An unlikely church experience..

Religion is usually considered one of the biggest and most essential parts of a person's life. However, I am not one of those people. Although I was baptized a long time ago I don't go to church, except for christmas eve, and I kinow almost nothing about the religious path I will follow later in life or which of the many would fit me best. All this aside on most sundays I am at my good friends house and she is forced to go to church every sunday. Consequently, I am dragged along with her. She goes to a lutheran church and although I don't know where there that falls on the spectrum of religions I do believe that I have learned many useful things in the times I have gone.Just last week we heard ina sermon something that really made me thing. the pastor was talking about how our role in life is to serve, and to search for the way that we can best serve the world and god. I don't know exactly how I feel about the god thing but I thought it was an interesting point. They kept talking about how instead of looking to "get" the most of life, we need to see how we can best put the most into life. I never had really understood the difference between the two expressions but I now noticed that I should decide if I wanted to be a giver or a taker. I know this was pretty random but it made me realize that going to church, and religion is definetly not only about the savior, and bible story like I always thought it had been. It's more about having a community around you that shares similar morals and values and that are very likely to support you. It' about learning to become a better person and serving others. I think that type of community is extremely rare and I know that I definetly want to bee a part of one but not necessarily a congregation.

getting vs. giving

Essential questions....part1

When we were first given the challenge of thinking of the essential questions that fit our own lives I was immediatly worried because I didn't even know where to begin. But after making an effort to pay more attention to my life and the reading we have been reading in english I have thought of some possibilty's of potential essential questions.

-How should we live in this world? And how do I specifically?
-to survive only?, to make the world a better place?, better for others?

-What makes us/me happy?
-getting vs. giving?

-What is our purpose?
-To get the most out of life vs. put the most into it? Does religion greaten my experience of life?

-What is the balance of taking risks?
-are they worth it?, do I way risk and reward? doing potentially dangerous things (ex. sky diving) do things like that enhance life or are just too risky?


thats all for now but there will defiently be more...

4 generations of water buffalo

My understanding of the water buffalo movie may be a little off due to the fact that I could only hear it because the computers in the computer lab don't have the right software. But in spite of that, I could find some similaritys between this man's video and Singers essay. Both of the two are focussed around the idea of giving to people in need, and each of them found there own solution to lessening the amount of pverty around the world. However, Singer's solution was much more extreme then the water buffalo idea and called for world wide participation. Robert thompson on the other hand took the approach of helping world poverty one family at a time. He wasn't concerned with what measures other's were taking towards the problem and relied only on his actions to provide a good example to others. Both works were effective in the aspect of making there audience consider what they could/should do towards helping world poverty but differed completely in their approaches. Singer's strategy was to manipulate his audience and accuse them into wanting to do good works for others. Robert Thompsons approach was to simply capture the effort he was making towards helping others.

Singer's Solution to Poverty

I'll have to admit that in class while we were attempting to correctly assemble Singer's essay I only briefly scanned the huge mass of words. But after reading the essay completely I was completely surprised with the way it affected me. Although many aspects of the paper pertained to me, the first part that grabbes my attention was in the begginning where Singer writes about the, "people who would have been quick to condemn Dora if she had not rescued the boy go home to places far more comfortable than her apartment,". I realized that I could easily have been one of those people and may in fact be one right now as I'm in the middle of planing my Sweet Sixteen with my best friend. A few days ago my mom suggested that instead of presents we ask our friends to give an amount of money to a charity of our choice. It would be an understatement to say that my mom's request was not met with open arms. Reading this paper forced me to think twice about the answer I had given my moher and momentarily forced out of my world of happy oblivion. Singer addresses this many times and part of the success of this essay is the way that it shoves the reader out of a world where they can ignore poverty around the world and makes them examine what they're not doing to help it. Although each point that Singer presentes was powerful I thought the paragraph where he actually listed the organizations names and phone numbers was the most influental.
It was at that point where reading this esay went from an assignhment to something that I actually had to consider. Once I was given this information and the challenge that I could no longer be oblivious I seriously considered Singer's idea. Not only was this paper an excellent piece of writing it held ideas that could actual change the world. And although what Singer asks for is not simple and requires particiaption and caring from many people that are unlikely to give it, "knowing where we should be going is the first step to moving in that direction."