Blurry Souls

Blur the lines of how another human being should be treated and you will find yourself losing what makes you human…

I commented in a group of people that a part of the fight against human trafficking goes hand in hand with the direction that major industry has gone in how it exploits people. In reply, someone said, “There is a fine line between exploitation and understanding that those are jobs being provided for those individuals and they otherwise would not have a job”. Well I guess that lets everyone off the hook that wants to address things such as human trafficking and worker’s exploitation. We can just go to the grocery store, pick our package of beef that someone chopped up for us in a dirty, dangerous and unhealthy environment where they get paid terribly and are seen as disposable parts of a piece of machinery that has to be kept up in order to bring in the largest profit for the company and the cheapest price for the consumer(all of us). Then we can go home cook the beef, sit down with our family and pray, thanking God that he provides for us and at such a great price! The provision we are so thankful for can be at the cost of someone else, but since they have a job they should be thankful. We can continue to make God look like a hypocrite when our selfish lifestyle causes suffering to increase at rapid rates. But, thank God for lower prices at Kroger and Thank God the people providing our food are willing to be treated the way that animals should be treated when they’re raised on a farm. I can’t call that God’s provision. Cultivate soil, plant crops and watch the beautiful process of nature God created and I will call it God’s provision, but the exploitation of human beings in order to fulfill my need for luxury and comfort, I call that losing our souls. God’s provision would be seeing a girl prevented from being lured into a trap that leads to being forced to work in a brothel or on a street corner. What if God’s provision is something we have to allow through a willingness to sacrifice everything for someone else to have a chance to feel alive?

Sew it up, literally

Here are some belts that will soon find new purpose being straps and handles for an assortment of bags as part of a new socially conscious business initiative that will support/sponsor former victims of sex slavery and human trafficking. See anything you like?

Perception

I often and reluctantly think back to when I was a teenager. I went through so many ethnic phases that I still feel like I’m not entirely just a white guy. I grew up largely in the suburbs and have since departed to the beautiful landscape of city living. it’s such an awesome experience to live in a city with the sights, the sounds, the smells(not always the best, but nevertheless an experience) and definitely the people. There are so many different kinds of people walking the streets. So many stories to be told. And intrinsically we all have some framework to how we perceive ourselves, whether it be societal class, style, who we are in community with, or whether we are a Mac or PC user. Those form the stories we tell and the memories we collect. Me, I was at the prime of my coolness when I was fourteen to around the age of seventeen or eighteen. This was my phase when I wore Boss jeans and FUBU t-shirts, and man, did I think I was hard. I thought by dressing a certain way, talking a certain way and listening to certain music made me appear to be something I wanted to be at that time. I was undoubtedly hardcore and no one could convince me otherwise.

If this was how I perceived myself for several years and I was so convinced that was who I was, then how is it possible that I perceive myself correctly now? I have matured, yes, but how correct are our present perceptions of ourselves? We are usually so sure of certain parts of our general framework, but for all we know it could evolve into another perception that we’ll look back on and shake our heads at in disbelief. As a person I have evolved and changed in many ways, my interaction with God has changed positively through the years and there are many aspects of my array of phases that have stayed with me as I have changed. Instead of locking into one perception of who it is that I am and want to be, I have been on a transformative journey with God and have progressed gradually. We, as humanity seek progression. We don’t like to be in one spot and perceived one way by others or even ourselves, so we move on, we change. It’s in an environment of monotony that we suffocate and lose passion for life. Why else do we meet so many people bored and miserable at their jobs or the trajectory of their life? I would venture to say that most of us are living this mundane, passionless lifestyle and we are dying to get out of it. We’re always questioning what we have to do to get out of the rut of monotony, to get from the place we’re in now to the place we want to be.
It will take risk. There will most certainly be uncertainty, but imagine how amazing it could be!

Jesus invites us into an adventure that finds its stability in trust, when all the variables of life are unknown, and finding peace in hope that there is more. That life really can start now and that we can progress and look back over every phase and admire the beautiful portrait that has been painted with brush strokes from a truly creative, vivid and vibrant artisan. Search deep, ask the questions necessary to find what your soul is craving

Pushing a cart

Every once and a while you witness something that effects you more by seeing than by being seen in that moment. If you live in a city, then you have most definitely seen someone that is homeless pushing a shopping cart on the sidewalk. Everything they own is literally in their cart, a thought most of us can barely grasp as realistic, think about it. Everything that he would call his own fits in a two foot by four foot metal basket. We use the same basket to buy food, we carry it to our car, that depending on the size, could be filled up multiple times with a basket. Then we drive it to our house or apartment that can fit so much more, we have so much space and so many objects in that space, but the homeless guy I saw yesterday had a basket that held his entire life. It was his bedroom, kitchen, living room, garage, car and backpack. As I was driving by, I noticed his cart had fallen over and his possessions we’re everywhere, and a police officer had pulled over to help him pick up his belongings. This effected me profoundly. If we were to be honest we would say we regard the things in his basket as trash, but what the officer displayed was that this man who is looked down on by most of society matters, his shopping cart matters and what we regard as useless is actually someones home. Isn’t this what Jesus did? Coming to each of us in the emptiness of our souls, helping us pick up what little we had inside of us even if it didn’t mean that much to anyone else. He bent down to put back together the fragments that make up who we are as humans, broken and craving wholeness.

My view on a man pushing a shopping cart is forever changed. I now see my brokenness and I see, not someones junk, but their home. Every person matters, you matter, we all matter

What’s your answer?

I think it’s safe to say that we have all heard the ancient proverb, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger”. Why do we parallel the word gentle with weakness? A gentle answer, in essence, does more than get us out of a sticky situation, and it’s so much more than an act of self-preservation. A gentle response in a conflict can actually be an act of service to another human being, by not forcing your opinion or your emotion into a conflict you choose to take away the fuel, so to speak, from the fire. We can label this “taking the high road”, or we can take a road that gracefully and gently travels among people we would never experience by staying on our high road.

We, as fellow travelers can instill dignity and respect in the lives of those all around us by seizing opportunities to respond gently, sensitively and with grace

Weight part 1

She stood there as an example for an illustration demonstrating the plight of people scattered all throughout our society. The speaker stood next to her with a stack of ten pound weights on the desk. She began putting weight upon weight while naming things like an absent father, drug addicted parents, child of a single mother, child abuse, neglect, lack of education, fear, pregnant, alone, and working two jobs to stay afloat just enough to eat and keep the electricity on in her tiny efficiency apartment. With all the weights literally hanging on her, the speaker asked if she could walk. The answer? No, she couldn’t, she couldn’t budge and it was painful. This was the exercise in a local Social Services office demonstrating the weight that any given person could be carrying around, highlighting the invisible nature of such weight. The next part of the exercise is what’s so beautiful, the speaker asked for a volunteer to personify ‘hope’ by coming up and pulling her forward. Ann stood up, thinking of Jesus, his life and hope. Ann walked up to her, pulled her forward and started helping her remove the weights to lighten the pain she was experiencing.

We live in a society of external and internal loneliness and isolation. So many are writhing in pain from things unseen. We expect so much from our neighbor without knowing what’s going on deep in their soul. The exercise in the Social Services office opens our eyes that we have no idea the pain and weight bearing down on every person we see on the street, in the myriad of cars driving back and forth, the communities in poverty that we put out of our mind in an attempt to forget that they exist. But its there. But in the midst of it there is also something there illuminating hope in the darkness of suffering..

Jesus offers peace to those in conflict. Comfort to those in pain. A home to those without one. And he invites us all to join this family of broken people. This community that facilitates love and freedom. This magnificent and beautiful expression of God’s love and grace.

I hope the life Jesus lived gives you courage to have compassion on humanity and even yourselves

Today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, what a beautiful day

Tale of Regret

Tale of Regret
By: Joshua Bailey

The Busyness of humanity doth persist
though turmoil steers its course
While we labor for singular bliss
evil destroys with its force

Though movements gain their speed
and many play that field
Our wounds will cease to bleed
as our heart stops. Quietly. Still.

With every victory comes two more losses
as unseen traps lurk ’round the corner
Bowing prayerfully we bear the crosses
hardly aware of the weight on our shoulder

Never prepared to carry this burden
We push and shove the weight on some other
Unsuspecting, we crush with this burden
the one’s that should be our brother

And in the name of what?
As if we are anything but wrong
doorkeeper to the door we slam shut
But all is well! we’ll sing the tune we’ve always sung

A tune with a word such as peace,
at least to the ones who with us agree
Talks of celebration and unending feasts
washing in the gutter the He and She

The He and She whom hath no name
Who walk with a soul tormented
Who hears them? Who hears their claim?
The blood soaks our hands, toxic and fermented

Aged, it used to leak
but now it pours!
You and me have the strength to lift these who are weak
but over and over our luxury lures,

Lures us back until old and frail
as we achingly regret our inaction
Telling to many our tale
in hopes of a better generation

“In a sense the poverty of the poor in America is more frustrating than the poverty of Africa and Asia. The misery of the poor in Africa and Asia is shared misery, a fact of life for the vast majority; they are all poor together as a result of years of exploitation and underdevelopment. In sad contrast, the poor in America know that they live in the richest nation in the world, and that even though they are perishing on a lonely island of poverty they are surrounded by a vast ocean of material prosperity. Glistening towers of glass and steel easily seen from their slum dwellings spring up almost overnight. Jet liners speed over their ghettoes at 600 miles an hour; satellites streak through outer space and reveal details of the moon.” An excerpt from Martin Luther King’s Nobel lecture in 1964

The power and conviction behind his words shake me to the core of my humanity, challenging me in every sense of my perception on society and culture. He voiced what many would be afraid to voice even today and the depth of his words will echo in the halls of honored and respected men and women for many years to come..

I hope on this day you will not just remember the man, but what he stood for and fought for
Here’s a link to his entire Nobel lecture

Curiosity weans from disappointment
This is not what I thought it would be
Corruptive, horribly destructive and so suddenly

There was a view so pure

But now it takes courage to look at myself, to look at all of us in the mirror
so distorted and untrue I have only the faintest desire to look again
And this ambivalent attraction to the abnormal seems so apparent
But a war waging intrinsically sickens the eye of the mind just slightly peeking in
Hence the bitter taste in my mouth as I taste sensibly what I have become
I am to myself, to all of us an object of ambivalence, of disgust and repulsion

“Extreme” They say,
I reply, “On the contrary, I find it falls too short. It doesn’t grasp the depravity of my condition”
And this is where I am aware and scared of what I have become.

Ugly, pitifully bowing to an idol all my own
I am a king on a throne with my soul as my only citizen
My quickened descending crash into the barren realization that I am alone in a self-righteous persona leads me to beg the question,
“What have I become?”

The issues in the world are not relative to our perception. They speak for themselves and are often ignored. The concept of a humanitarian is not determining the issues..it is paying attention to what’s right in front of us and refusing to believe that this is the way things are going to be. The issues all around us are there whether we like to acknowledge it or not. We are responsible. We are created to refuse settlement in oppression and pain not to walk around with intentional blindness to it. God’s love is not conditional on what we do, but he would sure love to see all the others he loves not suffer the way they do.

We need willingness to become involved in what issues obviously already exist. Involvement actually takes sacrifice(A word we’ve come to know, but rarely portray). We have so long alienated others that are different than us that now it is nearly impossible for us to really get anything done for those that are suffering everywhere. More organizations are created every day. Every day there is a meeting of some new effort or initiative from any given group of people. These people have their spheres of influence..Often they are like minded people that join up with a beautiful passion because it is noble to do good in the world. But every day we drift further and further away from humanity, from each other, from our neighbor, from anyone that differs in opinion. The further we drift, the larger oppression grows and the greater the momentum of poverty skyrockets. With more individualistically selfish organizations created the value of humanity shifts downward and the source of suffering is clarified to reveal us as the problem. Obviously individuality is not a negative characteristic. Actually I would venture to say a whole other issue is those who cut out their individuality all together. We can celebrate what makes us all so different and out of this individuality comes creative aspects of ourselves that few have ever actually explored within their own heart, soul and imagination. But our human individuality can turn viciously into a force of hate and self promotion. Every ego maniacal somebody most likely did not start out that way..but if we look at history then we’ll see civilizations rise and fall, prominent men and women rise and fall, common men and women rise and fall revealing that selfishness is the result of individuality gone wrong, put above the life and value of everyone else. Considering our own success as more important than the food a poor child needs is scary…and when our success and name becomes more of a priority than the very heartbeat of another human being then we have crossed a line into a sad depravation of what it means to truly live as one of the billions of humans on this earth..

Selfish and spiteful we can tear apart what is pure and true

Change starts with me.. the individual

Feel free to question me