Two days at once.

Boatswain’s Log November 14^th and 13^th.  

Yesterday will be in summary form. I sowed bainica. The whole day. The word definitely has negative connotations now if it didn’t before. To sow bainica (to plant a seed) you get a stick, make a hole, and put 3 seeds in it. Easy enough, HOWEVER…you plant as many of these holes as there are seeds. That means at least 6 hours of this. Also, the seeds have a poisonous substance on them which isn’t good for your health. Sigh. It was really hot out that day and we were out there all day. I drank 4 nalgene bottles of water and got owned.

 

Then I went to a concert in a nearby town. A Honduran group was performing in a church. They were good. Some mediocre talent and/or praise and worship bands opened for them. I was tired, so during the altar call I fell asleep. It happens when I use the “I am praying” stance to avoid praising any more, I really can’t take more than a few songs. I felt really out of place with the youth there. I felt more like visiting gringo than I have in a long time and the lack of people who are engaging in conversation here has not helped my spoken Spanish, plus I was tired. The people I was with kept looking at me as though I was doing something strange. Maybe that was just being me.

 

It really made me wonder though. I am really picky about my churches. It took me a long time to find a church I wanted to keep going to in Seattle. 3 years of half-assed looking around. I find myself thinking too much in other churches. Things about how I hate being forced to pray for stuff or how much I dislike having to “levantar” my hands all the time. I also am overly analytical during worship songs and find myself unable/unwilling to sing things that aren’t true or are just simply tacky and stupid. Thus, I can actually enjoy a service in a select few churches.

 

Today was the usual day, except that instead of sowing more bainica…we burned stuff. It is what I understand to be “slash and burn” farming. A practice that the videos about the rain forest I watched in school back in the day called harmful. I wonder why. Maybe it’s the burning piles of fumigated grass…So yeah, I used a machete and a stick of sorts to gather grass and put it in fire. I also messed with a termite nest and ate 2 coconuts right off the tree. Good stuff. I did that the whole day, until after dinner when I went over to Heyner/Noemy/Maria Celeste’s house to hang out while culto de abuelos was going on at my house. It was nice to spend time with them. Maria Celeste is a bright little girl who is fussier than all get out. That about brings us up to now.

 

I had an interesting/hellish few days in my mind. I prayed a lot. Which is the best thing to do when I am doing mind-numbing brute labor for entire days at a time. Besides the prayer though I went through several phases multiple times.

 

1) The hating everything stage. It is here that everything sucks a whole lot.

2) The being irritated with Yeiner as an 11 year old stage. He is obnoxious.

3) The praying stage.

4) The mental silence by not thinking and just doing stuff stage.

5) The wanting to go home stage (which is happening the whole time). It is this stage where I remind myself how many days there are and ask God to help the days go faster.

6) The extreme irritation at LASP phase and wondering about God’s purposes stage. Did God send me here or did LASP just decide to put me here? If it was God then what am I supposed to learn? If it was LASP then how do I describe my extreme displeasure at being here while maintaining full “attitude” points when they come on Monday?

 

Then today I entered a new and more irritating phase than any other. It’s called the “Why do we give the bible authority stage?” I wrassled with this one for a while. I have to read this book called “Is religion killing us?” It is an okay book that could be more balanced. As it is, it is saying without significant evidence lots of statements of the sort that “There’s lots of scholarship that supports Christ being just a man.” And other things that lack any sorts of convincing points. The author basically is pushing for a selective view of the bible in which we don’t let any text be sacred, but just take what we want. See, but that doesn’t leave us with much. Then there isn’t anything that is valid or true, when everything is true…nothing is (or rather nothing carries the weight of being true). Anyhow, most of his arguments are bunk. The only two things that he got me to do is wonder about the violence of God traditions in the bible. The OT’s description of God is a rather violent one. And ask myself the question of why we give the bible authority.

 

I thought about it for awhile. It was really frustrating. I was offended that LASP would give me a book like that and put me in a place where I can’t ask that question to the people I am around. I am a verbal processor working on a farm where people mumble, don’t talk, are 11, or just don’t seem to the sort of people you ask that question to. Hence, I am a frustrated man. I am going to try and process a bit here. It may be rough, don’t fret though.

 

Well, let’s see. We give the bible authority because…I don’t have a great answer that exists in a single sentence. This is how my chain of thought goes. Jesus existed. Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected as the incarnation of God. Jesus used the OT. Therefore OT is good to go. To get to that point I suppose that I have to believe the new testament, which is to say that I believe what the original followers of Christ said as true after his death, which is that He rose from the dead after being crucified. Which I do. Then I trust the Holy Spirit to have His hand in putting the actual bible I read together. I am not worried about people fiddling with it or making it somehow unreal, because the things it says are sufficiently powerful to make everyone feel uncomfortable…which is how I think God should and does make us feel. That doesn’t make it sound like I am having any real issues, and I suppose that I probably won’t. Scriptural authority does really come down to faith. In God, but also in the apostles. Do I believe Paul/Peter/the rest’s witness about the risen Lord? Am I willing to take the words of people who lived almost two thousand years ago on faith and believe that they saw what they saw? Yes. I suppose I am.

 

Sometimes I wonder though. Do I say yes because I am afraid or unable to say no? If I am afraid to say no then it means that I want to say it but can’t for some stupid reason. If I am unable it means that it would be an untruth, something like telling you that I didn’t clog a toilet earlier today when in fact I did. So let’s play a game. Take out all of the things that would affect my answer apart from me. In this game I exist and no one else’s input matters. Then I ask myself questions. Do I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead? Just now I found a scary silence. It wasn’t a no, but more of a “I’m not sure right now.” Yet, if someone came into my room and put a gun to my head and asked me on pain of death what I believed I would say yes that I did believe in Christ’s resurrection . If that person asked why…I would have no idea. I guess some things you just roll with.

 

This is me processing. For those of you who care deeply about me, know that I haven’t renounced my faith. I am just asking myself hard questions and being real with the answers.