Are You Living in Reality?

So this story really took me by surprise. The short-story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is about the citizens who live in a city that could be classified as a Utopian city. Everybody lives in harmony with each other and there is hardly any problems in the city. Except for one. Locked away from civilization is a child, who is apparently deformed, is kept in a basement that has no windows. The only human interaction that this child gets is from groups of people that bring young adults as a coming of age ceremony. The sight frightens the young adults, they continue to remember the child, but eventually come to the conclusion that is better for the happiness that the child stays locked away where it is. Also, the entire town of Omelas is aware of the mistreatment of this child but think its best not uproot the established order and keep things the way they are. However, the ones who are truly affected by the sight they saw, leave Omelas, knowing exactly where they are going. This story brings out we as humans show our indifference to injustices around the world. Whether orphans in another country or how needy the poor are, we have to be actually thinking about how we can change these things. Many people like to live indifferent lives because they want to control everything around them. they want to take action because the result of their action would require them to put their faith in something other than themselves. People who live indifferent lives also like to blame their problems on others. When we do this we lose the opportunity to reflect on our choices and actions and and make positive decisions that will help us become better people. We don't live in a world where everything is perfect, the sun is shining all the time, and no conflict. There is thing called reality and it hurts when we realize the world isn't what we thought it was.

Phillipains

In the Apostle Pauls letter to the Philippians, if one were to study closely, they would fin text rich metaphors and other figurative language. After reading this passage and actually trying try and keep count of the amount of metaphors that I noticed. One sentence caught my eye when Paul was describing righteousness as a "fruit". another group of sentences that I also thought were metaphors was "...Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in the appearance as a man, he humbled Himself by becoming obedient,  even to the point of death, even death on a cross." When someone understands the use of metaphors, I believe that they will come to see what a genius Paul is. I also think that Paul is trying to make us think and go more in-depth in our walk with Christ. And we can see how Paul was trying to connect spiritual things with physical things so that the Philippians could make a connection and understand what he was trying to say, and be able to apply it to their lives.

I Attended The Man Who Came To Dinner

Nature Field Trip

I want to Lake Bonny Park and stayed there for a full 45 minutes.

Today as part of our Nature Poem unit in Intro to Lit. we had to go a nature preserve. Going to the preserve brought back many memories of when my mom and I would go to the park and walk the nature boardwalk. So as my walk down memory lane began so did my walk around the preserve. the preserve is part of a park and is right off the road, so I was surprised when everything got quite. Not eerily quite, but that type of quietness  where you can hear yourself think and you start to focus in on the little things about your surroundings. Like the first thing I noticed was how majestic looking the trees were. As I walked deeper it didn't look like I was in Lakeland anymore, and I began to think what if we didn't become such a technologically dependent society, how much different life would be. I began to even wonder if todays world would even survive without tech stuff. As I continued on i ran into a rabbit and watched it run off in a hurry and went on this board walk that overlooked the lake. Thats was when I saw all this junk thrown everywhere, from a frozen chicken container to an old milk carton. Seeing this I thought of a group discussion I had with two of my classmates on earth day in English Composition class last semester. My classmate was all into finding new ways to help clean up the planet, limit waste, and other stuff that I can't remember at the moment. If she saw what I did she would be disappointed. I believe that as humans we have a duty to take care of what God has blessed us with. Some Christians may say that since Jesus will come back and that there will be a new heaven and new earth that taking of the earth would just a waste of time. I would like to submit to you that would be ignorance on their part, just read the parable of the talents. I'm pretty sure that God won't call a "lazy servant" and send us to the place where there will a gnashing of teeth, but chance to witness to someone just by being aware of what we could do better at taking care of what God has given us would be lost.

State Of The Planet

Well, let me start off saying that this was the most difficult reading I've had to do this semester. I've never been a fan of poetry and anything to do with the environment. Yet after reading this poem I must admit that it did intrigue me. What I really enjoyed about the poem was how effortless the author was able to illustrate everything he was attempting to get across. Even though four pages of poetry was very tough to stay focused on, my mind kept coming back to one sentence in the first stanza, "Inside the backpack, dog-eared, illustrations, A book with the title Getting to Know Your Planet."  And it is this sentence that I want to touch upon.

The Backpack- we use backpacks to store things and to transport things. It can be perhaps a representation of our minds, how we can keep vast amounts of information and be able to recall that information in an instant.

Illustrations- what the author is talking about here is our interactions with the world around us.

The book Getting to Know Your Planet- this one struck me the most. We all know about the basics of the planet, like 70% of the Earth is water and the other 30% is land mass. but what I'm talking about is going deeper, about the stuff that truly means something to our planet, like water purification, greenhouse emissions, and climate change (or global warming).

Can Sonny's Blues Be Your Blues?

This story is probably the hardest story that I had to read for Lit. For a short story there was a lot of things in motion before the story began so it was a little tough in the beginning of the read. But the story is about the narrator who picked up the morning paper and saw that his brother was arrested and put in jail. After corresponding several times via mail, the narrators brother Sonny comes to Harlem to visit. The whole interaction between the brothers is very uncomfortable begins to turn awkward. Eventually Sonny hints to his brother that he was addicted to drugs and that was the reason that he went to jail. the narrator attempts to be understanding, but doesn't really succeed at it. This is due in part because throughout the story the narrator feels this sense of discord and and hatred for his surroundings and what Sonny represents. This theme was mentioned so many times that I am going to write about this theme. The narrator left for the army and returned, and in a way never seemed to escape where he came from. Have you known somebody from your childhood that you were so close too and then all of a sudden lost touch, then years later you reconnected with them and you turned out better than they did and when you tried to help them you couldn't relate to them? The theme behind this theme of the narrators feeling of hatred for his surroundings and of his brother is that no matter where you go, no matter what do or will do, no matter how hard you tried, you will never escape the surroundings that you grew up in. It will still catch up to you, just like it did to Sonny.

The Zombieland Ese

This is not what he was looking for. A desolate land across the Rio Grande. Alejandro had been looking forward to seeing his family, the family that he paid so much money to send over from Mexico to the states waiting for him at the river bank. Before him was a wasteland, cars everywhere, car parts, building material and other stuff. The sight put him into despair, seeing that his ticket to freedom had been his wife Marisol holding his phony green card. His two companions came up behind him, Pepe and Machete taking in the scenery as well.  Alejandro didn’t trust these two since all they wanted was to eat taco bell and eat fajitas for the rest of their lives.  They descended the hill and approached the highway they looked for a vehicle that was in working order, hoping that they would be able to begin their journey in U.S. Alejandro began cursing out loud about the current situation and how they would get out of it. While he was mumbling to himself Pepe spoke up “thius is not what I was expecting ese, all this destruction man I did not sign up for” Machete nodded his head in agreement and just grunted “I’m hungry”. “Do you guys only think of yourselves all the time?” Alejandro retorted. Before they could answer He took off moving faster, looking for the stupid car. After a while they came upon a Cadillac that had full tank. At first they admired the car and moved around it. Finally Machete was able to pop the door open and allowed Pepe to hot wire the car and get it started. All of this was taking too long and Alejandro was started to get irritated. All he wanted was to see his wife and kids to start his new life with them. All of this was not going to happen if he continued to hang with these eggheads of companions. Finally Pepe got the car started and Alejandro jumped in the driver seat and waited for the other two. As they got in Machete gave him a “where are we going” look, to which he responded “Houston, to find my family.” Machete nodded and promptly fell asleep. As he was driving, Alejandro couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that they were about to run into something bad. Something really bad.