We all come from the same beginning

My father posted this picture of me on Facebook a couple weeks ago. It was taken by my mother when I was just a few months old. Incidentally, my dad and I are the only two people in this photo who are still living.

The woman holding me is my great-grandmother, and beside us, my great-grandfather. To the right is my grandpa, who passed away in 1992; and looking down at me is my grandmother, who just passed away in November.

I've heard it said that death is the great equalizer. That may be true, but if it is, so is the beginning of life.

Regardless of what title you have, what you've achieved, how much money you earn, how many friends you have, where you live, where you've been, what battles you've won in life, or how much power you wield, you have at least one commonality with everyone who has acquired none of your worldly accolades.

You started out as a helpless infant who was utterly dependent on other human beings who had come before you — for your very survival.

You couldn't walk, talk, or reason. You couldn't feed or clothe yourself or use the restroom. Someone else had to change your dirty diapers. Someone else had to keep you warm, give you a safe place to sleep, and care for you when you were sick.

You couldn't even learn to do any of those things for yourself without the help of someone else — again, people who came before you, who learned things and had experiences and faced pain and joy and all emotions in between, before you were even conceived.

Think of the people you love the most, and then think of the ones you can't stand. Remember that they, like you, all started out the same way, no matter where they are now, or where they're going.

It makes the status symbols of this world seem so trivial.

It's so obvious — and yet, so humbling. So human.

If we don't protect the environment, the economy becomes irrelevant

Sun sets over the Olympic Mountains and Puget Sound, viewed from Seattle.

It's fascinating to imagine what explorers like George Vancouver or Theodore Winthrop might have encountered when they navigated the waters of Puget Sound as they toured what's now known as Washington state and the Pacific Northwest.

Were they greeted by virgin, damp, fragrant, moss-draped forests of fir, hemlock, and cedar, many with trunks wide enough to house a modern-day car?

Did they observe undisturbed cliffs and hillsides, framed only by mist and snowcapped peaks, rather than skyscrapers or industrial cranes?

Were they captivated by the deep, crystal waters of what's now known as the Salish Sea, when it was populated only by whales, seals, salmon, and other marine life, not motor boats or giant cargo ships headed toward Asian ports on the other side of the Pacific?

Were they awestruck by the sight of glacial volcanoes like Mount Rainier or Mount Baker as the bulks of rock and ice hovered in surreal majesty over pristine harbors?

In the time before the American Pacific Rim was forever altered by development, industry, and human progress, I'm sure it was one of the most beautiful places on the planet.

It still is — but it's not the same.

Does the Carnival fiasco highlight our First World bubble?

One of the top news headlines of last week was the drama aboard the Carnival Triumph, a cruise ship that became crippled in the Gulf of Mexico after a fire broke out in its engine room, cutting power and disabling essentials like freezers, refrigerators, ventilation systems, and toilets.

The media jumped on the story, of course, recounting stomach-churning tales of the sights, sounds, and smells aboard the stricken vessel, perhaps as much for the shock value as for the actual relevance of the story.

From my perspective, there are two points of discussion to take from this.

One, of course, is the public relations disaster that Carnival will face in the aftermath of the mishap, epitomized by this Onion headline from last Wednesday.

Fortunately for the cruise-line giant, the story probably won't have much of a shelf life. There might be some twisted novelty to reading about a hapless group of travelers who are forced to poop in plastic bags for a few days — but the ship did make it back to port, and no one died, so public memory of the incident will likely fade fairly quickly.

The other takeaway, in my view, is a missed opportunity by the media. Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times summed it up as such on his Facebook page: "Just to put the cruise ship fiasco in perspective, the nightmare that those passengers have endured for the last few days is roughly what 1 billion people endure every day."

Remember when all agreed that sexual assault and human trafficking are bad?

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the hip, young face of the
Republican Party, and new spokesman for
Poland Spring bottled water.

If you need any additional evidence that the current Republican brand is ultimately headed for the dustbin of history, it's worth looking at a couple of votes that took place Tuesday in the U.S. Senate.

And if you still carry any doubt as to why the GOP can't win elections anymore — and why its candidates won't be able to for the foreseeable future, unless they continue circumventing the democratic process — these votes should erase whatever uncertainty you still have.

(Side note: This blog was never intended to be a Republican bashing forum. If they'd stop being so terrible, I'd stop ripping on them.)

On Tuesday, the Senate reauthorized the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), even though nearly half of the Republican caucus voted against it. That's 22 members.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio — whose GOP response to Obama's State of the Union address was apparently so intense that he had to pause midway to take a swig from a water bottle that was likely paid for by Big Government — was among the senators who voted "no." Rubio posted an absolutely nonsensical statement explaining his vote, saying it was because of funding for sexual assault programs and criminal jurisdiction for tribal governments.

Um, right.

And this guy is supposedly the new, fresh face of the Republican Party, the one who will usher in renewed GOP electoral success in 2014 and 2016 — particularly among minorities, because, well, look, he's Latino, and women, because…

…Oh, wait. So much for that.

Proscriptive theology: When sinful people want to judge other sinful people

I just got back from spending the past week in Anaheim, California, at a conference on a ministry I'm part of at my church here in Seattle. The conference was fantastic — and I'll detail it further in a future post — but one of its most interesting moments was a conversation I had with some fellow participants over drinks at the hotel bar on Friday night.

This conversation wasn't at all related to the conference itself, but it did touch on some hot topics in the modern-day Christian faith — namely, the role of gay and lesbian people in the church, cohabitation, and premarital sex.

One pastor from Orange County (no, it wasn't Rick Warren) repeated the same talking point I so often hear these days: that he certainly doesn't have anything against gays, and he welcomes them at his church, because we're all broken and we're all sinners. He simply expects them to "repent" and to "not act on their sexual urges." As I interpreted it, he'd only have a problem if they didn't remain celibate for life and didn't ask forgiveness for being who they are.

I quickly challenged him on why divorce and remarriage are different from same-sex attraction. After all, one can repent from being party to a failed marriage, but Jesus himself specifically admonishes his followers that marrying again after divorcing is adultery — and thus the opposite of repentance for the initial sin. Meanwhile, Christ makes no explicit reference to homosexuality in any of the four gospels.

The straight, married pastor didn't have a ready answer for this one.

The NRA may be its own worst enemy

As the debate continues over comprehensive gun control, the National Rifle Association has devolved into a state of paranoid, delusional self-preservation that's completely at odds with mainstream America (and reality).

Consider this recent poll, which shows that voters in Texas support an assault weapons ban. Texas. Just think about that for a minute. Where in this country are guns a bigger deal? And what state shouldn't you mess with?

The NRA finds itself in an awkward spot if voters in the Lone Star State — 20 percent of whom don't even want to be part of this country — aren't on board with its agenda.

Yet the nation's premier gun advocacy group maintains its scorched-earth opposition, not just toward bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, but also, in a more recent (and truly unbelievable) development, universal background checks.

Just let that sink in. They now oppose universal background checks, because, in their words, "homicidal maniacs" won't follow the law, anyway.

If you aren't sure whether the NRA is really on a downward spiral toward insanity, watch the 11-minute video above. (Reading this from an email? Click through to the post to see it. Trust me — it's worth your time.)