Displace Me 2007

Exhausted, burnt, and more sleep deprived in the last 72 hours than I've ever been in my life.

But I have fought the fight.


More to come...

Displace Me Promotion at Belmont

T-Shirt Design:





Cardboard Hut in the Quad:



Carboard Hut After Belmont Lawn Patrol:

Posters and Flags Around Campus:

Why You Should Be DISPLACED

1) Above all else, click here and check out the newest media on the front page. The video is shocking and heartbreaking.

"If the U.S. Government desires that this conflict is ended and they desire it at breakfast, by dinner time it wouldn't be there."

2) The solution to the conflict is a REALITY! The ceasefire with the LRA was just reinstated less than two weeks ago. Peace talks began this Wednesday, April 25th. How powerful of a message would it be for the people making decisions in Uganda to wake up on the 29th and read in their newspapers that 100,000 Americans rallied all for the cause of peace in Uganda?

3) A year ago, I witnessed the power of our generation for the first time. People were moved to action upon seeing this video. I saw so many people I never would have thought get so passionate about this movement nearly explode with excitement and energy. I saw the look in people's eyes as they prepared for the Global Night Commute. I stood among the 3,000 in Franklin who marched for 3 miles as one, a single unit in solidarity to bring awareness and peace to this atrocity. I ask you to experience this for yourself. I dare you. It will be life changing. It will give you hope for the future of our world.

4) Because it will be fun. Africa doesn't have to be about triggering emotional responses by showing manipulative pictures and putting somber music behind it. There is an adventure to it.

5) Pete Wence tells you that you should...



6) We need to be reminded that America is not the standard. Not by a long shot. God is with the poor. He hears their cries. Maybe it's time we start as well.

LEAVE YOUR HOME TO BRING THEM HOME
www.invisiblechildren.com/displaceme

Going To A Town

I recently had an opportunity to listen to the soon-to-be new Rufus Wainwright album, Release the Stars, and I was immediately captivated, captured, and terrorized by the second track.

Going To A Town

I’m going to a town that has already been burnt down,
I’m going to a place that has already been disgraced,
I’m gonna see some folks who have already been let down,
I’m so tired of America

I’m gonna make it up for all of the Sunday times,
I’m gonna make it up for all of the nursery rhymes,
They never really seem to want to tell the truth,
I’m so tired of you, America

Making my own way home, ain’t gonna be alone,
I’ve got a life to lead, America
I’ve got a life to lead

Tell me, do you really think you go to hell for having love,
Tell me, enough of thinking everything that you’ve done is good,
I really need to know, after soaking the body of Jesus Christ in blood,
I’m so tired of America

I really need to know,
I may just never see you again, or might as well,
You took advantage of a world that loved you well,
I’m going to a town that has already been burnt down,
I’m so tired of you, America

Making my own way home, ain’t gonna be alone,
I’ve got a life to lead, America
I’ve got a life to lead,
I got a soul to feed,
I got a dream to heed,

And that’s all I need,
Making my own way home, ain’t gonna be alone,
I’m going to a town,
That has already been burnt down

I'm not saying I agree with all of this, but it just moved me. It was very real and very compelling. It drew me in and shocked me all at once. It addressed my passions, my questions, and my frustrations. And thus has stimulated a conversation in my head that has since been conveyed to God on numerous times in the last few days. Though I try not to let this attitude dominate my life, I would be lying if the thoughts never entered my mind. Sometimes it feels really good to have somebody say something that resonates with a part of you in the rawest form. No masks, no walls, no shame. So here's to you, Rufus.

What do you think?

GREETINGS OFFICIAL WAR STOPPERS

First of all, if you have not yet done so yet, sign up for DISPLACE ME at www.invisiblechildren.com/displaceme. Invite your mom. Invite your dog. This event will change your life.

Second, it is up to us to PROMOTE (the mom and dog part):

At Belmont, we are all teaming together to wear our WHITE SHIRTS WITH RED X'S on campus WEDNESDAY. Basically, the entire campus should be blanketed with these shirts, and anyone not wearing them will be too overwhelmed that they will have to ask. And then they will come. You need to make the shirt anyway to take a picture with you wearing it for the event, so why not use it as a sign of solidarity on campus?

Also, you might have noticed a nice new decoration on the quad. As long as weather and BePo permits, a cardboard tent will be present as a constant advertisement for DISPLACE ME. It was constructed earlier tonight, and it has already received a lot of attention and caused a lot of attention. Make sure to stop by it and hang out at it when you can this week. We will be there with flyers. Anything we can do to create an enormous buzz is very beneficial.

Get excited, and get involved! The numbers for Nashville have gone up 1,000 in under a week! Let's add another 1,000 by Saturday!!!!

Check out www.invisiblechildren.com/displaceme for all the updated information on the Nashville location.

Remember, no one else is doing anything at all like this to raise attention to the situation in Uganda. NO ONE ELSE IS RALLYING TO END THIS WAR. IF WE DON'T DO IT, NO ONE ELSE WILL!

Thanks

This is Why I'm Hot -- MUST READ!

Basically, you should read this. That is all.

ELP

Tis a tid bit late, though apropos in my highly trained professional opinion. And if you don't like it, well...it's my blog and I can do what I want :o). So at Belmont I'm a part of a group called ELP, Executive Leadership Council. We just finished our last event, a campus-wide event we put on ourselves. It was a giant easter egg hunt on the quad along with a wonderful concert by Mark Trussell, Josh Johnson, and the great Andy Davis.


Fun, fun! I just wish I had a picture of Ryan in the bunny costume... And for the sake of nostalgia, here's our first group photo:


Definately a fun first year experience. Glad to have done it. Peace. And Love.

CMT's at Belmont

The CMT Music Awards were hosted for the second straight year at Belmont. Despite the ridiculous frustrations of having the media/set-up crews taking over our campus, it was quite fun to be able to be on the floor for the screening of the show. I'm not a big country fan, but seeing such artists as Carrie Underwood, Bon Jovi, Hank Williams Jr., Chris Kristopherson, and yes, even the freakin' STANLEY CUP was pretty exciting.

The Red Carpet
Bon Jovi
Rascal FlattsCarrie Underwood
Carrie Underwood -- Video of the Year
Kenney Chesney
An Excited Tim

DISPLACE ME

You may have heard about Invisible Children and Displace Me, but please don't do yourselvs the disservice of not really considering what it means. Last year, a group of my friends and I helped to organize a rally for Invisible Children in Franklin called the Global Night Commute. Of the 130 cities across the world participating, Franklin was the third largest location by the number of people who participated. It was incredible. And as incredible as that was, Displace Me (April 28-29) is going to be even better. It will allow the participants to put themselves in the shoes of the people in Uganda that have been living in the terrible conditions of the displacement camps for the last ten years. Everything will be experiential. If you thought the GNC was good, wait till you get to Displace Me. In Nashville alone, we are expecting over 10,000 to gather together to support this cause. It will be absolutely unreal. I promise you, you will not regret participating in this event.

The reality is, no one else in the world is lobbying for the people of Northern Uganda like Invisible Children is. No one else is organizing rallies of over 80,000 people in cities across the globe. No one else is lifting up the voices of the oppressed in this country in Africa. WE ARE UGANDA'S ONLY SHOT AT JUSTICE. WE ARE UGANDA'S ONLY SHOT AT FREEDOM. If we don't stand up and bring awareness to this issue, NO ONE ELSE WILL. Please stand with me. Join me in Nashville (or in any other city) and let your voice be heard for the Invisible Children.

Please go to www.invisiblechildren.com/displaceme to SIGN UP and to receive more information!

I'm helping coordinate Belmont's efforts for Invisible Children, so if you have any questions, please let me know. This blog will probably be IC heavy for the next couple of weeks, but it'll definately be worth it!

Me in Belmont's Greek Sing

This is me in our campus' greek sing this year. Yes, I am in a fraternity. Don't think any differently about me :o) ...ask me about it sometime and I'll tell you why I love it. This performance took home the gold for the event, so I hope you enjoy! Go Phi Tau!!

Because I Have the Coolest Nephew...

Blake's First Month Birthday
Grandparent Lovin'
Thug Life
Shake what yo mama gave ya!

Mandy and Aaron, Sittin' in a Tree...

Congrats Guys!!! That's right, these two lovebirds are engaged. Frye, I never thought the day would come. What a difference a year makes, huh? I'm so happy for you two!!! Can't wait for the big day :o). I'm incredibly excited and honored to be able to be a part of it!!

A Morning At The Lakehouse

-Written March 11, 2007-

I remember at Sarah’s lakehouse waking up to her sitting beside me on my bed, her hand on my neck. It was amazing, the best way to start the day. That’s a little of what I felt like this morning getting up early and reading God’s word. It’s harder to grasp, and you have to fight for it, but I think that’s the idea behind it. God wanting us every morning to feel so overwhelmingly loved and wanted. There’s no other desires that live in that instant. You’d rather have nothing else, and there’s no other place on earth that would offer you more. You are perfectly content, complete, whole, and beautifully captured by that mystical moment. You are connected to the creator. And for that time, the world is how it should be. It is put back together. And nothing can prevail against it. Except maybe her mom calling that breakfast is ready. Those pesky little reminders that the real world is waiting just outside that door. And the only hope you or the world has is if you bring that holy moment out to them. As if it depends on it. As if that jump in your step, that sparkle in your eye, that foolish grin that steals your face is the only thing holding everything together, and that maybe if you don’t smile, no one else will. But that the light in your heart is stronger than the darkness that surrounds. And after that moment in time that seemed like it just froze, after that’s over, that the darkness is just waiting to be pierced. And you live to live, because you know tomorrow morning you’ll wake up to the most wonderful moment once again. The moment you open your eyes and beauty is staring you in the face. The moment that you begin to see. The moment the world is put back together.

Music (good) Friday

In light of my last post, I have decided to post a song of happy, a song of sad, and one of semi-crazy. May you listen to them while living life. As opposed to living death. or dying life. eh...you know what I mean.

Happy: Three Little Birds -- Elizabeth Mitchell
Sad: Vincent O'Brien -- M. Ward
Semi-Crazy: Waking Up Before Her -- Groom.

got the post in with 17 minutes to go...phew

A Perusal and a Discovery

It is funny how past words can light a present fire. And so as I ventured into my journal of words that come from a now dead world, I find the world not as dead as I would have been led to believe. The words are still alive, somehow conjuring up neuron firings and synapses that result in an image of me being much more alive in that dead world than I am in the one that is playing before me. And so, these arrangements of spaces and letters have some mystic element to them. They have the ability to inspire, and to thrust old meaning and new meaning together upon the beholder. Somehow they are able to speak more truth into the time that is completely foreign to them than to even the era in which they were originally composed. And so in honor of their sacred power, I will repost them exactly as they were over a year ago. Perhaps they can affect you as they affected me...again?


Wednesday, September 14, 2005:
life is beautiful. life is a gift. life is the ups and downs. sometimes it's crappy and boring and stressful. sometimes it's fun and exotic and contagious. the rhythm of it. the beat of it. it's everything woven together so intricately. it's everything how it's supposed to be. not only that, it's everybodies crappys and borings and stressfulls and funs and exotics and contagiouses all intertwined. it's a beautiful collage of God's inventions and wirings. life is not a b****. life is not a grade. life is not a happy. life is not a smile. life is being fully alive. heaven is here. now. grab it. life is a holy discontent. life is a battle. life is a tension. life is a choice. to live is to love. to live is to be dirt on the underside of a shoe. life happens when there's nowhere lower to fall. when you're the servant of all. isn't it funny how the way life has been programmed to work? what we think we want the most, just doesn't help. and getting it in red or a size bigger or 21 points and two letters higher won't help either. He's written in the very way life functions and exists. life is our common assumptions inverted. blessed are the nothings. life is gravity. gravity is grace. and grace is a beautiful thing. life is beautiful.

my life right now is a tension between:

the memories i just want to relive, driven by the reluctance and doubt that im actually here at this point.... and ....the lonely feeling that i just don't belong here anymore and need to start a new phase of my life. in my head my identity is trapped in the past or future. where's the present? i have many times in the last 5 years thought of this time in my existence and determined what it would be like. i've turned out to be a very bad fortune teller...

i can be dragged through the day or drag the day around where i want it. :o)

Global Warming a Reality according to UN

Since I just posted about this and got some minor feedback, I thought this would be an interesting post....

Warming 'already changing world'
From the BBC

Climate change is already having major impacts on the natural world, a UN report is set to announce.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believes there is also a discernible, though less marked, impact on human societies.

The IPCC is to release a summary of its report on Friday but talks on wording have continued late into the night.

Officials said there were differences between various countries on the strength of the language.

China and Russia had also raised concerns over some passages of the 21-page summary, the official said.

The last-minute wrangling is likely to affect the degree of certainty in the final version, the BBC's Richard Black reports, but not the overall direction.

Water shortages

Draft versions seen by BBC News warn it will be hard for societies to adapt to all the likely climate impacts.

The report is set to say that a temperature rise above 1.5C from 1990 levels would put about one-third of species at risk of extinction.

More than one billion people would be at greater risk of water shortages, primarily because of the melting of mountain glaciers and ice fields which act as natural reservoirs.

The scientific work reviewed by IPCC scientists includes more than 29,000 pieces of data on observed changes in physical and biological aspects of the natural world.

Eighty-five percent of these, it believes, are consistent with a warming world.

Read more here...

Hospital Bound

I am currently sitting in a hospital in Jackson Mississippi. It looks like it will be my home until today is called tomorrow. My sister is just about to have surgery, so your prayers would be appreciated! It shouldn't be anything serious, but they won't know for sure until they are into the operation. I'll keep you all updated, but thank you so much for thinking of my family!

--UPDATE--

She is out of the hospital and is resting with us at her house. The surgery went well, and it was apparently a good thing they did it because the situation was worse than they had thought. But all things considered, it was a mild operation, and Erica should be up and running in about a week. She's still in a TON of pain, so prayers for a speedy recovery would be appreciated. Much love.

An Inconvenient Truth

This week is "Belmont Goes Green" week at Belmont, and thus there have been several events to supplement that title. On Tuesday night, I was able to view a screening of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, his documentary to raise awareness about global warming. I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone that, well...lives on this earth. I think it was very well done (though definately not worthy of it's Oscar bid... just a political statement), though definately overly corny during Gore's back stories that interrupted his lecture. But this is a moral issue, not a political issue. It's a shame and an outrage to me that evangelical Christians are the primary force that are arguing against global warming. Of all groups, we should be the most concerned with this issue. God has given us this planet and made us responsible for it. It's our job and duty to God to take care of this place. I even believe there's a direct connection between the land and our spirituality. The Hebrews believed that everything is spiritual and that somehow there was a connection between the physical and the metaphysical. I happen to believe in our forefathers of our faith as well. Why wouldn't we be concerned about global warming? If it's real, which is pretty much the concensus, then we got some work to do. Even if it's not, isn't it better to be prepared than left with massive death and destructions on our hands? A cleaner earth shouldn't be the cause of debate. It's kind of obvious. But wait, that's gonna cost me something? As I quote directly from a U.S. delegate: "The American lifestyle is not up for negotiation." Wow. I don't understand, even if for some reason you have a logical base against global warming, people (mostly Christians) continually mock and ridicule Al Gore, though. He's attempting to do, what he considers, at least, some good in this world. We have enough people doing terrible things these days, but when someone believes in something so much and is so passionate about an issue that they believe will make the world a better place, as Al Gore is, we should commend them! Or bash them in bible studies. That's the Jesus Way.

One shocking thing I learned: Up until the time Gore was born, all the people on the earth only reached up to 2 billion people. It took from the beginning of the world until recently for the world to see 2 billion people. By the time he dies, the world is estimated to have 9 billion people on it. That's crazy to think about! Where are the resources to cover this increase coming from?

One thing I wished Gore covered more: economics and global warming. He glossed over it with sort of a joke and then later with just blowing it off: "Other countries are doing it." This is a real issue in the global warming debate, and I wasn't really satisfied with how he handled the issue. Give some real life solutions to how U.S. businesses won't have to go bankrupt by having environmentally friendly policies.