What a day!!

Phew! It's 9:30 pm and I'm just now sitting down! What a day!

Today, I met with the director of the Seminar Program at San Pedro High School. I awoke at around 6:30 am, showered, caught a cab, and headed for Comacho Catholic Church where I will hitch a ride with one of the other teachers. I arrived about 10 minutes late due to traffic issues, and found out my ride was gone!

So, I had somebody look up the directions to the High School on Google Earth. For those of you who are in the US, the school is very hard to get to. Not only with directions, but you have to go through 3 security gates, 3 security gates that do not allow taxi's in. I took a deep breath, grabbed a muffin, and tried to find a cab that would go along with me on this adventure.

The first cab laughed at me and drove away. The second cab driver was very young, maybe 20, and probably more willing to go along for an adventure. So we negotiated the price (roughly $2.50 for a 15-20 min ride) and headed out. We got lost a few times, but luckily there was somebody willing to point us in the right direction. With a little gringo negotiation at the security gates, we were able to pass without too much harrassment. When we finally got to the high school, which is at the top of a hill, I decided this guy earned a tip. So I gave him the tip and headed into the school.

Upon arriving at the school, I met with the director and we mapped out the 4 Seminars I'll be teaching over the next year:

• Making Real World Decisions in Times of Economic Crisis
• The History of Economic Development
• The North American Free Trade Act: Its affect on American, Canadian, and Mexican Cultures
• Render unto Ceasar: Cultural Influences on Voting and Politicians in the United States

I had other names for these classes, but after consulting with a few high school students, we selected names that we easier for them to understand, as well as better explain the courses...

Later I'll update you on the mess I found at the office when I returned...let's just say our website crashed and the company that provides the server didn't want to help and Ryan had to get pissed...

The Beach

A guy whiter than me!

Love Part 4

Finally, there is the equally mind-boggling mystery of the intrinsic paradox of agape: somehow in agape you give yourself away, not just your time or work or possessions or even your body. You put yourself in your own hands and hand it over to another. And when you do this unthinkable thing, another unthinkable thing happens: you find yourself in losing yourself. You begin to be when you give yourself away. You find that a new and more real self has somehow been given to you. When you are a donor you mysteriously find yourself a recipient-of the very gift you gave away.

There is more: nothing else is really yours. Your health, your works, your intelligence, your possessions-these are not what they seem. They are all hostage to fortune, on loan, insubstantial. You discover that when you learn who God is. Face to face with God in prayer, not just a proper concept of God, you find that you are nothing. All the saints say this: you are nothing. The closer you get to God the more you see this, the more you shrink in size. If you scorn God, you think you're a big shot, a cannonball; if you know God, you know you're not even buckshot. Those who scorn God think they're number one. Those who have the popular idea of God think they're "good people". Those who have a merely mental orthodoxy know they're real but finite creatures, made in God's image but flawed by sin. Those who really begin to pray find that compared with God they are motes of dust in the sun. Finally, the saints say they are nothing. Or else (Saint Paul's words) "the chief of sinners". Sinners think they're saints and saints think they're sinners.

Who's right? How shall we evaluate this insight? Unless God is the Father of lies (the ultimate blasphemy), the saints are right. Unless the closer you get to God the wronger you are about yourself, the five groups in the preceding paragraph (from scorners to saints) form a hierarchy of insight. Nothing is ours by nature. Our very existence is sheer gift. Think for a moment about the fact that you were created, made out of nothing. If a sculptor gives a block of marble the gift of a fine shape, the shape is a gift, but the marble's existence is not. That is the marble's own. But nothing is our own because we were made out of nothing. Our very existence is a gift from God to no one, for we were not there before he created us. There is no receiver of the gift distinct from the gift itself. We are God's gifts.

So the saints are right. If I am nothing, nothing that is mine is anything. Nothing is mine by nature. But one thing is mine by my free choice: the self I give away in love. That is the thing even God cannot do for me. It is my choice. Everything I say is mine is not. But everything I say is yours is mine. C. S. Lewis, asked which of his many library books he thought he would have in heaven, replied, "Only the ones I gave away on earth and never got back". The same is true of our very self. It is like a ball in a game of catch: throw it and it will come back to you; hold onto it and that ends the game.