Awesome video about how the internet works
It’s Hard being me. I can relate
Water
All posts by ariah
Maybe the beginnings of another Story?
Another little piece of scraps of writing from way back when. Who knows, maybe this will turn into a story…
Honest stands on the street corner. To the left across the street a beaten down building with a tacky neon sign, “House of Thrills Adult Bookstore.” To the right the base line of a rock song emanates from an old church. It’s morning, the man’s head still throbs from a mix of alcohol and experiences he can’t quite recall at the moment. He went for a walk to clear his head; the frigid air clearing away depressed thoughts of past experiences he’d like to forget. Now his hands were cold and the alcohol was finally hitting his bladder.
On almost any other weekend he would have struck out to the left, used the restroom and then spent a few inconspicuous minutes browsing the shelves, pretending to be not overly interested. Today, today was different, and for whatever reason he turned right.
In the not too far distance the city skyline with big skyscrapers, sat gloomy and quiet. The streets littered with cups and papers from the revelries of the evening before.
The Church entrance was up a short set of stairs and as Honest climbed the steps he could feel the draft of warm air rushing through the doors. That’s what he would do too, rush out with the warm air, as soon as he used the restroom and got some free coffee. If there was one thing Honest had learned about church it was that it was a great place to get free coffee. Coffee and beer, two things Honest would show up for if you were just giving it out at a party. A lady greeted him at the door. She was young, maybe late twenties, short brown hair, and a smile that seemed plastered to her face. “Hi, welcome to our church. My name is Joan. Here’s a program, let me know if you have any questions.” At least she hadn’t asked him any questions, Honest wasn’t looking forward to trying to answer them. Before he could reply with “yeah, where’s the restroom?” Joan was already greeting the next folks coming through the door, and Honest hurried along trying to stay out of the way.
Looking around he spotted the coffee first and decided his bladder could wait…
To Be Continued, maybe.
Book Review: Letters to a Young Teacher, by Jonathan Kozol
I just finished reading the book, Letters to a Young Teacher, by Jonathan Kozol. I’ve read a couple of Kozol’s other books, but this one came a from a slightly different perspective. If you haven’t ever read anything Kozol has written, you need to pick up a book today (Savage Inequalities). He writes about the dismal public education system, and has for many years, giving factual statistics, heart-wrenching personal stories, and honest realities about the disparities in the public education system. One of his recent works, The Shame of the Nation, gives some political insight into the situation as well.
In this book, Letters to a Young Teacher, Kozol uses a personal format of letters he wrote to a first year teacher in the Boston public schools. He addresses a wide range of topics, from veteran teachers to vouchers, in a friendly, concise and personal style. I think it’s an easy read and a great primer on the education system if your looking to be educated (which every US citizen should be).
Here are a few of the quotes I enjoyed from the book.
(this one is a little long, but it’s for context, which you can read the whole excerpt here)
These suddenly fashionable phrases seem to travel the rounds of education workshops with unusual rapidity. (It’s also possible, I guess, that once we hear a term like this, we simply start to notice its recurrent use in other situations.) Only two weeks after you told me this, I was in Sacramento and the same term popped up once again during a luncheon I attended with a group of people who were working as curriculum advisers for the state. In answer to a question I had asked concerning classroom dialogue, a woman with a commanding presence who was sitting across the table from me gave me this reply: “We’re speaking of a meta-moment taking place in interactional time.”
The other people at the table seemed to be as baffled by these words as I was. They tried to change the subject to some other issue of importance they were dealing with. But she was insistent in her wish to keep on telling me about the value of these “metamoments” and, try as they did, they could not shut her down.
This kind of jargon, which relies upon the pumping up of any simple notion by tacking on a fancy-sounding prefix or a needless extra syllable, infests the dialogue of public education nowadays like a strange syntactic illness that induces many educators to believe they have to imitate this language if they want to have a place in the discussion.
One of the most annoying consequences of this trend, as you’ve observed, is a peculiar tendency to use a polysyllabic synonym for almost any plain and ordinary word: “implement” for do, “initiate” for start, “utilize” for use, “identify” for name, “articulate” for state, “replicate” for copy, “evaluate” for judge, “quantify” for count, “strategize” for plan, “facilitate” for help, “restructure” or “reconstitute” for change. The toss-in use of adjectives like “positive” and “meaningful” (instead of, simply, “good” or “real”) in front of nouns like “outcome” or “collaboration” is another common way of trying to pump extra air into a wilted and deflated intellectual balloon.
And…
“Down with concerns about the global marketplace…. Childhood does not exist to serve the national economy. In a healthy nation, it should be the other way around.”
Finally…
“Blaming the victim” is, of course, anathema to those who view themselves as liberals or moderates politically and socially. But “flattering the victim” is a favorite practice nowadays, especially in white-owned media that constantly attempt to spare their segregated cities from the odium that they deserve, and their most valued readers from the guilt they otherwise might feel, by pointing to the slightest signs of cultural or economic self-rejuvenation in the neighborhoods to which their racial outcasts are consigned.
That’s a pretty scathing thought on the last quote. Thoughts?
The Christian Life, part VI
(note: Originally written my sophmore year of college in January 2003)
Continued from part V (part IV, part III, part II and part I)
Millions die everyday the statistics are appalling. What are you going to do about it? You can sponsor a child or give something at thanksgiving. You can give out of your abundance and still live with everyone of your physical needs and many of your other needs and wants met. Give till it hurts. Give till you can sympathize to even a slight degree with those whose lives are shaped, marked, centralized around their suffering. If any can understand Christ I think they can to a great degree then we know.
The truth is that for many of us we will never really know what that sort of suffering and feeling of hopelessness is to its fullest. If I want flat broke and lost everything, couldn’t find a job and had no place to live, my parents would take me in feed me, clothe me and give me shelter for as long as I needed. If I decided to have no medical insurance and live overseas somewhere, if any emergency occurred my family and my church would pool their resources and get me the medical care and the ticket out of wherever I was in a second. If I go to a country where many are persecuted and killed for their faith, I might have the potential to be martyred. But there is also the strong possibility that because I am American, and those have in a sense the entire US army behind me, many will think twice before senselessly killing me. Do you see how far removed we are from the suffering so many others endure? We will never, know what it is like to wake up in the morning on a dirt floor, not knowing what they day may bring, where are next meal will come from if it comes at all, if today death will knock on our door, or likely somebody else close to us, to curl up in agony because the pain is unbearable and has been for longer then you can remember to count.
So give!!! You can roller blade in heaven! You don’t need your own pair to take out once during the summer. Spend the time you would be playing video games to petition your church leaders to do something about the aids epidemic, and take the money you get from selling your video game system to pay for vaccinations and help educate a village on the problem of AIDS. If you go out to eat once a week make it once a month and spend the time you might have gone out eating frozen pizza and taking that money and send it to Bread for the World. Instead of buying that new pair of pants or shirt you want (not because you necessarily need one, but because your other clothes just aren’t “cool”) take that same amount and send it to an organization in Russia that gives coats to freezing families with no home.
The Christian Life, part V
(note: Originally written my sophmore year of college in January 2003)
Continued from part IV (part III, part II and part I)
Back to giving. “The poor will always be among us.” It’s scripture and many use it as a reason to cop out of giving. But the rich have always been among us too. In fact many of us have been made rich, by the simple act of God that we were born were we were born. Now if you think for one minute that blessing was just the luck or happen chance of the Divine, you are sorely mistaken. You have been blessed, praise God. But if you think you have been blessed in this way simply to enjoy more fully the pleasures of this life in your comfy little world you are wrong. You have been blessed so that you can bless others. I think quite possible the promise that the poor will always be among us is God’s divine plan for us to have the joy of participating in His work and experiencing to the slightest degree the type of pleasure he has when He gives. The poor are there so that we can bless them just as God has blessed us in whatever means he has. Never forget the Blesser. The blessings are meaningless apart from Him. But never rest with the blessings, they have been given to you so that you can give to others. I do not say this as a possibility. I speak as fallible human being and a sinner but I speak boldly, you have been called to give. So give till it hurts.
YouTubesday: Good Magazine, Earthday, Vampire Energy
GOOD Mags always awesome videos
N*Danger
Vampire Energy
Praying for Our Enemies
(Context: This was written in the spring of 2003 while I was a sophomore at Wheaton College. It was written for the Wheaton College newspaper, but they never published it)
Pray for your Enemies
With all of the talk around campus about the war with Iraq it is important to be reminded of a biblical passage or two in which there is very little discrepancy or debate as to their meaning and our response. “Pray for your Enemies.” It is a simple text; a simple task; you pray.
You needn’t look far to see who our enemies are, pacifist and war supporters would agree that if America has dubbed any individuals it’s enemy at least two would be Osama Bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein. So how does the scripture apply to these modern day enemies of ours? We pray for them. We pray for their lives, that God’s will would be done in them. We pray for their well being, their families; We pray for their salvation, that they might come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. A radical thought, but let me remind you of another radical story. Saul was a persecutor of the church, an enemy of Christ, and the Lord met him on the Damascus road. Is our God’s arm to short that He is not able to do the same thing with Bin Ladin or Hussein? So pray for them! Pray for them like you do your aunt, or cousin, or high school friend that doesn’t know the Lord.
If you need more biblical support look to I Tim. 2:1-2, the same scripture by which we pray for President Bush and the leaders of this nation, “I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone– for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.” We use this verse often to support praying for the leaders of our nation, we’ve done it many times in chapel. Do you know how many times we’ve prayed for our enemies since 9/11? Twice; maybe three times. Yet, “those in authority” include Bin Ladin, Hussein, and any other leader. So, the scriptural command is two fold for praying for Bin Ladin and Hussein: “For our enemies” and “for those in authority.”
If we spent half as much time praying for our enemies as we do debating whether this war is just (and these debates and discussion are not bad things), maybe we would see a radical move of God unlike anything we could have ever anticipated. The discussion on war has been a discussion of “what if” (what if we don’t attack and Saddam does? what if we kill millions? what if Saddam builds nukes?). So, let me present another “what if?” What if by a miracle of God Saddam Hussein becomes a faithful believer in Jesus Christ, and turns from his military wrong doings, and calls to the world to help turn his country around, not only for their physical survival, but so that they might also know Christ as their Savior. Our rational, faithless minds give us trouble even fathoming that.
Now, on a final note I must address those readers who will disregard this message rationally or simply disregard the importance of this command in their daily life. For certainly, there must be an argument that there are some men, evil men, who are not worth praying for. The second option could be much easier; you finish the article, nod in agreement, and do nothing to implement this prayer into your daily life. If you take either of those two routes, you will not be held as ungodly or apostate, yours seems to be the path that the majority of the American Christian world takes on this issue. Besides, there are many ways others and I fall far short of the Lord’s commands as well. In other words, this article is not meant to condemn. But it is meant to convict. We live a Christian life that is comfortable, pleasing and satisfying to us. We obey the law as we feel fit and where it is not to our liking we bend it, twist it, or even break it, but always with justification for our actions. And whether you are a peacenik or a war monger, you stand in a place of extreme blessing. If you get nothing else from this article, tomorrow morning, before you start debating whether this war is just or not, pray for your enemies. “Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves, do what it says.”
Book Review: Traveling Mercies, by Anne Lamott
I should have read Traveling Mercies a while ago, it’s been on my reading list, I just never got around to it. Anyways, my wife has been a reading machine, and I had recently recommended Lamott, which she devoured in less then a week. She enjoyed it so I figured I should read it next.
Lamott is a great author. I want to write like her. Some things I noticed that she does is she gives very specific allusions. She’ll randomly reference specific characters in movies or she’ll give vivid word pictures. For example:
I’m unclear about the fine line between good parenting and being overly protective. I get stumped by the easy test questions – like whether I should let Sam ride his two-wheeler for several blocks without me when I secretly want to run alongside him like a golden retriever. He wants to walk to a friend’s house; I want him to stay inside and draw while I sit on the front porch with a shotgun across my lap like Granny Clampett.
Unfortunately, we have no front porch
-p.81
Or this priceless gem…
“…such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”
I tried to write a little using her style, but I don’t think my mind is at the creatively imaginative stage Lamott’s is at. She’s also very raw in her honest. I think that might disturb people at times, but it’s only disturbing in that she’s willing to share her secrets in a way others of us are not.
Traveling Mercies is more or less a random collection of essays, I don’t think there is any terribly defined theme running through, but each one is unique and adorable in its own right. Definitely recommend you pick it up.
Here are a few more quotes I enjoyed:
Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, “Well isn’t that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do about your stuff.”
..Grace thought it had been just fine. “It was what it was,” she shrugged. But I knew it hadn’t gone well – even her husband said it had been a disaster. And my fear of failure has been lifelong and deep. If you are what you do – and I think my parents may have accidentally given me this idea – and you do poorly, what then? It’s over; you’re wiped out. All those prophecies you heard in the dark have come true, and people can see the real you, see what a schmendrick you are, what a fraud. -p.142
The Christian Life, part IV
(note: Originally written my sophmore year of college in January 2003)
Continued from part III (part II and part I)
It is likely that our churches have already given us opportunity to “love our neighbor as our self” through a number of service activities for the area. Maybe you’ve helped out at the soup kitchen, donated clothing, sand carols, delivered thanksgiving baskets. When did we as Americans remove the idea that our neighbors our those who live next door to us? Don’t get me wrong, I am ecstatic that we have understood that that verse means those in need in our city and community and those neighbors we have never meet half way around the world. But what happened to the neighbor next door? Many in America have never met their neighbor, and that is uncalled for.
Is it that we are too scared to face those who are daily in our lives with the truth of our message? Or maybe the truth is we don’t believe it as strongly as we ought. Maybe it’s that it hasn’t changed our lives to the degree that it ought. Let me suggest something: If you have truly experienced the saving grace of Christ, and have tasted the “full” life that Jesus came to bring, you will desire to share it with everyone that you meet. This doesn’t mean you go around talking about Jesus to every person on the street, but your life, your actions, your lifestyle and your words embody that Christ is all to you. Will your neighbor see that Christ is all to you when you have everything they do (maybe more) and you say Jesus is what makes you happy? Maybe. But what if you lived with so much less of the stuff that society says is the pleasures of life, and yet joy emanated off of you? This is and should be a point of struggle for a lot of people. Do not move from this point. Is Christ really the most satisfying thing in your life? If you knew the cure for Cancer would you share it with everyone you could? You have the cure for the emptiness of which every person suffers, and it is Jesus Christ. If you don’t believe that, or if you don’t really feel the truth of that, then maybe you haven’t experienced Christ to the fullness that you need to.
The Christian Life, part III
(note: Originally written my sophmore year of college in January 2003)
Continued from part II (and part I)
It’s one of the biggest atrocities of the church that we do not give even close to the ten percent that we as believers should be giving—At LEAST. I would submit that most Christians in America could give 20% of their income without seriously suffering in their day to day life. If you equate suffering with not being able to buy a new car every few years, or any other material possession which you have no real dire need of then maybe there is a slight potential one must suffer.
Do you have any idea what the church could do with the money if each Christian gave 10%? Even assuming ¾ of the people who go to church are not bonified Christians, if the last ¼ all gave 10% the resources would be amazing. We could fund hundreds of missionaries overseas; we could give resources of all kinds to the persecuted church; we could feed and educate hundreds of children in needy countries. But there are so many facets to this, so many.
If we gave to the point that we need to choose a standard or quality of living that was below, noticeably below the people who we might be living around (assuming you haven’t had to sell your middle-class suburban home), what message might that send to your neighbors? Might they “see your good deeds and worship your father in heaven?” What if some of the money you tithed went to giving to the needs of those in your neighborhood? What if you tithed 10% of your time (If there is a resource of capital we budget nearly as much as we do our money its probably our time) to the specific task of tangibly “loving your neighbor as your self?” There are 168 hours in a week, that leaves approximately 17 hours to serve your neighbor. Even if we didn’t count sleep time (8 hours a nights) that would still be 11 hours a week to serve your neighbor, by baking a cake for their birthday, writing cards, shoveling driveways, mowing lawns, babysitting, or maybe just talking. We often talk of the mission field as those countries and tribes far away that have never heard the gospel. We forget that Jesus said we will be His witness first “in Jerusalem,” that is, our home, our city, our community.