Category: MANHOOD
Louder Now
It is a great excitement and a walk down memory lane to talk about the meaning behind the Ruckus Journal. The pause for me has been crafting the best way to say it on the About page and in the format of this blog. 2017 has marked 10 years for a few things and this blog is one of them. A decade of holding the tag ” Sitting in His presence is a great disturbance.”
I think writing( and all of us would agree) just happens to find its way back to personal and yet deeper then you would want at times stories. The constant run on sentence of connecting everything back to yourself. Its humorous at times and painful and tormenting to always bring it back to your life but usually it is because you are starting with you and ending with a vision for others. You mostly want to write because you want to make some kind of impact with what you say. And on, and on, this conversation could go.
Its 3:23am and I am in the craziest week ever only in the weird travel stuff happening stuff kind of way, so the better poem and this and the post called The Last Time have all been on this trip and this trip pretty much happened right next to Texas part 1 the end of July and in between was a wedding, and a wedding before that before that. So, don’t be surprised if this gets rearranged into something else. I want to talk to you. I want to tell you this. You ready?
Louder now and the Ruckus. Sitting in His Presence is a great disturbance. The idea that Ruckus is disturbing the peace, and making us uncomfortable is a constant reality. We are never called to expect a safe ride. And everyone has to wrestle with it. The Gospel in all its greatness is the least safest message around. The characters of the bible make the loudest Ruckus from the one that started the noise in the first place.
Why are we so afraid of failing at something we didn’t start? We are only here for a few reasons…
I will tell you more later but my disturbance is changing. I am holding back from being all that I can be. I am not joining the army but I am fighting the wars that are in front of me.
If I can be loud with meaning then I guess that would be some cymbals that aren’t annoying and less lovely to hear.
Paul is saying( Apostle Paul) that love is measured by the source of the prophecy and wisdom, the sacrifice of the person, This is a much longer series of writings to reflect. Because love is the center of everything pointing us to Christ.
I am louder because I want to be. I am in the process of staying loud about the right things. I did get the Homer Simpson award in the fifth grade but that was more me wanting attention and being loud as the class clown.
More to come. Getting older..
Better

Part 1
I have come to this place.
Like I was without volition,
Or any ambition.
I was the one that heard it from you first.
I did all that I could to try and listen.
You were just a beautiful kind of vision.
I said I would start working out for you,
I would start running for you.
Didn’t we meet in chaos to begin with?
So now I am in the volition,
I am on a day off still in ambition.
I am still wondering why I ever tried so hard
But it was because of the way I was raised.
I was raised for you to see,
All the shining parts of me.
I am in it now,
Waiting for this part to stay the stage,
To never wonder the next page,
I am the risk, and the wonder.
I am raised this way,
Raised in thunder and raised in rain…
Day 4
Day 2
I am making it up as I go,
Cause everytime I wake up I just know,
I started to script it out,
I started to sort it out,
All the things I’ve learned for You,
All the things I chose not to do,
All the memories to cling to,
I told night 1 to stay in the run,
To stay in the walk,
To walk with the chalk,
To right it write,
And to step into destiny.
You raised me for free,
But is has costed everything
To survive,
To edge on it,
To swerve with it.
We all fall apart,
And I am still picking up your
Pieces,
I can’t make it up as I go,
Because I go,
I wonder the slow,
I wonder the wall that
Stands tall,
It stays within,
The day to begin.
I am the castle,
I am sinking in it,
Deeper now,
I am up, I am day
2, I am in, I am in the blue,
Clear and ready,
Sinking sweetly,
I know you are out there,
Ready to raise me,
To raise me again.
Older
You can’t be this stuck. Like mud, like slipping, like missing it always. But, that is how you feel?
And maybe its the right path. Maybe it is no longer maybe. It’s is a now. It is a suddenly. You can’t be this naive either. You sat on it for years. For fears. For further evidence look at the way you have spent your time.
Look at the way you have spent your money. Look at all the things you have saved, and the scraps you have thrown away. Look at your life. That is the proof that you need. You are stressed out because You have to keep giving. No one is asking. You are a mess, but a good mess. A good kind of wreck.
This heart is broken. It really feels that way. Things have not changed. I miss a lot of people and I can’t go back.
And I hate it when people share to much online. But I got time. I got a lot of time to stop wasting.
To start speaking. Truth. The Ruckus was never for me, it was for us. It was Fort Collins, Loveland and everything high school. It was everything we did and didn’t do. It was adolescence.
It was where we owe a lot. I am sorry world, I am not really. I have moved on. I don’t know if this is for you, but its all for me. That sound selfish. That sounds like, “who is this guy,” he doesn’t need anymore attention..or does he?” I know I have always pressed publish really fast. I know I have spent all day looking at the past. All the receipts. All the expenses. All the bounced checks. All the fees. All the parking in the wrong place tickets. Forward. Forward is a must.
Balance can never be achieved by trying to be balanced. It can’t. I think 3 years ago I started over. And its still a process. I felt it daily. I spent 5 months sitting still.
I spent a lot of time watching the white walls. And washing the night fall. Time after time. By Disneyland, of all places. Fireworks nightly. The best part. Selling cigarettes for quarters. Quarters for calls. And a long list of people to talk to.
No one wants to know everything about you. Maybe your spouse is that person and that seems like that sounds healthy. No one really needs to know everything about you.
However, why do we feel like no one understands us? I can talk a lot about stories. Some that have made this blog. More that are in video form, and even more that just live in this movie of a mind I have.
No one really needs to know it all. People that love you just want you to be around. They want you to last a really long time. I got to see my little nephews get big and grow up. Noah Kai and Jedidiah Sky. They are moving forward, too. You know?
I don’t have good grammar. I have worked more on pursuing good stories. Now, its a new season. Its fall. It is closer to the holidays. It is when everything gets darker, and colder. We are expected to be at our brightest.
How can you be, if no one knows you? I got out of that place. I was there for five months. It wasn’t a prison. It was freedom. It was pain facing. It was life changing.
It was better than riding the circuit. See, now that I am out its been harder to have boundaries. I don’t mean relational boundaries. Most of us have never figured that out.
You like someone and you share your heart, and your thoughts and then it doesn’t or it does work out. Is having boundaries related to how little you say or don’t say? And don’t people get mad at you when you hold and hide and don’t confide in them?
No one has to know everything. The Ruckus is going. It is continuance. It is a noise that will carry. Can’t we stare at love a little more? Can’t you stop chasing the wrong kind of noise? Love has to be the loudest noise you chase.
It will make you. Break you. Ruin you. It will start your day. It will flee those long nights.
Older. That’s you now. That is where you are at. Time just is what it is, but it can’t be controlled. It can’t go back on you, and you can’t go back on it. A new it. A new life. A new hole in the sky is here tonight, today, tomorrow. The Ruckus. That is any noise you can make. That is any commotion you can create. The Ruckus without love is, well, just getting older. Older without love is just age. And everyone dies, eventually.. Am I an age? Just 30. Almost 31. You got a lot left in you. I know you do.
You got a lot of time to make things right. To live right. To be anything more than just a number, an age. Be older. Be forward. Be the Ruckus. Cause I had five months, and that’s all you need sometimes.
Sermon At My Church
I got to preach last month at our Sunday night service. Got to speak on Righteousness. It has been such a blessing being at New Life in Pomona. I love this place! Thank you Cody, Craig and Billy.
How to Help your Kids with Depression
My mom has helped me so much over the years be more than just a default I need your help parent but has been my rock and my friend. Just like the into the light video this is the start of a series of videos tackling depression. My mom talks about what a parent can do. Filmed where it all went down in Laguna Niguel at Salt Creek beach.
Steady
Just for fun here’s some meaning in this:
The song rollercoaster by the Bleachers..’come a little closer!’ Fruity Camper award at summer camp when I was 9 or ten years old so about 20 years ago. The fruit part was not a gay reference it was that I had a lot of Joy! It is sad now that certain upbeat emotions in a man get translated as the femininity that comes with being gay, instead of the idea that a man can be tender and cry and have a “feminine” side that is healthy in being a man. The idea of both genders misunderstanding these things has created division among the sexes. The Pizza parlor reference is about winter 2012 taking a Psychology class at Longview College and hanging out after class.
You’re a roller
You’re on the coast,
I am pushing the peddles
I am pushing the whittles of
Child with five skittles,
Fruity me,
Fruity camper,
Oh how gay,
Oh now its Paraguay,
I can’t grow without you,
I don’t want to stretch without
You next to me–come a little closer,
Is love a choice without a risk,
Without a sacrifice–
I don’t say no anymore–
This head was made for thinking
But this life made for living–
You used to go to church,
Now you are still on the search
Pizza parlor in the winter, 36 hours
Later was the coldness of December–
Closer is a myth when their lives on regret-
To make a dent, to pay the rent, to keep the
Rubber on the road with love about to explode–
Your love is the heat, I am cold, I am up, I am
Down,
Steady aim, steady heart!