social work
"We exercise the skills and talents God has given us. We have the opportunity to put His commandments and His love into action in a setting where, for the most part, He is not recognized or known. We face new situations every day that challenge our Christian values, our self-control, our creativity, and our compassion; and out of the challenges we grow stronger and more mature "
I've had that quote on my blog for almost four years now. I don't remember where I read it or why I decided to put it up. All I know is that when I read it, I liked it.
About the same time that I put that quote on my blog I was deciding to major in social work for my college applications. At that time I had just realized what social work was and I knew that I wanted to help people.
"I want to help people" was the answer that I gave to people who were interested in knowing why I wanted to major in social work. A part of answering in that manner was because I didn't truly know the reason why I wanted to be a social worker.
Throughout the process of going through the motions of college, the real reason for partnering in social work slowly emerged. Going on missions trips to Mexico and Atlanta were the sparks that led to my major decision. In retrospect there was a sense of disatisfaction with coming home after a mission trip where I actively served God each day by serving others, to life as a comfy kid in the suburbs that would live incarnationally if the opportunity arose.
As I consider my future in child welfare and child protection in the year to come, the quote above sums up really nicely all my reasons for doing it. I believe that God has given me certain skills and talents that kind of fit social work. The opportunity has come for me to put those skills and talents in a setting where God is definitely not recognized or known. Since I've been interning in a social work setting, my Christian values, my self control, my creativity, and my compassion have been challenged and tested everyday. And I sure hope that being able to live that experience everyday will grow me into a stronger and more mature follower of Christ.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Friday, November 23, 2007
I read this from urbana.org and was moved. Moved in the sense that I want to do something. I felt like moving beyond the safety of oblivion about what happens in the world. Maybe these poems will do that for you.
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The Zion Project
by Sarita Hartz
This is a story of a girl child soldier in Uganda.
What follows is mine.
Her eyes haunt me still.
The hopelessness of them was hard to bear
as she told me what happened to her.
There were gaps and stops. Hesitations where I knew
she was thinking, remembering, like fingering a scar
that was too painful to touch still.
The stories. So many of them, the same:
They came.
In the night. Ripped me from my parents'
arms. Killed them. Then and there.
Made me walk. Miles.
No water, only rain. If lucky.
I begged him to pee in a cup for me.
We ate grass like cows.
They gave me to an old man.
They made me kill my best friend.
They said they would kill me.
My baby is all I have now. My only family.
I left him in the garden once with friends…
I came back and they were beating him
calling him the son of Kony.
They called us “killers.”
Sometimes, sometimes I think of going
back to the bush.
At least there, there, I was accepted.
If only I could have
a place of my own.
Coming Home
The sun sets a stream of red over a long horizon above the deserts of Sudan. As I fly over towards Uganda, I feel my heart sense that I am coming closer to home. From the air there is no landscape just the black shape like a backbone rising out of the African dust. This is Africa. A strong back lit up by the sun. Always breathing, always rising.
She rises still.
I do not know what will become of me here, only that I am drawn here as the wild geese to a warmer spring, the trout who swim upstream, and the wolf to the studded moonlit darkness. There will be many failures but maybe there will be one life utterly transformed, catapulted into redemption. I used to think that I could bring something, that I could save the many, but I think more now that this is about God doing something in me.
I think of what Lilla Watson said: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time... But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
Some say God left Africa a long time ago. The tribal wars clash on, the governments steal and crack the backs of children in mines for money they will never see, Aids spreads, malaria consumes, and girl child soldiers seem beyond repair. But I find God in Africa - in the midst of the most destitute of places, in the least ones whose lives have been given up on, in tiny acts of grace and raw human need. He is close to the poor. His world order is very different from our own.
Here is where revolution will not come through the wise or powerful, but through the children who stretch their arms to the sky. And I realized that all I can give is Him through love that never says enough is enough but cracks on through the middle of the most painful places. It’s not that they need Him more than we do, but it is because He is at home here, He flourishes here, He is making a way because he is wanted. Here we live close to our desire. Close to want for more in life and close to disappointment. We befriend the lack of things meeting up to our expectations. We sleep with dreams of possibility in our heads.
It is never as we think it should be. It is harder than we thought it would be. But here we are being born and baptized over again with light and with fire.
There is a war in Northern Uganda that has been going on for 21 years. Children are abducted to fight as soldiers with the rebel army. They are often forced to kill family members and friends. For more info on the crisis and how you can help in the current peace talks visit: http://www.resolveuganda.org/.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The Zion Project
by Sarita Hartz
This is a story of a girl child soldier in Uganda.
What follows is mine.
Her eyes haunt me still.
The hopelessness of them was hard to bear
as she told me what happened to her.
There were gaps and stops. Hesitations where I knew
she was thinking, remembering, like fingering a scar
that was too painful to touch still.
The stories. So many of them, the same:
They came.
In the night. Ripped me from my parents'
arms. Killed them. Then and there.
Made me walk. Miles.
No water, only rain. If lucky.
I begged him to pee in a cup for me.
We ate grass like cows.
They gave me to an old man.
They made me kill my best friend.
They said they would kill me.
My baby is all I have now. My only family.
I left him in the garden once with friends…
I came back and they were beating him
calling him the son of Kony.
They called us “killers.”
Sometimes, sometimes I think of going
back to the bush.
At least there, there, I was accepted.
If only I could have
a place of my own.
Coming Home
The sun sets a stream of red over a long horizon above the deserts of Sudan. As I fly over towards Uganda, I feel my heart sense that I am coming closer to home. From the air there is no landscape just the black shape like a backbone rising out of the African dust. This is Africa. A strong back lit up by the sun. Always breathing, always rising.
She rises still.
I do not know what will become of me here, only that I am drawn here as the wild geese to a warmer spring, the trout who swim upstream, and the wolf to the studded moonlit darkness. There will be many failures but maybe there will be one life utterly transformed, catapulted into redemption. I used to think that I could bring something, that I could save the many, but I think more now that this is about God doing something in me.
I think of what Lilla Watson said: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time... But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
Some say God left Africa a long time ago. The tribal wars clash on, the governments steal and crack the backs of children in mines for money they will never see, Aids spreads, malaria consumes, and girl child soldiers seem beyond repair. But I find God in Africa - in the midst of the most destitute of places, in the least ones whose lives have been given up on, in tiny acts of grace and raw human need. He is close to the poor. His world order is very different from our own.
Here is where revolution will not come through the wise or powerful, but through the children who stretch their arms to the sky. And I realized that all I can give is Him through love that never says enough is enough but cracks on through the middle of the most painful places. It’s not that they need Him more than we do, but it is because He is at home here, He flourishes here, He is making a way because he is wanted. Here we live close to our desire. Close to want for more in life and close to disappointment. We befriend the lack of things meeting up to our expectations. We sleep with dreams of possibility in our heads.
It is never as we think it should be. It is harder than we thought it would be. But here we are being born and baptized over again with light and with fire.
There is a war in Northern Uganda that has been going on for 21 years. Children are abducted to fight as soldiers with the rebel army. They are often forced to kill family members and friends. For more info on the crisis and how you can help in the current peace talks visit: http://www.resolveuganda.org/.