Up for Air

"The Blues"
By Switchfoot

Is this the New Year or just another night?
Is this the new fear or just another fright?
Is this the new tear or just another desperation?

Is this the finger or just another fist?
Is this the kingdom or just a hit n' miss?
A misdirection, most in all this desperation

Is this what they call freedom?
Is this what you call pain?
Is this what they call discontented fame?

It'll be a day like this one
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in

I'm singing this one like a broken piece of glass
From broken arms an' broken noses in the back
Is this the New Year or just another desperation?

You're pushing till you're shoving
You bend until you break
Till you stand on the broken fields where our fathers lay

It'll be a day like this one
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in

There's nothing here worth saving,
Is no one here at all?
Is there any net left that could break our fall?

It'll be a day like this one
When the sky falls down and the hungry and poor and deserted are found
Are you discontented? Have you been pushing hard?
Have you been throwing down this broken house of cards?

It'll be a day like this one
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in

Is there nothing left now?
Nothing left to sing
Are there any left who hasn't kiss the enemy?
Is this the New Year or just another desperation?

Does justice never find you? Do the wicked never lose?
Is there any honest song to sing besides these blues?

And nothing is okay
Till the world caves in



I won't lie to you - I'm still pretty shaken up from this weekend. I've developed an unconscious habit of rubbing the callouses on my fingertips. I think I can still feel everything that I've touched.

I'm going to go ahead and get some reader involvement here. I know that several of my friends read this, so if you are a friend of mine and you have a picture of me and you together, or just a picture of you, then send it to me and I will make it my desktop background for the day. I am already putting several of you on my background picture cycle and it really brightens my day. So send pictures to joseph.halbert@gmail.com. Send me some emails, too, because every time I have internet access I save all your emails in a word document and then take some time every night to write back. I really like doing it and it makes me feel connected to everyone back home.

I've added a new section on this page called "Recommended Reading." I recommend you read these books.

Just in case anyone was wondering, I've been listening to the band Switchfoot every day. Particularly, the album Nothing is Sound. It seems to fit where I am in my life perfectly. Give it a listen.

I'm going to a region called Gulu on Friday. There are several IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camps up there, so I'm going to spend some time seeing whatever it is I need to see.

This might be it for the week, so I hope to hear from you and I'll be sure to post something of substance soon.

Cheers,
Joseph

Fingertips

For days I’ve been trying to come up with an effective way to relate what I saw and felt in Rwanda. I want to convey to you what it means when a million people are murdered by their neighbors, friends, and family. I want to understand it myself.

I want to understand how so many people could be killed so brutally. I stood in a church where 10,000 people where killed. I felt the bullet holes in the walls, in the communion table, on the floor. I touched the blood stained alter. I wept when a woman at a church told me that I wasn’t touching bullet holes, but marks left in the walls by shards of skull. The machetes had that much force. I touched the blood stains on the walls. Children were swung around by their legs and smashed against the wall, to save ammunition.

I saw rows and rows and rows of skulls and bones. I touched a blunt club used to shatter skulls.

I watched grown men break down as they tried to explain to me the complete and utter devastation.

I broke down myself as I looked at family photos of victims. Wedding pictures, pictures of mothers and baby daughters and the hospital, pictures of teenage girls dancing at a party, pictures of soccer players after a big game.

I wept when I looked at a picture of two sisters, ages two and three, who were grenaded while they hid in a shower.

I wept when I looked a picture of a beautiful two year old girl who was stabbed in the eyes and head until she died.

I wept when I thought of the 500,000 women who were raped. I thought about all of the women in my life.

I thought of the 300,000 children were orphaned.

I saw rows and rows of skulls, many shattered by clubs and machetes. I stared straight into where their eyes would’ve been.

In the span of three hours, my fingers touched the graves of 40,000 victims. 40,000 life stories, wasted.

I cannot understand what I saw, or the devastation that lives in the walking wounded.

Here is what I do know:

If we think that one million people were killed, we are wrong. One person, one life, one spirit, was taken from this world, one million times over. One million life stories ended. Their stories were cut short in ways that I wouldn’t believe if I had not seen with my own eyes.

A long time ago, I promised myself and you and the rest of humanity that I would never look away. This weekend that promise changed the core of me. I am positive that I am not the same person I was on Saturday morning. I am convinced that what I have touched with my own fingers has changed me on a fundamental level and has changed the direction of my life. These were God’s children. We are all children of God, and I owe it to all of you to never look away. Apathy and ignorance are not options for me. You and yours are much too valuable for that.

I want you to read a book called “We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with our Families.” It’s written by Philip Gourevitch.

That’s all I can say right now.

Fact of the day: Military analysts agree that the presence of 5,000 troops would have prevented the genocide.