Filed under: quotes
it’s simple- i prefer my eggs over easy, my coffee black, and my love with reckless abandon 
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intake, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly save from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
- C.S Lewis
The Four Loves
Thanksgiving is over, and before we can even catch our breath…. behold- Christmas.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not out to bash Christmas entireley!
But, the older I get, the more insane it’s all seeming…
We all grew up with the WWJD rave (I will shamelessly confess to having bracelets which i color cordinated to my outfits in jr. high school… what can i say? i was THAT cool). I can’t help but wonder though- what would Jesus do during the Christmas season?
I have a hard time picturing him waking up with the sunrise, lacing up his sneakers, and heading over to the mall to beat the rest of the Black Friday crowd wracking up his credit card debt buying things for people that they don’t really need.
I am finding it quite difficult to imagine him gaining ten extra pounds on pie, turkey, candy, and sweet potatoes while he knows that there are people starving and cold down the street.
And for some reason, the thought of him making his own Christmas list is just absurd.
I bet he’d skip the mall scene… tune out the commercials… give love, not objects… yah, that picture seems to fit.
Is it wrong to give people gifts? I don’t necessarily think so, but I like what the folks at buynothingchristmas.org suggested:
We are all going to have to buy some things. When you do buy things, we encourage you to remember principles like buying locally, fairly-traded, environmentally friendly packaging, recycling or re-using, buying things that last, and so on. The main aim is not to save money (although that can be a side benefit), it’s not to slow down the pace of Christmas (although that can be a side benefit), it is to challenge our over-consumptive lifestyle and how it affects global disparities and the earth. So, even though you might buy a few things at Christmas, it’s important to think in these global economic terms.
I’ve been re-thinking alot of things, and Christmas is one of them. If this struck a chord with you at all, here are some alternatives you may be interested in!
- Why not buy a gift in someone’s name that will keep on giving? this is the route I’m taking this year,and I am so excited about it!! Check out the gift catalog here at World Vision and buy a family in need clothes, or a goat, or malaria protection. How seriously cool is that?
- Ok, this is cool if you are in highschool/ college. Why not set up a little gift exchange where you all bring nice things that you have that you no longer use/ need, and exchange? It could be cool
- Instead of spending money on each other, get all of your friends to pool their money together and prepare a meal for a family in need, or the homeless in your community.
- Write a poem, tell a story, draw a picture or take a photograph and present it in a creative way.
- Give fairly traded coffee, tea or chocolate, get beautiful items at garage sales or buy gifts from shops that support local or international artisans in poorer countries.
- When someone asks what you want this year, and they persist on getting you something, ask that they donate whatever they would have spent on you to a charity instead. do some research and pick one that your heart responds to. Come one, do you really need another sweater?
Am I there yet? Do I have it all figured out? no… still working on it, and I know I’ve got a long way to go… I just don’t think He meant for it to be like this. I’d love to hear your feedback, and even ideas.
(this was inspired by buynothingchristmas.org and an annoyance with my television.)
Filed under: quotes
Very often people object that nonviolence seems to imply passive acceptance of injustice and evil and therefore that it is a kind of cooperation with evil. Not at all. The genuine concept of nonviolence implies not only active and effective resistance to evil but in fact a more effective resistance… But the resistance which is taught in the Gospel is aimed not at the evil-doer but at evil in its source.
- Thomas Merton
from Passion For Peace
If I forget… yet God remembers.
If these hand of mine cease from their clinging… yet the hands Divine hold me so firmly that I cannot fall.
And if sometimes, I am too tired to call for Him to help me… then He reads the prayer unspoken in my heart, and lifts my care.
I dare not fear
since I am in God’s keeping,
shielded so from all else that would harm.
And in the hour of stern temptation,
strengthened by His power,
I tread no path in life to Him unkown,
I lift no burden, bear no pain alone.
My soul- a calm, sure hiding place is found- the everlasting arms my life surround.
God, Thou art love, I build my faith on that.
I know Thee who has kept my path,
and made light for me in the darkness,
tempering sorrow so that it reached me like a solemn joy.
It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love.
(To learn more about Goodafrican, check out their website here)
We passionately believe that TRADE NOT AID is the only viable strategy for Africa’s economic and social development. Handouts create dependency and stifle innovation, whilst Trade provides opportunities for economic empowerment and wealth creation. Trade generates employment and helps to build communities. It has the potential to create equitable partnerships between growers and consumers.
Africa has received over US$ 500 billion in Aid over the last 50 years, and yet the continent remains mired in poverty, blighted by systemic corruption, and with children dying needlessly from preventable diseases.
Unless there is a radical shift in the way the world sees Africa, there is no foreseeable hope of ever reaching the Millennium Development Goals of universal primary education, poverty reduction and the elimination of avoidable infant deaths that were set for 2015.
Aid, whether humanitarian or economic, confers enormous power and influence on donors to the extent that the political leadership in recipient countries are more accountable to them than to their own people. Any African Finance Minister will tell you that whilst dealing with donors is presented as a collaborative partnership, in reality governments are told what to do and when to do it. This paternalistic attitude not only informs a country’s policy matrix, but is a key factor in determining a framework that favours donors and the mindset of their bureaucrats.
In 2005, the year when Africa and African issues were placed at the centre of G8 discussions during the Gleneagles summit, media attention and the voices that analysed or offered solutions to the continent’s problems were predominantly those of European specialists on Africa. There was not an African to be seen.
Uganda, the corporate headquarters for Good African Coffee is an example of a country’s chronic dependency on donor finance. In 2006, foreign aid accounted for over 42% of the Uganda’s recurrent expenditure budget and 100% of the development budget.
In the leading industrialised nations of the world the case for trade as the engine for economic development is indisputable. The need for trade in the growth of nations is so critical that it has caused wars, driven colonial domination and helped to create the current unjust international trade system. In the last 30 years the massive economic expansion of India, Japan, Thailand, Singapore and China testify to the fact that trade stimulates growth. These countries have developed an industrial capacity to export attractive and affordable goods that have been instrumental in producing the accelerated growth of their economies.
