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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQkkAkNwIDw[/youtube]

The reading in church this morning really struck us, in light of current events.

How long, O LORD? I cry for help
but you do not listen!
I cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not intervene.
Why do you let me see ruin;
why must I look at misery?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and clamorous discord.
Then the LORD answered me and said:
Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late.
The rash one has no integrity;
but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.

Habakuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4

The American government has admitted its intention to extend its war into Iran. Read this report on Global Research…

The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity.

It is essential to bring the US war project to the forefront of political debate, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Political and military leaders who are opposed to the war must take a firm stance, from within their respective institutions. Citizens must take a stance individually and collectively against war.

Come on, peace train.

-Jessica

For a year now, Adam and I have lived less than a mile from the most heavily fortified border in the world… ever. Today, we are participating in the 40 Day Fast, and we want to talk a little about North Korea.

(Both photographs were taken from the same hill.)
Photo 1: Adam and I live in the valley beyond the hill behind me.
Photo 2: Looking across the Han River to North Korea.

Where we live in Paju, South Korea, the air is clean, the hills are beautiful and lush, and dense rice paddies fill every valley. Parents wearing designer clothes drive their new cars to bring their children to their schools and private after-school academies, stopping for fast food on any stretch of road along their way. The stretch of highway leading to the next town of Ilsan runs along the pristine Han River. Only a few miles further South, lies Seoul, considered the “Miracle of the Han River” and the second largest city in the world. Seoul is a huge, wealthy, modern metropolis.

However, look through the barbed wire, just across the river, and you see an unreachable land. Despite our close proximity to North Korea (the entire Korean peninsula is only as large as the American state of Minnesota), there isn’t a more distant place. Looking through binoculars from the “Unification Observatory” in Paju, we can glimpse the rolling hills across the river, cut bare for better surveillance of the border.

We can also see the propaganda village which was built in the river valley to show South Koreans that their northern neighbors are living comfortable and rich lives. The only problem is that the North Korean government could not even afford to complete this village. It looks like a bombed out ghost town. The empty shells that are supposed to convince us that everything is okay do the complete opposite. If they couldn’t even afford to finish this important PR move, how well is the real population of North Koreans living inland?

We have heard so many rumors, but of course we can’t see for ourselves. Kim Jung Il, the dictator is feared by his people. He and his late father, Kim Il Sung demand adoration as saviors, perfect men, ideal leaders of the perfect society. But while South Korea grew from poverty to wealthy metropolis in fifty years flat, North Korea has gone from bad to worse. The totalitarian government and the complete isolation, combined with widespread floods and droughts in the 1990s have made life extremely bleak in North Korea. People are starving, they live in fear, there are public executions, prison camps, curfews.

Amnesty International says,

Reliable figures on North Korea are difficult to obtain, given the lack of access and barriers to information gathering. Estimates of the number of deaths that resulted from the 1990s famine vary widely, ranging from 220,000 to 3.5 million. Some sources claim the famine destroyed between 12 and 15 percent of the total population. Economist Marcus Noland recently estimated that the famine resulted in the deaths of between 600,000 to 1 million people, out of a pre-famine population of approximately 22 million (between 2.7 and 4.5 percent of the total population). However the social damage was much higher if one considers the fall-off in the fertility curve caused by famine.

– from an article entitled “Starved of Rights: Human Rights and the Food Crisis in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)”.

The thing is, I don’t know how to help. Refugees caught in South Korea and China are sent back into the fire. Additionally, the minimal aid that is sent in, funnels through the corrupt people in power. Many South Koreans even fear a future reunification because the utter poverty and decades of brainwashing would flood into their borders and weigh heavily on their newfound affluence. It is a heavy and difficult situation that has spiraled out of control because of its shroud of shadowy secrets.

Please join us today as we pray for the people within the fortified borders of North Korea.

“Children of the Secret State”, a British documentary from 2000

Part 1 (10 minutes):

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=FVA4kgVGmX0[/youtube]

Part 2 (10 minutes):

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=Dm5xiFwnOSg[/youtube]

Part 3 (10 minutes):

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=LQUipc28cwA[/youtube]

Part 4 (10 minutes):

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=toOi1_7aNmM[/youtube]

Part 5 (5 minutes):

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=NEIv9gcLmt8[/youtube]

Other resources:

“North Korean Starvation Detailed” Seattlepi.com
“Starvation Threatens Millions as Aid to North Korea Dries Up” Times Online
“Scores of Children Dead in North Korea Famine” CNN

-Jessica

Adam and I will be participating in a 40 day effort to raise awareness of hunger around the globe as well as sharing ways to help. A woman named Kat has organized 40 bloggers to fast for a day and write about a cause close to their heart. Adam and I are on the schedule for July 24.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFZz6ICzpjI[/youtube]

Keep up with the 40 day fast, and join us all by fasting on the last day, July 31. Today, it began with Kat. Here is the 40 day schedule.

June 22 - Kat

June 23 - Brant Hansen

June 24 - SAM

June 25 - Shaun Groves

June 26 - Kristin

June 27 - Chaotic Hammer

June 28 - Stephanie

June 29 - Stephen

June 30 - Jeanine

July 1 - Truevyne

July 2 - Ryan G

July 3 - Jeremy Thiessen

July 4 - Steven

July 5 - Susanne

July 6 - Valerie

July 7 - William Guice

July 8 - Todd

July 9 - Scott

July 10 - Transition Pete

July 11 - Marianne

July 12 - Mark Jaffrey

July 13 - Michelle

July 14 - Lucas Parry

July 15 - Tim Harm

July 16 - Andrew Osenga

July 17 - Shawn

July 18 - Lorijo

July 19 - Euphrony

July 20 - Brody Harper

July 21 - Amy

July 22 - Erin Mount

July 23 - Dray

July 24 - Adam & Jessica Lofbomm

July 25 - Carlos

July 26 - Kat’s Mom

July 27 - Ted

July 28 - Charla

July 29 - Rick

July 30 - Tressa

July 31 - Toby

“We’re like people living in the penthouse of a tall brick building. Every day we need 200 bricks to maintain our walls, so we go downstairs, knock 200 bricks out of the walls below and bring them back upstairs for our own use. Every day. . . . Every day we go downstairs and knock 200 bricks out of the walls that are holding up the building we live in. Seventy thousand bricks a year, year after year after year.”

What on earth is this guy talking about? That’s absurd. Who would do such a thing?

Me. I’m doing that.

The writer’s referring to the fact that, due to an essential flaw in our cultural program, humans (me, and I presume you) destroy two hundred species of life a day. Every day. These sickening but true words were written by Daniel Quinn, in a speech of his called ‘The New Renaissance,” which you can read here.

Right now, I’m taking a class in Personal Ecology at Depaul. It’s a prerequisite, and I figured I might pick up a few new ideas on how to be a little more environmentally-friendly, but I wasn’t expecting any major eurekas or anything.

My professor assigned us Quinn’s book Ishmael to read over the course of two weeks. I sucked it down in two days. It was that good. I mean really good.

Eureka!-good.

It’s the story of a man who meets a highly intelligent gorilla named Ishmael. The man wants to know how to save the world and the gorilla promises to teach him. Ishmael proceeds to systematically school the man in the true nature of the destructive cultural subcurrent running through all civilization.

The sum of Ishmael’s message is fairly simple (though I highly, highly encourage you to follow his thread for your self ). Somewhere around the time of the agricultural revolution, we got this strange idea that this world was made for us instead of us being made for the world. As Quinn puts it in “The New Renaissance,” “Humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community.” This notion, he argues, is at the bottom of a great deal of our strife and struggle.

I tend to think he’s exactly right.

The fact is, there is a massive ecological problem facing us right now. Either the problem is with the Earth itself, or the problem is with us. As far as I can tell, the Earth works pretty great, so my guess it that the problem must be with us, and more specifically, with our perspective.

My perspective.

Laws aren’t going to do it. The Kyoto Protocol’s not going to do it. Recycling’s not going to do it. Hybrid cars are definitely not going to do it.

But if we could get it into our heads that this is our home and our neighborhood and not our kingdom, that might actually do it.

And, of course, there is the living it out too. That’s the domain of the laws and recycling and hybrid cars. But those are effects, not causes. The perspective shift has to come first, or else the effects will be empty and feeble.

I don’t know how to go about doing something about this other than to communicate this perspective to you. I think it’s the only way it’ll happen really. Bono could talk about it on TV and people would get excited for a while, but the only way I think its going to stick is for me to begin seeing life in this way and to talk about it with you. And for you to see life in this way and to talk about it with some other people too.

And so on.

Until we all decide it’s time to stop playing Jenga.

-Adam

“During your lifetime, the people of our culture are going to figure out how to live sustainably on this planet–or they’re not. Either way, it’s certainly going to be extraordinary. If they figure out how to live sustainably here, then humanity will be able to see something it can’t see right now: a future that extends into the indefinite future. If they don’t figure this out, then I’m afraid the human race is going to take its place among the species that we’re driving into extinction here every day–as many as 200–every day.”

We just saw this video, and I don’t know what we can do, but we can spread the word. Eric Volz is a young man from Nashville being held in Nicaragua for a murder he didn’t commit. Help spread the word. If you’re an American, please write your senator.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YChhOHrFA4[/youtube]

www.friendsofericvolz.com

Addendum: I’ve seen these kinds of “free so-and-so” emails and videos before, and they seem so far removed.  I guess this one hits home for me because he’s from Nashville, and he’s only 27.  This is also a very recent story, one that only began in November.  I try not to jump on every political bandwagon, but this seems worthwhile.  If there is anything you can think of to help this guy, if you know any people of influence, please help.

-Jessica