I haven’t made any major decisions to not eat meat. Not yet at least. I currently don’t eat red meat, though on occasion, if it is what’s offered at someone’s home or at a meal at work, I’m fine with eating it. However, I’m open to the idea that my convictions will lead me to being a complete vegetarian.
The thing compelling me lately is the sustainability, or should I say lack of sustainability of being a regular meat eater.
Here’s some links to get you thinking and discussing.
A while ago I picked up the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It got me thinking and one of the big things I had a dilemma with, particularly as it relates to real estate, are these thoughts below:
When I think only about the financial side of the real estate business, it’s quite tempting to try and jump in. And that’s when I step back and think about some of the social implications.
I’ll start with a typical example. Pick up your average ‘Make millions in Real Estate’ book and one of it’s tips will be to go to the bankruptcy office, or look for foreclosure notices, those are places to get houses for dirt cheap. Never have I seen in ANY book or tape or information anything that addresses the needs or situation of the person that is bankrupt or foreclosing. If anything it might mention that they’ll be glad to have the money, but I highly doubt they are glad to lose their house. “Your misfortune is my fortune,” that’s basically what it is, and that just doesn’t sound right to me.
The other major problem with real estate that I see is the power it has to push people around, particularly poor people. Gentrification is somewhat of a buzzword, but it’s happening and it’s frustrating and sad. Pick any major city and what’s happening is people with low incomes, but people who had a stable home, are being pushed out of their residence and left to move somewhere else. Now that the city has become popular again, those with money are forcing (I’ll explain in another post) out those without money. This includes housing projects (Cabrini Green of Chicago is now condos). This troubles me.
It didn’t get many comments then, but maybe someone could chime in now…
If you haven’t noticed or known already, there’s quite a few changes going on at my house. For those who know me well, and those who don’t here’s a brief update/insight into Ariah’s Life and Blog these days.
In less then one month our little household community will begin to disband. It’s been an exciting year, and a life changing one. I’ve spent the last ten months in a house hold with 8 other people, two of them young children. It’s been an incredible time and I think it has shaped and changed each of our futures in dramatic ways. I’m sorry I haven’t blogged more about the experience, I think it’s a hard task to write on when your in the midst of it. I think I might interview all our housemates on how this experience has effected and changed them and post those as podcasts…
And the big change for me is coming any day with the birth of our first baby. I’ve had the last week off or work to clean and prepare the house, tend to my wife’s needs and try and wrap my mind around the idea that I’ll be a father. I’ve done okay at the first two, but conceiving of holding my child in a few days is hard to grasp. I have been adjusting to the fact that my life will never be the same, I’m really soaking in the transition that this moment in time is.
And, I guess sort of a reflection of the outward changes going on in my life, I’m sort of in a transitional stage with Trying to Follow and my writings, hobbies and interest. Not sure what that means for this blog at the moment yet. I’ve thought about pursuing different avenues of blogging, writing, podcasting and more. I love to write so I don’t plan on that going away, just morphing into something different. I might not write as much (as you’ve already seen), or I might write more. I just added the Asides, minipost that don’t hold as much expectation to be profound, which you won’t find in the RSS or emails, you’ll have to come to the site to get them. I’m also going to be doing a podcasting segment with Josh Brown for the Nick and Josh Podcast, I’ll link to it when it’s up and running. Oh, and if you haven’t subscribed to my blog let, please do so.
So, we’ll see if any new changes come this way, but for now, enjoy your weekend. Hopefully I’ll have a baby by the end of mine.
Joanna, at Keeping Feet, wrote a great piece called Sick of Stuff, which I thought was worth checking out. Here’s a snippet:
Christian author and theologian Richard Foster puts it this way:
The lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick.
I stole that quote from my pastor’s sermon a couple weeks ago. The topic is Practicing the Economics of God’s Kingdom, and the second catalyst he talked about to encourage us to change the way we think about money and wealth and stuff, My personal economics will begin to change the more I am sick and tired of the material lifestyle I am living.
I recommend reading the whole thing here.
….Another P.S.
I just added a new type of post to Trying to Follow, called Asides. To see them you have to actually go to the website and browse the posts. They’ll mostly be short thoughts, links, maybe occasional pictures or videos. They won’t show up in your email or rss. The idea is it will allow me to post more often, without bombarding you with more information, and it’s one more reason to check out the website. Enjoy.
I’m not one to really promote Mtv, I mostly think they have an overall negative influence on us as a society and especially young people. But, rather then get into that, I think it’s good to acknowledge and encourage the good steps they take. MTVU (Don’t ask me what the U is for I haven’t even looked) has an Activism page, and they did make some effort at creatively raising awareness on the Sudan Crisis. Maybe it’s just a sign of the times, that activism is cool now. Either way I thought the site was at least a brief browse, if only to show there web techs that people are interested in Activism, not… other things.
You ever mention, or hear mentioned, a famous person or speech from back in the day? How about Dr. King’s Speeches, or JFK, Winston Churchill or Stokely Carmichael? Well, here’s a link for hours of interesting speeches and sound bits.
So, you might all think this is sort of backwards, but I’m officially on paternity leave, though the baby hasn’t come yet. Mindy, on the other hand, is still working and plans to right up until the baby is born. Before you laugh, I’ve got good reason to be off, caring for Mindy and preparing for the baby to come. I know there is a ton to do, I just am not that sure what some of it is. So, I’m making a list, and I’m gonna try and do as much of the list as I can before the baby arrives. But, seeing as I’ve never done this before I could use some help knowing what things I need to do that I might not have thought about yet. Any ideas?
Alright, the other thing I thought I’d ramble about, since today is Sunday and I try to be a little more spiritual in nature on Sundays, is about Birth. I’ve appreciated the conversation that struck up when I mentioned the idea of birth being a sacrament. If you missed that feel free to check out my post, but mostly check out the comments on the post, The Sacred Page, and this CT article Melissa directed me to a while back.
Mindy and I discussed this a little bit the other day and one thing we talked about is that conversation about birth, pregnancy and childbearing as biblical is nearly absent from most churches, and seemingly taboo in sermons. Our initial thought was that maybe it’s really not talked about in the Bible much, but I’m not sure that’s the case. One of Christian’s most celebrated holiday’s is concerning a Birth! We tend to focus on a pristine, angelic like baby Jesus, rather then labor pains and placentas, but that’s how God incarnate came into the world. I’ve never heard a sermon about pregnancy being sacred, but we annually read that Mary has found favor with God and her reward is nine months of pregnancy. And lest you say this is a unique occurrence reserved for immaculate conceptions only, don’t forget Elizabeth and Zechariah are blessed with the pregnancy of John. I could go on, but I’ll stop.
I guess my point is just this, I think we’ve neglected a large part of our faith, sacraments, community and more by not valuing pregnancy and birth as a gift from God and a part of our faith and spirituality. I’m not the one going through the physical changes, so I’m not really one to talk or be any kind of authority on this. Instead, I feel it’s important for me to step back and say, ‘wow, there is something special going on here and I am excited to have an opportunity to observe and come along side this experience.’
When I first started it, IFeelWhenYou, was going to be this great, thought-provoking website that opened up the conversation on race nation-wide and was a useful tool in our dialog in classes and churches all over. Well, it didn’t really happen. But it is fun to browse through once in a while, and moderate the new statements that had been posted. Here’s what I wrote about it when I first started:
Something that troubles me in dicussing race and racism is that we are often (like in many other areas) poor listeners. We tend to have a lot to say regardless of how important it really is or how much it affects us. Like you learn in any basic communication class sharing your feelings is perfectly okay and important. It’s also important to listen to one another. The typical statement you’ll here suggested is the famous, “I Feel…When You…” It allows you to share what your feeling based on the others action and focuses on your feeling rather then just yelling or pointing out their action (the “You ALWAYS do this…” types of statements). Martin Luther King day is just around the corner and I thought it would be neat to have a site dedicated to sharing our feelings about Race and Racism in a constructive way.
Browse around and see if it’s informative or interesting to you.
I’ve been future posting the majority of posts on here, mainly cause I’m to busy with work and baby prepping to sit down and write on a daily basis. The baby will be here very soon, and I’ll be taking a break from writing on here, so I’m setting up about two weeks worth of posts were I’ll just be posting links to websites I’ve found interesting. It’s up to you readers to lead the conversation.
Fridays I usually like to write a what if post, so here’s my what if…
What if I stopped blogging and wrote a book instead? Would it be worth reading? Would anyone be interested in purchasing a copy? I wonder…
Just saw this on someone’s myspace and thought it was worth sharing. Someday I’ll get back to our hip-hop lessons, it’s just not going to be anytime soon. Here’s Nickelback, If Everyone Cared, for your enjoyment…