Beginning of August

I haven't sung at Mass since the last Sunday of June.  The last time I stepped into my church was when Adam was visiting for July 4th weekend.  What I love about my church is it's ability to completely engage the community into its homilies.  July 4th weekend was hard, we went to see the fireworks and walked all the way home from Boston.  Then we got up at 8 to go to 10AM mass.  We were not the only ones half awake.  But the priest went on a beautiful homily that brought us all together, a bit like MMA almost.  He said something along the lines of...

"Jesus didn't 'shed a tear', he looked down on his people and wept.  He sat down, and cried.  Cried to his father, cried for himself, his people.  He grieved for them.  Could you imagine standing there, with Jesus our savior and life, grieving for his people?  Sitting down, and weeping for the tasks to come?  We are told to remind ourselves, 'What would Jesus do?'  I want you to take a moment with Jesus, weeping beside you, and ask yourself, 'What would I do for Jesus?"

In the crowd you could hear sniffles, it was terribly moving.  But it was very intimate and reassuring that maybe sometimes, we must be the miracle.

Which brings me to today.  I went to Mass for the first time this month to sing.  It was great pieces, many of which reminded me of MMA to be honest.  I wore my MMA beads and everything.  One year ago from today, I was sitting with my MMA family singing a Japanese hymn that marked the end of my MMA era.  So that made it even harder.

This homily today, was given by a woman from our community.  I've seen her speak before, and she is just such an inspiration for us, and is a true blessing to have her here.  We celebrated the bread of life, and what that really means.  She mentioned how we find ourselves blaming God, like the Israelites.  They asked for water, and God gave them water, and then they forgot because they were so caught up in what they don't have then what they do.  They forgot the miracles.  They had to wait 40 years to find their homeland, I'm sure after 2 years being told "have faith" works a toll on the soul.  But she ended it with...

"May we try to believe in our faith.  May we try to believe in the Spirit.  May we try and believe in the Miracles."

Count the blessings.  Make the miracles the milestones in your life, not all the times where you cried out to the heavens.  Don't click your heels three times and give up, don't give your miracles a time limit.  But believe that if you keep clicking those heels, it will eventually come.

Look forward to the sunrise.

(Real) Wheel Questions

http://www.wheelquestions.org/


If you have not heard about wheel questions yet, well here it is. Johnny started this project a little while back because he wanted to change up his life. This is one of these most inspiring things for me especially, because I have always been the go to girl. Now he has people he has never met, trusting in him that he knows the answers.

Trust. Wow. I don't even have that with all my friends.

I went on the website to see if he answered my questions yet (which he hasn't, grumble grumble) and you see pages upon pages of questions. ALL answered by him. And a noticed a trend in questions.

Love. Everyone is so concerned whether they are enough, or that their partner is enough, or that it will last. People have a need to know whether its a waste of time or not. But seriously? That can be said for anything we do. We are so scared by heartbreak that we need a stranger to give us that extra nudge.

I'm not saying its a bad thing. Maybe we need the extra nudge, of someone we can convince knows us better then our own friends. Sort of the same reason why we have religions, and gods/goddesses to turn to. We need to believe that we are not alone. That there is at least one person out there in this universe, who can meet us eye to eye, and say yes, I see your soul. We all need that stranger in our lives. And sometimes, we need to be that stranger too. A friends mother once told me, "Never forget you are being watched. Sometimes you are the only God people will encounter on this Earth."

Thank you Johnny!

Wheel Questioner: What is the purpose of Life?
Johnny: You Get to choose! How do you want to live? How do you want to change the world?

Why so much hate?

http://www.dailynewstribune.com/state/x716057381/Controversial-Westboro-Baptist-Church-plans-Mass-protests.  This, is gonna happen at my school.

I don't understand.  Why would a church of God, of trying to love like Jesus, be so full of hate?  God made all of us.  You are hating God's creations too.  I took the liberty to look up the text from Romans, Chapter One.  It is what's used as reference in the Bible as to why "God hates fags."

"Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.  They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator- who is forever praised. Amen.  Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.  Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.  Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the dull penalty for their perversion."  (Romans 1: 24-27)

Lines 24 and 25 are centering at how a group of people forgot God.  Forgot to praise him, and love him as the Creator, and took life for granted.  Forgetting that in exchange for their gifts, they must reproduce.  God allowed them to follow their "evil" selves, by following their lusts.  That.  Is the sin.  The sin with being Gay is that it is "only lust."  This is the problem.  What if you were madly in love with someone of the same sex?   Personally, that is not a sin, because you are taking a hold of the love granted to us by God.  The Bible always uses extreme circumstances to make a point.  Always, in order to prove a moral.  In order to provide a true example of lust and forgetfulness of mankind when dealing with reproduction, homosexuality proved to be the best example.

Who is to say you cannot praise God and be in love with someone who is of the same sex?  Again.  Forgetting to praise God for everything is the number one sin.

"Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."  (Romans 1:32)

This is by no means a relation to homosexuality.  This is in relation to rejecting God.  You can reject God by taking him/her/it for granted, and for following only after lust.  This group of people that are homosexual, in the Bible, were considered every disgusting thing imaginable, for disregarding God.  This does not make them evil, vicious, or cruel.  This is a group of people whom are homosexual to prove a point: life isn't about lust, its about love.  Homosexuality, does not change that.