God is in Charge

Disclaimer: This is not my work, either in the original photo or the postprossesing. As near as I can figure it was done by Jill Greenberg, who, along with Dave Hill have achieved fame/notoriety with their photo processing style. It is something I myself have never tried (yet!) but seems to involve multiple light sources, and of course, a masterful hand with processing software. This style makes the photoartist in me grin in jealous admiration :)

Isn't He? 

I have a love-hate relationship with the 

pauline epistles. Many of his directives seem so counterintuitive, requiring the Christian to give up all attempts at self-protection, and whatever tenuous grasp he has on his personal agenda. Paul gives some rather hard to swallow advice on how the Romans should interact with their Government at a time when some of them were being utilized as human tiki-torches for the Imperial Backyard Barbecue. By reminding them, that "God's in charge" (Romans 13), But one of my basic beliefs, and there is scripture to support this, is that God want's us to DO something, to Impact our world with our God-given abilities in order to make it more closely resemble HIS ideal, and that we get a clue what this is by investing in, prioritizing, and seeking with discipline a Personal Intimacy with the source, or author of this ideal. 

  Wanted to get this striking and diabolical picture up so Deacon could see it

Angel Dust

Well, it's been a while since I posted a picure I took. My perspective and sense of accomplishment changes, and the first insect macros that thrilled me so much, didn't seem all that great after surfing through some of the content on the web, especially some of the amatuer photos uploaded on flickr. This recent shot, taken a few days at the campus pond, I am really pleased with. :)

And it is unmanipulated. SOOC (straight out of the camera) except for the crop. :D

she looks great on black

Why...

Do they always give you more antibiotics than they do pain pills? I have a tooth that has been killing me since thursday night, and I took the last two Darvosets about twenty hours ago. I actually had to take my GMC 100 final slightly stoned on opiates... I'll post my score when I get it.

The Tooth Thing, and anything like it, makes me aware (painfuly, lol) that I am one of the uninsured. When this comes up, It's always with mixed feelings.

At 41, I am just beginning to experience medical conditions that would benefit from ongoing management by an actual doctor. So, hand in hand with my self-pity (just a little) I keep the background awareness of millions of people with immediate life-and-death health issues that make my own pale in comparison. But my tooth still hurts. affecting my eating, sleeping, and performance. I wonder how much awareness, on a national level is shunted aside, how much action is not taken, because my "tooth still hurts", because I'm "limping away from the wreckage of my divorce", because the "grief over the unexpected passing of my Father still colors my life"...

the Gross Domestic Product of this country works out to about 45,000 per year for every man woman and child. An ocean away, A life flickers out, every three seconds from poverty, and the lack of clean drinking water.

Vague feelings of misgiving...

I try to concentrate on my life. There is always something that needs attention, and for another four weeks, my highest priority is school. Politics disgust me. They stir up my cynicism like nothing else. I feel like the system is so twisted, that a man unwilling to make compromises to his integrity stands little chance of victory in a presidential election. For much of my adult life, I have heard people talk of voting for the "lesser of two evils" . This is sad. I have received, from the pulpit of a small baptist church, the message that God stood with the party that was unequivocally against gay marriage. Time and again I have gotten the subtle, or not so subtle sentiment that Christians and Republicans had shared, and overlapping interests, that GOP really stood for "God's Own Party". I don't believe that. I have (shamefully) first hand knowledge of such things as the love of money, and the abuse of power. I have a definite opinion about the electoral process, and the long -overdue, radical reforms that would be so easily accomplished with our current technology. The self-seeking issues that seem so important bring to mind treating Dysentery with pepto-bismol. I think I am spoiled. I am by this country's standards perhaps upper-lower class, or extreme lower-middle class. I struggle to pay my bills, but if I want, right now, I can go outside and spew drinking water all over my grass. I live in the lap of a prosperous luxury inconcievable to millions of people, Who will die without hearing the Gospel. We as a nation have the concerns of rich spoiled children. Every once in awhile, I get a bad feeling. I know that I am politically naive. I know that I am in a crisis that can only happen to a blessed individuals. I call them Cadillac problems. I am too busy to take the time to become politically literate. Malcolm Gladwell talks of "thin slicing", the amazing ability of our God-Given minds to "blink" and process information at a subconscious level much more quickly, and with greater reliability than conscious reasoning. I am apolitical, and intend to remain so. But I will not vote for John Mcain. He scares me. and if he dies in office... well, that scares me too.

Racism is a funny thing

Racism is a funny thing. Sadly enough, the deepest, most accurate understanding of it's nature is facilitated in the individual who has been both victimizer and victim. (of course, this only applies to those who are spiritually awake... the ones who understand they are/were double agents - like Paul after his momentous road trip) Furthermore, if and when repentance comes, when the innermost self acknowledges racism, that it is there, and abominable, a fascinating clarity is achieved. A man begins to see shades, and degrees. He realizes, from the double perspective, how pettiness and pride can contribute to poor prioritization, in dealing with multiple racism issues and how the subtle ones can be as dangerous as the high profile. There is also the understanding that much ( not all) of the progress is superficial in nature, treating the symptom rather than disease.

The original shriners... Memories as milestones

The original shriners, originally uploaded by use2blost.

I noticed early in my experience of community (It began with support groups, and moved into Bible studies, and now has become something more authentic- I have a few intimate friends, and am blessed to be able to engage more deeply as time goes by...) That I was better at talking about my feelings than I was at feeling them. Talking about my emotions in detail became for me, a way of actually escaping the raw emotional turmoil of trajedy, burying it so that It haunted me rather than dealing with it and moving on. It seems to me, that God calls me to a deeper more personal walk alongside him, and lately, I am  alone more than I have been in years. Studies take up a great deal of my time, and though I feel somewhat disconnected, I know that this is only for a season. (It should actually improve in about 4 more weeks.) Grief in the past has been something to run from, cover, or deny in busyness, and though I am busy, It seems that many of the tools I used to avoid the process have been removed. Flitting to and fro in the blogosphere and obsessively photographing nearly anything, has had to take a back seat to matters of greater import, and as a result, I find myself moving through emotions, and seeing a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. My good friend Kemp lost his father a few days ago, and stopping by to express my condolences evidently stirred up a little emotion. I later found myself at home alone, and came across the cache of old photographs that my Father left behind when He moved on from this world.  It occurs to me that me, and possibly my sister  are the only ones who know the story behind these old black and white photographs. My Father was a photo enthusiast, back in the day when that meant nailing plywood over the guestroom windows so you could develop your own prints. Electronics were huge, filled with vacuum tubes. My Dad's first calculator was 75 dollars and the size of a brick. this was back when when he made less than $275 a month. I can remember that these pictures were already around, before the Casio miracle. If I had to guess, these were taken around 1969. it was a wonderful surprise to stumble across them after He died. These pics are, I think of a place called Niko (not sure about the spelling) it was an area of Japan that was thick with shrines. Like most pictures, it looks better on an uncluttered black background