Category Archives: Politics

7 Posts in 7 Days: End Human Trafficking

Posted on by

A few minutes ago, my friend Presley posted this picture of Rand Paul:

Rand Paul demonstrating his commitment to end human trafficking.

(And yes, I’m aware that some of your heads just exploded at me posting a picture of Rand Paul on my blog. It happens.)

I responded by posting this picture:

Me demonstrating my commitment to end human trafficking.

What do the two of us have in common?

The answer: we are both committed to ending slavery and human trafficking.

I first learned of the issue in college and was inspired when I saw Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission speak at Urbana 2000. I’ve raised money for them and used to be on their mailing list. (Now that things are more settled for us, I think I need to get back on it.) As I’ve read about various people’s experiences with the issue, I’ve discovered that there are many who were completely fired up by that talk 13 years ago. I think the thing that really hit home for a lot of us was that he talked about the number 20,000 (the number of students at the conference) and how it relates to the issue worldwide. It was captivating enough that I remember almost every detail of that talk despite fighting bronchitis at the time. (All of us came home from the conference with respiratory ailments of some nature.)

Anyway, I challenge all of you to learn more about the issue and to watch the video above.

Ways to Be Pro-Life

Posted on by

Today is the March for Life in Washington DC as well as smaller versions in cities all over the nation. Why today? It’s the anniversary of Roe v. Wade being decided.

If you’re reading this blog, you probably know that I’m pro-life. I do not, however, believe that the pro-choice side is completely evil and I have friends who have had abortions so I have no desire to rail against women who have them — for all I know, I could have easily had one in college if circumstances had been different. Instead of making my entry today all about abortion, I thought I’d list off ways that you can be pro-life… from conception to death.

[+] Donate to your local crisis pregnancy center. Seriously, many are woefully underfunded and can use all the help they can get.

[+] If you play an instrument, go give a concert at a retirement home. You will brighten their day.

[+] Work for comprehensive immigration reform so that people can immigrate legally and not be stuck in decades of waits and catch-22’s.

[+] Donate medical supplies to doctors who are going to perform medical missions abroad. If you’re a healthcare professional, consider taking part in one.

[+] Volunteer at your local soup kitchen or food bank.

[+] Advocate for orphans.

[+] Write an encouraging note to someone telling them how they impact your life positively.

[+] Tell a young mother how adorable her child is… even if you’re lying through your teeth. Believe me, WE NEED TO HEAR IT!!!

[+] Pray for someone who has wronged you.

This is not an exhaustive list by far but it’s a good start.

7 Quick Takes: Posts To Write, Prayer Requests, and A Favor

Posted on by

7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

No guarantees. Probably 7 years ago (maybe more?), I received a comment on my old Livejournal from a young Russian woman named Anna who runs a Christian website called Pravmir. (The English site is here.)I helped her edit a few English translations of articles for the site before I ended up with a job and ran out of time; but I’ve kept track of her on Livejournal. A few months ago, her husband died suddenly, leaving her widowed in her 30’s (I think she’s my age) with a little daughter named Natasha. She has been a beautiful example of faith in the midst of all of this and wrote a beautiful piece called “No Guarantees” today. You can find it (in Russian) here. If you open it in Chrome, the browser will translate it for you.

— 2 —

Posts to come: Birch Box. I registered for a Birch Box and received it on Tuesday. I’ll try a couple of the products out this weekend and let you know how it goes. 🙂

— 3 —

Forty to Forever. From my Facebook wall:

OK… I’m the social media person for the Forty to Forever fundraiser and we’re trying to raise money for families adopting kids internationally who have special needs. We need two things:

1.) We desperately need churches who are willing to sponsor families with prayer and also with funding to a degree. This doesn’t have to be costly and there is information on the website about what to do. If you ladies could talk to you church councils/pro-life groups/ missions people/women’s ministries/whoever, I’d greatly appreciate it. If you can’t find the answer to one of your questions, let me know and I’ll get the information for you. You can find most of what you need here.

2.) We need people who can commit to being prayer warriors and praying for us/the families/the kids one day a week during Lent. (We could also really use it right now.) It’s a fifteen minutes per week commitment and if it would help, I can send you prayers, a litany, or whatever you need in terms of help in how to pray. The page for sign-ups is here.

The website is http://www.fortytoforever.com/ and we’re also present on Facebook and Twitter.

Thanks!

— 4 —

Orphans. Do you see these two precious children?

L-R: Brett and Iris
BrettIris

Brett still needs a mama. Iris finally has a family committed to her and they are compiling their dossier to send to her country.

— 5 —

Wow. A couple weeks ago, I posted a prayer request for Elizabeth of Keep on Spinning. She’s been fighting breast cancer for the last 5 years and the cancer this time is back with a vengeance. She was supposed to get chemo on Tuesday but her white cell count had tanked and made her ineligible. Instead, she showed pictures of her son Danny (who is looking GOOD despite his own medical issues) and her husband Dixon shaving her head.

OK… seriously, it’s incredibly humbling to see a woman brave enough to show her head being shaved. I mean, this is probably totally normal for her now but still… I don’t know that I would have the courage to show mine being shaved if I was in her position. Keep praying for her because she’s got a “hard row to hoe”.

— 6 —

Posts to write (maybe): potty-training. This isn’t a for sure yet but I might be writing on potty-training Daniel. I haven’t decided because I don’t know if I want to let some things in my life be private and if that is really one of them yet. In the meantime, I’d love tips if y’all have any.

— 7 —

The shutdown. Attention Congress:

YOU. SUCK. BOTH PARTIES. (Note: I’m a blue dog Democrat and I am criticizing my own party. That’s how pissed I am.)

This was 16 days and billions of dollars flushed down the toilet that did not have to happen. There are people who had to borrow money to pay their rent and mortgage, feed their kids, and keep utilities on while Congress got paid and got to keep their gym memberships. To the Congresspersons who either gave up their paycheck or is donating it: you rock and I will gladly support y’all with fundraising if I happen to find your arguments convincing. To everyone else, let me reiterate that YOU. ALL. SUCK. I will make it my mission to get your butts out of office in 2014. Count on it.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.

7 Quick Takes: Dinner Fail, Malala on The Daily Show, and Cute Animals

Posted on by

7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Only in Montana… I found the following stories in the Great Falls Tribune today:

Canadian man ticketed for driving 154 mph in Montana. (Did he forget that our speed limits are in miles, not kilometers???)

Montana woman too drunk to get out of her car calls 911. (I shouldn’t laugh because drunk driving isn’t a joke. However, this one just boggles the mind.)

— 2 —

A worthy cause. Malala Yousafzai was on The Daily Show this week. She rendered John Stewart speechless. There is an organization started in her name to advocate and raise money for women to receive education around the world. Go check out the Malala Fund. She is also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and I’m hoping she wins. (She’s the youngest person ever nominated.)

— 3 —

Orphans. Do you see these two precious children?

L-R: Brett and Iris
BrettIris

Brett still needs a mama. Iris finally has a family committed to her and they are compiling their dossier to send to her country.

— 4 —

Prerequisite baseball take. I’m rooting for the Cardinals because the Giants didn’t make it to the post season. They knocked out the Pirates and will be facing Jon’s team (and mortal enemies of the Giants) the Dodgers. There will be lots of good-natured trash-talking over Twitter and Facebook during this series.

I also just saw that the Tigers beat Oakland. Things are as they should be. 😉 (Oakland is the OTHER Bay Area team and I’m still grumpy about the 1989 World Series.)

— 5 —

The zoo zoo zoo. I saw footage of the surgery that was done on the Sacramento Zoo’s tiger and the pictures don’t do justice to his size. He was sitting in the window of his enclosure and his paw was bigger than my hand! His son, CJ, is getting so big as well!

There’s also the red panda blog. We saw Kodari, the baby last month and he is adorbs!!!

— 6 —

Dinner fail. I got some of ciopinno from Trader Joe’s which I’m sure is lovely but it was too fishy for me. (It’s a seafood stew. Imagine that!) OK… onto the Gardenburgers in my freezer… which tasted weird. I finally gave up and nuked some Morningstar Farms stuff and added some baby carrots to it.

— 7 —

Research study. I got to talk to a researcher doing a project on PCOS on Friday. I wish I’d had better answers for her but it was nice to be part of a study and get to do something that might help out with eventually finding a cure for it someday.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.

What The Pope Said

Posted on by

I finally read the interview in America Magazine about Pope Francis that it seems the mainstream media is picking and choosing what they use for soundbytes. It’s a dense article but in such a way that it reminds me of a vegan brownie — I had to take my time to consume it and I had to break it down into small pieces because it was so incredibly rich.

So… this is the soundbyte that has people worked up.

??We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

To my non-Christian friends: The Church’s stance on homosexuality, abortion, and contraception is remaining the same — they’re all sins according to the Catechism of the Catholic church. What the Pope is saying is that having a laser focus on any one of these issues is detracting from peoples’ ability to spread the Gospel. In Mother Teresa’s words, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” He’s calling for all of the Christians to walk along people and love them. I know I’m willing to listen to someone who has cultivated a relationship with me instead of someone who posts a screed about how pro-choice people are murderers and baby killers.

Some more from the article:

??I see clearly,?? the pope continues, ??that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds…. And you have to start from the ground up.

??The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all. The confessor, for example, is always in danger of being either too much of a rigorist or too lax. Neither is merciful, because neither of them really takes responsibility for the person. The rigorist washes his hands so that he leaves it to the commandment. The loose minister washes his hands by simply saying, ??This is not a sin?? or something like that. In pastoral ministry we must accompany people, and we must heal their wounds.

To my Catholic friends: I appreciate that you are passionate about your faith and about issues of life, death, etc. I’d like to suggest that people tone down their pro-life rhetoric because it seems from blog reading that all people talk about is abortion — I haven’t seen any mention of the fact that there were cuts to food stamps which means that there are going to be kids going hungry that may not be eligible for WIC. (I’m not saying that people haven’t mentioned that, just that I haven’t seen it as of yet.) That situation is a pro-life issue. The Pope hasn’t addressed abortion specifically because he has chosen to preach by example. The most recent one: a phone call to a woman who was pregnant out of wedlock and her boyfriend wanted her to abort the baby. He told her that he would personally baptize her baby if no other priest would do it. That speaks volumes to me about how he values life.

I can tell you as a Protestant hanging with Catholics that I honestly find myself more likely to listen to someone who is living their faith in their life and letting me be part of it. I have so many wonderful people that do that: Kelly, Cari, Katie/Kayla, Sara, Thomas, and others. These are bloggers who walk beside me and deal with me being the incredibly broken person I am. They evangelize with their blogs but they don’t pretend to be perfect which is why I can listen to them.

My two cents.

7 Quick Takes: Jaguars, Prayer Requests, and Twitter Personalities

Posted on by

7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Colbert does it again. Stephen Colbert takes on allegations by FOX Noise that the Syria conflict is a sign that the apocalypse is coming. You know, I’d believe the verses they were citing… if they didn’t refer to the fall of Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

— 2 —

Orphans. Do you see these two lovely children?

L-R: Brett and Iris
BrettIris

Brett still needs a mama. Iris finally has a family committed to her and they are compiling their dossier to send to her country.

Click on their names to see their Reece’s Rainbow pages.

— 3 —

Prayer Request. One of the benefits of blogging is that you get to meet interesting people as well as people who you swear live inside your brain. Thomas in both of those categories. He has the strange habit of saying things to me that make total sense after I’ve been struggling with them and I think the two of us could probably solve the problems of the world if we could sit down for an extended period of time.

Right now, Thomas is dealing with some devastating news. His wife is pregnant with their twin boys and having complications at 21.5 weeks that might cause her to lose the babies. We’ve been asked to take part in a novena to St. Gerard on their behalf, ending on September 24th. If novenas aren’t your thing, please just pray HARD.

— 4 —

Another prayer request. Elizabeth of Keep On Spinning got some craptastic news: the cancer is back. She’s been fighting this for 5 years — since just after the birth of her son George. They’re doing a massive amount of testing but it’s looking like this is a fast-growing one. Prayer is needed.

— 5 —

Anonymous Twitter profiles. Christianity Today interviewed Rev. No Respect and Church Curmudgeon in a two-part interview. Part I is here. Part II is here. I recommend both parts.

— 6 —

Forty to Forever. Wanna help out some orphans? I’m part of the Forty to Forever fundraiser and we need prayer warriors. If you’re interested, here’s the sign-up page.

— 7 —

New jaguar. Nope. Not the car. The Sacramento Zoo is getting a new one and the old one is shipping out on Sunday. I might be persuaded to make a trip to the zoo this weekend to say good-bye. Once the new one comes, it will be mentored by the zoo’s female jaguar, Tina.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.

Musings on the Situation with Syria

Posted on by

**DISCLAIMER** I am a Blue Dog Democrat (albeit a thoughtful one) so telling me that I’m going to hell for voting for Obama or supporting him will get you put in my spam folder. You’re welcome to disagree with me in the comments but be polite.

I took part in the prayer and fasting on September 7th though my fast was from the Internet with the exception of email. The reasons for this were: I honestly could go all day without eating and not really think about it. My endocrinologist is also messing with my medications and I’d rather not be fasting while she uses me as her own personal science experiment. Giving up Internet was definitely something that caused me to think and ponder more than giving up food would have done.

Here are some musings that have come about as a result:

[+] I took a class called “The Making of the Modern Middle East” in college and it’s making me more determined than ever that we are completely screwed when it comes to the Middle East because it isn’t divided up in any rational fashion — it’s all about the oil. This means that ethnic groups and sects of Islam are not divided up by homelands but rather shoved together into nations that have no sense of unity. Syria is one of these places. Assad’s regime are Alawite Muslims which are an off-shoot of Shiite Muslims. The rebels are Sunni. Because of Assad’s regime being a minority (and being pretty repressive), other minorities enjoyed protection that they would likely not have otherwise.

[+] I want to vomit every time I see articles like this one because it means more deaths of Christians (already a persecuted group in the Middle East) and the destruction of parts of my religious heritage by people who have no freaking clue what they’re doing. It’s painful because I know that most Muslims in Syria are not going to hurt their Christian neighbors but the Al Qaeda freaks who have joined the rebels will. It also pains me because the image that many people in the United States will have is that all Muslims hate Christians which is totally inaccurate and a stereotype that I’ve been fighting for 12 years. I even had to call out a former co-worker over email today for forwarding an email denigrating people who buy the special Eid stamp from the postal service. I had other co-workers who called Muslims “rag heads” and I felt like stabbing my ears with screwdrivers. Islam is largely ethic and what it looks like highly depends on the group with which you are associating.

[+] I read this week about the members of the Black Democratic Caucus who are having a conflict of conscience over the Syria issue. On the one hand, they want to support Barack Obama. On the other hand, they’re morally against the military intervention. I was heartened to read about this because I needed the reminder that there are people in Congress who are actually voting on legislation based on their moral beliefs and not to be partisan in any form. I also had uncharitable thoughts about whether Republicans would support this if it was Mitt Romney as president suggesting it. It brought to mind Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress and the representative for Montana. She was one of 50 to vote against entering World War I and the only House member to vote against entering World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Her comment: “As a woman, I can’t go to war and I refuse to send anyone else.” Do we have people like that in Congress today?

[+] I was talking to my mom about this yesterday and she made an interesting comment that goes back to my first musing: “In the Middle East, there is no good side to be on.” If we arm the rebels, we’re creating another Taliban and Afghanistan. Bombing Syria to punish Assad for the chemical warfare attacks would just kill more innocent people who would be “collateral damage”, a term that I find repulsive. The correct answer diplomatically is pretty much working with other countries in the region to help but very few countries are willing to do so because it is such a volatile situation. There is no good answer, save working with the UN to do something but I don’t know how long we can tarry on that level.

In short, this is a situation where we really need to pray for peace and for our leaders to act judiciously and wisely. This means that all of us (including people who despise Barack Obama and want him out of office) need to pray for wisdom for him and for our lawmakers as they figure what to do (if anything).