Has it been so long?

I just remembered this thing existed. Boy did I blow it. I go on Craig'sList almost daily. Forgive me. It is so easy to justify the things we do in our lives. I'm not personally hurting anybody by using Craig'sList. But in knowingly partaking in a resource that failed to draw moral lines in the sand, am I failing to draw the same lines? It brings up an interesting query: How much responsibility and accountability should we own? How much time should we invest in researching the businesses that we support?

The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre is a good place to start. It can be scary though. What happens if you click on that link, type in the name of your favorite clothing line or video game developer, and find out that they're guilty of severe human rights violations? Would you stop buying their products?

Would you justify it to yourself, saying "I'm just one person, it doesn't matter what I do."? Sometimes it is easier not to ask these questions at all.

If we try live as followers of Christ, we try to live as he would live today. I don't have all the answers. Maybe the Amish have it right. They know where everything they use came from, and can sleep soundly at night knowing they've played no part in supporting child slavery, indentured serventude, forced prostitution, drug trafficking, etc. I can't share in that peaceful slumber. I know for a fact that decisions I've made have directly supported all of those things.

What's the point in joining with groups like Love146, or throwing your support behind documentaries like Call & Response, if we're not understanding that the problem starts with us and the choices we make.

Sometimes even the solution is the problem. The clothing store Forever21 is declaredly Christian, going so far as to prosteletyze on their shopping bags. Yet even they can't get past the watchdogs without egg on their faces for how they treat their employees.

There are no simple answers. All we can do is sow love everywhere we can and use excersize extreme diligence on how we spend our money. Its obvious Jesus knew what he was talking about when he offered his thoughts on finances. The more money we have, the more responsible we must be. If anyone has the answers or knows the balance, let me know.

Insurrection Time: Craigslist

Our friends at Love146 are calling for an active boycott of Craigslist. This really breaks my heart, as I spend at least 20 minutes most every day browsing through the jobs, barter, real estate, for sale, and missed connections sections. Missed Connections is a sometimes funny, oftentimes heartbreaking section of the site. People post love letters to strangers that they missed their chance with. For example:

"Yesterday you were walking out of Wal-Mart as I was walking in. You were with your friend and had blue shorts on. His shorts were red. We made eye contact,but I didn't talk to you because I wasn't wearing makeup. If you see this, write back and let me know what color shirt I was wearing so I know itsreally you."

The humor in that is that adults are getting hung up on people that they saw for less than ten seconds and are desperate to find them. What is heartbreaking is that people are so lonely in their lives, so desperate to feel loved, that a sidelong glance from a passing stranger is their greatest hope. Why are so many so lonely? Why aren't we being Jesus' hands and feet and more?
The ordinary radicals over at the simple way, an amazing group of people dedicated to community and love, have come up with a few suggestions on how we can live with each other, instead of just next to each other (note: i'm stealing this list verbatim, check their site for more).

• Go out to eat with someone who is homeless, or invite them to your home or
  cafeteria to eat with you.
• Leave a random tip in the college bathrooms for the folks who clean them.
• Find out who makes the clothes for the athletic department and if those companies reflect the values of Christ.
• Learn to sew and begin making your own clothes.
• Start tithing 10% of all income directly to the poor (relationaltithe.com).
• Connect with a group of farmworkers who grow food for your cafeteria or
  favorite restaurant (such as Taco Bells Immokalee workers ciw-online.org).
• Give your winter coat away to someone who is colder than you are.
• Ask to see the budget of your school. What do the workers get paid compared to the administrators? Make sure folks know -- if you are proud of this, affirm the folks who make those decisions... If not, begin a conversation with both workers and administrators of how this could be better.
• Ask where the campus gets its energy. Is it renewable? If not begin a plan for moving toward renewable energy (talk to folks at Eastern University about how they have
  done it by an optional ecological tax that is tacked onto tuition -- it's only a few dollars per student).
• Write one CEO a month -- affirm or critique the ethics of their company (you may need to do a little research).
• Write only paper letters for a month (go computer free)
• Try sitting in silence for 15 minutes a day.
• Kill your TV -- or go TV free for a year.
• Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are about to expire...
• Leave a little anonymous note of niceness.
• Beat a war machine into a plow, without hurting anyone of course (Isaiah 2:4) -- NOTE: you might want to plan on a little sabbatical after this one, a little reading and writing retreat -- in jail.
• Write to one social justice organizer or leader each month, just to encourage them in their work.
• Experiment with a post-oil era by going fuel free for a week -- ride a bike verywhere, carpool, walk or hitchhike.
• Gut your TV and turn it into a pot for a plant.
• Try reading only female writers for a year (since many of our problems seem to be stemming from men).
• Go to a retirement home and ask to visit a few old folks who don't get any visitors.
  Spend some time with someone who cleans the campus, get to know each other,
  share your stories.
• Invite one of the college cafeteria staff to your home for dinner or go to their home.
• Try jack-hammering the church parking lot to make space for potato plants.
• Track to its source one item you eat regularly.
• Give your car away to a stranger.
• Convert a diesel car to run off veggie oil.
• Try flushing your toilets off dirty sink water (for a little guide, check here).
• Buy only used (thrift) clothes for a year.
• Cover up all brand names, or at least the ones that do not reflect the upside down economics of God's Kingdom.

So, there. I digressed a bit from my point, but that's not a bad thing. Love is the answer, that's what we're getting at. Back to Love146. They're a group dedicated to waging peace (waging war never seems to work, does it?) against global child prostitution rings. Specifics at their site (including petitions, factsheets, etc), but the idea is that craigslist, in their "casual encounters" section, unwittingly (let's hope) facilitates child trafficking. They've contacted craigslist multiple times about cleaning the site up, and after no response by the deadline of this past new year, a boycott has been called for. Like I said earlier, I really enjoy the networking craigslist offers, but there's few things I enjoy more than a bit of revolution (justified and peaceful revolutions of course).

So as of now, you're all my witnesses. No more craigslist for me. Maybe you too? It might be a bit inconvenient, but so is being an eight year old girl who gets raped. Lets not be lukewarm.

Blessed be the Wealthy

Its not a blue-red thing, or a white-black thing, or a conservative-liberal thing, or a north-south thing or an east-west thing. Its a touching thing.

We don't touch each other. We don't smile at each other. We don't know each other. Americans have fewer confidantes than ever. The trend isn't reversing, nor does it seem temporary. The whole world is getting smaller, yet somehow we're all moving farther and farther away. You've noticed this. On the bus, on the subway, walking down the street.

And now, the only daily interaction with strangers I can count on is being threatened. Nashville's bureaucrats have joined the growing ranks of cities legislating against the poor. If you live in Nashville, you've surely seen the posters downtown requesting you not help the homeless.

Now, apparently, Metro Police will be free to hand out fines of $50 to anyone caught panhandling A) aggressively, or B) after dark. Pure Genius. What better way to make people stop asking for money than to make them come up with more money?

Clearly panhandling doesn't solve the issue of homelessness. If someone asks you for money for food, an easier solution would be to buy that person some food. Many panhandling homeless have addictions to feed, and therefore your indiscriminate giving can make you an unwitting enabler of someone's demons. I don't dispute this. What I take issue with is the criminalizing of panhandling, and the whole culture of thought it entails. Nevermind the fact that these laws are probably unconstitutional. The problem is that what's being legislated is essentially a legal caste system. Your time is too valuable to have to put up with their shameless begging, and your streets look much better when they're not around.

Nashville is home to more churches per capita than any other city in America, (source) yet Christ's most often repeated message is flying over our heads: take care of our poor. Amazing.

In a time where ipods and text-messaging often take the place of old fashioned conversation, it feels nice to have someone stop me on the street to talk. Let the poor be a reminder that there's much work to be done.