When home becomes a prison.

It seems to me that for home life to flourish, then everyone who lives there must be able to enjoy being there.  I'm not saying that everything will be enjoyable to everyone at all times, but everyone there must have something there that they can enjoy.  From what I have seen and experienced, I have concluded that when people are prevented from all enjoyment at home, they start seeking to find it elsewhere.

Enjoyment can have many forms.  It can be creating a garden paradise to relax, meditate, and recharge in.  It can be listening to music, watching tv, reading or some athletic activity.  Anything or anyplace to personally recharge.

Along with personal enjoyment there should be a communal enjoyment also.  I believe that there also needs to be a connection with others in the household.  A home that has the residents living separate lives is not really a home.  A couple that doesn't have a connection and common enjoyment, will start looking for fulfillment elsewhere away from each other.  Home life becomes a prison that the soul yearns to escape from.

It seems to me that home really becomes a home when everyone there desires it to be and then pursues it through love, grace, forgiveness, & long suffering.

Hugo Duarte and A1A

I just recently had a weekend so awesome that I am still feeling the effects of it a week later.  When I go through something like that, I want to try and put words down to describe it.  If I am somewhat successful, then this will be a type of monument to bring back the memories of that weekend.

It starts on Saturday, July 13, 2013, after an Alumni Lunch (which is always special itself).  After I left the luncheon, I went straight to The Dallas Zoo for their Safari Nights Concert Series.  Jeff Pike and A1A was performing that night. I met some friends from The Lone Star Parrot Head Club plus a couple of others, who were already there.  We went to a couple of exhibits before heading to the concert area to make sure that we were front and center for the concert.

Now one thing that you might need to know is that Hugo and Jeff are both friends and a couple of my favorite musicians.  That Saturday I was surrounded by friends who know me and liked me anyway,  and they made sure that I knew that I was a part of the group.  You see, I have spent most of my life being an outcast when it comes to being with a group of my peers, and even though I should know better, I still have this expectation that when people know me, I will be excluded.  This evening my friends made sure that this did not happen.

Every-time that I have seen Hugo or Jeff, I have always felt like they were very happy to see me.  They are this way for everyone that they know.  It is a great part of their personality.  That weekend was no different.  Jeff even introduced us to a friend who had came up from Houston.  She is now a friend of mine as well.  That is always great also.  It seems every time that Hugo and Jeff come around, I make new friends and that also made that weekend great.

Now the A1A concert was a great concert.  Music was so good, that people started dancing without a dance floor anywhere around them.  I did not want to leave that place that night.  In fact I didn't leave until they turned off the lights in the park.

Now Sunday the 14 was a house concert with Hugo.  Now to be fair, Brian Burns and Don Burke were there and played also.  They were great also and I really like them, but Hugo was the Headliner in my book.  I was surrounded by the same friends that I had met at the Zoo a few hours before plus several more.  They were still friends too.  :)   Now the week that led up to these concerts was a week of roller-coaster emotions.  They had every right to be very emotional and distraught, and even though they were a bit more subdued than normal, they seemed to be ready for some music to soothe the soul like only music can.

The concert was still going strong when I left, but it had been one of the best weekends that I had had in a long time.  For the first time in a very long time my smile came back.  I had forgotten that I could even smile like that.  I mean I smiled and laughed and had a great time.

Now I do not know what will happen in the future, but for one weekend, I could and did smile and smiled a lot.  That makes for a great experience.

A Hero

 Lleweyn Swint was a true "Jekyll & Hyde" person.  I have been told that he would give the shirt off his back to help someone in need before he drank the elixir that would forever change him.  He was also a Chemist of sorts, a type of Scientist,  whose lab was not in some back room but out in the woods, what most people call a still.

You see Lleweyn's expertise was in making moonshine.  Although he may have been good at it, what gave others pleasure, proved to be the elixir that would turn him into "Mr. Hyde".  He became a very violent abusive alcoholic. This was the legacy of my grandfather, the father of my Dad.

My Dad left this lifestyle and married at age 20 and at the age of 21 on Father's Day 1957 - became a father himself.  He came into the roles of both marriage and parenthood, with very little if any positive role models.  The Pastor of the church that married my parents would run the whole family off from the congregation because the Pastor did not think that my Dad was good enough and that anything coming from that marriage would not be fit for God to use.  (Papa, my Mom's dad saw my Dad differently because he himself grew up in an abusive home, but that is another story).

There is a Bible verse that talks about the consequences of a man's wrong doing would be handed down for 4 or 5 generations.  I understand that very well, but I do not see that as a negative.  I see it as a positive.  For you see, my Dad made a decision back when I was born, that he would be a different father to me and my siblings than his father was to him, and to me that makes him a hero.

Don't get me wrong my Dad made a lot of wrong decisions and actions towards me, but that never changed the way that I respected and looked up to him because of what he tried to do.  That love and respect that I had for him has made it possible for me to forgive him of those shortcomings.  It would also help me during some tough times in my life when I encountered some Seminary graduates that used their "counseling techniques" to find and exploit people in order to build up their following and ministry.  

While these Seminary graduates exploited my family & turned them against me, they uncovered the strained relationship that I had with my father.  They tried those same techniques with me, but I would not share with them anything that they could use against anyone else.  They could not turn me against me Dad, because of the respect that I had for my Dad trying to be different from his father.  They could not undo the forgiveness that I had already given him.

You see, my grandfather had a terrible relationship with my Dad, but my dad took steps to have a better relationship with me, and even though I have made many mistakes myself with the upbringing of my kids, my relationship with them while they were growing up was better than the one that I had with my dad.  And it doesn't stop there, for I see in my oldest son that he has taken another step in the right direction with his child, and that has been a cause for happiness within my heart.  All of these right steps are the result of my dad making first step toward change back over 56 years ago.

Church

This is a hard blog for me to write about because I don't know, if people can put aside their scars and walls so they understand what I'm saying.  The word "church" will almost always send people into their own opinions where they can't understand or accept anything - other than someone repeating those same thoughts and opinions.  Well, I feel in my heart that I need to try and tackle this anyway.

I spent the first 50 years of my life in active membership in Baptist churches.  I was so involved in those churches that I was a teacher before I stopped being a teenager.  I was ordained a Deacon when I turned 25.  As a Deacon and "lay" minister, I was in a position to see behind the scenes as "leadership" led those churches.  You could say that I saw the image that was projected out to people as well as who actually sat behind the curtains.  As a result, I do not look up to anyone who is in a church leadership position.

When I left the last church that I attended, I left with their blessing as I sought to reach out to people who had no desire to be part of those churches and wouldn't be welcome if they did show up.  People who were forced out of those fellowships have always had a special place in my heart.  I have been treated the same way myself.

An interesting thing happened to me after I left the "traditional" church though.  I discovered a closeness to God that I had not felt in several years.  I had always known that God loved me but I had never experienced it like I started experiencing it.  As I experienced love, I started to trust God to do His part.  I gave up all of the manipulating sales pitches that church evangelism taught everyone to use. I didn't need to use them.  God would lead and I would let the overflow of love that I had experienced onto them.  I also did not need to coerce or manipulate people into behaving a certain way.  God changes people, including me, from the inside out and anything that would try to do would only hamper God.

After all of that, I get to this point.  What kind of "church", if any,  would be attractive to me?  It would not be a "traditional church".  It would not have traditional church leadership positions.

It would be a small informal gathering of friends.  All believers are connected to God the same way that Jesus was connected to God The Father as he walked upon this Earth.  We have this connection through Jesus and His sacrifice of his body.  So God would be the leader.

Our get togethers would be simply friends gathering together to encourage each other, and to love, and to spur that love forward revealing good works, that always comes from love.

To me, this is what the early believers did and this is where my heart is at.

Easter beliefs

As I have said before, Easter was always a big letdown for me growing up.  The day never lived up to the hype that surrounded it. Aside for a few songs like "Up From The Grave He Arose" that were only sung that time of year, nothing else was really different about the day from any other Sunday.

Over the past few years, that has started to change.  Not that I plan to go to any special services, because I don't.  What has changed is my viewpoint of Easter itself.  This different viewpoint is one that stays with me throughout the year.  This viewpoint is what Easter is all about.  

My beliefs about what happened that day has not changed, but my thoughts about why has.  You see, I no longer believe in a angry God who is looking to strike everyone down and used Good Friday just to take it out on His only begotten Son, who let Himself get tortured to death so we would not have too. 

The why of Easter is that God so loved us that He caused these events to happened so that we could be cured from our sin problem that has separated us from God since the Garden, and has kept us separated just as a deadly disease will separate us from our love ones here on Earth.  Not that our "sin" problem would affect God, but that His holiness would destroy us.  

The physical healing's that Jesus performed were a picture of what his death and resurrection would/will accomplish.  His death & resurrection heals all of the past scares and deformities caused by "sin" and transform us into new creatures as His Spirit would unite with our spirit/soul.  

Since God is love, then His Spirit will fill us with a love like we have never known before.  As His love fills us, it will flow out of us to others.  As it flows out from us, people will know that we are followers of God by the way that we love.

To me, this is the Good news.  God loved us and we can now have that same relationship with God The Father that Jesus had while He lived as a human among us.  And when death comes to us,we will find ourselves with a God who seeks to comfort us like we would a hurt child or other loved one, but even more so.

Mercy over Sacrifice

What does the quote, ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’ really mean?  This is what Jesus told the religious leaders of his day and followed that by saying that they needed to learn what this meant.  This verse is a quote from Hosea 6:6.

Jesus uses this quote twice and it is found in Matthew  9:13 and He repeats it again in Matthew 12:7.  Here are the verses in context:

9:9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax booth.“Follow me,” he said to him. And he got up and followed him. 9:10 As Jesus was having a meal in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Jesus and hisdisciples. 9:11 When the Pharisees saw this they said to his disciples, “Why does yourteacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 9:12 When Jesus heard this he said, “Those who are healthy don’t need a physician, but those who are sick do. 9:13 Go and learn what this saying means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

And:  

12:1 At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on a Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pick heads of wheat and eat them. 12:2 But when the Pharisees saw this they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is against the law to do on the Sabbath.” 12:3 He said to them, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and hiscompanions were hungry – 12:4 how he entered the house of God and they ate the sacredbread, which was against the law for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests?12:5 Or have you not read in the law that the priests in the temple desecrate the Sabbath andyet are not guilty? 12:6 I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. 12:7 If you had known what this means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. 12:8 For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

As I see it, this really points out the difference between religion and relationships.  Religion places a priority on rules, & customs . People need to make sacrifice to make themselves worthy before a relationship can be established. Relationships makes people the priority and mercy is freely given so relationships can be established.  Mercy is unmerited favor toward those who have done wrong without them having to atone for their failures.  Sacrifice is people having to make amends for their failures before the relationship is restored.

So, where do we place our priorities?  Where do we place our highest priorities?  Are our rules and customs, our highest priority; or do we want friendships with all people?

A difference in philosophy

During my lifetime, I have noticed two different philosophies competing for the way that we do things here in the USA.  I do not know what the official designations are for these points of view.  I simply describe them as Childproofing vs Responsibility training.

I first noticed these different philosophies as a kid and later as a parent.  If you store dangerous chemicals under your sink, then Responsibility training will try to teach your child not to go there. This is done by constantly monitoring them and punishing them if they should go there.  Punishment usually was a spanking.  The purpose here was to teach them that bad things will happen if they handle those chemicals  in a way that will not cause permanent damage to them.  Childproofing says that you can't monitor them as you should, so you need to put locks on the doors to prevent them from going there.

You can see a difference between the two philosophies later as the kids grow and start playing in the street.  Responsibility training will teach them to watch for cars and it is their responsibility to get out of the way of traffic.  Childproofing will say that it is the responsibility of the oncoming traffic to avoid the kids.

Also you can see this in schools.  Responsibility training says that it is the students responsibility to learn.  Childproofing places to total responsibility on the teachers.

Again, when someone goes berserk and starts killing others.  Responsibility training says the cure is to see that the criminal is made accountable for their actions.  Childproofing says we need gun control.

It is this last example that I have a problem with both philosophies.  My problem with them here is that neither of them will prevent these tragedies from happening.  History shows us this.  There has been many of a criminal in our history who has been taught responsibility in their actions but still went on and  did terrible things.  History has also shown us that tragedies can and will happen without guns (i.e. Ireland, Oklahoma City, September 11).

I believe that the only thing that will prevent these things from happening is love.  When this world was created, love ruled.  People rebelled against that love and that is why bad things happen now.  However, we now live in a time where it is possible to know that love and to experience that love.  As we experience that love, it will flow through us and will change the way we interact with each other.  As that love changes us, we naturally start loving others with that type of love.  I believe that the only answer that will stop the violence within America is that love.

Here's to living loved and loving others.