{"id":3980,"date":"2015-02-12T17:09:36","date_gmt":"2015-02-12T17:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=3980"},"modified":"2015-02-12T17:09:36","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T17:09:36","slug":"the-starfish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-starfish\/","title":{"rendered":"The Starfish"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It would have been really easy to write this week’s blog about mission teams going into Haiti. Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy<\/em> is made for Haiti. In a land that has been deforested beyond measure, where people have suffered for centuries, where the environment has been all but depleted, it is easy to feel lost and without hope. Good intentions have gone awry. Thousands of relief workers brought an abundance of goods following the massive 2010 earthquake and subsequent catastrophic hurricanes, but they soon left after meeting only the immediate needs. They focused on immediate survival with no afterthought to sustainability. As the authors attributed to Al Gore, we are a culture of distractions, and the next shiny objector celebrity drama, or natural disaster, took the workers, news crews, and potential leadership away.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

This book is made for mission teams going to Haiti. I spent years with numerous teams from all over the USA, and they all had one thing in common. Within 48 hours of landing in Haiti, at least one mission team member will invariably ask, \u201cIs what we\u2019re doing even making a difference? Why are we here? There\u2019s too much need. Are we even making a dent in the need?\u201d They are overwhelmed. The colors, the smells, the sights and the sounds overrun their senses and emotions. Their hearts are heavy by the profuse poverty. They question if they should return to work in the same community and help the Haitians with various needs. Or maybe they should continue installing as many clean water systems in as many communities as possible. And many of them simply stop and never come back again. But some listen. Some listen to their hearts and listen to the thankful voices of hope of those they are serving. As the authors Macy and Johnson wrote, \u201cActive hope does not require optimism; we can apply it even in areas where we feel hopeless. The guiding impetus is intention; we choose what we aim to bring about, act for, or express. Rather than weighing our chances and preceding only when we feel hopeful, we focus our intention and let it be our guide.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

It would be easy to write this week\u2019s blog about my \u201cgo-to\u201d story for mission teams in Haiti. I often find myself listening for hours as team members process their feelings, and in the end, though it may sound trite, I often tell the story of the starfish. You know the story:<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, there was an old man who\u00a0used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach every morning before he began his work. Early one morning,\u00a0he was walking along the shore after a\u00a0big storm had passed and found the\u00a0vast\u00a0beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see, stretching in both directions.\u00a0Off in the distance,\u00a0the old man\u00a0noticed a small boy approaching.\u00a0 As the boy walked, he paused every so often\u00a0and as he grew closer, the man could see that\u00a0he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea.\u00a0\u00a0The boy came closer still and the man called out,\u00a0\u201cGood morning! \u00a0May I ask what it is that you are doing?\u201d The young boy paused, looked up, and replied \u201cThrowing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can\u2019t return to the sea by themselves,\u201d the youth replied. \u201cWhen the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.\u201d The old man replied, \u201cBut there must be tens of\u00a0thousands of\u00a0starfish on this beach. I\u2019m afraid you won\u2019t really be able to make\u00a0much of a difference.\u201d The\u00a0boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, \u201cIt made a difference to that one!\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Hearing that story inspires intentional hope and gratitude. As this week’s authors wrote, when our hearts come from a place of gratitude, we tend to honor pain in the world. Then seeing with new eyes, we go forth with hope to make a difference.[4]<\/a> This is an amazing cycle. When we make a difference, when a life is saved through clean water or the ability to turn on a light bulb and read a book at night, the cycle begins again. Through the changed life, gratitude results. \u201cWhen we come from gratitude, we become more present to the wonder of being alive in this amazing living world, to the many gifts we receive, to the beauty we appreciate.\u201d[5]<\/a> I have seen it happen. A teenage boy on the brink of despair witnesses a team installing a clean water system. He drinks the water, hears the story of Jesus being the Living Water for our bodies and souls. He partakes in fellowship with the team, and he stays up at night reading his new Bible by the light he can now turn on. He sees with new eyes, not only because of the light from the light bulb, but because of the new life he has been given and the example set by his new friends from America. He studies to learn and to give himself a chance to not only survive to the next day but to make a difference in the life of his community. And when the team returns, they find him working in the school, teaching the younger children to read. This is a cycle of hope, and if we become distressed and overwhelmed by the work to be done, we will never have the chance to change the life of the person sitting in front of us.<\/p>\n

As you all could have figured out by now, I am the eternal optimist. I live by the starfish story. But, active hope goes beyond optimism, and in fact can flourish without optimism. Active, intentional hope and gratitude should include optimism where possible, but must also encompass pain and empathy, and, at times, even an acknowledgment of hopelessness. Choosing to be intentional and remaining focused on those intentions as we act, rather than basing our choices on our chances of success or failure, frees us from limitations in our giving and opens the door for deeper and more meaningful mission opportunities and impacts.<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy<\/em> (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2012), 25.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 3.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Adapted from The Star Thrower<\/span><\/em><\/a>, <\/em>by Loren Eiseley.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Macy & Johnstone, 37.<\/p>\n

[5] Ibid., 38.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It would have been really easy to write this week’s blog about mission teams going into Haiti. Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy is made for Haiti. In a land that has been deforested beyond measure, where people have suffered for centuries, where the environment has been all but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,177,481,176],"class_list":["post-3980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-hope","tag-lgp4-2","tag-macyjohnstone","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3984,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980\/revisions\/3984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}