Oh man, are the 2012 people ever gonna be pissed when they hear about this!

(See article:)
End of Days in May? Believers enter final stretch

On a serious note:

1) I checked out the websites mentioned, to see how exactly they even got to this date. Their methods are an absurd stretch at best, seriously dangerous at worst. Basically they take a verse where it says that 1,000 years are like a day to go, and a year like 1,000 days, and apply this to verse in Genesis where God tells Noah that in 7 days, he will send the flood. The folks at Family Radio Worldwide think that means we should also take this as God warning us that in 7,000 years, he'll destroy the world again on judgment day.

2) These folks are encouraging people to throw away their lives to go around and spread this message. Now, going around encouraging people to know God is by no means a bad thing, and giving up all our plans and ties to do so is quite Biblical. But the efforts of the people interviewed in the above article are going to be not only pointless, but counterproductive when the people they spoke to/put up ads for/handed out flyers to/saw their bumperstickers, wake up on May 22nd, neither dead nor Raptured nor starting a period of torture (which will reportedly last till October 21st. But I'd have to request the free pamphlet to get more explanation on that, I think). If these "ministries"* really wanted to encourage people to fully serve as Jesus calls us to, I think there are much better (and more effective) ways for them to help people do so.

3) In the article above, the woman shown in the above picture said:

          "If May 21 passes and I'm still here, that means I wasn't saved.
Does that mean God's word is inaccurate or untrue? Not at all."

How sad. God is not playing a giant cosmic guessing game with us. He has asked us to choose him, and if we have, we're in. Yet this woman thinks there's a possibility that on May 21st she's going to be surprised that she'd thought she was saved, but wasn't really. I'm sad that she didn't realize a third option, being that God's word is true and she might be saved, but that human interpretations of God's word are where the inaccuracies are coming in.

4) Shouldn't we be living every day like the end of the world is coming? Because for you-- or for the person you're trying to reach out to-- it very well might be. I on a fairly regular basis remind people that any one of us might get hit by a truck immediately after leaving the conversation, and people tend to think this is morbid, but it's not-- it's not like I then obsess about this possibility. But I recognize that it is a possibility. I could get run over by a truck, or have an undiscovered brain aneurysm burst, or be struck by lightning, or in a million other unexpected ways depart this bodily life. And so could you. So who cares if the end of the world is May 21st? I mean, I don't particularly want it to be. I feel like I still have things to do here. But it wouldn't be the end of the world (I mean, it would, but, you know what I mean...)

It will be interesting to see what these groups have to say on May 22nd. (But then again, if the world ends on the 21st, I wouldn't deny them an "I told you so." It would be sort of a bummer that I've been trying so hard to pass organic chem, though...)


*(I put this in quotations just because I don't know much about the work of Family Radio Worldwide or the other groups linked from the We Can Know website, who are spreading this message. It could be that up till now they've been doing great work that is very much in line with God's message. Or it could be that they're all deeply sinister cults. But since I don't know, they're getting the quotation marks for now.)

On Orangutans and Oil

This morning I headed over to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for a lecture by Dr. Birute Mary Galdikas, who while Jane Goodall was studying chimpanzees and Dian Fossey mountain gorillas, was herself setting out to study orangutans in Borneo.

Now, the museum-- or someone who was responsible for scheduling this-- did a serious disservice, both to Dr. Galdikas and the sold-out room, as there was all of 55 minutes for both her talk and Q&A time. She clearly would have talked longer (and was in fact greatly skipping through her slides, and at the end trying to ignore the fact that the organizers were inching their way up the side of the room to wrap things up), and people clearly wanted to hear more and ask more questions, as only a couple were able to be asked.

But, she was great, and talked a lot about orangutans (did you know that they only give birth every 6-8 years, for Sumatran orangutans, and 8-10 years, for the Bornean orangutans?) and their plight (Bornean orangutans are endangered with perhaps 40,000 remaining in the wild; Sumatran orangs critically so, with only about 6,000 left in the wild).  (Now why can't I absorb organic chemistry facts like that?)

Due to the time contraints, Dr. Galdikas skipped over info on some other threats to orangutans, but made sure to talk about palm oil. She showed maps indicating the forest fire hotspots after the palm oil industry cleared massive swathes for oil palm plantations, and others indicating the huge sections of Borneo that are still slated to be turned into oil palm plantations. Protected habitats that the ecologists there initially had to defend against illegal logging now face a much more devastating fate as they are are risk of being wiped out for the demand of the palm oil industry.

Now, I'd heard about palm oil. Most likely, you have too. It's among the latest hip thing to be "in the know" about (previous topics including Nike, Tibet, and plastic bags), but seeing (only second-hand) the impact the industry has on a great ape species is really striking. (Like, I've actually had the experience of standing in Whole Foods, knowing I was supposed to be checking the peanut butter for palm oil, and knowing that its production was bad for the environment, but at a bit of a loss to recall exactly how it was. But now I'll remember.) Which is not to say that now I will remember to constantly check ingredients on my food and cosmetics for palm oil, but I will make more a conscious effort to do so. (I think even more importantly, if you are avoiding certain products, you need to contact the companies and tell them why.) And I will learn more.

At the end of Dr. Galdikas's talk, she had a slide with a long list of ways we can help orangutans, but said that the number one thing-- which she said she was not asking us, but beseeching us to do, was to check products for palm oil, and avoid it. She said that there is currently no sustainably-produced palm oil. Another thing listed was to share this information with other people. So here ya go! And also, I'm going to include the website for her foundation, Orangutan Foundation International, which I'm sure has more information (but was apparently undergoing scheduled maintenance this afternoon).


Rainforest Action Network: The Problem with Palm Oil

Greenpeace: Deforestation for Palm Oil

Sky World News: Orangutans & Palm Oil (video)

And finally, on an upbeat note, the trailer for the new IMAX movie featuring Dr. Galdikas's work with orangutans and also conservation efforts to help orphaned elephants, Born to Be Wild:

5 weeks till my (bit-more-than) 5k

Five weeks from today, I'll be running my first race. Well, technically, it's just part of a race, but I'm sure not running the entire marathon (I like to remind people who are planning to run the entire Colfax marathon-- which includes a co-worker or two-- that the first person who ran a marathon promptly died). But it's long enough for me, a 3.3-mile leg to start off the marathon relay (at 6 o'clock. In the morning).

Five weeks suddenly seems a lot shorter than the five months or so that I had when my co-worker miraculously got me to sign up for this adventure. But I'm also much more ready for it now than those few months ago (which is good, because if I was less ready now, I'd for sure be in trouble).

I have good running shoes. I like them. They make me want to run. And combined with my magical breathe-y new running socks, my feet stay delightfully cool. I even got a couple pairs of running shorts that have cute little key pockets inside. And a bright green blinky light, which I've clipped on myself but haven't actually turned on yet while running, since my neighborhood is actually remarkably well-lit, even if I'm running when it's dusky.

I still can't run a full mile in one go, but that's ok for now-- I'm quite certain I have never done that in my life. I'm going to be ok if I don't run the entire race leg; my goal is more to be able to run a mile or a mile and a half without walking, so I can get the leg done in a couple of jogging jaunts with some walking between.

I am getting noticeably better at it, though. I can run a third of a mile in one spell! Not that that's a lot, I know, but it's more than I could run last week (I could get in a good north-south block last week, but now can do two plus a shorter east-west block). It's not that my legs get tired, but my lungs. This thin dry air has me huffing and puffing in no time.  I plan on getting a hydration pack next week ('cause I've got a coupon, you know-- I mean, I might be forsaking my long-standing running ban, but I am still Dutch), because historically in Colorado, a drink helps the not-being-able-to-breathe-in-the-altitude-when-exerting-myself thing. Because your lungs get all dried out and thus ineffective. (Note that the aforementioned drink should not actually be applied directly to the lungs. But it helps wet part of the way there.)

Tonight was the first run that actually felt-- I don't know if I'd say good, because that's strange to imagine-- but at least that I wasn't going to die; where I was starting to find a breathing rhythm and be able to push myself farther. I was together enough that I could smile at passing puppy dogs (walking their owners) and contemplate how no one teaches you how to breathe while running. Which sounds strange, because why would someone have to teach you how to breathe? But I have the same problem when doing Jillian Michaels videos, I always breathe the opposite of when she tells you that you should be inhaling and exhaling on particular exercises, and literally can't get myself to reverse it.

But then this evening I was Googling how to prevent a side cramp, which I haven't been getting much but seemed like I should find out about because it seemed like something simple to prevent and the sort of things you should know as a runner. And I found out all sorts of fascinating things-- like you can prevent side cramps by exhaling when you put your left foot down, but not your right (seriously? I couldn't make up something that ridiculous) or by grabbing your liver with your hand and shoving it back up inside of your guts. So apparently running isn't as intuitive as you would thing it ought to be.

Anyway, that was just some long rambly, random thoughts (don't say you weren't forewarned by the blog title) about the current state of my training for my first run, just 35 days hence (or, at the moment, about 34 days, 6 hours and 40 minutes). :)

p.s. The other day one of our students asked me if I work out!
(And not in a creepy way. In a she's-hoping-to-stay-exercising-more way, and wanted to know my routine. Because apparently, I look like a person who works out.)

How did we get here?

In the past 24 hours or so, I've had two really upsetting reminders of how far away from God the church has come. Last night I got a glimpse of a friend-of-a-friend's facebook page-- basically saw a post by someone who called themselves pastor in their name (e.g. Pastor So-and-So) and was interested about this person's work or relation to my friend, and instead found a truly disturbing focus that seems oh-so-far from Jesus' focus for us.

This evening I watched a 20/20 special on a conservative church denomination that advocates and teaches beating even infant children, and allegedly is rife with cover-ups of sexual abuse and incest, holding young girls accountable for their "sin" in these situations.

It's no wonder so many people who might otherwise be much more open to a relationship with God are instead hurt, disillusioned, jaded and guarded against the Christian church. And it's easy to say that they shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, and don't hold God's followers against him (after all, did they not read the bumper sticker about how we're "not perfect, just saved"?), but honestly-- what's a person to think? If God is good and God is love, shouldn't his followers, who get to spend time with him and have his direction through his word, respond in a way that reflects that?

So how did we get here? Did the people who sat around Jesus' feet to learn ever have any conception of the things that those blinded by long traditions of power, brokenness, misdirection, hatred and fear would be preaching in His name? Could they fathom the straight-up evil that would come to be touted as God's will?


I mean, can we just start over? Can we throw out the church doctrines, the traditions, the radio ministries and the commentary writers and the street preachers, the creeds and acronyms, the sayings and proverbs found nowhere in the Bible (but that no one bothers to try and look up), the bumper stickers and the paintings of chubby baby angels? Let's put all the people who call themselves Christians-- and I do mean myself included, and you and your family and friends, not just the people on the margins of Christian orthodoxy-- in a big room (or maybe individual tiny rooms, we don't actually tend to get along with each other all that well) and give each person a Bible, and not let anyone leave until they've read it, maybe several times-- and I mean like the whole thing, not just picking and choosing a passage here and there. And only let people believe what they read there. That's all.

(Sigh)... except I know that many of those people-- including those on the margins-- have read the whole Bible. It's just too many other things in their way-- many generations of hate or fear or self-preservation or power or a myriad of other influences that have caused whatever tradition they are operating within to evolve farther and farther away from the central  message of the Bible, which is, that God loves us beyond our ability to imagine, and purchased us back from our own chosen fate at a price we cannot comprehend. It's the most radical notion humanity has ever encountered, and we are trading that in for anger and control.

And the thing is, those people who believe that rape victims need to confess their sins, or teach that tiny babies need to be thoroughly spanked-- God loves those people just as much as he loves me, or my friends, or any of my family members, even my precious little nieces and nephew. Just as much. And in selfish ways that makes me a little jealous, like I deserve a little bit more, but I also know I don't deserve it at all, so it's all grace, and that's all a miracle.

So why are we not just all sitting around in awe over this revolutionary miracle, like the early disciples who just wanted to follow Jesus everywhere? How do we have so much time and energy for hate and power struggles in Jesus' name?

So, no really, seriously... how did we get here?