R-E-S-P-E-C-T

This is why I avoid campus. Sure, it's a beautiful campus and I usually run into some friendly faces. But sometimes, honestly, I'm embarrased to admit I am even a college student.

You, students across from me in the lower hyphen, I am talking about you. You and your video game scores, your "that's what she said" jokes, your loud obnoxious conversations about your bra sizes and how dumb your boyfriends are. Is that not your boyfriend sitting right next to you? Oh, it is? Huh. Interesting. Oh wait, you're not freshmen? You're seniors? I'm sorry. My bad. Couldn't tell.

I'm irritated. Not just because this particular group is loud and obnoxious and I have to sit at this census table for the next three hours, but because this group is just one example of self-centered, immature, stereotypical college students.

Bear with me while I take what may seem like a large leap and say abuse. Opression. Disrespect and broken people. Yes I just walked through the "Tunnel of Oppression" as a part of WSU's mulitcultural week, yes I just got out of spending half the morning talking about discrimination, abuse and therapy in seminar, I go to alot of conferences about violence, abuse, and exploitation and yes I am a bleeding heart liberal social worker! I'm proud of it. So maybe I'm a little over-sensitive, but it's becoming painfully aware that there isn't a huge gap between the horrors of "domestic abuse", the violence you're turning into a game on your Xbox, and the way a lot of people treat those they call friends. It's a slippery slope, at best.

My mind is a million different places today but I will try to channel this frustration into some sort of watered-down rant from the mind dump I typed up (and my computer deleted before I could post) yesterday afternoon.

I started reading For Women Only Thursday night. While it looks suspiciously like another Christian relationship book (Please God, no!), it started out fairly interesting. It's supposed to be the result of hundreds or thousands of surveys on the way men view life, relationships, and (most interesting!) perceive what women are saying. I had heard a lot of it before, but the other night it forced me to look at the way I talk to, and about, the guys in my life. Even the way I interact with my guy friends or the men at work. Obviously it was a lot about respect, and it challenged me to think about how much I respect, or show respect, to both men and women in my life. I complain about my friends when they do stupid things, I yell at the idiot (to myself) in traffic, I judge you for the uneducated things you say, I give my friends a hard time about any random situation because it's all in good fun. But this week I have become so incredibly frusterated with the way people treat other people - and I'm no longer talking about extreme cases of violence or abuse. I'm talking about me and my relationships. Even after I typed up this rant yesterday about how we all need to be more respectful and encouraging and sensitive, I went home and immediately found myself complaining to my best friend about how stupid and irritating people were.

It's like I don't even listen to myself talk when I go off about how you should be more understanding.

I've decided to take it as a challenge. I can't have a clean conscience standing up for human rights and fighting domestic abuse when my words (or thoughts) are nearly as hurtful. Matthew 5:21 puts it pretty clear as it says we commit murder in our hearts when we hate our brother. Ouch. By judging others, putting people down, even teasing our friends or being rude to someone who treats us badly first, we're creating an toxic environment. We're setting bad examples and we're not even standing up for the basic value of another human being.

I have a hard time showing respect when people are just plain stupid. But I'm gonna try.

Didn't see that coming

I have plans. I have a lot of plans, actually, and some of them are quite opposite of eachother. I'm fairly convinced I'm going to carry out most, if not all, of these plans even through the contradictions. I was feeling pretty content and excited about the future course for my life.

Then I'm pretty sure God laughed in my face.

Again.

This may or may not ammount to anything, and equally, it may not change anything. But here's Sarah's newest option: Cambodia.

Yes, it's way off in Southeast Asia. No, I've never even considered Cambodia before. I've never thought about Cambodia before. I don't speak Khmer (pronounced kuh-my) but apparently I'm learning it now. By learning it now we mean that I know three words and I can't keep them straight. Spoken Khmer, I've been told, is fairly simple to learn. You don't have to congegate verbs (which killed me in Spanish. And French.) and the grammer is pretty straight-forward. The written language, however, has four lines to every letter. In a way they kind of stack four letters on top of eachother for each letter, and then each main letter can have any variation to the three above or below it.

Yeah....... that's kind of what I said.

Anyway. Why Cambodia, you ask? Good question.
There is a man in Cambodia who has started an orphanage for children living on the street. I don't know much about the country yet, but it went through a terrible civil war when the Khmer Rouge took over in the 70's. It destroyed the country and killed so much of the population, forcing many families to labor camps, then Refugee camps, then various other countries around the globe. It's been awhile since the war, but the government is still corrupt. The orphanage gets no government assistance or any other kind of assistance, for that matter. The kids are taught a trade and sell the goods they make and with the money they are able to buy some basic food. It's nothing fancy but it's the best this man can do in caring for these kids who have no one.

Enter, two social workers who love to travel and take on a challenge. My supervisor happens to be related to this man who runs the orphanage. She and I have bonded quite a bit this semester and share a passion for missions, social justice, administration, and people. She wants to go back in December for the first time in 31 years. This is far from finalized, but we're dreaming big here. We started talking about the possibility of making this orphanage a non-profit organization. She would love the company and support while she travels.

What more do I need to hear?

A Lesson in Power

Draining.

That's the best way to describe my day. Good, full, interesting.... draining.

I was sitting in the backseat on a way to a meeting at the hospital with two colleagues of mine, both immigrants working in the professional world. Both educated, smart women. The conversation started with buying used cars and quickly turned into a conversation about racism. Both of these women who I have come to know and love this semester had numerous stories of blatant racism when buying cars, renting apartments, and reporting vandalism to the police. I was enfuriated. I was also silenced. What can you say when you, as a member of one of the most privileged classes in the world, are faced with stories like these? Sure, I was empathetic, I was on their side, but I couldn't do anything.

I've taken race relations and power & privilege classes; I've heard these types of stories. They've always made me mad, but now it's my friends we're talking about. And it's not okay. I may be in one of the groups of "power" as a middle class white American, but I felt powerless today listening to these women share their experiences. They've lived through war, communism, horror, refugee camps, and now as citizens in America they are still discriminated against.

"They think I'm stupid just because I'm an immigrant."

It breaks my heart. It drives me to action. I long for a time when social justice is not a noun, but a verb.

Images of our Lives

I took a few days off last week to go to Cornerstone's annual conference on domestic violence and sexual abuse. While there are many, many aspects of violence, abuse and sexuality I would love to share with you, my friend and fellow social worker Nikki summed one point up really well. I saw a film called "Killing us Softly" in a Women's and Gender study class a couple years ago, and it focused on how images of women and sex are used in advertising all kinds of items. Sex sells, but at what price? Check out Nikki's blog here: it will open your eyes to a whole new world of twisted advertising influencing our society.

How's that for a teaser?

Wandering

I apparently have taken up what seems to be permanent residence on Memory Lane. You know the one, somewhere
between Regret and Hope.

I would draw you a map if I knew the way out.