GO CATS!!!
Three cheers for Davidson basketball this season and many more from me and students here in Bayonnais as you can see in the video above. Given my general lack of interest in popular sports, such as basketball, which makes me quite an oddball in North Carolina let me tell you, I’m an unlikely candidate to throw a party to watch the game. However, upon hearing that my alma mater hadn’t been as far as it was since the 60’s, I got very excited and jumped on the opportunity to share a passionate part of American culture with my students and friends. Thanks to CBS.com and a digital projector, we enjoyed the show on the big screen. No thanks to a poor Internet connection, we stared at the “buffering” stats under a vacant black box most of the time, occasionally interrupted by an advertisement but no game. Nonetheless, we indulged in soft drinks (compliments of Actionnel) and Wild Berry Skittles (compliments of mom’s care package). A good time was had by all.
HAIRCUT
I laughed hard yesterday. For the last month or so I’d been debating whether or not to cut my hair, which my students are quite fond of–especially when it’s combed and shiny after I’ve taken a shower. The first resident OFCB Blan, Morgan Dibble, let the local barber do his thing, but the results were less than favorable, so I hear. However, I have to applaud Libone for his crafty use of OFCB’s newly donated electric razor. I laughed hard because the audience of children decided to start playing with my Blan trimmings, putting it on each other’s heads and eventually using mud to stick it to their chins and upper lips, creating disgusting but hilarious goatees, mustaches, and soul patches.
CHEZ ISAAC
I spent one afternoon with my student and friend, Isaac. He had invited me to visit his house where we were critiquing a few of his artworks when his sister noted, “Oh, the dog died.” Apparently it had died only a few minutes before. The black-and-white pup lay still on the ground, its belly surprisingly large. “What happened,” I asked. “He was hungry,” Isaac’s sister replied. When I asked its name the mood lightened, for both sisters started cracking up. “He didn’t have a name yet,” Isaac informed me, laughing a little himself. When I asked if it had any brothers and sisters the girls lost it completely, and I started laughing too, partly because their laugher was contagious and partly at the absurdity of the situation.
You see, I had secretly given three boxes of protein bars to Isaac the week before when he brought to my knowledge that he and his family hadn’t eaten for a few days. (It’s worth noting that I don’t know what it must feel like to ask someone for food, the body’s painful demand translated through humble politeness if it is strong enough to pass one’s pride.) That afternoon the rain came hard as if following Isaac’s prophesy from 30 minutes before, and we took shelter under the melodic percussion of a small tin roof. Because I had mentioned haphazardly that I liked okra, they served me grits with extra okra and a small piece of meat, the meal they were fortunate to enjoy that day, the meal they decided to share with me. They ate quickly. I was uncertain whether to shadow their pace or take my time, punctuating bites with smiles of contentment and gratitude as I–somewhat uncomfortably at first–enjoyed their radical hospitality.
SOMEWHAT UNCOMFORTABLY AT FIRST
I’d like to take a moment to explore this sentiment. I mentioned in a previous post that sometimes you serve others by allowing them to serve you. I think there is a lot of truth in that statement, and I’ve been forced to think about it a lot down here.
I know certain people, myself included, who have refused to accept gifts. It’s one thing to lightly reply, “No, I couldn’t accept that.” Actually, it’s often polite custom to do so before receiving something of value. It’s another thing to adamantly refuse another’s blessing altogether, yet often there are seemingly good reasons to do so. For instance, let’s look at the facts: I not only eat more than my fair share of three meals a day but am also not hungry, and Isaac wants me to receive a full plate of food from a family that didn’t eat for a few days the week before!
However, love doesn’t always care about the facts. Love may break a vessel of expensive ointment over another’s head even though its value could have bought a week’s worth of food for a poor family. Love may treat only one poverty-stricken drug-resistant tuberculosis patient when it would be more cost-effective to treat several victims of another disease. Love may allow itself to be sacrificed on a wooden altar of our pride because the cost of touching free will would nullify its value altogether.
(. . . to think you could kill love by killing it. . . )
Love.
Does it look absurd? Yes!
However, I think we pass by absurdity sometimes when arriving at higher truths. The absurdity at the heart of Sartre and Camus is just that because their existentialism is so ironically close to God. Ivan, in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, relays his brilliantly thought-provoking and painful poem on the the Grand Inquisitor, passionately attacking God and creation, only to receive Alyosha’s response: “‘But . . . that’s absurd!’ he cried, flushing. ‘Your poem is in praise of Jesus, not in blame of Him–as you meant it to be.’”
I’d ask my readers to pardon me for not only going profound, as I have a habit of doing, but absurd in this post. Allow me to return to the humility of allowing someone to serve you, to wash your feet, to die for you. Allowing someone to die for you may be one of the most difficult things in life. Some of you may remember Steven Spielberg’s film, Saving Private Ryan, in which a whole unit of soldiers risk their lives to save one individual whose three brothers had died during World War II; the command came from a high-ranking officer’s compassion for the mother. At the Normandy American Cemetery, this one individual recalls the stinging last words of a dear friend who died on the mission to save his life: “James. . . earn this. Earn it.” With tears in the eyes of this now elderly man, he turns to ask his wife if he’s been a good man.
Earn this. Live your life as not only an acknowledgement of its cost but also for those who paid the cost with their own.
While several sacrificed for one in the film, we have other examples of ones who have sacrificed themselves selflessly for the multitudes: Jesus, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Mother Theresa are but a few people who gave their lives for love of others. Jesus, however, doesn’t say, “Earn this,” though perhaps some of us unwittingly wish he did, for then we would have some control in the matter of our meaning and worth, comparatively pitting ourselves against others to validate and justify our earning potential. Unfortunately, we do this anyway, forgetting what has been given.
Somewhat uncomfortably at first. . . We learn to receive, though somewhat uncomfortably at first.
(For my readers who have been harmed by the name, Jesus or by those who confess to follow him, know that I am talking simply of love, for if he is indeed who he says he is, the Word of God made flesh, that word is none other than love.)
Thank you for coming this far. Here are some recent photos:
