I thought I would start posting a few pictures at my other blog. See them at www.poolhouseblack.com if you want to.

If you are all car savvy just ignore this post.

The other day I used a 3M Headlight Restoration Kit to polish the headlights on my car. It worked amazingly well:

So, if your headlights seem dim and the lenses are all foggy spend the $25 and 30 minutes it takes to restore them. It makes a big difference.

I was thinking this might be a business opportunity. What if you restored peoples headlights while they were at work? The system is completely portable, so you could go to the parking lot. It would only take a few hundred in start up cost, and some savvey marketing. You could probably charge $30, and I think it would take around 20 minutes to do the whole process once you got good at it. You would have to factor in some travel time as well…and of course all the normal business expenses like insurance, replacing worn out gear, etc.

I’m not sure the status of micro finance in the United States, but it seems like the amount of money it takes to impact an individuals ability to generate wealth is much higher here then, say, on the African continent (this is pure speculation). A business like this could be funded through some sort of micro finance or peer to peer set up, and might be a viable option for somebody looking to start a low cost business.

So after our fabulous dinner of frozen pizza last night, Ben comes to sit next to me on the couch. Wearing his nice dress clothes. And he says, “You have to get dressed like me, only be ready to walk around for a little bit.”

I didn’t really believe him at first. I thought he was just being silly. But he wasn’t! He was being serious.

So I got dressed up, and we started walking. We eventually ended up at the Performing Arts Center downtown. And saw these guys.

What a fun surprise! (That he came up with about two hours before…just because he knows how much I love going to shows like this.)

Watch this video:

Done? Good.

So, I have been challenged. What is the single story I have in my mind about the poor? The Rich? Muslims? Artist, Hipsters, the young, the old, that guy who cut me off in traffic?

What single stories do you believe?

Three posts in one day? This blog is getting down right chatty!

Yesterday I spent about 4 hours making conversation with people I don’t know. Now, if you know me at all…im not big on just having conversations with people. It is exhausting to me. I had a headache the rest of the day.

But it was good. Basically I spent the day hanging out with a lady who lives under a bridge, a lady who lives at a shelter and a guy who lives with a pastor we know. I was privileged to be allowed into their community for a few hours. There were a lot of things that we talked about, but here are two that i thought i would share:

Community is everywhere: This is nothing new, but yesterday I saw a great example of this.  If our only idea of community is centered  around small groups at church then our view is way to narrow. Everybody needs people to live life together with, and even a fiercely independent woman who lives on the streets recognizes that in her life.

Programs don’t work: I have a limited perspective on this right now, but for these three the programs, rules and systems that have been built around the homeless in Tulsa don’t work. All of them are taking active steps in their lives to change their situation (working jobs, doing the paperwork to have a nursing licenses restored, taking GED classes, etc), its not that any of them are looking for a system to save them. However, in the eyes of these three, the system in place has not helped them move from where they are now to where they dream to be. I don’t want to paint to broadly here, I know there are some people who the systems in place have helped, and I am only seeing a very narrow view right now.  Greg has something to say about this.

Any way, that’s enough for now…

Check out this video that my fabulously talented husband made for us. To help share the vision for Cafe Mosaic.

Cafe Mosaic from Ben West on Vimeo.

so….what did you think???

It’s 10:30 on Friday morning. And so far today, I…

1. cleaned the kitchen

2. made blueberry muffins just like my momma makes ‘em. (reduce the liquid & use the juice from the blueberries…more blueberry flavor & they come out purple!)

3. answered a few emails & worked on my newest endeavor through the Green Country Event Center-a wedding show!  Check out www.beforeidoweddingshow.com to see some of what I’ve been working on lately. (And let me know if you’re interested in reserving some booth space!)

Up next…

1. more working from home. (I really, really love working from home.)

2. learning how to use a hair straightener

3. a visit to NLR to see our peeps out there

4. Cass‘ concert tonight

5. our annual Valentine’s fondue celebration (a bit more low-key this year than in year’s past-but the tradition continues!)

I made this video recently, its sort of my first finished story for my story telling project at church. It was a lot of fun to make. Overall I think it came out well. For my next one im going to be doing something a bit bigger involving a lot more people. This next one is actually a bit intimidating because I am hoping to go out and get interviews with lots of people who i don’t really know and don’t necessarily have an existing relationship with the church. I’m not very good at that so it’s a bit scary right now!

Food Pantry and Clothing Closet from Ben West on Vimeo.

This is my reflection on one of our recent classes with Mark of TellTheirStory.org

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It seems that there were two basic areas we talked about with Mark…related but distinct. Ill start with development.

I do of course really appreciate the approach of micro finance, partnering with people in empowering relationships, and involving investors and donors in a very real way. Jacqueline Novogratz’s idea of patient capital (long term investment where the return is more about social change then a monetary percentage), is a really compelling idea to me, and is very closely related to what Mark is doing.

The thing that stands out from that conversation was the idea of approaching economics from a standpoint of scarcity or plenty. I do think in terms of plenty…I have no doubt that there is plenty for all. But I guess it seems like it depends on what you are measuring. Here is my worry: what if there are some things that do have to be given up to allow others to have plenty? The easy thing to pick on is anything we have the can derive from exploitation (cheap stuff, diamonds, coffee, sugar). What if we, as people with plenty, think we don’t have enough to make sure factory workers in China are paid a living wage? Now, I don’t want to be cliche with this stuff, the issues of trade, labor, wage, exploitation, etc. are very complex (see The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade), even if you just try to look at one single industry. Understanding it on a global scale seems impossible. But my worry stands; what trappings of plenty are possible because somebody has less?

I’m not sure where im going with this. I guess that I wonder if there is in fact something that has to be given up? I’m not talking about some sort of redistribution of wealth, that those with plenty will have to have nothing so that others can have something. But, it seems that there are some things we have that are built on the shoulders of the poor. It seems that this a lot of it is unimportant stuff though, cheap stuff from wal-mart. I don’t know, I might just not understand the economics of it all well enough, but it seems like this issue is less cut and dry then just saying that everybody can have everything. I found this picture a long time ago painted by the artist Banksy:

I think about it a lot. So, what if we are unwilling to pay 10% more on a meal so that the guy washing dishes can earn enough in a 60 hour week to pay rent? Part of this I suppose has to do with thinking long term. The person buying the meal might happen to own an antique shop. If this person only thinks short term then this is a situation of scarcity. There are only $10 in the meal and they have to be divided up. Somebody does not get enough. Or the customer can give up the extra dollar and pay $11, thus insuring that everybody had enough, except that he is out the dollar. In the short term he loses. But, I suppose, that if you look in the long term he might not. If all the dishwashers in the world have a bit of extra money some of them will start collecting antiques, and he gets his dollar back. I don’t know…i think i would need a degree in economics to really understand all of this!

There is another issue around this that we did not really talk about but it is related. For the sake of simplicity lets say that we (us) are obsessed with having stuff, with being comfortable at all costs, that we have built walls between us and nature, that we don’t know what it means to be connected to people, that we have to be entertained, that our priorities are wrong…all the negative stereotypes of the privileged that you can think of. So, say we invest patently, empower people, develop economies and create wealth. Are we just giving people tools to be us? To end up in a life obsessed with having stuff, with being comfortable at all costs, with walls between them and nature, without connections with people, needing to be entertained, with wrong priorities? I have two thoughts about this right now:

First, Jacqueline Novogratz returns. She has some interesting things to say about this. First, she throws out the romantic view of poverty. This is the idea that people with nothing are really better off because they understand family, community, and generosity. These things may be true, but the also have to walk five hours a day to get water, are always hungry, and their infant daughter died last week. So, Jacqueline says that we are giving people a choice. Through smart investment and development we allow people to choose to stay where they are, or to start down the path of developing economies and all that comes with that (good and bad). If they are really better off where they are, they will stay.

Second, I think this issue speaks to part of why development and spiritual formation go hand in hand. The thing that prevents people from becoming us is having the right person at the center of the story. If I am at the center of the story then naturally I can become obsessed with having stuff, with being comfortable at all costs, have to be entertained and with wrong priorities. However, if Christ is the center of my story then I probably will still become all of those things, but I will be fighting it. Christ will teach me to use my stuff to help others, to bring comfort to others, for my entertainment to be something more then mindless, and to have right priorities.

There is a bunch of stuff about this at Speaking of Faith if your interested.

On to story.

It is clear that Mark has thought about story a lot more then me, which is not surprising. It’s also clear that I have thought about economic development a lot more then story…

The question of exploitation is obviously important to me. I want to make sure that as I record what people have to say and take their picture that I do not use them, manipulate their words, be untruthful. I am really still processing this. I think the biggest place where this tension exists for me is when you are telling stories for the sake of an organization or project. Tomorrow I am going to start making a list of people i want to interview for a specific project. This project has a broad purpose, essentially it is to profile the community around the church so that we can give a taste of east Tulsa during a fund raiser. All i have to do is document what is, what people really say. Yet there is a temptation to shape the story. I want to show a “realistic yet hopeful” view of the community. I am already putting my agenda on it. What if there is no hope? Then what? In this case it’s actually not really that big a deal. I really can just show what I find. But what if Mark goes out and interviews a local hero and by the end the gist is “we have been working hard for 10 years, and now the water pump is broken, im tired of this, one of our co-op members stole all our money, and we are no better off then we were 10 years ago. It was better when people just showed up every now and then and gave us free food.” Then what? If it were me I hope I would be willing to take that story, put it in context, put it on the web site and be honest in saying that what we do is hard, that we don’t always have the answers, sometimes we might be wrong and make mistakes, that there are setbacks, and that it takes perseverance. But I think i would probably be scared to.

In the end I think that this is not solvable. You just have to know that this tension exists, and make sure that you are constantly checking yourself.

The most encouraging part of the conversation was hearing mark talk about the value that recording somebodies story brings to them. That just by taking the time to listen you help somebody feel like they have worth and value. Over the last several weeks as i have been interviewing a few people I think that is part of what I have enjoyed the most, is that they have seemed to really appreciate getting to share a bit about themselves with somebody. I have enjoyed hearing the stories and have learned from them, but i think (hope) that they felt valued because of the time I spent with them.