WATER RANT

I laughed at the water bottle I found today at the bagel shop. Then tonight, after I put the boys to bed was reading this weeks Newsweek and found this article about the popularity of drinking water that claims to have some spiritual value to it. Water that does not "just promote good health, it actually makes you good" these companies claim. They are proving my previous post correct. You really can promise all kinds of bull and get people to pay ridiculous amounts of money, even for water.

I stopped laughing.

Here's a few quotes.

"Like a crucifix or a rosary, a bottle of Holy Water is a daily reminder to be kind to others."

"Holy Drinking water, produced by a California based company called Wayne Enterprises, is blessed at the warehouse by an Anglican or Roman Catholic priest."

"The most recent entry in this niche is Spiritual Water. It is purified municipal water, sold with 10 different Christian labels. The Virgin Mary bottle, for example, has the Hail Mary prayer printed on the back in English and Spanish."

The makers of spiritual water, "Calmly refutes the implication that his Spiritual Water is bad for the planet. People put fewer of his bottles in the trash, he says, because they don't want to discard the images of Jesus or Mary."

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

I recently went on a field trip with TJ to discover how to use water and resources more efficiently in San Diego. It was very cool and in the process I discovered that 90% of the water I get comes from the California Aquaduct and the Colorado River. San Diego is a desert and gets less than 10" of rain a year. This year we have had like 3 inches. I sorta knew that, but the details made me think about my shower a little more intentionally this week. Water is not an American Consumer product, it is a privelege. It is a gift. It should not be wasted. And by the way, it does not come from us, but the Creator alone. Maybe men create cars, but God creates water. Period. We should be careful when we jack with anything lent to us by the creator.

Some according to Newsweek agree with me.

"Some religious believers, also convinced of the elemental importance of water, are campaigning against its unbiquitous sale and packing on the grounds that the practice is neither ethical nor good for the environment. 'Water is life' says Sister Mary Zirbes. 'It really should not be a commodity to be bought.'"

And here's two quotes from Richard Cizik- of the National Association of Evangelicals

"In a world where a billion people have no reliable source of drinking water, where 3000 children die every day of waterborne diseases let's be clear: bottled water is not a sin, but it sure is a choice."

"Spending 15 billion dollars a year on bottle dbottled water is a testimony to our own conspicuous consumption, our culture of indulgence."

Richard takes a lot of crap from "Christians" who don't give a crap about the environment, believing it's ours to rule and that since God's going to destroy it eventually anyway, we can do whatever we want to it now. However Richard Cizik believes Romans 8:19-26 and lives it. I'm a big Richard Cizik fan. (You can read what he believes here) He takes a lot of heat for the gospel. He believes that all of God's created order, including the planet, was hurt by the fall and that Christians not only care about the souls of human beings, but of the creation which is also called to declare the Glory of God. David evidently agreed.

If you want to chew on the behind the scenes issues that are really at stake in this water debate and how some cultures around the world abuse it and what a Christian ought to do about it, then you might want to read this covenant commitment to simple living from the Lausanne Commity for World Evangelization- orignally founded by Billy Graham. But be warned, it's long, deep, spiritual, theological, practical... and it will jack with you. Very few documents have impacted my thinking as significantly as the theological conclusions this group came to. I fully agree with them and am trying desperately to figure out what it means for me. I suspect it will take a while, but I'm on the road.

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XXX WATER

This morning I went to go get a bagel and while waiting for them to make it into an egg thing-a-majig, I was checking out the beverages they sell in the fridge.

While examining them, I was thinking how stupid it is that America has like a thousand ways to buy bottle water when lots of the world has no water at all and we treat it like a fad with different shaped bottles that probably cost more than the water inside and that I promise you, I could come up with a new fandangled way to pitch water to you with some silly promise. One of them they sell is "smart water" which I'm positive is just water and it makes you dumb if you buy it thinking it will make you smart.

But then I saw the multi-colored vitamin water and thought, well at least those people might have legitimately jacked with their water and added food coloring and called it vitamins. In the process, I saw that they sell one called "XXX" water and so I walked over to read about it, assuming the bottle would claim it was some kind of aphrodisiac.

However I found this paragraph instead:

c-mon, get your mind out of the gutter, we only named this drink xxx because it has the power of triple antioxidants to help keep you healthy and fight the radicals so in case you’re wondering, this does not cost $1.99 a minute or contain explicit adult content or anything considered “uncensored”, it has not “gone wild!!!!” during spring break nor will clips of it be passed around the internet like a certain hotel heiress and it has never been seen nude, but it is definitely au naturale.

I laughed out loud.

I think that if you're going to jack with people's water and sell it to them with some amazing promise, you should at least have fun doing it. I now want to take a second job working for vitamin water. I want to write the silly smack talk they put on the side of the bottles. Somewhere in the world, someone right now is sitting in a cubicle in vitamin water land saying to themselves, "I can't believe they pay me to do this." I take that back, they're probably on the ski slopes of Utah texting their latest paragraph to their boss while riding the lifts and laughing all the way to the bank as people buy colored water in the name of healthy living.

I'm jealous.

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CASH FROM THE TRASH

TJ's trash into cash project has meant that every Friday we've been bringing home cans and plastic bottles to be recycled. We've been stock piling them on the side yard and last week we took them in and....

Word on the street is the school has no idea what to do with the money since they never get money like this. This Friday everyone at school is getting ice cream... from money from the trash. Go figure.

There's a lot of cash in the trash evidently.

Every week I do a pastor on call day at our church.... and this last week a guy needed to put his family up in a hotel for 2 nights. He said he just needed a place for them to get out of the rain and to get ahead. So we paid for 2 nights in a motel since he had recently lost his job... long story but his job currently, is digging the recycling out of the trash every night. He says that he makes $80 every night doing it.

I was so surprised how fast the CRV added up that I've stopped giving my bottles to my curbside recycling program. I'd rather give it to the school.

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FINISHED

Another class at seminary is now officially over. I just finished my ethics class final. Now I think I can actually get a little normal back in my life. This class had me slammed ever since the fires and then having my computer stolen. That and soccer made this schedule quite the doozy. My apologies to those of you who were looking forward to reading my promised once a week journal entries. I managed to post only 2 of them for you in the time crunch. Sorry.

I was surprised to discover that this was class number 10 since I've been down here in SD. Man time flies and sometimes, I think school does not. I think I still have like 20 classes to go.

Next class starts Jan 10. - The writings of Paul.

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ONE MONTH, ONE K, AND BEAT UP

Well, as of yesterday, a little over one month from the day I called USAA, I finally got my payment. They charged me for two incidents for the "two" break ins- told me there was nothing I could do about it, it's how the contract is written. So my two break ins turned my weekend getaway with my wife into a $7 grand loss in stolen property that cost me a grand in freakin deductible payments to recover.

Merry Christmas from the thieves.

Last year around this time, I made this vow that I didn't want to pay any money towards extra fees in 2008. No late fees on credit cards, no extra money spent that was unneeded. I just wanted to use the money I had for advancing the ship. Maybe even save some.

Well, in the first week of January I got a red light ticket by a red light picture thingy on my way home from Nor Cal that slapped me with like a $400 bill. Then our dishwasher broke. Then my clutch went out in my truck. Then the fuel pump went out in the Yukon and so did the tires. Now the gas guage is broken. My car got broken into and my computer stolen and well, if you ask me, financially I'd just assume 2007 go away.

Money and the stuff it buys are stupid.

I wish I didn't like either of them.

I feel like they constantly beat me up and yet I'm attached to them and can't leave. I think I need to go to a support group for battered and beaten husbands. I'm getting a divorce from money.

Crap. I think that costs money too.

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SLAMMED AND SICK

That's the reason for no posts in 10 days.  

Slammmmed with 2 papers due the last 2 mondays and a final due this monday for Seminary.

Sick with a cold.

Slammmmmmed with prep for christmas, a hiring process, the weekend, and missions preps.

Sick with a sore throat.

Slammmmmmmed with family coming preparations, 2 field trips, end of the season soccer parties, and...

well... I gotta go.  Pictures will come eventually.  My posting will be sparse for another week. 

don't get sick and don't get slammed... or at the very least, don't do them at the same time. 

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