Trying to follow

just FYI, people seemed to be having trouble with the new theme so I reverted back to this old one, which I like at the moment.

I also updated to Firefox 2.0 which you should do as well.

It’s fabulous.



Tonight, it’s Wednesday again, and for the past many weeks we are supposed to have a Book Study on the book by Shane Claiborne called the The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. It’s a great book, and it was instrumental in three of our community (meaning the people I live with: Daniel, Josh and Chris specifically) members decision to radically change their life and join our little community venture in Christ-like living.
Anyways, back to the book study. The book study is part of Josh and Daniel’s church, it was one of many community group options this fall at their rather large church. It started off great, with about 8-10 folks signed up to come (plus those already at our house), and for the first night most showed up. Some even showed up for the second night and a few stayed around to the third or fourth. But then things seemed to drastically drop off.
Maybe it was the decision’s to put down our books for a couple Wednesday evenings and help a women in the church’s neighborhood fix up her house that had been ransacked by area drug dealers. Maybe it was conversation about giving up your stuff, stopping our rampant consumerism, or loving Jesus by loving others to the point of real sacrifice. Maybe it was when Shane’s book started talking about war, or hanging out on the streets with homeless folks, or throwing money out on Wall Street to declare a jubilee.

Whatever it was, it’s caused us in the community to think a little about the decisions we’ve made. We’ve realized the revolution is extremely resistible. Not many people want to talk about a faith that requires more of us then we are willing to give. That includes me. It’s a lot easier for me to resist the revolution when I surround myself with others who will acknowledge with me that there is no revolution, or if there is we are already a part of it, without making much change in our lives.

All that to say, I’m quite thankful for my community, they are leading me into the revolution whether I try to resist or not. Is your community doing that for you?

I just gave a loan to this lady, NANCY PEREZ TORRES.

You can click on Nancy’s picture to read more about her, but basically I had the great opportunity to join with 4 or more other people in supporting Nancy’s entrepenuership business in Mexico that is run by her with the help of her husband and sons.

This wasn’t a handout, it was a loan, one I except to receive paid back in full in about 6 months or more. There is no interest on the loan, and there is the slight risk that the loan won’t be paid back. I guess that’s a risk you take when your loaning money, seems to have worked for the banks and credit card companies. Seriously though, it’s amazing that I can loan money I have available to someone to help their dream come true.

Now for some explanation. Kiva is a new micro-financing organization that is harnessing the power of the of the internet to help bring the basic service of bank loans to many around the world that don’t currently have that service available to them.
Think for a moment what you would do if you lived in a place without banks. What would you do with your money? Imagine not having access to loans. Most couldn’t drive the car they have, live in the house they do, or have the job and college education they’ve received without being given a loan.

Kiva is not a charity, but it is a great opportunity to bring justice and basic dignity to many in the world who have dreams and have lacked the resources to fulfill them. Kiva also has had a 100% return on their loans to hundreds of entrepenuers.

I learned about micro-financing in college and thought it was a brilliant concept, but one that couldn’t be entered on the very grass roots level for your average person in the U.S. trying to do something good. Now, Kiva has made that possible.

So, stop sitting on that $1000 you got in the bank! Start giving out some loans!

Kiva.org

Another brief technical update for folks.
I decided to switch RSS readers today. There are a couple reasons for this.

1. I don’t like having to log-in to multiple sites, and seeing as a use gmail when not at my home computer, using google reader seems like an easy step.
2. Google reader has a number of nice features, easy starring, easy sharing and more. This will help me quickly browse the things I’m interested in reading and tag them to read at a later date. Hopefully thus saving time.
3. Because of the sharing feature, I might stop letting list of “items to blog about” from piling up and instead just direct you to my shared items list for insight into the latest things I’m reading about. (Visit here)

Also on a technical note, some folks have been having problems commenting on posts on my site. There are a couple reasons for this.

1. Do to the semi popularity of my blog, and mostly just because it is on the internet, it is susceptible to spam. Becuase of that I’ve implemented a few spam blockers to catch the 3105 and counting spam messages that have shown up on my blog.
2. Some of you have been written off as spam. I’m sorry if that has happened and I’m trying to find a way to “whitelist” people so that we don’t run into that problem, but I haven’t found it yet.
3. The other reason as some have noted for the commenting problems might be an incompatiblity with my new design. Just so everyone knows, I host this blog myself and do the coding and html on my own too (the design is usually borrowed from elsewhere). I’m not an expert and sometimes I don’t know how to make things compatible for everyone. For now your best option would be to: Get Firefox.

Please do me a big favor if you’ve had problems commenting and send me a message through the Contact button up top. I’d really appreciate it. I have visitors coming to this site everyday and I’d like to make it as user friendly as possible.