beautiful afternoon

Im on my porch doing something the brings me pleasure. it may be the very reason to why I bought this house.  If you are inside right now you are blowing it. It is beautiful outside right now.  Today was good day.  I have a new found energy.Jimmie you are correct.  I too felt a little weir but I am getting over it. I had a boss tell me something really great today.  Well it was an email that i never got.  Oh yeah to wireless. Im on my porch this is awesome. Kinda like being at a coffee shop.  For 2008 I am going to do something awesome. I dont know what it will be but it will be awesome. I haven’t had much time to think about it because of tour but its coming.  I realized that I dont say many profound things here. Guess what folks you wont get it. This is about me ramblings and all. Sometimes I’ll give you a little something but for now if we arent really friends and you were intimidated “that’s for Whitney” and you were scared to talk to me well here it is. You’ll find out how messed up I am.  Apple store update. I think I have been dumped.  It’s like asking a girl on a date and she says yes but didnt tell me when to pick her up.  I will try something else. dont worry.Ok some friends have been discussing race relations.   I never say too much at work because I think people think I think like they do.  Some say that we have many races that come to camp and etc. Sorry to tell you. I wouldnt call us a safe place for other races.  Wait safe i mean that our personalities look like them. That doesnt happen. Some would say show me the person.  You know this is too important for me to just have this be a couple of thoughts so I will stop there.  More to come.  

Sunday tv night

Oprah’s big give is about to come on and I’m watching Bourne Supremacy.  Just like last week I will be tracking along with that show and do a sorta real time blog with it.   I was coming home today from a chicken place and heard a song that reminded me  of a phase that I went though. Wait let me tell you the lyrics and see if you can guess.  “That’s my house and that’s my car and that’s my dog in my back yard there’s the window to the room where she lays her pretty head”  Yup country music. I went through this crazy time where I listened to country music. Now I wouldn’t say that I bought a single cd.  I didnt do that but I did know the words to many songs.  I guess Im a lover of music right even the kind that if I walked into a bar that served that client el I would be stop people in their tracks.  Oh the early post was a slide show that I created I think 2 yrs ago.  Ah the memories.  Ok the DVR has started I’ll let it go for about 15 minutes then let the fun ensue.  I guess I’ll need to start dvr bourne wait I own that movie.  Ok be back in a bit.

Sundays are for lovers

I will bear the indignation of the LORD Because I have sinned against Him, Until He pleads my case and executes justice for me. He will bring me out to the light, And I will see His righteousness.

You ever sit in a dark room trying to believe this is true. Life is a funny thing. One day you are floating high the other you are wondering what went wrong. Now hold on before you go to your prayer closet to try to figure out what’s going on. I’m sitting on my couch in a home that God has given me looking at the birds fly into my backyard and I wonder what did I do and did to deserve all of this. I mean come on what am doing here. I wonder what my life would have been like 13 years ago if I never took a friend’s offer and joined up with the place I work now. Would I have never met some great friends would I never been able to travel. Im not really deep in thought right now just sitting watching House on the dvr and trying to think what I should do today. So far I have made chocolate chip muffins a cup of coffee and catching up on tv Ive missed.

I’ll be back a little later. What ever happened to this girl. I think she is still in atlanta. She used to work for the company I work for. Kristi. I never asked about her name. I took these for her a while ago and lost originals these are from my flickr.

(Watching Madea’s family reunion right now)

My hope

So I was thinking about this on the way to best buy to pick up some toys. I bought some speakers and such.. but that is not the reason of my hope. So here is what I was thinking about.   I dont want a typical family.  I want forgive the term a multicultural family. But let me not get ahead of myself. I was talking to friend of mine whitney and we kinda fell into a discussion about taking risk. Well not really a discussion because we were ichatting  anyway that’s what got me thinking.  So I decided to write it down. I guess I could write some vague face book message like  “working it out” or “hoping it happens soon” or “Maybe she’ll look at me” and put it out there only looking for someone to ask me “so what was that about”  Taylor another friend of mine thinks I did that in an earlier post.  Sorry to tell you Taylor I saw something in Relevant magazine and wanted to see if it would work so I played around with it a bit. I wrote about some highschool stuff ok Im getting way off course here.  Family.  I say find who you love and open up your pool a bit.  it seems to me to be a waste to define your parameters in first deciding if they look like you.  I was going to talk about a personal experience but I need to ask permission before doing that.  Not being vague being nice which I have been accused of not being.  (side note just started watching a short called West Bank story will tell you about that later)  Any way I want a house filled with culture.  Life seems so short

You know funny that I say this and the point to this short is just like west side story only its the west bank. An Israeli soldier falls in love with a waitress at a kabob house.  You laugh so much you have to cry.  But that’s another story.  She gave gave him humus and he thought they sad Hamas the comedy insues. The Kosher King shop is encroaching in on the Kabob house the kosher machine is now on the other side of the fence.

So now that I have side tracked myself numerous times I should start to conclude. My I should have married Angelina Jolie.  Whatever you think of her I like the idea of what her family looks like.  Ok so yeah. Oh yeah and thats why I like Love Actually great pictures of love.

If you saw me today it looked like I was having a crappy day. not really crappy I’m kinda living in a fog right now.  Camp is underway and I’m a little out of it. I almost picked a fight with one of my bosses. Stupid move.  Tour for next year is underway and I need to see how I will fit in there and im off in the  morning to Atlanta.  Here is a secret and dont tell anyone I would do it all over again. I’ll get it together tomorrow.

Oh and Im trying a new thing well its not new.  no reading over posts.

What would Jesus really do?

I read this today. Why does it seem that churches aren’t the first to take on social issues. Do I agree totally with this article and take it on as my own. No not really.

By Roland Martin
CNN Contributor

Editor’s note: Roland Martin is a CNN contributor and talk-show host on WVON-AM in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of “Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith.”

NEW YORK (CNN) — When did it come to the point that being a Christian meant caring about only two issues,­ abortion and homosexuality?

Ask the nonreligious what being a Christian today means, and based on what we see and read, it’s a good bet they will say that followers of Jesus Christ are preoccupied with those two points.

Poverty? Whatever. Homelessness? An afterthought. A widening gap between the have and have-nots? Immaterial. Divorce? The divorce rate of Christians mirrors the national average, so that’s no big deal.

The point is that being a Christian should be about more than abortion and homosexuality, and it’s high time that those not considered a part of the religious right expose the hypocrisy of our brothers and sisters in Christianity and take back the faith. And those on the left who believe they have a “get out of sin free” card must not be allowed to justify their actions.

Many people believe we are engaged in a holy war. And we are. But it’s not with Muslims. The real war — ­ the silent war ­– is being engaged among Christians, and that’s what we must set our sights on.

As we celebrate Holy Week, our focus is on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But aren’t we also to recommit ourselves to live more like Jesus? Did Jesus spend his time focusing on all that he didn’t like, or did Jesus raise the consciousness of the people to understand love, compassion and teach them about following the will of God?

As a layman studying to receive a master’s in Christian communications, and the husband of an ordained minister, it’s troubling to listen to “Christian radio” and hear the kind of hate spewing out of the mouths of my brothers and sisters in the faith.

In fact, I’ve grown tired of people who pimp God. That’s right; we have a litany of individuals today who are holy, holy, holy, sing hallelujah, talk about how they love the Lord, but when it’s time to walk the walk, somehow the spirit evaporates.

A couple of years ago I took exception to an e-mail blast from the Concerned Women for America. The group was angry that Democrats were blocking certain judges put up for the federal bench by President Bush. It called on Americans to fight Democrats who wanted to keep Christians off the bench.

So I called and sent an e-mail asking, “So, where were you when President Clinton appointed Christian judges to the bench? Were they truly behind Christian judges, or Republican Christian judges?

Surprise, surprise. There was never a response.

An African-American pastor I know in the Midwest was asked by a group of mostly white clergy to march in an anti-abortion rally. He was fine with that, but then asked the clergy if they would work with him to fight crack houses in predominantly black neighborhoods.

“That’s really your problem,” he was told.

They saw abortion as a moral imperative, but not a community ravaged by crack.

If abortion and gay marriage are part of the Christian agenda, I have no issue with that. Those are moral issues that should be of importance to people of the faith, but the agenda should be much, much broader.

I’m looking for the day when Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Joyce Meyer, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, James Kennedy, Rod Parsley, ” Patriot Pastors” and Rick Warren will sit at the same table as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Cynthia Hale, Eddie L. Long, James Meek, Fred Price, Emmanuel Cleaver and Floyd Flake to establish a call to arms on racism, AIDS, police brutality, a national health care policy, our sorry education system.

If they all say they love and worship one God, one Jesus, let’s see them rally their members behind one agenda.

I stand here today not as a Republican or a liberal. And don’t bother calling me a Democrat or a conservative. I am a man,­ an African-American man ­who has professed that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that’s to whom I bow down.

If you concur, it’s time to stop allowing a chosen few to speak for the masses. Quit letting them define the agenda.

So put on the full armor of God because we have work to do.

Still thinking about this

Sitting out side of Starbucks on a Sunday morning. Just finished some homework so I thought it would be a good time to update. I watched the movie Babel over the weekend. I see why it was nominated. No real full stories were told and they were told in their language. No English accents for someone from Egypt. So anyway. Great film. Although I was really depressed at the end. Thinking about world affairs and such. I said to someone the other day that I would like to have a house filled with people from all over the world. I think the one thing that I would make my kids do is travel to different parts of the world. If there is anything that I believe you should spend your money on its that. It changes you. About a year ago I got hooked on being in different cultures. I would say that I had fun every time. What I did have was a story. I have some friends that are in a place where they are unhappy in their jobs and life and feel that they should be doing something else. That they were meant to be doing this or that. That moving will solve that. I think you have to come to a point where life is more than what you do. I used to think about that stuff everyday. Christian soapbox for a second. If Mathew 28:19 is part of your life well you’ve got your job. So if that is so then all you are doing is building places to do that. Its funny when you strip away Southern fried Christianity you know pink hair..gold chairs…holy healing water…and you get to the raw fact that its real. Its all real. The stories that you were told in Bible school…the fact that you are change…the fact that some days it isn’t’ so easy and no one promised you a perfect life….I don’t know what that all means yet other than I try every day sometime struggling with the same thing….tba…getting hot sitting outside. I’ll finish this later….Got some new stuff happening in my life right now….good new…

World AIDS Day

An AIDS warrior’s legacy: Heart, tenacity

WASHINGTON (CNN) — To see white-haired Father Angelo D’Agostino, an 80-year-old Jesuit and doctor, you would almost certainly underestimate his strengths.

He looked like a quiet, gentle priest, only about 5 feet tall and stocky, with an easy, infectious laugh. But beneath the priestly vestments he was one of the fiercest fighters you would ever meet when it came to protecting HIV-infected children in Nairobi, Kenya. He would take on anyone, and he did. He was their fearless defender.

As we observe World AIDS Day today, it’s appropriate to remember a man who brought heart and tenacity to the fight. D’Agostino died November 20 of a heart attack following surgery after he was hospitalized for abdominal pain.

“In the very positive sense, he was somebody who could get you to do anything, it was very difficult to say no to him. He was like a pit bull,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health and a longtime friend of “Father D’Ag,” as everyone knew him.

In the early 1990s, he created an orphanage called Nyumbani — Swahili for “home” — for homeless HIV-infected children in Nairobi. When the government wouldn’t let them go to school with other children, he sued and won. When the children started dying from AIDS because they couldn’t afford the drugs that would keep them alive, and the cemetery behind the school was getting full of tiny caskets, he fought drug companies and the government to get the children affordable medicine. He needed a lab to monitor the children’s health and he couldn’t afford one, so he built one of the best in the region from scratch. He fought tirelessly for his children. He was afraid of no one.

The United Nations says the vast majority of the 4.3-million people newly infected with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa. But AIDS is not just about Africa anymore. The economic powerhouse of India now has 5 million people infected, more than any other country. Experts are also concerned about China, Indonesia, and Eastern Europe, where the disease is skyrocketing.

The United States has not contained the epidemic either. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1 million people in America are living with HIV, and about 250,000 of them don’t know it. African Americans make up nearly half of all new infections but only 13 percent of the population. “We’re beginning to see the face of the epidemic changing. AIDS is increasingly becoming a black disease in the United States,” says Dr. Kevin Fenton of the CDC.

To contain the epidemic will take more people like Father D’Ag: people with guts who are willing to make sacrifices.

“For me,” he said in a 2000 interview, “it’s the combination of a long life of study in both medicine and the priesthood and as far as I’m concerned it’s the most effective, most rewarding work that I’ve done in either medicine or priesthood.”

His children, who often saw more strife in just a few years than many of us see in a lifetime, were his constant companions, and they undoubtedly learned from his teachings.

He liked to tell the story “Once I went up with a group of them in an airplane ride around the city, and when we got above the clouds the little fellow next to me turned around and said ‘Are we gonna see Jesus now?’ He thought he was in heaven.”

Heaven is something the children at Nyumbani often learned about the hard way. Before Father D’Ag got much-needed AIDS medicine for the children, he lost about a child a month to the disease. The children would gather for the funeral at Nyumbani and carry the casket to the cemetery behind the school until that plot was full, then they moved to another cemetery in the city.

When the casket was lowered into the ground, the children would line up for an African ritual and toss handfuls of dirt on the casket.

Earlier this week, it was Father D’Ag’s casket they tossed dirt onto, their way of sending him to heaven.

Christy Feig and Saundra Young are producers for CNN Medical News in Washington.