Working at a public school is very difficult for me right now. I just found out that our philosphy class is teaching that ethics and morals codes definitely DO NOT come from the Triune God or any god for that matter. INstead they are the result of human thinking and teaching.
I don't have a problem with teaching different angles, different sides of a story, but to teach one way as wrong is inappropriate and annoying.
What do you think...?
11.30.2006
11.27.2006
the pursuit
I'm doing my yearly read of AW Tozers "the Pursuit of God" and am once again captured by the simplicity and compassion in which Tozer lays out my God. I'm convinced to read this book every autumn season as I think about my goals and commitments for the next year. It is a great kickoff.
On one of the first pages of the book, Tozer states "The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world: we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His word." I can't help but to stop and think for a moment about this short comment.
I was in Cancun last week swimming with dolphins - seriously - and came out of the ocean to see this poster of the dolphin. It explained that dolphins have evolved from an acient wolf like creature (very furry and fierce looking) which no longer wanted to live on land so developed into the dolphin we know today (graceful and smooth under water.) I thought to myself, "How could this possibly be...?", and thought that this is being taught in our schools. God is lost in His own creation.
And then, I think about my Christian experience and realize I too am lost almost always. I am lost in my own world as I see God, rather than being found in the wonderful world He has made and set before us. It is possible to be in pursuit of Him and I want to be so bad.
On one of the first pages of the book, Tozer states "The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world: we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His word." I can't help but to stop and think for a moment about this short comment.
I was in Cancun last week swimming with dolphins - seriously - and came out of the ocean to see this poster of the dolphin. It explained that dolphins have evolved from an acient wolf like creature (very furry and fierce looking) which no longer wanted to live on land so developed into the dolphin we know today (graceful and smooth under water.) I thought to myself, "How could this possibly be...?", and thought that this is being taught in our schools. God is lost in His own creation.
And then, I think about my Christian experience and realize I too am lost almost always. I am lost in my own world as I see God, rather than being found in the wonderful world He has made and set before us. It is possible to be in pursuit of Him and I want to be so bad.
11.17.2006
Jayla's Thoughts
Check out Jayla's blog, Pura Vida, for some more thoughts on precious Leo.
I can't believe it's been almost a week already since we had to put him down. It continues to be hard at times - times when I just want to go snuggle him and be with him and walk with him.
I used to sit down with my legs spread wide open on the floor and Leo would come over and nestle in with his back against my legs. As I stroked his neck or scratched behind his ears, he would groan and purr. It was sweet and I miss it.
I can't believe it's been almost a week already since we had to put him down. It continues to be hard at times - times when I just want to go snuggle him and be with him and walk with him.
I used to sit down with my legs spread wide open on the floor and Leo would come over and nestle in with his back against my legs. As I stroked his neck or scratched behind his ears, he would groan and purr. It was sweet and I miss it.
11.14.2006
Remembering Leo
This morning started out like many mornings in our house. I took care of the normal morning routine - you know - brush teeth, shower, put on clothes, read, study, write, change Asher, etc... Then as I took Asher down stairs, bopping down so he would laugh as usual, a sadness came upon me.
Like usual, Asher was yelling "Eeo, Eeo" (his form of Leo). At the last stair I put him down and he ran for the corner where Leo used to lay, just around the wall from the kitchen. As Asher got to the corner he stopped, mystified by the emptiness that was before him. I thought for a moment he would cry. Instead, he went off to play with his toys as any normal 20 month old boy would do. I guess he's too young to know what has happened.
I shed a quick tear and move on to getting breakfast started, when again, I hear "Eeo, Eeo, Eeo" and turn around to see Asher pointing at Leo's photo album. It was so sweet. Jayla and I went into the family room and talked with Asher about Leo and how he is now gone. Of course, Asher just wanted to play. I guess he's just too young.
Me though. I'm not too young. I miss Leo. I miss going downstairs and hearing his rock hard tail thumping off the wall as he eagerly awaits his breakfast. I miss his beautiful eyes looking up at me waiting for some morning love. I miss his huge snout and his big feet and his amazing curly coat. He is gone physically, but Jayla and I still feel him in a very real way. Sweet boy.
Like usual, Asher was yelling "Eeo, Eeo" (his form of Leo). At the last stair I put him down and he ran for the corner where Leo used to lay, just around the wall from the kitchen. As Asher got to the corner he stopped, mystified by the emptiness that was before him. I thought for a moment he would cry. Instead, he went off to play with his toys as any normal 20 month old boy would do. I guess he's too young to know what has happened.
I shed a quick tear and move on to getting breakfast started, when again, I hear "Eeo, Eeo, Eeo" and turn around to see Asher pointing at Leo's photo album. It was so sweet. Jayla and I went into the family room and talked with Asher about Leo and how he is now gone. Of course, Asher just wanted to play. I guess he's just too young.
Me though. I'm not too young. I miss Leo. I miss going downstairs and hearing his rock hard tail thumping off the wall as he eagerly awaits his breakfast. I miss his beautiful eyes looking up at me waiting for some morning love. I miss his huge snout and his big feet and his amazing curly coat. He is gone physically, but Jayla and I still feel him in a very real way. Sweet boy.
11.11.2006
A Faithful Friend Departed
Today, November 11, 2006 at 3:11pm, Jayla and I lost a faithful and beautiful member of our immediate family.
It has been an incredibly emotional and challenging day for us as Jayla and I knew what lay before us even before the day began. After breakfast we loaded Asher and Leo into the car and headed to the mountains just outside of Red Rocks Ampitheater in Morrison, CO. It was important to us to get Leo out for some fresh air and some moutain views before the afternoon.
I put the towel under Leo's belly as has been normal for us the past few weeks, because Leo was unable to walk on his own. I led him to a patch of grass from which we could see Red Rocks and the city of Denver in the horizon. It was as nice as spot as any. Leo chewed a rawhide we had given him and Asher ran around falling on Prickly Pear Cactus and enjoying the weather. Jayla and I focused soley on the dog. We sobbed as we looked through a photo album of Leo - pictures of him as a puppy, pictures of him frolicking in the snow, pictures of him loving life.
In just a few hours we would be heading to Alameda East Vet Hospital to put Leo to sleep. We made the final decision to put him down last Thursday as Leo's condition has steadily worsened over the past few weeks to the point he can't hold himself up while urinating. It was too much to bear for both us and him. And, yet, the picture above was just taken today at about 2pm. Look at him. He looks wonderful. Just thinking about putting him down has caused much pain and anguish for us for several weeks.
When we returned from the moutains, we mixed up some cement and made footprint impressions of Leo's front paws and cooked him a juicy NY strip steak. As per the usual, Leo didn't even chew the steak - he just inhaled it - it was fitting. We would have it no other way.
We sat with him for seemed like an eternity and then cautiously headed toward the car again for our trip to the vet. It was one of the strangest times in my life. To be driving down the road knowing what we were about to do was nothing less than surreal.
We arrived at the vet and I arranged to have a stretcher brought out to help Leo in. They immediately rolled him to the back as Jayla and I headed to the "comfort room". We cried as he was taken behind closed doors. The look on his face vividly reminded us of Dulles Airport on our way to Amsterdam. He had the same exact look when the airline workers rolled him behind closed doors to load him onto the plane. It was a look of wonder - wondering whether he would see us again. We did.
And we would see him again this time as well. We arranged his bed on the ground and slowly lowered him down to the floor. He was happy to be with us, content in the knowledge that we were there with him. Tears flowed from our eyes as we talked about all he has meant to us and the all the wonderful memories we have of him and with him. Memories like:
- hiking in Grand Gulch
- the trip to Amsterdam
- the way he would look for us when snowshoeing
- his huge feet (and his huge nostrils)
- his amber eyes and his wavy brown hair
- running with him on rainy days
- snuggling him during hard times
- him licking out of an ice cream bowl with Sam
- and many, many more
The doctor would enter about 20 minutes later and slowly inject him with a durg making him "fall asleep." That's just what he did. Slowly, he laid his big head on my right shoe as Jayla and I carressed his beautiful coat of curly dead grass fur. He breathed his last at about 3:11pm. It was one of the hardest moments of my life.
And at the same time, we feel so tremendously blessed to have experienced so much with Leo. We look upon his years with incredible fondness and will never forget him - never.
It has been an incredibly emotional and challenging day for us as Jayla and I knew what lay before us even before the day began. After breakfast we loaded Asher and Leo into the car and headed to the mountains just outside of Red Rocks Ampitheater in Morrison, CO. It was important to us to get Leo out for some fresh air and some moutain views before the afternoon.
I put the towel under Leo's belly as has been normal for us the past few weeks, because Leo was unable to walk on his own. I led him to a patch of grass from which we could see Red Rocks and the city of Denver in the horizon. It was as nice as spot as any. Leo chewed a rawhide we had given him and Asher ran around falling on Prickly Pear Cactus and enjoying the weather. Jayla and I focused soley on the dog. We sobbed as we looked through a photo album of Leo - pictures of him as a puppy, pictures of him frolicking in the snow, pictures of him loving life.
In just a few hours we would be heading to Alameda East Vet Hospital to put Leo to sleep. We made the final decision to put him down last Thursday as Leo's condition has steadily worsened over the past few weeks to the point he can't hold himself up while urinating. It was too much to bear for both us and him. And, yet, the picture above was just taken today at about 2pm. Look at him. He looks wonderful. Just thinking about putting him down has caused much pain and anguish for us for several weeks.
When we returned from the moutains, we mixed up some cement and made footprint impressions of Leo's front paws and cooked him a juicy NY strip steak. As per the usual, Leo didn't even chew the steak - he just inhaled it - it was fitting. We would have it no other way.
We sat with him for seemed like an eternity and then cautiously headed toward the car again for our trip to the vet. It was one of the strangest times in my life. To be driving down the road knowing what we were about to do was nothing less than surreal.
We arrived at the vet and I arranged to have a stretcher brought out to help Leo in. They immediately rolled him to the back as Jayla and I headed to the "comfort room". We cried as he was taken behind closed doors. The look on his face vividly reminded us of Dulles Airport on our way to Amsterdam. He had the same exact look when the airline workers rolled him behind closed doors to load him onto the plane. It was a look of wonder - wondering whether he would see us again. We did.
And we would see him again this time as well. We arranged his bed on the ground and slowly lowered him down to the floor. He was happy to be with us, content in the knowledge that we were there with him. Tears flowed from our eyes as we talked about all he has meant to us and the all the wonderful memories we have of him and with him. Memories like:
- hiking in Grand Gulch
- the trip to Amsterdam
- the way he would look for us when snowshoeing
- his huge feet (and his huge nostrils)
- his amber eyes and his wavy brown hair
- running with him on rainy days
- snuggling him during hard times
- him licking out of an ice cream bowl with Sam
- and many, many more
The doctor would enter about 20 minutes later and slowly inject him with a durg making him "fall asleep." That's just what he did. Slowly, he laid his big head on my right shoe as Jayla and I carressed his beautiful coat of curly dead grass fur. He breathed his last at about 3:11pm. It was one of the hardest moments of my life.
And at the same time, we feel so tremendously blessed to have experienced so much with Leo. We look upon his years with incredible fondness and will never forget him - never.
11.09.2006
confessions of an economic hitman
So, I'm reading this book right now, called CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HITMAN, by John Perkins. You can find lots more information about it here. And here is a piece of the prologue:
Quito, Ecuador’s capital, stretches across a volcanic valley high in the Andes, at an altitude of nine thousand feet. Residents of this city, which was founded long before Columbus arrived in the Americas, are accustomed to seeing snow on the surrounding peaks, despite the fact that they live just a few miles south of the equator. The city of Shell, a frontier outpost and military base hacked out of Ecuador’s Amazon jungle to service the oil company whose name it bears, is nearly eight thousand feet lower than Quito. A steaming city, it is inhabited mostly by soldiers, oil workers, and the indigenous people from the Shuar and Kichwa tribes who work for them as prostitutes and laborers.
To journey from one city to the other, you must travel a road that is both tortuous and breathtaking. Local people will tell you that during the trip you experience all four seasons in a single day. Although I have driven this road many times, I never tire of the spectacular scenery. Sheer cliffs, punctuated by cascading waterfalls and brilliant bromeliads, rise up one side. On the other side, the earth drops abruptly into a deep abyss where the Pastaza River, a headwater of the Amazon, snakes its way down the Andes. The Pastaza carries water from the glaciers of Cotopaxi, one of the world’s highest active volcanoes and a deity in the time of the Incas, to the Atlantic Ocean over three thousand miles away.
In 2003, I departed Quito in a Subaru Outback and headed for Shell on a mission that was like no other I had ever accepted. I was hoping to end a war I had helped create. As is the case with so many things we EHMs must take responsibility for, it is a war that is virtually unknown anywhere outside the country where it is fought. I was on my way to meet with the Shuars, the Kichwas, and their neighbors the Achuars, the Zaparos, and the Shiwiars—tribes determined to prevent our oil companies from destroying their homes, families, and lands, even if it means they must die in the process. For them, this is a war about the survival of their children and cultures, while for us it is about power, money, and natural resources. It is one part of the struggle for world domination and the dream of a few greedy men, global empire.
That is what we EHMs do best: we build a global empire. We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure —electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or San Francisco.
Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money—and another country is added to our global empire.
Thanks to JR for his picture at the top.
Quito, Ecuador’s capital, stretches across a volcanic valley high in the Andes, at an altitude of nine thousand feet. Residents of this city, which was founded long before Columbus arrived in the Americas, are accustomed to seeing snow on the surrounding peaks, despite the fact that they live just a few miles south of the equator. The city of Shell, a frontier outpost and military base hacked out of Ecuador’s Amazon jungle to service the oil company whose name it bears, is nearly eight thousand feet lower than Quito. A steaming city, it is inhabited mostly by soldiers, oil workers, and the indigenous people from the Shuar and Kichwa tribes who work for them as prostitutes and laborers.
To journey from one city to the other, you must travel a road that is both tortuous and breathtaking. Local people will tell you that during the trip you experience all four seasons in a single day. Although I have driven this road many times, I never tire of the spectacular scenery. Sheer cliffs, punctuated by cascading waterfalls and brilliant bromeliads, rise up one side. On the other side, the earth drops abruptly into a deep abyss where the Pastaza River, a headwater of the Amazon, snakes its way down the Andes. The Pastaza carries water from the glaciers of Cotopaxi, one of the world’s highest active volcanoes and a deity in the time of the Incas, to the Atlantic Ocean over three thousand miles away.
In 2003, I departed Quito in a Subaru Outback and headed for Shell on a mission that was like no other I had ever accepted. I was hoping to end a war I had helped create. As is the case with so many things we EHMs must take responsibility for, it is a war that is virtually unknown anywhere outside the country where it is fought. I was on my way to meet with the Shuars, the Kichwas, and their neighbors the Achuars, the Zaparos, and the Shiwiars—tribes determined to prevent our oil companies from destroying their homes, families, and lands, even if it means they must die in the process. For them, this is a war about the survival of their children and cultures, while for us it is about power, money, and natural resources. It is one part of the struggle for world domination and the dream of a few greedy men, global empire.
That is what we EHMs do best: we build a global empire. We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure —electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or San Francisco.
Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money—and another country is added to our global empire.
Thanks to JR for his picture at the top.
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