Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Gossip!!!



This is not going to be your ordinary post because there are some things going on in some of my friend’s particular life that I do not particularly agree with. What I am about to post is information that the general public should know ANYWAY!! It’s common since, which I have found to be lacking in most people’s rapture as of late. First off, the thing that pisses me off the most is when people go onto other people’s face book just to find something to gossip about. I believe the Bible says something about casting the first stone if you have not sinned. First of all, NO ONE IS NOT PERFECT, that includes me. 2010 is going to be the year where I step back and check some things out in my life that need to change, that’s just one example of how I am not perfect. Since my conversion I have learned that ultimately it is not our place to talk about people but show them mercy, and let them know that they are loved. I do not care what you have done, except there is something that has been done to a friend of mine, something so sinister that I can only pray that God give me the strength to forgive them, and in a way I already have.

People, I know you have better things to do than to talk. In the small town I live in, that is near impossible to not hear someone talking. Yes I know I have been subject to it but I ask forgiveness and I try to change. I do however have the since not to go onto other people’s stuff and try to find out things about them. That’s how friendships end and it’s just bad manners. I know a lot of you talk about me because I have Muslim friends, and people who are not Christian. I have an educated background and I worked with the international department, so I am going to have friends from all over the world who have different backgrounds. I do not force my particular religion on them, yes we do have EDUCATED discussions but I NEVER TRY TO CONVERT THEM… I feel pity for those of you who are looking though MySpace constantly to try to figure out things. Some things I can understand, but just petty crap in general is no excuse. People get a life! There are better things to do like, charity work, helping your neighbor, and making yourself better in your own business and religion. You know if someone talks about me and it’s not true, I don’t have to do a thing, in my religion (Catholic) my God gives justice to those who deserves it. I do not have to lift a finger. All I have to do is continue to love and do my thing. If you do not agree with what I do or what my friends do, “snub off” as they say in England. May the Creator bless you. See you in church!

Friday, December 4, 2009

Snow in Mississippi 2009


Dear Journal

As I was looking out of my window I was astounded at the sight of snow. We do not see that much snow here in Mississippi. Many people of many ancient cultures think that winter is part of the “circle of life”. Everything that has a beginning has an end, and everything that has an end, has a new beginning. This year has not been the greatest year. Although I did graduate with a history degree, I still find myself struggling to survive because I have not found a job. The snow reminds me that the year is about to end and there are new adventures just waiting for me in the New Year. The snow also reminds me of all the beauty that God has put into the world. For some odd reason I associate snow with angles, something so light, something so white, can only be associated with a creature of God. In the Catholic Church we have a yearly cycle and we just started Advent, one of my favorite times of the year.

Those of us in the Catholic Church welcome winter by placing Advent reefs all over the church and adorning the church with poinsettias flowers all over the chapel. I try to wear things like green sweaters and heavy coats to invoke a feeling of a comfortable nature to all those who sit around me at church. I also do things like make warm tea and drink apple cider. I think a lot of it comes from the Irish blood that runs through my veins. I have always been a winter and fall person. I don’t particularly care for any time of the year. I guess it is all the colors that resonate during the fall and winter. I find myself taking in a deep breath and smelling the baked goods, which people in other houses are baking. Most of you say that winter has nothing to do with color. There are tons of colors that go on during the winter time. The windows of the church illuminate things and bring them more into a 3D perspective. Another thing I do is light candles all over the house. I like to think that it invokes light into the house. As I light the candles I remember those who have passed on before me and those elders who hold the knowlage of ancient times.

Yours Always,

Tyler

Sunday, November 22, 2009

This is something great.

The Manhattan Declaration


Dear Friends,

As most of you know I am converting to the Catholic Church and something monumental has been announced while I am a catechumen in the Catholic Church. Last Saturday the pope announced that ALL Christian faiths would be united. The first step was taking in the Episcopal Priest and graciously accepting them into Holy Mother Church. On Saturday the pope announced that Orthodox, and Evangelical Christians should all work together and that we would accept all faiths in the church. Many religious leaders met and three fundamental truths were set out at this meeting along with many religious leaders, INCLUDING PEOPLE OF THE BAPTIST FAITH, I might add:
1. We acknowledge that there is a Holy Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
2. Embryo sre not to be killed in the making of stem cells.
3. Marriage should only be considered with a man and woman.
If you are a person that follows church history, you know the bad blood between the Orthodox Church, and the Catholic Church. Holy Mother Church does not think there should be a monopoly on Christianity. However we do acknowledge the importance of our Holy Sacrament in the fact that we still believe it to be the true Sacrament (Absolute Body and Blood of Jesus Christ). Finally the document (I posted a link at the bottom of my blog where you can download the document) states the following about religious liberty.
Religious Liberty
“The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good
news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the
captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1
Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. Matthew 22:21
The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a
novel idea or recent development. The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of
God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Determined to
follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the
Incarnation had taken place: “Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing
fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness..., for compulsion is no attribute of God”
(Epistle to Diognetus 7.34).
Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example
of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God—a
dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise
of right reason.
Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Immunity from religious coercion is
the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience. No one should be compelled to embrace any
religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the
dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions.
What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.
It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a
right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated
around these practices be recognized and blessed by law—such persons claiming these “rights”
are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express
their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the
conjugal union of husband and wife.”
We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore
to compel prolife
institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and prolife
physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in
certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of antidiscrimination
statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various
sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. After the
judicial imposition of “samesex
marriage” in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities
chose with great reluctance to end its centurylong
work of helping to place orphaned children in
good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in samesex
households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a
quasimarital
“civil unions” scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status
when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to
be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations,
Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of
homosexuality. New hatecrime
laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.
In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious
values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free
exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to
the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the
trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of
republican government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to
hire people of one’s own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for
example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer
against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so
prophetically warned of. 1 Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.
As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority.
We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we
happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to
do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and
serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust—and especially laws that purport to
compel citizens to do what is unjust—undermine the common good, rather than serve it.
Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their
proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their
answer was, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God.
For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Through the centuries,
Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required.
There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one
offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly
Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught
that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose
ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim
no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King’s
willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.
Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports
to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryodestructive
research, assisted
suicide and euthanasia, or any other antilife
act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force
us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from
proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.
We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances
will we render to Caesar what is God’s.”

http://manhattandeclaration.org/index.php

Thursday, November 12, 2009


As most of you know I suffer from a rare disease which affects my eyes. Today I had to see a regular Dr because of the headaches I was getting from my condition. Normally when I go to my Dr in Jackson it takes around two hours. My local Dr’s office took four hours! I felt so bad because there was this Asian Kid who looked like he was going to pass out, waited just about the same time I did. I can remember when you enter a Dr’s office, which it took about an hour, at the most! Before all you folks scream “Government Healthcare” I want you to think about something…. I, a liberal Democrat, agree with the fact that we need think this “Government Healthcare” through. We have offered this type of “Health Care’ to the Native American population. I have worked with Native Americans from all over the place. I have danced with the Kiowa Nation in Oklahoma and helped organize the powwows at USM. I am not Native American but I have experienced and seen many things I thought my government would never do. Ladies and Gentlemen we do not want government funded health care. You can ask any Native American and they are going to tell you that “it sucks”. In some of my research I have actually found where the US government has done experiments on all these people under “Government Healthcare”. All I am asking is that we take another year to look at this healthcare bill.
Many Native Americans will tell us “Guess what White Eyes It’s your turn now” and kindly ask us to get in the back of the line. I have to wonder if some of the failure of the United States is due to Karma. I won’t get off on my mistreatment rants but it is something to think about. Many White families, me included, as I am white, are experiencing what many people of other races have felt for years. Native American’s felt oppression when the Spanish came over, the Asians felt it when they helped build California, and so on. All I am asking is a little thought. Yes I supported Obama and I am still a firm believer but… I think he is just trying to get the right shoe on before he makes good changes. He has not found his administrative comfort zone and is trying many avenues. Anyone that deals with administration knows what I am talking about. Not to mention we are only going to make Native American Healthcare worse because of the limited amount of funding and we cannot fund both. All I am asking is to take another year and let’s look at this from all sides, how it can benefit ALL Nations.

This is my opinion, I could be wrong.

Tyler

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Messages from Milad




Hey Guys



I had my first communication with Milad since choosing to sponsor him at his orphanage in Afghanistan. He looks so much happier than his first photo. I almost cried because it touched my heart to see what good things can do in this world. I have always taught religious tolerance, freedom of expression, and charity. I cannot help the fact that I am now an intellectual and now know how to apply my knowledge to befit the world. I am just happy that I was able to help him. There are so many kids in need and I am only one person. There is so much violence in the world and there are times that I cannot handle it. I just bust out in tears and pray that God relieve us of our burdens. AS I said I do all I can to help. I have so many friends of different colors and religions that I taught English to at the ELI institute at USM. I cannot tell you how much that opened my eyes. I just hope that Milad is safe. This kid has to deal with gunfire and bombs daily. I cannot begin to understand the courage this child holds.

Tyler Meador

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Children Sponsor



As I was watching MSNBC today, I was touched to find that there are still great things being done in this world. Today I learned of an orphanage in Afghanistan that takes children who cannot afford a place to stay due to the war in Afghanistan. They are in great need of donations and being the giving person I am, I chose to sponsor a kid today. His name is Milad and he is 9 years old. He is from Afghanistan. The amount of money I send is not that much, its money that would have went to fast food or something. I will include two links bellow if you want to read the story Brian Willams posted on MSNBC and I will be posting a direct link to the orphanage if you choose to join. The money you donate goes towards their food, medical, education, and any other activities they do. I mean these people can not run this orphanage on air folks! I generally practice what I preach. Our family motto under our family shield is "my gift is virtue" and I guess that motto has survived throughout the centuries. If you do not have enough money to give because of the economy, THAT'S OK. My reasoning for publishing this post is to make people aware that if they want to donate money that there is a real good orphanage they can donate to. I wish all of you the best and I will update everyone tomorrow.

http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/11/03/2117976.aspx

Link to Orphanage
https://www.charityhelp.org/sponsor/afceco/index





Tyler

Monday, November 2, 2009

Ill take relegious philosophy for 500 Alex!


In the production of this blog I hope to open people to the religions of the world. As previously mentioned in my article yesterday, It is hard for someone like me to be so accepting of other religions in the South. I am from Mississippi and I have no clue as to why so many people are close minded. As I observe America as a whole, we thrive on money, so much so that many people have committed suicide because they are so attached to money. I have been called everything from a "faggot" to a "tree hugger" for my beliefs. I believe that there is something beyond us and we must do all that we can as human beings to try and understand what that is. The "catch 22" about trying to find out how a "supreme being" works is that as humans we will never know how it works. Note I said "try" in the last two sentences and as human beings we can "try" but we will never fully understand what is at the center of the university.

I a Catholic, have submitted to the will of God and took up Classicism classes so I can receive the Communion in church. I also accept other philosophies of other religions. I might not follow their deity but I follow their particular philosophy. For example those who are Buddhist will tell you that you do not have to be Buddhist to follow their particular religion. "All life is suffering" and that's just about the basics of what you need to know aside from the Nobel Path. My point for this post today is that we need to stop looking at material things and start looking inward for fulfillment in our life. In my religion it says that "I am the way, the light", that is the word of our Jesus Christ. The same could be said for the Buddhist religion. If we focused on trying to be more like Buddha then this world would be a better place. Buddha never said to worship him people look up to Buddha because of his ability to see the world outside its normal ramifications. We ask the Saints to pray for us because they are closer to the Trinity. I hope I have not stepped on a lot of toes with this particular post. I just want people to recognise that there are some things in America that we need to change.

Namastae'

Tyler

Sunday, November 1, 2009

I accept culture.

This image was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture



t is hard for many people like me to be so accepting of culture in the South. There are only an educated few who accept many different cultures in the US. What people fail to recognize that this nation was founded on culture. Not only the Declaration of Independence but the Constitution ensures the happiness of everyone who wants to pursue their own cultural identity. My family came to this country as Irish Immigrants. I can not tell you the times that I have tried to explain to people that the US should be accepting of other cultures, epically in the South. For example New Orleans was one of the most cultural centers of the United States in the 1700s. New Orleans was a mixture of African American, Native American, and French backgrounds. In the 18Th Century we find most of Asian America in California. There are other cultures including Hispanic, Indian(people from India) and Native American cultures that we tend to forget.


I, a white person of middle class, neglected to see culture for what it relay was until I took religion classes at the University of Southern Mississippi. I then started working with many cultures including Native Americans. I hope that when I become a teacher that I will teach my students to be accepting of other cultures. I am legally blind and I do not know how much time I will be able to retain my sight but I vow to always help people and educate people of all the other cultures in this world. I myself have attended Hispanic Masses in the Catholic Church and I have attended an Muslim Masque. I know you do not find that much in the South but I wanted to think outside of the box. I just hope that one day that we all think outside of the box.


Hope all is well.


Tyler

The following is a cool video about Islam. Most people think that its a violent religion when in fact it is a real peaceful religion. Fundamentalist give regular Muslims a bad rep. Modern Day Muslims are very peaceful and I posted this video for people to learn about the religion.