Coffee, Three Cups of Tea, and Me

American journalism fails on so many levels to report the truth about our world around us, and our politicians talk in a weird pseudo language that never actually gets to the issues. And the average American doesn't dig deeper than the front page of their Internet browser, but rely on one-sided reporting such as we might find on Fox News.

I really trusted the American news reporting and our President to tell me in some kind of easy language what was going on in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, pre and post 9/11. It wasn't until I read Three Cups of Teaby Greg Mortenson, that I got the long awaited answers.

I wish this book was mandatory reading.

What Greg Mortenson has done (and continues to do through the Central Asia Institute) is open our hearts and minds to the reality that all Muslims are not our enemies and that education is the only way to bring peace to these countries, not fire power. Greg did, through recounting his years to build schools, what all the leaders of the world have never done: put names and faces, hopes and dreams on people we've been taught to automatically distrust and hate because of the radical views and violence of a minority.

I felt selfish to learn how Greg had slept in his car to get enough money to travel half way around the world, time after time, to help the world's poorest people in an inaccessible village (cut off from everything by the Braldu River raging below) because he'd made a Muslim tribal leader a promise. The fateful meeting came after Greg, nearly dead after getting lost after a failed trip up to K2, stumbled into an unknown (by mountain climbers) village and was immediately put under the care of an unlikely mentor, Haji, Ali, the nurmadhar (chief) of Korphe village.

Greg's failed attempt at K2 fades away as we're swept into Greg's world. Soon you're rooting for these poor and uneducated people who seem, by today's standards, destitute, but on the other hand are happy and content with what God has provided. After 9/11 that these impoverished, displaced, homeless, refugees, who watched their families mowed down and bombed out by both sides, can still find faith three times a day to bow down and thank God for whatever He puts in their lives, leaves this Christian humbled and embarrassed.

I thought dropping an envelope into a church basket was all the financial help God expects from his followers. Greg's book has made me rethink Jesus' message, that the church is about helping widows and children. But it's also made me rethink something else, how I've failed to thank God properly for my clean, beautiful home, three squares a day, and the absence of an apocalyptic landscape decimated by war.

That's going to change.