Day 10

Over the past couple days I've been immersed in a frenzy of study, realization, and change. This has led me, not to a destination, but a few concrete steps forward on the journey. I will attempt to summarize my findings here:

1. This came to me in a meditation: We (humans, particularly Westerners) are stealing from the earth without giving back. What does the earth want us to give back? Poop.

Yes, poop.

I remember reading once that human fecal matter is one of the most effective fertilizers in existence. With this in mind, I googled a bit, and found that composting human excrement has been done with great success, and is apparently not as gross as one might think. If done properly, it becomes pleasant-smelling and pathogen-free. I believe this is an idea whose time has come--with the world's drinking water supply declining and becoming more and more contaminated, we simply cannot afford to continue pooping in our drinking water. Sadly, I doubt I'll be ready to begin composting any time soon, however, it is a project on my list for the future.

2. I've been feeling somewhat guilty about the level of luxury in my life, which allows me to do ridiculous things like buy and wear gothic lolita clothing (although this fashion can actually be indulged in somewhat sustainably--a subject for a later post). This is because on the other side of the world, there are forgotten women who must spend their lives alone, abandoned and cast out by their families and societies, in shocking poverty and constant, unimaginable, and permanent suffering. I am talking about women with obstetric fistula. I can't imagine a worse fate--The alternative, dying in childbirth, actually seems preferable.

These women suffer because of poverty and ignorance. They are married off at a young age--often being forced to have sex with much older men before their menstruation has even started. And they suffer because the societies in which they live do not value women as full human beings, but only as baby-making machines. I know I must do something to help these people--something more than simply making a $20 donation to charity. Plans are slowly being birthed, and will be detailed in a future post.

3. Yesterday God's movement in my own life became apparent, and I am officially transitioning over the next two weeks. The transition has been, and will continue to be, clean and elegant. Specifically, I am very happy to report that in two weeks, I will start (again) as Assistant Director of Life Force Arts Center, an awesome nonprofit organization dedicated to spiritually-based visual, literary, and performing arts. And this time around, I'll be getting paid enough to cover my basic expenses, which means I can devote my full focus to advancing the cause of art and spirituality.

I have been dreaming of this moment--literally and figuratively--for a long, long time--in fact, more than a year ago I was praying to God to remove me from my job and place me in a more suitable one. I had been thinking to take a lower-paid position at Hobby Lobby or another craft-related store, but the Lord had bigger plans. He kept me at CFS and pushed me into a supervisory role, then a management role. I am not the same person I was a year ago--I have grown exponentially in marketable skill. And now that I'm coming full circle at LFAC, I will need to constantly call upon this skill that I have acquired by the Lord's leading and guidance.

4. The price of authenticity. This new role comes with a significant pay cut for me. Possibly I could have asked for more, and may have gotten it, however, I do not feel right about taking more from a nonprofit organization than I require to pay my basic living expenses. Now if I had been better about managing my money in the past, and therefore been debt-free now, my expenses would be much lower and I could work for less. Like the medical missionaries of Mercy Ships, who sail to poor countries at their own expense to provide much-needed healthcare services to people who cannot obtain them in any other way. How much more good could I do if I required less to live on, or if I could generate the material wealth I needed on my own time, allowing me to be able to give myself fully to a cause that does not pay?

Because the worthiest causes do not pay. Helping the poorest and most forgotten people on the earth is not something our corporations consider valuable. Additionally, I keep feeling that I need to increase my financial contribution to the world, even as I take on less lucrative career paths. There must be a way I can create an income stream that allows me to be free to help other people, free to give away millions of dollars to charity, free to obtain the education and training I'll need to carry out whatever mission I'm given. I believe the Being who created humanity gives each person the resources he needs to complete his calling. This, too, is a subject to be more fully explored in another post.

5. This is the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity. It was published almost TEN YEARS AGO, and it scares the fuck out of me. Basically we have ten, maybe twenty, years left to stop the hazardous course our civilizations are on before the whole world goes to hell in a handbasket.

Now this is not a conspiracy theory by religious extremists--although religions have been (mostly fruitlessly) warning us to act right from the beginning. This was created by 1600 senior scientists from 71 countries, including half of all
Nobel Laureates. In other words, the greatest scientists alive in our time. However, when it came out, the media declared it "unnewsworthy" and did not publish it. I only knew about it from reading Balance Point, which I found by accident while googling for poop. This is another subject worthy of its own post.

Now, this is a lot. It is a lot of information to process through my brain. It is a lot of direction for my life, and I really don't know where the fuck it will lead me.

Somehow, after just 10 days of this journey, I am getting the idea that I am about to live an extraordinary, strange life.