Hypocrisy

I'm sorry for all the hate on this blog. I didn't know any better at the time.
"I ask forgiveness for this blind man who saw & didn't see."
-Pablo Neruda

Zion or Hell?

The church is supposed to be Zion, a place of welcoming, love, compassion & charity (along with all the other good values & such) but often it is not. Instead it is oft a place of judgment, loathing, exile & neglect, the exact opposite of what God intended it to be. 

How can we fix it? We certainly can't make others behave & be genuine, or force them to be welcoming and unjudgmental; we're not their stewards & have no control over them. We can only change ourselves.  While we can control & command ourselves & our actions we're often lost on how to be Christ-like. Do we try to love everyone & be as fakely genuine as we can possibly be? Our intent would be good & true, but the method of doing it would be counter active. Many often believe a kind word in the halls, a smile or an insincere "how are you" is all we need to be Christ-like & helpful. Here's a news flash: being insincere or ungenuine does more damage then it does good. People can feel your lack of real concern rolling off you in waves, even if your intent was to be friendly & "fellowship" the person. Be real about it or don't do it at all. 

So what do we do? If we're insincere about our caring & fellowshiping we push people away, if we just out right don't try or give a dang we still push people away. It seems like a lose-lose situation to me. It may come as a shocker to you, but we could actually be real & human with others. No sense in thinking "I'm better then you so I'll pretend to love/fellowship you", or "She's new & needs a temporary uncaring friend", or any such facade. Instead we could take real interest in their hobbies, maybe find an activity going on that involves it, maybe sit with them in the halls when they're alone instead of just walking by, perhaps we could talk to them outside of church & church activities, or maybe we could even pray for them. That'd be a world shaker, don't cha think?

If all else fails, if you can't salvage your ward from the grasps of the Mountains of Ignorance or the Demon of Insincerity, we can establish a sort of Zion in our own homes. We can dedicate our homes to the Lord & pledge to make it as welcoming to others as we can. We can make our homes a place of refuge, keeping an "open door" policy for those who are in need. We might be sure to turn our hearts over to God completely & let him guide us, letting him use us as a torch in the darkness. We could make sure to know all of the youth by name, and know of their circumstances & needs, looking out for them & keeping them in our hearts; we can offer them an ear that really cares, a heart that has plenty of room for them or even just a cup of tea & a place to talk late at night. If we cannot find Zion in the place where God meant it to be, we must take the principles we're taught and make a Zion in our homes or else face the possible perishing of a soul starving for light. 

Inflation of Language

Words. Sounds. Ideas. They change the world, shape lives and lift hearts.
We so often declare (without thinking), I LOVE those shoes, or I love that movie, I love this food, I love this activity, I love this person. We say I hate this show, I hate this book, I hate this state.. But do we really? Do we really "1. to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest"? Do we really have "a profoundly tender, passionate affection" for those shoes, that food, that person?

No. We don't, at least not as often as we say it. Our language is becoming polluted and inflated, quickly declining in value and soon it will be worth absolutely nil, just as the confederate's money was worthless enough to burn. The words once used to describe true splendor and beauty, passion, loathing; the words that were used to describe the extraordinary are now being used to describe the vulgar and mundane. We say "I love you" to everyone & their mom's, but we don't really love them all that often, at best we faintly care for about 5% of the people we say that to I'd bet. So what happens when we really DO love someone? When the passion burns in our breast for them, when we want to cry when we think of the joy they bring us, when we hold their happiness above our own? If we use the words Love, adore, relish, how are we to express with clarity and conviction the well of feelings in our soul? We don't. We don't properly express our devotion, our passion, our unconditional love, we DONT convince the other person of our love and gratitude, they think that it is only another vain repetition.. More often then not, they don't FEEL it, they simply smile and nod and respond in like manner as is dictated by social edict, but they don't really know that we adore them, that we love them, that we are devoted to them, that we are FOR them. It's just another set of words strung together in a sentence to them, another three words without meaning. And how unfortunate, that we will never be able to properly convey the deep resonance in our souls, all simply because we've inflated our damned language.

"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."
-C.S. Lewis

Passion

Does anyone really have passion anymore or do most of us just seek to exist and be mediocre? I tend to be very off-putting (Yay for elaborate masquerades!) when people meet me because I'm so passionate about most everything. I've been told more times then I can count that I'm easily roused to excitement & that I'll be a leader in the inevitable revolution. I mean WTF guys, just because I have passion doesn't make me any different.. does it? Maybe that's why people find me "weird", they can't get past my passion, my love, my driving want to LIVE? So riddle me this, why isn't burning passion a "normal" trait in this faceless, blindfolded society we live in? Why does it set me apart? There was a time once, before big goverments when people actually had passions & trades that they lived for, but we, we just live for day to day. What about the other things out there other then the damned media, work & sleep?? What about just sitting in the middle of a storm and feeling the sting of the wind whiping the rain into your face, the sound of a bird calling in the early morning, the way a song feels when it strikes that chord in your heart, the way your soul threatens to destroy itself when you commit a grevious sin, the desperation of finding someone to love, the furthering of your own mind by exploring your thoughts? WHAT OF THAT? Why is it that the person who persues those fleeting moments, those small, insignificant, over looked moments with passion is considered odd. When did passion cease to be the norm and mediocraty begin to be acceptable?

Epitaphs

Have you ever sat down and thought about what you might want written on your grave stone or read at your funeral? Have you ever tried to write your own requiem? It's hard, but fascinating work to do. To find something that describes you so well, or that moved you enough to literally be set in stone, it's hard. I don't know about anyone else, but I have written a requiem (not mine own, but for a friendship) and am always looking for anything that might be worthy to be immortalized as an epitaph on my headstone. Below are some of my favorite ideas for them :)

Life! I know not what thou art.
But know that thou and I must part;
And when, or how, or where we met,
I own to me's a secret yet.
Life! we've been long together
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
Tis hard to part when friends are dear--
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;
--Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not Good Night,--but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good Morning.
-A.L Barbauld

HER hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light;--
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.

But not beneath a graven stone,
To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone
Shall say, that here a maiden lies
In peace beneath the peaceful skies.

And gray old trees of hugest limb
Shall wheel their circling shadows round
To make the scorching sunlight dim
That drinks the greenness from the ground,
And drop their dead leaves on her mound.

When o'er their boughs the squirrels run,
And through their leaves the robins call,
And, ripening in the autumn sun,
The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all.

For her the morning choir shall sing
Its matins from the branches high,
And every minstrel-voice of Spring,
That trills beneath the April sky,
Shall greet her with its earliest cry.

When, turning round their dial-track,
Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
Her little mourners, clad in black,
The crickets, sliding through the grass,
Shall pipe for her an evening mass.

At last the rootlets of the trees
Shall find the prison where she lies,
And bear the buried dust they seize
In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
So may the soul that warmed it rise!

If any, born of kindlier blood,
Should ask, What maiden lies below?
Say only this: A tender bud,
That tried to blossom in the snow,
Lies withered where the violets blow.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Those are just my recent finds, I've seen and considered other poems, but those are the new ones. :) Enjoy my morbidity!

Welcome to the insanity

Hi, I guess I started a blog tonight. Let's see what will come of it eh?