Peter Knight brought this to my attention and I sent Michael Enright some fanmail. I’m pretty sure it won’t be read on the air next weekend for your listening pleasure so I’ve posted it here for your reading pleasure.

Dear Michael Enright;

In your essay from the Sunday Edition you said that all of the journalists who report on cycling were surprised by Lance Armstrong? Any journalist who was surprised was not a journalist who was doing their job. The reason that this entire scandal is a surprise is precisely because the whole of the sports media, including the publicity arm of the sport’s governing body, have had their head in the sand. Everyone who has paid any attention has known the entire time that these cyclists have been engaging in activity that is outside of the rules. They have been permitted to get away with it because the journalists who are now surprised were not doing their jobs, and the few that were have been hushed, suppressed, and caught up in litigation for sharing the truth.

Your essay is misguided in the sense that this story is not about the truth being uncovered and subsequently a need to explain it. The truth has been available but you are now forced to confront it. The story isn’t about the sport of cycling being turned on it’s head, it’s about you, the media. The story about Lance has you conclude that cycling is no more than a false game, a charade, and a pastime for the rich with their Italian bicycles and cappuccinos. For me, I conclude that the media is a false game, a charade, and a pastime for the rich with their eReaders and cappuccinos.

– Joshua Krabbe

Edmonton, AB

The church began observing Lent today. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t really have any plans. Some years I’ve made big efforts with my life to give something up, some things have been really tough. Others have been really easy. Some years I did things that saved me a whole lot of time so that I could in theory find more time for prayer. One year it worked really well, another year it didn’t. I found that if there’s something apparent in your life then the beginning of Lent can be a bit of a nudge to pick it up and address it. If you need to go looking for something to fast from for 40 days then you probably aren’t going to hold it very close to your heart and you won’t learn much from it.

Then I learned what my friend Matt is planning to do for 40 days. In fact it’s something I previously have done as I approached Easter, I did it in 2006. I’ll quote his note from Facebook instead of trying to describe.

As I enter lent this year I have been mulling over many different conversations, realities that my friends and families are living in right now, and the need to challenge the systems of our day which are killing our souls. Thus the decision to fast from refined sugar feels like it is tying in all these threads. I’ve also been challenged by Isaiah 58, the call to a fast that is less about giving up something, as it is about activism to the poor and needy around you from a heart of love and justice. i feel like many times my fasting is lived from a very shallow level, and my mind is concerned with what it is that I’ve given up, rather than the many whose daily reality is like this. More and more i have become suspicious and pissed off with the rampant integration of refined sugar into all things that were intended to be pure and good in the food Creator has given us to live off of. This comes from becoming a parent and only recently introducing food to our dear little Jasper. A rant is coming about this in days to come.

It’s also appropriate to quote a section from Isaiah 58. I don’t know which portion struck a chord with Matt, but this is a summary of the relevant pieces.

…
The bottom line on your ‘fast days’ is profit.
   You drive your employees much too hard.
You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
   You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do
   won’t get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after:
…
To put on a pious long face
   and parade around solemnly in black?
Do you call that fasting,
   a fast day that I, God, would like?
…
This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
   to break the chains of injustice,
   get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
   free the oppressed,
   cancel debts.
…
Do this and the lights will turn on,
   and your lives will turn around at once.
…
If you get rid of unfair practices,
   quit blaming victims,
   quit gossiping about other people’s sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
   and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
   your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.
I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
   firm muscles, strong bones.
You’ll be like a well-watered garden,
   a gurgling spring that never runs dry.

Excerpts from a paraphrase of Isaiah 58 – “The Message”

Similar to Matt, this year I’m going to do three things. The first, is to adjust my diet, the second is to raise my voice against the injustices in our food system, and the third is to mourn.

Changing the diet: I’m going to stop eating manufactured food for 40 days. The intent is not to “put on a pious long face and parade around in solemnity” as Eugene Peterson puts it. There is not going to be excessive discussion about what counts as manufactured food, but it’s inevitable that such a discussion needs to occur on a few occasions. Most non-manufactured food has one ingredient. Some of it has two ingredients, like good bacon (Piggies and salt) or good peanut butter (peanuts and salt), or maybe even three ingredients like good ice-cream (milk and cream and sugar), but I can hardly imagine that anything will have more than four – Beer (water, malted barley, yeast, hops). I’m not going to eliminate sugar (partly because I already invited 20 people over to my house next week to eat ice-cream) because while refined sucrose, glucose & fructose are under publicized as an unhealthy sources of our daily caloric intake, they are the biggest problem when disguised and manufactured into other food, not when eaten as an ingredient to a home made lemon-poppyseed loaf.

I don’t anticipate that not eating manufactured food will be that tough for me, last weekend I ate about a hundred things, six of which were things I deemed to be manufactured. A few perogies, a clif bar, some cheerios, gatorade, and two different kinds of store bought bread. I needed none of those. Especially if I had made bread, which I haven’t done in a couple months. I’m also going to write, I’ll post what I write here on the blog but I don’t plan to write exclusively for the blog. I’ve been doing a fair bit of writing to elected representatives in the past couple weeks with Bill C-11 and now the nightmare that is Bill C-30 banging around in Ottawa. I’ll be doing a bit more writing to them, but I need to figure out who is the most appropriate elected audience before I decide who to write to. Instead I think I’ll start with an open letter to my alma-mater about the conferring of honorary degrees to corporate executives with the multinational corporation Nestle.

On the final point, mourning, I’ll leave that to Matt to describe.

Alongside these 40 days, I have been really confronted by Jesus’ secret to the universe in, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” We as western culture don’t really do mourning well, and in fact so much of our society is constructed to pull us away from it’s life changing depths to live in the triviality of our age. I don’t think we can truly enter into an activism for social justice without paying the price to enter into mourning. This is the way we find Creator’s heart in the midst of all the crap in our world, and then also find the comfort by which to seek to bring good and change for the kingdom of what is true, good and beautiful. So I’m trying to intentionally enter into mourning around all the hell that has been caused by refined sugar in Canada.

Instead of a hushed and sombre beginning to lent this year I’m doing something less than traditional, but more in line with the attitude of Isaiah 58, I’m starting with a battle cry:

Run-For-Japan started this past week. The concept was based on the general feeling of “what can I do?” that seems to go around when there is such widespread destruction in some part of the world. Well, there are a lot of people who can run, maybe that’s as good a place as any to start. The official blurb is as follows:

A massive earthquake, the seventh largest recorded in history, struck the east coast of Japan on Friday the 11th of March 2011. The earthquake, measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, triggered a tsunami which hit the east coast of Japan with 7-metre-high waves, leaving a trail of destruction.

With a death toll in the thousands, an economic cost in the billions, and the threat of nuclear meltdown imminent, the people of Japan face their greatest disaster for decades.

Inspired by Japan’s great runners Run For Japan is about bringing together the global running community and showing solidarity and support through dedicating runs around the World to the people of Japan.

The challenge…

To cover 24,901 miles (right around the world) in 28 days with at least one run dedicated from every country in the World. To achieve this runners around the globe are being asked to dedicate just one run to the people of Japan and donate at least one unit of their home currency per mile run.

So, how can YOU Run for Japan?

• Choose which of your runs you will dedicate to the people of Japan
• Take a photo of yourself on that run (optional)
• Upload that photo (with a caption) here
• Donate the relevant amount (1 unit of currency per km or per mile (or per meter or inch!)) via http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/runforjapan”
• Spread the word

So, my run is banked, and the last step is to spread the word. So, pick a run that you’re going to do in the next couple weeks, why not choose your longest one, and Run for Japan. You can click the banner up top to go to the RunforJapan website.

10 years isn’t all that long, but it can change a lot of things. The whole world seems to be recounting the last decade, and while this period of time doesn’t delimit any certain and distinctive portion of my life, it’s the period of time that is being discussed right now by a few people. I suppose there’s a lot of ways to recall ten years, but recounting a few things seems appropriate. Best or worst – this list is neither. Perhaps most influential is more appropriate. The last ten years covers a pretty broad range of ages for me, 10 years to be exact, so there’s some maturing that occurred along the way in here. Some of this stuff is “coming-of-age” realizations, but that’s an aspect of life, so they count just like the others.

I started writing this bit earlier last week but had to postpone posting it until I could flesh out a few paragraphs after a fantastic ski trip. So it’s not in time for the 2010 list making that happened last week, but I don’t think that really matters. Readers who were going to read it will likely read it anyways, that’s what readers do – by definition.

1. We’re greedy, selfish, love prejudice and are still somewhat racist – perhaps that’s not the most politically correct means by which to kick off a review of the decade, but the specifics making me note this fall chronologically near the beginning of the 200Xs for myself. Spending a year away from Canada in 2000-2001 highlighted the fact that typically we like ourselves a lot and we don’t like other people all that much. My own experience was probably magnified by being in my early teens at the time, the age that’s arguably got the meanest peers of any age for everyone. My own situation as the foreign kid made that all the trickier. I was the only boy in the grade with long hair I was the only one with an accent. I was one of a few from the village three towns down the road from school. I was too tall. I was damn good at maths. I had the wrong shoes for with the school uniform. I didn’t get the right food packed in my lunch (Mom fixed that one quickly though). I fit no molds and while the prejudices I experienced were rather tame compared with the ethnic cleansing experienced by many people groups around the globe they were certainly noticeable to a wee little GCSE student.
   Oh well, back to Canada in the summer of 2001 I’d escape being the subject of these prejudices, and that should hopefully reduce the amount of tension I felt surrounding this issue. But boom, September 2001 rolls around. Maybe I’m more aware now, or just older, or it’s more extreme than it has been before, but there’s racist commentary all over the place. Everyone Arab is suddenly a terrorist. How did that work? Maybe I needed to have experienced prejudices from the being-dealt end before I had reason to feel uncomfortable finding myself at the dealing-out end. Not a lot has changed by the end of the decade, nearly every media outlet I’m influenced was spewing reports about the climate change summit in Copenhagen. None of it made me happy. There’s an entire global community trying to sit around a pie, and debating how to slice up that pie, and every single nation at the table needs to have an above average slice. All the big polluters want some version of a cap and trade system, yet no system based on cap and trade knows how to distribute the quota. From what I understand, the quota distribution system has basically been proven by economists to not work in the long run. Unfortunately that’s the system the big players are pushing for because they know that if they can weasel their way into an unfair share of the global quota for emissions then while the whole world has to tighten their belts they will have to tighten their belts the least. Alberta will profit from this, I know it, and it makes me sick.
   Intentionally trying to deny developing nations an equal shot at using the planet’s resources is just as self-serving as a game called: “Make a flamethrower out of an aerosol deodorant can and try to light the Canadian kid’s hair of fire in the locker room at school.” Maybe it’s because once we’re grown up we find bigger and more complicated words to use to mean the same thing as ‘bullying’.
2. It was this decade that I made a realization world conflict was current. I distinctly remember watching the BBC news in the living room at our home on School Lane, Staveley Cumbria UK. There was footage from what I only remember was some Serbian conflict in Macedonia sometime in the spring of 2001. There was house to house and street to street armed conflict being shown between people who looked too much like me. I remember being somewhat shocked, sure there were wars going on, but from what I understood, Canada, America and Europe had their shit together we were too intelligent, too highly developed, and too “good” (whatever that means) to rely on anything but diplomacy to set things straight in the world. Canada’s army was for sending on peacekeeping missions with the UN, and that was something that should be highly respected. We were so well advanced in my mind, and we should be proud of it. Our soldiers went to Honduras to help out after hurricanes, or to help dig people out of the rubble after big earthquakes, no soldier that I identified with ever did anything that I didn’t think was good. Wars, genocide and armed conflict happened in places like Rwanda or Chechnya, Israel sometimes bombed what I understood to be “the bad guys” in Lebanon. These weren’t people like me. It’s not like I was out of the loop on the whole Kosovo conflict during the late 90s, but up until this point in life I don’t think I’d realized that this wasn’t too foreign. Perhaps, just because they were fighting, they weren’t at all like me. Perhaps it was the fact that I was now in Europe and the footage was from that afternoon and being shown hours later on the same continent. I remember this distinctly to be a perspective changing occasion, my reality was not as peaceful as I thought it was. People just like me fight, and kill each other. Whoa, what an eye opener for a random weekday afternoon.
   This only happened mere months before September 11, 2001 and mere months after that Canada was off an fighting in a war in Afghanistan. These events weren’t such a hard pill to swallow after the TV broadcast that spring, I seemed to know by then that the world was less at peace than I might have imagined earlier.
3. Pope John Paul II died in April 2005. The world paused for a while it seemed, this man had done so much for humanity during his life that absolutely the entire world took note when he passed on. I didn’t know a whole lot about the man, probably average for the average person outside of the Catholic church, but the way things seemed to pause worldwide when he passed away grabbed my attention. It seemed that the whole world converged on Vatican City to pay their respects to this man who had played such an important role in the history of the world. This fascination by the general public meant that I also started to learn about the Catholic church, and when the media died down I kept on going. This would lead initially to just paying attention, but later beginning to attend weekly mass, reading a few excellent books and taking elective courses through the Catholic college on campus. Pope John Paul II’s death was actually rather immaterial to myself but this set in motion a significant change in perspective and appreciation for differing views and values within the ecumenical church.
4. Perhaps this is the only thing on the list that occurred at a certain time and made the impact right away. Most of the others were events that occurred over months, or catalysts for perspective changes that occurred over the course of years. This happened over the course of maybe 20 minutes one Friday evening in front of the TV in the basement. Bono was giving a speech at the federal Liberal Party convention. It was the night where Paul Martin was taking over leadership from Jean Chretien. Bono took the stage and made a strong case for the power of our nation to do good in the world. He suggested that this period of history would be remembered for three things, the internet, the war on terror, and the lack of the first world’s involvement in the affliction plaguing the continent of Africa. That being a combination economic suppression through debt and exploitation as well as AIDS destroying entire generations of lives. It was a combination of compelling statistics as well as sincere human to human communication. The case was made in my mind for two things; first that there were real things that could be done on a super huge scale to make amends for some of the problems facing different areas on the planet. That if federal governments around the world decided to make it a priority to improve aspects of the global community thing would actually change for the better. Second, he changed how I thought about how I could view my government. If I believed that the potential existed to make positive change in the world, then I should be considering which federal party campaigning to form a government was going to behave most appropriately in that global community, not just for what they could provide me. I was for the first time thinking as a resident of planet earth, rather than as a resident of the overprivileged nation of Canada. I recall the speech relatively frequently when thinking about global issues and definitely every time I’ve been able to cast a ballot since then. If you want to read it, someone graciously typed out the Full Speech and posted it online.
5. It was about mid-decade that Canada changed the legislation governing same sex marriage. This, according to my understanding, was the turning point for gay rights in our country. It seemed that over the course of the previous few years there was an ever increasing frustration with the issue swirling around in the public media, and within different circles of conversation that I participated in. Following approximately 2005, when the same-sex marriage legislation battle came to a close within Canada, there has been a chance for the whole country to calm down and catch it’s breath. I’m certain that this has been for the better. All of the slippery slope arguments that had been made over the course of the previous years failed to hold any water. Religious officials had maintained their right to treat marriage as their traditions saw fit, no-one was trying to marry their pets, and no-one was force-feeding our children messages about their sexual orientation. Society had unambiguously improved, freedom had been granted to a slice of the population without taking anything away from the rest of it. Hallelujah! My own experience relating to the actual issue however, was rather unattached. I didn’t write any letters or join any protests, but I was content to see things change, with me on the sidelines.
   A year later, I was confronted face to face by someone I really respected about almost everything. How could I say I was going to vote for the Liberal party in the 2006 federal election when they had legalized same sex marriage? I was caught totally off guard by that statement. I remember anticipating that the discussion of who we would be voting for in the 2006 election was going to be about something like healthcare, or environmental issues, or the gun registry, or dealing with fallout from the sponsorship scandal, or a fiscal imbalance between the federal and provincial governments… One of those issues that the media kept pushing. Nope, I was mistaken, the question went something like this: If I agreed that biblical teaching was that the God-designed plan for relationships and families was between a man and a woman, how could I support any federal party that would permit otherwise? I distinctly remember having to pause and collect my thoughts for a bit. Well, the fact of the matter was that I wasn’t opposed to that. Actually, I was in support of it. The presence of committed relationships between people of all orientations was undeniable, and it wasn’t going to change because someone else was going to label it as sinful. What good was it going to do in the world to prevent some people from participating in a social structure that was largely run by the government, the insurance guys, and the tax-man?
   The discussion turned into a great one, ideas flowed about our largely undeveloped ability to listen to the needs of other people rather than decide what their needs were. The problem solving strategies that we’d been force fed through school and then university, more often than we’d like to admit were trying to cram round plugs into square holes. If there was a bit more listening and less strategical approaches taken in real life we’d soon realize that our plans for others’ issues had our own fingerprints all over them. Our home-grown solutions unfortunately don’t start out custom designed for other situations. In the subsequent months there was a lot of good that came out of what started as a really tense situation. A ton of trust was developed because, as I recall it, we were actually listening to each other once in a while.
6. Lance Armstrong won his 7th consecutive Tour de France during the summer of 2005. I spent that month of July generally in recovery mode from spending May and June sick in bed. The result was a lot of TV watching, and a new found love for the sport of bike racing. It was a realization for me that I was far more interested in this sport than most others, there seemed to be very little luck in the game, there was skill, effort, fitness, and strategy, and ultimately the best guys seemed to be able to win but they had to try amazingly hard to do it. There was something beautiful about a sport where you could earn fitness by putting in the hard work and quantitatively get better at things. That summer was the catalyst for me heading off to do all sorts of things in the world of endurance sports: learn how to swim, do my first triathlon, bike across an entire continent, run my first marathon, actually win a race. and get myself sufficiently enamored with long distance triathlon to sign up for Ironman. If we’re looking for life-changing and not just mind-changing events this one is it, since that Tour de France I’ve found hundreds of hours each year to put into this endurance sports campaign. As a totally unexpected bonus I’ve made some of the best friends of my life as a result.
7. I changed how I thought about food during this decade. Heading off to University required that I was going to be the person choosing what I would eat every day for breakfast lunch and dinner. I did a decent job right from the start, and got a lot better in the years that followed. Whether that was initiated by seeing the whole world go crazy about the Atkins diet in the few years prior, or due to the hilarity of “Supersize Me”, or just because I didn’t know any better than to eat relatively healthy, I ate better food than 99% of the world living in residence. There was a basic realization that the world chooses to feed itself very poorly sometime in the first half of the decade. During the second half of the decade things changed again, there is a difference between not eating poorly and eating well. Making that change takes some time and some effort but the decision to do so occurred based on conversations with real people who had their heads on straight. My friend Tulani had completely quit eating sugar and I tried that for about two months, before gradually becoming more lax on that front. A family friend, John, was eating strictly according to the direction of a naturopath, nothing processed and huge categories of the supermarket put “on hold” until he developed “better blood”. Neither appeared to be missing out on anything, it was just a decision, and their enjoyment of life and food had improved as a result. A simple realization really: I could choose to eat what I wanted, and I was in complete control of how I was going to decide what I wanted. Rather abruptly I pretty much didn’t want all sorts of things.
8. Friends ended in the spring of 2004. This is, I think, somewhat tied to a realization that occurred when Justin Timberlake tore off part of Janet Jackson’s top in front of all of America at the Superbowl the previous winter. The relationship between society and men and women is far from perfect. Friends wasn’t a show serving up sexist messages, but it wasn’t doing it quite right. If it weren’t for Sarah Jessica Parker being on the TV at the same time and being the go to example of liberated sexuality, perhaps Rachel Green, Monica Geller, or Phoebe Buffay (unlikely) would have been developed into that character. When the second half of the superbowl party turned into a discussion of whether or not the “wardrobe malfunction” was supposed to have happened or not, it wasn’t a marker of emancipation. It was an indication that things weren’t right, despite the fact that people were now suggesting that they were. Sure, women had rights like men but we’re far from having arrived at a solution, or destination. Somehow the end of Friends, made this especially noticeable to me. The fact that the feel good ending to the show is Ross and Rachel back together and Monica and Chandler heading to the suburbs with the twins was kind of a sick joke.
   In theory there’s freedom and equality but in reality in my perception this has just been replaced by almost equally un-beneficial expectations that we just hold in our heads. The issue of women’s rights has migrated from one that existed on paper for one sex to one that exists in the mind of society and afflicts both genders. As of 2004 when Friends came to a close we were far from success. Later in the decade there was an election in America where Hillary Clinton and Tina Fey, err… Sarah Palin, played large roles. Was anything better? Things seemed to be regressing more than they were progressing on this front through the last decade if you ask me.
9. My federal government admits fault with regard to their dealings with the residential schools. This is something that I’d been learning about over the course of a few previous years. Until I had spent a fair amount of time learning and discussing I was almost completely certain that this was not my issue. Despite the severity of the issue or the magnitude of the problem, I was most certainly not involved. Until I started to learn from people instead of books. Suddenly the issue was my issue, but the avenues to do things still seem distant and obscure. I identified with the damage caused and sometimes I think that’s all that anyone hopes from me, to listen, share the pain and to agree that what happened is wrong. When the apology was made in 2008 by the federal government I was lucky to be spending the week with friends, native and white, who also could pause and reflect on the significance of it. Not a lot changed that day, but witnessing the official statement seemed important to me. It was hopefully the beginning of a new renewal and at the time, I remember feeling a sentiment of great hope in so many conversations. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission might have gotten off to a rocky start but I’m certainly rooting for it to be able to overcome those obstacles and make a firm record in history on the second attempt.
10. Quantum mechanics soaked up my life for the better part of two semesters of university. What I at first thought was the pinnacle of my education was nothing more than an ivory tower rather detached from the world. By the time I was part-way through my final year of undergrad I could speak differential equations like the best of them. I had knew the normalization constants for dozens of probability wavefunctions off the top of my head and could basically guess at the forms for most others with an uncanny chance of success. I had started to develop intuition with regards to diagonalizing the matrices necessary to make eigenstates of an interaction matrix orthogonal. I had developed skills that even I myself deemed useless. I didn’t have a huge issue with it at the time, it’s not like I suddenly wanted to un-learn these things. It did cause me to back up however, I wanted to decide which skillsets I was going to develop as a part of my education. Quantum mechanics no longer made the cut. It’s no wonder that Engineering Management and my Christian Theology courses were my most appreciated the next semester. I was basically refusing to become a maven of mathematics, a prima donna of process control feedback or an exemplar of electronic wavefunctions. I was done with learning things to score well on tests. I was only going to train my brain to do things that I knew were useful. Now you could start debating with me the merits of training a brain to focus on putting out the most even wattage on a bicycle over the course of 5, 6, 7 or 8 hours, but that’s besides the point.

Sometimes I wonder why it is hard to remember the privileges that I live with each day. Remembrance day is fortunately not one of those days, our culture has decided it is important enough to remember, at least once a year, that we’re showered with blessings. I felt this even more today than I would say I have for the remembrance days of the last decade or so. We are grateful for those who made a sacrifice so that we don’t have to. Remembrance day reminds me to enjoy the things I love. Take hope, not sadness, from this day – the opportunity to live with freedom is empty when we refuse to seize the day.

Would it be easier to live with appreciation if we lived in the shadow of these sacrifices? I’m not sure. If we decide to be aware I don’t think it matters if we ride our bikes through Flanders or Fort Saskatchewan, over the cobbles of the Kemmelberg or the hills by Kapasiwin, or whether we battle headwinds in Dieppe or Devon. The choice to live lives that make the sacrifices of those that died count is ours. It’s ours whether we live on the battlegrounds of Europe & Afghanistan, or live in a nation blessed with the freedom that was fought for both generations ago and today. For me Remembrance Day 2009 was a Carpe Diem kind of day.

I think it’s important for as many people to read the following article as is possible so I’m posting it to my blog. If you’ve already read it consider passing it along to a few people. It represents to me not only the continually pressing issue of womens’ rights but also the kind of attitude that can make improvements. Our world needs people who are brave, really brave. It is no longer bravery to agree that women should have a vote, it is no longer bravery to suggest that black people should have lesser rights. In essence it is not bravery to align your opinion with outspoken groups working towards change in our society and gaining momentum. Real bravery is being one of the few to start trying to create momentum where there is none, and to be loud when there is silence. While the issue at hand in Carter’s article is not one cloaked in silence around the world I think it is one that here at home (wherever the heck you think that means) is losing momentum. Progress still needs to be made and it seems to me that because making corrections and bringing restoration to broken aspects of our culture’s past is something we’ve seen happening it is treated as though it is fixed. It’s a long way from fixed, but not many people are still saying that. Anyhow, read on, this Carter guy keeps making positive impacts on our planet and I’m grateful that “we’ve” got him.

Published on Sunday, July 12, 2009 by The Sunday Observer/UK

The Words of God Do Not Justify Cruelty to Women

Discrimination and abuse wrongly backed by doctrine are damaging society, argues the former US president

by Jimmy Carter

“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status …” (Article 2, Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

I have been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief – confirmed in the holy scriptures – that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. It is widespread. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths.

Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries. The male interpretations of religious texts and the way they interact with, and reinforce, traditional practices justify some of the most pervasive, persistent, flagrant and damaging examples of human rights abuses.

At their most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in Britain and the United States. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for everyone in society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and out-dated attitudes and practices – as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive area to challenge.

But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy – and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

The Elders have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights. We have recently published a statement that declares: “The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.”

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world’s major faiths share.

Although not having training in religion or theology, I understand that the carefully selected verses found in the holy scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place – and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence – than eternal truths. Similar Biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

At the same time, I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn’t until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted holy scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

I know, too, that Billy Graham, one of the most widely respected and revered Christians during my lifetime, did not understand why women were prevented from being priests and preachers. He said: “Women preach all over the world. It doesn’t bother me from my study of the scriptures.”

The truth is that male religious leaders have had – and still have – an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions – all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Jimmy Carter was US president from 1977-81. The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity.

A recent letter to my member of parliament. I’d encourage you to read it and consider contacting your federal representatives as well. If you’re really out of the loop you can find out who your MP is By using your postal-code.

Hello Linda Duncan.

I don’t know how intimately you understand the worldwide AIDS situation, it’s a complicated beast to say the least. Inarguably a huge contributing factor to the perpetuation of this issue is the fact that people don’t know any better than to keep spreading the disease either because they don’t know they’re infected or because they don’t know how to take simple steps to prevent transmission. Getting people started on treatment is intimately tied to education. Communities of people living with HIV/AIDS who are living as a result of ARV treatment change the societal outlook on the disease, instead of a silent killer amongst the culture treated individuals are given physical ability to stand up against it and confidence against the disease is created within the community. This is a step along the avenue to conquering the disease.

• 2.3 million children under the age of 15 are infected with HIV.
• Less than 15% of the 780,000 children who need treatment are on the necessary medicines.

I personally don’t think it’s particularly important to discuss how many people are going to die this year as a result of this problem. Anti-Retro-Viral treatment is not going to keep them alive forever. They do however, change the perspective of a community being wiped out by the disease, the question is a quality of life for the living. It’s about creating hope and inciting change.

You might be interested to know that I along with approximately 100 other students at the University of Alberta (the vast majority of whom I presume live in your riding) raised nearly $7000 at the end of last month to support the work of an organization called Dignitas International. (www.ualberta.ca/~dignitas) Our fundraising is basically going to be purchasing drugs and that’s it. Getting drugs moving is considered such an important part of this process that all we focused on this year as students was awareness and the purchasing of drugs. The International organization is putting a huge effort towards distribution and care system optimization (I’d be excited to provide more information about dignitas international if you’re interested) but drug movement is a huge deal, so much so that it’s all we focused on for this year’s fundraising event.

Here is where the situation involves our national government and therefor you!

In 2004 Canada responded to the urgent need for medicines in many developing countries by creating “Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime”, with the goal of getting more affordable, generic medicines to patients in the developing world. Unfortunately, the initiative was, and remains, seriously flawed. The bureaucratic burden associated with it has limited its use to one instance in the last 5 years.

The good news, though, is that CAMR can easily be simplified… without any additional spending. In testimony and submissions to Parliament, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and other organizations have outlined how CAMR can be streamlined by moving to the ‘one license solution’. Canada’s largest generic pharmaceutical manufacturer has made the commitment that, if CAMR is simplified, it will produce a lower-cost children’s version of a key AIDS drug for export to developing countries under CAMR. I request that you support the bill associated with this issue, a long term positive impact is directly linked to the passing of this bill.

I recognize that as a representative of this area you’d like to represent our interests but likely struggle a bit to know what people deem important. Consider the fact that there are 100 constituents who actively are making an effort to see AIDS drugs moving. I have a hard time imagining that you could even find 100 people who in principle are against the concept let alone making an active effort with their time and money to move in that direction. Please bring the situation with the CAMR to the attention of the New Democrats and request party support in the HOC. Bringing this issue beyond attention and towards action is critically important.

I look forward to hearing your response.

Josh Krabbe

Krabbe.ca was down a bit over the course of the last week. I was fiddling around with a few things regarding how things are hosted on the server that I’ve got. I am currently serving 4ish websites from the same place. One is of course my own, the other is my SeatoSea pages, which if you’ve ever bothered to notice are basically pages from my own site that are linked unidirectionally so that people browsing about Seatosea only end up reading mostly SeatoSea related material. The other two sites are supposed to be a bit more independent, Reuben.Krabbe.ca is my brother Reuben’s blog and photo gallery. He’s at photography school out in Victoria and his subdomain actually garners a decent amount of traffic all by it’s lonesome. The final site is for the Marda Loop Justice film festival and the spinoff festivals that are now happening at other places in the country. It’s got an independent domain justicefilmfestival.ca. The main switch was swapping primary domains on the account so that krabbe.ca points to the root and the film festival points to a folder. This was done because it used to be possible to find your way to mine or Reuben’s sites through the justicefilmfestival domain which can be a bit misleading if you don’t know what exactly was going on. That’s bad practise if you’re trying to inform people about something rather than confuse them. I could care less if people find out about the festival through my domain… in fact that would be a good thing. And I just gave a link to it, it’s happening in the middle of November and if you can you should come!

Other bonuses include the fact that reuben and I now have sweetaction email addresses that are associated with the domain… which I’m not going to post here because then they’d end up getting spammed and that would make them less useful.

I gave a presentation at my sponsoring church, River Park CRC, in Calgary Alberta on Sunday morning. I think it went well, plenty of people thanked me for sharing so that’s nice. It came in two parts, first me having a bit of time to talk and then during the offering I had a few ppt slides to show what day-to-day life was like while on the road. I thought I had covered the bases pretty well with the slides but when watching them during the service I realized it looked like I was generally riding with a group of about 10 people. Not quite the case, the average for the summer was probably closer to a group of 2.7 considering how often I rode alone of with just one other person.

At any rate, driving back north to Edmonton that afternoon it really started to seem like the Sea-to-Sea bike tour was part of the past. Something it hadn’t felt like before. It was more along the lines of “just finished” even two weeks later.

I’ve included here what I said (or at least what I thought/planned I was going to say) during my 7 minute slot.

Last summer the news of the 2008 Sea to Sea bike tour made its way into my email inbox. I was intrigued by the idea of getting on a bike and heading out across north America. It would be a summer of riding every day – a pretty serious challenge that I felt like I’d like to tackle, I would have the opportunity to live with a group of other people, other cyclists and other Christians. It was going to be good. The tour also had tied up in it the idea that we’d raise a bunch of money, that we hoped to raise awareness and funds to combat poverty. I was happy to have the issue of poverty along for the ride. It gave the trip a real purpose and for that I was grateful.

Arriving in Seattle – the summer’s ride started to play itself out – after so many months of anticipation it was living up to every expectation. Right away on Day 2 we climbed more than 5000 feet of elevation and it really felt like we were thrown headfirst into the adventure. I made great friends from all over Canada and the States and we were really soaking up the riding aspect of the summer. We found ourselves putting in extra miles for the pure joy of riding our bikes.

Early on it was really true however that the issue of poverty wasn’t doing much more than being “along for the ride”. While I can’t speak on behalf of every rider, the general sentiment around camp was just “Bike Bike Bike Bike Bike”.

It took more than 2 weeks for things to begin to shift. Answering the question “Why in the world am I biking across the country?” was something I found myself doing as I tackled 100 degree Fahrenheit weather and miles upon miles of sagebrush. The more times I answered the question while talking with someone the more I began to really identify with my answer. “We’re riding in support of the poor. We’ve been raising funds for organizations to tackle some of the underlying causes that keep people who are poor trapped in cycles of poverty. There are 150 cyclists on the road today from all over North America who are doing the same thing because it’s something we believe in. – Poverty and injustice cannot go unaddressed.”

I was riding by myself into Salt Lake City on one Saturday morning and got passed by a local cyclist out for a ride by himself. I decided to catch up with him and we spent the next 5 miles talking – about the cycling community in Salt Lake City, about the bike ride I was on and about poverty. Leaving Salt Lake City we had a huge hill to climb and I had spent a lot of that day’s energy just trying to keep up with this local. The Sea-to-Sea rider who I had joined still had fresh legs and left me behind on the hill. Normally I would have felt lousy to get dropped right at the start of a 10 mile ascent but I didn’t care. That conversation had been worth it.

I continued to ride far more than necessary for the next few weeks, tacking on trips up ski hills and over mountains, we took roundabout ways across Nebraska and spent a portion of a day lost in Chicago. I spent more and more time each week talking to locals in coffee shops, restaurants and gas stations about why we were riding our bikes across the country. We were on the biggest newscast in Chicago one evening and the next day it seemed as though everyone we met along the road wanted to stop and chat for a bit. The reasoning behind our ride was becoming more and more important, although in reality I hadn’t quite made the shift in my head, poverty was still “along for the ride”.

I was riding another Saturday morning, the day we were to ride into Grand Rapids, with a group of guys intent on going quick. We were flying down the road and I wound up on the pavement. I had a few parts of my body bleeding, my helmet had a pretty good crack in it and my right shoulder didn’t look quite the same as my left. I was off to the hospital in a vehicle for an X-Ray and suddenly the reality set in that I wasn’t going to have biked every inch from Sea to Sea.

With the conclusion that I hadn’t broken my shoulder and I had a separation rather than a full blown dislocation I was allowed to ride the following Monday. I could continue but I was resigning myself to a stretch of 40 kilometers in west Michigan, I wouldn’t ride every inch of the tour. I would be struggling to finish the ride each day and I would be one of the people around camp needing a helping hand more often than I would be able to offer one.

I finally had priority number one nailed down and it wasn’t going for a bike ride. It was participating in the tour, it was being a part of the wave of attention that swept across Southern Ontario the next week and onwards to New York City. Having been part of a huge fundraising effort and now participating in a cross country awareness event was more important than the cycling. It was the participation not the peddling of the bike that was my response to God’s call

Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked

As the tour began to come to a close, my shoulder became a bit less of an obstacle. I still had a few fantastic days on the bike but they were just bonus. My perspective had changed and I was excited to have the opportunity to continue Christ’s work when the tour wrapped up. My favorite discussions became not “bike bike bike” but what are the ways the tour had changed how us as cyclists are going to think and live.

Finally I want to say thank you to this church. I want to thank you for your prayers for my safety this summer, and your prayers that I would be challenged and grow. I also want to thank all of you who sent encouragement notes my way at some point during those 9 weeks. I also want to thank those of you who contributed towards the fundraising of the bike tour, River Park Church made a big impact on the $15 400 raised towards my goal. The final tally from the summer isn’t exactly complete but between all of the riders it’s somewhere near 2.2 million.

Today a few hundred students invaded the Substage area of the Students Union Building on campus. It wasn’t to study for the exams that are coming up in a couple weeks, it was because today, December 1, is World AIDS Day. The University of Alberta Dignitas Youth Chapter joined several other chapters throughout the country in hosting the “Race for Dignity” – a 12-hour stationary bike-a-thon fundraiser in support of community-based HIV care in Africa. Teams of participants pedaled stationary bikes for 12 hours in the University of Alberta’s Students Union Building (SUB) to support Dignitas International’s innovative community-based care model. For more information about that check out www.ualberta.ca/~dignitas

I scraped together a team of friends through my small group with IVCF and we covered the 12 hours of riding in style. Our team totaled over $300 in donations and contributed to the more than $11 000 raised today.

I rode the home stretch from 6pm through till the finish at 9pm. I threw a summer tyre back on my fixie and put it on a trainer. It turned out to be a bit of a higher gear than most team members of mine appreciated, oops, but that’s just how things turn out sometimes. I realized that even though I’m commuting back and forth to school that the whole end of my body involved with sitting on a bike seat is a bit out of practice for long stretches. I’ve got re-acquainting to do before I start packing on really long miles for the ride next summer. The legs felt OK though and I have no intention of letting them go jelly-like between now and the time the snow finally melts. I was satisfied that I’m still in alright shape and maintained an average heartrate of 148 for the post-warmup 2.5 hours of the ride.

I did a bit of an experiment with eating, mostly because I’m a sucker for gastrointestinal punishment and like to see how much I can process while still putting out decent power. There was way more food left at the end of the day than we were ever going to eat, and that gave me an idea. I decided to keep my heart-rate above 150 bpm and chow through food to see how many calories I could get in before I could tell it was going to be a good idea to stop. I cruised in full throttle:

• 2.5 bananas, 300 cal
• 1/4 chocolate muffin ~100 cals
• 6 cookies, ~150 cals
• 2 bottles gatorade 360 cals
• 3 oranges ~150 cals

All that (excess of a thousand) in about 40 minutes, then I could tell! I would have guessed I could have done around 1200 because my stomach was pretty empty, not quite I guess. I didn’t push it to the point of nausea, there has to be another experiment left for another day. It was an entertaining experiment and I managed to still ride well when feeling full, effort steady-plus or plus-plus and heart rate was above 165 for a sizeable chunk in there when I was at my fullest and there was some loud drumming going on to help push the pace.