starfish and coffee

Ever played a wii sport and been frustrated because you felt like the controller didn't work only to realize it was your form that was preventing all those pins from falling together? Maybe you were trying to make that ace a little too fast in wii tennis or you twisted your wrist so far in wii bowling that you didn't quite connect the sensor to the base. Whatever it was, you had to spend time perfecting your form to make the connection. It's time consuming and it can be frustrating.

I've talked to some of you. Some of you are fighting cultures in churches that just don't seem to have the capacity to change. Some of you are working with individuals who think they get it, but they're really way off the mark. Some of you are fighting time, fighting budgets or fighting yourselves, struggling to make the connection.

Recently I've been struck by the idea of the process. Clementine and Claudette got that reconciliation with Jean is a process--that's why they joined their land to his land: so they could have a place to work out the process of reconciliation. The process is an art, a process that requires attention and consideration, consideration of how all the different stages of that process connect to make the whole. When we neglect perspective on the whole process, individual parts of the process can suffer!

Sports players know the importance of focusing in on every part of their swing. Their success in connecting with the baseball, golf ball, or achieving the right release point in bowling depends on how well they can manage the connection between every part of their swing.

Perfecting a process can also bog you down. You can get too far into the work to be able to see it clearly. Sometime we need to stop looking at the breakdown and revisit our goal, the desired outcome, and regain our perspective on what we're doing.

It's been two months since I was in Bukonya. Two months since I saw 75 out of what are approximately 500 children suffering from malnutrition. Tomorrow, our man on the ground, Innocent, is meeting with the providers of Nutri-form and investigating the provision of a peanut-based suppliment by the Rwandan government. Before I spoke to Woody, one of our supporters from Florida, I had a pretty poor perspective on the situation. All I was seeing was 60 days. Woody saw starfish and told me this story:

There once was a little boy walking along a beach full of starfish. Every step he took he stooped down to pick up a starfish and throw it back into the water. An older gentleman, coming from the other direction, stopped the little boy and asked him what he was doing. The little boy said he was saving the starfish. The gentleman looked at the little boy and said, "Little boy, you'll never save them all."

In reply, the little boy bent down, picked up a starfish and threw it back into the water. "Just saved that one," he replied, and kept walking, picking up a starfish every step and throwing it back into the ocean.

So where are you in your swing? If you're working on perfecting a specific stage, make sure you're fully focused and don't lose sight of how it connects to the entire process. If you happen to be where I am: if you're bogged down, too far in, too wrapped up in one part of your swing--if you seem to be stuck, then take a moment. Stop. Breathe. Take a walk. Refocus on your goal.

My goal?

One More Starfish.

be thou my vision.

This past Sunday I spoke at one of our supporting churches here in the greater Atlanta area. I love to speak in front of people. I once went all the way to the national level of the National Management Association's American Free Enterprise Speech Contest. I think if you google my name you can still find Lockheed Martin intercompany documentation of my participation. (Please don't.) I once dreamed of starting a company where I would make speeches for people, traveling across the country to different conventions speaking in the stead of brilliant minds who may or may not suffer from a serious case of stage fright.

As I scanned the congregation during stories of widows, orphans, victims and reconciliation, I noticed several tears being shed by several different people.

I found myself wondering why they were crying. What was it, specifically, that touched them to the point of tears?

Tears, scientifically, have a perfectly logical explanation. The lacrimal glands secrete lacrimal fluid which flows through the main excretory ducts into the space between the eyeball and the lids. When the eyes blink, the lacrimal fluid is spread across the surface of the eye.

O sistema lacrimal
a = glândula lacrimal; b = ponto lacrimal superior;
c = canalículo superior; d = saco lacrimal;
e = ponto lacrimal inferior; f = canalículo inferior;
g = canal lácrimo-nasal.

But why do we cry when we're happy, sad, angry, or upset? When your emotions rise, your limbic system gets involved. If the emotion is intense enough to activate the receptors in the parasympathetic branch of your autonomic system, your lacrimal gland will begin to produce tears. And since it's linked to your nasal cavity, it can cause sniffly, runny noses, coughing and redness of face as well.


Thank you, class, Biology 101 has released for the day. Your homework: when was the last time you cried and why? I'm only joking.

"Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while,
so that we can see Life with a clearer view again."
Alex Tan

My real question to you is this: did you see them?
They were in between the lines and in the margins.

They were in the back of your mind, underneath all the papers...

Sometimes it take a good cry for us to see things clearly.
Sometimes we're too busy to notice there is something worth shedding tears over.

Slow down. Look around. See Life.
Drink Coffee. Do Good.

Linguistically Speaking...

After dreaming of it for many years, it's now going to be possible for our supporters and coffee drinkers (YOU) to visit the Bukonya Coffee Cooperative!!!

I know! How exciting! So, the next time you're in Rwanda, planning a missions trip, or skipping town on a coffee lover's honeymoon package, be sure to keep us in mind!

What this whole process did start me pondering on is words. I recently finished C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, which I highly recommend, and fancied this quote a great deal:

Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, “Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.”

The point of all of this is to say that what we have made available in Bukonya is not a tour, but a visit.

The word "visit" comes from the Latin word vīsitāre - go to see, or rather from the more frequently used form: vīsāre - to view or to see. I can go to see my Mother and I can see a tree on the side of the road. I can view paintings in an art gallery, but do I interact with them?

My point is this: Every time you drink a cup of Land of a Thousand Hills coffee, you're making a difference for someone. Social Justice is more than just a thought, it's an action--an investment in humanity. Through drinking coffee, you are already in community with the people of Rwanda. Now, I'd like for you to meet them. To visit with them.

Every day when I look at my soy latte, I picture Clementine sitting on the hillside in the setting sun, smiling peacefully as she tells me about Jean and the coffee they farm together.
I picture Pilaje.
I picture Manny, walking down the hill beside me as we talk coffee.

I picture our orphans.

I picture the children with malnutrition, and how many there are, and how coffee is going to provide them nutrition to become healthy again.

Every day I think about how to share with you about these people I have been blessed to sit and converse with in Bukonya. I pray the words I choose are accurate and expressive, because it's important to me that you fully comprehend the depth of Clementine's peace, the joy in the eyes and laughter of our orphans, and Manny's immense knowledge and love for excellence in coffee production. It matters to me because they matter to me, and I hope in some small way the words I choose help paint a picture where there is not yet a memory.

In the days between now and when we're standing together on the green hills of Rwanda, I leave you with a conversation between Alice and the March Hare and wish you luck today in not just meaning what you say, but in saying what you mean.

"Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.

"I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know."

"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter,

"You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!"

trust.

Are you familiar with the team building exercise “The Trust Fall”? It’s where you climb up a pole or a tree to a platform 6-12 feet above the ground, cross your arms over your chest, and fall backwards into the tightly joined arms of two rows of people standing below you. You fall backwards into this net of arms and the idea is, when they catch you, you will have magically learned what it means to trust the people on your team. Make whatever analogies and draw whatever conclusion you will from this exercise. The only conclusion I ever drew from it was NOT to trust people. Why? My team didn’t catch me. It took a long time to rebuild my trust in that team.

“Trust is difficult to rebuild, even when there is forgiveness.”

That quote is from a sermon given by Archer Leupp at his church in Peshtigo, WI. The sermon is entitled “Losing the Weight of Unforgiveness.” As I listened to the sermon I was struck by many things, that phrase in particular struck me above all the rest.

It reminded me of my surreal encounter with three of our coffee farmers in Rwanda: Claudette, Clementine and Jean.

If you’re not sure about whom I am speaking, then you and I should connect and have a conversation about this amazing story!

Clementine and Claudette are two women who farm coffee alongside Jean—the man responsible for murdering their respective families during the 100 days of genocide in 1994.

When I asked Clementine how it is possible to forgive the man who murdered her father and three of her siblings in cold blood and not just to forgive him but to share land with him, to work side by side with him in her daily labors, and to share with him her hopes and dreams for the future. She told me that it was and is made possible by three things, “the government [who gave her the land and coffee trees], through farming coffee, and by the power of God.”

Can you believe that we’re a part of their story?
We drink their coffee!
We’re a part of what made and what continues to make this reconciliation possible!

You, me, Archer, Ali, Brian, Michael, Lauren, Cindy, Janvier, and so many more of you with whom I have connected and so many more of you I haven’t even met yet! We’re all a part of this story.

See? It really is SO much more than just a cup of coffee.

**Archer’s sermon can be found on FBC Pestigo’s webpage: http://fbcpeshtigo.com
**A .pdf of The Reconciliation Story can be obtained by shooting me an email asking for it! Christina@drinkcoffeedogood.com Or giving me a call at the office @ 1-866-875.4369

cart before the horse.

Cart Before The Horse.

Many years ago, a friend of Land of a Thousand Hills traveled overseas to do a Habitat for Humanity build. They were about to chop down a tree in the plot of land where the house was to be built when the future homeowners stopped them. The Americans were confused. Why were these people so adamant that this tree not be cut down? Did they not want the house to be built for them? Why would you try to save a tree when it would cost you a home?

Finally, the builders were able to understand that this tree, so insignificant to them, was actually a coffee tree, and the sole source of income for this family.

Which made me dream up this comic. How often do we put the cart before the horse? How often do we dream up a great idea and without thinking it through and end up doing more harm than good? How often do we cut down the tree so we can build the house without thinking of the purpose the tree might serve? Not just in our charity efforts but in our work relationships, our personal lives, and our private goals and ambitions?

Today, in one of our many conversation about what Land of a Thousand Hills is doing in Rwanda, Robert said something that really moved me.

"We are here to make sure there are no more orphans, Christina. We are giving parents jobs and paying them a living wage so they can support their children, not giving them handouts so that they become lazy and learn to rely on someone else for their bread and butter so that one day, when the money doesn't come anymore, they have no choice but to abandon their children to the streets to fend for themselves. There they will inevitably fall into prostitution or drug abuse, most likely both, and foster a whole new generation of children whose parents cannot provide for them. No. No, sir. I won't stand for it."

We have to make sure these kids in Bukonya have homes and families and food to come home to in the first place. What's the best way we can do that? We give their parents work. Real work. Sustainable work. Work they can be proud of, work they can believe in. Work they can pass on to their children so their children can provide for their future families. And out of the excess fruit of their labors we can then return to bless them.

Robert won't stand for it and neither will I. Not while I can help it. And I hope you won't either.

No carts before the horse here, people. Let's give these people work to do. Let's buy so much coffee that Bukonya has to open it's coffee fields to farmers from other districts who are commuting in to help farm enough coffee to meet our demand! Let's stand together against poverty by helping train people's hands while we help them heal their hearts and their families and their communities. That's how we change lives. That's how we make a lasting difference.

The more coffee we drink, the more good we do. Why?
Because it's more than just a cup of coffee.

drink coffee. do good.