Easter Sunday.... the calling has come

In the LDS church you are "called" to serve in some capacity. could be as easy as locking the building at night or as hard as teaching the gospel to 100s of people. I was called to utilize my skills in the kitchen. This is not odd for me. I have been asked before to help out with special events with the Church, but now i have been called. This shouldn't be anything else weird. I am quick to volunteer, quick to show a helping hand, but this is the official "calling". this is the first steps to conversion. I am not afraid of this path. Nor do i shy away from an asked helping hand.

The call was put out and i answered. they asked for help and i showed up. This is nothing that i haven't done in the past, but now it is official. I was also asked to give the opening prayer one day

This official calling of the church does not require membership, but what the bishop said to me after church struck me. He encouraged to help in membership development. I am not a member, and I don’t think I am even close to being a member (that I can think of) but this was something that I am good at. I can sell. Ok Selling is not what it is made out to be. I am not trying to dupe this guy into religion, but I know the high points and I can generate excitement in a subject. Between my ability to generate excitement and Clinton’s vast knowledge of the scriptures, we are a great team for helping people develop their love of Christ. This is what I do. It is what make me feel in my comfort zone. Once in my comfort zone I will be able to start letting my preconceived notions of religion and Mormons are.

I am just in a place where I am stepping so far out of my zone that I need all the comforts I can find. And I find comfort in responsibility and recruitment. This is different for me. I have talked to some of my mo friends and they are all proud of what I am doing and some of my non-mo friends and they think the idea is stupid that I am looking at the church. I am finding my way, this isn’t about public opinion it is about me. What do I want to find, who I want to find it with. I am finding my way, not asking for approval, just let me figure it out. I will ask for help as I need it. and right now.

But the calling is in and I will be answering the call. We shall see what happens after that…. Watch for this Sunday I might be the one at the podium…

my biggest issues

is that i have to be there for everyone else. that i have my own problems i have my own issues but i feel the need to be there for EVERYONE. i can't solve my own shit but i am willing to take on the problems of the entire world. i have always worn the crown, it has set upon my head for so many years, now that it doesn't need to be here, deons't need to rest with me i am too use to the weight of the crown to know any different.

this is my crown, my pride and my promise, my curse, my burden. but it is the only thing that is mine. It doesn't belong to anyone else. i am the hook up, the middle man, the one who is have carried this my entire life. this is me. I have the cross to bear. but no longer. i guess. I don't have to be the one in charge. i don't have to have the crown. i don't need the cross. it is time for me to pass the batan to someone else who wants to carry the next generation of people.

But this is it. if i am not the person carrying the burden who i am. i have lived in that life much longer than anything else i have ever done.i this what i do. i bear the burden. i make the world go round. I DO THIS. this is me. i don't have any thing else. but my burden. and i guess this is why i do my search for faith.

This is why i am looking right now. i am not happy with where i am. who i am with. where i am going. what i am doing. all these stem from the fact that i feel like i have to provide for everyone. i have to understand that i can't help everyone. i can't do it. the ones that get to me are the ones i try to help and can't. the ones that hurt me the most are the ones that i try so hard to help and nothing will ever be good enough. my xs, some of my students and friends past. i can't help them all. i can try and help the, but it doesn't come.

I don't know where i am going from here. i think this is why i want to leave the area. I don't want to have this life. or why i lie. even now it is hard for me to admit that i might lie from time to time to make me bigger. i am sure people know.. or i set impossible goals for myself. i have to be the man. i can't understand why. i guess it is the fact that i have never had to take the back seat to anyone. I have been the center of attention i have pulled all the ambition to everything that i have done. I am just confused on what i can and can't do. what i should and shouldn't do... at the end of it all. what will i do.

i don't know. i can't know it isn't for me to know, but i need to get things done and make sure that my life is insulated from poverty. i am afarid of opening myself up i guess. i don't know this is just another tyraid.  i am done with it. i guess that i have figure a way about things. but for now. i am lost wondering, looking, trying to feel out the dark shapes that make up my life...

the light, the light i can't not see, nor find.  i the light that is there hidden in the darkness, the light that will validate me and my world. The light that will guide me to the righteious that is waiting for me. now i have to rage against the darkness to find that light...

what dreams have came.....

Dreams what came... this is an image that has always been at the forefront of what i am looking for. what have i missed. maybe, just maybe i have missed my boat of faith. I have not been blessed on where i should go i am the few that have to wonder the world looking for the faith others get to enjoy.

now i don't think that my boat has passed but i worry about it sometimes. This is the fear that actually keeps my drive to find it going. why i keep looking for something that is real and true in my life. 

i can make of list of things that are real and true.

my mom
clinton/amanda/jordy/dave/ben
the law
ambition
confidence....

but this list is lacking what i am looking for.

i can't seem to find what i am truely missing. i have a great life. lets not get things twisted. i have a good job that pays well, i have a wonder family, i am successful with the endevors that have undertaken, but i can't seem to find that last bit of something differnt. that last piece of the puzzle, the last HUGE piece of me.

This piece is found for now in the LDS chruch. not saysing that i am going to convert, but some of the answers i am looking for is here. but i have found something. i can't say that it is faith or understanding or peace but something is here. the people and their welcome to table is waht i have talked about wanting but i am not sure if this is where the faith is at. This family, this world, these people have shown me that i can be accepted for who i am. This acceptance is not a veil, or blinder to me i have to find balence, but this is the first time i feel a sense of belonging.

A few years back i first discovered a faith in God. I first found the peace that is found through the acceptance of a higher power. i never accepted Jesus as the savior and God as the one true almighty, but the faith that i did find helped me through the most difficult decisions in my life.  it gave me peace with my brother (this comes much later ina blog, but this was huge for me) It gave me peace wth my father (another huge one for me) and it gave me peace with several other huge issues in my life. and most importantly it gave me a great friendship with Andy. but it did not fill my heart with the faith people talk about. it does not fill my life with the joy that i was looking for, and when i left an x girl ,i felt unwelcomed.

the church was not my home and when i went to church with Andy i was ecplised by his rock star status. he was always avaliable to answer my questions and show me the way, but i never felt confortable in group setting cause i could never get my questions answered or talk about my relationship with God. Here with this chruch weekly i get to talk about my relationship with God i get read about my faith. where i can be me. where i don't have a rockstar telling me about faith, or i have a great friend guiding me. i had someone bring me in, show me the place then left me figure it out. no pressure. I am not saying that Andy's approach was different, but i just didn't find the full faith i was looking for. I found God with DOC. i saw the power of his love, but i never found the longivity of his faith.

Now i am back to looking. School is over. No real intimate family. i have holes in my heart and i am starting some place where i can turly have an impact. I can't set out on a quest for love, but what i can do is find a love within myself and a relationship with whatever God i have to be the true and correct God, if i ever find one.

well i am done rambling because i could go on for days.  good luck and good night.

jumping ahead

So i know i should talk about the journey from beginning to end, but hey this is my blog and i'll do what i want. I could go back and talk about those days of hanging with clinton and talking about religion and my faith or the long talks with sarah or the bonus night with the elders. but NOPE... not today. today being palm sunday (and that doesn't not mean i am going to masturbate) this is 7 days before the resurrection. Before the rebirth, so of course i went to church today.

and lets talk about chruch. today espeically. I am still new to the LDS chruch, new to the members. They know who i am, but i am still learning everyones names.  There is a genlteman that has stood out to me. John Spence. he is a guy who doesn't seem to have a lot of life experience, outside the chruch, but is very open and knowledgeable about the inner workings of the chruch and open to discuss with me any questions that i might have. 

today i spotted him from across the chruch. Walked in and gave him the handshake hug, you know the hetrosexual ok guy hug where you are shaking the hand but lean in for the pat on the back..yeah that one... the one that says im senstive, but still want to be proper.  Anyways. i digress.  But i met John Spencer across the room and we started talking about me. not a topic i shy away from cause, come on.. IM AWESOME!.  but anyways --down ego---- so we started talking about what i felt/thought about the church. This is the conversation that i have been dreading. i don't know honestly.  I really really don't know. i know that i like the family atomsphere that comes with the church and as i learn more and more i understand why the chruch is the way it is, but does the "spirit" move within me.. or do i feel that this gosphel is true... NO IDEA!.   But John wasn't fishing for a conversion. he knows that i am an educated man that will look at everything that i have done in my life and make the decision based on what i believe to be true and what i understand is God speaking to me. 

But the topic came up. My politics. the reason i have shyed away from church my entire life is that i have not found a religion that will validate my political beliefs.  the problem is that I see my poitics and my social beliefs in direct opposition to religious beliefs. I want a vague religion and religion is not that. it has rules and guidelines, it has edicts and commandments. I don't like rules, hence why i became a public defender. but honestly i don't like them. What i found to be funny this day is that i have preached the seperation of church and state my entire life, but when it has come to me personally i want a church to validate what i believe the state should be ran by.  This hit me today and is the purpose for jumping around in my own blog. by the way i still don't need your permission to jump around, it is my blog for fudge-sake.

anyways back to reality. i say church and state should be seperate.  i have held the belief that there is no God in goverment. but yet i want a reiligion that forms to my belief of God and government. I want religion to conform to my potlical beliefs and that is the stupidest idea i have ever thought.  How can i sit here and blog and preach and talk and inspire to hold chruch and state seperate when i cnat do it myself. Why do i condem people for having a faith and not using that faith to address my political agenda when i refuse to have faith in my life. Why is this possible? well it is becuase i am an asshole who can't figure out life. This is what i have done to day this is what i fgured out with the help of Mr. John Spence.  This is what makes the journey great. people who you odn' think will ever help you show up in the weirdest of ways. 

But john and i had a very constructive talk about another portion of the search for faith. The pro-active search. not the side line quarterback that is waiting for faith to walk up and hand itself to them. Faith is not going to find you, you have to find the faith, you have to find what makes you you, you have to look for it. God, the heavenly father, allah, whatever, has it out there holding it for you, but you have to jump a few hoops, beleieve a few myths, give faith to some old books and open yourself to the faith that is waitng.

Now I totally sounds synical, well cause I am. I know that one day i will have faith, and i don't know where it will come from, but for now i am finding bits and pieces within this church and these peoples.

Today John Spence exposed me for the fraud and hyprocite that i am. Not that he did it maliciously, nor did he try to do it. we just talked. just talked and i ended up realizing that i need to move away from the beliefs of old. that seperation of church and state is just that. And i need not find a religioni that suits my political life, but rather i need to understand that i have a poltical belief and a religious belief.  this two can be seperate and as long as i live i can abide by my politlics ensureing that the rest of the world is not under the oppression that some who have it and run my private life as i see fit, within a faith that i might find or in a life that i might dream or even, just even in a world that i have never thought would have existed before now.

This is a strange journey and i am finding the most random guides along the way..

looking back at the start of the journey

it happened 3ish years ago. This all started when a person that i call my best friend in the enitre world set me up on a phone call that changed my life. it was about a car. and a car alone. this was not a call to God or a call for redemption it was a call about a car. not jsut any car but a BMW M series. and i really wanted it. but i didn't have the 12k to buy it. so i had to pass. but the person on the other end of th phone was someone that would change everything about my life. he would change the entire color of my sky and the brighness of my stars.

At the time it was just a phone call from one friend to another. a mysterious man on the other line named Clinton. Dave told me about this mythical perosn Clinton about how he was mormon and to much of my sadness i immediatly didn't like him. I don't do moroms i thought. i don't deal with their narrow mindness, their disrespect for others their lack of tact and their ability to be holier than thou. I didn't buy into this. Now lets get some things straing the only time i have ever delt with them was when some Elders came to my house in early in my youth to talk to my brother. My brother brought them into the house and i was SOOO rude to them by kicking them out. I didn't want them there, my mom said that no one was allowed in the house and that they needed to leave. They didn't fight, they didn't say anything they just left.  and i have felt bad about that my entire life. I kicked these people out of my house before i knew what they had to say.  but i did. 

I look back on my action and i did it more becuase i wanted to control my brother actions. i was king of my house, i was in charge and how dare he think that he could invite these infadels into my house. HOW DARE HE!.. but what i did was not right. my brother was trying to find friends. he was looking for something more than himself and i made sure that he did not get it. I was the one that shuned them from my house. I still feel bad that, i don't know why i am brining it up now, but that was my first encounter with Elders and the Mormon religion.

so needless to say that it didn't go well.  not that this memory has even touched in my life until i sat down tonight to start writing this blog. this memory has been in the back of my mind as i had made friends with the current Elders. I value their friendship, not only do i see them as helping me with my spiritual journey, i see me helping them with their life journey. They come from BFE utah and idaho and never seen life on this side of the world. So i am showing them how i love life, how i drink in every breath and soak in every mistake. Showing them just as they are showing me. we are mutual teachers about this life and the next. it is a good relationship, and that is the relationship that i deined to my brother. I am a douche bag in that means, but at the same time, i can't live in the past. Things are done, and my sins will come and revisit me, or maybe they already have.

So back to Clinton and doing the Mormon thing. So for all the equality that i preach all the color blindness and the civil rights love ACLU driven, NAACP back and LULAC facade i jumped to a conclusion that was based on nothing but gossip and misdirection.

so here is clinton the guy who was willing to sell me his car without knowing me. a man i now call family. this is my cross to bear. i was wrong, but i didn't know it until much later in life.  so anyways clinton in my head was going to try and convert me right off the bat. he was going to force his book or mormon in my life. he was going to brainwash me as my friends had warnned from back home.  But i trust the D.  He told me clint was a down brother. he was that mormon, and coming from Dave i trusted blindly. he has never lead me astray. he is my boy, always will be and was my loyal friend before i knew what loyality was. 

So dave told me to hang with clinton at the house. and by the house i mean the GREATEST house i have ever seen in my life. The house has nothing to do with our friendship, but they are truely blessed.  This is their life though not mine. it is what it is.  but this is the story of clinton not the house.

So back to Clinton.  Dave took me over one day. He was just a normal guy. Who will become  extraordinary in my life. Clinton intoduced himself and his wife to me. Amanda was just as normal as clinton and you would think that "normal" might be an insult or wonder what i was expecting like them having a thrid arm or a glow about them, and honestly i didn't know what to expect. actually i expected the elders from my house many many years ago. White button ups short sleeves and blue slacks... not the guy in the neptonics (plug plug plug http://www.neptonics.com/) tee shirt and the Whats up duder, nice to meet you attitude. 

I was taken back, not that i am a person who gets start stuck (but i have had dinner with obama, yeah this is me bragging) but just struck, not like a come to jesus moment, just ok this guy could be cool moment. but behind clint was the car... oh the car. how beautiful in its magesty, how quiet in its power, and how lovely in the way the car smiled at me. I know this isn't a blog about a car..but seriously this car was the bees knees. I love this car.. still. 

Anyways this is about clint not the wonderful car.  sorry... back to reality.  Clint. just a nice guy. he laughed, acted like a dufuss and fit right in with the rest of us. He is us. we are him, now.. the D knew.. and the D is rarely wrong, and when he is wrong, he corrects his mistakes (only to get punched for it)...this is where clinton is the one for me to be friends. we are now family we are not friends, we are not acquanties we are family. i have been to his house, met his blood, married his sister (not in the way you think) protected his wife and helped in raising his son. we define family. we are now and always will be this close. the only way we will go is closer.

but this is why i started the journey with Clinton. He has never ever forced his religion on me. and acutally for a time i thought i was shaking his fatih, oh was i wrong. wrong wrong WRRRRRRRRONG. He is a man of God, and the God he knows. Clint and i have had talks about Mormon. I have been to the church to do events, i have met some of the most wonderful people in life.  they have showed me a world of love and life i did not understand in my dreams i was living in a depressed world until i saw the happines of these peopel and this isn't becuase of religion, but just from the actual love of life the actul peace of mind that comes from happines. Clinton showed me this. he brought me in. showed me something that i had found with dave and lost again after wendy.  that is happiness. something that you don't just earn you engulf you make your life it doesn't come in an out of life.

ok i am keep getting side tracked. but at the end of it. i met clinton and 3 years ago he was just a guy, now he is my brother, advisor, sounding board, and my loyality.  He was the start of all of this. it began with a phone call, where it ends we have no idea.  but it is not the begining or the end it is the journey that matters. and this is the chronicle of the journey!.

Lets get this started

I was told today that i needed to start this story. and i guess she was right. so here i go.

I am a Godly man. I have faith in a heavenly father and i believe that he created all of man kind. Now i don't believe in the entire adam and eve and the creationism only idea. Science and faith walk hand in hand. We have the hows and the whys (care of my junior college biology instuctor) and i can see where both of them work together. Science or magic or faith or nature whatever you want to call it we are all part of a system.  here is the issues. I believe in a higher power, but i don't know if i buy into this whole idea of christanity. The rules and guidelines of a book that is in constant contardictions.  I believe that man is NOT suposed to know what is going on. it is not our place to know the entire rule of God. what the plan is or anything about that.

the fact that i don't know my fate is part of the fun. the feeling of fear or invisibility or happyness or actual love. these feelings are real, and if i would know that this girl i would love i would rebel against it and become unhappy. or if i knew i would surive the jump, i would never leap. i love the unknown and that is part of why i can't buy into to Bible.

The mircles of the past are just that. History is convulted and hides that is truth in the world, but we go with it.  If the people in power didn't endorse the religion it would not have come to pass. Some believe that it was destined to come to pass and others believe that it was just popular, i don't care. it is here and now i am dealing with it.

I have struggled for faith my entire life. As a child i went to churches that did nothing but tell me that i was nothing, and a bastaard. so Fuck them. Then there were churches that said my mom was wrong for divorcing my alocholic father, so FUCK them and now there are chruches that tell me everything i belive is right and i should not challenge myself...fuck them.. i know that i sound like a child that can't be pleased, but faith is not about settling, but more about finding the truth in your life. 

Faith, it is a funny concept. what do we have faith in? God? family? friends? what? i have faith that i will be successful in life. i have faith that i will have a wonderful family. I have faith that one day i will die and i will not end up in hell or spirit prison or purgatory. I make the right decision for my life. Some poeple may think it is wrong and some might think that i am an asshole but that is life.  I have faith.  just not the faith i am looking for.

I want guidence from the big guy. i have some hole in my soul, i have a lacking of understing and faith in my life. Not that it is needed becuase i am succeeding with my life, but i want someting more. I want something to fill this void that i fell. i want to not have this searching feeling in my heart.

but i have been looking for faith, searching for the love of God, finding something that is telling me that this faith, this religion and this belief is right and i have yet to find it. 

I am a huge family person. I have taken care of my own for years. I am the head of my family. I make sure that everyone is taken care of. I know my entire family is fine, I know that i will always do this, but i am looking for someone to confide in me. Right now i don't have that.

Over the past few years i have tried out many chruchs. i have met many great people I have tried the churches that appealed to me, but something has always taken me away. something has pushed me back, and now i have started my trek into the mormon chruch.

I know i know you read the word mormon and are like didn't he just say "fuck" a few paragaphs ago, and i say blow me. i am in the journey. I am not your average person. I swear and i sweat, i fart and i fuck and i do it all the best way i know how. but back to the search.....

So faith. I go to this chruch, my family goes here. My nephew/godson and his family (who have adopted me) go there. and actually i really like it. I like the family feeling in the chruch. It is like cheers, just not at a bar, but at a church. but i search.  What i like about the faith is that it is fmaily orentated. and i can feel safe ther. i love the religious debate and the open exchange of ideas.

but what i don't like is the politiics...

ok i will get in to politics later.  This was for Jessi and it is the first post.

now....... off to some premartial sex and long nights....

OUT