The Presence of Luxury

Last night was a fantastic night. We were invited over to dinner at this girl Sarah's house. She's very awsome and her sister is coming in a few weeks... That'll be funny too because she has NO idea what she is getting into.
Anyway, she cooked some great food: artichokes, which I havn't had in a loooong time, an apple and onion stuffed chicken, and this fatastic muchroom pumpkin curry. We brought over some wine and I made a coffee cream and raisin pie. (I bake a lot now, by the way, especially on Sunday afternoons).
So, we drank, we laughed,we sat.
At the end of the evening, me and Sarah had a converstaion that went in circles, but that was the only place it could go.

She was here for a year working with "World Teach" a good idea that doesn't always play out so well here in the Marshalls, at least thats our opinion, due to some, SOME, American volunteers that are just too into their Americanness and their way of doing things. They are here only to teach and some are not so opne to learning, which I think is the first and main failure of any international volunteer, missionary, or any other type of similar expedition. It HAS to be a mutually growing experience, or else someone is going to thinktoo much of themselves. Anyway, after her program she decided to stay for another year, working under contract for WUTMI, which is an NGO like org that works for women's issues. They recently put together a great documentary about violence against women in Marshallese (one of 2 or maybe 3 things in the language on TV). SHe stayed because she wanted to and not because she thought they NEEDED her, which I think is fault number 2 of international volunteers and etc. Somehow, especially if you were part of a program, you MUST realize you personally are not desperately needed, and somehow the people and culture cannot and should not continue without you. Can you make an impact? yes. can you be remembered? Possibly. Can you even form some life long relationships? hopefully you'll get that close to some people. But no one really NEEDS you, and they WILL survive, and do well without you. Someone will come after you, and if not, they'll manage as they have for a few thousand years.

Anyway, I digress again... She works with a woman named Daisy Momotaro, considered a model Catholic in a lot of ways, who runs WUTMI. She works hard, but she has her flaws, as everyone does. Yet, despite all the good work she does for women and their rights in this country, she also gets manicures and pedicures all the time, takes the 5000 health package to the phillipines, and lives very very comfortably. There are a gaggle of other examples of people who do the samething in all ranges of wealth, from Oprah to Daisy, the question then remains: Where does it become hypocritical? Where does it become not so impressive that they help people?

Quickly we both acknowledged that we would be no different. And so we went in circles. IT is a question which I cannot, and she simply cannot answer. I also wondered because some of the examples I had that seemed better ended up in the same place. The guy I heard about from Chris at IV in Claremont that madelike 150 thousand a year or something and gave most of it to charity, was annually audited, lived in a low income neighborhood off of liek 30 or 40 thousand a year... even he, as far as I understand, may live on what he needs, but I don't think he lets himself ever live off of an amount of money where he WORRIES about not having enough to eat or worries about not having enough of anything. He gets what he needs and no more, but he never has to think about just that, what he needs, which a lot of people DO have to think about. Maybe he does, I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't thinkhe does.

So, maybe the idea is a model life in emulation of the great religions leaders: like Buddha, like Mohammad, like Jesus did, and like Jesus said over and over and over... to drop EVERYTHING and follow him. Maybe that is the ideal, but are all the attempts that don't meet it not as valuable?

I have no idea...but what I think right now is this:
What matters is that you care, that you are aware, that you ARE doing SOMETHING. Maybe its just a bandaid, maybe not, but that you see the wounds in humanity and you try to treat them. OK, Daisy takes the health package to the Phillipines and gets the best possible medical care, she doesn't deserve it for what she does, but she does DO what she does. She could just as easily choose to take her luxuries and turn a blind eye to the places in her country that need help and healing. I think that counts for a lot.

I don't know in life how much money I will make, and I will most likely give what I don't need to others in some way. But will I ever just trust God enought o watch my back? I don't know... right now I have placed tangible security and comfort before God, I have placed money before God, and I trust what it brings in the world. Even if I just use it for what I need, and the occasional but not overpowering wants, I still abide in the house of the all american dollar...

Monetary security is my golden calf, is it yours?

Moon Landing

I have to say that I have been emphatically reading discover magazines that were graciously sent to me by one amazingly beautiful pair of people. Thank you...
Unfortuantely, the pink monkey got wet and is a little grimey... but overall he is a happy fellow.

All I have to say is wow, thank you, and the nutella lasted about 4 hours...
Oh, and that I'm not so keen right now on living in north carolina, but I am excited for you, and it sounds like a good place to freeload for a few holidays each year...

On that note I would like to talk about NASA's plans to rearrange their budget to center work on:
A: Returning to the moon
B: Attempting a Space colony
and all of that really just being practice for
C: Landing on Mars.

While many people in our current times of rising global crises may see this as a foolish waste of money, I'm going to go with Steven Hawkings and support the obvoius,
Too many people and rising global instability does dictate that the future of the human race may not lie solely on earth. While that may be ridiculous science fiction to some, so was "The New World" or landing on the moon in the First place.
That being said, I am not thinking that space colonization will be an element of reality in my lifetime, (while going to space for a joy ride to create revenue for NASA and Virgin might be), but I am glad to see that SOME of the taxpayers' money is going to something significantly more cool and interesting than the "war on terror" or anything having to do with the billions of dollars spent on election campaigns.

What about problems here on Earth? Some would say, what about AIDS research, poverty, hunger, cancer!!!! and the heat... my god! ... THE HEAT!!!

Well, I say, no LESS money is going into those things, money is simply being refocused from mechanized missions, to human involved missions, which, to me is another plus. Adding the human element back into space research helps eleimate the science fiction and bring ont eh reality, it also helps us push ourselves harder to develop technology for the safety and plausibility of humans spending a long time in space.

AIDS research is hard because it may be, whether we like it or not, have to be added to the list of diseases we CANNOT vaccinate against, like malaria and tuberculosis, and then.. oh dear, the responsibility to protect humans from AIDS will completely be on education and personal responsibility... I know that that is a great fear for many.... What? We can't just get something done to us to make our lives easier, so that we can do whatever we want without thinking about it?.... At the pace we are going, according to most scientists, it will be a decade or a few decades before we reach a vaccine, but the most likely end result will probably not be one...
Obviously, I am not making a jab at people with AIDS. Its a disease, and it sucks, and I feel a lot of sympathy and compassion for those who have it, especially for those who did educate and protect themselves and still contracted the disease. But, seeing as it is not the easiest disease to catch, as opposed to say malaria or tuberculosis, I do often wonder if our moeny would not be better spent on funding good sexual education programs, that lead with abstiance as the forefront, but don't presume that that people won't still have sex, and educates our teenagers on how and why to protect themselves.

Poverty, hunger and the rest of the legitimate problems in the world, and in our country, i think have a more pressing battle to fight than that of being short on change. Until, which may never happen totally, but until there is a radical change in the mindset of the importance of material gain, and the revered cult of the glorious American Individual, those probelsm will continue to fester and grow, and many people will be taken in the wake. As long as there are still Sunday Christians praising the Bible but not listening to its call for simplicity and communal care, as long as there are the few and far between churches preaching that people deserve to be poor, as long as there are atheist materialists instead of atheist moralists at the forfront of our country, well... don't expect a bigger budget to change much. Before anything can change, WE have to change, the way we think and the way we live our lives, and especially the way we run our companies. As long as CEOs are making millions by paying workers 5 dollars an hour and never training them, as long as people keep getting absurdly more money than they will ever need, and as long as children are taught that the goal of life is to bring yourself to the top, no matter who you step on or leave behind... we will be pleaged by the consequences we have raught upon ourselves. Unfortuantely, it is not the ones with that mentallity that usually suffer. Pure materialsim is a religion all its own, with its own safty measueres. If you are that far gone, you don't CARE about making others suffer, and so that happens.. over and over again... its a great saftey mechanism.

Anyway.. the whole point is let's go to the moon. Heck, I'm ready to go myself... as long as we don't put an american flag on it, declare it the 51st state and start whipping out the shotgun when other countries' astronauts try to land.