Reflecting on Nathan George’s “Trade As One” Seminar at the Justice Conference

You know that moment when you do something cool, like attend a great event? It could be a concert or a movie or a family celebration. You come home and while you know you can’t relive it you want to dwell on it a little more. And even if you could go back, you wouldn’t because you know it would lose that special quality of the moment. Still, we think about it, we listen to the album, the soundtrack, flip through pictures and talk about it with our family and friends. Well, I attended the Justice Conference last week and to avoid “consuming” the event, I’m trying to reflect on it as I place a high value on that practice. Reflection is part of my prayer life, part of my mapping what’s next, it’s part of my ministry and the exercise of blogging is my attempt to create some conversation and community. Every now and then, I think I have to say all this – thanks for reading.

The second workshop I attended was Trade As One founder Nathan George –
However encouraged/motivated I felt from the previous workshop (posted about here), I was quickly brought back to earth listening to Nathan. in fact, I felt worse than how I did when I woke up that morning from a few hours of sleep. In fact, it felt more like when you’ve been up all night with a crying infant and your older children poke their fingers in your eyes so you can make them breakfast. There’s that thought of, “How am I going to get through the day from this starting point?”

Fair Trade, Buying and Living Ethically – here we go.
Nathan opened up with these quotes:

“We the lucky billion, now spend most our lives seeking even greater and subtler refinements in what we perceive to be our quality of life.” nicer clothes, better music, more comfortable furniture, more interesting holidays, more convenient technology, more unusual variation of food, a more secure retirement. It does’t get much better than this.

Our grandparents, let alone the generations prior, would look at us win amazement. They would see us living like kings [Read more…]