Street Wisdom

Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom. We live in an age of information but we are not necessarily in age of wisdom. A lot of people I have met who live on the streets have a lot of wisdom yet not as much access to information as me. I think I can learn a lot from them. I'd like to take an information fast for a while, so I have time to process information I have into knowledge and then the time to live that knowledge into wisdom.

As Good as it Gets: Reflections from a Mining Town

We are living in an economic boom where I live. Things we chose not to address now as a society will only be due to our lack of collective political will. No where is this more apparent than when I recently visited one of our states mining towns. I could almost feel the money leaving the town. There were seventeen year olds with 40,000 dollar cars and people flying in and out of the town earning six figure salaries. There is also a large Aboriginal population, one older man I saw was walking bare foot with a wooden leg that I couldn’t imagine any white person considering acceptable (It looked like something that might be given to a Pirates of the Caribbean extra). Every time I see older members of our Aboriginal population in this sort of condition I can't help but imagine the pain of being a generation raised without parents. I can still remember the pride of one Aboriginal woman I met who said she knew who her grandparents were. Something I took for granted but something that was the exception to the rule for her. I am amazed that as much Aboriginal culture has been passed on as has. I also visited this town the day Kevin Rudd apologised to the stolen generation. It felt strange to feel elated about this step one visit and saddened by the harsh reality of what so many have to live with.

A Bag of Chips

Last night a homeless man bought a bag of chips to share with me and a bunch of other homeless people most of whom he didn’t know. It reminded me both of the widow who gave two small coins to the temple treasury (Mark 12:42, Luke 21:12) and a quote from Shane Claiborne's book Irresistible Revolution "true generosity is measured not by how much we give away but by how much we have left." It certainly put anytime I've felt like I was generous into perspective.