part 3: aren’t they all the same?

Chapter seven goes on to say that we must be able to help people understand the world’s religions because “most everyone assumes they say the same thing.  We have found it very important to diffuse the accusation of narrow-minded intolerance by giving credence to the similarities they do have and explaining the key differences.  Some Christians act as if there is no trace of truth in the world’s religions because they do not proclaim Christ, but this view is not biblical.”

(Personal note: while reading this, I realized that before helping to educate others on the key similarities and differences in the world’s religions… perhaps it would be good for me to understand them first.  That’s the beauty of this book.  It is helping me to understand the gospel more clearly, even as it shows me ways to help others toward faith.)

Burke goes on to relay Paul’s words to the men of Athens (Acts 17).  Rather than zealously condemning these people for their many idols to Greek gods, he walked around among the idols, until he found a trace of truth.  He affirmed them and said to them, “Men of Athens!  I see that in every way you are very religious.  For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.  Now what you worship as something unknown, I am going to proclaim to you (Acts 17:23-24).”

Burke makes this point, which I think is worth trying to wrap our heads around: “God has been at work behind the scenes in all cultures, and we can find remains of truth everywhere to build bridges of faith in Christ.”

Now, on to what the world’s religions do say.  Rather than butcher what I read, I’m going to provide an excerpt from one of his sermons on the subject.  It’s a long chunk, but I think you’ll find it worth it:

Without a doubt, there are common moral truths taught in all the great religions of the world.  Mortimer Adler, editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, who was not a Christian, wrote a book called Truth in Religion.  In it he states, “In spite of the possibility that all religious faiths in the world may be factually false, or that only one may be factually true, nevertheless … there is a common core of sound morality and prescriptive truth in all or most of the major religions.”  And many Christians don’t realize this even though it is revealed in the Bible.  When people say, “Aren’t they all basically saying the same thing?” I think this is what people mean.  Scripture tells us that God has written his moral law on our hearts: “Even when Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, instinctively follow what the law says, they show in their hearts that they know right from wrong.  They demonstrate that God’s law is written within them, for their own consciences either accuse them or tell them they are doing what is right (Romans 2:14-15 NLT).”  If this is true and there is a Moral Law Giver — that’s the most reasonable explanation of the similarities we see throughout every culture and religion.  And so, in most all of the major world religions, we see evidence of this similar moral law that God has written in our hearts, which comes out in our religions.  So in this aspect of declaring moral law, they appear to be saying the same truths.  In fact, here’s a summary of what they all basically say morally — taken from moral laws given in ancient China, Babylon, Anglo Saxon culture, American Indian culture, Judaism, Christianity, ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Hindu culture:

Don’t do harm to another human by what you do or say (the Golden rule)

Honor your father and mother

Be kind toward brothers and sisters, children, and the elderly

Do not have sex with another’s spouse

Be honest in all your dealings (don’t steal)

Do not lie

Care for those weaker or less fortunate

Dying to self is the path to life

Now, let’s take a time-out and see what this teaches us.  In just about every culture and major world religion since antiquity, we see this common moral law — stated in various ways, but basically saying these things.  So we all basically agree on what’s right and wrong — it’s within us, and always has been.  God’s written it on our hearts.  So let’s look at how we’ve done.  How well have we kept this common moral law of humanity?  Let’s make this participatory — you just give me a thumbs-up if you think humanity has pretty much kept that one.  Thumbs-down if there’s evidence we haven’t done so well.

“Don’t do harm in word or deed.”  What do you think?  People have been pretty darn nice, haven’t they?  We don’t pick on each other on the playground.  We don’t gossip about others or think hateful thoughts or say hurtful words.  We don’t fight or do mean things or hold grudges or murder or start wars — do we?  What do you think — thumbs up?… No?  Watch the news — we’re still not doing so well…

So what do all of the world’s religions teach all of us?  We’re royal screw-ups — myself included, Jews and Christians, Muslims and Buddhists!  The world’s a mess!  We all know the right things to do, they’ve been in our culture or religious tradition, they’re in our hearts — and yet, the history of humanity shows us that we fall short!  We can’t live up to what we know to be right.  So in this sense, there is a universal truth communicated through all the world’s major religions.  Here it is: people have a problem, and it’s affecting all of us.  We need God’s help!  We cannot become who we know we were intended to be without God.

The Bible claims that the problem is that all people, in all religions, know enough about the one true Creator God and what is morally right or wrong, but we’ve all turned away from him, thinking we know better at some point — in every religious tradition.  Scripture says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — havve been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that [people] are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened (Romans 1:20-21).”

So does the Bible teach that all other religions are wholly wrong and Christians are right?  NO!  It teaches that every single person is wrong and God is right, and our problem is we all tend to turn from God and go our own way rather than humbly seeking God and his will.  So all the religions may basically say the same thing about people and what’s right and wrong.  But they definitely do not say the same thing about God or the solution to the human problem.  And if you think they are all saying the same thing about God, you just haven’t read or studied the claims of the original founders of the world’s religions.  They don’t say the same thing.

So the real problem is that we need God!  We need his forgiveness and his help.  And here’s something that very few people realize.  Not all the world’s religions claim to be revealed from God.  And you would think that if God exists and loves us, he’d care about our plight.  And he would give us a solution — a way out of our predicament.  But because God is infinite, beyond our discovery — our only hope is if God has chosen to reveal himself.  In other words, God had to take the initiative to communicate.  And if God has, the natural place to start looking would be the claims of the world’s religions — right?  But if you read the sacred texts of the major world’s religions and take them at face value — most do not claim that God has revealed a solution to the human dilemma.

Mortimer Adler says, “Only three religions claim to have a supernatural foundation to be found in a sacred scripture that [claims] to be a divine revelation… among the other religions… only some claim to have logical and factual truth, but the truth they claim to have is of human, not divine, origin.”

What Adler, who was not a Christian, discovered is that if you just read the sacred texts of all the world religions, only three even claim that the one, unique Creator God has revealed himself or his will directly: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Interestingly, all three speak of a Messiah.  The other religions claim to be wise human solutions to the problems mankind faces, or they are devotional poems and songs and stories, but do not factually claim God has revealed himself.  Now, if this upsets you and feels narrow-minded or judgmental toward other religions — take it up with the founders of the religions — but don’t assume they say more than they really do.”

Phew.  That was a lot of typing, but I hope it’s helpful.  I welcome your thoughts.  Please.  Let’s make this a discussion.

Tomorrow: the motherload question — “What about people who have never heard of Jesus?” — the question about God’s fairness.

NPPA, part 2: Questions of Tolerance

Ah, Eggos in the toaster.  I love Saturday mornings.

So, jumping back into No Perfect People Allowed.  It was recommended that I begin with Chapter 7, and that’s exactly what I did.

It spoke.  Spoke loud.  What follows are some of the thoughts John Burke explained, and my reactions to them.  It may be somewhat lengthy, but that’s okay, you’re used to that, right? 

This chapter deals with what it calls a “tolerance litmus test.”  Meaning, people in our culture who are seeking spiritual truth will often ask certain questions to ascertain whether we are accepting or intolerant (most probably lean more toward the latter, based on what they’ve seen, and I can’t say that I blame them).  The actual questions are genuine curiosities in and of themselves, but there are often questions beneath the questions that are important for the faith community to grasp.  Recognizing and being able to respond openly and honestly to these deeper, unspoken questions is absolutely necessary if we are going to remove barriers that stand in the way of people embracing faith.

The question he addresses in Chapter 7 is this: “What about other religions?”

The questions beneath it probably sound something like this (taken from the story that opens the chapter): “[Christians are] just so narrow minded and arrogant.  I mean, who are we to say one group or culture is right or wrong?  To say Native American Indians, for instance, were wrong in all their beliefs because they knew nothing about Jesus?  That’s ridiculous.”  “Every culture has it’s own customs, beliefs, and values that must be respected.  I see the biggest problem with religion is it divides people and creates hostility.  It seems all religions are basically saying the same thing, so why argue and fight about who is right or wrong?…”

The questions deal a whole heck of a lot with questions of open-mindedness (a HUGE value in our generation), arrogance (a huge turn-off), and questions of God’s fairness (How could God send someone to hell simply because they’ve never heard about Jesus?).

I can’t say these same questions never crossed my mind myself, and I was raised in church.  None of the answers ever satisfied.  And the reigning attitudes did little to foster open-mindedness, much less humility.  In my childhood church, other denominations of Christianity couldn’t escape ridicule (I’m so sorry, Baptists).  With that kind of judgmental attitude toward other Christians who, despite some differences in the small points of theology, were the same in all the essentials, it should come as no surprise that other religions were held in absolute contempt.  Or worse, they were viewed with a kind of condescending pity.

Were these well-meaning Christian people?  Absolutely.  Good-hearted, God-loving folks?  For sure.  Doing a whole hell of a lot of damage, for all their good intentions?  Don’t even get me started.

We are ten kinds of evil when we let Jesus be anything but completely central.  Being good and being like Jesus are so wholly different.  Being good doesn’t necessarily make you like Jesus.  Being good, you can still be arrogant, uncaring, judgmental, and harsh; we saw this with the Pharisees in the New Testament, and we also saw that Jesus reserved his severest anger for them.  In relationship with Jesus, as we become like him, we begin to care about the things he does –  humility, grace, sacrificial love, forgiveness, servanthood — just to name a few.  We begin to care about the people he cares for — the outsiders, the poor, the broken, the lonely, the sick, the unlovely, the unloved, the imperfect.  It’s in this way that he makes us good… good, but in the right way — grace and truth in equal balance.

Okay, enough personal commentary for the moment.  Here’s what he said (I can’t do it all justice here, so go ahead and read the book, for Pete’s sake, but in order to stretch some brains, here we go):

When people in our generation hear Christians say that Jesus is the only way, what they hear us saying is “We’re right and everyone else is wrong because our way is always right.”  They hear that and think of the same pride and arrogance that led Christians in the Middle Ages to slaughter those of other religions and ethnicities.  This attitude of religious superiority doesn’t fly with a culture that has learned to value diversity of belief.

Burke says, “The way to address these concerns is head-on.  I’ll say flat-out in a message, ‘One of the biggest problems people have with Christianity, I find, is this idea that Jesus is the way to be made right with God.  It feels so narrow, so intolerant, so religiously snobbish — kind of a “we’re-right-because-you’re wrong” kindergarten mentality.’  Anticipating and openly voicing this question-beneath-the-question often diffuses people’s resistance to even listen.  This allows them to relate to you and actually want to hear your answer.  When you affirm where tolerance is needed — you can also show its natural limits.”

“Tolerance is a good thing when it comes to differences in people, tastes, or preferences.  We should be tolerant of others’ opinions and even beliefs that differ from our own.  But this doesn’t mean we have to agree that everything the other person thinks is true.  You can be tolerant and disagree.”  Burke goes on to use the example of preference (one person liking a red car and another liking a black car) vs. reliability (one person insisting on a Ford Pinto, which Ford discontinued because they blow up, while the other person chooses a Honda). 

“The question is — where does religious thought fit?  Is saying ‘I believe Muhammad’ or ‘I believe in Jesus’ the same as saying ‘I like red’ or ‘I like black’?  Or is it more like saying ‘I believe Pintos are reliable’ or ‘I believe Hondas are reliable’?  That’s where the real question lies.  My experience tells me that most people these days think religious belief is more like a preference thing — red or black — whichever makes you happy.  And I will acknowledge that they are right — it is just preference, if God has not revealed himself to our finite, fallible world.  But what if God took the initiative to show up?  That would take away a lot of our subjective opinion.”

Burke says that we must understand that when asked about other religions, the underlying question is really “Do you always think you’re right and everyone else is wrong?”  This is a litmus test for arrogance, and the only way to pass is to show a humility and willingness to learn, “remembering that all truth is God’s truth, and truth has nothing to fear.  I have found when leaders humbly acknowledge that we don’t know everything, and that religious arrogance has caused problems in the past, it helps people drop their first defense.  As we acknowledge the good aspects of tolerance, yet differentiate tolerance from agreement, we can better communicate the right heart.”

Once it is clear that we are more about caring about people than about “being right,” we can move forward to the next question, which many in our world assume to be truth: “Don’t all religions basically say the same thing?”

Til tomorrow, hopefully. 

no perfect people allowed…

I haven’t forgotten this discussion… it’s just been a busy week.

My lovely co-worker, Tracie, and myself have joined a gym five minutes from work.  Due to the convenience of location and the inconvenience of peer pressure… I’ve just been at the gym seven times more often than I usually show up in a week.  Since Monday!

We are training for this, coming up March 12 in Seattle:

THEME: Run, jog, walk… or crawl.  Those crazy Irish.

I feel great, but the 5:30 am wakeup time has taken a bit of getting used to (e.g. I hit the sack around 9 pm if possible… leaving little time for spending online).

Saturday morning around 10.  See ya then.    Enjoy your Friday.  Me, I’m enjoying my marble mocha machiatto. 

Chocolate and coffee.  Best idea ever.

when I talk about my mountains, THIS is what I mean…

This is a view of The Brothers from a bridge in Bremerton.  Good pic, Dad. 

overheard in new york

Thanks to Chelsie, I have found a new site that makes me laugh:

www.overheardinnewyork.com.

This one made me gut laugh, sitting here all by my lonesome in the Little Blue House:

Girl #1: I just don’t think I’m his type.  He’s very intellectual.

Girl #2: What do you mean?

Girl #1: He’s all “yada yada yada” and I’m very “What’s your favorite Starburst?”

–31st & Park

–overheard by Clara

no perfect people allowed, part 1

Today is the perfect day for soup.

For the past week or so, it has been uncharacteristically cold here.  The technical term we Washingtonians use for this kind of weather is Butt Cold.  Or, to be more accurate, Butt Cold with a wind chill factor of Super Butt Cold.  Since the sun has been shining bright and I can see my mountains, I don’t mind so much, but yes, my mmm-mmm good Tomato soup is hittin’ the spot.

Plus, I’m a little off-kilter due to attacking an antique glass doorknob with my face yesterday.  I reached down to grab something off the bathroom floor yesterday and — WHOMP!  Instant goose-egg just above my right eye.  Instant weekend-long headache.  Sweeeet. 

So yeah.  Enjoying the soup.  (Glad I shared that.  I’d hate to take up space on the internet discussing something arbitrary and unimportant). 

Ow.  Scratch that.  Just burned my tastebuds off.

I am so cool.

Anyway, on to what I actually wanted to talk about.  I am reading a fantastic book that I am forcing on everyone I can get to listen to a passage or two.  Last book that I loved in this way was Bono’s spoken biography — I highly recommend it.  This new one is called No Perfect People Allowed (John Burke), and it is resonating with me big-time.

Before I jump into the specifics, let me share a bit of history.  If you’ve been reading W.E.W. for any length of time, you know that while I was raised in the church, I didn’t really have a good understanding of grace until much later on in the process, and that I’m right now in the midst of re-learning what it means to be a follower of Christ.  This means unlearning some things and learning others for the first time.

(Geez.  Took me long enough to be able to condense that into a few sentences.  Score!) 

I cannot emphasize enough that I often feel like a new Christian all over again.  To be honest, I hope I never lose this sense of newness with regards to my faith.  There are things I am capable of understanding now, at twenty-five, that I obviously couldn’t fully grasp at the age of four, when I first asked Jesus to lead my life.  As I get older, I don’t expect this pattern to change.  If I ever get married, if I am ever a Mommy (or if I end up the cutest old maid/auntie there ever was, perhaps), there are new facets of my faith that will emerge, and I never want to be so sure of having figured it all out that I’m closed off to a new, deeper understanding of Jesus and his work in me.

That said, there are new questions that have arisen this time around.  Not so much in the realm of Is God real? or Are the claims of Christianity true? — I’ve seen too much in my life to think that everything happens by chance and accident, and while the actions of Christians don’t make too much sense to me sometimes, the claims and actions of Christ ring true (i.e., turning religious rulekeeping on its head, exposing the inner nastiness of the religious elite, loving and healing those who had always been excluded — the tax collectors and the prostitutes and the poor and the sick and the racially different)…  No, my questions were more along the lines of If God is real, and the claims of Christ are true, then what about ________?

That blank represents many unanswered questions for me.  Not that no one ever attempted to answer them.  It’s just that the pat answers I received — and often accepted — when I was younger no longer satisfied me.  I had been forced to venture outside the Christian subculture (and for this reason I thank God that I flunked out of Bible college); I’d seen way too much that didn’t fit in my nice, neatly packaged Christian paradigm (and for this reason I thank God that he allowed me to go to hippie-ville Western and grow friendships with people whose world-views were decidedly different than my own). 

The world was no longer flat, so to speak.

And while Jesus remained real to me as ever, so did all those blanks.

Among them, here are a few:

What about other religions?  What about people who have never heard about Jesus?  Yeah, I got lucky and was raised in a home where I was taught about Jesus — but what if I’d grown up in Saudi Arabia or something?  What then?

Why are Christians known more for being arrogant, judgmental and hypocritical than for being loving and accepting, as Jesus was?  (How in the hell did Pat Robertson install himself as our spokesman)? 

If Christ died for all, why are Christians so ugly toward certain groups of people, most specifically the gay community?  Why are Christians so unconcerned for the poor and the sick?

Is it possible to be a Christian and not vote Republican? (snicker)

This time around, I found myself asking the same questions that came up in different arenas all throughout my school years.  Questions in my debate class.  Questions in World History.  Questions in Philosophy of Religion.  Questions in Red Square or at Starbucks or in my dorm room — questions that were asked of me.  I shudder when I think about what my answers may have been… when I consider that I may have simply repeated those same trite, unfeeling, unsatisfying answers to seekers before I’d ever really been a seeker myself.  I claimed certainty and authority where I had none.  God forgive me.

Tomorrow, time permitting, I want to deal with the first question in my little list.  The answer I’d been taught when I was younger was of the Too bad, so sad variety: God is gracious, God loves the whole world, but God is also holy, and the only way to be made right with him is through Jesus.  If you grew up in the Middle East or on some deserted island where they haven’t heard of Jesus — if your time’s up and you haven’t said the magic words, it’s a real bummer — but you’re screwed.  Needless to say, this answer wasn’t super palatable.  I used to think that it wasn’t palatable because I wasn’t strong enough in my faith.  Now I realize it wasn’t palatable because it shouldn’t be — not to anyone with a heart and any remote understanding of God’s own. 

I am happy to have found in this book the most thoughtful, fearless, scriptural treatment of this question that I have ever come across.  It doesn’t claim to be THE answer to the question, but it does address what we know from scripture — and what we don’t know.  I’m still processing it, but so far, so good.

Finally.

Til tomorrow then.       

conversations

I had a good cup of coffee the other day with one of my all-time favorite people.  When I stop to think about it, it’s such a funny friendship (but life’s great friendships are, more often than not, odd pairings).  I can only credit God’s sense of humor with how we ended up friends.  He is, I suspect (although I can never fully know for sure, since he refuses to reveal his biological age, only his mental one), slightly older than my dad.  Me, I’m twenty-five, but have always been a bit of an old soul, and have never easily fit into my own demographic.  We have a rare brand of kindredness — a mutual love of flip-flops, coffee, discussions about faith and culture, church survival, and all things Bono.  Somehow, it all evens out, and for about a year now we’ve met every so often to get caffeinated and throw words and thoughts around.  (We mark seasons of life by which particular coffee shop we were in when we had such-and-such a conversation, e.g. “Oh yeah, that was back when we were meeting at Barnes and Noble.  Has it really only been six months since we were praying for that job?”). 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all that God blessed me with this friendship during the year my faith was tested more than any other. 

Often, you don’t realize the value of a friendship until life’s pathways have drawn you to separate circumstances and locales, and you suddenly realize with a pang of loss that you had it good.  This is one of those rare occurrences where I’m already aware of this friendship’s value and impact — that this particular mentor has already left a lifelong mark.  If I ever have some measure of success in this life — outside of my family, Dan will be a big part of the answer to why.

There have been brief moments in my life — aha! moments — where, all of a sudden, I feel like I am with my own kind.  Most of the time, those moments have been shared with people I’ve never met:  Buechner.  Yancey.  Lamott.  (I think Donald Miller showed up at one point, even if he was late to the party).  Musically, I found that kinship in Nichole Nordeman.  It was like coming face to face with my own thoughts in another person (who could articulate them far better than I).  In spite of learning to make friends, in spite of having a great family who loved me, I have more often than not felt an underlying loneliness all of my life.  Hard to explain, but it didn’t matter a bit if I was surrounded by people or completely on my own.  I felt the loneliness of not belonging, of not fitting in.  I think it all started my junior year of college, but when I first began to read these particular words and hear these particular songs — for the first time, I was not alone.  These words were no substitutes for a face and a voice, but they were a beautiful glimpse.

I have since found a precious few people who are the face and the voice with the words, Dan being one of them, and I cannot help but walk away from each hour’s worth of conversation with my heart full of the joy that is being known and understood (and, perhaps, loved even so).  Yesterday’s conversation was just one more among many.

This past year I have been at turns cynical, bitter, angry, stand-offish, unreliable, and more than a little feisty, at least, as it relates to church world and church leaders.  Refusing to let me go, God had mercy and grace on me, and sent a friend who listened, consoled, asked questions, and listened some more, even when my answers were frustrated and ugly and not well packaged. 

God double-crossed me by sending me a pastor in friend’s clothing.  He sent all these qualities in the very type of person I’d learned not to trust: a ministry-type.  A pastor.  He sent me Jesus in bleach blonde hair and surfer clothes, someone who could frankly not give a rip about the title of Pastor — being much more concerned with that of Friend.  Exactly what I needed.   

I’ve never been more grateful.            

–grasshopper

good news

I’M ON A PLANE TO BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI IN APRIL!!!

www.CityTeam.org/katrina

I’m not dead yet… I feel happy…

I wanted to write and let you all know that I am, indeed, still alive. 

I was kidnapped by my job for the last several weeks, but I have been released back into the daylight, have sufficiently de-stressed thanks to my yoga class, and hope to be writing up a storm for the next several weeks.  So check back soon.

I also hope to update my photo.  My hair’s not brown anymore — I’ve been a blondie again for several weeks, and it’s a little odd seeing my evil twin up there in the corner.

Keep your fingers crossed for me — I hope to find out this week if I’ll be able to go down to Mississippi in April to work with people still homeless after Katrina.  This has really been on my heart and I’m asking God to open this door if He sees fit.

In other news, I haven’t stopped being amused by the Chuck Norris Fever sweeping the nation (or at least, the internet).  My newest favorite:

When the Boogey Man goes to bed, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

***

Dan — dear friend, pastor, mentor and all-around pain in the ass sometimes (he simply refuses to let my sorry self fall off the radar) — and I have been dialoguing at length about what we dream about when it comes to “church.”  What that community looks like, what it values, who it reaches out and embraces, how it embraces them, how it points people to Jesus.  We’re meeting for coffee tomorrow — email conversations just don’t cut it when you’re talking about these kinds of things. 

Normally after these kindred-spirit conversations, my heart and brain are full and I let go of my cynicism for a while and dream again, like I used to.  I am looking forward to it.  You might hear some ramblings about this over the next few weeks or so.

In general, I’ll do my best to slow down and knit some words together.  I sense that God is quietly at work in me even in this crazy season, and I don’t want to continue to let frenetic activity keep me from paying attention, or from being grateful. 

Busy or not, I only get once.  There have been sunsets I’ve missed too often; far too many whispers of grace I’ve been too distracted to hear.  Not good.  Luckily, I’m a huge wuss and my heart won’t let me go too long or too far without the alarms going off and reminding me that I’m not all that strong on my own.

No more.  God, I’m watching.  And listening.  And very, very hungry. 

two least likely questions

So we’re in meetings with my biggest client yesterday, going over results for the year, and looking at new strategies for the coming one. 

I am the most junior person in the room.  For the most part, I am happily taking notes and munching alternately on snickerdoodles and cheese n’ crackers.  I’ve been nervous all day leading up to the meeting, and am happy to finally put faces on some of the folks I’ve been working with for about five months.

Then, the president of the organization, a man I’ve never met before but one I like intuitively, asks this question: “What do you think of this whole Bill Gates / Bone-oh thing?  What’s happening there?”

One of the guys from my company at the table had a quick comment, but the president saw the interest sparking on my face.  He said, “I want to hear from you.  What’s this thing all about?”

All of a sudden, I have something to say.  I sound off about the One campaign, about its objectives, about the G8 summit last year, about how much of my generation genuinely cares about global poverty and disease, dashing many of the predictions that we’d be narcissistic and apathetic about world issues.  That I think the response goes deeper than it being the currently-en-vogue thing to do because Bono’s speaking up and Brad Pitt went to Africa.  The world is connected in a way it never was before.  We have access to information in ways we never did before… we see suffering with our own eyes.     

I talk about how much of the word for One spread through email, through friends telling friends, and how some of it was as simple as wearing a bracelet.  How people really will give to something they believe in, but only if they hear about it, only if you find a way to reach them on their turf.  For folks around my age, the web is most often our medium, and if a group can figure out a way to tap that, they’re golden. 

I spoke clearly, but could feel myself turning beet red at suddenly having to throw my own two cents out there.  There is something about a board room full of people older than you and much smarter than you that is quite intimidating.  All of a sudden the room felt like the temp was around 88 degrees.

His next question, I’m not kidding: “Do you blog?”  This discussion lasted about a half hour.

I never ever thought that my admiration/slight obsession with Bono and his work (in addition to his music) and my passion for blogging, of all things, would make me an expert voice in the room, even for a few minutes.

It was wicked fun.

On a wholly other note, I am really excited.  There is a potential opportunity for me to be able to travel with a group my client is sending down to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, one of the hardest-hit areas in the wake of Katrina (CityTeam has been serving there since right after the storm, and has remained there and in another hard-hit location this entire time, staying long after the Red Cross pulled up stakes and moved on.  Check out their site, the pics from down there are amazing).  Things are still awful down there, and there is still a huge need for relief work.  I’d go in April.  They’ll take me, I’d just have to figure out the whole time-off-work thing.  It just might happen, and the thought of being able to actually see these faces and the devastation around them, and actually being able to tangibly serve these people and minister to them… man.  It gets my heart beating pretty quick.  (You want to talk about bloggable experiences…)  Please pray with me that God will open this door.

Okay, off to another day of meetings.  It stormed here all night long and the wind blowing through the huge trees around my place kept me awake… hopefully I’ll be able to mask the yawns without being too terribly obvious.

PS!  I probably won’t have to work til 9 pm tonight!  Score!

Enjoy the day.