A few things come to my mind at this point.

1. As my generation starts to emerge as leaders and business owners and as priority-one consumers for companies to target we need to take a lesson from our grandparents.  They didn’t expect anyone to do anything for them.  They worked hard for very little.  They didn’t have jobs with vacation and sick time, they didn’t have family leave or cushy work environments.  They worked long hours sometimes in hazardous environments, they were entitled to nothing but the right to decide how to live their own lives.  They made sacrifices for the sake of their posterity with little concern for what they might gain themselves.  Many of them fought and died to protect this lifestyle that many of us would whine about daily.  I think that my generation needs to sac-up and chose the HARD thing for the good of our posterity. We have been sheltered by our parent’s generation and perhaps we have been done a disservice.  Perhaps pain needs to be something we show to our children for their survival.  More importantly that the pain is a part of life that is as necessary as the seasons and that putting it off is unhealthy.

2. During times like these we get really focused on our world arena and we watch CNN or MSNBC and we see a globe in crisis.  I think that one of the best things we can do in these times is to invest in our families and our neighbors.  Discover who we are as a community, decentralize and localize our resources.  Be determined to be self reliant and to be concerned for our neighbors. Learn to garden and find out what grows best in your yard.  Get good and taking care of yourself.  If it gets really ugly, its your immediate community and your skills that you are going to depend on the most.

3. Finally a good healthy perspective on what we are putting our trust in.  Are we trusting in a government run by and established by people?  Or are we trusting in the constant and reliable hand of God to provide for us? This isn’t just a question for those of strong or mature faith.  This is a question for anyone that cannot escape the fact that creation testifies to the existence and presence of a God that lives and is concerned about us daily.  We cannot expend tons of energy worrying about things we can’t control.  We need to trust that the world is unfolding in a way that does not surprise this God that we can trust in.

It might be kind of preachy, and its not complete, but its a sleepy summary on my thoughts on current events.

Today on MSNBC I spotted a video that struck a nerve.  I am sure some people watch this video and think that it is something they never would or could do.

I watch it and wonder how anyone could think they could do anything else.

See the whole video HERE

So if you watched the video you get the idea of what it looks like.  If you read the Wiki entry you know what the issues are and essentially how it works.  Now, for my impressions.

Its a blast! It was a little uncomfortable blowing through red lights with the masses because by my very nature I am a rule follower.  When I ride on my own I depend on traffic laws to keep me as safe as possible so ignoring some of the essentials really goes against my grain – but I do understand.  You get comfortable riding in the mass and you get good and weaving around other cyclists and riding in VERY close proximity.  In fact, you get very dependant on it very quickly.  There is safety in numbers.

The message is good. I like what the heart of the event is supposed to communicate.  Alternatives to driving cars everywhere.  Making motorists aware of the presence of cyclists and how they need to keep an eye out for them even when its unexpected.  Cycling is a very entertaining and healthy way to get around.  I would love to see more of that mentality here in Murrieta.

In numbers, people demonstrate the worst of humanity… I wish I could say that everyone there maintained the ideals of the event.  But instead, I heard cyclists taunting motorists.  I heard them calling drivers names and banging on their cars.  I saw some disposing of beer cans on the road as they went along their way.  I saw too many people blowing an opportunity to show that they are truely different by behaving exactly like the people they want to educate.  I have news for you, it doesn’t work like that.

All in all, it was fun and I would love to do it again but I do have my reservations about the behavior of some of the cyclists.  I don’t suppose you can get everyone to behave themselves all the time but I don’t know if it should ruin a thing that doesn’t hurt anyone, the police tend to just keep an eye on and definately gets some healthy attention.

I won’t be doing anything like this soon.  I have only been at this for a week and need to see how it goes.  This town isn’t an entirely bike friendly town.  I can say that my goal is to see if I can make a tank of gas in my truck last a month.  Wish me luck!

Has anyone else seen these folks around?

A couple of weeks ago at one of our iGroup meetings we were talking about anger and whether its right or wrong. In fact, this is a topic that comes up more than a little in our group, maybe we can discuss this more in depth later… Back to my point – this one night we were discussing what anger is about after watching a Nooma video narrated by Rob Bell. His topic was anger and he postulated why people are angry so often is because they have passion to be in a fight and they are not in one. He suggests that these people can use this passion to do good. So, as we were discussing this topic I had a fresh thing in my mind. The topic of my neighbors’ shopping carts. I try hard to make my home look presentable and make it an asset to our neighborhood and when someone else does not I tend to get frustrated. So when the carts are around from time to time I get really annoyed and naturally tend to get mad at my neighbor. But after our discussion that night I decided there needed to be a switch. So afterward I went out and grabbed the shopping cart, put it in my truck and ran it back to the Stater Bros. down the street.

This same thing happened tonight, when I saw the two carts I remembered to not get angry at my neighbor but to just collect them, put them in my truck and take them back. So what is the lesson? What is the spiritual exercise? Our anger can do lots of things in this world. It can cause us to be hateful, spiteful and impatient. I can cause unnecessary rifts in my relationships with people over my anger. But on the other hand it can cause us to act, cause us to do something to restore what we see wrong. So as I collected the shopping carts and loaded them into my truck I found myself thinking very deliberately about my anger: is my anger adding to the brokenness of the world, or is it causing me to add to the healing of the world. Its a good question for me to ask myself and the shopping carts make me do it. These days, I find joy in taking shopping carts back to Stater Bros.

Then I looked at the girl who was waiting expectantly beside me. It wasn’t the girl who I was supposed to pick up. It took me a moment to realize what was happening, but when I did, I was kind of at a loss for words.

Go read this post, Corey asks a great question to think over – and for the record, I don’t have an answer for myself…