It's hot in Houston

It's hot in Houston, originally uploaded by bcdady.

My view of Houston from the skybridge between the Hilton of the Americas and the convention center.
--
Bryan

Blue Like Jazz

I just finished reading Blue Like Jazz by David Miller and I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated it.
One of my favorite parts came toward the end when he starts explaining his own epiphany about what it means to love other people.

The sentiment was simple: Love your neighbor as yourself.


And I thought about that for a second and wondered why God would put that phrase so strongly in my mind... He was saying I would never talk to my neighbor the way I talked to myself, and that somehow I had come to believe it was wrong to kick other people around but it was okay to do it to myself. It was as if God had put me in a plane and flown me over myself so I would see how I was connected, all the neighborhoods that were falling apart because I would not le myself receive love from myself, from others, or from God. And I wouldn't receive love because it felt wrong. It didn't feel humble, and I knew I was supposed to be humble. But that was all crap, and it didn't make any sense. If it is wrong for me to receive love, then it is also wrong for me to give it because by giving it I am causing somebody else to receive it, which I had presupposed was the wrong thing to do. So I stopped. And I mean that. I stopped hating myself. It no longer felt right. It wasn't manly or healthy, and I cut it out. That was about a year ago, and since then I have been relatively happy. I am not kidding. I don't sit around and talk bad about myself anymore.

...

And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it. I think apart from the idea that I am a sinner and God forgives me, this is the greatest less I have ever learned. When you get it, it changes you. My friend Julie from Seattle told me that the main prayer she prays for her husband is that he will be able to receive love. And this is the prayer I pray for all my friends because it is the key to happiness. God's love will never change us if we don't accept it.