Poll results

I put this poll up initially on an impulse( like a lot of the things I do) and it was after watching the Saddleback  Faith Forum as well as the Larry King Live interview with pastor Rick Warren who hosted the forum between Senators Barrack Obama and John McCain. After about 10 minutes from posting this poll I wanted to take it down because I realized how silly it seemed and especially how silly it could seem without an explanation to it, but I decided to leave it up there because I realized that it could be a great visual for what I am about to write about. The Evangelical vote is always highly coveted as of the past few elections and quite a large voting block that is heavily targeted. Over the past several elections cycles there have been several hot button issues that have decided who to vote for if you are a Christian. And yes we all know these as abortion, gay rights and war. Over the past few election cycles if you were a self proclaimed Christian then you had to vote for someone who held the same values on these issues as you and the evangelical base as if these were the only moral issues at stake. Other moral issues such as the environment(creation), poverty,non-violence, healthcare etc. haven't been considered important enough to God apparently and decidedly so by the evangelical leaders. So up to this point we have the conservative right evangelicals backing republican base issues of pro-life and anti gay rights and war and we have the liberal secularist and evangelicals backing democratic base issues of poverty healthcare and the environment. 

    Lets jump forward a little to the faith forum. I was really excited about this. I had read a lot about Rick Warren as the ascribed new leader of the modern evangelicals who cared about more historically liberal issues such as poverty and the environment. During the interview with Larry King he said that there were a lot of questions that he wanted to get to that covered these more historically liberal issues but didn't have time to, but he definitely had time to ask questions about abortion rights and gay rights. And it was at this point that I decided to throw the poll up on this blog, because I wanted to see how people viewed the message of Jesus Christ. I wanted to see if that view of Jesus's message correlated into the evangelical base's main issues of importance. And the results show quite the opposite. If the people who voted on my pole vote according to their view this upcoming November then it should be clear who they vote for, at least its clear to me. If those 7 who took this poll are a small sample of the evangelical voters then I have hope for this upcoming election. I sincerely hope and pray that followers of Jesus Christ see the message of Jesus as the 7 of you who took this poll do. Jesus never spoke of abortion or homosexuality directly, Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God at hand, he taught us to take care of the least of these, he taught us time and time again to take care of the poor and the oppressed, he told us to turn the other cheek, he told peter to put down his sword. Jesus didn't say that because we were attacked we must defeat evil by attacking back. Jesus taught and lived Non-Violence as a means to resist evil! 

this is my prayer

    

Inconsistency?

           

Ive been real intrigued by the Russian/Georgian conflict, for several reasons. The battle over western and eastern ideologies first grabbed my attention and I started getting sucked in to the pro-west mindset and fervor that once held most americans during the days of the cold war. Then I started hearing what could be called a "meta-message", this wasn't a meta-message intentionally inlayed into the coverage but instead of how I started to interpret the actions by our government, the coverage, and the feelings of importance of what was happening. That is kind of vague so I will try to narrow it down. 

       The meta-message started occurring when they started giving numbers about the humanitarian package and effort that was underway by the United States. Our mission from President Bush was strictly a humanitarian mission, no use of force was expected by our military. At first I was excited because this is how I feel that our military should be used instead of war. Then they started talking about how many displaced Georgians there war and they were making romance of it in only the way media can and I think that is when it hit me. "Why after only six days has this "atrocity" been so romanticized when the ATROCITIES in Sudan and Uganda and Burma and elsewhere have been happening for who knows how long and nothing by our government has been done about it, no romanticized coverage by the media and no since of grave importance?"

   This I find very inconsistent for top down. It makes me very grateful for the many organizations and individuals who care so deeply to bring light to these atrocities. I hope that we as a nation and as believers and as humanitarians don't get sucked in to the middle and forget about the margins. 

Reconciliation

Several years ago I heard this image(hmm that sounds funny) as another way to see the life of Jesus and as a way to show/explain what Jesus was about and what He was hear for. Essentially, as my amazing drawing shows, Jesus came to reconcile four relationships; our relationship with oursleves, our relationship with humanity, our relationship with God and our relationship with creation(nature,environment,etc..) 

Any thoughts on this?

Me and Rachel's future entrepreneurship

Rachel and I have always had a desire to own and run a cafe/coffee shop/lounge what have you, for many reasons. For one, coffee shops were central to the beginning of US ( :) ). Two, they are central to several things that we value very highly such as conversation, common ground, comfort, familiarity, a rich shot of espresso, an aromatic cup of dark roast, a sense of community etc.. We have several ideas of ways we want to use it in a way that brings 

a little more of the Kingdom of God to the community where we have it such as the kinds of people we hire and train and services we provide to the community as well as what kind of coffee we buy, from who, and how they are treated(yes you can assume I mean fair trade). Every opportunity we get we try to find new coffee shops or cafe's to check out to give us inspiration and re-ignite our desire to open one some day, so with that I stumbled on this amazing cafe in Seattle called Q Cafe.  Here is a little description that they give of the Cafe that immediately sparked enthusiasm and gave me even more to shoot for when we open ours:        

Q Cafe is non-profit neighborhood cafe in Seattle featuring direct trade espresso and tea, live music, art, and community events.  We proudly serve Stumptown Coffee; support local artists and musicians through our art gallery and live music venue; host many groups through the rental of our space; host community events; help collect resources for the homeless community; and give back 10% of all cafe sales to local and global non-profit causes.

In addition to great coffee and tea, Q Cafe also features free WiFi for laptop users, 2 desktop kiosks for internet [30 minutes/purchase], a new kids’ room for parents and children, countertop tables and benches for laptop user with easy access to outlets, a piano, and plenty of comfy chairs and sofas.

As I said early we don't know when this venture will take place but hopefully it brings together all of the elements that I mentioned here and more.

the green thumb and much much more

Rachel and I don't have much yard to work with but we try to make the most of it. Here is our first attempt at bringing a little creation to our home. As you can see it is very basic, consisting of only plants, but it is a beginning nonetheless(and yes this is pretty much the extent of our yard). Eventually we desire to have a small garden with vegetables and fruits as well as many more beautiful plants. Im starting out with this because it is a small part of a bigger idea that I am looking into under the umbrella of sustainable living. I recently bought this book called "ToolBox for Sustainable City Living" 

      

I have a good friend in Baton Rouge who is wanting to start a community garden to give back to the Baton Rouge community as well as provide basic skills to underprivileged areas of BR. He is also trying to get crew from the Rhizome Collective  to come to BR and put on a work shop. Essentially it would be a workshop on permaculture which is a multi-disciplinary practice used to design long lasting human communities. Its essential goal is to create intensively cultivated spaces capable of providing for as many human needs as possible in as small of an area as possible. By doing so, humans can be self-reliant and lessen their impact on their surrounding environments in a way that doesn't rely on outsourced energy and resources (xvi).  It seems like something that you could apply in your life in whatever kind of community you live in, learning how to use and recycle different materials to be able to perform everyday uses. They also make a great statement about the state of capitalism and its consequences and that is that "it requires infinite expansion and consumption of material resources. In a world that is fragile and finite, such a system is inherently unsustainable." (p.xii,xiii). Just something that has been going through my mind, I will keep updates on the progress of both this project and our venture in it. 

Washington D.C. and the beloved community

Two weeks ago Rachel and I attended a conference in Washington D.C. titled "Training for Change: Vote out Poverty Campaign" it was hosted by Sojourners and is part of their annual Call to Renewal/Pentecost conference. It was one of those things you expereince where, like trying to capture a beautiful moment with a photo and how it too often doesn't do the moment justice, trying to put it to words really won't skim the surface of what we experienced, not just at that conference but what we experienced all together in D.C. 

The conference had speakers, panel discussions and workshops like many others do, but the people that were leading all of these were not ordinary people, they were extraordinary people. They were priest, pastors and civil rights activists from all over the United states, from every denominational background you could imagine, every age you could imagine, all ethnicities, both sexes, movers and shakers in the Kingdom of God, and they were all friends, brothers and sisters. There were civil rights activists who had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King and there were new civil rights activists fighting for immigrant rights and living wages. There were people who had worked in Calcutta and with Mother Teresa. All of this, to me, was overwhelming. To be in the presence of these people and their stories, their stories that will bring you to tears while at the same time light a fire of righteous anger in you, will never leave me. The stories of injustice that happen all around our country and world are present today just as much so as ever. We as the church, and we has human beings need to recognize that our will is to preserve justice within the human race with love and humility. 

The conference was to train us how to be grassroots organizers in our local church or faith based communities, to lobby for the poor because they can't afford to do it themselves. There are two goals that we are supposed to organize people to pledge for and to have in mind when they cast their votes, one is a domestic goal of reducing poverty in the United States by 50% over the next ten years and the other is to meet the millenium development goals set in place by the UN to reduce poverty internationally. So we are supposed to first register voters if they aren't already registered and then get people to sign pledge cards saying that they will vote these issues next elections and then, like a petition, we take the voter pledge cards and bring them to our state elected officials and say here are your constituents and this is what they are voting for, are you on board? and then Sojourners will make it public and next April there is a rally in D.C. where we will have meetings with our elected officials and hold them accountable to their pledges. It is kind of tricky for us because we don't have a traditional home church but we think we have figured out a way to make it happen. So we are both excited and anxious about pulling it off. 

We were also blessed to meet some amazing people our age who were doing amazing things, big and small, all over the country and world. It was encouraging to see people living in intentional community with each other. Guys committing to live in true community with each other, and also girls doing the same, and even some couples committing to live life together and raise families together. We also met a lot of people from bigger cities who were choosing to move from their urban homes to downtown( not the hip/artsy parts and not gentrification) but where the people that they are working and fighting for live. You have to live with the people, you can't just go in and help once a month, you have to immerse yourself in their lives and into their community, creating a beloved community. Such a beautiful thing. There was this one guy from Toronto who lived in a poorer part of the city and did a lot with the kids around him and tried to show them that they were not poor, that actually they were richer than 40% of the world and showed them examples of what impoverished was, and then took it to the next level and gave them a since of empowerment and wealth by getting them to send a pair of their basketball shoes to kids who didn't have any shoes at all. He called it two kinds of oppression that poor kids/people face, internal and external oppression, and he was trying to reverse the image of themselves that they are told they are. This is just one of many beautiful stories that we heard. This is love, this is the gospel of Jesus, this is tangible.

We need to start living and voting with the love and compassion of Jesus

"Breaking News" flashed across every news station a moment ago with the sub-title "Bush comparing Obama to Nazi appeasers" and "Bush suggests Obama wants appeasement for terrorist." Here are a few startling facts that are not well known and should be a concern... 

"The 2006 budget showed that US military expenditures were twenty-one times larger than diplomacy and foreign aid combined, and that the United States was dead last among the most developed nations in foreign aid as a percentage of gross domestic product. One wonders what would happen if good-hearted Americans realized that a mere 10 percent of the US military budget, if reinvested in foreign aid and development, could care for the basic needs of the entire worlds poor." 

"Even if you take all the rest of the world's weapons sales and put them together, they don't match US weapons exports. My country can boast that we produce 53.4 percent of the worlds weapons. Most Americans are either uninformed about these figures, apathetic, or perhaps they believe that McNamara was more rational than President Jimmy Carter, who in 1976 saud "We can not have it both ways. We can't be the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of arms."

"It gets worse. In 2003, 80 percent if the top buyers of US Weapons (twenty of the twenty five top clients) were countries that our own State Department labeled undemocratic or countries known for their failure to uphold human rights, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In 1999, the US weapons industry supplied arms to 92 percent of the conflicts in process anywhere on the planet, and in a stroke of elegant fairness, often supplied both sides in conflicts. Perhaps most shocking and awful of all:between 1998 and 2001, the United States, Great Britain, and France earned more income from selling weapons to developing countries than the gave those developing countries in aid"

(all of these passages in quotes are take from 'Everything Must Change' by Brian McCalren with annotated sources in the back of the book.)

What if we had a President who stood up against this and perhaps wanted to talk conflicts out, through diplomacy, rather than immediately going to war and perhaps saving us from the deaths of nearly 1,000,000 Iraqis and 4,000 Americans among the countless others who we have supplied arms to. If we as people have any compassion and love for the rest of the world we have to stop voting for policies that contradict the love, humility, meekness and forgiveness that we are taught through Jesus.

We would be in a far better place than we are right now not only in our country but also in our world. I read this passage in a book im reading right now and it fits perfectly in describing this moment  "The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him." -Tolstoy