 |
|
 |
|
|
Sample Article from Current Newsletter
The War at Home By: Tim Burdick tim@simpleriver.orgSimpler River December If you were a fan of the cult television series The X-Files (and you were either a rabid fan, or you rarely watched it), then you remember the episode where FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder is granted three wishes by a modern-day genie of sorts. With one of his three wishes Mulder asks for peace on earth – a seemingly well-intentioned and altruistic hope for humankind. When his wish is granted however, he discovers that he is the last remaining person on the face of the earth. True world peace, achieved through the process of elimination. In lieu of some sort of preemptive apocalyptic intervention, we are likely to continue to deal with the chronic problem of unrest, violence and war(s) in our world. Somewhere a battle will always wage on. With each fresh generation, countries from around the globe will continue sending their young ones off to fight and many of these soldiers will never come back. Others will return home as old souls having seen too much to ever claim innocence again. Their stories will be a reminder of what we lost in our efforts towards peace, but these memories will fade and will soon be forgotten. Another generation will rise to fight new wars with old consequences. Sadly, humankind has yet to develop any faith in a peaceful paradise, instead finding countless ways to create situations where society is cornered, forced to select violence as its only option. We can no longer argue the merits of going into Iraq, for example, because it is an irrelevant discussion. We are now forced to thresh through the difficult discernment of how we can stop being in Iraq, a much more tenuous enterprise in which some level of violence is almost guaranteed with any solution. Of course, far away battle-lands are not our only concerns. We have a tendency to leave our pro-war / pro-peace discussions on the front lines, but fail to see how our own private actions can be a microcosm of the real thing. Somewhere within our own national borders another type of war wages on. We do not call it war, but it is a violent conflict just the same. It is a secret war where the enemy hides in designer jeans, mortgage statements and smog reports. Have you ever asked yourself where your best jeans came from? Ever checked the label to see which country produced them? Is that country well known and documented for ongoing human-rights violations? Or is the product certified as Fair-Trade? Perhaps the manufacturing operation doesn’t qualify as a legitimate sweatshop because it has done just enough to stay ahead of the more egregious offenses, but rest assured, most overseas textile shops are not places you would ever let your own child work. Don’t have any designer jeans? Every single piece of clothing – every product in your house – comes from somewhere. What do your possessions say about your ongoing support of violent regimes, repressive societies, economic inequities and working conditions around the globe? You don’t have to buy a blood diamond to facilitate global violence and conflict. What about on the domestic front? For instance, what kind of relationship do you have with your mortgage lender? For most people their house payment is their single largest economic commitment. Yet what research do we put into understanding the corporate partner we share a bed with for 30 years? Does your lender have multiple SEC violations? Does it have any pending lawsuits for labor law infractions? Does it offer its employees health benefits? Is your mortgage company one of only three mortgage companies to make the Forbes’ 2007 list of Best Places to Work? When you write your mortgage check every month do you secretly support an economic engine that is inherently built on a “kill or be killed” premise? Keep in mind that you may benefit financially the leaner, meaner, and more economically competitive your mortgage company is – regardless of its impact on the people, community or world around it. What about your car? Do you knowingly make violence on the global eco-system every time you fire up those horses? Is the local smog report an indicator of your good will towards all? And what about me…? The fire and brimstone preacher for peace on earth is as guilty as he is accusatory. I can tell you exactly where my possessions come from, but I know nothing about the man, woman or child who put them together. To me, my mortgage company is a distant monolithic phone tree. In fact, I (wisely or unwisely) signed a variable interest rate loan and I now regularly check in with the lender to try negotiating a cheaper rate without any consideration for how that impacts their ability to pay their employees. And my car? Well I can take a little pride in being a one car family, which is somewhat peculiar for an American, but this reality is soon to change as my vocation is beginning to demand another vehicle. For most of us the choice to be pro-war or to be pro-peace is an easy cognitive decision that has minimal personal impact. This is not to ignore those who have experienced tragic and painful loss from real war, but is more about acknowledging the fact that way too many of us simply sit and watch from our own homes as the battle scenes are comfortably squished between the five-day forecast and the play-off picture. “When we come back, three Americans dead in Fallujah, will there be rain tomorrow, and how about those Packers…” And we think it has nothing to do with us. But the truth is that neutrality is no longer an option. Every single thing I do has an impact on the larger global community, some of them longstanding or even permanent. Can I take refuge in the argument that I’m at least trying to do something? Many of my family’s clothes are second hand… When I do refinance I’ll do a better job of researching the company first… my car gets decent gas mileage… Are these small steps in the right direction, or sad justifications to keep living basically the exact same style of life? In the end, it’s ultimately between you and God and your fellow humanity. But, take some discomfort in knowing that this path we are currently on will not end wars because war is not about what we see on the battle field. War is about you and me and how we live out our lives each and every day. Want to see some collateral damage up close? Go spend some time at your local dump. Where did all that crap come from? What about the homeless guy you saw on the street corner? Any chance he was preyed upon by sub-prime lenders before they foreclosed on his house? And is road rage really any different of an emotion from the feelings of hate and helplessness when doing battle? Whether we are pro-war, pro-peace, or pro-peace by means of being pro-just-war, we are all in the same boat of complicity. Ossifying our belief system into nice little opposing cognitive categories will not excuse anyone. In the end, either we are radically assertive and almost aggressive about our pacifism, trying to eradicate everything within our personal lifestyle that leads to violence on any level, in any place, in any way shape or form. Or, we end up living our lives by default in a way that risks us becoming just another pro-violence, selfish, war monger. There is no safe middle ground to hang out in when it comes to this kind of nastiness. Little small steps in the right direction certainly benefit everyone, but in the larger scope of life, everyday actions in an affluent culture will have global repercussions, some of which are violent. It is to everyone’s peril if we fail to acknowledge our collusion in this little war at home.
If you would like to have the full Simple River Newsletter e-mailed to you each month, click here.
|
|
|
Past SR Newsletters __________________________
By: Tim Burdick October 2007
A friend of mine once attended a time management seminar and came away with the advice to sleep less. That’s right, sleep less as a time management strategy. Apparently most of the seminar was comprised of medical professionals presenting evidence that claimed with regular training (and a short mid-day power nap) the human body could sufficiently survive with just four hours of sleep a night. So instead of wasting all that time burning the candles at both ends, we are now encouraged to just burn the midnight oil a little longer. Who needs time management when you can just add hours to your day? Perhaps this sleepless solution may work for some, but the difficulty is like so many time management systems, it’s a gimmick to...
__________________________
Shooting Partridges in Pear Trees By: Tim Burdick September 2007
My quarter-acre urban farm has seven different types of fruit trees, all but one of which I have slowly planted over the years. We have four kinds of apples, two pears and a hybrid Asian-pear tree. All of the trees were carefully selected based on their ability to resist disease and for their consistent annual fruit production in my little micro-climate corner of the world. The one tree I did not plant is the last remaining pear tree from a long-standing orchard once located in this neighborhood long before the housing development went in over 50 years ago. Despite its well-rooted place of respect in my yard, this tree is the constant invasion target of local birds and much fruit has been lost over the years to them. It’s as if several generations of local avian...
__________________________
Another Way of Doing Business
By: Mark Oppenlander August 2007
For the last year or two, I have been a consulting editor on Simple River. However, my full-time job is with the School of Business and Economics at Seattle Pacific University. In April of this year we held the first of what we hope will be many Social Venture Plan Competitions. Sixteen student teams began by preparing written business plans for social enterprise ventures. The teams then pitched their ideas to an audience of more than 50 business leaders and community members. Additionally, several hundred student visitors stopped in to visit during this energetic Showcase Round. At the end of the day, $8,000 in prize money was awarded to six teams. Our first ever Social Venture Plan Competition was a smashing...
__________________________
Walking the Path of Failure By: Tim Burdick July 2007 A few weeks ago my almost 2 year old daughter and I sat out on our back deck on a warm sunny spring morning watching two American Robins build a nest in one of our pear trees. As the male stood guard, keeping a wary eye on my little girl, the female gathered bits of dead grass and twigs and flew them to a forked crotch about midway up the pear tree. Back and forth she went like this for hours on end. All the while the male watched us, cocking his head to one side and looking straight at us with one piercing black eye, just to make sure we did not present any threat to his mate or to his future off-spring. Over time both birds acclimated to our presence, likely realizing the small danger posed by a man and a toddler sitting in a lawn chair.
|
|
 |
|
|
Questions or concerns regarding this web site should be directed to
[info@simpleriver.org].
|
|
