Boys Next Door Act 2

Jack, I like Jack. He seems to be stressed out, even at his whits end at some times with these gentlemen but he still loves them and even calls them his little associates. To me Jack sees himself in these men, he sees someone who is free of pressure, of worry, and they can be who they want to be. At some times I think Jack may even envy this. He sees who he can be when he looks at them. They are happy just being them selfs, they don't need anything but good friends and they seem to do well. Jack looks at these men in a different light. Most would look at them and say why, or laugh and turn their heads because they feel superior to them in some way, but in many ways these men are far more superior than the average person. In the Bible we are told to have the faith as children and to be like children in some ways. have you ever noticed how a child wont judge another child by their looks, clothing, or anything else. We as the "normal ones" can't seem to grasp this and it is something that these men have not lost or forgotten about. They don't judge each other and they don't put each other down, they are a family and I think their is much to be learned here. Just something to think about.

Boys Next Door Act 1

So far this book has really made me happy. A few years ago I witnessed a mentally handy cap kid walk up to a girl that everybody in the class was in like with and say next to her and held her hand. I laughed because he did what every other guy in the classroom wanted to do. Next thing I know I got yelled at for laughing at him. She said that it was not nice to laugh at him because he had a disability. So what, isn't he human like me and you. If my buddy where to do that I would laugh because it was funny. Just because he has a disability dose not give us the right to treat him any differently. It was an injustice what that teacher said about him, how could some one dehumanize another like that? It was not right. We are all equal and the same no matter what or who we may be. We where all born and we will all die.

This book really rings true this message. No matter what people may say or think about a person with disability's, we all deserve to be treated like humans nothing more nothing less. It is this simple but humanity seems to just ignore them all together. When we pass one by in the market place, do we say how are you doing today?, or do we walk on by pretending we never say them, thinking it is the right thing to do, but is it? Don't ignore them like some horrible plague that might go away with time, give them time just like you would anyone else. Thank you, that is all.

Darkness

"Where is God in the darkness?". When the passage was talking about the question sometimes being more important than the answer I took a second look and was astonished. Answers like this leave us with raw blank information, but for us to really grow in a time of darkness we need the question and only the question because this many times opens up a door to growing and learning not just spiritually but mentally and maturely, if thats even a word. Like the passage said, "it is time not for answers but for questions that defy answers,”.

I really like the lines, There has to be some serious doubt, otherwise faith becomes merely a dogmatic formula, an orthodoxy, a way of evading the complexity of life rather than engaging honestly with life.” This rings true to my life. I feel like I am completely helpless to help somebody if I haven't experienced something tragic too. It is very difficult to me, I know that if I was in a world of hurt and somebody came up to me saying it will be alright I would be quite angry with them if they have not been through what I been through. I wouldn't even want to hear them speak to me. I know that this seems harsh but its the truth. The truth can hurt, no matter if the truth is darkness and despair or the unknown in times of uncertainty.

Oliver

wow, Oliver sure has an interesting way of looking at things. Reading this passage helped show me all the things that nature can be. The Bible uses nature for many examples and metaphors and through this passage i was able to see the furry, wrath and gentle kind heart of nature, boom baby.

The author talks of Gods work being all around. I never looked at nature in that light, if I look at a tree and physically say that God created this tree and the dirt I'm standing on and the very breathe I take it starts to seem overwhelming that our God was able to do all of this. In a why Gods finger prints are everywhere we look, first we just have to look, then we look again and finally we learn to look. I know it doesn't quite make sense but there are many things that just don't make sense and God and nature is just another one for the list. She had a gift for looking into something and seeing it for what it is, we have lost that and I for one would like to rediscover this. I plan for now on not to look at something for what my eyes see but what my eyes don't see. It is as simple as that if only we try.

Nature

Today [Monday] I walked out next to Lake Bonnie and I tried to grasp everything that I could about nature. In class we talked about nature praising God, listening to God and being pentecostal. I tried to imagine nature as a living breathing entity just like myself. So I closed my eyes. Over the next few minutes I tried to listen and I couldn't hear anything. I tried again, this time I laid in the grass and let my feet soak in the lake as my body soaked up the sun. I had to literally become one with nature. Slowly I could almost feel the earth breath with every rushing wind. I could hear the waters crash at my feet, the grass whistle as the wind turn its way. A song I thought, suddenly the earth let out a deep groan that reached from one end of the sky to the other. It was almost like a huge symphony orchestra playing its fine tune, but who in this orchestra is featured. Could it be the crashing sound of the waves, the howling wind through the trees or the grassy plains in which I laid. Who in this orchestra of one could it be. Maybe it is the soft rain that slowly cooled my body or the sound of silence, when all nature is quite before God. Who will nature feature tonight? Surly it must be something greater than even myself, maybe even God himself? But I like to think of God as an excited father sitting on the side lines cheering on his son thats up to bat, "come on son I know you can do it, home run home run", or even the hand that held mine as a child as I fell to sleep. I like to think of my father as that proud parent who rags on about their own child, but surly he doesn't go through all this trouble for us? But then again he would, wouldn't he?

Just I had to become one with nature to somewhat grasp the essence of it all, we must become one with him. Though I am afraid that we may never truly understand it all, and thats all right. For I nor any other man or woman could ever truly grasp it all, and thats why I keep coming back.

State of the Planet

I found this piece of lit to be very interesting. it gives an inside look on the secular view of the world and how it came to be and how it might end one day. The part that talked about how we took the earth and used to to do certain things really caught my attention. Even thought it is a secular view it showed how men do not create only can they invent. Even thought secular it still posses christian beliefs I found this interestingly not suprising, I just needed something to write about.

I love the part when it says that we dare not answer or ask the unanswerable we tend to leave that to priest and such. Why, I ask myself? Do we leave these things to priest because we are afraid to answer them, or do we fear how people might take our ideas and philosophy's. In the Christian view many of us are afraid of stating something untrue and risk spreading heresy, but I can not see why someone on the secular side could or would not want to figure out the unanswerable. The unanswerable has always interested me. One could say that I am nosy and another could say that I have every right to want to know whatever it is that is unknown to me, wow I was really hoping that last sentence would have come out sounding more sophisticated but I will take what I can get on only a few hours of sleep.

I was inspired

During our discussion last class I got inspired to start writing a story, This is just the very begining of an amazing adventure.

My story takes place over 120 years ago in this very land. Our ancestors took shelter in these underground facilities seeking refuge from the danger that drew near. As children we are told stories of the great light and fire so intense that it can vaporize a human in seconds. They say that the bunkers protect us from this great threat. War and famine spread across our land killing all in its grasp. Disease infiltrated our great cities and spread like wildfire, choking the very existence of humanity. Those who survived the plagues took shelter, we are all that are left. Surviving off of mushrooms from underground springs, roaches and an occasional rat for over a century.

All of them are gone now, the story tellers, The only record of what happened is imbedded in the memory of the few that are left hear. Thirty four men women and children, we are the offspring of the story tellers. Their story is our story.

-120 years earlier

-Flipping through the Television channels

CNN- Wide spread evacuations are taking place as of this very moment. You are to take your family and get to the nearest evacuation center immediately. Don’t take any-

FOX- We have Tim Suarez on the scene now. Tim- This is just incredible never in my life time have I ever seen anything like this. There are people busting out windows of shopping centers and taking everything inside. This is just unbelievable. Anchor- Now we go to Charlie Belcher who is at our nation’s capitol, are you seeing what I am seeing, there are mobs of people storming the white house and slaughtering-

700 CLUB- May God keep us and protect us, this is our most desperate hour-

-Turn off Television.

Jake-Honey, did you get everything?

Mary- yes I got all the medication, and enough food for a week.

Jake- That’s not enough. Hear take this [gun] and keep it on you.

-Back to 2130

Anna- Many times I sit and pray to God, asking him why he has forsaken us and left us to die in these prisons we call home. Are we just to rot in here until our race has completely depleted to nothing? O how I feel so alone in such a barren hopeless world, no joy no peace only death and suffering has entered our minds and bodies. O how I long to feel freedom from this fate.

The Adults speak to us of stories passed down from the first story tellers. They speak of a bright fire in the sky that is so big it can warm everyone and still it does not burn you. They speak of pools of water that are so enormous you could not possibly swim across, and they speak of rocks that are so monstrously huge that they make a man look like a grain of sand. O how I long to see these things, to feel this salt wind in my face, the cool breeze in the fall air, to watch green paper change colors before your very eyes. I want to see experience this but I am afraid that they are just myths maid to give us hope of a better life someday. Is that what keeps us going on? The hope of a better life. I wonder, if our race would have tried to work even have as hard if they knew their fate would not be a happy one, but a dark strange world, cursed by our own hand and lost to our greed. O how I long Heaven. For surly I have seen Hell.

-2010

-Driving, Horrible traffic at a stand still

-Radio- This is just in Turkish ballistic missiles just devastated the East coast of the united States. We have contact in Atlanta, Boston, Jacksonville, Charlotte and New York. If you can hear this you have approximately 38 minutes until first light.

Mary- That doesn’t give us enough time.

Jake- We’ll walk from here, leave everything it will just weigh us down. I’ll grab the baby.

-2130

-Anna- I always wonder what it would be like to go outside. Nobody has done it in 120 years. They say that the air outside is poisoned with an invisible monster. They said that if you go outside he will get into your lungs and cause your skin to boil and bubble. I think they are just making it up, besides I’m twelve now and not afraid of no monster.

-Later on that night

-Silently Anna makes her way through the bunker to take a peek out side. Softly and carefully she makes each step count. She could make out the sounds of the elders snoring and adults talking. There was a narrow entrance way that leads to a spiral stairwell. Their where chains on the door, so she had to carefully squeeze her body through ever so carefully. Suddenly she felt something scurry over her hand, and then she dropped. The doors bumped the chains and maid a loud clang against the doors.

-There was a long period of silence, like everyone was listening for her. Then someone was coming. She pulls the rest of her body through grabs the rat that ran over her hand and placed it just outside the doors in the hall. Then all I could see through the crack of the door and hinge was a stout man it must had been Mr. Parker, he sometimes keeps watch during lights out. Those few moments seemed like forever, then Mr. Ferguson walked up and said come on back to the party; it’s probably just a rat.

-Mr. Parker- Your right, OK.

-Mr. Fergusson- Of course I’m right.

-Anna- As I made my way up the stair well I felt light headed and dizzy. Kind of like when you stay under the water to long in the spring. The stairs seemed never ending they wrapped up higher and higher until I was out of breath. I could look down now and see a small light from the crack in the door where I saw Mr. Parker and Mr. Fergusson. As I journeyed onward say a small light appear. It was orange in color. I also became quite cold for a small breeze now blew my hair around my head like the fairish wheels I learned about in my history lesson. As I came to the final ten steps a saw a door on the ceiling, there was a bit of light that had seemed to make its way in through the edges of the door. My bare feet seemed to glide across the stone cold floor as I rose to open the doors.

-2010

-Patrol officer-Get inside, hurry. No sir, there is only enough room for 50 people.

-Mary-(screaming) Jake, no.

-Jake- I love you, take care of her, when she gets old enough tell her that I love her and no matter what happens God will see us through.

-Patrol Officer-Mama, I must shut the door.

-Mary-(crying) I love you.

-Jake-(crying) I love you too.

-Door shut, A great wind picks up, sun fades into the distance. Suddenly, a blinding light appears.

-2130-