Everyday Boy

The Olympice Tent Village

Gathered around the fire on the evening of day one.

Olympic Tent Village Blog

Streams of Justice Olympic Tent Village Pictures - Day 1

2010 Poverty Olympics

I took part in the 2010 Poverty Olympics in Vancouver yesterday.  You can see more pictures by Streams of Justice and Blackbird (where you can see me take a spill in the hockey game).

Supporting The Red Tent Campaign

Red Tent is national campaign that invites the participation of all persons and organizations wishing to end homelessness in Canada.

Our goal is to persuade the federal government to enact a funded National Housing Strategy that will end homelessness and ensure secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing for all persons living in Canada.

Our strategy is to use red tents and like items as symbols on the streets and in the media to draw attention to Canada’s homelessness crisis, educate the public about the need for a funded national housing strategy and mobilize people across the country to pressure government to take action on homelessness.

You can help Red Tent succeed by sponsoring a tent, or by taking an action to end homelessness.

You can make a difference!

Read more about it in articles by The Tyee and CBC.

On The Ground In Haiti

This was passed on by the Hedge Society last week: These people are on the ground in Haiti - many of their buildings damaged or destroyed. Artists For Peace And Justice: watch the video.

Also your donations to The Humanitarian Coalition (a compassionate network of Canadian NGO's dedicated to a united response in cases of humanitarian crises) will be matched dollar for dollar by the Canadian government until February 12, 2010.

Poverty Olympics

 
Photo by Goh Iromoto

Mark your calendars:

You're invited to the 3rd Annual
2010 Poverty Olympics
Sunday, February 7th, 12:30 - 3:00pm

Province-wide Poverty Olympics Torch Relay:
At Vandu (380 East Hastings) at 12:30pm

Opening Cermonnies and Games:
At the Japanese Hall (487 Alexander) 1:00 - 3:00pm

I'm hoping to be part of this, along with Streams of Justice.

Ideas For The New Year

My friend Maija passed along a link to Seth Godin's free e-book, What Matters Now, a collection of "70 big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the New Year."  Here is one of those ideas, highlighting the project benefiting from the book's proceeds:

Education has a ripple effect.  One drop can initiate a cascade of possibility, each concentric circle gaining in size and traveling further.  If you get education right, you get many things right:  escape from poverty, better family health, and improved status of women.

Educate a girl, and you educate her children and generations to follow.

Yet for hundreds of millions of kids in the developing world, the ripple never begins.  Instead, there’s a seemingly inescapable whirlpool of poverty.  In the words of a headmaster I once met in Nepal:  “We are too poor to afford education.  But until we have education, we will always be poor.”

That’s why there are 300 million children in the developing world who woke up this morning and did not go to school.  And why there are over 750 million people unable to read and write, nearly 2/3 of whom are girls and women.  I dream of a world in which we’ve changed that.  A world with thousands of new schools.  Tens of thousands of new libraries.  Each with equal access for all children.  

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.

The second best time is now.

- John Wood is Founder & Executive Chairman, Room to Read, which has built over 850 schools and opened over 7,500 libraries serving 3 million children.  He is the author of Leaving Microsoft to Change the World.

Who's At The Center?

The most profound experience I have had this holiday? You would think it would eminate from a mountain-top experience, a deep conversation, or perhaps an insightful book or a film. But it happened very mundanely as I waited for a bus.

A young boy was waiting at the bus stop.  Pleasant enough, he struck up a conversation with me, really about nothing in particular, asking whether I knew when the next bus was coming.  I wasn't sure but I reassured him it would be coming soon.  As I observed him a bit more closely, I saw that he had a noticable limp, his right leg dragging slighty behind at an angle, which did not slow him down at all as he made a bee-line for the corner to check if the bus was coming down the street.  I wasn't sure what ailed him exactly.  He was a bit unkempt, as most kids his age I suppose are, but his clothes seemed a bit old, worn and dirty.  He seemed poor, but loved, and his face held that look of an old soul, somehow weathered by knowing too much.  I couldn't help but smile as he proudly told me that he was on his way to the video store to rent The Simpson's Movie, and to make sure that I ask the bus driver if he was going to the train platform so that I would make it safely to my destination.  In my minds eye he was the proverbial Tiny Tim.

This past year I have been challenged by a small group of folks at a social justice group called Streams of Justice, to not only look at and be more aware of justice issues, but to somehow educate others, act, and live more justly.  And one of the more challenging talks last year was about how children - a symbol of the most vulnerable in our society - should be at the center of our communities.  The poor, the elderly, the weakest and most vulnerable, should be the center of our lives, and from there a more just world begins.  The old adage that how a society treats it's most vulnerable is a picture of it's integrity.

I find this to be a difficult task at times.  The refocus, the shift, and the change that is needed in our vision, thinking and lifetsyles respectfully.  A change of center from ourselves or the illusions around us, to those broken, vulnerable and in need of healing.  I am reminded the poor are everywhere around us... not just the physically poor, but emotionally, socially, intellectually - in our families, neighbourhoods, circle of friends and beyond. And what are we are called to do?  There can be a sense of burden in serving one another rather than joy.  Perhaps because we try to take it on all by ourselves?  Perhaps because we think we hold all the power, answers and help?  Perhaps because we are too tired or apathetic or unwilling to be vulnerable ourselves?  The other side of the coin we sometimes miss are the gifts that the weakest and most vulnerable are holding out to us.  The importance of receiving from them, as much, if not more than what we give.  A joy that is perhaps easily missed.

So I wonder, how are we to reach out to one another, and build communites of love and care, centered around the poor, vulnerable and weak?

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intake, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

- C.S Lewis, The Four Loves

World Aids Day

I envision the year when every Canadian will see December 1, World AIDS Day, as a day when they work not for themselves but for the broader human family.  On that day, each Canadian will give up their income to help combat HIV infection around the globe.  Surely we can each give up one day a year for those who battle courageously each day of their lives to see their families survive and thrive. - Dr. Jane Philpott, founder of Give a Day.

I'm hoping to follow in the footsteps of my friend Karen who has been blogging about reading fifty-two books in a year, which works out to reading about a book a week.  I tend to jump from book to book, many times without finishing them, so I thought this would be a good way to ensure that I complete all the books that I start.

This week, with December 1st being World Aids Day, it seemed fitting to begin my reading adventures with Stephen Lewis's book Race Against Time, which encapsulates a series of lectures presented across Canada about the African Aids pandemic.  He covers five topics entitled context, pandemic, education, woman and solutions.  Incidentally, if you don't want to read the book, you can actually listen to these lectures through CBC radio podcasts free of charge.

Ulitmately, I would like to have a better grasp of what is happening in Africa around this pandemic.  It is an issue, like many daunting world issues, that seems so distant to my everyday life here in North America.  Although I have increasingly met more and more young clients at the shelter who are affected by AIDS, which helps bring it into clearer focus for me by putting a face and name to the struggle, I still wrestle with apathy around the cause, perhaps because of the sheer magnitude of the issue, but more precisely because the pain, suffering and stigma of the disease remains largely hidden from me.

So what can one do?  Much of what I've learned the past few years has begun wth listening.  Listen to those who are afflicted with the disease; listen to the family members, friends and front-line workers who engage on a day to day basis with AIDS patients; and listen to the heart of God which longs to beat with ours in care and compassion.

Two campaigns have caught my attention this past week.  One is locally driven and one is nationally driven, but both try to engage folks from across the country and from around the world to support The Stephen Lewis Foundation.

The former is (Red)emption, which Vancouver blogger Mike Todd began about a month ago.  It spun-off from Bono and Oprah's shopping campaign Product Red, which encourages consumers to buy products that give a percentage of their profits to help eliminate AIDS in Africa.  Mike is hoping to gather one thousand folks to forgo the artifice of having to buy something, specifically an Ipod, in order to help the cause and just donate the ten dollars straight up.  I like this because it is a small step in transcending our propensity to identify ourselves as consumers first.

The latter is Give A Day, which is more directly associated with The Stepehn Lewis Foundation, and challenges Canadians to donate a days worth of wages towards combating AIDS.

And so I wonder how much should I give?  Ten dollars?  One hundred dollars? One thousand dollars?  Does it matter whether we support Product Red, (Red)emption or Give A Day?  I am sure there are thousands of solid organizations that are helping combat AIDS in Africa.  That too seems daunting.  Where does one offer support?  And perhaps not just financially.  Hopefully, we are able to stop long enough to listen to the Stephen Lewis's of the world and do something.  The questions that have bubbled up for me seem to be: how can I grow in solidarity with those suffering with and because of AIDS, and what sacrifices have been placed before me to alleviate such suffering?

Second Sunday of Advent

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Abraham Lincoln, in his second inaugural, with John Wilkes Booth in the audience.

With the Oscars come and gone, the Reverend at Jazz Vespers is going through many of the Oscar nominees in a series of sermons this Lent.  Yesterday, he focused on the film Munich, and the patterns of violence we are apt to propagate in the world.  Like I wrote before, along with Crash, Munich was one of the movies nominated for best picture which I enjoyed most, even though I know it was too graphic for some.  (I'm glad there are still folks who are sensitive to such violence - I'd be worried if there weren't.)

I grew up playing with toy soldiers, taking out library books about tanks and warplanes, and listening to my father mimic the sound of a machine gun as he read me comics about all-American heroes - rat-tat-tat-tat-tat.  I would go on to delve into short novels about spies and elite Navy seal teams who would travel the world saving the world from terrorists, so I think there are still remnant pieces of those ideas in me where I relish espionage and firefights and things blowing up on screen.

Of course the excitement of those things have fallen away greatly in the reality of such violence claiming both innocent and not so innocent lives.  As a friend pointed out there is a sensationalism of violence in films, which I certainly recognize as dangerous to have, but for those with a capacity to see beyond that, I think the substance of violence in Munich slowly deteriorates as we see the main character struggle with who he has become.

My friend had another interesting question though: Can we teach the path of non-violence by showing violence?  Do as I say, not as I do?  The reality of peace seems so distant at times in this world of ours, but I am often reminded that peace comes in the everyday encounters and relationships we find ourselves in:

It seems as if the first step down the road to violence is taken when I dehumanize a person. That violence might stay within my thoughts or find its way into the outer world and become expressed verbally, psychologically, structurally or physically. As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death.

"Why are we here?" We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.

Tom Fox, from Sojourners

International Woman's Day

Karen has a great post commemorating International Woman's Day, which you can read at the Beyond blog or at Onehouse.  Listening to and reading the Writer's Almanac has become a daily little ritual, and they have an interesting historical bit in regards to Susan B. Anthony's relentless efforts in granting American woman the right vote.  It's sad hearing how long and slow the process was in woman gaining the right to vote; but inspiring to hear of the patience and perseverance involved in  making such a change come about.  Not every seed sees it's flower:

It was on this day in 1884 that Susan B. Anthony addressed the United States Congress, arguing for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote. She said, "We appear before you this morning ... to ask that you will, at your earliest convenience, report to the House in favor of the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Legislatures of the several states, that shall prohibit the disfranchisement of citizens of the United States on account of sex."

She had been petitioning Congress in writing for sixteen years, but this was the first time that she managed to persuade Congress to vote on the amendment. It failed.

But even though the constitutional amendment failed that year, it was only six years later, in 1890, that Wyoming became the first state to give women the right to vote. Colorado adopted women's suffrage in 1893. Fifteen states in all gave women the right to vote in the next thirty years.

Susan B. Anthony died in 1906. The amendment she asked for on this day in 1884 didn't become law until almost fifteen years after her death, on August 26, 1920.