Fruity Oaty Bars...

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Originally uploaded by Justin Masterson.

Doesn't this billboard just make you wonder, "what's in the bowl?" The little girl seems to know...in kind of a sly way, at that.

Wow. This morning, Greg and I wandered around Shanghai, shopping and exploring. Wow. This is a very very different place.

I can't wait to tell you stories. We're running out the door now, but I'll write tonight, which will be your this morning.

If I didn't write about it in the next entry, please remind me to tell you about the quest for the black jacket, how to say no to a watch salesman, and the cod that refuses to be.

Peace,
Justin

Fri 743 p.m. (US)

As I write this, I'm eight hours into a 14-hour flight from Chicago to Seoul, South Korea (the good Korea)...and the little map in front of me tells me we're somewhere over Alaska.

I’m flying on a Korean Air 747-400…the double-decker kind of jet…and I’m up on the upper-deck. We took a Comair puddle-jumper from Cincy to Chicago…Delta (sigh)…and I couldn’t help but laugh when they announced that, due to our imminent approach to Chicago, “service would be discontinued in the cabin.” By “service,” I’m assuming they mean the surly woman who grumbled by me with a six-ounce (not kidding) Dasani water bottle and said “want water?” with the same enthusiasm a polite man in a downpour asks, “want my umbrella?” They also offered a tacky piece of dried biscotti in a Delta cello-wrap. Frankly, I was pleased to see it discontinued.

This is compared with Korean Air, where, after being escorted to the upper-deck and shown our all-in-one-music-TV-movie-videogame-shopping-massage-phonecall-vibrating-recliner-seat (with about four feet of legroom), we were given slippers, a glass of wine, a glass of fresh watermelon juice, and a plate of warm cookies. This was followed by two four-course meals during the course of our flight, any number of liquor, wine, beer and coffee services, a bunch of random foods, 65 napkin-replacements, and about 46,000 bows. (Read as in “bow at the waist” not as in “nice bow in your hair). God help me, they even gave us face-spray.

If you read my last blog entry, you'll know that I'm afraid of Asia. Not Asians, mind you...who doesn't like Asians?....but Asia itself. I don't know if you've watched much National Geographic Channel, Travel Channel or anything else at all, but if you have, you may have noticed that Asia is very different than the US.

In China, they speak languages which sound nothing like ours. They write with strokes that look more to me like beautiful little sketches of houses than letters. They don't wear shoes inside. And they eat ducks.

Yes, quite different.

And that kinda freaks me out. I know virtually nothing of China. I can say "hello" in Mandarin, and have learned a number of very dirty curse words from Firefly, but that's about the extent of it. I'm going to be helping out on a project in the middle of a culture I can't possibly understand. I'm nervous.

I miss Stacy already. She always makes me feel comfortable. She's great at that.

I'm REALLY looking forward to this week, but it's a really healthy blend of fear and joyful anticipation.

I'll post pictures. I'll describe things. I'll probably fall asleep fairly early by their clocks, but I'll do my best to post what I can.

China man....freaking China.

Cool. (Slow, slightly shuddery breath). Cool.

Peace,
Justin







Sat 3:48 a.m. (US) 5:48 p.m. (Korea)

I am writing to you from the Sky Lounge from the airport in Seoul, South Korea. Since I’ve been in Korea (which has been about an hour now), and given only the evidence that one can gather from one’s plane at gate 17 to one’s Sky Lounge near gate 26, I have learned several things about South Korea:

1. Koreans are very clean.
2. Koreans are very polite..
3. Koreans are very, very sweet and helpful, even to stupid Americans.
4. Koreans spend a lot of time in airports.

If China is half as clean and kind as Korea, I’m set. (In fact, the rumor is that China is exactly half as clean and kind as Korea). In the 22 hours that I’ve been on this trip so far, I’ve yet to see my fears realized. No attempts to thieve my passport, no communist prisons, no bird flu or SARS, and very little kung-fu battling. Greg and I have gotten along just fine, as everyone seems to speak at least a little English, and we smile and bow our heads a lot.

I’m starting to get tired…as you can see, it’s 4:00 in the morning by my standards, and sleeping on the plane, while pleasant by comparison to most airplane experiences, was still far from restful. I’ve just downed 12 oz of some Korean drink called “Pocari Sweat” which, according to the English side of its label, “is quickly absorbed into the body tissues due to its fine osmoalaity and contains electrolytes.” I also picked up a carton of “Seoul Milk,” which, despite the great opportunity for a heart-inspiring play on words, is actually just milk from Seoul.

I’ve half a day tomorrow to attempt to catch up on sleep…but I think I’d rather spend it out and about. We’re not really going to have any touristy time during our stay in China, so I’ve got to get whatever shopping/tourism in tomorrow morning. For me, this means going to Shanghai’s shopping district, and trying to find something pretty to buy for Stacy. I hope I find something cool…I am very, very far away, so I want to bring back something that feels exotic. I’ll keep you posted.

We’re off to our quick flight to Pudong airport in Shanghai.

There was a time when I would have called in sick, and I would have missed it.


Last night, I stopped by a bachelor party for a friend in my bowling league. ("Bowling league?" you ask. "Yes, my bowling league." I reply, scowling a little at you for your tone). It was a surprise for him...the party, not the marriage...and it was held at a bar down on Main Street.

I'd been in a work-related-social-meeting-thing-with-beer in Newport until about 9:00 or so, and picked up a ride from a friend over the bridge into downtown. I walked into the bar on Main Street where, apparently, everybody but me knows the owner. I was greeted with a rousing chorus of guy-heeey! and about two-dozen handshake-into-hugs. (Hyphens were on sale this Wednesday, you'll have to forgive me). I've seen these guys 35 out of 52 Thursdays a year for the last two years, and they greeted me like I've been in their group of friends since high school.

In my khaki pants, blue ox-cloth button-up, and dark brown blazer, I stood among a sea of ripped jeans, pierced what-have-yous, and t-shirts with cuss words on 'em. I felt grossly out-of-place, and very naively dopey. I felt like a whitewashed condo built in the cool-brick arts district, the new Hyundai you regret trading your beat-up college car for. I really like these guys, and though they accept me as one of them, last night it was clear to me that I am still not...not because of them, but because of me.

You see, I'm still afraid of things...things I don't know much about. Included in this category are (but not limited to): poverty, manual labor, dance clubs, perpetually-hot cities, alternative sex, real illness, hard drugs, and most of Asia. And strippers.

For a long time, things like drugs and strippers and hard drinking and smoking and [insert your favorite un-Christian-sounding vice here] were just plain wrong as far as I was concerned, and therefore deserved no further exploration or learning. But I'm starting to think that's not the case. Are strippers/prostitutes/random hookups wrong? Jeez, I don't know. They're pretty damn wrong for me; I'd prefer to be married, and to be married I need to not be doing those things. Hence, wrong.

Are they wrong for everybody? I'm guessing they feel kinda gross for most of the strippers and prostitutes and people who are being used. Or not, I don't know, I'm not them. Maybe it's not wrong at all for them. Maybe the strippers who showed up at last night's bachelor party (OK, "showed up" is euphemistic...as if my friends hadn't paid hundreds of dollars for them to be there) are confident, self-actualized women who feel free to express their sexuality and make a ton of money at the same time. Again, I don't know, I'm not them.

Whether it's wrong for the strippers, or wrong for the guys who paid them to come, or the guys who stayed to watch, I don't know, and it's not the point. I hope all had fun, and that my buddy felt well-loved by his friends as he got ready to get married. I like him, and I want him to be happy. The point is that, a few years ago, I wouldn't have gone down there to begin with. For me, as ridiculous as it may sound, even going to the bar on Main Street to meet up with a bunch of guys having a raucous bachelor party was pretty risky...pretty scary. It's not my world...at least, it never has been. But I've been afraid of things for a long time, and while it may have saved me from doing things I might later regret; I've also missed a lot of good learning experiences...and I regret that, too.

I think I made a good choice last night. I stopped in and drank with these guys until the strippers showed up, then I took off. I wished them a great evening, gave 'em a goodbye-man-hug, and headed off. That was probably a really good choice for me. [Again: married and happy]. I'm proud of the way I was raised, and I'm proud that I keep to one woman. At the same time, I'm proud that I went down there. I stretched myself a little, and in some ways I aspire to be a little more like them. Without judgement, without condemnation...and in spite of the fear of the unknown that would have prompted both...I went down there to an unfamiliar place and a more unfamiliar situation to celebrate with my friend.

I hope everyone had a good time last night...the guys, the strippers, the bartenders. I hope all wrapped up well, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again next Thursday. And when I do, I'm going to go in knowing these guys just a little better; and, more importantly, knowing a little more about the world.

That's just slightly less to be scared of, and that's good.

Peace,
Justin

It's not often that American Idol gets profound.

But tonight, somehow, it got there.

The picture you're looking at is a guy named Jonathon. Jonathon is, without a doubt, mentally retarded. I don't mean that as a rude figure of speech...he actually was mentally retarded. Jonathon tried out to be the next American Idol.

He was horrible.

But...

Jeez, I can't help it, I was really touched. Jonathon could barely put a sentence together...he was awkward, overweight, and sung very poorly...but he was so excited. He really believed he could do it. Like, not in a manic "I'm so hot, I'm 'bout it, so step off" kind of way...like in a "why couldn't I do it?" kind of way. It had never really occured to him that he couldn't do it.

Something tells me that his parents and family told him to go do it, and that something was a big poster he brought with him that said "Go Jonathon!" and "Follow Your Dreams!" He made friends with the very creepy-looking guy next to him, and the two of them, in all of their ignorance and total lack of self-awareness, supported each other through the whole waiting, auditioning, and failure process.

They hugged each other before they went in. They listened intently to the door as the other one sung poorly for the judges. They encouraged each other as they walked out without a gold slip. They railed against the judges together, and told each other that they would make it.

It was sad, and it was beautiful. I got sad because some people are mentally retarded, and I got sad because I wonder what it would be like to have friendship like that. Seriously. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but it was pretty incredible. It was pure love...simple, stupid, and kind of perfect. It's probably most what friendship should look like, at its very best.

I'm not going to write more about that. But if you get a chance, watch it.

Peace,
Justin

A murderer of millions was killed a few days ago.





My friend Keith wrote a blog entry linking to a list of 11 reasons not to support the death penalty.

I wrote a response to his post...and I wanted to post it on my blog as well.

So, here it is.

---

Keith,

I was deeply satisfied to watch Saddam Hussein face the gallows. He was hung, without ceremony or fanfare, in a building that he used as a base of operations for his genocidal regime. He is a murderer on a mass scale, and he committed unimaginable crimes for which no punishment could possibly atone. He deserved death at the hands of those he oppressed.

And yet, I believe killing Saddam Hussein was a mistake. I think the death penalty is wrong.

Throughout nearly every philosophy and idealogy that I am attracted to, the notion of killing an unarmed person who poses no threat to others is deplorable. Saddam Hussein deserves death, yes...but that justice is not ours to mete out. We should stop him, and if killing him is the only way to do that, fine. But we did it without killing him. We caught him, desheveled and dirty, hiding in a spiderhole. We disarmed him, we cut off his communications with his regime and network, and we put him in jail where he can't hurt anybody. We didn't have to kill him to neutralize him.

Killing Saddam Hussein felt very, very right. But we made a martyr of him...the same way we did to Timothy McVeigh, and to David Koresh. They can't get old and weird looking and publicly nutzo like Charlie Manson is. They die "at the hands of [insert anti-American derogatory term (i.e. - Western Devil, Great Satan, etc.) here]," and it gives them an immortality that growing old and batty wouldn't. Dying by noose in the prime of your megalomaniacal tyranny is romantic and strong; dying of bladder cancer in your late 80's isn't.

I read a bumper sticker a while back that I liked. It said, "Why are we killing people who kill people to show other people that killing people is wrong?"

I wanted Saddam to die, because it makes me feel better. But I think it's the wrong choice.

Peace,
Justin

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Originally uploaded by Justin Masterson.

I had a wonderful Christmas...I hope you did too.

Before I dive into the post, I'd like to note a couple of things about the picture which accompanies this post:
1. I just discovered the joy of "Flickr" photo sharing, as evidenced by the fact that there IS a picture accompanying this post. It's a fun tool, check it out.
2. If I would have known I was going to discover Flickr, and post a random happy-moment-with-wife picture from Christmas morning to my blog, I would have come up with something better than a skin-tight red pajama shirt to share with the world.
3. In case you're wondering, that angel over my shoulder is the "top of the Christmas tree" variety of shoulder-angel, and not the "whisper better ideas and gentle admonishments into my ear" variety of shoulder-angel. She stopped coming when I hit puberty.

Now, back to the post.


Christmas wrapped up all of 56 minutes ago. Stacy and I did lots of Christmasy things. We wrapped presents together, we drank coffee together (mulled cider was in short supply), we decorated our tree together, we listened to Christmas music together, we ate with and hung out with my family together, we opened gifts together, and we watched A Christmas Story four times together as it repeated on TBS.

It was a wonderful Christmas. Perhaps the best we've had.

In a couple of days we leave for her hometown to hang out with her parents and family. Their celebration of Christmas, much like Hannukah, lasts for eight days. Her mom is one of 10 kids, and each day the entire extended family moves from house to house looking at who got what and talking about who they got it from and then asking that who how much she paid and how much she could have paid if she would have driven across the state line to buy it and used a coupon. Stacy's family is fun, and, like mine and yours and everyone else's, full of characters and oddballs and drunken uncles and crying babies and fun cousins with life-partners. I like going out there, and it'll be a relaxing three days.

I hope your Christmas was brilliant, warm and deep, and that the Indescribable Love I felt was with you too. God is good, and this was a magnificent time of year to re-learn that.

Peace,
Justin

"You know that old saying about how you always hurt the ones you love? Well it goes both ways."
-Jack, Fight Club (1999)


A friend recently moved into our house for a few days.

She moved into our house, because she moved out of hers.

She moved out of hers, because her husband abused her. A lot.

She moved into our house. For the second time in a week.

The hardest part wasn't that she left him. The hardest part was that she had to do it twice. For me, that hardest part was that she walked back into her house...kids in tow...into the home of an abuser...and lay down next to him again.


I've much to share with you, but tonight I want to share this. I'm amazed and I'm confused and I'm really, really sorry for her, and for her kids. And, in some weird way, for her husband. This is not my world...I'm lucky that way. I live in a home with a woman who I not only love, but most of the time really like. My wife lives with a husband who she loves and most of the time likes, and who they both, deep down, believes won't ever intentionally harm her. I live with a woman I yearn to see after a long day, and she lives with a man she can go to bed at night knowing wants the best for her. I believe that Stacy and I could bring kids into the world and, somehow, raise them to be people who respect and love the opposite sex. Not because we're better, I don't think. We grew up that way...our kids will believe it because our parents, at some level or another, believed it. We were lucky.

My guess is that my friend's husband grew up in a home where he saw his mother treated with contempt, shame, and disgust. My guess is that his father was dominating, and his mother either stooping or overcompensating by raging against the kids. That's just my guess. I'm fairly sure that my friend grew up in a place where she questioned her own worth, and where her parents, by example, taught her that she was only as good as her foul shots and her pretty smile, and she had to know that someday she would slowly lose both.

I think she went back into that house not because she truly believed he would change, but because she believed she didn't deserve for him to. She's smart, educated, strong and beautiful...and yet she learned along the way that she wasn't worth true love; just marriage, and children, and a house, and the abuse.

We helped her get away. For now. I don't know if she'll stay away. I wonder if some twisted sense of destiny will bring her back to him. God, I hope not. No woman deserves that treatment. None.

I'm angry with my wife at this moment. I'm not going to tell you why, because it's her business and it's my business. But it doesn't matter. I'll be over it tomorrow or the next day or maybe next week. That doesn't matter either. What matters is that, by God's grace and decent parenting, I'm choosing to love right now. I'm loving by breathing slowly, remembering who she is and who I am, and typing furiously at my blog until I can fall asleep. And tomorrow, when I wake up and head off to work, I will choose to kiss her goodbye. It is my choice to love her, and it's a choice both of us make each day, whether we feel it with everything we have or whether we conjure it in spite of some squabble, petty or otherwise.

I'm not a great husband. But I'm a good one. And when our friend calls us tomorrow to ask us if she should return to her husband again, I'm going to close my eyes and, for as long as it takes, be grateful for what I have.

Please pray that she stays away, and that he seeks help. Her story is one of millions, and she and her kids deserve better.

Peace,
Justin

My friends just had a baby.

She is beautiful. I held her. She smelled new.



I liked it.

Peace,
Justin

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Originally uploaded by Justin Masterson.

I am in-between moments of heart-wrenching, sacred pride.

I will tell you about that in a moment. But first, I want to say thanks.



I've received several extraordinary comments, a few emails, and even a couple of phone calls about my last few posts...a sort of still-going chronicle of my fall from the faith or my hopeful toeing right into it, depending on how you look at it.

Thank you. Josh, Jacob, Patrick, Black17, Keith, Ryan, Denis, Anonymous and everyone else...thank you. I've heard everything from, "you're finally evolving [away from fundamental Christianity]" to "I'd like to meet with you, and I promise I won't try to convert you back [to fundamental Christianity]" to "wanna go for a beer and talk? [presumably about fundamental Christianity?]" I feel really loved, and I really appreciate it. Even if you did try to convert me...toward or away from your system of belief...I'd still feel loved, because you care enough to try.

That's all...thanks. I'll keep writing as I keep asking questions and getting answers and finding time between whatever it is I do all the time.




...Now, back to the topic at hand.

I am in-between moments of heart-wrenching, sacred pride.

A couple of weeks ago, my oldest brother married his wonderful and beautiful fiance. It was a gorgeous wedding, held in my parents' home, with a total of ten of us in attendance. I had the great honor of presiding over the ceremony...an honor whose profundity I could not understand until the moment came to actually do the presiding. As I stood between Brian and Maria, standing next to my twin brother and just a few feet from my parents...as I opened my mouth to speak those first words of the ceremony ("dearly beloved..."), it hit me: I have been asked to officiate the uniting of my own brother to his wife. My own brother. My own brother, Brian. My own brother, who I love more deeply than I know how to articulate.

I had the chance a couple of weeks ago to tell you about my twin brother, Matt. Now I'd like to tell you about Brian.

While Matt was my doppelganger present as we grew up, Brian was, in a way, a walking, talking, chest-hair-growing future. He is four-and-a-half years my senior, and acted simultaneously as my bully, my mentor, my spiritual advisor, my mom-ruiner, my hero, and my coal-mine canary all throughout my youth. I followed Brian the way perfume follows your churchy Great Aunt on a Sunday afternoon...just a few steps behind and lingering in the aftermath. Brian taught me how to take a charley-horse, and how to write a rhyming poem. He ruined my mom by breaking all the good rules before I could, so she would tighten them up by the time I got there...then he taught me how to defy her. (Matt needed no teaching in this regard; seemed to come as naturally as a morning pee). He went ahead of me, getting hurt by girls and making best guy friends and discovering clumsy football and taking final exams and picking up an accoustic guitar to see what happens when a guy who can't fix a car or throw a baseball or build a table decides you can be just as much a man with Rosewood and nickel-wounds. He cried over things I couldn't understand yet. He broke curfew doing things I only imagined as I lay in my bed listening to mom worry loudly over the phone to a friend. He was the first to do most everything. He was my brave future, and I loved him for it.

And somewhere in there, we became friends.

I remember when I was 12 or so, when he said, "man...you guys [meaning Matt and I] are cool...it's like you guys actually have personalities now. Like, you're actual people." He was right...when I began to become Justin and not Vince and Pam's son or Brian's brother or "one of the twins," he and I were ready to begin becoming friends. We grew together for the first time...instead of me just following him. We started to open up to each other, to experience life together as peers of a sort, despite our age difference. He soon became the closest friend I've ever known.

Brian and I share most everything. We talk about religion and faith and politics and beer and wives and swearing and philosophy and cars and sex and the Simpsons. I call Brian sometimes with a rhetorical question or one-line joke or a quote from a movie we saw ten years ago...I think I call to reconnect, and I think I call just to hear him. I ask him before I do anything that truly matters to me. I call him when I can't understand my wife, and he tells me when it's probably my fault. I love my time with him, and as he moved out of our house (his temporary digs until he got married), I felt like I was losing another brother, even though he'd be living just up I-71 a bit. I miss him when he leaves, and I love it when I see my message indicator flash on after I've deliberately ignored his call so that he'll leave some ridiculously stupid message. We seem to vibrate at the same frequency, Brian and I, and I think I'm so much better for it. I think I always have been.

Standing that evening, between Brian and Maria...I stood in the past, present and future at once. He was my older brother; a doctor, a rocker, and a traveler. He was still doing the things I've yet to try. But he was also my peer...my friend in a sense so deep I can't possibly express it here. But, in a weird way, I was the older brother for a moment...and perhaps for the first time. I've been married almost four-and-a-half years...I was able to share a few words about some of the pitfallsl, the joys, and the romance of commitment. I got to warn them and encourage them. I got to hug them. And when I got done, and they made their amazing promises to each other...I got to pronounce them husband and wife. It was one of the happiest moments of my life, and one I shall never neglect nor allow to fade.



So now, here I am. My twin brother, Matt, has just passed the Ohio Bar and will be sworn in on Monday. My older brother Brian just got married to a woman I am proud to know, and prouder to call my Sister. I am so damned proud I have no idea how to express it. I wear my joy like a sweater these days.

I'm so proud of you, brothers.

Peace,
Justin

Sometimes revelation is a mountain-top. Sometimes it's church confessional. Sometimes it's a hospital bed. And, every once in a while, it's a long red light on your drive to work.

I didn't expect much from my drive to work yesterday. I was a bit sore from the workout, a bit full from a rare breakfast of eggs and toast, and more than a little anxious about all I had to get done before my noon meeting. I had my iPod plugged in to the car stereo (I have forgone driving with earbuds in; turns out it's fantastically illegal), and it was shuffling through it's 10-GB songload, flitting fickley between genres like a DJ with the very worst kind of ADHD. On I-71 at Smith-Edwards it was Billy Joel, at Kenwood it was Evanesence, and by the time I got to Pfieffer, Elvis Costello was half-finished whiney-warbling his way through one of my favorite love ballads of his, "She."

As I pulled up to the intersection of Kenwood and Pfieffer and waited at a red light whose greatest pleasure is letting everyone go straight and nobody turn left, a new song came on. And this is where the revelation begins.

The song came from a band that doesn't exist anymore, and the only album they ever made and that the vast majority of you have never heard. They were called "Dividing the Plunder," and consisted of a husband and wife just about my age. They live in Greater Cincy, and I came in contact with them when they came by VCC for a performance one weekend. I loved the song they sang, bought the album, and digitized it into my iTunes, where it now sits, nestled in the cultural warm front between Diana Krall and Dr. Dre.

It's a good album. Decent music, OK production, but great writing. That's what caught me. The writing.

The song that came on was called "Maybe It's Faith," and it goes like this:

(the full version...like, the kind with music in it...is on iTunes, I just checked).


---

“Maybe It’s Faith”
Dividing the Plunder - The Ordinary

I wish I had more to say.
It’s such a quiet room.
But today I can’t give voice to anything but doubt.
It starts doubt deep inside me
In my blood and in each cell.
And it makes it’s way to the blank look in my eyes
And the questions on my lips.

I wish I had less to say
It’s such a crowded room.
But the sun came up this morning
And it all began again.
The compulsion's is inside me
And it beats against my doors
It seeps into my sterile polished closet
Brings the skeletons outside.

There was a time I would have covered my face
I would have turned away
I would have broken my bones trying get out the door.
Here it is, come and take a good look.
Get out of the way.
Maybe it’s faith when I just don’t know for sure.

I wish I had a thousand books
To fill in what I’m missing
And a thousand days to read them
And a time back guarantee.
It starts down deep inside me
Every breath and every fiber.
And it makes it’s way up to the empty stare
And the tears on my face.

But I wish I’d never read a word
The answers were too easy
And I’m grown enough to know there’s more mystery than proof.
But it stirs down deep inside me.
And it stirs the dust of faith
Cries out to me about my hollow nature
And the desperate human need.

There was a time I would have covered my face
I would have turned away
I would have broken my bones trying get out the door.
Here it is, come and take a good look.
Get out of the way.
Maybe it’s faith when I just don’t know for sure.

And it’s a little more earthy than I’d like to believe
Like the holes in God’s hands
Like the dirt on God’s feet.
But I’m not alone in that it’s comfort more
Than I ever felt pretending I know anything for sure.

There was a time I would have covered my face
I would have turned away
I would have broken my bones trying get out the door.
Here it is, come and take a good look.
Get out of the way.
Maybe it’s faith when I just don’t know for sure.

---

This is where revelation came. It washed over me like a backrub. Maybe where I'm at is faith.

Yes, I've got more questions than answers. I always have, and I suspect I mostly will. I'm in a place right now where it seems I'm not sure about much. I'm searching for theology, a system to follow, a religion to belong to that I can reconcile well enough to play along. But I don't know that I'm searching for faith itself.

There was a time when the question itself scared the hell out of me. A search for spirituality is, inherently, a search for your own identity. And whenever you question your identity, you're questioning the very essence of who you are, as well as your relationships, your friendships, and everything you know about your social circles. To question fundamental Christianity is to question most of my young adult life, and that's scary. As the song says, "there was a time I would have covered my face, I would have turned away, I would have broken my bones trying to get out the door."

But I think that time is not now. I'm losing that fear. My previous post (Oct 04) was kind of a big deal for me...it's not that I have begun to have these questions, it's that I'm becoming unafraid of what it means that I've had them all along. I think theology can be a wonderful, powerful structure for understanding the entirely ununderstandable...but the quest is a little more earthy than I'd like to believe. It's blood, and it's dirt, and it's God...it's sacred, yes; but it's also human. I can't worship the quest, but I am beginning to recognize it's inherent value. I refuse to believe that God's primary concern is whether or not I had the single salvation experience at some point before I get hit by a bus...our lives are lived in a constant tension between sacred and secular, and our purpose seems to be more about navigating that tension rather than relieving it. The quest is not God, but the quest for God may be salvation itself.

I may find absolute truth, and a theology, existing or created, to match. And I may not. But I don't think I'm lacking faith. Maybe it's faith that I'm continuing to seek God, perhaps now more than ever, despite the personal and social ramifications that result from questioning the faith of my youth. Maybe it's faith that I believe that it's safe to question Christianity, because I believe that Christ himself is greater than both the religion and it's questioning, and that earnest pursuit of Him will inevitably land me in His presence.

I am in a hard period, but it is a good period. I don't know much, and I'm asking a lot. And I think I've long feared that I'm losing my faith because I can't claim the same outward surity I had in high school or college. But maybe it's faith that I just don't know for sure.

I've got a lot more to write to you about. It's about Manhattan, neon at 40 floors, and my brother the Esquire. But it's time to get to work now.

Peace,
Justin

My friend Ryan wrote a great response to my last post...

If you're interested, check it out at:
http://c-change.blogspot.com

More to come...whoever has been reading in New Zealand, post something! I'd love to hear from ya!

Peace,
Justin

Some of my best conversations come over my first cup of coffee in the early morning, and some come over my last beer in the very, very early morning.

This post is about the former.

Lately, I've been working out each weekday morning with a good friend. In my attempt to lose the 35 pounds necessary to remove my least favorite set of chins, I've taken on a fairly rigorous diet and excercise plan. The plan goes like this:
1. Get up at 6:20, pick up friend down the street and get to gym by 6:30.
2. Work out until 7:30.
3. Sit on friend's porch and drink coffee until 8:15, and talk about the stuff of life.

Every morning we tackle the same three topics, and one wildcard. We talk about sex, we talk about faith & religion, and we talk about the squirrels that are eating a hole in his roof. The wildcard topic depends on what movie was on in the cardiocinema, how work is going, and how strong the coffee is. Either way, it's always a pleasant way to start my morning, and I love the conversation.

This morning was harder than previous...

This morning we talked about heaven and hell and what makes a Christian and what makes you saved. My friend is a very smart 20-something with a lifetime of history in the church, several years of missionary experience, and deep knowledge of the Bible. I am a very smart 20-something with a lifetime of history in and out of churches, several years of church employment, and a deep-seated need to keep asking the question.

He talked about his very cool experiences traveling the country and watching pagan people in pagan rituals at pagan festivals worshiping humanism and reveling in relativism. He said he hates relativism. He's got answers that involve Jesus, and the Bible, and what you have to figure out before you die.

I respect that...but I don't have those answers. I've got lots and lots of questions...but not a lot of answers. I know it's supposed to be noble to have questions...it's the intellectual pursuit, right? But that's not entirely true...I do have answers, I just have them for a while. I've known for a long time that a belief that the Bible is infallible feels wrong to me. I've known for a long time that the idea that you must "give your life" to Christ before you die in order to be with God in the afterlife feels wrong to me. I've known that the pursuit of God may be the end in and of itself, and that feels right to me.

It's a weak man that pretends shys away from what he knows is true...and these are what's true, at least as far as I can tell right now. And he shared what he believes is true, and that makes him strong too.

He is what most would call a Christian. And, for the first time since high school, I'm fairly convinced that by many standards, I am not. Some of my questions...and some of my truths...don't match those of the Christians I went to Young Life with and volunteered at church with and sit next to at work. In fact, it's quite probable that I've become the dangerous brand of pseudo-Christian that my youth-group leaders warned us about...the kind that question the basic truths of Christianity, and bit-and-piece out the Bible at there own discretion to match their worldviews. For the first time since becoming a young man, I am the moral relativist compared to those who used to be my peers. I still have so many questions left to answer, and I'm not ready to settle into some of the truths of fundamental Christianity.

I am the outsider in some ways...stuck in bizarre purgatory between religions...and I think I'm learning how to value that.

More to come, I'm sure.

Peace,
Justin

Watching the Simpsons of the last four or five years is a little like having your 95-year-old grandma to Sunday dinner...

You love your grandmother. You have many, many happy memories with her. She has been so good to you for so many years. She was a crucial part of you growing up, and you often spent all week looking forward to a happy Sunday spent with her. Her contribution to your life is immeasurable, and you will always be grateful...

...but now, things are starting to go. You love her, and you want the best for her, and it pains you to see her slowly failing. She doesn't remember who she was, her thoughts are often rambling and incoherent, she keeps telling the same stories over and over again. And, periodically, she pees her pants.

You don't laugh, because it's not funny. It's sad. Every week you hope she'll be more like she use to be than like she is. And you work hard to remember the younger, present, coherent, dignified woman she used to be You still keep inviting her to Sunday dinners because of all she has done for you. But it's not fun anymore...it's more for her than for you.

So, with that in mind, I offer this open letter to the producers of The Simpsons:

Dear James L. Brooks, Sam Simon, and Matt Groening,

I love your show. I have loved your show from its first season. I owned and proudly wore my "Who The Hell Are You?" tee to my eighth grade Catholic school math class, knowing full well I would be asked to remove it in lieu of a school-issued lost-and-found tee, complete with a note sent home to my mother. I gladly accepted this persecution...damn near proudly...because it was for The Simpsons, the first prime-time show in my lifetime with the guts to tell it like is, the willingness to offend me, and the humor to make me laugh about it. Your show changed television forever, and forever upped the bar for comedy TV, cartoons, and adult prime-time entertainment. You created a cultural mega-icon that changed the way we think about marriage, gender roles, politics, religion, and what's really funny, and I am forever grateful.

In that gratitude, I'd like to entreat you to please stop making your show. Please let the film project quietly disappear, let the existing merchandise work it's way through the gift-shops and fast-food happy meals, and let this season's episodes stay vaulted until they can be gifted to your great-grandchildren as a personal reminder of your powerful legacy. Please stop production on everything Simpsons, save for the DVD sets of your existing shows.

I want to remember you as you were, and not as you are now. I want to remember a show that is fresh, clever, biting, subversive, fearless, counter-cultural, and, most of all, funny. Before the weekly random guest-stars, before the nonsensical rambling plot-lines, before Homer went pseduo-effeminate and clinically retarded, before your writers started taking the easy jokes and kitschy pop-culture slams, and before you accurately recognized that true Simpsons fans will watch anything, and were willing to rest into complacency with your ideation and writing.

I want to celebrate everything you were. I continue to tune in every week out of respect...which is my choice, and for which I can't hold you accountable...but I have to admit, I keep hoping every week that you've been canceled. I want to relish my Simpsons DVD's (I will continue to buy them the day they come out...all the way through Season 11) and watch and re-watch your brilliant show in its prime.

Please, save your dignity, and make sure your legacy gets the celebrated and virtually untarnished reputation it deserves. After holding out hope for the last four or five years that you would go out strong, the unfortunate truth is that I'm now begging you to just go out.

Please let me enjoy The Simpsons for its brilliant inception and eleven brilliant seasons. Please stop making The Simpsons, and let's celebrate your hard work together with a glass of champagne as we watch and laugh at those magnificent years.

Thanks.

Respectfully,
Justin Masterson

I have reason to believe that nearly a dozen uteruses are conspiring against me.

In the last six months, approximately all of our friends either got pregnant or had babies. It's not a perfect statistic, but it's pretty damn close.

When the first couple were born, I thought, "Wow, how cool...what are the odds of two of my friends having babies at the same time? I should introduce them...perhaps the little bundles of cry could play together some day." When the next couple were born, I thought, "Wow, how fortunate...that God, in all of His generous bounty, had decided to bless our community of friends with such a cornucopia of little souls for us to tend to." When the next couple were born, I thought, "Wow, how creepy...the condoms around here sure are unreliable." Finally, when the most recent six were born and four more friends got pregnant...the truth became all too clear...

...there is a global conspiracy to try to get me to have a baby.

Somewhere underneath the streets of Cincinnati there is a an underground HQ, complete with large-screen plasma displays constantly updating with new pregnancy info, vertical pieces of glass that you can write on with markers from both sides in order to chart my progress, and a big black onyx table where all of the women in my life meet to plot every nuanced move necessary to change my heart from irresponsible young ragamuffin to responsible, reliable Pop.

...and at the head of that table sits my dear wife...hands tented together, head tilted slightly downward, an evil grin on her face and holding another picture of another cousin who just gave birth to another wrinkly squish-dough screamster.

...


Here's the weird part: it's kind of working. No, I'm not the hardened, wild-oats sowing bachelor who is turning into a big soft teddy bear. I was never that wild, and I'm not that teddybeary now. But my heart is changing. I think I like babies...at least a bit. More likely a lot.

My favorite part is when I get to be one-on-one with them. Nobody taking a picture of me holding the baby, nobody asking me how I'd like to be a daddy, nobody gesturing with their elbow at me holding the baby and then knowingly winking at Stacy. Just me and the baby...little, breathing, warm, helpless, surreal and perfect. That's my favorite part.

I want a son. I want a daughter. I want a newborn baby that kind of looks like me and kind of looks like Stacy and mostly looks like an old man. I want to hold my baby and know that I don't have to give her back. I want to wonder what my tiny son will be like when he's done fighting to stay asleep at night and has begun pulling the covers over his own head to dampen the wail of the alarm clock so he can stay in bed for a few more minutes. I want to fear the rise and fall of her chest, impossibly small and complex in my hand, as her eyes dart wildly beneath closed lids in her newborn dreams. I want a son to teach, a daughter to be perplexed by, and Saturday mornings of fallen Cheerios and headless Barbies.

I want it to be safe, I want it to be scary, I want it to go right and I want to build a rebel. I don't know what I want, but I want the experience as much as I fear it.

We're thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. A lot.

Peace,
Justin

My friends are in a hurricane right now, and I'm very afraid for their safety.

Please stop what you're doing and do this:

Those who pray, pray.
Those who meditate, meditate.
Those who intend, intend.
Those who envision, envision.

Evan and Ellen.
Cabo San Lucas.
Hurrican John.

Make it stop, keep them safe.

Thanks.

My twin brother left town this morning.

Technically, it was this morning, but it felt like a very late night just after midnight as my brother, Matt, and his wife, Jo, loaded the final hangers and pillows and boxes of books into their taxicab-yellow Penske moving truck, and pulled the clanging metal door shut. We had all had a party together for the hours before their midnight departure, ostensibly celebrating this new chapter in their lives, I suppose...but my older brother Brian said it well when he described "a pall over the whole thing." It was a celebration of new things, I guess...but for me, it felt a bit like a funeral.

I've never lived apart from Matt, really. We grew up in the same house, as you might imagine, and shared a bedroom for the bulk of our youth. We went to college together and lived next door from each other. We got ourselves married, and moved down the street from each other. Hell, we even shared the same room in-utero, and that was close quarters. We played together, we sledded together, we swam together, we joined rival ten-speed biking gangs in our neighborhood together, we fought each other, and we bled sometimes. I hated him when I was still in the stage where I could hate someone for stealing my dessert or not handing over the TV remote, and I loved him when I was still in the stage where you believed you didn't have a choice. He was my rival, my playmate, my bully, my confidant, my equal, my conscience, and the only one of us brave enough to tell Mom off.

Matt and I have always highlighted the enormity of the differences between us. He is a sports fanatic, an athlete, a social butterfly, and a raucous and loud voice that carries in any crowd and that sneers in the face of disagreement. I am an artist-type, a sedentary, an extrovert who fears the disappointment of others, and a peacemaker. But jesus, we're so alike sometimes. We did life together in a way that, unless you're a twin yourself, I don't think you can understand. In some ways, we polarized in order to live our lives as two halves of the same exprience, I think...we polarized to differentiate ourselves, and we polarized so that we could experience the completeness of life more fully together.

As kids, we were often asked if he could feel the same things I feel, and if we had any kind of special "twin power" that would allow us to sense what was going on to the other twin at any given time. I always laughed and said no. Today, I wonder more.

If this reads like a eulogy, it's because it is. Matt is far from dead...he is beginning the next step of a journey that will undoubtedly prove magnificent, frightening, resonant and powerful. He and Jo are finally going to be in a town big enough to accomodate their talents and their training. He will practice law, and he will excel. She will write and publish, and she will excel. They deserve this success...and I would never wish for them to stay here. But the fact remains, he's further away than he's ever been, and for the first time in my life, I can't just go see him. This is new, and this is hard.

Matt and I, for all these years being so close to each other in young adulthood, never spent a lot of time together. Truth is...I never felt like we had to. My love for my twin brother is as saturating, profound, and as unconditional as I will ever know. He was a constant for me...I quietly trusted because I knew he was there. He was always there.

Matt, if you're reading this...I miss you already. I cried last night, I cried this morning, and I'm crying now. I am so happy for you and Jo, and I have no doubts that this is the best move for you...but I don't want you to be gone. You are the only twin brother I will ever have, and I can't help but feel like a part of me is in DC now.

I love you deeply, and I look forward to seeing you soon.

-Justin

I always become a nihlist when I'm on vacation...

Not a dedicated, Uli Kunkel, floating in a pool surrounded by Jack Daniels bottles, "I beleeve in nuh-zing!" nihlist, mind you...just a "nothing means anything" nihlist. Which, as I think about this again, may not qualify as nihlism...or any ism for that matter...it may better qualify as good ol' fashioned depression.

I had a great weekend this weekend. I drove up with Stacy to Put-In-Bay, a tiny little island on the Ohio side of Lake Erie whose homes and city streets resemble Pleasantville and whose night-times resemble Mardi Gras. It's essentially a party paradise for four months out of the year, with all varieties of wealthy white boat-owners and their college-aged offspring gathering together to drink beer, flash people for beads, and spend a lot of time saying "WOOOO!" Fifty-something men with white hair tucked under straight-billed baseball caps roam the streets by day, buying cigars and t-shirts with funny sayings on them, and young people wake up at nooon and slowly take over the town by nightfall, when all is transformed into a pulsing, sexy, simmering party for those who can afford to get themselves blurry.

In short, it's a lot of fun.

However, I don't tend to enjoy it as much as I would expect. In the middle of everything I get introspective, distant, and navel-gazing. I wish I could say it was some kind of pious soul-thing...watching that sort of gluttony and debauchery from a distance with a holy discontent for the short-lived things of this world...but I'm usually four or five beers south of that ivory tower by then. No, I think it's more the realization that several hundred miles, several hundred dollars, several dozen cigarettes, and seven days of severance from my soberest sentience later, I'm left with a feeling of..."is this all there is?"

Right now I'm sitting in a bed in the Seelbach Hotel in downtown Louisville. I'm in a very large room with very dark oak, surrounded by four posters of bed and lying on a duvet with a thread count that exceeds the average Nicaraguan's yearly salary. The lighting is perfect, the dinner was magnificent, and the Kentucky bourbon that followed deserves a post of it's very own. I was lucky to be treated to these great amenities on this particular trip, and I'm glad to consume them and to smile while doing it. Yet, for all of the soft touches and scented soaps and leather seats and tasty glasses of wine...I still feel a bit hollow, and more than a bit useless.

I think that's the problem. I work at work, and I feel useful. I work at home sometimes, and when I do, I feel useful. I occasionally get to counsel my friends, console my parents, and fix things that break around the house...and I feel useful. But when I'm on vacation...all I do is consume. I just keep taking things in. The only thing I'm doing as I move from hotel to restaurant to rental car to playhouse to hotel is contribute to the GNP and global warming. I'd like to relax, to be sure, but I feel like there has to be more than just tickling my own underbelly, and that thought keeps me discontented. That discontent, if left to simmer long enough, eventually turns into a bland form of disgust, which eventually commits itself to pseudo-nihlism. That nihlishm takes the shape of, "If I am having all of the finest things in the world and all of them offer only momentary feelings of joy or growth...than nothing can mean anything."

Seems dramatic, doesn't it? I realize. But I can't get that feeling to go away. It comes as one of the many flavors of my neurosis, I guess...one little Buttered Popcorn in the multi-colored bag of Jelly Bellys we call the human condition. (Lord, that metaphor is a stretch, isn't it?) But it is what it is, and it's my blog, so there you have it.

I sleep now, and I dream of Stacy. I love to travel, and I look forward to going home.

Peace,
Justin

Hola amigos...it's been a long time since I rapped at ya.

(Onion fans, grin break now).

I had a wonderful after-dinner conversation with a very good friend last night about the relative goodness or badness of humanity. I don't know why dinner tends to induce good conversation, but I suspect it has something to do with the blood leaving your brain to support your bloated stomach, freeing up the brain from the burden of all those nutrients, and readying it for brash opining over tiramisu.

The conversation began with a discussion about drinking, as I recall. Which was odd, because neither of us were. In fact, now that I think about, that very fact probably made the discussion so topical. My friend is not a drinker...she will have an occasional drink here and there...but she's not a drinker like I'm a drinker and my father's a drinker and the men of Omega-Delta-Chi are drinkers. She samples, she sips, she moves on. She drinks to taste. I drink to drink for the most part, and I drink to get dull and happy.

My friend is very, very smart; so I tend to listen to her pretty carefully. She said that she doesn't drink much because she wants to live a healthy, natural life, and that getting buzzed or drunk doesn't seem natural to her. I told her that when I drink, I usually drink in order to feel more natural. I am an anxious person by the combined efforts of nature and nurture (with a healthy tip of the scales toward the latter), and I spend a great deal of my time worrying and fretting about one thing or another. I have a hard time letting go of what concerns me, and tension leaks out of me the same way gold bricks leak out of Fort Knox. So, when I drink, I drink to help me let go, settle down, and smile more. I don't know if it's a good policy or a bad policy, but I drink with relative modesty, so I'm not too worried about it.

What really interested me about the conversation is that she kept saying, for me. "Drinking is unnatural for me." "Being drunk is unhealthy for me." "It's a bad idea to get drunk to make yourself feel better...for me, anyways." She's like that...it's one of my favorite things about her...she refuses to exercise judgement against others as being good or bad in any real sense, which works out great when you're a solid mixture of both and you hang out with someone as excellent as her.

The trouble is, something being bad solely for me is a pretty foreign concept to me. I tend to believe that most things that are bad are bad, and most things that are good are good. I think it's the Catholic in me, or at least the Christian. Christianity doesn't have a lot of tolerance for moral relativism. If the Bible is to be believed, then Jesus didn't have a lot of conditional morality to share with the world. Nor did the God of the Old Testament. There are a lot of hard lines in the Bible, and less grey area than I think I'd like. At least, that's the case as I see it at first glance...

..but if you look a little deeper...

In Exodus 20, God says "Thou shalt not kill." (Thank heavens God speaks fluent King's English, or I'd have a hell of a time understanding him). But, then he orders the Jews to slaughter the Philistines. He says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness" [or, "lie" in modern translations], but then in I Kings 22 it says "The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee." God says, "Thou shalt not steal," but also orders His people to "...spoil [steal from] the Egyptians" in Exodus 13.

So, if you think the King James translation is somewhat accurate, it seems you have a couple of options:
1. The Bible isn't accurately reflecting God's words to man.
2. The Bible is accurately reflecting God's words to man, and God is unintentionally contradicting Himself.
3. The Bible is accurately reflecting God's words to man, and God is intentionally contradicting Himself.

Or...of course...

4. Justin, it's wrong to question God and the Bible. Just have faith, or go to Hell.

If you believe #1, which I'm still trying to make up my mind about, then this conversation can probably wrap up here, because what's the point of worrying about something somebody made up a long time ago?

If you believe #2, then you don't believe in the same God I do, because my God tends to remember stuff.

If you believe #4, then enjoy this video, I'll pay you back for the time with a prompt money order to your place of residence.

But if you believe #3, which I ostensibly do, then you have to ask why God would do such a thing? Is it possible that morality can't simply be spelled out with hard rules? Is it possible that it's OK to kill some people some times, and not OK to other people other times? If that's the case...are there any hard rules? Is it ever OK to have sex with children? To eat your parents? To abort a baby? To lie?

And...if it can't be said that there are absolute lines of good and bad...how can it be said that a person is either? For the pedophile who was molested as a child, and who knew nothing in his life other than pain and suffering, and for whom the desire to understand his pain drove him to molest another...can we call him "bad?" If so, can we call him "worse" than he who steals two dollars from the register on his way out of work at Starbucks...providing the man at Starbucks knows it's wrong and has the ability to control his impulses?

If those who are driven by madness, revenge, or a crippled past (or a tasty cocktail of the three) to perform horrendous acts against humanity were truly oppressed by their disturbances, can we call them "bad?" Can we rightfully punish them? Shouldn't the child who has everything be punished more severely for a small transgression than the child with nothing who commits a large one?

Can a person ever be called "good?" Can a person ever be called "bad?" If not...can we call God either of these?

It was a good conversation, and it was a troubling conversation. I've thought about it all day...which is probably best. I don't want my fear of what would happen if there were no moral plumb lines to drive me to presume that there is one.

Peace,
Justin

The following is the most romantic post about stomach flu you'll read all day...

I got sick this week. Quite sick. The kind of sick you don't talk about at dinner parties. And for the last 36 hours or so I've been lying on my couch waiting for the sick to pass. And, lying in the overstuffed and oversized chair five feet from me has been my also very sick wife. (It seems she got me sick with the flu she had last week...and, not to be outdone, I returned the favor this week. I didn't think it was possible either, but then again, here we are). We have spent the last day-and-a-half trying to sleep, trading turns in the bathroom, and trying to guess how long ago four hours ago was so that we can take the next batch of Tylenol.

OK...I'll give you...not a formula for high romance.

However, for some reason, it was romantic. We were sharing the experience together. We took care of each other, watched each other get worse, and we've begun to watch each other get better. We called out quietly for one another in the hot and wakeful midnight hours, and we did so hoping that, for some reason, the other person would be awake enough to respond, just so we know that they're there. We hoped for each other, and even prayed for each other a little bit. We loved each other in our sickness...the kind of love that is bigger than grossiness and pukiness and trashcans by the bedside.

I loved my wife today...and she loved me. It's a strange thing to say, but I actually enjoyed being sick with Stacy. Being sick is life, and I love having life with her.

Peace,
Justin

I've been trying to post for two weeks about something I'm not sure how to talk about...

I have written a number of posts, edited them, and deleted them...all because I'm not sure how to say what I want to say on this very difficult and inflammatory issue, about which I am extremely emotionally connected.

All to no avail. So...on the excellent advice of my friend Steve...I've promised myself I'm just gonna write it and let it be what it is. Here is what I've been trying to say:

...


...I think being an illegal should be illegal.

...

...

...there, I've said it.

Whew...that feels better.

I'll expound a little.

I tend to think of myself as a liberal, progressive, dare I say Democratic kind of guy. I tend to think that I'm a compassionate kind of guy...at least in certain squishy areas of humankind. I also tend to think that I tend to speak without thinking, so I took some extra time to think about this one before I started speaking. And I still think being an illegal should be illegal.

If you've turned on the TV...or the radio...or the newspaper...(let that one go)...you've surely seen the great debate on immigration in America. Or, more specifically, the debate on Hispanic immigration into America. Nobody seems too concerned about the extraordinary number of people from India, or Korea, or China, or Eastern Africa who are streaming into the United States. And there's a perfectly good reason for that...

...they came here legally.

What's pissing everybody off is that people from Cuba are floating in on rafts, people from the D.R. are stowing away in the bottoms of freighters, and people from Mexico are t across the border in the middle of the night to get into this country. And get in they are...to the tune of an estimated 700% growth in illegal Hispanics living in the U.S. over the last ten years.

...wait, I'm not done. That part isn't pissing everybody off. In fact, as you may have noticed, illegal Hispanic workers have been living in the U.S. for quite some time, and doing a fine job at it. I don't know who was legal and who was illegal, but I know that Hispanic workers with very little English at their disposal have cooked my meals, mowed the lawn where I work, constructed my gym, cleaned my hotel rooms, delivered my Chinese food (which was a strange surprise), and so much more. And you didn't hear me complaining. They work cheap, they work hard, and they seemed happy enough.

That's where we get to the part where everybody is pissed off.

The seemed happy enough...for a while. And then, protests started. Protests about equal pay for equal work, protests about getting social services and schooling for the children of illegal immigrants, protests about minimum wage increases...and...here's my very favorite...protests about the U.S. Government's attempt to enforce and toughen immigration laws.

You know what, let's change the POV here to make things easier...

---

The following is an open lettter to pissed off illegal Hispanic immigrants:

---

Dear pissed off illegal Hispanic immigrants,

Thank you for doing all that hard work for me. You do really good work...truthfully, you do better work than I would have done, and you worked twice as hard without complaining. Thank you for doing that...I'm really glad that you chose to do that work, and I'm thankful that I could benefit from your tremendous work ethic.

However, I'm a bit concerned. You see...you're not supposed to be here. I know it sounds insensitive and elitist...but I'm actually just telling you what the law says. The law says that you're not supposed to be here. It says that you're welcome in this country...as tired and/or poor as you may be...and that you may come and work our fertile lands to make your living. All you have to do is what everyone else on the planet who wants to come and work in America has to...you have to apply, and you have to be accepted. I'm sorry that we let you make your living here without kicking you out sooner, because I can see why you'd get the impression you had the right to be here after a few years of nobody saying anything. That was our bad. But now you need to go home.

You see, I have a good friend named Maria. Maria is a brilliant woman, and a gifted lawyer. She wants to move to America from Peru so she can be a lawyer in the US and make a life for herself here. She went to school here on an educational visa, she fell in love with an American man, and now she wants to work here. She applied for a work visa and was denied, unfortunately, so she went back to Peru where she now waits for a chance to return to America, see her love again, and try to get a visa again. She's playing by the rules, and it hurts her. My prayer is that she gets her visa, moves here, and gets married to that man. My hope is that she may even some day wish to be a citizen of the US, though I will always respect her even if she doesn't.

So, here's the thing...I don't think you should be here. You weren't invited, you weren't cleared, and you sure as heck weren't approved for a work visa. In fact, we did everything we could to keep you out...we spent millions and millions of dollars building fences and hiring guys to drive up and down the border, just so you wouldn't come. But you made it through our fences, and you made it past our guards, and somehow you made your way into your current job. I admire your courage and your resolve...but you still shouldn't be here. This isn't "Red Rover"...just because you made it across the border and through the locked arms of the patrol doesn't mean you get to stay on this side. You don't get to stay, you don't get to work, and you sure as shit don't get to live off our social services.

You are here against the laws of this country. You broke the law, and like any other resident of the US who breaks the law, you are subject to consequences. You can march in the streets, sing our anthem in your language, and fly your flag above ours...you may be as polite or rude as you like (that's the beauty of our first amendment), but you're still here illegally. And until we make running over the border in the middle of the night a legal shortcut to the immigration process, you will remain illegal.

It sucks that you come from a shitty country. It sucks that I was fortunate enough to be born into a free country with great opportunity, and that you weren't. I hope that your country changes, and I hope that my country changes its laws so that good people can find good homes here easily. But that hasn't happened yet, and you're not supposed to be here.

Go home, find the application office for an American work visa, and get in line. While you're there, look for Maria...I'm praying she's up near the front.

Good luck,
Justin


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Peace,
Justin