So I’ve been having an increasing feeling over the last few weeks of belonging, feeling less like a part time temp or student worker and more like a real employee who has real responsibilities. It is kind of strange but really nice too. I feel like I go to work and I’m part of a team. I really like that, it is very important to me and part of why I came to Mount Hermon in the first place. Hopefully it is not a feeling that fades in the coming months and years.

I went to Costco tonight with Juan and Shelly and found that florescent bulbs were on sale. So I bought a bunch and replaced all the bulbs in my apartment. So, just like Australia, I’m now completely free of incandescent lights. So far I like it, they are brighter and use a lot less power. My power usage has gone from 460 watts to 124 watts (if I were to have all the lights on at the same time). Though I don’t have to pay the electricity bill on my own so I won’t see and savings, I feel a lot better about being less wasteful. Maybe it doesn’t matter but it’s by getting people to do those small things in large numbers that big changes can be made. I think I read somewhere that if the US were to switch to florescent bulbs like Australia is proposing consumers would save something like $2 billion a year just on their electric bill and power consumption would noticeably drop. I think people don’t realize how easy it is to be a good steward of the environment and that if you can show them how easy it can be and what little changes they have to make we really can make the world a better place.

Ok, enough being sappy. I sound like a democrat! Honestly though, I am looking forward already to the Presidential race in ‘08. I’m not looking forward to all of the bickering and fighting but I am looking forward to the possibility of two new candidates. So far it looks like Obama and Hillary are the front runners for the dems and Giuliani and McCane are the front runners for the GOP (unless McCane or one of the less likely candidates ends up winning, this means we will have a Presidential first, either the first woman, first African-American, or first Italian President). I would really like to see Obama win the nomination on the Democrat side, I’d have to think about it some but I might consider voting for him. His stance on abortion, gay rights, and the specifics of how we got into Iraq don’t really matter to me much. I’m tired of the GOP telling me that to be a good Christian I should be Republican who wants to over turn Rowe v Wade, be for a Constitutional ban on gay marriage, and view God’s command to “subdue the environment” as a blank check for strip mining and flogging the planet till the ecosystem collapses. I think as fractured as the Democratic party is, the Republicans need to clean house and get rid of the neo-cons and fanatically conservative far right (ala Falwell and Robertson). Personally, I think R v W should stay because it has been around so long overturning it and making abortion illegal (which really R v W didn’t decide, it had more to do with privacy than legality) would be doing the reverse of making drugs legal. The fact that women get abortions is not something that can be cured by passing a law. If we want to decrease the number of abortions we should direct money to crisis pregnancy centers and child care programs for single parents. Same with a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. For one, while I don’t agree that putting it there “writes discrimination” into the document (the same document, btw, that refers to blacks as being worth 3/5ths the votes of a white person), it just doesn’t belong there. The constitution is about the most basic and foundational principles this country was founded on. And I’m sorry to break the heart of James Dobson or his cronies on the far right but America was not founded to be a Christian theocracy. It was founded on the principle that there should be no established state religion. A ban on gay marriage is an issue with its basis in theology and the right, not in some natural right of men and women to marry only persons of the opposite sex. If you want to get really cold about it, in the entire animal kingdom, there are only a handful of species who mate for life. While I personally believe there is more to the relationship between a husband and wife than cold anthropological observations you could make an argument that marriage is a sociological construct rather than a natural phenomenon. And when it comes to the environment, clear cutting the forest and strip mining the mountains is hardly honoring God’s creation. If our living bodies are a temple to be respected and maintained then how much more is the entire living planet a temple of God? I’m tired of faith that is informed by politics and big business rather than being informed by the love of Christ. We shouldn’t read the Bible as people searching for a witty quote to bash our opponents with, we should read it as Christians who strive to honor God and live “righteously.” I really enjoyed when Dan preached about the idea of thinking of ourselves as “righteous” the other week in church. His point was that when we stop thinking of ourselves as sinners and start thinking of ourselves as “righteous” in the eyes of God then we are more likely to lead righteous lives. I want to vote for a Presidential candidate who is willing to take ownership of his mistakes and who says that we need to work on being good, loving, decent people. To quote Morgan Freeman’s character from the film The Bonfire of the Vanities, “. . . law is man’s feeble attempt to lay down the principals of decency. Decency! And decency isn’t a deal, it’s not a contract or a hustle or an angle! Decency…decency is what your grandmother taught you. It’s in your bones! You go home now. Go home and be decent people. Be decent!“

Anyway, that’s enough for tonight. It’s past time for bed so I’ll sign off for now. Quick music update first, classical music is awesome and Dvorak is by far my favorite composer. Also, the Dresden Dolls are really good but if they didn’t swear they’d be even better and I could play them at work.