Social Justice and The Lack of Love.

I first want to explain my roots. I was raised in a very conservative evangelical church. There were amazing people who were instrumental in my childhood and who I am today. I was raised in a climate that often promoted the United States Government as an "agent of God," as in this government could do no wrong, God was on our side, blah blah blah. There was no real since of social justice issues being important. I can no longer subscribe to this theology.

I believe in the Kingdom of God. I believe the Kingdom of God has no borders, no politicians, and no higher archaical system in the sense we understand as a society. I am not saying there is no leadership, no structure, I believe the Kingdom of God is very structured, just not in a way that is popular in our society. There are issues within our society that I am called to stand up against. I am called to be a voice for those who suffer under injustices of this world, for those on the fringes of society who suffer the ungrace of people. And I am called to do this with love as a motivation.

Martin Luther King Jr. said "At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love" I believe that love should be the only motive for standing and imposing injustices. I have found this not to be the overwhelming consensus with the majority of those who are in the social justice arena. This is really disheartening. When you are driven by anything other than love, when you stand up for those who need to have a voice in this world, and you do it in a manner which is not honored by love, then you too are an oppressor. Only one disguised as a hero. It seems as though many of us in the "social justice" community have some sub-conscience angst that needs to be released and we have latched onto an exterior fight in order to not deal with interior problems.

Dr. King also said "I have decided to stick with love, Hate is too great a burden to bear." I understand this. I am not trying to discourage those who are wiling to be the voice for the voiceless, I am asking that we do it with love, that we stand out against injustice with one motivation; Love your neighbor.

Losing

I have felt like I have been a failure more in the past year than I have in a very long time. Truth is I have failed at a lot in the past 12 months. I do not write this as I believe I am in a bad place or that I feel as though I need a hug, but to give a background as to why I have given up.

I have finally come to the conclusion I have very little to say about where my life is headed, or for that matter I am confused. I am living a life at the moment completely out of my comfort zone in ever aspect. This is a good thing though, growth is important to me.

I am on a sort of autopilot right now, I feel as though I am letting go of a lot of things that need to be let go of, my faith is being challenged and strengthened in an amazing way. I don't know how long I will be here in Philadelphia, or where I will go next, but I know there is a learning and life education opportunity here where I am.

I do not discount where I was in Florida, but have a very healthy perspective of the amount of growth, the healthy mentorship and the relationships I developed while I was there. It was time to go though, it was time to leave and be put into a position of fully trusting and relying on God in a way I have not done as I have relied on others so strongly.

I am at peace with where I now. Being at peace does not mean life is easy, it means I am confident I am where I am supposed to be, even though I don't actually know where that is. I miss people who are close to me, I miss the security of the complacency of comfort. Growth does not happen out of complacency and I am willing and I desire to grow. This has been a multi-front assault on areas of my life I need to grow in and I could use your prayers.

Blogging Again at pedalabout.com

Well I am blogging again and if you found your way here please find your way to my website where I will be updating as often as an internet connection and electricity allow me to on my trip. What trip you ask? Well look at my website.

Nothing To Say

So I have nothing much to say about life, or the current place I am in, or just about anything else for that matter. So I leave you with a half smile.

The Thumbtrix - Webisode 1

Okay,
So quick back story. I was hanging out with some friends when I was introduced to "Thumb Wars" the full-length feature. So I share this bit of joyful awesomeness with you in hopes it may bring the same joy to your lives as it did to mine.

The Books On My Shelf

So I have decided to list off what books I keep on my shelf. These are books I have read and once in awhile refer back to. This does not include the current books I am reading or the ample amount of books I keep in plastic storage containers which I move with me whenever I move. Why I still have these I don't know, but they move with me from place to place. This is my three shelf unit from top to bottom, no specific order implied by what is on them. What books do you keep on your shelf?
Top Shelf-
5 different Bibles
The Anglers Cookbook
4 Ophthalmic Tech books
5 Ophthalmic photographer journals
Writing made simple
and a sketch book that I believe might have some papers in it I have been looking for

Middle Shelf-
"Handbook of Today's Religions" (which I think belongs to Bryon Mondok)
"My Father My Friend" (stole that from my cousin Chris)
"Come, Let's Reach The World"
"The Ragamuffin Gospel"
"Revolution In World Missions"
"The Dangerous Act Of Worship"
"Faith and Force"
"Completely Pro-Life"
"Evangelism Without Additives"
"Orthodoxy"
"Non-Violence"
"They Like Jesus But Not The Church"
"Exiles"
"Refuting Evolution" which didn't quite turn out to be as good as I hoped.
"Just and Unjust Wars"
"Blue Like Jazz"
"Searching For God Knows What"
"Blue Like Jazz"
"Through Painted Deserts"
"Revolution"
"A Generous Orthodoxy"
"Call To Commitment"
"The Politics of Jesus" (or John Yoder)
"The Jesus I Never Knew"
"So You Don't Want To Go To Church Anymore" winner of the longest title...
"This Beautiful Mess"
"Big Bang To Kingdom Come"
"The Chosen People"
"Praying the 23rd Psalm"
"Fossilized Customs"
"Jesus and The Non-Violent Revolution"
"For Men Only"
"Reimagining Church"
"Why Not Women"
"Sex God"
"Velvet Elvis"
"The Irresistible Revolution"
"Jim and Casper Go To Church"
"Hostage To The Devil"
"Divine Nobodies"
"Wide Open Spaces"
"Threatened With Resurrection"
"The Five People You Meet In Heaven" (gracias dad)
"Jesus In The Margins"
"War With No End" (every liberals handbook)
"Angels And Donkeys"
"Bird By Bird"

Bottom Shelf-
"Strong's Exhaustive Concordance
"The Onion- Dispatches From The Tenth Circle"
"The Makers Diet"
"The Search For Messiah"
"Every Man's Battle"
"Compact Bible Commentary" (that isn't that compact)
"Evidence For Christianity"
"Morning and Evening"
"Stop Dating The Church"
"Angels"
"Man Of Steel And Velvet" (courtesy of my brothers ex-wife...)
"A Prayer For Owen Meany"
"Handbook Of Personal Evangelism"
"Epic"
"The Case For Christ"
"The Sacred Romance"
"What Would Jesus Do?"
"Waking The Dead"
"I Kiss Dating Goodbye (I need to)"
"The Name" (free with a phone call to Franklin Graham's ministry, they must like me because they keep calling me, or they want their book back)
"Every Man's Battle Workbook"
"Every Single Man's Battle" (pretty much the same as every man's battle this one just reminds you that you're still a loser)
"A Light In The Attic"
"Where The Side Walk Ends" (fitting for the last book

Forgive

Evidently there are some things in life that are easier to understand intellectually.

Living This Way

The irony of the title is the subject of the problem. Never have I been stripped down, internally naked, completely exposed for all the world to see. This is it the bare me (well the bare me and two Ambiens) to speak what it is that has me trapped inside my own mind, my own self. These are the collected items I carry with me.
Fear is the biggest one.
Anger is the active one.
Selfishness is the fuel to propel me into this place.
I don't know what is worse, the alarm clock or trying to go to bed.

So there it is, the room I store all that negativity is filled to the brim and I have no wore space left in this well compartmentalize can that needs to be kicked,

Love God, Love People

Would have, Could Have, Should Have.

Carry through time all that I've left behind,
sneaking up like cannon ball fire,
should have seen this coming long ago.
my shoulders hurt from weight of choice,
please remind me how I got here.

thirty almost thirty one what have I to show?
a mediocre job and place in the suburbs.
Not really what I signed up for,
accomplishment of nothing.


Everything I have directed my life to,
poor navigation and bitter resentments of what I would, could, should have been.
If only for the right compass given as a gift.
treading water day to day I am tired,
hold on for dear life is what I do.

Ha!

Dear life, what a crock,
it rolls of my tongue as if there was truth in it.
the value of something is placed on it only by another.
I don't want your bumper sticker, cliche, t-shirt slogan.
Save it for the naive.

Broken down past nothing,
where hope no longer sheds light.
Given away to those who hold there hands out with trust,
nothing in return, not even the hope given away.

I think the legal term is theft,
more appropriately grand larceny.
Embezzlement is the act of dishonestly appropriating goods.
is that what it is,
a misappropriation of something that does not belong to you?
Whatever you choose to call it,
it is a crime none the less.
A wronged not easily righted by the courts of justice.

I end this year with nothing but an end,
nothing to start the new year off with.
Other than a couple new reminders,
reminders of the dumb-ass choices I make.

Time... A Pointless Review

Time is what we use to measure everything in life. Our work day to our calendar year. Well this past calendar year has pretty much been full of things I prefer not to relive.

It started off with a bout of depression and is ending in the same manner. Technically the first couple hours started off with me being somewhat intoxicated with my brother, sister-in-law and a bunch of their friends. There hasn't been another night as such since. I started taking an antidepressant first thing this year. A drug that by all accounts has worked the way it is supposed to without side-effects.

Honestly I cannot finish this post, I guess finishing it would only be pointless. In short I am going into a new calendar year with a lot less hope than I did a year ago and it's not due to clinical depression. It is due purely to experience.

You're a Great Guy...Just Not Good Enough!

This should be a sign I wear around my neck. There is nothing worse than hearing a person, whom has claimed to have loved you say "I think you're a Great guy and I am sure you will find the right person one day." Here's why this is hard; besides hearing this more times in my life than I care to try and remember, it beckons a childhood of family saying "you will never ______."

Do yourself a favor, don't compliment a person without ending it with a period. A compliment does not end with a "comma but" it ends with a period.

God thinks I am good enough, but it is starting to wear on me simply because He is the perfect loving Father, of course I am good enough to Him. When people who love us, just don't think you are good enough, this life becomes a pretty shitty place to go through day to day. So is there a solution? A decision to make to change this? I think there is and thank God for free will. This will be a Christmas to remember for many, including me.

Destiny Part 1

There is nothing more empowering than to choose your own destiny. Free will comes with responsibility, the responsibility to live out a life making choices that will not hurt others. I fail at this often.

I am selfish, so I have been told by two different people in the last three days. I guess they are correct. I don't want to be selfish, but I am. I don't want to deal with seeing ex-girlfriends or fiances for that matter, I don't want to deal with future heartache in any sense. I am tired. So being the selfish person I am, I realize I am in the way of others being happy. I have free will, I have the power to control what happens to me on one level. To remove myself from a situation, to take away the thing that is standing in the way of others, to enjoy their lives more.

I was engaged until about 4 months ago, I was not her prince charming, but obviously some other guy is, or so she writes about. I was engaged up until 7 years ago, I was informed today that although I feel as though I have grown by leaps and bounds, I am still the same piece of shit I was then. I will not get into detail more than that, I will not discourage those people from being happy, evidently I have done that well enough thus far in life.

I have a plan, a plan that I am sure will play out soon enough with the right time, the right choice, the right words to express what I choose my destiny to be, even if temporary. So to all I have hurt, to all I have let down I cannot express how sorry I am. I cannot take back the pain I have caused, but I can stop myself from causing more.

This Is Amazing

I ran across this here jewel on Annie's blog and just had to know where you buy the Pee and Poo toys. So Annie gave me the link to what I believe is an amazing site. I went to the "Pee and Poo" site and I thought I was in Heaven. They had men's briefs, I thought I had just hit a GOLD mine, butt, it abruptly came to a SKIDDING stop when I realized the Pee and Poo underwear are not made in my size. Disappointment is the understatement of this post...

My First Cilioretinal Artery Occlusion.

Some people have their kids first steps captured on film, or any other special occasion. maybe they have met this famous person or saw an interesting site in life which made them go "wow...that's awesome." Well when you're an eye nerd like me this kind of thing is exciting. I was able to photograph a Cilioretinal Artery Occlusion on Friday. They are very rare and the Doctor whom I had been working with had never seen one since his residency. So here you go a little more eye nerd jargon I pulled from this site that happened to fit this perfectly.

"This patient has a cilioretinal artery obstruction of recent onset. The retinal whitening adjacent to the optic nerve represents a localized area of retinal ischemia.Cilioretinal arteries can be seen clinically in approximately 20% of all eyes, a somewhat normal anatomic variant, and by fluorescein angiography in up to 32% of eyes.These arteries separate from the central retinal artery and enter the retina on the temporal aspect of the optic nerve. There, they appear as small isolated arteries that supply all or part of the papillomacular bundle. On fluorescein angiography, they usually fill at the same time as the choroidal circulation, about 1-2 seconds before the retinal arteries."

Good Grief Bad Timing

So here is the reality of what I have walked through in the last couple, almost few, months. They call it the grief process. It has been a long time since I have approached it, last time would be my initial start of counseling after many years of drugs and other outside deterrents from facing all the messed up things in me.

I was engaged for about 6 weeks, to someone who had been a friend, to someone who I thought I knew, truth is I didn't know her. I am not going to bad mouth Jenn, call her names, say she broke my heart on purpose because the truth is, she didn't.

In my relationship with God, I have asked Him to "use me" and I have had this idea in my head of some super amazing christian super-hero type calling on my life. To say I was called to live in a mud hut in Africa and minister to some tribe with very little contact with the western world and make them like me. I say all this in the typical ignorance and arrogance we can have in our western culture, not because I believe we do things and think we are doing things "the way God wants, because God just happened to have a market on western civilization," but I think it is just learned into us. So long story short God used me in the lives of other people, through my relationship with Jenn. Things that needed to be exposed were in this process. I, on the other hand, have found the importance in praying that God will use me, "just not in this way or that."
Although I have been blessed with an understanding of what has happened, that God's will was and is being done, I am still human and I had to go through the regular process of grief.

Five Stages Of Grief

1. Denial and Isolation.
   At first, we tend to deny the loss has taken place, and may withdraw from our usual social contacts. This stage may last a few moments, or longer.(been there done that, I tried to chalk it up as the byproduct of what was being exposed)
   
2. Anger.
   The grieving person may then be furious at the person who inflicted the hurt (even if she's dead), or at the world, for letting it happen. He may be angry with himself for letting the event take place, even if, realistically, nothing could have stopped it.(yep, have this covered too, said some mean things hoping Jenn would hurt as much as I did, verbally and on this blog)
   
3. Bargaining.
   Now the grieving person may make bargains with God, asking, "If I do this, will you take away the loss?"(Only God could confirm this one, but I thought there was this hope that Jenn would be some person she isn't in the long run. Again, it is her time to figure out who she is in God and when that time comes that she will be presentable as herself, new and whole for a man who will treat her well.)
   
4. Depression.
   The person feels numb, although anger and sadness may remain underneath.(This one was kind of hard to tell where my clinical depression ended and where the depression from this began. All I have to say is "thank you Jesus for Cymbalta)
   
5. Acceptance.
   This is when the anger, sadness and mourning have tapered off. The person simply accepts the reality of the loss.(Time, it has taken time and space for me look at the situation fully, to understand there is no way this will ever happen, and to accept it for what it is, why it happened and to move on wishing the best for her, her family, and her friends.)
   
   I still struggle with some aspects of the relationship, things I said that in my heart were reserved for the woman who was to be my wife, and I cannot change that. I struggle with God being God and not understanding His timing with other things going on, fully trusting Him and being able to open the most vulnerable parts of me up to someone else. I have had a life chalked full of God's timing seeming to be bad timing, not going along with Shawn's timing, but truthfully always working about perfectly and beautifully in the end. So I rest in the knowledge and experience that The Father's timing is perfect, full of love, and beyond my pee-brained understanding, and I should trust Him and not worry about tomorrow.