..today

This is what I have learned today:

1. Apparently I make outlines when I think and when I talk to people. I am okay with this.

2. This is a list, supporting point 1.

3. Planning limits you. I was thinking about the verses in Jame 4:13-15 (Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.") It seems that planning not only puts you in charge, but limits your accessibility to other people's perspectives. If I am planning on 'serving the poor' with my life so I have a specific liberation theology, I might limit my ability to understand other people. If my whole future depends on the perspective I have on the world right now, I limit myself from learning and I think that is a very sad form of chosen ignorance.

4. Sometimes I want to believe clean things about God. I want to believe in his grace, but not have to experience failure in order to receive it. I want to believe in mercy, but don't want to deserve punishment to receive it. Sometimes this looks like me telling people I believe certain things about God, that deep down inside I don't know/don't want to be true.

5. The kingdom of God is sweet. My small group mentor was talking about the Hebrew conception of heaven today, about how it was another dimension of life on earth and how it was right here. She was talking about how sweet it was that when John the Baptist said things like, 'The kingdom of Heaven is near...' that meant that it was literally 2 feet away from you, not a lifetime or thousands of years away. She also talked about how the practice of Sabbath was one of being intentionally mindful of Heaven. The the practice of Sabbath was practicing Heaven. I like this a lot.

6. I like knowing really different types of people.

7. Sin is far more cyclical that I give it credit for. I realized that I often think that sin will correct itself the next time around, that somehow a fresh batch of people and situations will lead to different outcomes. I would tell other people things like, 'Hurt people hurt people...' when they would come to me with pain caused by others, but realized that I never thought that I was hurt, or hurting people. This is not true. I am hurt in some places in my life and that means I hurt other people. I need to be more intentional about my healing rather than assuming it will just magically be better another time around.

8. Today I was asked if I have 'traditional' perspective on poverty. I was caught off guard by it and didn't really know how to respond. I said that I think that poverty has more to do with people's perspective on humanity. The poor are dehumanized when they are treated like machines for labor or pet humanitarian projects or guilt-reducing agents. Celebrities are dehumanized when they are photographed or talked about in reference to fabrics and inches on their waists and pounds on their hips. People dehumanize other people based on their race, gender, religious affiliation, education, material wealth, basically everything. I think that 'serving the poor' means redeeming their humanity, and there are a lot of realms of humanity to redeem.

9. I like children.

10. In my sociology book, there was a section on animal sacrifices. There was a religious group that sacrificed oxen to their god. Once they didn't have enough oxen (or it was too costly to sacrifice one) and so they pretended with a cucumber. They treated it like it was really important and did all of the same oxen-esque things to it, but really, it was a cucumber. It made me think about the cucumbers in my life.

11. Yesterday, there was a homeless man outside of Star Life. Apparently he had been sitting there all of Friday and was in the same position, rocking back and forth, in the morning. I saw him when I got to work and Wings asked me what he should do. I didn't really know what to say, so I said offer him coffee. The man wanted water. Buy then Wings asked me if I wanted to out to talk to him and I said no. I just didn't want to at the time but today I realized that it was because I didn't want to feel responsible for him. I also had no idea of who to call, or who else would take responsibility for him. This seems to be less of a problem with 'society' and more of a problem with my idea of how my humanity works.