Adem Finds A Home...

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