The Power of Education

What if I told you there was something that could do all of the following?

• Increase your lifespan. 
• Increase the income for yourself and those around you. 
• Decrease your risk of contracting myriad diseases.
• Grant you access to more countries in the world. 
• Promote gender equality. 

And so much more... The list goes on and on. The positive effects of higher education for an individual are amazing, even more so for an educated society/country. 

Yet with all of the advantages education provides, so much of the world is denied that opportunity. It's a tough problem to fix too. When we see a malnourished child we are triggered and emotionally invested, then in turn we can quickly and easily feed this child. If we see a child that doesn't go to school, we think little of it; Despite the fact that the child is much more likely to die of starvation or a preventable disease as they age because they have missed out on the knowledge they could have had. I'm not saying we shouldn't feed malnourished children, that is an important and urgent need. But we should take it a step further and look at the entire life of this person, recognizing that as they grow  one of the best gifts we can give them is an education. 

Today we had our Back To School party for our School Support kids. The ministry I work with pays the price for these children to go to school, along with the cost for uniforms, backpacks, notebooks, shoes, pencils, pens, etc... Seeing the kids faces when they received these items was such an honor, it felt like Christmas morning. If these kids can stick through it, their quality of life will be dramatically increased because of what this organization is doing. Not only that, but the leaders also encouraged the parents about keeping their children in school when times are tough. This is so important in the developing world, where children are frequently sent to work to pay the family bills. 

Today reminded me once again of all the amazing things happening in the world. It reminded me that hope is not lost, that the world really is becoming a better place. Today over 40 children's lives were changed, and they will continue to be a positive change in their community. This is exciting, folks. It's only getting better. 

Homesick

Christianity speaks of this idea that the world is not our home. I think this idea can become dangerous at times. Too often it leads to groups of people with no regard for the planet and people around them. It can cause us to look toward some other time and place rather than being present in the here and now. 

Yet at the same time, something in that idea rings true. We can never really capture this idea of "home". We buy big houses and fill them with nice furniture. We find comfortable places and try to keep them as they are to retain the moments they held. But it's never quite enough. We chase the feeling of home, trying to pin it to one place. Americans are more transient than ever, we move from one place to the next seeking out the one place we can call home, the place that will make us whole. Somehow we are more lonely than ever before, emotionally, physically and spiritually homeless. 

I don't consider the town my family lives in to be home. It's a wealthy, religious, and safe city. With homes made for Pinterest and people made for Instagram. Designer bags, luxury cars, and clean parks. It is disgustingly beautiful. But when I look back at memories in that house and that city, at family devotions going an hour late because we couldn't contain our laughter, that is what I call home. Home has never been where I lived, but the moments of connection... Wherever they may be. 

I have felt home at a concert, belting out songs as if each one of us were a rockstar, unified by our times of heartbreak. I have felt home in my father's office, sitting together through the hours of the night, until I was too exhausted to go through with killing myself. I have felt home in the rubble of a natural disaster. I have felt home singing hymns with a group of strangers. I have felt home overlooking the rice fields of Cambodia. I have felt home singing my baby brother to sleep, protecting him from the screams reverberating through our house. I have felt home among the homeless. I have felt home meeting God in a Buddhist temple. I have felt home laying in a field and looking up at the stars. 

I think home is found when we stop looking. It's found in the moments where we are so present that everything else fades away. It's an experience rather than a place. The more I travel the more sure I am that no place will ever be home. Whether I settle down with a husband and 2.5 kids or spend the rest of my life as a single vagabond, I will always and never be home. 

Learning to be a feminist...

I've been pretty anti-feminism growing up. Ask people who have known me a long time, they will tell you that I used to outright say that men were superior to women, better-looking, smarter, stronger, better everything.

Awful, I know.

But growing up, the women in my life were the people that hurt me the most. Whereas the men in my life (my father especially) protected me and cared for me. If I were to meet two people, one man and one woman, my gut reaction would be to trust the man and fear the woman. In my mind, I will naturally deem women untrustworthy if I don't make a serious effort to do otherwise.

That being said, I'm beginning to realize how dangerous that thinking is. For one, my sister is a hard-core feminist. She frequently rants about how women are misrepresented and harmed by our culture and throughout history. She doesn't sit quietly when people demean women whether it be outright or subtle. Even if you say something like "give her the girl toy", one of her catchphrases is "items don't have a gender". She recently introduced me to her non-gender conforming toy seal. I love that about her. When she cares about a cause, she doesn't just think about it from time to time, she lets it inform her decisions and interactions with the world around her. I look up to her in that sense, and I'm so excited to see how this part of her develops as she learns to be slightly less abrasive and gains more wisdom.

Also, being in Cambodia has opened my eyes to the extreme side of anti-feminism. The patriarchal parts of American society struck me as annoying at times, but nothing more. I would shrug off things like cat-callers or the wage-gap, telling myself it was just how things work. But here, you see what happens when that sort of culture is brought to the extreme. Here, men can have as many partners as they want, but if a woman dares to talk to another man without her husband's okay, he is allowed to beat her and leave her without any repercussions. Even worse, these women are then considered worthless for not pleasing their husbands. Most of them have to resort to prostitution because in the culture's eyes, they lose all value as a human without their husband. This isn't rare, this is common practice.

There's a saying in Cambodia-
Men are like gold; if you drop them in the mud, wipe them off and move on.
Women are like paper; if you drop them in the mud, throw them away.

I'm beginning to realize that I cannot be for women in some circumstances and not others. Being beat to death is worse than being cat-called, but it comes from the same motivation. When we devalue an entire group of people for something they cannot control, that is damaging. Whether that devaluing of them leads to something annoying or something deadly, it still is not okay.

I told one of my close friends that I think I'm becoming a feminist. She was a bit annoyed with this and talked about how "those" feminists are so extreme and demean men, some even saying that we should try to live without them entirely. I'm with her, I think that's ridiculous. I, for one, am very fond of men. But I don't think the extremists of any movement should stop us from seeing the good in the movement itself. Most days, I like to call myself a Christ-follower or Christian. I would like to be able to say I'm a Christian without being homophobic, misogynistic, or racist. I'd like to take back that title from the people who have misused it. I'd like to do the same with feminism. To me, it's not about burning bras or hating men, it's about seeing people as whole, valuable human beings regardless of their gender.

So here I am, learning to be a feminist. It will take some discipline on my part to change my natural thought processes when it comes to women, but I think it's worth it.