Loans That Change Lives

Kiva.org is a non-profit that fights global poverty by enabling people to make individual loans, of as little as $25, to low-income entrepreneurs in the developing world. If you lend money, you choose whom it goes to, and you will know exactly what the entrepreneur does with the money because regular journal updates are posted to the Internet.

The loan repayment period ranges from six to 18 months, and once the loan is repaid, because you haven't made a donation, you can choose to withdraw your money or to lend to another entrepreneur. If you choose the latter, you'll continue making a difference with the same money. 100% of your loan goes to the entrepreneur.

In addition to any loans you fund, you can also make tax deductible contributions directly to Kiva to help defer its costs.

Many thanks to my cousin Troy for bringing this to my attention.

Romans 7:15-20

Yesterday was a day of over indulgence. A day full of myself.

I bought a new MacBook, which in itself is not a bad thing, but which represents something I continually struggle with. If I'm not careful, I allow the allure of materialism to ensnare me. I suspend rational thought and operate on emotion. "I'm cool because I own 'x'. People will be impressed by me." It's quite ridiculous, but I can't seem to stop myself from going down that path - running actually. In these moments, I feel that I lose the ability to enjoy anything in moderation. I get consumed with the need to know everything about the item and to know it immediately. I can't pull myself away. I'd say I'm possessed, not by a spirit or demon necessarily, but by something else. I'm consumed by desire.

In this mindset, I'm looking externally, to other people and to possessions for validation and self-worth, when I should be looking eternally. Instead I say, "Oh well, I'm committed now. There's no use stopping." I make a conscious decision to indulge myself. I choose temporary pleasure over sustaining joy. I push God's quiet but clear voice aside and separate myself from the only person who loves me totally and unconditionally. I feel lost and lonely, smothered in despair.

I seem to approach God when I need something - forgiveness, acceptance, strength, courage, comfort - not when I need nothing. Why can't I just "hang out" with my friend and ask nothing of Him?

Today, I did.

And the simplicity and peace of being in the moment, being present for and with God, is a feeling that I always long for. So it constantly amazes me that I still succumb to what I don't want to do, to what I know is wrong for me, and I do it time and again.

Half Baked

Ben & Jerry’s pints for $2.50 a piece? Prices haven’t been that low in ages. The price thaw must be related to the rise in gas prices. It was good to shop today.

As fuel consumption increases, demand drives gas prices up. Extended engine use creates more exhaust which contributes to global warming and elevates the DQ Factor – an index measuring the frequency of Blizzard purchases between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Warmer temperatures trigger cravings for ice cream, steering people to today’s dispensers of chilled confection. Fuel consumption increases. Temperatures rise. More ice cream is purchased. And the cycle is perpetuated. So much for licking global warming.

The solution to the half baked gas and cream marriage is not to drive like a jerk. In 1997, I bought a new four-cylinder truck because I couldn’t stomach the gas bill a V6 would deliver at $1.40 a gallon. Ten years later, with my fuel economy consistently averaging 23 miles per gallon, my truck broke the bank -two extra miles per gallon on a 13 gallon fill up. It’s the equivalent of squeezing an extra gallon of gas from my tank. The potential ramifications are staggering, the least of which is that more kaching translates into more pints of S’mores.

Not sure how ONLY four pints of Vermont's finest crawled into my freezer this morning, and I’m even more surprised none of them were Karmel Sutra or Dublin Mudslide. Regardless, with more than 1,100 tantalizing calories in each container, I expect to have plenty of energy for my personal human-powered transportation initiatives geared to preserving the polar ice caps. Gotta get the ice for the cream somewhere.

Derivation

gioLOGOS [jo-log-os, gee-oh-loh-gos]
n. The online musings of a 10-letter surname (represented by g9ine)

[Origin: 2007: Italian, gio - first three surname characters; Greek, lógos a word, saying, speech, discourse, thought, proportion, ratio, reckoning; akin to légein to choose, gather, recount, tell over, speak; cf. LECTION]