Mercury Hazards from Gold Mining to Humans, Plants, and Animals

Experimenting is fun.

The first conscious social experiment I remember trying out was in Gr. 8, when I decided to give up on trying to be cool and just hang out with the totally uncool kids - the people who accepted me as I was. That was the best social decision I ever made in my life. I was miserable prior to that decision and incandescently happy for the rest of the school year after I made the switch. It changed the way I would try to make friends forever. It also saved me from being an empty shell of a person for who knows how long. God (the source of the idea) was good.

The next experiment was about Gr. 11, when a friend and I wondered what would happen if we said "hello (insert name here)" to everyone we passed by at school that we knew the name of - the popular kids, the random kids, the kids in our class... everyone. I think the goal there was to attempt to get over our shyness. I think the experiment lasted about a week, because actually carrying out something like that was embarassing. Its safe to say that we failed royally. Oh well. I still like that idea though. After all, who doesn't like to be acknowledged?

This year I tried veganism... and lasted from September until Christmas. I just could not stand the temptation of being home and surrounded by loads and loads of chocolate. So I gave in and have been an "easy going" vegetarian ever since. What I mean by that is that now, if its far more convenient to eat meat, like at someone else's house for dinner, than I'll just suck it up and eat it.

I like this way of life because its more environmentally friendly, not to mention cheaper. I'm also far more aware of what I put in my body and what nutrients I need daily and weekly than I was before because of my vegan/vegetarian experiment. Also, as prideful as it sounds (and is), it helps me identify myself as a socially and environmentally conscious person, and so through the practice of abstaining from meat I am more conscious of how my actions as a consumer and global citizen affect the world around me.

Experimenting is fun. On this inside cover of this season's Geez, it says,

"What if we approached our troubled world less like earnest, hang-wringing, stern-talking, manifesto-brandishing world-changers...

...and more like slighly mad scientists?"

I love it. And it really convicted me. There are plenty of times I've talked with no action at all, plenty of things I support in theory but not in practice, and that's just silly.

Experimenting is fun.

Community Building Books!

One of my good friends and I are making tentative plans to start an intentional community house starting September 2010! We're incredibly excited, and are going to start reading as many Christian books on community as we can this summer. She backpacked through Europe this Summer and Fall and something she became a part of was 24/7 - a movement in Britian involving a community that has prayer going on 24/7 (if I understand properly). She is friends with the leader, who wrote the book Punk Monk : New Monasticism And The Ancient Art Of: New Monasticism and the Ancient Art of Breathing. For the past decade, his life has been all about community, so she asked him what books he would recommend for us. I thought some of you might be interested! Here is what he said:


Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (Touchstone 1948). Bonhoeffer’s call to new monastic communities has echoed through the whole of this book.

Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water (Harper 2001). Foster explores the five great traditions of the Christian taking biblical, ancient and recent case studies of people who expressed them.

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in 10,000 Places (Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2005). Peterson’s ‘conversation in spiritual theology’ has become one of the central books on our Transit training year and in particular helped us think about ‘incarnational’ communities.

Abbot Christopher Jamison, Finding Sanctuary (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2006). Written by the Abbot of Worth Abbey - featured in the TV show The Monastery – this is a helpful, readable and practical journey through monasticism and the rule of St.Benedict.

Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (Darton, Longman and Todd 1976). Written by the founder of the L’Arche community, this book is the one I regularly go back to in looking to learn and live out simple community. His chapters about meals and hospitality are especially helpful.

BAH! I'm SO excited! :D

Christian Hipsters

Are You A Christian Hipster?

Definitely worth looking at.

I am most definitely a Christian Hipster - though I'm sketched out by Benny Hinn.

Taken from Stuff White People Like

Thought for the Day

"...world-changing people are pretty unbalanced people, not like our middle-class placid existence. World changing people are like Ghandi and Tosltoy. No one would call them balanced. Even a Paul Brand; I’m sure his service to his patients [who often had leprosy] took a toll on his family." - Philip Yancey

Love is In the Air

E-mail I just sent to my Mom:

Hi Mom,
So, I know this might seem kind of sudden for you but I didn't want to say anything unless something was going to happen for sure. But... I have a boyfriend! Officially! His name is Dave. I met him at community dinner. Here is a picture of him for you! :) I love you!

Community

What is this thing, community?

I feel like a community would be a place of really being known and accepted for the person that you are - regardless of how different all the members of that community may be. So... shouldn't our primary responsibility be to our families - the original communities God placed us in?

I've been struggling with this a lot lately.

I've been feeling guilty because this summer I do not want to live at home. I feel like I am way too much of a black sheep there and I truly feel like my presence in that house makes every family member unhappy. Personally, by the end of last summer I was nearly suicidal with grief over how little I fit in anymore.

I may move into an intentional community here in Guelph for the summer. It just feels as though I'm taking the easy way out, scrapping one intentional community, the one I was born into, for another one - a more vegetarian-friendly, earth-friendly, Shane-Claiborne-fan-friendly one.

My Mom cried when I told her I wasn't going home this summer. She's taking it personally and feels like I think she's an awful mother. I think she must have forgotten how awful things really were when I was around.

I just... don't know what to do.