Sunday, February 18, 2007

"I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." - Jesus, Matthew 18:3 (NIV)

Students help pay heating bills
Some local elementary students spent Saturday helping people stay warm.

Four classrooms from Sibley Elementary School in Grand Rapids wrote letters to local businesses asking them to sponsor the "Walk for Warmth" program.

The walk will help raise money for seniors and low income families who can't afford to pay their heating bills.

Students walked through the neighborhoods gathering pledges.

"So I can help people pay for their bills because not many can," said Trent Allen, "and I want to help everybody be able to pay for their bills and stay warm."

"Read for Rent" parents from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Academy joined in on Saturday's walk, as well as members of the Rental Property Owner's Association.

Generous

It was January of 2005, just weeks after the deadliest tsunami in recorded history devastated the South Asian Pacific.

As volunteer leaders of Sunday children’s activities, we knew that we would have 400 children who needed help understanding how to respond to the tsunami’s devastation. So we thought, Let’s teach the kids about being generous to those less fortunate than themselves.

In order to teach this generosity lesson, we made a plan to spend 100 days praying for and giving to tsunami victims.

That Sunday in the front of each room, we set up a donation box for blankets and a plastic tub for loose change. In the kindergarten and first grade room, a leader explained that next week the children could begin bringing donations.

Interrupting, a kindergarten-aged boy stood up from his seat, walked in front of all his peers and emptied his pockets into the tub. Without a word, he went back to his seat.

We were all astonished. This kindergartener’s response was so immediate. Why wait until next week to offer his loose change? He was wired with generosity–God-given generosity.

We discovered that there’s something instinctively generous in children. As leaders, we began wondering if there was something we needed to learn from them …


hmm...

Thursday, February 15, 2007

White Privledge

It's been a while since I posted anything of any substance. Actually one could make the argument that nothing I've posted has really had much substance :) Anyway, I've been trying to avoid posting about the mundane going-ons of my current life, which has left pretty much nothing for me to post about. Until just a little while ago.

The following was written as a response to a post by a Xanga friend, Reverend Jeremy who rocks the internet handle APuritainMindset. It might help to read it. I'll post the quote he started off with which lead to my thoughts, for his thoughts on the whole thing (which might give a greater context to my words) you'll have to read his post.

Were five people killed in Salt Lake City this week because of Islamofascism? Don’t count on Big Media to answer that question. Here is what we know as of now. According to witnesses, an 18-year-old gunman calmly walked into a Utah shopping mall and started randomly killing customers. Thankfully, an off-duty police officer was able to slow him down, and the assailant was eventually killed in a shoot-out with Salt Lake City police. Early press reports only gave his age, but no name. ABC reported the story last night, but repeatedly said little was known about the shooter. Today, several Utah papers are reporting that the killer’s name was Sulejmen Talovic, and he was a Bosnian Muslim refugee.

Don’t expect to hear much more. Big Media has no interest in pursuing these sorts of cases. When a Muslim man intentionally mows people down in San Francisco with his SUV, the headline is: “SUV Driver Kills Pedestrians.” When a Muslim assailant bursts into a Jewish community center in Seattle and brutally murdered a Jewish woman and wounded five more, he is described as “sick,” and the story vanishes. When an Iranian college student tried to turn a rented SUV into a weapon of mass destruction, the media reported, “9 Injured by SUV at UNC-Chapel Hill.” We deserve to know whether Sulejmen Talovic was another example of “Sudden Jihad Syndrome,” but don’t hold your breath waiting for the facts.

- Gary Bauer

The quoted text from Mr.Bauer wreaks of white privilege. I wonder if Mr.Bauer would be asking the same questions if it had been a white conservative that had gone on a killing spree. Or how about asking the same questions every time a crime is committed by any white man. After all, Timothy McVeigh was white and how many people did he kill in his terror attack? Or how about Gale Nettles, another white man who believed he was working with Al Qaeda (ended up being undercover feds) to blow up a federal building in Chicago last year. Although I've found many people outside of chicago don't even know who Gale Nettles is. Or what about Eric Rudolph, who is best known for his bombing of the Olympic Games in Atlanta who also bombed abortion clinics and gay and lesbian night clubs. He also professes to be a christian. So why aren't we worrying about white christians being terrorists? Or how about the "trench coat mafia", why not assume and worry about any white teenage male being a terrorist?

Its because those whites and christians are us. We know that not all white people are terrorist because we're not a terrorist. But as soon as someone outside of our group does some hideous evil we start thinking that persons a terrorist. Hello white privilege. Especially in the case of Gale Nettles. That case quickly disappeared from the public eye, he was given a fair trail and got the sentence he deserved. If Gale Nettles had been anything but white, he'd be spending God knows how long at Gitmo Bay as an Enemy Combatant without any due process. The system seems to work, as long as you look like the majority.


A Few Resources

Eric Rudolph
Atlanta Olympic bombing suspect arrested - one of the literally hundreds of cnn stories about him
Eric and the Islamists - an interesting excerpt from the book "Hunting Eric Rudolph" comparing the similarities between the "Christian Identity" (the group Rudolph belonged to) and "Islamic Fundamentalist". Can't say I agree with everything, I'm educated on the "Christian Identity" movement enough to say one way or another. Just an interesting read.

Gale Nettles
Chicago man arrested in alleged bomb plot - cnn story
"Criminal" White Terrorist in Chicago Vs. Non-White "Enemy Combatants" - Music For Americans: music and other social causes short blurb

Tim Wise a speaker/author on White Privilege
http://timwise.org/ - I've been reading his book called White Like Me, and excellent read, pick up a copy like right now.

I'm assuming nothing is needed for Timothy McVeigh or the "Trench Coat Mafia"