A Clean Sheet

Last day of the old year, and I spent it trying to find new sheets for my child's first bed.

I found sheets. Lots of sheets. But matching ones?
And certainly none that didn't make me pray for the poor folk who make them in the far east...

No, I tell a lie. I looked on the internet last night, and found lots of organic and fair trade sheets. Almost all white and none of them affordable.

Affordable. Well, I guess what I mean is that I'm too mean... to spend what it costs to pay cotton producers, spinners, weavers etc a fair wage.

In the end I went and sold my soul to IKEA.

A far cry from straw in a feeding trough, and swaddling bands.

I want my child to be rich... in the things that matter. In beauty and colour, but more importantly in relationships and world citizenship. But on this last day of 2007 I have cheated her with brightly coloured fripperies fabricated on the back of the world's poor...

Tomorrow, I want to start afresh, with a clean sheet, and beautiful bedding made by people who are fairly paid.

Tomorrow, I want to give her the wealth of the King of kings who said "what does it profit a person, to gain the whole world, and lose their soul?"

... at least, that's what I say I want to give her. But am I ready to let her live a life like Jesus, in simplicity and relative poverty, and perhaps even to suffer a death like his, standing for truth, love, justice and freedom from oppression and the power of evil?