Ground Zero Sum

An Old Old Story: Ground Zero Sum by An Old Old Story

[soundcloud link; via An Old Old Story; HT: Experimental Theology]

Obligation to Overspend...

A topic on the minds of many at this time of year is, “How am I going to pay off the credit card bill this time?” If you’ve put yourself into a hole by overspending at Christmas, you’re not alone. You’ve got social expectations to meet, and if your pocketbook doesn’t live up to your sense of generosity, you’ll find yourself in a hole. You’re also going to need a plan to climb out, especially if you’ve never been good at money management. {more...}

[via Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff- Site News]

[via Indexed]

Christmas Gift Guide for the Homeless

[via JordonCooper.com]

Independence Day: Celebrating Courage to Challenge the Situation

[via The Situationist]

Something or Nothing...

Suppose there is a terrible problem and there are only two options:

(A) Do nothing.
(B) Do something to make the problem worse.

All politicians choose (B) of course!...

Here's a brainstorm. Doing something to make things worse, that is equal to negative aid. If you change from doing something bad to doing nothing, that is equal to a decrease in negative aid. A decrease in negative aid is equal to an increase in positive aid. Therefore, doing nothing = positive aid. QED.

[via Aid Watch, HT: Texas In Africa]

Susan Boyle and Invisible Women

[via Faith Dance]

Generosity...and Markets

There are two basic questions every society has to wrestle with: “How many of which things shall we produce today?” and “On what basis shall things be distributed?” Theologians almost invariably dwell on the second question to the exclusion of the first. The mindset is that material goods simply exist. The only obstacle to abundance is greed and lack of generosity. If we were just more giving, then inequities would just melt away.

But material goods do not simply exist....

The basic question is not generosity but how rather how do we create a mutually advantageous cooperative venture that both justly produces and distributes abundance. Generosity and markets are essential to such a venture. {full post}

[via Kruse Kronicle]

Suspend Hesitation

Sometimes life is about shooting blind. You don't really know what you're going to get. You set your face in one direction and trust that you'll capture what you need. Something powerful happens when you suspend hesitation. When you find yourself in a distant place, and trust the opportunities that come. When you pick up a lonely child and spend some time in an embrace. When you wash the feet of a stranger. When you learn that in serving, you become the served.

[via biscotti brain]

Being Warm in the Cold

(also on Twitter: salvationarmysk)

Salvation Army Community Centre: It's cold outside

How we handle the extreme cold at the Centre

[via Weblog: News from the Salvation Army Community Centre, HT: Jordon Cooper]

Related:

Since we are now thigh deep in the giving season, I feel it is pertinent to share my complete and total disgust with the fact that shoppers trampled a man to death on Black Friday. If you're not familiar with the story, and don't mind having your faith in humanity tested, read more here. A few onlookers even stopped shopping long enough to make jokes about how overweight the person was that they had just killed in their haste to save five bucks on a panini maker....

In order to maintain my giving spirit in the face of such a dreadful story, I've decided to give you five good reasons to do your shopping at your local Deseret Industries, Salvation Army or other community thrift store: {full post}

[via East Coast Frost]

Christmas Is Still Coming, Right?

How the Grinch Prorogued Parliament

[via CalgaryGrit]

Not A Thing

It struck me recently that a lot of people think they know what’s wrong with this world, and it also struck me that they’re all wrong.

Seriously — almost every political and religious group, every opinionated person, every publication with an opinion, has said at one time or another what they think is wrong with this world.

Conservatives think that we’ve become a welfare state (giving too many handouts to the poor), while many liberals think we’ve allowed too much corporate welfare (and I tend to agree with this more — we give billions to corporations and much less to the poor and sick). Others think that abortion is the problem, others think it’s declining morals, others think it’s infidels, and others say it’s infidelity. Other things that are wrong with this world, depending on the group: the media, young people, environmentalists, McDonald’s, criminals, gays, black people, white people, foreigners overrunning our country, bigots, radicals, the Establishment, poor people, corporations, lazy people, evil people, Fox News, the Internet … the list could go on and on, obviously.

So what’s really wrong with the world, in my opinion?

Not a thing. {continue...}

[via Zen Habits, HT: Swinging from the Vine]

I am all for the institutions taking responsibility for reversing the injustices they have profited from. But the missing piece is “us”, not “them.” The real problem is that community cannot be created by direct deposit. The government cannot legislate away our selfishness and our fear of the “other.”

[via Under The Overpasses, HT: biscotti brain]

Oh, Those Things We Should Have Done

[via ThinkChristian.NET]

Fishing For Substance

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day….
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

On an international scale, this poignant proverb has moved hearts, opened wallets and enjoyed widespread popularity in relief and development literature. It correctly identifies the temporal quality of much aid work and demonstrates the need for development beyond the limits of most projects in relief situations.

However, this little proverb carries with it inherent assumptions that need to be examined more closely: {continue...}

[via Ministry To The Homeless, HT: The Link Between]

Edging Ahead

It’s an agonizing time when you feel your peers edging ahead and the cool people aren’t seeking you out and almost every day somebody announces a cool new job, or a big romance, or the receipt of an awesome gift, some fresh kill from the jungle, and it depresses you. You don’t want to be a loser. And you sense the fact that, in life, so much — so very much — is pure luck, no matter what they want you to think, and an angel may knock at your door in the person of a beggar, and you say No, and that No will resound for the rest of your born days. It is agonizing to think about.

Garrison Keillor

[via Salon, HT: Randall Friesen]

Mutual Realization, Infinite Potential

.In friendship, the Other personalizes the good (or true or beautiful) in a way that includes my own participation, so that friendship becomes an interactive revelation and intensification of the good...

Friendship is never simply a matter of who. The what (what is said, what is done, what is shared) is highly relevant to the realization of relationship because it can foster the mutual realization of the true, good, and beautiful, the correlate of persons. The what makes the who more robust....Greater depth of friendship (philia) becomes possible as friends progress in the good, and this happy phenomenon is another indication that person is the correlate of the true, good, and beautiful...Friendships that do not remain dynamic tend to wither. The friendship must go forward in pursuit of more truth, beauty, and goodness so that ever greater gifts of self can be given and received. Personal participation in the transcendentals keeps friendship fresh."

From Person, Grace, and God by Philip Rolnick

[HT: Faith Dance]

For...All

They are the outsiders. The non-Christian or non-practicing Christian visitors who swell the ranks of almost every Christian church on Easter weekend. And on this Good Friday I'd like us as a community of faith to start praying for them.

Some of them are there because they have to be; their parents or siblings or spouses or partners have dragged them to the "just this once, please" service. Some of them are there because they believe Christian folk are supposed to have a corner on what's right in the world, and there isn't much going right in their world right now. And some of them have heard just enough of the story of this Jesus person to want to be there - to see what all the big deal is about....

Not everyone will come in as friends, and many will feel as strangers. With our help, and our prayers, and our loving actions, perhaps they will leave feeling that they might just be able to come back and find a place among us. That they might find a home. That they might know we are Christians - by our love, and by our welcome.

I know I did.

[via Ragamuffin Ramblings]

Generous Gospel

Even though Grassley would not go that far, I find the complaints and lavish lifestyles of the "prosperity preachers" sadly ironic when contrasted to the literally life-and-death plight of people around the world. I like his idea of not giving them a claim on the gospel because there is nothing in the true gospel of Jesus that can justify such gluttonous lifestyles.

[via For God's Sake, Shut Up!]

Related: Where’d the Money Go? [via ThinkChristian.NET]

Naive About Beauty and Wonder

From the series, Emotional Affair or Friendship Love?:

We're vulnerable to being naive about aspects of beauty and wonder in the other gender we are pursuing a friendship with.

[via Faith Dance]