My apologies for the recent scarcity of blog posts. Between finishing my substitute teaching schedule, my grandmother's passing and another rather different piece of news, things have been rather nonstop and emotionally charged of late. I hope to get back to a bit more regular schedule soon, but please bear with me as my wife Cheryl and I adjust to quite a big development on the home front ...
We welcomed baby Jadon Richard DeVries into the world on June 23, just a few minutes before midnight. The little guy was 7 lbs. and 21 inches long (he takes after his daddy in the latter respect), and as healthy as could be, praise God. We brought him home a week ago, and mother and baby have both been recovering and resting as well as could be hoped (though we're all adjusting to different sleep schedules)! Our families are in town to mark the occasion, and have been a ton of help in the adjustment.
Many thanks to those of you who have passed along prayers and well-wishes. It's quite an experience to hold your own son for the first time ... and what a reminder of the incomparable gift of life.
(The second picture is with our cat Bubba, who crawled up on my lap with Jadon the other day. Our friend and artist Katie Mackie Banaszynski painted the beautiful piece at the bottom for Jadon, featuring Bubba.)
My grandmother Joanne Brubaker passed away two weeks ago today after a long, but amazingly graceful, struggle with congestive heart failure. Aside from being a woman of great faith and a wife, mother and grandmother of tremendous love and hospitality, which included much prayer and care invested in me personally, she was also a highly talented artist. She illustrated thePictorial Pilgrim's Progress, which was published by Moody in 1960 and remains in print, and worked with many other themes and media before and after, even in her last days.
I thought I might take the opportunity to share a couple of her paintings which were only recently passed on to me a year ago on my birthday. This is the note which she included:
Dear Ben, I thought you might like to have these pictures which I painted about 1945 or 6 with india ink. I was 18 or 19 at the time, and I was Joanne Cameron. I never got into painting animals but I remember always liking kittens & was heart-broken when my dad accidentally backed over a white angora one, which the fluffy one reminded me of. I was about 12 at the time. Love, Grandma
This is a picture of my brother Josh (designer of our beautiful site banners) and myself with Grandma a few Christmases ago, when she gave all of her grandsons a personalized painting of lighthouse:
My prayer for her over the last, most difficult months was an arrangement by John Rutter and The Cambridge Singers of Numbers 6:24-26; and it remains my prayer ...
"The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace."
This post concludes Nancy Janisch's series following up, and significantly building, on the recent swine flu headlines (see the beginning of the series):
In the last post we talked about industrial farm animal production and the problems it has produced in the US. In the one before that we talked about zoonotic diseases, and about the need to feed families which causes people to move more deeply into previously (humanly) uninhabited regions of the world. In this last post I would like to put these two topics together, and consider food production on a global scale.
National Geographic has a recent article titled “The End of Plenty: Special Report, The Global Food Crisis." Take a moment and read it. It does a nice job, as National Geographic often does, of presenting both sides of the issue. The 'Green Revolution' in India has saved an untold number of people from starvation, but it has also come with substantial costs to the environment. There is a movement toward using more sustainable methods of farming, but we would be foolish to expect this to be cost-free. As with the 'Green Revolution' and intensive animal farming practices, it may take a while for the costs of sustainable agriculture to become apparent. The need for food is rising, and globally food production is decreasing. We have been 'getting by' by using up grain reserves. And food prices have been rising for a variety of reasons, one of which is the use of grain for biofuels. The poorest billion people, according to National Geographic, spend 50% to 70% of their income on food.
These are tough problems, and there are no simple answers. Fortunately, there are some smart and dedicated people workiing on these problems. One group is the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. They have been thinking about and actively working on developing sustainable agriculture. At their website you will find a variety of resources about the science and philosophy which guides their work.
Once again, as I have written repeatedly in these last four posts, people of faith need to understand, at least at a basic level, the science involved. We must be able and willing to engage science. Important decisions have to be made about human health, farming, the care of animals, the environment, genetically modified foods, water and soil use and preservation, the use of chemicals, pesticides and fertilizers, and zoonotic diseases.
In addition, we cannot ignore culture and the values of the various societies around the world. Merely importing our Western solutions won’t work. Recently, Sightings, a publication of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, published a short article by Spencer Dew which captures some of the complexities of animals, disease and culture.
The topics I've written about over the past few weeks are complex and cross disciplinary boundries. It’s not enough to be only a soil scientist, or a virologist. We need to recognize the way each discipline interacts with others in the real world. There is a huge amount of information which we need to consider. Do we need to understand everything about all these topics? Well, that would certainly be ideal, but it’s simply not possible. And frankly, few of us will be directly responsible for making decisions on these issues. However, that doesn’t mean we can ignore what is going on.
We need to be aware. We need to be informed about the programs our government and our churches are involved in. We need to be part of a serious, thoughtful debate. I believe Christians and other people of faith need to be the voice for social justice in these discussions. Without us, the participants in the discussion are business interests which are primarily concerned with profit, and politicians who are primarily concerned with power.
Conversation in Faith has been for the past few weeks more like Conversation in Science, because people of faith, to be faithful, must engage science. Too many Christians in North America fear that science and faith are incompatable. We end up anti-science at worst, and afraid of science at best. But friends, science, whatever it discovers, doesn’t change who God is. Science may, just like serious Bible study, challenge our small and flawed ideas of who God is and how God is at work in the world. But to avoid science is to evade our responsibility to care for creation. Stewardship isn’t merely some idyllic pastoral ideal. Stewardship involves tough choices in a real world.
If you've appreciated this series, please take a moment to thank Nancy at her blog or dialogue with her further, which she always welcomes. Thank you, Nancy, for writing such an excellent collection of perspectives, and for graciously making them available here. (Content courtesy and copyright Nancy Janisch, edited from her original post at Conversation in Faith (05/29/09); photo courtesy and copyright my father Daryl DeVries.)
Continuing Nancy Janisch's excellent and thorough series in response to the swine flu headlines, this is part three of four, and one of the most pointed for the not one sparrow community yet:
Part of my reason for writing about the H1N1 influenza outbreak, epidemiology and industrial farm animal production is to make the case that people of faith need to be paying attention to these things.
In the news this week there was an example of why this matters. The World Health Organization is concerned that people in poor nations will not have access to a vaccine against the H1N1 flu if a large-scale vaccination effort becomes needed. Some wealthy countries have already signed contracts with vaccine manufacturers reserving millions of doses of vaccine. Vaccine manufacturers, as of Tuesday, were reluctant to donate or offer the vaccine at a reduced cost to poor nations, the exception being GlaxoSmithKline who offered to donate 50 million doses and to supply more doses at a reduced cost (see the AP report). The United States is not one of the countries which has signed contracts for the H1N1 vaccine, but we have set one billion dollars aside in case mass vaccinations become necessary.
The same concern exists for the availability of antiviral medications. According to Doctors Without Borders, many developing countries do not have medications stockpiled, and neither do they have purchase agreements with drug manufacturers. Poor people in developing nations are at higher risk from influenza because their health may be compromised by the high probability of malnutrition and preexisting disease conditions.
What is a poor country to do? What should people of faith be doing? What should the church be doing? What should denominations, parachurch organizations, and international faith-based relief organizations be doing? I hope they are quietly, yet deliberately, making preparations. And I hope that as individuals, we are staying informed, asking questions and encouraging appropriate planning.
I mentioned we would think about farming in this post. In spite of what I said about 'narrowing' our focus, farming is a really big topic. The Pew Charitable Trusts commissioned the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production through a grant to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Commission spent two years researching the topic and released their findings in April 2008. Their website has a vast amount of high quality information, including the entire study (see adjacent cover image), an "Executive Summary," a series of technical and background reports, and a long list of links to other resources which represent a variety of viewpoints on these issues.
If you've paid any attention at all to farming issues, you won’t be surprised by what the Pew Commission has to say about antibiotic use, ground water contamination, pesticide and other chemical use, health concerns for farm workers, animal welfare, or the effects of big agribusiness on rural life. If you haven’t paid much attention, take some time and read some of the information found in the previous links.
The Commission looked at four general areas: public health, rural life, environment, and animal health. I found the preface by Robert P. Martin, the Executive Director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (beginning on page vii), particularly interesting when he wrote about the influence of the agriculture industry and its attempt to influence the work of the Commission. I also appreciated the Commission’s brief review of agricultural history and how we arrived at our current farming system. As they noted, no one was trying to create a method that harmed people, animals or the environment. The initial intentions were to provide inexpensive, safe food.
Every farmer I've ever met took their responsibilities to provide healthy, safe food very seriously. They take their responsibility to the environment seriously. They take their responsibility to the general public seriously. Unfortunately, the system has become deeply flawed, and in the opinion of the Pew Commission, among others, unsustainable.
We have some serious problems in American agriculture. How can we bring change to such a large and complex system? There are big businesses with a lot invested in the status quo, and if Robert P. Martin is correct, they are very powerful. Effecting change on a large scale, before a catastrophe forces change, is exceedingly difficult.
What is a farmer to do? What should people of faith be doing? What should the church be doing?
Many people in the church have been involved in letter writing and advocacy for legislative change. In the past, churches have been involved in boycotts to urge companies to act responsibly. Is this something we should be doing with food products? Churches have promoted 'fair trade' products to encourage just, sustainable practices for certain internationally-sourced products. Is this something we should be doing for US-produced goods?
Should we be involved in helping individual farmers make a change in the way they farm? There are financial risks involved anytime someone changes the way they do business. Should the church provide a 'safety net' of some sort for farmers as they change their practices? Do you know of churches, parachurch ministries or other organizations which are working for change in farming practices? Do you have ideas about how we can improve our current system?
Bringing change to our agricultural system will take the efforts of a lot of people with a variety of talents. Farmers, animal scientists, agronomists, economists, sociologists, public health workers, city dwellers, lawyers, ecologists, consumer advocates and many more. And it will take a vision of what could be, a vision of what should be.
(Content courtesy and copyright Nancy Janisch, edited from her original post at Conversation in Faith (05/22/09). As always, comments are welcome here or at Nancy's blog. Top image copyright Cienpies and 123rf.com)
I've had the privilege of getting to know Debby Porter a bit over the past couple of weeks, after she sent me a note through the site. Aside from having a generally big heart for God's creatures, Debby has quite a unique outreach on behalf of birds which most often go neglected and underappreciated. And she graciously agreed to share more about her passion, corvidae, here:
My crows found me. I went into my backyard to feed my Mastiffs, and saw this black thing under the rabbit hutch. I was thinking, "Oh, no. A dead crow." And I didn't want to deal with it. But it was a live crow that was wounded, and I promised him that I would get him fixed. So I took him to the animal emergency hospital to get him help. For some reason, they kept skipping my name, so I ended up spending an hour with this crow and bonding with him. He let me pet him, and didn't seem to be afraid of me.
They didn't fix his wing correctly, so I went to another doctor who had to amputate his wing. When I called Wildlife Rehabilitators, they told me that if a crow couldn't fly when turned into them, that they would euthanize it. I decided to keep him, and named him 'Crow.' He was a beautiful bird, and he just passed away last year of pneumonia after I had him for five years.
Crows are social creatures, so I posted my name and number at all the emergency vets near me, so that if they found an injured crow, I would take it and rehabilitate it. A week later I got a call from a vet about a wounded crow. He had been hit by a car. He, too, had to have a wing amputated! I named him 'Speedbump.'
So now, I had two adult crows with one wing. I built them ramps in their original cage, so they could climb to their perch. Then my vet called me about a baby crow with Avian Pox. It was so sad, this beautiful baby covered with the equivalent of human chicken pox. Only the avian version looks more like barnacles on the poor birds. It saddened me to see him look like this, even though it didn’t appear to affect his personality. I prayed over him daily to rid him of this scurge, and treated him, and he became imprinted on me. I named him 'Ricky.'
But there's more. The owner of a pet store next to my vet was a veterinarian technician, and she told me about another baby crow that had fallen out of a tree. I went to visit her at the vet, as they couldn’t release her to me yet. She looked so pitiful and lifeless, and so small. No one thought she would make it, but everyday I came in the afternoon and held her, and prayed over her in the spirit. She rallied, and I was allowed to take her home. I named her 'Moses' (at first I thought she was a 'he,' but she began to act very prissy like a 'she').
She too developed avian pox, and had to have a foot amputated. There is nothing so sad as to see a baby bird with this disease. The pox even covered her beautiful blue eyes. Since Ricky was already affected with pox, they were allowed to share the same cage at home, and weren’t too far apart in age. Again, I cried unto the Lord, literally, to heal this little girl. He answered my prayer immediately, but in a strange way: Ricky had picked off the pox lesions from Moses! She also became imprinted on me, having been in my care for so long, and having to receive oral and topical medication.
Then the guy at the local vacuum store, not knowing I had crows, said he had a pet crow with a broken wing and he felt sorry for it because it was home all day alone. I said I would take him, and that's how I got 'Jack' (who has since laid eggs and is a 'she'). Jack has a large vocabulary of human language.
One day, I came home and my postman was out front. He knew I had crows and asked if one of them was across the street in the vacant lot. It wasn't mine, but someone had kept her as a pet, and had trimmed her tail and wings so weirdly that she couldn't fly. I took her to my vet, and it turned out she had parasites, so I couldn't integrate her right away with my other crows. She ended up being in a cage all by herself for 6 months or more, and became very attached to me. I had to give her oral medication all that time.six She was so patient, I had to pry her bill open to squirt in the medication. Sometimes, she would become perturbed and bite at the syringe, which actually made it easier to medicate her! Finally she was well enough to put her in with the other crows, and the name I gave her was 'Postal,' in honor of the postman.
Then I found out about Corvid Ranch, and I really wanted a raven. These ravens are not indigenous to the United States, but rather originate in Africa, and are therefore legal to own. That's how I got 'Edgar,' my silly and brilliant raven. Speaking of which, all of my crows can play catch with toys. And all of them can say 'crow,' except for Speedbump; Postal says 'crow' and 'hello.'
Rest in Peace, 'Crow,' my handsome prince. And may God bless all who treasure his magnificent creatures ~ Debby Porter.
Debby has since rescued two more baby ravens, and asks for prayer especially for 'Home Boy,' who was injured falling out of a store sign. Please do check out Debby's tremendously educational and testimonial site Corvidae: Crows and Ravens, as well as her delightful YouTube video channel (just one example is below).
And if you can, please support Debby's rescue efforts through her page Rescue Pets Revenue, her wonderful merchandise site The Crow's Caws, or I'd be happy to put you in touch. Many thanks, Debby, for sharing some of your heart and passion with us.
(content and photos courtesy and copyright Debby Porter; first photo is of 'Duncan')
The following continues Nancy Janisch's stellar series "Flu, Farms, and Faith," the first part of which ran two days ago. This post looks more closely at zoonotic and other emerging diseases:
Well, not surprisingly, the H1N1 flu is still with us. We know more than we did, but we still don’t have a clear picture of what is happening. That will take a while.
In the last post I provided links to the CDC and WHO influenza sites, and I want to add this page from the New England Journal of Medicine. You may or may not feel like reading the two original articles, but I would encourage you to read this editorial. In it Robert Belshe distinguishes between the triple reassortment virus which has been around for several years, and the swine origin influenza virus which is currently infecting people around the world (this article may also help you understand some of the factors which WHO and others have to consider).
As you read this article and others like it, I hope you are getting sense of how complex the subjects of virology, pandemics and epidemiology are. Viruses, compared to other life forms, are 'simple' and yet they are amazingly complex. There is a great deal we need to learn about them. The other thing to realize, as some of the links highlight, is that there are a lot of people and organizations actively looking for the next pandemic and the next emerging disease (see this article from Scientific American).
Of course, related to all of this are zoonotic and emerging diseases. Did you know that,
In the last 20 or 25 years – and we term this as the age of emerging infectious diseases — approximately 75 percent of the new human diseases that have emerged are zoonotic, and of the 1,461 human pathogens that we know about today, about 60 percent are what we would term “multihost pathogens.” In other words, they don’t reside just in people by themselves. Contacts through animals or animal products – even plants — are actually responsible for multihost diseases (American Public Health Association, “Get Ready” interview with Lonnie King from the CDC).
And listen to this from NPR on a Nature article about emerging infectious diseases (here is the abstract). Now, why am I asking you to read all this? Because the threat of pandemics, emerging infectious diseases and zoonotic diseases is not going to go away. These aren’t new problems; there have always been infectious and zoonotic diseases. But their rate of incidence seems to be increasing, and the causes are complex.
On the one hand, that means this is a job for specialists. I, for one, am glad there are dedicated professionals on the job around the world. But on the other hand, the rest of us need to have a basic understanding of these issues. Public policy is going to be made, and we need to be smart about it. We need all of our abilities, all of our various skills, to make wise decisions. We need scientists and economists, sociologists and political scientists, and yes, even theologians to be involved.
Ultimately, this isn’t just about infectious disease. It really is about human interaction with the environment. Some of the sources I linked to talked about humans hunting and eating bush-meat, and how this enhances the opportunities for emerging diseases to spread. And as we think about this, we need to consider the social, political and economic realities involved in why people eat bushmeat.
We need to think about the movement of people into previously humanly uninhabited areas, and how war, famine, politics and other social and political realities influence that movement. We need to think about the global transportation of people, animals and goods and how it contributes to the spread of disease.
We need to think about the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in food animals, why it's done, who does it and what the implications are of continuing it, as well as stopping it. We need to think about the environmental, health, economic and ethical costs of intensive farming practices.
Now, each of us doesn’t need to think about each of these realities with the same degree of complexity. We can’t all be experts in each area. But we all do need a basic understanding of all of these issues.
What does our faith have to do with this? People of faith need to embrace Jesus’ radically inclusive view of our neighbor: the small farmer in southeast Asia, the families hunting for bush-meat and also the confinement hog farmer in the U.S.
People of faith need to be thinking about God’s desires for the world, about how we participate in God’s shalom, his vision of wholeness, health and well-being for all. To effectively participate in moving towards shalom, we are going to need science and we are going to need information. We are going to need to think about complex issues in comprehensive ways.
In the next post, we’ll narrow our focus to consider farming practices.
ps - Some of you may be familiar with Francis Collins and his work on the Human Genome project, as well as his book The Language of God. Dr. Collins and some of his colleagues have a new website on science and faith, The BioLogos Foundation, and a blog on Beliefnet, Science and the Sacred. Thanks to Bill Tammeus for highlighting these sites on his blog.
(content courtesy and copyright Nancy Janisch, edited from her original post at Conversation in Faith (05/15/09); photo copyright Anest, 123rf.com)
A few weeks ago, when the swine flu dominated the news and some animal advocacy groups were suggesting industrial farming may have led to its development, I asked Nancy Janisch if she'd be interested in looking into the connection. You won't believe the degree of research or comprehensiveness which she put into her response, a series called "Flu, Farms, and Faith" posted on her excellent blog Conversation in Faith.
Nancy didn't necessarily confirm a direct connection to industrial farming (I'll post some links to those who strongly suggest as much later on). But I greatly respect her integrity in following her research to a more open-ended and nuanced conclusion. And, as she mentions herself, there is still much to be gained from her findings in terms of understanding our multifaceted relationship to farmed animals.And so, part one follows ...
In recent weeks there has been a lot of discussion about the H1N1 influenza virus and concern about the role that swine play in all this. Now that some of the initial fears about this new flu have decreased to a reasonable level, perhaps it is time to review (or learn) some virology, think about food production and its impact on human society and health, and of course consider how our faith might shape our thinking about all this.
Why do I think we all need a virology review? Because very few of us understand much about viruses. Nearly every day of my 20 years in clinical veterinary practice, I spent time teaching people basic biology so they could understand what was going on with the health of their pet. And viruses are really interesting.
We also need to understand virology because the potential for pandemics is real, and it’s not going to go away. Zoonotic diseases (diseases that spread between animals and humans) are not going to go away. All of us need a basic understanding so we can make smart decisions.
So in this post, part of what I’m going to do is provide you with links to good information, mostly about viruses in general, but also a little bit about epidemiology and pandemics. In the next post, we can start thinking about how this relates to our relationships with the animals we live most closely with, companion animals and farm animals.
And the faith piece? There are, I think, two parts to this. First, there are in many faith traditions people who distrust all science and who can be quite vocal in their opinions. The rest of us need to understand the basics of science and its relationship to our faith so that the anti-science influence is limited. But more importantly, we are going to have to do some serious thinking about food production, access to medical care, and what it means to live in a 'flat' world. We have some ethical decisions to make. We can be driven by fear and self-protection, or we can follow the precepts of our faith, and its concern for the wellbeing of all and social justice.
As for links, let’s start with this article from Newsweek which does a good job of explaining some of the challenges we face in understanding viruses and how they spread; a talk by Nathan Wolfe on TED about virus hunting in Africa in an attempt to avoid pandemics; information about viruses, and the differences between viruses and bacteria, from MicrobeWorld and the American Society for Microbiology; at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute are two slideshows about viral genetic recombination and the viral life cycle (bottom of page); this BBC page has a simple explanation about virus mutation and how pandemics develop; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has information on Swine Flu, H1N1 Flu, Avian Flu and Seasonal Flu; some influenza basics from the veterinary college at the University of Wisconsin; and finally, to start your thinking about epidmiology, here is a link to this week’s edition of the PBC series “NOW.”
Of course the CDC, WHO and PandemicFlu.gov are sources of credible, up-to-date information about H1N1, swine flu, avian flu and many other infectious diseases. I’m not giving you these links to scare you, but rather so that you can know that many scientists from all over the world are working hard to protect us.
Viruses are very simple organisms, but yet they interact with their environment in complex ways. We live in an interesting and complex world, full of wonder and danger, and filled with organisms we barely understand. We need to be careful and wise.
(content courtesy and copyright Nancy Janisch, edited from her original post (05/08/09); image copyright Stephen Finn, 123rf.com)
I you ever enjoyed watching Bob Ross soothingly paint his "happy little trees" and other scenery on his iconic PBS show, you'll appreciate the following video by the Chinese-styled artist behind RaggedyBird.com. The piece is titled "8 Lucky Sparrows," and is accompanied beautifully by music in a soft Far-Eastern theme. Be sure not to miss the still shots at the end:
I'd like to thank Audrey Taschini very much for exposing me to this highly skilled and delightful artist, through another piece entitled "Raggedy Sparrow Meets Cricket":
By the way, as I was looking up information on Bob Ross, I noticed the following bit on Wikipedia: "Ross also filmed wildlife footage, squirrels in particular, usually from his own garden. Small animals often appeared on his show, even during some of his trickier works, as he would often take in injured or abandoned squirrels and other assorted wildlife and look after them" (from a July 7, 1990 Orlando Sentinel piece by Linda Shreeves).
I'd like to thank my fellow Moody Bible alum and friend Eric Beach for offering me a spot in his May edition of The Brew Mag, an online journal which exists "to spur people to think through slow-roasted, premium writing." Each month a different theme is explored, and with this month focusing on violence, Eric graciously welcomed a reflection on violence towards animals.
Here is a sample, but I do hope you can check out The Brew and the full article, "Against Animal Violence":
... While I might have been more inclined to echo Lincoln’s response to his peers’ savagery than Sobosan’s, witnessing such acts and the resulting agony of noble and harmless creatures would have been hard for me to process as well. I don’t know that I would have reacted any more favorably as I grew into adolescence and something resembling adulthood; but I do know that the deep-seated fascination and heart which I had for the animal kingdom as a boy was replaced with a practical indifference to their existence, and wellbeing. ...
still fledgling, but no longer hatchling ... (see the development of our unofficial mascot 'Spoggy')
This past Saturday, May 16th, not one sparrow turned one year old. As alluded to in a recent blog post, anniversaries are often special to me, and this one was especially so. When I think of all the ups and downs of the past year, I'm grateful not one sparrow survived some difficult circumstances. Launching and maintaining an animal advocacy effort in the Christian community was going to be a stretch in the best of times, and Lord knows this year has been far from that. Maybe some of you can relate.
Even so, I'm thankful for the grace which made many positive developments possible: from connections with animal advocates and other communities, to blog contributions from a variety of poignant voices, as well as upgrades to the look and accessibility of the website, and even an opportunity to represent not one sparrow publicly (please read on).
And I'm beyond grateful for the family and friends who have been with me all along, and for the new friends I've been honored to make along the way. You've been such an invaluable source of support and encouragement, and I can't thank you enough. As always, please let me know how not one sparrow can be of better service to you and to the cause. So, I raise my glass of framboise to all of you this first anniversary, and here's to many more to come!
a new look ...
Thanks in large part to another stellar banner by my brother Joshua DeVries, not one sparrow's site has been seasonally updated. A big thanks also goes to Ali Beem, Ben Aldridge, Peter Blom, Cathi Leibforth, Patti Monaghen-Brandt, Jackie Pointer and Amy Sondova for contributing beautiful images to the new slideshow.
Our updates have received a much-needed upgrade as well, courtesy of MailChimp. Aside from the visual boost, you'll be able to manage your subscription more directly. Please let me know if you have any problems receiving or viewing the new format (you can choose HTML or plain text). Updates will still go out at most every 1-2 months, and will still be accessible through our blog and Facebook page as well. Speaking of which, thank you very much to each of you who recently subscribed or became a Facebook fan.
If you've read this far, thank you, and for letting not one sparrow have a small part in your concern for God's creatures. I hope to keep doing my best to coordinate and develop the effort, content and outreach, but I really need help doing so. Not only prayer and collaboration, which are truly needed and appreciated, but also some form of part-time financial support as I look to care for my family, which is growing by one in a few weeks (future animal advocate in waiting?). I've graciously received about 10-15% of what I anticipate needing (please feel free to contact me for further details and accountability), but have a ways to go. A mailing address as well as a PayPal link are available, but regardless of whether you can respond in this way now or in the future, thank you for standing alongside me.
July 2, 2009
Ben DeVries
