one week and almost three thousand dollars later...

Hi. I'm Erinn and a newbie and have been duly prodded into posting. Judge me not too harshly.

Tuesday and Wednesday I spearheaded a little fundraiser for Pakistan, and the whole thing made me want to be a raving optimist. Huntington University students and professors and community members gave donations (lots of clothes, handcrafts, baked goods, and some artwork) that we set out on a few card tables on campus and at Coffee D'Vine. Over the course of two days, people stopped by and paid what they could for stuff. I was so moved by the generosity of people all around. We had a girl give away a DVD player, a guy who happened to pick up a piece of trash with "When you give, give generously" written on it and decided to write us a really large check, and we had tons of students (even ones who weren't officially helping with our sale) come and help set up and tear down.

I know humanity is messy, ugly and often apathetic, but also deeply beautiful sometimes. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn puts it really well in The Gulag Archipelago when he writes, "The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil. It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person."

I've been thinking a lot in the last year about hope and cynicism. And about the reckless optimism that must have been involved in the Incarnation, and in God ever looking at humanity and not sending floods or instant damnation. I've thought a lot about how representing this God in any way must involve emulation of his great hope. And about how these three really really do remain: faith, hope and love. So chock one up for hope this week.

posted by E Caley Ferguson @ 8:24 AM