Your whole mindset and worldview determines how you approach life, how you think about it.  It influences how you think about both life and death, how you approach life and death, whether you live for life now or death, the life after life.  Your mindset, worldview, and approach to life is fueled by religion, status, even belonging to a gang, and just life experiences period.  And within this mindset is meaning, a reason for living for the life now or for the life to come after death.

My great grandmother died last Tuesday.  Her funeral was on Monday.  I remember when I touched her hand.  It was icy cold and hard as a rock.  The soul that once occupied her body left her lifeless.  The blood that once moved through her body left her cold.  Her spirit escaped the pain of this world to eternal happiness in heaven.  Her body died, but her soul was reborn.

I talked with one of my friends that has been going through some rough times and she just started a new job.  I was so excited for her because she has a new beginning.  The funny thing is that she started work on the day of my great grandmother's funeral.  While some die, others are born, reborn, or reborn again.  With death comes life.

I was watching a documentary Called "Hard Times" (I think that was the name) on HBO.  The documentary was on the struggles of black kids living in the inner city as far as education.  These are kids dealing with unbelievable circumstances.  These children in inner citites live in high crime areas, in single parent homes, and do not have hope for a better life.  There are some schools that have more than 60% of uncertified teachers and not enough money for books or other school resources.  One school only had one student break 1000 on the SAT.  Some students give up by dropping out of school or by not participating in class at all.  Some don't believe that they were meant to go on to college and break the cycle of poverty.  I then began to think about what makes them different from other children.  Why aren't they succeeding?  Why are other children in other areas succeeding?

There are schools in the suburbs and other areas that have the necessary resources and money to accomplish what these schools in the inner cities are not capable of accomplishing.  We are talking about schools that don't have enough money to purchase books for every student and have a shortage of highly qualified teachers.  The state is imposing impossible demands on these inner city schools when they do not even have the necessary resources to even provide a good education to students.  Due to this, students with potential are being ignored and left to find their own way through life.    

Why is it that some students have more resources and opportunities than other students?  Every child has a right to an education, but not every student has the right to quality education.  Where is the equaltiy?  Poverty and marginalization of certain groups of people is a horrible reality that is present in our own country.  Equality does not exist.

I refuse
to have a broken
spirit

shoved into a dark corner
to have my wings
clipped off
 and stepped upon

pulled by my legs
into a stranded land
and ripped apart
by knives and blades

grabbed by the heart
to have it squashed
into bits and pieces
until it is unwhole

snatched by the soul
to have it thrown
into the deep ocean
until it explodes and shatters
broken

I refuse
to have a broken
spirit

I once had an interesting conversation  with a former roommate.  We were talking about how life is like a spider web.  My former roommate went on to say that all of our lives are connected on the spider web.  I wanted to disagree becuase I wanted to be the smart one, haha.  But now that I reflect on it, she was absolutely right.  Life can be represented by a spider web.  This spider web represents the intricate and complex system called life.  Each strand on the web represents each of our lives, which are connected, or better yet, interconnected and interdependent.  Our lives constantly intersect, affecting one another, causing us to connect, to depend on each other's actions.  We need each other a lot more than we think!

     Have you ever been so emotionally drained from chasing ectasy that you then become emotionally numb?  Dead to all emotion, all desire, all pain.  But only temporarily.  That state of numbness almost becomes a sort of ectasy.  The pain gets too burdensome to carry and face, so you'd rather block it all out.  But everyone knows that a life without emotions and desires is not living at all.  It's a dead life.  And sooner or later you hit rock bottom, once again, back where you started.  Why are you looking for ectasy in all the wrong places?  If you can't find contentment and fulfillment in the Creator, which lives in you, then you can't find it any where else.  I guess the fact that I was moved to write this shows that there is still a spark left some where with in my body, my soul that is waiting to be ignited.