I am Aaron Blue. I am the director of The Charis Project. I am an intellectual who hungers for the practical. I was born into one of the strongest, most well adjusted families I have seen anywhere. I was born an upper-middle class citizen of both the USA and Canada, heir to all the immense benefits that accompany that. I was born healthy.

About twelve years ago I graduated from UCSD with a degree in philosophy and realized or decided that my purpose in life is to use the advantages I have been born into to benefit those without. For more than a decade now I have been striving in this direction. The journey has not been at all straightforward. I have worked in India, Nepal, Canada, USA, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand and Hong Kong. I have repeated lost and found and assimilated my faith. I married my wife, Carrien. I pursued graduate studies in Christian theology. I became a father three times over. I, in full co-operation with Carrien have (served/ministered to/in) many capacities in Churches, aid organizations, orphanages, schools, communes, etc., etc., etc. We have incessantly taken care of anyone in need who has crossed our path. Throughout all this I have supported my family and the work we have done through full-time work as a carpenter.

Always, Carrien and I have pursued every opportunity and possibility for shifting into full time “employment” in the life purpose we share. Each time we have found a possibility we have come to the conclusion that either it didn’t fit us or we didn’t fit it for a host of reasons ranging from “severe relational incompatibility” with other members of the organization to our commitment to remain a family unit wherever we go. About two years ago, after ten years of frustration, I gave up. I had had enough rejection and failure. After a particularly painful year of too little work and too much frustration, I decided to change my career aspirations. So I began the application process to two different law enforcement agencies (I chose this direction because it is an excellent fit for my personality and it is a job my children could be proud their dad had).

Then, in the middle of my background investigation, it all fell apart.

My wife has made our apartment the safe place for the kids in our neighborhood, most of whom have single working mothers who are usually gone. So there are normally a lot of noisy kids playing around our place. The best we can figure is that this displeased one of our neighbors and instead of talking with us they opted to accuse us of neglect to Child Protective Services. We were then investigated by a trainee social worker who decided that our scrupulously honest answers to her questions were “deceptive and misleading.” This is what she reported to my background investigator and to this day our case is filed as “inconclusive.” This “resolution” makes me a pariah to law enforcement.

Back to the frustration.

And then, two days after this axe fell, my brother Wayland emailed me from Thailand where he was living at the time. “So, I have connected with this network of people out here in the villages who are highly motivated but lacking in really any resources.” A little over a year and a half later finds my brother, my wife and I still working our tails off building The Charis Project. We have been in active operation for about a year and are on track to shifting into full-time actualization of our shared life purpose.

RULE

Tags: non-profit work

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