April 2013
2 posts
2 tags
Four Things Christians Need to Remember About Gun... →
“Honestly, whether these laws change or not does not trouble me. Would I be willing to give up my guns in northern Wisconsin if it would save a life in downtown Chicago? Yes. If it came to it. A thousand times over.
It would be a shame to give up rights for measures that don’t ultimately make a difference. What would be an even greater shame is if we allowed legal ends to satisfy our...
3 tags
March 2013
2 posts
3 tags
February 2013
2 posts
2 tags
November 2012
1 post
3 tags
October 2012
3 posts
6 tags
6 tags
3 tags
the cube.
It happened.
I knew one day it would.
No matter how long I delayed it, I was merely prolonging the inevitable.
I work in a cubicle.
The cube, as I affectionately call it, sits at the Des Moines Habitat for Humanity office. I do feel less like a sellout when I pull into the parking lot in the morning than I originally thought I would, though. So, for the most part, I can get over spending...
July 2012
1 post
June 2012
5 posts
3 tags
4 tags
3 tags
3 tags
rewrite.
Two weeks ago I should have stepped on an airplane bound for Cambodia. I should have said goodbye to Des Moines for two months and I should have landed in Phnom Penh. I would have taught rescued sex slaves the intricacies of inDesign and Photoshop. I would have spent 60 days immersed in a very different culture. I would have come back a changed person.
But, these are shoulds and woulds.
Let...
4 tags
Watch“People, once they hear what happens to us, will think differently. And this is the most effective tool we have, alone or together.”
In this information age, it’s hard to remember what it feels like to not knowsomething for an extended time. I can remember first finding out about St. Augustine, Florida. Or, the first time I learned people were trafficked. It can be a powerful feeling to truly...
April 2012
2 posts
8 tags
redux.
I wrote a blog a little over a year and a half ago called inbetween. After this past week, I went and revisited it. Scroll back and read it if you could; not because it’s an exceptional piece of writing, but because it would be hard for me to convey the amount of naïveté and bias that was flowing through me at the time.
This past week, I helped lead a week-long event on Drake University’s campus...
words.
People who have chosen slavery out of love are free to give themselves to others without it damaging their ego or destroying their identity. They can sit on the curb with a mentally ill homeless person to share a sandwich, or cut their hours in order to take care of an aging parent, or move into a slum community in the developing world just to become loving neighbors to people whom the rest of the...
March 2012
4 posts
11 tags
4 tags
response.
A response to an article in Washington Post regarding Invisible Children and KONY 2012, director Jon Turteltaub wrote the following response (side note, couldn’t have said it better myself):
My name is Jon Turteltaub. I have directed several movies including both National Treasure films, Phenomenon and Cool Runnings. In spite of how much my mother loves my films, I have had more than my...
5 tags
critique.
I get it. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone wants everyone else to know what that opinion is. It’s the nature of every human. As a kid, if I didn’t agree with my bedtime, I made sure my parents knew about it. I think it’s innate and ingrained in us from the time we set foot in the world.
But there’s something about critique I hate.
I absolutely cannot stand critique when it’s framed with the I...
February 2012
5 posts
4 tags
1 tag
WatchI wish I could go to this conference, but the video will have to do.
off to cambodia.
This past year has been a year of awareness.
From my involvement with Beza Threads, to working for a week in St. Louis, to preparing a sex trafficking awareness week on Drake’s campus with InterVarsity, I’ve been struck with the complexity of the issues in the world today.
Last summer I attended a conference where I heard the phrase “the need is the call.” As I stewed over the significance of a...
January 2012
2 posts
There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by...
December 2011
7 posts
Fighting Social Justice Snobbery →
Confession: sometimes, this is me.
possessions | part one.
I can’t count how many times I’ve said I’ve been motivated to do something, and continue to fall short of actually doing something.
A discontentment rose in me the other day. When I realized I was sitting with two friends who share similar mentalities on revolution and we were all reading books about Jesus. We were sitting in this coffee shop, reading about church development,...
“I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the...”
– President Benjamin Harrison (R), 1891
justice for all. →
I thought this was an interesting look at “social justice” and how the world measures up in action. It would be nice to see a comparison of this and the number of NGOs per country.
November 2011
1 post
2 tags
ready.
It’s interesting how when you begin to care about real issues in the world, how badly you want your life to match up with those beliefs. And yet, it’s even more intriguing to watch how quickly apathy sets in again.
It seems ironic to me that I deeply care for the world, have the knowledge that more than half of the world lives on two dollars a day, and yet, I have an issue with...
September 2011
1 post
1 tag
troy davis.
“… no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davis’. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity...
June 2011
1 post
May 2011
2 posts
a call for change.
The following words are not my own. Sara, from Tegan and Sara, wrote an open letter to Tyler the Creator. (I refuse to link anything from him; just google it.)
In a increasingly desensitized society , I thought this was an excellent “call for change” in the entertainment industry.
When will misogynistic and homophobic ranting and raving result in meaningful repercussions in the...
April 2011
4 posts
3 tags
2 tags
“It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you...”
– The Low Road | Marge Piercy
March 2011
3 posts
4 tags
hypocrisy.
I got a kick in the pants this past week.
I spent a week in Saint Louis with 130 college students. I met Brittany, a fifteen-year-old single mom attending one of the worst high schools in Saint Louis. I learned that all public high schools in the Saint Louis area are unaccredited. That means any senior graduating from a Saint Louis school can’t go to college. I saw more vacant lots than...
1 tag
st-st-stuttering
I haven’t written in a while. It’s not because I have nothing to write about. It comes from not quite knowing how to write this.
I finally had the opportunity to see The King’s Speech. I was hesitant about seeing it at all because I generally dislike period pieces. Any movie that tries to reenact the way things were in history usually won’t hold my interest. But I became increasingly interested...
February 2011
5 posts
2 tags
2 tags
what's genocide?
This is how I know StumbleUpon knows me: in the same 30-minute span I was looking at a list of top 10 disturbing books, Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted chapter “Guts,” a redesigned boarding pass, Fred and Friends Products, and this. This poem.
their high school principal told me I couldn’t teach poetry with profanity so I asked my students, “Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the...
