Thursday, July 08, 2004

Well, one more off my chest

"And Jesus Wept"
Book of John, Chapter 11

I've known about this verse in the bible my whole life. My father mentioned it to me when I was a mocoso (spanish for little kid). He told me that it was the shortest verse in the bible, and that we has Christians like we do with all religion, interpret it many ways. My dad's interpretation of it was simple. The fact that it was short means that those 3 words together were meant to stand out the most. The fact that Jesus wept was just an amazing thing.

Recently this verse in the bible was brought forth to my attention again thanks to the movie "Barbershop 2." He was first mentioned when the owner of the Barbershop, Calvin, was starting to eat a biscuit and his old nanny came in and said, "Don't forget to say grace." He responds "And Jesus Wept" and she ask "Why did he weep?" and Calvin had no response to this. Later you learn that Jesus was moved to tears because of witnessing the sorrow that Mary and Martha had upon the death of Lazarus.

This intrigued me to open my bible and look for the verse and read it in context of the whole chapter, and just like it was stated in the movie, Jesus wept because of the sorrow he felt for Martha and Mary. This brought back my memory of why I want to be a doctor.

For my whole life, I wanted to be successful, I.E. I wanted to have lots of money for little work. I use to see doctors all the time. I use to go to their nice houses for Christmas parties with my parents. I saw how they had more then they could ever want, so I decided I wanted to be an anesthiologist, easy work, measure out the drug and sit back and watch. But that plan didn't stick. There was one person who had so much of an impact in my life that I was moved to tears and I'm not completely sure as to why. I don't know his name, I'm sure I could find out his name, but I don't want to know, I'll learn it when it is right, for now he is just "THE GUY."

My brother was at the University of North Texas and we (my family and I) went to visit him over a weekend. We went to "church" with him, which was basically a meeting in a little extra room in one of the dorms, nothing special. But at the end of the mass, there was time for the announcements like always, but at the college they let the students come up and say what there is. Well enter THE GUY, he was a guy who was paralyzed drastically. Only means of moving around was his chair/scooter and he had a dog that helped with everything he needed, like many people who are handicapped have dogs that help with daily task. I heard my parents ask about him, apparently he was extremely smart, I think he had something close to 4 doctorate degrees, I'm not completely sure on this fact. But anyways he started talking about this fundraiser that was going to happen at the college to help handicapped people and how he hoped some of the people would volunteer to help. But something in his voice caught me off guard, I could hear the pain that he had, not for him self at living this life that people would consider disadvantaged, but for the people that believed this lie themselves. I heard pain. I heard courage. I heard defiance at not letting this world bring him down. And I heard pleas for help. For some unknown reason to me. I started to cry. Not just a tear, but uncontrollable crying. Now I want you to know that I was in middle school. When you are in middle school, all you want to do is keep this mask of being tough up, especially me, but here I was, crying. I couldn't help it. I then realized, you DON'T become a doctor for yourself, or because of family legacy. You need to become a doctor to help other people. That's where I changed my choice at what kind of doctor I wanted to be. I'm not sure what I want to do now, but I know I'm going to make a difference. It's not about me, or money. It's about spreading the message I heard in THE GUY's voice that day. Since then, I've had the gift of hearing emotion and more in people's voice then they know. I can hear what makes people sad, or what makes them happy. It's sort of a curse, because I sometimes don't know what to say at the moment I hear it, but I do have faith that I have that gift for a reason. I guess there are some people that THE GUY's voice was God talking to me. I don't know about that. I know that if you are willing to listen to those around you, I mean truly listen, you never know what you might hear. Now, I don't want anyone to think, I'm pulling a John Lennon here and comparing myself to Jesus, but like I said in earlier post. Jesus was sent here to lay a path for us to follow, whether you know it or not, you are following it yourself. You know I never told you what Jesus did because of the sorrow that Jesus felt on behalf of Martha and Mary. He raised Lazarus. He raised a man from the dead. I think I can do something to make the world a better place. Now I pose a question to you: What makes you weep? What are you going to do about it?

P.S. - this blog is supposed to be just social commentary. Not strictly religious thoughts. But social commentary is hard. You know those writers in the media actually do have a job.

P.S.S. - This is my last entry until I get my laptop.

Waiting

I think I'm going to wait to write further on my blog until I get my laptop. So my next entry will be made probably somewhere next week. Until then.

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

Most Important

You know, I can't believe I forgot the most important entry of a blog. The explaination of the whole thing and reasons for starting.

The Name is Pantaleon's Blotting Paper. Pantaleon is a saint who also was a doctor to a Pagan king. As a good christian he would also help the poor and not charge them. Pantaleon started to cause jealousy among the other doctors and they challenged him to see who could heal better. They agreed on a patient and Pantaleon let the other doctors go first and they could not heal the man. Pantaleon just went to the man and whispered the name "Jesus," in his ear and he was cured. But the pagan king started to go after all christians and so he killed Pantaleon.

Blotting Paper like the description at the top of the page "explains" is a sort of paper that is used to soak up excess ink on a page. Sort of my feelings on the whole blog situation. All blogs to me just seem to be soaking up ink, or rather in this case data, storage and peoples time. So this is my way of saying this is my wasting of everyone elses time, like they are wasting mine with their opinion. Not like I listen to them or you listen to me, so it's a fair trade.

One thing about me is that my whole life, or rather the last few years, I've felt like a moderator in my family. Don't like conflict, but if you do get me involved in a conflict, run. It's not pretty. But since my dealings as a moderator I don't push things in peoples faces, I just hope that they sort of have a come to jesus on their own. Also, the good thing about being a moderator is I deal in KNOWN fact. I don't try to put anything out there that might have the slightest chance of being false no matter how interesting or plausible the fact may be. Now I'm using this to refer to my last post titled "My Friend". Like I know it is stated somewhere, I want to be pre-med, so I'm fairly well versed in the ways of the human body and how it develops and works. I've been in a college psychology class, and I know that there is significant scientific research going into the study of the homosexual mind. I know that many of the cases have female traits, but that doesn't mean that all people that consider themselves homosexuals have female characteristics in their mind, nor does that mean that all people with female characteristics are homosexual. All I was saying was that my friend decided to embrace the homosexual lifestyle. I do not know for a fact whether or not he choose to be gay or whether God made him like that. Like I stated in that post, only one being in this whole universe has the answers and the right to judge my friend. So That's all for today.

Saturday, July 03, 2004

My Friend

I've had a couple of ideas for post in my mind recently, but I think it only right that I do one for right now.

Recently, a friend of mine "came out" to me.
Yeah, the came out you are thinking. He admitted he was gay. I was caught a little off guard by this, and by what I mean is, he did it so quickly I didn't know what had just happened. He is one of those friends that you always sort of assume that there is a high probability that they are homosexual.

Now, I've always been opposed to the homosexual life-style, not so much because of the Christian view of "IT'S AGAINST GOD!", but more so of the fact that it denies life. On that point I will gladly stand with the Christian fundamentalist. I have other points against the homosexual lifestyle, but this is neither the time or place for them on the account that they aren't very "gentlemanly" topics to discuss in public. Meaning I will be more then happy to discuss these views with you in person if you care to ask.

But this post ISN'T about whether or not my friend was obeying the laws of God/nature. It's about the views that it brought to my mind. I had never really had a friend come out to me, because I don't figure many of them know what they are talking about (too young) or that some of them are just confused. But this friends "comments" affected me, because he is a good friend. He has always watched out for me, and given me information I needed to know about my surroundings in Oklahoma. It's just that after what he said to me, I had to think about more then what my opinions are about the "homosexual lifestyle", but also about how I felt about my friend deciding to live this lifestyle. I had to come to many conclusions.

1) He is my friend. Always will be friend unless he fails to meet the requirements to be called such.
2) He is a good person, just making a GREAT many number of wrong choices in his life.
3) That I love him and I will stand by him as a person, not a mistake.

Now I know some of you are grimacing at point number 3. By no means am I stating that I would participate in his "lifestyle", but I AM stating that as a Christian, I will and do obey the laws of my lord. Jesus said "Love your neighbors as I have loved you." (Now, I know my parents will find this as kind of a shock, I don't display many of the usual outgoing Christian views. I prefer the simple and quiet and live a good life to show it's possible view.) Jesus was willing to die for you, my friend, and I. In my view of this, he wants us to be willing to put others before OURSELVES, something that is hard to do in this day and age where we put our best interest before all others. And by this definition do I mean I love my friend. I don't agree with his choice, but it is NOT my place to judge him. There is only one being that I can think of that can truly judge a man, and by no means am I that being, and by no means am I anywhere near that beings equal. All I can do for him is pray(yes, family, I said pray) for him, and live my life in the way I see a good Christian values to be, and show my friend that conquering whatever demons and obstacles that are put or we put in our way is possible. He is my friend, and if he needs me, I will not back down from his side.

Friday, July 02, 2004

The Beginning.....I Guess

Well, I guess I have to start somewhere and might as well be now as long as I don't have anything to do right now. My name is Sam, that's not the only name I'm known by, but for all intensive purposes, it should get the job done for right now. I'm 18 years old, about to start College and really excited about it. I'm going to start at the University of Oklahoma, come this August. I'm registered as a Biochem. major but I think that's going to change because I only need one math class to be a Zoology major instead of two for Biochem. That just goes to show you that I don't really like math, infact I hate math. I have no clue as to why I graduated High School with two extra math credits. Wait, that's right, I wanted to be pre-med. I've always wanted to be a doctor. Something in my nature just wants me to help people. Must be some weird ass instinct that I can't fight no matter how I try. I'm from a family of four: Mom, Dad, brother and I. I think that's correct grammatically, not like I'm very grammatic, infact this post is probably the one I'll try my best to be correct as far as the written english language.

My whole reason for starting this blog is to get my ideas out there. Somewhere. I'm not exactly sure anyone will read this and/or listen to me, but at least I'm trying. I've been reading all my friends blogs and they are just inane, random things that don't have any affect on the world. I mean if anything is worth doing than make it something that will affect the world in a way that you think will make the world a positive place. I mean I can understand why people would want to have a place where they write about what happened to them today, but that's a diary, and on a public forum I don't really want to know what you had for lunch today. That totally defeats the purpose of a diary/journal. In a true actual journal, you keep your thoughts about the people involved in your life, and some of these thoughts you really don't want some to read. But on the thoughts that you do want people to read, get a blog.

Also, as I stated before, I'm 18. A teenager. I've been reading some of my friends blogs, on xanga, and I don't like what I read. "This sucks because of blah, blah, blah." Don't complain about it. Do something about it. And one thing that you need to know right now, people my age, is that the world is full of hypocrites, get use to it. If you don't like it, don't be one. As much as many people complain about the hypocrites that run much of our lives, they are guilty of just the same crimes on a smaller scale. I recently read a friends blog where he complained about our high school principal, and how he was proud of the AP (advanced placement) classes at our school, and how he remembered that the principal was opposed to AP program in the first place. That's what happens when people see how good a program is. They get convinced, and change, that's why you have to try to change the world. I'm not saying that in one day, the world will wake up and say, "Oh yeah, what I'm doing right now is stupid." That's not going to happen. Fighting the world is like fighting a thick, strong wall of stupid. You aren't going to get much done about bringing it down by slamming your head against it one time, and then taking some tylenol. You have to be constant and meticulous, and just keep picking at it, as long as you can bear. Eventually, hopefully that wall come down, but as a Catholic, I'm supposed to believe that once the stupid wall comes down, and peaces reigns, that begins the end of the world. Another reason to hope for peace. This place is a HELL HOLE, and it needs change. Well I guess this is enough for a beginner. Write more later I think.