Good Eats and Thoughts of a Contemplative Feeler

Right now my roommate is at Urbana, the missions conference hosted by InterVarsity USA in St Louis.  He has been tweeting and posting on Facebook about lessons he's been learning, and one of them was in regards to the Black Lives Matter, or BLM, movement.  You can see the stir on social media he has caused because of it here . So what's the big deal about BLM and why is it important?  Shouldn't we acknowledge the plight of other ethnic groups and that "All Lives Matter?"  Aren't we just making race relations worst by acknowledging such movements?  Even more, how can I support such a movement when people have committed heinous crimes in the name of BLM? These are questions that have gone through my mind since BLM publically became recognized in 2014 after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.  I must confess that I initially did not understand the BLM movement or why African-Americans were being so vocal about their plight.  Because I did not underst

After I finished up at church this afternoon, I paid a visit to my grandma and grandpa since it's been awhile since I went to go see them.  Today is fifteen years since my grandma passed away.  I visited them alone because I wanted the time to reflect and meditate by myself without anyone with me (dang my introversion haha).  Although I know that neither one of them are physically here, there's something deeply comforting being at their gravesides and spending time with God--as if they were both right next to me as I engage with the Father.  Not long after they placed her grave stone, my family took me to go look at it, which is when I left a letter for her expressing how much I would miss her.  I left a letter for her today...the exact amount of closure I needed. Dear Grandma, It’s been fifteen years since God decided that your journey on earth was at its end and he called you into your new journey into eternity.  I still remember the night when mom and dad found you

Since I graduating college, I thought I had myself all figured out when it came to how I do friendships/relationships.  I had convinced myself that the depth of a friendship directly correlates to the amount of quality one-on-one time I spend with someone.  In this new season of life thought, I'm learning that is not the case anymore...especially if I want to be the brother and friend God has called me to be. Awhile back I met up with a friend in order to catch-up and hangout.  Unknowingly I left that hangout with expectations about how our friendship would play out this semester.  By the grace of God, the Holy Spirit was able to reveal to me that I had formed these expectations and that these expectations were causing me to experience disappointment and to have conflicting thoughts/feelings towards this friend. "Does this friend truly love me?"  "Maybe my presence isn't as enjoyable as he said it is..."  "I don't think our friendship is a prior

We all have that side of our ourselves we want no one else to experience or to see.  This is where our fears and insecurities live, where the characteristics of our personality which we're not proud of manifest.  Personally, the dark side of my self is also where my desires are rooted in the world and in the flesh and exist outside of the influece of God and his radical love and mercy.  This is the side of me that I try to suppress--sometimes with the help of the Holy Spirit, sometimes by myself--because this side of me tends to villainize and almost ruin relationships.  This side is immersed in darkness where the focus is solely on me--what I want, what I need, what I feel, and what I think.  It transforms how I view relationships and how I act in them and towards others. I recently allowed my dark side to manifest in one of my significant friendships...it's the worst thing that could have happened.  I became negative and acted horribly and impatiently.  I only cared about w

Dear History Maker,             After finishing the readings for my Discipleship & Ethics class on war and violence, I began to consider the value of Christian pacifism and how it applies to my life.  Though I have never been violent myself, I have always enjoyed watching martial arts movies, war movies, and playing videogames that involve either physical combat and/or conquest and the use of artillery or firearms.  When violence entered into my reality though, such as seeing fights at school, I was uncomfortable with it.  (I think that's why I didn't want to engage in that conversation from Tuesday night about which one of us would win in a fight.  Though theoretical, it was infringing on my reality).  Basically, as long as violence did not directly affect me and was not a part of my reality, I did not really think about its impact.  That is probably why I never really made a decision about how I feel about war and the prospect of taking another life.              I

A couple weekends ago, I had the opportunity to share at an event for the fifth and sixth grade students at my church.  The theme was how we as individual superheroes can contribute to our own superhero team -- the body of Christ.  One of the points I shared was that it is important and necessary for the body of Christ to be made up of superheroes with different talents and gifts because...let's face it...it would be boring and nothing to very few tasks would get accomplished if everyone had the same personality, gifts, and talents.  What naturally happens though when we begin working and become friends with people who are different from us?  We tend to butt heads...and friendships tend to get messy.   Since I shared at this event, even though I talked about it to the students at the time, I have been truly realizing how messy friendships and relationships can get when your friends and coworkers have completely different personalities than you. There will be times when we say t

I realize that the title itself is a little melodramatic since Facebook is not literally destroying my friendships, but it has been affecting them in the realm of my mind. Assuming you are Facebook friends with the people who are your friends in real life, Facebook has conditioned our minds that your real friends will like whatever post--from pictures to status updates to random articles you decide to share because you believe they are interesting.  Facebook has also conditioned us that the value of what we have to say and the value of our identities all lies within the number of "likes" we receive on posts or the number of comments we can generate.  Whenever I decide to post something, I always end up checking to see if anyone has liked my post. Currently in my Discipleship & Ethics class in seminary, we are discussing how technology and media can become powers in our lives that take away from our identities and create a community that is contrary to the kingdom comm