Conservative brass, from Sarah Palin to Glenn Beck have railed on this mosque as a training ground for the terrorists, or as being in poor taste. What is lost in all of the conservative punditry is the Constitutional Right to Freedom of Religion,

The first ammendment states

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

Failing to allow the first amendment rights to the Muslims would be against the very spirit of America. We are a land built on freedom of choice, and freedom to express that choice. By disallowing the Ground Zero Mosque, we are taking away the right of the people to express their religion.

Interestingly enough the other day I was listening to talk radio and I understood the host to say we should instead put a church in the proposed location, so people could freely worship the true God, and the terrorists wouldn’t win. Maybe someone should hand the host a copy of a history text explaining the Christian’s own century long Jihad against the rest of the known world. But only the Muslims are terrorists.

Perhaps we can all take a lesson from my good friend, blogger, and noted conservative Jeffrey Shifflett; who wrote an incredible article on the subject. To my surprise, it seems that bloggers are able to rise above party lines and address issues from a “fair and balanced” perspective. Though a conservative, Shifflet supports Obama’s support of the Ground Zero Mosque. Kudos, Jeff

For the past ten months I have traveled with an international children’s choir, (Children of the World); our kids come from impoverished regions, impoverished cities, and impoverished homes. Our kids have been neglected, abandoned, or simply the victim of circumstances that cause their parents to be unable to provide for them.

This is poverty: to be marginalized by society.

For ten months we’ve been traveling the country, raising money, and awareness to fight this abject poverty, and the apathy that envelopes, and allows it. Taking the message to churches in different states, the response is the same, “Wow, I had to idea this was happening.”

Abject poverty exists because we don’t care.

That is a bold sentence, but I really and truly believe it is true. In general we (Americans, the Church, etc.,) don’t care for others near as much as we care for ourselves. We are steeped in a torrid love affair with our bottom lines, we are more concerned with how much we make and keep, and not concerned with how much we are able to give away.

For far too long, in far too many places, we’ve ignored poverty.

There is a growing chasm between those who have, and those who have not. For instance, Americans spent $16 billion in bottled water in 2008, while 6000 children died daily due to preventable diseases brought on by unclean water in developing nations.

To provide for one child’s needs, in their entirety, through sponsorship can vary from $30-$45 per month, depending on which organization you sponsor through. I pay more than twice that a month for my cell phone. Sometimes our comforts and luxuries don’t add up, sometimes it is greed.

Friends, we are in a great position, if you’re reading this, then you can afford to access the Internet, and more than likely you’re probably doing it from a computer that cost several hundred dollars. We have so much, and others have so little, and yet we are still so unwilling to help.  You and I have been given much, and as a result, much will be expected of us.

The hardest part of the last few days was saying goodbye to my kids. I had the privilege of traveling with 15 of the most wonderful children on the face of the earth. As we sat in a circle, on an old green carpet on the floor of a classroom on the former campus of Liberty Christian Academy in Lynchburg and went around and took turns saying goodbyes and thank you’s I was humbled, humbled more than I’ve ever been. Every single one of the children said the same thing, and it wasn’t what I was expecting to hear, or hoping to hear; largely because I’m selfish.

I was hoping to hear “thank you Uncle Mike for carrying my suitcase, and putting it in and out of the trailer, and doing all the work that you did so we could have concerts.” Instead what I heard was “Thank you aunties and uncles for teaching us about Jesus, and I’m glad he is now in my heart” That simple sentence put everything into perspective, that the tour wasn’t just about hard work, and concerts and raising money for orphans and building wells, the tour was a chance that I had to build into 15 lives, and share Christ with them through my words, and more importantly through my actions.

I am thankful for what this tour has done in my life, and in the lives of the 2800+ children who now have a sponsor, and the lives of the 46,000 people who will now have clean water thanks to generous people who donated wells. I’m sad to see this part of my journey come to an end, but am thrilled beyond measure to know what lies ahead for me.

At it’s root, social media allows us to be gatekeepers, and agenda setters. In essence we are the content managers of our own social media news network, with outlets across twitter, facebook, blogs, foursquare, gowal, and tumblr. In essence social media creates a certain narcissism about its users. We feel the items we choose to “publish” are newsworthy and that people will care about them. It erodes basic communication, it replaces conversations with one-sided asynchronous communication, reducing the way we interact with people to a message board in an online forum. I’m not railing on social media completely, it does have its uses, it allows people to disseminate information over a vast ‘network’ inexpensively.

For me, social media has increased my level of narcissism, where I feel the most mundane event in my life is worthy of letting the world know, and then chronicling the responses via “like’s,”  ”comments,”  ”or @replies.” I’m not proud of the way I’ve allowed this media to take me over.

So what does this all mean, for you and me? For you, I’m not quite sure, you may be unaffected by social media, and remain a casual user. I am a radical producer/consumer of social media. So for me, I’m going to take a break, I don’t know how long… a day, or two days, a week, a month. I haven’t quite decided yet. I will update my blog from time to time, most likely with pictures and book reviews, until I feel like I can use it again for social media purposes.

If you have any questions, I welcome them, you can email me: MikeHBrandes@gmail.com or call/text me.

Since I’ve last written, my personal life has been in a bit of turmoil. On January 5th, one day following my previous update, my girlfriend and I broke up, it was unexpected to say the least, but that’s all I will go into on that front. However, we have been pretty busy on the road, we are starting to have a pretty full calendar which is nice. The more time we are working is the less time I am spending sitting in hotels being bored, so I’m very thankful for that. I had a great chance on Saturday (the 6th of February) to go and visit a few museums in Sacramento California, on account of it being free museum day. The museum that Kory and I spent the most time in was the Automotive Museum, it was really neat to see all the cars from the early 1900′s to late 1900′s as well as some of the first and most recent electric cars. There was also a few sweet motorcycles, however I was upset not to see any Royal Enfields.  I am excited to head to the pacific northwest for the month of march, it is one of the areas I’ve always wanted to travel to. Im excited to enjoy a few days in the Seattle area as well.

So that’s what’s going on, here are a few snapshots.

“I felt like a race horse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone. I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.

…I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and everyone of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet”

“I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles threaded together by wires. I counted one, tow, three… nineteen telephone poles, and the the wires dangled into space and try as i could I couldn’t see a single one beyond the nineteenth”

At this point in my life, I’m very uncertain about the future. In 6 months I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life. There are jobs, there are places to live, there are cars, car insurance, health insurance, life insurance etc, a million decisions. Pray for me, pray for guidance, for opportunities to open, for perseverance, patience, and optimism.

The pains of promises

This past new years (4 days ago) I made a list of things that I would like to accomplish by the end of the year. Some things are personal, some things are psychological, some things are physical. A few of these resolutions, or promises are: to lose the remaining amount of weight to get down to 200 lbs; to become more of a patient person; to be optimistic by default instead of pessimistic.

The problems when we make resolutions and promises is somewhere along the way, people are going to want to see results, and to keep us accountable. I could resolve, and promise to lose the last 18 lbs I need to, but in march if I weigh 240 lbs again, it will be painfully evident that I failed to deliver on my promises.

In an effort to make good on my resolutions and shed some weight, I went to the hotel fitness center today and attempted to run a mile. In high-school I used to be quite the athlete, and was in shape, I could run 6 miles at a time, and run one mile in around 5:45. Needless to say, I was reminded that in fact I am 5 years removed from high-school (thats a scary thought) This is the first time I’ve exercised since August, and I was humbled to find out that 12:08 is the fastest I can run a mile.

While it wasn’t easy today, and Im assured it will only get harder today, I’m committed to dropping some weight, and being a more optimistic person, and to be patient with things. I can only hope that three, six, nine months down the road there will be some sort of evidence that this is true, after all I wouldn’t want to break a promise.

“Pain is not the enemy,” emphatically stated in the book, Finding Purpose Beyond our Pain by Paul Meier, MD and David L. Henderson, MD. This book fully identifies with the axiom; “everyone can get something from this book.” The problem lies in the fact that while everyone can get something out of the book, there is no real depth explored in each of the issues. In this book the authors explore seven different causes of pain, and how we can “Uncover the hidden potential in life’s most common struggles.” While the book is shallow on psychiatry, it does not lack in the arena of biblical support. This book is replete with scriptural evidence to support the points of the authors. However, I would have appreciated more psychiatry to go along with theology.

When I received this book I was hoping for in depth analysis on overcoming pain, and sound medical and counseling practices on doing so, but I was disappointed to find only anecdotal accounts of people struggling, and then overcoming. I cannot in good faith recommend this book highly to anyone looking to overcome pain, but for those interested in counseling, the anecdotes will provide some help and possibly a fresh perspective.