Tag: issues

Guilty: Depraved Indifference

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Trust me, it’s a good thing  I haven’t blogged in over a year. I unknowingly spared you from the self-focused, woe is me, screwed over, victim of corporate, too much month-not enough money, navel gazing “I want, I need, I earned, I deserve” train of thought that thankfully came to a screeching halt yesterday.

A representative from Gospel for Asia came to speak at my church. He passionately pleaded the cause of the orphan and widow, he showed a video, quoted Matthew 9 citing how Jesus had compassion and took action, and how the workers are few.

And…. My heart was broken and I am selling everything I have and moving to India or Africa and giving my life to missions!!  I totally zoned out.

Please understand, none of this was new. I worked for Gospelink. I’ve seen the videos of pastors going through flood waters on their bikes, orphans being served their  daily “meals”,  mud huts people make into homes. Having friends that are missionaries, I’ve heard stories. I’ve cried tears. I used to care. I made it a prayerful and financial priority in my life to right the wrongs. I was focused on telling anyone who asked how they could help too.

I zoned out only because I just couldn’t (and can’t) shake a phrase said by my pastor.

He said it flippantly, only once, having to ask a friend sitting in the front row for the correct phrasing: “Depraved Indifference”.

Was.

“Depraved Indifference”

Worked.

“Depraved Indifference”

Seen.

“Depraved Indifference”

Heard.

“Depraved Indifference”

Cried.

“Depraved Indifference”

Used to.

“Depraved Indifference”

Made.

“Depraved Indifference”

Focused.

“Depraved Indifference”

All past tense.

Over and over and over again it shouts : “Depraved Indifference”.

Depraved Indifference: conduct that is so wanton, so deficient in a moral sense of concern, so lacking in regard for the life or lives of others, and so blameworthy as to warrant the same criminal liability as that which the law imposes upon a person who intentionally causes a crime.

Here I sit: Me. “Mother Teresa Incarnate”. (As a prosecuting attorney cross-examining me once said.) Julie Stein.

Here I  sit: Comfortable. Complacent.

Here I sit: Julie Stein, GUILTY of Depraved Indifference.

Knowing of the wrong doing that is happening, having excess funds to help stop it and doing nothing.

Found as guilty, as liable, as those intentionally committing heinous crimes.

Here I sit: humbled, wrecked, and hopefully changed.

Secrets

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I have a secret.

I haven’t told you up until now because it doesn’t fit into what a “good little Christian” (read: pharisee) like me should read, not to mention like. I do like it. Alot.I have almost all the of books. And I check it first thing Sunday mornings. Yes, first thing, Sunday mornings.

My Secret: I LOVE PostSecret.

“PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people
mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.”

Some are vile. Some are funny. Some are sad. Some are so inappropriate. And I relate to at least one, every week.

Here are just a few of my (“cleaner”) favorites in a slideshow:

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Julie’s random roller coaster… california edition….

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This week I have been in LA for an Urban Youth Workers Institute conference 

Right now I am supposed to be writing in my new free Living the Legacy  journal about my time here and putting together a practical plan to “Living the Legacy” , but I am blogging instead because if I think about anything important at this point, I just might cry again today…

Just know that my brain is fried and I have had no time to process or reflect the real stuff  intentionally, I have been going from breakfast to small workshop to big main session to small workshop to lunch to small workshop to big main session to small workshop to dinner to small workshop to big main session  to worship to “bed” for the past several days, I hardly know what day it is, I haven’t had my phone with me all week, I have been sick from being sick last week plus interesting food adventures, jet lag never set in… it’s well past midnight west coast time, and I leave in 4 hours and my brain is spinning, and I don’t feel like sleeping…..

buckle up, and enjoy the ride on Julie’s random roller coaster… California edition..

Why did I need to stop in North Carolina to get to California?

I think the “glamour” of LA is all media hype. Wrong judgement I’ve been told, it was based on just visiting the airport …

California is beautiful…. mountains, and soft grass, and purple flowered trees, and roses everywhere.. I am growing to appreciate the smell of Gardenia, and Jasmine…

I love In-and-Out Burger, so much so that we had it almost everyday here, it’s inexpensive and the toasted bun won me over…. but there is a reason I know it is called In-and-Out Burger, and it has nothing to do with quick customer service…. They have bible verses on their wrappers, and I am ok with that because they don’t sell clothing that I think is slightly skanky and put a bible verse on the bag, and I have a critical heart sometimes…

I took my silver ring off of my left hand ring finger and put it on my right hand because I didn’t want Mr. “you could be my husband because you love Jesus and love kids and you are here so you must be someone who might be my husband” guy wouldn’t think that I am married… and then I refused to go to speed dating…

I almost really got a tattoo tonight… 

I am becoming that girl who carries her Nalgene bottle around with her so I always have water (thanks to Sharon for always remembering what seat it was under)…

This lip balm I got was certified 58% Organic… I don’t even know what that means…

I like being barefooted so much that I am getting ok with my feet being dirty even though I scrub them, and I am almost ok with me thinking that other people maybe thinking that I am dirty because my feet are “dirty”… I’m not, even if they “are”

I over packed books because I didn’t consider that I wouldn’t have time to read…

I under packed clothes because I didn’t consider that I spill stuff on myself every time I eat…

All leadership books are 90% the same just refonted and repackaged… when the people who keep buying them start implementing them – then what?

I went from “losing” the free books we accumulated, to having extra?

I will eat almost anything if it is free, even a few dry nonoatmeal raisin cookies.

I think that it is wonderful when guys hold doors open for women, really hold them open not a kinda just keep it from hitting you as I storm through, and I told some random young guy that today that I appreciated real gentlemen, he smiled and kinda chuckled.

I think I talk to every person I make good eye contact with, or feel like talking to for whatever whim moves me at that moment. I love making contact with people, and making them smile, or laugh.

I ate Mexican soup with pig skin in it, and by ate, I mean a spoonful, and will never again, and by never I mean unless that’s what God’s plan is, and I hope not, at least the soggy, slimy, chewy pig skin and intestine part.

A speaker guy dropped the F-bomb in one of the sessions, and it wasn’t vulgar,or slang, or just because, and I am ok with it, even though I know God is refining my speech, and it was “impure”…

I want to be free from my ethic dilemmas in my head –  thinking I am bad for my thinking it is ok for a “Christian Speaker Guy” to drop an F bomb, but I have a problem that there were burned CDs in the prayer room, of signed copy-written Christian music, with a label on it “Leave in here, if you want your own copy of this CD email blah@blahblah.com”…

I have alot of “issues” about non-essentials, for what I think are good reasons – but I don’t want to die fighting the wrong battles, on the wrong hills.

I want to start journaling, for real – this time.

I don’t know what happens in my head from filling in the blank on sermon notes, to the notes in the margin, it would be neat to see a map of how my brain fire-wires these connections that are profound to me.

I need to re-write, and reprocess, and reread notes so soon after things like this, because I know that if I had written down what I knew to be true from God to me through conferences or sermons in the past, I wouldn’t have to revisit the same thing over and over.

I am sick of the carousel, as beautiful as the horses are, I am sick of the circle, and want take a ride on paths of those before me and trail blaze a new one for others to follow.

Ok this is getting to not fluffy for tonight…