North Africa

I got an email yesterday telling me a Canadian team for North Africa STINT was a go next year. That means I and three other lovely girls are going to serve as missionaries in a beautiful country for about 10 months.

I am pretty mixed emotionally. I'm excited and honored like you wouldn't believe. To go to a country where most don't know who Jesus Christ is and be an ambassador for Him is amazing.
On the other hand I'm scared. Two things scare me. What if God shuts the door? and what if I can't handle it emotionally.

Today two guys (Eric and Ben from Western) came to York to interview some students, and they asked me about going to NA. As I talked, I started remembering why I wanted to go in the first place. I want to see lives changed, I want to see the world changed. I can get pretty abstract and distant from daily life sometimes. Not just in my ideas, but my emotions as well. (Many of you have suffered through a silent hang out time with Andrew.) But for me, it still comes down to the glory of God revealed through changed life. It breathes life into me, it breathes life into the world. That's essentially why I'm going to North Africa.

Anyhow, I'm excited and so you ought to congratulate me when you see me.

poolosophy - but it's useful

some quick thoughts on my thoughts as of late. I've been really pleased to have been learning about a major post-modern writer jacques derrida. one of the things he argues is that text (like what i'm writing right now) does not carry inherent meaning. when people read it, they take out their own interpretions, and thus the author can never be sure what her readers will come away with. this has been called the "death of authorship" by some, and it's pretty huge.

why you ask? author's write to communicate something. Karl Marx had a pretty clear vision of what he wanted to see happen in the world, and he wrote it down, assuming those who later read his work would understand his ideas. But looking at "A Communist Manifesto" through a post-modern perspective, people are given leeway towards what the "right" interpretation is. Whatever the author intended to communicate cannot be known.
This effects Christianity too, and not just through movements like the emergent church. it effects bible studies, when people come up with different interpretations, and assert the "truth" of both.

Ok, so now there's an even deeper problem i'll take the trouble to try and explain. derrida also
argues humans are separated from truth because... ok put you're thinking caps on... humans think in language, which is an external object which is internalized so you can what? so you can think, express yourself, be angry, fall in love.

ok, what's wrong with that?

Language is not human, yet your use it to define all your human thoughts. so really, you can only define yourself via something that is not of yourself. in fact, you (at least in this stage of life) cannot concieve of yourself without using language. because of this, derrida and many others claim humans are disconnected from themselves, and thus disconnected from knowledge that truly represents the world, and thus truth. post-modernists don't necessarily think there is no such thing as truth, just that we can never access it. exit absolute truth, enter pluralism.


well, school's out for now, but if you got questions, or want to change or add an idea, I warmly welcome it

my reading week so-far

I'm nearing the end of my reading week. York has the pleasure of a reading week un semaine earlier than most other campuses. For me, reading started
after my French exam last Friday, when my parents hijacked me from York for a family trip to Montreal. It was my uncle's 80th B-day. so we went to his "favourite" Chinese buffet, which was really just bad westernized Chinese food with Hawaiain decor (see pic -->)

So I got food poisoned, and spent my Saturday at Brad's (montreal
staff) empyting my body. (I think the human body's reaction to food poisoning is amazing. It empty's itself of absolutely everything, I couldn't even hold down water. Good for illustrating "purging.")

Anyhow, I think God poisoned me to get me to start seriously praying over what I should be doing next year. I had decided to go on STINT to North Africa, but I wasn't always very enthusiastic. I was also "waffling" (in Brad's words). Anyhow, I waffle no longer. I'm going to North Africa, and I intend on taking 3 girls, 2 guys with me. We're gonna help change the world.

So that's how I started my week. In the middle I went to Guelph for CAMPUS EXCHANGE. Yorkies travelled to the beautiful campus of Guelph to do some evangelism. The buildings are impressive, not just blocks of concrete like some at York. Also, they have greenhouses. Here's two of my favourite pics from the greenhouse:



Silas and I left some surprises for you :) He's a little more in cognito than I.

Happy Late Reading Weeks non-Yorkies!