Have you even been to Kosovo?  One of the world's newest nations, Kosovo is a wisp of country tucked between the east flank of Albania and the western border of Bulgaria.  A curious mix of Albanian and Serbian Muslims, and victim of much ethnic and religious dispute in the Nineties, Kosovo nonetheless offers many fascinating pictures of culture and society. 
     Moreover, like people all over the world, Kosovoians wish to be educated.  A former student of mine has been teaching in Kosovo since August.  She enjoys it immensely.  She appreciates the warm of the people and the ease with which she, a non-native speaker, has been able to integrate herself into the populace.  Her students' thirst for knowledge at times overwhelms her.

     I found the same thing when I taught at a theological conference in Malawai a number of years ago.  My audience consisted of pastors, male and female, who had traveled, often from many miles away, for the conference.  Because most of them had no money for the one hotel in town, they slept in groups outside the church that hosted the conference.  Not one regretted doing so, however:  they wanted to learn.  They listened to all the speakers with rapt attention.  No one slept, no one looked glassy eyed; everyone was focused. 

     As I think about little Kosovo and tiny Malawai and the hundreds of forgotten students, youth and adult, who live in them, I wonder anew at the incredible drive of the human being.  Centuries ago, Aristotle remarked that people have a natural desire to know, to learn, to grow.  And so they do.
     The people of Kosovo and Malawai underscore aptly one of the richest truths about humanity:  we were not born to atropy and shrivel.  We were born to become.

     To become what?  Simply, to become what becoming demands, that is, creatures more fully aware of why we must "become" at all, creatures who realize that, all things considered, we are born to become far more than who we are in ourselves.  Rather, we are born to become who we are in God