Black Friday is upon us…

Is it just me, or are you amazed at the craziness of Black Friday too? Am I the only one that finds the whole concept of Black Friday ridiculous?

We are going to be starting a series in Jr. High this week that is called Advent Conspiracy. This is not something of my own creation, I am just 1 of many that is jumping on the bandwagon of this movement. Here is the concept: we as Americans spend a ridiculous amount of money each year on Christmas. Christmas has become about consuming and not celebrating. So we are saying “enough”.

I am preparing for this weekend, and just for fun I thought I would look up some things on Black Friday. So, naturally, I go to YouTube. It is here that the madness is exposed. Videos of people doing insane things for “stuff”. People standing (actually more like camping) in line for hours, days, just to save $100 on a TV that they probably don’t need. (no actual stats on that, just an assumption on my part)

What does this say about our culture? I am afraid it says a lot. We are willing to spend countless hours in line to buy stuff. Meanwhile there are pressing issues around the world, but we so much as blink. Clean water? sorry, there is a sale at Walmart. Starving children? sorry Best Buy has a 10% off sale for all used video games. Orphans? sorry, Dillards is having a sale on their dishes. I think you get the picture.

So, what do we do? I don’t have all the answers. I do know this: my favorite memories from my childhood have nothing to do with the presents I got. It had more to do with the presence of my family and friends. If we give more of ourselves and less gifts, what would happen?

Check out this video. I hope that we can take back Christmas. No more stuff.

a plea for sanity

I love dogs. In fact, I am in the process of trying to convince my wife to let me get a dog. I think what Michael Vick did to those dogs was a terrible thing. BUT…… Come on people. The longer I live, the more I am surprised at how ridiculous we can be as a society.

Right now, there are groups of animal activists that are spending big bucks to rent billboards around the Eagles stadium to boycott and protest the signing of Vick. People are spending crazy amounts of resources (money, time, and energy) to show their anger at Vick for taking part in dog fighting years ago.

Meanwhile…

27 people lost their lives in Iraq on August 13, 2009 due to the on going war in Iraq.

There are still Millions of people in Darfur that have been driven from their homes and are displaced with inadequate resources to live.

There is something like 23,000 people dying every single day in Africa due to the lack of basic needs like food and water.

There are more families that are calling the streets home everyday due to job loss right here in the States.

There are countless people that are calling trash dumps home in Mexico and South America because they are so poor.

BUT…. that stuff isn’t enough to cause a stir. These facts don’t upset people all that much. But Vick coming back to the NFL has somehow shown  itself worthy of massive amounts of attention.

My plead is that we would somehow re-evaluate our priorities and begin to care about what matters. I hope that I will always place a higher value on human lives than on other things. I hope that one day the injustices in the world will start to get more air time than Brittany Spears, Michael Vick, or what Paris Hilton dressed her dog in today. I hope that we will start to pay our teachers decent wages, and begin to see how crazy it is to pay an athlete $10 million to put a ball in a cylinder. ( I could go on all day about these issues, but I will jump off the soap box for now)

As for Vick, he deserves a second chance. I got a second chance, actually, I have been given countless second chances. Michael Vick: I forgive you.

Brennan Manning #2

Enjoy!

The Christian response to evil – to aggression- is resistance, of course, but nonviolent resistance, the resistance of love, prayer and accepted suffering. When Christians do anything else, they have parted company with Jesus. Nonviolence  is the expression of a faith that the greatest power in human history is the forward movement of love.  Nonviolence is as realistic as Jesus Himself, and it is one with the cross of Christ’s victory over evil. The question of whether or not nonviolent resistance “works” should be referred not so much to the gain of an immediate victory as to the transformation of history from within by the converging forces of love. Gandhi wrote that ” Jesus lived and died in vain if he did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love.”

This point has been stressed by Scripture scholar Marcus Barth in his book Acquittal by Resurrection. If God so loved the world as to forgive all men and women for the murder of His Son, and to make out of that murder the cause of His murderer’s redemption, how can people fail to forgive each other their mutual crimes? What man can serve as the executioner of his brother when God refused to execute those guilty of the death of His Son? After that acquittal, there is no crime on earth, no form of aggression, that can justify a person deliberately taking the life of another.

From his book The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus

falling whistles bike tour

my buddy seth is getting ready to take part in a cross-country bike tour. he is wanting to raise awareness of the sad situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. the DRC is a place of horrible tragedy after horrible tragedy, and seth wants to help put an end to it. will you take 4 minutes and check out their blog and watch the video for their trip.

they will be making their way through the desert in Aug., and staying at my casa, so if your interested in talking to them then just let me know. OR even better, if you would like to book a small screening with them that would be even better. they are looking for places to get the word out.

Just 2 Ordinary People

My wife and I have been asking some tough questions lately regarding the environment. We are curious what the relationship between being “environmental” and following Christ looks like.  The more we talk and pray together the more we feel a responsibility to change some of our habits and help others question some of theirs. So that brings me to the title of this post: What can 2 ordinary people like us do to make an impact to improve and sustain our world? I have already caught myself being discouraged by our tiny efforts, thinking that what we are doing isn’t even a drop in the bucket. Then, I remind myself that it is in the small things that we see great progress. So here is what we are doing around the Barton household to make our tiny impact. 

- hanging our clothes up to dry

- we have replaced all our bulbs in the house with the compact fluorescent  bulbs

- we ride our bikes around town

- we plan on planting a garden soon!!

- we take our own bags to the grocery store

- we visit the farmers market

- we turn off the lights around the house (sometimes we light candles for our light)

This is what we have started to do. What are somethings that you are doing? What is your take on conserving and re-using? Do you find it too big a task to make any significant changes? Join us!

Here is a great resource for “green” living.

Also, I know I have recommended it before, but it is worth your time. Save God Serve the Planet

This is our new dryer

 

Liz's transportation

Location of our future garden

Farmers Market & Clothes lines

Today my wife and I went to our local farmers market to look around for some fresh fruits and veggies. We were impressed with the selection and the prices. We are on a mission to eat healthier. By healthier we are talking more about natural and organic foods. Vegetables are so important in our diets, but if your like us you don’t get enough in your diet. 

Also, by going to a farmers market we are supporting our local farmers and in so many ways supporting green living. 

We also made a trip to Home Depot and bought the goods that we need to hang some clothes lines. We are going to hang 2 clothes lines in our garage. We are on a mission to stop using our dryer. I will keep you posted on some other changes we are going to make and how the no dryer thing is going. 

This is all a result of my wife reading Serve God Save the Planet.

Bitter-Sweet NYC – part 2

This has been a great trip to New York for Liz and I. It has been a little different this time because Liz got a chance to spend more time with her friends than usual. I am glad that she has had the opportunity to connect with old friends, she doesn’t get that chance very much. One of her friends is married to a guy who works in the South Bronx in the school system. He works in one of the most dangerous parts of the country.  She has another girlfriend who is getting married to a guy who was a teacher in The Bronx. He has to work in a school system that has at least 50% of the students on free lunch. Basically, that means his schools are in a poor neighborhood. All that to say that I had a great opportunity to talk with both of these guys about the way of life here in the city.

Bill (the teacher in The Bronx) told me a story of a foreign exchange student that he worked with that shed light on a common problem for students in The Bronx. Bill worked with this student in his class and quickly saw a problem with this students turning homework in. When confronted the student informed Bill of his situation. He was having to learn English while working 2 jobs after school. This student would go to school, then leave and go to job #1, then job #2, then home for sleep time around 11pm. Wake-up at 6am to try and get some homework done, then off to school. While this scenario isn’t the case for all the students, it does give some insight into the grind of a students life.

Danny told me about his schools that he works with and some of the hardships that his kids face. Through my conversations with Danny I learned how he had to make 25 lay-offs and cut a whole program due to limited funding available. He didn’t give me any stories about students specifically, but did give me an idea of the landscape of the area. He didn’t exactly paint a pretty picture.

The beauty that is New York City often overshadows and hides the suffering and oppression that is so prevelant here. The results are high crime, low graduation rates, a nasty cycle of poverty, and a lack of adult role models. These are dangerous combinations for an area that houses millions of people.

I wish there was an easy answer to these problems. What can we do? How do we change a culture?

 

Sidenote:

 While on the subway tonight, a guy stood up gave a very quick synopsis of his current life situation. He informed everyone that he was recently told he is HIV positive, which caused his father to kick him out of the house. He said he had nothing. Begged for food, drink, or money. I don’t know how much of the story was true, but I do know the look I saw in his eyes. It was heartbreaking. He was broken and hurting horribly. Nobody budged when asked to give. I gave him a Fiber One bar. It was all I had, but that will only give him enough nuritement for a day. He needed so much more. I hate seeing people so broken.

Green Christians

My wife and will be reading the book Serve God, Save the Planet by Matthew Sleeth. This book deals with what it looks like to be a follower of Christ and be a person who takes care of creation. I am excited to read the book because there is something inside of me  that believes in taking care of God’s creation. I will give  a review of the book after we read it. I read the the first chapter and it got me pumped for the rest of the book. Here is something to chew on, it is a quote from the 1st chapter. 

The earth was designed to sustain every generation’s needs, not to be plundered in an attempt to meet one generation’s wants.

 

Advent Conspiracy @ work

Tonight was our Youth Christmas party. Every year these parties are a good time. We eat. We laugh. We play. We laugh some more. 

Something about this year was really special to me. We do a white elephant exchange, nothing special right? Here are the rules: you can’t spend money on the gift. That’s it. No spending money. 

The catch: instead of spending money on a gift, the students are asked to buy a gift for others that need it more than they do. So this year we decided to buy gifts for the teenagers over at House of Refuge. HoR is an organization that helps get homeless men and women and their families back on their feet. They give them a place to stay for up to 2 years.  Good stuff. 

Well, to be completely honest, I was hesitant about the whole thing tonight. I wasn’t sure how the kids were going to respond. I didn’t know if the economy was going to affect the gift giving. I don’t know why, but I was just hesitant. None of the kids had mentioned anything to me about getting gifts or anything. 

They responded. It was amazing. When I got home from the party my wife and looked through all the gifts to see what the students gave (HoR asked us not to wrap them, its not like we ripped open gifts). Seriously, it was awesome. They gave. The conspiracy of giving infected our students. 

They didn’t just give lame gifts, by lame I am thinking of a whole bunch of used clothes that they just wanted to get rid of. It was all new, gift cards, and very thoughtful. I was almost brought to tears to see the generosity of our students. 

I love it. We celebrated Jesus’ birthday tonight.

A good insight

Today I had the privilege of having a conversation with a guy who is a Kenyan native. His name is Z. Z is from Kenya and now lives here in Gilbert with his wife and 2 daughters. Z has a different perspective on things because of his story. You see, I can have a heart for Africa, but until I go there and experience the culture, the people, the sights, and hear their stories I will never have a full understanding of what it is really like over there. Even then, I will not be able to know what it is like being from there, growing up there, and seeing first hand the plight of my people.

Z and I talked about a variety of things today. We talked about Christmas, and what it is about. We talked about Mac’s and PC’s. But the majority of our time was spent talking about Africa, Christianity in the west, and what can we do? Z gave me an interesting perspective and I will share just a couple of highlights from the conversation.

First thing that stuck out to me has to do with what Z described as a Western ethnocentric frame of mind. He explained that when we go over there to “evangelize” we go with the assumptions that we have all the insights, wisdom, and knowledge that they need to have. We are the ones that are going to save them, we are the ones that have it figured out, they are just the recipients of our blessings. Instead of viewing them as brothers and sisters, we tend to view it more as a teacher – student relationship. We almost see ourselves as superior beings.

Z told me how he sometimes feels guilty almost for sustaining the type of life he has here in America. His people are living in extreme poverty. While he comes from Kenya which has it better than some places, his country is still in great need. We talked about how we have so much, and yet we catch ourselves always wanting more. Our concept of poverty in America is very different than it is in Africa. Have you ever known someone that has died because they were unable to get clean drinking water? I know for a fact that you can go to any restaraunt, starbucks, or grocery store and get a nice cold glass of clean filtered drinking water.

Z and I talked about what we can do to help. He was mentioning to me how he would like to take me to his homeland.  We talked about how Africa is so far behind technologically, and how they don’t have a lot of the modern ammenities that we had. Then Z said something that I had never thought of. He said somthing along the lines of ” If you have a laptop but no water what does that get you? If you have a nice car but no health what good is that? If you have a big house but no food, what good is that?”

What good is that?

Bottom line: We have the resources to do something now! We choose not to. Not as individuals, but as a country, church, and people. Let us do good. 

It was good talking to Z. He is a smart man with a very different story than mine. 

Here is a little video that I found on Youtube a few days ago. It addresses the clean water issue.