New Year

With hours to go before 2009, I wish to say that 2008 has been full of surprise and frustration. Surprise in the renewed strength of the American Progressive movement and frustration that so many could enthusiastically join it without the least clue about what it is about. So this year I resolve to educate myself about progressive causes and get better at implementing the changes that I need to be more progressive in my day to day life. I hope to bring others along with me but if I am alone I accept that each life that is more aware is a step forward. So teaspoon at the ready, I stand prepared for a new year and new surprises.

One extra thing- get tested as a bone marrow donor, give blood when you can and if possible become prepared to donate organs so that other teaspoons can be raised when they might have been lost. Each life has something to give if we are prepared to learn.

Passing of a Friend

I woke this morning to find that a friend has lost his long struggle with leukemia, and a condition called monosomy 7. His long struggle is documented at http://www.healemru.com/index-en.php and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9635600965.

I have no words except that being on the bone marrow donor list can save lives, I have lost two people to diseases that could be cured with a timely match and the only way for that to happen is to have as many as possible on the list. That means that regardless of your ethnicity, you need to be on the list, you need your family on the list and you need your friends on the list. You may never be needed, you may never match but if you do then you can save a life. There is nothing better than that.

Remembrance Day

We will remember.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— John McCrae (1872-1918)

New Year's Resolution

Evangelicals have annoyed me for a long time. Most Christians don't, I am a Christian and recognize my limitations on expounding about faith. Proselyting has always annoyed me, diminishing God has always annoyed me and finger wagging has always annoyed me. Evangelical Christianity, as represented on Sunday morning shows and other mediums, is about all three and it grates down my spine like a wire brush. I cannot imagine what makes it so popular except that in making God small and easy to digest it makes Him more accessible. I don't want an accessible God. I want one who can make a universe that expands beyond my imagination and that will live on long after I have gone to rest. I want my great grand children viewing sunsets with wonder and awe and hopefully on other planets. I like that God incarnated to understand His creation better and in so doing forgave us our weaknesses. I like that we are cleared of past sins and left to grow on our own, responsible for our own actions and able to repair the damage done by mistakes. I don't understand how, if we are cleared of past sins, organized Christianity doesn't make it clear that that includes Original sin and Sins of our Fathers. I cannot accept any faith that doesn't get that- that we are only responsible for the sins that we commit. Even though we weren't granted immediate access to Eden, we are no longer stopped from striving to attain it. We can achieve it, we can learn enough about our world to bring it back.
So as the New Year dawns, I offer this promise I will strive to take responsiblity of my actions, I will strive to make the world a little better than it was and I will live my faith and not wear it on my sleeve.