Let me clarify two things.
I don’t think we need to try to help everyone, because then nothing happens. We need to make the hard decision to help someone.

But at the same time, we can’t just give from our excess or the systemic issues won’t change. We need to sacrifice something for that cause. This is what I was trying to get at with the “drop in the bucket” comment. Not that we need to try to do everything but that we need to be committed to something.

Also

I don’t think we, in the West, need to feel guilty for what we have. That was never Jesus point as he taught and that is never a good motivation for anything but a reactive posture. Instead of feeling guilty we need see what we have been given and to feel that we can use that to be part of a better story- part of a real solution.

When we are guilty we give from our excess to appease that emotion. When we see ourselves as blessed for a purpose we can take bold steps to move towards using what we have to affect change.

Those of us engaged with mobilizing people have to move past the “orphanage” model where a few lucky individuals are plucked from poverty and dropped into a western model of, quote unquote, sustainability, because for all intents and purposes this will forever be a drop in the bucket (Hands at Work alone is hoping to reach 100 000 orphans by 2010 and the total number of orphans in Africa grows by some estimates at up to 2.1 million a year). While it’s always worthwhile to save one child- if we are really going to turn the tide there needs to be more effective large scale strategies. These need to be community based initiatives that don’t try to emulate western living standards but attempt to find “actually” sustainable, culturally sensitive, African approaches.

Anyway, after all that, the comment that stuck with me was one Mark Crocker made. Essentially he said we’ve focused so much energy and marketing muscle on the idea of making poverty history when the real challenge is to make affluence history.

To make poverty history from a western perspective would leave little for anyone but an empty husk of a planet. We have to help people to reimagine their role not as bringing people up to our standard of living but in carving away at the margin between the rich and poor from both sides- because the brutal, honest, ugly truth for those of us on the inequitable side of the global equation is that the scope of the problem will take more than generosity and sympathy (sharing the feelings of another) but sacrifice and compassion (sharing in the suffering of another).

1. New look for the blog. I thought I needed something fresh- something cleaner. Still working through getting it exactly how I want it but I’m happy with the new look. The white makes me feel light.

2. I went to the dentist this month for the first time in a decade. [personal note: I hate the dentist - professional note: This guy was very nice] Cleaning- not so bad, though I hate that gritty polish junk they use at the end. But then came the 7 silver fillings that needed replacing. Not sure why but I took his word for it. The bottom half of my head was frozen all day and I had to just keep nodding along with everything the secretary was having me sign on my way out because I couldn’t form a coherent word without my bottom jaw- that and the fear of drool gushing out on the counter. I think I may have signed away something important.

I have also been informed that I need no less than 4 wisdom teeth ripped from my head. Badly. [historical note: this is the very reason I stopped going to the dentist low those many years ago]

3. Looks like I will be heading off to Africa early next year to work with a home based care team in Zambia. Now I just have to get a passport and some [big] cash lined up.