Ourselves Revealed

I’ll admit it, I like watching, “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmitt,” and I have mixed feelings about Kimmy. I love the eccentric characters of Titus and Lillian, and am a little scared of the fact that I have a little Lillian in me. I love those characters! They are perfectly flawed. Kimmy is also perfectly flawed, but in the most annoying way possible, she is too happy. Seriously, how can anyone be that cheery? It makes me want to barf sometimes. Then again, sometimes I think we can all be a little bit more like Kimmy Schmitt (just not as naïve.) We can all be a little more carefree. Sometimes the best way to live life is by not being pushed down by the weight of this world and just enjoy life. However, that doesn't mean we should ignore what really matters in this world. Yes, there are times when we need to be insightful. Yes there are times when we need to stand up for the little guy. And yes there are times when we need to care about the nature of society. But we also nee...

The month of October was a struggle for me. I could feel the negative energy of this campus weighing me down. It was frustrating navigating through the cynicism and hypocrisy on campus, but that’s something to be discussed in my journals. As much as I value vulnerability, I’d rather not publically display my internal struggles online. Obviously, that decision is based on my boundaries, but above all I am finally in a better state of mind, and I don't want writing about the weight of the negativity to bring me down. I wish I could give you a simple answer as to how I got to a better state of mind, but alas I do not have any answer to bestow on you. There is great power in understanding the emotions that we feel, but sometimes we don't have to have an answer as to why we feel a certain emotion. Putting words to our emotions and looking at them through a rational lens is a supreme source of comfort. It is also a source of comfort to let our emotions be; emotions are irrationa...

Hello beautiful readers, I might be stating the obvious here, but we all come from places of different stories. Each one of us bring our own stories, our own emotions, and our own insights of the world. All of them diverse from one another, and yet all of them connect to one another. The beautiful part about our stories is that they are always changing. The way we interpret our stories, our emotions, our world is always changing. In a way we can never fully reconcile what the absolute truth is in our stories because our stories are not static. Yet despite those changes, wisdom is granted to us in the midst of the reconciliation (can you tell I'm a seminarian?) Originally, I didn't know if I should write this blog because I knew my insights on this story would change six months from now. I decided to go ahead and tell this story knowing that grace gives me the wisdom to know that this isn't my entire YAV story, but rather fragments of it. Fragments where I give myself permi...

Ever since the evils of Charlottesville I wanted to write a blog regarding social justice. Hate has always been a part of human nature since the dawn of time, but recently I’ve noticed just how screwed up this world is. Sometimes it feels like we are swimming in an ocean of discrimination and hate. I want to write a blog post addressing social justice issues, but I don’t think I can eloquently articulate my feelings without using a salty variety of vocabulary native to Los Angeles. I don’t wish a pessimist, but dragons don’t exist solely in the fairytales. Let’s face it; it is a reality that if a person is born into this world then they are born into a world surrounded by evil. If the amount of injustices of this world were measured in written word, then the Library of Alexandria would have to be filled ten times over in order to capture all the injustice of the world. Now I would much rather live in a world of fairytales where the only injustice I have to face is the length of ti...

I am very excited about being able to write a blog post since I am in seminary and I don't know the next chance I will have to write another blog post! Yet at the same time, I’m nervous because I don’t know how to articulate my feelings and I’m afraid that it will send me on the down spiral of an emotional headache because I’m overanalyzing my feelings (which I am infamously known to do.) I thought I knew what I was going to say, but BOOM! An experience like lighting happens, I know that I must blog about that. I guess that experience doesn't make since unless I give some background information. For the last two weeks I have been in a class called, “Transformative Seminary Education,” TSE for short. I use the term “class” very loosely, because while I do get credit for it, TSE is more of a bonding experience for the incoming cohort. In fact, now that TSE is over, we still have about a week before we officially start our fall classes with the rest of the seminary. When as...