I just didn't know any better. I know that's no excuse, but it's the truth. Part of me understood at some level that direct cruelty to a particular living animal was abusive and therefore wrong, but somehow kicking a puppy was distanced from chemical research on laboratory animals. Setting my neighbor's house on fire was distanced from dropping bombs on a faraway nation. Tossing garbage out my car window was distanced from storing nuclear waste in underground bunkers in Hanford. I believed "global warming" was just a bunch of political noise, that torture was acceptable as long as it was done in a secret bunker so that my neighbors here in America wouldn't be victimized by terrorists, that the government wouldn't let big-box retailers or oil companies do anything harmful, and that how we treated the planet really didn't matter, since God was just going to destroy it in the final coming, anyway.

Are these views extreme? Yes. Of course they are. But they're real. How many of us really look at the labels on our shampoo to see if the product has been tested on animals? And how many of us think even asking the question is silly? What's the harm in shampooing a dog? Nothing, assuming there's nothing wrong with the shampoo and the dog isn't shampooed more often than needed. But isn't the whole point of testing to weed out the variations that don't work right? That turn out to be harmful? What about testing on animals that leads not to upgrades in cosmetics but eradication of disease and disability? Shouldn't it be worth the lives of a few rabbits to cure diabetes or breast cancer?

I don't know the answer to all these questions. I don't know where all the lines need be drawn. But I have learned enough since I began to ask the questions to know the old answers are false.

In 1996, I was a Petty Officer in the US Navy, assigned to a command staff in San Diego, California. I worked under a Chief Petty Officer who, looking back on things, was dealing with a number of hurts in his own life. He was the newest Chief in the crew, an ethnic minority, and of short stature. He hid his insecurities by putting down others. I hid my insecurities by accepting the put-downs of others. We made a great pair.

The Chief had a special word: sakamuyo. It was a pet name originally used to refer to anyone in the office or whomever he was hollering at. No one really knew where the word came from and we just sort of accepted it, until the day I put it together. It was a compound, multi-lingual, contraction of sorts. "Saka" short for "Sack of." "Muyo" a word best translated into English as "shit." Sakamuyo. Sack of shit.

Politely and privately, I called the Chief on his use as soon as I broke the code. He agreed it wasn't a very nice thing to call people and stopped using it - for everyone but me. So I took it. At first, I rationalized that suffering through it was worth the pain if it stopped him from calling other people by such a name. Over time, though, I began to believe him. I received the name and wore it as a label. I internalized it. I believed it. I wrote it on the outside of my journal: The Sakamuyo Log.

If this was the end of the story - if this was the end of the etymology - sakamuyo would be a terrible name for a website, for a person, for a community. But the story continues.

Welcome to the island. We're still in the rebuilding phase - but isn't that how life goes? The more I let Jesus recreate me into his image, the more need I see for him to do so.

Please feel free to wander around and take part in the conversation. Don't be afraid to push buttons and pull on levers. If something breaks, it's my fault. Just let me know so I can fix it.