I hate to inform all of my loyal readers of this blog, but for the time being I am going to be at another blog. The blog is Atypical Spirituality. It is me and a couple of friends. You should all stop by and join in on the conversation and leave a comment about being our friend so that we know who our readers are and send the love back their way and become readers of their blogs in turn. Thank You everyone for making the change, I love you.
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Politics drive me crazy. Here in Oklahoma we just had our primaries for Governor, Lt. Governor, etc. and I had to watch negative ad after negative ad after negative ad, on and on and on. I lose my mind having to watch all of this negative crap, I don't want a politician to tell me how bad their opponent is, I want to know how good you are as a person and what you want to do to make all of our lives better. I refuse to vote for a person who only puts out negative ads. Something has to be done about these ads.
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I went in to work last night feeling like it was going to be another long boring night, but about an hour into my shift a lady walks in with an animal in a blue pouch around her neck which I just assumed was a small dog that she was carrying around with her. When she came up to the counter I looked at it and then I looked at it again and it didn't look like any dog I had ever seen before, in fact it looked like a small kangaroo. I asked the lady and it was a baby Austrailian Red Kangaroo and then she let me hold it. That's right I got to hold a baby kangaroo last night and it was everything you could image it to be, so surreal. I have decided that kangaroos are awesome, more awesome than before.
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Last night I went to go see Rob Bell in Oklahoma City on his 'Everything is Spiritual' Tour. I really enjoyed what he had to say, although if you listen to the sermons from his church's website here, then you have already heard about 90% of the information. If you want to know more about the tour just google it.
What I thought was interesting was that they were serving beer at the venue, so I thought I would get one. I felt like the only person in the place who enjoys a beer. I had people watching me from every direction with every gulp of the delicious beer.
I'm not exactly sure what exactly I am trying to say. I guess I think Rob is good and I think Beer is good. I also think God is good. What do you think? | 11 comments
What I thought was interesting was that they were serving beer at the venue, so I thought I would get one. I felt like the only person in the place who enjoys a beer. I had people watching me from every direction with every gulp of the delicious beer.
I'm not exactly sure what exactly I am trying to say. I guess I think Rob is good and I think Beer is good. I also think God is good. What do you think? | 11 comments
God does not love me more. This is something that I often need to be reminded of. I have this tendency to look down on people because of the way they dress, the way they live, their political affliliation, etc. I am loved the same as my neighbor no matter how much I disagree with them, or how our education differs, or how we choose to live our lives. We are all in this together searching for the same love from both God and Humanity. We all want and deserve to be treated better.
May we as a church begin to treat people with more respect and dignity than before. May we begin to let people know that they deserve to be treated better. May we affirm people with the same affirmation that God has given us. May we spread the message that God loves us, God loves humanity. | 7 comments
May we as a church begin to treat people with more respect and dignity than before. May we begin to let people know that they deserve to be treated better. May we affirm people with the same affirmation that God has given us. May we spread the message that God loves us, God loves humanity. | 7 comments
REPOST ALERT: This is a repost from last December, but it is one of my favorites. I found it today and it helped me see where I have grown in the last six months. My marriage is just now becoming easier and we are learning how to be 'one'. Anyways here is the post:
Warning: I'm a young, handsome, newlywed. Some of this may not apply to you (if you are single), and some of you are probably years ahead of me, so be forwarned if this bores that socks off of your feet or beanies of your head.
I have been married for going on four months now, which just now strikes me as being 1/3 of the way to a year, that is so crazy. Anyways, it is hard, and when I say hard, I MEAN HARDER THAN HARD. I will stop you now, I'm probably not going where you think I'm going, then again if you are married, you might know all to well where I am going.
I have been an only child, the older brother of a half-sister, and the step-brother of four (one of those doesn't really count though). I've kind of been through the gammit of family situations growing up and boy did that suck, but I was the only child toward the end of my tenure with the parent(s), this isn't a good place to be. Let me explain (at least somewhat), have you ever known families that have the younger or youngest child who gets more 'things' and possibly 'attention' because their parents now have only one child to focus their resources and attention towards, well this 'kind-of' was me, the only difference being that I was usually the oldest and was thrust into the situation of being the sole benefactor of resources (not so much attention, but we won't get into that here). This totally messed me up, I became, and still am to a degree, pretty selfish.
Here is my problem:
Pretty Selfish + Marriage = Disaster
The funny thing about it is that you really can't enter 'pretty selfish' into any positive equation and come out with a good result, maybe meager, but that is about as far as it can go. Again, I'll give you some examples:
Pretty Selfish + Church = A "Christian"**
** A "Christian" here means someone who puts on a pretty image for people to see, but in reality they aren't being healed from the inside out, they don't care about the poor, or anyone outside of their current sphere of influence. They are in it for what they can get out of it: safety, 'fire-insurance', answers. They are commited as long as they feel that they are being benefited from the Church, which really isn't commitment at all.
So, as many of you would agree if you were in my situation, I don't want my marraige to be a disaster. This means that I need to remove a part of the above equation. Let us now look at what removing these would look like.
First we will take out Marriage.
Disaster - Marriage = Divorce
Not at all where I want this to go, but I know this is what happens everyday, which is a hard reality to face. The problem here is that I lose twice. I lose the love of my life, and I lose because I am still 'pretty selfish', which will only lead to more problems, not less, even if I do get a divorce.
Next lets try taking out Pretty Selfish and see what happens.
Disaster - Pretty Selfish = Death
Wait, that doesn't sound too nice either, there has to be something wrong. I have this disaster (which is made up of me being selfish and my marriage) and I take out my selfishness, I should end up with a happy marriage, or something like it.
The thing is this, to remove this selfish part of me, I have to die. I have to let go of myself and begin to embrace my wife, God, and this new me that in reality isn't new at all, it is the original design of me, the me who is hiding behind all the junk. The equation that leads to death isn't done if it ends in death. If you take my death (the end of this selfish me) and you add it to my marriage you will get ... well, I don't know for sure to tell you the truth, I am in the middle of the dying part right now. I don't know where this death is leading, I only have to follow it one day at a time.
But, maybe we shouldn't call it death. Maybe we should call it life. | 2 comments
Warning: I'm a young, handsome, newlywed. Some of this may not apply to you (if you are single), and some of you are probably years ahead of me, so be forwarned if this bores that socks off of your feet or beanies of your head.
I have been married for going on four months now, which just now strikes me as being 1/3 of the way to a year, that is so crazy. Anyways, it is hard, and when I say hard, I MEAN HARDER THAN HARD. I will stop you now, I'm probably not going where you think I'm going, then again if you are married, you might know all to well where I am going.
I have been an only child, the older brother of a half-sister, and the step-brother of four (one of those doesn't really count though). I've kind of been through the gammit of family situations growing up and boy did that suck, but I was the only child toward the end of my tenure with the parent(s), this isn't a good place to be. Let me explain (at least somewhat), have you ever known families that have the younger or youngest child who gets more 'things' and possibly 'attention' because their parents now have only one child to focus their resources and attention towards, well this 'kind-of' was me, the only difference being that I was usually the oldest and was thrust into the situation of being the sole benefactor of resources (not so much attention, but we won't get into that here). This totally messed me up, I became, and still am to a degree, pretty selfish.
Here is my problem:
Pretty Selfish + Marriage = Disaster
The funny thing about it is that you really can't enter 'pretty selfish' into any positive equation and come out with a good result, maybe meager, but that is about as far as it can go. Again, I'll give you some examples:
Pretty Selfish + Church = A "Christian"**
** A "Christian" here means someone who puts on a pretty image for people to see, but in reality they aren't being healed from the inside out, they don't care about the poor, or anyone outside of their current sphere of influence. They are in it for what they can get out of it: safety, 'fire-insurance', answers. They are commited as long as they feel that they are being benefited from the Church, which really isn't commitment at all.
So, as many of you would agree if you were in my situation, I don't want my marraige to be a disaster. This means that I need to remove a part of the above equation. Let us now look at what removing these would look like.
First we will take out Marriage.
Disaster - Marriage = Divorce
Not at all where I want this to go, but I know this is what happens everyday, which is a hard reality to face. The problem here is that I lose twice. I lose the love of my life, and I lose because I am still 'pretty selfish', which will only lead to more problems, not less, even if I do get a divorce.
Next lets try taking out Pretty Selfish and see what happens.
Disaster - Pretty Selfish = Death
Wait, that doesn't sound too nice either, there has to be something wrong. I have this disaster (which is made up of me being selfish and my marriage) and I take out my selfishness, I should end up with a happy marriage, or something like it.
The thing is this, to remove this selfish part of me, I have to die. I have to let go of myself and begin to embrace my wife, God, and this new me that in reality isn't new at all, it is the original design of me, the me who is hiding behind all the junk. The equation that leads to death isn't done if it ends in death. If you take my death (the end of this selfish me) and you add it to my marriage you will get ... well, I don't know for sure to tell you the truth, I am in the middle of the dying part right now. I don't know where this death is leading, I only have to follow it one day at a time.
But, maybe we shouldn't call it death. Maybe we should call it life. | 2 comments
For those of you who have watched my wife's video blogs a few posts ago, or for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I thought you would be interested in knowing that my wife has set up a video blog here. She is actually very good at what she does, especially since she just started a couple of weeks ago. She has already inspired another man to do some of his own video blogging here. Check it out and leave some wonderful comments.
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