Thursday, April 3, 2008

While I take five minutes to catch my breath...

Hey everyone. Hopefully you haven't given up on me even though I haven't posted in a month. Things have been very busy. With midterms and working at a church, I feel like I haven't really had any time to reflect, but here are some things on my mind.

I'm very concerned about the cycles of Imperialism and its relation to religion. For instance, we read an article for class about the Spanish conquest of Latin and South America in the 16th century. Although they basically were committing genocide, the Spanish felt they were doing it for God. Sparing you from multiple other examples of this throughout history, I'll jump to the Iraq War. There is so much Christian language that goes along with the war that makes me very uncomfortable since it is ultimately also a war about gold, or oil in this case. I find it very important that the church speak the truth in these instances and yet I don't see it doing much now. What is our responsibility?

Secondly, I'm still struggling with the Katrina stuff. If you're like the rest of the country you've forgotten what that means and think I should get over it. But I continue to hear awful things from my friends down there, and none of the Presidential candidates are really talking about it. I wonder in all of Bush's talks about terrorism how he can't see that the gross ignorance and blatant racism in this situation is also some type of terrorism. Obviously I'm angry. And all this has been compounded by discussions on evil and providence in class these past two weeks. I'm not sure how Katrina fits into those topics.

Thirdly, I'm getting very excited for some time off and a summer in a city. I will have most of May off and then I'll begin my summer internship in Philadelphia. I know being back in a city, even if only for a few months will be a good change of pace. I really miss being anonymous, being able to walk around without bumping into a million people I know.

Speaking of summer, I'm taking suggestions for a summer reading list. Any ideas?

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