Sure it is Christmas
Yet that doesn’t seem fitting

For today feels like any time of the year
Which is why I’m quite contrite

Though it all I learned that there is more to life than money if it means working at a job you hate. That sometimes you have to take a step even if you don’t know the outcome just to do something.  I learned nobody rocks like the girls I’m rolling with. When you think you know it all there is always something to learn. I think most importantly I learned a lot about myself and never giving up. I can’t wait to see what this year brings, this new beginning, this fresh start.

“We are indeed much more than what we eat, but what we eat can nevertheless help us to be much more than what we are.”  Adelle Davis

Inspired partly by GOOD’s 30-Day Go Vegetarian Challenge I wanted to share some of my experiences with being vegetarian for the past year and a half. I don’t want to go into the environmental, moral or health reasons why some people choose to stop eating meat or even my own personal beliefs on the issue.

Often times when people find out I don’t eat meat they ask “what do you eat” as if meat is the only choice for food. Over the past months I have learned how to cook more meals than I ever did when consuming meat. It’s amazing how many meals can still be made sans meat. Pizzas, pastas, grains, etc. Of course if you still want to eat meat there are many meat alternatives. It seems I have digressed from posting food ideas and spinned off into a horrible fiery tailspin of a rant about vegetarianism for that I am sorry.  I leave you now with GOOD’s conclusion post from their challenge. Leave your questions, comments below.

“Come on, be honest with yourself, at some point in our lives we all wanna be a superhero.” — Kick-Ass

These past few days I’ve been watching a lot of superhero movies. No, not the classic Batman, Spiderman, or Superman movies. No, the lesser known superhero movies, the ones about the little guy; I mean the tiny guy. The guy without a chance to be a successful superhero. I’ve been watching movies like Super, Kick-Ass, and Blankman. These movies all have the same premise, average people who decide to fight crime and enforce the law. The Crimson Bolt in Super said it this way, “You don’t butt in line! You don’t steal! You don’t molest little children! You don’t deal drugs! The rules haven’t changed!”

I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for these underdogs I want good to win over evil, crime to stop, injustice to be destroyed. To be honest I think the world needs more superheroes. More people fighting for the good of all. Let me pause here to clarify; I’m not talking about people running around wearing mask and capes. You see, there are flaws with this type of superhero. They always tend to work alone or with the occasional side kick. They feel they are above the law or maybe it’s that they are the law. This list could go on but I’ll stop there.

I am talking about the everyday superheroes, the teachers, the policeman, the non-profit employees. The people who are willing to fight for what they believe in. The people who risk it all to protect, to educate, and help those in need.  In a world where everything is broken we need more individuals, more groups, more action, we need to stand up and fight. Think about what we can accomplish together.

I wait
Things don’t improve

Have patients
Change takes time I’m told

I wait
Change never comes

Hold on
It hasn’t been long enough they explain

I wait
Losing motivation

Not now
Just wait a little longer I’m informed

I wait
Giving up hope

You’re young
You have plenty of time they reply

I wait
Time becomes the enemy

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.
–Heraclitus

I’ve been blogging for the past six year (on this site for about three and a half). One of my favorite things about blogging is being able to look back at my life and see where I was. Even if the post doesn’t explicitly say what was happening it’s often the jog I need remember.

I find it’s easy for me to think that my life is stagnate. I find myself wanting change to come, now. It’s only after I think back about my life I see that things have change, some good, some bad. I am able to see that life is a process. The hard part for me is balancing patients with lack of motivation.

Do my goals just need more time or do I need more motivation, or both?

John Reuben said this so gracefully in his song Boy vs The Cynic:

“…yes your heart will break and go numb lots of times before this life is done
You’ll look for answers but there’s just one
Patience one day it will make sense
But waiting is a pinch waking you up from the worlds you’ve made up
The one where you dream and the one where you gave up time
To create a new atmosphere where the boy and the cynic can both play fair”

I think it’s time to set my fear of failure aside and just dive in just go for it. But how? Hopefully I can find that place where the kid and the cynic can both play fair.

P.S. Poem on this topic possibly to come shortly.

“The problem’s not Hollywood, the problem’s not Washington
The problem’s a weak divided church of schizmed Christians.”
- The OC Supertones, Unite, Supertones Strike Back

If you’ve been spent amount of time around Conservative Christianity you may have heard the idea that every human has a “God-shaped hole,” a void in our soul that can only be filled by God. Oftened followed by stories of people who trying to fill this metaphorical hole with drugs, sex, music, earthly desires. These “fillers” tend have negative societal references.  However, debating the existence of a God-shaped hole is not what this post is about.  Let’s instead explore a new idea, the idea of a Box-shaped God.

Another popular theme of Conservative Christianity is the notion that we have actions that glorify God and ones that dishonor God. Although Biblically it’s true there are actions that honor God and ones that don’t our society seems to place value, weight and judgment to variety of actions. If you ask an individual which of these actions are more and which are less honoring to God each list will be different depending on their belief system.

What then is the “right way” to honor Christ? It seems that we tend to limit these glorifying actions to what fits inside of our God box. The box that holds our perceptions, our ideas of what God is and what God expects from us.  We are quick to limit our own responsibilities shaping our views of God to what we are, or aren’t. It’s easy to judge others and tell them that they aren’t honoring God. Next time think “Am I putting God in a box? Should I expand my view of God?”  By focusing on the good qualities of people, by getting to know their hearts and passion, though showing unconditional love, this is what God is. God is not (and cannot be) confined, to be held in a box.

You know, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender – people are people.
Judith Light

This is my third year writing about Transgender Day of Remembrance. I feel that each year it’s important that we take some time to reflect on those who lost their lives over the past year for being different;  not fitting the cookie cutter mold  the world tries to force upon them . This year is a big year in particular for the LGBTQ community as so many people have lost their lives due to suicide and murder based on sexual orientation, gender identity or their perceived orientation or identity.

I would like to encourage each one you reading this to think about how this year you can take a stand and do something to help stop the deaths, hate, injustice of people just for being different. What can you do on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis to change the lives of others around you?

Today marks the 4^th Annual Blog Action Day (and my third participating in.) Blog Action Day is a day where a theme is chosen and the blogosphere is encouraged to reflect, write, and educate others about what we can do to change the world. This year that theme is water.

So what can we do as a community to help the almost 1 billion people without clean water?

The simplest thing we can do is give. After my experience without water I donated $20 to Charity: Water. According to the organization $20 is enough money to provide one person clean water for 20 years. A small donation can make a huge difference. If you’re low on dough you could fundraise or get friends/family together to each pitch in a few dollars to make a difference. Perhaps give up drinking bottled water and use the money to provide others with water.

Don’t want to give, then conserve. A recent TriplePundit report states Americans drink on average of 200 bottles of water each, per year. That’s a lot of water! It takes over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 80 percent of which will never be recycled. By giving up bottled for the tap water you’d be doing something good for the environment as well as saving money.

I encourage you to think about water today. What would you do if you didn’t have clean water? What other things can you do to help those without it? Leave your ideas and suggestions in the comments.