Before I forget, a couple of things

So often I have great ideas or thoughts while on my drive to work in the morning, and today I feel especially compelled to scribe a few things before the day gets away from me and I forget exactly what felt so important earlier in the day.
First up: Why is being a Christian so scary for people? I'm reminded of a quote by a favorite comedian of mine, Jim Gaffigan. On stage he begins a part of his routine this way..
"I would like to make you all feel comfortable here tonight, so... that's why I would like to talk to you about Jesus."
That killed me - it really is true that nothing makes some people MORE uncomfortable than talking about Jesus. To be completely honest, I don't like doing it either, except with close family and a few friends. But I often think now that if people got past the label of Christian or the name of Jesus as such traditionally out of bounds topics for general conversation, we could get to the idea that most Christians are just trying to be better people in all the different areas of their lives. Clearly we all have a long way to go, and there's no point in hoping to attain perfection. Not gonna happen. But it's a journey that I'm happy to be on now more than ever, and something about putting it down in writing helps me get further down that road. So to all 3 of you that end up reading this, thanks.

Next up: Society's ills
Even though I'm quite sure that Don Henley didn't concern himself with more worldly topics when he wrote "The more I know, the less I understand" as part of one of his 80's hits, that line popped into my head this morning as I thought about all of the things that concern me as a human being. Thanks in part to the proliferation of social media, and a steady diet of NPR, it seems that I constantly learn about the way things go in this world and I spend a lot of time wondering why they can't be done differently. It's like John Coffey says in The Green Mile. It's kinda like a thousand needles always poking at you constantly. I hear about thing like political corruption, the need for more recycling, plastics in our waste stream, the massive amount of food our country overproduces each year, obesity, poor parenting, over-reaching religious zealots, quality of food, HFCS, the list seems to get longer each time I tune in. So how does one balance a realistic daily life with a job, kids, home to worry about with all of these seemingly impossible social ills? It's enough to make my head come unglued from my shoulders.
Of particular note this morning was the Radio Times piece on food waste. I was not aware that we wasted that much food in our country, or that we produce roughly 50% more food than we actually need. The stories of grocery stores throwing out perfectly good food when so many in our country don't have any food at all really struck me. Some callers mentioned that they actually feed themselves and many others purely on what grocery stores toss into dumpsters at shift's end. I liked the story of a guy from Reading, PA who worked with his local stores to arrange for pickup of the items to be tossed out and then spent his time delivering that food to those in need through local agencies. But I was equally as shocked about stores that even as they prepared to throw food out that had been on deli shelves for more than the allowed 4 hours, store employees were not allowed to take advantage of the cast offs. They had to purchase the food that otherwise would have gone into the landfill. (Which apparently causes a huge methane gas problem in landfills, that's a topic for another day) The madness of being charged for garbage is beyond me.
But there I go, getting all worked up about something that I don't feel like I have any way to change. Sure, I can patronize stores that do things the right way, and as I may have mentioned earlier via FB or elsewhere, we can all cast a vote each time our purchases are scanned at the grocery store by purchasing products that support better methods of food production. But you can see when you look at the list above that it can seem overwhelming. Too many causes and not enough time.
I have this idea now, after the RT program this morning, to contact our principal at Clare and Addie's school to see if there's any chance of changing the lunch time for kids so that they eat AFTER recess and not before. The guest on the show mentioned how much food schools waste because often the kids are in a hurry to get out to the playground and they waste a tremendous amount of food not because they're not hungry, but because their friends are all bailing out to get to the monkey bars and they don't want to get left out. I get it, I would go too. But something as simple as putting recess BEFORE lunch might make kids sit and eat more. It would be healthier for them AND cut down on food waste. Seems like a win-win. But I have a sneaking suspicion that there are more hurdles to making that happen than I'm aware of.
(whew).
Now, about those candidate endorsement stories..