Sarx » charity

Food Raffle Deluxe

Huw — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:27:50 +0000

F, LIKE Me, you enjoy good food and good wine and sundry other good things – and would like to put that enjoyment to good use – may I suggest the Menu For Hope programme over at Chez Pim.

Full information is here: Menu for Hope and the World Food Program

And the listing of the most amazing prizes ever is here.

Tickets are granted by a ten dollar donation to the cause, helping the UN’s World Food Programme.

Go for it!

Economics

Huw — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:18:09 +0000

EAR WASHINGTON, I’m not very big on competition as a way of life. Capitalism, unrestrained, seems to me as an economic system of little guys feeding themselves to bigger guys. Socialism, on the other hand, while it seems to be the grass-roots economy preferred by the Gospel, is a failure on the level of the large governments that humans have constructed for themselves.

So, someplace between the two…

Please don’t give the public fund to businesses. Cars, banks, insurance… this is silly. Rather than Gov’t-run, socialised banking or federally-mandated wages for car makers, I’d rather have federally-funded medical insurance and other social services. Then let the economy collapse and let us build it up again.

Mind you, I’m not saying you must give the public fund to anyone at all.

But it strikes me that if we’re not worried about the basic needs of life – health, food, etc – we can set about competing to build the best businesses possible. Yes, there are some who would be lazy in such a situation. To that end I propose a ten-year plan by which this welfare should decrease, nationally, until there is just enough for the recipient to have rice and beans and a trip to the clinic. Some might live on that indefinitely. But I’d prefer the freedom to buy some grass-fed beef every now and then. And I’d prefer to have the freedom to build the business that would empower me to do so.

Stop trying to liberate the wallets of the rich: trickle down, supply side, Voodoo Economics has never, ever, worked. The rich, predictably, don’t want to carry the poor clinging too their coat tails. Rather, give the poor a road to walk on and we will move forward on our own feet – the rich may follow if they will.

Giving to Charity

Huw — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:54:15 +0000

OW SHOULD We progressive folks deal with the conservative begging folks this Christmas? You know, the bell-ringing Salvation Army Santas and Brass Bands out there… Throwing a dollar or a fiver in their bucket can or even might get around to helping the poor. But it will also be used to support the Salvation Army’s other goals like denying gays equal access to be benefits of Marriage in California.

I think it’s important to give to charity – but the right ones. I think it’s important – important, in fact, to your soul – to help the poor in the Kingdom of God. But it is equally important – to your soul – not to oppress others. If you’re willing to shop local and eat vegan and use green electricity and vote progressively, why should you donate to charities laden with retrogressive moralities?

What do do?

Here’s a suggestion:

Step 1) Make a donation to something that actually is progressive – locally or internationally. Examples are:

Step 2) For every dollar you give, print yourself up a note such as the following:

(Feel free to use mine!)

Step 3) Throw one of those in the bucket every time you pass a brass band playing O Christmas Tree.

Just to be clear: not giving is not an option. Getting all uppity and judgemental about “those people” when you should be giving anyway is bad.

Give. Just give justly.

Husker Du?

Huw — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:03:56 +0000

AISE YOUR hands if you remember or know how to bake bread: not fancy, organic, stuff either, but solid, I-want-a-sandwich kind of bread.
Raise your hands if you remember or know how to make a chocolate cake for your family with next-to-nothing in the kitchen.
Raise your hands if you remember or know how to use potatoes to make a dish stretch, or what to do with chicken carcasses or how to turn one can of Spam into several different kinds of meals.
Raise your hands if you know how to make any of the following from scratch – no pre-mixed boxes allowed: pancakes, corn bread, chilli, vegetable soup, chicken soup, pasta, cookies, ice cream, acorn flour, chestnut flour, tamales, papussas.
Raise your hands if you’re willing to go without meat 6 days a week so you can afford it on your religion’s holy days.
Raise your hands if you still think you’re too good to make clothes, darn socks, use flat sheets when they tear, hem pants so the next-youngest child can use them, or use old underwear to clean your dishes.
Raise your hands if you remember or know how to make clothes, darn socks, use flat sheets when they tear, hem pants so the next-youngest child can use them, or use old underwear to clean your dishes.
Raise your hands if you think you can manage not throwing away that thing that just broke because it’s going to cost too much to toss it and replace it – and you might be able to earn a few cents by knowing how to repair it when your neighbour’s breaks.
Raise your hands if that includes the car.
Raise your hands if you think “walking though knee-deep snow” is about something other than saving money.
Raise your hands if you remember to turn off your burner to let the food in the pot continue cooking without added heat.
Raise your hands if you think hunger and the threat of homelessness is something that happens to other people.
Raise your hands if you’ve ever had to say “No!” – over and over – to your children’s request for a second helping.
Raise your hands if you think “Our Gang” and “The Waltons” were interesting TV shows and not how-to manuals.
Raise your hands if you think it can be “normal” again.
Raise your hands if you thought the last 15 or 20 years *were* normal and you still think that now.

Raise your hands if you imagine the way out of this is “every greedy bastard for himself.”

Dorothy Day Does Orthodoxy

Huw — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:35:34 +0000

IA The OrthodoxJobs listing, we find this:

Lived Theology School

The name alone is worth the price of admission.

The internships are open to Orthodox Christians (male or female) over the age of 18. The internships are for one calendar year commencing September 2008. Interns will be expected to commit themselves to full participation in each and all of 4 aspects of the Lived Theology School as given below. The practical work (diakonia) of the interns will be carried out at the St John the Compassionate Mission in Toronto. The liturgical life of the intern will be at both the Mission and the St Silouan of Athos Mission parish attached to the Mission. The study programs will be conducted at the Mission and elsewhere. The interns will live in their own community house.

A click-though brings us to some of the most wonderful pictures of Orthopraxis I’ve seen in a while. The letter of invitation from the School is… wow.

Granting, for a moment, the claim that doctrine is important, one must admit that Jesus spent a lot of time talking about what we would call “social justice” issues and – again, granting the argument – if nothing else, doctrine was as important as justice.

Every once in a while I hear of something – Fr J wanted to give hospitality at the front door of our rented space, or a parish might work with a food programme. But not as much as I hear of it in the rest of the church (I doubt there is a Roman or Anglican parish that doesn’t have some kind of outreach programme). Yes, I speak mostly of convert parishes rather than cradle ones, although I get the perhaps mistaken sense sense from the net that many charitable groups in ethnic parishes tend to be charitable only to one ethnicity (ie, “us”) but this isn’t true in all cases, maybe.

But news of this… heck, if they’d let Anglicans in, I’d think about it.

BBC NEWS

Huw — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:28:34 +0000

» See how they love each other? The road was strewn with palms.