We’re about to start the 4th session here shortly. I only slept for about 4 hours last night, so I’m a little tired. I was too excited for sleep yesterday. Hopefully I’ll be fully awake here soon.
Julie Clawson and Kelly Bean are tag-teaming their sessions, like Nadia and Phyllis did yesterday.
Kelly’s focusing on the power of small, sustainable, and nimble faith communities. She’s run a little church out of her home for 23 years, and its grown and changed and adapted.
“There’s nothing wrong with building community for a season.” -Kelly
She finds the church is working because they are willing to stop. Dropping expectations and doing less leads to something much, much better.
“Real life, in all its glory and mess, is inevitable, and one of our best teachers.” -Kelly
Now Julie’s focusing on the stuff in her book, Everyday Justice. How do the things we buy help support justice, or injustice?
“There has to be doable, everyday ways to subvert injustice.” -Julie
That wraps up their first part, they’ll be back later for Part 2. They’re being followed now by Compassion International. Such a great anti-poverty organization.
Now Julie and Kelly are back.
Nearly 1 in 9 Americans are on food stamps. 1 in 9! I had no idea.
Kelly’s calling all Christians to practice “doability,” encouraging people to simplify and become more adaptable.
Julie is encouraging people to care about how the things they buy were made. Instead of buying chocolate, most of which is tainted by slavery and child labor, buy slave-free chocolate.
Be an activist with the companies and the government. Write letters, shop differently, cut back, subvert the system.
Kelly’s going through meeting time changes in her church due to family dynamics. My tiredness is starting to set in I think. This part is tougher for me to engage I think because I’m a single guy without any kids – I haven’t had to deal with any of this stuff.
Decided to lead by triad, 3 people from the community working together to plan and organize the event. Brought everyone’s giftedness to the table.
They wrapped that up, now we’re getting more music for Heatherlyn. I’m hoping its upbeat to give me some more energy.
And it was! Very loving, large, hopeful and beautiful! Definitely what was needed!
Alyce is back again, on self-indulgence, and replacing it with self-control. This one was pretty funny too!
Now its Debbie Blue! She’s discussing the incarnation, how unlikely it is for God to have a body, to have lived in his mother’s womb, had armpit hair, etc.
“He had an anus. It sounds like something a junior high boy would come up with.” -Debbie
“God reveals himself most fully as a human. A living, vulnerable being.” -Debbie
“Power and Purity, and Body and the Blood, don’t sit that well together.” -Debbie
“You only have to see roadkill once or twice before you start to develop gnostic tendencies.” -Debbie
“The disembodied soul seems comforting in the face of the disembowled.” -Debbie
The story of the Bible isn’t about God helping us escape the world and escape physicality. It’s about the God who created it.
“We keep prefering the immaterial idea to the material.” -Debbie
“We’re often not that patient with our bodies, or generous or kind.” – Debbie
“The flesh isn’t something dark, lurking around to entrap us. It’s who we are.” -Debbie
And Debbie was the final speaker for this session. It was interesting, kind of odd and trippy, but good. Now we’re going to lunch. Although our lunch folks’ generator is broken, so it’s sort of in flux in the moment. Guess we’ll see what happens!
Here is a link to Change.org, which I find to be very helpful in showing us how we can be engaged in everyday justice.
http://www.change.org/
This is their human trafficking link. Other links include Homelessness, Women’s Rights, and more.
http://humantrafficking.change.org/
Finally, regarding chocolate, there is much to say on the issue of chocolate.
Here is a link to a guide produced in February 2009 detailing which companies are being conscientious toward child labor and which are not.
http://www.laborrights.org/files/ChocolateScorecard09.pdf
(Be aware that Mars did, following the publication of this document, did greatly increase their efforts – http://humantrafficking.change.org/blog/view/mars_chocolate_steps_toward_sustainable_cocoa )
Here is a search result page for chocolate on the Change.org site.
http://www.change.org/my_change/search?global_keyword=chocolate&x=0&y=0
And here is a link to Compassion International. Please, please sponsor a child or more through them. We do too. The difference we have made in this family’s life with only $38 a month is phenomenal.
http://www.compassion.com/