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.

---

Will you help? Please?

They are [ here ].

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

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.

Where there’s doubt, there is no doubt

A general rule: where’s there doubt, there is no doubt: More Ambiguity About Torture

A Lack of Imagination

U.S. Says It Fears Detainee Abuse in Repatriation

It’s interesting:  the US depends on, counts on the threat of what will happen to prisoners returned to their home countries. In fact, it’s had a practice of detaining people there and letting local government torture them, outside the confines of US law. You see how they make the short jump to the lightbulb of using that as justification for their detainees? It’s a lack of imagination which still fools one half of the public, and gives justification to the other half.

So Dies Liberty

School Suspends Burka-Clad Students

From Narnia to Nausea

Academics are appalled, says the BBC. Of course its appalling. It’s appalling because its tawdry and lame. It’s not as though anyone is stopping great writers from writing novels set in Narnia. Lewis encouraged others to try it. This is a publishing house deciding to have people write in Narnia – to make Narnia into a Dragonlance venue – to Harlequinize it. It will be the mass-produced Narnia of low-paid no-name denizens of a writing factory.

Safe Society

One way it’s been put is “If it were bad for us, the FDA wouldn’t have allowed it on the market.” Another way is “I TRUST our government.” And a third way is “I don’t believe people are evil enough to…”

Idiot Test

Do you get your “information” primarily from “the news”?

Do you believe the mainstream corporate news media is at worst only “a little” biased and that you can sort through that and get the real information?

Do you believe that you will be kept informed of any truly important events that you need to know about?

Do you believe that everything really important about history and politics was covered by your instructors in school, even if you weren’t listening?