Today is one of my proudest days as a case manager, as I’ve been able to assist several of my clients in voting today. Sitting down with them, helping them find their local polling place, driving to the center, walking them through the ballot and the voting machines, and then watching them vote has been amazing. I wanted to share a conversation I had today with (as we’ll call him) “Chris”. He’s grown up well-within poverty his entire life in the roughest neighborhoods of Philadelphia. He’s been in the mental health system since he was very young, with a mind full of voices and confusion.
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Personal
Voting = Bueno.
“The Books” are updated, and…what do YOU think about Iran?
(Forgive the picture. I know it’s weird, but it captures my love for books so well.)
I just wanted to put up a quick post to let it be known (to those few people who might care) that my “The Books” section above is updated again. In the midst of my reading and research for the summer Bible Survey Class, I had to put all personal reading off to the side–and, along with that, that Books page.
But, I’ve updated it now, with my new additions. For personal reading, I’ve added Moby Dick and Stephen Kinzer’s All The Shah’s Men. For my devotional reading, I added the poems of Hart Crane (which are rocking my world). I’ve also changed the formatting on the page for easier reading, and added links to posts in which I’ve shared quotes, reviews, or meditations from my time reading that book. Hopefully this will make this page a little more useful for those looking for book recommendations.
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Free Music: introducing Propaganda’s “Excellent”. [casual fri]
I wanted to plug an amazing new album I recently ran across. The album is Excellent by L.A. hip-hop and spoken word artist Propaganda. Being part of the record label Humble Beast, his new album is available for a free download, though I would encourage any and all of you to support the artist by buying his album on iTunes.
for your soul, unplug. [casual fri]
This weekend, I’m going to go to New York. For the first time in a long time, I won’t be bringing my computer on a trip. I had no idea how tethered I was to this thing until I felt the thrill shudder through me at the thought of having a weekend with just a moleskine, my new (real) book, a Kindle, and a phone (hey, I can’t completely unplug in New York, right?).
About a year-and-a-half ago I read Tim Challie’s The Next Story about a Christian perspective on the digital explosion. He explored: How do we embrace technology rightly? How do we tend to do it wrongly? What are some temptations inherent in technology? How might we act to not let technology consume us? How do we maintain our humanity and community in the midst of it? What is a “theology” of technology?
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Hope of the Earth: a political eschatology (we can all breathe)
November 7th, we will wake up to front pages declaring with finality the results of the American Presidential Election. Most of us will see these headlines and have some sort of emotional reaction (especially those of us that stayed up as late as we could to know the results early).
Depression? Fear? Anger? Injustice? Sadness? Joy? Elation? Ecstasy? Worship? Peace?
I remember after the 2004 election when Bush beat Kerry. Going to a large, urban University dominated by idealistic and passionate liberal youth, the campus was in mourning for the rest of that week. People walked in silence, hugged one another, and I saw a good number of people crying as they resigned themselves to what they felt would be the end of every good thing they’d ever thought about this country.
This election cycle, I was certainly active–probably more so than ever before (especially on this blog, at least). I’m almost certain that I have been blocked from my fair share of Facebook feeds and removed from some feed readers in the past six months or so. I’ve been quite passionate on those few issues that have guided so much of my writing and reading.
But I haven’t lost a bit of sleep over any of that stuff. I’ve been able to enjoy good books and beers, and pipes and peers, without any discussion of politics or debates or elections.
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My 1 Domestic Policy Suggestion for the President
Earlier today, I posted my 10 suggestions for changes the President should make in our foreign policy. Now, I want to offer the one thing I’d ask to change about our domestic policy.
But first, why only one thing? Not only do I think that our legacy and history is far more shaped by foreign policy, but to me, these domestic issues are a lot less certain. I hear great arguments on all sides for all of these issues. Countries all over the world have prospered and waned in both high and low taxes, in both high and low employment, and in both bigger and smaller government. There’s simply no inherently “right” way to run a nation. And so, to me, the best thing we can change domestically is systemic rather than particular. So what’s that one thing?
Steal Britain’s brilliant idea and institute “President’s Questions” here in the States.
My 10 Realistic Foreign Policy Suggestions for the President
I said yesterday that I’m growing tired of my political arguing and whining. I realized that, in what I’ve been writing during this campaign, I’ve mostly been laying criticisms (which is easy) and not offering any real solutions (which is much harder). So as I wind down my political talk, in the interest of trying to helpful and productive, I tried to think of some realistic things that could be changed with our foreign policy.
A lot of times, people with my same criticisms and concerns can come across as pretty paranoid, conspiratorial, and anarchistic. I hope I haven’t. I’m still sleeping fine. These issues are the natural ebbs and flows that every powerful nation in history has gone through. We went through it with McCarthy and eventually corrected (mostly), but people pointing this stuff out and complaining about it is part of that corrective. I guess I’m just playing my part. Here’s hoping it does some good.
One more caveat. This list is meant to be as realistic as possible. My ideal list would be much more development-heavy, pacifistic, and non-interventionist. With that being said, here are my top 10 alternative realistic foreign policy solutions that the President could employ to put us on a healthier course:
I like answers better than questions {a reblog}
Here’s a return to some more meditative reflections on God and life by Kimberly Novosel at The Ooh La La Life. This is so true of me. It was an encouragement to be reminded. (By the way, I posted similar thoughts about a year ago in my post: “to “why?” is human, to “what” is divine“)
A year or so ago I sat down with the counselors from my church, freshly broken-hearted, folded my hands in my lap and said, “Ok, how do I heal from this?” I may as well have had a notebook and pen, poised to take rigorous notes. They looked at me for a moment and, ever so gently, pointed out that there is no checklist for sorting though emotions. Even further, they handed me a page listing the stages of grief and pointed out that they would NOT happen in order, some would last longer than others, and they would repeat an unknown number of times.
I guess I wasn’t their first type-A.
It’s true though, there is no path through the sometimes dense and dark forrest of the things we struggle with in life, whatever they may be. Not even a winding path – no path at all. You have…
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Weekend Photo Challenge: Silhouette (Autumn edition)
This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “Silhouette“. For this challenge, I was able to choose I picture that’s very important to me. Like I said in my previous Photo Challenge post, photography editing is still relatively new to me; but for many years now, the desire to simply take beautiful pictures has been a consistent interest.
This was certainly true for me during my time in Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University. Richmond is a beautiful city, but not in the grandiose way that usually marks the beauty of other American cities. No, Richmond’s beauty is far more subtle, and you find it most clearly exhibited in quiet corners and places that only residents would truly know. In fact, my first Photo Challenge picture was in this vein.
This picture was taken at the very beginning of the fall of 2005. It was my first Richmond Autumn as a resident: having conquered freshman year, there were now no more dorms or still learning the city. I had an apartment near campus and could honestly call Richmond home. The evening of this picture, I stepped outside and found myself captured by the oncoming sunset. I jumped in my car and raced to my favorite in spot in Richmond: Church Hill.
This hill looks out over the entire city (not unlike another hill that plays prominently in my life).This is the hill from which the original founders of the city laid the grid-lines for the streets. The “Church” on this hill from whence it derives its name is St. John’s Church, the very Church from which Patrick Henry proclaimed “give me liberty, or give me death!”.
I made it to Church Hill just in time to take some beautiful pictures of one of the most beautiful sunsets I ever saw in Richmond. It was one of my favorite introvert moments and captured so well the essence of my favorite times of solitude: me awash in beauty.
It was also the beginning of Autumn in Richmond, and I couldn’t help but draw my attention to the trees that were just about to peak in their transition towards death. I took this picture trying to capture the harmony and dissonance that exists when Nature is at the climax of its beauty; when darkness and death lay mere moments away.
Sorry to wax poetic, but this picture captures my own hope for my death and mortality. Even though I fear death so much, my hope is that my own death would exist in what this picture represents: the height of beauty awaiting sunrise, and awaiting spring. It’s appropriate that Henry’s words echoed from these heights, for it’s precisely in this place–and in this moment–that I precisely find liberty in death.
See my past Weekly Photo Challenges here.
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Happy 24th Birthday to my little brother Matthew & his attempted beard.
This is a post I put up every year on October 20th, my brother’s birthday. It’s an essay I wrote a few years’ back during an intense time of doubt and skepticism when I realized just how much a sustaining force he was in my life. I still love him to death. Oh, and I usually accompany these posts with an unflattering picture. In love. Here’s the essay:
on blogs that begin and never start… [casual friday]
The blogging platform I use, WordPress, has a nifty feature where you can “find your friends” with blogs also on WordPress. I spent the other day doing this, and ended up really enjoying myself. It was like dropping into random time capsules here and there. I ran across blogs that many of my friends had begun, only to never write a single post. Then, some of them would come back months or years laters and express their desire to start back up again and…well…. just look at this example:
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A Presidential Debate Debrief {#3}
Last night was the second debate in the 2012 Presidential Election. It was a Town Hall formet where the candidates walk around freely and take questions from audience members. Yesterday, I talked about what question I would ask if I was there, and I invited others to post there’s as well (incidentally, that post got picked to be highlighted on the front page of WordPress.com, and so there’s a lot of lively discussion to join over there, if you’re interested). Anyway, as I’ve done for each debate, here are some of my thoughts (here are my thoughts on the first Presidential Debate and the Vice-Presidential debate): Continue reading
Evil & God {2}: I’m a Heretic, I Fear
This is my final post in a discussion I’ve been having with a very good friend of mine, Austin Ricketts, about the relation of Evil to the Nature of God. For more on the background of this discussion, see Part 1 of this reply, although you should be able to gather a good idea of the conversation from this post. After this, I’ll let Austin have the last word, if he’d like.
Pressing into the Story of God’s Nature
I’ve been saying that God’s Nature is not static, but, just like us humans, it’s like a Story, unfolding in time (click here for more). Further, it’s a Story that includes Evil and Death within in. Hopefully I can clarify some points all the more by drawing out the “Story” metaphor further (because, at the end of the day, that’s all this whole “Narrative” framework is).
When I write a story about redemption and healing, I include evil in that story–evil that ends up being resolved and healed in the end. The thought of that evil (whatever it may be) is borne from my mind and existence. Just because the thought of that evil has “existed” in my mind, does not, however, make me evil.
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Town Hall Debate: what would your one question be?
Update: I’ve written some specific reflections on the debate last night.
Tuesday was the second Presidential Debate of the 2012 election. We’ve had one Presidential and one Vice-Presidential Debate so far, both of which were traditional debate formats. This debate, though, was a “Town Hall“-style debate in which the candidates walked freely and spoke to a small studio audience that encircled them as they took their questions directly from audience members. They did not know the questions beforehand, but as the years have gone on, the Debate Commission has limited both the ability to have back-and-forth exchanges with the audience members as well as the follow-up role of the moderator, giving them far more space to dance around the question with no accountability (these changes were put in place after Clinton devastated Bush in this exchange in 1992).
This got me thinking: what if I was there, and I got one shot to ask them one question. I’ve had my fair share of complaints about both candidates (and their running mates), so boiling all of this down to one question that would both be difficult for them politicize and address the most issues I’m concerned about was difficult, but this is what I came up with:
Mr. President and Governor: as a social worker, I’m taught that the goals I make with my clients should be S.M.A.R.T. goals: Simple, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Using this criteria, could each of you, in terms that are not cliched, rhetorical, or abstract, tell me what the goals of the War on Terror are, and what would represent the end and accomplishment of that War? Thank you.
What do you think would be their answers to this question? What would be your question? (And how do you think they’d answer?) Sound off in the comments below, and tune in at 9pm tonight for the debate.
[image credit: AP photo, from an article at The American Prospect]
the long way home 