This picture is of a legal wall behind Workmen's hip hop clothing and graffitti supply store on Melrose in Hollywood. That's for you, bro.

This picture is from the childrens' ministry craft night a couple weeks back. Juvenal, Adriana, me, Alejandra, Reza, Claudia and Norel. All of them were in the summer program except Claudia.

I've been getting off work at 3. i like having a short work day. It will probably be like this until October, when i start tutoring after school. Interestingly, the job of tutor at SPHS pays significantly more than my current job of Special Needs Aid.

I've been thinking a lot lately, more soberly about my life.
it seems like things constantly hang in a delicate balance between chaos and evil on one side, and peace and salvation on the other. More and more, it is clear how lost all people are. How utterly given over to destruction-- self-destruction and destruction of others. More and more it is clear to me that this is the world i live in, and for as long as i am alive, a part of me will be drawn to it. Seduced by lies. Seduced by the desire to have all for myself and ignore other human beings. It sounds extreme, but this is fundamentally what is behind our fallen condition.

i've been thinking about the hurricane in New orleans. That city was the homicide capital of the nation this last year. the disaster came right at the hub of the country's oil production centers, at a time when we are engaged in an unjust war with oil at the center of it. What is God doing? we cannot presume to know. Like Greg said, we must repent! we must not retain any illusion of our own goodness, righteousness, salvation. will we heed the cleansing destruction of these events and clean out our lives from everything that is reprehensible, filthy, built up, glittery, superficial, 'reliable'? Lament that so many have lost so much. how much more will we lose if we do not heed the words of the prophets.