herd mentalities.

Article: 300 Reindeer die tragically in Sweden

No, this isn't the beginning of a sick joke. It actually happened. Apparently the reindeer, herded by members of the indigenous Sami people, were making a biannual crossing over a frozen waterway and for some reason, the lead reindeer turned around. It sparked a wave a confusion from the herd. As one official said, "the herd started to run in circles on the ice...Pressure increased so much that the ice broke."

What's more is that despite the near-holy status of reindeer to the Samis, a Norwegian energy company "offered" to use the near 300 reindeer carcasses to produce biofuel... a sensible, environmentally-friendly and responsible solution to the modern mind, but to the Sami mind, it is cold, heartless, and disrespectful.


Not sure why I was fascinated by this article today. Maybe b/c reindeer (the real ones, not the flying ones) seem like pretty amazing creatures. Maybe b/c it highlights the tensions between modern and pre-modern sensibilites, and challenges us to consider what the ethical response is in this situation...


Actually, risking insensitivity to the situation, I think I'm fascinated with herd behavior... and the different ways of looking at the same story....


Some might read this story and think, "Wow! If only the lead reindeer did not get mixed up, then all the others would not have become so confused, and the ice never would have broke." From a simplistic perspective, the lead reindeer is the easy one to blame.

Or, you can perhaps wonder what spooked the lead reindeer in the first place... what was it that made her/him turn around? What fear was provoked? Fear of the unknown? Hearing a family member call for help in the back and trying to respond? Or, maybe the lead reindeer's actions were misinterpreted by the rest of the herd... He just needed to scratch his leg, and everyone else thought he was signaling the end of the world.

Maybe the lead reindeer did get spooked.... then in that case, why didn't the reindeer continue to trust the herders that were leading them? They had led them through treacherous ground safely thus far....

Then, the thought of how quickly a little confusion became utter chaos is also fascinating... how one's actions (or their misinterpretations of them) ripples through the crowd until it becomes a massive wave, uncontrollable and unstoppable... and eventually leads to profound loss.

And of course, then there are the fuel producers...responsible that they "may" be, yet also appear poised to jump in and profit from the tragedy... It's almost as if they were lying in waiting to profit from the herd's self-destruction.


I guess it might be strange to gather all of this from just a simple article about drowning reindeer. Then again, perhaps the behavior of reindeer, and the people around them, aren't just restricted to their little corner of the animal kingdom.

claus or not?

New blog post on Relevant re: Santa

I've had some interesting discussions with my wife lately about the whole Santa Claus thing--- whether or not to tell your children that there is a magical guy that flies around once a year, bouncing from rooftop to rooftop, sneaking into people's houses via chimney and WD-40.

This article is from a Christian perspective; as a Christian I tend towards thinking the whole Santa thing is a bad idea to begin with. I know that makes me a big fat killjoy (it wouldn't be the first time), but the reason has nothing to do with a sense that Santa is not the "reason for the season" or distracts from Jesus....

My main issue is teaching a child that something is real, and then saying it's not. The guy in the article argues that teaching about mystery is good for children--- I agree; it's good for adults too. But when the jig is finally up, and Santa is exposed as a fraud, how then do we treat the mysterious in our world? As a fraud, I would expect! We learn to mistrust the fanciful and wondrous (especially when those in authority purport those ideas) and that keeps us from either accepting the possibility of spirituality at all, or we make religion into doctrines and dogmas, because, well, there's no mystery in that.

Oh yeah, the marketing kills me, too... how we spend 140 billion on Christmas EVERY YEAR, when even just a fraction of that amount could end world hunger/poverty/lack of clean water/lack of education/treatments/etc.etc.etc.....

Santa was supposed to teach us about the spirit of giving, and now he's a marketing tool, invoking nostalgia for more innocent times... such as, back when we believed in Santa...the magical and mysterious...

Maybe we can find a way to teach our children about giving and love in another way during the holiday season, and instead find ways to invoke real mystery and awe in our everyday lives, throughout the year.

okay, totally ripped this off of another blog, but it's worth it.

Kindly stolen from Bryan Allain's Blog

un----real. LMAO.

The (not quite) new Advent Conspiracy Promo.

power of sacred.

Thanks to @theofem for the link.

Um, two more. ... this time re: slavery and fair trade.

1. Article on Cadbury's recent move to increase its fair trade cocoa commitment, now extending into its Australia, Canada, and New Zealand markets.

Get a load of this paragraph:

"Cadbury’s move’s expected to quadruple Ghana’s fair trade cocoa sales. Of course, if you live in the U.S., you may be wondering why Cadbury bars here aren’t going to be getting the fair trade certification mark. The reason: Hersheys. Explains the Labor Rights Forum blog: 'In the US, Hershey owns the license to produce most Cadbury chocolate here and unlike many companies, Hershey has not committed to any certification programs to improve working conditions for cocoa farmers.'"

Read the article in context here.

2. Check out this trailer for a new documentary coming out Sept 15 in NYC... Hopefully it makes it onto the big screen out on the West Coast, too.

two quick articles that I find exciting today.

1. The Gloves Come Off Against Western Theology... Short article quoting a podcast from Eastern Orthodox thinker Clark Carlton, with some food for thought re: how we Westerners think about God.

follows this up with some thoughts; my favorite quote from them follows:

Postmodernism, in its approach to any academic study, including theology, is often lambasted as cutting out the foundation of Truth with a big huge capital T. More accurately, what postmodernism in the West or theology as usual in the East does is infuse humility into spiritual and theological conversations. What modernist theology does in it's insistence that everything can be proven 100% true given enough propositions, logical arguments, and scientific reasoning is to refuse to be humble concerning the nature of humanity and language. For what its worth, there is great irony in the arguments of Piper or Carson who so adamently insist on the depravity of humankind while at the same time putting forth that we can know all things absolutely. Those two ideas cannot exist together.

2. A New Day at Rolling Hills Baptist Church in Fayetteville, GA... This seems really cool!.... a church selling its property in order to become more truly missional.

Where is the fight on chocolate now?--> Target on Nestle's chest.

Here is a list of the recent progress made in the STOPTHETRAFFIK campaign against slave labor currently used in harvesting over 35% of the world's cocoa beans. (Can be found on their website here.)


WHAT WE'VE ACHIEVED SO FAR
Six weeks after launching STOP THE TRAFFIK's March on Mars campaign, Mars made an announcement.

They have promised to make their GLOBAL product range traffik free by 2020, starting with Galaxy bars in the UK and Ireland next year.

Mars are giving us a short term commitment with Galaxy bars while we keep asking for evidence of long term, global change.
STOP THE TRAFFIK chocolate campaign developments:

* July 2008:
Verkade committed to 100% fairtrade cocoa and sugar in their chocolate bars in Netherlands from autumn 2008
* February 2009:
Swiss Noir committed to fairtrade cocoa in their chocolate bars in Netherlands from March 2009
* March 2009:
Cadbury committed to fairtrade Dairy Milk in the UK and Ireland from autumn 2009
* April 2009:
Mars committed to Rainforest Alliance cocoa in Galaxy bars in the UK and Ireland from 2010 and across their whole product range globally by 2020

STOP THE TRAFFIK congratulates Verkade, Swiss Noir, Cadbury and MARS.

By continuing to call upon chocolate manufacturers to only use Fairly Traded cocoa in their products and by only buying Fair Trade chocolate ourselves, we can create a world in which chocolate doesn't leave a bitter after taste.



Great progress has been made!... but the chocolate industries' LONG history of broken promises is well documented...

Read a fact sheet PDF here about this.

Read the "short-and-sweet" version here.



Note that Nestle'... the world's largest food company, one of the major chocolate suppliers.... is not listed as making ANY progress here.

Not surprising, given Nestle's ATROCIOUS human rights record over the years... their negligence in the past and present has led to millions of deaths and human rights violations.

Nestle got in big trouble in the 1970s and 80s for pushing formula in the developing world when they KNEW it was directly causing malnutrition in infants... this website shows that even though Nestle was punished, they have not improved much at all. (scroll half-way down to see a list of their human rights violations.)

Nestle has been the subject of boycott and documentary, and (possibly as a result) they have an extensive section on their website committed to "current issues." (Found here.)

Look for a mention of forced and child labor. Go ahead, look for it.

That's because it's not there.

I even downloaded Nestle's "Around the Globe" PDF, to see if they make any mention of their harvesting practices at all. This was all I could find, on page 40 of the PDF:

We source our agricultural raw materials – principally
milk, coffee, cocoa, cereals, vegetables, fruit, herbs,
sugar and spices – either through trade channels or
directly from farmers.
Although we don’t have control over the farms, we
support sustainability in the supply of agricultural raw
materials and agricultural best practices. To put these
words into action, we have over 800 of our own
agronomists, technical advisers and field technicians.
Their job is to provide technical assistance to more than
400,000 farmers throughout the world to improve their
production quality, as well as their output and efficiency....


It goes on to emphasize how these "specialists" have helped farmers create better yields of coffee and milk, thus, according to them, Nestle is "contribut(ing) to improving their standard of living." (caption on page 40).

What a snow job. Better yield doesn't mean better pay, if you're only paying farmers peanuts in the first place. It just means that you end up with more coffee and milk to sell.

And they don't mention cocoa there.... except in the one highlighted instance.... and is sure to emphasize soon after that "we don't have control over the farms."

Um, sure you do. You buy from them. You can refuse to purchase cocoa harvested by slave labor. Mars, Verkade, and other companies have begun to do this (in part); you can too.

The annoying part to me was, as I read this corporate statement, how much Nestle claims to be a "human" company, how much they claim to care about employees and the people who use their products....

To misquote Shakespeare: Methinks they doth protest too much.




Everyone, click HERE to download a letter provided by STOPTHETRAFFIK to send to Nestle.

To email them, go to this web address (send enough to crash it!):

Their US address is: 800 North Brand Blvd. Glendale, CA91203

Here's a "child-friendly" version.

If you get a response, use THIS template for a second letter.


THEN--- STOP BUYING ALL NESTLE PRODUCTS. That means Nestle, Cherrios, Shredded Wheat, Enviga, Gerber, Nespresso, Nescafe, Nestea, KitKat, Dreyers Ice Cream, Friskies, Purina, Coffemate, LeanCuisine, Stouffers, Carnation, and Alcon.

Holy and Ridiculous.

In the last two years as a new youth pastor, I have developed a saying: "Youth ministry is a mixture of the holy and the ridiculous." If you're a youth or volunteer at New Life, you've heard me say it, undoubtedly.

In that spirit, I offer you today my findings based on a 5 minute perusal of Facebook...

A 'holy' video: a short clip of Empowering Lives: Ilula's Children's Home in west Kenya, where I spent three weeks in the summer of '05 that absolutely changed my life.

A 'ridiculous' video: ummm... well, you'll just have to watch. :)