http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/
Either click the title of this post or copy and past the above link and read the speech.
As I have said before, if Ronald Raegan gave this speech then there would be no controversy.
Most everybody that I heard making a big deal over this had not yet read the speech. They probably still haven't.
Read it. It is inspiring. I hope that when I have a child that the president then would be able to openly talk to my son or daughter in the same manner about education.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Back To School
I can remember growing up that on the first day of school every year my mom would wake me up singing a line, "Up in morning and off to school.... Teachers are teaching the golden rule...." From Kindergarten through my senior year of high school she woke me up like that. So annoying.
Tonight was my first day of school in a couple of years. I am taking two courses this semester. One is an online course, Professional Writing. The other is once a week on Thursday nights and it is Criminal Justice Systems. I have to take some upper elective courses and so these two interested me more than anthropology and other things similar.
The campus has changed so much in just two years. As I waited outside of the classroom a friend of mine who is younger than me saw me and we talked for a couple of minutes. He is in his last semester. I am not.
My class is an upper level elective class so most of the people aren't that much younger than me, but still some of them looked like they were in middle school.
Most of all sitting in class reminded me of the time when I was in class the most a few years back. It reminded me of the days when I only worked 15-20 hours a week and spent most of the time in between classes hanging out with my roommates.
Late nights. Good friends. Some not so smart decisions. And some great ones.
I believe that I do a pretty decent job of "living in the moment" and not taking for granted what is happening right now. I wouldn't say that my first few years of college were the best years of my life, but they sure were a lot of fun. I would take being married to Brittany over living with the guys any day, but I will always look back on those couple of years with the guys as being some of the best moments of all time.
So I raise a toast to my old roommates and the fact that I don't ever have to deal with living with them agian.
Tonight was my first day of school in a couple of years. I am taking two courses this semester. One is an online course, Professional Writing. The other is once a week on Thursday nights and it is Criminal Justice Systems. I have to take some upper elective courses and so these two interested me more than anthropology and other things similar.
The campus has changed so much in just two years. As I waited outside of the classroom a friend of mine who is younger than me saw me and we talked for a couple of minutes. He is in his last semester. I am not.
My class is an upper level elective class so most of the people aren't that much younger than me, but still some of them looked like they were in middle school.
Most of all sitting in class reminded me of the time when I was in class the most a few years back. It reminded me of the days when I only worked 15-20 hours a week and spent most of the time in between classes hanging out with my roommates.
Late nights. Good friends. Some not so smart decisions. And some great ones.
I believe that I do a pretty decent job of "living in the moment" and not taking for granted what is happening right now. I wouldn't say that my first few years of college were the best years of my life, but they sure were a lot of fun. I would take being married to Brittany over living with the guys any day, but I will always look back on those couple of years with the guys as being some of the best moments of all time.
So I raise a toast to my old roommates and the fact that I don't ever have to deal with living with them agian.
Pretty Dumb
Plaxico Burress:
Takes a gun into a nightclub and accidentally shoots himself in the leg 2mm away from his femoral. 2mm away from killing himself.
He gets two years in jail.
Michael Vick:
Runs a pretty sick (not in a good way) dog fighting ring. Tortures and kills animals.
He gets 23 months in jail.
Dante Stallworth:
Runs a man over with his car. In his statement to the police he said he honked the horn and flicked the lights at the man. Apparently he had time to do that, but not to slow down. He has enough money to get a cab to take him home.
He gets 30 days in jail.
Pretty dumb.
Takes a gun into a nightclub and accidentally shoots himself in the leg 2mm away from his femoral. 2mm away from killing himself.
He gets two years in jail.
Michael Vick:
Runs a pretty sick (not in a good way) dog fighting ring. Tortures and kills animals.
He gets 23 months in jail.
Dante Stallworth:
Runs a man over with his car. In his statement to the police he said he honked the horn and flicked the lights at the man. Apparently he had time to do that, but not to slow down. He has enough money to get a cab to take him home.
He gets 30 days in jail.
Pretty dumb.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Depth
Brittany and I did something today that we never done before together.
We went to a church where we didn't know anybody.
I wasn't filling in for anyone doing music. My wife and I decided to go to church out of curiosity. We had both worked about 11-12 hours the day before and were extremely tired. But we set the alarm and got out of bed in the morning because we felt like it would be a good thing. It is a rare time when both of us have sunday mornings off and we visited a place knowing that we wouldn't see anybody that we knew.
My desire was that we would learn something. That someone would teach something from the bible that would give us a bit of a deeper insight into what God is like. You might be surprised to know that I really don't care a whole lot about what the music sounds like when I attend a church that I am not familiar with. Seriously, I don't really care. I once visited a church where the person leading the music prayed something like, "These are just notes, but you are God and we want you to speak to our hearts today" sort of conceding to the fact that he knew that the music about to be played wouldn't be a wonderful sound. I remember that it wasn't, but that it seemed so sincere that I wasn't as concerned with the bass player missing half the notes as I usually was.
I long for depth more than anything else.
And honesty I guess.
So we arrived to find out that the pastor and regular person that leads the music were on a mission trip and there was a family who was in charge of all aspects of the service.
On the drive to church I prayed to myself simply hoping that I wouldn't be so cynical this time. I was genuinely wanting to attend church and longing for something real and not an experience or entertainment. I have entertained churches and christians so many times with my music and unfortunately I have manipulated people's emotions on more than one occasion so that they would leave feeling something that I knew wouldn't last more than 6 hours. I really didn't want to be a part of that, but this time as an observer. I came with an open heart and mind wanting to learn.
After about 30 minutes into the service I found myself wondering how much more of this I had to sit through. And that saddened me in a way that I cannot explain. I mean, really really made me uncomfortable. I didn't want to have those feelings. It had been so long since I had just gone to church to go and for no other reason.
The sermon/message/talk...whatever is popular to call it these days was a very good attempt to make people "feel good". The main subject of the 45 minutes of one man speaking was pain and how to deal with it.
It makes me sad to say that I am so angry as I think about it now and type this out. I don't want to be "that guy".
I am trying to figure out exactly how to explain the situation without sounding like I am trying to bash the man that was preaching/teaching/speaking...
I felt like I was in some type of self-help Tony Robbins course that was occasionally laced with bits of biblical reference. The subject was pain and I have known quite a bit over the last two years. This should have impacted me greatly and helped me move on because "...pain is the fuel for our souls!"
Instead I felt so cheated...
I could write so much more. I just deleted a bunch of stuff because it wasn't worthwhile to what I am really trying to say.
What I am trying to get across is that in my heart I am not too concerned with emotions at church. How the music makes me feel or how the person talking wants me to feel is not really that important. What I long for is to learn more about God. It doesn't have to be from a professor at a seminary. I am just asking that it isn't from the school of Tony Robbins. No matter how good intentioned a man may be in his preparation of a 45 minute speech at a church, it comes across as shallow to me when the bible is just a bit of support to the message they are trying to get across.
The message that was taught today was very helpful for a lot of the people it seemed. Many there seemed to really enjoy it.
That bothered me even more.
What I needed in the midst of pain that is still very real to me was insight into the character of God. I needed content, not emotion. I needed Jesus, not formulas.
This was a quote that I wrote down that was displayed on the screen for us to see/write down:
"Shadows are not as big as they seem."
Thanks.
I didn't need a scholar. I could have used someone simply putting this verse on the screen and talking about it and the situation surrounding it for about 10 minutes at least.
"Jesus wept."
I long for more than dribble. I know that sounds so pious and snoody of me. I honestly don't want to come across as that way. I really just want to learn more about Jesus.
Being away for so long has brought that desire into my heart.
We went to a church where we didn't know anybody.
I wasn't filling in for anyone doing music. My wife and I decided to go to church out of curiosity. We had both worked about 11-12 hours the day before and were extremely tired. But we set the alarm and got out of bed in the morning because we felt like it would be a good thing. It is a rare time when both of us have sunday mornings off and we visited a place knowing that we wouldn't see anybody that we knew.
My desire was that we would learn something. That someone would teach something from the bible that would give us a bit of a deeper insight into what God is like. You might be surprised to know that I really don't care a whole lot about what the music sounds like when I attend a church that I am not familiar with. Seriously, I don't really care. I once visited a church where the person leading the music prayed something like, "These are just notes, but you are God and we want you to speak to our hearts today" sort of conceding to the fact that he knew that the music about to be played wouldn't be a wonderful sound. I remember that it wasn't, but that it seemed so sincere that I wasn't as concerned with the bass player missing half the notes as I usually was.
I long for depth more than anything else.
And honesty I guess.
So we arrived to find out that the pastor and regular person that leads the music were on a mission trip and there was a family who was in charge of all aspects of the service.
On the drive to church I prayed to myself simply hoping that I wouldn't be so cynical this time. I was genuinely wanting to attend church and longing for something real and not an experience or entertainment. I have entertained churches and christians so many times with my music and unfortunately I have manipulated people's emotions on more than one occasion so that they would leave feeling something that I knew wouldn't last more than 6 hours. I really didn't want to be a part of that, but this time as an observer. I came with an open heart and mind wanting to learn.
After about 30 minutes into the service I found myself wondering how much more of this I had to sit through. And that saddened me in a way that I cannot explain. I mean, really really made me uncomfortable. I didn't want to have those feelings. It had been so long since I had just gone to church to go and for no other reason.
The sermon/message/talk...whatever is popular to call it these days was a very good attempt to make people "feel good". The main subject of the 45 minutes of one man speaking was pain and how to deal with it.
It makes me sad to say that I am so angry as I think about it now and type this out. I don't want to be "that guy".
I am trying to figure out exactly how to explain the situation without sounding like I am trying to bash the man that was preaching/teaching/speaking...
I felt like I was in some type of self-help Tony Robbins course that was occasionally laced with bits of biblical reference. The subject was pain and I have known quite a bit over the last two years. This should have impacted me greatly and helped me move on because "...pain is the fuel for our souls!"
Instead I felt so cheated...
I could write so much more. I just deleted a bunch of stuff because it wasn't worthwhile to what I am really trying to say.
What I am trying to get across is that in my heart I am not too concerned with emotions at church. How the music makes me feel or how the person talking wants me to feel is not really that important. What I long for is to learn more about God. It doesn't have to be from a professor at a seminary. I am just asking that it isn't from the school of Tony Robbins. No matter how good intentioned a man may be in his preparation of a 45 minute speech at a church, it comes across as shallow to me when the bible is just a bit of support to the message they are trying to get across.
The message that was taught today was very helpful for a lot of the people it seemed. Many there seemed to really enjoy it.
That bothered me even more.
What I needed in the midst of pain that is still very real to me was insight into the character of God. I needed content, not emotion. I needed Jesus, not formulas.
This was a quote that I wrote down that was displayed on the screen for us to see/write down:
"Shadows are not as big as they seem."
Thanks.
I didn't need a scholar. I could have used someone simply putting this verse on the screen and talking about it and the situation surrounding it for about 10 minutes at least.
"Jesus wept."
I long for more than dribble. I know that sounds so pious and snoody of me. I honestly don't want to come across as that way. I really just want to learn more about Jesus.
Being away for so long has brought that desire into my heart.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Reaching For More
Next month I will celebrate my 26th birthday.
I have been reevaluating a lot of things in my life lately.
I have been coming to the conclusion that there are certain things that I MUST do before I die. Dreams that I have had since I was a teenager that I have a deep sense that I need to fulfill.
One might refer to these things as a bucket list. If you watched the movie "The Bucket List" you understand that most of the incredible things the two gentlemen did were in the last year of their lives. That is all well and good, but I would like to incorporate my list into my entire life.
I believe that things are so much more attainable than we are willing to believe. When I think about these 25 years that have been my life I realize that I have pursued in a responsible, yet sometimes reckless enough manner to achieve some incredible things that I never thought possible.
I have worked in an orphanage in Africa.
I have hiked a glacier in Alaska.
I own season tickets to the Florida Gators football games. 50 yard line. 39 rows up. In the shade.
I recorded an album and made money from it. And I actually liked my album even though I usually hate listening to myself.
I was the keynote speaker at a week long camp in Philadelphia. The goal of the camp was that over 300 high school students from different parts of the US would come and be a part of rebuilding and renovating homes in a poor area of the city. At night all of the students and adults would listen to what I had to say. The crazy thing was that a lot of the people acted like they couldn't wait for me to speak the next evening.
I am a waiter at a restaurant. I kind of hate it, but I always thought that I would be good at it and I have had the chance to accomplish that.
I married someone that is cool and that is hot.
I have built a snowman.
I once had a conversation in American Sign Language with a stranger as a result of me taking classes for it.
I write these things out because I believe that I could look at my life and think of how boring it is. I could sit around and feel stuck in my job and that I am not useful. But the truth is that our waves do come. They just don't come every single day or every month. It has taken many years for these dreams to become a reality, but they have become just that.
I understand that we all grow a little hardened and calloused as we get older, but I don't want to be the person that is miserable as a result of that.
I don't want to let go of my dreams just because I haven't reached another one in the last year or two.
One of my goals since I was a kid was that I always wanted to go to Hawaii. The older I got I realized how expensive that would be and that I wasn't sure how I could do that and not feel like I had just wasted a ton of money on myself.
Now I work for Hyatt Hotels. It isn't an amazing job and a lot of times it makes me into a person that I don't want to become, but there are things about it that are pretty awesome. So next August I have booked for my wife and I free rooms at 3 different Hyatt Resorts on 3 different islands in Hawaii.
The rooms are $400 a night to the average joe. For us they will cost nothing. I don't feel that bad about it either. I work all the time and very hard so that my wife and I are at peace with our finances and also so that we are able to be married. She does the same and more. So for a reward for barely seeing each other for the first 2 and a half years of our marriage we are going to spend 2 and a half weeks in one of the most beautiful places that I could imagine going and we are going to be able to do that saving quite a bit of money.
It is funny how dreams become a reality. I kind of hate my job. But the rewards can be outstanding.
What dreams do you have that you have given up on?
What is there deep within your sould that you feel that you MUST do?
I feel like we could reach for more if wanted to. Maybe we are afraid of failure or things similar, but I think if we looked at the things that we have already accomplished we will realized that our dreams aren't that far from being a reality. The fun part is that most of the time we have no idea how things worked out in our favor. We just knew we had to do something and it got done.
Hold on to those dreams. We live once. I am 26. I will contine to grow older until I stop breathing. I feel pretty satisfied out how my life has turned out so far and the amount of things that I have been able to accomplish. But I don't want to stop there.
There is so much out there and there is so much within us.
What if we just believed that we could do some incredible things and then focused on them when they actually happen?
I have been reevaluating a lot of things in my life lately.
I have been coming to the conclusion that there are certain things that I MUST do before I die. Dreams that I have had since I was a teenager that I have a deep sense that I need to fulfill.
One might refer to these things as a bucket list. If you watched the movie "The Bucket List" you understand that most of the incredible things the two gentlemen did were in the last year of their lives. That is all well and good, but I would like to incorporate my list into my entire life.
I believe that things are so much more attainable than we are willing to believe. When I think about these 25 years that have been my life I realize that I have pursued in a responsible, yet sometimes reckless enough manner to achieve some incredible things that I never thought possible.
I have worked in an orphanage in Africa.
I have hiked a glacier in Alaska.
I own season tickets to the Florida Gators football games. 50 yard line. 39 rows up. In the shade.
I recorded an album and made money from it. And I actually liked my album even though I usually hate listening to myself.
I was the keynote speaker at a week long camp in Philadelphia. The goal of the camp was that over 300 high school students from different parts of the US would come and be a part of rebuilding and renovating homes in a poor area of the city. At night all of the students and adults would listen to what I had to say. The crazy thing was that a lot of the people acted like they couldn't wait for me to speak the next evening.
I am a waiter at a restaurant. I kind of hate it, but I always thought that I would be good at it and I have had the chance to accomplish that.
I married someone that is cool and that is hot.
I have built a snowman.
I once had a conversation in American Sign Language with a stranger as a result of me taking classes for it.
I write these things out because I believe that I could look at my life and think of how boring it is. I could sit around and feel stuck in my job and that I am not useful. But the truth is that our waves do come. They just don't come every single day or every month. It has taken many years for these dreams to become a reality, but they have become just that.
I understand that we all grow a little hardened and calloused as we get older, but I don't want to be the person that is miserable as a result of that.
I don't want to let go of my dreams just because I haven't reached another one in the last year or two.
One of my goals since I was a kid was that I always wanted to go to Hawaii. The older I got I realized how expensive that would be and that I wasn't sure how I could do that and not feel like I had just wasted a ton of money on myself.
Now I work for Hyatt Hotels. It isn't an amazing job and a lot of times it makes me into a person that I don't want to become, but there are things about it that are pretty awesome. So next August I have booked for my wife and I free rooms at 3 different Hyatt Resorts on 3 different islands in Hawaii.
The rooms are $400 a night to the average joe. For us they will cost nothing. I don't feel that bad about it either. I work all the time and very hard so that my wife and I are at peace with our finances and also so that we are able to be married. She does the same and more. So for a reward for barely seeing each other for the first 2 and a half years of our marriage we are going to spend 2 and a half weeks in one of the most beautiful places that I could imagine going and we are going to be able to do that saving quite a bit of money.
It is funny how dreams become a reality. I kind of hate my job. But the rewards can be outstanding.
What dreams do you have that you have given up on?
What is there deep within your sould that you feel that you MUST do?
I feel like we could reach for more if wanted to. Maybe we are afraid of failure or things similar, but I think if we looked at the things that we have already accomplished we will realized that our dreams aren't that far from being a reality. The fun part is that most of the time we have no idea how things worked out in our favor. We just knew we had to do something and it got done.
Hold on to those dreams. We live once. I am 26. I will contine to grow older until I stop breathing. I feel pretty satisfied out how my life has turned out so far and the amount of things that I have been able to accomplish. But I don't want to stop there.
There is so much out there and there is so much within us.
What if we just believed that we could do some incredible things and then focused on them when they actually happen?
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Home
I have thought long and hard on how to articulate this post. I confess that nothing that I say gives justice to the topic. On the topic of Heaven I write not as a theologian, nor do I write as a man of faith (whatever you think that means). My knowledge of what the religious scholars and books of the bible say about this place is smaller than I can begin to describe, and if you could see into the depths of my heart you would understand that my faith is many times microscopic compared to what I think that I know.
I write as a son who has watched death slowly but surely take his mother down a road that I wish no one else to follow. I write as a friend who, from a distance, has traveled the same journey of close friends who just this past Sunday held a memorial service for their father. I write as a spectator who watched along with around 1/6th of the population of the world the memorial service for one of the greatest entertainers of all time.
Smokey Robinson stated so well what, I believe, resonates in the hearts of most of the human species.
"I believe that this is not the end. I believe that this is not ALL that there is."
I just sat and read that line over again a few times.
My take on Heaven is based on a conversation I had a few years ago with a stranger in the Atlanta airport. Her name was Tina and I really didn't want to talk to her. In fact, I had just wandered down to the small bookstore to make a purchase and try to waste the remaining hours of my delayed flight in solitude away from everyone and anyone who felt a need to start a stupid conversation with me as their way of passing the time.
I had heard that a bunch of local churches were doing sermon series on a fictional book called "The Davinci Code". I thought if it caused this much of an uproar then it must be a pretty decent read. By the way, it was an ok book. It wasn't the greatest book ever, but I still never understood the religious movement against a FICTIONAL book. Anyways, I began to read it near my gate and of course within about 10 minutes this girl, who was probably just a few years older than I was, noticed what I was reading.
"Oh...the Davinci Code, such a good book."
My first thoughts were straight profanity, which I will refrain from typing here. I knew that this person wanted to talk and I should have bought Marilyn Manson's autobiography instead and maybe she would not have said anything. That reminds me, I ordered that book a while back on ebay and still haven't received it.
So I decided I couldn't just walk away and I engaged in conversation with Tina, who happened to be quite a pleasant person to be stuck at your gate with in the busiest airport in the world. I mean, I could've had some real idiot that smelt like hot garbage trying to talk to me. If that were the case, I would definitely have walked away.
Sorry for getting so sidetracked there. Back to the matter at hand: Heaven. Eventually the question came up from her about if I believed in Jesus and if I believed in Heaven.
This is a pretty close paraphrase of what I told her. It wasn't scripted or anything, it just is what makes sense in my head and now that I have seen death and disease so close it makes more sense that I can convey.
When I look at society I see a lot of bad things. We sometimes argue so much for certain veiwpoints of certain topics that we lose sight of the fact that most of what we are arguing about shouldn't be argued about in the first place. War doesn't seem ok, but it has been going on since the beginning of history. Disease doesn't seem ok. Although we have made large advances in medicine, over 700,000 Americans will die this year due to cancer. That is a staggering amount in our technilogically advanced era. In America we work more than any other country in the world, mostly so that can go on vacation or have the material possessions that our hearts desire. Meanwhile, in poor countries all over the world, people are dying of things such as the common cold or lack of penicilin. And we don't give a damn. We argue about universal healthcare being a political issue, but do we not believe that every child and every person should have the opportunity to be taken care of just as well as anybody else.
Please understand that I am trying to make no political statement other than our politics have gotten in the way of common sense. But the main issue that I told Tina in the airport was that I believe that our society as a whole is in the most simple sense "broken".
There is something wrong.
There is something off.
Some of it is in our control and some of it is not. Life is so unfair and the best word I know to describe that is that this existence as we know it and have known it through reading history is messed up. And not just a tad, but messed up quite a bit.
But let's not stop there. Take a look at yourself.
In my life I have struggled with things that I believe that we all deal with on and off throughout our lives.
Lonliness.
Broken Heart.
Wondering if we matter in this world.
Not knowing if we will be good enough children, students, husbands, wives, friends, you fill in the blank.
We are broken individually.
I am broken.
I belive strongly that there must be an answer for this. That belief has led me to Jesus and the topic of this post, Heaven.
I wrote about how my mother had become physically unrecognizable. I wish that I could tell you that image has been banned from my memory, but it has not. I dealt with nightmares consistently for weeks after her funeral dealing with her health. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't see clearly her decayed and diseased and tormented body in my mind.
To me, her body is a very accurate representation of my "broken" state of being. My soul is ridden with this disease and the symptoms are listed above as they are with every single person. When I think of her sickness I think of my inmost thoughts being so wrong at times and how I can manipulate people and on and on. I think of how our society is cancer ridden and so messed up that most of the time we don't even recognize it.
When I searched for the word "heaven" in the bible, most of the time that Jesus talked about it he talked in terms that heaven was here now. That the purpose for those who follow his teachings are to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth now in a real way for people to see.
I don't want to get too far off subject or into Heaven being just on earth. I believe that Jesus wanted us to bring the great things of Heaven i.e. justice, oneness, completeness, redemption, grace, love to the place we live now because He knew that we were a sick people with a cancer at the core of our society and our souls.
So to me, Heaven is the opposite of the picture of my mom's diseased body. It is the opposite of the things I mentioned earlier about our society and our individual hearts not being "ok". Heaven will be the place that we no longer struggle with the aspects of our lives that everyone has always struggled with.
Can you imagine that there is a place where depression does not exist? Can you picture not feeling incomplete?
No more lonliness.
No more suffering, physically or mentally.
No more inadequecy.
No more not quite measuring up.
No more sleepless nights of your mind wandering on and on about all of the dreams that you have thrown away or that you can never attain.
No more broken.
One of the last times I talked to my mom I told her that she was so close to experiencing and having everything that she had ever longed for since she was a child. None of that being toys or things, but rather all of it having to do with feeling whole. It is funny, she didn't mention anything about how the streets of gold would look or what her "mansion" would look like.
In her sickest state she only longed to be loved and to be made complete.
In my sickest state I also long to be loved and to be made complete.
I believe that my mom is home.
I look forward to seeing her there. I am sure that we will have no recollection of disease of any kind.
Until then I think about what it means to bring that "Home" to this journey.
I write as a son who has watched death slowly but surely take his mother down a road that I wish no one else to follow. I write as a friend who, from a distance, has traveled the same journey of close friends who just this past Sunday held a memorial service for their father. I write as a spectator who watched along with around 1/6th of the population of the world the memorial service for one of the greatest entertainers of all time.
Smokey Robinson stated so well what, I believe, resonates in the hearts of most of the human species.
"I believe that this is not the end. I believe that this is not ALL that there is."
I just sat and read that line over again a few times.
My take on Heaven is based on a conversation I had a few years ago with a stranger in the Atlanta airport. Her name was Tina and I really didn't want to talk to her. In fact, I had just wandered down to the small bookstore to make a purchase and try to waste the remaining hours of my delayed flight in solitude away from everyone and anyone who felt a need to start a stupid conversation with me as their way of passing the time.
I had heard that a bunch of local churches were doing sermon series on a fictional book called "The Davinci Code". I thought if it caused this much of an uproar then it must be a pretty decent read. By the way, it was an ok book. It wasn't the greatest book ever, but I still never understood the religious movement against a FICTIONAL book. Anyways, I began to read it near my gate and of course within about 10 minutes this girl, who was probably just a few years older than I was, noticed what I was reading.
"Oh...the Davinci Code, such a good book."
My first thoughts were straight profanity, which I will refrain from typing here. I knew that this person wanted to talk and I should have bought Marilyn Manson's autobiography instead and maybe she would not have said anything. That reminds me, I ordered that book a while back on ebay and still haven't received it.
So I decided I couldn't just walk away and I engaged in conversation with Tina, who happened to be quite a pleasant person to be stuck at your gate with in the busiest airport in the world. I mean, I could've had some real idiot that smelt like hot garbage trying to talk to me. If that were the case, I would definitely have walked away.
Sorry for getting so sidetracked there. Back to the matter at hand: Heaven. Eventually the question came up from her about if I believed in Jesus and if I believed in Heaven.
This is a pretty close paraphrase of what I told her. It wasn't scripted or anything, it just is what makes sense in my head and now that I have seen death and disease so close it makes more sense that I can convey.
When I look at society I see a lot of bad things. We sometimes argue so much for certain veiwpoints of certain topics that we lose sight of the fact that most of what we are arguing about shouldn't be argued about in the first place. War doesn't seem ok, but it has been going on since the beginning of history. Disease doesn't seem ok. Although we have made large advances in medicine, over 700,000 Americans will die this year due to cancer. That is a staggering amount in our technilogically advanced era. In America we work more than any other country in the world, mostly so that can go on vacation or have the material possessions that our hearts desire. Meanwhile, in poor countries all over the world, people are dying of things such as the common cold or lack of penicilin. And we don't give a damn. We argue about universal healthcare being a political issue, but do we not believe that every child and every person should have the opportunity to be taken care of just as well as anybody else.
Please understand that I am trying to make no political statement other than our politics have gotten in the way of common sense. But the main issue that I told Tina in the airport was that I believe that our society as a whole is in the most simple sense "broken".
There is something wrong.
There is something off.
Some of it is in our control and some of it is not. Life is so unfair and the best word I know to describe that is that this existence as we know it and have known it through reading history is messed up. And not just a tad, but messed up quite a bit.
But let's not stop there. Take a look at yourself.
In my life I have struggled with things that I believe that we all deal with on and off throughout our lives.
Lonliness.
Broken Heart.
Wondering if we matter in this world.
Not knowing if we will be good enough children, students, husbands, wives, friends, you fill in the blank.
We are broken individually.
I am broken.
I belive strongly that there must be an answer for this. That belief has led me to Jesus and the topic of this post, Heaven.
I wrote about how my mother had become physically unrecognizable. I wish that I could tell you that image has been banned from my memory, but it has not. I dealt with nightmares consistently for weeks after her funeral dealing with her health. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't see clearly her decayed and diseased and tormented body in my mind.
To me, her body is a very accurate representation of my "broken" state of being. My soul is ridden with this disease and the symptoms are listed above as they are with every single person. When I think of her sickness I think of my inmost thoughts being so wrong at times and how I can manipulate people and on and on. I think of how our society is cancer ridden and so messed up that most of the time we don't even recognize it.
When I searched for the word "heaven" in the bible, most of the time that Jesus talked about it he talked in terms that heaven was here now. That the purpose for those who follow his teachings are to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth now in a real way for people to see.
I don't want to get too far off subject or into Heaven being just on earth. I believe that Jesus wanted us to bring the great things of Heaven i.e. justice, oneness, completeness, redemption, grace, love to the place we live now because He knew that we were a sick people with a cancer at the core of our society and our souls.
So to me, Heaven is the opposite of the picture of my mom's diseased body. It is the opposite of the things I mentioned earlier about our society and our individual hearts not being "ok". Heaven will be the place that we no longer struggle with the aspects of our lives that everyone has always struggled with.
Can you imagine that there is a place where depression does not exist? Can you picture not feeling incomplete?
No more lonliness.
No more suffering, physically or mentally.
No more inadequecy.
No more not quite measuring up.
No more sleepless nights of your mind wandering on and on about all of the dreams that you have thrown away or that you can never attain.
No more broken.
One of the last times I talked to my mom I told her that she was so close to experiencing and having everything that she had ever longed for since she was a child. None of that being toys or things, but rather all of it having to do with feeling whole. It is funny, she didn't mention anything about how the streets of gold would look or what her "mansion" would look like.
In her sickest state she only longed to be loved and to be made complete.
In my sickest state I also long to be loved and to be made complete.
I believe that my mom is home.
I look forward to seeing her there. I am sure that we will have no recollection of disease of any kind.
Until then I think about what it means to bring that "Home" to this journey.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Pretty Crazy
My father wrote me an email shortly after he read my last post. He told me that he read it and then read it once more and that his heart was aching for his son. These next few sentences I should just copy and paste from the email, for there is great power in them and I don't want to get one word wrong.
" I think of you so often as a little boy and I want to take away the pain, but you’re a man now and you’re acting like one. I’m proud of you….I always have been."
I have read those specific lines over and over again since they landed on my blackberry just a few hours before my mom died. Such a few words that I know will always remain in my memory.
Since my mother's death I have begun to take some things a little more seriously. Things including my health, weight, time, finances...etc. Included in that process is making sure that my wife and eventually the rest of my family feels secure and safe and one of the things that is a large part of that is our finances. At the beginning of the week I took a closer look at how I can help my wife and our bills and what is really more important in certain areas.
The biggest thing that we agreed upon changing is our car situation. Brittany's car is a lease. That was a deal that went down before we were married so we have been paying about $250 a month towards a car that we know that we will not want to buy once the lease ends in October of 2010. Instead of paying that money to "rent" a car we decided that we needed to get rid of the lease asap and put that money towards something else more constructive. It all worked out rather quickly and Brittany's parents actually wanted to take the car from us so as of the end of July we were ready to be a one car family.
One car would be a tough thing for us because Brittany goes to school and I was going to start back again in August and riding the public bus to work would be my transportation, but we were ok with that and believed that we were doing our best to sacrifice a little to be better with our money. Wednesday night I finalized our insurance policy to remove the car as of the end of July (when her parents would take it form us). I felt great about it.
But also a little worried about how I was going to get around.
Tonight, Thursday, Brittany and I went over to where my mom lived to see her husband and go through a few things that now belonged to us. There were some incredible priceless things that I am so thankful to have. I believe that being a pack rat is not good, but please save some things. I found pictures and random things that I have never seen before. We all teared up as we went through things that were close to my mom's heart and the idea that she is no longer here was very real.
As we took some of the boxes to our car Darold, my mom's husband, said "Since we are out here I want to give these to you."
He handed each of us the keys to my mom's car and told us that she had a policy that allowed the car to be paid off completely after she died and given to us. He cried as he told us this and I believe I laughed at first and then cried all within 5 seconds.
The crazy thing is that Brittany and I had just discussed that we would pay for cash for whatever car we owned in the future and never again have to deal with a car payment. I was planning on saving up about 6-8k for a decent used car eventually.
The car that we now own because of the generosity of my mom and her husband is something that we would not be able to buy until we were very old. I would not brag about my own car if I had bought it myself, but I am going to tell you a little about this car since, I believe, it shows what a great gift it is.
-2007 Nissan Altima
-25,040 miles
-Complete navigation system included
-Bluetooth included
-Power seats, windows
-Seat warmers
-Camera when you reverse to show you what is behind you
-Leather seats
-Keyless ingnition, keyless locking/unlocking
-Sunroof
-6 disc CD changer and mp3 accesible
-Seriously, everything is digital. Everything. And there is a screen in the middle where the GPS is that is touch screen.
-Darold had it deatailed before he gave it to us
The only reason I am going into all of this detail is because I am incredibly overwhelmed by my mom's final gift to me and my wife. I am also almost speechless to the fact that this came just the day after our plans were final to get rid of one of our cars and begin the long process of saving enough money to buy a decent used car.
My next post will be on heaven. I am not sure exactly what that means, but I have been thinking a lot about it lately and will get to it.
But for now all I can think of is how thankful I am to my mother for loving me. She had this planned almost two years ago before her first surgery. I believe that God had something to do with all of this. When I had a conversation with my mom about her death that I described in my last post she was about to tell me what she was going to leave me and I told her that we didn't need to talk about that.
Two years in the making and God worked out the timing in such a way that all I can do is sit here on my couch and be amazed at everything. I understand that none of you will know how incredible this really is, but I just had to write about it.
" I think of you so often as a little boy and I want to take away the pain, but you’re a man now and you’re acting like one. I’m proud of you….I always have been."
I have read those specific lines over and over again since they landed on my blackberry just a few hours before my mom died. Such a few words that I know will always remain in my memory.
Since my mother's death I have begun to take some things a little more seriously. Things including my health, weight, time, finances...etc. Included in that process is making sure that my wife and eventually the rest of my family feels secure and safe and one of the things that is a large part of that is our finances. At the beginning of the week I took a closer look at how I can help my wife and our bills and what is really more important in certain areas.
The biggest thing that we agreed upon changing is our car situation. Brittany's car is a lease. That was a deal that went down before we were married so we have been paying about $250 a month towards a car that we know that we will not want to buy once the lease ends in October of 2010. Instead of paying that money to "rent" a car we decided that we needed to get rid of the lease asap and put that money towards something else more constructive. It all worked out rather quickly and Brittany's parents actually wanted to take the car from us so as of the end of July we were ready to be a one car family.
One car would be a tough thing for us because Brittany goes to school and I was going to start back again in August and riding the public bus to work would be my transportation, but we were ok with that and believed that we were doing our best to sacrifice a little to be better with our money. Wednesday night I finalized our insurance policy to remove the car as of the end of July (when her parents would take it form us). I felt great about it.
But also a little worried about how I was going to get around.
Tonight, Thursday, Brittany and I went over to where my mom lived to see her husband and go through a few things that now belonged to us. There were some incredible priceless things that I am so thankful to have. I believe that being a pack rat is not good, but please save some things. I found pictures and random things that I have never seen before. We all teared up as we went through things that were close to my mom's heart and the idea that she is no longer here was very real.
As we took some of the boxes to our car Darold, my mom's husband, said "Since we are out here I want to give these to you."
He handed each of us the keys to my mom's car and told us that she had a policy that allowed the car to be paid off completely after she died and given to us. He cried as he told us this and I believe I laughed at first and then cried all within 5 seconds.
The crazy thing is that Brittany and I had just discussed that we would pay for cash for whatever car we owned in the future and never again have to deal with a car payment. I was planning on saving up about 6-8k for a decent used car eventually.
The car that we now own because of the generosity of my mom and her husband is something that we would not be able to buy until we were very old. I would not brag about my own car if I had bought it myself, but I am going to tell you a little about this car since, I believe, it shows what a great gift it is.
-2007 Nissan Altima
-25,040 miles
-Complete navigation system included
-Bluetooth included
-Power seats, windows
-Seat warmers
-Camera when you reverse to show you what is behind you
-Leather seats
-Keyless ingnition, keyless locking/unlocking
-Sunroof
-6 disc CD changer and mp3 accesible
-Seriously, everything is digital. Everything. And there is a screen in the middle where the GPS is that is touch screen.
-Darold had it deatailed before he gave it to us
The only reason I am going into all of this detail is because I am incredibly overwhelmed by my mom's final gift to me and my wife. I am also almost speechless to the fact that this came just the day after our plans were final to get rid of one of our cars and begin the long process of saving enough money to buy a decent used car.
My next post will be on heaven. I am not sure exactly what that means, but I have been thinking a lot about it lately and will get to it.
But for now all I can think of is how thankful I am to my mother for loving me. She had this planned almost two years ago before her first surgery. I believe that God had something to do with all of this. When I had a conversation with my mom about her death that I described in my last post she was about to tell me what she was going to leave me and I told her that we didn't need to talk about that.
Two years in the making and God worked out the timing in such a way that all I can do is sit here on my couch and be amazed at everything. I understand that none of you will know how incredible this really is, but I just had to write about it.
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