Night-time, and Cicadas Ring Incessantly

Ever look around you and wonder what you are doing here?
Shreveport, Louisiana, really? How did I get here, and why? Why would I come here? Maybe tomorrow I will wake up to a city reincarnate in the morning light. Maybe a new type of grass will grow, and maybe my legs will take me somewhere I want to be. Maybe I will not sit on my computer all day or eat a quarter package of Oreos. I find myself tonight standing on the edge of a diving board, but I can step off, let alone jump. It kind of feels like those dreams in which I can not respond to someone who is chasing or attacking me, in which I just sit there a take it, my whirling somewhere outside of my body. Inside my brain hits a black spot. I want so badly to do something worthwhile, something challenging in which I am fully capable, something that makes me feel useful. I want to do something useful. I feel so alone, too. Not in the depressed sense, but in the sense that I share my convictions with no one. I want to share dreams with someone. I want to know that the things that I want to be, want to do are not detrimental. I want affirmation.

Reading the bible, found that "God is a righteous judge, a God who expressses his wrath everyday." I wonder how God is going to express his wrath tomorrow.

The bible has a lot of quirks

So I have decided to read though the Bible because I have never completely read it, and I have heard it is a profitable thing to do. It may just be me, but I like to know what exactly I am dedicating my life too, because it definately isn't just the chapel choir singing "How Great is Our God" while the congregation sings along with raised hands and swaying hips. That should be the product of the thing for which I am dedicating my life, not the cause. I do not know God because I go and sing with soul, I sing with soul because I know God. I think that concept is often confused. People forget that God is not in the church, the church is in God. God is so much more than what we include in our man made institution we call "Christianity". I think it is interesting that Judiasm is a specific following created by God, but Christianity isn't. We created Christianity, and it is not the only way to Heaven. Jesus is.
Anyways, I am in the book of Psalms as of this week. It has taken about a year, maybe a year and a half, to get this far. The whole questioning mentality opens so many doors for thought and makes the bible alive. Like usually I would skim over most of the laws and then forget about them, but now I am looking back at some that I read with new eyes. For example, if a Israelite raped a girl (specifically a virgin), those two would have to get married. Would you want to marry the man that raped you? I wouldn't. There may have been a cultural difference that lessoned the shock value of this law. Marriage were arranged for stratigical purposes, so I don't think that would have been as contreversial as it might be now in the time of "soul mates to love and cherish forever". It would actually be a punishment for the man because he would have to pay a large dowry, and the marriage wouldn't neccesarily have any gain. Still, this is God's law, and it strikes me as odd. If a son can get stoned for not obeying his parents, why wouldn't a rapist be stoned? Is there any inherant sin in not obeying your parents that doesn't exist in the raping of a virgin? I mean, technically if she were a virgin it wouldn't be breaking any law other than the one that requires you to love your neighbor as yourself, whereas disobeying a parent is deliberate rebellion agianst the authority that God has set above the son. There seems to be a lot of verses speaking out against the latter as opposed to the former. Rebelling against the authority that God set above you is like rebelling against God, right?
I wonder how often people were stoned in the Jewish community. How often is someone executed on death row?

Just be

Just be.
God at the center,
All of us within.
Disagree,
Talk with me,
or stay home.
But just be.

Just be.
Independent,
No work turns time,
but silence
and stillness
turns minds.
So just be.

Just be.
The world goes fast
enough for all,
and programs'
rigidity
loses souls.
Please, just be.