MISSION STATEMENT
The Mission of House of Friendship is to serve low income adults, youth and children in need of support and to promote opportunities for personal growth, wholesome relationships and community development through the application of holistic Christian principles.
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STATEMENT OF VALUES
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Friday, September 30, 2005
House of Friendship Values
The place that I'm working has a very interesting set of values. We've been discussing them a lot lately at work, and I thought that I'd post them up here and then maybe if I have some more time in a future post, I'll share some insights that have come out of these values. But I thought it would be interesting for now at least to post them. ( from http://www.houseoffriendship.org/about_mission.htm )
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Kierkegaard on testing your faith
"Testing is always related to possibility; it is always possible that what is being tested would not stand the test. Therefore, if someone wanted to test whether he has faith, or try to attain faith, this really means he will prevent himself from attaining faith; he will bring himself into the restlessness of craving where faith is never won, for "You shall believe." If a believer were to ask God to put his faith to the test, this would not be an expression of the believer's having faith to an extraordinarily high degree (to think this is a poetic misunderstanding, just as it is also a misunderstanding to have faith to an "extraordinary" degree, since the ordinary degree is the highest), but it would be an expression of his not entirely having faith, for "You shall believe." Never has any greater security been found, and never will the peace of eternity be found in anything other than in this shall. The idea of "testing," however congenial it is, is an unquiet thought, and it is the disquietude that will make one fancy that this is a higher assurance, because testing is in itself inventive and will not be exhausted any more than sagacity has ever been able to calculate all the contingencies, but on the other hand, as the earnest person puts it so well. "Faith has calculated all contingencies." When one shall, it is eternally decided; and when you understand that you shall love, your love is eternally secured."
(You shall love/works of love) Soren keirkegaard... The essential Keirkegaard page 287
(You shall love/works of love) Soren keirkegaard... The essential Keirkegaard page 287
Friday, September 23, 2005
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 1:7)
- When do we do things because we fear God and when do we do things because we fear man?
- In the movie "Dogma", the claim is made that the fallen angels envy humans because we are able to ignore our seperation from God. We are able to block out the fear of God and live our lives. Do you imagine that this is true?
- Even if you do the right thing, if you do it for the wrong reasons, can that still be sin?
- Where does fear of God vs fear of man fit into church decisions? When pastors speak from the pulpit do they generally attempt to speak to the social norms of the christian sub-culture, or how often is there something deeper than that happening?
- Do testimonies often sound similar because of social pressures? how do people decide what parts of their spiritual journies are the most important? Social pressure, or something deeper?
- Does a person have to fear either the lord or man, or can some people just be somewhat fearless?
- What is wisdom?
- If the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom, what are the middle and end of wisdom?
- In the movie "Dogma", the claim is made that the fallen angels envy humans because we are able to ignore our seperation from God. We are able to block out the fear of God and live our lives. Do you imagine that this is true?
- Even if you do the right thing, if you do it for the wrong reasons, can that still be sin?
- Where does fear of God vs fear of man fit into church decisions? When pastors speak from the pulpit do they generally attempt to speak to the social norms of the christian sub-culture, or how often is there something deeper than that happening?
- Do testimonies often sound similar because of social pressures? how do people decide what parts of their spiritual journies are the most important? Social pressure, or something deeper?
- Does a person have to fear either the lord or man, or can some people just be somewhat fearless?
- What is wisdom?
- If the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom, what are the middle and end of wisdom?
Saturday, September 17, 2005
sleep and post-daytime-ism
I like sleep.
I find that dreaming is quite an amaising thing.
I tend to make sleep a bit of a priority in my life. which sometimes creates conflict for me because there are other things that I should do, but usually sleep wins.
If I had a big exam tomorrow and I at least knew a bit of the material, I would probably (and have) opt to get at least half a nights sleep rather than study all night.
I hate it when people brag about how little they sleep. There's nothing that great about depriving yourself of sleep. it may make you look more ambitious, but you also probably feel really tired. Stress creeps up much more easily when a person is tired. I like to get 8 or 9 hours a night, but sometimes I like to get 10 or 11 or 12...
Sometimes, you can go without sleep and still feel fine, but other times you can get a bad headache, even just from getting up early.
Why does our culture not value sleep?
I drempt last night that someone that I live with (not sure who) got tons and tons of apple juice from somewhere but didn't have any containers to put it in. So they put it in every available container including my guitar case and even my record player (my record player has a class cover that in this dreem was able to be filled with apple juice). I was really mad about someone using my record player as a container for apple juice, and I told them so, pointing out that it would not only make the deck all sticky but the apple juice that it was holding would be covered in whatever dust might have been on the deck in the first place. I was able to pursuade them to empty the apple juice out of my record player.
I find that dreaming is quite an amaising thing.
I tend to make sleep a bit of a priority in my life. which sometimes creates conflict for me because there are other things that I should do, but usually sleep wins.
If I had a big exam tomorrow and I at least knew a bit of the material, I would probably (and have) opt to get at least half a nights sleep rather than study all night.
I hate it when people brag about how little they sleep. There's nothing that great about depriving yourself of sleep. it may make you look more ambitious, but you also probably feel really tired. Stress creeps up much more easily when a person is tired. I like to get 8 or 9 hours a night, but sometimes I like to get 10 or 11 or 12...
Sometimes, you can go without sleep and still feel fine, but other times you can get a bad headache, even just from getting up early.
Why does our culture not value sleep?
I drempt last night that someone that I live with (not sure who) got tons and tons of apple juice from somewhere but didn't have any containers to put it in. So they put it in every available container including my guitar case and even my record player (my record player has a class cover that in this dreem was able to be filled with apple juice). I was really mad about someone using my record player as a container for apple juice, and I told them so, pointing out that it would not only make the deck all sticky but the apple juice that it was holding would be covered in whatever dust might have been on the deck in the first place. I was able to pursuade them to empty the apple juice out of my record player.
Friday, September 16, 2005
the middle path
I used to be really interested in Buddhism... specifically the somewhat nacent and arbitrarily inacurate tradition of watered down westernised Buddhism that presents itself in self help books, naratives and beat-nick literature.
I'm telling you this to build up to another point. Something that I thought about today that this blog entry will get around to hopefully but I have to make a few more odd statements first in order to put the thought in it's proper context. So, be patient and read on if you so choose.
I recall an insite from a book of the above mentioned genre (I can't remember what book it was or I'd tell you all. it might have been from 'If you meet the Buddha on the road kill him' by Shelden Kopp.. (might not be the right book))... I recall a concept called taking the middle path.
Buddha had 4 concepts that he taught at his first sermon. The second one was 'all desire leads to suffering'. That said, in the Buddhist worldview how does a person go about overcoming an issue that they struggle with? Buddhists have as many moral principles as we do. Yet, an extreme desire to change could be just as destructive as the desire to give in. Look at the cycle of guilt and resentment that alcoholics struggle with. The Buddhist answer is (according to western pop buddhist literature) to take the middle path. The path of least resistance isn't either of the extremes but rather a path right down the middle. Being the path of least resistance, it is ultimately more sustainable than either extreme.... and I guess if you wanted you could just keep taking new middle paths which mathmatically speaking would never get you to your goal but you'd keep getting closer and closer to it.
Anyway, all this to get around to a sumwhat different application altogether... and I will get to that right after I talk about one other concept neccisary to place things in a coherent context. Thank you once again for your patience and pursevierance in reading this blog entry.
In Christianity, we generally not too concerned with eliminating all desire, although we do sometimes attempt to avoid sinful desire. But here's the interesting part, we have two types of sin (and therefore two types of sinful desire). We have sins of comission and sins of omission. People normaly notice the sins of comission, those are the things people do that are wrong. We often miss out on the sins of omission, those would be the things that we fail to do that are right. Christ commanded us to love our neighbour as ourself for example. The fact that most of us rarely do is a sin of omission. It's something that is missing from our perfection.
Now here it is...
For me, purhaps only because of the way the idea was first presented to me, the idea of taking the middle path always made sense in the context of a person attempting to overcome a sin of commission. What I had never really considered before is taking a middle path towards overcoming sins of omission. I mean, finding easy and sustainable ways to do good things a little bit at times that I normally would not. It really sounds like I'm selling the vacuum cleaner right now, but think about it. Everyone thinks of taking action for things that are right as a lot of work... possible more work than not doing things that are wrong... but what if it started with mentally looking for a middle path somewhere between conformity to our somewhat dull culture and fully alive path Christ walked.
I know... I know... Christ empowers us , and it's a massive heresy to talk about using a Buddhist concept to move towards obedience to Christ... but I'm really just trying to present a different way of looking at things... I mean, don't try to become more Christ-like on your own strength. True Buddhists are indifferent to God, but we as Christians do have the Holy Spirit to help us. On the other hand, we do live in an all or nothing culture, although that seems to be changing with postmodernism/emergent church stuff. In an all or nothing culture, isn't it reassuring to think not everything has to be all or nothing. Taking the path of least resistance, or even doing something half way desirves a lot more credit than it recieves.
So, look for ways this week that you can "sort of" serve Christ where you would normally just entirely serve yourself... I think it makes sense, but I'm open to hearing that I'm wrong.
I'm telling you this to build up to another point. Something that I thought about today that this blog entry will get around to hopefully but I have to make a few more odd statements first in order to put the thought in it's proper context. So, be patient and read on if you so choose.
I recall an insite from a book of the above mentioned genre (I can't remember what book it was or I'd tell you all. it might have been from 'If you meet the Buddha on the road kill him' by Shelden Kopp.. (might not be the right book))... I recall a concept called taking the middle path.
Buddha had 4 concepts that he taught at his first sermon. The second one was 'all desire leads to suffering'. That said, in the Buddhist worldview how does a person go about overcoming an issue that they struggle with? Buddhists have as many moral principles as we do. Yet, an extreme desire to change could be just as destructive as the desire to give in. Look at the cycle of guilt and resentment that alcoholics struggle with. The Buddhist answer is (according to western pop buddhist literature) to take the middle path. The path of least resistance isn't either of the extremes but rather a path right down the middle. Being the path of least resistance, it is ultimately more sustainable than either extreme.... and I guess if you wanted you could just keep taking new middle paths which mathmatically speaking would never get you to your goal but you'd keep getting closer and closer to it.
Anyway, all this to get around to a sumwhat different application altogether... and I will get to that right after I talk about one other concept neccisary to place things in a coherent context. Thank you once again for your patience and pursevierance in reading this blog entry.
In Christianity, we generally not too concerned with eliminating all desire, although we do sometimes attempt to avoid sinful desire. But here's the interesting part, we have two types of sin (and therefore two types of sinful desire). We have sins of comission and sins of omission. People normaly notice the sins of comission, those are the things people do that are wrong. We often miss out on the sins of omission, those would be the things that we fail to do that are right. Christ commanded us to love our neighbour as ourself for example. The fact that most of us rarely do is a sin of omission. It's something that is missing from our perfection.
Now here it is...
For me, purhaps only because of the way the idea was first presented to me, the idea of taking the middle path always made sense in the context of a person attempting to overcome a sin of commission. What I had never really considered before is taking a middle path towards overcoming sins of omission. I mean, finding easy and sustainable ways to do good things a little bit at times that I normally would not. It really sounds like I'm selling the vacuum cleaner right now, but think about it. Everyone thinks of taking action for things that are right as a lot of work... possible more work than not doing things that are wrong... but what if it started with mentally looking for a middle path somewhere between conformity to our somewhat dull culture and fully alive path Christ walked.
I know... I know... Christ empowers us , and it's a massive heresy to talk about using a Buddhist concept to move towards obedience to Christ... but I'm really just trying to present a different way of looking at things... I mean, don't try to become more Christ-like on your own strength. True Buddhists are indifferent to God, but we as Christians do have the Holy Spirit to help us. On the other hand, we do live in an all or nothing culture, although that seems to be changing with postmodernism/emergent church stuff. In an all or nothing culture, isn't it reassuring to think not everything has to be all or nothing. Taking the path of least resistance, or even doing something half way desirves a lot more credit than it recieves.
So, look for ways this week that you can "sort of" serve Christ where you would normally just entirely serve yourself... I think it makes sense, but I'm open to hearing that I'm wrong.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
ecconomics
Apparently, the overall cost of having an addict in a treatment program is 4-7 times less than having them out in society.
but are numbers all that matter?
it's hard to know sometimes how to see people.
If we're only talking about managing people as assetts/liabilites, does that not say a lot about how we see human life?
I guess that the easiest and cheapest thing would be to just create large institutions for anyone who wants to give up. We could call it, like, the giving up centre or something. We could fill every room full of beds. People could just sign-in to a bed and have a mixture of nutrishious food and their drug of choice pumped into them. We could just let them stay on it for life with no other elements of life to interupt their addiction. Then everything could be controlled and we would never have to worry about criminal drug activity or dealing with people's behaviour or struggles.
The healthy would be much closer to completing the imaginary wall that protects us from the sick and the disturbed.
Of course, I do believe that we need more addiction treatment programs.
I know that there are some very prominant illegal drugs out there that are infecting both the city and the country-side like an epidemic. What if, some day, a drug came along that spread so much that it was universally in demand. Imagine a world where every man, woman and child was an addict....
Society has very limited tools to fight against the drugs that are taking over probably millions of lives right now....
but how much money does it cost? ....
What is the cost of escape?
what is the cost of the wall that seperates those who are assets from those who are a liability?
...and to whome?
but are numbers all that matter?
it's hard to know sometimes how to see people.
If we're only talking about managing people as assetts/liabilites, does that not say a lot about how we see human life?
I guess that the easiest and cheapest thing would be to just create large institutions for anyone who wants to give up. We could call it, like, the giving up centre or something. We could fill every room full of beds. People could just sign-in to a bed and have a mixture of nutrishious food and their drug of choice pumped into them. We could just let them stay on it for life with no other elements of life to interupt their addiction. Then everything could be controlled and we would never have to worry about criminal drug activity or dealing with people's behaviour or struggles.
The healthy would be much closer to completing the imaginary wall that protects us from the sick and the disturbed.
Of course, I do believe that we need more addiction treatment programs.
I know that there are some very prominant illegal drugs out there that are infecting both the city and the country-side like an epidemic. What if, some day, a drug came along that spread so much that it was universally in demand. Imagine a world where every man, woman and child was an addict....
Society has very limited tools to fight against the drugs that are taking over probably millions of lives right now....
but how much money does it cost? ....
What is the cost of escape?
what is the cost of the wall that seperates those who are assets from those who are a liability?
...and to whome?
