There came a point very recently where I bowed my head and I said, "G-d, thank you for this delicious meal You have provided for me. Please let it nourish my body and grant me peace..." Then, as I sank my teeth into the double bacon chicken sandwich on garlic bread with a side of seasoned fries, I felt a little silly. I was reminded of being a teenager in the Christian church and praying for opportunities to fool around with whoever my girlfriend was at the time.

You, reader, may not have this problem of misplaced gratitude but I do and lately it has been glaring at me. I wouldn't bow my head and thank G-d for the opportunity to put a blade into my skin, to find good pornographic images, or any number of other sinful activities so why is it so easy to give G-d credit for this foolish meal selection. Not only had I just purchased a meal that was feeding sickness and helping me to get out of shape, I had spent His money poorly.

I wonder how many times I feign an attitude of humble gratitude, thanking G-d for something He doesn't want me to have. How many times do I act according to my understanding, make my own decisions, find my own solutions and then thank G-d? This is a dangerous activity because when my decisions lead to detruction in my life, when the consequence of sickness finds me, and my solutions lead to more problems... Perhaps I will blame the same G-d to whom I credited my own poor choices.

It is imperative, maybe not to our survival, but certainly to our success that we constantly question our own motives. Growing up in the Church, it is second nature to thank G-d for the greasy double bacon cheeseburger before me but there comes a point where I have to ask if He is truly providing this for me, or if I am stepping out of His will and taking it. We did this once before with a particular tree and as I recall it lead to separation from G-d.

Something like a double cheeseburger may seem like a silly thing to bring G-d into but if I might be so bold... It is a silly thing to think G-d should be absent from anything.

in love and admiration,

adem

Alright, so I haven't posted a lot lately. There are a couple of reasons for this and I'll probably be too vague or too descriptive, as I often find is the case with the things I write. Nonetheless, I have a full time job now and have been working and then going out and about. The name of this post should probably have been, "Adem Learns To Drink." On top of that, I haven't felt much like writing lately. It's a lonely point in my life where I am finally surrounded with people and yet somehow still feel so misunderstood and unbalanced.

So we will start with the job. It is amazing, full time, and I love it. I basically hang out in the projects and get paid. However, it also means getting up early in the morning and remaining clean-shaved, which some of you know is not something I like to do. I love my beard. And I miss it, dearly. I also miss Charlie, my hat, whom I recently tipped a waitor with at an iHop somewhere between Chatanooga and Atlanta. What a friendly fellow, he was.

I have also had a few very, uh, southern people in Dale Earnhardt shirts tell me to get my yankeee @55 (is that how the kids are spelling ass now so they don't get in trouble?) back to New York. So, it's been an interesting couple of weeks since my last post.

Something cool that happened! I have mentioned Tyler Lyle before, most specifically at www.4thirtyseven.com/familyofstrangers where I credit him with helping to inspire some of the writings from that EP... Well, anyways, he recently played a couple of shows here in Knoxville and I went and met him and heard him play. I cried hysterically for much of his set. A small portion was the beauty of his songs but I think more predominantly, the reason is that I have been listening to him since probably November-ish and his music has been a guiding light through some really stressful and frustrating times. When he played "Secret," I was driving to the Lost Horizon again to perform with The Brilliant Light, and when he played "Closer To Me," I was sitting in the car with Kirsten by the river meditating on the words both of us were thinking as they poured from my speakers. It was a very emotional experience.

However, right now, I am sitting in my bed in Strawberry Plains, procastinating the preparations for Easter service tomorrow and thinking about the Egg Hunt I have very loosely planned in the Old City tonight. If I'm completely honest with everyone, I am struggling in a lot of areas right now and I am putting things before G-d and allowing my will, my focus, my concentration, and my worries to overpower His path for my life. It has been easy for me lately, because of the loneliness I have felt, to justify any number of self mutilating actions.

Sometimes the best example I can be for people is a show of the things you shouldn't do. I pray in the name of YeShua that people would have the clarity and wisdom to know the difference. We carry on in our weakness knowing that it is in those that the glory of G-d can be known. May we continuously be regenerating closer to His heart. I want to write His commands on the tablet of my heart.

Humbly yours,
Adem

I moved to Knoxville roughly a month ago and it has been an enormous struggle for me. One thing that has become evident is how much I depend and rely on the people that have been close to me. I have counted on them to supply me with answers to serious faith questions, to supply me with answers to financial questions, to supply me with comfort when I'm sad, companionship when I am alone, and generally any and every thing one should expect at all. G-d has been teaching me, however, in the absence of aforementioned people that He is most reliable, most comforting, most knowledgeable, most trustworthy, most relational, and generally everything I should expect.

In this blog, I will address briefly the topic of one facebook account and the deleting of it. To be as vague as possible, I am wrestling with absolute truth and the fundamentals of my faith in Him. I do not doubt His existence. I do not doubt His son. I am arguing, however, with other areas and working my way through a great deal of frustrating materials. I am studying currently evangelism and trying to become more and more familiar with Halakha, that is "the way" or the set of rules spoken by G-d in the old testament with which to prolong life and health (physical and spiritual). While I am wrestling with my identity in Yeshua, I do not wish in any way to be a stumbling block to anyone or more importantly, to appear as a tare shaking in the wind. I will undoubtedly be a different person a week from now than I am now. I do not know when my page will be reposted, but one day you will see that I am posting statuses again. That will be the day.

For now, the best way to keep up with me is probably to read this blog. Or to email me at Adembingham@gmail.com or to aim me at GrizzlyAdem or also to call me at (315) 374 3090.

So now for the boring sorts of updates. I do not have a job, currently, that is generating income. Thus, I am very socially poor (& economically) and haven't gotten out to do too many things. However, I am completing classes now to begin a DSP job hopefully by the end of next week. DSP is similar to the health attendant work that I was performing in New York. 

I will be speaking for the first time in basically my life at the end of the month, March 31st at Lost Sheep's Under The Bridge ministry. This is a sort of ragamuffin get-together that features people of a wide array of social classes. People come from all over the city to serve Knoxville's large homeless community through food, clothing, and anything else we can do. On the 31st, I will be playing some songs in an effort to uplift their spirits and then aiming to give a message of hope to people who feel like all of the opportunities have been given to someone else.

Also, I will be performing my first show in North Carolina in some 3 years. My good friend Amanda is helping to book an event for Relay For Life at UNC in Charlotte and has invited me to come out and play some songs and hopefully we'll put together a potluck. or 2. It is a very exciting thing to be going back for a visit to my hometown. Probably a lot of people don't know that I was born and raised in Charlotte. Well, now you do.

What else should I talk about here? Being a worship pastor is an exciting thing. I visited the Shomair Yisrael Messianic Congregation today and got to experience a beautiful worship service. I can see G-d's movement through out the atmosphere and it gives me hope. I can almost see Him stirring in the grass and I feel Him against my skin. He is brooding over the expanse, hovering like a storm cloud and I am anxious to feel His healing rain. I am becoming increasingly interested in the prevention of replacement theology and grow excited daily about where He is leading me.

I miss my family and my beautiful city but I am grateful for the sun and the family I meet every day. The people I live with, Jeff & Tommi, they have been such a blessing in my life. They will probably never know the incredible love they have demonstrated to me and I pray for their peace and that they be continuously blessed. Things are changing, growing- inside of me. It is a scary time, an exciting time; it is the sort of season when dead skin falls away to make room for new life. It is a season of renewal, of death and rebirth. I thank you for your patience as we continue this journey together. May your lives be blessed and your weeks be kind!

Humbly yours,
Adem

As many of you know, we have had a tough go of this Tennessee thing, Leonard and I. However, there are a few fine points that I will address and also some pretty exciting stories. First of all, I am incredibly nervous about everything and have been since the moment I decided to move here. Despite G-d's consistent provision,  I wrestle constantly with who He is and who I am and what we're doing here in this state where nobody knows my name.

I have been bothered a lot by numerous people encouraging me to move to different cities and different states. I have been asked over and over again when I will be returning "home" and especialy before I left, I sort of had the impression that Syracuse was, in fact, my home and that I would be returning. However, the heart of this particular blog is to say that I have found a home in Knoxville and while I am not quite where I hope to be or doing the things I hope to be doing, I am serving a beautiful G-d who has taught me that home is wherever I sleep tonight.

Lately, I am learning to trust no man, but rather the G-d who wears them when they empty themselves of nepotism. I spent some time with a new friend of mine last night named Charles discussing his homelessness and my homelessness and the frustrations of said plight. I would not compare my struggle for even a second with his, but his restless spirit and the feeling that the opportunities have been handed to everyone else... now, THAT... I feel.

Today, I was walking around the old city and I ran into a young man named Payden and remembered what it was like to find art, much like a child, jumping rope innocently in a brick alleyway. We shared songs and brief renditions of our stories and talked about getting beers at a pub in the old city come monday. It was a beautiful moment where integrity met six strings and introduced them to our twenty fingers. I believe that sometimes you have to physically reach out and touch life to remember why you're here and why you're still breathing the same oxygen that Adam turned to carbon monoxide before the tree of knowledge spat it back into the mouth of Cain.
 
I also passed a young man today with a flat tire but did not stop. In fact as I drove by physically fighting to go back or to keep on my way, I actually began to feel as though I had fulfilled my good samaritan duties the other night when I did a good deed that for this very purpose I will not elaborate on. This was a reminder of what it is like to find art strung out on heroine and in the corner of an abandoned house waiting for her next fix, dodging glances from the righteous passerby's leaving tracts to save her pitiful soul. Which reminds me... Homeless people don't like tracts because they can't eat them so unless you've taped it to some heavenly manna or a bottle of water, you can just use that for toilet paper or however else the Lord leads you.

It's funny to me how we can have such enormous hearts and use so little of them. I love people so endlessly. In every stranger that I meet, I try and establish them as family and yet still I can justify not stopping to help someone out because why? Because I helped someone out the other day? It's been aching inside of me how easily I can allow my egotism to take control of the wheel and to push Joshua from the position I gave Him.

It is easy to think of Christianity as a reckless drive to be more righteous and it is easy to think of Christianity as a get-out-of-sin free card but lately, I am trying harder and harder to give my decision to seek after His kingdom the identity it deserves. In that, I am desperately fighting to use Grace as a stepping stone into the righteous man He has created me to be. I am fighting to shift my perception from being defined by the things I am against or the things that I am not and to become identified by the love that I have and give.

I continue to be blessed by the kindness of my brothers and sisters. It is a beautiful day to be a human. Thank you, thank you...
 
Love is the solution and everything else is the problem.

Humbly yours,
Adem

G-d has been with me. We've been talking lightly. He listens to me complain to my friends and waits patiently while I run around searching recklessly for a shoulder to cry on. I have been a lot of things but one thing I have never been is perfect and as I have existed in the bible belt these past couple of weeks, I've thought about it constantly. I don't understand. It as if I know a completely different G-d than many people here do.

I have been constantly wrestling with being judgemental as I look at a movement of church that disgusts me. I've said it before and I will say it now. I have absolutely no desire in my life to become more christian. My desire is to do the will of my Father who sent me. I have been asking Him why a lot lately. Why did You bring me here? Why did you put me in this place? Why am I sleeping in this bed? Why am I in this state?

I want to know why nobody will answer the phone for me. I want to know why I am so isolated, so alone. So many of my relationships are fading in my absence and I feel the strain. I feel this grief over relationships that will never be the same again ever and I ask Him. I say, "Why? Why are you doing things this way?" I want to know why He puts particular types of people in my life, especially ones that are so opposite of who I am.

Most of all, it comes down to loneliness. I want to know why I am so alone. And tonight, as I came ino the house at 11:30 with a broken out windshield courtesy of downtown bible belt, I thought of the lyric from Samuel's Son. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I will quote myself. It says, "Is it possible that loneliness is just a tool, a symptom of our separation from You?" And I finally stopped thinking of loneliness as a weakness, a cause of depression and I began to think of loneliness as a tool. I began to think of loneliness as being a symptom of our thirst for an intimate relationship with Joshua.

Tonight I learned to cry... out. He said, "Call to me and I will show you things that you have not seen." And I think it's easier for us to cry than it is to cry out. Dating back to the exodus of the israelites, there is a call and response; a sort of song and dance where people cry out to G-d and He responds with action.

I didn't quit everything I was doing and leave New York with no money, no source of income, and no relationships so that I could come here and be stagnant. I am here and I am crying out to the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, of ISRAEL... I want movement. Things are well. I am learning that following Joshua means complete reliance on Him. Complete trusting in Him. Love is the solution. Everything else is the problem.

Humbly yours,
adem

The first thing I hate about blogs is the title. For some reason someone decided that the date was not an adequate expression of the contents within and that they should be summarized with a witty phrase. Well, some of us cannot come up with witty phrases and for that purpose, many of these titles will be the date or something completely random. I am beginning this blog because I am away from everyone that I usually come into contact with on a daily basis.

When I lived in New York, there were people that I was used to bumping into at the grocery store or seeing at a pub and we might refresh each other on how our lives have twisted and turned since the last time we'd seen each other. But seeing as I now live in Tennessee, that sort of thing doesn't happen. That being said, this blog will be me letting people in New York, specifically, know the comings and goings of my life in the south. Although, it should be noted, this blog is not limited to New York readers exclusively. That would be stupid.

To lock down a steady theme for this blog seemed like too difficult a task, seeing as it intends to be full of any information that might remotely pertain to my life which is, to say the least, a vast stream of information. I have elected to call this blog "Trying On Skin..." because ultimately, that is what we are doing as we are growing up and into ourselves. People keep saying things to me like, "You don't sound like yourself" and "You don't sound like yourself." Why, even the other day someone said to me, "You don't sound like yourself" and I suppose this is just me trying on skin and trying to decide who I am in the flesh, and who I am in Christ and where these two identities ultimately collide.

So some future "title's" might consist of things like "Adem Makes A Friend" or "Adem Learns To Dance" or "Adem Urinates In A Subway Parking Lot." Get excited, friends. Side note... Driving here was some 13.5 hours excluding the hour and a half I spent with my friend Matt in Lebanon, PA (we watched the new modern family- the valentines day episode is amazing) and I was drinking a lot of water (a trait i've recently developed. trait? habit? whatever.) Nonetheless, there came a point where I had to sort of shimmy my way into an empty water bottle and relieve myself of fluids.

Wait, it gets better.

So, the people at Subway in West Virginia were such turkey's (ironically enough, i had a turkey sub and it was amazing) that when I got back out to my car, I emptied the bottle in the parking lot. So 3 Cheers for being nice to your customer ordering the turkey sub because he just might be crazy enough to empty his pee bottle where you parked your chevy.

We'll call this the end of the first blog. Worship service went well this past week... I didn't pee on anything.

Humbly yours,
adem