A Blog of Redemption

These Cities

2011-12-30T15:16:00.000-05:00

I'm finding myself thinking a lot today about crime and the city.

The first thing that grabbed me was an article from the News Journal that mentioned in passing that my city, Wilmington DE, had the third highest crime rate for cities our size. http://goo.gl/69PJh

The next thing I read was about the spike in murders in Philly, just 20 minutes up the road. They're going to top the homicide list this year.http://goo.gl/Xi1Og

And then we have Camden, also right near us with a similarly grim crime outlook being listed as the 2nd most dangerous city in America.http://goo.gl/WiIzl

So what's the deal with the Delaware Valley here? I love living here. I think its one of the best places in the world to live and I LOVE our cities, seriously! Yet for some reason, there's an element of our population that's just living crazy. What are the spiritual forces over these places that is causing all of this? I just don't know. What are we to do as Christians against these dark forces?

I know that God has called me and my family to live in this city, but it would seem foolishness to some to choose to live here. I know that this is a good place filled with good people that God loves. If we choose to abandon these cities and leave them to their fate, how can we live with Jesus' command to go to the poor and oppressed and make disciples of them.

Sad Jason Has a SAD

2011-12-08T10:26:00.001-05:00

Over the past month, I had been working on trying to write up a post about how I had been healed of depression and anxiety when I suddenly realized I was struggling again with depression. Ugh!! So frustrating. I have a great testimony of what God has done in my life and how he has seriously delivered me from the pits of despair. I still hope to post it sometime soon, but it just rang hollow given my current emotional state.

I have noticed over the past several years that I've manifested symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), but this year they're really kicking my butt hardcore. Most years, I drift seamlessly from moderate inactivity during the fall to full on inactivity during the winter months. I go from not doing too much at all physically to doing absolutely nothing at all. However, this year was different.

Starting in May, I decided I had enough of being a fat blob. I was going to start eating right, get running and walking and get my butt into gear, and I did! I lost almost 60 pounds, ran a few 5k's and felt amazing! So when SAD hit me starting in late October and November, it was like getting knocked over by a brick wall. I included this graph of my total miles per month from runkeeper.com (which i love!) to show just how bad it has been for me.

I hit a high in August of moving my sorry butt 87 total miles, but I've dropped every month since then. I went from 59.3 total miles in October to 16.1 in November. Its more than just the bad weather. I was motivated to get out in the cold. I got cold weather gear that I was excited to try out, but every day when I got up, I just didn't feel it. Then when I got home, I just didn't feel it. I have had zero energy this entire month.

Being a good medical scientist, I looked up common symptoms of SAD and discovered that I wasn't simply being lazy this past month. I was hitting on symptoms of this same old disorder that has plagued me.

Fall and winter seasonal affective disorder (winter depression) symptoms include:

Depression - CHECK
Hopelessness - NOT SO MUCH
Anxiety - SORTA
Loss of energy - DOUBLE CHECK
Heavy, "leaden" feeling in the arms or legs - NO
Social withdrawal - THIS IS BECOMING AN ISSUE I FIGHT AGAINST
Oversleeping - OH DOUBLE YES
Loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed - CHECK
Appetite changes, especially a craving for foods high in carbohydrates - NOMNOM
Weight gain - SADLY YES - 10 POUNDS SINCE MY LOW IN OCTOBER
Difficulty concentrating - WHAT?

Ok, I'm convinced. I has a SAD, but I don't want to take it lying down. I've decided to fight against this with what ever little bit of energy I can muster. I don't have the answers and I don't have a clear strategy yet. here's got to be a way out of this. I hate that I lose all life momentum for four months and then spend the next few months after that digging myself out of the hole that SAD has put me in.

Pray for me dear friends!

Writers Release: The Start of New Relationships

2011-11-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

Image via Wikipedia
Let me first and foremost make a point about my previous post about the end of relationships. I can't fully say that I outright lost a lot of relationships. I would say that what I lost was a lot of 'relational capital'. Allow me to explain by sharing a few jokes I used to tell.

The first is that I used to joke with friends that weddings were great because it was the only time that you ranked your friends. Okay! You stand here, you're my number one man! You! You're number two.. etc etc. I've been 'worst man' in some friends weddings and still considered it quite an honor. Its a joke, but it does that there are levels of friendship that we naturally tend towards.

I used to joke with another friend about people being 'A-list' and 'B-list' friends. What seemed to have happened is that folks who I considered 'A-listers' seemed to bump us down to the 'B' or 'C' list. The problem is that we didn't get the memo, so we treated folks like they were really good friends and they didn't return the honor. People that were 'B-list' friends bumped us down and 'C-list' folks just walked by like they didn't know us anymore. Suddenly, there was a relationship gap that had to be overcome. Its not like we weren't friends anymore, its just that we weren't as close as we used to be.

Even though this has been troubling to my spirit, I have found some refuge in God's word to me. One of my favorite scriptures is found in Romans 8:28 which says that "we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." That piece of scripture has given me a lot of hope over the years. It doesn't say that everything is going to work out great for us. It doesn't say that everything is going to go our way. What is says is that God is going to work good out of all things in our lives. That meant that even when I was in the midst of trial and turmoil, God was working out a way to turn that bad stuff good. I know that it wasn't God's will that I lost those relationships, but he can and has made good out of that situation.

If you had talked to me about it in 2007, I could have never imagined leaving my old church. My plan was to retired there, however God had other plans. Over the past few years, God has taken us through a process where we left the safety of our old church (under great and wonderful circumstances) to start a new church in Wilmington, Delaware. Part of that process was a maturation of our faith and a deepening of our love with Jesus and his call for the city, but part of that process was because our ties weren't as strong as they previously had been. I don't know if we would have been able to make the leap to a whole new city if those old relationships had held us back. I'm not saying that God caused our old relations to decline, but God giving us the opportunity to move forward to a new city was the 'make good' on that.

So as we've progressed from a small community group in the city to a full fledged church plant, God has brought new relationships to our lives. We've met amazing new folks in the city and have made some amazing new friends. I've found myself sharing my life with people I didn't even know existed two years ago. This has been such a great inspiration to me and a sign that God will make things work together for His good. I'm loving living in Wilmington and the longer we live here, the more folks we get to know and the bigger our community in the city grows. Its a good thing!

A Return to Armistice

2011-11-11T11:11:00.000-05:00

Image by janheuninck via FlickrI have a bad habit of stepping in it, and I think I'll revisit that habit of mine by complaining about 'Veteran's Day.' This is likely a cause that will make some infuriated, so I'll try to keep my complaints brief. My main complaint is about the seemingly subtle shift between the original name of 'Armistice Day,' (as its still referred to in much of the world) to the current name "Veteran's Day." You can call me an old grandpa for wanting to stick with the original name, but hear me out here.

Armistice Day was established to commemorate the end of the 'War to End All Wars.' It was made a national holiday as you can read in this excerpt:

On June 4, 1926, Congress passed a resolution that the "recurring anniversary of [November 11, 1918] should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations" and that the president should issue an annual proclamation calling for the observance of Armistice Day. By that time, 27 state legislatures had made November 11 a legal holiday. An act approved May 13, 1938 made November 11 a legal Federal holiday, "dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day.'" ( History.com )

Take note that the wording of the holiday included the perpetuation of peace between nations through prayer and good will actions. The federal holiday was in fact, "dedicated to the cause of world peace". That doesn't sound anything like the current holiday that we celebrate.

In 1954 the name of the holiday was changed to 'Veteran's day to not exclude all the folks who fought in WWII, and I think that was a big mistake. When you change the name of the holiday, you change the focus. Instead of focusing on peace, we shift our focus to the veterans. We honor those who have made war instead of the ongoing work of preventing war. That shift turns the day from one of solemn remembrance of the folly of war to a day where we can beat our chests, talk about how great the US is and say great things about our military without any critical examination of the fact that we're currently involved in conflicts in more countries than you even know about. Its actually quite a big change from one word to the other.

So I'd like to honor armistice today. I'd like to celebrate peace and I'd like to use this opportunity to pray for its return to this country. We haven't known real peace in this country since the end of World War One and we are long due for its return.

Jason
11/11/11 11:11am

Writing about Writing

2011-10-15T10:00:00.000-04:00

I've heard that if you want to write, you should write something everyday. Some days a lot will come and other days not a lot will come. So this is me writing about writing, or at least my lack of ability to write. I would say from an output standing its been a good experiment so far.

Image by Evan Hamilton via Flickr

Productivity has increased 500% over last years numbers.
Worker satisfaction is at a two year high.
Quality is down from 2008 and likely needs improvement. However, we're just happy to be back.

So I've spent the week talking about what's gone wrong over the past few years. I'm going to be turning it around in the upcoming week and talking about what's gone right. As I mentioned in my first post back, 2011 might go down as one of the most transformative years of my life. Seriously! I've got a lot talk about! So if you've been reading this so far, thanks for your patience. Stay tuned because good things are right around the bend.

Writers Block: Physical Illness/Depression

2011-10-14T10:30:00.000-04:00

Image via WikipediaContinuing onward in my series of self examination and naval gazing, I want to spend some time around the development of my mental illness between 2009 and 2010. Around the time I was writing this blog I experienced some major mental illness that almost became THE defining characteristic of my life. When I look back on that time in my life, I had so many good memories and experiences tainted by anxiety, panic, and depression.

I had my first ever panic attack in April of 2008 and I wrote about it here. That was the first time anything like that had ever happened to me and it was terrifying. I thought I was having a heart attack and was about to die (these are very common thoughts and sensations for panic). I ended up in an ambulance and got the full work over. The doctor said nothing was wrong and they sent me on my way. I felt pretty uneasy about the non-diagnosis, but more or less assumed that it was just an isolated incident, and for the most part it was. I didn't have any major panic attacks. However from that moment on anxiety began creeping into my life more and more.

I can't really pin down when it started because its not like something like this has a clear start and stop date. All I know is that I would find myself waking up in the middle of the night with my pulse racing and sweating. I would having Susan listen to my heart and take my blood pressure, just to get some assurance that I wasn't going to die. That poor woman put up with so much from me. The typical pattern was that symptoms would come on out of no where and would quickly escalate. After 20-30 minutes things would start to get better and I could go back to sleep or whatever. It would happen when watching TV, when driving, while talking on the phone. Anytime, anywhere. It was never quite as bad as the time that I went to the hospital, but it was definitely affecting the quality of my life.

I didn't' realize it at that time, but I had fully developed an anxiety/panic disorder. If you're not familiar with this, it can be described by the diagram at the side. For me, it might start with a weird chest pain, which might plant the thought, 'maybe you're having a heart attack' in my head. That thought would scare me which would cause me to start breathing a bit faster. That fear would raise my pulse which would make me think there IS something wrong. All of these sensations would increase pain in the chest causing the cycle to keep on going. It wasn't unless I could sit down, be still, focus on breathing or get my mind off of what was going on that these things would stop.

Since these things would happen all the time, any time, any where. I started getting agoraphobic. I didn't want to ever be too far from home or too far away from Susan, since she was the safe person who could talk me down from the fear.

By the winter of 2009, particularly January and Februrary (about the time I stopped blogging.. hmmmmm) this cycle had fully taken over my life. I met with counselors and tried researching what was going on but it didn't make things better. In March of 2009 I ended back in the hospital with another fulll blown panic attack. This one happened while I was at work. Despite the obvious interruption at work, it was really embarrassing to fall apart like that in front of my co-workers. The worst part is that when it happened, I was actually trying to write my prayer shield begging for help when it happened. Where was my God when I needed him? This was one of the low points in my life for sure.

After that ER visit, I decided to visit as many doctors as I could to see what was wrong with me. They worked me up side and down the other. I even met with a cardiologist to make sure there was nothing wrong. After we ruled out any physical cause for the chest pains, my doctor figured it was likely was being caused by anxiety and depression. So in April of 2009, I started taking Zoloft and Xanax to help, and they did. I was thankful to be on the meds because they finally gave me a holiday from all the anxiety. Zoloft seemed to put up a short barrier between me and reality. It was almost as if I had a quick half second more to process and react to stuff. I would get a chest pain and wouldn't react immediately; it gave me almost a half second to say 'hey that's probably just anxiety or heartburn or something.' That really seemed to help prevent anxiety attacks and after being on the meds for several months, I felt relieved that I could maybe live a normal life.

But is a medicated life a normal life? If you need to rely on drugs to think right, you have a diminished quality of life. Its never optimal to be on drugs unless you need to be. Of course, you have to do what you have to do to survive, but I really hated the side effects of Zoloft. That weird barrier thing affected more than just anxiety; it affected all of my emotions. I felt like I was living just slightly out of phase with the rest of reality. The drug also messed up relations between me and my wife (that's all that needs to be said here). Worst off, it made me fat. I don't mean chubby, I mean fat. I went from being overweight to full on obese. In 2008, I dieted and lost a decent amount of weight, but while on Zoloft I gained it all back plus some plus some more. I had never been so large in my life and I hated it.

So is there any good news in this? Is there any redemption for our hero? As not to leave you with any cliff hangers, the answer is "YES!!" Absolutely, God has been faithful and has delivered me from this trap. Today, I am fully healed, cured, and free of anxiety, praise God!! However, I want to save that for another post.

Writers Block: A Sense of Failure

2011-10-13T10:00:00.000-04:00

Image by photosteve101 via Flickr

Another cause of writers block is 'a sense of failure' and boy-howdy did I have one surrounding this particular endeavor.

When I first started this particular blog, I had only really imagined it as a place where I could journal my thoughts and the things that God had been sharing with me. Prior to kicking things off here, I had come through a very long dry time where God had been really distant. Then allofasudden, things broke through and there He was again in such a vivid and amazing way. I knew I needed to start journaling and writing about it.

Once I started writing though, something surprising happened. I started getting comments, feedback, discussion. It was wonderful and exhilarating. Even more surprising was that some of the comments were coming from folks around the country, not just my friends. Folks that I didn't even know were having conversations with me. I had thoughts that maybe God was maybe bringing an audience to me. After all, he was telling me things, I was writing those things down and people were interacting with me. THIS was beyond all expectations and was exhilarating.

And then, things started to slightly go down hill. I'm not sure if I can chalk it up to be an inexperienced writer or maybe it was the constant conflict that surrounded my content, but my early success was not to be long lived and eventually the audience dwindled. This was discouraging. I went from feeling surprised and successful to lonely and discouraged over the course of that year.

By the end of my prolific writing year, I felt like a total failure as far as communicating my ideas went. I had hoped to enact some change in the world through the words I typed, but I just felt like nothing had changed and nothing had moved. Things were the same as they ever were and all I had succeeded in was giving myself an anxiety disorder.

When I try to analyze what went wrong, perhaps part of the problem was that early on I lost sight of what the original purpose of the blog was. Having an audience changed the way that I interacted with it and changed my tone. This place quickly stopped being my personal journal and became a preachy sounding board for what God was showing me. I think I could have gotten away with that change if I were a better writer or a better teacher, but I'm just not there yet.

As always, God has a redemption story for this failure, but I'll get to that in a future post.

Writers Block: The End of Relationships

2011-10-12T09:25:00.000-04:00

This entry will be part one of several gratuitous self examination posts (please forgive me) delving into what seems to have gone wrong with my blog. I want to explore the causes of writers block and work out the kinks that have my mind all knotted up. When examining Wikipedia's list of the causes of writers block, one of the first things I come to is 'the end of relationships.' So I'm going to explore that a bit today.

Overall, I noticed a strange tension in my relationships between 2008 to present. I am not so prideful as to attribute everything to what I wrote on my blog, but it definitely had to do with how God grabbed a hold of me and shook me up, which was present in most of my writings.

So first that tension started in my conversations. I found that while folks were generally supportive when I talked to them about things I wrote on the blog, it didn't seem to really connect. I started sensing a certain bit of awkwardness between me and my friends. Maybe I was imagining things, but I don't think so. I think the perception is that I went from being a normal guy, to 'That God Guy' and that put a strain on some relationships. For the record, it wasn't really true that I was becoming 'That God Guy,' the fact is that I had been that guy ever since I got saved in the fall of 1997. I was just rediscovering that identity which had been crusted over by the world.

Next were the arguments. I understand the need for discussion, but it was difficult because I was sharing what I felt God was showing to me. In essence I was opening up my personal devotions and prayer time to the world. It was difficult to have those revelations of the Spirit be constantly questioned. It stressed me out to write about a particular passage in the Bible and what God showed me about that passage only to be refuted and told I was incorrect. It felt that if I typed that the sky was blue, I would get debate about it. The arguments led me to wonder if people that I considered friends actually liked me. It was incredibly discouraging to be torn down on a regular basis and it destroyed the joy of writing for me.

Lastly and most significantly, it started in relationships. I remember getting into a somewhat heated discussion on this blog with one friend that ended with me actually seeking him out to make sure that there were no hard feelings. He assured me that there were none and that we were okay, but after that, he never commented again and he has never talked to me about anything I posted. I felt like that was sort of a turning point in my friendship with him and for some reason things have been different ever since. That is just one example of how relationships started to change over the course of that year that God made me His guy again. The strain of God changing me altered my relationships with friends at that time. There are folks that I considered to be close friends that just don't invite me over to hang out any more. Things just changed and I still don't fully understand it. I didn't suddenly lose my sense of humor or become a jerk that you can't drink beer with (I still enjoy a good adult beverage) and watch football with (go Steelers!), but I didn't get invited over to watch games anymore or other social things. So I still am in mourning over the loss of some really good friendships. I look back with a lot of regret and haven't found God's redemption in those particular relationships yet. Of course since this is God's story of my life, there is a story of redemption that follows from this point on, but I'll leave that for another post.

Yearly Update? I hope not!

2011-10-05T16:10:00.001-04:00

Apparently it's time to give you my yearly update and what a year its been. Seriously, 2011 might be remembered as one of THE most important and transformative years of my life. No joke! I would have loved to tell you about it along the way, but I've diagnosed myself as having something they call "writers block."

The most reliable source on the internet, 'Wikipedia' defines writers block as:

A condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked" writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers.

Looking back, I would definitely say that I would fall into the later category. I had been a regular blogger on xanga even before I migrated over to blogger. Once I came over to blogger, I felt a great surge of creativity and really pumped things out over the course of 2008. However by the time 2009 came, I was done. Finished! I had nothing left. Every time I sat down to type, nothing came out. I was effectively blocked up.

I have some of my own theories as to why it hit me so hard, but Wikipedia also lists some causes of this condition:

Other blocks, especially the more serious kind, may be produced by:

adverse circumstances in a writer's life or career
physical illness
depression
the end of a relationship
financial pressures
a sense of failure.

So I think it will be a helpful exercise for me to examine these. I can say that all of these hit me on some level over the course of 2008-2009 and I'm hoping that sitting down and writing about them might help break these chains that bind me.

Reboot

2010-01-19T15:33:00.002-05:00

As the great prophets Hall & Oates once said:

"Starting all over again is gonna be rough, so rough but we're gonna make it"

I'm entering into an strange time of new and forced beginnings, so this turmoil seemed like an appropriate reason for me to restart this blog up. I've had a bizzare love/hate relationship with this blog. I've always loved sharing what is going on in my life and what God has been teaching me, but I've always hated the personal conflict that I stirred up by doing that. Lately I've been feeling like taking it back up again, so I'm going to make another run at it.

So I'm coming through a time where in the past few months, a lot of people that I'm close to are going through some serious life changing stuff. Serious awful slimey painful stuff. Lost jobs.. chronic illness.. terminal illness.. divorces (3 couples in 3 months).. long term relations and engagements breaking off.. Then add the whole mess down in Haiti to the mix and you would have to have your head in the clouds to not feel down about any of those things. So the weight of the world is a heavy burden on me at this time.

Right now I'm seeking that peace that surpasses understanding and hoping to find that Jesus truly is the King and that He is good! I'm trying to find meaning and reason in this pain and suffering, but all I can come up with now is that we live in a time when the Kingdom of God is coming and is here in some ways, but not yet here in others. So I'll try and keep up heart and hope if you can keep up encouragement.

Blessings

Jason

Announcement and Update

2009-11-13T12:10:00.000-05:00

Hello Everyone! Back for one special post to bring you this very important announcement:

ATTENTION SPAMMERS: NO ONE ON THIS BLOG IS BUYING VIAGRA, CIALIS, OR LEVITRA BECAUSE YOU POSTED A COMMENT.

I prefer to keep comments open to anyone, including annonymous posters, but it's very annoying to get these random comments on posts (sometimes not even in English) directing people to foreign websites to buy drugs. Seriously, does that really work? The answer must be yes if they keep doing it. If it didn't work, they wouldn't do it; right? So unfortunately, I've had to enable comments that you have to log in for. Sorry guys..

So while I'm here, how about an update! More or less things have been going well in my world. I stopped this blog almost a year ago because I felt like I was creating too much conflict and disunity within the body of Christ. I know that as Christians, there is an amazing calling and destiny available for each of us, but unfortunately, I've also come to the conclusion that I'm much more persuasive in person that I am in print, which is unfortunate, because I do like to write. So maybe some day the Lord will see fit to bless my written words at some point, but until then, I need to be much more careful of my tone.

All along, my heart was to challenge people to examine their lives and to hopefully inspire some small amount of change; after all, as Richard Foster said in his classic, A Celebration of Discipline, "conformity to a sick society, is sick." When I look around, its very easy to see the symptoms of that sickness in myself, my friends and most of the people around me and as a medical professional, my gut reaction is usually to attack that sickness. However, I need to learn the art of doing that with grace and love, knowing that not all of us are convicted to the same level at the same time. I realize now that I can't be the one convicting people, only the Holy Spirit can do that. So Holy Spirit come and do your business, I'm just going to sit back and watch the show :)

Over the past year, I've tried to live what I preached over the previous year. I've had some successes and some failures, but mostly good things. Mainly, I've tried to focus on relationships and actually living out the change that I want to see in the world. So instead of writing, I've tried taking on the challenge of St. Francis to preach the Gospel always without necessarily using words. As part of the change that we're living, we sold our house in the suburbs and moved to the city of Wilmington Delaware. We've both fallen in love with this place, its people, and Gods plan for both of them. We're here working with an awesome and growing group of co-conspirators that are all have a similar vision to establish an outpost of God's Kingdom here and now. It's a very exciting time and maybe I'll get around to blogging about it sometime in the future.

So thats me.. whats going on with you?

The State is Still the State

2009-01-22T11:14:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, other people can say what you're trying to say in a more eloquent and persuasive way. However, if you're me, then most people can say what you're trying to say in a much more eloquent and persuasive way. As an example of this, I present this article I read earlier today from the leftward leaning Christian blog, Young Anabaptist Radicals .

This author hit almost every point I did, but from a more progressive view point.

Inauguration Thoughts: The State is Still the State

Yesterday was truly a big day in U.S. history. The inauguration of the first African-American President is truly a turning point for our nation, especially given our abysmal history on race. Moreover, it was encouraging to hear Senator Dianne Feinstein’s reflections on the nonviolence of Martin Luther King, President Obama’s message that we need not choose “between our safety and ideals” and his call to diplomacy and international aid over sheer violent force and military power, and Reverend Joseph Lowery’s prayer that one day we will “beat our tanks into tractors.”

Nevertheless, I had a difficult time getting too emotional or excited over this change of guard. For, while yesterday was historical from the perspective of the United States, it was a pretty small speck when history is viewed rightly. As John Howard Yoder tirelessly argued, the locus of history is not with the state but with God’s work through his church. The state is merely the context in which the real drama of history can unfold.

So, while the words and symbolism of the inauguration may be moving, the sobering fact is that the state is still the state. Yes, Obama seems more intent than Bush on using diplomatic tactics to secure peace, but his message to our “enemy” was still virtually the same: “We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

Not much room there for Jesus’s message to love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, and turn the other cheek. But this is as should be expected, because the state is still the state.

Ironically, with this change of guard many us open-minded, progressive Christians will begin to forget that the state is still the state. We will start to put our faith in the ideals of the state and our hope in its progress. As blogger Halden recently argued, now more than ever is it imperative (though difficult) to be resolute in our anti-empire polemics. It was far too easy to maintain a prophetic witness to the state when those in charge overtly sanctioned military aggression, torture, and seemingly unbridled increase of personal power. But when those in power seem to share many of our ideals, the temptation will be to give them a pass when they deem military violence necessary in this or that situation. And it will be difficult for us to make the unfashionable charge that those in power sanction the unjust extermination of the least of those among us. Indeed, to increase the irony still further, it may be the conservative Christians who begin to recognize with more clarity the separation between church and state (as many of my students, for example, ponder whether or not Obama is the anti-Christ!). They will now be the ones to speak prophetically, though their witness will be narrow and tainted by their continual use of political means to grasp for power.

It as at this time, perhaps more than any other, that we need to heed Yoder’s exhortation to what he calls “evangelical nonconformity,” quoted here at length:

When then Jesus said to His disciples, “In the world, kings lord it over their subjects . . . Not so with you”; He was not beckoning His followers to a legalistic withdrawal from society out of concern for moral purity. Rather, His call was to an active missionary presence within society, a source of healing and creativity because it would take the pattern of his own suffering servanthood.
Jesus thereby unmasks the pretension to use violence for the good as being a form of hypocrisy: these rulers call themselves “benefactors” but they are not servants. He who would claim to have the right to use violence, and especially legal violence, against another, places himself outside of the scope of Jesus’ mode of servanthood. This is not so much because he sins against the letter of the law from the Old Testament or the New but because he claims (with a pride intrinsic to his position) to have the right — (whether on the basis of official status, of superior insight, or of his moral qualities) — to determine in a definitive way the destiny of others. The older language in which the theme of “conformity to this world” was stated in Bible times had to do with “idols,” with those unworthy objects of devotion to whom men in their blindness sacrificed. Thus it is quite fitting to describe the use of violence as the outworking of anidolatry. If I take the life of another, I am saying that I am devoted to another value, one other than the neighbor himself, and other than Jesus Christ Himself, to which I sacrifice my neighbor. I have thereby made a given nation, social philosophy, or party my idol. To it I am ready to sacrifice not only something of my own, but also the lives of my fellow human beings for whom Christ gave His life.
- John Howard Yoder, “Christ, the Hope of the World” in The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism, 174-75

In this time of celebration, may we not forget that the state is still the state. And we are still called to be the church.

Your Innagural Day Dose of Realism

2009-01-20T10:20:00.001-05:00

So today is the innauguration of our next president and I just can't help but look at everything with a healthy dose of skepticism. I know a lot of people are very excited over Obama's election and the historic nature of this day. You're going to read lots and lots of people taking about how wonderful everything is going to be now that Obama is in power, however, I would like to temper that enthusiasm with just a small dose of realism. We should never put our trust or faith in any one man or else we'll inevitably end up disappointed.

When I see all the excitement surrounding Obama, I think back to the way that conservative evangelicals, myself included, all felt when Bush was elected in 2000. Think back to all the hype. You remember it, right? We had prayed that Bush would win and he did. Finally we were really going to make this place a "Christian Nation" again. We elected Bush! He was a real born again Christian that loved the Lord and best of all, this guy was really pro life! Once we get this guy into office, he was going to outlaw abortion! He's going to remake government in a radically new Christian conservative way. He was the embodiment of compassionate conservatism. So on and so on and so on. Don't forget that hype and what a bunch of baloney it all was. What did we really get? A big mess! He proved to be neither compassionate nor conservative. I could go on and on about what I really think about GW, but suffice to say I think he lied and decieved most of us and was more or less a disaster. Seriously, don't ever forget to hold onto that hype. It was my reminder not to trust the government or any of its leaders, despite all the great words they may say.

So this brings me to the new incoming grand leader. I'm concerned because I'm seeing lots of my liberal leaning evangelical friends being sucked into those same though patterns that we conservative Christians fell for 8 years ago. Back then we all thought we could use the government to remake the world in Christ's image, but sadly what happened is that we allowed those forces to remake us into something political and ugly.

The Bible only teaches that there are two kingdoms. The Kingdom of this world and the Kingdom of God. When we become Christians, we pledge our allegiance to the Kingdom of God wholly. The kingdom of God works nothing like the kingdom of earth. If we forget that then we run the risk of beoming like those first century Jews. They thought that when the messiah came that he would establish an earlthly kingdom and overthrow the Romans. They totally missed the point and we could too.

Barrack seems like a charismatic and friendly enough guy, but the major problem is that he is offering somethign that he shouldn't really offer. He claims to be 'Hope,' but we Christians should know that only one person can really offer hope. He claims to bring 'change' but we know that true change can really only happen when Christ changes your heart and the Holy Spirit is allowed to move and convict you. Otherwise real change is a hard thing to find. He is a cult of personality, and people really have faith in him, but putting your faith in anyone other than Jesus will leave you empty.

So we need to not get swept up into all of the hype and all of the hope. We need to pray for our government leaders, but our hope and faith is in King Jesus first and foremost. We can enjoy this day with all of its history and all of its pagentry, but remember that we are strangers and aliens in this place. We may live in the US, but ultimately it is not our home.

This is a Santa that I Love

2009-01-12T14:14:00.000-05:00

I meant to post this a few weeks ago, but I forgot. Anyway, this is the kind of civil disobedience that I love. (Mainly, no one gets hurt and no one gets arrested) From the first time I heard about "speed cameras" I thought they were possibly one of the most ghastly things I've ever heard proposed by our government. Here are some guys that agree with me!

http://kfyi.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=&article=4766345
TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) _ A group of Santa impersonators are on the naughty list of Arizona law enforcement officials.
A YouTube video posted Monday shows four people dressed as Kris Kringle, white beards and red hats included, covering three speed and red light enforcement cameras in Tempe. Two are covered with boxes - one decorated with Christmas wrap - and the third is blocked with what appears to be a red sheet. The Jackson 5's ``Santa Claus is coming to town'' plays during the more than two-minute video.

At the end is a message that reads: ``Ho Ho Ho! Death to the surveillance state! Free movement for all people!''
The group that posted the video also wrote ``lumps of coal to all of those who make it their business to watch and control.''

They Were Liked by All the People

2009-01-09T10:00:00.001-05:00

I ran across this verse in Acts a little while ago and was amazed by it.

Acts 2:44-47

All the believers were together and shared everything.45They would sell their land and the things they owned and then divide the money and give it to anyone who needed it.46 The believers met together in the Temple every day. They ate together in their homes, happy to share their food with joyful hearts.47 They praised God and were liked by all the people.

This is really where I want to go with this life I've been given. As an extremely wealthy person (on a global scale) how could I not share my possessions and money with those who need it. How could I not strive to live in a community that seeks to make sure everyone had everything they needed, even to their own sacrifice. Why wouldn't I want to live with those that opened up and share their homes and food with each other with joy. It's no wonder they were liked by all peoples. I know most people disagree with me on this, but i just think its such beautiful example for us to strive towards.

The Power of Less

2008-12-31T14:12:00.000-05:00

This is 100% lifted from consumerist, but when I read this the other day, I was amazed at how many things Susan and I have done from this book. Take a few minutes and read through the free ebook and see if you can pick out a new resolution or two.

Author of the upcoming book The Power of Less Leo Babauta offers a companion ebook that's free to download now. Thriving on Less—Simplifying in a Tough Economy tells you how to do just that.
The 27-page PDF describes advice garnered from Babauta's own journey from clutter, debt, and scarcity to a simpler, frugal lifestyle that focuses on the essentials and cuts away the extras. Like Babauta's popular Zen Habits blog, this book offers calm, peaceful straight talk that makes the super-busy and overwhelmed think "I want to live like that." Looks like a great preview of what's to come in his print volume, which gets released in four days. Think Babauta's approach is possible in today's world or too idealistic? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Free Ebook: Thriving on Less - Simplifying in a Tough Economy

Christmas 2008

2008-12-29T12:01:00.000-05:00

Christmas this year was beautiful. We really had a good time. For the first time in several year, we didn't host it at our house, so things were more relaxed (for us) than normal.

The classic shot by the tree on Christmas morning (Yes, Jessica, there is a Christmas tree!)

We tried to be very deliberate with Zoe this year to not make Christmas all about the presents. Leading up to Christmas, whenever we got a chance to talk to her about it, we were very careful to say that it was all about Jesus' birthday and that she was going to get to see Pop Pop and Uncle Joe and Ashley and the rest of the family.

Zoe- enjoying her visit

When she saw the gifts in the morning that we were going to take down to Lewes, she went through each one. "This is for Mama, and this is for Jonas, and this is for Pop Pop, and this one is for Zoe!" Once we got to my brothers house, instead of watching her open all of her presents, we had her hand things out to everyone as they opened their gifts one at a time.

Zoe still had another surprise for me though. One of the first gifts she opened was a little Thomas the Tank Engine toy. Instead of rushing to get through the rest of her presents, she was just as happy as could be with that Thomas. All she wanted to do from that moment on was play with that Thomas. At one point I literally had to hide Thomas so I could trick her into opening more presents but then I thought to myself, why am I trying to force gifts on her when clearly she's 100% content with what she has? When it was all said and done, she probably only opened half of them, but she didn't care. She had her Thomas!

Uncle Joe and Ashley got Jonas his very first Star Wars shirt!

The hat I knitted for Jonas

Pop Pop and Jonas (between naps)

Hope everyone else had a great holiday as well!

2012

2008-12-23T14:07:00.001-05:00

This was posted on the Jesus Manifesto website (which apparently is down) a few weeks back. I thought it was a pretty worth read, so I wanted to post it here.

2012

http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/2008/11/28/2012/

My dad passed away in 2005 at the age of 84. He belonged to the so-called “Greatest Generation”, those who came of age during the Second World War and the Depression. Both events influenced father, and although my dad was deeply affected by his military service during the war, it was the Great Depression that had a more enduring impact on his life. My dad became a pharmacist, a career his father encouraged him to pursue, because, you see, pharmacists had work during the Great Depression.

Now and again my dad and I would talk about the Crash of 1929 and the economic catastrophe that followed. He always believed that the fundamental element of economic behavior that led to the Depression had not changed: greed. Even in the 1980s and 90s he argued there would be another “day of reckoning”, a correction to balance the gross excesses of Wall Street. The recent stock sell off, collapse of the housing market, tanking of retirement accounts, unemployment spike and demise of banking institutions like Lehman Brothers, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, and Bear Sterns are indications that the “day of reckoning” may be at hand. Indeed, Wall Street’s market sorcery ofcollateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps and other forms of witchcraft seem to have placed a curse the economy that the handsome prince from Illinois may not be able to reverse.

As I write this, Citibank has announced the layoff of 50,000 plus employees, and the CEOs of the Big Three automakers have flown to Washington in their private jets, hat in hand, begging for taxpayer billions to keep their Lincoln Navigator and Chevy Suburban assembly lines running. The government’s total bailout money (taxed, printed and ripped off from future generations) is now trillions of dollars and counting. This largess is added, of course, to the already obese, but vastlyunder calculated, national debt of 10 trillion dollars.

While many of the experts who helped get us into this mess are busy explaining their mistakes and lack of foresight, others have been warning us and continue to warn us that the present economic situation is bad and could get a whole lot worse. In a recent appearance in Singapore former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Paul Volcker made the following admission: “I have been around for a while. I have seen a lot of crises but I have never seen anything quite like this one.” He added, “This crisis is an exception. I don’t think we can escape damage to the real economy.” Noted economist Nouriel Roubini has cautioned that we’re entering into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and respected trend watcher Gerald Celente is predicting that America will be a much different and poorer place in 2012. (To view his sobering interview with FOX Business click here).

“The world ain’t going to be saved by nobody’s scheme. It’s fellows with schemes that got us into this mess. Plans get you into things, but you got to work your way out.” Will Rogers

America is at a precipice. The question now is not whether there will be a severe recession, but whether the experts hatching schemes and overheating the printing presses in Washington will be able to prevent a full scale economic depression that rivals the collapse of the 1930s. I’m an optimistic person by nature, but I’m not optimistic that our leaders will be able to guide us out of this mess without real hardship. For those of us who proclaim our allegiance to the Kingdom of God this means we have our work cut out for us.

In light of all this, here are some ideas for faithful action…

For the Church:

1. It’s time to get utterly serious about intentional Christian community. We are going to need each other more than ever in the next few years. Get with brothers and sisters of faith now and pray for wisdom. There are many models for Christian community; new monasticism is just one. Pray, pick one and act.

2. Get ready to take care of the homeless. You or your neighbors may be counted among them.

3. Don’t forget the poor in other countries, this recession is global. Whatever economic disaster hits here will be much, much worse overseas.

4. The Church must remain a testimony of hope among the hopeless. Throw a ceili dance, invite neighbors, share your joy in Christ.

For individuals:

1. Learn practical skills. People who can fix things, build stuff, facilitate healing, teach, grow food, hunt and fish will be in demand. Liberal arts majors take note!

2. Entertain yourselves without technology. Learn a musical instrument. Write poetry. Learn to draw. Start a weekly Scrabble game. Go for a walk.

3. Get out of debt. Get out of debt. Get out of debt.

4. Pray.

The prophets of economic doom and gloom may be wrong. I am certainly willing to eat crow if my concerns prove false (provided the crow is cooked in a savory Thai curry and I can put it on my VISA). Nevertheless, if the present economic trajectory continues unabated, 2012 may produce a much starker and harsher America. My gut tells me that our luxurious, American-built-SUV-of consumption-excess is going to turn into a pumpkin at Midnight and the clock just struck 11:55.

Author Bio:: Cathasaigh is a member of Missio Dei, along with his wife and two boys.

50,000 Shoes

2008-12-22T12:01:00.001-05:00

Here's a great stocking stuffer, if you're still looking for a few more things to give this Christmas.

This is an organization that is trying to collect donations to buy 50,000 shoes for people that can't afford shoes. Its such a simple thing and it only costs $5 to buy 2 pair of shoes. Seems simple and easy enough, so check it out

http://www.50000shoes.com/

I Am Busy!

2008-12-22T11:13:00.000-05:00

So you may have been worried, but rest assured, Susan and I are still alive. Between finals for VLI, all out craziness insanity at work, computer problems (I lost my laptop and my work computer), and just general busyness, I haven't had time to keep up with the blog.

I've got a lot of things I want to say so hopefully I'll be able to get them out at some point.

How Much is That Bailout - Part 2

2008-12-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

In case you're more of a visual person, heres a graphical representation of what I just said. Click on the picture to get a larger image. Its amazing!

How Much is That Bailout

2008-12-04T09:12:00.000-05:00

I saw this the other day on Lew Rockwell and I thought I would share.

If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars. People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.

Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

Think to the video I showed you yesterday. It would cost $10 billion dollars to solve the world's water crisis once and for all. Think about it, 0.2% of what our government has committed to try and save our excessive lifestyles could wipe out the third world's number one cause of death. I don't know what to do about it, but when I think of it, I literally get nauseous.

The Advent Conspiracy

2008-12-03T11:50:00.001-05:00

Barb showed us this video last night in kinship and I just had to laugh because these people hit on just about everything I said in my Christmas Revolution post. The only difference is that they do it in a fancy multi-media kind of way and I have to try and deal with printed words.

Watch the video and check out their website, they're both great!

Advent Conspiracy - http://www.adventconspiracy.org/

BB's - Now if You Don't Know, Now You Know

2008-12-01T16:31:00.001-05:00

Earlier today I was trying to look up the hours for BB's up in Quarryville, which is a difficult task for an Amish grocery store, when I ran across this article about the store. If you've never heard of it, its simply awesome! Everything there is so stinking cheap. Susan and I go up there once a month and can usually get a whole months worth of groceries for around $100. The whole time Susan and I lived in Baltimore, it was worth it to drive an hour up to Quarryville, PA just because we saved so much money. Literally this store has saved us thousands of dollars over the past few years.

Read the article and take note of their four part vision. Its awesome! Seriously, I would want that to be the vision statement for any church that I go to, let alone any store I shop at.

http://www.theslateonline.com/archives/10-28-08/Focus/081028_focus_bbs.html

BB's, Offers Bang-Up Bargains

By Joanna Plasencia

Guest Writer

Nearly 30 years ago Ben S. Beiler, an Amish entrepreneur, founded the first BB’’s Grocery Outlet. Since then the salvage store has been an appreciated supplier of food for the Newburg community, just eight miles from Shippensburg. But what marks this salvage food store from others are the workers and its attention to the community.

The BBs Motto “Bents, Bumps, and Bunches of Bargains” is a part of its four part vision. They also hope to “Bless our community”, “Bless our employees” and “Build a Kingdom of God.”

Emmanuel Kauffman, general manager of BBs’s Newburg branch, and his employees work hard to uphold the store’s values and to ensure the satisfaction of every shopper and worker alike. The employees are made up of Old Order Mennonites and the Amish, the men work in the warehouse and the women at the register.

“Originally it started out as a family store but then we let some Mennonite women work and more would come. We don’t try to discriminate at the store,” said Kauffman.

Traditionally, the Amish believed in limiting themselves from outside influences. However, as the difficulties of farming, finding land and turning a profit are increasing, the Amish oftentimes find themselves debating difficult decisions.

It’s becoming harder to stick to the traditional history of Amish farm life. Kauffman stated that, “we are at a point where we cannot stay outside [of modern culture’s influences].”

All of the land surrounding B.B’s Grocery Outlet is farmed and owned by the Amish. The Amish humbly uphold their tradition except when it is reasonably detrimental to their lifestyles.

For example, their cash registers, ATM and freezer lights are powered by electricity and they recently added the option of paying with debit and credit cards.

The store’s lighting is powered by a combination of gas and sunlight. For this reason their hours of operation run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for most weekdays excluding Wednesdays when they are open until 5 p.m. and Monday and Sunday when they are closed.

BB’s in Newburg has for 12 years helped its community get more bang for its buck. This allows many who are in need of frugality to buy more. One customer said she came to BB’s because, “they have different products from other stores that you can’t get elsewhere.” This is because BB’s deals with suppliers from all over the country, from Maine to Florida and even California.

The life cycle of a product that finds its way to BB’s begins in either a store or warehouse. The shipment box may become damaged or a careless customer may drop the product, denting or damaging the packaging.

Regardless of the circumstances the store will remove it from its selling floor and ship it to a recondition center. There, the center will evaluate the damaged goods and decide whether or not it’s still fit for selling.

BB’s steps in and buys the products that are still useable and sells them to its customers.

In the selling of all its products they uphold its business foundation of, “It needs to be a good deal for both parties before we will do it,” and “Buy a bargain, sell a bargain.”

And nowhere but BB’s can you fill up your cart for just $50. They sell their products at 30 to 70 percent lower than other stores would.

Beverly Turner, 69, has been coming to BBs in Newburg since it opened 21 years ago.

“If you watch what you’re doing you could save a lot of money,” she said. Turner had first heard of the store by word of mouth through her daughter.

Despite the economic benefits, there are still many who are unaware of the store’s value. While the items in the store are salvaged goods, most costumers find that they are willing to sacrifice appearance for the reduced price.

Since starting 30 years ago in Quarryville, Pa., the original BB’s has expanded its chain of stores. The larger Newburg store was built just four years ago and is located at 20 Quigley Road. BBs owns four stores around rural Pennsylvania.

Newburg is the third oldest store, before Schaefferstown and after Morgantown. So far, there are no expectations of adding more stores to the chain.

Unlike many people, the Amish are content just where they are. According to Kauffman, “Ben [S. Beiler] started with, I think, a load of dairy past its expiration date, mostly yogurt. And he brought it home and he sold it to his neighbors.”

Day after Thanksgiving Update

2008-11-28T13:45:00.002-05:00

Hey guys! Life and the pharmacy have made themselves very busy as of late, so my blogging has taken a hit.

I'll hit you with two quick things today and then I'll go back to slinging drugs.

It may be too late for you today, but the good folks at Adbusters have declared today "Buy Nothing Day". You should go and check out their website , but here's a snippet if you're too busy to click on the link:

Suddenly, we ran out of money and, to avoid collapse, we quickly pumped liquidity back into the system. But behind our financial crisis a much more ominous crisis looms: we are running out of nature… fish, forests, fresh water, minerals, soil. What are we going to do when supplies of these vital resources run low?

There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth: we have to consume less.

It will take a massive mindshift. You can start the ball rolling by buying nothing on November 28th. Then celebrate Christmas differently this year, and make a New Year’s resolution to change your lifestyle in 2009.

Who can blame them. The lines, the stampedes, the aggression, and the mindless consumerism of "Black Friday" glorifies Jesus ZERO percent. If we're all lining up to kick off Christmas shopping, shouldn't we do it in a way that glorifies the Christ?

The other thing that I've been thinking about is that sad story from up in New York where a man was trampled to death and a pregnant woman was hurt and likely miscarried because of people rushing into a Walmart for Black Friday sales. Good grief! It seems like theres a story like this every year. Can we just cut this all out already? Its just so sad how people can act when they're whipped into a mob mentality by super deals on limited supply items.

Jim Gaffigan on Holiday Traditions

2008-11-18T13:25:00.000-05:00

Susan referenced this video in her comments yesterday. If you havn't seen it, it is freakin hillarious.

I was just going to edit out the non-Christmas parts, but frankly the whole thing is just great. If you watch the whole thing, It will probably be the best five minutes of your day.

Christmas Revolution

2008-11-17T13:29:00.004-05:00

A few of you may have noticed the other day that my facebook status said I was looking for ways to have a "subversive Christmas." I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about what I meant exactly.

If you're not familiar with that term, Encarta defines it as:

Subversive: [adj] somebody involved in subversive activities: somebody involved in activities intended to undermine or overthrow a government or other institution

The definition I am going for of course is the overthrowing of an institution. I have no current plans to overthrow the government, but I'll let you know if that changes. I believe that Christmas as we practice it here and now has gotten so far away from the simple celebration of our Savior, that we need to do something, anything, to change it.

Here's the deal; one evening about two thousand and eight years ago, or so, angels appeared in the skies above a field of shepherds and announced to them that the long awaited Messiah had come.

Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

This was how the very first Christmas was heralded in. The Creator of the Universe didn't invite any world leaders, the rich or other MVP types into the most important events in all of history. Instead, He invited poor working class field hands to come and share in this world changing event. When this humble King grew up, He did not live in luxury or excess, instead, He chose to live as a homeless carpenter; hanging out with the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden. That's the Jesus I love. He cares for those who no one else cares about.

So how did the birth of Jesus come to become an orgy of rampant consumerism and mindless busy-ness? How did we trade in the worship of Jesus the King for the worship of the idols of shopping and merchandise? I don't really know, but I want to stop it now. Since we're all adults now, we are free to work to change things in this world that we don't like.

Susan and I want to work to build a Christmas for our family that first glorifies God in the highest and then produces peace and good will between all men. We want to find new patterns, rhythms, and traditions that hold true to the character of Jesus first and foremost.

Now I'm sure there may be two things running through your mind right now.

First, you may be saying to yourself now, good grief, I don't want to hear about Christmas yet, it’s too early. I totally understand that, but since I want to work to change the way my family and people around us totally perceive the holiday, I can’t wait too long.

Last year Susan and I tried to change up the way we did Christmas, but we didn't start talking about it until a few weeks before Christmas By that point, everyone had already been sucked into the Christmas money machine and weren't very receptive. We also took a lot of heat from some in our families for trying to opt out and not buy gifts for every single person. So we can't wait or we'll get in trouble again.

Second, you may also be thinking, good grief Jason, can't you just leave anything well enough alone. The answer to that is apparently not. Christmas is one of the most significant events in the history of the universe, yet our celebration and recognition of that event is so gross and different from the character of the person we celebrate that something has to change.

Now please don't label me as a Christmas hater. I love the holiday so much and want to see it as a true celebration of the birth of our savior and not a consumeristic mockery that it can be at times now.

So I'm looking for co-conspirators in my Christmas Revolution. Am I the only one that is fed up with business as usual, or would anyone else like to join me in my subversion? I plan on posting several more things to help the fight over the next few weeks. Let me know some of your thoughts on this because I'd love to discuss it some more.

Noisetrade

2008-11-12T08:10:00.000-05:00

Now here is a concept I really really like.

https://www.noisetrade.com/

This is a website started by Derek Webb, who is an excellent singer/songwriter that you may know from Caedmon's Call. The concept behind this site is that you can either pay whatever you want for an album, or you can recommend it to five friends and get it for free. I recommended Derek's album Mockingbird and I've been rocking with it since Saturday.

There are a good number of artists. Some I know, like Sixpence and Waterdeep, and a lot that I don't know, but will likely give a try since its cheap or free. What they say on the site is that a good album is its own best marketing. When Derek gave away Mockingbird originally back in 2006, he saw a spike in concert attendance, merchandise, and record sales. Plus as a Christian artist, he gets the added advantage of spreading the message without any real barriers.

All in all I think its an awesome concept. Go there, check it out, and support it!

Visiting the West Philly Vineyard

2008-11-10T11:02:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of content in my posts over the past week. Last week was a big mess with VLI midterms and me getting sick for 2 days. Fortunately I'm done with the tests and I'm feeling much better.

So this Sunday I took a page out of Jim and Casper , and visited the West Philly Vineyard Church with Susan, Barbara, and Justin.

I've been going to the same church exclusively for almost 10 years now, so it was really interesting to go to another church simply with the intention of observing how another church does things. I figured I would write down some of my observations and share them with you.

First off, I was glad to see it was actually in West Philadelphia. It's in the University City section of the city on the corner of Baltimore and 42nd Streets. Its a minor peeve of mine (very minor) when places that aren't actually in the city say they are. I was worried that it might be a suburban church just outside of the city, but it wasn't This place was as West Philadelphia as Will Smith himself.

They meet in an old church building, so its ambiance is really neat. Its a thoroughly modern experience surrounded by the memory and feel of something much older. Its the kind of thing that you could never plan, but it gave it a very nice feel.

When we got there, they did one worship song first, and then did the teaching. Apparently their setup is to do one song, then a teaching, and then do the rest of worship afterward. I thought it was an interesting format, because it allowed you a chance to process and respond to the teaching during worship. Also, doing the teaching first gave Brad all the time he needed to make his point There was no rushing to get things done before it was time to go. His teaching was really good and in pretty in depth. He had notes fill in the blank notes in the bullitin that you could fill in as he went along, so it kind of kept you focused.

Another thing that was different that I liked was that they had a choir. When you say choir, I have a very particular picture in my mind of what that looks like. Usually, I start frothing at the mouth and flash back to my childhood at Grace United Methodist in Millsboro with me wearing all the robes and getup (just kidding, I actually really enjoyed that time in my life). This was something different though. They simply had 5 people bunched together under two overhead mics just worshiping. It was really cool. I thought it was a great way to get people involved in leading worship. I wonder if we could do something like that at our church.

I have a lot more things I could write, but I'm amazed that you've actually read this far about the experience, so I'll wrap it up. Overall I had a great time there. The people were friendly and welcoming. It was definitely the kind of church that I would love to go to if I actually lived in the area.

Whats A Nerd Like Me to Do?

2008-11-06T09:52:00.000-05:00

This relates to nothing that I normally post about, but I wonder what will happen when two of my all time favorite nerd shows collide? I suspect that likely I will wet my pants.

Star Trek hero to play Time Lord

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/article1770729.ece

This somewhat makes up for the sting of the news that David Tenant will not be back after this next season of the Dr.

Vote for None of the Above

2008-11-03T09:46:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow is election day and I found a clip on the internet to promote my plan for tomorrow!

This was from a movie I loved from my childhood called Brewster's Millions. Somehow it must have sunk into my subconscious because I had totally forgot that this was in the movie until I saw this clip.

btw: The clip does have some objectionable language. If you're offended by that sort of stuff for some reason, then obviously don't click play.

My idea is that I refuse to choose between the perceived lesser of two evils. I don't like any of the candidates (1st, 2nd, or 3rd party), so why should I be forced to make a decision between people I don't like. When I go into the voting booth tomorrow, my plan is to write in "None of the Above" for President.

After all, Jesus is already my president. I don't need another one. Thanks!

Phils Win! Phils Win!

2008-10-30T09:07:00.001-04:00

Last night was ridiculously awesome!! The Phils won their first championship that I can remember! (I was alive in 1980, but was only 3 at the time) It was a really exciting end to the series and after the game I was pretty pumped.. So Susan and I loaded up the kids in the car and went up to the city to party with 1.4 million of our closest friends...

There was so much craziness going on that my camera from my car, just doesn't do it any justice..

People were absolutely EVERYWHERE! People were running, skipping, and dancing down the sidewalks and streets. Everyone was yelling and cheering. Everyone in a car was honking thei

r horns. Last night, it was truly a city of brotherly love. Random people were hugging each other and giving high fives. I must have dealt out a couple hundred of them from my car.

This guy was awesome! He was walking down the middle of the street yelling, "No more next year! No more next year!" Then he took off his shirt and starting flexing in the street!

The chicken guy might have been my favorite! He came up to our car and gave us high fives! Then saw Zoe in the backseat, who was awake, but barely. He said to her, "Don't Fall Asleep! You have to remember this! Don't go to sleep!" Awesome! I hope that is her first real memory.

Philatubbies?

There was some craziness of course... I love the look on the guy doesn't even seem to care that people are dancing on his truck.

Then of course there was some stupidity. This guy climbed to the top of a light pole to grab a flag! Thankfully he was sober enough to climb back down safely.

And these guys were awesome. Susan said, "I prepared by getting a cake, these guys prepared by putting a golf cart in the back of a pickup!" They were playing music and just driving around.

CBP from 95 on the way home! Way to go Phils!

The Parable of the Foolish Farmer

2008-10-28T09:15:00.000-04:00

As part of VLI, I am doing Teaching and Preaching mentoring with Christian. So our assignment currently is to come up with 10 minute teachings on the topic of my choice. For my first teaching, I chose to talk about the parable of the Foolish Farmer, as found in Luke 12. Parts of this were lifted from an earlier post on here, but I expanded it to fit a full teaching.

The parable of the Foolish Farmer

Today I want to talk about a passage of scripture that I find to be particularly difficult and challenging to the way most of us think.

I want to discuss the parable of the foolish farmer in Luke 12, which is of about money and generosity. Money is a frequent topic in the bible. I recently read a teaching by Rich Nathan where he talked about being a church that helps the poor. In that teaching he noted these amazing facts:

One out of every sixteen verses in the New Testament is related to the poor or money.
One out of ten verses in the gospels is related to the poor and money
One out of seven verses in the book of Luke is related to the poor and money.

You can tell whats on someone's heart by what they talk about. For example, every time I get together with my friend Drew, we talk about the Eagles. Why? Because It's important to us. So if God devotes one out of every seven sentences to a particular topic, we should be able to assume that He's trying to tell us something here, right?

So here is the parable,

Luke 12:16
Then Jesus told this story: "There was a rich man who had a good job, where he made a good salary. He thought to himself, 'What will I do?' I have no place to keep all my money.' Then he said, 'This is what I will do: I will increase my monthly contributions to my IRA and I will diversify into foreign markets and commodities. That should help me save up enough cash. Then I can say to myself, "I have enough money saved up to last me well into retirement. Its time to sit back rest, eat, drink, and enjoy life!"

"But God said to him, 'Foolish Man! Tonight your life will be taken from you. So who will get those things you have prepared for yourself? This is how it will be for those who store up things for themselves and are not rich toward God."

So obviously this isn't really what scripture says, but I think its a fair modern analogy. The actual parable is about a farmer storing up grain, but I don't personally know many farmers. However, I do know a lot of successful business people and who can blame them. Who doesn't want to be successful? You don't get into business not wanting to do well. Who doesn't want to have it all and live great well into retirement... those things sound great, but I just don't see any justification for that in the scripture..

So what I want to know is, what specifically did the man do that was so wrong in God's eyes? Was it the fact that he wasn't generous with his possessions? Was it the fact that he didn't trust in God for his provision? Was he just a real jerk and Jesus left that part out of his parable?

Now please note; before you think of this as total condemnation of people with money and wealth, note that God didn't say "tonight you dine in hell." I don't necessarily think that this guy was condemned eternally for his actions, however this was a wise man in the eyes of a world that the creator of the universe called a fool. I know that my momma didn't raise no fool, so lets examine what made this guy a fool so we don't fall into the same trap.

So, this parable wasn't told in a vacuum, Jesus and his friends weren't sitting around watching football when he randomly blurted this out.. (uhhh thanks Jesus) No, this was told in the context of a conversation that was going on around Him.. So to get the meaining, we have to look at this whole chapter to see what was going on and how this Parable serves to counter the thinking of those around him.

I find it interesting that this parable is sandwiched between two very well known passages that most of us could quote by heart. Early on in verse 6 he says,

6 "Five sparrows are sold for only two pennies, and God does not forget any of them. 7 But God even knows how many hairs you have on your head. Don't be afraid. You are worth much more than many sparrows.

This flies totally in the face of the store up for yourselves mentality. The world tells us that you've got to take care of yourself because no one else is going to. It's up to you to make sure that you've got enough, but that mentality is counter to the very words of Jesus..

Directly after the parable He reiterates that earlier point:

22 Jesus said to his followers, "So I tell you, don't worry about the food you need to live, or about the clothes you need for your body. 23 Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothes.24 Look at the birds. They don't plant or harvest, they don't have storerooms or barns, but God feeds them. And you are worth much more than birds.

Note here that Jesus usues the exact same words here that he used in the parable; harvesting, storerooms and barns. This verse was meant to be a direct counter to the way the foolish farmer lived. He became a fool in this parable because he didn't trust in God to provide for him. He thought the good life was going to be found in accumulating wealth and possessions. He thought that he would find security and peace though how much wealth he could amass, but it just wasn't true.

Listen to Jesus's reassuring words again... 'Don't worry about food'... 'You are worth much more than birds.' That's the wisdom of the Lord... Believe Jesus.. He's telling us the truth...

Right after that he concludes by saying,

32 "Don't fear, little flock, because your Father wants to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Get for yourselves purses that will not wear out, the treasure in heaven that never runs out, where thieves can't steal and moths can't destroy

Whenever I read Jesus say that, I think uh oh... I'm in trouble... Who wants to get rid of their stuff.. How the heck am I going to do that? But listen again to the trade-off. Jesus said, "your Father wants to give you the kingdom! Wow!! As much as I could work and accumulate here on earth is nothing compared to the riches of God. We need to grab hold of that truth and understand that. When that truth sinks in, we are much more likely to be generous with our wealth, to share with the poor, and to take hold of the Kingdom that God wants to give us..

So in light of those things, what a fool that farmer really was. He ignored the fact that God would take care of him which caused him not to share his wealth and take his share in the Kingdom, and lastly he died without ever seeing the fruit of his labors. Maybe he thought he would be generous and would share when he had enough, but who knows when we'll ever really have enough.

So I would encourage you to begin examining your lives. Ask yourself, am I living wise by the world's standards like that foolish farmer or am I living by the wisdom of the Kingdom of God? In one kingdom, its up to me entirely to take care of myself, in the other one we have the peace and security of knowing that we have a creator who promises to take care of our needs? I don't know about you, but that second option sounds much nicer than the first.

Vineyard Church Planting Conference October 2008

2008-10-27T10:04:00.000-04:00

This past weekend Susan and I got a chance to go to the Vineyard Eastern Regional Church Planting Conference with our friends Justin and Barb, who are in the process of starting up a church in Wilmington, Delaware. It was seriously awesome. We got to meet a lot of like minded people that are interested in expanding the Kingdom and doing the work of Jesus.

They had a lot of great speakers who had planted churches all through out the northeast. Here are a few notes from John Elmer of the Syracuse Vineyard.

Why plant?

There is a need for more churches.

Only 30% of people in any given area go to church in a given week.

2/3 of more people in your community don't go to church.

More churches..... more flavors!

1 Corinthians 12 5 There are different ways to serve but the same Lord to serve.6 And there are different ways that God works through people but the same God. God works in all of us in everything we do.

More churches, more spheres of connection.
More churches.. the more places to unleash the gifting of people

1 Corinthians 12 4 There are different kinds of gifts, but they are all from the same Spirit.

More people can get in the game with more churches.

More people grown when more people are involved.

Church planting is God's Heart

John also noted that the first 5 years of a church, there are more salvations than at any other time in the church's history.

I'm probably going to start talking more and more about this on this blog. We've committed to being part of the Wilmington Church Plant team with Justin and Barb and I'm excited to see whats going to happen there. I feel that my heart is still ultimately pointed towards central Maryland and Baltimore, but right now, God has convinced Susan and I that we are to work here and now where we are at and not to sit around waiting until he calls us back there.

As promised...

2008-10-24T11:45:00.001-04:00

Here are a few (not that great) pictures of Zoe in the jumper I made for her:

The Worship Industry

2008-10-23T10:38:00.000-04:00

I ran across this Brian McClaren video the other day and I didn't know what to fully make of it. I think I agree with him on a lot of what he says, but I'm not fully sure. I figure I'd share and then we could discuss!

Is he too harsh in his criticism or is he right on for a lot of churches? Do you think that we can be influenced too much by the "worship industry?" Shouldn't worship be a natural and organic thing that grows out of our body instead of being brought in prepackaged from somewhere else? What do you guys think?

I've Been Busy

2008-10-22T10:47:00.000-04:00

This past week has been pretty busy. We were down in Baltimore for 4 days for a wedding and work has been hectic as of late. I know you're all waiting eagerly for me to post and I have a lot of things to say, but for now I'll leave you with the best 5 second clip on the internet.

The Dramatic Hampster

Fall Fashion Show

2008-10-13T17:57:00.003-04:00

Okay, if you do not know me, then please let me reassure you that the title of this post is meant to be ironic. I know that I am not now, nor will I ever be "fashionable". I take great comfort in the following quote that I found from respected theologian, John Wesley:

“As to matters of dress, I would recommend one never to be first in the fashion nor the last out of it”

Throughout my life as a female, I have struggled over how much emphasis (time, money and energy) to put into my clothing. After all, scripture tells us not to worry about clothes (Matthew 6:28), and there are specific admonishments against women putting too much emphasis on their outer appearance (1 Peter 3:3-4). Still, we all know women who have "given up" on their appearance altogether, which doesn't seem right to me, either.

Recently, I've been captivated by the elegant beauty of simplicity. Jason and I have been trying to buy less "stuff", and really use well the things that we have. We are trying to share more, give generously and consume less as an effort to be better stewards of the blessings God has entrusted to us.

Now, to bring together all of these ideas, along with the fact that I "inherited" my mother's sewing machine, I have begun making my own clothes. Behold the quirky creations that happen in my living room:

This is a shirt I made from a cheap Burda pattern out of some fabric that my sister salvaged from my Nana's stash.

This dress was an un-cut pattern of my Nana's (from back in the day when you could send away to the Philadelphia Inquirer for sewing patterns). I made it out of fabric I bought at Goodwill for $1.53.

Here's a swatch:

Here is a dress I made from a pattern I won off eBay. It was one of a lot of patterns from prairie women in the 1940's:

I made it from fabric called "Pennsylvania Plain and Fancy" I bought at a discount in Boston:

The last is a dress I made to wear to my friend's wedding in August:

The fabric was more expensive than for the other dresses, but I am pretty happy with how it turned out.

I am finding that my new wearable hobby does wonders at keeping me from "lusting after" new clothes. Even if my homemade dresses are not going to make the cover of Vogue, I feel such a sense of accomplishment when I finish a project.

Still to come this fall: a jumper for Zoe, a dress for me, and (hopefully) a sweatshirt for me. I'll post pictures when the dream becomes reality!

Go Phillies Go or maybe its called Three Strikes You're Out

2008-10-11T10:39:00.000-04:00

No one commented on my Phillies Fever post but thats alright, this video is proof that I'm not the only one thats got it.
This guy is awesome. The last time I was at a Phillies game, I saw him sitting outside the stadium. He wheeled past me and then all of a sudden.music started coming from his chair and he started singing this song. I was excited to find it on The Fightins blog and wanted to share this silky sweet anthem with you.

Apparently this guy is named Sonny Forest Jr , and he just drives around Philly singing to people. I love it!

Here's a link to video of him singing to a guy outside of Geno's. I love how he's singing to the dude with the white-fro. Its just so random and cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPo2Gv-fSDs

Phillies Fever

2008-10-10T10:28:00.000-04:00

One of the sports blogs I read, the700level.com, posted this gem from the 70s. Catchy and awesome!

Go Phils!

Bad Neighbor II - A Chance for Forgiveness

2008-10-09T13:09:00.002-04:00

One of the things that made things annoyed me the most about getting my car hit was that I didn't have a chance to talk to the guy who did it. After praying about it, Susan and I decided that it would be best to forgive the person who did the damage to our car. The problem was that I wanted to let them know that we had chosen forgiveness, rather than allowing them to think they had simply gotten away with it.

When you read Irresistible Revolution, Shane talks about when Jesus says to 'turn the other cheek'. He points out that its different than just taking the abuse and cowering. He said when someone strikes us, we stand up, look them in the eye so they can see God within us, and then turn to offer the other cheek. So I didn't want to take the abuse silently. I wanted to let them know that I know what they did and I have totally forgiven them anyway.

So with that in mind, Susan and I made up these flyers and hung them up on our community mailbox. I don't expect the person to email or call me, but I wanted to give them the opportunity to choose grace.

A week and a half ago someone in the neighborhood did a hit and run
on the side of my car. I wanted to let you know that I don't blame you for
not leaving a note. Who wants to see their insurance premiums go up for hitting
an 11 year old car that has a fair share of dings and dents in it already?
As a Christian, I am called to forgive others, so I just wanted to let you know that
I don't have any hard feelings and you are totally forgiven in my book. I have found
cheap replacement parts on ebay and hopefully should be able to fix it myself for
under $100. If you'd like to help me put the new part on give me a call at
443-XXX-XXXX or email me at jaysonjaz@XXXXX.com
Thanks!
Jason @ 30 Whitetail

Speaking of Jesus for President

2008-10-07T09:01:00.000-04:00

I just wrapped up reading this book last week and all in all, I really enjoyed it. It's pretty dense, so it took me a while to read through the whole thing, but it was worthwhile.

First off it was one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. Every page is a work of art. The entire book is fully illustrated with the text weaving in and out of and integrating with the art on each page.

The central theme of the book is about redefining our relationship to government and the rest of the world in terms of being citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. I can't fully articulate everything clearly here in such a small space, but I would strongly recommend this book to everyone that reads this blog.

Jesus, You are My President

2008-10-06T09:59:00.006-04:00

Yesterday during worship we were singing "You Are My King (Amazing Love)." At the end, we just repeat over and over, "Jesus, You are my King." I was wondering if any of us (other than me at that moment) really think of that as a real political statement..

As Americans, living in a democracy, thinking of a King can be a bit of an esoteric experience. We don't have any "Kings" over us so its only an exercise in imagination for us to say we have one. To anyone living prior to 1776, terminology like 'king' and 'lord' would have held real political meaning. Making a statement that someone other than your appointed monarch was your king would have been considered treasonous or possibly even blasphemous. All in all, it is a very radical statement.

I was wondering if we should change the lyrics to say something like, "Jesus, You are my president!" Maybe its not quite as poetic, but it does make a much stronger statement about who's really in charge.

Back to School

2008-10-01T14:39:00.000-04:00

When I finished up my doctorate at UMaryland, I swore that I was done with school. After doing 9 years of undergrad and graduate school, I knew it would be a very long time time before I felt like going back to school.

Well apparently a long time for me equals a little over 2 years because this fall I started up with the Vineyard Leadership Institute , or VLI as I'll call it from here on out. VLI is a 2 year certificate program that teaches theology, bible study, and also offers mentorship to help people become leaders within the church. Susan has been enrolled for the past year and I'm always fascinated with what she's learning. So this summer when she told me that couples get a big discount, I figured, why not! I've never had any formal training in theology, church history, or pretty much anything, so I'm looking forward to getting my learn on.

Still Revolutionary

2008-10-01T09:25:00.001-04:00

I've been stuck in the Beatitudes for the last year. I keep reading them over and over again. I just can't get over how radically awesome Jesus was.

This is just amazing to me. The world would be a very different place if all Christians took these words to heart.

Matthew 5:38-48

38 "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'^[f] 39 But I tell you, don't stand up against an evil person. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other cheek also.40 If someone wants to sue you in court and take your shirt, let him have your coat also.41 If someone forces you to go with him one mile, go with him two miles. 42 If a person asks you for something, give it to him. Don't refuse to give to someone who wants to borrow from you.

43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor^[g] and hate your enemies.' 44 But I say to you, love your enemies. Pray for those who hurt you.^[h]45 If you do this, you will be true children of your Father in heaven. He causes the sun to rise on good people and on evil people, and he sends rain to those who do right and to those who do wrong.46 If you love only the people who love you, you will get no reward. Even the tax collectors do that.47 And if you are nice only to your friends, you are no better than other people. Even those who don't know God are nice to their friends. 48 So you must be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Jesus doesn't make any provision or caveats for when we are allowed to fight back. His words are just as radical today as they were then. Jesus' worldview is so radically different than ours. In His world, we don't fight back but we don't back down either. We confront the people that hurt us with love and prayer, not with anger and violence.

Twenty Social Justice Questions

2008-09-29T09:33:00.000-04:00

I found a link to this guys blog the other day and I thought this was an excellent post.

From Daniel's Pilgrimage Blog - September 14, 2008

Here is a quiz for you by Bill Quigley that a friend passed along to me. Bill is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. See how you do:

1. How many deaths are there world-wide each year due to acts of terrorism?

2. How many deaths are there world-wide each day due to poverty and malnutrition?

3. 1n 1965, CEOs in major companies made 24 times more than the average worker. In 1980, CEOs made 40 times more than the average worker. In 2007, CEOs earned how many times more than the average worker?

4. In how many of the over 3000 cities and counties in the US can a full-time worker who earns minimum wage afford to pay rent and utilities on a one-bedroom apartment?

5. In 1968, the minimum wage was $1.65 per hour. How much would the minimum wage be today if it had kept pace with inflation since 1968?

6. True or false? People in the United States spend nearly twice as much on pet food as the US government spends on aid to help foreign countries.

7. How many people in the world live on $2 a day or less?

8. How many people in the world do not have electricity?

9. People in the US consume 42 kilograms of meat per person per year. How much meat and grain do people in India and China eat?

10. How many cars does China have for every 1000 drivers? India? The U.S.?

11. How much grain is needed to fill a SUV tank with ethanol?

12. According to the Wall Street Journal, the richest 1% of Americans earns what percent of the nation’s adjusted gross income? 5%? 10%? 15%? 20%?

13. How many people does our government say are homeless in the US on any given day?

14. What percentage of people in homeless shelters are children?

15. How many veterans are homeless on any given night?

16. The military budget of the United States in 2008 is the largest in the world at $623 billion per year. How much larger is the US military budget than that of China, the second largest in the world?

17. The US military budget is larger than how many of the countries of the rest of the world combined?

18. Over the 28 year history of the Berlin Wall, 287 people perished trying to cross it. How many people have died in the last 4 years trying to cross the border between Arizona and Mexico?

19. India is ranked second in the world in gun ownership with 4 guns per 100 people. China is third with 3 firearms per 100 people. Which country is first and how many guns do they own?

20. What country leads the world in the incarceration of its citizens?

Answers to Social Justice Quiz 2008

1. 22,000. The U.S. State Department reported there were more than 22,000 deaths from terrorism last year. Over half of those killed or injured were Muslims. Source: Voice of America, May 2, 2008. “Terrorism Deaths Rose in 2007.”

2. About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. Poverty.com – Hunger and World Poverty. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes – one child every five seconds. Bread for the World. Hunger Facts: International.

3. Today’s average CEO from a Fortune 500 company makes 364 times an average worker’s pay and over 70 times the pay of a four-star Army general. Executive Excess 2007, page 7, jointly published by Institute for Policy Studies and United for Fair Economy, August 29, 2007. 1965 numbers from State of Working America 2004-2005, Economic Policy Institute.

4. In no city or county in the entire USA can a full-time worker who earns minimum wage afford even a one bedroom rental. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) urges renters not to pay more than 30% of their income in rent. HUD also reports the fair market rent for each of the counties and cities in the US. Nationally, in order to rent a 2 bedroom apartment, one full-time worker in 2008 must earn $17.32 per hour. In fact, 81% of renters live in cities where the Fair Market Rent for a two bedroom rental is not even affordable with two minimum wage jobs. Source: Out of Reach 2007-2008, April 7, 2008, National Low-Income Housing Coalition.

5. Calculated in real (inflation adjusted) dollars, the 1968 minimum wage would have been worth $9.83 in 2007 dollars. Andrew Tobias, January 16, 2008. The federal minimum wage is $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008 and $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009.

6. True. The USA spends $43.4 billion on pet food annually. Source: American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, Inc. The USA spent $23.5 billion in official foreign aid in 2006. The government of the USA gave the most of any country in the world in actual dollars. As a percentage of gross national income, the USA came in second to last among OECD donor countries and ranked number 20 at 0.18 percent behind Sweden at 1.02 percent and other countries such
as Norway, Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom, Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and others. This does not count private donations which, if included, may move the USA up as high as 6th. The Index of Global Philanthropy 2008, page 15, 19.

7. The World Bank reported in August 2008 that 2.6 billion people consume less than $2 a day. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/Poverty-Brief-in-English.pdf

8. World-wide, 1.6 billion people do not have electricity. 2.5 billion people use wood, charcoal or animal dung for cooking. United Nations Human Development Report 2007/2008, pages 44-45.

9. People in the US lead the world in meat consumption at 42 kg per person per year compared to 1.6 kg in India and 5.9 kg in China. People in the US consume five times the grain (wheat, rice, rye,
barley, etc.) as people in India, three times as much as people in China, and twice as much as people in Europe. “THE BLAME GAME: Who is behind the world food price crisis,” Oakland Institute, July 2008.

10. China has 9 cars for every 1000 drivers. India has 11 cars for every 1000 drivers. The US has 1114 cars for every 1000 drivers. Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future (2007).

11. The grain needed to fill up a SUV tank with ethanol could feed a hungry person for a year. Lester Brown, CNN.Money.com, August 16, 2006

12. “According to the figures, the richest 1% reported 22% of the nation’s total adjusted gross income in 2006. That is up from 21.2% a year earlier, and is the highest in the 19 years that the IRS has kept strictly comparable figures. The 1988 level was 15.2%. Earlier IRS data show the last year the share of income belonging to the top 1% was at such a high level as it was in 2006 was in 1929, but changes in measuring income make a precise comparison difficult.” Jesse Drucker, “Richest Americans See Their Income Share Grow,” Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2008, page A3.

13. 754,000 are homeless. About 338,000 homeless people are not in shelters (live on the streets, in cars, or in abandoned buildings) and 415,000 are in shelters on any given night. 2007 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Annual Homeless Report to Congress, page iii and 23. The population of San Francisco is about 739,000.

14. HUD reports nearly 1 in 4 people in homeless shelters are children 17 or younger. Page iv – 2007 HUD Annual Homeless Report to Congress.

15. Over 100,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. About 18 percent of the adult homeless population is veterans. Page 32, 2007 HUD Homeless Report. This is about the same population as Green Bay Wisconsin.

16. Ten times. China’s military budget is $65 billion. The US military budget is nearly 10 times larger than the second leading military spender. GlobalSecurity.org

17. The US military budget of $623 billion is larger than the budgets of all the countries in the rest of the world put together. The total global military budget of the rest of the world is $500 billion. Russia’s military budget is $50 billion, South Korea’s is $21 billion, and Iran’s is $4.3 billion. GlobalSecurity.org

18. 1268. At least 1268 people have died along the border of Arizona and Mexico since 2004. The Arizona Daily Star keeps track of the reported deaths along the state border and reports 214 died in 2004, 241 in 2005, 216 in 2006, 237 in 2007, and 116 as of July 31, 2008. These numbers do not include the deaths along the California or Texas border. The Border Patrol reported that 400
people died in fiscal 2206-2007, 453 died in 2004-2005, and 494 died in 2004-2005. Source Associated Press, November 8, 2007.

19. The US is first in gun ownership world-wide with 90 guns for every 100 citizens. Laura MacInnis, “US most armed country with 90 guns per 100 people.” Reuters, August 28, 2007.

20. The US jails 751 inmates per 100,000 people, the highest rate in the world. Russia is second with 627 per 100,000. England’s rate is 151, Germany is 88, and Japan is 63. The US has 2.3 million people behind bars, more than any country in the world. Adam Liptak, “Inmate Count in US Dwarfs Other Nations’” NYT, April 23, 2008.

After reading all of that, you have to think that everything must change. We just can't continue going on this way.

New Glasses!

2008-09-28T09:34:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite weblogs is Consumerist.com, which I've linked to numerous times. They often give great money saving tips, but this time I hit the motherload. They linked me up to this article on Slate.com

How To Get an Unbelievable, Amazing, Fantastic, Thrilling Deal on New Glasses

$8 glasses plus $4 shipping!

Freakin' Awesome!

Bad Neighbor II

2008-09-26T09:52:00.001-04:00

I was very disapointed to come out of my house this morning to find that someone had performed a hit-and-run on the front of my car. I'm not sure how drivable it is at this point. The front quarter panel was pushed in so that it is rubbing on my tire. I think the damage isn't too bad, but I had to get Susan to drive me down to work, so I couldn't do a thorough assessment. That car is such a blessing and I intended to drive it for at least the next ten years, so I'm obviously annoyed.

We're already on edge in this neighborhood with how unfriendly everyone is so this doesn't help at all.

Forget Climate Change - Lets Spend on Nutrition

2008-09-24T09:13:00.001-04:00

I was cleaning out my inbox and I noticed this article from a few months back that I had meant to share with you guys. Read the whole thing, but here's the key part:

'Forget climate change, we should spend on nutrition'

The Times of London - May 31, 2008

The jury of economists chose to emphasise malnutrition, and micronutrient supplements in particular, because of the major effects that comparatively moderate financial investments could have.

Around 140 million children suffer from vitamin A deficiency, which can cause blindness, immune system problems and death, or zinc deficiency, which can stunt growth. Supplements of these nutrients, however, are both effective and extremely cheap – at 20 US cents per person per year for vitamin A and $1 for zinc.

For just $60m a year, it would be possible to provide capsules of both micronutrients to 80 per cent of undernourished children in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with benefits worth more than $1bn. “Each dollar does more than $17 worth of good,” Dr Lomborg said.

Things like this make me very mad at our country. We are involved in a war that will likely cost $3 trillion dollars and the Fed just bought out AIG insurance for $85 billion dollars but for a fraction of that cost, America alone could save the lives of millions.

Lets re-look at those numbers like this:

3,000,000,000,000 Killing and maiming while occupying a foreign country
$85,000,000,000 Bailing out irresposible busineses to save corporate interests
$65,000,000 Money for vitamins for 140 million malnourished kids

This is one of those things that would be humorous if it wasn't so sad. Honestly though, it is disgusting and exciting at the same time. Its terrible given all the waste in this world that such a relatively small amount of cash could make such a difference. The two highest paid Yankees, Jason Giambi and Alex Rodriguez, made that much last year. You can't say that 2 people playing a kids sport are worth more than 140 million children in third world countries. But then again, that is the encouraging part. If we can pay 2 people that much to play baseball, surely we can come up with that kind of cash to help malnourished children, right?

Remember Your Baptism

2008-09-22T09:30:00.000-04:00

This no doubt will be controversial, but I found this letter to be fascinating,

An Open Letter to Christian US Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

This is an open letter to all Christians in the military asking them to lay down their arms. The author, Stan Goff, is a life long military man who fought in Vietnam and numerous other "hot spots" over the course of his career. He came to know Christ when he was 56 and has come to see the evil in the lifestyle that he helped propagate.

It is long but it is very worthwhile to read the whole thing. If you can't here is a small snippet:

Remember your baptism. You declared your renunciation of Satan, and you made that declaration to God. Did you think it would be easy?

The Roman soldiers had been convinced, and had convinced themselves, that they were right to do what they did. To make it alright in their own minds to do what they did, they had to withdraw recognition of the Jewish Palestinians’ basic humanity. I don’t know what they called the Palestinians, but I am sure there was some equivalent of the term “rag head” or “hajji.” And in turn, no doubt, many angry Jews in Palestine had dehumanizing epithets for the Romans.

... Christ told us to break the cycle of enemy-making. Fight the system by loving the “enemy,” but fight the system nonetheless. Provoke with your presence, but do not batter. This is how demonic power is unmasked, and how it was unmasked on the cross, where Christ baited a snare for Satan with his own frail body.

Loving the enemy neutralizes the category of enemy.

Unfortunately, even with phalanxes of chaplains ready to distort and press the message of Christ into the business of war, this means that you are now part of an organization that has no reason to exist without an enemy. The ethic of the military is inscribed in the infantry phrase, “close with The Enemy and destroy him.” The ethic of Christ is inscribed in neighbor-love — love of anyone who is near, and enemy-love — the unmaking of the category of “enemy.” These two perspectives - military doctrine and the ethic of Christ — cannot be reconciled.

“For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors (enemies who exploited the people for the economic benefit of Rome) do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles (those who were not of the Jewish nation) do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt 5:46-48)

Christ told you to “love your enemies.” Break the cycle of enemy-making.

Yet the armed forces are based, at their very core, on the existence of an enemy to destroy. The very doctrine that governs your organization, your technology, and your methods, cannot exist without The Enemy. To accomplish that, the armed forces must do two things: they must devalue the lives of all who are not members of the nation, and they must set up an idol to supplant God.

Throughout the article, he keeps asking us to "remember your baptism." To the author, this is the political act where we break with the kingdom of this world and become allegiant to the Kingdom of God. I found this all fascinating and true. I agree with everything this guy has to say.

My Homelessness

2008-09-19T09:55:00.003-04:00

This weekend we're all going to Pittsburgh to visit family and to just hang out in the town thats always felt like home to me, even though I've never lived there.

In many ways, my home should be have been in western Pennsylvania. From what I understand, my family has lived in the Pittsburgh region from about the 1830's onward. Generations of Hormels, Pattons, Holloways, Anders, and eventually Jaszemskis called that area home. Things were great until the manufacturing economy collapsed in the sixties and seventies and my parents and a lot of their siblings became part of what has became known as the the "Burgh Disaspora". When the manufacturing jobs left, people moved away looking for manufacturing work. When those families left, there was less demand for all other services and all the other regular jobs dried up. From what everyone tells me, everyone had to move away to get jobs. This vicious cycle drained the area so many of its residents and during that time period over 300,000 moved away, almost half of its population.

My parents ended up settling in southern Delaware, but despite their efforts, they could never click with the local crowd. Since they didn't grow up there and they had a "weird" last name ("Jaszemski?! What kind of a name is that"), they stuck out like a sore thumb in a small town. Growing up, I picked up on that otherness, and I never seemed to fit in either. Oddly enough, most of my friends from school were children of transplants as well. Despite being born and growing up in Delaware, I never felt too much affinity to towards the place. When I was a kid and people asked me where I was from I would usually tell them Pittsburgh because I wanted it to be true. Trust me, it's much more exciting to be from Pennsylvania than from a small nothing town in Delaware. I did eventually grow to like the place, but now big building corporations have raped and developed the land and turned it into something that is a mockery of the slow paced rural town I grew up in. They have turned it into suburbs without the urban part to pull it all together. Its gross and I could never live there again.

After I finished up high school, things really got turned around for me. In the past ten years I have lived in multiple homes and apartments in Newark, Bear, Long Neck, Elkton, and Baltimore. After living in so many different places, its no wonder I feel so turned around.

So, I've come to see that I struggle with a problem of homelessness. Now obviously, I own a house and I live in Elkton, but thats not really what I'm getting at. The problem I've had is that despite living for thirty years in various locales, I've never really felt at home in any of them. In Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (the book, not the awful movie), Douglas Adams says that every life form gives out a tiny sublimal signals that communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from his home, and even thought that's a work of fiction, I've began to wonder if there isn't some sort of truth to that.

I wonder if God has an earthly place for us to fit in long term or if I'll be wandering from place to place until I finally reach my true home in heaven.

Quick Applogy

2008-09-16T10:49:00.000-04:00

I wanted to apologize to everyone for talking politics so much. I know that politics can be a touchy subject for some people, so I'm sure a lot of people just bowed out of the discussion because of that. As many of you know, politics has always come easy to me. My dad taught government and history for almost thirty years and my brother was a political science major, so its something I've grown up with. So please forgive me if I talk too much about it, I just find it fascinating.

I've been amazed at the awesome discussions we've had here. I've been on many message boards and blogs, and usually most politcal discussions inevitably decsend into name calling and bickering, so you guys are all seriously awesome!

Revaluating What Pro-Life Means to Me

2008-09-12T09:30:00.000-04:00

From about as far back as I can remember, I have identified myself as a pro-life Republican. When I was in 8th or 9th grade, One of my best friends lent me "The Way Things Ought To Be" by Rush Limbaugh and that book clearly laid out for me for the first time the differences between awesome conservatives and evil liberals. Of course, out of all of those issues, abortion was always the lynch pin point. There was no way I could ever identify myself with any Democrat candidate. To me, being pro-life meant being a Republican.

Things started changing for me a few years back when I was talking politics over dinner with my Uncle Jim. He is a retired Lutheran minister and an incredibly awesome man of God. What he said to me is that Christians are really in a bind because you can't vote for Democrats because they're the party of abortionists but at the same time you can't vote for the Republicans because they're a bunch of war-mongers. That was actually the first time I had ever heard anyone talk about the Republican agenda as being counter to the will of God. At that point in my life I was deluded into believing that America was a great Christian nation and that the Republicans were the party with God's values on their side.

Since that time I have been influenced by the writings of a lot of Christian political thinkers like Jim Wallis, Shane Claiborne, and Thomas Woods. These people have challenged me to re-examine my Republicanism and party line views on pro-life issues and have caused me to change to what I see as a more holistic pro-life view.

The problem with the debate is that we've allowed politicians to define what the term "pro-life" means. To keep it simple lets look at what that word means:

pro: 1 : an argument or evidence in affirmation of pros and cons; 2 : the affirmative side or one holding it
life: 1 a: the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body

No Duh! Right? Except in the political world you can be defined as pro-life by being morally opposed to abortion while still favoring war, executions, and other means of forceful coercion. I don't know of a single Christian who is ok with the quantity of abortions that occur every year, but I do know many that will rationalize away, or simply ignore, our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to statistics I found on the internet (which of course are likely biased) there are over 1.3 million abortions per year in the United States, which is horrible. That number makes me feel absolutely sick. But what should make you feel equally sick is that almost an equal number of people have been killed due to the Iraq war. The difference between the former and the latter is that the president could stop the war instantly with one single executive order (since congress abdicated their power over war to the president before the war began). Only in a sad and fallen would could someone possibly be defined as pro-life when his polices have literally led to the death of millions.

This election has been referred to as an election of change, but as a pro-life person, I honestly see no change from the policies of death that either side offers. One candidate promises to keep us in Iraq for the next hundred years and jokes about starting a new war with Iran. The other candidate, while talking a good game about the war, is staunchly pro-choice. When given a choice, he couldn't bring himself to vote against the disgusting, yet rare, practice of partial birth abortion. Any differences perceived between the two is simply sleight of hand. Both are apparently fine with the death of millions, its just a matter of whether those killed are born yet or not.

Now just as a disclaimer, it would be overly simplistic to suggest that Barrack revels in the fact that abortions happen or that McCain longs to kill more Iraqis, but once in power, neither of them will seriously do anything to change the way things have happened in the past. Barrack will work to make sure that abortion laws go unchanged. McCain will make sure the war effort continues on. Its just gross to me. All of these things make me cynical of American politics and make all the more thankful of my citizenship under King Jesus.

Lastly, to some of you, all of this may seem wildly obvious, and I honestly don't know why this didn't click before. Maybe it was party loyalty blinding me? I don't really know why I didn't get it then, but I do now.

Politics as Citizens of Another Kingdom

2008-09-10T09:46:00.001-04:00

For once, my recent lack of postings has involved having too much to say rather than too little. The last two posts that I have been working on have each expanded to the level of way too much for anyone to care (or read) so I've been working on paring them down into something more appropriately blog sized.

In the mean while, I've been catching up on some of my favorite blogs and I came across a really good post by Mark Van Steenwyk on Jesus Manifesto. He makes a lot of good points in this article that I would love to say, but why should I rewrite it when he's so articulately spelled it all out. I think everyone should go there to read it, but if you don't want to, here are some highlight points.

We who follow Christ should know better than to simply seek to create a new world order. Christ teaches us to reject the desire to rule over one another. Paul teaches that we are to reject revolution. John Chrysostom teaches (in keeping with the common sentiment of the early church) that “the desire to rule is the mother of heresies.” No, we are the people who turn the other cheek. We are peace-makers in a violent world and enemy-lovers in a hateful world.

Nevertheless, the Christianity we’ve inherited has been, for the most part, interested in ruling over others, forcing morality on others, and enforcing their rule with violence. Let us not be naive: both the Right and the Left are guilty of this. Even that mytholigical group of people called “Moderates” are simply guilty of combing a mix of forced moralities of the Right with the forced moralities of the Left and seeking a new rule that operates under the facade of sensibility.

In other words, one of the mistakes we make as Christians is thinking that any political party or group can possibly fulfill the rule of Christ. If we follow that logic, then tend to think that our morality should be supreme and forced on all because it is the God-given truth. I don't mean to sound relativistic when I say that, because thats not my heart at all. However, we are to live under a Christarchy which is very different form of government than the land in which we presently reside. Our standards and government should be entirely different than the powers that rule now. Mark continues:

.. one of the worst habits of contemporary Christians (especially in the West) is that we fail to recognize that the Way of Jesus is intrinsically political. In other words, we fail to see that Jesus’ way should dictate the way we live in this world, the way we understand power, the way we as a Nation of Priests, a New People, a Sacred Society, should order ourselves. The Church is a political reality, and I’m convinced that a faithful reading of the New Testament leaves little room for a strong sense of dual citizenship. In other words: If you are a Christian, you should make a crappy American or Canadian or Mexican or Lithuanian. As a follower of Jesus the King, your allegiance is so profoundly tied to Him and His way of life that it should be nearly impossible to “conform to the patterns of this world” (Romans 12:2)…or to the patterns of America or Canada or Mexico or Lithuania.

Most Christians believe, deep down inside, that Christianity is a spirituality that should simply inform one’s politics, rather than seeing it as a developed political system already.

Mark goes on to talk more about the the fact that we shouldn't think of the kingdom of God as something that is coming because the reality is that the Kingdom is here and now! That is really exciting to me. We shouldn't just make the best of the culture and government that we've been placed in, but we should truly be outsiders that live radically differently and challenge that culture and all of its assumptions. In many ways, living in this culture as a Christian should become as foreign to us as it would be for us to live in China, India, or New Jersey even (j/k).

I know I've been feeling a strange homelessness (more on that later) and I think at least part of it is due to the fact that I've become convinced of my citizenship in the Kingdom of God rather than America. I never used to see those two as incompatible but the more I go on, the more discongruent they become. So is there anyone else out there that has been feeling this or am I alone on this one. What do you guys think about all of this?

Jesus Is My Friend

2008-09-06T10:20:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Kristin for sharing this.

They seem Canadian, so I think that makes all of this completely normal. I also think this is the direction our worship team should take. Enjoy the love... Zap!!

Film Review: The Ordinary Radicals

2008-09-05T09:14:00.001-04:00

Last night, Susan, Jonas, and I had the privilege of going to the premiere of The Ordinary Radicals movie up at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute outside of Philly. It was a documentary that followed the Jesus for President tour around the country in their vegetable oil powered bus. The story weaved in and out between great teachings by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw from their book and the stories of normal everyday Christians doing amazing things.

The movie was challenging and inspiring. It challenged me to try and do more with the time God has given me here and inspired me that I can do it. I would recommend the movie to any Christian that is interested in seeking change things here and now. Its all about seeing the Kingdom come here on Earth as it is in Heaven and that always excites me.

Public Service Announcment

2008-09-02T09:20:00.000-04:00

Attention People of Westchester County New York: You are paying way too much for gas.

We traveled up to Vermont for a wedding this past weekend and had to get gas in New York. For whatever reason (I'm sure taxes) gas is always a bit more expensive in New England, but we saw multiple stations selling at $4.15 a gallon. Compare that with the lowest I've seen around here at $3.31. I don't mind paying a little bit more, but thats an 84 cent difference. If they're paying that now, I wonder how much they were paying during the worst part earlier in the year.

Anyway, this past week has been ridiculously busy and I pretty much expect today to be the same. When things die down a bit, I'll come up with a more interesting post!

Book Review: Jim & Casper Go to Church

2008-08-26T14:22:00.001-04:00

Book Review: Jim and Casper Go to Church: Frank Conversation about Faith, Churches, and Well-Meaning Christians

I got this book out of the Perryville Library (but you can put a hold on it to pick it up at any Cecil County Branch) and absolutely loved it.

The premise behind is that a Christian and an atheist travel around the country visiting different churches and talk about their impressions and how the services affected them. Jim Henderson is a former pastor who now works with churches to improve their marketing. He literally pays people to go to church. He said, if a church is willing to have a multi-million dollar building fund, the least they could do is pay someone $25 to sit, observe, then report back for a one man focus group. So out of this he came up with the idea for the book.

He hired Casper, an open minded but committed atheist to come along with him to visit several churches over the country. They went to all the big ones Saddleback with Rick Warren, Lakewood with Joel Osteen, Mosaic (which may interest some readers here) and a bunch of other churches all over the country.

Casper was absolutely great in this book. He gave great insights on how different aspects of Christian culture and churches made him feel without being overly critical. There were times when the words coming out of Casper's mouth could have been Jesus' own. ("Why do they have fog machines?")

I would recommend this book to anyone. After spending any significant time in the church, it naturally becomes hard to think of how an outsider would relate to what goes on inside our weekly meeting. Its a quick and interesting read, so check it out.

I Like This Quote

2008-08-25T15:35:00.000-04:00

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."

G.K. Chesterton

Don't Boo Me

2008-08-22T11:16:00.002-04:00

Last night, some friends and I were talking about the 'Jimmy Rollins' situation up in Philly and how the fans were booing him for some comments he made recently.

If you're not familiar with the story, Jimmy Rollins, who is the Phillies All-Star shortstop and 2007 league MVP, recently went on a national sports show and was asked about the Philly fans. He responded, "I might catch some flak for saying this, but, you know, they're front-runners. When you're doing good, they're on your side. When you're doing bad, they're completely against you. For example, Ryan (Howard) is from St. Louis and St. Louis, it seems like they support their team, they're out there and encouraging. In Philly, can't be no punk."

So over comment that you can debate over, the Philly fans are booing him relentlessly, which more or less proves his point. We were debating the merits and deservability of booing last year's MVP, who by the way picked up team on his shoulders and carried them into the playoffs after Chase Utley went down for the year. As you might have guessed, I came down on the don't boo Jimmy side. I just don't see how you can boo a guy who has poured out body and soul for 9 years because he made an offhand comment like that.

I recently just finished reading an autobiography by Terry Bradshaw, who was dogged pretty early on by Stiller fans. Here's an excerpt where he talks about being booed by them:

It took me one-half of my first real professional football game to get booed. I had never before been booed in my life. I will never forget that sound of an entire stadium booing me as long as I live. Some players claim they don't hear the boos; I heard each and every one of them. i could hear the guy in section 104, row H, seat 6 booing me. That sound went through my body like an angry wife through a bank account. It was painful. Painful. Did they think I was trying to throw interceptions?

Most people will never experience the pain of being booed. You ever see customers in a restaurant stand up and boo a waiter? Or walk into a store and boo the salesclerk? Whoa, ma'am what a bad sale you made! What'd you make that sale for? People don't even boo the income tax collector. But they booed me. Me! After the game I was so upset, I sat in my car in the parking lot outside Three Rivers Stadium and just cried. I just don't take kindly to insults

Most athletes will put on a good face and say the "right things" when asked, but I'm sure a lot of them feel this way about it. I reallly appriciated Terry's honesty in that book. I'm sure getting booed at home really bugs Jimmy, but he won't let on too much. In this article Jimmy said all the booing is affecting some of his teammates and messing with their heads. He also said he though it prevented free agents from coming to Philly, so there's no way you can argue that it doesn't affect the players at all.

So what do you guys think? Are Philly fans right to be forever angered by Jimmy's remarks? Is Jimmy right? Does anyone besides me at all care?

Dancing Baby Jonas

2008-08-20T09:16:00.001-04:00

The other day Susan and I were cleaning and listening to music. Jonas was just sitting in his car seat when we noticed he was totally rocking out to all of the music. I grabbed my little camera and tried to catch some of the magic.

Perfect Crime by the Decemberists - Dancing by Jonas

Boating Adventures

2008-08-15T11:21:00.003-04:00

And now for something (I hope) we can all agree on. We had a good vacation, but none of it played out as planned. If you're an amateur mechanic, this would have been your dream getaway.

On our first day, we got underway with the idea of docking in Baltimore overnight. We got to the first channel marker and I noticed an inordinate amount of smoke coming from the back of the boat. I jumped down from the flying bridge and checked in the engine room. When I peeked in, there was red fluid all over the place and I knew immediately what was going on; transmission problems. We turned off the port engine and limped back to our slip with one engine, which is quite a task with a 42 foot boat. After we got back, we were able to see that we had blown a hose, which is a relatively easy fix, however the repair shop didn't have it in stock, so we had to wait until the next day to get it.

Day two started with me in the engine room again fixing the hose and putting new transmission fluid in the engine. After that we got back underway, this time with the idea of docking at Chesapeake City. This time we got as far as the second channel marker before things went horribly wrong again. I noticed the engine was running hot and was smoking again. This time the tell tale fluid was green. As I'm sure you know, green is antifreeze, so we cut off the engine and headed back again. Once we got back, I then proceeded to crawl back into the engine room to find the leak.

Before I go much further, let me tell you about the engine room. "Room" is kind of a misnomer. "Crawl-space" is a bit more accurate. You have a 4 foot door that you go through and have to climb over one hot motor to get to a space between both engines that you can work with. These are two very large diesel engines that had just been running at full bore, so they are also very hot, which oddly enough, makes the engine room very hot.

So back to the leak; after crawling and contorting and twisting for an hour, I could not find any leak at all. Fred (Susan's dad) and I troubleshot and he came up with the idea that the problem might be with the water pumps. So I had to twist and contort my body into an all new shape, which gave new definition to the word pain, to get this stupid thing off. Once we got it off, it was clear that the problem was one of the impellers inside, which was great news because again, it was just a matter of putting a new one in and putting it all back together again. After all of that though, I had run out of energy and daylight, so I put it off until the next morning.

Day 3 again found me in the engine room, but this time with renewed vigor! I was going to get this boat fixed, running, and ready so we could at least have one night out on the boat. I was able to get the broken water pump fixed pretty easily, since it was 95% taken apart already. We decided to replace the other engine's impeller too, which was a good thing since it apparently wasn't long for this world either. After that I put it all back together and prayed that it would all stick together... AND IT DID!!

We finally got out for our trip and headed for a cove called Still Pond. The trip down was wonderful and the cove was absolutely gorgeous. It fully made all the effort worthwhile. Here are some of the pictures:

Turkey Point from the water

Zoe was very excited to drive the boat for all of 20 seconds

Once we got to Still Pond, we took the dinghy out and explored the cove.

2008-08-09T16:50:00.000-04:00

We'll be spending the next few days on a vacation with Susan's dad boating in the Chesapeake! I'm pretty excited to get some vacation time in.

Talk to you in a few days.

Bad Neighbor

2008-08-07T10:10:00.003-04:00

One of my neighbors is apparently moving out. The way I found out is because they are throwing away stuff. Lots of stuff. Lots of good stuff.

It all started last week when I noticed they had a kitchen sized trash can full of shoes sitting out on trash day. My first thought was, haven't these people heard of the Salvation Army? I stepped back though and realized maybe I was jumping the gun and maybe they had a good reason, so I started making excuses for them. At first I thought, maybe they're all worn out, but they didn't look to be in too bad of shape really. Then I thought, even if they were worn out, no one would keep about 20 pairs of fully worn out and useless shoes, so that was out. Then I started thinking, maybe someone in the home had been kicked out or had died or something tragic and this was all of their shoes, but that still didn't make sense. Most people in that situation would still donate their stuff. My last excuse, was that maybe they didn't have any way of getting it down to the Salvation Army, but that wasn't workable either. They have a big truck in the driveway and the drop-off center is 2 miles down the road. I was out of excuses, so I just had to assume they were wasting it all.

Over the next few days it became obvious (by the moving trucks and vans) that they were moving out. Along with the moving out came several other choice items kicked to the curb. They had; a king sized matress, a nice rolltop desk, 2 or 3 lawn chairs, a floor lamp, a weedwhacker, a bed frame and bags that were filled with unknown treasures. All of it looked perfectly usable, yet there it was to go spend the rest of eternity in a landfill.

It just seemed so wasteful to me. When you read accounts of poverty in other parts of the world, it just breaks my heart to see so much waste. When I think of that basket of shoes, I think of that part of Irresistible Revolution. Shane went to India and worked with Mother Teresa caring for the poor there. One thing he noticed (amongst many) was that her feet were terribly deformed. When he asked someone about it, they said that people donate used shoes to her mission. She allowed all of the people they serve to have first shot at all the donated shoes, then she took whatever was leftover for herself. When you contrast that kind of need with that kind of waste, it literally turns my stomach.

While not exactly the same thing, to other people in poverty, just trashing your stuff like that is the same as a rich person lighting cigars with $100 dollar bills. Its gross, its irresponsible, its wasteful.

What do you think? Am I being too harsh? I don't think I am.

The Good and the Bad

2008-08-06T10:18:00.000-04:00

Is it wrong that I am constantly amused by my patients? I think anytime you deal with people on a regular basis, you're just going to see things that make you laugh to yourself.

For example, we have this elderly black guy who comes in once a month to pick up medications.. There's nothing particularly noteworthy about him, except that every time he comes in he is always wearing an "Audioslave" hat.. If you don't know, Audioslave is a hard rocking band made up of Chris Cornell from Soundgarden and the band from Rage Against the Machine.. So the thought of this 80 year old guy rocking out in his button up shirt, slacks, and hat cracks me up.

Another patient is a 77 year old guy who has bought 33 Viagra in the past 28 days.. That guy is a champ! I love it!

Then I have another woman who comes in and literally talks me ear off. She goes off about 200 words per minute asking me questions all along the way, but never waiting once for me to answer.. Then after going on and on and on and on without stop, she will finally say, "Well what do you think Jason?." Usually I have no clue which of the seven questions she's asked in the past five minutes to answer, so I'll just say, "well....." Then she'll start right back up before I even get anything else out... Eventually she'll answer her own questions, then leave. I know some of the other people find it annoying, but its mostly just amusing to me. Shes a real sweet lady, so I'm fine with it.

Its these amusing little things that keep my job from being too much of a downer. Last week, one of my patients that I really like came in told me had just been diagnosed with Lupus. That was a huge downer, but then two days later, he comes in and tells me they've also just found out he has cancer as well. I'm praying hard for him, and you guys should too. He's having surgery next week and they'll be able to let him know how advanced it is. A few months ago, another patient of ours had a massive heart attack and died suddenly. It was really tragic and I felt terrible for his family. All of these things are sad and depressing. If I couldn't find at least some things to keep it fun, I'd go crazy and quit.

The Quest for Balance, or, the Holy Grail of Parenting

2008-08-04T09:57:00.000-04:00

I had "a few things" I needed to get at the grocery store. No big deal; I have multiple gadgets of modern convenience with which to transport my children and my groceries through the store. On the way to the store, I mentally shuffle through various permutations of sling/cart, sling/stroller, stroller/hip hammock, just a stroller (expecting Zoe to walk). I know that Zoe likes to walk when we shop because it gives her independence, so I opt to put Jonas in the sling, allowing me to keep my hands free to push a cart. That way, I can shop hands-free. If Zoe gets tired, I reason I can put her in the cart.

Act 1, Scene 2: I find myself standing in the vestibule of the grocery store with Jonas sleeping peacefully in the sling and Zoe refusing to walk along side me anymore. I stop pushing the cart to negotiate with my toddler. "Zoe, do you want to walk?"
Zoe lifts her arms up, "Mama, Mama," she pleads.
"Let Mama put you in the cart", I suggest, thinking she must be tired. I lift her gingerly into the child seat on the cart. My actions are met with instantaneous, full-force toddler tantrum. Before I fully comprehend what is happening, Zoe is face-down on the grocery store floor screaming, wailing and crying her displeasure for the whole shopping population to enjoy. Trying not to disturb Jonas in his cocoon of cotton, I stoop to soothe my savage two-year-old. "Zoe, let's get up and try to walk," I begin in my best I'm-the-adult-and-I-am-in-control-of-this-situation voice. There is no change to the volume or ferocity of Zoe's protest, and a quick survey through my peripheral vision reveals a woman standing at the deli counter fully staring at my predicament with an expression of amazement mixed with subdued horror. At this point, I no longer wish to contribute to grocery shopper voyeurism, so I scoop my still-screaming daughter off the floor and move toward the first item on my shopping list as I try to figure out what to do. To give you a visual, I have moved Jonas in his sling over my right hip to accommodate Zoe, as I hold her on my left hip. With my right hand, I am pushing a cart which veers decidedly to the left, so I have to give a correcting push with my left hand every few seconds. This means that every other step, I balance Zoe between my left hip and forearm in order to free my left hand. Every time I try to get an item into the cart, I either have to use my right hand alone, or put Zoe down- which immediately elicits screams of agony. In this manner, I get "a few items" from the store and complete my shopping chore for the day.

Somewhere between household items and frozen foods, it occurs to me that this is exactly what my life has become- and insane attempt at balancing that which can only be balanced through tremendous planning and incredible, continuous effort. I know I am not the first woman to have two children. I also know that I am not the first woman to have a little trouble acclimating to life with two children. I can't even say that I am surprised that it's tough. I guess it's just really different to know ahead of time that something will be hard than it is to live through the hard stuff.

Several very wise and encouraging women I know have told me that, when you have your first baby, you can't imagine loving anyone else as much as you love him or her, but when your second baby is born, you just find that love miraculously present in your heart. I agree with the beauty and the grace of that sentiment, but I am struggling with the expression of the love that I have. I love Zoe and Jonas both so much, but I worry sometimes about how best to share the love between them. I feel pain when Zoe climbs up next to me while I'm nursing Jonas and whimpers, "Mama, mama," because I know that she must feel so ambivalent and uncertain and she just needs a reassuring hug, but I have to wait until Jonas is done nursing. Then, I feel a pang of sorrow as I hear Jonas wake up from a nap, ready for some quiet time with his Mama, but Zoe needs me to help her finish with breakfast, or get her pants on, or find a safe toy to occupy her time while I am with Jonas.

Then, in the midst of my attempts to find a balance between my two precious babies, the many nagging responsibilities outside my little nest are constantly pressing in on me, waiting for me, hovering just outside of "I need you now". When all is quiet and peaceful, when both Zoe and Jonas are well fed, sleeping and at peace, that is the time I begin to tackle "everything else". Have I e-mailed Jason in a while, because I know he likes to keep in touch with me through the day? Are the dishes done? Does everyone have clean laundry? Do I have homework for VLI? Do I have phone calls to return? Has the garden been watered? Does the dog need to be fed? Does she need to go out? (that one usually corresponds with the previous one) What's on the menu for dinner tonight and what must I do to make it happen before Zoe's bedtime?

So, you can clearly see that I am on a quest right now. I have long been searching for that balance where all of the things in my life are as they should be. I long for everyone in my family to have his or her needs met. I would love to have a clean house, a rich spiritual life, well nourished children, and time to exercise and work on my hobbies (what are THOSE?!). I truly want to pour myself into learning all I can from VLI, but I find myself consistently giving "just enough", because my cup is so empty by the time I get done with everything else. I am perennially tired. I have chores that go undone for weeks and months. There are piles of clutter in my house that merely get moved from place to place depending on what surface is the most necessary. I know that this parenting stuff is hard, but I didn't really understand what it would feel like to live it everyday.

I feel like week by week, I am climbing the ladder of Maslow's higherarchy of needs. The first week home with Jonas, I literally was meeting his need for food, and that was it. As I move up the ladder, I find I am able to meet more of my family's needs, but I am not yet where I want to be. I am not certain how I will get there, but Jason and I keep trying to work out a system for achieving that elusive balance. If my recent trip to the grocery store is an accurate indicator, we have a long way to go. On the other hand, I have learned that the best way to keep everyone happy during a shopping trip is to carry Zoe in the hip hammock and push Jonas in the stroller. So, maybe I am closer than I thought. ;)

Toddlers are Emotionally Volatile

2008-07-31T10:10:00.000-04:00

Two year olds emotions can change on a dime.

I thought these were hilarrious.

Really Evil

2008-07-28T10:40:00.000-04:00

I am seriously not trying to beat a dead horse, but I saw this post on one of my favorite blogs, consumerist.com, and I figure I would share the love.

2008 Consumer Action Credit Card Survey Declares Credit Cards 'Really !@$% Evil!'

Credit cards are so much worse than you thought, according to the 2008 Consumer Action credit card survey. Creditors have carte blanche to do pretty much whatever they want, including randomly changing terms, conditions, and rates, even to cardholders with perfect payment histories and pristine credit scores.

From the survey:
77% of surveyed credit card issuers (17 of 22) answered “Yes” to the question “Can you increase my APR or change my terms ‘any time for any reason’?” This includes all Top Ten issuers – even Citibank which pledges not to change a customer’s terms before the card’s expiration date.
Bank of America, Chase, Citi, American Express and Capital One all reserve the right to change rates without notifying consumer in advance.
Representatives for Bank of America, Capital One and Citi cited “market conditions,” “the economy,” and ”business strategies” as factors that might cause an interest rate to increase.
Consumer Action also identified several practices that will seem all too familiar to many of us:
As consumers pay off large balances, creditors slash credit limits so that the balance is always close to the credit limit.
Credit limits are reduced to levels lower than the current balance, triggering over limit fees and requiring a large “balloon” payment of the over-due amount. This practice also puts the consumer at risk of being hit with a penalty interest rate.
Cards are declined at the point of purchase, and only then do cardholders find out that their limits have been reduced with no warning.
When asked to comment on their practices, several creditors responded: "Brahahaha!"

For the record, it has been my dealings with most of those companies during my years enslaved to debt that has fashioned my view points today. I love consumerist for holding their feet to the fire and talking about the crap that these companies try and pull on people.

Give a Man a Shovel

2008-07-24T15:20:00.003-04:00

I've talked about debt here numerous times, and I've disagreed with a lot of you, but instead of me beating the same old topic, I'll let someone else do it for me

The New York Times ran a very interesting article on the trap of consumer debt and how its affecting people. Here is an excerpt: (btw if you need a login and password, go to www.bugmenot.com)

Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt

July 20, 2008

Just two generations ago, America was a nation of mostly thrifty people living within their means, even setting money aside for unforeseen expenses.

Today, Americans carry $2.56 trillion in consumer debt, up 22 percent since 2000 alone, according to the Federal Reserve Board. The average household’s credit card debt is $8,565, up almost 15 percent from 2000.

College debt has more than doubled since 1995. The average student emerges from college carrying $20,000 in educational debt

Household debt, including mortgages and credit cards, represents 19 percent of household assets, according to the Fed, compared with 13 percent in 1980.

Even as this debt was mounting, incomes stagnated for many Americans. As a result, the percentage of disposable income that consumers must set aside to service their debt — a figure that includes monthly credit card payments, car loans, mortgage interest and principal — has risen to 14.5 percent from 11 percent just 15 years ago.

By contrast, the nation’s savings rate, which exceeded 8 percent of disposable income in 1968, stood at 0.4 percent at the end of the first quarter of this year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

More ominous, as Americans have dug themselves deeper into debt, the value of their assets has started to fall. Mortgage debt stood at $10.5 trillion at the end of last year, more than double the $4.8 trillion just seven years earlier, but home prices that were rising to support increasing levels of debt, like home equity lines of credit, are now dropping.

The combination of increased debt, falling asset prices and stagnant incomes does not threaten just imprudent borrowers. The entire economy has become vulnerable to the spending slowdown that results when consumers... hit the wall.

Read the whole article and pick up on some of the stunning numbers they put out there. Credit card companies doubling their profits since 2003? I doubt many of us (except for me finally finishing college) have doubled our income in just 5 years. How about the fact that mortgages have doubled over the past several years? How is anyone supposed to afford housing in the future? College has doubled since when I started circa 1996. They don't say it in the article, but I'm sure the price increase has everything to do with an expansion of credit for student loans which allows colleges to charge more. None of this is sustainable at all. Its all got to end somewhere, and I don't think its going anywhere good for most people.

I think as Christians, we need to stand up against this lifestyle. Large corporations with slick marketing packages have taken advantage of all of us and have convinced us that a life spent in debt isn't a bad thing. They tell us that, "life takes visa," which couldn't be further from the truth. The only thing life takes is Jesus and a lifestyle of simple living. These companies have created monster machines that chew up lives to churn out money and I'm calling shenanigans on them. By giving out free credit to anyone, they've allowed millions of people the ability to outspend their financial means. Of course this means we get to live forever indebted to banks and credit card companies, which always hurts in the long run. Those of us that are middle class get to tread water with the sharks, but those of us who hit some sort of crisis, end up getting eaten by them.

I know some people here are going to respond back and say that not all debt is bad and that there are some "good debts," but I'm just not buying it. I know that most of us will have to go into debt to buy houses and cars, but we should look at that as a necessary evil, not as the way things should be.

Top Ten Play

2008-07-18T10:35:00.000-04:00

Since all I do these days is work, I'll share a story that just happened here.

A woman was in looking to get a wrist brace for her friend. She said she needed a large brace. I know that wrist braces are sized according to wrist circumference and I doubt she measured, so I ask her why she thought she needed a large. She said, "She's a real large lady. Very obese. She has big bones." I'm convinced and say "ok," but she continued on. She turns and points to another woman sitting 2 seats down from her in the waiting room and says, "She's about the same size as her. She's built about the same." Now, to me this patient isn't THAT big, I would guess she's about 5'6" 160lbs, a little overweight for sure, but certainly not the behemoth this woman is describing. The apparently obese woman, who is also apparently filled with grace, speaks up and kindly says, "my wrists aren't that large." I speak up for her too and say, "She's not really that big," but she continued on undaunted. "Well she's about the same size."

After the rude woman left, I turned to the other lady and say, "That has got to be one of the top ten rudest things I have ever heard in my life." She laughed it off, but I was serious, that was so freaking rude. I couldn't believe it.

Long Week

2008-07-18T09:24:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone! Sorry for the long break between posts. Last Thursday my boss left for a 2 week Mediteranian Cruise (today he called me from Turkey) and left me in charge of the shop. Things have gone alright but I have felt constantly busy. Most nights I've gotten home anywhere from a half hour to an hour late and thats with me going in early. So needless to say, I'm pooped!

A Fresh Idea for President

2008-07-09T10:39:00.001-04:00

My Own Personal Soapbox

2008-07-08T11:56:00.000-04:00

Friday night, while driving home from a very nice evening with my dad on his boat, Jason and I participated in one of our favorite activities; talking. Somehow, we hit upon one of my personal hot-button issues. It's a little American societal phenomenon I have dubbed "age segregation". I first wrote an essay about this when I was a junior in high school. My perception of age segregation breaks down as follows. In our society, people begin their socialization through the educational system where they are grouped with other people in their age peer-group. This structure, which perseveres throughout the educational years, sets Americans up to establish friendships and romantic relationships almost exclusively with people their own age- simply because they never meet any other people outside of their immediate family. The logical conclusion of this structure is that people basically travel in social circles with people their own age, rarely ever meeting with people outside of family from other age groups.

One place where this age segregation should be easily avoided is within the church setting. After all, we are all in one place with the spiritual means to transcend our societal presuppositions. However, I have observed that inter-generational relationships remain the exception, even within the church setting. Many of the small groups that gather tend to cater to one age group. It seems that our cultural way of doing things has left us uncomfortable with anything other than homogeneous age groupings. My argument against this norm is very simple. There is a limitless wealth of blessing that we gain from inter-generational relationships within our community. I could go more in depth on this, but I want to (attempt to) keep this post brief.

I remember cherishing the time I spent with my mother's parents as a kid. My little sister and I would stay with them for a week each summer while my parents went on a vacation together. I have so many warm memories associated with those times. When I was in second grade, my dad's father came to live with us because he had been disabled by a stroke. The richness that I gained from these close relationships with my grandparents came from getting to know people who grew up in a slightly different time period. The things that my grandparents taught me about how people are pretty much all similar far outweighs anything that was different about their experience.

Because my grandparents were real people with incredible stories and fascinating life experiences, I learned to see people in different age groups as people first, and members of an age group second (or third, or further down the list of attributes). Now, my grandparents are just an example. What I would really like to see is a community where it is natural for people of all ages to interact and form friendships.

Now, for the "interactive" part of this post...

Does this concept of age segregation seem like an obvious thing that everyone already knows about and just accepts as part of our culture, or is it a new idea that you haven't thought about before?

Do you agree that it is a problem that people from different ages don't associate with each other as a regular function in American society, or is the intergenerational relationship building within a family sufficient?

Any additional thoughts or observations??

A Day In Court

2008-07-07T14:08:00.004-04:00

I suppose every pharmacist that is vigilant and mindful will have his day in court and today was mine. Its a semi long story so I'll keep it semi short.

A few months back, I got a prescription for Percocet, which the kiddies around here go coo-coo for, that just didn't look right. It looked like a legitimate prescription, but the colors on and the ink on the script just didn't look normal. What it looked like to me was that someone had used a scanner and a really good color printer to copy a real prescription. Since calling the doctor didn't get me anywhere, the only thing I could do is fish around to some of the other pharmacies around. I made a few calls and finally hit on one up in Bel Air. The patient had gotten the same prescription filled there a few days before. I had that pharmacist copy and fax me a copy and it was identical. I called the cops leading me to my adventure today.

I was nervous going into the courthouse because I had never testified before and I guess I'll be nervous next time too, since the guy plead guilty. I was glad it didn't go to a full procedure because he was absolutely 100% nailed. Since it was his first offense, the judge went light (very light) on the guy and gave him a year of probation and a $250 fine. If he's abusing and addicted, then I'm not too upset by the sentence. Hopefully getting caught will scare him into getting the treatment he needs. If he's selling, I'm pretty upset because he's a dealer on the street poisoning and killing teens. Plus the street value of his prescription is about $500 making that $250 fine seen pretty small. He told the judge that he's been addicted, so I'll have to take his word on it for now.

So just as a friendly reminder; if you ever think you can fool a pharmacist, don't. Pharmacists have spidey-sense and can tell if you're trying to pull any funny business. Even though it was one of the best fakes I have ever seen, I still could tell it was a fake. Literally thousands of prescriptions pass through my hands each month, so I am going to notice even subtle variations on fakes. Don't ever try to pull this crap. Seriously!

Bomb Bomb Bomb

2008-07-05T09:07:00.001-04:00

Posting that video of my boy Ron Paul made me really sad at what our options our for the upcoming election.

I know this is kind of old news, but when I heard this, I decided that despite the fact that I am a lifelong Republican, there is absolutely no way I could vote for McCain.

Question: When do we send em an airmail message to Tehran?
The answer is totally LOL (sarcasm)

For the record, waging war and killing should never ever ever be a laughing matter. Its nothing to joke about. That is why I refuse to vote for this guy.

Happy Overthrow the Government Day

2008-07-04T12:33:00.001-04:00

Happy Independence Day Everyone! Just thought I'd post this video I was sent. It really upsets me (and this guy too of course) that after all the mess we've had in Iraq that anyone could possibly even dream of initiating another war of aggression.

Just know that The Gross Domestic Product of Iran is 1/68 that of the United States, its military spending 1/110 that of the Pentagon. Iran is not the threat, we are.

Quick Quote

2008-07-01T19:52:00.000-04:00

From The Great Awakening by Jim Wallis

Majorities normally don't change things; creative minorities do, and the majority just goes along in the end. As antrhropologist Margaret Mead famously said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, commited citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

I read this last night and was encouraged.

All Good Things

2008-07-01T10:06:00.000-04:00

I love my job, but it has been great having some significant time off. Since Jonas was born on a Saturday, I got that weekend, the whole work week, and the next weekend off. Nine days without working is one of the longest vacations I've had in years and I really really enjoyed the time. Now , I'm back to the grind of work which means I'm back to blogging as well.

Welcoming Jonas!

2008-06-23T15:04:00.008-04:00

Well, after a couple of "false starts", Jonas Andrew Jaszemski was born Saturday, June 21st at 3:35 am. He weighed 7 lb., 4 oz.

On Friday evening, Jason and I took Zoe to church for a healing meeting. Worship was really nice, then the meeting moved into healing prayer. Zoe has had a fever on and off for the past few days, so I took her up for prayer, but I felt sort of weird about asking for prayer for myself- especially since I was pregnant- not sick! A friend of mine prayed for me early in the evening, so I figured I was "covered". Jason was playing on the worship team, so he kept text messaging me that I should go up for prayer. I'm not sure why I am so reluctant to pursue prayer for myself, but when my long-suffering husband texted me the word, "please", I knew I was out of excuses. I took Zoe out into the main meeting again. We walked through the "fire line", which was basically a row of people praying for Holy Spirit fire to descend on everyone walking through. As we got to the end, several of the sweetest women I know surrounded Zoe and I and just immersed us in really wonderful prayer. They prayed for Zoe and they prayed for me and for the baby.

We got home around 11:00 pm. Zoe was asleep, so we put her right to bed. I figured I would lay down and try to fall asleep. I had been having contractions throughout the meeting, but I was learning to ignore contractions after our third trip to the Birth Center (on Friday afternoon). By midnight, I realized that the contractions were not slowing down- and they were getting more intense. I got up and took a warm shower. Jason came up to check on me, and we decided to go downstairs and wait for the contractions to stop again. By 1:00 am, we knew that things were different!

The really amazing thing was that when my labor really settled into active, intense contractions, we had a very short wait to finally meet Jonas. After all of the long hours of contractions leading nowhere, it was nothing short of miraculous to get to the Birth Center and hear that I was 6 cm dilated- and I would be meeting my baby that night! Two hours later, I was holding my brand new son.

Well- enough introspective recollection- now for the pictures!!

See if you guess who's not the center of attention anymore!

Family Photo at the Birth Center

Saturday evening at home on the back deck

Jason gets in a little bonding time while I rest

Stuck

2008-06-19T10:29:00.003-04:00

Stuck is one of Zoe's favorite words right now. Whenever she's in the backseat and she wants out, I hear her from the back saying "stuuuuck." Same thing when she's in the highchair and can't get down, its the same cute little word. Stuuuuck!

So that's kind of where Susan and I are right now. We both feel like we're in some sort of holding pattern waiting on the baby. We've had two weekends in a row where Susan had a run of some serious contractions, but didn't deliver. I can't speak for her, but I feel like I can't concentrate on anything knowing that any moment our lives are going to change. Hopefully once the baby comes, I'll be able to start thinking again and I'll start posting more stuff on here, but until then, I'm just hanging out and waiting.

False Labor is Still a Lot of Work

2008-06-16T12:01:00.004-04:00

We had a very eventful non-event filled weekend.

We came into the weekend exhausted from a full week of getting ready for the new baby and preparing a small birthday party for Zoe. Then Saturday morning, Susan starting having semi-regular contractions. They subsided for a while, but by the time we were getting ready to go out for Father's day with her dad, they had settled into a pretty regular pattern. Dinner was pretty good, but we ended spending a good amount of our time out writing down times on the back of our placemat. On the way over to the restaurant, they had been around 10 minutes apart, but by the end of dinner, we were settled in around 5 minutes apart. We decided to go home and pack our bags and get ready.

While we were at home they were around 4 minutes apart, so we figured this was it. We called up the midwife and she met us at the birth center. Unfortunately when she checked Susan, she wasn't really dilated all that much. She had us wait around there for a couple of hours to see how things would progress. Unfortunately, they didn't. Around 2 in the morning, she checked Susan again and figured that it would probably be best if we went home to sleep in our own bed and see what would happen in the morning.

Around 5:30am on Sunday, Susan was woken up by contractions and this time they were closer than before. They were timing at about 1 minute apart and they were getting a little more intense. However, they weren't super intense. We called the midwife and she said that unless they got to be really intense, we should just wait at home and see what would happen. We watched TV for a while and went for 2 walks around the neighborhood, but they didn't really ramp up in intensity. While we were waiting and counting contractions, Susan fell asleep for a nap. When she woke up from the nap, the contractions seemed to start to slow down. Throughout the rest of Sunday, they started spacing out more and more and more to the point where they more or less stopped.

So we're a little frustrated, but there's not much we can really do to coax this guy out. He's going to come when he comes, but the waiting game can be particularly tiring to the spirit.

Sunday in Philly

2008-06-09T15:34:00.005-04:00

Yesterday we had Day 2 of our Giving Spree. Actually you could probably more accurately call it Day 1B. We had so much food left over after the neighborhood party, that we had to find something to do with it. Susan called our friend Adan, who is planting a church up in West Kensington, Philadelphia, and the two of them decided to do a cook out up there.

It was a really good time. We were going to have it outside, but it was just too hot, so we ended up having to move the party inside. We did worship for a bit and then just ate food and talked to people.

West Kensington is an amazing place. I met a guy yesterday who has been on the neighborhood watch patrol for 20 years. He told me he's been kicked, punched, stabbed and shot at, but that hasn't stopped him yet. Looking at his arms, I could see several knife wounds, so I knew he was telling the truth. He loves his kids and the neighborhood and he wants it to be a safe place for them. That is amazing to me. It makes my biggest struggle, getting my neighbors to say 'Hi' to me, seem weak.

When it was over I was talking to Adan. He was telling me how he just finished reading a book about church programs and how to reach out to people and that they just didn't really apply up there. He said there are so many areas of need and so many opportunities to speak into people's lives up there that you don't have to come up with these programs. It got to be an exciting place for a Christian to be.

The lighting wasn't too good in the building, but here are a few pictures.

After worship I gave a few kids impromptu bass lessons. I kind of look angry in this picture, but I'm really not.

Zoe loved Anthony. She literally followed him around everywhere. When we were finished, he said, she was the first person ever in 10 years to wear him out.

The cooks! Iris and this wonderful older woman who doesn't speak a lick of English but is as sweet as can be. Maybe when I brush up on my Spanish a bit more, I'll ask what her name is.

Obligatory, "my daughter is cute" picture

We're still looking for ideas for the next "Giving Spree." We've got about $400 left over to spend, so there are tons of options! Let me know what you think.

Weekend Links Roundup 6/7/08

2008-06-07T08:14:00.000-04:00

I'm only going to post a few links because two of them are long, but really good articles. Give them a read and comment here about either.

Congratulations

2008-06-06T08:17:00.003-04:00

This is a little late, but my living room has become a construction site, so I have not been able to get to my computer until just last night to upload these pictures.

Last Saturday we went to see my brother Joe graduate from University of Delaware. I was really really happy for him to finish up college.

There he is!

Our awesomeness is overwhelming!

Plus, as an added bonus, we got to see Cal Ripken get an honorary doctorate. He delivered the keynote speach and was great.

2 out of 3 American Christians are Wrong

2008-06-04T13:13:00.003-04:00

So I want to comment about my last post.

I was floored by the fact that 67% of people surveyed thought their church was doing enough to help the poor. Absolutely floored! How could we possibly be doing enough? There are over 2000 verses in the bible relating to poverty and taking care of the poor. How can these people possibly think they are fulfilling all of those scriptures all of the time? There is clearly so much poverty in the world, so what could be the source of their delusions?

I personally think it has a lot to do with the fact that people in nice middle class churches in the suburbs are for the most part insulated from that real pain and suffering. We don't interact with these people on a daily basis, so we tend to minimize their problems. I used to be in the same boat as everyone else in that survey. I would have said we were doing plenty until I spent 4 years living in community with the poor in Baltimore. After living there and seeing everything I've seen, it has been very rough transition moving back to the burbs.

When I doing clinical there, one of my many jobs was to help people sign up for drug assistance plans or Medicare drug plans. We would have people bring in all of their financial information and medical expenses to us and we would see what we could do for them.

It was a real eye opener how poor some of these people were. They would show me their tax forms and I couldn't believe it. Single people that made about $6,000 a year. Couples that made $12,000 a year or less. That was less than what I made at Grotto's as a part time pizza delivery guy, yet these people were trying to live on this year after year with little hope of improvement. The sad story is that some of the the couples that came in made over $14,000 a year making them officially over the poverty line and therefore not weren't eligible for a lot of the programs we were offering.

It wasn't my job to ask why they were struggling so much. It was my job to see them with compassion and help them. Jesus didn't make any stipulations on helping the poor in the bible, so we shouldn't either.

Like I said earlier, there are over 2000 verses in the Bible, so probably God is trying to tell us something there. So the question is how do we get churches together moving in the direction of helping those less advantaged than we are? I don't have any answers, but that is part of the reason I keep talking about it here. I want church to be a place that equips and empowers the disadvantaged. I don't know what any of that would look like, but I know we can find it together.

Should we cancel Church?

2008-06-03T09:23:00.004-04:00

Sorry I have been a bit slack of posting as of late. One of the three pharmacists I work with was out last week, so I was crazy busy at work all week. Add on top of that all the preparations for the new baby and I haven't had too much time to blog.

So here's an interesting an article I found on the interwebs. You can click here for the full article or read below if you have a short attention span.

US Christians urged to cancel church services and help poor

By agency reporter

22 Apr 2008

Christians in the US should close their churches and channel their energies into helping the poor.

This is the message from the campaign 'Faith in Action', a resource developed by Christian humanitarian organization, World Vision, church communication resources provider, Outreach, Inc., and Christian communications company, Zondervan.

The call comes along with the news that two-thirds of American surveyed in a new poll say their churches are doing enough to help the poor despite the latest United States Census Bureau statistics showing consistent year-to-year increases in the numbers of Americans living in poverty.

This, combined with poverty indicators such as rising food stamp usage, points to increased demand for a complacent church to do more to help the poor, say Christian campaigners.

Conducted by Faith in Action and Harris Interactive, the national survey polled more than 2,800 adults. Sixty-seven percent of respondents "agreed" or "strongly agreed" with the statement, "My church already does enough to help the poor in my community." "Faith in Action is designed to be a step toward alleviating the complacency that is afflicting churches across the country, and an effective call to action to follow Christ's example of compassion."

Current data provided by the US Census Bureau reveals the national poverty level has increased from 11.7 percent in 2001 to 13.3 percent in 2005, or 38 million Americans.

Additionally, demand for food stamps between 2007-08, a key economic indicator provided by the United States Department of Agriculture, is up significantly in 43 states, increasing the need for significant help among more than 28 million Americans.

"These results, when combined with current census and economic data, expose a discrepancy between Christians who believe they are doing enough and the reality that Christians are just scratching the surface in our communities," said Steve Haas, vice president for church relations at World Vision.

What do you think? Should we occasionally close church and take it on the streets? Do you think that will help at all? What about the fact that 67% percent of Christians think we're already doing enough? I have some ideas, but I wanted to toss it out and see what you guys made of it.

You've Got to be Kidding

2008-05-29T15:05:00.001-04:00

This doesn't have much to do with anything I normally talk about, but can someone please get rid of Amtrak. They are absolutely useless. On multiple occasions, I've thought it might be easier and a bit more environmentally friendly to take a train between cities, but its always more expensive and it takes too darn long.

Case in point; I wanted to check into how much it would cost to take a train to San Francisco to see Susan's sister sometime after the baby is born. Since gas is getting so bad, I thought it might be a bit cheaper to take a train , but boy was I wrong. For Susan, Zoe, and I, it would be 3 days and $900 for a one way trip in coach. What the heck! Who in their right mind would pay that much for a trip that takes that long.

With prices like that, I guess I'll have to stick to the air.

A Little Family Time

2008-05-29T10:42:00.008-04:00

Jason and I have been trying to build in some "special time" with Zoe before the baby is born. Apart from this being a chance to lavish some extra attention on her, these little outings are sure to be lifelong memories (at least for Jason and me- Zoe's long term memory is still at two-year-old level). Last night, we took Zoe to the Orioles game. It was great to be back in Baltimore. I forget how much I miss it until we go back there for something. Walking to and from the stadium from our parking spot, people were so friendly and regularly commented on Zoe's cuteness. That's pretty much all it takes for me to like a place!

The only "down-side" to our evening was that the Orioles lost to the Yankees. That would be tough enough to swallow based solely on Jason's intense dislike of the Yankees, but the loss was made even more bitter by the constant jeering of numerous New York fans who flock into Camden Yards for every game between these David and Goliath (financially speaking) rivals.

We had great seats, toward the back of the lowest section. A large group of NY fans in the very front spent most of the game heckling one particular O's fan across the aisle from them. It was painfully like watching a middle school kid being teased by the entire "cool crowd". At one point, the NY fan- disgusted by the fact that our Orioles buddy was simply wearing an orange tee-shirt- went out to the concessions and bought him a children's Orioles fan tee-shirt. Needless to say, our boy the O's fan was not amused.

Meanwhile, there was an Orioles fan of increasing inebriation just behind us shouting various criticisms of the Yankees organization. His default (though there were several others) was, "Highest paid, last place!" Whenever it had been too quiet, or he got tired of saying something else, he came back to that gem. Jason found it funny every time- but I wearied of the chant by about the 7th inning. Thankfully, the rivalry between the fans never reached brawl level. It would have been unfortunate to have Zoe witness violence at such a tender age.

Zoe hung on till the bitter end, partly because Jason got her some ice cream during the 9th inning. I was very proud of her for behaving really well, letting us enjoy a great evening of (disappointing) baseball. She made Jason particularly proud with her commentary on the evening as we drove away.

Jason asked, "Did you have fun tonight, Zoe?"

To which she replied, "No."

Intrigued, Jason followed up with, "Did you have a bad time?"

"Bad," Zoe repeated.

"Was it because of the Yankees?"

"Yes!"

Then Jason looked at me and said, "I love my daughter."

Whitetail Way Family Fun Day

2008-05-28T13:49:00.003-04:00

On Saturday we finally had our neighborhood party. Susan posted most of the story, but I wanted to just add a few of my own observations.

First off, for future reference, this kind of thing is tough to do without much help. I purposely didn't ask for much help from my friends or from the church, because I didn't want it to seem like a church outreach. I wanted it to be community focused relationship building , so I wanted the majority of people there to be from our block. Because of that however, I felt like I spent most of my time either manning the grill or trying to keep the Moon Bounce from deflating. We had a couple that we were friends with there to help us and they were lifesavers, without them, it would have been a disaster. I personally didn't get to spend as much time building relations as I would have liked, so in the future, I would definitely ask for more help.

The second thing I learned that it is really hard to get adult people to come out of their houses. Besides kids, who were very very abundant, we had about 6 households out of 32 on our block. Of those six, only one of them was there without any kids. A couple of our neighbors did pop their heads out to get their mail at the box right next to us, but they didn't stick around to even say hello.

I got into a real good conversation with a really cool guy from the next street over who said he tried something like this a few years ago. He said he went door to door and invited all of his neighbors neighbors out. He got all the meat and free beer and not one single person showed up. So that shows you how tough it can be to minister here. If TV has taught me anything, it is that men will do ANYTHING for free beer. So if that wouldn't draw them in, what else possibly could.

The last thing I learned is that there are some good people around us that I want to get to know better. The whole point was to bring people together and to form new friendships. If that one day is the only time I ever get to talk to any of these people, then it was a waste of time. Hopefully we'll be able to spend some more time with them and sow some good things into their lives.

The Neighborhood Party

2008-05-27T12:47:00.004-04:00

Well, I'll start out with the major details. The weather on Saturday was absolutely gorgeous for our neighborhood party. When Jason arrived with the Moon Bounce (generously loaned to us by VCF), a procession of kids began circling, asking when the Moon Bounce would be set up. They were eager to help with the set-up- which was nice since I couldn't do much to help. As soon as the bounce was fully inflated, the kids poured into it in what can only be described as loosely controlled chaos. By this point, many of their parents were milling around, introducing themselves and giving us great opportunities to share the "why" behind our party.

We learned quickly that we are not the only folks in our neighborhood that have been frustrated by the lack of fellowship. Several of our neighbors mentioned that they had made early efforts to meet and greet, but they had met with little or no success. Jason and I estimate that about 5 families came out for the duration of the party. We had a few others pop in at various points. Everyone we met seemed very appreciative of the effort we put forth. Everyone was also really friendly. One guy even stayed late and helped us clean up! (we definitely owe that guy some free babysitting or something)

The party wrapped up around dusk. As soon as the Moon Bounce came down, people pretty much began to disperse. I think there must be some sort of magical attraction property to the Moon Bounce. Perhaps some physicist can devote some doctoral research money to explaining it. In any event, I left the day feeling that the party was successful. There are people in our neighborhood that we still don't know, but we can honestly say that we made some new friends that we might never have met without this party.

Zoe- with not Zoe's bike and helmet...

As a side note, Jason and I have a chance to share the multitudes of leftover food with a church up in West Kensington on June 8th. So, we got to bless our neighbors and we will have a chance to party Philadelphia style! It's a win-win situation ;)

Weekend Roundup

2008-05-24T09:47:00.002-04:00

Hey
No links today. If you're in the area, stop by Persimmon Creek to say Hi! We'll be hanging in the middle of Whitetail Way from 3pm until dusk.

View Larger Map

Longing for Even More Freedom

2008-05-22T16:46:00.004-04:00

A friend of mine who is a full time missionary in Harbin, China was saying on Facebook how she's looking for people to join her there for a year and my heart just ached after reading that. A large part of me would just love to up and go back to China and do God's work, because the people there are so hungry for Gods word. When I was there last time, I would tell stories from the Bible and crowds of 10-20 people would gather around just to listen. At one point, I literally had a woman come up to me and say, "What must I do to be saved?" How awesome was that?!

Unfortunately in 2002, I made a deal with the devil (or Sallie Mae as some call him) so I could go to grad school and get my doctorate. Now there is little I can do to get out of that obligation. Susan and I are working really hard to pay down all of our debts and I've been encouraged at the progress we have made so far, but on some level it fully disgusts me that I will be spending the next 3-5 years in service to my creditors instead of wholesale, sold out service to the Lord.

I know I've discussed this before, but its still applicable. Debt is truly a trap. It locks us in and restricts our freedom. Its a form of slavery and I want to break free from it so badly.

Breaking Addictions - Part 3 of 3

2008-05-22T09:30:00.003-04:00

The last and honestly most exciting and most satisfying thing has been God ending any and all addictions to pornography. I feel like I can write about this publicly because I have to share about the incredible freedom God has given me. Also, it doesn't really even embarrass me to share because I almost feel like a whole new person. That wasn't who I am now, so its easy to talk objectively about the situation.

Now, before you get all huffy or embarrassed on my behalf, just know that some surveys have found that 70% of all men in this country, including 50% of Christian men, have looked at porn at least once in the past month, so I was by no means an abnormality. Christianity Today had a really interesting article a few months ago on the problem called "Help for the Sexually Desperate." In it they highlighted how pervasive the problem has become and how many Christian men and women struggle, often in silence, against it.

As for me, before I was a Christian, it was rarely a struggle. I was 11 or 12 when I was first exposed to it and it became an instant addiction. Back in the days before the internet existed, my friends and I would rip out pages or even steal whole magazines from the local convenience store to get our fix. I would eventually become disgusted with my behavior and I would throw them all away, but it wouldn't be long before my addiction demanded to bed fed and I would steal again. I am not proud of that era of my life at all, but thats where God's grace comes in, right. Fortunately (ha) the internet and all of its temptations came in to my life in 1996 and I was at least able to give up my short stint as a thief.

As I talked about last week, I become a Christian in 1997 and since then it has consistently been something that I have really struggled with. At times, its gone very well and others not so, but despite my efforts to end it, I've never been able to fully grasp that victory that Jesus wanted for me. To me it was always the thorn in my flesh that I wrestled with. The passage from Romans 7 really summed up my struggle:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do -- this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it (NIV).

As Paul said, my sin was living in me. No matter how much I prayed and tried to white knuckle my way through it, if it decided to indulge, there was little I could do to resist it. I hated it, and clearly it hated me.

That all changed on that one great worship night I posted about around a month ago. Worship was off the hook good that night. At one point we just stopped playing because the presence of God was so thick in the room. Instead of anyone leaving though, everyone just sat there in reverent silence, soaking up God's presence. During that quite time, God was speaking all sorts of excellent things to me about our future plans and the things He wants to do through us. After sitting there soaking it up for about 40 minutes, I knew I had to get home to help put Zoe to bed. I hated to leave but I told God I had to go. As I got up to leave, He plainly said to me, 'Oh by the way, I took something away from you.. You're going to like this' and that was it. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

Since that moment, it hasn't been any kind of struggle at all. Its never been this easy in my life. I have lived under that addiction for almost 2/3rds of my life and I can't believe God just lifted it away like that. It's as if a giant weight has been lifted off me and I can finally run free again. Its beautiful and wonderful and it is fully a gift of God.

I'm so thankful to God for all the pruning he has been doing and I am excited that there is more work for Him to do.

Party Planning in Progress

2008-05-21T14:27:00.004-04:00

Preparation are fully underway. Its been fun trying to plan and brainstorm for how we're going to pull this party together.

First off, we had my future sister-in-law, design up a nice flyer for us.

We hung these up on the 2 community mailboxes on either side of the cul-de-sac last week. Then we shrunk them down and sent them off as postcards with a personal invitation. Susan dropped them all off at the post office today, so hopefully they'll get them tomorrow or Friday.

There are 33 homes in our cul-de-sac, but I have no idea how many people live in each one, so planning has been difficult. Just as a rough estimate, I am guessing 2 people per house, which I know isn't right, but I am sure we won't get 100% attendance. From there, I am guessing 2 hot dogs per person and 2 hamburgers per person. So we're going to buy around 120 hot dogs and brats, and 120 hamburgers.

What do you guys think? Its tough to plan food for a party when you have no idea how many people are coming. Does those numbers seem good, or would you bump them up?

Breaking Addictions - Part 2 of 3

2008-05-21T09:28:00.007-04:00

The second area of addiction that is being broken right now is my coffee/caffeine addiction. This is one I wasn't really looking to give up, but God has called me to give it up too. A few weeks back, I tried a day of fasting to get closer to God and it was absolutely brutal because of the severe caffeine withdrawal. I was fully unable to focus in because of the pounding headache that several hours without caffeine gave me. It was ridiculous! So after praying about it, I decided to give up caffeine, for the time being.

This one has been really rough so far, but I'm getting through it. I've always loved coffee, but I took it to a whole new level while I was in grad-school. At one point, I was drinking so much that for a while, I thought I was developing a neuro-degenerative condition. My muscles would twitch and spasm randomly and I was feeling weak overall. After switching from coffee to tea, the twitching stopped, so I assumed the problem was just too much coffee. For that time being, I started drinking tea every day instead of coffee, but that still wasn't the best thing. It was still addiction for addiction. However, once I graduated and started working my daily 9-5 shift, I became a coffee fiend again.

The problem with quitting coffee is that my addiction is more than mental, its physical too. Since I was pharmacologically addicted to caffeine, I literally have been going through withdrawal. For the first two weeks, I had killer headaches every day and I felt particularly lethargic since I was missing my morning pick me up. Thankfully though, I'm puling through and I feel all the better for it.

Now, I don't feel that God has called me to fully give up all coffee and tea in the long run. I think that it will be alright for me to enjoy an occasional cup in the future as long as I don't allow it to dominate my life or daily routines.

It is great to have freedom in another area of addiction. As a Christian, our ultimate goal should be freedom from this world and I think any little thing that ties us down can be a potential problem. I am so thankful for what God is continuing to do in my life.

More again tomorrow

Breaking Addictions - Part 1 of 3

2008-05-20T09:23:00.002-04:00

The past month for me has been all about breaking addictions. God has been working on breaking all sorts of things in me. Some things I was looking to break, somethings I wasn't but he did it anyway. So needless to say, its been an intense month. I've got a lot to say, so I 'm going to break it down into three small posts, instead of one long one.

The first thing God has attacked has been my addiction to overeating. I have been doing the diet program at settingcaptivesfree.com with my acountabilabuddy, and with both of their prayers and help, God has worked to change me from the inside out. After only a month or so in the program, I've really been able to cut back the amount of food I eat regularly.

I've been convicted that overeating really is a sin for me because its something that I do to replace God in my life. I usually tend to overeat or oversnack when I'm under stress, depressed, or just plain bored. These are areas that I should have been seeking God in, but instead I just turned to food. So over the past month, instead of using food to fill my empty spots, I've been seeking God for help in those areas and he has worked to fulfill me.

Now just to clarify, I'm not saying that eating is a sin by any means, its just the manner that I have been eating over the past 10-15 years is sinful. When you try to find fulfillment in anything outside of God, you're only going to come up empty and looking for more. Since I was seeking fulfillment in food, I could never get enough, which always led to overeating. Since I'm getting to the root cause of my overeating, I have been able to really keep control of how much I eat. So far, I've lost about 16 pounds, which is good, but its so much better than weight loss because my unhealthy relationship to food has been broken.

Its been amazing how easy it has been because I'm seeking God as the only way. Since I've come to a place where I realize I can't do it on my own, He has really stepped in and given me all the grace I've needed so far. It's been wonderful and I'm so thankful for what He's done so far in me.

more tomorrow

Vacation!!

2008-05-19T14:42:00.005-04:00

This past Thursday, Jason, Zoe and I went down to Cape Henlopen State Park in Lewes, Delaware for some much needed and long-awaited rest and relaxation. Jason set up camp Thursday afternoon, then we hiked to the beach to enjoy our one day of forecast sunshine. The weather was beautiful Thursday afternoon.

Thursday evening, we ended up getting take-out from Jason's former employer, Grotto pizza. Zoe had had a long day by that point, and was not emotionally prepared to sit still in a restaurant. After a nourishing meal, we took her to the boardwalk in Rehoboth. She fell asleep on the way back to camp, allowing Jason and I to enjoy some grown-up conversation around the campfire (complete with S'mores- my favorite!!)

We got completely rained-on Thursday night into Friday morning. The tent was relatively dry inside, but we did not have high hopes for Friday's entertainment. We met Joey and Ashley for breakfast in Rehoboth. Jason suggested that we head west and check out the Flea Market in Laurel, DE, but he was pretty underwhelmed by what met us there. Still, it was a relaxing drive with plenty of good company. Plus, I bought a green bandanna (my only souvenir from this trip).

After about ten minutes inside, Jason decided to leave the flea market and head south. Along the way, the sky cleared and the weather improved. Jason recommended a trip to the Salisbury Zoo. Jason has always spoken highly of the Salisbury Zoo, but I was very impressed by the beautiful landscaping and the small-yet-interesting collection of animals. Zoe's particular favorite seemed to be the Jaguar, but she was pretty excited by most of the animals there. Her very favorite seemed to be the geese that wander around the park, which is situated on a scenic river. She would have run around chasing geese the entire time had she not been restrained by her vigilant daddy!

Friday night, we took Jason's dad to Rehoboth for dinner at Nicola's (a favorite of his), then we got Mama and Zoe Kohr brothers frozen custard- only because it is a requirement of mine for any visit to Rehoboth. Friday night was closed out with a nice, long drive down the coast to Ocean City. The temperature dropped into the 50's that evening, so we curled up in the tent fairly early.

Saturday morning we grabbed breakfast at a coffee shop in Lewes before heading over to Joe and Ashley's yard sale. About mid-morning, we decided to begin the journey home. We took the scenic, coastal route 9 north of Dover to ensure an enjoyable trip. The weather was beautiful, and everything was extra green and fragrant from the recent rain. All in all, the trip home was wonderfully relaxing. We detoured over to Chesapeake City then stopped off for lunch at Baker's.

All in all, it was a very relaxing respite that we really needed.

Weekend Links Roundup 5/17/08

2008-05-17T08:12:00.000-04:00

Susan and I are going camping this weekend as our last little get away before the baby is born. We're actually going away to fabulous oceanside town of Lewes, Delaware. While that may sound exciting to some, considering I grew up there, maybe not so much for me. Just kidding. I'm really looking forward to a relaxing trip where we already know the fun things to do and we can do whatever the heck we want to do down there.

So this weeks links kind of bounce off of my post yesterday, which a couple of just fun ones mixed in. Have a good weekend!

Oil for War (we're spending nearly a billion per week on gas in Iraq)
Noncomformist Bird
Onward Christian Soldiers - A pacifist's response to war
Strong Bad Email - Cereal Toys Awesome

For my Daughter

2008-05-16T10:40:00.000-04:00

Jason and any other guys who may happen to read this blog- I apologize in advance for a "chick" post:

I recently visited a good friend of mine who teaches dance classes to kids of various ages. She was telling me that some of the girls in her classes as young as 10 years old were already demonstrating some behaviors that reveal a poor self-image. She said she has observed these girls looking in the mirror critically and making comments like, "I am so fat!" The behaviors that my friend has observed have been concerning to her, and she has an analytical mind, so she has put her observational skills and her analysis skills to work and come to the following conclusion; these girls learn their negative body-consciousness behaviors from their mothers. The immediate moral that my friend communicated to me was that I needed to be very mindful of how I talk about myself when I am around Zoe.

Now, just to clarify, I do not have the evidence that my friend has collected. Nor have I done any research in this area, so please do not read this as though it were a dissertation or scientific paper. Instead, just let it tickle your mind and encourage you to a higher view of yourself. As I have processed the conversation I had in passing a month ago with my friend, it has occurred to me that mothers everywhere could benefit their daughters by adopting a simple practice. Before letting any idle self-criticism leave your lips, ask yourself, "Do I ever want to hear my daughter say this about herself?" The fact is that children learn how to behave by observing their parents behavior. That much is known and fairly well studied. Consequently, the more often your daughter observes you putting yourself down, for looks- or for any other trait, the more your daughter will perceive that as normative and acceptable behavior. This alarming fact has really challenged me to stop myself before I criticize my looks or my weight. Even though Zoe is barely two years old, I want to establish positive self-image patterns early on for her to model in her life. The interesting side effect of this practice is that I find myself thinking negatively about myself much less often than I did before I became focused on how my behavior might impact my daughter. I can honestly say that my self image has improved since placing Zoe's confidence and self image ahead of my own.

I recognize that, for some women, appearance or weight might not be an issue. I use this example simply because it is the one that I personally struggle with the most (for me, weight and appearance are so interconnected as to be one issue). If you have low self-confidence about your intelligence, for example, you can apply the same principle to that area. I have been particularly convicted about this because Zoe was born with a natural confidence that I have admired and loved about her as part of her God-given personality. I have prayed that God would show me how to nurture and guide her in such a way as to cultivate that confidence. In my own life, there were numerous experiences that damaged whatever confidence I had, and I do not ever remember having any confidence, even as a small child. However, God has built confidence into my personality since I became a Christian. People who have met me since I became a Christian have commented on my confidence, which always amazes me because I know that it was something that would not be there were it not for God's work in my life.

To conclude, if there are any other mothers out there in cyber-land, remember that how you think about yourself and the behavior that flows out of those thoughts communicates something very concrete to your children. Learn to think about yourself through the eyes of the God who created you (in His image, may I add). Do it for your daughter; I am doing it for mine.

Three Trillion Dollars

2008-05-16T10:11:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, I talked about how it would be a challenge for me to spent $750 on the kingdom, but heres a better question; How would you have spent $3 trillion. That's the question they are tying to answer at this website.

http://3trillion.org/

The question is what if instead of making a $3 trillion dollar investment in death and destruction, they had instead spent that money on humanitarian causes. I am by no means a fan of big government spending, but since the money has already been spent, its appropriate to question if it was money well spent. What else could we have received instead of this mess?