“Well, I’ll never make THAT mistake again!”

I’ve said that line a lot.  Like the time I forgot to check the latch on my back door, and while I was folding laundry I heard a knock- my neighbor coming to tell me that my 20 month old son was wandering around the back yard alone.  My heart stopped beating while I checked every inch of his body to be sure he was okay (a process he found hilarious) and then as soon as I could calm myself down I laughingly said to my neighbor “I can’t believe I would do that.  There’s no excuse.  But at least that’s one mistake I’ll never make again.”

A mother herself, she nodded knowingly.  And she replied, “That’s the good thing about mistakes.  You learn from them.”

Like the time I wanted to add cinnamon to a recipe, and seeing red powder I didn’t really even look at the label.  Imagine my surprise when my spice cake had cayenne pepper as the primary flavor!  Or the time I put bread under the broiler and then went into the other room to fetch something without setting a timer.  Someone came to the door and I forgot about the bread until I smelled it charring.  Or there’s the time I put pizza back in a warm oven for my husband, and we both forgot about it until the next time I needed to bake something.  I started the oven preheating, smelled something strange…  Well, I’ll never do THAT again!

There are more serious times- like the time I was twelve and at a new school where I had few friends.  A gaggle of girls started talking badly about my mormon friend, how weird her clothes were and how annoying it was when she started getting “preachy”, how odd it was that she had such a huge family (she was on the lower middle end of seven kids from eighteen to four), and on, and on.  Desperate to be accepted I joined in the conversation, just to turn around and see my only true friend crying in the doorway.

Lesson learned.  I will NEVER again say something I don’t believe only to gain acceptance or approval.  Our words all carry power and a price.  But out of all of the bad I’ve done, to meals and to people, some good has come out of it.  Because all of these mistakes I’ve turned into something positive.  An opportunity to learn and grow and mold myself.  As much pain as some mistakes may cause, like the pain I caused to my friend Faith, if we are willing to admit our shortsightedness, if we are willing to be humbled and broken and to ask for the world (or our own mouths) to forgive us, we can grow.  We can learn.  We can be better.

As bad as a mistake can be, we can always choose to never make it again.

August 27, 2008. Tags: , , , , . Relationships, life. 6 comments.

‘Tis better to give

Inspired by comments on Angry African‘s latest post.

Why do people give to charity?  I’ve heard a lot of excuses.  A lot of rich people say that they feel an obligation to the society that allowed them to succeed and gain wealth- which may very well be true.  I’m sure the tax breaks and the status don’t hurt, either.  Poorer people give out of a recognition that there are those even more desperate.  Christian’s give because they feel it is their life calling. There is also belief in Karma- that all we give away is returned to us.  So some people give because they wish to receive, or they give because they already have received.  There are those who give when a life experience like a loved one being diagnosed with cancer brings to the forefront of their mind the need to establish foundations for those in need.

And then there are simply those who feel that being charitable should be a way of life.  Those who are motivated deeply by compassion for their fellow humankind.

Then there are those who make excuses.  There are those who say that it’s too hard to know where your money is going, and they don’t have the time to properly research.  There are those who say that by giving charitably you are taking away the impoverished man’s need to learn to care for himself.  There are those who say, “why delay the inevitable?  Allow nature to take it’s course.”  There are those who say that to be charitable is a calling- one they haven’t heard.  Better to leave the good deeds to those who are summoned for it.  There are those who say that charity is simply medicine for the conscience of the complicit, and not necessary for themselves.  There are those who say they don’t have enough time, enough money, enough passion.

Let God judge their hearts.

The ones who bother me the most are the ones who blame the charities.  The ones who talk about it being a bandaid on a deep bleed.  Why feed a child who will just starve later?  Why give clothes to someone who will always be jobless?  Why give medicine to the starving, the impoverished, the ones who will never do anything to better themselves?  Why save the unsalvable?

The basic premise of this sort of argument is that there is something inherintly unworthy about one class of people, but more worthy about another.  So why save the starving African orphans, who will likely always be impoverished and in need, instead of offering job training to poor people in one’s own country?  Well…  There are a few reasons.  The first is this:

  1. First I will acknowledge the fact that there are some nations where the problems of poverty and governmental corruption are so intertwined that it seems impossible to do anything to better the situations of the actual people involved.  I know that Mexico is like this- one can do very, very little to actually improve the lots of the poor.  All one really can do is give a little, year to year, day to day, and hope that it keeps them from dying.  Which is a tragedy.  It’s not the old axiom of “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat forever”- they know how to fish, their governments just steal their fish.  So the question I ask in this situation is:  will you allow the corruption in the system to kill these people- or will you do as much as you can?
  2. I understand the reasoning- no matter how much money is thrown at some problems, they will persist.  So why even try?  Why not give money to a separate cause that has some greater hope of being eventually effective?  Well, it goes like this:  People in our country have options.  They have a government that has their back.  They can find someone to set up a nonprofit organization in their favor, they can apply for grants.  How is a starving African AIDS orphan going to do that?   Yes- I realize that people in my own country can only get that help if someone is willing to help them, and it may as well be me- but I tend to gravitate towards being sympathetic to the most urgent needs.  If the governments of some people will not stand for them, then someone else has to.  It might as well be you and I.

Ultimately there are a lot of ways to help.  If you want to be sure that all of your money goes towards helping someone who wants to help themselves, there’s always Kiva, which allows you to give a “micro loan” to someone who is trying to start a business.  A friend of mine gave $300 to a woman who wanted to start selling organic peanut butter, because he liked peanut butter- and it was a great experience.  There’s also the Heifer Project, another organization geared towards finding more long-term solutions to short-term problems.  I find that a lot of people complain about charity without actually informing themselves about what is out there and what they can really do.

So let me tell you:

YOU CAN DO A LOT- AN AWFUL LOT.

August 27, 2008. Tags: , , , , , , . Politics, Religion, life. 16 comments.