When calculated as a percentage of income the neediest become the most charitable.

Those who earn less than $20,000 become twice as charitable as those who earn $100,000 even though they donate one fourth as much.

The most common reason for upper income people not giving to charity: They can’t afford it.

[via Charity: Who Cares? on Mint.com]

For those of you who are statistics junkies and like looking at fancy charts and graphs about things, this survey by Mint.com about who gives to what charities, what types of charities are donated to and a bunch of other demographic information in a fancy, easy-to-read format will be a quick and easy read.

For those of you looking to make last-minute donations as a gift alternative or for year-end tax offsets, Mint wisely recommends Charity Navigator as a good resource for finding causes to donate to where the most money goes toward the actual cause rather than to administration costs.

Have a merry Christmas, friends. Hope you don’t get too much junk you don’t need.

The other day my friend Brett wrote in defense of using violence in a last-resort situation to solve problem. He addressed it in a mature way that I completely understand and, while I am writing to support pure pacifism instead, it’s not meant to be in opposition to him directly (and not the least bit personal), but more of a devil’s advocate response. Well, sort of. I currently haven’t decided exactly where I stand when it comes to violent measures “when necessary.” So I’m partially writing to get an idea out that’s been bouncing around my head, too.

First off, this argument is founded on general Christian ideology, so if that’s not how you swing, read on only for your own entertainment.

In America, Christians glorify the martyrs of the faith in other parts of the world. We stand in awe of those willing to stand up for their faith and die for it, then sit comfortably and question why it is that American Christians rarely die for theirs. It’s because it isn’t threatened here, in the land of free worship. But I argue that it is still threatened, albeit indirectly.

There is a fair amount to support the idea that Jesus taught pure pacifism. Not an idea closed to reasonable debate, but it’s a substantial point made in the New Testament. If that side is taken, then we should, ideally, not cause harm others when our safety and the safety of those around us is threatened. Instead, we should take the “third way” (as Shane Claiborne calls it in Jesus for President [see my review]) and respond unexpectedly, however that may be.

When we talk about peacemaking and the “third way of Jesus,” people inevitably ask bizarre situational questions like, “If someone broke into your house and was raping your grandmother, what would you do?” We can’t exhaustively troubleshoot every situation with nonviolent “strategy,” but what we can do is internalize the character and spirit of Jesus. We can meditate daily on the fruit of the Spirit and pray that they take root in us. Then we can trust that when we encounter a bad situation, we will act like Jesus.

At one festival, I was asked after a talk, “What would you do if you lived in Darfur and had a gang of young men running at you with machetes?” I though such a strange question deserved an equally far-out answer, so I said, “I’d take off my clothes and run around like a chicken, squawking wildly and pecking at the ground with my mouth.” I figure the chicken response is about as likely to disarm a mob of young hooligans as my trying to fight them. Either response would be ugly, but I’d opt for the former. I’ve already decided that the next time I get jumped, I’m going to turn some backflips and act like a ninja. Or I might just get on my knees and start speaking in tongues. Either seems as likely to hold promising results. At any rate, these aren’t solutions for the tragic situations of brothers and sisters in areas like the Sudan. Without a doubt, protecting the innocent is one of the strongest arguments for redemptive violence. A bunch of folks running around like naked chickens is not a solution to the crisis there. But the story of my friend Celestin [who continued to teach forgiveness and reconciliation, to eye-opening results, after militant Rwandans killed many in his church family] is. After all, Jesus didn’t say, “Greater love has no one than this, to kill to protect the innocent.”

The end idea is this: if we truly believe Christ’s teachings, and it is true that he asked for our peace and pacifism, we are martyrs if we stand up for that belief in any situation where our physical safety is threatened by another person.

Is this easy to do? No, not at all. But I’d wager that, if a nonviolent movement of Christians were to rise in this country, someone would take notice and perhaps see something in our faith that hasn’t been seen in quite some time through the inevitably martyrdom that would occur, even if not in great numbers. Something that goes beyond lots of words and cheesy attempts at evangelism and actually gets at the core of our faith and our humanity.

Defensive violence makes sense in a logical world where our own survival is of the highest value. But if our faith is what defines us, then it is for it that we should be willing to die, even when given the opportunity to fight back.

My friend Matthew recently started a community of bloggers doing what he calls “Poetry Wednesday.” The idea is simple: post your favorite poetry (yours or someone else’s) on Wednesdays. And that’s it. So here’s mine.

Like Lilly Like Wilson

By Taylor Mali

I’m writing the poem that will change the world,
and it’s Lilly Wilson at my office door.
Lilly Wilson, the recovering like addict,
the worst I’ve ever seen.
So, like, bad the whole eighth grade
started calling her Like Lilly Like Wilson Like.
ŒUntil I declared my classroom a Like-Free Zone,
and she could not speak for days.

But when she finally did, it was to say,
Mr. Mali, this is . . . so hard.
Now I have to think before I . . . say anything.

Imagine that, Lilly.

It’s for your own good.
Even if you don’t like . . .
it.

I’m writing the poem that will change the world,
and it’s Lilly Wilson at my office door.
Lilly is writing a research paper for me
about how homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed
to adopt children.
I’m writing the poem that will change the world,
and it’s Like Lilly Like Wilson at my office door.

She’s having trouble finding sources,
which is to say, ones that back her up.
They all argue in favor of what I thought I was against.

And it took four years of college,
three years of graduate school,
and every incidental teaching experience I have ever had
to let out only,

Well, that’s a real interesting problem, Lilly.
But what do you propose to do about it?
That’s what I want to know.

And the eighth-grade mind is a beautiful thing;
Like a new-born baby’s face, you can often see it
change before your very eyes.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, Mr. Mali,
but I think I’d like to switch sides.

And I want to tell her to do more than just believe it,
but to enjoy it!
That changing your mind is one of the best ways
of finding out whether or not you still have one.
Or even that minds are like parachutes,
that it doesn’t matter what you pack
them with so long as they open
at the right time.
O God, Lilly, I want to say
you make me feel like a teacher,
and who could ask to feel more than that?
I want to say all this but manage only,
Lilly, I am like so impressed with you!

So I finally taught somebody something,
namely, how to change her mind.
And learned in the process that if I ever change the world
it’s going to be one eighth grader at a time.

Taylor Mali is a personal favorite poet. I enjoy slam poetry and poems that are better when recited live. So here’s Mali performing it:

Dr. Thorpe also said that if the incidence of obesity fell to its 1987 level, it would free enough money to cover the nation’s uninsured population.

(via Health Care Savings May Start in Employee Diets in the New York Times)

File this one under “news I am not at all surprised to hear, but am glad for the affirmation anyway.”

I’ve talked a lot about food this year for some reason. And health care has been a national concern since Obama strolled in the front door in January. So someone helping us tie the two together in a way that’s been needed for a long time is a welcome thing to see.

I read somewhere once that if you take a fast food meal, factor in the cost of weight gain (new clothes, gas mileage, etc.) and negative effect it has on your health in the long term, the meal would actually cost more than an equivalent meal made up of fresh produce that many claim is “too expensive.”

Another challenge for the new year: find a partner and make a bet to not eat fast food all year. Keep each other accountable and make the wager high if you lose the bet (kinda like I did).

I wonder the same thing about folks who check for new email every 5 minutes, follow 5,000 people on Twitter, or try to do anything sane with 500 RSS feeds.

Some graze unlimited bowls of information by choice. Others claim it’s a necessity of remaining employed, landing sales, or “staying in the loop.” Could be. What about you?

How do you know when you’ve had “enough?”

Not everything, all the time, completely, forever. Just enough. Enough to start, finish, or simply maintain.

(via Enough by Merlin Mann on 43 Folders)

After I read this short essay by Merlin Mann, I got rid of a good handful of the news feeds I was reading in Google Reader. My life already feels better, and has continued to for the week or so since I did it. Turns out I didn’t need up-to-the-minute headlines on Tiger Woods’s love life and fifty funny headlines a day from Fark and The Onion. If I’m aching for a funny headline, I can always peek at the site sometime. But I don’t need it every day. I certainly don’t miss it yet.

I also did a big cleanup on Twitter recently that has made it a simple joy again. Something to fill in gaps for a quick bit of communication or an enjoyable tidbit of a friend’s day. It’s not something I feel like I have to check every five minutes any more just to keep up. Turns out I don’t need to keep up with every move every band and person I know at every moment.

Suggested goal: Sometime before the new year, go through the websites, email newsletters, Twitter accounts, news feeds, newspapers, magazines and social networks that take your attention and ask yourself whether or not each of them is essential to your daily survival. Try to get rid of a third or even just a quarter of it. Then open your eyes to all the things you have time for with those extra moments.

Søren Kierkegaard is an irate, spiritual philosopher who had some issues with the way the Christian community was doing their thing in his day. So basically a more prominent, more vocal version of me. And from Denmark.

Provocations is a collection of his spiritual writings put together some time back. I somehow came across the book as a free PDF and, knowing what I did of Kierkegaard’s work, decided it’d be good to at least be aware of what he was saying.

The book covers a lot of territory, so it was helpful to get an idea from the start what he was standing for. His main arguing points are for a very subjective faith. That is, he believes faith to be a very personal thing, that no expansion of knowledge about one’s set of beliefs helps save them, that faith is the foundation and everything else is secondary.

He takes these ideas to extreme ends, but they are ends that should be explored. He does so with a fair amount of attitude and calling-out of bad Christian habits. He also comes to conclude that the “Christianization” of our world creates an environment where “everyone is a Christian, so no one is a Christian.”

Today’s martyrs will not bleed, as formerly, because they are Christians – yes, it is almost insane! They will be put to death because they are not “Christians.” Frightful drama! And how alone the martyr will stand!

I recommend Provocations for anyone who enjoys philosophical discussions on faith and wants to take faith to its necessary ends in order to see what the Christian life might look like without a need for arguments over doctrine and theology or a “Christian elite,” as he might call it were he to see the state of modern church life.

To be clear, though: I do not entirely agree with everything Kierkegaard has to say, but enough of it that this was an encouraging and growth-inducing read. I firmly believe that we should have no fear of any question, and Kierkegaard challenges those ideas of where the ends of the earth lie. I respect his life’s work much for that alone.

Waiting in the wings like stage moms, breakup songs are ready to hold and lightly stab you, marking the transition from one type of membership to another — albeit with kazoos instead of trumpets.

We are grateful for these mood crashers for the same reason we might question their perversion: They keep us rooted in the heartache. These songs allow for introspection and the full acknowledgment that something very important has ended.

(via Break Me Off a Piece of that Breakup Song at Bitch Magazine)

Nice to see a feminist publication valuing the importance of relationships for once. Hahaaaa just kidding. I’m no bigot.

I love breakup songs. And sad songs in general. Sue me. They are some of the best songs by some of my favorite artists. They console us when we’re not in a good mood. They’re indulgent, guilty pleasures but sometimes they hit the spot like nothing else.

Here are a few favorite sad songs that just crossed my mind:

• Ryan Adams – “Come Pick Me Up” (Heartbreaker)
• Joshua James – “Dangerous” (The Sun is Always Brighter)
• The Avett Brothers – “Tear Down the House” (The Gleam II)
• mewithoutYou – “Son of a Widow” (Catch for Us the Foxes)
• Ryan Adams – “The Shadowlands” (Love is Hell)
• Glasvegas – “It’s My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry” (Glasvegas)

Just now I was listening to Ian MacKaye (of Minor Threat and Fugazi) on the Sound of Young America podcast. He said something which, in retrospect, was obvious. I’d just never quite put it so succinctly:

[I have a friend from high school who] has a 13 year old son. And his 13 year old son is a massive Minor Threat fan. In 2009! And I think that’s just incredible! The idea that music, if it’s created in a way that is honest, can still resonate. Kids can still be like, “Yeah, that means something to me.”

It’s interesting how transcendent honesty can be. How the teenybopper pop from the 70s and 80s (Leif Garrett anyone?) has almost zero relevance now while punk rock still inspires and expands, and is well on its way to powering through three generations.

What else are people doing now with music that will still resonate and inspire in 30 years? It’s certainly not “Party in the USA” or that damn Justin Bieber song. It’s what the teenagers do who aren’t listening to top 40 radio or the top-purchased pop songs on iTunes.

I don’t know what that is because I’m an old fogey already at the ripe age of 25. (Seriously, I felt like a grandpa when I saw Vampire Weekend last month.) Maybe it’s a kid writing the next Heartbreaker or some high-schooler learning how to use Ableton Live and a synthesizer, or Talbot Tagora, who are sneaking into their 20s and already touring the US as a noise rock trio (music I’m just now learning to appreciate and understand). Those damn kids and their music.

If older folk still buy music and younger people steal it, why did John Mayer sell almost twice as many albums the first week out as Bon Jovi?

This “oh snap!” moment brought to you by Bob Lefsetz.

Guys. People still buy music. And I would bet that young people, even the ones that download illegally, still buy more than the older folks. iTunes has sold well over a billion songs and I would guess that the majority of those sales went to people under 30.

It takes a lot more work and awareness than it used to in order to sell albums. John Mayer’s is one of my favorite Twitter accounts to follow. He’s clever, witty and he knows how to connect with his fans. He knows that Twitter is not where you do a sales pitch. But I would bet that a large portion of album sales for Battle Studies came from his Twitter followers, because he is constantly reminding them that he is there and that he’s worth paying attention to.

Bon Jovi on the other hand…

Oh hey, look. Remember that time I said that anyone complaining that gay marriage destroys the sanctity of marriage should also be in support of a proposition banning divorce? Looks like it wasn’t just me.

In a movement that seems ripped from the pages of Comedy Channel writers, John Marcotte wants to put a measure on the ballot next year to ban divorce in California.

The 2010 California Marriage Protection Act is meant to be a satirical statement after California voters outlawed gay marriage in 2008, largely on the argument that a ban is needed to protect the sanctity of traditional marriage. If that’s the case, then Marcotte reasons voters should have no problem banning divorce.

[via NPR]

Props to that guy.