12 September 2010


You know when you wait for something for a very long time...

Sometimes we call that patience.

Sometimes we call that pain and suffering.

Rarely do we call it the "right thing"


This photo is about the right things in life.

I had the blessed opportunity to teach this gorgeous girl

as I labored as a full time missionary for

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

We would study: words, phrases, meaning and most importantly

how we felt.

This photo is also about feeling.

Not so much, the type of feeling that can have a

collective touch on an audience of photograph viewers,

but a feeling that speaks to the very people who live inside this image.

There wasn't alot of posing in this photo session, mostly because that

isn't who these two are.

They are really this beautiful.

They are really this great.

And they are really this real.

And for this, I am grateful to celebrate their Brand new colony together.

The colony they have planned and worked out for the past three years.

I doubt not their successes and their goals.

I know they love beyond the world's capacity to know and feel.

07 September 2010

I’m in the airport, in transit to Phoenix, AZ.

As I type this, I sit upon the floor against the window.

The carpet is blue/gray/green/red Delta Airline based design.

My back faces the west, the heat feels good through the window
and I can only imagine it as a foretaste for the Tempe Sun.

Something I will feel in hours, unless I give up my seat again.
The flight is schedule at 7:54 p.m.

I have just bumped my own flight for a 400.00 voucher.

I’m a sucker for no brain good deals and now I sit here with my goodies:




1. 400.00 voucher for giving up my seat. { Where will I travel next?}

2. 2 6.00 airport store vouchers, which one has turned into the following:





I have with me a book.

GB let me borrow it.

“As a Man Thinketh” written by James Allen.
GB told me it was amazing, I believed him

but now I experience it myself: with the following passage:

“Every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces it’s own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruitage of opportunity and circumstance. Good Thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit…. man learns both by suffering and bliss.”

Suffering and Bliss

takes my thoughts down memories of the actual two

and trails unknown. Things that may come.

Things that maybe others close to me are already experiencing.

Sometimes {very short times I might add}
I think being 27 and single is some type of suffering.

Then I realized:


I'm 27

I’m travel back to my mission whenever I feel like it.

I can bump my flight because I don’t have a demanding weight bearing schedule.


Yes I have school and all the responsibilities, but I don’t have a boss that says I cant have what I want.

I’m lucky.

I’m blessed.

Then I think about my lovely friends.

Two women of great faith come to mind:

Jackie.

She couldn’t be here bumping flights with me.

She is expecting her third baby.

She is probably bartering with a sun-kissed toddler about how many cups of chocolate milk are okay to drink per day.

Jackie.

She is lucky.

She is blessed.


Then I think about Amy, who just had baby number three.

Her second oldest child had a bath and dressed himself for what I assume is the day to come, whereupon he decides to get back into the tub with his clothes on.

She also is not available to sit in the airport for hours, checking emails, doing homework and waiting

to bask in the areas starting in 8528____blank.

Amy is a mother,
a wife and a great person.

She is lucky.

She is blessed.


My thoughts can only give credit to James Allen.

These moms have blossomed their thoughts into decisions pertaining to

dating
which lead to
marriage which lead to
husband and wife which lead to
families which lead to
motherhood which lead to
small children drinking chocolate milk in the bathtub fully clothed.

And evenly I feel we are lucky we are blessed.

We decide if sitting in the airport is suffering or bliss.


Personally,

the times I have had extra chocolate milk or gotten in the tub with clothes on,

I felt bliss.

Let bliss emerge from the times we think of suffering.

I am 27 suffering in bliss and I am blessed.

02 September 2010

I'm starting to feel that maybe my life isn't so backwards