The American Pyramid

So I was making my bed earlier (something I try to make a habit of), when I had a sort of....vision thing.  Now, I am not going to tell you the vision itself, just part of it.  I was being interviewed for something, and as I was leaving the reporter asked me "What would you like to tell America?"  I thought for a moment and then slowly turned around and began to tell the reporter what I am about to tell you.
Think about the "Ancient" Pyramids.  Why are they ancient?  Because their time is over; they are of the past.  Their time ended when they were finished being built.  Now, this may be different than what some people believe, but think of it in terms of people.  A person "dies" when they are finished aging, and growing spiritually, and the life leaves their body.  Pyramids are the same way.  They grow and grow, getting taller and taller, then, they die.  They stop growing.  Their life starts big, at the base, and gets thinner until it disappears, the tip.  Every pyramid has a beginning, and all pyramids have an end. So...just how is America a pyramid?
America had a strong foundation.  That foundation was on God-given rights, like freedom and equality. Over the years, America has strayed farther and farther from those rights and, more importantly,  from God.  We began with freedom of religion, of speech, of petition, and of press.  Currently, I am exercising freedom of speech.  That freedom is one of the few that is still used and accepted.  The least accepted nowadays is freedom of religion.
Thanks to the president of America, a man who is supposed to be the voice of the people, the health care system (which is supposed to help the people) is forcing people to go against their religion.  I won't go into details, but I will say that they are being forced to endorse sin.  And that clearly goes against every shred of religious freedom America was founded on.  They said that they didn't want to have a state religion system like England did; what they didn't tell us, however, was that they would have a state anti-religion system.  
Every country is founded on something.  Every country falls; generally they fall when they stray from their original foundation.  America is straying more and more from the freedoms it was founded on.  I ask you this, what freedom IS there in America?  Freedom of speech and freedom of press, are the only things that are really still free.  Freedom of petition is there, but it is useless; rarely does anything come from it, so what is the point?  And the only freedom of religion is behind closed doors...tell me how that is freedom.  Soon, we will lose our freedom of press and speech.  Then what?
When we have no freedoms, when we no longer go by what our country was founded on, we will fade away.  We already are fading.  We are falling apart at the seams.  People from every single state have filed for secession, over 700,000 people nation-wide.  What does that tell you?  The people are not happy with what is happening.  And I have a question for you, why should they be happy?  
Let's me address the past election.  Supposedly half of America voted for President Obama, right?  Wrong.  About one quarter did.  Sure, half of the people that voted voted for him.  Only around half of the nation voted, though.  The other half of the nation?  They just sat back.  They gave up.  They didn't even bother to try.  My guess, is that they thought there was no point in trying.  Half the nation...
If half the nation has given up or thinks they have no say, then how long until all of America thinks that?  How long until America reaches its "apex?"  This apex isn't joyous.  It isn't the pride of the nation.  This apex is the tip of the pyramid.  It is the end of the life of the nation.  It is the nation’s death.
I have one last question for you: how long do you think it will take before our nation’s glory begins to be history instead of actuality?

All Countries Are Formed Of Recycled Zombies

     So....I just watched the Vice Presidential Debate.  I know what you're thinking "Why is a 15 year old interested in Politics?"  Don't think to highly of me, it was extra credit in Government....that I decided to pursue...because I kinda...sorta...maybe..might have failed the first test....but everyone makes mistakes! Right?  So anyway, I ended up watching the Debate with my brother Alex, Nana, and dad.  Alex and I were the main ones who needed to watch because we are both taking government ^_^ me on a high school level, he on a college level.  So anyway.  There we were, in the living room, eyes transfixed in horror on the TV screen O.O
     What stood out to me the most, was probably how completely rude Joe Biden was.  Now...I am not going to go into politics on my blog...how do I plan to write about a presidential debate without going into politics? Well....I do not know.  We'll just have to wait this out and see.  So yes, I can say he was rude without going into politics.  As we ALL (hopefully...) learned as small children, it is disrespectful to interrupt.  Darling Biden, if you are going to call Ryan your friend do please let him finish his thought process before going into yours.  They give you papers to take notes for a reason.
     Dear democrats, don't worry, I'm going to slam Ryan too!  He had this amazing way of just staring at Biden, and then glancing at America *coughthecameracough* and visually screaming "This man is a moron!" (note: moron is NOT to be confused with Mormon....although I misheard it as that once >.> it was humiliating).  And, again, as we all learned in boy scouts, girl scouts, 4-H, or the like, it is not nice to call people names (even if it's just with a look?  Yes!  Even if it is just with a look.)  Sweet Ryan, if you want Bidden to let you finish your sentences on your own without him talking over you, you shouldn't make fun of him....I don't care how funny Mia's expressions were in Princess Diaries when she was poking fun at her grandmother behind her fan, it's still not nice.
     As to any Moderates/Libertarians that may be reading this, I bet you thought you were gonna get it easy on this article.  Right?  Wrong!  All politicians are the same, and they are all mean!  That's right....politicians are bullies.  As Teresa Lisbon from The Mentalist once said "Don't mess with super rich people, Jane! They're like children with machine guns!"  The same goes for politicians....only THEY have the power of the press.  Now what might that mean?  If they have machine guns...and the power of the press....hm...oh I know!  It means that they can implant viruses in your TVs, phones, tablets (that have Internet), iPads, radios, billboards, and your dreams (yes, it's true!) with their bits of advertisement that seep into your brain and then....when you least expect it....BOOM! The shards go all the way through your brain and infect every fiber of your being. And then....you become...a politician's zombie O.o and you will follow that politician around and eat the brains of anyone who opposes him.  All politicians do this...and it's just mean.  They go out and turn poor -insert country's name here- citizens into zombies!  And then what do they do?  They go out of office!  The whole process happens again....and again...and again without end.
     ~*~The moral of that tangent?  All countries are formed of recycled, political zombies. ~*~

     Now I will actually take this seriously.  Which is hard to do....as the candidates of the debate didn't take it seriously.  From what I could tell, they were fighting...but they weren't portraying their sides very well.  What it all sounded like to me was "We want this!  But you are in our way because you won't look at that!" and then the other would counter saying "We want that!  But you are in our way because you won't look at this!"  Over all...it was very jumbled up and not at all as it should've been.  I love debates, but that was hardly a debate.  I do not remember every question....but I will talk about a few.
     First question was about the nations economy.  So, naturally, they "debated" the unemployment issue.  They stated their so called "facts" with percentages.  But I saw a problem with all of their facts and percentages...none of them lined up with each other.  Biden was convinced things had gotten better and that the percentage of unemployment had gone DOWN while Ryan gave percentages that said it had gone UP.  So I suppose the real question they should have been asked was "who provided you with you erroneous percentages?"
     Another question asked was about the war in Libya.  Now....I am not very good with names.  But they talked about a bombing that happened recently (this is my article and my topic is not the bombing so I won't go into that) and about how there is a terrorist in the Libyan area that is gathering supplies to make a nuclear weapon.  Biden didn't really give any information on the matter except saying that no one would let him build a bomb.  Likewise, Ryan didn't give much information except in saying that he had a certain percentage more supplies than he did when Obama interred the presidency.  So basically all the listeners could get from that, unless they had done previous research on the matter, was that he had all the supplies he needed, but nobody would let him use the supplies for a bomb.  Honestly, I do not see how anyone could stop him, and I do not see how anyone can calculate how many supplies a terrorist has.
     They also talked a lot about Obama-care and Medicare.  Now....the problem with this one....is that Ryan failed to point out how it went against his beliefs, and Biden failed to realize that it went against his.  Ryan did not point out that it forces Catholic hospitals to provide insurance that covers abortion.  He states that that was against his beliefs, unless under certain circumstances.  Then there is Biden, who at the end of the debate said that he did not believe that he should force his Church's beliefs on abortion onto other people.  But what does Obama-care do, pray tell?  It forces Catholic hospitals to provide insurance that covers abortion (forgive me if I sound like a broken record).  Now....he doesn't support the Church in "forcing" it's beliefs on other people, but he does support the government forcing it's beliefs on an entire religion?  Something about that sounds a little bit askew if you ask me.
     I'm sure that I missed a lot of what was going on.  Perhaps I missed so much because the candidates were talking over each other and the reporter?  I think that is what happened.  Another possibility to my lack of catching every question is that they did not answer every question but would spin it back on the previous question if they didn't believe their point to be made.  They would also go off on random tangents that didn't seem related at all...
     I do not think that America's Founding Fathers would be happy with what has become of America's government.  They formed this country for freedom...but there is no freedom in this country.  They believe there is "illegal" immigration nowadays form Mexico and Canada....look, people, we ALL came into America as illegal immigrants!  Can you just open your eyes and see that?  Now here is something both candidates support...which is completely and totally against their Catholic belief: abortion.
     I started to go into that....but realized that after being three paragraphs into that issue...I still wasn't done talking -.- so I suppose that will have to wait for another time.  My main point was just that the candidates know nothing of what they are for...nothing.

"nah"

Okay, so I was talking with a good friend earlier tonight. A very good friend...do you know how I know he is a good friend? He doesn't say I am right, he makes me prove it. It's an amazing educational method. There're other reasons why he is a good friend too of course...but that is beside the point, right now at least. BUT, you know who you are, and I thank you for making me come out of my moving slump to think about this! I owe you one!
Now, what I mean by we were talking, is that we were debating. It's never "just a talk" with this friend, not even a stimulating talk. We hop from debate, to therapy, and then quickly back to debate because therapy get's too boring and it let's brain cells go to waste just sitting there. And...I do not quite know how, but I dove full force into a debate about why man fell and sent him this super long message (well...long for a G+ chatbox anyway...) that I will now elaborate on for you.

Picture yourself in a "garden", where NOTHING is wrong. Would you be able to appreciate the beauty of the rose, of the iris, of the cherry blossom, without ever having seen the ugly of murder, of pain, of death?  Smell the grace and love and utter joy that fill the air, practically lifting you off of your feat with their aromas; could you comprehend this majesty if you had never had the experience of choking, having your lungs clogged shut with smoke, or of suffocating from the heat of the day?  No. I do not believe that you, I, or any human being could.
"you don't know what you've got till it's gone" (note: lyric credit goes to the guy who wrote that song about paradise and a parking lot...or something like that). This is so very true. I did not know how beautiful my relationship with my oldest brother was until it was torn apart by distance. I didn't understand the majesty of the mountains until I saw the grandeur of the desert. I didn't understand the life and bustle of the city, until I observed the death and peace of a cemetery. One simply can NOT understand something until they can comprehend it's opposite! Man fell so he could know the opposite of perfection!
When you have a goodnight's sleep, you wake in the morning feeling well and rested. How do you know that you feel this "well" and "rested"? Because you have before experienced feeing ill and exhausted! When in the arms of someone you care about, you feel their love wash over you. How do you know how special that brief moment is? Because you have felt the cold hard gaze of someone you have been rejected by! When you come home hungry form a long days work, and you are filled with a wondrous meal that seems to satisfy your every need, how do you know you are satisfied? How? Because you came unsatisfied!
Now I want you to picture a life with no pain that stabs you when you least expect it. Picture a life where you never see your parents/children fighting. Picture a life where you and your siblings never argue. Picture a life where you are never too cold or too hot, never too hungry or too thirsty. Picture a life where no one is ever sick, no one is ever dying, no one is ever fighting. Picture a life, that has never once known sorrow.
PICTURE IT!
Now, hold that image! And now, tell me that at each of those "never"s and "ever"s you didn't think of a memory. Tell me true!
You wouldn't understand if you hadn't felt the pain!
Tell me I am wrong.

I do not think I will ever be able to forget his response. All the effort I put into that, all the thought, all the emotion, all the belief, and his answer came in one, small, unexpected word. I had dived into that debate prepared for SOME sort of round about argument wherein at the end we would finally decide we actually agreed in some confusing way or another. But no...through the text I saw the word, read it over and over again, and heard it in my head: "nah".
That was it...no debate...and then I realized...how messed up we are as humans. Of course, I already knew this. Honestly? We are actually insanely stupid, irrational, illogical, blind, and ignorant. That my dear friends, is humanity as a whole. Not each and everyone, but the vast majority. Do we see what is happening? No; we simply see whatever it is we want to see.
I wanted that to be a debate. I knew I could win, no matter what he threw at me...not that he really would...as we are on the same side of the debate...but STILL! No matter what anyone threw at me, so long as they would listen to what I had to say, I could win. I love debates, especially ones where you have to imagine yourself in the scenario.
So I dove in, headlong. Then, when I got to the water, I realized that he was there to catch me. We weren't in any sort of disagreement at all, not even for the heck of it. We were in complete agreement, just with different ways of saying what we had to say.

Sometimes we will dive in and the water will be to shallow, as such we will get badly injured; but there will be times when we dive in, and the water is just right, and we can swim to shore and be victorious. There will be times, when we dive in and almost drown, and have to call upon a friend to drag us out of the mess we are in; but there will be times when we see people sail away on a rescue boat, knowing we won.
What makes me who I am, and what makes my fellow Christians who they are, is that we will KEEP diving in, no mater what kind of terrible land we might experience. Why? Because we have seen the imperfections in our own gardens, and we know that there is one without blemishes. One who's beauty, love, and joy is so great that you can taste the very noise that flows forth from the tender colors of the lilies. In knowing this, could we possibly give up because we are in danger of getting a few scars along the way? In my friend's words (*coughwordcough*) "nah".

Just Breathe

     There are somethings people learn to count on. The sun will always rise in the morning and set again in the evening (unless your in the arctic, but lets not go there). We learn to expect that someone loves us, and someone probably doesn't. A biker learns to suspect that everyone is out to get them. In Texas, people learn  to dance in the rain when it comes (or at least they should!). But sometimes things change.

     Man had become accustomed to living on the earths surface. Living on the ground. Then the Right Brothers invented the plane. A new world was opened up to us. We had the sky to roam. Then we found ourselves on the moon! We were so far from just being on the ground. We found it hard to imagine never leaving the earth. But we did.

     Things like this happen everyday. Imagine when someone first learns they are going to be a parent. Oh imagine the knowledge of a death in your family. Imagine the terror in your heart when you yourself have something wrong. When you can't eat without throwing it up again. When you can't stand without falling. Or when you can't speak without choking. Imagine not being able to bring in air.

     Breathing, another of those things we take for granted. We do it everyday without thinking. It would be like suddenly not being able to feel. Or like not remembering anything from your entire life. Breathing is life, it is us. It just *is*. But in all of our lives, at some point, we either can't breathe or it takes our whole being just to suck in a single breath. It is a terrifying moment when one can't get air to power them to think of how to fix the problem at hand.

     Unless it is our dying hour, we find something to pull us through. We normally can look at something ahead of us and say 'no, i will breathe. And I will get there.' Something keeps us all going. We sometimes don't even know it. But something is there pulling us forward. For some people it could be over half a lifetime before they find a time like this where they can't find the air they need. Other's experience this almost daily.

     We must never forget the little things. We must be grateful for everything we have and can do. If the sun comes up in the morning, and if you wake to fresh air, you should be happy. You can always find something to make you happy, something to keep you moving.

Once Upon a Time

     Y'know...the full force of highschool life is finally hitting me. I spend every spare minute catching up on homework that was due last week, when I'm not doing that I am rebelling against my human need to sleep by staying up late just so that I can then read the books that *I* want to read.
     So yes, I am always doing school...well, almost always. When I am not doing school I am normally doing some sort of what not with my Catholic homeschool group or my Catholic youth group. Yep, religion is my north, and school is my south. I rarely do much more than math related studies on friday due to the fact that I find myself going to a social, service, or religious retreat with F.I.S.C.H.E. (afore mentioned homeschool group). Every now and then I will get thrown off by a all out retreat, you know, the overnight kind?
     DCYC happened the weekend before this past. On friday I piled into an RV with...9? other people...yeah, I think it was 9. Anyway, whatever the number, we all hopped into the RV and were off (thanks to Mr. and Mrs. H for putting up with 8 teenage girls!). The drive was about an hour and a half of bouncing amusement. I might be guilty of falling off the bed in the bad at one point, while E would've done the same had I not caught her. We did, however, all arrive in one piece (each, of course).
     Once at DCYC I set out on a mission to see a couple of my friends who I had not seen in 6 months. I was most grateful to find one of them within the first half hour of our arrival. This was the beginning to a delightful weekend. Around an hour after arriving we got rushed into a big concert-y room that had deafening music playing...the music mightn't have been too loud if there hadn't been 2000+ teenagers singing at the top of their voices.
     The weekend seemed shorter than some of the retreats I had been to (maybe because it was a convention?). Yet, somehow, Saturday felt like the longest day I have ever experienced. The F.I.S.C.H.E.-y peoples stayed together for the first talk we went to (Saints Among Us), but we broke up after lunch for the second talk. For the second talk I found myself sitting in the dining hall with a whole bunch of girls waiting to hear a talk entitled Secrets of a Godly Woman.
     Yeah, it was about chastity. As pretty much all 'girls only' talks are. But the talk was nice, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I wont go into detail, because I doubt you want to hear about a talk second hand. But it was cool.
      After the second talk we all went back into the big concert-y like room and there was more loud music. After the music we got another more different talk, and then we had adoration. Adoration was very nice, and it was rather apparent that it moved quite a few of the people there. I enjoyed the chance for adoration, and after that I got in line with some friends for confession.
      Oh yes, I waited in line for about an hour. I was an hour and a half away from my home parish. There were about eight of nine priests there hearing confessions...and I still got Fr. Jonathan, my parish priest. Go figure.
      The next morning we went to Mass, got lunch, and then headed home. The ride home was fun, but we were all rather tired, and I'm pretty sure three of the girls slept on the way home.

     Yes, I do have a reason for telling you this story. You see, I never really thought I would go on retreats. It hit me earlier that I have gone on so many retreats since I moved here to Texas, and I had only ever gone to one back in North Carolina. I never really thought about being a teenager. I never thought about highschool. I also never thought about moving from my little town of Saluda.
     Yet here I am. I realize that it all happened so fast, I went to bed one day a child, and I woke up here. I'm not complaining. I like my life. I have a loving family around me...for the most part. I have wonderful friends. I have my baby (don't freak out, she's a cat).
     Some days I wish I could go back to the time when I was a child...but then I think, how far back would I go? Would I go to when I was younger than eight? Before the house burned down and my grandfathers died? No...then I would have to see it happen again. Would I go to right after that happened? To when we lived in the rent house? No, I couldn't do that either. I don't want to live in the time where we were still grieving the loss of Grandaddy and Papa Joe. I realize that I can't go back.
     And even if I could change the past, I ask myself, would I? And I can honestly say no. I could never change the deaths I have seen, sooner or later they would die again. I would never change the fact that our house burned down, if I did, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't know the wonderful people I know now.
     But sometimes I do wish I still had the innocent naiveness that one can see when they look in the eyes of a child. That, I do miss. And to think...I am halfway done with my freshman year of highschool. Wow. That went by very fast. I will wake up tomorrow, and it will be next semester, and I will be lonely without all of my senior friends. And I will go to sleep wondering "what if?", only to wake up the next day and it by my first day of school as a junior. This time all of my friends that are now juniors will have graduated and gone on. I will go to sleep and wake up yet again, and I will be a senior...all of my friends that are but sophomores right now, they will be gone. And then do you know what? I will go to sleep, and I will wake up once more....but this time, this time I will be the one leaving my friends behind. There will be people that (hopefully...) will miss me as much as I will miss my senior friends when I wake up and they are gone.
     This is my reality, this is how fast time flies. To imagine the days whenever I would play in the woods with my friends and we would think that we would be together forever. Now they are hundreds of miles away, back in little old Saluda. Soon, that is how my highschool friends will be.
     But still, I would not change that either. For if I change anything, I would not know the people I know now, and I would never know the people I have yet to meet. Everything happens for a reason. And I thank God for all the bad things that have happened, for they brought me so much good in the end.