Graduate?

Finally feeling the emotions that come from my child graduating high school.  I cried this morning, not so much for her success, not so much out of sadness, not really understanding why, and absolutely knowing why.  She represents the newness in our culture.  She represents the progress in our sophistication.  She represents the persistent effort our family and ancestors have evolved to be.  She was never hoping to graduate, like my generation.  She appeared to be learning in ways rooted in her design.  She rarely seemed to feel obligated to learn.  I never felt she was a few decisions away from a life of delinquency.  And yet she had a father who had to learn how to parent like she was capable of doing anything. 

I cried because I didn't know how to teach her to believe in herself.

This is where I find our New Mexican culture, trying to develop a belief in ourselves.  Unknowing and yet learning how to believe in itself, she is a bloom from this, she is doing it.  I had to set aside all the toxic traditions that kept me alive.  The yelling, hitting, drinking, shortcuts, ambivalence, dogma, and toxic obedience.  She inspired me to trust in her.  She gave me every reason to have a little more patience.  She taught me to believe in me, as a father.  She let me fail.  She didn't let me fail.  She is moody like me, temperatures changing in moments, stubborn to the point of spite, and also expressing emotions as fragile as a snowflake.  She gave me fear that lured my selflessness out in ways I'd never experienced. 

Watching her grow was my lesson in belief.  She showed me that believing in her wasn't up to me.  She didn't need my permission to believe.  She taught me how to feel someone else's, the other's, worry without having any role in dealing with it.  For every time she hesitated, I felt inspired to show her how not to.  For each hasty attempt at some reckless response, she invoked in me a call to patience.  She still leaves her room a mess and each morning when I'm about to leave mine unkept, I pause, I lament, and I take the time to put things right, knowing I am asking her to endure "each thing has its place".  Not doing this mindful act will feed the habit of neglect.  She teaches me to feed my habit of care, diligence, and focus.  She is my exam!

Her beauty is not my success, but the success of every interaction, every lonely encounter polishing her perceptions, and every courageous exercise in believing she is greatness.  Then I accept that she will also be taught to doubt, and this scares me.  And then I trust how doubt might be the most important ingredient.  Without doubt belief does not have its beautiful nemesis.

The milestone is not a high school graduation, rather a realization that "wanting the best for her", has likely been the subtle wisdoms for how I learned to improve on my perception of me.  My tassel, as a father, is believing in me, not selfishly, but with the necessary application of knowledge and fearlessness, that will help me continue to be an example of refinement.  My daughter is not on a trajectory for grandiosity, but an extension of progress, sameness, and flavor.  And in that same thought I am full of shit, because I cannot know who my daughter fully is, nor can understand where she is going. It is what I hope for me.

Father's Day Crudo

The work I need to accomplish in order to show up in society, doing what I've been placed here to do, should be shared.  It gets cliche for me to think I was born with a destiny.  I've been lazily able to embrace the whole God has a plan for me.  I've done the whole I'll leave it in God's hands routine.  But in order for the rubber to meet the road, I have to get up, get still, get the messages, read the signs, and make the choices.  I have to do the work.  What kind of work?

 I've heard it called men's work.  It seems more appropriate to call it boy's work because it takes effort while in the child's mind, transcending the security of a mother's comforting blanket.  In order to overcome the convenience of boyhood, I had to find a compassion in my psyche for the boy.  I had most often destroyed the boy within, bullied the boy inside, wore it down.  I've had to learn to love the boy in me.  Not just one but many different facades that expressed with a boy's energy.  The boy is an archetype, symbolizing the aspects of my psychology that have not yet been galvanized by the existential crises of living.  With each archetype encountered, I find myself having to do "men's work".  I have to say good bye to the way I nestle up to the mother.  As long as there is a feminine energy to roll up to, hunker down in, and rest by, I will need to taste the vicious pull of discomfort.  This is a part of men's work.

Father Richard Rhor, through his knowledge and literature, guided me through a rights of passage.  It was my first lesson in the humble journey a man likely will take, must take, to approach a True Self.  I was shown in ritual 5 promises.  The rights of passage was a gathering with other men, taking us into an experiential process for feeling these promises.  It was something challenging to explain.  The best or only hint at what it was like is to call it a stimulation of True-ness.  The gathering was a collection of events and rituals, like prayers performed.  Each was brutally real, deep, and rich.   Each promise was a promise of work.  Each promise, if it could be describe by a direction, pointed down.  I learned a way to be dignified and emotionally responsible.

I found out that I wasn't the only man that had a distorted idea for what it meant to be a "man".  I find myself revisiting, these principles when I encounter my anxiety.  The promises remind me that the journey is hard, my duty is to see it through, to do not for me but to benefit all, that I belong to something grater than myself, and with grace I will die.  So how do you hand this across to a boy, even the archetype of a boy.  That is the motivation for this piece.

I can't teach the boy in me to be a man.  I can't coach the boy in me to be man.  It feels like I can only nurse a suffering boy ravaged by the insecurity of the wild, through the pangs of survival, reaching a condition of matured.  I find myself digging through my understanding of being a man and acknowledge that being a "man" might be more about restoring the boyish aspects of myself.  As if joining the mother need with an internal father.  A father that isn't drunk.  A father that isn't abusive or brash.  A father that is present and initiated with these prestige promises.  A father that understands how to cry enough through the pain while still working.  A nurturing father that will guide me through the panic, because the internal father trusts the 5 promises serve the soul.

Men's work must start with a nurturing male to place an understanding for what a gentle father can look like.  The boy must be given a living example to initiate the internal father.  The external father must nurture the boy, leaving behind the nurturing father to replicate for all other boyish aspects needing to repair the gap a mother can't fill.

Incentives...that work

In a conversation with a man, who I am learning to trust and value beyond his reputation, a question was posed, what gets our children up and want to learn?  What a beautiful question.  And of course like the analytic I can be, I started to grip the question.  But only for a little while.  I let the unknown go into the cold afternoon, into one our final days of summer.  I imagine it flew away like a falcon in search of pray.

What it brought back was another question.  I woke this morning to the first brisk morning of the year.  I had in my head, at the feet of my conscious, the question, what incentives are societies providing to learn?  An obvious way to answer was to remember my reasons why I woke each morning to go to school.  

I got up early in life because I didn't have a choice.  I remember school being a traumatic place.  I remember early on it being the place my mom would leave me.  I have vivid memories of the emptiness and fear of watching her walk away.  I remember the longing and worry that flooded my day.  

As I got older I understood that school was a way of life.  It was what was done, without alternative.  If I wasn't in school, I wouldn't be like other kids.  There were aspects to school that I began to enjoy.  The incentives began to come.  The first was art.  I loved drawing, colors, and crafts.  The second was friends.  I disappeared into recess.  The fun we had left deep memories, so much I can still picture some faces and places.

Around the 3rd grade I was introduced to competitive sports.  At this time, I was in a modest catholic school and it had sports teams.  I played basketball.  This is was what woke me up in the fall mornings.  This also sprouted twitterpation.  I remember trying to impress girls with my athleticism during these years.  If I was a winner she would notice me.  It is endearing to reflect on now.  I see it as the naive mating ritual for what was to come. 

That's it for now. 

I find it hard to realize that while I was in elementary school I never really wanted to learn .  I was wanting to play and learning to love.  I went to school because it had kids who could imagine with me that we were being attacked by Dark Vader and his drones (the other 1st grade class), and they need me to protect the Millenuim Falcon (tractor tire).  I see that what I was doing was learning what interested me.  What got me up and going to school was obligation first and friendship most.  I see that intellect was a by product.

Criticize to rationalize its a better direction

I am in an amazing space in my life.  I am accruing debt at a higher percentage than ever.  I wake up and it scares me.  I am not buying luxurious things, its just necessities.  I am learning to appreciate the dependence that I have chosen, dependencies that are tied to social norm.  I realize that much of my life is still geared toward a balance between simplicity and convenience.  So I worry, but I don't think I am overwhelmed.  Now how do I synthesize this into wisdom.

What first comes to mind is my self perception.  Even after 37 years of life, 34 years of memories, and 20 years out of high school I still judge myself.  I wake in the morning and recognize that my eyes are a little more tired looking.  My body takes a lot longer to warm up when I work out.  My joints are more stubborn than I remember them being.  But my mind laughs.  My mind says "you can still hang brother".  If I stop now, it will only get harder later.  I  rest more and push myself less but I live the same.  I am borrowing from laziness to pay off the debts I have accrued with anger and discipline.  I am cashing in on some pleasurable comfort, knowing I am going to pay intensity back with interest.  I am not wasting my lazy time though.  I get enough done, but this allows me to feed my dreams, fears, and insecurities.  In my laziness I remind myself of the disappointments in lifestyle, livelihood, and achievement.  I am building a stockpile of motivation that I know I can do without but for humanistic reasons have convinced myself I need.

I realize I am willing to live with others, for others, and in spite of others.  In the past I was living for me, to get mine.  This is a subtle shift towards a community that I can't clearly recognize.  The others in the first sentence of this paragraph is as dynamic as the weather.  I can't clearly identify who is it that I am moving towards, with, or against.  There is appreciation for chaos and a mistrust of planning.  I am seeing balance everywhere.  I am finding meaning in most or at least looking for it.  I am preparing for surpluses and harvests that can't be seen in this drought.  I am accruing a personal debt that may not be able to be paid off tomorrow, but I am not wasting the goods rendered.  I am irresponsibly being devoted to simplicity.  I am choosing to spend credit to keep from having to increase my income.  I am spending laziness to keep from having to increase my intensity.  I am resting because right now life feels like I can.

So this is a demonstration for how I have taken my criticisms and used them to build a rational for explaining my recent laziness.  I might even call it excessive rest to give myself a poetic hug.

Learning from the world

Recovery

Recovery, is something I've been experiencing over the last several months.  Regaining what has been lost, getting back to a condition of health, and patiently letting go of regret for what will never be again.  Recovery is hard.  It has been a test of my will that never really gets used.  Its the part of my will that might be described like resistance training.  The actions I take that have helped me into recovery are the patience to do nothing.  That is difficult for me.  This has led me into the realm of being helped.

I am recovering both in spirit and health.  I have grown addicted to sacrifice and justice.  I have depended on exercise to relieve stress and build self concept.  Both of these have escaped me in some form.  My shoulder has been injured due to overuse and lack of care.  My prayer life has suffered from a loss of sympathy for injustice.  My ability to admire sacrifice has suffered from the growth of my optimism.  I have felt detached, restless, and somewhat carefree with my prayers.  I have grown irritable with my fitness.  Not being able to exhaust myself has brought me to point of laziness.  I am physically discouraged.  I still run, swim, and bike but I am humbled by my perceived loss of strength and power.  My inner soldier is worried about never finding our way back to the intensity and efficiency.  I am recovering!

I have some soul recovery to talk about soon, but when in recovery, it is said to take my time and make small progressions.  Peace and improvement find me!  Passion keep your eyes on me.

License to help

I need a license to work with youth who desperately work to hate the licensed.  We have a license for things that can be harmful.  Counseling is one of them, I guess.  You can buy a gun without a license.  I find myself joining a system of counselors manipulated, inspired, and branded for the most part by the theories of people who have studied the scientific perspective.  The scientific perspective is born from a system of institutional education.
I find myself wondering how did local communities lose sight of wellness.  What i hear in my communities is not suffering but more a refusal to see the sickness.  I sadly describe the lower class community as being sick.  It is unfortunately expected to be dysfunctional because functional for them is not the norm, it is different from the educated higher classes.  If I live in a home with cockroaches, i learn to fuction with them, around them, and time has to be spent dealing with them.  For the upper class, roaches are eradicated, trapped, and poisoned.  

I talk with a carnalito and he looks at me like a threatening stranger.  I am the system he has been punished by.  I am the paddle that has smacked his hearts ass.  I am the concerned veterano being forced to wear the uniform of the correction officer.  They smell me and look over me like the vato turning up their barrio street coming to take away their little brother.

I am a wanna be curandero.   I joined up to heal and now I am handcuffed by legislation, licensure, and oaths.  The currandero is like a rare cactus  that blooms under the right conditions.  The artificial and stale mindset instilled by the congnitives has drapped a white hospital like bed clothe over the colorful cotton blouse worn by the curandero.  My gente cannot see me as a friend.  I am drenched in the smell of the system.  I am wearing a uniform that disguises my intention.  I am a foreigner, an alien among the broken hearted, like Christ in His human form among the sick.  I am rejected and ignored because I don't look capable of bringing good news.  If I was tattooed,  dressed street, and spoke with cred, I could have their attention at least.  The language of love and healing is potent but getting people to speak with it is rare.

A generation of change and wellness

I think one of the greatest gifts my parents have given me is their mistakes, so to speak. They aren't even mistakes, but rather experiences interpreted from the eyes of their greatest critic outside themselves...Me! I think because of the progress my parents made in dealing with their parents dysfunction, a generation escaping the depression and racism, I am able to understand my own the idea of awareness, balance, and wellness.

I have grown to believe that my parents look outside themselves for answers versus trusting their own insight. I am capable of critically thinking about my lifestyle for the first time in a few generations. I have the liberty to do what I am passionate about versus having to do what society will allow me to do. I am educated enough to understand how to make healthy lifestyle decisions. I am informed enough to discern propaganda and marketing that does not fit my values and beliefs. I am at liberty to question authority, participate in systems, and invent my own. Because my parents had the courage to survive, scrape, and crawl through their generational dysfunction I have the freedom to be critical, thankful, empowered, impactful and loving.

I am proud of my parent's choices, healthy and unhealthy, because both have helped me make choices today. I belong to a generation that is realizing that convenience served its purpose but is not always the best choice. I see this in the organic trending, dietary innovation, environmental awareness, and the emphasis on sustainability. I recognize that my parents taught me to belong in my communities and this belonging has resulted in my taking ownership of how and which to belong to. The corporate model has grown too large and I am part of a generation that will balance the globalization of economies back into a balanced ecosystem of shared communities, sustainable trends, applied research, and reasonable comfort. I see the change from pursuing convenience at the expense of values to the adjustment of values with the assessment and examination of convenience. I see progress! Yes the cynic is smiling, but not ignoring suffering.

Weaving the Critic

There are paradoxes in who I am.  In regards to my critic, I am willing to be confrontational in ways that are constructive and destructive, mostly both, but the results are perceived subjectively.  I have a knack for identifying paradox, maybe it is more modestly a knack for looking for paradox.  I have a desire to find hypocrisy, which is really paradox marked and misunderstood, especially within myself.

Hypocrisy seems to be a consequence of judgment. The blessing I find in hypocrisy seems to be the markers or indicators of paradox, analogous to finding run off patterns on Mars, here I can start searching for paradox.  When I come to find hypocrisy, it reveals my judgmental quality.  Life is fluid and cannot be narrowed into snapshots, leading me to believe that judging for the sake of socializing is toxic.  Judging for the sake of survival is necessary.  Judging for the sake of wellness is desirable.  When judging, I use snapshots or select moments to come to conclusions, versus having compassion for the complex fluidity of life. 

Their is foolishness in selecting, isolating, and highlighting particular blemished events.  Choosing motivates me to ignore the collection of life's memories that effect emotions and behaviors.  Each moment experienced has an investment in our future actions.  In judgement, it is hard to be both critical and compassionate because I need the dualistic objectivity to decipher a choice.  Hypocrisy and contradiction has been necessary to my growth.  I would not have been able to see the plank in my eye, without first recognizing the splinter in my neighbors.  The hypocrite in me has been a blessing in embracing my shadow.

So reflecting on how others judge me or give me feedback is helping me adjust my critical thoughts.  This helps me mark situations and circumstances that create judgmental patterns I can change.  These changes are helping me to connect and create bonds between what I see as hypocritical and my own contradictions.  This is where I dig, I turn over, and I probably over think, but I could do worse, I could be ignoring it. I am forgiving of what I cannot discover and appreciative of the beauty I am finding when most of the time I am expecting to see spoilage.  I am seeing that I am have become a better man.  I am seeing that I am doing the work.  In my search for broken pieces I am finding healing, fused, and stronger parts.  I am allowing my own judgmental quality to exist with less shame and better utility. 

I see how I cross boundaries when being judgmental. Boundaries are important indicators of congruence, like criticisms are indicators of hypocrisy.  My critic does not have a good sensor for recognizing boundaries nor the consequences that come with crossing them.  There is a benefit to my critic to cross boundaries that are oppressive or unjust, but I cannot to have this same attitude with all boundaries, especially those that people put up to protect themselves.  I also see how I am cataloging and collecting better understandings of boundaries.  This is helping with communicating my judgments. I want to learn to be judgmental in a cathartic way, hopefully eliminating the need to identify hypocrisy or contradiction in favor of tolerance and furthermore acceptance.

I can be momentarily contradictory and hypocritical. These moments are reasonably understandable using compassion, again holding them in the perspective that life is fluid.  I am not capable of being mistake free. 

I see being contradictory as a natural quality of being alive.  I am not capable of being constantly pure.  Accepting my imperfection has been revolutionary in my recent willingness to love self.  I never saw myself coming to point in life where I could be writing openly to the world that I am trying to discover how to love myself.  I would not have had the courage to trust that my uncles, cousins, and other men in my life would allow me this gentleness.  The contradiction of being gently strong has never been in my nature.  The idea of being a loving warrior, is a beautiful hypocrisy, most cherished contradiction.

I have striven for perfection and its been futile.  I have put perfection in the crosshairs only to find myself realizing I don't even know what perfection looks like.  When I am contradictory I am usually protecting myself, marking a point of vulnerability.  There is something shameful about being wrong.  There is something convenient about creating a contradiction to remedy being wrong.  I have fears that cause me to protect my delicate ego from being hurt by being wrong.  This is where power and control have come into play.  When I am wrong I feel a loss of power and control.  Acknowledging this is a release.  I find myself not knowing what to do now that I realize I need be comfortable with being incorrect or even corrected.  I find myself overwhelmed with fear of being wrong, a fear of inadequacy.

Hesitate...

Hesitation is one of those words that has some stigma attached to it.  In sports I was always told don't hesitate.  In spirit, I find that hesitation might open my perspective to something I may have whizzed by.  I have herd how hesitating has stopped accidents, equally hesitating has caused accidents.  I know for me it leans towards the negative pole.

I am interested in observing how hesitation works in love.  Just go after it.  Does that mean that going after it doesn't include hesitations.  In basketball there is the hesitation step, where you give the defender the impression that your letting up but then penetrate quickly right past them.  Is love a sport?  Is there room for hesitation in love?  I am not sure and I know fear is my primary motivator for having hesitation.  I am beginning to see that there are no truths when it comes to love.

Each decision to act or hesitate is only interpretable.  One thing I worry about is my regret around not taking action.  There are times when I build anxiety around events where I think I could have acted better.  These times make me wonder about how flexible hesitation can be, like a reversible jacket.  I still do believe that we make the current decision the best decision, but regret has been a teacher.  Regret has become a tool that is allowing me to reflect on my attitudes and values because I think I could have used a few hesitations and I know I could have benefited from a few "just go for its".  I don't have clarity on decision making or regret.  I just appreciate that hesitation is not necessarily a bad thing, and that its used side is equally as effective as its unused side.

I see how I have grown to value the mystical and the spiritual.  It fills the void between feeling affirmed and regretful.  I often tell myself things happen for a reason and the reason may never be revealed to me.  This might be where faith is born.  I like to think I have faith and really don't like describing it because my faith includes too much doubt to be understood by the typical dogmatic understanding of faith.  But this is where my faith thrives.  My ego likes to be in control and control is power.  I like to lead because the ego feels valued.  I have not gotten to the point where I know when my ego is complimenting me or undermining me.  In the realm of spirituality nothing seems to stay constant, therefore nothing is good or bad, but only interpretable.

So, I go today, asking my ego to allow me to recognize my spirit, so that we can make quality interpretations of decisions to come and be prepared to reflect on our decisions experienced.  I have a foolish and naive belief that, if I trust in my spirit, those hesitations that I worry about will fall between the spectrum of grace and regret, both leaving me fully prepared to learn.

In honor of my mother who teaches me to forgive, regret, and apologize.   Francesca I love you!

Act of forgiveness

I would never have been able to think of both my parents in the same sentence using the word forgiving.  But as life continues to grant me time, I now can.  When I went through my divorce I accepted how much more responsible I felt for the deterioration of my marriage.  It gave me the courage and context to look critically on my parents relationship during my childhood.  What I found was so many misunderstandings and misinterpretations that left me having to chose sides, defending, and feeling caught in between.   I knew I couldn't let this be recreated for my daughters.  So I confronted the scariest of unknowns,  the details of my fathers reasons, the worries of a young mother, and my own unwanted memories.  Forgiveness and confronting seem to go hand in hand.  I have described forgiveness synthesis and with it comes the encountering of the wound.

What answers I found were sacred understandings  of who my parents were.  I was able to see myself in their sadness, because I was in my own divorce, I was dividing my own family.  I could not hold onto the discomfort, created by years of avoiding my pain, any longer.  I saw my dad as a young arrogant but eager boy trying to live in a world of accolades while being asked to humble himself in order to be a father.  He only had training in one area... basketball.  He never spent endless hours practicing how to be a top notch husband or father.  My mother was a young naive girl seeming to be dazzled by attention.  She was caring, selfless, and exhausted by the realities that come with being a mother responsible for holding together an adolescent family.  This is what I can share, there is a depth that i cannot share but it is a hard look into the suffering of two people torn apart by immaturity, mishandled love, and the fatigue of disregard. 

How does this fit with forgiveness.  I have moved past the need to understand my parents.  I have gradually accepted how they treated each other.  My expectations are no longer sticky.  My hope for happy reunions no longer were a distraction.  My fears for witnessing resentment and animosity have become dull.  And to be clear it wasn't the expectations of them to "get back together" but for the simple experience of having two parents who could value time shared and the creation they made.  That is hard to say and it makes me cry happy tears.  I accepted their pain for the obstacle it was.

This is leads me to yesterday.  My mom and dad shared a happy moment.  For the first time I watched as they both shared a smile and joked.  I watched as they both were genuinely delighted.  There was no agenda, nothing to be gained for being pleasant, just a sunny day and a giggle that brought two people who once loved each other deeply enough to hate, into a joyful instance.  A simple 2 minutes of nervous excitement helped me forget a lifetime of endured resentment and tension.  Forgiveness had broken through.  Un Milagro!

cultural blister

education can alienate. I often think about why I do the things I do. mostly i do things with narcisistic intentions. I chose to go to school so that could get a good job. I chose my path of study so that I could get good pay. this was the message my parents were fed. this message is true to some extent. what it doesn't explain or help is the cultural stigmas that I wear. it doesn't explain my insecurities. it didn't consider the consequences for becoming educated. and maybe because the consequences are unique to my experiences. the metaphor I have is the blister.
education is an abrasive experience that rubbed raw an unwilling area of my understanding. like a hand on a shovel doing work, strenuous and repetitive work. the area I picture as tender is my communal attachments. I feel like I these communal attachments were worn to a raw friction filled sore. In the process of educating myself I was also distancing myself from my communities that I had functioned in and become comfortable in. I was distancing myself and moving toward connections that are ironically despised by the communal attachments that had embraced me for so long. the distance puts me in a place I call my cultural blister.
is it coincidence that the educational system is dominated by the white culture? are white people better learners? did I have to leave my communal attachments to be productive? in the barrio I am labeled at times a sell out, coconut, or oreo. now in this blistered area I find it difficult in expressing this sadness about choosing my educational route. acculturated people become nervous, defensive, concerned, when I talk about brown, black, and white. I feel obligated to forget the distinctions that reality uses to create advantage. i think it is easier to dismiss the injustice when you are the benefactor. I cannot and will likely never see without prejudice.
I see this sensitivity as the unwilling to touch the sore and raw edges of the cultural blister. in more graphic description this space is filled with puss protecting and obstructing me from confronting the wounded area. I am isolated in this luminal blistered area longing for the simplicity I left in my barrio lifestyle. I feel isolated in my insecurity for participating and contributing to this blistered space. I feel isolated in my hatred for this educational work that divides and has my communal attachments believing that they are lesser. I am suffocated in this pool of puss that compresses my desire to escape the constant pain of knowing I chose this path.
in the metaphor the blister can pop. what will help this callous is either more work or intentionality to break the blister. where I am this morning is fatigue.

See past your bias and into the child

If we take a second look at our lower classes and see past the dysfunction, I think we could recognize a child's eyes. If we looked beyond the physical and into the culture I think we can recognize an underdeveloped child. If we looked beyond the violence and filth, I think we can recognize an abused child. If we looked at our lower classes with a compassion towards the collective I think we could recognize and underdeveloped culture. My longing is to not assign blame, not to trickle down opportunity, not create boot straps, but to be critical in action towards those who blame, delegate, deny, and take advantage. When I look into the eyes of the aspiring tycoon's culture I can see an adolescence's eyes.

In a common family the Adults model for their children, and develop, invest, and care for their children's future. In my family even siblings support and provide for younger siblings. In this country at times it doesn't feel like a family.

Inspired by:

Trailer

Loosing connections to pain

Has tradition been replace by dogma, a hierarchy of needs, or something between? I see how many Americans, including myself, have had to leave their birth cities, their connection to their past, or their connection to their pain. I assume the top reasons for the migration is to find work, better pay, explore, or follow family. Many Americans are adopting a tradition of moving away. I too, felt this was the thing to do. I see now that it disconnects me from learning the history, struggles, and lessons learned from my great uncles, grandparents, and community elders. I see how it deteriorates a family's bond. I see how it corrodes the connection from the pains of the past. It is that source of familial pain, that I see as necessary for me to go beyond the dogma of tradition.

I can see how I learned to be mistrusting. I know now where my anger came from. I can see that my families traditions are being altered, by me and life. I see clearer that I have become independent with hypocritical dependencies. I must risk trusting that things will be alright, knowing I say this often. I feel alright one day and tossed in despair the next. I must trust that I can survive and thrive in any phase, democracy, or climate.....foolishly .... with God's grace.

I think I am aware that I need comfort to be happy. I think as I harden as a man I will be less dependent on laws, conveniences, and luxuries for my content. I might even consider suffering a joyful understanding of the paradox that gives way to death. It is getting too easy to point out hypocrisy in our American politics. It is getting too discouraging when my peers can't recognize it. Or maybe I am just on a fools journey and the joke is on me.

Today as a radical Catholic, a radical believer in Jesus Christ, and a revolutionary wannabe, I see my ego at work and my senses remind me I am only a man, no more, no less.

Loving the game!

I think I have learned what the most challenging aspect of a man's life is.

It is loving a partner fully, completely, and purely. I have trained and prepared for many challenging things in my life. I have had coaches teach me skills and techniques in preparation for games or events. I have had the discipline and self motivation to be committed to preparing for all the anticipated aspects of competition, and trained for how to deal with the unexpected. In baseball I crafted my defense, I conditioned regularly, and I made a point to improve always. In individual sport events, I transferred this mindset into my workouts, research, and dedication. I learned to become my own coach and learned the quality of self discipline. Unfortunately, all these qualities worked well for me in competition, but seem detrimental to my ability to love. My professional career has embraced and leveraged my athlete's mind or warrior spirit. I am learning or becoming aware of how useless these skills are, when it comes to love.

Love is not a competitive event. So most of what I learned in my young adult life has not helped me love. In fact it has taught me how to love with my mind versus my heart, which for me is not loving at all. I also can't remember having a love coach. I don't recall ever having love workouts. I rarely made time for learning how to love. My coaches never made room for love in their warriors curriculum. I was filled with anger, focused rage, and a thirst for strength. I was told that losing sucks, and its all about winning. Not much love in this message. If it takes a man to lose his ability to love to gain a championship then I welcome the losers bracket. I was not taught how to hold ferocity with care.

So as I open my heart to the concept of love, I see how my competitive mind distracts my God given thoughts. The heart doesn't compete. My heart is waiting for my mind to rest long enough to be coached in the language, rules, and spirit of the game called love. It is a game where if played for the right reasons everyone wins. It is a game where the best are the example and the worst are honored for participating.

The most challenging thing I have done in my life is to live for another. I have questioned and still question my ability to commit to one lover. Loving is so much fun...this is my exploitation of love. I am loving for its fruit and I have become unwilling to learn the complete love lessons that are learned in sacrifice, self control, and discipline. I am a love tycoon, seeking to tap into loves aquifers, drill love's lands, and mine love's bedrocks. I have not let go of my addiction to the profits that come from using love, like infatuation, pleasure, or thrills. I am an adolescent lover. This game called love has put on its full court press, it has brought in the hard throwing lefty, and I am in the middle rounds with love's best pound for pound lover. I am excited, because love respects my stupidity, arrogance, and foolishness, it won't use it against me, but for me.

Through Him, with Her, and In Them.......

Amen!