Living in a HUT

This past weekend we took some of our 8th and 9th grade kids (and lots of parents!) to HUT, on a retreat oriented around being conscious of poverty issues around the world. HUT is a mock global village, with living environments from southeast Asia, Latin America, Haiti, Appalacian America, and East Africa. The retreat basically involves a lot of situational role play, and experience in different kinds of work projects.

For the most part, it is amazing how unaware of both our wwealth and of global poverty. It's impossible to get into our American heads how extremely different our situation is from the rest of the world around us. The way we define things like "adequate" and "comfortable" is somewhat ridiculous. I can't even put this thought in concrete examples, becaues it sounds silly to say things like "I think that soft couches are important for me, but really it is nice to have a house.

HUT is kind of a silly thing because it tries to simulate things that are so out of our minds that we can't really even process them. It's not even really just a matter of selfishness (though it's pretty close) but just a matter of understanding reality. I really am blind to world poverty. I can't see it, can't process it as reality.

Okay, I've got to go, but There's more about this to come.

reboot

Sometimes things just get crammed, and instead of piking up the old thread, it's just better to start another.

Okay T-Rev, this is for you.

I've been on the go like crazy over the past month, buying a house in the process and getting moved in. A remarkable amount of work went into pulling down the freaking wallpaper, but now it's all painted up and ready to go.

I've also been working my tail off trying to keep up with grad school homwework and general work, but it's all been really fun. I've enjoyed the greek, learned a whole lot about the medieval church, and after tomorrow will have a functioning hot tub at my cozy home. So life is good.


And I'm thinking a lot about the incarnation and the trinity.