Well, I did it. I bought a truck, well my wife and I did...and by bought, we mean we traded my 1996 Honda Accord that had 165,000+ miles in and are going to be making payments on this vehicle. Regardless, we have "bought" it in that sense and are loving it so far. Here is a picture of it.
A friend of mine just recently left me a message saying that he loved my new blog and that it felt like we were sitting in my room changing the world again.
The truth: we never changed the world.
We talked a lot about the world, but we never changed it. Does that stop us? No. We see need for change in our world and we desire so badly for it to happen. The change is not just needed in religious areas (though there is great change possible there), but also in the political realm and the scientific realm and the music realm and the food realm and the publishing realm and the entertainment realm and the realm of people's desire and the lack of reading realm and the healthcare realm and the worldwide poverty realm and the familial relationships realm and the holiday realm and so many other realms.
The truth is that we lived a completely screwed up world, but this does not stop us. We do not allow ourselves to get depressed and pessimistic about the situation of our world. Rather, we imagine. That's right, we imagine. You may be asking how imagining can do anything to change the world. And you'd be right to ask. But I'd also have to say that if you are asking that question you have not imagined often enough or hard enough or deep enough. We imagine, just like John Lennon. We imagine a world that is better than the one we currently live in and we imagine what it would take to see that world come to fruition and then we work with every ounce of our being and our soul to be that change to this world. We help raise awareness for issues like the genocide in Darfur and the utter poverty in our own country and the amazing omnipresence of hypocrisy within the religion that we claim as our own (Christianity).
I echo John Lennon when he said, "You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be as one." I have been told countless times in my life: "Thomas, one person can't change the world." I reply that yes, one person can. How many times have we seen it. Jesus pretty drastically changed the world (and I don't say this in a super-spiritual-look-at-me-the-good-Christian way, but in an honest way that any student of history, especially religious history, as I am, must admit) and Ghandi wasn't too shabby either. Should we mention the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Tim Berners-Lee (step over Al Gore, he actually did create the Internet) or Mikhail Gorbachev or Frances Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin (the three who discovered DNA). And just so you know that I recognize the other side of the coin. Let's talk about what Adlof Hitler and Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini and Osama bin Laden. I hope you get my point. We have the ability to do so much more than we tell ourselves that we can.
I am trying to change the world by changing myself and being the change that I want to see. You can do the same.
P.S. If you are looking for maybe an organization or two to get involved with there are two that I would suggest you start with, as they are doing what I'm talking about in the area of poverty and equality. They are making things happen and truly changing lives. The two organizations are Compassion and Kiva.
Say hello to Francisco. Francisco lives in Brazil with his father and mother.
For those of you who care, I have just finished work on a paper for my Advanced Greek Exegesis Seminar on My Philosophy of Teaching Greek. I have published the paper to Google Docs.
The paper can be found here.
There has been a ton of conversation about the upcoming movie "The Golden Compass" and about the trilogy that it is based on His Dark Materials. As I have not read the books or seen the movie I have largely been an outsider in the discussion. Thus, I have been led to what many others have said. In that, I have come across two places that handled the movie/books in ways I have not seen done yet. One is an article about it and the other is an e-mail interview with the author himself done by Peter Chattaway. Chattaway contributes often to a magazine that some of you may be familiar with, Christianity Today. They are very interesting reads. I do intend to read the books soon so I can finally be allowed to have a voice in this conversation.
The first article can be found here.
The interview can be found here.
My wife and I were watching Business Nation on CNBC tonight and heard about a company called Kiva. The whole premise of this company is to connect entrepreneurs in third-world countries with people just like me and you who loan them small sums of money. This is the excerpt from Kiva's website:
"Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the
developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a
business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic
independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can
receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are
repaid, you get your loan money back."
I've added some new blogs to my blogroll. You should definitely check them out. I don't put blogs on my blogroll that I don't read on a regular basis and wouldn't dream of asking you to check out anything that would be a waste of your time.
So, what are you waiting on?
I have recently published a paper of mine to Google Docs. The paper is titled: "To Veil or Not to Veil: Argumentation of an Egalitarian Reading of the Pauline Corpus."
If anyone is interested it can be accessed here.
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With the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor coming on Friday I decided to post this. It was originally posted on my former blog on 3/29/07.
Let us start this post out with me laying some things bare about myself. I have issues. State it anyway you wish, but I have issues and if my other posts have not clued you into that fact yet, then I feel quite confident that this one will. This post will probably also offend you. Apologies will be issued for neither of those facts. Moreover, this post will most likely touch on another topic other than just freedom, namely equality. For, it seems self-evident to me that these two concepts are inextricably related and to attempt to reverse the tethering that is present would not only be unwise, but also irresponsible.
So, then what is freedom? I'm sure that we could all give nice succinct answers to this question that may have something to do with the lack of any oppressing forces, etc. However, I would like to take the long way before we arrive out our destination of freedom, if indeed we do end up at freedom. The first thing that I must say about freedom is that we do not value it. We purport that we value it above all else, but our actions scream another story. For instance, just 2 days ago Serena Williams (world-famous tennis player, black, sister of Venus Williams) was at a match and there was a man in the stands that was heckling her. By all accounts of the story all he did was heckle. He was very much annoying and disrespectful, but all he did was heckle. Nothing he did or said put Serena Williams or any of the other fans in any danger whatsoever. Yet, Serena stopped play and spoke with the Chair Umpire and forced them to remove the man and disallow him from ever returning. Since when is heckling disallowed in sports?
Now, you may be asking what he said and that is a fine question to ask. Most of it was the usual heckling though he did say: "…hit the ball into the net like any Negro would." It was this word that set Serena off. As she was sitting on her bench waiting for the officials to remove the man she was quite hysterical saying that the man could be a stalker and other things like that, but I was absolutely floored when I heard the following words come out of her mouth: "I'm an African-American and I won't stand for that!" WHAT?! Who does she think she is? Is she even really an African-American? Are any of her ancestors from Africa? (New note: Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan) If they are, then fine, but what does her being an African-American have to do with anything? The man said a word that offended you and you expect the law to make him stop. Doesn't the First Amendment of our Constitution guarantee freedom of speech? Well, apparently it doesn't. It guarantees free speech when it doesn't offend someone, or better yet, when it doesn't offend a certain group. If I am on that court and someone of another race is heckling me and calls me something meant to be derogatory, such as maybe insinuating that my ancestors were slave owners or calling me a "cracker" or saying that I was a Nazi, and I asked for that person to be removed because "I'm a German-American and I won't stand for that," I would be laughed at (I am German-American by the way, my biological father was full-blood German. However, another issue I have is that I am an idiot if I demand that people call me German-American instead of Caucasian or white. I do not expect that everyone will know my heritage when they see me and neither should blacks expect others to know their's when other see them.
When will this country realize that not every single black person is of African descent? In fact, quite a large number of them are from Haiti and other countries south of us, yet they still insist on being called African-American so as to preserve something about their ancestry when really they have thrown it away by not taking the time to learn their real ancestry). We only value freedom when it is beneficial to us and the same is true with equality. Women and blacks (Please let it be understood that the generalizations do not mean that I truly think all women and all black people are the same and think and act the same way, for I do not. However, the generality is necessary for the ease of the flow of the language used herein) have desired equality for some time and I have absolutely no problem with them having it, but if they have it, then it needs to be real. Women say that they want equality, but they don't want to be drafted. Blacks say that they want equality, yet they expect for certain words to be outlawed when used against them, but not when they use those same words amongst themselves. Also, they expect laws to protect them from being offended, but do not want others to have similar laws. I understand that the word 'nigger' evokes many emotions and is often used in a derogatory sense, but what about all of the other racial slurs directed against Asians and Mexicans? No one is up in arms about those being used. People simply realize the idiocy of the persons using those words and they move on with their lives. So I have to ask: "What do we value most?" I believe that at this point in our history we value not offending black people.
Now, you may vehemently disagree and that is perfectly acceptable. I do not think that has always been our value (I know I am stating the obvious). Our country was founded by those who said that they desired religious freedom, but that was a sack of shit. They didn't truly value religious freedom any more than we truly value freedom of speech today. For, if they did, then they would have been okay with those persons who desired to practice religions other than theirs, but I think that our history tells us quite well, that that was not the case. The Japanese Internment camps that followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 show me once again that our country does not value freedom. We value plenty of things – power, safety, comfort, not offending certain people, security – but to say that we value freedom seems to be to be a bold faced lie! The same is true with equality. Our Declaration of Independence says that "all men were created equal." And in that statement asserted quite the opposite, for they were intentional in making it only read "men" as opposed to "men and women" and they did not even follow through with what they had written. For, they enslaved blacks for almost another hundred years after that.
Though the bulk of this blog may seem to be directed at one group, please hear my heart when I say that it is not. It is directed at everyone in this country, be they black, white, Hispanic, Asian, male, female, young, old, in between. It doesn't matter to me. What does matter is that we do not value freedom, yet lie to ourselves and the rest of the world about it constantly. The mere presence of government shows that we made the decision a long time ago to give up certain freedoms for safety and security. I am not saying that all of this is wrong, what is wrong is when we scream and yell, often like children, for freedom and equality when freedom and equality are not what we really want. We want power. We want safety. We want security. We want people to agree with us. We want to not be offended. We want many things, but I cannot say with any confidence that true freedom and true equality are among the desires of our hearts.
I returned home tonight to find “Kingdom of Heaven” on tv. A movie that I love, for it is brilliant in many aspects, but especially in how it upholds integrity at all costs. Some of you may know just how important integrity is to me. It is one thing that I work vehemently to never lose, for though many things can be taken from us our integrity can never be taken. It is solely our responsibility to keep our integrity. Our actions are our responsibility. I know that this idea is controversial, for our society has almost wholly forgotten what personal responsibility is. No one ever wants to take responsibility for their own actions, but to defer blame to others.
Hear me though, I am not saying that I have never attempted to defer responsibility, only that I make a concerted effort not to and to uphold my personal integrity to the highest degree that I can. This is my own personal conviction and it is on moral and religious grounds. The movie “Kingdom of Heaven” makes claims about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like by making claims about Jerusalem. Balian de Ibelin (Orlando Bloom) is given an oath early on in the movie and then gives the oath to others later on. It is an oath that we could all live by. I only hope that I am halfway able to uphold it. The oath is:
“Be without fear in the face of your enemies,
Be brave and upright that God may love thee,
Speak the truth even it leads to your death,
Safeguard the helpless,
That is your oath”
My integrity is for me in one sense, but it is for God in a greater sense. If we would all live by this oath then maybe, just maybe, we could see the fruition of the kingdom of heaven. In this movie, the kingdom of heaven is in the head and in the heart, that type of kingdom can never be destroyed or surrendered. Let us live for and hold onto the kingdom of heaven, namely one that is courageous, sure, truthful, works for the safety and righteousness of others and upholds integrity.
Just to let everyone know that doesn’t already, I have taken a new job. I am no longer working at Samsonite, but am now the Minister with Youth at Eastside Baptist Church. My wife, Trinity, was leading children and youth, but has gone to doing just children and I have come on to lead the youth. I think this will be a good situation and am looking forward to what we can do there. For those of you who would like to know, my e-mail address at the church is thomasebc@carolina.rr.com.
This one woman, the only woman in all the world, she must belong to me, she must be mine. Let God keep Heaven, if I could keep her. I know what I choose; it is something so great that Heaven itself must be the loser by such a division, for what would be left to Heaven if I keep her? The faithful Mohammedans will be disappointed in their hopes when in their Paradise they embrace pale, weak shadows; for warm hearts they cannot find, all the warmth of the hear is concentrated in her breast; they will yield themselves to a comfortless despair when they find pale lips, dim eyes, a lifeless bosom, a limp pressure of the hand; for all the redness of the lips, and the fire of the eye, and all the restlessness of the bosom, and the promise of the hand, and the foreboding of the saigh, and the seal of the kiss, and the trembling of the touch, and the passion of the embrace - all, all are concentrated in her, and she lavishes on me a wealth sufficient for a whole world, both for time and eternity..."
Why is it that others can always say it better than me?
P.S. I really like pictures of famous dead people, especially if they're cool looking and it just so happens that Kierkegaard is, so that's the handsome man starring at you at the top of this post. In the future I will probably continue to add pictures of the cool people I am referencing.
The following is a poem by Arthur Hugh Clough titled "Epi-Strauss-ium," which means "On-Strauss-ism." Thus, it is a response to David Friedrich Strauss' Das Leben Jesu, which looked critically at the life of Jesus.
"Matthew and Mark and Luke and holy John
Evanished all and gone!
Yea, he that erst, his dusky curtains quitting,
Through Eastern pictured panes his level beams transmitting,
With gorgeous portraits blent,
On them his glories intercepted spent,
Southwestering now, through windows plainly glassed,
On the inside face his radiance keen hath cast,
And int he lustre lost, invisible and gone,
Are, say you, Matthew, Mark and Luke and holy John?
Lost, is it? lost, to be recovered never?
However,
The place of worship the meantime with light
Is, if less richly, more sincerely bright,
And in blue skies the Orb is manifest to sight."
NB: 'he' in line 3 is 'the sun'
Clough is saying, I believe, that though the historical-critical method (higher criticism), as evidenced by Strauss' work, might have cast a shadow on the gospels, rendering them lost, the truth can be seen more clearly without them. The picture is of the narrator standing in church facing East watching the sun rise through the windows that are the gospels. Here he can only see dimly ("On them his glories intercepted spent"). He then turns to face SouthWest and watch the sun set. These windows are clear and allow him to see the sun more clearly. Note the sun in line 3 and the Orb in line 15.
Just some things to think about. I had to read this poem for my Literature and Religion class and was struck by it, so I thought I'd share.
Comments welcome...
"Some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual...There are times, then, when in order to keep ourselves in existence at all we simply have to sit back for a while and do nothing. And for a man who has let himself be drawn completely out of himself by his activity, nothing is more difficult than to sit still and rest, doing nothing at all. The very act of resting is the hardest and most courageous act he can perform."
- Thomas Merton
Wouldn't this be easier if we actually had time to sit and rest and do nothing at all?
"And if the old guard still offend,
They've got nothing left on which you depend.
So enlist every ounce of your bright blood, and off with their heads!
Jump from the hook! You're not obliged to swallow anything you despise!"
- Sleeping Lessons by The Shins
Welcome to my new blog. I hope you like the new look. Feel free to give suggestions.
More to come...
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