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Well Happy Thanksgiving! Wow, what a holiday. For all of the problems that America has, I have a feeling that as long as we set mandate a whole day of the year for gratitude and thankfullness, it should delay the four horseman for at least a few hours from making an appearance.
What’s that you say? Why are bathroom’s important, besides the obvious? Bathrooms are great for jokes of course.
Well, it’s important enough to have a world summit for the humble toilet, the most unappreciated of modern conviences? The BBC reported this week that the fourth world toilet conference was held in Beijing. Participants arrived to discuss such pressing issues as the “taboos” against toilets and the basic human rights of good toilets.
Yet they have a point. Other than finding food & shelter, sanititation is one of our greatest needs. I will go so far as to say how we view sanitation and the resources we place to it says a lot about how we view individuals.
Honor guests to our homes? Have great toilets. What’s the first question any new employee asks on their first day? Where is the toilet. Want the young, weak and old to avoid disease? Have working toilets.
It’s odd to think so, but many millions in the world don’t think so. Of course the poor are always the last to receive good sanitation, and they suffer for it greatly. But there are cultural barriers to good sanitation.
Anywhere where individuals as individuals are treated culturally and socially with dignity and respect as special creations, good toilets exist. Where individuals are raised in either tribal circumstances (RE: the Middle East) or in socialistic, totalitarian regions (China, inner-cities of Western lands, parts of urbanized Africa, etc), there is simply little desire to see to that the great masses live in healthy, clean areas.
For any NGO, missionary groups, foreign aid workers, and others who want to see impoervished people have healthy lives, they must be treated as unique and special individuals with spiritual needs met in physical ways. Other than that, we can continue to look forward to future World Toilet Conventions.
Well, it looks like I have a Tobacco Road streak going. I’ve never seen Clemson win in the state of North Carolina. In what looked like a pleasant weekend, visiting my old roommate in Raleigh and seeing his wife and baby daughter, was abruptly ended with a 52 yard winning Duke field goal. While Clemson has struggled in Durham for years (just 6-4 in the last 22 years in Durham), a loss, with so much on the line is nothing short of shocking.
And now all comes down to the USC game this Saturday. As bad as USC’s game was Saturday, I have no clue how this will turn out. The Regulator – wife, a USC graduate, is eagerly anticipating the end of the Holtz regime no matter the outcome. Go Tigers, but I’m afraid to look Saturday!
Why work? It’s a simple, yet complex question. For a paycheck? To keep a roof over our heads and the creditors out?
Last week CBS News had a series on Mom’s returning to the work force, called Moms ‘Sequence’ Back To Work. The backdrop is women, after a few years nurturing young children are returning to the workforce. The mothers they interviewed, mostly professional, highly educated sorts, had what would be considered very unusual perspectives on work for most of our history. Most mothers interviewed were reentering the workforce out of boredom as much as anything.
“It just needs to be interesting and challenging and compensate me enough to cover the babysitter,” said one of the mothers.
Is this a proper perspective on work? I don’t think so in a general sense (no way I can comment on this one woman’s unique prepackaged). One of the great failings of American culture and most specifically the conservative church is articulating a sound view of vocation and work. We do enjoy the benefits of the Protestant work ethic, though I doubt many could name what it is.
Good work (as opposed to good works) should include:
- Serving God and the community
- All occupations can have spiritual dignity, if they can be done with a heart aimed at honoring God with talents given by Him
- Work diligently to achieve maximum profits
- Associate success in work with God’s blessing AND an obligation to grow in vocation and give back
I am not sure if a mother returning to the work force looking for something interesting to do with enough margin to cover the babysitter was in the minds of the early Protestants. We live in an age of extreme luxury in this nation. I will periodically post on the greatly ignored subject of vocation from time to time; for I think a solid appreciation of what work is for has been lost in our culture.
For all the veterans of America’s armed forces, thank you.
To those in Iraq and Afghanistan, thank you.
I have only one relative that I know of who passed away in war. His name was Brocks Nelson, an uncle of my now-86 year-old grandmother. A native of Whitmire, SC, he died in route to France in 1918 to help end the War that will end all Wars. A U-Boat got him before he arrived in Cherbourg. Dying in the cold North Atlantic, far from the quiet of the Piedmont of South Carolina is an awful way to die. He receives my thanks as well.
Until the last trump sounds and the last war ends on that day, I recommend that all listen to this Last Post to remember those that have served and especially all those that have fallen, including the 10 more US soldiers this week.
