A few years ago I wrote a blog post about the movie ‘Pay It Forward’. I asked what would happen if people actually started trying to do that in real life. I tried for a while to get a
group of people together to go out and do things for others. It was a lot of fun and we did some pretty great stuff over the next few months. Life happened and the group we had all moved away and kind of lost touch. That was the start and finish of my attempt to get Tulsa/Broken Arrow to ‘Pay It Forward’. There is a city that has had a lot more success that we had over the long run. This city is now being called by some “The Kindest City in the World.”
Winnipeg is that city. I ran across an article Winnipeg’s Residents Pay It Forward and I had to stop and read it. What I found was pretty awesome. The movement seems to be taking the city by storm. Here is a short portion of that article:
“Last month, we reported the story of a kindhearted bus driver who took off his own shoes to give to a homeless man on the street one cold morning.
Recipients of other random acts of kindness have taken to writing in to the Winnipeg Free Press to share their experiences.
“I would like to thank all the kind people who stopped to help me recently when my car was rear-ended,” Paul Chute wrote. “I am especially grateful to an off-duty paramedic who came to my rescue and made sure I was okay and stayed with me until the ambulance arrived.”
These aren’t the only stories, they just keep coming. They started a Facebook event called, “Winnipeg Pay it Forward Day” and if you scroll through there you will see even more stories of people doing nice things for others simply to be nice. No one is getting paid, no one is getting recognition, it is just being nice because it is the right thing to do.
What if this happened in the town your live in right now? What would it look like if we were doing nice things just because we wanted to do nice things? It is a challenge to me to step outside of my normal routine and do something for someone else. Why not start today where you live? It is not going to hurt anything. If it doesn’t sweep through your whole city (like it is in Winnipeg) then at least a few people will have smiles on their faces that might not have had a smile before. It doesn’t take much to change someones life. That goes for positive and negative change. I think you should try to make someone smile today.
It has been almost a month since my friend Ryan Byrd wrote a blog post about Dan Haseltine and Jars of Clay leaving the evangelical church behind. I saw that he had posted it and I wanted to read it, but I got caught up with my own life and all that was going on there. For those of you who don’t know there were two big events that happened in the two weeks before his post. The first was that I got married on the 25th of August and the second was that 5 days before Ryan wrote his post my office burned up in a fire. Needless to say I was a bit slow in getting everything back on track.
Between his writing the post and me reading it I was able to go to the David Bazan concert at Eikon (thank you once again Ryan). If you don’t know who that is, he was known to the Christian community as Pedro the Lion until he left the evangelical church and Christianity behind. This was not a normal ‘concert’ for me. It was a small setting with less than 50 people in the room. Bazan was playing a bass guitar like it was an electric guitar, complete with capo and pick. His bass player was playing electric guitar during the show. It was just the two of them with their guitars and mics.
About every third song David Bazan would ask if anyone had any questions. There was a group of guys sitting on the floor right in front of him. One of them had several questions, but the one that caught my attention was when he asked him what was up with him? What had really happened with him leaving Christianity and had he really broken up with God like people said after his breakup album. Had ‘Curse Your Branches’ really been about him breaking up with God? Bazan responded more candidly than I ever expected someone in his position to respond with. He was honest and open about the fact that he had come to a point in his life where he had to search out some answers. He had taken things for granted that he had been told his whole life, but he fully expected to find in the end that everyone had been right and it was all true. According to him, that is not what he found. He found that he couldn’t get the answers he was looking for and had to be honest with himself and walk away from what he had been taught.
I am not quoting him word for word and if you really want to know what Bazan thinks you just need to read the lyrics to his music. He is amazingly talented and has a lot of influence on a lot of people. That same thing can be said for Dan Haseltine of Jars of Clay. The journey he is on seems to be a bit different from Bazan’s, but it is headed in a similar direction. He is leaving the evangelical church behind and is making music about real life experience.
Dan Haseltine wrote a blog post called An Unfinished Record; An Uncharted Path that you can read if you want to read. From what it sounds like, he had a similar upbringing to my own. He went to youth group, wore the Jesus t-shirt, and lived all that goes along with that. Somewhere along his path things changed and he had this to say:
“God gave us a story, and a space to fill. And it isn’t really in the same neighborhood as the evangelical church. And so our music will be disappointing to many. People will inevitably engage us with the question, “Are you going secular?” or, “Why don’t you sing about Jesus?” or, “How come you don’t share the gospel?” And some of those people will be angry. Some of them won’t have the tools necessary to understand that anger, or the fear that creates it. Some people will see our form of artistic expression as a threat. Some will categorize us as “back-sliders.“ I wish I had more patience and time for those people.”
His music is taking a turn that leave the evangelical church behind. Now I don’t know about you, but Jars of Clay has been one of those bands that has always been around in ‘Christian music’. They have songs that I know and hear even if it is not something I knew was their song. People remake their songs and worship leaders sing them in youth groups across the country. Now they won’t be singing about Jesus…or at least not in the way that most people expect them to be singing about Jesus. So what does that mean? How do men like this just drift away from the church? How do they begin to see the church as something that is no longer answering the questions that they have in life?
In another part of that same blog post Dan says this:
“These songs are honest expressions of what life around us looks like. The descriptions of love and pain, loneliness and hope are real to us. It is what frustrates me about the general church audience. If artistic expressions do not have an evangelical agenda, or they don’t explicitly cheer for Jesus, they tend to fail commercially. In my experience, the music with those kinds of agendas is shallow and somehow not ultimately believable to me.”
This is one of the things that I have heard from people who are not associated with the church and even from some in the church. They don’t think that what we call ‘Christian music’ and what we now call the church are honest expressions of what life around us looks like. They say Christians are out of touch. Is that what is happening? Are we losing the pulse of people? Are we missing the mark or is this just a blip on the radar? I have been reading some books that lead me to believe that we are losing more people both in the church and outside the church than a lot of us are willing to admit.
To say that there is nothing good coming out of the church today would not be accurate. There are a lot of hurting people being helped in a lot of areas. There are also a lot of people doing things that ultimately hurt other people. I think one of the problems that we run into is that people try so hard to act like they are perfect so they can be in the right ‘position’ to help others that they ultimately lose sight of what is really important. People are what is important. Jesus said we were to love God and love our neighbor as ourself. He didn’t say we had to love our church and those in our church while not worrying about what is going on outside the walls of our churches.
So I would say that we have some things we need to work on, that I think we can all agree on. My question is simply what is it that is driving away so many people who are looking for answers? Now I know that a lot of you who will read this are not Christians, but you all know that I am a Christian. I want answers, but I want it to be civil. I don’t need people bashing the church or Christians specifically or in general. I want to know what you think about Bazan and Haseltine walking away from God and the evangelical church (depending on which one you are talking about.) I want to know what you think is causing the exodus.
The headlines over the past week have been filled with one sensational story after another. I have seen coverage of the Republican National Convention, Hurricane Isaac, Mormons, Chick-fil-a, and a speech by Clint Eastwood. What I haven’t seen is any real response to the two short stories I read about 19 people being beheaded in Afghanistan this week.
The first article I read was that 17 people (men and women) were beheaded in Afghanistan after they went to a co-ed dance party. Then today there was an article about two children that were beheaded. Now I understand that we are a country that seems to be pretty wrapped up in ourselves and our own problems, but how can there be almost no comments on people getting their heads chopped off? You know it is 2012 right? I didn’t think we stood for things like that anymore? I thought that people had rights and that if we saw those rights being violated we would stand up and do something…or at least say something. What happened to KONY 2012? Why are we more worried about a surprise guest speaker at a convention than we are about people being murdered in the streets?
I know it is an election year. I know we are looking for change, no matter what side you want to win the election. That doesn’t seem like the only thing going on in the world right now, but it is the only thing people seem to be talking about. Perspective is gained when you look at the whole picture. I think that every once and a while it wouldn’t hurt all of us to take a look at what is happening outside of our normal circle. Maybe look at some things that don’t have any real direct affect on you. You don’t have to do any of that, I just thought it would be a nice change of pace.
Click on the picture. Read the article. Form an opinion.
My brother made a CD called “Girl Power” and it was (surprise, surprise) all women singing. I had heard it once or twice before, but yesterday my fiance replaced my Johnny Cash CD with the “Girl Power” CD for the ride back to her apartment. This morning on my way to work a song came on that caught me off guard and made me stop and think. It is called, “Laughing With” by Regina Spektor. Here is the music video:
It is easy to dismiss God sometimes as we go on through our busy lives. Then there are those times when our world comes crashing down and who do we turn to? Her perspective seems pretty good to me. Some of her lines were pretty powerful. I will leave you with just a couple of those lines:
God could be funny
When told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God
When they’ve lost all they’ve got and they don’t know what for
There are those around you who are NOT laughing at God, they are going through something bigger than they know how to handle. Reach out to the hurting. Do what you can, when you can. We all have so much to give, even if it is just a kind word or a smile. You can change a life.
If you are looking for a tangible way to change a life right now CLICK HERE. The One, Inc. is helping keep people alive. If you don’t want to help here, help somewhere. We all have a part to play.
One day your life will end. A movie quote that always brings me back to earth is “On a long enough timeline, the life expectancy of everyone drops to zero.” We all live our lives like we will live forever. We ‘know’ that we won’t, but we secretly hope that we will be the one person who keeps on going. Science will make a breakthrough that will let us live forever! If we are honest with ourselves we know this is simply not the case. So what will you leave behind when you are gone? What will people remember about you? I ran across an article that gave me a link to a website about one man’s legacy.
His name was Aaron Collins and I didn’t know him. I also don’t know his family, but what he left in his will is something that has impacted people more than he probably ever imagined it would. Here is what is on the first page of the website:
Aaron passed away July 7, 2012 just 3 weeks after his 30th birthday. He left us a will full of his personality. He asked that any debt he owed his parents be repaid should he have money in the bank at his death, but also had the following request:
“Third, leave an awesome tip (and I don’t mean 25%. I mean $500 on a f***ing pizza) for a waiter or waitress.”
Of course, the way he lived his life meant Aaron never had much and didn’t leave much. We want to make his wish come true. So we are asking for donations to make this happen for him. Any money donated will go directly to this cause. His hope was clearly that such a random gift of kindness would leave an impact for life.
Once we have $500 his family will go to dinner somewhere and leave it as a gift for the waiter or waitress. If we continue to receive money, we will continue giving these gifts randomly, so that in his death he can touch the lives of many more people than he had even dreamed of doing in life.
If you can’t donate then please give a generous tip on your own. Tell the waiter or waitress why, or don’t. He would still be happy that you had done it. Give them this website address if you’d like, or write it on the check, so they know they received the gift because of my brother.
The third thing on his list was to do something kind for people that he didn’t know. Here is the video of the first person that his family was able to give a $500 tip:
The most recent stat that is given is that they have received $57,000 in donations! That is 114 people who will now receive a $500 tip because Aaron thought it would be cool to put in his will. His death is a tragedy. No one should die at 30 years old, that is not a long enough life…but he was thinking ahead. He wanted to make a difference in the lives of people. What kind of legacy are you leaving?
Click Here to go to the website and see all the videos and read the stories of people who have been impacted. After you watch them, come up with a way to do something that will impact people in a positive way. We can all make a difference, all you have to do is try.
It is funny to me that when it comes to politics you can have EXACTLY the same facts/event/announcement…etc. and come to two polar opposite conclusions.
This is just one more reason that I say we all see the world through our own set of glasses. The world is colored to us by our past experiences, our convictions and what we have heard or read lately that we deem to be trustworthy.
An example of this is the VP nomination that was just announced. Paul Ryan is going to be running on the Romney 2012 ticket. I normally will check CNN.com in the morning to see if anything crazy happened overnight that I missed since I don’t watch a lot of TV. The top two stories in the left column were these two stories:
“Why Paul Ryan is the right choice” (after clicking on it I found out that the title and the actual article had different names…but it was the same idea)
I will give you one line out of each story. First the one that says Ryan won’t help: “…Ryan elevates selfishness to doctrine.”
Now a line from the one that says Ryan is the right choice: “The president has not led; Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will lead, and ultimately, they will lead us back on the path to prosperity.”
Both of these writers have witnessed the same event (the announcement that Paul Ryan will be the VP nominee) and both of them are familiar with Paul Ryan and his political past. The thing about it is that they have polar opposite reactions to the announcement. Who is right? Which one do you believe? Is either of them right? What set of glasses do you see the world through?
I read an article a couple months ago that confirmed what already made sense to me about economics. The whole concept of ‘trickle down economics‘ is one that I have had a hard time with for a while. It didn’t seem to add up and it didn’t seem to be working in America or around the world lately. I came across this article:
It was not in some small time magazine, it was from the Money portion of CNN’s website. Now the part that I found particularly interesting was that not everyone in America was losing their ‘net worth’ at the same rate. In fact, take a look at this small portion of the article:
Families in the top 10% of income actually saw their net worth increase over the period, rising from a median of $1.17 million in 2007 to $1.19 million in 2010.
Meanwhile, middle-class families who ranked in the 40th to 60th percentile of income earners reported that their median net worth fell from $92,300 to $65,900 over the same time period.
The net worth of the top 10% did not skyrocket while everyone else plummeted…but it did go up while the rest of the country was in a decline.
I planned on writing about this when I read that article, but I wanted to do some more research before I wrote anything. I have a lot of friends who are on both ends of this spectrum. I know people who have succeeded in business that are 100% behind the concept of trickle down economics. I also know people who have no money at all and have just assumed that the people they elected were right when they said the rich create jobs and should have lower taxes so they can create more jobs. I have friends who fit in different economic sections and don’t agree with trickle down economics.
Those of you who don’t agree with my conclusions, feel free to let me know why you don’t agree. Just remember to be civil and talk to me about facts. Do not just state what you think is right or wrong, tell me why you think that and how you came to that conclusion.
I’m not un-American for suggesting that trickle down economics is a lie and that making laws and regulations based on a flawed model will/have hurt this country. Don’t accuse me of being a socialist or a communist or anything like that. Just look at the facts and lets talk about it.
Recently a man named Nick Hanauer spoke to TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference. For those of you who don’t know Nick by name, he is a multi-millionaire venture capitalist from Seattle. The video of his talk is less than 6 minutes long and it is right here:
If you don’t have 6 minutes to spare I will give you the gest of what Nick is saying in his talk. He states that the rich don’t create jobs. Jobs are actually the last thing that a rich business owner wants to make. Jobs are created because of the demand from the middle class consumers. He says that our politicians and our policies have been based on faulty information and a false premise. Only consumers can set in motion a cycle of increased demand and hiring. “In this sense an ordinary consumer is more of a job creator than a capitalist…” He says a lot more and I don’t consider myself to be an expert, but he seems like someone that you (the reader) may take a bit more seriously when it comes to the way business works.
There was another video that I watched. This is the one that might ruffle even more feathers than the last one, and I’m pretty sure that most of you will not take the 80 minutes to watch this video. It was a video called ‘The One Percent.” It was created by a 27-year-old man who is the heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune. Here is the link:
In this video he is mainly focused on the growing “wealth gap” in America. The thing about both of these videos was that they were both made by people on the other side of the 1% from me. I’m not in the wealthy group, I grew up in the middle class. My parents owned their own home when I was born and my Dad made enough money so that my Mom was able to stay at home until I was in Jr. High. We weren’t rich, but we had enough to eat (even if a lot of it was grown in our garden) and we didn’t get upset when others had more than us. I’m not jealous of anyone who has made lots of money. I’m not saying that rich people are all terrible and we should take all their money and give it to people who don’t work.
I’m saying that right now in America we are trying to create jobs the wrong way. We are giving breaks and writing legislature to make it possible for venture capitalists and the rich to keep more of their money so they can create jobs. The problem is that they are not creating more jobs. Here are two more small bits of the transcript from Nick Hanauer:
[O]ur current policies are … upside down. When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.
Since 1980, the share of income for the richest Americans has more than tripled while effective tax rates have declined by close to 50%.
If it were true that lower tax rates and more wealth for the wealthy would lead to more job creation, then today we would be drowning in jobs. And yet unemployment and under-employment is at record highs.
and this:
Anyone who’s ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalist’s course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn’t just inaccurate, it’s disingenuous.
Now is the part where you get to tell me what you think. I’m not saying I’m the one with all the answers or that I am a business genius…I’m just asking you to take a look. If you don’t agree, then we are still in the same place we were before. At least you know where people are coming from when they say they don’t agree with your views on trickle down economics.
Most of my posts lately seem to be because I read an article that got me thinking about a topic and I wanted to see what everyone else thought about it too. This one is more light hearted than the last few have been. Living to be 100. Hitting the century mark is always something I wanted to do. I read an article recently that gives me a better chance than some. It was “Autumn babies more likely to live to 100” and it says that because I was born in November I have a much better chance of reaching 100 than someone who was born in July. Why more 100 year old people were born in the Fall was something that they were not sure about, but the numbers speak for themselves.
My question to you is simply: do you want to live to be 100? I have been fortunate to have grandparents and great-grandparents that lived up into their 80′s and 90′s during my life. My grandpa right now is in his mid-80′s and still is more active than most of you who are reading this post! He goes fishing, hunting, plays golf and takes his girlfriend out to eat a lot. They cut and stack their own firewood and both keep gardens. So that is what I want to be like when I am in my 80′s and above. Do you want to still be around when you’re 100? What kind of life do you expect to have at that age? I’m just curious…because I don’t really plan on stopping until after I hit the century mark. Maybe that will change when I get older, I don’t know. For now I would like your opinion.
*I’m including the text from the article below for those of you who wanted to read it and are not going to click the link*
The study looked at data from 1,500 centenarians born between 1880 and 1895. The research showed that people born in September and November specifically seemed most likely to make it past 100 years of age. Fewer 100-year-olds were born in March, May, and July than the other months.
What accounts for the seasonal difference? The most popular hypothesis has to do with diseases: That is, having a baby catch the common cold very early in life may better help protect it from disease later in life. Seasonal hormone fluctuations could also have an impact, scientists say.
The reason this article caught my attention is two-fold. The first part is that I have asked questions about violence, war, capital punishment…etc. and to this point I have received very few answers that seems to fit my world view. My world view is obviously a mixture of my faith in Jesus and my life experiences. Those two together make for a world view that seems to rub some people the wrong way.
The second reason this article caught my attention was obviously the Aurora shooting. There is a lot being said about guns, gun control, violence and things like that in the days that have followed that senseless murder spree. I have read some stories about people who saved lives by laying down their own lives and I have heard other stories of courage under fire. Then there are those that are talking about the man on trial for the murders. I heard this shooting instantly turned into a political tool for both sides of the aisle. I read that it was a government conspiracy and I heard that it was a U.N. conspiracy. There is a lot of talk about what should and shouldn’t be happening when it comes to guns.
What I want you to do is to take a look at the article yourself and give me your opinion. Here is a part that stood out to me:
“…even in the face the evil that Jesus endured, he consistently challenged the myth of redemptive violence. He looked into the eyes of those killing him and called on God to forgive them. He loved his enemies and taught his disciples to do the same. He often said things like, “You’ve heard it said ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth‘… but I want to say there is a better way” and “You’ve heard it said, ‘love your friends and hate your enemies’ … but I tell you love those who hate you … do not repay evil with evil.’” He challenges the prevailing logic of his day, and of ours. He insisted that if we “pick up the sword we will die by the sword” — and we’ve learned that lesson all too well.”
If we are to love our neighbor as ourself and we are supposed to repay evil with good then how do we defend the current response to “evil” in the world? Where is the balance between saving lives (ending things like the holocaust) and starting a war that we have no business being involved in? Is there such a thing as “redemptive violence” or is it a myth as this article would suggest? I leave that for you to consider.
I am a fan of being happy and I also like it when other people are happy too! I was on my lunch break today and I stumbled across an article that was simply titled, “Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals”
Now that may not seem like a crazy title for an article if you are reading a Tea-Party website, but I found it on the New York Times website! It was listed as an ‘opinion’ article, but if you actually read it there is very little opinion in it. It lists facts and studies about happiness.
I appears that religion and marriage are two of the biggest keys to living a happy life. It is not money, possessions, education or job status that will make you happy. I know I have readers from all kinds of backgrounds, religious views, political views and social views. I’m not saying that YOU are not a happy person if you don’t fit into the box that this article says makes for happy people.
So what do you do with information like this? What it does to me is remind me that appearances are not always what is really going on. Just because someone smiles and makes you think they are happy does not mean that they are truly happy. Also just because society tells you that you will be happy when you…whatever they are selling at the moment…you don’t have to believe them.
You can do whatever you want with this. I found it interesting and I thought you might find it interesting too.
