What I would say to the world

Running, sprinting, moving. If I could speak with the world, it would go like this:

ME:  "STOP! Please, slow down. Does anyone know where we are going? Why are we running and rushing and moving so fast? Why is it that we keep needing and keep getting, but then still need to get more? I SAW the answer back there, so why did we keep running?”

(I think you know our reply)

WORLD: “Progress. Have you never heard of progress boy? You must know nothing of the world, because it needs to be BETTER. That’s why YOU kept running too. What is of this world that we haven’t created by our progress? You ran past things that are NOT BETTER. ”

                ME: “ But I saw it! I ….”

I know the world is hearing, but not listening

ME: “.... Tell me, what is your neighbor’s name? How many laughs does it take from a stranger to make them not one anymore? When was the last time you thanked the sun for shining so nicely? Our happiness, the plug for the holes in our chests, lies in the connection of humanity.  Stop and say thank you. Your happiness was thrown away and locked inside your own busy heart.”

WORLD: “What are you saying? Flowers and love and sky can replace money, replace better? Only better can replace pain .”

ME: “what makes a mountain beautiful is the same as life; there cannot be a mountain top without valleys and hills.”

There exists a hole in the human spirit; the purpose of life is, among many things, to find what fills this hole. The world has tried time and time again to fill this hole with progress and materials, to no avail.  

There is one man who is, by all definitions, a hero. Growing up I didn’t have much, as I have stated in previous assignments. The best thing I got from my brothers was examples of what not to be (nothing against you all and I love you so dearly). They would sometimes invite me to come with them on an illegal trip to egg a house or other things and I went. So my hero’s weren’t my brothers. My mother loved, but as a mom with 5 children, she was tired. Sometimes she would just mutter, “ I hate my life I hate my life.” I never wanted to be the reason my mom hated her life, so I was always good. So I couldn’t find a hero there. I played Halo when I was young, but The Chief doesn’t say very much. There was, however, my dad.

                My father is easily summed up, and it’s amazing how many good words can be used. I have met many people, but none so many that everyone saw as good. Some people are liked by a majority of people, but even they still have their enemies. I have never, except for the loving complaints of my mother his wife, heard a bad word uttered against him. He was oh so generous. He once spent a month’s worth of rent money to pay for me to play football. He gave to any man that ever asked of him, and he gave even when he didn’t have that much to give. He was strong. His arms were a dark brown, and pulsed with life whenever they worked. He had a truck from the 1960’s, the ones made out of all steel. He was so strong he picked up the back of that truck all by himself, and that’s how strong my dad was. When you saw my dad, you could tell that even his soul was smiling. He had more friends than my teenaged brothers, and he made them laugh even louder. He would have cookouts for our family, and the cousins would come from all around. He would cook up ribs so good that you would have thought he had a secret recipe given to him from God himself. My father outworked all his helpers, even when he out aged them. He worked his life as a manual laborer, but till this day I haven’t seen any job that carries as much pride as his. I can still see my dad straining away at lifting some couch or wheelbarrow while his workers sat and caught their breath.

 My father loved. For my brother and I, he would do anything. Every morning, when he dropped us off at school, he would smack a big smooch on each of our cheeks. We would giggle, and he would always say “ now don’t you go and wipe that off!” I loved my father. One day, a car was stalled in the middle of a busy street. My father pulled his big old white truck up right behind him and gave that car a nudge. He helped to push the man’s car over to the side of the road, and after that he gave the man a jump. He was a hero because he worked every day to take care of a house of five boys up till he died at the age of 69 when I was 11. He was a hero because he always cared, and he always loved. He was a hero because he came home while my mom worked graveyards and cooked dinner, and cleaned the house, and raised us as kids. My dad was a hero.

-Jean Valjean learns an important lesson from the Bishop in the excerpt you read from Les Miserables. How would you summarize that lesson? Why did the bishops actions change Valjean? (my question)

This passage has, like Blood Brothers, picked my brain and caused me to dig deep within myself. I believe the message that the Bishop conveys to Jean Valjean is that all souls are equal in life and all are deserving of love. His message is that the soul and the man can never fully be conquered by sin, hate, suffering, and shame, and that there will always be another path to walk which is bathed in light.

 Valjean had a spot of darkness that momentarily stained his soul, as will happen to all men over the course of their lives. However when society saw that blackness, it did its duty of condemnation and attempted to cut from his soul that spot. The body of the society saw his action as an attack on the human race. They did not see the man who stole only one loaf instead of them all. They did not see the man who worked to feed seven very hungry children, the same children that society had let slip through the cracks. To let people starve was not a crime to society, but for the starving to grow too hungry to wait was. Society misjudged Valjean for a villain, when in actuality he was a man in need of food for himself and 8 others.

                He was then locked away, beaten, and degraded. His soul was torn. The black spot that had once shown up due to desperation, the spot that would have vanished with a morsel of bread, now clung to Valjean. It was in the screams of his cell mates, the violence of the thrashings and the hard, cold silence of a wooden plank to rest. So the black spot grew into a black cloud that was the man 24601. This black soul saw light in every chance of escape. This soul wanted nothing more than to get away from the blackness, but for its attempts, it was thrust further into pain and despair. By the time Valjean made it out of his own hell, his soul had soaked for too long in the black filth of societies doing. It had tainted his character. All the world could see from where he came, and yet he was the one deemed a menace. His soul pondered why no person could see that his soul had been given over to society, blackened by it. Somehow though, after his nineteen years of being debased and educated in evil, society saw him as the perpetrator of a crime. With no light left in his world, he became what society made him.

I am answering the second question by saying that Valjean’s soul never thirsted or hungered for darkness. It always craved the light. At first he was scared of the light, for the light had been what society represented. He knew society was unjust, and so he saw the light as unjust also. His soul was still black, and so he stole from the man who had shown him kindness. Would we blame a dog who had been beaten from birth for biting the one friendly hand that is finally offered to it? No. Valjean was still a good man, as seen with his inward torture upon his contemplation of theft. When Valjean was returned for his crime, the Bishop saw all that I have described. The Bishop saw the now small, blinding whiteness in Valjean’s soul. Unlike society, He knew what to do.

 To clean a stain, you do not cut out the blackness; this will ruin the garment. You can bleach the whole cloak in the color of the stain, and then stain will not be noticed.

The best way to clean a garment, and a soul, is to wash it. You cannot wash something dirty in something dirty. The dirt will only multiply. When, however, that soul is washed in the cleanliness of good and joy and love, the spot leaves. It took the Bishop one day to undo the darkness of 19 years. A soul can never fully be conquered by sin, hate, suffering, and shame, and that there will always be another path to walk which is bathed in light. Valjean’s soul was so changed by the Bishop’s display of light because it was hungry and needed to be fed.

- Do you think that Martin Luther King’s dream has been fulfilled today? Why or why not? Cite specific parts of the speech to support your answer.

                Sure, doctor King’s dream has come to fruition. There have been laws that have been past, and thankfully discrimination and segregation by race have been outlawed in America.  So the manacles have been legally disposed of, and Michael Brown and Treyvon Martin can walk the streets in peace. That land of freedom can be seen in the right to protest in the streets of Fergeson, a right that was able to be used without guns being pointed at them... Now notice I said discrimination was “legally” disposed of. I said “legal” because although the United States Government has officially outlawed the unequal  treatment of a person due to a pigment difference, the reality is that much hasn’t changed since Jim Crow. Martin Luther King’s magnificent dream was that all could come to “the table of brotherhood.” It is the universal dream of equality. It was the dream where the color of your skin or any other insignifigant difference couldn’t  determine if you are to go hungry. Just as Nietzsche decared God is dead, I tell you that the dream of equality lies face down in the gutter along side his African American brothers. We are still in slavery to this defective system and the dream  “ that my four little children will one dat live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character” is just that, a dream.

                “ One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” From a study conducted from 2007 to 2011, there were 43 million Americans who lived in poverty. This is equivelent to about 14 percent of the population between those times. To better understand that number, one must understand that poverty is considered to be anyone who makes less than 11,500 for one individual and 23,000 for a family of four.(Morello) That’s equivelent of saying you make and live off of less than 958 dollars and 33 cents a month. Of course, these numbers in and of themselves arent a reoccurence of King’s declaration that African Americas are isolated on an island of poverty, but the next numbers are. Out of that 43 million, 26 percent of those people were Black. Not impressed? How about when you put it next to less than 12 percent of those were whites? (Morello) I am African American, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the fires of justice have not burned hot enough, and that apparently the bank of opportunity is bankrupt.

                Our government, in the days of Civil Rights, made changes in the social system that degrades African Americans and other minorities. Affirmative Action, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voter’s Rights Act, and other pieces of legistlation were actual credable steps that our government had taken to “make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” Since then, Affirmative Action has been stripped and even deemed unconstitutional in some states, the Voter’s Right Act has been molested, and all the promises given by the government have been retracted. When the people stopped marching and the grew tired, the phrase “all men are created equal” was crossed out. Even the man who’s dream I write about was put to death to silence the cry for rights. “Business as usual” has gone on just as planned. Those who were at King’s speech that day did what he suggested and went back. They went back, and they waited for their check. They waited for the check that would give them their rights and humanity back. A few notices came, and a dollar here or there in the way of an act or so, but in the end they took it all back. All that’s heard from the great mountains of our nation are the sighs of starving, unemployed, and forgotten black. That, and the silence of all who watch.

Bibliography

Morello, Carol. "Poverty Rates Higher for Blacks and Hispanics than Whites and Asians." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 20 Feb. 2013. Web. 05 Mar. 2015.

A Big Sky Day

Where to start with in a Big Sky Day?

A Big Sky Day is

simply,

and not so simply,

 The Day I which The Sky Rules.

The Day is a time when the Sky races by,

The Clouds stretch and flow overhead like whispers of creeping mist,

and The Day that is a gift in its presents to all life.

Thank You Big Sky,

Thank You God.

The Day that you step out of your door and the Sky,

not the world,

envelopes you whole in its beauty and grace.

on a Big Sky Day, anything can happen. I asked myself how such a day came to be

and a bird sung.

My and your answer is that this day came from life.

 You cant see a Big Sky Day if you are paying attention to anything else but it.

The Sky will hold you on these days if you let it.

A Big Sky day is a day where the sun can blaze a field of golden fire

And the wind can strike the orchestra of leaves into unison with the rush of birds wings.

on This Day, life wins. it It is The Day in which the beholder is unstoppable, and realizes

all good things.

I wish I could share a Big Sky Day, but I believe only one or two are given the gift a day.

It is amazing

What is a Big Sky Day?

I guess you will have to see it, and then you will know.

The stage is set, and so what role do you cast?

            The roles have been cast, and someone is late. Who? This is not the important question, only who will take his place.  The answer of that question is also simple; I will play the role and do so perfectly. As they say, the show must go on. What they never mention is, the how. I am the how. I am the role that must be filled. I am the man who wears not just many masks, but wears as many as he must. I am nothing more than a messanger, just as Moses was. Notice I do not say just as Jesus was, for he knew of his mission from the day he was born, and his role was cast. As for me and Moses, we are powerful but only a means to the end. In this beautiful and mysterious play in life, I am a leader. I am not the bold and daring leader who is to smite the enemy, but the leader who is already weary and slowly trods towards freedom. I am the horse of life when the farmer is taken into the equation. The farmer, god, society, whomever you may call it, demands the land be not forgotten and that fruit spring from it. Many look and see a barren land of life, no reason to plow the soil. But horses don’t make those decisions, only plow when told. Yet I am the horse yet to be sold. I am the horse who knows that there is a field to be plowed, but I do not know which it might be. As of now, I am a actor who sees the roles that are to be filled, and have not yet judged which  I will fit in. Yet not taking a role is out of the question, for someone must do it. The show must go on. The world spins, the water splashes and the rain comes down, and I do not know which way to go. I am a light at the top of a hill to light a way. This light however, was lit by others. The fire does not decide when its lit, but its lit upon request. I have been requested, through my school and my mind and my family and my situation and my self proclaimed wisdom to play a role, a role that cannot be small. I am a horse, a light, a actor, all who is both at the will of all and at the will of none. A sheppard in a storm, I do not know the way but still feel that I must lead. So I must find the way in which to lead. So I am the horse who is in need of a field to tend, and an actor who is searching for a role, and a sheppard searching for home pastures. I see many, but I do not know which is mine. Yet, I am determined to go on. I am as strong as the horse, as smart as the actor in all his guises and knowledge, and as humble as the sheppard who owns nothing. I pray I will find my pasture soon, because the storm is cold. What I have not said is the reason I must lead, and that reason is simple. Not only must the show go on, but this is my favorite play.

My letter of hope

Hope is a fleeting butterfly that brings a smile to your lips at its sight,

but it is hard…. because we know that it flies.

We know that it leaves.

The difference between children, and those that are tired in this world,

Is that the children chase all things that come like Beautiful Butterfly.

My life has been things flying away from me, and sometimes not even pretty as my fateful and whimsical butterfly. Things have just left. Like family. Or loves. Or homes. Or friends. It isn’t the fault of them though. This is a lonely world when you get to it as it is.

By the grace of my God I have been raised – finally – into a life of youth.

My legs pump and my heart races as I foolishly and bravely and joyfully

Chase that Beautiful Butterfly of Hope.

I hope to God for a better world.

One that does not call money its master.

A place as the meadow, run by none but enjoyed by all.

A room finally to lodge in where my dreams aren’t paid for by sweat and blood.

A art exhibit where my body is marveled at not because of its utility or its ability to generate, but for its soft and gentle curves.

Money , I promise you, has done deals with racism, and oppression, and sexism, and unfairness.

Money is and never will be fair.

My better world – which is painted on my Beautiful Butterfly’s wings - twinkles

not like gold,

but like the sun. Or the glint of a beautiful eye taking in the wave of humanity and….

and it. The world.

Don’t ask me to put into words the world. Have you felt awe?

It is the only thing that comes close to describe the wave of the world that twinkles.

Let my Butterfly twinkle, and shine, and blind with the glint of a full world.

Created as it is for us.

This world could never be laid between the heels of a dollar.

My Beautiful Butterfly wasn’t caught with a bought net.

Or maybe it was bought, but the currency was love.

I hope for a better world.

One where a net of many beautiful and colorful fingers are grasped

and hold me safe.

Community. The natural dance of humans is with others.

Souls step out and turn in the streets. Down the narrow and wide roads

till the whole world,

painted on the back of the Beautiful Butterfly,

is finally together again.

The world we live in today took my heart from others a long time ago.

It told me that “I” could pull the sun down.

But the promise has been empty for some time now.

 I have only ever seen such brightness in the

net of fingers grasped that hold me safe.

Such rays of light reside not in one being,

but radiate out of the smiles of children and families and people,

all walking side by side.

Like a forest.

One leaf can shake with a small , important yes, but small rattle.

However, what a small rattle it is compared to when the winds call out the choir of the forest.

Those leaves sing with the infinite power of together.

Maybe not even the bell of Dr. King can sound so sweet. And, after all, that bell of freedom rings only with the pull of many.

Have you heard the collective song of a forest,

shaking and breathing with the wind and the life,

belting out its joyous song

in the form of a whisper in your ear?

Then you know but a small fraction of the glory

That is the world united, not under money or hate or “I”, but love of another.

I hope for many things, but most of all I hope for a better world.

One where courage isn’t lost or thrown out with our fickle fun technology… or our meaningful yet somehow disposable relationships… or our smiles at nothing in particular.

To chase a butterfly,

to wonderfully abandoned the begging of your body and life to save its energy for “a later fight”,

takes courage.

The force that drives one single and powerful drop of rain to spring from the clouds to the hard world far below

 - nestled home in a net of rain fingers grasped to keep it safe, paid always in nothing but love and the glory of the amazing world-

is courage.

 The rain drop lands hard.

On our roofs. On our food. Into the still sleeping rivers.

and changes absolutely everything.

The spectacle of the crazy and oh so powerful rain drop brings a smile to all the other rain lips at its sight, and they gleefully rain down.

The rain drops as a community fall into our world, and land hard.

This rain grows our food. This rain builds the driving rivers that cannot be stopped.

This rain sprints into the ocean to create that which we all look to for vastness.

All of this,

because of the courage of that first drop.

When she sprung from her home, they said “she won’t change a thing. Why doesn’t she worry about herself? It isn’t safe out there. It’s far too far down.”

Yet she, that seemingly oh so little rain drop, did fall.

Did she fall knowing that they would follow?

Did she fall thinking thoughts like the vain and small amount of water contained within herself would water the big plant?

Did she really believe that her life mattered enough to change the world so far below?

I don’t know, it isn’t for me to say.

But I do know that she gave her absolute everything-

because she died, in some way, though not in others, when she met the grasp of the parched world below-

to give.

Grant me that courage God. World.

Grant me the courage to finally race with my legs -

 pounding and pumping full of blood and life, cycling through streets and dead woods and sleeping rivers and seeds of plants and quite bells and oh so much more- 

after that Beautiful Butterfly of Hope.

Give me that courage, and I promise ill run after it until I catch that butterfly in a net of love,

standing firmly in a street full of Souls that stepped out to turn around and around with each other. Ill stand exhausted in that road - which winds through a forest roaring in its combined song - drenched in the falling rain, happy.

Happy that I finally had the courage to chase hope.

Ill sit down, a child again, in front of food grown by the courage of the one rain drop, joined by many others, paid for with nothing but the brightness of people and the inexpressible fullness of the world,

And eat and regain all that energy that I spent. I will eat in the kingdom of God, where I will be so full.

It won’t be in vain to chase the Beautiful Butterfly of Hope that has my better world painted on its back. I know it. I can build a world that is better for the sick. And the suffering. And the lonely. If I have courage and and love and walk with God and others.

In order for any march to start, there must be those few who start to walk first. There must be those that choose to stand and move before the crowds have formed, or the walk is easy by way of multitudes or the "it isn't possible" is converted into "we are marching to victory". The only way toward a revolutionized world, a new and peaceful and just and creative world, is through the barrier hesitation and into the courage of newness.