the simple weigh

this was kind of the idea behind starting this second [or third, if you count the silliness that is brett andy] blog – the idea of weighing up two different ideas or opinions or styles against each other… sometimes you come out with a right or wrong and other times it can be a preference between two things… what i find a lot of the time is a resulting tension that can exist between two ideas that seem to contradict each other but in reality only probably do because we are trying to understand something big [like Love, or God, or how ‘Big Momma’s House’ got two sequals] with our puny little human-sized brains…

but this one is something that firstly i don’t understand, as in really i don’t, and secondly, i cannot understand the people who defend this with SUCH a strong stance, and particularly the Christ-following ones among them… i just really don’t… so if you can play nice, then leave your comments below and share your views on this topic because for me it just seems so much cut and dry.

a soccer player receiving $40 million [let’s not get hung up on whether it’s him or the club or the installments or anything like that cos if you reduce it by 95% i still think it’s ludicrous] in the one hand.

what $1 million could do [let alone $39000000 or even $40 million] for the poorest nation on earth [let alone one other person, or one family, or one village or province… a whole country, and countries even]

it blows my mind that people are okay with this. it is beyond me that people think the sports player [and we can substitute many other sports players as well as actors, artists and 1000 other things] have earned that amount. but most of all it worries me that so many people don’t see that the system is wrong that allows a player, or players or leader or CEO or inheritee to live beyond absolute luxury, when someone else is allowed to die because they cannot get access to clean water or medicine or food…

something is wrong here.

the tension that exists between fireworks and food parcels

tonite tbV and i headed out with our bossman darin and his cool kid justice and went to watch the fireworks in philly preceded by such a-liner bands as earth, wind and fire, dj jazzy jeff without the Fresh Prince, roots, estelle, some mcdonald guy formerly of the doobie brothers and boyz to men as a surprise act not on the programme – we arrived late for the bands but in time for the fireworks so pretty decent timing.

and i have to say without doubt that it was the best firework show i can remember seeing ever – some pretty big amazing fireworks but then some pretty bigger flippin amazinger fireworks – after seeing two big shows already from the rooftops plus other random peoples fireworks going off nightly for the last week or two in the build-up to july 4 i have to say i was largely over fireworks [a firework is a firework, right?] but there were a good couple that did some cool things from waterfalling type drip motion to strands that exploded different colours on the ends to the big poof cushion from the centre vibe… huge and impressive and mouth-opening.

as they were happening [they went on for a long time, felt like a half hour but was probly ten minutes of constant explosions] i thort back to this afternoon when we put together 16 bags of really quality food that had been donated by a store here and did the weekly food parcel handout. in the three weeks of doing this, it was by far the best food we have handed out with fruit packages, exotic salad collections, a bunch of fresh fruit and vegetables – 2 whole coconuts – and the cookies we prepared earlier [defrosted, bagged and bow-tied] – and it went to some really poor people from the local neighborhood.

my mind struggles to hold those two things together – having some small idea of how a smallish big fireworks show costs i cannot come close to imagining the kind of money that was poured into tonite’s show – i would go beyond thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars and hope that not even entertaining millions is the right call [with the bands and elaborate sound system and big screens who knows what the whole thing went to]

for me there was a moment when the fireworks had awed me as much as fireworks are able to and it could have ended there and i would have been beyond happy. but it continued. for a long time. and a lot of the fireworks after that looked a lot similiar to the fireworks before that. i imagined if the last five minutes or whatever it was of fireworks [unnecessary in the big firework-watching context of the evening] had not been bought then what good that money could have done.

then i took a look at little justice sitting on his dad’s shoulders having an absolute blast [this kid gets excited by stuff] and i thort there is definitely some great element of worth there – i looked at the crowd of between 100 and 200 thousand people absolutely celebrating together in a scene somewhat reminiscent of us winning the rugby world cup or getting the soccer world cup bid and i thort there is good here. but i still am not sure if i can justify the extent of what was spent when i think of the poverty we have living all around us day to day.

i did have this thort at some point of my thortingness though, somewhere on the way home – i believe that everyone has to be doing something for the poor. not that everyone has to be doing everything for the poor or that everyone has to be doing something for all of the poor. but that every individual needs to be investing and engaging and reaching out to someone or ones who do not have as much as them…

probly more to follow, but this thort buzzes around my head as i head off to pushup and then to bed – oh and one more thort was to people back home who daily walk past people saying “i don’t have money to give you” and then enjoy golden circle tickets to U2 and Coldplay concerts… not sure i am able to get round that one, but then grapple with the difference between my movie ticket or improv evening or night out with my wife to someone else’s golden ticket, why is mine okay and theirs not?

i don’t particularly want to hear answers, just to know that you too are wrestling with some of this stuff, if you are.

i need an eye op. urgently.

i probly have a good 30 or 40 more blogs i could write about the goose fest but i don’t know if i’m going to get to them – i don’t want the blog to become a sort of dairy [as i spell it] of events and lose the heart of what is happening here – i also don’t want to be caught up too much in blogging that like a person filming or photographing an event i spend so much time filming the event i wasn’t really part of… i still don’t know if the simple way folks may some day see this blog as part of my ‘online ministry’ and ask me to take a sabbattical from it too for 6 months… so i feel i should write this one at least before it happens…

after listening to shane again at the goose [by far my favourite talk or session and largely because it was the first time in three days i remembered hearing the name Jesus more than once and heard passages read from the bible] i was reminded or challenged by the fact that i need an eye operation. i need to start seeing people the way Jesus sees them – he retold this one story about this argument he had with a buddy of his who told him ‘Jesus never spoke to a prostitute’ – shane whips out his bible and is ready to argue and quote scripture and claim battle victory but his friend continued, “the reason Jesus never spoke to a prostitute is that He never saw a prostitute, He only saw a child’ and that hit me once again and i know it needs to do so much more than give me a moment of “oh yes, that” – it needs to become my dna.

i know with some of the kids on the street and some of the parents whose names i am already learning it already has, because they are not statistics or a demographic – they are now a name and a person and a personality and a story – i have not come close to connecting with people on our street like i want to but i have started connecting and at least that is something, but with them i already have a growing sense of how God sees them.

but i know with a lot of the people i don’t have those eyes and i certainly don’t have the heart of Jesus that is desperately needed in the community – those dealing with or doing drugs and those who look worn down with the ugliness of life and some of the barely dressed women we pass in the streets and so on – i judge and i think i am so better and my sin and uncleaness is forgotten in a horrible instant of somehow thinking i may have earned everything God has so freely given to me.

i need God to give me new eyes. and i need a new heart. to see as He sees. to love as He loves.

i have realised since being here how little i actually care about the poor in for-real terms – and that’s another blog – but if i really cared for the poor as much as i needed to then my life back home would have looked dramatically different from what it does now – i can’t change the past but i know i need to be changed so that i walk a different future. that excites me. i know it starts with personal connection with God as well and that needs my attention too.