Day of days, why remember anything? What is truth? Why die for it?

This photograph was taken on my recent trip to Ucluelet. I had stepped out on to the rock to shoot a specific composition. It had taken a 20 min hike to get there. I didn’t understand the timing of the photo. I do now. While near the water and having just narrowly avoided a wave in panic, I struck up a conversation with a wonderful person named Stephanie.

Stephanie was bare foot.

Let that sink in for a moment. There was no sand nearby. Not remotely. Just the jagged rocks, slippery, yet she moved over them with the freedom of a confident local. Indeed, she is a nurse in town.

The conversation was so genuine. I could see that I had met someone with an understanding of pain learned. It’s a universal understanding. The rocks get it, the trees get it, the water changes, motivates it. I told Stephanie that the photograph would fit the thought.

Pain is truth. Often there are many layers to both. The photo above is called “layers of pain”

We learn from pain. We build on it and we grow through it.

Why remember it? Why remember what we lost and then learn?

Why remember someone who spoke, acted on and then died for truth?

Veterans understand this.

A funny thing happens when you speak your truth. When you fight for it, when you stand behind it.

You don’t have to stand in front of it anymore, blocking its path. If it’s indeed truth,

It moves forward.

Relentless.

Where it leaves you is standing in its wake, vulnerable to what the declaration now is. That truth can now lead and direct you properly because who you are has been settled. The internal argument has been lost and the love for something of truth pushes outward.

I’m trying to say something here.

What’s really happening when we speak for something inside of us ( a conviction ), is that we are actively recognizing the significance of that truth outside of the constructed importance observed by others.

This before you.

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“This means of refinement is worth more than your temporary comfort or feelings about it.”

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“Stepping on that nail hurt, and it will hurt if I step on it.”

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I wore boots. Stephanie didn’t need them for the life she was living. I did. We both understood pain.

This shift in the understanding of pain and living is constant, but it has a funny way of teaching us both when we embrace pain and when we avoid it. That’s the pride part.

Pride is not self love. Love is insight, pride and fear are selfishness.

Self love and identity shift the focus outward because that is what the very nature of love is. It’s made to be given. It only exists because something wants it for something else. Hate works the same way. So does manipulation even if it’s disguised as love.

Pain is the learning crucible for all of that.

Pain is only recognized when it’s experienced.

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Actions have consequences. This is not an isolated equation, trust me, I’m good at math.

What’s given to all is best for all, becomes enlightenment. What is the saving grace? What is this truth? What is the equation?

This is the part that the constitution got the idea from.

This is where the shift happens. We all lose the life that we never asked for. Every memory of that life remembered is lost to the one after it. To quote Fight Club, “On a long enough time-line, the survival rate of everything is zero” -even the memory of someone. At least a human one. This is why I love the story of Jesus. He transcended equality. He wrote the equation that solved the problem.

He introduced pain into the equation and then was sure to willfully and fully understand it Himself. He did this because He knew who he was.

Equality in ineptness; not stature or composition. Composition is in the eye of the thought, stature is the importance placed on someone deserving of that recognition.

When “This truth” is actually the truth that joy is found in selflessness and that recognition of one’s brokenness is the beginning of wisdom,

Then suddenly, friends, families, although often enemies, start behaving differently.

Stature will be judged by Character. Actual Righteousness will be looked to for the standard . It’s inevitable.

Jealousy, greed, envy, gossip, pride, and hate become acknowledged pitfalls to target for expulsion.

The concept of forgiveness and boundaries begins to be understood. People are.

Churches stop being a popularity contests, and educated, technology inspired, God fearing, seeking people, start being just that.

This truth is actually that you are more important than I am.

You are. You got me here.

You inspired the drumbeat, the love of the photo, the love of the Word, the love of life. The love of family.

Whatever part you played in that, happened by some will to see that we recognize the importance of the other while we move forward.

(Whatever part you played in my life played out for the will of something greater than me. )

I like run on sentences. It gives the opportunity to share a thought twice because I want you to get it.

This truth extends much further than a 45yr old drummer who’s finally found a voice.

It’s is a universal understanding that if the plane is crashing, you make sure that you’re going to be conscious with a mask first before the assistance part.

It’s not survival of the fittest. It’s simply acknowledging that sneeze.

This is why universal healthcare is important.

Honouring our veterans, and actually supporting them and the elderly.

Education and social health services must be brought to the attention and forefront of everything.

Families must be supported, especially those that have the courage to step up and be the family that no one believed in. Not more than, all the same. Families bring growth. Growth equals prosperity.

A personas personal growth, intellectual understanding, and continued enlightenment, will always point them to the ultimate source of that source itself. The Creator who is all, knows all and is the energy through all.

That’s why every person’s decision to do what they want with their body is absolutely their decision. We are the witness of the process of life. God made each for a reason. The first thing God gave us was direction to do something instead of do something. That means, regardless of the outcome, God wanted a decision. He wanted you to make up your own mind, to make our own deduction and decision. Both are important.

Yet, in the context of one’s search for God in the midst of sexuality…

We all. Love is universal. That isn’t a new idea either.

I know what He made me to do and to be. What did He make you?

God is not defined by sex you may say, it goes both all ways. You are correct. It.

It is Thy. Thy will be done for your life.

(What’s happening here is that we are recognizing the validity of another creation, as something else. Not ownership, the opposite.)

Freedom.

Not mine.

Sneeze = God Bless you.

That’s not sexual, moral, or educated. It’s simple affirmation of the blessing that’s beyond understanding.

Why say it then?

Because universally, outside of human resentment, religious construct and preconceived self righteousness….

We actually care about each other. That’s a good thing. We recognize expression of air and loss of it, quickly, suddenly. That’s a Christ thing. It’s a human thing. It’s both.

It’s the same thing as rushing to pull your cat out of the burning house.

It’s the rescue of touch to the infant to encourage the breath, not silence it.

Predators silence life. They recognize the power and worth of something because they recognize the void in themselves. They, hunger. Fear is the fuel for both the reminder of power and the life of the animal. The lion eats the zebra because it must. The zebra eats the grass and understands its relationship with the lion. Fear was introduced to the equation. predators are manipulators of this equation, they understand it. We are not animals, we are not humans, we are created. Created to love being and therefore doing. Living. Preying on another life is the key difference. Fear of pain got introduced and used.

Fear of pain and death, is not life, but it is truly the only way we will ever understand it. Even Christ asked for it to be taken away from him.

This is a truth that needs to be spoke again and again.

We’ve become so accustomed to functioning in selfishness, pride, and greed, that we’ve forgotten the principles and humanity that brought us here in the first place. Life exists to be lived. That’s why I enjoy a good steak but also understand why I should be my own version of ethical about that. The steak helped me understand the grass.

Our entire existence is for the purpose and recognition of something Holy and greater than us…an old understanding that is truth..

We don’t live to die. We find life in living more fully as we understand life. We protect that. To prosper in that acknowledgment of something of actual divinity. It’s what we were actually created to do. To worship by living and helping others to live.

How often must we kill, manipulate and destroy in the name of fear of life?

Have we remembered anything? Have we actually given reverence or has God been reduced to a punchline? To a political indicator?

In-case you need the question answered, ask those who you thought closest. Some people are a very bad judge of character. Testing that against your own, is never a bad thing.

Ask yourself this. How long have I known the truth about something but didn’t act on it by getting out of the way?

This Truth remains.

Thy will be. God decides the finished part.

I know.