What I Learned in Church 2-10-13

Father Joe is always on time. Spiritually, that is! That man will have you forgetting you’re Catholic…five hour long church trying to play the saxophone and preaching two extra sermons… At least there’s only one collection.

Seriously, we’re still in and out in an hour and a half.  At least he makes people want to go. That’s huge in this day and age. People are ready to give up at the slightest bit of controversy or difficulty. Lord knows the Catholic Church has had some difficulties. (Understatement) We have greed running rampant in other churches, Sex, All kinds of Sex and Even More Sex. How do we respond? The same thing we always do. We run. "I don't want to go to church"

Don't let a few bad apples run all the good people out of church!

Don’t let a few bad apples run us out of anywhere. We abandon everything. We come, we consume, we ask, we take, we get full and when we get asked to do some real spiritual work, we pack up all we’ve taken over the years and run away, leaving only the trash behind. We do it in our schools, we do it in our neighborhoods, and we go all the way with church. We might change churches for a short while but eventually we just leave.

I read this book one time (or three/four). It may or may not be 100% true but it does illustrate the possibility of man. The one thing I believe is that we must never give up and (SPOILER ALERT) we (the good people) win! So why you running? Think you’re not good enough?

God will perfect whatever is defective

(Isaiah 6) “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

I’m not going to front; right after that God told Isaiah not to tell anyone they were saved so they would suffer a little more and repent before he let them off the hook. That happens. You can’t avoid it. Sometimes we try to avoid the temporary discomfort so we stay in the mess we’re in instead of moving forward through to the end. Go one through it! Again, a lot of ups and downs in that book but it ends well.

Isaiah 43:1,2 “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

You know there’s a lot of fire and brimstone in the bible. Don’t be afraid. If you choose the right side, you won’t get burned. Just make sure you choose right. No fence straddling.

(1 Corinthians 15)And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.

It’s simple. We believe in Jesus, not some magic superhero who flies in and stops us from being assholes. We believe in a man being able to transcend the flesh and distractions of the world to attain true peace. We believe that we can practice and practice and attain a similar peace. (And that may be where we falter…) Too much unattainable magic and not enough practical advice.

So here it is:

•         Repeat after me “My miracle is on the way.”
•          Get ready. That means look at your faith.
•          Stop dwelling in the past.
•          If you don’t know how to pray, learn.
•          After you pray, meditate. (Meditation first step is clearing your mind)

Jesus removed his self from the world often to focus. And when he did, he was listening. He wasn’t doing a whole bunch of jaw-jacking and not waiting for an answer. Shut up sometimes! To be clear, shut up for at least five minutes every day (to start).

·       
             Keep casting your nets! Some of my friends are wonderful salesmen/women not because they know anything about what they are selling. They are great at it not even because they don’t take no for an answer. It’s because they keep going, believing that someone will say yes. Just like Colonel Sanders, it might take 1010 attempts and the majority of your life to get your miracle. Why are you giving up on yourself?

      A lot of yall give up at 23 after two ‘No’s. And still try to claim you believe in something.

Luke 6 - Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” … When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken,…

How many of yall would listen to someone who wasn’t an expert in “your field”.  I can hear the majority of you now running back to your egos at the mention of similar advice. “I been doing … for … years! What you trying to tell me?” “If you know so much, why don’t you do it?” The least we can do with any advice is to meditate on it. Find a way to make the best of everything given us.

So, one more thing before I go. Fight!

Believe in what you say you believe in. I’m getting tired of all the woe is me, look at how strong the devil is, illuminati, conspiracy this, conspiracy that talk. Too many of us say we believe in eternity and still deathly afraid of every little fool hollering boo at our God. SMH.

Isaiah 41:10 I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. “All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced; those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish. Though you search for your enemies, you will not find them.

Don't worry I will ALWAYS be with you (not only when the bullies aren't around). AND ALL (A-L-L, every single one) enemies will be ashamed and disgraced; they will be as nothing and perish. Shoot, you won’t even be able to find them if you look for them! And Lord knows yall like to look for enemies!

Gina noticed that the message is always the same and said that’s OK because that’s what the Bible is. Something happens, you maintain your faith, God shows up. That’s it. And it only works that way. Not – something happens, you run like hell or something happens, you have faith for two days, then you give up and do it your way on the third day… That’s the way you do it. It’s called faith because it works especially when it doesn’t look like it will. That’s it.

1300 words later, the simple truth is, if you say you believe in something, prove it. If it’s worthwhile it WILL work! Watch!

Spread Too Thin in Black America

I had a teacher at Crenshaw for like two weeks. She broke up with me. It was my senior year and I was trying to run every club. I was in every class (except AP Physics). Mostly I was walking the halls all day. Either way, she could tell I was doing too much. She took me to the side and encouraged me to drop AP U.S. History. The class was going to be demanding. I couldn’t give it much attention. She wanted more from me.

            I probably could have gotten a good grade but my lack of interest may have distracted the other students. So I left.

           

            After that, I was always conscious of spreading myself too thin. Doesn’t mean I don’t do it sometimes. Just means I am always aware of the delicate balance between being a brilliant multi-tasker and being depressingly overwhelmed.

With that in mind, black people are probably spread too thin. The focus is totally not there in Black America. We are seriously all over the place. We are ashamed of each other and we want to lift up everyone. We call everything racism and we can’t stand immigrants. We want more representation in media and the representation we create is unacceptable. We want to the government to help us AND leave us alone. We got to stop snitching and we want to get rid of all the crime.

            I’ve been in on a thousand arguments/discussions on a million and one topics in the Black community. No matter how passionate. No matter how loud we get. The arguments are always circular. For example, we hate “haters” and we want to make them our motivators and we want them to go away and we keep talking to them and we ignore them and we continue to respond to them. Or we have people in our lives that aren’t living right and we don’t want to judge them and they get on our nerves and we want them to get their shit together and we love to tell the stories about them messing up and we don’t want any of their mess in our lives and we Love them and will miss them if they leave our lives.

A few years ago, I had to have that conversation with my AP U.S. History teacher again. This time, however, I was alone and I played both roles. I had to stop myself and point out that I was spread way too thin. I was helping WAY too many people. I was wearing WAY too many hats. I was being WAY too many people for WAY too many people. It’s time to focus. The only way to achieve anything is to achieve SOMETHING. I had to prioritize, focus on only the most important things and put the rest to the side. Now I’m back on track.

            Part of being spread thin is that you can get distracted and end up refocusing yourself on the wrong things. I could have ended up selling cars and lying to people and not being myself. There was success there but that meant I would have put my writing completely to the side maybe forever. That wasn’t my true priority and I would have ended up lost

So, now, Black people are lost. We started with nothing and formed a vision and direction, lost it, started all over again, got lost one more time and STILL found another vision. Today, we are lost again. We are being pulled in every direction by every American trend because we think we must choose between being black and being American.

            Today everything is possible and that is the problem. We must choose something and we want everything. We want to be included in the mainstream and we want our own stuff and still don’t like sell outs. (BTW – the new sell outs are in the illuminati)

            I notice it in conversations. We support bums one day. The same bums get on our nerves the next. And, on another day, we wish all the bums would die. And in neither conversation does a true priority develop. And there lies the problem.

            We have no priorities anymore. Now that everything is possible, we have become distracted. The last time we had a vision is was this. We have achieved the ability to do all. Anyone who is into goal setting knows it is way past time to set some new goals.

            We need a new vision, a direction, for our future generations.

            With a direction and vision we used to be innovators and leaders. Today, with no direction or vision, everywhere I look we are no longer the innovators. Fashion, movies, music, sports, there’s nothing new anymore. HELLO! We’re slipping! New shit is our job. Let’s get back to work!

            We need a focus, a vision.  Maybe we should start with fashion:

This is not u and it’s not new.

Can we get something new please?

(Twice in a row. Can you tell how I feel about those stupid jeans?)

The bottom line is we need to reestablish our identity. We need a new vision. A new purpose. Even if it’s just defining our role in this new America, a change is coming and we need to make sure we are once again a major part of it.

Our new challenge is to pick a side and determine a direction and let’s achieve new heights.

Whatever we do, just remember let’s leave these behind:

Seriously!