To all boys who may or may not be reading this:
if you say you're gonna call, you best call.
if you think you can drop in and out of someone else's life, you best get some good apologies to precede whatever it is that is so important.
if you start reminiscing, keep it to yourself.
if you want to start recommunicating, do something a little less public than a facebook wall
if you have a girlfriend, stay the hell away from me and all other exes. it just makes life easier for all involved.
if you're gonna sign your name at the end of a note, don't even think the word love.

thanks buddy.
you're always there for me....

I'm in a disconnect right now that I used to name and see in others and despise.
I love who God is. I love listening to people praise him. I love reading Isaiah. Psalms. the Gospels. Over and over again I page through them. And I take comfort that that is who God proclaims Herself to be. (Iveth has started doing that in our Bible Studies. I think its interesting how much that throws me off, so I'm doing it more, as an exploration of a pattern, to figure out what I think)
And yet. The whole personal relationship thing? The whole Spirit thing? it feels so far away.
So far.
And so I wonder what I do believe. and I wonder what the point is in appreciation.
One side of that is "inactive faith". But another way of saying it is "resting in who God says He is". Is that self-imposed distance? Or is that what faith is supposed to look like?

I dunno.
I cry out. I cry to him. And there are many beautiful people in my life who pull me forward and are pulled by He who has called them. And He has called me too. Its just been so long since I've heard his voice. So long since I've felt Him around me. This summer I saw Him move. I saw Her in my GAYG girls. I see the beauty in Her children. I see Her grace in others.

and of course my question is: what do I do?
and I'm pretty sure that actions aren't supposed to dictate it. But they sort of are?
"its about Be-ing, not Do-ing"
so is it out of control?
or doing things that make you more open to Be-ing.
or doing things that help you not focus on do-ing the right things or always do-ing more.

i want to walk in those rhythms of grace that he promises. the ones where the burden is light

Matthew 11:28-30 (The Message)

The Message (MSG)

28-30"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."

Life is heavy for me now.
And it snowed this morning at Whitworth
And I still want to be anywhere but here.
And something happened last night with Paulo but I'm not even sure what he was saying under what he was saying. so we'll see. dunno. dunno. healthy? depends. good that its not serious from the start. good to start small light. could be good for both to work on be-ing okay without ______. you know? or could be disasterous like josh.
but i don't even know what happened really. i'm really out of it these days..... no good.

So I don't know if the hypothetical audience of this blog has picked up on this yet, but I struggle through a lot of race/culture paradigms. pretty consistently at Whitworth.
I wonder if part of the problem is that I don't like people that are different than me in their opinions. I don't know if I rebel against the feeling that they think I agree with them, or if I truly don't understand how they think that way. I think that makes me elitist. smile.
I don't see the appeal in Palin. Does that make me one sided? Have I just attached myself to Obama, and idolize him to the point of not seeing wrongs in him, and demonizing his opponent?
She didn't point out a single difference between mccain and bush's policy? she enumerated multiple times word-for-word portions of Bush policies. are you kidding me? really?
aand, apparently, she/her administration in alaska were responsible for killing that bill diverting funds from Sudan that she now really wants to pass. no source on that. just angry new york times readers.
i think bidens a smart smart man. it will be interesting (oh please please jesus) to see if he and obama do butt heads due to differing opinions like my new moody friends were talking about today. also. palin didn't answer the question about whether or not she would follow through on mccain's policies

And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people

Pretty sure in a debate you're supposed to listen to the moderator, and generally even answer her/his answers.

Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always the solution. In fact, too often you're the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper

and saying that holding to the Republican party line of deregulation and smaller government is not patriotism. I would hope that half the country doesn't hate America, or isn't patriotic, they just choose to affiliate with the Democratic party. you can't say that sarah palin, you can't say that.

PALIN: Yes. Well, as the nation's only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it's real.

I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.

As governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change sub-cabinet to start dealing with the impacts. We've got to reduce emissions. John McCain is right there with an "all of the above" approach to deal with climate change impacts.

We've got to become energy independent for that reason. Also as we rely more and more on other countries that don't care as much about the climate as we do, we're allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for.

Although China surpassed US for the first time this year in gross carbon pollution, our per capita rate is still 8.1 tons per year, around 4 times that of the Chinese per capita usage. also, India's is still at like 1.4 (out of a Foreign Affairs article, Setp/Oct 2008). Lastly, if we're pumping crude oil out of alaska, its still gonna produce the same carbon as oil from those terrorists who hate American freedom.

last palin frustration from the debate: she didn't seem to hear biden any of the multiple times that he stated explicitly that John Mccain voted the same as Obama on the funding for Iraq.

...
yeah
...

Indeed, the US incarceration rate has become the highest of any country in the world. In California alone, there are more people imprisoned than in any other country in the world except China.
The number of adults incarcerated in federal or state prisons or local jails in the United States skyrocketed during this period, quadrupling from just over 500,000 in 1980 to 2.2 million in 2005, according to the Department of Justice. Two-thirds of those are in federal or state prisons and one-third in local jails; the vast majority are young men between 18 and 39. An estimated 80 percent of them either violated drug or alcohol laws, were high at the time they committed their crimes, stole property to buy drugs, or had a history of drug and alcohol abuse and addiction — or some combination of those characteristics. Adding those on parole or probation to the incarcerated population, nearly 7 million adults are currently under correctional supervision, 3.2 percent of all US adults 18 or older.

In addressing the common idea that immigration brings crime:

The total incarceration rate for the native born is more than one percentage point higher in California than in the rest of the country (4.5 percent to 3.4 percent). In contrast, the incarceration rate for the foreign born in California was less than half the foreign-born rate in the rest of the country (0.4 percent to 1.0 percent).

So really, its the disenchanted second generation that you have to look out for....

http://www.migrationinformation.org/USFocus/display.cfm?ID=403