plays better on myspace. bigger file.
BETTER QUALITY VIDEO ON MYSPACE. CLICK HERE FOR BEST VIEWING.

my digital artclass portfolio.

hope the music syncs in the smaller file I just put up.

powerman 5000
nobody's real

           http://youtube.com/watch?v=rz2JKyQhpGA

ok.....

ok....

i'll stop these soon.....

i promise.......

but just not right now!

yeah.  xkcd is good.

i love this!

Someone wrote a post on BCWorld equating faith and blind faith as if they were one and the same thing.

So, here was what I wrote in reply:

the initial statement equated all faith as blind.

that is not true.

faith is faith. blind faith is blind faith.

I have faith that the sun will rise in the morning -- now that's an easy one.

I have faith that my kids will not steal -- that's based on both knowing their character and trusting them.

faith is belief in things unseen. faith is based on trust.

faith and trust are two core things that love develops with.

if you think about your deepest friendships, they are people you have faith in and can trust.

so, then, there is a huge difference between faith and blind faith. the two do not equate.

When people trust God even though they cannot see Him, that's faith.

Blind faith is not faith.

Blind faith is abdicating the responsibility to THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU
BELIEVE AND TO OWN IT BECAUSE YOU HAVE THOUGHT DEEPLY ABOUT IT.

If you think about what you believe and really evaluate it and
decide that is truly what you think and feel is a true life philosophy,
then your belief is thus based on your own faith. It is based on your
own decisions, your own understanding, your own agreement, your own
judgement, your own assessments. Hence, faith is something you build
within yourself through your own thought and actions.

Blind faith is simply doing something without much investigation of the
ultimate outcome, and sinking your trust in something that you
personally have not come to terms with all the ramifications of its
meaning.

Blind faith is bailing on personal responsibility.

Faith is based on personal responsibility, both your own, and those
who have demonstrated personal responsibility toward you in caring for
you with your best long term interests in mind.

Faith is a very complex creation.

Somebody just sent this to me.  It's pretty damn funny.  I did not write any of it.

1. Your first name is Korean, you've learned a good amount of Korean,
you constantly eat Korean food (bulgogi and kimchi are part of your
diet), you've been to Korea many, many times (for a "spiritual retreat)
and your friends don't get why, since well... You're not Korean.

   2. You're the weird family out of all your cousins.

   3. You've lived in a van and lived off fast food.

   4. You've done a "40 day"

   5. You have a hard time explaining how your parents met to your school friends.

   6. During speeches, you used/or still do wander around with your friends.

   7. You have "school friends"

   8. An elder yelled at you for flirting or doing something "chapter 2" related. Heck, all you did was highfive the girl!

   9. You hide your picture of True Parents when your friends come over.

  10. You just put Christian-Other on myspace.

  11. You're half Japanese and most of your friends are.

  12. One of your parents (the white one, for you halfies) tries to act Asian.

  13. You've seen WAIT perform many times.

  14. You call elder BCs (or have) nunas/hyungs, oppas/unnis.

  15. You know of the Aunt DJ.

  16. You went on STF and told your friends your taking a year off for "traveling"

  17. You're in a room with at least one picture of True Parents.

  18. You know what BCcandidates is, and you check it sometimes.

  19. You were once an active member of BCworld.

  20. Camp Sunrise was the highlight of your summer.

  21. One of your parents work for an organization that either has the word "Peace" or "Interreligious" in it.

  22. You wake up at 5 AM often, and not to see the sunrise.

  23. You have a ridiculous amount of Uncles and Aunts.

  24. You once loved the band Mr. Sparkle.

  25. You meet a girl, fall in love, and marry her, but never in that order.
  26. If you're white, you have to explain to your friends why you hang out with Asians during the summer.

  27. You know what it means to "cain out".

  28. Anything somewhat sexual is "chapter two".

  29. Friends asked if True Parents were your grandparents.

  30. The phrase "medical ansu" scares the heck out of you.

  31. When you're getting "old" your mom constantly tells you all the good ones are being taken.

  32. You know Jesus, Muhamed and Buddha all have old Korean wives.

  33. When the teacher starts talking about cults in class, you read ahead in the chapter to see if the church is mentioned.

  34. You've been woken up really early to bow to fruit on your birthday

  35. You've paid a lot of money to have old Asian people repeatedly hit you way harder than they look like they can.

  36. You learned how to wrap a dozen roses when you were in elementary school

  37. The sound of wind-chimes makes you have flash-backs

  38. You have lived with 20 people or more that you can't remember

  39. You've lived with 20 people or more at the same time.

  40. You have seen STDs dance on multiple occasions  (I'm trying to figure out what STD stands for...)

  41. You've sat on the floor wearing your best dress cloths for up to 7 hours or more

  42. You are still a virgin 39 days after your wedding.

  43. You know way too many details about your parents’ first night
together and the same thing applies for at least a few thousand other
people’s parents too.

  44. You know "amen" is so--- last era!

  45. You know "starting family" doesn't have to mean having kids.

  46. Right after you get "blessed" everyone asks if you "started family"

You know you're a moonie when you know this is not what Adam and Eve ate (this one I just made up)

The
Intercultural “Exchange” Marriage Blessing

Distinguished
ladies and gentlemen, our bondage to the lineage of Satan has caused
so much suffering throughout history. Let us now boldly step forth to
sever it and be grafted onto the root of the lineage of the True
Parents. Why should we foolishly continue to live and die as wild
olive trees? A wild olive tree, even if it lives a thousand years,
will only continue producing the seeds of more wild olive trees.
Where can we find the path to escape this vicious cycle?

It is
through the Holy Blessing. The Holy Blessing Ceremony offers the
grace of being grafted onto the true olive tree. It was instituted by
the True Parents, who bring God’s true lineage to humankind. Once
you change your lineage to God’s lineage, your offspring will
belong to God’s lineage naturally. The Holy Blessing is received in
three stages: rebirth, resurrection and eternal life. These marriages
contribute to the enormous task of transcending the barriers of race,
culture, nationality, ethnicity and religion, and to creating one
family of humankind. In God’s sight, skin color makes no
difference. God does not recognize national borders. God does not
stand behind the barriers of religion and culture. They are nothing
more than the Devil’s tricks. The Devil has used them to rule over
humanity as a false parent for tens of thousands of years.

You have
the mission to teach the members of your families and clans that
perfecting a life of absolute sexual morality through the
intercultural exchange Marriage Blessing is the ultimate means to
establish a peaceful, ideal world here on earth. Your families and
clans should all join the holy ranks of those blessed through
intercultural marriage through the perfection of absolute sexual
morality.

Ladies
and gentlemen, the path is now open wide for you to change your
lineage through the Holy Wine Ceremony that the True Parents have
instituted. The Blessing is yours, either as newlywed couples or as
already married couples, that you may establish true families.

excerpt from

"God’s Model for
Absoluteness, Peace and the Ideal Is the Family

Find out your Japanese name with this link (I wonder what it will do if you already have a Japanese name??)

http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/toys/namegen/969/

My Japanese name is Junko Fujiwara -- which is really amazing, because my spiritual mother is Paula Fujiwara!

campfire in the Big Thicket of Texas -- taken this spring when we went camping. 

and now, for our regular continuing message:

The Kingdom of Heaven and the Family

Ladies and gentlemen, what kind of place is heaven? In brief, heaven is a world overflowing with God’s true love. True love is its axis. True love is everywhere, in the outward expression as well as in the inward thought. Everyone’s life is filled with true love from beginning to end. The people of heaven are born through true love, live in the embrace of true love, and follow the track of true love all the way to the day they pass on into the next world, the spirit world.

Heaven is a natural world where all people live for the sake of one another. Consequently, antagonism and jealousy cannot be found anywhere in that world. It is not a world governed by money, position or power. In heaven, the success of every person represents the success of the whole, the likes of every person represent the likes of the whole, and the joy of every person represents the joy of the whole.

Heaven is a world filled with the air of true love, where all breathe true love. Its life throbs with love, everywhere and all the time. The citizens of heaven are all linked together through their common membership in God’s lineage. There, the whole world and all its people are linked together in an inseparable relationship, like the cells in our bodies. True love, the love that is God’s essence, is Heaven’s only governing power. Accordingly, God also exists for true love.

“God’s Model for Absoluteness, Peace and the Ideal Is the Family
and Global Kingdom Upholding Absolute Sexual Morality”

Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon

playing: promontory  -- soundtrack of Last of the Mohicans

It rained torrentially on Easter weekend. I was able to capture this shot between downpours.  The original file is 17 megabytes, and you can zoom inside each drop.  That is without my macro lens -- just a regular shot with the Canon S3 IS.  There are many fancier cameras, but I can't afford them.  Still, this one is pretty damn nice.

I took this shot March 21.  I was so close to it I could feel the heat from the flames.  This shot made the front page of the Baytown Sun.  Luckily, the guy who was driving it got out alive.

The next section of Father's speech deals with the relationship between our spirit body and our physical body.  I guess the picture above is a good depiction of where one could wind up if one did not have such great unity between their spirit body and their physical body -- not just in terms of a flaming accident, but more allegorically, in terms of winding up in a flaming inferno of hell! 

Actually, that sort of fire and brimstone message is not at all a part of the speech below.  It's more practical in content, telling how to grow spiritually.

I think the guidance below is valid.  It's easy to feel lost and directionless, and it's easy to pursue a lifestyle, quite unwittingly, that will make your success in a marriage very difficult, and that will definitely not make you a very good parent.  Every kid deserves a good parent.  It behooves all of us to become one, so that we don't inflict any disservice on our kids.  Raising yourself right is all part of being able to raise someone else right.

So what's written below, if taken to heart and lived in your practical daily life, can definitely make you a better person, one that someone could definitely fall in love with and want to be with forever.

However,
in the relationship between the spirit and the physical body of a
human being, the spirit is the more important of the two. The
physical body lasts for about a hundred years before it stops
functioning, but the spirit lasts eternally, transcending time and
space. Isn’t even a person who dresses and fares well in the
physical world bound to die? Therefore, before you pass on to the
next world, you should achieve unity between your physical and
spiritual bodies by living your earthly life in such a way that you
meet the standards of both the physical and spiritual worlds.

In other
words, you have the responsibility to perfect your spirit within your
physical bodies based on the finite life you live in the tangible,
physical world. This does not mean, however, that the perfection of a
spirit self happens automatically. Only on the basis of your having
achieved complete unity between your mind and body during your
earthly life, by expressing true love through actions, can your
spirit self fully mature.

Ladies
and gentlemen, in order for fruit to ripen and be put into storage in
autumn, it must first pass through the growing process of spring and
summer and be provided with the nutrients supplied by nature and the
tender loving care of its owner. Fruit grown in an orchard by a lazy
and ignorant owner will be afflicted with all kinds of diseases and
be affected by foul weather. Eventually it will fall from the tree
before it is ripe, or be classified as worm-infested. Though it will
still be fruit, it will be different from other fruit since it will
never be good enough to sell in the market.

Fruit
that has fully matured on the tree will automatically go into the
owner’s storehouse. Similarly, only when the spirit of a person has
reached perfection during his life in the physical world, which can
be likened to the tree, can it automatically enter the incorporeal
spirit world of the kingdom of heaven. In other words, a person will
enter the kingdom of God in heaven automatically only when he has
qualified for and enjoyed the kingdom of heaven on earth by living as
a fully mature person while in his physical body.

While
living on earth, your every action and movement is recorded on your
spirit self without exception, with the public laws of Heaven as the
standard. Accordingly, you will enter the spirit world in the form of
your spirit self, which has recorded your life on earth with 100
percent accuracy. Your spirit will show plainly whether you have led
a ripe life of goodness, or a wormy, rotten life of sinfulness. What
this means is that it is not God who will judge you; you will be your
own judge. If you are aware of this astonishing rule from Heaven,
will the remaining days of your life on earth be spent in selfishness
and immorality, succumbing to all the temptations of Satan and in
pursuit of nothing but pleasure? No, rather you will abstain from
injuring and scarring your spirit bodies, even at the risk of your
earthly life. Please bear this truth in mind: Whether you are bound
for heaven or for hell is determined by your thoughts, speech and
behavior in each moment.

Nevertheless,
when you look into your lives, undeniably, your outer self and inner
self are in a constant relationship of conflict and struggle. How
much longer will you allow this fighting to continue? Ten years? A
hundred years? In contrast, there is undeniably a proper order for
all forms of existence in the universe. This indicates that God did
not create human beings in this state of conflict and disorder. You
need to know that it is your duty and responsibility as a human being
to dispel all temptations directed at your outer self, your physical
body, perfect absolute sexual morality and be victorious in life by
following the way of your inner self—your conscience. Heavenly
fortune will be with those who lead their lives in such a way. They
will attain the perfection of their spiritual selves.

excerpt from

“God’s Model for
Absoluteness, Peace and the Ideal Is the Family
and Global
Kingdom Upholding Absolute Sexual Morality”

Rev.
Dr. Sun Myung Moon