Straight From Pastor Ey

Daniel Suelo of Moab, Utah claims he has “figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in the first place.” (Source: Details.Com ) Image source: Details.Com Almost 10 years ago, he just decided to quit money. He lives in a cave. He eats wild plants, grubs, lizards and roadkill. He also scavenges leftovers in the garbage in a nearby desert town. Yet, he is no crazy hermit. He has a degree in anthropology from the University of Colorado.  But a tour with the Peace Corps in an Ecuadoran village jolted him. Tasked to monitor the health of the villagers, he saw how they sank as they took on “the economics of modernity.” With the earnings from their produce, they bought things they didn’t really need. Suelo sadly noted, “The more they spent, the more their health declined. It looked like money was impoverishing them.” ( Ibid ) Image source: BBC World Mixing Christianity and Buddhism, he then decided to give up on money. “When I lived with money, I w

While I was digging in my file looking for something (anything!) to somehow inspire myself to write (Yes, I do get writer’s block at times), I found a compilation of quotes and quips on money and generosity by Rev. Brian Kluth of www.maximumgenerosity.com. One time, a man lamented, “I’m a walking economy. My hairline’s in recession, my waist is a victim of inflation, and together they’re putting me in a deep depression!” I think a wife said this, “A joint checking account is never overdrawn by the wife; it’s just under-deposited by her husband.” Nowadays, because of the global financial crisis, “the safest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it in your pocket.” Here’s another good one: “With the price of everything else going up these days, aren’t you glad the Lord hasn’t increased the tithe to 15%?” While our dire situation is no laughing matter, there are times I feel that one of the only ways to cope is to find humor in it. But I believe the best way to conqu

“Part musical feast, part religious experience, ” was how Agence France-Presse, an international news agency, depicted the two-hour Michael Jackson’s memorial at the Staples Center Arena in Los Angeles, USA, last Tuesday, July 7, 2009. The New York Times hailed it as “religious pageant meets awards show”. The Washington Post noted that the memorial “was an orgy of praise, an exercise of excess and quantity, much like Jackson’s life.” About 1.6 million fans applied online for entrance tickets to the memorial but only 11,000 got it. According to the TV ratings released by the Nielsen media group, “31.1 million Americans tuned in for the memorial, making it the third-most watched funeral in US history.” (35 million Americans watched US President Ronald Reagan’s funeral in 2004 and 33.2 million Princess Diana’s in 1997.) People heaped praises upon praises on Jackson. Sadly there are those who went overboard that led a lawmaker to quip that these tributes honored “a low life.” Amidst t

On the day the pop icon died, Yahoo! got five times its usual traffic, its breaking story on people rushing Michael Jackson to the hospital emerging “as the ‘highest clicking story’ ever with 800,000 clicks within 10 minutes.” (Sources for all quotes: http://inquirer.net/) Queries deluged Google News that at first the Internet giant “initially mistook it for an automated attack” (a computer virus onslaught). Other than the mad rush to secure his estate, people sought to pin blame on who or what caused his seemingly premature death. A former nurse claimed Jackson struggled with insomnia and, early this year, begged her for a powerful, intravenous sedative. She quoted Jackson as saying, “I just want to get some sleep. You don’t understand. I just want to be able to be knocked out and go to sleep.” She refused, knowing its fatal side-effects. “I told him this medication is not safe. I told him—and it is so painful that I actually felt it in my whole spirit—‘If you take that you might n

Last Thursday, June 25, Michael Jackson, 50, died of cardiac arrest. The death of the Pop icon stunned the world. Some even compared the shock on the news of his death to that of the assassinations of US president John F. Kennedy and John Lennon of The Beatles. Other than all his songs that went off the chart, Jackson gave the world in 1982 the first MTV with his “Thriller” video, which was the top-selling album of all time, with a whopping 41 million plus album sale. Since his 2005 acquittal from child molestation charges, Jackson lived like a hermit. But recently he announced that he will have a comeback concert tour in London this July. He labeled it “the final curtain call.” But the curtain abruptly closed even before the first song. The Philippine Daily Inquirer summarized his life this way: “While Jackson reigned as the ‘King of Pop’ in the 1980s, his once-stellar career had been overshadowed by his colorful public behavior, his startling physical transformation and multiple all