Brotherhood

Hello and welcome to this my first post and hopefully the first of many. I have several friends who have already taken the plunge into blogging. They have been trying for years to get me to come on over so I finally did. It took me while to decide what exactly my first blog should be about. Thus brotherhood. I thought that this was the perfect concept to unveil who I am and what I stand for. I was raised Christian. My father was a baptist pastor and my mother his friend and the steward of his church. All of this to say my early life was an experience in confusion and strictness. Church life for the most part was fun and good as long as I was a child, but the minute I crossed the line into age of understanding and reason all fun ceased.
The life of show and go, the production of big hats and back stabbing, the list of giant egos and two faced acquaintances sitting in the front rows. Yes this is a horrible way to exemplify the church but this is just my own personal observations of the some of the churches that I have personally attended. This is not a systematic destruction of every church every where, that would be.......well, unenlightened. This is just for background information. To give you an overview of why I feel the the way I feel. So many of the people you will run into in the church will judge you based on a number of factors. Do you go to church? Do you have a home church? What are your particular beliefs as it relates to religion? These questions are asked with an eye toward determining whether or not you have the potential to fit in with the status quo. This is the decision that I had to make once I reached the age of discernment. Do I want to fit in? Do I want to mold myself in the image of the older men of the church? Am I down with the plan?
I now live for all. What does this mean? It means, no. I'm not down with the plan. I refuse to be herded like so much sheep to the slaughter. I will not lie in the embrace of ignorance. I will not suffer the idiocy of fools. And I will not be molded by another, I will take responsibility for myself and do my own molding. If perchance I make mistakes and how could I not make them, I am after all human. But if I make mistakes let them be my mistakes. In this way I will have lived, experienced, this life for myself and not just mimicked the life pattern of another.
This brotherhood that I mentioned earlier is what has been born of the suffering I've experienced here on Earth. I realized very young that I could internalize the pain and return violence for violence, cruelty for cruelty, hatred for hatred, or prejudice for prejudice. My parents believed in Christ but my father differed from my mother. He would rather offer a helping hand than a back hand. My mother loved my father for his ability to love in the face of adversity, but for herself she believed in giving as good as she got. Even though she loved him she saw the open hand as weakness and tried hard to beat this weakness out of me. For a time I lived as I was raised. Always on guard, always waiting for some perceived injustice so that I could reward it in kind. The drain on my soul was phenomenal and could not me maintained. The horrendous results of this lifestyle is that I have lost the function and use of my kidneys. I speak of this not for sympathy but as one would speak of a pitfall on a map. A danger to be recognized and avoided.
Those who choose to ignore this warning will undoubtedly meet their own precipice where they will realize that to continue as they have means death.
Those who choose to see the danger and adjust their course will be welcomed into the brotherhood. This brotherhood is an androgynous term and should not be seen as excluding of any one sex over another. Nor should it be seen as being exclusive of anyone at any time for any reason without exception.
The brotherhood simply put is us. All of us. All of us who have learned that we are a part of a much greater whole. Those of us who recognize that regardless of locale, race, color, country of origin, religious belief, sexual orientation, or any other method of division, we are one. One people; human. One planet; earth. One love; unity.
All are welcome because in this brotherhood it is your actions that determine your place. If you desire to be a brother all that is required is that you love. Whole heartedly, unashamedly, without reservation you love yourself and your brothers. Be they male, female, white, black, red, blue, green, Ukranian, Serbian, British, African, American, democrat, republican, green party, labor party, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindi, etc, etc, etc.
Sooner of later we must come to a place where we stop destroying ourselves and our world. The only end that can come of fear, hatred, ignorance, greed, sloth, prejudice, and uncaring is death. The deaths of our children and grandchildren, the death of our planet, the deaths of our futures, the deaths of our dreams, wishes, and hopes.
Welcome. You come from all walks of life, all age groups, all races, all countries and you have accepted to be here, now. We no longer look to the future to give our lives purpose. We who live now will have incredible stories to tell our children and grandchildren of these days. How we were here on the ground floor helping. Helping who and what? Well now that depends on your particular calling. So as you go about your lives doing what you've been called to do, following your hearts, living and loving may you be at peace. Light and love from your brother.