the day i lost my faith and my footing

True story,...

I was 14 my arms were full of art supplies coming down the stairs in a hurry and OOPS I tripped and tumbled down the stairs and at the bottom of the stairs SMACK right into the wall. I was disoriented, my pride hurt and so did my leg. I whined,...my dad was sitting literally ten feet away watching the news, he heard the racket and in true midwestern fashion he leaned over to catch my eye and asked in an hurried tone,... "Can you walk?" I replied,..."I,...I don't know aaaah it hurts I think I broke something." He leaned back into his chair and said,... "Wait until after the news then we'll get you some ice." As I sat there holding my ankle I remember thinking,..."holy shit he's not kidding. Finishing the news is more important than helping me with my jacked up ankle,... well then fuck it I don't need his help." And that was it, I gritted my teeth stood after several tries and limped away never looking back. I love my parents, I love them for this lesson even though to this day my dad always laughs and says "Jair,...." That was the day I stopped expecting help and stopped waiting for someone else to solve my problems.
When I ask people what's the feeling they get when they think that there's an invisible force looking out for them, more often than not the reply is "It's nice to know I'm not alone." My response to that is how much potential is lost leaning on this placebo this crutch for support. We are so much stronger than we give ourselves credit for,...but most individuals turn away from their own strength in favor of an external force to lean on. When in the end the power has always been within you. When I stopped reaching out, and instead used that hand to lift myself up that was a day where I ceased to become a victim and instead became master of my own fate.
I've learned to give and recieve with the best of them I've gone through phases of voluntary solitude and desperate longing, and i've come to respect the basic idea of karma passing on the goodness that has come to me,...but never,...NEVER will I hold my breath waiting to be rescued. The invisible hand is not coming to save us. We are free to live or die in every moment of our lives that is what it means to be alive. To be free. To be strong. To lose your footing and happily find your own path.

burden of the believer

So I wanted to weigh in with a pro religious institution blog,...don't worry the blog hasn't been hijacked, I just felt after I read God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens, that he left out some really important elements that blur the debate,...and I enjoy complicating an already insanely complicated issue so, let the blurring begin

I had a conversation with someone recently who revealed to me that bringing up a child in a church that has an existing community acting as a support system that at least on the surface purportedly shares his belief system helped take the burden off of trying to weed their way through social friends hoping to find couples that shared similar morals and values with him and his wife. It was help they needed when she came home with the baby and it took all their energy just to keep up, and through the church community help is what they got. It boiled down to helping their brothers and sisters in faith, and for this help they got to welcome a new recruit into their religious community.

Religion as an institution brings people together to celebrate a commonality of spirit in a very compartmentalized society. Similar to war, people from drastically different backgrounds can find themselves sitting next to each other at a sunday sermon and surprisingly find that we're not so different afterall-WOW who would have guessed a former hells angel would have bought the same spritual ticket that i did? neat o! there is something beautiful about this meeting of the minds,...I only hope that this meeting of the minds doesn't hinge on leveling judgements about those who DIDN'T buy the same ticket that they did, as I witnessed more times than i'd like to recall.

Peace of mind, I was just told today that when i change the way i look at things those things change. I thought to myself, wow what a slick bumpersticker that would be.
I'm imagining this car moving forward now I can move forward and BAM!

The world is a complicated place, religious institutions act as a funnel for all the insanity of living in this sped up consumer existence. Pouring all the murky world's problems into a divine bucket and sifted from this bucket is perspective, a divinely sifted perspective on the world. When you have a divine bucket to trust at your disposal who would want to wade into the murky world and try to sift out perspective on your own? The bucket knows best,...

Scientists who are believers,... If science has proven anything its that what we know today most likely will be improved upon if not completely shattered tomorrow. Leap frogging our way into the void even the most rational minds i'm sure seek an absolute an answer to it all. That's the seeker in all of us. To pull up short and say i could go on, but why? This is a testement to the human spirit, to imagine the vastness of our ignorance is stupefying even to the most educated of individuals. So why not stop drop to your knees and say "well,...just in case I believe."

the power of placebos never ceases to amaze me,...