Last night history was made. As a columnist in the Washington Post said yesterday, the policies, hopes, and dreams of Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr. have been realized in a way many thought would never happen. Some are cheering in the streets, and some refuse to cheer, despite this historical marvel that has happened in what truly is one of the most remarkable nations in history--I can say that after living and travelling around in China and Tibet for the past two years.
There is much to be curious about--will Barack Obama be able to deliver on his promises? He has a good chance with the Congressional results. Will Obama bring about the end of the world? I doubt it. Health care, education reform, energy reform, and a foreign policy that actually makes sense (as opposed to the absolute insanity of the last eight years)? I think there is a real chance.
I'm happy and hopefull about the direction America seems to be heading. Nationalized health care is not as bad as many would have you believe--just because something in the UK doesn't work as well as it was intended is no reason to decry to benefit to the majority of Americans. Most of us who have any experience with another country aren't even in the bracket of people that would be affected by a national health care system. But for those who are stuck, for those who simplly can't afford it, this is the way to go. I've watched Tibetan nomads' and destitute Chinese farmers'lives be saved because of national health care. I've watched families go into spiraling debt because they couldn't afford private, open market health care in America.
If Obama only does one thing, this one thing would be amazing. If he delivers on even half of promises, that will be something to show the world that the American experiment is far from dead, far from irrelevant.
Indeed, as Barack Obama said last night, we are only at the beginning of a great challenge in American life. And just as he spoke of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, just as he spoke of putting a man on the moon and surviving the Cold War, America can.
Yes, we can.
Today, for the first time in over a decade, I am proud to be an American.
05 November, 2008
09 October, 2008
Pro-life...really?
I know that a lot of people tend to make elections one issue events, especially when deciding who to vote for in a presidential race. On the surface I don't really have an issue with that, other than to think it's a bit naive. Especially when the issue centers around the pro-life debate.
I know that Nicholas Kristof is part of the big liberal conspiracy to ruin America (according to some). I, however, have been to some of the areas he talks about in his columns. I've done a fair bit of reading on community development theory (beyond Sachs and Easterly). So when he says something, I tend to pay attention. In this column he raises an excellent issue. I'd recommend people read it.
Can This Be Pro-Life?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 8, 2008
New York Times
The Bush administration this month is quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world’s poorest women in Africa. Thus the paradox of a “pro-life” administration adopting a policy whose result will be tens of thousands of additional abortions each year — along with more women dying in childbirth.
The saga also spotlights a clear difference between Barack Obama and John McCain. Senator Obama supports U.N.-led efforts to promote family planning; Senator McCain stands with President Bush in opposing certain crucial efforts to help women reduce unwanted pregnancies in Africa and Asia.
There is something about reproductive health — maybe the sex part — that makes some Americans froth and go crazy. We see it in the opposition to condoms to curb AIDS in Africa and in the insistence on abstinence-only sex education in American classrooms (one reason American teenage pregnancy rates are more than double those in Canada). And we see it in the decision of some towns — like Wasilla, Alaska, when Sarah Palin was mayor there — to bill rape victims for the kits used to gather evidence of sex crimes. In most places, police departments pay for rape kits, which cost hundreds of dollars, but while Ms. Palin was mayor of Wasilla, the town decided to save money by billing rape victims.
The latest bout of reproductive-health madness came in the last couple of weeks when the U.S. Agency for International Development ordered six African countries to ensure that no U.S.-financed condoms, birth control pills, I.U.D.’s or other contraceptives are furnished to Marie Stopes International, a British-based aid group that operates clinics in poor countries.
The Bush administration says it took this action because Marie Stopes International works with the U.N. Population Fund in China. President Bush has cut all financing for the population fund on the — false — basis that it supports China’s family-planning program.
It’s true that China’s one-child policy sometimes includes forced abortion, and when traveling in rural China, I still come across peasants whose homes have been knocked down as punishment for an unauthorized child. But the U.N. fund has been the most powerful force in moderating China’s policy, and a State Department team itself found no evidence of any U.N. involvement in the coercion.
Mr. Bush’s defunding of the U.N. Population Fund — backed by Senator McCain — has persisted since 2002. What is new is the extension of that policy to a leading private family-planning organization like Marie Stopes International.
“The irony and hypocrisy of it is that this is a bone to the self-described ‘pro-life’ movement, but it will result in deaths to women who just want to space their births,” said Dana Hovig, the chief executive of Marie Stopes International. The organization estimates that the result will be at least 157,000 additional unwanted pregnancies per year, leading to 62,000 additional abortions and 660 women dying in childbirth.
That may overstate the impact. Kent Hill, an official of the U.S. aid agency, insists that there will be no increase in pregnancies because the American contraceptives will simply be routed to other aid groups in Africa.
That will work to some degree in big cities. But it’s a fantasy in rural Africa. Over the years, I’ve dropped in on a half-dozen Marie Stopes clinics, and in rural areas there’s typically nothing else for many miles around. Women in the villages simply have no other source of family planning.
“This nearsighted maneuver will have direct and dire consequences,” a group of prominent public health experts in America declared in an open letter, adding that the action “will translate almost immediately into increased maternal death and disability.”
Proponents of the cut-off are not misogynists. They are honestly outraged by forced abortions in China. But why take it out on the most impoverished and voiceless people on earth? Mr. McCain seems to have supported Mr. Bush, mostly out of instinct, and when a reporter asked him this spring whether American aid should finance contraceptives to fight AIDS in Africa, he initially said, “I haven’t thought about it,” and later added, “You’ve stumped me.”
Retrograde decisions on reproductive health are reached in conference rooms in Washington, but I’ve seen how they play out in African villages. A young woman lies in a hut, bleeding to death or swollen by infection, as untrained midwives offer her water or herbs. Her husband and children wait anxiously outside the hut, their faces frozen and perspiring as her groans weaken.
When she dies, her body is bundled in an old blanket and buried in a shallow hole, with brush piled on top to keep wild animals away. Her children sob and shriek and in the ensuing months they often endure neglect and are far more likely to die of hunger or disease.
In some parts of Africa, a woman now has a 1-in-10 risk of dying in childbirth. The idea that U.S. policy may increase that toll is infuriating.
I know that Nicholas Kristof is part of the big liberal conspiracy to ruin America (according to some). I, however, have been to some of the areas he talks about in his columns. I've done a fair bit of reading on community development theory (beyond Sachs and Easterly). So when he says something, I tend to pay attention. In this column he raises an excellent issue. I'd recommend people read it.
Can This Be Pro-Life?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 8, 2008
New York Times
The Bush administration this month is quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world’s poorest women in Africa. Thus the paradox of a “pro-life” administration adopting a policy whose result will be tens of thousands of additional abortions each year — along with more women dying in childbirth.
The saga also spotlights a clear difference between Barack Obama and John McCain. Senator Obama supports U.N.-led efforts to promote family planning; Senator McCain stands with President Bush in opposing certain crucial efforts to help women reduce unwanted pregnancies in Africa and Asia.
There is something about reproductive health — maybe the sex part — that makes some Americans froth and go crazy. We see it in the opposition to condoms to curb AIDS in Africa and in the insistence on abstinence-only sex education in American classrooms (one reason American teenage pregnancy rates are more than double those in Canada). And we see it in the decision of some towns — like Wasilla, Alaska, when Sarah Palin was mayor there — to bill rape victims for the kits used to gather evidence of sex crimes. In most places, police departments pay for rape kits, which cost hundreds of dollars, but while Ms. Palin was mayor of Wasilla, the town decided to save money by billing rape victims.
The latest bout of reproductive-health madness came in the last couple of weeks when the U.S. Agency for International Development ordered six African countries to ensure that no U.S.-financed condoms, birth control pills, I.U.D.’s or other contraceptives are furnished to Marie Stopes International, a British-based aid group that operates clinics in poor countries.
The Bush administration says it took this action because Marie Stopes International works with the U.N. Population Fund in China. President Bush has cut all financing for the population fund on the — false — basis that it supports China’s family-planning program.
It’s true that China’s one-child policy sometimes includes forced abortion, and when traveling in rural China, I still come across peasants whose homes have been knocked down as punishment for an unauthorized child. But the U.N. fund has been the most powerful force in moderating China’s policy, and a State Department team itself found no evidence of any U.N. involvement in the coercion.
Mr. Bush’s defunding of the U.N. Population Fund — backed by Senator McCain — has persisted since 2002. What is new is the extension of that policy to a leading private family-planning organization like Marie Stopes International.
“The irony and hypocrisy of it is that this is a bone to the self-described ‘pro-life’ movement, but it will result in deaths to women who just want to space their births,” said Dana Hovig, the chief executive of Marie Stopes International. The organization estimates that the result will be at least 157,000 additional unwanted pregnancies per year, leading to 62,000 additional abortions and 660 women dying in childbirth.
That may overstate the impact. Kent Hill, an official of the U.S. aid agency, insists that there will be no increase in pregnancies because the American contraceptives will simply be routed to other aid groups in Africa.
That will work to some degree in big cities. But it’s a fantasy in rural Africa. Over the years, I’ve dropped in on a half-dozen Marie Stopes clinics, and in rural areas there’s typically nothing else for many miles around. Women in the villages simply have no other source of family planning.
“This nearsighted maneuver will have direct and dire consequences,” a group of prominent public health experts in America declared in an open letter, adding that the action “will translate almost immediately into increased maternal death and disability.”
Proponents of the cut-off are not misogynists. They are honestly outraged by forced abortions in China. But why take it out on the most impoverished and voiceless people on earth? Mr. McCain seems to have supported Mr. Bush, mostly out of instinct, and when a reporter asked him this spring whether American aid should finance contraceptives to fight AIDS in Africa, he initially said, “I haven’t thought about it,” and later added, “You’ve stumped me.”
Retrograde decisions on reproductive health are reached in conference rooms in Washington, but I’ve seen how they play out in African villages. A young woman lies in a hut, bleeding to death or swollen by infection, as untrained midwives offer her water or herbs. Her husband and children wait anxiously outside the hut, their faces frozen and perspiring as her groans weaken.
When she dies, her body is bundled in an old blanket and buried in a shallow hole, with brush piled on top to keep wild animals away. Her children sob and shriek and in the ensuing months they often endure neglect and are far more likely to die of hunger or disease.
In some parts of Africa, a woman now has a 1-in-10 risk of dying in childbirth. The idea that U.S. policy may increase that toll is infuriating.
12 September, 2008
Liberalism
As a self-proclaimed classic liberal who hopefully is in the tradition of Lyndon Johnson, I also agree that the greatest threat to this country is not the far left, but rather the far right. And keeping in that spirit, I'm here going to quote a recent opinion article from the New York Times:
Hold Your Heads Up
By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 8, 2008
Ignorance must really be bliss. How else, over so many years, could the G.O.P. get away with ridiculing all things liberal?
Skip to next paragraph
Troglodytes on the right are no respecters of reality. They say the most absurd things and hardly anyone calls them on it. Evolution? Don’t you believe it. Global warming? A figment of the liberal imagination.
Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.
So there was Hillary Clinton, of all people, sponsoring legislation to ban flag-burning; and Barack Obama, who once opposed the death penalty, morphing into someone who not only supports it, but supports it in cases that don’t even involve a homicide.
Anyway, the Republicans were back at it last week at their convention. Mitt Romney wasn’t content to insist that he personally knows that “liberals don’t have a clue.” He complained loudly that the federal government right now is too liberal.
“We need change, all right,” he said. “Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington.”
Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.
There would be absolutely no chance that a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin could make a credible run for the highest offices in the land. Conservatives would never have allowed it.
Civil rights? Women’s rights? Liberals went to the mat for them time and again against ugly, vicious and sometimes murderous opposition. They should be forever proud.
The liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were contained in the original Social Security Act. Most conservatives despised the very idea of this assistance to struggling Americans. Republicans hated Social Security, but most were afraid to give full throat to their opposition in public at the height of the Depression.
“In the procedural motions that preceded final passage,” wrote historian Jean Edward Smith in his biography, “FDR,” “House Republicans voted almost unanimously against Social Security. But when the final up-or-down vote came on April 19 [1935], fewer than half were prepared to go on record against.”
Liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Medicare and Medicaid. Quick, how many of you (or your loved ones) are benefiting mightily from these programs, even as we speak. The idea that Republicans are proud of Ronald Reagan, who saw Medicare as “the advance wave of socialism,” while Democrats are ashamed of Lyndon Johnson, whose legislative genius made this wonderful, life-saving concept real, is insane.
When Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law in the presence of Harry Truman in 1965, he said: “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine.”
Reagan, on the other hand, according to Johnson biographer Robert Dallek, “predicted that Medicare would compel Americans to spend their ‘sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.’ ”
Scary.
Without the many great and noble deeds of liberals over the past six or seven decades, America would hardly be recognizable to today’s young people. Liberals (including liberal Republicans, who have since been mostly drummed out of the party) ended legalized racial segregation and gender discrimination.
Humiliation imposed by custom and enforced by government had been the order of the day for blacks and women before men and women of good will and liberal persuasion stepped up their long (and not yet ended) campaign to change things. Liberals gave this country Head Start and legal services and the food stamp program. They fought for cleaner air (there was a time when you could barely see Los Angeles) and cleaner water (there were rivers in America that actually caught fire).
Liberals. Your food is safer because of them, and so are your children’s clothing and toys. Your workplace is safer. Your ability (or that of your children or grandchildren) to go to college is manifestly easier.
It would take volumes to adequately cover the enhancements to the quality of American lives and the greatness of American society that have been wrought by people whose politics were unabashedly liberal. It is a track record that deserves to be celebrated, not ridiculed or scorned.
Self-hatred is a terrible thing. Just ask that arch-conservative Clarence Thomas.
Liberals need to get over it.
Hold Your Heads Up
By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 8, 2008
Ignorance must really be bliss. How else, over so many years, could the G.O.P. get away with ridiculing all things liberal?
Skip to next paragraph
Troglodytes on the right are no respecters of reality. They say the most absurd things and hardly anyone calls them on it. Evolution? Don’t you believe it. Global warming? A figment of the liberal imagination.
Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.
So there was Hillary Clinton, of all people, sponsoring legislation to ban flag-burning; and Barack Obama, who once opposed the death penalty, morphing into someone who not only supports it, but supports it in cases that don’t even involve a homicide.
Anyway, the Republicans were back at it last week at their convention. Mitt Romney wasn’t content to insist that he personally knows that “liberals don’t have a clue.” He complained loudly that the federal government right now is too liberal.
“We need change, all right,” he said. “Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington.”
Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.
There would be absolutely no chance that a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin could make a credible run for the highest offices in the land. Conservatives would never have allowed it.
Civil rights? Women’s rights? Liberals went to the mat for them time and again against ugly, vicious and sometimes murderous opposition. They should be forever proud.
The liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were contained in the original Social Security Act. Most conservatives despised the very idea of this assistance to struggling Americans. Republicans hated Social Security, but most were afraid to give full throat to their opposition in public at the height of the Depression.
“In the procedural motions that preceded final passage,” wrote historian Jean Edward Smith in his biography, “FDR,” “House Republicans voted almost unanimously against Social Security. But when the final up-or-down vote came on April 19 [1935], fewer than half were prepared to go on record against.”
Liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Medicare and Medicaid. Quick, how many of you (or your loved ones) are benefiting mightily from these programs, even as we speak. The idea that Republicans are proud of Ronald Reagan, who saw Medicare as “the advance wave of socialism,” while Democrats are ashamed of Lyndon Johnson, whose legislative genius made this wonderful, life-saving concept real, is insane.
When Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law in the presence of Harry Truman in 1965, he said: “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine.”
Reagan, on the other hand, according to Johnson biographer Robert Dallek, “predicted that Medicare would compel Americans to spend their ‘sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.’ ”
Scary.
Without the many great and noble deeds of liberals over the past six or seven decades, America would hardly be recognizable to today’s young people. Liberals (including liberal Republicans, who have since been mostly drummed out of the party) ended legalized racial segregation and gender discrimination.
Humiliation imposed by custom and enforced by government had been the order of the day for blacks and women before men and women of good will and liberal persuasion stepped up their long (and not yet ended) campaign to change things. Liberals gave this country Head Start and legal services and the food stamp program. They fought for cleaner air (there was a time when you could barely see Los Angeles) and cleaner water (there were rivers in America that actually caught fire).
Liberals. Your food is safer because of them, and so are your children’s clothing and toys. Your workplace is safer. Your ability (or that of your children or grandchildren) to go to college is manifestly easier.
It would take volumes to adequately cover the enhancements to the quality of American lives and the greatness of American society that have been wrought by people whose politics were unabashedly liberal. It is a track record that deserves to be celebrated, not ridiculed or scorned.
Self-hatred is a terrible thing. Just ask that arch-conservative Clarence Thomas.
Liberals need to get over it.
17 August, 2008
The Spring of the Christian Soul
Spring is a time when things become new. As the long, dark of winter finally ends; new life suddenly emerges from what once appeared to be dead. This seasonal change is more drastic than that from Spring to summer, or summer to fall. In the span of a week or so, things that were grey and dreary suddenly become bright and full of life. I sit and look out my window across a hillside that two weeks ago was brown, and is now green with life. Not just plant life, but birds and bugs emerge and begin their movement like a well-orchestrated symphony. In the heart and mind of a person, this sudden change from death to life also begins to spark in the realization of newness, of life.
Springtime should be time of rejoicing and reflection for the Christian. It is not enough to admire the beauty that springs up with the arrival of Spring; rather, the Christian should use this time to reflect on the arrival of Spring in their soul. All of nature is built by God to show His glory, but also to point man to Him. And, I think, the arrival of Spring does more than this. It also gives a visual example of what happens in the soul of man when he is born again into New Life with Christ.
Before a true encounter with Christ, we live our lives in a dreary wasteland. Our souls shuffle along, dying more each day. Our lives are meaningless, pointless, and repetitive. The picture that C. S. Lewis gives us in his work The Great Divorce is fitting of who and what we are as we move through the dark and dead world, becoming darker and lifeless ourselves.
But suddenly there is an Arrival. This Arrival is not that of a thawing or slight warming upon the cold plain of our lives. It is the Arrival of the Morning Son pouring forth Light and New Life into all He reaches. When this happens to our soul, we cease to be bent and burdened with shadow and death. We instead have our crooked backs straightened upright, the lifeblood of our souls becomes quickened with warmth and vigor. We look around and see that the place we are standing in is no longer death and darkness; it has become a lush garden with Life-giving Water flowing continually.
This is the Spring of the soul, the experience that gives our lives meaning, and removes the repetition of death. We no longer become bound by the strictures of the wintry death of sin. We instead step forward into the Love and Grace of the Springtime’s Son. Instead of the death song we sing with the Psalmist “Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices.”
For the Christian, Springtime is to be a time of continual rejoicing. It is no accident, I think, that Easter is celebrated in the beginning of Spring. The Risen Savior is the ultimate symbol of the New Life found in Spring. Spring should be a time where the Christian contemplates the imagery given us by the Creator to remind us of our own Spring. It is a time to often think of the contrast between our old life, and our New Life in the Son.
The coming of Spring in the soul gives the only New Life that is lasting and true. The New Life in the Son will not pass away like the Spring of the world passing into summer, fall, and winter. So as the Spring arrives, let us look not to nature’s finery in simple bliss, but let us look to it as a mighty symbol of the Spring in our souls.
Springtime should be time of rejoicing and reflection for the Christian. It is not enough to admire the beauty that springs up with the arrival of Spring; rather, the Christian should use this time to reflect on the arrival of Spring in their soul. All of nature is built by God to show His glory, but also to point man to Him. And, I think, the arrival of Spring does more than this. It also gives a visual example of what happens in the soul of man when he is born again into New Life with Christ.
Before a true encounter with Christ, we live our lives in a dreary wasteland. Our souls shuffle along, dying more each day. Our lives are meaningless, pointless, and repetitive. The picture that C. S. Lewis gives us in his work The Great Divorce is fitting of who and what we are as we move through the dark and dead world, becoming darker and lifeless ourselves.
But suddenly there is an Arrival. This Arrival is not that of a thawing or slight warming upon the cold plain of our lives. It is the Arrival of the Morning Son pouring forth Light and New Life into all He reaches. When this happens to our soul, we cease to be bent and burdened with shadow and death. We instead have our crooked backs straightened upright, the lifeblood of our souls becomes quickened with warmth and vigor. We look around and see that the place we are standing in is no longer death and darkness; it has become a lush garden with Life-giving Water flowing continually.
This is the Spring of the soul, the experience that gives our lives meaning, and removes the repetition of death. We no longer become bound by the strictures of the wintry death of sin. We instead step forward into the Love and Grace of the Springtime’s Son. Instead of the death song we sing with the Psalmist “Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices.”
For the Christian, Springtime is to be a time of continual rejoicing. It is no accident, I think, that Easter is celebrated in the beginning of Spring. The Risen Savior is the ultimate symbol of the New Life found in Spring. Spring should be a time where the Christian contemplates the imagery given us by the Creator to remind us of our own Spring. It is a time to often think of the contrast between our old life, and our New Life in the Son.
The coming of Spring in the soul gives the only New Life that is lasting and true. The New Life in the Son will not pass away like the Spring of the world passing into summer, fall, and winter. So as the Spring arrives, let us look not to nature’s finery in simple bliss, but let us look to it as a mighty symbol of the Spring in our souls.
09 March, 2007
Thoughts from Making Bread
Well, don't let the title fool you (though, yes I do make bread....my fiance taught me). I just ran across this thing called the "Top 50 Influential Churches/Pastors." Now, while I am as big a fan as the next of looking at lists like these to see what's going on, I generally confine this to things that are as inconsequential as the list-movies, music, and books. I'm a bit concerned that we apparently have a need to make a list like this...did Paul ever make a top 50 list? NO. He instead exhorted the churches and believers to be churches and believers. Who cares about ratings? If you make it onto "way to go list" for doing what you are SUPPOSED to be doing, who cares!!! That's just silly and a willing action of blindness on the part of the Christian community. If you are doing what you should be, you don't need a list to say so. Now, granted many of the pastors/churches on the list are men who could most likely care less (Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, etc.). I think I am slightly disturbed by this because instead of magazines making silly lists like this, I think the Christian community in America should be doing more than congragulating each other and patting backs. Maybe we should (and I say we, myself included) actually go do what we are commanded to do-be the light and the salt to world. When we make a list like this all we do is join in the thousands of other worldly things that we are commanded to stay away from. That's a reason why the world laughs at us. We say we are different, yet we do the same stupid stuff...where's the difference?! It's kind of like when God told the Isrealites to kill/eradicate (choose your own verb) all the peoples of Canaan and to not marry into them. If they do this, problems would explode (and they did-look at the Old Testament...dude). Fast forward to now. Make shiny media lists and ostensibly well-meaing magazines the Canaan. The urge to pat backs and all the people we are not supposed to marry, yet we do. What happens? Everyone thinks we are Flanders from the Simpsons....for goods reason. Two and Two don't make Five folks.
03 March, 2007
Madness, Markers, and Mayhem
So today my fiance and I got a hold of some black markers and decided we should decorate my rather drab apartment (or, if you're of the british inclination-flat). So we drummed up quotes and thoughts and started to write....a project that will continue until I come back to America and have to paint over it all (except the deadhead bear-it's just too dadgum cool). If you have a quote for the wall, lemme know, and up it goes (as long as it's fairly decent and clean...my students and the team member's kids will read it). As always, the more random and strange the better in my world, so off we go!
01 March, 2007
Sartre
*n.b.-my treatment here is rather elementary and basic. A more thorough and academic answer to the questions and problems Sartre poses for Christians will follow in the future.
Recently I finished reading a lecture by Jean-Paul Sartre (noted French Existentialist) on Extistentialism and Humanism (and their corresponding ideas in French Existentialism). While I came away with a greater understanding of his approach to this, I also came away amazed that he didn't want to shoot himself in the head...so much of it, to me, was rather depressing. Simple enough theory-existence predates essence, and therefore man is constantly defining himself and the world around him (in a sense, as I understand it, always in creation of himself and others)...seems like a lot of responsibility to me (and undue stress...He argues that this makes us responsible, because of our individual choices, for mankind). All in all, rather depressing to me. Makes me glad that our beliefs aren't set up this way-that we were created with an essence, or simply-a purpose, in mind. Glorify God. That validates our existence. And that makes our decisions and actions much less stressful-we aren't, in every decision, responsible for all of mankind. And we aren't trapped by anguish, despair and abandonment...so all in, I'm pretty glad that God doesn't think like Sartre.
25 February, 2007
Life and such in China
So the other day, my fiance and I were wandering the Tibetan market in town, checking out the nomads and monks that were getting ready to head back out to the grasslands. Whilst wandering about, we ran into two monks from Sakya monastery (in the Shigatse region), said "Hello." We talked for minute, and then one went "We are from Sayka monastery, you give me money!" I said, no, you're a monk, you don't need money. He was okay with that and wandered off to ask someone else. (If you ever travel out here, you should NEVER give a monk money. They get all that they need from their monastery, and more from general poor people who wish to gain karma points. Besides-why give money to a guy that's wearing a nicer watch than most people in the U.S. wear? So the rule of thumb-just say, politely, no-you don't need it, and move on.) About ten minutes later, we encounter this Muslim (quasi) guy selling this stuff I call Weigar cake. It's a kosher cake-made with sugar, nuts, and dried fruits. Really quite good. We proceeded to have a serious miscommunication that resulted in a different price than what I thought we had originally agreed upon. Then we argued, and a crowd (a big one) gathered to watch the foreigner get cheated. We continued to talk, I called a friend in town for some help with language, the crowd grew larger. Finally, after some time, we got away from the whole affair-but still were rather soundly cheated. Bummer. But, that is how it goes here, being a foreigner. You can't speak well, especially the local dialect, and they know it, so they cheat you. Sometimes there's no way around it, like this time. At least the cake was good.
20 February, 2007
The Genius of the '80's (and it's not Reagan!)
Ladies and gentlemen-teased hair, rockin' music videos with a theme reminiscent of a Reynolds wrap factory and classic songs like "I Ran" can only mean one of the New Wave all-time greats- FLOCK OF SEAGULLS!!!! Even the long running TV show "Friends" realized the magnificence of this group and their absolutley smashing hair styles. Hopefully no Japanese audiences where harmed during the making of this video.
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