Stepping Forward

Greetings from....chilly & overcast....Vancouver.  After 4 months in the Dominican Republic (specifically the community of Maria Auxiliadora)  I am experiencing a bit of clima-shock.  Having been back for two weeks it has been great to enjoy time with friends, family, and warm showers...although a splash of cold water in the morning is quite refreshing.  My four months in the Dominican Republic were formative.  It was an incredible time with new friends, new language, new culture, new food, living with a (wonderful) family, and asking life questions.  While I can wrestle with "life questions" I do enjoy that mental-terrain as it is there where I find myself pressing into God and more attentive to his voice and direction.  Sometimes, I feel...and you may feel... that life questions should get ironed out.  Sometimes I can feel or self-talk "hey, Darin, you're 30...you should kind have nailed down what you are going to DO....no more adventures of discovery or "rabbit trails" in a seemingly new direction."   Perhaps we think "just make a decision"....or "God give me the answer"....like we gain unwavering clarity, make a decision, and then move forward in a fixed trajectory and rhythm.  This may happen. Or you may need to (poco a poco) take steps down the path--with all its bumps, options, and turns with no real sense of "clarity". 

The four months in the DR have been a good journey down the path....exploring the possiblity of a longer term opportunity living and working in Maria Auxiliadora.  I am thankful for the ways in which  God was speaking and directing along the journey...and thankful that this journey is continuing as I head back for a full year.  

Pause: take a visit to these three sites: www.dueckphoto.com, www.tears.org, www.partnersindeed.org // If would like more information on partnering with me, definitely send an e-mail to darin@dueckphoto.com.

Ok, I am sharing this in part to update but also to segue to a great quote...long, slightly dense, but great.  I was packing up books last week which is always a long process (lots of books and lots of stopping to thumb through pages of books I forgot I had).  Pause: HUGE thanks to my parents for trucking ALL my "stuff" back to Alberta and storing it there house.  Promise: Mom and Dad I will sort through it.  Question:  Is it worse to have kids move back or just their stuff?!  

Ok, back to the quote.  I wanted to share this quote with anyone who is asking questions future questions...Self-Knowledge questions.  

(Pardon the non-gender inclusive language)

"In relation to the personal presuppositions which he himself brings, the action of man must be one which always and in all directions is open, eager to learn, capable of modification, perpetually ready, in obedience to the exclusively sovereign command of God, to allow itself to be oriented afresh and in a very different way from those which might have seemed possible and necessary on the basis of man's own ideas of his ability and capacity.  In the last analysis man has no more knowledge of himself, then [consists] only in constant attention and openness to that which, as God claims him, will be continually disclosed to him as his true self, as the real aptitude which he has been given together with its limits, and then in the corresponding decision for perhaps a much more daring or possibly a much more humble action than that to which he has hitherto considered himself called." (Karl Barth.  Church Dogmatics, III, 4, 52.2)

Journey on.  Step forward.  God enable & direct you.