publishing peace

I was not blessed to be mighty in speech - in fact, I occasionally feel, like Moses, that I am "slow of speech and slow of tongue". However, I hope that God will give me words to express my feelings about the topic I want to address. True love is, I believe, seeing a person as not only what they are, but what they could be. It's understanding. It's knowing that someone is not perfect, but believing that they are still good. That is what I believe the Savior does for us. Ages ago, in a stable, in a manger, the Most Important Person Ever came to earth. From this the humblest of beginnings would come the Savior, the Prince of Peace. In the scriptures we're told that He grew to be "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3) - because He spent His time lifting the lowly, rebuking but gently forgiving the penitent sinners, performing miracles. Consistently the Bible accounts for His visits among the poor, the sick, the afflicted of mind and...

There's always something good happening in the world. I wish that I could paint that on every street corner so that people who are losing hope everywhere could just see it and know that it's true. I don't know, maybe I'm just crazy. But despite everything that I know is crazy, there are some things that are just good.

About a month ago, I was able to go to New York on a choir tour. That was amazing. I saw three Broadway shows. I visited Ellen's Stardust Diner, the 9/11 memorial, Grand Central Station, and Liberty Island. I did NOT get cheesecake (not because I didn't want to, and not because I'm on some diet or something, I just got sick the night everyone went out for cheesecake). And given everything I saw or didn't see, I feel like I just barely scratched the surface of what New York is. I don't know if I could live there, but I could definitely visit for awhile longer than I stayed there. New York is a city filled with people who are lost, finding themselves, found, and everything in between. When people say the city never sleeps, they mean it - late at night in New York City, Times Square is packed, jam-packed, with people for whom dawn is just a concept. It's a dirty city - around every corner, there's cigarettes hanging out of mouths...

this is an introduction of the best kind. i'm introducing myself to like EVERYBODY. hello, EVERYBODY!!! i'm em. em pew. as of twelve minutes ago, i an the official voice of pewnyblog.blogspot.com. why should you listen to me? you may ask. well, because. that's just it. you should listen to me because. because i am Human. and humans were made to speak. to be understood. you could argue that hey, animals might be too. but human language has gone farther as far as is able to be recognized than any other form of speech. to us, words are pivotal. and i have words for you. the world is full of words. stories. news. information. a lot of it is confusing, stressful, scary. it may be true, but it is also scary. the truth can be scary sometimes. i feel as though the scary stuff is vitally important and essential for solving problems, but we focus too much on what's going wrong and not enough on what's going right. i am fully aware that things are going wr...