Entry Thirty One: Accepting the reality of death brings light.

When you witness the the passing of a good man - a man that has played what you perceive as a amazing work, from the simplest of things like learning to ride a bike to understanding the universe, and maybe its creator. When you see the pulse stop, the flame leave, the spirit pass, the soul cry out, the fact what he was is no more - reality at twenty years old becomes very bleak or.... for me very optimistic, or a better word ALIVE.

The facts, or maybe emotions, the out of world experiences which you have just been engulfed by makes your head spin to a point where you at the climax wish for death too. You begin to reason with all the other oddities which your five senses have recorded or picked up. Them being words, actions, your mother, father, friends, family, and every other being or concept you have made contact with thus far.

But when seeing death you completely and fully realize our bodies are a cage to a spirit, a entity, a object or "Something" which is very mysterious. That unfortunately, on a individual basis only one of our very limited tools can attempt to describe - words. I say that it is Something that is not apart of our human biology, surely not apart of our "human condition", nor apart of what makes us who we are.... here on earth, now in time, and possibly later.

I have accepted it is as The Spirit, you may see it as an entity or object, but we all see it as a thing beyond any current form of "scientific" explanation. It resides in all of us and at the same time outside of us.... A poor example would be like the Gases in our atmosphere. We breath one of them which gives us life, but it is also apart of a much bigger system and process. Like this Something much more gorgeous, great, and vast then our knowledge of what "this", or "life", or "reality", or " the universe", or "plan" could possibly be.

The same "Something" which everyone I believe has seen through the death of a loved one. Shown to those who have yet to witness, using forms of communication which always underperform the discovery - or awareness. Such as the many forms of english, in different contexts which run under the lines of mythology, philosophy, theology, and now under science, who all equally falter in the attempt to label with pure translation - translation of what we know to be the simple sum of all.

Entry Thirty: Missing the "missions", memories, and love of my old mentor.

Today brings sadness and joy. My grandfather Wendell Wardell Woods passed around noon. He was, and in my heart still is, a great man. He served as a Missionary in japan for twenty five years, spreading the love and support of Christ to the best of his human ability. He was a Pastor, husband, and great Father of four children.

But more then anything a successful Grandfather. He provided so much for our family, for our faith, for our future, and invested so much in my childhood. Without his wisdom and love I would not be the person who I am today. I would not have this understanding of God and his amazing Grace.

I will never forget all the memories we spent together. The times he took me out on bicycle rides as a child, the times he took me for long drives so I could fall asleep, the times he spent outside playing games or gardening. And I will never forget the time we picked peaches and I ate a worm...


I love you Papa, so very much, and I miss you now, but know I will See you again.

Your grandson,
Tyler.

Entry Twenty Nine: The knocking on our souls - is fixing our stupidity.

I gather my following beliefs through pondering these verses - 1 Corinthians 20-25.

"20:Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21: For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 22: For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; 23: but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, 24: but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25: Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

My word by word, reiterated interpretation of these versus... are as follow:

"20:Who are really the wiser? Who is really the poet? Where and who is the philosopher of this age, this time around? Don't you get it, hasnt God made foolishness of this world already? 21: Don't you see? Mans great wisdom was, and still is wrong, and he does not know God, what we taught ourselves and passed down as "Wisdom", it was mans wisdom not God's. So listen to me now, lay down your hearts, it pleases God through what we see as foolish, to accept what he sees as his wisdom - His true, real, applicable wisdom.

22: The jews thought and think him a giver of signs, a powerful "thing", the Greeks saw and see him as a teacher. 23: But we preach his Christ Crucified (HIS CLIMAX OF GRACE/LOVE). The fact that the devine, the power of God, is love. 23: But listen closely for you misunderstand this too - this great power of Chris is not specific or given to one man, but to all. 24: is to be given to all. 25: Even though the world may see this "power" (LOVE - Kindness, Mercy, respect, and honor) a weakness, it is truth, because God not only spoke it by mouth, but spoke it through action - through the sacrifice of Christ. Now you must see our opinions which reflect otherwise is completely foolish. How ignorant of us! God's will is God's will - much wiser and pure then ours."


What I interpret this ultimately coming down to... is this:

THE ACT OF GIVING GRACE IS LOVE "God showed us his love this way, he showed us how, by showing us first", THOSE WHO NOW KNOW LOVE CAN SHOW GRACE "know his love through his grace, now give it to others", THOSE WHO THEN RECEIVE GRACE KNOW LOVE "the process continues".

He taught the twelve so they could attempt to teach us, and they did, and we continue these teachings to this day - through the ages. Giving us these teachings (all these things which as humans... at the time we didn't already know) was him loving us. If he didn't give us these things, we would still be in bondage by foolish rules and mans own thoughts of "wisdom". But we are not, and this is because of one specific thing which he attempted to teach us, through showing us, more then anything else - Love through grace. He could have easily just let us all sink, but decided not to, instead he decided to pay us that visit, and in doing so he was showing his love through Grace - yes, by not letting us sink, having mercy on our human condition - stupidity.

What personally amazes me is how Christ so bluntly reiterated the messages he taught prior, even in his goodbye he said it again. He confronted us by conforming to something which no God is ever ruled to do, a cultural norm, but perhaps more importantly a mortal idea - sacrifice. He basically said "I GOD, the alpha and omega lay down my life in human form, to SHOW my love, because you would lay down a lamb in attempt to SHOW yours for me - and this is not good enough - wrong". In our modern world it would be something like "I lay down my life, I am taking the hit, so I can save my family, because don't you get it? The bottom line is I love you and wish for you to love me, yourselves and everyone else!". When you put this in context, "I am God, but Im going down to your level, to save you, to show mercy on you, to give my graces upon you, so you may know me which is love" - its a powerful thing.

IN doing so he pushed the culture, he moved it and brought it up to date, up to his wanted way of thinking. No longer did we give lambs as sacrifice for others and ourselves, we no longer used them as a means of saying I love you, or I'm sorry (Because apologizing takes the form of love). Instead we were shown to give ourselves, sacrifice ourselves. Our time, our food, our everything, and give it to others so they could feel this real version of "love" and be freed to do the same.

If anyone is in fact reading this and finds it agreeable, but still asks the question "how", well ill explain from "how" I saw it. First know, you have no super natural power, no higher intellect or intuition which can "spawn" the "transcendence" of God - the gift of "grace". Nor can you magically manifest the personality of God - love. For some of you, to put it simply, you can not create these things which God has already given, you must only accept them. Just like man can not "create" a cell from nothing, only see it, accept it, and attempt to re-engnere what has already been given to them as material - already exists. That is the magic, it must be given, the act of grace, but through what we now understand as love, and it must be received, so it can be given again. When you become apart of this ageless process will you know the power of Christ, (the power of what he did), and truly know the Father who so desperately wanted to do it.

Finally, when you are told to look back on your past, all you shall recall is a blur, but this is however... only if you accept the gift, and you can only accept the gift if you give something in return. Only love is worthy of giving for grace and only grace is worthy of being given for love, but because we have neither to begin with, unless it is given, we can only give ourselves. Our wills are corrupt, selfish, twisted things. But even so, in giving this up, this slime, God views it as our beautiful wonderful jaw dropping gift to him. This is the trade in for grace and the understanding of love, what he ultimately right now wants. A great deal indeed.

Entry Twenty Eight: The attempt to understand Christ.

I believe in Christ, his simple message, or better - his example, at the surface he is for friendship but at the bottom for salvation (A grand gift exchange). He gave us grace through example, and we give him us, he gave us love through this example, then we give this love to those around us, which when given - in some cases morphs into grace and the entire process starts all over again… in the end all giving our newly found love back to Christ by doing what he showed us to do. All we have to do is participate, in this giant game of white elephant.

EXAMPLE:
I saw this after analyzing the blood cell and its duty, lets start with a dying cell somewhere in the human body (or humanity). We are each a spiritually dying individual, like a dying cell which lacks oxygen. But when fed the right chemicals or nutrition - Oxygen, (in our case Love) this cell (or individual) continues to thrive. Christ became the lungs of life, breathing in its power, starting a complex mechanism, and giving us the duty to carry it to others.

By teaching us Grace we can give up apart of ourselves and start loving or nurturing the other, (the rest of our body - humanity as a whole), and by loving ourselves we love others which is actually loving God. I know it must be right because it is not self centered, its not just about me getting to heaven, its not just about you getting to heaven, its not about me me me me you you you you, I I I I, and it is certainly not anything about a "them", its about "all" getting to heaven - which I believe is bound to happen (His family as a whole, the entire body of humanity as a whole). But only if we play our new God given role in this mechanism we dwell.

This is the way we must begin to think about each other. I do not mean socialism, but the air that we carry amongst ourselves, there is no longer room for personal pride or ego, because in reality we all have in the eyes of God equal value in spirit. MY soul is just as important as a whores soul, my brain however or my skills or whatever you want to call them, are an entirely different matter.

I like to believe the one thing that differs us from others is this understanding, the awareness. We (the ones who know love) became aware after giving ourselves up to this beautiful process, we became aware of our human condition, sin, (self condemnation and self destructive behavior) and his yearning to fix it, his love. And I like to believe those who have experienced love are those who have for a very long time only experienced sin (Self condemnation and self destructive behavior), very much of it...

Entry Twenty Seven: The reality of Grace.

Accepting the gift… starts simultaneously by giving him something in return and it finally makes sense.

My understanding of the already aware:
Only when humans feel love (feel is a key word, "feel" not "know") do they become aware of sin, (self condemnation and self destructive behavior), then they feel regret. (Oh and ,who do you think first made man aware of love, and how - I believe the first coming of Christ did). Regret leads to guilt, guilt leads to sadness, sadness leads to pain - I think.

However, there is no specific thing which "must" take place after regret, for some odd and peculiar reason, somewhere in that process, at different stages, the "aware" are always pulled to this final idea, thought, or place of Grace. The process washes away and we accept who we really are, because we finally know love (Know is a key word, no longer feel). Our egos and pride die, or are sacrificed, given up as a gift in return. Then we are free to find new duty outside of ourselves, which is to help tranquilize and stabilize what God has wanted to revitalize for so long. The coolest part in this is he wants not our help, but simply us to participate, he wants us involved.

The full or entire understanding of what love is, flowers through grace, an opposite to sin (Self condemnation and self destructive behavior). It allows us to commune in faith, which leads us back to being friends, right, or stable with God... along with others. Now to keep this gift is selfish, to keep this light which destroys the dark. So we must constantly offer it to others - to offer this grace to others is to show our love (So others may feel what love is, and eventually know love), but more importantly it reflect gods love for humanity.

My understanding of the temporarily lost or hopeless:
When you do not feel love, you can not grow to know love, all you then know is sin, your sin, (Self condemnation and self destructive behavior) and you live day after day covered up, well hidden, walled in by it. Its cruel but you are, and powerless against it. This powerless state leads to fear, fear leads to confusion which in most cases spawns the need for emotional, and especially spiritual isolation.

Isolation is in my personal opinion the worst place to be, and the most self destructive. It twists you into rejecting the gift (Grace), and when this is done you turn to apathy, apathy or anger, and these if not stopped lead to hate. Hate, or the rejection of love is by far the worst of all - destruction of God and his great plan. The removal of God is the removal of love, which is the removal of life and of course that means death.

In this cycle for man, I say again with "feeling" love, comes the mission for grace, which leads us to finding it and trading the self, this grace opens your eyes to the "full!" understanding of love, and with the full understanding of love, comes the capability and in a sense... duty, of helping spread it around.

Entry Twenty Six: "If you're going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill

These past three days have been hell, granted, that is what life normally is. However seeing the temperature rise this high is very rare, normally throws me fire and brimstone in waves (key words "in waves"), in fact I get that a lot. But this week is different, it has erupted all at once in just three days, like Krakatoa. And I have been hiking in it since Monday -just like the wise man said to do. But now that I have an opportunity, I must jot it all down.

It began just two days ago (although it feels like a week), on my first day of school... with a phone call from my grand mother. She notified my mother who notified me, that my grandfather was being moved from the retirement home - unfortunately being checked into the Emergency Room. I was told that he could not hold fluids or food, and couldn't breath. So Immediately after getting out of class I rushed over.

I didn't really grasp how serious the situation was until I arrived and saw him lying in the ER. Because he has parkinson's I assumed to find something, well, more related to that. Instead of being correct... he was unconscious, sweating profusely through pale yellow skin, with a high fever. The only calm I found next to his bed, was the small increase in heart rate upon hearing my voice.

I spent the next few moments telling him some of my most fond memories, from picking peaches with him as a child, to the long walks we used to take regarding my old questions about God. I left soon after I saw he was stable, going back to the waiting room where my mother and grandmother were sitting. We were then told to go upstairs to the second floor where they would be taking him. Instead, I went to the cafeteria for some food.

The second time I went to say hello he was awake, and the nurses were getting him ready to be wheeled to a permanent room. I was the first one to see him awake, that, made it more difficult for me to talk. He looked very confused, and very alone. I tried my best to explain the situation. After telling him where he was I saw a calm come over his face, I asked if he wanted to see my grandmother, and his eyes shifted, then tears began to form, I immediately remembered that he couldn't talk, so I answered my own question with, "ill call her right now".

I told her what was going on, but she wasn't able to come down and see him, even though I insisted she did. I knew he wouldn't be awake much longer. When he arrived in his permanent room, and we were given the
(OK) to gather and say hello, along with a diagnosis... everything finally set in. The grim reality of the situation was finally shed light, and the small wave I summed this to be... became an explosion of pain, followed by ash and soot from hell.

The next day (Tuesday) we went back for a visit. Amazingly, he made it through the night and was awake when we arrived. Thanks to some powerful prayer, (but more likely the antibiotics) hope was finally restored. After a few hours of bed side story telling, all three of us went to the mall for a good family lunch... and this, is where the second volley fell from, (or so I thought until yesturday afternoon).

Me and my mother had some sort of Salmon spaghetti and it was delicious. I downed at least seven ice teas as well. But here's why this is actually important. A few hours later after returning home from my fathers, after getting ready for Armor (A church Event), my stomach began acting quiet odd. I thought at first I was just hungry again, so using my brilliant common sense... I went to the worst place possible - Dell Taco.

The next few hours I was only drizzled on, "paradoxical" ash fell. Being in the wrong state of mind to begin with made everything worse (Wondering the point of a man suffering two years, alone, unable to talk or move, when he dedicated his ENTIRE life to "god"). The absolute worst thing to wonder, when jabbing, or attempting to jab at ideas like predestination and free will, as if there's really a point to do that in the first place...

Imediatly after that, just fifteen minutes of being home, my stomach began imploding, upwards multiple times, and downwards multiple times, for hours. On two occasions I had to use the restroom and hold a trashcan in front of me at the same time... experience both... at the same time. Somthing I thought up untill that night, was physically impossible. Really, it lasted until I ran out. Which then lead me to a barley conscious delivery to urgent care, where I spent four hours receiving fluids.

I never knew how amazing an IV drip could be, it was actually a pretty awesome experience. After they inserted the needle (which I actually found out is only used for penetration - afterwards the only thing left in you is a 16 gauge rubber hose) - epic!) I could feel the coolness of the drip flowing through all my veins in the arm I was receiving it in. After about an hour my hand became cold, but my body relaxed, and I fell asleep.

That relaxed feeling vanished when my subconcious realized school was the next morning, and not just school, but my second day of school, a day of school where it would be my first day for specific classes. After waking up, the only thing which brightened my spirits from that obnoxious fact, was my doctor telling me It was food poisoning. Because by the sharp pain in my side, and fear of murphy's law being true, "if there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong", I could have sworn it was appendicitis.

The next day (Wednesday), I spent at home alone, asleep. Around 1pm I received a phone call from my mother, but this time, thankfully, it was about herself. She also contracted some sort of stomach flue. After talking to her for a few minutes about my adventure to urgent care and the prognosis given, we both concluded it was all because of the salmon spaghetti.

Unlike her, I was still unable to retain anything. However the fluids I received the prior night managed to keep me going through out the day. I decided around 6pm to visit urgent care once again, but this time I drove myself - I was given another round. When I left, instead of returning home I drove to my mothers. Where I have stayed until now.

Now today (Thursday) - I have almost recovered. I was able to get most if not all my reading assignments done, so the return to school wont be compleatly insane. But erlier, around noon depressing news came, which really is the climax of this Volcano. My grandfather is not expected to last past Sunday... the family is setting up plans to come down, to asess the situation. Regardless of there decision and regardless of the outcome of impending events... I will continue to fight, "sigh", continue to keep going... it is, the only option.