It seems that most non-voting twenty-somethings fall into three categories (Politically that is): those that are disgusted with political zealots, those who don't care because their vote "doesn't count anyway," and the third (the newest group) think that the results do not effect them.
"Elections are going to happen whether or not we vote. And the people who are elected will make decisions on issues large and small. The same is true for the various referenda and regulations put forward by our states and municipalities. The vast majority of these decisions won’t affect the vast majority of us directly. But each affects somebody, and there’s the rub:
Whether you’re personally motivated by a given issue or candidate, do you to learn what’s at stake in your community’s life, and then pull the lever?
That’s why it’s important to remember that elections are about
people—and don’t let anyone get away with saying it doesn’t matter who wins. That’s always a cop-out. It may be that no candidate feels completely satisfying to vote for, but your satisfaction isn’t the point of voting.
The point is making an informed decision about the person you think will best serve your neighbors."
Monday, November 1, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Work is work. Enjoy it.
What is it like to be famous...
What is it like to have people want to eat everything you eat...
So many times, I am caught up in these conversations trashing superstar athletes or musicians, finding myself secretly balancing between envy and disgust.
Why do I want what they have, yet, say I don't?
I am usually on the side of trashing athletes for not taking their jobs seriously enough and not working for their pay. Just living as over-sized kids still playing games with their professional and personal lives.
Me, of all people, criticizing someones work ethic...
Today I read an article interviewing Kobe.
(Kobe Bryant for those born yesterday.)
The interviewer was trying to get a rise out of Kobe inciting him with remarks Michael Jordan recently said. It went something like this...
Reporter: Are you upset that Michael Jordan said you were only in the top 10 best to play in the NBA?
Now after this question I was instantly turned off because I have been so burnt out on questions similar invoking a debate on who is the greatest basketball player of all time. That conversation always results in a heated debate, then ends with the conversation reveling in top plays from both. This interview was different, much to the reporters chagrin...
Kobe:“There have been a lot of great guards to play the game. For me to sit here and say, ‘He should have said top five,’ that’s disrespectful to the other guards that I’ve watched.”
He goes on in the interview to disarm the reporter and talk about how he hopes to be remembered as an athlete who did more with less. To be remembered as an athlete who wasn't supposed to be The Greatest, but turned into a great one.
This shook me awake from my cultural bias' and made me see him more as a person than an athlete. A person trying to live a humble life.
This is Kobe Bryant, the man millions envy, taking his job, well, like a job.
What is it like to have people want to eat everything you eat...
So many times, I am caught up in these conversations trashing superstar athletes or musicians, finding myself secretly balancing between envy and disgust.
Why do I want what they have, yet, say I don't?
I am usually on the side of trashing athletes for not taking their jobs seriously enough and not working for their pay. Just living as over-sized kids still playing games with their professional and personal lives.
Me, of all people, criticizing someones work ethic...
Today I read an article interviewing Kobe.
(Kobe Bryant for those born yesterday.)
The interviewer was trying to get a rise out of Kobe inciting him with remarks Michael Jordan recently said. It went something like this...
Reporter: Are you upset that Michael Jordan said you were only in the top 10 best to play in the NBA?
Now after this question I was instantly turned off because I have been so burnt out on questions similar invoking a debate on who is the greatest basketball player of all time. That conversation always results in a heated debate, then ends with the conversation reveling in top plays from both. This interview was different, much to the reporters chagrin...
Kobe:“There have been a lot of great guards to play the game. For me to sit here and say, ‘He should have said top five,’ that’s disrespectful to the other guards that I’ve watched.”
He goes on in the interview to disarm the reporter and talk about how he hopes to be remembered as an athlete who did more with less. To be remembered as an athlete who wasn't supposed to be The Greatest, but turned into a great one.
This shook me awake from my cultural bias' and made me see him more as a person than an athlete. A person trying to live a humble life.
This is Kobe Bryant, the man millions envy, taking his job, well, like a job.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
whoa...
So this past month has been crazy. I have done a lot of things I probably shouldn't have. It was fun.
But, I write this now as a wake-up. Damn.
I find myself constantly trying to look through things. Constantly trying to see through the obvious and look at hidden meanings or intentions. I love that about myself. I loved that about myself.
Sometimes I forget what a formidable opponent complacency can be. I forget and then the cycle begins.
So here's to me waking up. Here's to me shaking up. Here's to me moving. Always moving.
Broken world
I’m not deceived
The hopelessness I once believed
Tells a story of nightmares in dreams
Between cribs and gravesides
There are beautiful things
But, I write this now as a wake-up. Damn.
I find myself constantly trying to look through things. Constantly trying to see through the obvious and look at hidden meanings or intentions. I love that about myself. I loved that about myself.
Sometimes I forget what a formidable opponent complacency can be. I forget and then the cycle begins.
So here's to me waking up. Here's to me shaking up. Here's to me moving. Always moving.
Broken world
I’m not deceived
The hopelessness I once believed
Tells a story of nightmares in dreams
Between cribs and gravesides
There are beautiful things
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Here we go...
It seems I am at this place in my life where I know where I am going, (I think) I know how to get there, just can't seem to get there fast enough. I have found that no matter how much I try to tell myself to let go of the social boundaries and timelines that are imposed upon me daily, I forget to fight and let them consume me.
It is ok to not have graduated yet. It is ok to work a labor intensive job. I am Happy. It is ok to be single. All of these things mold and push us to pretending to be someone less than who we are. An abbreviated version of ourselves that is easier for everyone to swallow because we are all pretending to follow and live by the same rules. It is bullshit. More than being bullshit, it is poison. It has so many people unhappy. So many people compromising their convictions. We have to stop making people who we want them to be, and we have to stop being who people want us to be.
I have found that this happens a lot in our faith as well. We all allow our faith to be attuned to someone else's walk. I take a lot of heart in an analogy shown to me many years ago when reading Nouwen.
He tells a story of a piano tuner who tunes every piano he tunes to a precise tuning fork. Therefore minimizing the amount of human error involved. He then begs the question, what if one was to tune one piano and then tune every according piano to the previous. If one was to try and play one hundred of those piano's there is no way they would sound in one accord. In order to tune a piano precisely and accurately you must tune them all to the original source, such as the tuning fork.
This analogy applies all aspects of my life.I can take elements from Buddhism or other religions and see the similarities and differences in those, and learn from those, but at the end of the day, I don’t care as much about man’s interpretation of religion. What I care about is what God tells me directly.
My hope is this. That we do not put our faith in people. that we do not put our faith in who we are supposed to be. But that we put our faith in god and can learn to be ourselves...
It is ok to not have graduated yet. It is ok to work a labor intensive job. I am Happy. It is ok to be single. All of these things mold and push us to pretending to be someone less than who we are. An abbreviated version of ourselves that is easier for everyone to swallow because we are all pretending to follow and live by the same rules. It is bullshit. More than being bullshit, it is poison. It has so many people unhappy. So many people compromising their convictions. We have to stop making people who we want them to be, and we have to stop being who people want us to be.
I have found that this happens a lot in our faith as well. We all allow our faith to be attuned to someone else's walk. I take a lot of heart in an analogy shown to me many years ago when reading Nouwen.
He tells a story of a piano tuner who tunes every piano he tunes to a precise tuning fork. Therefore minimizing the amount of human error involved. He then begs the question, what if one was to tune one piano and then tune every according piano to the previous. If one was to try and play one hundred of those piano's there is no way they would sound in one accord. In order to tune a piano precisely and accurately you must tune them all to the original source, such as the tuning fork.
This analogy applies all aspects of my life.I can take elements from Buddhism or other religions and see the similarities and differences in those, and learn from those, but at the end of the day, I don’t care as much about man’s interpretation of religion. What I care about is what God tells me directly.
My hope is this. That we do not put our faith in people. that we do not put our faith in who we are supposed to be. But that we put our faith in god and can learn to be ourselves...
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Summer...
(cliche' time)
It has been a long time since I wrote...
A Long time...
The Problem is where do I write in my journal and where do I blog...
This is me teetering on a double standard. I either do not write enough here, or am I to become one of those people who put their entire lives on here and become loathed....?
I will find the happy medium...
Its Summer Time
actually, it's almost over
this heat is defeating.
this air is choking.
this should feel good.
its beginning to feel like home.
feeling safe never felt so scary...
either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you
when i was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb,unsophisticated.
I had bad blood,a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.
I was hard as granite,I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.
I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted,jailed,in and
out of fights,in and aout
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at, i had no male
friends,
I changed jobs and
cities,I hated holidays,
babies,history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbageman,
English accents,Spain,
France,Italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angered me,
opera sickened me,
charlie Chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.
peace and happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
and
idled
mind.
but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't different
from the
others, I was the same,
they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
grievances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.
cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less i needed
the better i
felt.
maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.
I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenuous magic parts
open for the
asking.
I re formulated
I don't know when,
date,time,all
that
but the change
occurred.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
i no longer had to
prove that i was a
man,
I didn't have to prove
anything.
I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.
I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.
I've missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, "i am going
to have to let you go"
"it's all right" i tell
him.
He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children.
expenses, most probably
a girlfriend.
I am sorry for him
he is caught.
I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporarily,
anyhow.
(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned)
I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.
I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels,breasts,
singing,the
works.
(don't get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of
itself-
this is a shield and a
sickness.)
The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I didn't fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
i luxuriated in them,
I bade them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw,almost
handsome,yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares,lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a baby's
butt...
I am
let it enfold me...
It has been a long time since I wrote...
A Long time...
The Problem is where do I write in my journal and where do I blog...
This is me teetering on a double standard. I either do not write enough here, or am I to become one of those people who put their entire lives on here and become loathed....?
I will find the happy medium...
Its Summer Time
actually, it's almost over
this heat is defeating.
this air is choking.
this should feel good.
its beginning to feel like home.
feeling safe never felt so scary...
either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you
when i was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb,unsophisticated.
I had bad blood,a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.
I was hard as granite,I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.
I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted,jailed,in and
out of fights,in and aout
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at, i had no male
friends,
I changed jobs and
cities,I hated holidays,
babies,history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbageman,
English accents,Spain,
France,Italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angered me,
opera sickened me,
charlie Chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.
peace and happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
and
idled
mind.
but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't different
from the
others, I was the same,
they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
grievances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.
cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less i needed
the better i
felt.
maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.
I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenuous magic parts
open for the
asking.
I re formulated
I don't know when,
date,time,all
that
but the change
occurred.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
i no longer had to
prove that i was a
man,
I didn't have to prove
anything.
I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.
I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.
I've missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, "i am going
to have to let you go"
"it's all right" i tell
him.
He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children.
expenses, most probably
a girlfriend.
I am sorry for him
he is caught.
I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporarily,
anyhow.
(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned)
I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.
I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels,breasts,
singing,the
works.
(don't get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of
itself-
this is a shield and a
sickness.)
The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I didn't fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
i luxuriated in them,
I bade them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw,almost
handsome,yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares,lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a baby's
butt...
I am
let it enfold me...
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Everything has a beginning
And so it begins...
Last night I "Skyped" India...Symbolic of what is to come I hope.
This "blog" that I am writing is not going to be a place for me to satisfy my urge for people to hear me but a place to share with people who are preparing themselves for something...
In this case it is for preparing myself for the mission field.
I have been praying for god to break my heart for the oppressed and I can already feel it happening. it is amazing the things god has shown me that I DONT need. This is a pretty vague beginning to a blog, but this is what I feel right now.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei
that is a Latin phrase that says...
What the people say, God says.
this broke my heart today because I realize how much truth is in this simple phrase. we allow a majority to speak for so many.
often times we get so angry that a few Christians can mis-represent the god "we" follow and society/culture begins to view "us" as the same lost Christians yelling hate through their actions.
I think this is why it is so important to show tolerance and compassion towards all view points and truths.
By the simple fact that we are raised in a culture where we are NOT persecuted for our beliefs, we have to understand that the Great Commission is way bigger than our worldview. By world view I am referring to the little glimpse of the rest of the world that we get in the United States.
The freedom we are so blessed to have(key word being, Blessed), is wasted if we are not using our freedom to bless others. this means we must overcome the Latin phrase by "living" a life of reflecting our blessings onto other people.
I am not by any means saying we should all leave and move to third-world countries. I am saying god gives us the freedom to discover his truths, god gives us the freedom to discover rights and wrongs, and by promoting a culture that doesn't cultivate discovery of truths we are blaspheming god. In the beginning, told adam not to eat of the tree of life. What we so easily forget was that Adam and Eve still had the choice to eat of the tree. Free-will is at the center of gods character because free-will is at the center of love. if we want to love a lost world, we must allow the world to make a choice. we must not come at the world with ultimatums and deals. we must, as paul says many times, come at the world with one truth. Christ Died, Christ rose.
These numbers you are about to read are not put here for guilt, guilt does not "do" anything. Guilt does not motivate with the heart, guilt does not motivate with love. these statistics are here so we can hear them and understand how far this world really is and to remind us of our blessed state. These numbers we must learn to incorporate into our lives and our love.
Over 1.5 BILLION people in the world live on less that one dollar a day.
An additional 2.5 BILLIONS people in the world live on less than two dollars a day.
This means that over half the world lives on less than 2 dollars a day.
Key word in these statistics is live.
the average american teenager consumes, not LIVES, on 150 dollars a week.
The average american household spends more on trashbags in a year than one-third of the world spends on GOODS!
it is easy to say that the cost of living is less or that its about choices, and my response to you would be...
You(and I) sound alot like the people on mount sinai when moses called the people to love the orphan, love the refugee, love the widow.
Also, We would sound alot like the people (Gentiles and Jews) when jesus instructs them to take care of the lost, less fortunate and oppressed.
So many times we point fingers to "those" people, or say what about them, or it is their fault...
but that is not how or why jesus came. the first and greatest commandment is LOVE. That is loving god and molding your heart to his(his heart breaks for the oppressed, that is why jesus was in Jerusalem. Jews were being oppressed by a roman government/empire) and to love people. if we take that verse an stop trying to justif things to it, we can see what we are called to do in the "Great Commision."
I know I ramble but I pray you could follow me and see where my heart and hopefully may others' are headed.
With Hope and Love,
Tyler
Last night I "Skyped" India...Symbolic of what is to come I hope.
This "blog" that I am writing is not going to be a place for me to satisfy my urge for people to hear me but a place to share with people who are preparing themselves for something...
In this case it is for preparing myself for the mission field.
I have been praying for god to break my heart for the oppressed and I can already feel it happening. it is amazing the things god has shown me that I DONT need. This is a pretty vague beginning to a blog, but this is what I feel right now.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei
that is a Latin phrase that says...
What the people say, God says.
this broke my heart today because I realize how much truth is in this simple phrase. we allow a majority to speak for so many.
often times we get so angry that a few Christians can mis-represent the god "we" follow and society/culture begins to view "us" as the same lost Christians yelling hate through their actions.
I think this is why it is so important to show tolerance and compassion towards all view points and truths.
By the simple fact that we are raised in a culture where we are NOT persecuted for our beliefs, we have to understand that the Great Commission is way bigger than our worldview. By world view I am referring to the little glimpse of the rest of the world that we get in the United States.
The freedom we are so blessed to have(key word being, Blessed), is wasted if we are not using our freedom to bless others. this means we must overcome the Latin phrase by "living" a life of reflecting our blessings onto other people.
I am not by any means saying we should all leave and move to third-world countries. I am saying god gives us the freedom to discover his truths, god gives us the freedom to discover rights and wrongs, and by promoting a culture that doesn't cultivate discovery of truths we are blaspheming god. In the beginning, told adam not to eat of the tree of life. What we so easily forget was that Adam and Eve still had the choice to eat of the tree. Free-will is at the center of gods character because free-will is at the center of love. if we want to love a lost world, we must allow the world to make a choice. we must not come at the world with ultimatums and deals. we must, as paul says many times, come at the world with one truth. Christ Died, Christ rose.
These numbers you are about to read are not put here for guilt, guilt does not "do" anything. Guilt does not motivate with the heart, guilt does not motivate with love. these statistics are here so we can hear them and understand how far this world really is and to remind us of our blessed state. These numbers we must learn to incorporate into our lives and our love.
Over 1.5 BILLION people in the world live on less that one dollar a day.
An additional 2.5 BILLIONS people in the world live on less than two dollars a day.
This means that over half the world lives on less than 2 dollars a day.
Key word in these statistics is live.
the average american teenager consumes, not LIVES, on 150 dollars a week.
The average american household spends more on trashbags in a year than one-third of the world spends on GOODS!
it is easy to say that the cost of living is less or that its about choices, and my response to you would be...
You(and I) sound alot like the people on mount sinai when moses called the people to love the orphan, love the refugee, love the widow.
Also, We would sound alot like the people (Gentiles and Jews) when jesus instructs them to take care of the lost, less fortunate and oppressed.
So many times we point fingers to "those" people, or say what about them, or it is their fault...
but that is not how or why jesus came. the first and greatest commandment is LOVE. That is loving god and molding your heart to his(his heart breaks for the oppressed, that is why jesus was in Jerusalem. Jews were being oppressed by a roman government/empire) and to love people. if we take that verse an stop trying to justif things to it, we can see what we are called to do in the "Great Commision."
I know I ramble but I pray you could follow me and see where my heart and hopefully may others' are headed.
With Hope and Love,
Tyler
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