Guyana - The Land of Many Waters

Posted by PaulQ |1 comments

So typically I dont use this blog to post life updates, but recently the following news came to fruition and I found it important to share with all of you. Check out our life update blog whenrichterbecomesquinlivan.blogspot.com

Friends and family, it is official. We received our nomination and invitation to serve as education and health community volunteers in the country of Guyana. Not to be mistaken with the African nations of Ghana or Guinea, Guyana is located in the North Eastern coast of South America, bordered by Venezuela (Northwest), Suriname (Southeast) and Brazil (South) SEE MAP.While not a Spanish speaking country Guyana is one of the most diverse countries in the world and certainly the most in South America. It has a history of European imperialism, multiple indigenous tribes still in existence and history of slavery. For more info check this out. We have spent the last two days researching the country and still do not feel like we know even a fraction of what there is to know.

While there is way too much about Guyana to share with all of you we can share the logistics of Peace Corps Adventure. We will be going to Miami February 7, 2009. There we will meet the 22 group of Peace Corps volunteers to go to Guyana. In Miami we will also take care of any last minute paper work, medical requirements and get any needed vaccinations for our adventure. As a group we will board a plane to Guyana. We will spend the next 8 weeks in training as a group. We will learn the language (Creolese), culture, as well as different health and safety measures that will need to be followed. During our training we will be observed and evaluated by Peace Corps Guyana and will then graduate onto our official volunteer time.

Our volunteer time will consist of 24 months of service in a extremely rural setting, with no running water or electricity. This will most likely be in the interior savanna or northern rain forest regions where there are many small indigenous villages of 200-300 people. Alyssa's project will consist of basic classroom education (math, science, reading, etc.), community development and health education. Paul's projects will include health education and outreach in schools, clinics and with NGOs. These projects set up the perfect opportunity for us to work on separate things but also at times partner together to attempt to enrich a community.

There will be many more posts to come.

Please continue to pray for our process of getting ready to leave as well as the actual journey.

If we haven't seen you in awhile please, please, please contact us because things will get crazy soon and we want to make sure we hang out with all of you.

Entitlement

Posted by PaulQ |0 comments

The other day I was in the office getting ready for our midweek event when a student walked in to hang out before the night. He nonchalantly walked over to our candy grabbed something and begun eating it. He then opened the refrigerator, then the freezer, then the cabinets. He then found a bag of popcorn and put it in the microwave to begin popping it.

I had to say something. So I asked him what he was doing. "Getting a snack," he replied, as he went back to his task of meeting his "needs." I quickly removed the bag of popcorn from the microwave and threw the candy in the trash and told him that he can't just have things in the office and that he needs to ask for them. "Well, the other leaders always say that I can have things." Well first off I am not another leader and second I highly doubt that they told him he could just waltz into the office and have his way with any thing and everything there.

This event and a conversation I had with my friend Jonny Gas, has had me to thinking about the sense of entitlement in our society today. It led my students to just take things from the office, it led that guy this morning to cut me off on that wave, and ultimately it has led people to follow their own selfish interests (whether financially or socially). Everyone seems to believe that they are due theirs without contributing or putting in the work.

Im sure some of you out their believe it is a direct result of our political system. Maybe some of you feel that it is directly correlated with our lack of biblical truth. Maybe, as I believe, it is a direct result of parenting and the last half a century collapse of our family structure.

I want to hear from you. What are your thoughts on entitlement?

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Posted by PaulQ |1 comments

In May of this year I was required to write a research paper based off of what I felt was one of the greatest issues facing our world today. Barring over-population and consequently over-consumption (come on people, really you need to stop having so many babies, we dont have that much food),religious/political wars and global warming I decided to focus on our plastic garbage. Many of us have began following the "Green revolution" by using reusable plastic bags and water bottles, as well as limiting our single use plastic use. But many of us do not understand the complexities for why we limit those things other than it is good for our communities. My paper (if you wish to read it I can send it to you) focused on the finacial and environmental impact plastics have in hopes of bringing light to the issue of the longivity of plastic life. Part of my research focused on what is known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch (or gyre)".

This morning I was listening to NPR and they had researchers who have just returned from the garbage patch and were discussing their findings as well as solutions to limiting plastic waste. Listen to it (below).

Hopefully you will feel encouraged to change your lifestyle for the sake of our oceans.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/aug/31/scripps-scientists-discuss-expedition-great-pacifi/

Thomas Merton

Posted by PaulQ |1 comments

Earlier this year a good friend of mine gave me a copy of Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain. It is a remarkable autobiography about Merton's early travels through Europe and the U.S., and his eventual finding of God in the mists of a world war. After being baptised into the Catholic Church he shuns society and shrinks away to a Trappist monastery where he wrote this book.

Merton, an intensely brilliant and passionate man, spent the early part of his twenties attempting to find peace after realizing that nothing in his worldly life assuaged his growing restlessness. It is from this part of his life that I wish to share a quote with you. Merton, on a transatlantic trip from England to New York realizes (After reading Karl Marxs) that he wishes to change the world and create a class-less society. Thus he becomes a self-proclaimed Communist (in word not practice). I too have fantasized about this ideal and because of this feel like I can connect. It is a long quote but worth the read.

It is true that the materialistic society, the so-called culture that has evolved under the tender mercies of capitalism, has produced what seems to be the ultimate limit of this worldliness. And nowhere, except perhaps in the analogous society of pagan Rome, has there ever been such a flowering of cheap and petty and disgusting lusts and vanities as in the world of capitalism, where there is no evil that is not fostered and encouraged for the sake of making money. We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.

For there can be no doubt that modern society (this from the 1930's) is in a terrible condition, and that its wars and depressions and its slums and all its other evils are principally the fruits of an unjust social system, a system that must be reformed and purified or else replaced. However, if you are wrong, does that make me right? If you are bad, does that prove that I am good?

I don't know how anybody who pretends to know anything about history can be so naive as to suppose that after all these centuries of corrupt and imperfect social systems, there is eventually to evolve something perfect and pure out of them-the good out of the evil, the unchanging and stable and eternal out of the variable and mutable,m the just of of the unjust. But perhaps the revolution is a contradiction of evolution, and therefore means the replacement of the unjust by the just, of the evil by the good. And yet it is still just as naive to suppose that members of the same human species, without having changed anything but their minds, should suddenly turn around and produce anything but imperfection and, at best, the barest shadow of justice.

God Bless America

Posted by PaulQ |0 comments

Earlier this morning I went to a church where that ever so popular tag line was strewed across a screen in front of the stars and stripes dramatically waving in the wind. The image was meant to stir up a sense of belonging, remembrance and pride in out country. I'm sure it did. But something felt strange because directly next to the flag lay a cross.

This blogs purpose isn't to convince you to disown America and become a Communist. I don't not love my country, but when the love of a country becomes synonymous with the act of following Christ I believe there is a major disconnect. When the flag begins to fly higher than the cross there is a problem. Shane Claiborne writes in his book The Irresistible Revolution

My heart sank as I walked into the foyer and noticed something I had never seen before: the American flag standing prominently in front of the auditorium. And never before was I so heartbroken that the cross was missing...It is a dangerous day when we can take the cross out of the church more easily then the flag. No wonder it is hard for seekers to find God nowadays. It's difficult to know where Christianity ends and America begins. Our money says, "In God We Trust." God's name is on America's money, and America's flag is on God's Altars.

God has blessed America. I am remembered of that everyday that I get in my car to go to the grocery store that has seemingly endless supplies of food to put in my refrigerator that will hold more than I can eat in two weeks. When we put a bumper sticker proclaiming that God needs to bless our country we are essentially spitting on everything he has already done and forgetting God's children in other countries that are suffering endless amounts. So today I ask that you ask God to bless everyone.

Intro to the rants

Posted by PaulQ |2 comments

I thought it time to begin my own blog.

Many of you maybe familiar with the blog my wife and I share(whenrichterbecomesquinlivan.blogspot.com) which is dedicated to updates on the happenings of our family. This blog's sole purpose will be different in that it will (hopefully) allow me to write my thoughts, philosophies, frustrations and anything that I find interesting or important freely. While the other blog is truly something that allows our family and friends to continue to be involved in our life this blog will be, as the title suggests rants; Or snippets into my mind.

I like to think myself a realist, but have been called a cynic, or a pessimist. I write what I see or experience, sometime without consideration of some who are emotionally invested in a situation. I do not mention this because I lack faith in who I am, or who I have been created to be, but as a warning. Some of what I say may offend you. For that I apologize. I truly do not seek to offend, or write merely to "rock the boat" but to stir up thoughtful and authentic consideration; or as a friend recently mentioned, "to lift your blindfold."

I ask that as you read this blog, you attempt to clear your mind of any preconceptions or philosophies that you may have and thoughtfully assess my words. As my title quote mentions, I ask that you judge my rants based off of your own humble assessment of my thoughts.

As another request, I ask that you engage with me in this project. I am a full believer that a church community requires active involvement of all members. In order for that to exist a healthy, committed and authentic conversation needs to happen. This does not mean that you simply attack what I have to say with the intention of shifting my philosophies, but that you allow for dialog as a brother (or sister) in Christ. If you disagree with me give reason and I will respectfully respond.

Remember that Without Love We Perish

"Error never shows itself in its NAKED REALITY, in order not to be discovered. On the contrary, it dresses elegantly, so that the unwary maybe led to believe that it is more truthful than truth itself." - Irenaeus of Lyons