Ryan Boyette went to Sudan 8 years ago with Samaritan’s Purse. He fell in love with the people, and then he fell in love. When Sudan started falling apart, and the Nuban people came under fire everyone started leaving. He was told to evacuate. But he stayed. And he started reporting on the atrocities committed against the Nuba people.
A profile in courage, a profile in love. He’s got a Kickstarter for his citizen reporting work, Eyes and Ears Nuba, so we can all be a part of his work.
On Tuesday when Jenn and I were thinking of the upcoming Zero Week Challenge the only thing I could imagine really stopping us would be someone getting sick. For almost all of 2012 someone in our family has been sick so that possibility wasn’t out of the picture. I didn’t expect the reality to appear quite so immediately.
Excepting perhaps 5 hours, I spent Ash Wednesday sleeping, fighting off some resurgent bug. Sebastian also stayed home from school, clearly carrying something in his lungs. We soldiered on and I felt restored enough on Thursday to come in for a half-day. But Thursday night Augustin and Arden both came down with something. After a long, sleepless night we trekked to the doctor this morning, where we heard confirmation that they both have some respiratory virus.
Our goal was a week without spending anything: A week where we could focus the energy of buying on thanksgiving and giving instead. But can’t we ignore four sick people and responsibly take no action. So our zero week has turned into a $30 week owing to a pair of co-pays. We used a gift card to pay for their medication. It’s possible that’ll run higher because whatever intentional spending we need to do to make sure we tend to our kids, we will. But excepting the exceptional needs, for the rest of the week we’ll be keeping on a zero week focus.
Nothing slows thinking down quite like being sick.
This year Jenn and I are trying something a little different. Starting tomorrow we’re starting the Zero Week Challenge. For the first week of Lent we aren’t going to spend any money. None. $0.
Why are we doing this? Well, besides looking for a way to recalibrate our approach to spending and money in general, Lent starts tomorrow.
In the history of the Christian church, Lent is typically a 40-day season where in preparation for Easter Christians would adopt certain attitudes or prayer or repentance, or sometimes fasting or giving up of certain behaviors. Often a combination of new attitude and abstinence are combined, so that if you give up chocolate for lent when you crave chocolate you use the craving as a trigger to pray.
It’s a great spiritual discipline or practice, though by no means does it impute any special holiness or Christianity+.
For this Zero Week Challenge, there’s a two-fold idea. First, that we’re setting aside unintentional consumption and buying for Lent. Secondly, that in those moments we usually buy, we can turn to moments were we pray or give or reflect or any number of other practices.
Clearly there are big challenges to this. We need to have our family provided for in advance. A week without spending isn’t intended to be a week without eating or driving. So we’re filling up the gas tanks tonight and our grocery runs are complete. We’ve tried to ensure that what needs we have are covered for the next week.
I’m not sure if we’ll succeed. And I’m not sure what the impact of success would be. In fact, I’m not even sure what success would look like. Spending less money? Spending less often? Reflecting on the gap between real and perceived need?
But I am sure that for this week we’re going to try and spend no money at all. Bills that are coming up have been paid. Upcoming needs have been planned for. And whatever else comes up we’re planning on just passing on. Then we’ll see what happens. If it’s healthy and has a positive impact on our lives, we’ll probably do this again.
If you’re looking for something to try this Lent, you’re welcome to join us. You can try a Zero Week Challenge too, or just resolve to abstain from casual spending for the season. If you do, let us know.
Now girls listen up here’s how you live a long and happy life:
Never ever jump out of a moving car.
Sebastian, at 7 to his sisters aged 5 and 3 respectively.
This year we’re trying to cut down on presents. For one, our kids don’t have a tremendous amount of need. But even more I’m not sure the best way to celebrate birth and to say “I love you” is to shower that child with gifts. There are surely better ways, or at least more moderated ways.
For the older kids we’re going to cut back on parties too. But for Arden, turning three, we didn’t want to trim back against her expectations too much. Especially since at three it’s hard to hear anything but “no parties”.
So she had three: One with our family, one with friends and one with Jenn’s extended family which happened yesterday.
Tonight at my son’s school there was a choral, orchestral and dance performance for grades k-3. As you can imagine the talent is, at best, raw. Historically that’s made all school gatherings tricky because as far as performance quality, there’s not much to work with. Granted the audience is as friendly as you can get and no one is really there for the talent anyways.
But given at most of the gatherings like this is majority of the audience isn’t there for any given performance. We sat through nine presentations before Sebastian’s group came on. What made a few of them work better than the others was the fun quotient. When the teacher programmed something fun for the kids to do the 5-minute show became instantly fun for everyone to watch. Sadly, few of those preceding 9 shows were fun. But the music teacher at his school picked songs people knew, had the kids march and dance and kept the whole thing short. Our other kids actually enjoyed the music portion because the emphasis was on fun rather than performance.
So we actually stuck around for the last group. Sure that was in part because most of the audience was gone by that part and we felt bad for the last group of kids. But she rewarded us and the final song was “Good Night” from the Sound of Music.
The whole thing was a good reminder to me. Unless your quality is truly exceptional, people will always prefer to engage with what’s fun.
Johnny Barnes spends 6 hours a day on a corner waving at cars in Bermuda, telling people he loves them. It’s endearing and based on this video Mr Barnes seems significantly impact people in Bermuda.
The only thing I get hung up on is whether love can really be love if it’s so impersonal. Regardless, the video’s title, “Mr Happy Man”, is certainly accurate. This guy is seriously happy, his happiness is infectious and we could all do to wave and love people a little more often.
Mr. Happy Man from Matt Morris Films on Vimeo.
You can tell the day will be full of love when you wake up to this.
