Reboloke's blog

Today one of the adult Sunday School classes at my church began using Rob Bell's NOOMA videos. Each week we'll watch one of the ten minute videos and then discuss the video, and whatever semi related topics our conversation spins off into (this class is good at randomly changing topics during our discussions).

Today's video was about being so busy with "good" things that we don't have time for the best things. It compared the busyness of our lives to a little kid picking up broken piece of shell until his hands were so full he didn't have any room to hold the perfect starfish that floated within his reach.

I have many friends and acquaintances who are avidly supporting Obama for president. Many of the people I know supporting Obama are members of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and are proudly tying their support for Obama with the denomination's "God is Still Speaking" comma.

From soon after I began noticing campaigns related to the presidential election, part of me was temped to jump on the Obama Comma bandwagon and support his campaign. After all I had friends supporting him, I hadn't heard anything bad about him (at least not anything realistic), and he even has ties to my church denomination. Nearly everyone I knew seemed to be picking their presidential candidate, and I wanted to be a part of that,

What's your greatest fear?

I live in a small, mostly Christian town, that's generally pegged as being conservative. It's not an area that's know for being open-minded, so the first local Pride Festival created a stir.

When I turned nineteen I got kicked off my parents health insurance policy. Since my work doesn't offer health benefits, I am now one of forty-five million* Americans without health insurance. Many of those forty-five million are young adults like myself, and most come from working families, so my situation is far from unique.

I work at a preschool/daycare center, and every now and then one of my kids will say something that just makes me wonder. Like today*. I was sitting on the ground next to another teacher while the kids were playing, and one of my kids said “Miss A** you're the same as Miss B.” We figured out he was talking about our shirts being the same and said “Yes, we both have red shirts on.” He went on to say that we have the same hair, too, and and we acknowledged that he was right about us having the same color hair. This was all fairly typical conversation. Then he said “and you both have the same color skin as me.” Again we said “Yes, we all have the same color skin” to which he replied “Except for C, he has black skin.

Last weekend I attended a Justice Summit sponsored by Leadership Now, the youth program of Lancaster Theological Seminary. Discussions were intense and often difficult, but enthusiasm was abundant and it was an incredible weekend. There are many things I could write about the weekend, but for now I'll focus on one of the last activities we did.

I think most Progressive U users are here for the same reasons – to get scholarship money and to express their opinions – but we've all come from different backgrounds. Since a person's background and where they are in life can have a huge effect on their ideas and opinions, I am curious about the demographics of Pro U users. I have created several polls with questions about user demographics (religion, gender, age, and high school education), and would appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to answer them.