We won under my perfection!

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On behalf of basketball, the sport of jumping, shooting, passing, teamwork, dreams, from my dad, from the cool tall black people that I never got to be, from the coolest homies in the hood, all seeking perfection, and from Jesus, who arose, two thousand years ago, rising to the sky, because He has hops, He is coming back down, He is coming back down to earth, to do his thing, He has home court advantage, He has incredible hangtime, He loves, He dominates, He is unstopable: and on behalf of all that, I bring you the NBA Finals of 2008, game 3, June 10, Tuesday, where the Los Angeles Lakers perfected victory, in California, over the Boston Celtics: especially via a white foreign three-point shooting force of speed and skill, and speaking of the unstoppable force, mentioned early about Jesus, I was even watching, live, online, Kobe Bryant, only being guarded by Ray Allen, in the fourth quarter, for a moment or two, and because of the mismatch, Kobe even echoed this concept of responsibility, this duty, this advantage, this honor, this talent, this mismatch, post-game, that it was his responsibility to score, if he is only being guarded by one man, or pass it when he is trippled-teamed, trapped, fouled (or what else can they do him, especially if you do not like him, for all you playing hating fans out there): and through all this, they won under perfection, via perfection, through perfection, and for perfection. actually, we won under my perfection, on the court, absent of California, lacking omniperfection, or I mean, lacking, omnipresence, being everywhere, all the time, at the same time, in which, I was actually at the Manoa Valley's school's outside park's basketball court, duh, via Hawaiians, a couple white people, Koreans, or oriental people, who were all probably college students, on this Oahu island.

We won, while playing basketball!

We won under the perfection of my nerves to score!

At the close of Revolution Hawaii, of serving the homeless, youth, elders, and people of Hawaii, of learning to love God by loving others, of many heartaches and pain, of many joys, laughs, tears, and opportunities, of a complex story with simple remedies and continuation, of meeting people that we may have never met otherwise, of being a friend over a mere judge of wrath and distaste, of learning the culture, like mahalo is thank you and aloha is hello or greetings or goodbye, of doing things that most Christians are not doing, which is really loving people, of being afraid, of being closed minded, of discovering the heart of being open and available to be the hands and feet for Jesus, of discovering that the trunk of love is fear, of regret for being distracted, of a year long trial and error camp or apprenticeship, of a ministry, in Hawaii that is still growing, of a revolution that is spreading around the world: at the close of all this, I am pausing in thought, I am reconsidering my ways, I am remembering who I am, I am becoming thankful for the good opportunities that I had to express the grace of God with others, and I am somehow tolerant and becoming to be understanding for the difficult times!

During the first week of June, 2008, last week, I ran into sickness, a sore throat, bad cough, and all, which is keeping me from visitation, from saying hello to my friends, before I leave this Saturday, June 14, and I am getting better, and Revolution Hawaii is over, and my team members left, during the last week of May, to continue their ministry in Micronesia, except for the fifth member of the team, Martina Pound, who is actually from there (from the Marshall Islands, which I wanted to go, too, but I never got enough money, support, bling bling, from viewers like you, yeah, ouch, but I am not sounding like Mister Roger's Neighborhood, when I say this, am I? And not to sound rude, either, to say that I hate you because you never gave me legs to walk to destiny, because that is not true, I need to calm down), and so Martina, is also already at Camp Homelani, a Salvation Army camp, on this island of Oahu. You see that my team members are gone, the year is over, our adventures are over, my tears are buried, and I am thinking about all that in my head! I am wondering why I got sick, why I am kept from perfection, or under perfection. I just went through a few hard cough, which dries out my throat, and it is hard to swallow! The other day, Crystal, my younger sister typed, "Drink lemon juice...gargle with salt water." Absent of lemons, I poured salt into a cup of water, I begun swallowing some of the salt water. Eh. But enough is enough. And it was thick at the bottom. I feel the salt made things worse. Never mind that, for my sickness keeps me under my perfection. I mean, the sickness cries for perfection, "You need to be better Joey, because you did not sin, and you deserve to be better, and perfect, since you are a perfectionist, and you need to eat more icecream, and do bad things with girls, and turn the world into hell, grr!" Oh no, my head is spinning, and I may just knock down a 7Eleven, or maybe not. But what i am trying to say, is that, from time to time, I get sick, we get upset, I lose focus, I become distracted, I lose the fear of serving Jesus, the honor, the joy: through the mist of the hurricane, so to speak, I become hungry for my own kind of perfection, the kind that I was never promised, the kind that I am disqualified from, and I become clouded from calmness! Through the mist of this all, I start saying, as my mom does, "Whatever," and I start wondering things, doubting things, and I start living a life of sickness. I mean, being sick is not too bad, especially when we relax, become calm, think about thinks, take time to laugh and blink again, and appreciate the little things in life: sadly, sickness, intermixed with the four conponents of consistent living, "Physical, Emotional, Mental, and spiritual," and we become sick physically in our health, sleep, diet, and ability to only live for Jesus; next, we become sick, emotionally, in the lack of vision, in the way we see life, the way we see ourselves, and we start hating life, "I am fat, people do not like me, I cannot do that, not even through the power of Jesus, I am not sure about this, I am going to fail, and there is no hope in me," and because of the way we chose to live, to breath, to think, to do, then our minds become lasy, we lose focus, which eats at our drive, our integrity, our character, our perspective, our very heart, which is connected to the mind, to the library of future endeavors. In light of sickness, the opportunity for reflection, we must drive to use every last drop of those down times, low runs, and keep our eyes open for what is going on.

Win through practice over perfection!

Underneath my perfection, lies practice, lies grace, lies the ability to rely on Doctor Perfect, who is always Perfect, because that is who He is, it is all He knows to do (technically, it is not all He knows, since He knows all, but as far as living, being, and fleshing out faith, and being faithful with who you are, those attribute, integrity, of the guts deep inside: because of that, you could say that Love is God, and that is all all God, but the absense of it is Hell, anyways, so what else is there?): He will always love us, especially when we are under His perfection.

Live life while under perfection!

We won while under my perfection: the imperfection of basketball: winning in spite of my I'm-out-of-shape and fat play: Tuesday night, June 10th, 2008, at the Manoa Park, in Hawaii, as I was missing all of my shots, about all six of them, especially missing a few fastbreaks, after stealing the ball, about two times, in the two games: beyond all that, in those two games that we won, me and random people at the park, underneath my shame for so-called attempt at perfection, my falling short at perfection (Ro.3:23): I was praying and coaching myself, inside, "Remember to stay calm, because you have watched the tape, the end of the game, and at the end of the game, we win, as soon as God comes back down from hangtime, and we win daily, too, because of what He does for us, in us, through us, and from us: and that is perfection in the making: but the perfection starts with a focus on He who is already perfect!

Live through Doctor Perfection!

While playing basketball, I continually become nervous of imperfection, but I forget to focus on what I can do, not on what I cannot do: this concept bleed from my mothers lips, when I was about fifteen, as I returned home, from my ghetto park, in that trailer-park hood, from playing my daily basketball, which I wish I still do, and I shared my basketball life with her, not to be confused with a sex life, which is something else, all together, and something that I have none of until marriage, and basketball is a subject that my mom does not care for, but somehow she bled out words, but she did not bleed litterally, but instead, she inspired me to focus on what I can do, to thank the Lord, like rappers do during music awards, and be appreciative that you can play basketball, get on the court and learn to really enjoy life, and I held onto those words: I even held onto the words of Katie Jean Arnold, my older sister, who told me, almost ten years, when I was like the age of fourteen, that I need to focus on being the person that I am suppose to be, to focus on being me, and people are going to see that, people at high school, especially, since I was homeschooled until the year of 2000, when I then turned fifteen, and I have been learning since, that I must have a good kind of fear for God, a respect to love Him as He loves us all, and then a constant run at being myself, the person that God made me to be, to be thankful, via joy, to really be capable of all that: to not simple become frustrated at my lack of perfection, but to seek to serve Master Perfection, and to do so in a humble way!

Serving Master Perfection, under our perfection!

Revolution starts internally, inspires society, moving us past self-focus: as we serve, we become less stiff and defensive! Moving past mere laziness (since perfection seems unattainable), we become goal-orientative, God-focus, and passionate: like basketball, we begin collaborating, coming together, in love, in team-work, in relation, in connection, in unity, in joy, in purpose, in drive: we start seeing things, eye to eye, we move past looking down on each other, especially when we look down on ourselves: we move past constant yelling at ourselves: we get to the point of winning under perfection!

As fear is the trunk, joy is the fruit, the leafs!

Serving the Master, L4OJ, Living 4 Only Jesus, are all concepts of eternal perspective, of serving the King who deserves more than we can ever give, especially since we deserve Hell! The other day, I was describing, on the phone, to my mom, about how fear must be the trunk to our lives, the focus and drive that will get us out of the dirt and darkness, that will get us out of the mud and towards the sun, the Son, and gets over and above and beyond the wild beasts on the animals (not counting tree-climbing monkeys, and such): as faith and vision roots down to the well of life, the water of life, the way, truth and life of nourishness, as the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, as fear is intermixed inside the roots, as it becomes flesh in the trunk, I mean, when it becomes visible in the trunk, in the light, then it becomes evident, it is thencloser to continual life, success and destiny: I mean, that is our story: and I was telling my mom about this: about how the trunk must be flexible, strong, yet also flexible in principles, in statues, as it branches out to the programs, the fruits and leafs of the tree: and it is there where things happen for society! And I find that amazing!

Do not let perfection be your goal!

I am learning not to be a mere perfectionist, as defined from me, from anybody, yet I am not learning to then be lazy and unmotivated to transform the world, one person at a time, and I am learning, thus, to have my goal one of more focus and perfection, one that flows from inner goals: in other words, I am leaning to focus on the little things, to set dreams, schedule day planners, callenders, plans for years to come, but to not be too focused on perfecting everything, and to learn to be in the moment, to really take in what is before me: to calm down and learn and to try and to laugh and to fall: especially while playing basketball!

I am learning to calm down, to live in the moments!

Let us try our best, seek to serve each other, try, fail, try again!

And after all that, we must continue to laugh about it, afterwards!

Learn from each other, because life is too short to learn it the hard way!

This is what I am learning, as I make my way towards camp Kuratli, in Boring, Oregon! I have been talking to Lincoln Hawk, a good friend of mine, and he is encouraging me to be all that I can be, and that is the least I can say about him, because he has looked past my imperfection and actually said hello to me, and he actually talks to me, and he actually believes in me, and he cares about me, and he wants to see me succeed, and he even wants to me get a wife, someday, so that I can partake in the blessings of a help-mate, as Eve had Steve, I mean Adam, and Lois Lane had the Superman Clark Kent, and my friend, here, has a wife, and wives are great: and anyways, he has been encouraging me, teaching me, guiding me, like nothing else (excuse me if I have never mentioned your name, whoever is reading this, I am so sorry, I am just focusing on a best friend right now): and that has made a difference in my life, so much: and this is a long story: but if only we can befriend people like Lincoln did with me!

I am darin myself, and I am daring you all to befriend people and to encourage them to become all that they can, because it makes all the difference, even if the person has hundreds of friends, especially since I like do have hundreds of aquaintances! I was impressed with Ric Garland, the president of WOLBI, my first college, in New York, because he discovered my life-story, my testimony, of being raised in a broken home, with an abusive, alcoholic dad, with having birth defects, with being far behind, with being made fun of, with so many setbacks, with even doctors claiming that I would never pass the sixth grade, and somehow, Ric would encourage me, talk to me, a few times, and it made a difference! Even girls make a difference in my life, no doubt, no joke, and oh how I love all that kind of sweet stuff!

Fulton Hawk, another angel, has invested in me, and he was not doing so because he is just an expert with people, youth, or whatever that I am, but it is rather that he actually cares, and he has got in my face because I was late to meetings, because I was rude, because of many mistakes and bad things that I do,a nd it hurts when we confront each other, but if we do so, out of love, then we are going beyond a self-focus on perfection, we enter into the realm of perfecting our eyes to jesus, who is the author, the perfector, and finisher of our faith. This guy, Fulton, that I was talking about, as seen in the picture below, has no relation to my best friend, Lincoln Hawk! Yeah. Ok, just kidding! Haks, can fly, unless if one, a fox, is married to an angel who sure can fly. Hee hee. Maybe. But life is too short to be focus on a bad kind of personal perfection! We are not suppose to be the opposite of perfect, but we must run away from the pain of, "I have to be like this, I have to be like that! I have to stop failing at things! I keep making the same mistakes, each day! I can never get past this! I will never get past this! I am a loser because I feel like dirt inside, and I know that I deserve nothing, anyways! Leave me alone! I was called to be perfect, to be holy as He is holy but I quit because I failed! And I am so tired of the pain of losing!" Those words, we say, are not totally, or not always false, but they normally become doubts and walls to our lives: and we use them as excuses to doing our best! It is not about being perfect! It is about following and imitating He who is perfect! We are to seek perfection, we are to want it, love it, hang around it, try it, ask for help, laugh, cry, labor for it, and all, but we cannot be too focused on specifics, all the time! I mean, specifics, details, being focused, careful, in direction, drive, and all: are all essential and crucial, no doubt (not Gwen Stefani, some pop singing artist), but keep your eyes open because (sooner or later) we can let our dreams, our paradigms (ideas), paralyze us, and keep us from being martyrs, which goes beyond simple dying because you stood up for what is right, for what your killer was sitting down to, for martyrs are artists, dreamers, livers, and pioneers of daily living with that mark, that call, that victory of life, especially since daily living is a whole lot harder than simple dying in less than thirty years of a poor missionary life in Russia, Africa, India, or God knows where else (Because God knows where else, because what else is there, except for else there is, that God knows)! May our eyes be on the Perfector, who will enable us to pursue perfection in a more calm manner!

We can make a difference!

And we are making a difference! You are helping me!

But it is not about perfection!

It is about being there!

That is my dream, my pursuit, that I seek to be that consistent friend for others, that I smile with integrity, with character, with the fear of the Lord, with abudant joy, with a steady and ever moving drive, for a passion for souls, for a fight for what is right, to be a tiger, grr, to be a fox for robin Hood, to be a spirit in the wind!

Underneath our imperfection, rather, we are (or can) still winning!

Let us be the spirits in the wind!

Grr!

May we continue to win, through Him, beyond our imperfection!