by Meg Dendler
I’ve grown rather accustomed to mentally tuning out the music my daughters play, often at competing volume levels, from their respective bedrooms. But one afternoon as we drove in the car a favorite of my older daughter’s came on and I really started listening to the words. What I heard from the gravely voice of rock band Nickelback’s lead singer shocked me, but in a good way for once. He sang:
By John Biggs 
Good heavens. It’s been a wonderful couple of weeks. This weekend I went to Addo Elephant Park near Port Elizabeth, and we must have seen over 100 elephants, along with bushpig, warthog, red hartebeest, and zebra. It was beautiful to see these animals in their natural environment. The bush is very thick here - such a diversity of plant and animal life. It was a great backdrop, to have these images in thought during the drive back to the farm the next day, as we talked about the current (and possible future) state of affairs in South Africa politically, socially, and economically. (more…)
By Tim Heinemann
Before returning to the Burma border region, I had gotten wind of assassination teams targeting key leaders of the Karen ethnic resistance movement with whom I had been working for some time. We had struggled uphill for several years trying to gain the approval for a youth-leader development concept that was now in the works. We wanted to develop a kind of grassroots initiative, to train ethical servant leaders so that they could then serve in the Karen’s decades-long resistance effort against Burma’s military dictatorship.
by Robert Horner
This second edition in a series on spiritual solutions for the environment will tackle our first specific issue: pollution from solid waste disposal. This may be the most visually disturbing form of pollution. After all, who doesn’t cringe when they sail into a plastic debris field the size of Africa floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? (If you don’t sail between Japan and the U.S. much, you can just imagine doing it and then cringe.)
by Tim Heinemann
We’ve all seen recent images on TV of Burmese monks and citizens beaten on the streets of Rangoon and Mandalay. To me this video footage is an example of evil, uncovered for all the world to see. This is only a beginning. While there is progress here, the brutalization of ethnic hill tribes on a much grander scale in Eastern Burma still remains largely unknown to the world. Here hidden beneath dense jungle canopy, the military regime has been carrying out a decades-long land grab, burning down and mining over 3000 villages in order to seize lands rich in natural resources.
by Robert Horner
Severe weather. Drought. Sea-level rise. Desertification. Freshwater shortages. Pollution. Deforestation. Species extinction. Climate change.
Today we are faced with a looming global crisis. Our actions are altering our planet in ways that are harmful to ourselves and to life around us. Often, the actions we take today will continue to hurt us for generations to come. And these effects are sometimes irreversible. This is the current state of our world from a material standpoint. As a student researching sustainable development and renewable energy, I often find the scientific data about the destruction of our planet overwhelming.
by Tim Heinemann
I am writing from the Thailand-Burma border where I’m working with ethnic Karen hill tribe resistance leaders. These brave men, women, and youth leaders are trying to protect their village people from attacks from the Burmese dictator’s army. My path here has been an interesting spiritual journey, one that continues to test my understanding of how to experience the full power of Christian Science at jungle level.
As a retired Special Forces soldier just coming back from the Iraq War in 2003, I was somewhat lost as to what to do next with my life. I bought an RV and roamed the great American Northwest finally winding up on a beach in Southern California. But the search for the perfect place-paradise-had proved a failure.
by David Evans
“World-changers meet in Maine” reads the headline on a Christian Science Monitor article about last week’s Pop!Tech conference in Maine, attended by, the report says, “several hundred movers and shakers from corporations, think tanks, and universities.”
Do they change the world? Well, one Pop!Tech participant started a program that lets regular folks make small loans to poor but motivated entrepreneurs anywhere via the Internet. Another designs tools that can make a real difference in the standard of living of people making less than even $1 a day. He estimates that over the past 25 years he’s helped 17 million people escape poverty. And a new initiative, called the Pop!Tech Accelerator, wants to bring together innovators to tackle such big challenges as helping poor South Africans with AIDS manage their medical treatment.
by David Evans
On the sixth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC, a new videotape of Osama bin Laden surfaced. In it, he called for a caravan of martyrs to follow the men who carried out those attacks.
A caravan of martyrs to kill themselves and innocent people for some poorly defined and unattainable goal? Uh . . . not for me. But how about a caravan of healers to help people and solve problems? I like that idea. And each one of us can be part of it.
by David Evans
“Charity [love] never faileth,” the Apostle Paul writes, after noting that it also “beareth all things” ( I Cor. 13:7,8 ).
“Fine,” you say, “but a bridge in Minneapolis didn’t bear all things any longer. It failed. Dozens of people and their vehicles plummeted into the Mississippi River. What’s Love never failing got to do with that?” (more…)
