Because of my tendency to reminisce about the passage of time and changes, I find myself thinking how much has changed in our own lives and the lives of everyone we care about. We have moved across the country, made new lives, traveled around the world, and had our first child. I personally have had to reconsider everything I once believed in, and am still in the process of doing so. But through it all, our closest friends and families have been there literally and figuratively (through this blog and other ways) with us. Thank you to everyone who has followed along with us on our travels and our discussions. I’ve learned a lot from everyone here and in our lives.

A theme that has dominated this space of late, of course, has been politics, which is why I chose today to stop writing here. We are in many ways on the edge of at least a partial, temporary retreat from madness or a full-fledged plunge into a new dark ages. Those who find that statement to be hyperbolic or exaggerated are not paying attention.

People have often asked me what “Sacking Rome” means. Everyone knows about the sacking of Rome, most notably in 410 AD, by the “barbarian” tribes. This event has fascinated me for many years. I once wrote about Ralph Winter’s take on this event. This perspective continues to influence me, although my view of the church has changed radically in the last few years.

At any rate, the death of empire is a concept that has always forced me to wonder about how and why powerful civilizations collapse. They always do. One day, maybe not too far in the future, America the Empire too will be swept away. Perhaps it’s the process of imperialization itself that sows the seeds for the empire’s own destruction. Perhaps human societies don’t scale well, or sustainably.

No matter what the superficial reasons are, one lesson is clear. Civilization collapses as a result of the actions of its own people. The invading hordes do they what they do because the giant has become weak through fear, corruption, and despotism. All of these things are both the cause and result of unsustainable growth and freakish consumption.

There are those, even among my readers and friends, who look at such statements as overt negativity. What they don’t realize is that people such as myself are often more optimistic than those who refuse to heed such warnings. It’s because I believe in the worthiness of humanity and the beauty of culture that I say these things. I want to save the good things that we have, but in order to do so, we have to find a better way to live. That is my point.

Enough.

This doesn’t mark the end of my writing, thinking, or photo-shooting. I’ve begun new projects that I am very excited about. For one, I have a new camera, so I will continue to post my photos online here and here. I’ve made exactly $50 from my photography and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s all I ever make from it. I do it because I love it and because I get great enjoyment from my friends and family joining us on our travels through our photos.

Speaking of travel, I’ve started a new website dedicated to finding the good things in life through travel, called Quit Work to Travel. It’s little more than a place holder right now, and is very rough in terms of content and design. However, in the last year of settling back into life in America, I’ve realized that we are permanant carriers of the travel bug. I plan to make this site into a resource for like-minded folks who find themselves gazing off into the horizon when the proper thing to do would be to keep their eyes on the freeway ahead. Every day, I run into more people with the nomadic spirit and they always ask me how to do what we’ve done. There are people with much more experience than we will ever have, but I would at least like to share what we learn as we continue to forsake sensibility for freedom.

They say after a person has written approximately 400,000 words, they start to become a better writer. I’ve written a lot over the last four years, but I know I haven’t written anywhere near that much. So, I’ll keep writing somewhere, but no longer here. I’ve decided to devote my energies elsewhere, and now I’m off to figure out where that elsewhere is. Thanks for everything.

It’s a funny feeling to go back to Columbus this time of year because it means that almost an entire year has passed since we came back to the US after our trip around the world. Lots of changes. Last year when I was home, I was studying for the GRE to get into Journalism school. Got in, but I decided not to go for a number of reasons, the most important being the birth of our son. Also, in February I started work at one of the hottest startups in Southern Cali and I enjoy it too much to think of doing much else right now. That in itself is a big change because all last year I though I had left my last job with the intention to never return to software. Turns out, software is incredibly fun if you’re in the right position and the right industry and the right company.

Anyway, we’re looking forward to seeing all of you!

I’m no fan of corporate corruption, and justice did need to be served, but come on… 24 years? This sentence is essentially a death sentence. He’s already in his 50s. This ends his life. He will lose his wife, his children, his sanity. Even 10 years would have been too harsh.

What’s ironic is that this does nothing to solve the real problem, which is that greed and the accumulation of wealth hold more value in this country than human life. Essentially, Skilling was given this sentence because he was responsible for wiping out people’s wealth. A horrible crime, yes, but not one worthy of this degree of punishment.

Austin works with Free the Slaves and they are recently promoting efforts to eliminate U.S. government and American corporate-backed contractors that practice slavery in Iraq and the Middle East. More details on how to get involved can be found at warslavery.org.

Details on the talk as follows:

We Are The World?
How does turning off the light switch when you leave the room help children escape malnutrition in Africa? How can bicycling short distances instead of driving lead towards an end to strife in Darfur? How can the clothes you wear help free slaves around the world?

Introducing GLOCAL
It’s time to explore how the little things make a huge impact around the world. We live in an era full of choices…now is the time to learn how to choose justice through the little decisions we make. Join us on Saturday, October 21, 2006 as we launch a new series of Teach-Ins called, GLOCAL.

At GLOCAL Teach-Ins you will hear from locally-based experts that can help us connect the dots between how what we do in our local communities and the effects to our larger community, the world. Network and brainstorm with like-minded people, on how you and your community can make a difference.

Each GLOCAL Teach-In will discuss a particular problem that exists both globally and locally, current efforts to address the problem and specific things that we, the people in the room, can do to help bring change. The idea being that each of us leaves with practical, realizable and realistic next steps that we can take.

MODERN SLAVERY AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING
At the October GLOCAL, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick will open a dialogue about what slavery and trafficking is, how it’s connected to our lives and what people in San Diego can do to bring it to an end.

Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick is a human rights advocate and educator working on issues of human trafficking, modern slavery and human rights. He is an Outreach Coordinator for both San Diego Youth and Community Services (San Diego) and Free the Slaves (Washington, DC) and is a lecturer at San Diego State University. His recent projects have included the creation and implementation of a human rights education campaign in at-risk communities and the implementation of www.warslavery.org, a campaign to end tax-payer sponsored slavery in Iraq.

There are 27 million people held in slavery around the world. While some are trafficked and others are born into slavery in their own communities each of them has been held through violence, with little or no pay, for economic gain. In America, tens of thousands of women, men and children are forced to work in the agricultural, domestic and sex sectors of the economy. As human trafficking, especially trafficking for sexual exploitation, has gotten the public’s attention, it is critical that Americans -as consumers and voters- understand what slavery is and how it can be stopped.

This teach-in will provide an overview of the global and domestic perspective and efforts being made to bring slavery to an end. This will be followed by a facilitated discussion about what we, as consumers and voters living in Southern California, can do to bring justice to victims of this human rights abuse.

When: Saturday, October 21, 2006 at 6:00 p.m.

Where
Main Hall at Mid-City Nazarene Church
(corner of 41st and University Ave.)
4101 University Avenue
San Diego, CA 92105
http://midcitynaz.org/

No cost … but your donations at the event are helpful and greatly appreciated

Spread The Word!
We need your help in getting the word out about GLOCAL. Please forward this email on to everyone you know. Go to http://groups.google.com/group/glocalsd and sign-up for our GLOCAL update e-mail, visit our MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/glocalsd and tell others about it. Send us an e-mail at glocalsd@googlegroups.com to let us know that you are coming on October 21 and to suggest topics for future GLOCAL Teach-Ins.

GLOCAL is a collaborative effort of people from the following organizations:
The Ecclesia Collective (http://ecclesiacollective.org)
Floresta ( http://floresta.org)
Jubilee Economics Ministry ( http://www.jubilee4justice.org)
Free The Slaves (http://www.freetheslaves.net)
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
Church of the Nazarene in Mid City ( http://midcitynaz.org/)
Healthmuse Holistic Health Counseling (www.healthmuse.com)

Marian Fisher, according to an article in the Seattle Times, asked to be shot before the other girls, all younger than her, apparently in an effort to get the gunman to let the others go.

The Common Dreams piece takes the story and admittedly goes a little far in extrapolating the lessons from the story into a sermon on the war and the American prison system. I don’t disagree with these extrapolations, per se, but the compassion and courage of the girls that day is worthy of more contemplation and self-reflection than simply to be used as a springboard for a political sermon.

Maybe that’s our problem.

Perhaps we turn every tragedy into a posture to adopt or a policy to enact, and in doing so miss out on the real lessons that those who respond with grace in the face of violence have to teach us. The most compelling acts of courage, it seems to me, are not the ones belonging to soldiers carrying out the rage of a nation but the ones that carry out the words of truth, which have turned the world on its head for 2,000 years: “Love your enemies.”