jason

91 people from Oklahoma blinked. 20 of those were kids. And in a moment they were greeted in the full presence of God. Today they felt his pure majesty.

God will allow some to enter into his rest.

The 91 were thinking like you when they woke up this Monday morning
Unsuspecting worries
Jubilant hope
Gahhhh
Finally vacation on memorial day
But maybe not
They’re last day on earth

The broken world in the face of a tornado
A quick rush
Sweeping everything along its unjudged path
Carrying the just and the thief

I heard Peter say
    All people are like grass,
    and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
    the grass withers and the flowers fall,

Poof, and the 91 were gone.

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My heart sank after I read this. 91 families to pray for. Getting started.

New York Times news article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/us/tornado-oklahoma.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

You are kind, pursue justice, and upright. I wanna be like You. #occupyallstreets

I don’t need cool, I need wisdom. #occupyallstreets

I love the hue of mid-80’s to early 90’s movies. I watched the Breakfast Club for the second time in my life tonight.

I am a firm believer that I have added to my identity two questions: “Who I want to be like?” and “Who I do not want to be like?”

A taste of beautiful adversity and the mirage of self-deception (Ezekiel 33:31-32 and all of chapter 34). Your words to the prophet was pure breath.

The past 30 days I have identified the presence of You with me. I have found the presence of You when I have looked for the presence of You.

See„, in the despair that feels like an overwhelming road, where tiredness weighs on your back, and future uncertainty worries the heart, I lay forth in the valley of dry bones.

There is no difference. I understand I will suffer and I must as a Christian. As I am walking through pain, I am not alone, and if I wait 3 days or 3 chapters, chapter 37 is my gold in the adversity.

It is not that I have become anything. It is the fact that I am the dry bones and it is Your Spirit who is wild and full of color. You gave breath to the  tendon and the light brown flesh on my skeletal frame.

Second time around brings life. I had forgotten I liked the weird girl who sat in the back right of the Breakfast Club. I’ve always had a thing for crazy. They stand out, ya know?

People always ask why I continue to take guitar lessons, go to conferences, and rehearse the rudiments over and over. I then reply “The Seahawks practice, right?”

And they shut up.

-first shooting star on sunset 2013
-orange cat sleeping while biking
-every time the Thunder lose
-buttoned shirts
-high five’d a leaf along the burke-gilman
-bbq at mo’s
-to be cont..1:16am

“I get to wake up every morning with someone who still has her soul.”
~Tony Starks

My quandaries of the single life, it’s gift and the abridged gap when blessings to be coursingly in love are all expressed floats to the surface through song, writing, poetry, and a mess of words.

It has occurred to me that my soulmate, the one whom I would marry one day and one whom I am searching for, I already treasure. Because while I believe we become one being bonded under a spiritual force, it is temporary in the human realm. And this is why I treasure it, and write about it, and write about who she is, and how I love her because she is already whom I love. The earth bound body is subject to a quick lifetime. “As the grass withers..” I have spent most of what has been a quick twenty some odd years and the next twenty I imagine will go just as fast. My best thoughts and writings have been in high hopes of what our souls will be like together. Therefore, treasure I will.

We want a controlled environment. We analyze and persist.
We give in to the predictable. We plan and desire results with expected parameters. In short, we want control.

But I often wonder as a believer. I often wonder how far I can push into the safety of You. Should a net spring forth when I jump? or If I fall hard, can You pick me up by the hand. Or worse, have I never given a reason for a net to save me or leaped far enough into the black mystery of faith? How far can I stretch into the uncertainty of my future hopes and believe in your perfect rest in You alone.

The let downs and joys I am headed toward looks like a piece of wood strapped on my back with one hill to climb and die on.

As I go, may You help me love recklessly.

1. Back from rehearsal 2nite! I felt the presence of God as Psalm 62 left my lips, “My soul rests..”

1. Mustachio party with the crackle of sisig on a grill
2. The brush of brownies on your nose as the oven cracks open
3. Tasted red coke
4. Felt Seattle sunshine
5. Dreamt
6. B. at the front desk
7. Relief from a good interview
8. Great Gatsby Party just sounds fun
9. Birthday Lunch w/ Jesse and John
10. cont..12:28am

Safeco Field 2013!

Suppose that the premise of every day, you woke up and were told 10 things about who you are. And they were this..

1) You are beautiful
2) You are extraordinary
3) You don’t know how to jump, you LEAP!
4) When you fall in love, tell her and when she doesn’t believe it, tell her again
5) You don’t have it altogether
6) But you will have the trust to trust He who does
7) You are beautiful
8) You are great
9) You are extraordinary
10) Everyday I believe in you more than you believe in yourself

piece in progress..

The Spirit has laid rest in the temple of our hearts, glowing as the light of all lights; a light so great that it will be the shine on a new city that rebels its need for the sun and moon to govern its day. In fact, that city is the new jerusalem, Heaven itself. This Perfect light radiates in the wild hearts of the Beloved.

In Christianity, however, the human soul is not the seeker but the sought: it is God who seeks, who descends from the other world to find and heal Man; the parable about the Good Shepherd looking for and finding the lost sheep sums it up.

~ C.S.Lewis

I Counted how many times I have smiled over the past three years. I looked at pictures. Thought about the past weekend. It was over 10.  Each smile reminded me that You have already blessed me beyond all I could ever imagine. Should You allow a psalmist to fall in love with me.. *deep sigh of relief and awe*.

Okay. 10

1. 24-yr old Jason who wrote notes about his spirituality to remind his 26-yr old present self what You have done and who I am because of You
2. Meeting new friends : )
3. Inadequacy
4. A loong way from having it “altogether”
5. Seeing Tita is AWESOME over gyros
6. Learning the phrasing for Mirrors..chyuh, J.T. right?
7. How conflict is approached matters. U grow in it.
8. Rest
9. Special S/O to P. Mac, the New President of the Manila Bible Seminary // I love when we get together for pho on rainy days..I’ll miss that.
10. Edward puttin’ a new pickup; somem grill in bell w/ Lex and Alula

You need to know her.

1. Apple Fritters
2. Leg workout
3. Seeing my Pa
4. Sharing convos w/ a poet
5. Being enamored in the joy of Christ
6. Nat’l Sibs Day w/ my bro @ Blazing Onion
7. Cams and the secret signs
8. Funny Anthony and his M’s vid: http://www.komonews.com/news/offbeat/Watch-Ms-fan-catches-foul-ball-in-his-beer-proceeds-to-chug-it-202524581.html
9. Aussie talks of wild dingos and tazmanian devils
10. Catching up over lunch

At the very core of me is the night. It breathes better. Why yes, this hot bowl of sinigang and rice on my tongue is Just the right sour. I love soup. I’ve done a lot to close the silence “what if” and “should have” has brought. “What if I songwrite more” or “I should have told her..” have been yammering quandaries. As Van Gogh remarked, “If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” Never have I been so at peace and so quiet.

The fastest way to grow as a musician is listening to playbacks. Embarrassing, yes.

I do not apologize for re-posting great writing. Most of which are found in books. In this case, you get their digital footprint and keyboard nuances as e.e. cummings had no disregard for capitalization. ¡Salud!


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Finding the Road Back by Samuel Duran

I’ve decided to re-establish for myself my core values. I’ve been direction-less for a while now, but having been in the presence of people who evidently have fought for and live out their dreams, I can’t help but want something more than this aimlessness. 

As it stands, this is what matters: Art. Communication. Relationship. Stewardship. Discipline. Faith.

Art matters because it is beautiful. I don’t believe Art is accidental, I instead choose to believe that Art is a deliberate act, a direct overflow of our hearts, circumstance, beliefs, treasures, wounds, questions, and existence. Art matters because it’s essentially, us, in a nutshell. 

Communication matters because we owe one another the benefit and dignity of being understood. We’ve learned to talk too much without actually saying much of anything, yet we still manage to destroy one another with empty words. Communication matters because being listened to restores in our hearts a sense of worth. 

Relationship matters because love cannot exist in a vacuum. Communities are not just superficial collections of similar objects- instead, communities are bound together by people actively risking their insecurities and flaws in order to build bridges towards others who are also risking those very same things. Relationship matters because without them, we just become islands, going through empty motions. 

Stewardship matters because we are gifted uniqueness. We carry blueprints, talents, baggage, patterns, and ways of being that have no duplicate, and we are held accountable for making the best use of what we’re given in such a relatively short time. Stewardship matters because you never know when you may be the key to unlock someone else’s potential.

Discipline matters because nothing worthwhile comes at a cheap price. Health, art, influence, intelligence, skill- you get what you put in. Discipline matters because satiating appetites may feel good at the time, but it’s passing up the short term for the long term that almost always reaps the better life. 

Faith matters because our hearts, souls, and minds need something bigger to rest in. Faith is choosing to put your belief into something which you don’t necessarily have the hard evidence for, and in this cold, cruel world, if all we ever chose to believe was what we saw, then we would never hold onto hope. Faith matters because we need to believe we are made of something greater, that we are capable of something grander, that we are more than just wandering wreckage- that we can choose to believe in the good, despite its seeming lack of proof. 

These, to me, are the values that matter. These, to me, are my breadcrumbs back to purpose.

(end)

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.

~Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov