Each page shows a photograph of a models hand in a different gesture. The opposite page explains what it means, followed by the countries where it has that meaning. It’s very simple with only minimal text. Occasionally the authors throw in a fun anecdote, such as poking fun at a US President who used an incorrect gesture while on an international trip. But in general the explanations are just one or two words.

Note that this is not a book filled with obscene gestures. Well, at least not American obscene gestures. But the international obscenities are labeled as “vulgar” and left without a specific explanation. The authors are not taking joy in making this a sophomoric book of jokes. It’s a classy way to handle it.

Most of the gestures are everyday expressions, such as how the French put their thumbs up to indicate “one”, or how clasping hands together can mean “thank you” in various African countries.

I’m heading to Turkey in a few weeks — a country I have never visited before — so I quickly scanned the book to see if there is anything I should avoid “saying” with my hands. There are a few things, but they are minor and not gestures I tend to make anyway. So hopefully I don’t tick off a border guard by waving hello.

PathLight’s Executive Director, Mark Parcher, went to Belize in mid-January with plans to begin a search for a new program director. Finding a director has been a challenge in the past, and based on those experiences, I expected the search to take many months. But remarkably, God had another plan.

Andrea and Dion Rodriquez

Louis Wade, the PathLight ministry director in Belize, introduced Mark to Dion and Andrea Rodriquez, who already have huge hearts for working with students. They shared PathLight’s vision of bringing hope through faith and learning, and they live out their faith by working with underprivileged kids. Since Dion and his wife were so perfectly matched for PathLight, we soon had him on board!

Dion and Andrea live in Belmopan, not far from the rural villages where PathLight works. Eight years ago they founded Joshua Generation Youth Ministry, which in addition to providing tutoring and mentorship, also coordinates outreach programs, community service projects, and an annual Christmas party for underprivileged kids. Dion and Andrea even built a patio in their back yard so they could have kids over for events and discipleship!

I feel so thankful to have such a remarkable Belize Program Director, and also want to thank everyone on the PathLight Prayer Team who joined in prayer. Thanks also to Mark Parcher for his dedication!

If you’d like to learn more about Dion, click here to read his biography on PathLight’s website.

We would spend days orienteering, cross-country skiing, and rock climbing. The evenings were spent in group discussions about creation care, led by Dave Willis. Dave, a fascinating man with multiple talents, would guide us through an ever changing array of topics and exercises. It was a great way to learn for me and I loved the interaction.

Our textbook was Earthkeeping by Loren Wilkinson. It is now out of print, I think, and it probably feels dated today. But it was a cutting edge book at the time. The book challenged me to look at how my faith should be integrated into caring for creation. That made the book edgy in its day. No, that made the book radical.

Long story short, it was on that Sierra Trek trip that D’Aun and I first sensed a vision to do something involving our faith and creation care. Which led to us starting Hidden Lakes Retreat a few years later, which led to the Christian Environmental Association, which became Target Earth International. Along the way we worked with some great people to protect nearly 2000 acres of rainforest, publish a magazine, establish college chapters, build research centers on three continents, launch a semester academic program, send thousands of people on short term service trips, and impact the poor in at least two dozen countries.

Earthkeeping may not have been the impetus for all of that, but it was the core reading that got us going. So for that it deserves to be on the list of 25 books that influenced my life.

But there is more to this story.

As the evenings wound down on those cold January nights in the Sierras, Dave would entertain us with poetry. That sounds so incredibly boring, doesn’t it? But the poetry that Dave would recite by memory (with dramatic flourish) was by Robert Service. It fit the setting beautifully and would keep us entranced as Dave amazed us with his memory.

How could I not fall in love with phrases like this:

“There are strange things done in the midnight sun,
by the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
that would make your blood run cold;
The Northern lights have seen queer sights,
but the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.”

Now that’s an opening verse that will grab your attention! I still have the book of Service poems that I bought almost as soon as I got home from that trip to the Sierras, and I still open it up to read a few verses. It makes me smile as it paints pictures of a time long ago in the untouched wilderness.

I was never much of a poetry fan. I’m still not, to be honest. But I have a higher appreciation for the craft because I heard Dave bring those Robert Service poems alive. And for that, the Robert Service collections also deserve to be on my list of the 25 books that most influenced my life.

We were going through a study on marriage and the author (an extrovert) had written about conflicts with his introverted wife. It led to an interesting conversation in our group, but one spouse in particular was upset at her husband because he was an introvert. “Just get over it” seemed to be her mantra, and his response was quiet submission.

At first this didn’t bother me. But it continued and grew in intensity. Finally, I had enough.

“Look,” I said, “his introverted ways annoy you. I get it. But at least he doesn’t stake his self-worth on being with others. He’s not putting lamp shades on his head and acting like an idiot extrovert who craves attention. He’s thoughtful rather than impulsive, focused rather than scattered. You need to realize that being an introvert is not a psychological flaw. It’s time for YOU to get over it.”

OK, maybe I wasn’t that clever. Nor that harsh. But I said something along those lines. It shocked everybody in the room (except D’Aun, who just got tense and wondered for the fifteen millionth time why she married me).

For decades I’ve been defending introverts. We live in a society that hyper values extroversion, from backslapping politicians to ultra competitive investment bankers. Academic institutions, management gurus, pop-psychologists, and most preachers espouse extroversion as the way to live. Organizations create whole cultures of extroversion. It’s carpe diem to the max and leave the thoughtful reflection to the slow.

Recently I heard about Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. It felt like a breath of fresh air. Finally somebody was saying what I’ve been saying for years. Only saying it better.

This is a great book. I immediately told the introverts in my family to read it. And I told the extroverts to read it so they’d understand us.

Some of the lines in the book made me laugh out loud. Cain’s critique of Saddleback Church was great. Her description of attending a Tony Robbins event was hilarious. The description of a visit to Harvard Business School, where they drank the extroversion Kool-Aid decades ago, was fantastic. Interviews with people from different cultures where introversion is more highly valued shot holes in countless leadership books (these are often written by the same people who hyperventilate about the joy of globalization; they fail to see their disconnect as they write books espousing American style leadership in a global community that views leadership very differently). And her modest appraisal of “teams” in both schools and the business world is the best covert criticism I’ve read yet (thank you, Susan…that alone was worth the price of the book).

And I learned something about myself. I’m an introvert who has a high self monitor, which allows me to act like an extrovert when the occasion calls for it. That’s why I can smile at you when I really prefer to go read a book. Don’t take it personally … I really do like you, I just don’t always have the energy for you.

But I don’t want you to misunderstand the purpose of this book. It is not an attack on extroverts. Cain explains that society needs both introverts and extroverts. Introverts who talk to extroverts will choose cheerier topics, find making conversation easier, and describe such conversations as a “breath of fresh air.” Extroverts who talk to introverts often feel they can relax more, they feel more free to confide problems, and don’t feel pressure to act falsely upbeat. We need each other to be whole. I love that image (says the introvert happily married to an extrovert).

If you are interested in how our society has created a culture of personality and bought into the myth of charismatic leadership, or how we find ourselves in the the midst of an economic crisis brought on by people who love high risk, or what the latest research tells us about nature vs nurture, or why your kid struggles in group projects at school, or why you hate the idea of joining a small group bible study at your church, or you just want to better understand your spouse, then you need to read this book.

Extroverts might not get it. But that’s okay. People like that are quickly distracted anyway, so I’ll just wait for them to bring it up in the next small group study.

D’Aun and I have been packing as we prepare to move, and I came across my old notes from college. One page caught my eye: introductory remarks by Professor Robert Gundry on the Gospel of John.

My notes from his lecture show that cultural perceptions even influences how we see Scripture, and that good cross-cultural communication exists in the Bible. I’m certainly not a Bible scholar. I know hundreds of people who could pull more out of what I’m about to share, but I’ll explain a cross-cultural communication insight that struck me.

The theme of the day when I took those notes was “universalism”, a term that perhaps today has negative connotations among Evangelicals. But Gundry made it sound … obvious. The Apostle John was attempting to reach as many people as possible in a way that connected them to his convictions.

The book opens with the famous line, “In the beginning was the Word…” It’s obviously an echo of Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God….” The word used for Word in the Gospel of John is the Greek word Logos. John then immediately connects Logos with the Jesus that he knew and followed.

But the passage is a lot more nuanced than just a linear connection. Gundry’s lecture pointed out that three different groups of people from the first century would understand Logos from three different perspectives.

First, the Hebrew speaking community would clearly see the link between John 1:1 and Genesis 1:1. Their context would include references to the “word” as forever in heaven (Psalm 119:89), “words” made in heaven (Psalm 33:6), and “word” as a light and path (Psalm 119:105) among many other such passages. So to a Jewish reader of the Gospel of John, it would be very clear that Logos was referring to something preexistent, the Creator, the Messiah.

Second, the Greek speaking community would understand the use of the word Logos as something that dwells in a man. Logos is the soul of the universe and there was nothing higher or better in Greek thought. The actual Greek definition of the word Logos would be “reasonable communication.” So a Greek reader of the Gospel of John would understand the author to be saying that Jesus is all that is good, all that is beautiful, all that is logical, all that is perfect.

Third, the Aramaic speaking people of the region used the word Memra for the Greek word Logos. Memra was an Aramaic substitute for God’s name in many of the ancient holy writings. When they saw the word Logos translated as Memra they would immediately understand that the author of the Gospel of John was equating Jesus with the Divine.

One simple word. Three different perceptions. But all coming to the same conclusion. It really is brilliant cross-cultural communication at work here! John was able to use a simple word that denoted something very special to all types of people. It was a universally understood concept, although with different cultural twists for each audience.

What struck me about those notes as I was cleaning out my old files was that even my old Bible teachers weaved cross-cultural understanding into my education.

Cool.

My aim is to visit one of these prayer spaces in a school while visiting London, and then seek out ways that this simple program might be applied elsewhere around the world. It will be fun to pray and dream with the folks running the program.

One conversation we have already had is what it might look like to start a prayer space in a Belizean school through PathLight. The school administrators in Belize who heard about the program were enthusiastic about that, so it has real appeal. There are countless questions to ask and hurdles to jump first, but surprisingly not as many that a lot of other programs require. The simplicity of prayer travels well!

That said, we will probably need a sponsor (anybody want to help?).

Anyway, take a look at this video and let me know what you think. What questions should I be asking when I visit? What should I specifically look for? Your input would be appreciated!

If you subscribe to this blog via email, you can view the video here.

Love goes into God’s presence,
while at the gate
Reason and Knowledge
must remain
and for an audience wait.

As you might guess, it was written just as the Enlightenment was being unleashed across the Christian world. The author, Angelus Silesius, lived in the 17th Century and was a bizarre guy. Then again, somebody described as a “German Catholic mystic poet” is not going to be ordinary!

Whatever it’s roots or source, it strikes me as a simple way to remind ourselves of the importance of love. I easily get caught up in the midst of what I call the three sins: spreadsheets, strategy, and sensibility. When I do, I lose sight of love. At the end of the day it is love that gives meaning to all things, including reason and knowledge.

Nothing you haven’t heard before here. Just a nice reminder!

I encourage you to check out their website here and learn more. Here’s a short teaser video they put together.

If you subscribe to this blog via email, you can view the video here.

A few days ago I received an email from the system that analyzes the statistics of junkyardwisdom.com. Much to my surprise, January was the busiest month ever for my simple blog. Not only that, but the number of hits in 2011 was about 400% higher than in 2010. Long gone are the days when I’d look up my daily stats and see zero visits!

This blog started as an venue for sharing family stories. It has morphed into more than that, becoming a platform for all kinds of things. The blog experts tell me it needs to be more focused, such as being about nothing but book reviews. That way, they say, it will have a specific identity and people who share that interest will be more likely to visit.

But that’s not true to who I am; I want junkyardwisdom.com to be an honest expression of my life and that means being all over the map. Sometimes I sit down to write and ask myself the rather presumptuous question, “What would my someday to be born grandchildren want to know about their grandpa?” Thus I write for them, with the hope that it is just as amusing for all of you.

So junkyardwisdom.com has family history, oddly collected wisdom, book reviews, wine stories, olive oil tales, junkyard insights, stories about my travels, curiosities about my family, appeals from the various charities I work with, lessons learned from work, reflections on life in these crazy times, and anything else that might pop into my head. Sometimes I just flat out make stuff up (or as Tony Campolo says, “That’s not lying…it’s just remembering big.”).

When you live a life that’s about 50% work, 50% charitable endeavors, and 50% everything else … well, it’s an odd collection of stories to share.

In a weird way, it really is a reflection of what I call the liberal arts life.

So thank you for being a part of this. It’s fun to see how things have grown since I started blogging, and surprising to know that others seem to appreciate the goofy things that I do.

As Sally Fields would say, you like me! You really like me! Thank you!

Please let me know if you’d like a bottle. Having said that, we are not shipping the bottles, so you must pick it up yourself. Sorry about that.

A small part of the 2011 harvest.