The Lighter Side

The last three posts have been rather confrontational and 'what's wrong with this world we live in?' -esque.

I'm reminded though that people are awesome. And though collectively we can do some pretty dull things, I almost can't get over how good it is when people open up and share in fellowship.

Christmas is a convenient time for this.

Numb

Kaite e-mailed the other day with the following to say. I asked if I could share it publically.

"I went into chapters, and after reading numerous titles, I just got overwhelmed and discouraged. It's as if every book suggests that it has the answer, some morsel of truth to grasp onto, but in reality it's just as empty as the last. We are so consumed by our consumption. The entire store is tribute to the fact that we have no clue about reality, we remove ourselves from the real state of the world, and seek to find wholeness in superficiality of things. We keep making stuff, but in the end it'll all be gone. And in the process we throw away those bits of truth that are part of the whole, maybe incomplete, but at least they're something. People, relationships, connection, joy in the little stuff, and the fullness of life. That's what we're missing, that fullness. I browsed through titles like, "decorating to end depression" and "the anti-aging guide to eradicating wrinkles, laugh lines, that tummy, and attaining complete perfection through cosmetic surgery from head to toe). Aside from being a dreadful title, (can we say run-on anybody?) it just hit me all the bullshit that is out there. There's this ridiculous standard set up, attaining perfection is our god, it's in our attempts to IKEA ize our living rooms, the listening to of Martha Stewart for the perfect Christmas decorations, and our constant upgrades of technology, the gyms we join, the self-help books we read, and the never ending spending spree that is our lives.

"We're numb, and we don't even know it."

The Madness of Luxury Living.

My heart is aching. I just can't believe the excess we live in.

Two issues that are really hitting me are public transportation and urban sprawl. Why I have such a passion for these two things, I don't know. But it's frustrating to be so concerned about these loosing battles.

Public Transportation:

What is wrong with our government? How can they have the nerve to promise us tax cuts, when they've dramatically cut funding in this area (and others too I'm sure) that is so vital to our health, the enivronment, and the infastructure of our country? It used to be that the province helped to fund public tranportation, but that all but disappeared with Harris.

The situation is so dire that I can't even see the solution as getting people to take public transit. I know I for one wouldn't be able to do in Peterborough. The system is so out of date with current traffic patterns, so unreliable, and unintuitive in general. This is true of many people I'm sure in cities all over Ontario. Toronto (I'm told) has one of the best in North America, and it's desperate for fixing. But no one wants to spend money on it. No wants to give Public Transit a chance even. The TTC propsed to create a right-of-way streetcar route on St Clair, only to be met with opposition from the merchants who felt it would 'take away from the beauty of the neighborhood.' I almost counldn't believe that this was a valid argument, and yet they won their first court case against the TTC (which the TTC is now appealing).

To try and give you a visual:

this many cars:
_____
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo - O < can be replaced by this streetcar.
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo |
oooooooooo___|

With the unbelievable environmentally friendly impact that this would have, as well as the relief of congestion, and the easier access for hundreds of thousands of Torontonians who don't own a car, is 'beauty' a valid excuse?


Urban Sprawl

I covered most of this a few days ago. But it's important to note how closesly it is with the public transit issue. Suburbs can't be served with public transit efficiently. It's extremely low density residential, and developers have this sick facination with creating 'elegent winding streets' that are in fact nothing but a maze, making bus routes nearly impossible.

The visual applies here as well. That many suburban houses can be replaced by one apartment building that is substantially easier to maintain and service with transit. And the environmental footprint is considerably less.

The Problem

We like to live in excess. We like to have a big backyard, a car, a house we can keep up. They're all signs of prosperity that signify to others that we achieved a certain level of wealth (which is a lie of course, since we don't also show off the amount of debt we have put ourselves in to obtain these signifiers).

We are a prideful people. And I wish I wasn't.

Jesus vs. Pomo

How do you talk about Jesus to a world that thinks it's already made up it's mind?

I've been reading about John the baptist lately, as well as the deciples. An interesting look on things, kind of the 'bookends' of Jesus life. It's refreshing, becuase thier job was so clear cut. No one knew about Jesus, they hadn't even heard of him. And when they did hear, it was important and people changed.

Nowadays, who hasn't heard about Jesus? And while were on the subject, who hasn't heard about the crap that's been done in his name?

I was brought to thinking about this a week or so ago when I was sitting in Concepts and Theories. Ella, who sits next to me each week, asked if I was religious.

I HATE that question. It's loaded.

I can say yes, assuming that she simply means, "do you believe in God?" but becuase I said yes to the word 'religious' that also means I could fall into a lump of 'religious' people who vote republican, burn abortion clinics, and can't survive without buying another testamint.

I can say no, simply becuase I don't consider myself to part of the above definition, but also deny the way Jesus has been changing me and the relationship we've had for half a decade now.

My response went as such:

"yes... um... no.... uh... I think Jesus is awesome."

That's right. 5 years to prepare a response, and that's still the best I can do. I almost choked on the cheese.

In a way though, it's very true. I do think Jesus is awesome, but not 'awesome' as a meaningless superlative. I didn't mean for it to sound like it came off a bumper sticker, or a t-shirt shold at a mega-Christian-conference

So here's the full answer, just to explain myslef a little.

Jesus is awesome. Awesome in that there have been moments where I'm left speechless at the things he does. When I try to read through his life in the Bible, and set aside all notions of religiousity, I'm somtimes stunned. This man wasn't someone off of a stained glass window. This guy was reolutionary. Not revolutionary like Napoleon or Che, but revolutionary in a completely new way. He was 100% for the people, which no person after him or before him ever was.

I met him several years ago, and my immediate reaction was confusion and then blame. He pointed out a lot of things that were wrong in my life, and instead of accepting it and changing, I offloaded to others and judged them (some of you reading this will perhaps remember this of me).

The most difficult thing for me to get my ego around was the fact that this Christ guy wasn't an impersonal being. He actually wanted to get to know me, and have me get to know him. This is the part where most people check out of my story, because it goes a step beyond convention, and you're then forced to make a decision of whether or not I'm telling the truth, or just spouting my mouth off.

Though at one time, I very much viewed Jesus as this distant character like something out of a 50's biblical blockbuster, I came to realize that this conception leads one to miss out on just who he was, how amazing he was, and how real he is.

Suburbia

I read a rather unfortuneate article in Macleans this week, about suburbs and how 'they aren't THAT bad.'

Please!

It's economically inefficient, it's environmentally damaging, it's socially inequitable, and aesthetically it's ugly. Yes, those are the four arguments against suburbs, and he tries to deconstruct each one.

It's not that he does a poor job at it, it's that he hasn't accounted for the negative impact the suburbs have had on urban development and the environment.

Particularly in regards to the environmental issues. His argument runs as such:

"The notion that you'd have a very dense city that's environmentally friendly is very difficult to sustain. A whole bunch of apartment buildings that rely on big, centralized energy systems for all the heating and cooling and elevators, and everything else? By contrast, let's say everybody lived at two-acre densities. What could happen if they got all their energy right on site -- geothermal, wind, solar? You wouldn't need these huge systems of waste-water treatment and water delivery. You could have a more-or-less self-sufficient kind of situation."

Brilliant, if that were the case, but I don't know any suburbians who are about to put up a solar factory in their back yard, or start harvesting the earth's heat. As well, even though the burbs could rely on well water (ones in the country do), most rely on water from a central source, and have sewage treated at a central source.

So the same problems exist with the suburbs as do in high-density buildings, however, burbs stretch out over VAST expanses of land, whereas high-rises have a small footprint. High-rises are also transit-friendly, which the burbs are not. Many people in high-rises opt out of owning a vehicle of their own, but such a luxury isn't possible in suburbs, where density is so low that it makes running routes economically unsound.

I'm not going to comment on the ugliness of suburbs, because not all burbs are. But certainly urban-sprawl cities have lost a lot of magic and history with dowtowns going the way of the dodo in favour of a 'central business district' that in many cases is just a mall (Scarborough Town Centre, Square One, Pickering Mall, North York Centre, umm... whatever is in Ajax).

Be kind to your environment and don't buy into the suburb lifestyle. It's not a healthy choice, regardless of what Macleans says.

13 years ago...

...my grandpa died.

I was only 6 at the time (just turning six actually, the funeral was between my grandma's birthday and mine). I don't remember him too well. The one memory I do have stems from a camping trip we went on. My brother, my cousins and I all went camping with him and my grandma. We spilled a lot of stuff on the table. Cereal, soup, drinks, anything. I can't recall why we were so clumsy, but all of us kids were. So my grandpa made a sign. He made a lot of signs, so does my grandma. You can fiugre out anything in thier house becuase there are notes and signs everywhere: "Gas for the kawasaki" "Fuse for the kitchen" "Turn valve to the left to shut off the water" he even made a complete and detailed electrical drawing of the Christmas light set up.

This sign however was more of a challenge than information. It had list of 'number of spills' and a prize associated with each. If you didn't spill any more items you got something like 20 dollars (enough to buy the world when your six) and the prizes decreased as you spilled more. If you spilled more than 5 more times, all you got was a chew of gum. I thought it was joke prize, like saying you got an elephant, becuase really, who gives a chew of gum as a prize?

Needless to say, we all spilled over 5 more times (except for my cousin Andrew I think, I believe he got a dollar). When we got back from the trip, my grandpa gave me a peice of gum.

Not a very exciting memory. I have no idea why it stuck with me. It wasn't important, or overly emotional. My grandpa gave me a peice of gum.


I was working for my grandma today, getting stuff out of the attic, putting up the winter windows, etc. She got the mail and looked at one of the envelopes, it was from the Netherlands. It was a personal letter (as you could tell from the envelope), and my grandma began to wonder who she knew in the Netherlands. No one really.

But the weird thing was, when I looked at it, it was addressed to my grandpa, not Grandma. Some 13 years after he passed away, this lady has decided to mail him.

She didn't open it in front of me, and nor would I care to know what was written. But it was exciting, like something out of a movie.