Understanding Others

As the season of Advent is upon us, we will be looking at how our faith relates to the world. More specifically, we'll be asking questions about our faith and beliefs and how those ideas influence how we treat each other. During the month of December, we'll be examining the particular themes around the Advent Candle: Hope, Peace, Love, and Joy. Since each of these themes elicit a particular behavioral response of our Christian faith, we'll explore exactly what behaviors, attitudes, and modes of compassion are addressed.

One interesting way to begin the undertaking task of understanding others is to explore how others go about doing the same things we do. By examining how they go about doing it or, what is different about what they do when compared to what we do, we can better appreciate our differences and similarities.

Here is a great story from Time magazine from awhile back that has a slide-show about what the world eats. Each family in the story goes grocery shopping. Upon returning to their homes, their food was laid out on a table, a price was calculated, and the family stands around the food in the picture. Notice what they spend their money on. Notice what is healthy and what isn't. To me, it's fascinating!