So I can never make resolutions for myself.  I am just too self-righteous I suppose.  Melissa and Tori and Leah and McPhanda were at my house and we were making resolutions for each other.  Mine was no more procrastination.  That night though I thought of how I wish when people look at me they see Jesus.  I wish that instead of just taking blessings I was also a blessing to others.  That's my new year's resolution for myself.  It may not work out incredibly but just wanting to is a start, right?

Also related, last night I was reading about this community of Christians that reached out to the poor around them and made actual changes in their life.  Made the neighborhood prettier.  Gave people the things they needed, not just an anonymous check (as wonderful as those are, let me tell ya).  It reminded me of us and how that's what I want our culdesac to be like.  Not a whitewashed suburban house with a minivan to drive the 2.5 kids to soccer practice in.  I want so much more than that.  I want to make a difference and soccer mom's don't make that much of a difference.

"We wrestle to free ourselves from macrocharity and distant acts of charity that serve to legitimize apathetic lifestyles of good intentions but rob us of the gift of community.  We visit rich people and have them visit us.  We preach, prophesy and dream together about how to awaken the Church from her violent slumber.  Sometimes we speak to change the world; other times we speak to keep the world from changing us.  We are about ending poverty, not simply managing it.  We give people fish.  We teach them to fish.  We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond.  And we figure out who polluted it."

this wasn't so much a comment so much as a manifesto.  o well.