Just Shave it all off

I don’t understand why some older men insist on holding on to as much hair as they possibly can. I see this phenomenon everywhere here in hippie Maui. I sat behind a guy at church who literally had an inch of grey hair left at the base of his neck. And dangling from this mini-fringe of nostalgia hair was a two inch ratty ponytail. Soooo gross! There are plenty of good looking bald men out there- Bruce Willis, Vin Diesel, and at least half of the NBA. As a woman, I can say that I am attracted to bald men and not at all attracted to grown men who are balding and still insist on keeping their remaining hair in a ponytail. Just shave your head and do us all a favor. And there are just too many men here who have ponytails balding or not balding. Balding is obviously worse but I must say I don’t think men should have ponytails at all. Here if you see someone with a braided ponytail that reaches mid-back, there is no guarantee that its owner is a woman. In fact, the person is more likely to be a man. Yuck! I am not attracted to hippies.

I just got my oil changed today. All I still need to do on my car is to get it inspected. I cannot do that, however, until I get my insurance card in the mail. I have put some stickers on my car to make it feel more like my own. I put two Ben Harper stickers, two longhorn stickers, a Rusty sticker and a lovely, “Texas is bigger than France” sticker. I have already received several compliments on that particular sticker.

I already mentioned that I got a bike. Yesterday I attempted to take a leisurely ride to Kahului and back. It is only about 15 miles round trip. Considering that I had done 160 miles in two days with the MS150, 15 miles seemed like a walk in the park. This was not the case. I got into town just fine. I went to some stores and just kinda rode around. Then I decided I wanted to return to Paia. This was easier said than done. The wind had picked up at an incredible rate. I was pedaling as hard as I could and I estimate that I was traveling at around 1 mile per hour. It was excruciating and infuriating. I kept getting blown to the side of the road. I understand why Maui is the wind surfing capital of the world. I really wished I was windsurfing then and not riding a bike. I was about five miles from home when I just gave up trying to pedal through the merciless wind. I started walking my bike.

I walked for about fifteen minutes when a guy in a truck pulled to the side of the road. He asked if I needed a ride. Normally a YWAM girl is not supposed to hitchhike alone but at this point I was not concerned with following the rules. I prayed that this guy was as nice as he seemed and I threw my bike in the back of his truck and climbed in next to him. He turned out to be a nice landscaper guy named Dallas from Oregon. He dropped me off right down the street from my house. I don’t know what I would have done had he not rescued me. I am very thankful. I don’t know if I mentioned how freakin hot it is here. This is not helpful when you are walking your bike for miles.

Yesterday I really went to the beach for the first time. I had been earlier in the week but I didn’t get in the water. It was pretty cool. I forget how amazing the water here looks. Unfortunately the wind was intense and I got pummeled by sand most of the time I was out there. I kept taking refuge under my towel.

Last night I drove some of the people here across the island to hear a guy from Israel speak at a church. He gave us background on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It was very informative. It felt like being in college again. It was also cool to hear an Israeli Jew’s perspective on everything. And I am pretty sure he is not a Christian.

I am very apolitical as many of you know. I don’t pretend to be informed enough to have real opinions on most political issues. I usually just try to stay out of it. But I do want to share a few things the guy said. Take them however you like. He was talked about how Israel keeps trying to give the Palestinians land and they refuse. Then they use acts of terror to try to get land that Israel has already offered them. The speaker was a general in the Israeli army. He said that the reason they were getting the Jews out of the Gaza strip was that the army had to use too many resources to protect these small pockets of Jews from the surrounding Palestinians. The Palestinians think the Jews left because of successful terror attempts when the Israeli army maintains it was for financial reasons. This means Palestinians still believe that terror is a good way to get what they want.

I also did not know that Winston Churchill was responsible for the creation of most of the countries in the Middle East. He drew boundaries almost arbitrarily without much thought for the people groups involved. This is why there is not much unity in much of the Middle East. These people did not form countries out of a desire to unify, they were basically told they were a country. The Palestinians are continually being displaced and moved around. They don’t really have a place to call home and they keep refusing offers of land from Israel. Also the Palestinians were semi-unified under Arafat but now there is no one leader. There are at least five separate factions of Palestinians so negotiating with them is very difficult.

One other interesting thing the guy said was that he is for American troops in Iraq. I recognize that this is one man’s opinion, but he thinks that their presence has resulted in a push towards democracy in other countries in the Middle East. He believes that if the U.S. were to pull out now, it would show the terrorists that terror has beaten the Americans. This would give them an even greater sense of power. As I have said above, I tend to stay out of political matters, but it was interesting to hear an Israeli support U.S. troops in Iraq. I don’t know how accurate the man was, but I found the above interesting. Please don’t use this as a license to engage me in a political debate. I am not into that.

Then after the Israeli guy spoke, the Pastor of the church came up and spoke about the end times. I hated it and I felt very uncomfortable. It did not help that the guy had this weird fake smile, glazed eyes look on his face and that he talked animatedly like he was talking to a group of two-year olds. He basically said that the stuff in the Middle East right now meant that the end times were here. He was saying that he is 57 and that the second coming of Christ WILL occur in his lifetime. I felt like I was listening to a cult leader. I was surprised that he did not ask us to don black Nike tennis shoes and drink poison. If he indeed thinks that the end times are about to happen, then why did he seem unconcerned about all the people who are not Christians? He said that if we are not 100% sure where we are going when we die, we need to come up to the front so he can enlighten us.

I personally do not agree with his theology. My logical personality and what I have learned in my research make me very hesitant to declare that I am 100% sure I am going to Heaven. I have found Christianity to make the most sense and it is the faith system that the evidence seems to support the most. I cannot say beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a God or that Jesus is the way God will redeem the world but because of the evidence I have seen, that is what I believe. If someone could convince me that another faith system has more evidence, then I would switch religions. I doubt someone could do this but I believe that if I am not open to testing my faith then I am just being naïve.

The Bible has a lot of prophecy about the end of our time on earth but it also talks about it “coming like a thief in the night” and that no one knows when exactly it will happen(except for this pastor, apparently.) Also the Bible talks about how a day is like a thousand years to the Lord and a thousand years is like a day. Who knows if there is any exactness in Bible prophecy when the Bible says the Lord works on a different time table than us. As you see, I did not like this part of the evening. The Israel guy was cool, though.

Sorry this post was so political and opinionated. I will try not to do that on a regular basis.