Pride and Precedent

“Having little or no sense of the human experience through the ages, of what has been tried, of what has succeeded and what has failed, of what is the price of cherishing some values as opposed to others, or of how values relate to one another, they leap from acting as though anything is possible, without cost, to despairing that nothing is possible.”

For changing lives

In the Phillips neighborhood, there is a building on Park Avenue--newly built, bright, and modern. It was named the Center for Changing Lives--it houses a Somali-owned daycare, a Lutheran pentecostal church, an affordable cafe, Refugee Services of Lutheran Social Service (LSS), and other social services. I take my laptop over there from the main LSS administrative building in St. Paul every week or so to work in the space with Pastor Mary, one of my supervisors. We go there because, we say, we want to get our lives changed.

A Myth: Social Change without Personal Change

"Perhaps you are a better person than I am. I hope you are. But, if you’re like me, take this moment to remind yourself: we are parts of the problems in this world. We acknowledge that we are part of a broken society, yet we are participants in this brokenness, and we are fools if, even in our activism to change it, we separate ourselves from it."