life would be so much easier if my sole ambition was a corner office with a view. but my heart beats misery when success is measured by dollars rather than a touched life and dreams fully alive.

inspiring.

"Wendell Berry is no dour scold who preaches a joyless austerity. To the contrary, he tells us that what we truly seek in life is not comfort, but meaning – and that you don't have to live a life of rigorous asceticism to find it. Rather, we only need to order our lives around the ancient idea that happiness depends on virtue – virtue lived in community. We can only be fulfilled by living within the bounds prescribed by our nature, and in fidelity not to our selfish desires but to the greater good of our families, friends and communities."

For the full article about this wise man:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-dreher_26edi.State.Edition1.21c9278.html

let the experiment begin!

i have been cracking up at people's reactions over the news of our next president. some have been elated... others think the world is coming to an end. and still others are just completely apathetic to the whole situation. me? i am choosing to think of this as a social experiment. first of all, let me explain my reasonings for voting mccain/palin. at the outset of this election, i was an obama supporter. i was excited about his ideas of change and the strong emphasis on helping those in need. i liked that he wanted to help young people get an education and get involved in community service. over the last few months, though, some of my opinions have changed. while i do believe very strongly in community service and helping those in need, i don't believe this is the responsibility of the government. teaching someone to fish, rather than just giving them a fish, will bode much better in the long run. i have a very big beef with our capitalistic society... i do not believe it cultivates generosity or community, but greed and individualism. however, that is the society in which we live, and a major overhaul of that paradigm is going to be extremely painful. i have also come to issue with the associations obama has had. i think the people you surround yourself with tells a great deal about you as a person, and he seems to befriend extremely controversial figures. that scares me. so my vote unfortunately wasn't really for mccain, but rather against obama this year.

but alas... here we are. i honestly do not feel any anxiety about the next four years. my peace is in the Lord and i know that no matter who the president is, God is my only source or hope. but i do feel that it will be very interesting to see how things play out. obama absolutely will not be able to carry out a great percentage of his proposed policies. they simply are not feasible, especially in our current economic situation. in addition, the ones that will be put into place are so different from anything ever proposed in my lifetime that i am very interested to see how they play out. i honestly hope that they do work. that at the end of the next four years, our america will be a better place than it is today. i hope that pride does not blind any good that could potentially come from this administration. many of his policies are my ideals, i am just too much of a pragmatist to hold much hope that they will work in our society. but alas, i will see my ideals implemented to some degree and can measure the true effectiveness of them. so i hold optimistic. the world was still turning when i woke up this morning. all we can do is hope that tomorrow will be better than today and work for ourselves to better our world. we can't depend upon government to change what we can do ourselves. so i'm buckling in and getting ready to take some notes...

the ideal.

I think Karl Marx has gotten a worse rap than he really deserves. I think he was simply an idealist. I relate with many of his frustrations, and even think he has some great thoughts on how living should look. The only problem is that we live in this horribly fallen world. Otherwise... it would be fantastic. I was reading in Romans the other day about how we are to love each other. To love generously, give to those in need, hold nothing against a neighbor, and love our enemies. I see so many areas in which I fall short of these things. Then I look at the Church in Acts where they had everything in common and loved each other and took care of each other. That didn't seem to last for very long. I wonder what happened. My heart longs for that. I am torn between idealism and reality. I want to live in harmony with everyone. Love and give. I have a love-hate relationship with money. It is a necessary evil in my eyes. When we were discussing Marx in my class, I think everyone kind of missed the point. Sure, it's inherently flawed and so beyond anything that we experience in our capitalistic society that we can't even begin to imagine anything like his idea of communism. He thought everyone should work hard, and in that hard work be rewarded with enough to get through life comfortably. My classmates argued that it simply isn't fair for a doctor and receptionist to get paid the same amount of money when one is clearly worthy of a higher wage. I think Marx believed that in his society, people would be working not out of any kind of monetary ambition, but simply because that is the work that they love to do. Greed would have to be completely lost for that to work. I think he painted a picture of a really pretty world: no greed. no strife between neighbors because everyone is working toward the common good. People would live together and give as they saw need. We have given money such a prominent role in our culture. Sure... you have to have money to live. But why should money be our motivation. We assign value to things. Nothing is inherently valuable. Gold holds no value until someone says it does. Same with our paper money. The copper that makes up a penny is worth more than the exchange of a penny in our culture. Think about that for a second. Sometimes I sit and imagine a society with no money. Boo for capitalism. Makes me want to go live on a commune... but that would be crazy, right? At least that's what I've been told.....