Daniel Farrell

I recently checked out Brotherhood Economics by Toyohiko Kagawa from the Richmond Public Library(RPL). Kagawa, for those who don’t know(I didn’t a week or two ago), was a Japanese christian, pacifist and labour activist around WW2. He was apparently a pretty influential guy in Japan. His grand holistic vision was to see a real life combination of christianity, the peace movement and the cooperative movement as an alternative to both communism/socialism and capitalism. This book lays out that vision. It was published in English in 1936 and RPL actually has a first edition in good condition.

I’m only a couple chapters in but so far it’s pretty interesting. Some of his interpretations of sayings of Jesus are new to me. It seems like he tried very hard to have a quote from Jesus to fit each of his points. While I appreciate the thought, I think it makes it seem like he’s stretching things a little with his interpretations. But the overall thrust of the book has been good so far. I’ll post more about it when I finish if it continues to be good.

I just got home. I feel like it’s been a long week. I got to hang out with my family, Brad, Leslie, Scott and a few others. It was good to be with you guys! I love you all! I also got to go to Horizon Owing Mills yesterday. I also got some work done, but I didn’t feel as useful and busy as I had expected.

I had a bit of an epiphany between my visit to Horizon and my drive home while thinking about the trip. I realized that I wasted most of the time I was a part of Horizon. I focused way to much on the system and trying to influence it instead of just loving people and investing in their lives. People at Horizon see me and say, “hi Dan” and maybe ask how things are. But I didn’t invest enough personally in people to really have anyone excited that I was there. I’m sorry Horizonites… I didn’t love you very well. I can compare and contrast that to my previous time leading Young Life. Even now when I run into former YLers they are very excited to see me. I had invested in them. I loved them well. Gotta make sure I learn from this stuff.

I’m currently reading Gandhi an autobiography, The story of my experiments with truth. I’m only about 1/5 of the way through so far but it’s been very good. It’s neat to see his experience in another culture so foreign to my own and see that he dealt with all the same stuff I currently deal with. He’s real honest about struggles and does not seem to hold back. I’m looking forward to finishing it to see all the experiences that molded such a great man.

I finished reading The Cluetrain Manifesto today. I(like tons of people) saw the website years ago, but I had never read the book. So I got it in an order I placed with Christmas giftcards and gave it a read. It’s a good one! If you are in any way involved with business(or anything that resembles it, like the church) or the internet you should read it. If you want to borrow my copy let me know.

Alicia and I went to the theatre and saw Brokeback Mountain tonight. It’s a big deal for us to even go to the theatre because neither of us really likes the experience. I think we went once or twice in all of 2005. But this movie has gotten a lot of press, including being featured on Oprah today, which motivated us to see it.

Alicia seems to have really enjoyed it. More than I did anyways. I thought it was a well made movie, but one thing bothered me throughout the whole movie. It bothered me that they portrayed love as something that has to be sexual. Love is not wanting or needing to possess the another person, that is lust. I want to be the kind of person who can love someone, pursue their best, even be affectionate to them, without it being sexual or without one person trying to possess the other. This movie is closer to most people’s realities than my ideals. Hollywood has incredible power, I just wish that would use it to inspire us to rise above our own mess more often.

Of course most of the publicity about the movie focuses on the idea of two masculine men being lovers. I’m not homophobic(I got over that in college), so there wasn’t shock value to it for me. It was sad that they wanted to be together and society made it unacceptable. But it was equally as sad to me that neither of them really learned to love anyone well(although you saw the first hint of it with his daughter at the end).