Oversharing

Awhile ago, my cousin shared something with me that may stick with me for the rest of my life and that is the concept of oversharing.  Oversharing, according to urban dictionary, is providing more personal information than is absolutely necessary.  She shared this information with me on the heels of me seeing this absolutely wonderful play written by Marcus Gardley featuring Minka Wiltz and Enoch King called Every Tongue Confess, in which church and community is in turmoil because of people oversharing. (Side note, if you ever get a chance to see this play, you definitely should, it is really fantastic.)

As you have come to expect, this prompted me to think and reflect on some things that I would like to share but not overshare...lol (had to say it).  We are all living in a time, especially in America, where social media and reality tv and world star hip hop and Youtube and the list goes on and on, gives us license to share every detail about our lives publically with just one click.  Whatever we are thinking or doing at this very moment can be seen, read, and heard by all that want to peek into our lives.  But this is how we get into oversharing because we just start to provide too much of ourselves for the world to see and most of what we share is not the best.

With all of the instant access we can put out and take in, we have exposed personal relationships, private thoughts, and pictures galore all because we can.  Now one could say, that there life is an open book and has nothing to hide but the thing is, Christ said it best, "Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" (Matthew 6:3).  The wrong people can know too much about you and share it with others that should not the good and not so good things about you.

If you allow me to go to the Bible on this, Proverbs 2:11 says, "Discretion shall preserve you, understanding shall keep you."  See, not sharing everything protects you.  Think about how many wars have been lost, businesses went under, relationships have been destroyed because a little bird sang songs (tweeting) about what was said behind closed doors (Ecclesiastes 10:20).  We need to have an understanding that everyone cannot handle all of our being, if you will, and cannot handle all that we can share so we have to be careful of who we choose to share our lives with.  We need to start choosing secular friend and sacred friends.  Secular friends are people we just keep at a distance and only share things as needed.  Sacred friends are people you can share your heart with and can trust them not to share them with anyone else.

So, as Herman Edwards and Skip Bayless and others constantly warn, before you hit send or before you open your mouth to anyone, take to heart what you are about to share and who you are sharing it with, and just as important, why are you sharing it?

Reference: http://buzz.eewmagazine.com/eew-magazine-buzz-blog/2013/2/6/over-sharing-online-is-nothing-sacred-anymore.html

Stat Sheet Stuffer

I was talking to a close friend of mine recently about accomplishments in life.  As we have gotten older, we started to think on what we have achieved and what we have not done given our opportunities and abilities. One of the things she pointed out to me though, is that she does not want a life of just accomplishing a lot of stuff.  For her, having a lot of stuff accomplished is just as bad as doing nothing at all.

A thought:  doing a lot f stuff.

Of course, me being a modern American man, I referenced sports to frame the conversation and what came to mind is a stat sheet stuffer.  Now a stat sheet stuffer is a player that has the ability to put up impressive statistical numbers in a lot of categories in a game, i.e. a triple-double, hat-trick, hitting for the cycle, etc. Stuffing the stat sheet is an indicator that the player is highly skilled in all areas of the game and, for lack of better term, can put up video game like numbers.  That type of skill level and performance would understandably draw a lot of media attention and cause the fans to say the player is good.

But, as one of my favorite sports analyst Skip Bayless would point out, stuffing the stat sheet does not mean it will win a championship.  Having the ability to fill up all the numbers in the box score becomes fruitless if the end result is still a loss.  And while most players universally would love to have the great stats and the win, if they had to choice, they would rather have the win over scoring a gazillion points.

Which brings me to this:  in our society today, we have come to measure accomplishing a lot by doing a lot. Think about it, we have awards and give out cookies for the smallest things.  As working adults, we stuff our resume with tons of experience that we may not even remember.  Whenever we go out on dates, we stuff our dates with all of our good qualities.  We just pile on and pile on the things that we do and while it all seems impressive, nothing is really gained from them.  In Matthew 7: 15-23, Christ talks about knowing men by their fruits and highlighting that just because people appear to do a lot of good things (stuffing the stat sheet or trying to win points with God), does not mean much.  The reason why doing all of those things are meaningless in God's eyes is because they are meant to glorify ourselves and not Him.

So lets change our mindset:  the mindset of wanting to do a lot of stuff  to the mindset of doing things and living a life that is meaningful.  Living a meaningful life may not always to be glamorous or come with a lot of accolades but it does come with touching a lot of people's lives and pleasing to God.  So lets not stuff the stat sheet, lets win the game.

What Are You Afraid Of?

In the wake of Trayvon Martin's trial and by that I mean, his murder on trial, I talked with a close friend and out of that conversation, the key word of fear came up.  Yes, race is one of the symptoms the disease that caused the tragedy for the Martin family but lets be clear:  the disease is fear.  This trial was about fear, fear of a young black man because presumably other young black men have committed crimes where this young black man resided.

When I was growing up, my generation was taught, not to talk to strangers if your parents or teachers aren't with you, to be wary of people on the street because they might offer you drugs, and to be more localized, don't go through East Lake Meadows (aka Little Vietnam) or Thomasville Heights at night time.  In short, be so cautious that we would fear people.  If people fit a certain image, right or wrong we should fear them, not be cautious till we get to know them but fear them as soon as we see the whites of their eyes.

Its a sad funny that Birth of a Nation is becoming more of a prophecy than it is a film.  And that prophecy is, to fear the opposite of your mirror.  Rather if it have been white or black or red or yellow, this nation has been taught, has been raised to fear.  Where I work, as a black man, I sometimes see young white ladies cross the street or hold their purses tighter.  Where I live, as a black man, I have been taught to look over my shoulder when I see youngsters hanging out just being young and green because some of them could be doing something else and could be watching me. I like Chinese food but I have been told to watch the people in the back because they may not wash their hands.  I mean, the list of things we have been taught to fear can go on and on and on but the point is, we have been taught these things.

But out of the fears we have been taught or picked up on we have left no room for love.  Somehow we have convinced ourselves that our fears will keep us safe when throughout history, we see that is so far from the truth.  Fear, from the beginning has caused us to miss the mark on what God intended for us and that is to love one another.  But how can we love one another when we are so scared of each other.  We have made so many things to keep us separate from each other, mental and material that we can always fear each other and never love each other and to quote Take 6, "what the world needs now is more love!" 

With that, I hope the tragedy of Trayvon Martin makes volume that we have enough to fear each other and that fear leads to hate but we do not have the love.  If you do not mind me going to the Bible on this, 1 John 4:18 says, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."  Fear has spread and continues to spread, now is the time for us to spread love.

Sharpening Up

Odd question I'm about to ask but I'll ask it anyway because that's what I do:  have you made your neighbor (family member, friend, coworker, mail man, the baristas at Starbucks or local coffee shop), have you made any of them smile today?  Have they made you smile today?  I only ask this because I read Proverbs 27: 17, where it says, "Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend."  Now, for the last, maybe fifteen or twenty years, people have been using that verse to mean, "get what you can from a successful person."  Think about it, when you hear that, its normally brought up when you are starting some new venture and people say, "you know so and so is into that, iron sharpens iron."  I mean, that is how that conversation goes right, what they can do for you or what you can do for them to a lesser extent.  But looking at the second part of that verse it says the word, countenance and somehow that gets overlooked.  Its not talking about helping your business grow or improving your skills or even improving your gardening techniques; the second part of that verse is saying that friends sharpens one another's character. 

At first, I thought of it as just all smiles but like I said, its about us helping each other with our character and sometimes, that will not always be cheerful because lets face it, sharpening something does not look or sound pleasant.  Whether you encourage someone through a good laugh when they are feeling down or encourage them to think about where they are heading in life or even encourage them to go around the neighborhood for a few miles, you are starting a process of sharpening your friends. 

Now we all like to put time table on things for some reason and at least for kitchen knives, its good to sharpen them once a month or once year or everyday, depending on how often they are used and what they used for.  With that being said, some friends may need daily touch ups and some just need your presence once every blue moon and you can be the same way with those people: the thing is, all of us need to be honed and sharpened.  So today, think about who needs help, in their mood, in their behavior, and sharpen them up, who knows, the love you help spread may spread all around.

Caught In The Rain

To date this or mark time on this blog, on May 19th, 2013 (Malcolm X's birthday by the way), I read Joshua 3 and in the 7th and 8th verse, God tells the leaders to stand still in the Jordan river and walk through it till the river dries up, but its not drying up till they start walking through the waters.  As a coincidence, if there is such a thing, President Obama gave a commencement speech at the Morehouse graduation in Atlanta, Georgia.  The interesting thing is, here in Atlanta, the rain came and came and came.  And the 2013 Morehouse men graduating class, sat in the rain, as men, as leaders, listening to the words of wisdom from the President Obama. 

Now, the usual speech any Christian or motivational speaker would give at this point is, "rain will come but you have to go through it in order to get what you want," and yes, that is the truth.  But lets dig deeper here:  these men, Joshua's men and the 2012 Morehouse men, had to stand and get drenched in the water and lead the way so that others behind them could cross on dry ground.  See, whatever rain and water we have to go through may not even guarantee that we will always get the sunny weather and dry ground afterwards but people that come behind us will have those opportunities. 

The thing is, its up to us to walk through it.  If we do not walk through it, those waters will never open up for us and for those coming behind us.  God, if we had not notice, is all about making and leaving legacies so that people will have standards and goals to aspire to.  In Joshua 4, people took 12 stones and built a memorial so that generations to come would know where they are going and where they have come from.  At the same token, Morehouse class of 2013, made a mark for future generations, especially young black men, to follow and that is, by any means necessary, through rain, through flood, through fire, through brimstone, through whatever God leads me through, we have to go through it not only for my personal success, but for the success of generations that follow.

To close, in Joshua 5: 9, God said to the Joshua, "This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you."  I bring that up to point out that Joshua and the people he led probably felt the shame of being slaves and to bring it up to current times, those Morehouse graduates probably felt some type of way knowing they had to sit out in the rain for their graduation.  But in that moment, then and now, God made a change and says, we no longer have to be ashamed of what we had to go through to get to our expected end.  Our journeys may not have always been the prettiest and brightest circumstances but God being the Master Artist, wanted to bring us to a point of completion or perfection, and any artist can tell us that any great work takes messy and ugly details but when it is over, those ugly moments were needed to get the desired result.

One At A Time or Season For Everything

Okay, call me lazy or call me devoted, but I like listening to the Bible on my computer (I love the Bible Experience, you all should get it), and got to Leviticus 19:19 talking about not mixing things together and of course brings us to why we're reading this.  I found it interesting that God made this a commandment, I mean, I've seen some beautiful hybrid flowers and tasted some good fruits and veggies that were mixed together as seeds and of course I said, God did a great job at this...lol.  But thinking on it, I understand why because different seeds have different seasons, I will say it again, different seeds have different seasons.  A professional farmer or a good gardener knows that sometimes planting two seeds at one time will affect what grows i.e, chili plants will make fruit spicy, cucumbers will make watermelons taste like cucumbers, and so many other combinations.  The gist of it is, if one thing is expected but has a different result then the work done for it has been in vain therefore no one can sell it and no one can taste it and that whole process has been wasted and now we are behind.

I know we like to multitask and combine this goal with that goal but there is a reason why oranges are oranges and apples are apples: they require their own attention to produce them and it is the same for our goals.  I'm a writer and an actor and some other stuff too but I can't focus on trying to write a poem in the middle of the scene or quote Hamlet while I'm reciting a poem about how cute rabbits are, that would be awkward and out of place.

I looked up this site, http://www.pastorpauley.com/tzedekah/articles/Leviticus19_19.pdf, talking about the benefits of planting one seed at a time and a few highlights for having as he put it, heirloom seed is that (1) tastes better, (2) more consistent performance, (3) better nutrition, and (4) a continuous harvest.  See what God is trying to bring us too: all the dreams and visions He put in us can happen if we are patient and do the necessary steps in the one season we are in now and not having to cram season three and season four into season one (it doesn't work with our dvr's so it certainly won't work with God's plan for us).  Jesus even said that mixing different wine with different bottles ruins everything (Mark 2:22).  Therefore, we have to be patient in the things that God has given  us and trust in Him to give us what we need in our apple season the same way He did in our carrot season.  There will always be seed time and harvest time just be sure not to have both hands full because you are sure to drop everything (Ecclesiastes 4:6).

Making Repairs

Okay, so yesterday I cracked my guitar that I was just learning how to play on for the last few weeks and needless to say, I was kind of down about it.  Now I was not playing like Jimi Hendrix or somebody like that but still, I was just getting into it and to have it gone like that was just troublesome.  So in talking with a co-worker about it, feeling that all hope was lost and that I would have to save and buy another guitar he said to me, "Maybe it can still be repaired.  As long as you still have the pieces there is a chance the strings can stand the strain of being fixed."  He then told me that the process of fixing the guitar is binding and glueing the broken part together then if it survives that then it can be restrung and play as good as the day it was made.   He says to me, "Things can be repaired."

Things can be repaired.  In a simple statement, truth was spoken.  Things can be repaired.  Broken, hearts, friendships, families, marriages, credit, dreams, a car, and the list go on, can be repaired.  What jumps out at me the most is that, as long as the two broken pieces are not damaged any further, there is hope it can be fixed.  Often times, we throw away and give up on what is broken when it can be repaired.  It will take work to put it back together but that is when we have to ask ourselves, is it worth going the through process of the strain to play beautiful music again? How many marriages, friendships, families can be saved if the two broken parts realize its worth the time and effort to be made one again?  It all can be repaired if we give it to the One who is the Creator of all things.

God can mend it back together but it will take a commitment on both sides to let it happen and as we all know, going through the process of something is not easy but when it is finished, it is worth it.  Besides, all the time and effort put into building something up the first time should be worth rebuilding right.  And with God now in the middle of it, it is sure to last (Ecclesiastes 4: 12).   So think back on relationships that have been broken and if there is still part of it that can be brought back together then go ahead.  If you have a broken heart then be assured that God can and will make it whole again.  If you think your dream is broken, pick up the part that is still there and God will send back the other part (2 Kings 6: 1-7) and you can start back up again.  Whatever it is, it can be made whole again, just trust that God is able to put it back together again.

Dreams Don't Have Deadlines (The Prequal)

Okay, I'm a wrestling fan, I mean a huge wrestling fan and one of my favorite wrestlers is DDP, Diamond Dallas Page, the one who will make you feel the bang!  And his whole story is very motivational and one time he did a very good promo when he was about to wrestle one of the all time greats in wrestling, Macho Man Randy Savage.  In this promo, DDP said that his first 79 matches, he lost (and as a kid I remember him losing a lot and just to say he lost is being kind).  Anyway, he lost his first 79 matches and one time he was stripped naked in the ring at a live pay-per-view, and whatever you think about wrestling, clearly, no one wanted DDP to be in the wrestling business but the thing is, just as bad as people did not want him to succeed in wrestling, his desire was even greater that he pushed through those barriers.  Keep in mind, Dallas Page was 40 when he lost his first match and continued in this streak, and this was after he had been managing other wrestlers for about fifteen years.  Years later in an interview Page said what helped him through everything was that it was his dream and "you can't put your dreams on anyone else, you have to do it yourself."  And that statement stuck with me.

Taken that into consideration, there is never a deadline on what God has given you to do.  If you want to do something bad enough, something that drives you, a purpose that you cannot deny then there is no time limit for it.  George Elliot says, “It is never too late to be what you might have been,” and its true because if time is our only limit, we have our whole lives to fulfill our dreams.  When Joseph had the dream about being a ruler over his family as a young man it did not happen till he got older.  When David wanted to build a temple, he gathered all the money and materials together and his son Solomon built it.  Simeon literary waited his entire life just for the birth of Christ.  These few and many more had dreams to keep them going and the thing is, through everything, they never gave up on their dream no matter how long it seemed to take.

The old statement of Rome not being built in a day is true.  It started with Romulus, one man with a vision of a city and after thousands of years, one man's dream became realized.  Of course Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream for the future of the people in the US and worldwide and even though he knew he probably not be alive to see it come to pass, he was willing to do whatever it took so that future generations would see it happen.  In all that, we should not put a deadline on our dreams.  If we are 40 years old trying to be wrestler or leader with hope for all people to love one another, there is no time limit on what we can accomplish.

Opportunity Knocks or Invite Opportunity

Recently, I had a conversation with someone that had a great opportunity slip through their fingers.  This person played in a marching band in high school and transferred and stop playing because of the lack of skill level of the band.  Now, in the back of the mind of some of us is, if you love doing something, those little things do not matter right, well to this person it did, and who knows where that road could have gone.  So this person comes to my alma mater, Georgia State University, who in the last few years, launched a football program and along with that came, guess what, a marching band.

Now, this band is not on the level of some other major universities just yet but that will come with time.  At any rate, this person, once again, did not join this the GSU band because it was not up to the level of expectation so being apart of it was out of the question.

Here is the kicker to this filibuster if you will (thanks Dusty Rhodes), Georgia State University just celebrated 100 years of being in education and the marching band was invited to be apart of the inauguration of the re-elected President Barack Obama which I must say as an alumni, I am proud of that fact and I am proud of the band members that were able to have that opportunity and experience; a rare, even once in a lifetime opportunity, that the person I was talking to missed out on.

As the old heads say, the only thing between us and success is opportunity and air and its true.  The thing is, opportunity comes to our house very little and accepts our invitations even less and rarely invites over for that matter so we need to take heed to Ecclesiastes 11:4, instead of waiting on right conditions to do something, i.e., a better marching band, better job, right background, or whatever we come up with, we will never do what God put on the inside of us to do because we are looking at what is going on around us instead of what is in  us.

Ecclesiastes 11:6 says that we should be working at one thing in the morning and working on another thing in the evening because opportunity could happen for either one or both but the thing is to be prepared when God sends opportunity to our house or when He tells us to call opportunity up and invite opportunity over.  I will close by saying that time is precious and opportunities are few so we have to treat it all like a lightning bolt that we can grab on to and ride it because it is no guarantee that we can put that lightning in a bottle (yes it is cliche but it fit right?)  God gives us the skill and ability, provides the opportunity, but its up to us to make the choice if answer the knock on the door or send out invitations for it.