i feel guilt.

okay i already started the day off on a snappy note with my confession.

now i want to speak about feeling guilt. yesterday during my bible study, our professor, *len*, was kind enough to give us a meditation on global poverty. most of what he had highlighted on that crushing piece of paper is found here, but i'll just bring up two items for the sake of discussion...

• Half the world -- nearly three billion people -- live on less than two dollars a day.

listening to him read off the list, i felt sick to my stomach. are things really *that* bad? how can we be such consumers, of what?? not me, i thought. no way. i am not like those others that spend excessively on stuff, especially stuff i don't need!! no, not me.

guess who spent $147 on stuff at staples yesterday? $147. worth of stuff she *thought* she needed?

• staples ink for epson printer - 2 @ $21.88
• flexigrip elite pens - $12.99
• palm slim leather case - $17.99
• 3 hole punch - $24.99
• expandable file folder - $9.99
• 3-tabbed file folders, ltr design - $8.49
• heavy-duty, 4" binder - $15.99
• diet coke with lime - $1.25
• 6% sales tax - $8.13

GRAND TOTAL: $143.57

here's my self defense on all items above:

• am tired of running out of ink on printer, must have back-up ready
• am always searching for my pens, no can find, but am so flippin' picky about ink (must be blue) and pt (must be medium) that not any pen will do
• case for palm pilot - other one broke, pathetic
• old hole punch did only 5 pgs at once, this one can do up to 40 pgs at once, oooooh
• expandable folder & manilla folders (with stars, oooooh) needed for writing project i am involved in; wanted something inspired-looking (stomach starting to turn)
• i was thirsty (that one, my friends, is justifiable...)

so effectively, based on the statistic above, i spent the salary of about 10 folks or, even sadder based on the statistics below, 20 people who are living in abject poverty...on what? okay, yeah, i needed ink for the printer, i run a business, so that is practical. mostly, though, since i am telling the truth here, i print out longer entries on blogs i enjoy so i can read them later and don't spend all of my time in front of a monitor (o, wretched woman that i am...) i can reason away everything else, save for the diet coke and i didn't realize what i had done until i was half-way home in the car and remembered what we had discussed during my class yesterday.

i implore people to think about the poor. i sit and listen to a professor read off statistics that injure my conscience. but what, if anything, did i really learn? where is my culpability in the poverty of others? where do we begin to make the changes necessary so the statistics are less staggering and effectively, know we have done something about them to bring about a change, even if we are only one person?

• Today, across the world, 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day; 3 billion live on under two dollars a day; 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation; 2 billion have no access to electricity.

not only where do we start, but how?