A life of Activism

While sitting at Rachels restaurant today I had a very intriguing and encouraging conversation with a couple that actually live a few streets down from us in downtown Covington. It is a couple that both myself and Rachel have been particularly drawn to for a while because they both frequent our restaurants and downtown Covington quite a bit and have a unique freedom to their style, so one day we got to talking and realized that we lived by each other and have since taken part in small talk from time to time when we would run into one another. Today was a different day. I decided to bring my cup of coffee over to their table and sit down and get to know them on a deeper level. We ended up talking for a quit a while and it was one of the most challenging and real conversations I have ever had with, more or less, complete strangers. 

It turns out that they have been political activists for about five years now and so we talked about that and about different things all relating to humanity, war, love, peace, civil rights, human rights, the constitution, and etc. Then they asked me what I was passionate about, because they could obviously see I was somewhat like them. So I started telling them that over the past two years my eyes have been opened to a new world, the entire world and not just America, I have begun to realize that we are all people and all deserve love regardless if we are Christian, Muslim, Hindu, American, Iraqi, Chinese, etc. I then started telling them how I have started to become passionate about social justice and politics and that I am trying to figure out how to merge the two. I told them that I have been discovering an emerging view of Jesus that I had never been exposed to before and that this new view of how Jesus came to live a life to show us how to have peace and justice and equity is something that is driving this passion in me.  So we went on for a  while longer before wrapping it up and exchanging contact information and we went our separate ways. On my walk home my mind was racing with everything that we had been talking about. And the thought that a life of activism is something that we owe our friends and family and neighbors(both domestically and globally) was stuck in my mind. To wrap this up, the common denominator that both of us said lead to our desire for activism is EXPOSURE, we were all exposed to more truth that had not previously been shown to us in our little worlds that we came from. And so the main thing that we both said was essential for change is AWARENESS, and that awareness is the backbone of our activism. We as people and as citizens need to be aware and educated on and about the governing bodies that we put our faith in ( whether it be the U.S. Government or the Church). Once you have the information you can choose what to do with it, but I know  that I personally can't ignore it.