Eyes Wide Open

I'm currently reading a book called "Serving with Eyes Wide Open: Doing Short Term Missions with Cultural Intelligence." This reading is in preparation for my trip out West to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and is meant to help frame the experience in a meaningful way. I planned on just skimming the book and faking my way through the question on the application, but I started reading and I am intrigued by the content. It talks a lot about shedding off the "The world is America and mine for the taking" mindset. Very cool.

I just wish that they wrote books to prepare you for everything in life.

Like how do you react when your co-worker is talking about "slitting b-tches necks" and infusing every sentence with so many "f-cks" that you can barely discern what it is he is trying to articulate?

How do you talk to someone who only wants to drink his life away?

How do you talk to someone who objectifies women?

How do you talk to someone who mocks people with retardation?

I mean, I know that sometimes you have to come down off your high horse...you have to leave all the shine and pristine world of ideas, but how do you interact with someone who thinks radically different than you do?

Or are they really that different? Maybe you have just become so well socialized and well-kempt that you don't send out such barbaric utterances and underdeveloped conceptualizations.

But then again, a Christianity is sometimes like putting a square peg in a round hole. The Gospel always opposes this wretched world.

Alas, what am I to do?

Melodrama!

All I am saying is that sometimes Krogers feels like a whole 'notha culture.