I went back to Youth Group last night for the first time in close to a year. It was fun, got to see a bunch of people I'd missed, talk and laugh with old friends. Or young friends, maybe I should say.

The program last night was on La Gonave, a small, impoverished island off the coast of Haiti. One of the members of the church came and told us about the island, and about how she worked with Children's Cross Care USA to bring money, food, clothes, toys, along with medical care to the island. It was sick, it really was. I'm not talking about the pictures she showed us of the kids with malnutrition or of the small stick and mud houses. The sick part was her attitude. She was a nice lady, very caring and genuine, and totally convinced that it was her and our responsibility to save this poor island. Ever hear of the White Man's Burden? This was it.

It's one thing to send doctors, or to bring children to the states for a few months to correct a deadly ailment. That I can certainly understand and condone. And taking food and vitamins to La Gonave is definetly a reputible and worthy endevour. But this woman was talking about taking the people of La Gonave and making them Americans. She wanted to take them good cloths, because they didn't have any. She wanted to take them books and paper for schools. She wanted the little girls to have dolls to play with. This all sounds noble. But all the pictures of kids on La Gonave had them smiling, even beaming. They were half or totally naked and playing with only a flat, dirty soccer ball, but these childern were truly happy. The women were wearing their traditional clothes and carrying water in buckets on their heads. But they were smiling. I'm not accerting that life on this island is great, or good, or easy. But the fact is that our going over there to "take pity on them" is almost more for our own pride then it is for their benefit.

America has the highest standard of living in the world. We have the greatest wealth per person and overall. Life expectancy and the Literacy rate are higher hear than anywhere else. I love America and have no desire to live on La Gonave, or in any third world country. But that doesn't mean that we should turn them into America. Taking things to them to spare them from death is one thing, but trying to change their way of life because we think that ours is easier or better...... it's something else. And I don't think that it is anything noble.

I didn't bring this up at Youth Group. Most of the people there didn't want to hear it or simply couldn't, and there wasn't really time. But in the closing prayer circle, when we were asked to name our joys and concerns, I lifted up the joy of the people of this little Carribean Island....

"Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so quick to deal out death in judgement. Even the wise cannot see all ends." -Tolkien

One of those quotes that I have liked for years, but now that the movie is out, it can be on the lips of every teenager in America. Never the less, good ethical philosophy. Death is the one punishment which we have no cure for. I guess that it is true, that many who are alive deserve death. That they have done things so atrosious that they no longer merit their life. But even still, is that for me to decide. How does one weigh one transgression against another. If Bob steals and Dick lies, then who has done the worse action. If I kill a man in a war, Nick kills a man in self-defense, and Jon kills one in cold blood, then whose murder is more or less right. Or is every evil on the same level? Is a rape equal to petty theft?

Back to the death thing. Does one person's sins give leave for another to kill him in the name of justice? And what if you're wrong. Say the next week the true criminal comes forth and admits his own guilt. Can you give the dead back his life? No. Or what if he really was the guilty party. Say a father kills the man who murdered his wife. The courts try and convict and put this father to death. But then say that this was the man who would have found a cure for cancer five years down the road. There is no way to see all ends to any sin. It is too harsh to deal out a permanent end when you may end up being wrong.

"Without faith it is impossible to live." -Tolstoy

We're not talking religious here. Well, not specifically anyways. Faith is just believing in something that you can't prove with reason. Human Rights is a perfect example. There is no rational way to prove that I should have Freedom of Speech. I just except it on faith. I have faith that when my friend says he'll do something, that he actually will. No proof, no logical reasoning, just faith. I could say that I have faith that God exists. My roommate could say that he has faith that God doesn't. Have we contradicted one another? Can we sit down and have an argument about this? No more than we could argue that green is my favorite color. There is no valid argument that the Bill of Rights is correct, just a lot of good points. In the end, the judgement call is just a leap of faith one way or another.

The strange part about this is that, probobly, most of the leaps of faith are, in fact, objective. God either exists or he doesn't. God's existance is not something that is up to my opinion. But all the arguing and faith in the world is not going to bring me any closer to knowing for certain. There are innumeral good points, excellent points for having certain Human Rights. But Hitler can still say that he has faith that they don't exist and no one can prove him wrong. That's the beauty of faith. It is the only way to answer some of the most important questions out there, and every answer is unprovable and thus, not wrong in our knowledge. You can know that you are right, but until you get perception beyond that of this life, you'll never have proof.

The answer to the purpose of this life cannot be proven until after death. Until we become infinite, we can never give a certain answer to an infinite question.

"The secret of being a bore is to tell everything." -Voltaire

There, I have found it. The quote that all of you have been looking for to tell me to shut the hell up. Ever hear of Scheherazade? She was chosen to be the newest wife of the Shah of Persia, a man notorious for having his wives executed when they no longer pleased him. So upon the first night of their marriage Scheherazade began to tell her husband a story. She weaved an intricate tale and then would bring it to the climax..... and yawn and say in that breathy voice that only a woman can do that she was tired. "I'll finish the story tomarrow night." And the Shah was so intrigued that she lived every day until she could finish the story. Thus began the 1,001 Arabian Nights.

Another side of this is the human capacity for imagination. Imagination is the key thing that sets us appart from animals. Even the smartest animals only can see what is and remember a little of what was. They have no idea of what might be. A man has only to think of what could be and, like as not, it is. Even with small things, the human brain can decieve itself or induce such highs and lows that the truth inevitably falls far short. The old adage that the "forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest" is not because we want it more when we can't have it. It says that we make it better than it ever could be. Everyone has day-dreams and only very rarely does reality surpass them. Conversley, who has not dreamed night-mares that had them wake to a cold sweat they were so convinced. Tell all and the truth is boring compared to even the with-holding of the most sparce details. Describe someone and forget to mention the exact color of their skin or the perfect pitch of their laugh, and your audience will put in exactly what they want to see, or else will revel in the mystique of the veiled details.

I guess that it is impossible to cover all details of a person. Even a young child has a unique perspective on every experience that makes them infinately interesting. But still, with some people you can brush over a number of conversations, never hitting details, and it will seem that any further conversation is useless. The same way, talking of the same thing over and over for hours and not saying anything new can be just as tedious. I remember not this Thanksgiving but the previous one my cousin was talking to Megan about choosing and applying to colleges. He made his point in the first 15 minutes that cost should not be a major factor. But over the next three hours he and she belabored the point and beat it silly. The rest of us began to crack up and laugh with them at his chronic use of the phrase, "What I'm really trying to say is." Not that he was boring, but to tell everything, still, is a sure way to lose your following. It is a pit that I shall have to begin to avoid.

Pop culture screws up the modern vocabulary so much, it's all most tragic. Words like cool, awesome, suck, damn, bad-ass, yeah-right, and most of all, like. People are no longer articulate. That should be my New Years Resolution, to vary my word usage. I don't believe that most people are ignorant of big words, they appear all the time in novels and poetry, but the majority of people simply don't think to utilize them. This is especially noticiable in the conversational use of adjectives. If something is good, then it is cool; bad and it sucks. I actually really began to notice this in myself when I was describing my New Years experience to someone and just said it was cool. Upon asking them, they said that theirs was cool. Neither of us was treating this as a throw-away conversation, but we simply didn't want to think about more descriptive words to use.

Sometimes short and to the point communication is useful and prudent. In writing in newspapers you want to be immediatly understood and not have the reader search for any hidden meaning. The same with public speaking. Any speech writer can tell you that you want to use only words three syllabules or less and lots of repetition. But this doesn't mean that eloquence should simply be tossed off. It is important to find a happy medium of still being understood properly without boring the audience.

I was reading some of my Dad's old Chirstmas stories from long ago. I never realized what an impressive vocabulary. Even now I was still using context to understand a couple of the words. I find it a wonder that as a nine year old I wasn't stopping him ever second or third line for clarification. But again, it's easier to understand things of this sort than it is to conjour them out of thin air. In any case, it was fun reading the artistry of the words. Without reverting to a slew of literary devices, he managed to weave a web of words that told the story and was pretty to read at the same time.