I want to talk a little about death and hate.

First, death.

More specifically the death of a terrible man. Unless you live under a rock, well more under a rock than I do, you may have seen in the news that the founding 'father' of the Westboro Baptist 'church' has died.

Fred Phelps is best known for his God hates Fags message as well as the churches unique way of telling people. From picketing soldiers funerals, to applauding large scale deaths (tsunami etc), to targeting specific people in media outlets/twitter, they haven't made a very good name for themselves. A name maybe, but a positive one hardly.

A goal they applaud. A church that wants little to do with being liked because that would mean they are failing in their goals.

The most disturbing part about their website is how well versed in the bible they are. Using chopped bits and pieces from predominately the Old Testament to create a theology, if you will, of hate. Intermixed with the hate message apparently lies the 'good news', as well as, the many promises of God for those who follow. Also, therein lies an interesting take on what it truly means to be jewish is smashed into their beliefs. There is a purposeful deviation from the message Christ taught of love, forgiveness, not hating your neighbor, and did I mention love?

I bring this all up because I want to talk about the Christian Church and hate.

Many of you may not know that I left England because of a huge church scandal. A scandal I was loosely involved with but was heavily involved in the church. The leader of this church Michael Meyers was, in many ways, a very similar person to Fred Phelps.

His message was a skewed message with a sick and twisted philosophy. A goal to not be liked or anything like the surrounding churches because he would have failed at his goal. I don't believe his message was as explicitly of hate but I wouldn't say that it was far off. The message was hardly on signs of neon but of haughty and underlying tones of religous exclusivity.

He was about as evil as a human can be and hid behind his servile/obedient family (and still does). Obviously, his hate message was not nearly as evident from the first visit but as I got more involved with church planning, planting, and preaching I began to see a man who was preaching a message of his own. Slicing and dicing the Bible to create his own form of truth to aid in his own agenda. An agressive man who much like Phelps only sees himself as the Christ.

Laughably, some of the Q&A sections on westbroro site have the same answers that 'Pastor' Michael had to my questions. Of course, it all seems so crystal clear but only a year out does it seem so.

I digress.

Phelps has died and to where he has gone I can only imagine. The devious side of me has numerous ideas but voicing them would place my message of Christ's love and forgiveness on the same laughable scale as his hate mongering/name calling message. And, I had an elementary teacher tell me once that if I had to name call to get my point across I had no point to begin with. Wise words that have stuck with me these 27 years.

I want to hate this man, Phelps, but cant. I am absurdly frustrated with the lack of logic and humanity in the messages but I cannot hate someone who thrives off of hate.

Now, here came the revelation. Phelps is the same man as Meyers. Not physically but symbolically.

I have been hating Meyers for quite some time. A feeling I felt quite justified in for the wretched and depraved things that he did to people I love. For the things he continues to do, and for those who will fall under his 'ministry' unknowing of his underlying hate agenda. And lastly but possibly mostly, for his lack of true repentance. He has, unlike Phelps, not died but continues preaching his messages of exclusivity, theological torture, and manipulation.

I believe much like Phelps he is unable to truly be sorry. He is so eaten up with hate and his own agenda he cannot see anything else.

Their message is not the gospel, good news, nor is it Christian. Simply in chosen title alone is their association.

The response to Westboro's picketing recently was a true act of humanity on the counter picketers end. A sign apologizing for the loss of a father, of a mentor and a leader. Someone close to the family of Westbroro's hearts regardless of how anyone felt towards him.

I cannot say that I want to hold an olive branch of love out to the Meyer's family but truly do see the importance now. Disassociating myself with Phelps is truly the first step in freeing myself from hateful 'Christian' messages and I can only hope those involved in hurtful, disgusting, and painful church experiences can do the same.

Ive spent a considerable amount of time on site design and none on content.

Ive not been happy with the layout of the blog and the readability but I really should have been more focused on the content.

As I browse back over my past writings I feel mostly twinges of awkwardness and embarrassment. I suppose any writer should feel the same as they should evolve as a writer and as a person over time.

I am unsure if I have evolved as a writer. It is quite possible that I have devolved out of sheer complacency.
I do feel separated from the person who has written most of these posts; as if I am viewing her through a looking glass.
The story of her life causes those awkward cringe moments in movies. Winces followed by 'OMG really did that happen?'

I want to consider this year and its happenings in the following blog and begin again. A new start along with those who are looking for a new start.
A readership who is also looking to begin 2014 with fresh eyes and a slate looking to be filled with better and more deliberately new things.

Goodbye 2013. I do not know how I feel about you but you, like those before you, shall pass.

These past three months have been less than pleasant for the most part.

Roaring back to the states, gun-ho for a big change in life and making a difference didn't last too long.
Ive not even had the motivation to write anything in months.

Apologies for the lack of noise this blog usually makes.

Apologies for the historically terrible content (it even annoys me now) and apologies for the amount of time it may take for me to get back on my feet.
To imagine things again as they could be rather than through the skewed lens I picked up in the past few years.

Eyes encapsulating only what reflects light enough to tell of fables still untold, 
a word search made up of lives intricately knit together to be read in any which direction. 

Read love, hope, hate, friend, pain;
perspective of the woven worlds may prove to conform to each that reads.

To close the eye to the words is to open your heart and, there, much more light is let in;
reflection plays no part in your hearts story while projection plays the leading role. 

My eyes closed begins to tell a story that I only hope to become a part of;
A play in which words collide to create what is to be. 

Barely a breath escapes without a tug of hope from the life projected out towards those I find myself loosely knit to. 

Each sigh clings to the strings that tie myself to the unknown, 
tugs in a direction towards pools of unknown depth and alternating colours. 

Uncertainty is never anyone's friend yet proves to be everyone's companion -  at least for a while. 

Which way is up?

I must ask you, which way is up? For although a simple question, it proves to be slightly difficult in answering. 
The moment I feel my heart fly the knots in my stomach sink. Or do they rise? And did my heart just fall into something. Was it up or down? 
The sensation of being lifted up strangely mimics what I can only describe as a complete free fall. 
Weightlessness in an undefined direction strangely feels the same either way. 
Gravity's pull involves forces in both ways but which way is up? 

My compass has four points but none point up or down. Directionless in my quest to find which way is up I can only find my location using those 4 little letters. We Never Eat Spaghetti. Which isn't true. We love spaghetti, whoever we are and I am facing East. 

But now I am just as lost as before with my head  in an un-specified  location. Is my head in the clouds or have I buried it in the sand. Ignorantly blissful of my trivial position. Where is up? Where is down?

It must be all relative to its opposite? How does one define up? Is it opposite to down? Then how do we decide what down is? Is down under our feet? What if lying? Then down must be behind and up must be in front. Of course, this all changes with new positioning. 
take the sun. The sun never really goes down, nor even does it move, but only is moved away in rotation. Sideways, backwards, forwards and up all mean nothing to a multi demential rotation. 
So where again is up? which way then is down?

What of an object? Do we misuse it for years only to discover its been wrong all along?  If upside down is right side up then down may be up, and up may be down. 

Lets turn it all once more to find whether up was down or if down was right-side up. Of course, we must be able to find  the right-side... 

so, does anyone have a map?

One month has past.

At first it felt like unbridled freedom.

Liberation of the most exciting sort.



First one week -- then two-- of sleep alone.

Upon the arrival of week three the chains have slipped themselves back on.



This must be the feeling a fish has when it has escaped its watery prison only to discover it has jumped into much worse.



Yet, boredom is hardly worse.



I once wrote on a blog, seemingly forever ago, that I felt that I was floating helplessly in a vast ocean. Waiting for a shift in the current to drag me to wherever it may.

That haunting feeling has begun to creep its way back into existence.



I must remind it of direction and purpose.



Those two words muddled in anger, wrath, pain, and hurt. Each layer of anger removed only uncovers a layer of pain or wrath. I am unsure how far to dig for purpose.

I am told it is there, waiting dormant for its re-discovery. As if buried in Pompeiian fashion by a sudden burst of fire which tore my world apart.



Maybe to discover the world is to be released from one cage at a time.

Fingers stretched upon the small keyboard. Words that once flowed endleslessly are held captive in the slight curve of those bent fingers.

Words - her voice - had been stolen. A vicious mugging many would say. Her version of the story is a slow drip of a slightly cracked china mug. Hardly realising that anything was being siphoned, she pressed on.

It was only upon the final drip that the once full container realised it had been robbed of everything inside.

Yet, all the marks of a writer remained. Vocabulary readied for quick disposal yet there she sat. Brokenhearted at an empty toolbox.

Words devoid of meaning. Empty words to waste time.

Where does one refill their words?

Tis only at night, through lonely strands, that the call arises.
Those wanton sands of shifting times beckoning you to ponder all that could be thine.
Neither death nor life nor weight nor vice cause its arrival, although they may gently tug at the hearts drawstrings.

The not so gentle being that causes fertile to become fallow.
It is where hope mustn't spring, never eternal. Existentialism 's dangerous affair with the very base of your reality. Forgotten loves, lost sayings of hearts never to be, which never were yours.
It is the place where two paths in a wood diverge only to lead to the same destination.
Dangerous roads laden with stones, ready to unseat the tired foot.

Oh, the missteps caused by placing the most sanguine expectations upon fluctuating ashes. The year turns its page and the waft of air caused by its passing draws upon a new spirit of the age. Its arrival agents chaos, but only in theory, upon all that is genuine in existence. It is here that, as Edward Lorenz once said, the present determines the future, but the relative present does not relatively determine the future.

For to build upon the shifting sands of time, will surly cause grievous loss upon grievous loss.

That which is desired above all else is to know what is to be desired of.
The truth laid in its intrinsic value must weigh more than gold or diamonds.
The desire at hand is hardly the correct desire and the correct desire lies far below the forseeable horizion, that I am mostly sure of.
Far off in order to be unseen it longs to be sought after. I, in search of it, am oft distracted by cheapened copies. The problem therein lies in my inablity to spot a fake because I have never truly seen the real.
Yet, a desire takes not a physical shape but a mental figure I would imagine. That figure, a strangely attractive one, lies there, standing out of sight waiting to be the centre of my attention.
That which is meant to be desired rather than that which was not.
Nay, all mean to be desired of but not all were meant to be.
And here, herein, is the conundrum.
That which I see is a good looking copy of that which I cannot see. That which I cannot see, its figure lies hidden, must be a better form of that which I see in my minds eye placed gently infront of me today. However, knowing that this may also be that which lies in the future instills a fearfull worry of 'missing it'. And that. That fear is your answer.

That which is to be desired of is void of fear.

Thereby this cannot be that.
The present desire which means to be desired of is not the desire which was meant to be desired of.

I must then wait.