Prison Libraries

i got an email this morning from a friend of mine that was disturbing to me. here's what it said:

Dear friend,

Imagine walking into your local library, planning to read a
theologian such as Reinhold Niebuhr or Karl Barth, or a popular
inspirational work, such as Rick Warren's _Purpose-Driven Life_
or Harold Kushner's _When Bad Things Happen to Good People_.

But instead of finding such important and popular titles, you
discover that the religion section had been decimated - stripped
of any book that did not appear on a government-approved list.

That's exactly what's happening right now to inmates in federal
prisons under a Bush administration policy. As _The New York
Times_ put it, "chaplains have been quietly carrying out a
systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once
available to prisoners in chapel libraries."

I've just sent a message to the Federal Bureau of Prisons
protesting this absurd policy. Will you join me?
Just click here:
http://go.sojo.net/campaign/prisonlibraries?rk=_dSEq5E1p0BpW

Do it.

it has a head!

hey, look! i'm not sure if this is petri or dish, but it looks like a baby! hooray! they're both in there, but this is the best picture, i think. and their little hearts are beating 170 times a minute. wonderful.

in other news, stuff is going well here. i started my new job a few months ago, and i really love it. i had a full day of supervision today at grove city, and i got to visit one of the students who was in my youth group at the church last year who is a first-year student there this fall. he's doing really well, and it was good to catch up.

my mother told me this weekend that my blog is boring, so i felt convicted again to update. i'm not entirely sure what to write about though... i'll tell you one thing i've been loving lately though is my new church. these last few weeks, i've been thinking a lot about it, and i've really been understanding the song of ascent in psalm 122, where it says, "i was glad when they said to me, 'let us go to the house of the LORD.'" the church i've been going to is in my neighborhood, and it is committed to two things: being centered on Christ, and on being intentionally cross-cultural. they (we?) really believe that Christ can unite us over all kinds of barriers, and even though sunday morning is the most segregated time of the week, that's not true at my church. it's a really beautiful picture of the Kingdom, and i love it.
well, that's it for now.