The next best thing to living in communes

Do you hate materialism and consumerism? I know I do. If you’re like me, then listen up. There’s this great new website called LendList. A guy from my school designed it. The site lets you make a list of things you own that you wouldn't mind lending to people you already know, within a certain community (eg. Emmanuel Baptist Church or Regent College or your local birdwatching club). The site lets you search other group members' lists for things you might need, and makes it easy to see the shared resources of the group. The result: we share more, we become less attached to our material possessions (which aren’t really OURS to begin with, we’re just stewards of them), our possessions get more use, we save money and the environment, and we start to depend on other people and build more tightly-knit communities. I hereby challenge my friends and family to take this from Vancouver to Saskatoon and light the fire of lending across the country! Somebody needs to start an Emmanuel sharing group on Lendlist. Just go here: http://www.lendlist.org .

Thank you for your prayers about the whole needing-to-find-a-job thing. As it stands, I’m officially “on call” for a tutoring agency, awaiting new students. Obviously this is not going to be a reliable regular source of income for a while, so I’m looking for other things. The latest possibility (get this): typing out letters for a string theorist from Jerusalem – a professor at UBC. I have very few details about this position. I called him and said, “I’m calling about your job posting…” and he said “I need you! Can we meet tomorrow?” He knows nothing about me, but it is good to feel needed. It sounds like I don’t have very much competition for the position; nevertheless I plan to wow him with my knowledge of Hebrew and the string theory (ha) to “seal the deal”. Assuming I want to seal the deal when I actually learn about such minor employment details as, say, hours and salary. If it doesn’t work out, there’s always Grounds for Coffee. Keep praying!

I’m working on a poem right now. I’m getting pickier with myself so I’m going to start spending more time on revision and editing. I’ll post it on the blog, so check back in the next couple of days.