Enjoy a fun-filled, night on the town and benefit an amazing local non-profit that bhelps families in need. A night in Casablanca is an authentic charity casino night benefiting the South Brevard Caring Center. It’s on Saturday, May 11, 2013 from 6 to 11pm at the Hilton Melbourne, Rialto Place in Melbourne, Florida.

By attending this fun-filled evening, you’ll be helping to transform the lives of needy families with young children, living right here in Palm Bay and Melbourne, Florida. 100% of the proceeds from this event go directly to the cause. And you’ll enjoy an authentic Vegas and World Series of Poker gaming experience, with Moroccan “Casablanca” flair!

We recently became aware of an amazing non-profit that meets incredible need in Melbourne and Palm Bay communities. South Brevard Sharing Center (SBSC) is about treating people with dignity and respect by providing a haven for those who struggle to meet their basic needs. The Sharing Center was founded in 1971 as a non-profit, community based agency for charitable and philanthropic purposes. The general nature and purpose of this organization is to provide short-term emergency assistance to needy individuals and families, in the Brevard County Area where Federal, State, and County funds are not available.

As ONE members, we care. We care about the child orphaned by HIV/AIDS. We care about the village that lacks access to clean water. And we care about the millions of people throughout the developing world who will go to bed hungry tonight. For many of us, that caring is borne of our faith.

Last week, the ONE campaign asked students to take action on our challenge: to make poverty history. Now, ONE is reaching out to people of faith and engaging traditions that say that when you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness. (Isaiah 58:10)

We all have a finite amount of purity—innocence lost. Every time we are intimate we give some away. Like the force George Lucas shows us in the Star Wars universe, our actions effect who we are. We do something good, we shift ever so slightly to the light. And the reverse is also true. Whether it is Anakin slaying a village of sand people or going too far on a first date, our actions have consequences.

I just had a grapefruit. The saying goes: the devil is in the details, but I tell you, God is in the details. Fast food, processed food, is killing me. Every day, I need to eat lunch. Every day the fast food corporations try and provide that food — and they are killing us.

Yesterday, instead of going to McDonalds or Wendy’s or even Subway, I went to a local health food grocery. Every day I drive past it; Venturing in, just seemed unnatural. Who would be inside there? The fear of that place kept me driving right on past even though I knew the alternatives we slowly, habitually clogging my arteries.

Another Thanksgiving holiday passes us by and I’m reminded by just how much we have to be thankful for. So much earth-shaking, world-changing events have transpired, just in the last year. It’s often hard to take it all in–and still care. Yet amongst all this, that’s exactly what we have to do, to keep being the people we are.

Media coverage of Katrina and her aftermath is simply beyond my ability to comprehend. We see image upon image of destruction on a scale I could never have imagined. Our thoughts and prayers, indeed the nations, rest upon all the people of the Gulf region.

In Central Florida, we witnessed the most intense season of storms and damage in recent memory. We are still putting back the pieces. Roofs still are missing shingles, a local church is still missing its steeple, and yet four hurricanes pale in comparison to what the people of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are going through.

I recently received an email. In it was a petition, written to President Bush, calling for the reinstatement of prayer in schools. With 1557 names on it, it asked users to forward it on when it reached 2000. I’m sure that happened soon and was diligently delivered. But I’m afraid that the good intentions of the originator is misplaced.

Where does the power really live in American government? Why do so many of us focus on big picture, national issues and ignore their back yard, ignore the community which they live in? Why do we call on the President when we really need to connect here at home?

I’ve just returned home from being engulfed by the dark cinematic masterpiece that is Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. It has much to teach the observant eye—those who are “mindful of their feelings”—about the ongoing wrestling match between human passion and spiritual abandonment.

Teeming with metaphors to the biblical faith that creator George Lucas may or may not have intended, Sith is the culmination of young Anakin Skywalker’s descent into the “dark side” of the Force. The Force, the confluence of all living energy, has a light and a dark side, both of which feed much power to their adherents. (It can be used for good and evil, an important distinction when viewed in respect to the Holy Spirit.)

A recent message circulated throughout the internet shows us, “A Sign From God After a Florida Hurricane”. Now normally my spam filter would keep me from ever seeing this, but for some reason, this one caught my eye.

Last year as wave after wave of tropical fury visited our fair State, we all had to wonder what prompted such an irregular season. I honestly thought that Brevard would never see any real effects from a Hurricane, never mind several in rapid succession. Yes, I bought into the mythos, you’ve probably heard some of it. Stories tell that we built Kennedy Space Center where we did because no storm in recorded history had passed through the area or that native Indians said no hurricane would hit land there.