What’s the difference between a day and a year?

If this week 40 people would give $25 each to New Futures Orphanage, instead of that same amount spread out over a year’s time, the children could buy chickens, fish, plants, and other sustainable food sources that would last over a long time, and wouldn’t have to eat the small increments of money coming in, while they’re waiting, so that they have no future. If 20 of us could give $50 this week, instead of spread out over a year, they could eat all year, instead of just on the weeks that someone gives.

Choose a child from the orphanage photo below, hold him or her in your mind, and picture what eating all year long might do for his mind, his health, and his opportunities. Now picture him wondering every day if there will be rice today. It’s easy to do the right thing: give directly, so 100% of the funds go to the orphanage, which is run by volunteers, take it as a tax deduction (they email you a receipt automatically), and you break even, but their lives are changed. Christ reward you according to you charity.

Christ is an orphan. “Who are my mother and my brothers?”

Christ became an orphan for our sakes, “Lord, Lord, why has Thou forsaken me?”

I’m asking for your help. Please.

I first got involved with direct giving to the poor because of the New Futures Orphanage. I was scouring the net, looking for just, real, and direct ways to impact the lives of the poor, with small funds. I came across a [ blog ] kept by an English teacher backpacking through Cambodia.

She’d come upon an orphanage there that needed volunteers to teach some English to the children. Teachers would come through, and some would stay a while and do this, and she was captivated and decided to stay for much longer. I was captivated too, and I looked, and they needed $900 in small gifts – that’s all they were asking for last year, and it was being given in small gifts ($25, $35, $45 at a time) through [ givemeaning.org ] a site that serves as the vehicle for giving directly to such small charities.

They finally met their fundraising goal, which was used to provide some basic things to the orphanage, like cinder block walls and a roof to enclose the toilet. I read the updates from Claire, who was giving her time there. She reported on how the children were doing, their improving skills, what this means for their future. I read what the children thought about their situation, and their hopes for their futures; each one is an individual. I knew I had to help.

The poor are Christ to us. They are the icon, the image. They are the means by which we are saved, by being filled with love. Apart from them, I know I at least cannot be saved. They are the ones of whom Christ said, “inasmuch as you have done with your riches to the least of these, who are my brothers, you have so done to me in my impoverishment”.

Recently, the landlord sold the orphanage and the children had to be taken to a facility that doesn’t have electricity. So they need to raise money to get 12volt battery-powered lighting installed and survive with the soaring food costs. The project has established a funding goal of $1000. I’m asking you to help me help them. Take the cost of a night out, or a new video game, or a month of cable TV, and give directly to them, for this need.

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Will you help? Please?

They are [ here ].

Direct Giving defined: Give in reality, not in theory. Give to people, not to ideas.

Today’s Laugh

The “Way too proud of Texas Guy”

You know, if Rumsfeld (of the “Salvadoran Option”) and Cheney and their crew don’t go to Hell, I might have a chance.

Real men BAKE quiche!

Never One World

Lately, Asher has been helping a friend with his book, doing lots of writing and blogging under various personas, spending a lot of time in the chapel, working in the new construct, strengthening or repairing some relationships, reading, and clarifying his thinking in a number of areas. He’s around, as always, in many places at once – not content to live in one world.

3 Kinds of Assholes

There are 3 kinds of assholes in the world. I, Asher, happen to be all 3 of them.

The word “asshole” is phrase we use of men. We do. The equivalent word for a woman is bitch. This is the prevalent usage. So what is meat of the word asshole, and why is it applied generally to men?

Cowardice

Have you ever had an argument and your opponent brings up your wife? “I wonder what you’re wife would say about that.” “I feel sorry for you wife for having to deal with you.” etc.

Only the lowest, basest coward would try to find a wedge between a man and his family in the course of an argument. Only a coward would, unable to strike effectively at the man, use his family as a weapon.

Rotating Headers

Rotating Header Graphics: I’ve put together a selection of 30 or so headers that will change each time you visit the AsherNet. The current one is my favorite – a shot of the Haunt – and will stay up for a little while until people get used to it.

Justice and Neutrality

Over the years, I realized, I’ve become what people would dub ‘politically neutral’. It’s not that I have no ideas; it’s that the ideas are on an entirely different ball field; I’m not playing on the presuppositions of the culture; I don’t accept the first premise of it’s debate, so I have no position on it’s opposing teams. Far from being a moderate or a true neutral, I hold ideas that threaten it’s very existence. But relative to its presuppositions, I’m neutral, because for me, within broad strokes, it’s morally arbitrary who is in power. I used to think one group or another was destroying America and the World. I’m still certain of that; it’s just that now I think that *all* the groups are doing it. Not because they’re groups, but because they’re what they are. This arena is one of competing evils. Nor do I find it a morally defensible framework to ‘choose between the lesser of evils’, as though supporting Mussolini is somehow acceptible because I didn’t support Hitler. These are the cowardly ‘moral stands’ of those who have admitted personal defeat but don’t have the courage to admit the true depth of the problem, because – unlike defeat – it would underscore rather than rob them of their responsibility. I cannot say, “I am not responsible, because I voted for Mussolini not Hitler.” I cannot divide life into categories and say, “I did the best I can do, because I supported Communist Guerillas over a Fascist Dictator (or vice versa). America’s hemispheric policies are so illustrative in these areas. No, I understand that either the next Mao or the next Amin or the next Pol Pot may take power, and they are all criminals against man and against the Kingdom of God, and I won’t help any of them take what they are pleased to call power which, if you have to take it, is not power but only violence, or if you must win it, it is not power but a trophy. Do I support anarchy? Only in the sense that I do not accept the false dilemma of the forms of leadership, government, and political debate currently offered, but consider them all perverse and false – illusory forms of politics – themselves therefore anarchistic. In this age, one has to be an anarchist just to have independent thought. But I’m not ready to don a black beret and retreat into coffee house intellectualism. On the contrary, I have no argument, unless I take responsibility. So currently I am with whoever is being killed by those who are doing the killing, whoever is being invaded, not those doing the invading, whoever is being forced into submission, by those doing the forcing. I am not their political ally, but I am with them in this one thing: I reject the claims of others to dominate them, for whatever reason. Even when it is said they must be brought to justice, I am with them in this: I do not recognize the justice to which they are brought as justice. Justice is what we will have when all of these governments are overturned by the one that bears the government upon his shoulders.