Life & Faith

Yeah, I’m on hiatus for Lent, but this one was so powerful that I decided to break in and share it anyway. Sue me.

via Dear god, < Killing the Buddha.

Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, an impassioned UCC minister, potently shares his frustrations with God. The entire letter is long, but very worth reading. The bit that hit me most deeply is quoted below:

Dear god,

I have not written you in some time. I have been busy cleaning up your shit down here. I believe the last time I wrote you it was from New Orleans. Now, I write from a little further south—Haiti.

…

I know you like numbers because you dedicated an entire book to them in what is purported to be your word. So let me give you a few:

1.5 million homeless
30,000 died in Leogane
250,000 total dead
6,500 tent cities

Evidently you shared your version of the earthquake’s cause with your envoy, Pat Robertson. (By the way, a deal with the Devil for my freedom is a deal I am willing to make.) If the recent tone of my sermons and this letter have not made it clear, let me say in no uncertain terms—I am angry with you, god. If you did this, you did very, very wrong.

However, I will not give you the pleasure or satisfaction of me quitting. Haiti is not a test of my faith, or the faith of the people of Haiti, for that matter. Our faith is shaken but steady. We are rebuilding in the shit and filth, but you are hiding. Haiti is not a test of our faith but a test of your grace. Show yourself.

Sincerely,

Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, Senior Minister
Lemuel Haynes Congregational Church
South Jamiaca Queens, NY

via Dear god, < Killing the Buddha.

It’s easy for me to say this from my comfy chair here in Louisville, but in a very real way I think God just did show Herself – through Rev. Sekou’s letter.

RESPECT.

I’ve spent most of my life
letting my demons convince me
I don’t deserve it.

So I’ve seldom expected it.
Rarely asked for it.
Never demanded it.

That must change.
And my first demand is
that I demand respect from

MYSELF.

It’s like Briana took the thoughts I’ve been thinking right out of my head, massaged them with her own knack for wordplay, and then shared them with the world.

More Adventures in Snobbery via Blisscovery

Especially this part:

In Sarah’s latest series about online rockstar-dom, she wrote:

The point, after all, isn’t to change yourself so that people will like you. The point is to gauge how accurately you are voicing your truths.

Ahhh, yes. That’s where 16 year old me got things very wrong. I’m pretty sure I was all about changing myself to get people to like me.

The only difference is, I’m way past 16 years old and STILL, at this very moment, trying to navigate the difference between getting people to like me and trying to gauge how to accurately voice my truths.

Oh, and Fred Hicks is just adding two gallons of fuel to this whole thing in terms of me pondering how my online persona (which I’m trying to make authentic to my everyday person) walks the very same labyrinth.

Debra Dean Murphy comes across with a potent indictment of both Wall Stree culture and Western religious culture.

I especially love the part where she mentions the Christian church “bedding down” with Emperor Constantine.

Corporations and the Corpus Verum « Intersections: Thoughts on Religion, Culture, and Politics.

I suspect a lot of my Christian friends – and my pro-capitalist friends – will get a bit bothered by reading this – or maybe they’ll just blow it off and ignore it. We LOOOVE to whitewash over the simple fact that both Jesus and the early Church were  advocates of what many people today like to call “socialism” and “communism”.  As Debra points out, Western Christianity is fond of doing the interpretive dance to try to get passages like Acts 2:37-46 to mean anything but what they actually say.

February 2nd. Brigid’s Day.

Here’s a photo of my mantle with a candle lit for Imbolc and below that, a digital painting I made last night with Painter X, based on a 3d render I worked up a couple years ago.

In honor of my muse, my Lady, my creative spark, my Empress, my mother, my anima, my tornado, my warm breeze, my protector, my instigator … sun of my morning, moon of my night, fire in my darkness.

I light a candle and create … and Possibility inches ever more closely to being born.

You’re not the boss of me. Anymore. >> via Blisscovery

Call me corny. Whatevs. I like this sort of stuff lately, and I REALLY like this site that Leah from Creative Every Day recently shared.

Here’s to dealing with all those inner voices that constrain and demean our creativity; be they bosses, editors, or other mask-wearing archetypal jackasses who try to keep us from finding what works for us and/or try to make us conform to what works for “them”.

I’ve been a creative little boy over the past several days, and I’ve got some stuff queued up to share with you soon. But today, I want to take some pride in letting you know that the CED2010 project is being undertaken by Leah and the kids along with me. Leah has been either cross-stitching or scrapbooking every night (although she won’t let me take any pictures of her in the process) and the boys have been taking extra time to build, draw, and make stuff. Sometimes we sit in the kitchen and create together, other times I find them in their rooms working on interesting stuff. Yesterday I noticed Liam building with Lego Duplos in his room while Conor was busy creating a map of one of his many made-up cities. I thought it’d be cool to take some pics and share them here.

This is cool, eh?