Is Your Character Welcome?

Before I get to writing the main part of this blog, I want to take a little trip down memory lane. Remember back in the day in English class during high school and we all had to write a narrative story? How long did it take you come up with that character to be at the center of the story? I remember taking pretty much the whole time I had to write the paper just trying to create a character. I don't know about you but I would just think of myself being this ultimate hero in the most ridiculous situation possible. That's one way to do it, but its not the only way to think of a character. In my reading for my Into to Lit. class, it talked about how create a character. Most of us do what I mentioned previously, but what caught my attention was that we should discuss our characters with others. When I read that I immediately thought of how I treated my character creation. I would pretend to have like a maximum security prison, underground laboratory in which no one could gain access to but me. Looking back on that, it seems kind of childish and I guess you could say that I was afraid of someone plagiarizing me and taking my brilliant character. But discussing your character will allow your character to grow even more, before you can put him/her into the story.

My Painting of Joel 3:14

Proclaim It Loud and Proud

Tuesday before class we were told to go read the Book of Joel. Now I don't know about you but Joel is one of those books where you just pass along when your flipping through the minor prophets. I thought that the book was average and I really didn't think much of it. However when I got to class, Professor Corrigan told us that for 20 minutes we were to read sections of Joel. Out loud. At first I thought he was kidding, but after he shooed us out I made a beeline for the concrete dock overlooking Lake Bonny. (I think it's Lake Bonny but whatever). After getting to the dock and mustering up some courage I began to speak under my breath feeling ridiculous. But after awhile I began to gather more courage and spoke louder. then I just started proclaiming loud and proud, hand, motions and all. After I finished my favorite sections, I wondered what the book would sound like if I spoke in a Russian accent, so I began speaking in said accent and replaced the word Zion with Mother Russia every time it appeared. I had a complete blast. But there in lies my point. I said earlier that I thought nothing of the Book of Joel when I read it. That opinion changed almost immediately after I began to speak it out loud. Sometimes when we feel that a certain passage of scripture doesn't feel powerful when we read it we feel that it doesn't apply to our lives. My suggestion to you the reader is that you speak it out loud and see how you feel after. As I read the Book of Joel out loud I began to feel the same tang of pain when it called the people of Israel to repent and turn back to the Lord. I also felt great triumph when I read the passages of when the Lord would come and the nations at the Valley of Decision. So next time you feel that a certain passage of scripture doesn't come alive to you, read it aloud and see how you feel afterwords.

Are You A House Of Cards

In my Intro to Lit class we were given cards and told to make house of cards. After some time my group succeeded and made a ugly house. but it quickly fell down and back to work we went again trying build it again. after we realized that it was going to be futile to be able to build house that would stand stand on its own so we would blow on the the house and it would crumple down. After this we had a class discussion about metaphor that kept appearing the book A Grief Observed. Throughout the book the author keeps describing his faith as a house of cards. the author has lost his wife and questioning his faith in God. And through the process comes to this conclusion "God has been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't....He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down". Ever had one those welcome back to reality moments in your life? How many of you have ever been through some kind trial or trouble? Ever thought questioned God? How many times have we thought that God is this or God is that, and then in dramatic fashion we discover that we turned out to gravely mistaken? Ever thought about walking away from God? I would like to submit to you that your house of cards had no foundation. your foundation was based on something misconceived and therefore fell apart in the wind. I am not saying that there is a perfect to get through any trial or offer any type Faith 101 type thing. but as long as we base our foundation on the fact that God, who created everything we know, who loves us,who knows whats going to happen years before we know we will, sent His son, to die for us, for the hope of a life everlasting with Him, the foundation is strong, and when the winds blow instead of everything crumpling down, our foundation is rooted and strong. For we don't need something that resembles Christ, we need the real Christ. So, is your faith a house of cards?

Graveyard

yesterday night i went to go visit Roselawn cemetery. this cemetery and two others in close proximity are among the oldest cemeteries here in lakeland. when i first arrived i thought this place was extremely creepy (thats what you get when you visit a place like this at 10 at night). after me and rob  got past all the zombie movies we saw and were expecting to come out of the graves, one gravestone caught my attention. i cant remember the name but he was a corporal in the marines who gave his in the first persian gulf war. when i saw this all i felt was really weird, and i felt like crying. so trying to be a man i held  it in but it struck me that death is one constant thing. i looked all around me and all i saw were graveyards. i wanted to take a picture of the gravestone but i forgot to bring my phone and robs phone goes all crazy when he uses the camera. i reflected on what ive read from C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed and began to understand what he he writing about. through this experience this book has come alive to me in my mind. a song that i was listening to said "God knows the hell ive been through knowing that no one can take your place". how many families have had loved ones buried at these cemetaries? how many of them are asking for one chance to see them? for one more hug, one more kiss, one more goodbye, a one more "i love you"?

Grief.

Grief. why does such a thing exist? unfortunately i dont have the answer but i would like to bring up this point. how do we know that we can tell if someone is actually grieving or not? are we even in place to judge to should we begin to have the previous question pop into our minds. i went to a funeral since one of the students who attended the elementary school division of my christian high school. he passed away in a terrible car accident and his funeral/viewing was being held the in the sanctuary and the high school was allowed to sit in. i went since my whole class was going and was very solemn through the whole ceremony but wasnt very interested. after the ceremony i was on my out when a complete stranger proceeded to pull me aside and ask if i had any respect. he believed that because i didnt show any emotion i was not being respectful to deceased's family. being 16 and not afraid to stand up for myself, i retorted that i was being respectful by not crying or making any type of big scene, since i did not know the deceased or his family, i felt that if i did those things that i would be mocking them and therefore cause more hurt and pain than there had to be. i bring this up because i was reading "A Grief Observed". this book was written by C.S. Lewis soon after the death of his wife. just reading the first two chapters i already connected with him. you literally feel the grief that he is going through come right through the pages and hit you. so how do we know when someone is actually grieving and when they're not?

Is there such a thing as Happily Ever After???

Have you ever planned your life out? like after college im gonna get a high paying, then meet the most beautiful girl the planet has to offer, have this enormous wedding, then go to china for a honeymoon (ok maybe no there. maybe Puerto Rico and im not being bias) then have like 6 kids and live in a ten bedroom house in the mountains. perhaps that was a little over exaggerated but my point is that what we wish for is not even close to reality. there was a short story I came across where it started with one of those fairy tale endings. then were about 4 different versions of the story with the same characters with different situations for them. to me each version reminded me of accurate these stories are of reality. how many people go through similar experiences that the characters had been through. reading this story reminded of a broadway musical called Into The Woods. this musical pretty much had all of the major fairy tales the we love today, such as cinderella, rapunzel, jack and the bean stalk and added the story of a baker as well as several other fairy tales. and each of the musicals characters wanted some specific cinderella wanted to go the ball, rapunzel wanted to get out of her  tower and see the world, jack and his mother were poor so he stole from the giants after he grew the beanstalk, and the baker and his wife just wanted to have child since they were barren. now heres the plot twist, after they got what each of them wanted, none of them were happy, which brings me me to my point. happily ever after is sometimes damaging to our perspective of reality. yes i completely understand that as a child we were taught to imagine and thats all right. but as adults if we continue live in a "fairy tale" it opens us to be used and then discarded,  just like mary opened herself to john and john didnt do the same in Version B in Happy Endings. mary lived in a fairy tale of john will warm up to me, which never happens. we need to have a reality check to help us have a very meaningful and enriching life. by have a proper balance of reality and "fairy tale" to help us live happily.

What is this word we call love?

Love is one of those words whose meaning always seems to be muddled in every way. we all have our own definition of love that we love to stand by. we get it from an experience we had or from reading a from favorite romance movie or fairy tale or even from the dictionary and from the Bible. we could go on and on and on about what the true meaning of love is and that for another time and place. however i would like to ask what is love and how can can love be shown? i ask this question because i recently read a narrative on this very subject. there are four characters in the story and they were all at a table sharing a bottle gin (not the best drink to have when about to have a serious a conversation but it'll do). what got them started on the conversation of love was when one the characters started talking about her abusive ex-husband. he expressed his love through hitting her. now we all say that there there is no possible way that he could have shown his love by beating her. that would be true if he struck her for no reason. yet he kept saying that he loved her when he hit her. he loved her so munch that when he found out that she ran off with another man he ended up killing himself. what is the farthest that you will go to show that special someone that love them? will it be chasing them where ever they may go? following them everywhere? constant communication with them? sending them flowers all the time? now think about how far some will go for you to see that they love you. if they did the craziest thing you can think of could you love them? think about it for a while