NOTE: This is a modified “for public consumption” version of my world-famous (yeah right) email newsletter. A slightly less-edited version is available – just write me!
Hello friends,
Mung beans are about $1.19 in the bulk food aisle at Whole Foods. You can take these beans and sprout them in a Mason jar. A pound of beans will make BOATLOADS of fresh, tasty, nutritious sprouts. Good eatin’! And yes, I realize that the acronym for the Dispatch is now B.A.D.D. – it’s cuz I’m such a tough guy. :)
Well well well, it’s been a while since I’ve attempted to connect with y’all. When I last checked in, we were days away from launching the One Voice of Faith conference. It went well, and the Interfaith Youth Leadership Summit that Hafsa Arain and I put together was a success. After that, it was a mad dash through World Malaria Day, movie screenings, wrap-up meetings, training to become a ONE Campaign and Malaria No More Malaria Griot, and budget reconciliation. The budget work was difficult; I had to match up how much I actually embezzled with how much the Interfaith Youth Core thought I embezzled. JUST JOKING!
The Faiths Act Fellows reunited in Chicago at the end of May. It was great meeting up with all of my lovely friends to talk through the last year and to help design future iterations of the program. The Fellowship was an amazing experience. It’s going to be a few more months before we can “take the temperature” of the coalitions that we built in cities across the US, UK, and Canada, but the preliminary statistics show that we raised about $150,000 USD, which will be personally matched by Mr. Tony Blair. 10,000 people came to Faiths Act events, and we reached out to over 40,000 folks in three countries. Not bad for a first outing, if I do say so myself. Hafsa and I worked hard to connect interfaith activists to each other across the Bay Area. For only having eight months in which to work, I think that we affected the interfaith ecosystem quite positively.
I have delayed this Dispatch largely because I didn’t want to report to you all without being able to list my new employer (probably some hang-up of being a prideful rural lad), and I will do so now. On June 21st I joined the Ashoka Changemakers as a Community Mobilizer (I’m actually a non-benefited full-time consultant/contractor). I’m helping out with some current competitions to identify and empower social entrepreneurs, and I will soon take on competitions of my own. I’m going to work on developing an outreach plan for faith-based organizations, too. It’s all very exciting!
My girlfriend and I are keeping our eyes out for interesting humanitarian jobs both here and abroad. She’s back in central Colorado (pictures of the paradise of Crested Butte) and I’m still here in San Jose. I’m helping out around the office at Islamic Networks Group ; they’ve been kind enough to let me keep my desk space for the time being. There is also more interfaith organizing to be done in the Bay Area, and I’m doing what I can in my spare time. So we’ll see – the future looks bright!
So I’ll leave you all to your endeavors, which I would spell “endeavours” like my English friends if I wasn’t afraid of the jagged red line that Gmail puts underneath it. Get plenty of sleep, try drinking a few cups of green tea each day, and…shamelessly link out to a post that I wrote about my raw food experience.
I miss you all, I hope to speak with you soon, and always, keep up the good work.
P.S. Today’s poetry break is brought to you by Thomas Merton, who is awesome. His poem “A Dirge” follows my signature.
Tim Brauhn
A Dirge
BY THOMAS JAMES MERTON
Some one who hears the bugle neigh will know
How cold it is when sentries die by starlight.
But none who love to hear the hammering drum
Will look, when the betrayer
Laughs in the desert like a broken monument,
Ringing his tongue in the red bell of his head,
Gesturing like a flag.
The air that quivered after the earthquake
(When God died like a thief)
Still plays the ancient forums like pianos;
The treacherous wind, lover of the demented,
Will harp forever in the haunted temples.
What speeches do the birds make
With their beaks, to the desolate dead?
And yet we love those carsick amphitheaters,
Nor hear our Messenger come home from hell
With hands shot full of blood.
No one who loves the fleering fife will feel
The light of morning stab his flesh,
But some who hear the trumpet’s raving, in the ruined sky,
Will dread the burnished helmet of the sun,
Whose anger goes before the King.
No related posts.
