A List to Live By

A fellow journeyer of life sent this to me and I loved it. Absolutely loved it. He was in a small town in Washington State named Troutlake. He said it was posted in a cafe in town. These are definitely some people I could get with!

In light of our recent economic crisis we’re all sharing in, it’s causing many of us to question life, our purpose and what really matters in life. Things like money, work, consumer goods, and fancy cars are being replaced with things like sharing, gardening, volunteering and community. Maybe crisis really is our friend afterall?

Nevertheless, I want to aspire to live by more of these. I need things like this to remind me of a direction and to keep me from just thinking about myself all the time. I think this is amazing and totally fitting in my world today.

My favorites are:

Learn from new and uncomfortable angles, Garden Together and Play Together.

The one I want to move most toward is “leave your house know your neighbors.”

Check out the list – what are your favorites? How is your life moving toward these?

Where George W. Bush Went Wrong?

If only W. would’ve had his own trading cards…maybe he’d been liked more?

Ya, that’s probably it. Karl Rove missed that one I guess…

See Everything at the Inauguration

This site is amazing. Really fun to play with.

Zoom in a little and center the view on the 4 snipers on the roof of the large building, then zoom in all the way, then still centered, zoom out slowly.

You can use the roller on your mouse, or use the bar on the upper left side of the page to navigate and get in really close.

What a surveillance tool this! You can actually see people over half a mile away on rooftops.

This picture was taken with the robotic camera and with 1,474 megapixel (295 times the standard 5 megapixel camera).

Can you find anybody you know?
 

A Story That Will Make Your Day

This story is so good. It’s a short video of the story of boy named Jason McElway. By the end, you’ll be grinning from ear to ear, full of joy, glad to be alive.

Enjoy.

A Benediction to Remember

Any speech that begins with the following is worth the time you give it:

“God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, … where we met thee, lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.”
Toward the middle of the speech, Dr. Joseph Lowery has this to say about our “choices on the side of love.” How can you disagree with that?  Republican or Democrat…It’s beautiful.
“And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.”
Here’s the full go at it…oh, the closing isn’t bad either – “When the Red Man can get ahead man…” So good…

Life Together

I’m hard-pressed to find story better than that of “Team Hoyt.” It’s not a new video, but it’s worth watching again and again.

I complain. I wish for better. I ask for change. And I look for more.

Then…I watch.

I watch the story of Team Hoyt and it all goes away. All my wants and desires leave and I become present, in the moment…complete.

What I appreciate about this video is how it brings life back into perspective, when it so easily gets away from us.

The story is one of a journey of life together. Our culture breeds individualism. We’re continually being separated from nature and one another. Life is so much more rich lived out together, but so much around us aids us to self-protect. Self-protection may be at the very core to all that separates.

I have a great friend that said, “I want to become less dependent on institutions and become more dependent on people.” I thought that was beautiful.

And I couldn’t agree more.

Food Democracy Now!

 

 

This is an excerpt from Food Democracy Now!

Take a quick read below. Our local and national food supply has grown to be one of the paramount issues in my life. If you believe our food system needs to be changed, please go the Food Democracy Now’s website to learn more as well to sign this petition to make change. It seriously takes less than 30 seconds – please check it out!

Thanks for the support!

“As such, we are dedicated to advancing the dialogue on food, family farm, environmental and sustainability issues at the legislative and policy level. We understand the dynamic interplay between today’s industrialized agricultural system and its impacts on human health and well-being, health care costs, rural communities and the environment. We advocate for policies that encourage sustainable, humane, organic and natural food systems.

We seek to transform today’s system by advancing best practices in food production, animal husbandry, conservation of natural resources, renewable energy and soil preservation. Through these efforts we hope to stimulate local food systems, promote rural economic development, encourage a new generation of farmers and respond to the growing public demand for wholesome, fairly-produced food. We will also support candidates who advance this vision and who embrace common sense policies that respect our nation’s air, water, soil, livestock, food workers, consumers and family farmers.

We hope that you will join us in this national movement to implement real and significant change in our nation’s food, agricultural and environmental policies.”

Test

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Test 2

Transform Your Christmas

What if you could transform Christmas? Would you?

As Christmas approaches many of us are asking the same questions. We’re no longer interested in the idea of buying for the sake of buying. We’re interested in discovering the redemptive meaning of Christmas.  Are our relationships deepening?  Are we stepping into what it means to love our neighbor in a restorative way?Are we giving of ourselves in a way that truly has value?

Americans spend an average of $450 billion on Christmas. That’s 1,485 dollars for every man, woman, and child in America.  And yet are we really experiencing the original meaning of Christmas?  To solve the world’s clean water problem would require only $10 billion dollars.  What that means is the problem is not only solvable, it’s easily within our reach.

We would like to extend an invitation to participate with us this year in transforming Christmas from purchasing and getting to really giving.  Our goal is simple: To transform Christmas by gathering families together and sacrificially purchasing as many wells as we can.

Advent Conspiracy and Samaritan’s Purse, an organization that has a long history of working with the poor and oppressed in the world. A well costs about $800 to repair or retrofit.  That’s less than the average spending per American to transform the life of a village. It costs about $2,500 to rehabilitate a non-working well and about $15,000 to drill a large well that serves a large village.

And we’re not asking you to just write a check on top of everything.  We’re asking you to consider working with us as a way of stepping into the deeper meaning of Christmas, a day when love entered the world in a profound way.  We’re asking you to consider giving sacrificially in place of the traditional mad rush of gift giving we typically do.

A brochure has been created to understand what we’re doing, invite friends to participate, dream bigger, and help transform the meaning of Christmas.

Donwload it here.

If you do participate, feel free to steal the banner from this post to spread the word.

Here’s the Advent Conspiracy Video – it’s really well done and worth the watch. (ht.)

Where is the love?

(ht: brittian)

Here’s what’s interesting to me about this video:

Not that it’s about Love.  It’s Keith Olbermann…talking about Love.

Agree or disagree with California’s Proposition 8, it doesn’t matter – but tell me why a non-Christian like Keith Olbermann sounds like he has a better grasp on love than a lot of Christians I encounter?

Why is it that Christians feel so strongly about having to protect something?

I get disagreeing. I get that. But disagreeing to the point of hate? I just don’t get. I get voting against. I get being disappointed. I get wishing others agreed with you. But to act in such a way that causes someone different than you to feel loved and accepted…I just do not get.

Here’s an extreme example: Christians blowing up Abortion clinics.

Sound extreme? Of course you wouldn’t blow up anything or any person.

But how different is your non-accaptance of someone that, in your eyes, does something wrong or immoral?

I can’t tell if a guy like Olbermann speaking like this is more evidence of how close of an understanding of love he has or how far some Christians are away from it?