Seeing Human (The Naked Inside You)

I read this book called, "Sex God" and I liked it.

It always take awhile to get used to the Rob Bell style of writing but I like it because it is simple, yet profound. It continues to change my perspective on paragraph length.

Part of the book tells the story about American soldiers finding the concentration camps. It goes on to talk about how the people in the camps were treated as not human and that is why they become so miserable. Instead of being a unique creation of God they were treated as something else. Something that wasn't human.

It goes on to talk about how a large shipment of lipstick came to the camp and how everyone thought how random of an order that was but they took what they received and passed it out around the camp. The next day everyone seemed more joyful, running around with lipstick on their face smiling and laughing. It was the lipstick that made them remember that they were human, that they were something special instead of a number.

I feel like we do this a lot. Making humans less of a human. Giving labels to people just so we can define them in something when simply they are human. I was just doing this to people I watch on the television. People I don't even know but I am labeling them as something. I do not think I would treat the villain of a movie as well as the hero of a movie.

I got an email once telling me not to buy this certain kind of stamp because it had something to do with the Muslims. It told me to boycott from buying them because Muslims were involved in September 11th, and the Muslims this, the Muslims that.

Muslims are human.
Americans are human.

I was watching a television show about a bunch of lawyers. One lawyer, an Australian dude, likes another lawyer, a blond girl.

A male human like a female human.

Anyways, at first he didn't treat her as human but as some object. He tried to get her with chocolates and flowers, but she was still an object so that didn't work. Later he realizes from his ever wise guitar playing friend that if he really cares about her that he has to love the naked inside her. Her thoughts, feelings, etc..

He has to make her human.

In the end he writes her a poem set to music. Makes her human, not an object. He cares about the naked inside her and, I'm assuming, but she cares about the naked inside him.

Because we're human, and we should see others as human.

Headphones

It was on a icy January night where I listened to God. The roads were slick and I was driving home from a party and on the way back I decided to go a different route. I don't know why I did but I just had this small pecking inside me to go a different way home.

Sure enough, as I stopped at a stop sign there was a car on the side of the road with a guy inside. I turned the car around and opened my window to ask if he needed any help. I asked, "Do you need any help?" He saw me, turned on his car battery, opened his window and I asked again, "Do you need any help?"

He replied, "I got a tow truck coming here soon, but I appreciate you stopping."

I acknowledged. He put his window back up. I put my window back up. I drove away. He sat in his car waiting for a tow truck. I took a long U-turn around the block so it wouldn't be awkward if I drove by him again.

As I drove back home I saw a police man coming down the road, and then a little later as I was going through the round-a-bout I saw a tow truck entering the round-a-bout.

I didn't do much that night other than just pull a couple of U-turns but I do believe that God speaks to us like that. Little heart nudges. I always had imagined it like a loud drum but this was more like a soft whisper.

I had the choice to reject or accept. Say yes or no. Confirm or deny.

I might not have done much for the guy sitting in the car waiting for tow truck, but it did something to me even though I didn't have the intent to help myself.

Maybe God has some headphones we just haven't put on yet and maybe we just have to pray to find them. My friend started praying that God would show him ways to love people. They plugged into God, started listening for little heart nudges. It probably wasn't easy at first, but he would come to us with stories of the transforming power of love. I never saw the people he talked about in the stories, but you could tell that he had started to change. That something was different.

That the headphones were getting louder.

If I Had A Club...

Sleep seems to be passing me by this month. I don't know whether it is because at times my dorm room is eighty degrees or because my mind can never seem to shut off from little scenarios in my head.

I have been thinking about random people throughout my life and I am not sure why.

I thought of Peter, who was my best friend in third grade and I remember telling him who I liked while walking on the street by the playground during recess after telling him how he was my best friend and how I felt like I had to tell him because I couldn't contain my feelings any longer. I made him promise over and over again not to tell anyone but the next day somehow people found out and teased me about it.

And Bailey, whose mom was high school friends with my friends mom. I would run into her on the sidewalks of Baylor and ask her about her broken wrist when she actually had a cast on it from intramural football. Then spring semester started and I only saw her occasionally when I was walking to my nine o'clock class on Tuesdays and Thursdays and she barely ever saw me but when she did it only consisted of one of those awkward waves from the opposite sides of the street. I didn't even know her that well but I always liked waving to her because she had a nice smile and actually stopped to talk to me once.

We made a list today in class of who we would like to meet someday. I wrote a lot of my favorite authors and musicians then assumed that meeting famous or even semi-famous people would be semi-awkward and would be kinda boring so I wrote down a fireman, homeless person, and the guy who invited my pencil because those guys would have stories to tell. I feel that we wouldn't have that awkward of conversations and that maybe I would have something to contribute to the conversations.

I haven't been able to write in awhile which might contribute to my lack of sleep because writing your thoughts down helps a lot. Even if you don't post them to some public website I would highly suggest at least writing your thoughts down. At least, it helps my mind not get so filled up. The more I write the easier it has become to write down my thoughts about something. For my class I have to write about what I thought about certain pieces of music or a theatre production and my roommate gets angry at me because I write a lot more than him and he says I am making everyone else look bad. Writing is good.

I originally titled this draft, "A Dark Robe" and I am not sure why. Usually when I write a draft I type in the title and then a little snippet about some moment I had so I will remember what I want to write about but for this one I just wrote the title then assumed I would remember what I wanted to write about. I must not have been happy with the title because I didn't write anything and now I forget how I came up with "A Dark Robe." I don't even like the title anyway.

I started reading "Sex God" by Rob Bell and I remember my sister-in-law asking me if the book was about sex and I am only two chapters in but it doesn't seem like it is about sex but rather sexuality. I don't know the difference really but I'm only two chapters in so I don't know much yet. It's a good book so far though, at least better than I expected. I remember hanging out with my friend Laura at Baylor and seeing the book and thinking, "what a dumb title for a book." I was wrong. It's an awesome title and so far a good book.

I keep reading about the Haiti earthquake and that is sad to hear about but I always wonder why it takes an earthquake for people to wake up and start caring for something and start donating money to. You don't see a lot of people in the news every day doing a fundraiser for schools in Africa and clean water for people in Rwanda. Why is it always an earthquake or hurricane or mudslide? Why not rally the caring everyday? Do we blind ourselves of the hurt around us until we find something we can't avoid?

I am no longer importing these blogs onto Facebook, so no more "notes." I liked it and I think it had more pros than cons because random people would comment it and tell me how they like my random love poems about strangers but I think I want to keep this whole blogging thing a little more exclusive and let people find it on their own. I guess exclusive isn't the right word because it sounds like I am the bouncer and only want a certain amount of people into my club of writings so I guess what I want to say is that I don't want to be so public with this whole blogging thing quite yet.

I'll end this by saying that if I did have a club, I would have open mic night and people would come up and read their thoughts or poems and at the end people would snap and not clap because that what I imagine in my club.

Also, after re-reading this post I feel like it has a lot of run-on sentences...