“…ending poverty is essential to God’s mission in the world and our task as the people who participate in that mission. The fact that we carry on our ordinary lives consuming and participating in injustice must make God weep.” -Lucas

I was listening to Saturday’s with Mark and Tony and Tony Campolo mentioned the quote, which you’ve maybe heard before:
“God created us in his image, and we decided to return the favor.” -George Bernard Shaw
He was acknowledging that we tend to have churches divided by race, socio-economic status, political views, etc. because we each make God in our image. This made me think about another thing someone once said to me when we were talking about politics and I was saying that the best way to vote is to vote …

Once during the winter, prompted by my friend Peter’s experience in China, I turned off the heat in my apartment and tried to live life as normal, but without the modern convenience (and privilege) of heat. Here is a bit of Living without Heat:
I wondered about how much the quality of your apartments building layout affects your expenses to keep it warm. Can you imagine living in a low income housing situation where not only was your rent high for extremely low quality, but you had to leave the heat …

I reposted about this topic in December, but I wanted to highlight the podcast, which I think is worth a listen. A while ago I chatted with my friend Nate about simple living and some discussion we had had on our blogs and others comments. It was quite interesting.
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For the original post, On Simple Living and living “a dollar above” the poverty line

Global hunger is a global problem. I don’t know that there was a time in the history of the world that we were better equipped with the resources, technology, power and money to be able to solve world hunger then we have today. It’s so obvious we have the resources and ability to do this that the UN’s first Millennium Development Goal is to:

Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day

Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

We, as the …

The name Se7en might be cheesy, more so maybe because it was a complete rip-off of 5ives. I thought it would be fun though to start making brief collections of verses on various topics (ones I like to talk about). This might be a weekly thing, or maybe not. Let me know what you think

Luke 12:15 — “Then he said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.’ ”
Mark 12:43-44 — “Calling his …

I found this article, about a town not to far from the town I went to college in, a place where there are supposedly a lot of practicing Christians…
From Daily Southtown: Residents oppose shelter for immigrant children

The children rarely leave the federal immigrant shelter, a former nursing home near the city’s lakefront that houses undocumented children found alone in the United States.
Teachers and doctors are brought to them. And aside from occasional field trips or visits to a nearby park, the children spend almost all their time indoors — although …

So, in the richest, most powerful country in the world, Severe Poverty is at an all time high. Does anyone else find this terribly disturbing?
From Miami CBS:
The McClatchy Company - owners of the Miami Herald – a CBS4 news partner - went through an analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, and found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty.
A family of four, with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 — half the federal poverty line — was considered severely …

So I’m sitting at Starbucks with my 2% chai
and this lady comes walking and people stare as she goes by.
She’s about 5 foot 2 and she’s wearing a big coat,
and everybody looks up from their computers and forget what they wrote.
She walks to the counter with her bundle of sacks,
as we sit here rich and white on our new shiny macs.
She’s visibly frozen from the outside right in,
and nobody wants eye contact with her, is this a great sin?
She buys a coffee for here and digs through her pockets
and everyone’s …

One of the fun sites I’m subscribed to is Houtlust, a blog about nonprofit advertising and social campaigns. This was one of the very neat guerrilla marketing (the low cost unconventional kind) tactics I’ve seen listed. I thought it was so cool I figured we should repeat it. Basically they are little image inserts to put inside table tents you see in lot’s of restaurants and coffee shops. I put together the images below.

I figured the best way to sort of track our impact is to put a website …

I received this email a while ago about a letter from the President of Iran to President Bush. It was interesting, but I didn’t think much of it except that it was just a forward someone had written themselves, not a factual letter from the real Iran President.
Well, it turns out the Washington Post believes it’s real, so I’m going with them on this one. It’s a long, but easy to read letter and I would strongly encourage you to do so.

Read the Complete letter here.
Below are some excerpts:
After 9.11, …

This date will go down in history as a tragic one for our world. The cold heartedness that could bring such atrocity to mankind makes ones heart tremble. We pause in remembrance of the tragedy that has occurred. We look forward, gaining strength from those who have been an example of heroism in the past.
The evil of hunger claimed the lives of 40,000 children on 9/10 that did not need to die. They were little ones to whom belongs the kingdom. Their death was not due to the overt hatred …

I little while back I made a tiny off-hand reference to liking high gas prices, the comment was mentioned by my pastor, I then mentioned it to Mel, who then mentioned it to Gustave, and this was his response:
Dear Ariah,
I was talking to Melissa and she mentioned something offhand to me. She said you think high gas prices are good in that they will help change patterns of American consumption. I am not sure what your whole position is. It was something about a conversation with …

Chapter 2, The Role of Language and Story, of A Framework for Understanding Poverty talks about the language that we use and the distinctions between classes as it relates to language. They talk about 5 types of language (Frozen, Formal, Consultative, Casual, Intimate) of which I’d like to discuss two.
Formal is the language we commonly use in school and work settings. Specific word choice is important, as well as complete sentences. I remember being so annoyed in school when teacher’s asked us to write in complete sentences which really just …

After looking back at some old post and the comments that followed about finances and what not, I thought it was worth giving some further explanation.
I’m rich.

I use more then my share of the earth’s resources. (11 acres)
I see those things as problems.

I’ve recently started reading the book A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne. I’d highly recommend it to anyone (but particularly those who work with or live in poverty situations).
I’ll be posting a lot of my thoughts on what I read in the book over the next few days or weeks (it helps me to process information). Today, I want to talk about a definition for poverty.
Commonly when we talk about poverty we usually focus on finances. The national poverty line is measured solely on the income of …

This is the third time I am trying to write this post to clarify where my thoughts and views concerning my financial lessons come from. The reason I felt it was important to try and do this was because I feel like a few readers have misunderstood what I am saying and I want to try and make sense of it. Let’s just say I haven’t found the right words yet. Here is my third and final meager attempt.
I feel like some of what I have shared of views on …

My good friend Logan alerted me to this issue, via a NY Times article:
…H.R. 4437, a bill sponsored by James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin and Peter King of New York. This grab bag legislation, which was recently passed by the House, would expand the definition of “alien smuggling” in a way that could theoretically include working in a soup kitchen, driving a friend to a bus stop or caring for a neighbor’s baby.
Logan writes further on his own experience and previous similiar legislation from two years ago:
At that point in …

I had the great opportunity to talk with my friend Peter Amico on the other side of the globe in China! I decided to do a short interview with him so that he could share his story with a great audience. Here’s a brief interview with him, which I’m sure I will do more of in the months to come.
NOTE: The quality of the podcast is quite clear considering the long distance connection. However, the recording software caused some overlap of my and Peter’s voices. Though a little distracting, …

This podcast I brought a guest speaker in, Nate Manaen, all the way from Las Vegas (He joins us in the study, from inside my cellphone). The topic being discussed was originally brought about by some post Nate put on his Xanga a week ago. You can read his two post and some of the comments here: post 1, post 2.
Here is the podcast.
Please post your comments and thoughts below or on my xanga or Nate’s.
p.s. If your an audio junky, get the quality downloads here.