Green Oasis

I wonder why we value faith in an unseen God. Isn’t it really faith in what we’ve learned from our culture? Isn’t a single act of kindness more virtuous than a lifetime of believing without evidence?

An excellent introduction to the central philosophy behind Getting Things Done from the man himself. GTD (as it’s known to the dark cult that surrounds it) is the art of stress free productivity.

(via lifehacker)

Provocative? Perhaps.

But I know that I, personally, am much less willing to ask people to die to secure more oil to maintain my lifestyle now that I believe that once they die they are completely, irrevocably dead. I didn’t realize how precious life is until I knew how easy it is to lose it forever.

No, the soldiers who die won’t see their families again in heaven. Their mothers and fathers, spouses and children will never see the fallen again. Children will have to grow up without Mommy or Daddy. They will never again speak with them, hug them, or kiss them. They will never hear them laugh again.

Who am I to ask someone else to pay that eternal price so that I can drive my car and watch my DVDs?

Thought you would have fun playing Where’s Gordy? on Christopher Hitchens’ online directory Build Up That Wall. There’s twenty points for the first one to find him.

I had an odd reaction to The Mormons Are Coming, posted yesterday on Salon. This was the first time in a long time that I truly felt like an outsider to Mormonism. I felt as though I had never been Mormon. I looked with outsider’s eyes at the peculiar things Mormons do and sensed the otherness that is such a part of being Mormon.

The article brought up old memories of what it was like to be a Mormon child. Somehow the article connected me to memories of being embarrassed to be Mormon. When I was a child, I remember looking around at the faces in sacrament meeting thinking “These really are peculiar people.” I sensed that being Mormon meant that I was strange.

I was an outsider with strange ideas. The gentiles would question me about why I didn’t drink soda, swear, or play on Sundays. I sympathized with the gentiles because Mormon ideas seemed a bit strange to me too. Yet I was Mormon, so I stuck up for those ideas.

Today as I read the article, I remembered that same feeling of peculiarity. I felt the kind of shame in the pit of my stomach like I had been left out of the others’ games and jokes, like I was outside the group. I felt the pain of being different. I finally understood why some call being Mormon an ethnicity.