One Child Coming, Another One Leaving

As my long intermission between blog posts would suggest, life has been quite busy here at the Bahler household. There's much to share, many stories to tell, and a lot of topics I want to touch upon in upcoming blog posts, but for the moment I'll suffice to write about one of them.

In two days, we go to get our first ultrasound. Our first pictures of our first child. Hopefully (s)he will dance a little jig so we can find out if its a boy or a girl. Amber's beginning to go into "nesting" mode and has taken up scouring the Craig's List ads for co-sleepers, cribs, and all things baby-related. We even bought diapers and other baby products on Sunday at CVS as they were greatly on sale. This is all well and good, and planning for the future is fine and dandy, but my mind has difficulty wrapping around what my life is going to be like in March of 2009 when it hasn't even had the time to think about next week. Last week was particularly difficulty thinking about all of this as we were hosting several strangers from out of town for a huge philosophy conference being hosted at Duquesne (more on that to come in later posts). So, I would come home each day completely exhausted and Amber would begin barraging me with questions about decorations for our baby room and crib designs. Of course, its not that I shouldn't be thinking about such things... its just going to take a while for me to get used to it!

On the other hand, a bit more than a week ago, I was notified that my sponsored child through Compassion International had been removed from the program. Upon finding out (which was frustrating to begin with, as my cell phone was called from a 1-800 number - and who picks up a call from a 1-800 number? - so I had to hear the news through a voice mail), I was shocked, then perplexed, and then angry. Abigail Asami is no longer my sponsored child. For nearly 11 years I've supported her - not that I'm saying this to boast, but simply to point out that this was a regular aspect of my life. Even more mesmerizing still is that she was kicked out because she's pregnant. My first thought when I heard this news was, "I wasn't a good enough sponsor. I should have contacted her more. I should have wrote more. I should have worked harder to go see her. I could have done something to prevent this." I thought, well, like a parent - about a girl who is no longer my child.

She's not a girl really either. She's 19 years old (Compassion children often do not graduate until they're 20 or 21) and has an 8th grade education. The Sponsor relations guy who called said she was healthy and was going to be fine because she had an interest in tailoring and had developed skills in being a seamstress. Well that's reassuring, but - and here is when my mind begins to flood with questions - what's a pregnant girl going to do out on her own with an 8th grade education? And why''s a child being kicked out of the program at the time when she needs support and encouragement and guidance the most? I wonder, if the Compassion workers were spending time talking about sex and puberty to my 18-year old instead of having her color pictures of animals to send to me with her letter, maybe she wouldn't have gotten into this mess.

Yesterday, I received a letter from Compassion and a final letter from my child (which, at times, sounds as if someone told her what to write). The Compassion letter states on one line, "Althought it is discouraging to see her start a family at such a young age, it may be helpful to understand that cultural values often influence these situations." So I ask myself, if its true that culture influences such situations, why should it be discouraging? Isn't it perfectly natural for a matured woman to start thinking about being a mother and being in a relationship? One of my cousins got married right out of high school and is getting ready to have her fourth child and she's not even 25 - something we might not embrace ourselves (because of certain other cultural influences), a circumstance we might consider difficult, but it doesn't have to be discouraging. Do Africans have to aspire to wait to start a family until they reach the age Americans are when they tend to start families these days?

I know all of this sounds like a rant and that I'm simply blaming Compassion for what has transpired. But at the moment, these are simply my raw thoughts and emotions on questions that I hope to get some answers. And I'm not against child sponsorship either - we will continue to support the other child we are sponsoring (although I may have to give some thought before taking on another one that I surmise Compassion is already sending my way). Child sponsorship, with all of its problems, is an awesome way to change the life of a child who would otherwise have little chance of success, and Compassion - as well as many other child sponsorship programs, are changing the lives of millions of children. But such a circumstance, such a dilemma, accentuates the weaknesses of the methodology behind a ministry of this kind and should cause us to question if there is a better way - a better way to visit the stranger and the orphan, a better way to make poverty history, and a better way to provide love and care to those who have been deprived of it.

But if it dies...

Flowers paling and leaves in unbloom
Bear the trace of an unforgotten fall
Wind whispering coolly a dirge of a tune
And all that it touches answers the call

Wait for redemption
Wait now; just lie
There is no prevention
To this season long sigh

A bewildering force, this chill in the air
Life, once vibrant, it bends from the sway
Winter surprises when we’re unaware
Seizing the colors now fading to grey

Wait for redemption
At the end of the night
Wait for the sensation
Of warmth and the light

Fields now feel barren, as an empty womb
Save for the memory of fruit grown and ripe
Just remnants of soul, they march to their tomb
Ashen, defeated, what’s left merely tripe

Wait for redemption
‘Midst this promise of death
Hope, don’t you mention
Just save your breath

Trees were once thriving, budding with green
Now become naked, bequeathing their crowns
Such wasting away, they had not foreseen
To watch all their glory fall to the ground

Wait for redemption
Not beauty that fades
No self-preservation
Will bring you more days

Verily, I say, as you plunge to the soil
Though red and purple; soon yellow and brown
No matter the pain no matter the toil
The yield you produce will be worth going down

Wait for redemption
Lie down to die
A peculiar salvation
Your ruin brings forth life

Endure in destruction
Wait through the strife
Soon comes liberation
From the Giver of Life

Suffer through death’s fray
Emancipation
Will come on the day
Your leaves heal the nations

Pitter Patter Pitter Patter... Choo Choo!

So, I'll have to make this short, as I'm supposed to be doing homework right now and have to pick up Amber from an interpreting job in less than an hour.

This afternoon, Amber and I went for her first doctor appointment since the pregnancy. We're actually a little behind schedule, but today was the first day they could get us in, as they only take new patients at certain times of the day. We even saw another couple from our church there who are a couple months ahead of us in the process! So, they did some tests, asked us questions about our family health history, and gave us a bunch of stuff to read through. AND, we got to hear our little baby's heartbeat for the first time. Craziness. This is REALLY going to happen. Someone's not playing a cruel trick on us! Anyways, it took a while for the midwife to find the baby and get a good read on the heartbeat - with the magnified heart monitor doo-hicky thing-a-ma-jig. He's already learning to play hide and seek! But when she finally got it in the right place, the heartbeat sounded like a freight train. Seriously! Perhaps it was because it was beating at around 155 beats a minute, which apparently is normal and healthy.

Also, in today's news, I've discovered that my laptop had a virus on it and kindly passed it on to my flash drive whenever I stuck it in. This happened a couple times before I realized what was going on (when I stuck my flash drive in our desktop, the virus was immediately found and discarded and I just went on my merry way). Well, for some reason, the virus basically made my flash drive unreadable. Every time I plugged it into a computer, it wouldn't let me open the drive. I started panicking - all my work would be lost and I hadn't backed it up since I started working on a recent paper. Thankfully, I was able to do a virus check on the flash drive - only on my laptop, ironically (although I still couldn't access the drive) - and was able to delete the virus and then open the flash drive. I created a back up folder immediately. Whew!

And finally, a quote for the week (i have a lot of these saved up but I don't have the time to post it seems when they come to my mind!). If you haven't heard (since the news has been focused on only on two topics this week), there has been an ongoing meeting at the UN discussing the Milennium Development Goals and the various creative ways people and governments are helping to make poverty history. Jeffrey Sachs and Bono have been blogging about it at http://blogs.ft.com/mdg/. Below is a quote from Jeffrey Sachs (if you don't know who he is, you should) regarding the possibility of the $700 billion bailout that (he wrote this a week ago before it was shot down in the House):

"Many countries were at the table yesterday, but some big ones were exceptionally quiet. The US, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, and Canada, think that the MDGs are a spectator sport. Yes, the U.S. has stepped up its financing of disease control, but its overall aid level of 0.16 per cent of national income is the lowest of all rich countries (and compared with far more than 4 per cent of national income for the military). Why aren’t successes being scaled up? Not for lack of solutions and strategy, but for lack of follow through by the rich countries that promised (and promised and promised) to help.

"The UN meetings were abuzz that the US could find $700 billion for a bailout of its corrupt and errant banks but couldn’t find a small fraction of that for the world’s poor and dying. It didn’t make sense to the world community. The puzzlement was all the greater since the very banks being bailed out so generously had awarded themselves more than $30 billion in bonuses early this year, roughly the world’s entire aid budget for 800 million people in sub-Saharan Africa."

Hm...It certainly makes you wonder. John McCain is focused on spreading American ideals through Iraq, while Barack Obama has called America "the world's last great hope." And yet, when the rubber meets the road, both of them are more committed to an isolationist view after all, valuing our economy (by making it less free) and the protection of our precious Wall Street (by opting to go into more debt to China...) when we should be leading the way in ending poverty.

I Hate September

September is always a hard month for me. In September of 1997, my high school sunday school teacher died in a plane crash at the Purdue University Airport. A week later, Rich Mullins, a well known Christian recording artist died in a plane crash.

Then, in 2003, my grandfather died - my first real experience with the death of a family member (aside from the funerals my parents dragged me to for a great aunt so-and-so when I was a kid and have somewhat frightening memories of meeting really weird old people). It's not that it was unexpected - his health had been going downhill since November 8th the year before - a night I well remember because I was staying at their house, having come to Indianapolis to celebrate Amber's brithday when I awoke in the middle of the night to paramedics in my grandparent's hallway. It's that a complex influx of various emotions came together (and still come together) when my grandfather died.

Grandpa McCool brought me up on the Cubs, even got me the monthly Cubs "Vineline" magazine and taught me how to keep a box score while I watched games on TV. The Cubs, as is usually the case, always lose in September. 2003 was no exception... that damned disastrous season. Bartman. The goat. A 3-0 lead over the Marlins and they still lost. I was heartbroken. I wanted them to win for my grandpa more than anything else.

And then I was asked to preach at my grandfather's funeral. I was a senior in college doing my first funeral for my grandpa. That in itself is a dizzying experience. But more than any other event I can point to, it was also the day I became an adult - the day people actually looked at me as an adult, treated me as a mature person. It was the first time my uncles and friends of my parents talked to me as if I were a man. Me being the artsy person that I was, not only spoke at my grandpa's funeral, I wrote a song for the occasion a few days before on the 19th of September, 2003.

So, it should come as no surprise that all these emotions should start flooding back this week as it is the 5-year anniversary of his death. But there is more to it than that. This year marks the 100th anniversary since the Cubs have won a World Series, and today I just watched them clinch the division title with a win over the Cardinals. Last week, I saw replays of Carlos Zambrano pitch the first no-hitter for the Cubs since 1972. This could be the year! And if you're a serious Cub fan, you have to check out http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=cubs100

But it gets more eerie than that. On Thursday, I was at my first elder's meeting for our church (yeah, can you believe it?! They made me an elder!), and our co-pastor mentioned that he was just asked by his ailing grandfather if he would speak at his funeral. This also happens to be John's first funeral, so I told him I did the same thing several years ago. I started swelling up with emotions just thinking about it on Thursday night (it didn't help that I've been exhausted at the end of every week since school starts. As my wife could testify, I tend to cry about everything when I'm really tired). John (our pastor) told me he wanted to talk to me about it after the meeting, but we didn't get the chance as the meeting ran long and he got a phone call right afterwards. So, yesterday I sent him an email detailing what I did for my grandpa's funeral (as well as Amber's grandma's funeral which I spoke at last March), and even sent him an attachment of my notes from my message along with the lyrics for the song I wrote. Yesterday was September 19th - FIVE YEARS TO THE DAY THAT I WROTE THE SONG. Craziness.

It's amazing to think that we're given this life to live to influence others and make a difference. But its crazy to think that sometimes the greatest impact - for better or worse - often comes long after we're gone. Which is why I've reasoned that (and this is only the kind of thing a philosopher reason about) if there is some kind of "judgment seat" we'll have after we die, if we are accounted for all that we have done, for good or bad, then it must not happen for quite a long time after our death, for the affects of our lives continue from generation to generation.

Which is why the lime-sized kid in Amber's womb is going to root for the Cubs.

Exhaustion is Setting in

I am so tired. After nearly three weeks of school and my new job, my brain is fried. And tomorrow is my first Latin test. Nice. I'm sure I'll be able to recover over the weekend and will get used to the stringent schedule, but so far I have yet to adapt after my less than structured summer break. It must be all the extra walking (which gets tiring when you're lugging books around!), the reading, the studying, the learning... and it probably doesn't help that our tomato harvest just hit big this week (we canned like crazy last night), we had our first Bible study meeting of the fall last night, and Amber's been sick and weary from being pregnant.

All of this, of course, easily explains how we managed to overdraft money from our checking account, not once but a couple times this week. It's not that we're living from pay check to pay check. Its just that we didn't think about the fact that I wouldn't get paid for several weeks until after I started working, never got around to taking a deposit slip with two checks in it (which had been sitting on our kitchen table for a few days) to the bank, and didn't have it on our radar to get online and check the status of our account. Craziness... At leaast the damage isn't that bad.

In my current state, I guess it's no wonder that it didn't hit me that it was September 11th until later on in the day. While I was learning Latin this morning, the survivors and victims of the fatal crashes that changed the course of our country's history (well, at least its foreign policy) gathered in Pennsylvania, New York, and D.C. to remember. When I was a kid, I always thought it was weird how my parents would talk distinctly as to where they were when they found out JFK had been shot and could recall vivid details. But now that I look back on the day the Twin Towers fell, I don't find it odd at all. It was my junior year in college, and I was with all the other Resident Assistants on our way to some camp way out in the woods where we were going to do a bunch of team-building exercises. We had arrived at the camp and only minutes later did we hear the news about the first tower on the van radio. We were stunned, but since we had no TV or extensive idea of the damage, we hardly thought much of it. We stopped for a moment and prayed and then went on with our exercises. Throughout the day, one of the deans kept calling his wife to get updates on the situation to tell the rest of us. As more news came in, we went from being stunned to being utterly speechless. We prayed some more. Later, we were told a side of the Pentagon had been hit as well, and for some reason a spark of immaturity had to swell up in me at that particular time and I tried to lighten the mood by joking that the Pentagon would now have to be called the Square. (I think that was one of the stupidest moments of my life). We all just sat around during lunch without much to say. A couple hours later, we rushed back to campus and clamored into our Resident Director's apartments (only they had TVs!) and glued ourselves to the news reports for hours upon hours. Unbelieveable.

But unbelievable largely because I don't live in a country like Israel where things like that happen on a regular basis. Unbelievable that three thousand innocent Americans could die because I don't live in a country like Iraq where almost a million of died since 2003.

An Update on All Fronts

Well, I've finally managed to write another post after surviving a long and weary week. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but traveling to Seattle, speaking, getting back at midnight, giving some much-needed attention to our garden, and working and going to class the rest of the week (while taking care of a sick, pregnant wife!) made it difficult to do much of anything else. Here's what's going on in our life:

Seattle was a great trip. Bryce drove me around to see some of the sites and various neighborhoods in between my various philosophy conference activities. The city is beautiful and there is, no doubt, a lot to see. I can tell why so many people want to move to this place. As the pictures show, the space needle really isn't all that big, and from time to time, if you watch closely, you'll see a salmon jumping out of the water.

Needless to say, the philosophy conference I presented at was a mixed bag. I had a great time getting to know better some students from the psychology department from Duquesne who also presented, hearing some top-notch plenary speakers, and meeting people from a variety of schools from around the country (several from Purdue, I might add, all who couldn't stand the flatness of Indiana and the boring life of West Lafayette...). The conference attracted a nice mix of thinkers from a variety of fields - philosophers, psychologists, theologians, and Orthodox Jews.

But my own session was, well sabotagued I guess you would say. They tend to break the sessions into three presentations that are to revolve around a similar theme. One of the three presenters in my session didn't show up, and the other one was a clinical psychotherapist - which clearly didn't mesh with my presentation that was more geared towards philosophical theology. Needless to say, the other presenter's paper had very little to do, if anything, with Emmanuel Levinas's works (the focus of the conference), was ill-presented (it was a poorly edited job from a chapter of a larger book that went way too long), and provided no room for dialogue. His paper was all about the "pursuit of the good life" and how heaven, hell, and reward were just states of mind or projections of our own selves and used scores of pithy quotes from Proust, Shakespeare, Einstein, and a whole host of others (that were in no way related) to back in up. He spoke extremely loudly, as if to say, "I'm right, so don't question me." And then when it came time for Q&A, he totally dominated the discussion, always disagreeing with the people asking questions - and even responding to questions that people specifically directed towards me! I couldn't believe it. I had spent countless hours fine-tuning this paper to present it at a hijacked session. Grr.

At least in other news, things are going well. I love my job as an editor at the Duquesne Press. My boss is great, and I get to read/critique a lot of cool stuff (Actually, one manuscript that is currently on my desk is written by a presenter I met at the conference! I told him that, and he got kind of nervous and said, "I feel like my career is in your hands!"). Some days, I wind up a bit cross-eyed by the end of the day - particularly when my time is spent making sure an index of a book is all in alphabetical order... School is going very well also. I'm excited about my classes (Latin, African-American philosophy, and Islamic philosophy), and I'm sure near-future posts will involves detailing some of what I've been learning there.

Amber is starting to have more days where she isn't overcome by morning sickness. She broke down and started to use some Unisom, which is certainly doing the trick. However, while I was gone, she didn't get around to doing much, so I got home to a garden that was in desparate need of picking (Yes, that is a zucchini that's roughly the size of a caveman's club!!!). We rounded up enough tomatoes to can four jars and make a huge pot of spaghetti sauce. And there's still more out there we need to pick. The cucumber plant is officially dead and gone, but the zucchini and yellow squash plants are somehow still producing new shoots of leaves and finding ways to make fruit.

Scribbles from Seattle

So, I'm sitting on my brother Bryce's bed here in Seattle about as close to brain dead as I'll get while I'm awake, having sat in on a day of philosophy presentations and now that it's almost 11PM (and my body is telling me it's almost 3AM). Tomorrow, I present around 3:45 and will then be on my way home on Tuesday. What a way to spend a Labor Day weekend. Oh well, this morning, Bryce drove me around town to see the sights. There are a lot of really cool neighborhoods (we stopped at one area to go to a farmer's market and eat breakfast at a vegetarian place - was really good!). The 'needle' isn't really that tall. There's a place where you can see the salmon come in from the ocean into Puget Sound, which is a waterway that becomes freshwater. And I can't say much else about the city.

Tonight, after I was tired of sitting in on philosopher paper presentations (many of which I didn't understand, I'll be honest), I wound out going out to get a drink with four people all from completely different walks of life. One guy was from Lisbon, Portugal and has two kids ages 10 and 5. There was a guy whose father was from Germany and mother from Mexico who met in England. He's spent a good portion of his life living back and forth between Germany and Mexico (imagine a man who looks German but speaks English with a Spanish accent!). There was a woman from D.C. with five kids (one of which was nearly my age!) who has worked on and off on her dissertation between children and whose parents and grandparents fled Germany in the 1940s to avoid being placed in concentration camps. And there was a woman who was born in Chicago, moved to Miami, moved again to Wabash, Indiana, and is now getting her PhD at Purdue and knows one of my old friends who was in my wedding! Amazing how people of such different backgrounds could come together in one different place, appreciate each other, and encourage one another in their life and scholarly pursuits. God is good.