20100112-1240

It's Tuesday, January 12th at 12:40 PM Amman, Jordan time. It's the second full day. Jamie [Moffett] and Shane [Claiborne] will be getting in around five-ish or something. So I'll probably see him around 6:30 or 7pm. We've mostly been working, trying to work, with the embassy.

To get our visas approved, and it's looking good, it should be, if not tomorrow morning, then probably tomorrow evening. Then ready go across on the 14th, I think, at the latest. The other members of the team that are here, Peggy, Cliff, and Weldon and I, have all had some really good check-ins.

Greg has been really awesome. Every morning we have breakfast together and we chat. Last night we did check-ins I thought was really important for me. You know, it's real difficult trying to find my position in all this and figure out you know, what my role is, but they've been really supportive and I think I kind of found some value in everything.

So in our check-ins, Greg had to take off cuz I was doing something. He had to contact Washington or something. And we did our individual check-ins talking about how everybody was feeling and everything. I think I was probably the last person and each one had something to say about how excited there were that I was there and was able to kind of provide, some broader perspective and everything.

And I realized that I found another metaphor. I shared with someone my writings on Hebron and that pendulum image I had, and that the metaphor continues to evolve. I thought of this spiral circle where it's not quite a circle, or maybe it is, but you're coming back upon the same point. And for me, that point is Iraq and having a certain mindset, or failing to have a certain mindset, and then coming back much more informed and yet still definitely learning so much. But having a different perspective and reentering these places.

I also told them briefly about Tracy and going back to Camden and going back to mainland and Philadelphia and everything, and how that really had a positive effect on me and how I think that's what I'm doing here in Iraq, which is revisiting and not replacing old memories, but adding overlays like I used in the military.

That could be of a map and these different layers that you're adding, layers of meaning or additional perspective to inform the bigger picture. So you're looking at this map; that's great, it's very informative, but as you add overlays over overlays, you're getting a better picture, a broader picture of what's going on.

And I had mentioned it in my theological kind of mindset, the biggest thing is Where is God's agency? What is God doing in and through my life that I am to learn? And what might that offer other people? And so I think I'm beginning to see a little bit more with each successive overlay that I've been given.

So I'm feeling good about going in. My heartburn’s kind of subsided, I've been a little bit better about taking my medication. Yeah, for the most part, I think I feel good. I was real nervous heading into it for the last several weeks and everything, but I think things will be fine.

I will be asking Sammy what his thoughts are on revealing my history in the military. Because he had some idea, we picked him up today, or he came to the hotel, and we did introductions around tea, he asked ”Is that something that you're gonna tell people, about the military?”

He'd asked me “Why are you here?” This was after I said something about you know, “I was in the military” and I think we chuckled or something. Then I asked him, actually very seriously, “Should I be telling people that?” And I think he said no, but I don't think it was a no in the context of him considering whether I should tell people and believing that I should not. I think it was kinda like a spur-of the-moment thing, like '“ha ha ha, no.” But I don't know for sure. So I'm gonna try and pull him aside and ask deliberately “How do you think Iraqis are gonna feel about having a former soldier there?”

My expectation is that of course it's gonna come up. I mean, it came up today. Everybody's real clear that [Shane, Peggy, Cliff, and Weldon] were here before, Greg's writing a book, Jamie's doing a documentary, and what the fuck am I doing? And so, I don't know. I don't know what to expect on that front, but I'm hoping that God will lead, that He is doing good things.

I did just read, in Kathy Kelly's book, the experience of these two Palestinian kids who were in Baghdad studying and got arrested. So they were taken to this prison on the border with Kuwait or something. Oh, I'm gonna pause for a second.