paved tarmac pairs well with the storefronts. The tarmac, reaching on to the horizon is reassuring. The potholes are a brief jarring challenges to our bubble of relative calm amidst a massive confusion of transit.
Sharing the road, we weave amidst innumerable bicycles, motorbikes, pedestrians, cars, trucks, busses, and tractor-trailers. Instead of lanes, we move in eddies. The road is like a river with currents that individual vehicles move along, like so much flotsam. Our driver, Pat has white knuckles, but I wonder why. We can’t move fast, no one, going American speeds, is going to careen into us. Our greatest fear is that one of these bicyclists, loaded down with fresh bananas, is going to topple under our wheel. We will quickly fall into the role of the cruel white oppressors, and our money will be taken from us in a flurry of guilt and police corruption.
White guilt lives here. You’re here not so much afraid for your safety, but that you will find yourself in a situation where the mere fact of your skin will be culpability enough. The traffic of the city begins to thin as the hills turn from the color of soiled concrete to that of grass. As the concrete recedes, the amount of asphalt does too. The random pothole becomes an array of potholes that renders driving not unlike skiing on moguls.
Our pace of travel slows. Ugandans ostensibly drive on the left side of the road. However the asphalt moguls render the concept of sides more fluid. Drivers’ responsibility narrows onto their car. To spare the car, take the route of fewest potholes. Cars weave around each other in a violent, jarring, organic dance. Sometimes opposing vehicles appear to be the same vehicle, merely driving towards a large mirror. The scenery- the countryside- retreats from the foreground as the pothole dance takes the center. Africa is reduced to this one, dysfunctional, jackhammer of a road.
Somehow, the road becomes good again. My vision becomes less for the road, and more for the land. Small shacks float by, laying claim to fields of green crops. The green crops perpetuate the shacks, and life continues in some semblance of a cycle. Uganda, and so also Africa, broadens into vistas of impoverished fecundity. As the trip reaches it’s middle moment, the verdant life of this world descends on our car. It’s called Mubende. Mubende is a town, but it’s more significantly the place where the manic fight to live inflicts itself on the hermetic travelers, in their climate-controlled vehicles.
In Mubende a crowd of hawkers, barkers, and road-side attendants swarm every vehicle that stops. You don’t want to be swarmed. But you need to stop, because this is the good place to get petrol, the life-blood of your travels. The people descend on you, all selling one of about 4 things: chicken, pork, chapattis, or drinks. No one seems to feel funny selling the same thing that 100 other people are selling. The struggle to live is too important to worry about pithy notions like diversification and efficiency.
After Mubende another long stretch of green poverty awaits. The road becomes quite peculiar. The straight, modern road remains. Yet it is hung in a state of suspension, identifiable, but not complete. The crucial finishing coat of rich black tarmac remains unapplied. We cross the road in a looping half-helix over and over again, crossing over the modern world, but never staying for very long. The intersecting dirt road looks more established, more used, than the in utero one.
As the roads reduces to one the terrain changes. The mish-mash of shacks and attached land changes into something ordered. Here, that verdant chaos of Mubende has been cowed. There are plantations beside the nice, well-worn, but well taken care of tarmac. Tea estates and managed pine forests accompany the road, almost as a welcome committee to this new place. It’s called Fort Portal. In the dawn of modern Africa, a British man, a Mr. Portal, saved these inhabitants from their bloodthirsty enemies. To show their appreciation, the Batoro’s town still bears his name, and a statue.
If there is a place in Uganda where the colonial and tribal live in happy harmony, it’s Fort Portal. Elderly British gentlemen are still there with their massive tea estates, but the town hums with bustle. The way of enterprise prospers here from the top down. Everyone is working. The little alleys between and behind businesses are swept clean. The beggars are chased from the whites by concerned citizens. As we pass by the golf course, Africans tee up.
Fort Portal recedes, as we head towards the mountains. These mountains are written of as the Ruwenzoris, or Rwenzoris, or even Rewenzoris, depending on whom you ask. Our destination is on the other side of these mountains. As a last gasp, the tarmac grudgingly breaks to pieces as the potholes take over. But then the potholes give way to plain red dirt, packed with pebbles. We’ve done with the dressings of the modern world. The road elevates into a valley that marks a pass, called Bwamba. We go into this place. On the other side is the particular cranny of the continent that I will call home.
I believe that the whole earth is filled with the glory of God. But not surprisingly the glory doesn’t always seem like a good thing to me. That glory can be overwhelming. The sheer vibrant struggle to live that fills Africa almost to the brim has to reflect God’s glory, but like Moses’s burning bush, threatens to sear my eyes. With too much life to comprehend, I’m forced to reflect on my own limitations. I don’t like that.
Here up on Bwamba pass, God’s glory comes along in more digestible measures: a brief view of the wide open Semaliki, narrow valleys, long drops, small farms carved out of the hillside. The glory here is more available for the tourist inside me. That feels nice. The car maintains a safe distance from the world, allowing for consideration, appreciation, contemplation, but probably not real harmony.
As we come down out of the valley. Nature finally beats our car. The mud, rocks, and sticks prevail over one tire. We need our fifth wheel. As we stop to make repairs, some people come to assist. We signify a business opportunity. They proceed to make themselves as dirty as possible in assisting us in our repairs. By the end, they’ve transformed themselves from normal, well-dressed, young men, to tattered paupers desperately in need of “appreciation.”
Our car, pristine when leaving the city, has been dirtied and bruised by our road and our journey. But I at least on the exterior, look pretty much the same as I did in the morning. Maybe, I’m wearing a fine coat of dust that wasn’t there before. As we arrive to the bush, to my new home in Bundibugyo the preponderance of life is apparent. Domesticated animals get under your feet. Neighbors rush up to greet. As the birds stop singing, the bats start screeching. The noise of the city may have left, but the noise of nature is at least as loud, as least as constant, and at least as invasive.

More on Garang

Both these articles are good pieces about the Sudanese situation. Sudan is a confusing place. The death of Garang and the decade-long war that was just brought to a peaceful conclusion isn't the same as the Darfour situation. Garang was the leader of Christian peoples in southern Sudan.

John Garang is Dead

Title sounds like some work of fiction, but sadly, it's true. John Garang, former rebel, highest ranking Christian leader in Sudan. Died in a plane crash. Already in southern Sudan, 12 people have been killed in rioting. No one knows if the peace in Sudan is going to hold. Garang had recently joined the formerly oppressive government as vice-president in a symbol of peace

Hirambe!

Today, July 31st, 2005 I went to something called a hirambe. I’m not sure what this word originally meant, or from what language it originated. But if I had to define the word based on my experience it would go something like this.

Hirambe-a church-service that doubles as a fund-raiser. In order to raise the money, the organizers make the service very long. Lengthening each part of the order of worship an average of 35 minutes.

How does this event actually raise money? It’s quite insidious. You get invited and it’s made very clear that if you decline the invitation they’ll just reschedule for a date you can attend. So you have to go. After the initial 4 hours of church, including a 90 minute sermon, a 50 minute sharing time, innumerable choir numbers, and offering is taken. If enough money is raised in the minds of the organizers, the service can stop. If not, church will continue. Or at least that’s the threat. Fortunately the initial offering was enough, so we weren’t faced with the alternative.

Of course, once the money is raised, a speech is in order. The donors (us) must be congratulated a reminded of what wonderful things their offerings will do for the church. In total, by about 5 in the afternoon you may get a benediction. However, you can’t stand for the benediction, or any part of the service, not if you’re over 6 ft in height. This isn’t some strange rule. It’s just the practical reality of a ceiling that stretches all the way to 5 ft 6 in.

After the benediction, and nearly 6 continuous hours of church, you get up to leave like an escaped criminal. But this is too early to expect release. In “appreciation” a wonderful meal has been prepared for you, because after all, sitting from 11 to 5 will work up an appetite in anyone. The food, a very rich meal that makes you feel bad for all your fidgety irritation, takes time to eat. But you can’t just eat and run. After the meal, you must join your hosts, who not wanting to disturb your meal, have been waiting outside for a chance to converse. In all told, a process that began at about 1030 AM may be over by 7. Hirambe!