Thoughts

I got a tattoo over the weekend. Okay, it's only a spray-on tattoo, but it is the visual reminder of my weekend, of a night on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk with my leadership students and over 700 other junior high school students. I have received comments, questions, and even a look from a stranger about the tattoo, most of which have required me to explain its origin. This tattoo is a symbol of my past, and these events show me that my decision to get one in the past has affected me in the present. The same is true for all our decisions. The choices we make in the past, whether public or private, influence our present perceptions, behavior, and dispositions. This is true not only for major life decisions-- a career path or spouse, for instance-- but even for the daily habits of thinking in which we actively and passively engage. For the major life choices, a person's choice of career is a more obvious example. In my own life, my decision to teach junior high school studen...

I'm going to Haiti again this year, so I shared this tonight at a benefit concert for our Haiti team. I’ve had the privilege of going to Haiti twice now, and I can say that each trip was very different. On our first trip, I remember thinking that the orphanage was so clean and safe compared to what we had seen in Port-au-Prince; and I left thinking that these children were in such a good place. I came to the second trip with the same understanding, but I left that week with a different mindset. We began to understand from that trip that for all the wonderful things the missionaries had given to these children, they could not always give back to them their parents. These children were still orphans, and for that reason, we saw some of the pain they felt. The directors told us about one boy, in particular, who was very defensive, and learned that his feelings of abandonment came from parents who were still alive and had given him up willingly. I think some of us learned from th...

Sometimes, when we hand out lunches to the homeless on Sundays, an individual will ask for a second lunch, ostensibly because there is a family member somewhere who needs one. We respond by saying that we give lunches only to the people who come to us in line. This prevents individuals from taking two lunches for themselves.* Two Sunday ago, however, we were handing out lunches to more people than we had ever seen before. The pace was quick and it was difficult to keep up. In the midst of this business, a woman asked me if she could receive a second lunch for a man in a wheelchair across the street (he was visible to us), saying that my mother had already given her permission. Too rushed to stop and think, I reluctantly gave the woman the second lunch. I watched, then, as she walked toward the man in the wheelchair, then saw her turn left to sit on a bench with others without having given him the lunch. Although I can't say for certain whether the woman shared the s...