This is a piece submitted by a new guest writer, my dad Ron Kephart.  I was inspired when he told me this story, and asked if he would write about it for us.  The opportunity for transformation has never passed.

I don’t do coincidence, but if I did, Three Cups of Tea, and the latest humanitarian tragedy in Pakistan would be high on the list.  The book, a story of American Greg Mortenson and his efforts at building schools – including those that educated girls – in the most remote parts of the high country in the Northwest Frontier Provinces of  Pakistan, is a tale of charity whose recipients just happened to be Muslim.  It also takes place in some areas recently struck by the most devastating flooding in living memory.  Please keep these people in your prayers.

Villagers use tractors and trucks to cross flood waters in Pakistan's Muzaffargarh district of Punjab province on Monday. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)

Mortenson, the son of Lutheran missionaries serving in Africa, is a nurse by training, but an Alpinist
by desire. The story begins with his failed attempt to summit K-2 in 1993, his journey back down the mountain, being separated from his climbing party and wandering into a remote Balti village. The villagers cared for him; helping him to regain his strength, and allowing him to become acquainted with their ways.  Before leaving the village, he found that children met outdoors, without a teacher doing lessons with sticks in the dirt.  He vowed that he would build a school as repayment for the care & kindness they had shared with him.

During the time I was reading this fascinating story a young man came to my home church – a missionary who works among Muslims in the Middle East in an area so sensitive that he would not give out his location (even the country) to those in attendance.  The following week, as our Sunday school class discussed what we had heard, a fellow classmate expressed a teaching of Jesus that he held to strongly:  You’re either for Jesus or against him.  Unable to deny this, I wondered why Jesus bothered to teach about loving our neighbors and our enemies?  As I listened to this young missionary speak of his efforts amid Islam, and continued to reflect over then next few days, I personally realized that to “be with Jesus”,  meant that He intended for me to love Muslims also. This realization is perhaps not earth-shattering to you, but to me it was a giant step.  Again, I was in the process of reading the tale of fighting terror by building schools, at the same time I got to hear this missionary speak – coincidence?  Non-existent.

You see, I am a former hardliner, with a once hard heart concerning those things.  I began reading this book out of a fondness for big stone mountains.  Along the way I developed a sense for the problems facing people in under developed areas of the world and finished this book with a greater understanding of what one person can do, and the role of Jesus in today’s world of conflict.

As I concluded the book and began writing this piece, flooding in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier had begun.  As I worked to use the lessons of the book, the young missionary and my own personal feelings, the flooding has moved further downstream and worsened. I am haunted by my own experiences with flooding, the coincidental timeliness of all these events, and the never ending need for mankind to help mankind. Love your neighbor as yourself, help someone today.  Please pray for the people of flooded Pakistan!

Mimi and I returned from Colombia a little over a week ago.  What an adventure!  Through the logistics of traveling on someone else’s time and with a large group, we managed to form new relationships, put human faces on known facts, and step out of our comfort zones and into the complicity our country’s violent military system.

The subject matter of this trip focused on the Defense Cooperation Agreement signed by the Presidents of Colombia and the United States last fall.  This agreement formalizes US Military access to the six bases where it already operates, and a 7th, the centrally located Palanquero Air Base.  Critics of this agreement argue the ill effects of increased or formalized US Military presence on Colombian sovereignty, relationships with other countries in the region, and environmental, economic and social impacts on communities surrounding the bases.

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Tomorrow Emily Kephart and I are heading to Colombia as part of Shalom House’s participation in a learning delegation led by Witness for Peace.  Back in the fall, the U.S. government signed an agreement with the Colombia government for the Pentagon to lease 7 military bases in Colombia.  After 10 years of funding Plan Colombia to the tune of over $7 billion in the attempt to fight the drug war and the global war on terror, we’re going to find out what this increase in U.S. presence is all about.   What does it mean for the people who live near the bases?  Does it have to do with protecting U.S. trade interests by military force?  Is it to continue fighting drugs on the supply side of things?

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Learning Delegation to Colombia from Shalom House on Vimeo.

Elizabeth Wotring moved into Shalom House in April.  She has blessed our community with a deep ability to listen & care for those around her.  She’s also brings invaluable skills in graphic & interior design.  We’re so glad she’s taken the plunge and joined us.  Here’s more about Elizabeth in her own words.

I’m not a liberal activist (yet). I don’t have a background sprinkled with peace marches, non-violent protests, or recognitions of great events of peace.  I consider myself normal. I come from a tight family unit in a small town working hard to make things better for the next generation. I’m like you. I know God has called me to follow Him and I want to take His calling seriously. I was just like you, but now I have made a decision that changes things. I have committed myself to making peace; I am trying to understand what that means and am challenging my indifference.

Why?

For me God is real. I believe he has called us to live in peace with our fellow man. I want to be obedient and live a life of submission to His love. I’m not so idealistic to think that we could transform this world into a utopian Garden of Eden, or even eradicate war or hunger. I know I’m capable of doing a lot of harm and wrong. What if I tried to do good and peaceful things instead?

I’m in a time when I find the complexity of the world’s ills to be more disabling than I like to admit. I know that I’m not alone in this. Cell meetings, peace talks, or any spontaneous conversation with a group of peace and justice-minded people can quickly digress into an airing-of-grievances session, where people of similar perspective affirm each others’ legitimate and well-informed frustrations at the oil spill, the Israel/flotilla situation, the military industrial complex, etc.

I think these type of conversations can be therapeutic in a way, as we affirm each other in the pain that we feel and the frustration over the limited progress of the justice we are fighting for. It’s good to be angry, and it’s good to not feel alone in this. But many of these problems are so complex and systematic that we stop there, overwhelmed. When it’s time to talk about potential responses and the hope for change, we aren’t sure what to say because we feel lost and powerless. I can’t say how many conversations I’ve left filled with righteous anger, but even more frustrated and discouraged than before.

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Circle of Hope and Shalom House invite you to a free documentary screening:

I’ve been thinking a little bit about the scope of things recently.  The question of large-scale or small-scale,  macro or micro, individual or systemic change has been a continual one for me over the past several years.  The tide has ebbed and flowed.  My heart-strings are tugged on by the individual and the specific, and my passions are set aflame by the vast possibilities of the communal, universal, and pervasive. 

Where is the balance between these two? At one of Circle of Hope’s Public Meetings this week Joshua Grace addressed this very subject.  He called up some space and time comparisons to remind us of how truly vast our world is compared to that of our ancestors, and of how much change we expect to affect.  It is no wonder that sometimes we get lost in our grandiose aspirations.  However, sharing your granola with your housemate can be as transformational as the work of ending world hunger; sharing your money with your neighbors can be as empowering as erasing third-world debt.

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So many good things happened on Monday night at the Shalom House festival.  If you missed it, we’ll relive some of it here on the blog.

With our theme of Peacemaking as Vocation, our friend and fellow church community member, Mary Ward-Bucher candidly and humorously shared with us “My Peacemaking Story (So far).”

We gave out our first-ever Shalom House Peacemaker Awards to Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Greg Mortens0n &  the Central Asia Institute.

And To local Philadelphians,  Ann Guise & The Bright Lights Initiative, who won over the audience with their story.  Here’s a video made in their honor.

See the Circle of Hope website for a recap of the evening.