No more adventures?

I am writing this post from Mom's dining room. As I told one friend, Tootsie and I got tired of being kicked around and we headed home. I paid for the ticket with money that I inherited from my Grandmother. I may get to visit my friends who offered to pay for my ticket, but that bit of travel will be within the borders of the good ole U.S.A. In God I trust. I am believing that he is my provider...even if I did have recurring dreams of homelessness last night. So, I am done writing about travels to foreign lands but maybe I'm not done blogging. In fact, I'm going to ramp it up a bit and start something new as God begins something new in my life. My new blog will almost be the opposite of a travel blog. My plan is to explore the domestic arts for awhile. Im inspired by a woman named Marissa who has a blog called Now I don't know if I am nearly as creative as this woman, but I want to explore this. However I'm not a copycat and I personally like to make handbags. I'll make a new handbag each week and perhaps I will open an etsy shop where they can be purchased. I've joined something called and I'm sure that I will learn a lot from these folks. I hope that my 2 readers will enjoy the experience with me.

Fired Times Two

After teaching in Korea for two years, I wanted more and I wanted my students to have more, so I earned a CELTA certification this summer and got myself hired by Pagoda, one of the famous chain schools, teaching Adults. They were supposed to be motivated learners because they were actually paying to take English classes...yeah, right!

Koreans sign up for English classes like Americans sign up for gym memberships.

So, I was assigned to work these monstrous split shifts with classes morning, noon, and night. I was always behind on sleep and I eventually fell asleep in class. That got me fired. I shed not one tear and I had a new job in about a week.

Then the new job was terrible. I was only going to get half-pay for the first two weeks and no airfare home until I worked there for 2 years. Then I managed to get into an arguement with this guy who wasn't even in charge, he was just another teacher and I took him to be a bit of a bully. He didn't want to take responsibility for our joint classes and give me any prep time on my first day, and because I yelled at him in front of students, they fired me on the first day. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. I'm usually not so hot tempered and I really don't understand what came over me that day, but it's too late to worry about it now.

At this point, the owner of the school wants money for the letter that will allow me to transfer to another school. This is totally illegal but he thinks that he can get away with it because I'm a foreigner. I think that I will call immigration or something and we will see about that!

A friend of mine offered to send me a ticket home and I may take him up on it, but before I do that, I thought I would write to everyone I knew to see if they knew anyone who knew anyone who might know of a job here in Korea for a well qualified and very passionate teacher who loves children very much.

Why I wanted to mess around with MLK's letter

I listened to a sermon in which someone quoted MLK today, and then I ran accross a reference to the same letter from Birmingham on someone's blog. MLK was a Christian and civil rights were all about social justice.

When the African-American slaves were freed in the U.S. they were still treated as second class citizens. Today's slaves, when freed should have the opportunity to live just as everyone else does. I want this to happen.

I want women who are "choosing prostitution" to be able to choose differently. I want them to realize that the choices that they see are different from the choices that really exist. I want them to be able to expand their horizons.

MLK used some beautiful, amazing, and motivating language. I wish that I were the gifted writer that he was. Maybe, if I can borrow a few of his words, adapted to this situation, I too can inspire.

Fooling around with MLK

My Dear Korean Clergymen:

I think I should indicate why I am here in Korea, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as an English teacher here and as a Christian I felt compelled to find a church where I could pursue spiritual growth and to do God’s work to make this world a better place. Several months ago, I participated in a conference on human trafficking and I became aware of how the problem affected Koreans and specifically, Korean women both in Korea and in other countries.
This conference was organized by Pastor Eddie Byun of Onnuri English ministry. Many Korean people were at this church as well as English speakers from around the world. Awareness was raised and everyone who attended wanted to fight this injustice.
I finished my contract teaching at a Korean public school, and I could have returned to the U.S. where there are many opportunities to raise awareness on issues of social justice, but having seen the pink lights and the scantily clad women with the sad and scared faces, I couldn’t just leave, so basically, I am in Korea because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by and not be concerned about what happens in Korea. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. No longer is anyone who lives in today’s interconnected world can truly be considered an outsider any longer.
In any social justice campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action.
These are the hard, brutal facts of the case…

waiting

It seems that I'm in a place where I am waiting again.

When I think that I know what I want, but realize that I'll have to wait awhile before I will get it, I start to wonder if I really want it.

So, I have this dream to begin a sewing and embroidery business that employs people who leave the sex industry. It will take a team of good people, and a certain amount of money. Some of my friends share my vision...sorta.

One friend wonders how we will capture any market share.
Other business ideas keep coming up.
I myself have been sewing handbags hoping that we can sell them to raise some of the money that we will need. Along the way, the sewing machine started having problems and I have yet to sell a single bag. One woman asked about special orders because the bags that I have made are not to her taste. She would prefer something plain and beige. It would just about hurt me to make something like that.

So, I'm losing my mojo. I'm praying that I will soon get it back, and if I don't get it back, I'm thinking about looking for new opportunities so that I can earn more money. Perhaps some of the money can be used to get my dream started in a year or two...or not, it's just a thought.

more wishes

I've been doing a bit more research for Mantle ministries and I'm collecting little pearls of wisdom off of Craftster.org, so I'm listing a few more wishes, maybe a few goals, and of course some dreams.

a really great outreach team
someone to train the team
business cards, fliers, postcards, media folders, brochures...
a logo that sets us apart from all of the rest of the t-shirt sellers on the web as well as from all of the other ministries that do what we do. As far as we know, NO ONE is doing this in Korea.
A madly successful fundraiser to kick this off and get it going...and my thought is to have a craft show/silent auction but it will take a lot of work to make it happen, so we will need PEOPLE!

We will need the people to do the following:

1. Talk to a designers to see if who would be interested.
2. Find a space! (We can use our church but it would be nice to have a bigger/more centrally located venue)
3. Decide how much to charge for tables/entrance fee/etc.
4. Get the word out to vendors!
5. Make a diagram of the space with table spaces drawn in so we can "reserve" the space when someone pays the table fee.
6. Get the word out to consumers! Use the internet, flyers, and if you have the money for a newspaper ad, DO IT!

Keep advertising all the way until the date of the fair, and hope for the best turnout!

I don't really lean to the right politically and my reasons for this have a lot to do with the statements in this arguement between these non-believers.

It started like this:

"His myopic literal following of the constitution with disregard for how supreme court decisions and the amendments have clarified it's meaning is as silly as the the Christians who take the Bible literally."

Then someone else went on to say:

" That's the Tea Party and the libertarians for you, just like the Religious Right. People who are strictly adherent to a political philosophy who like to misappropriate other documents that have nothing to do with that philosophy to make it seem like they have a false sense of morality or patriotism on their side. If there was anything inherently moral or patriotic about their philosophies it would be self-evident and they wouldn't have to hide behind SYMBOLS of morality or patriotism to support their ideology.

Libertarians are the worse at this and they learned how to do so by Ayn Rand. She would come up with all this mumbo jumbo about "individualism" and "freedom" (words that can literally mean anything to anybody) as an excuse to intellectualize greed. What Ron Paul and other libertarians who hide behind the Constitution fail to realize is that, in many ways, our Constitution is a living document, and the new ideology that our Founding Fathers were putting forth was that, unlike the monarchies and oligarchies they were trying to break away from, the laws in the United States were derived from the PEOPLE not some bogus interpretation of "GOD" or adherence to some radical and flawed economic ideology like libertarianism."

Now, when I read the part about the constitution being a living document, I could not help but remember Hebrews 4:12 "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So naturally, I began to think about how my faith and my political perspectives are joined...and I wanted to expose Michelle Bachman as the fraud that she is, let's be honest...it's a virtue!

Recently, many of us listened to and/or read the transcript of an interview with Michelle Bachman in which she described books and people that were influential in her life. In this article, some of us heard about "Christian" dominionism for the first time. I myself had to look it up on Wikipedia and here is what I read.

In the early 1990s sociologist Sara Diamond[13][14] and journalist Frederick Clarkson[15][16] defined dominionism as a movement that, while including Dominion Theology and Reconstructionism as subsets, is much broader in scope, extending to much of the Christian Right.[17] In his 1992 study of Dominion Theology and its influence on the Christian Right, Bruce Barron writes,

In the context of American evangelical efforts to penetrate and transform public life, the distinguishing mark of a dominionist is a commitment to defining and carrying out an approach to building society that is self-consciously defined as exclusively Christian, and dependent specifically on the work of Christians, rather than based on a broader consensus.[18]

According to Diamond, the defining concept of dominionism is "that Christians alone are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns". In 1989, Diamond declared that this concept "has become the central unifying ideology for the Christian Right"[13] (p. 138, emphasis in original). In 1995, she called it "prevalent on the Christian Right".[19] Journalist Chip Berlet added in 1998 that, although they represent different theological and political ideas, dominionists assert a Christian duty to take "control of a sinful secular society."[20]

In 2005, Clarkson enumerated the following characteristics shared by all forms of dominionism:[21]

1. Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.

2. Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.

3. Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believe that the Ten Commandments, or "biblical law," should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing Biblical principles.[21]
Other authors who stress the influence of Dominionist ideas on the Christian Right include Michelle Goldberg[22] and Kevin Phillips[23][24]

Essayist Katherine Yurica began using the term dominionism in her articles in 2004, beginning with "The Despoiling of America", (February 11, 2004),[25][26][27] Authors following Yurica in this usage include journalist Chris Hedges [28][29][30] Marion Maddox,[31] James Rudin,[32] Sam Harris,[33] and the group TheocracyWatch.[34] This group of authors has applied the term to a broader spectrum of people than have Diamond, Clarkson, and Berlet.

It isn't beyond notice that those who stress the influence of these ideas are largely people who do not want to see any Christians take public office or influence our post-Christian secular culture. Some Christians, whom my pastor would call them fans of Christianity, rather than true followers of Christ, do not do a very good job of acting like Christians, so I can hardly blame these people. We Christians have given up a lot of moral ground as we have failed to be holy and set apart from our culture. However, we have every right to participate in a government of "We the People" as we too are people in America.

As I see it, even the softest forms of Dominionism seem to be based on a view that our world is getting worse and worse. Even Francis Shaeffer, who is rather unfairly associated with dominionism wrote a book called Whatever Happened to the Human Race? expounding on how he thought that the world was moving from a predominantly Christian one to a post-Christian, secular world that was worse.

Now, when I read my bible, I don't really get a picture of an idyllic, pastoral world where people always obeyed God, did the right things, and treated one another with kindness. Instead, I read of people who did really bad things...things so bad that God punished them and even let them become slaves to other nations at times...
and yet that God still loved them, rescuing them from their captors over and over again, finally sending Jesus, his only son to redeem them forever, and the world that Jesus walked in was no better or worse than what we have today. The Pharasees were in the holy temple trying to sell salvation for bags of gold and the Romans were worshipping innumerable pagan deities. Prostitution was a sacriment. Someone needed to stand up and tell people where they were going wrong and a few heroes of faith were there to do it. John the Baptist had his head served on a platter and Christ was crucified. How is our world today any worse than this?

When I see the way that people are trying to resist secular influences in politics, I don't see Christ, or even John the Baptist. I see a lot of garbage. We know trees by their fruits and one doesn't have to be a Christian to tell an apple from an orange. We are being called out on our faults and they are big ones. We need to quit bothering non-Christians about who they want to marry. In a secular state, marriage is a kind of contract and if people want to enter a contract (into which Christians are opting out of through divorce as often as anyone else,) who are we to say that they can't? Even if we want to resist this on moral grounds, we can't. We have lost that moral grounding through our own selfish behavior.

When it comes to abortion, I get that the fetus is one of the "least of these" that Jesus talked about. I get that children are a gift from God. However, I fear that we may not have much ground here either. How many Christian college students have abortions every year? It's a bit sickening. However, I am encouraged by the way that so many pro-life churches have put their money where their mouths are as they have reached out to help women in crisis and I think that Christians need to actively resist a culture that encourages young women to take the easy way out. Things like waiting periods and parental consent, or a meeting with a judge are perfectly appropriate. Abortion should not be an easy thing. However, once the decision is made, it should be as safe as anything else that can be done in a medical setting. Everyone should have access to medical care, it can save lives.

Let me say that last thing one more time. Everyone should have access to medical care, it can save lives. I'm dismayed by what has happened to health care in America during my lifetime. My parents had difficulty managing their finances while raising four children, but one or both of my parents always worked, so if anything really bad happened, we had medical insurance. Nowadays, with huge unemployment in America and with the rising costs of insurance, many families do without basic medical care. This shouldn't be happening. The health of the American economy may begin with the health of American families. We need to work on this. A country that is even remotely Christian in nature should care for it's poor people. I don't see many Christian political candidates who seem very concerned about this. Instead, I see people who complain that government is too big, and taxes are too high, and also that helping the poor should be done by charities because charity should be voluntary. Ayn Rand was the one who originally said that charity should be voluntary and she was an atheist who justified the greed of capitolism, because she disagreed with communism and was ignorant of the fact that pure capitolism and pure communism have never existed. So when Christians embrace her philosophy, it makes me rather sick.