Category: Words To Live By

I wasn’t going to talk about it because I didn’t think it was worth discussing anymore. But, after sitting on it for a number of days, I decided I needed to talk about it, that being the capitol riots.

I’m truly ashamed at what so much of our country has become lately. But I’m even more ashamed about how tarnished Christianity has become due to the actions of countless people who say they’re doing what they’re doing because they’re being guided by God and Christ.

Let me be 100% clear on this. Storming the capitol, defacing property, injuring and allowing needless deaths to occur in the process is not living anywhere close to the teachings I came to love and appreciate when I speak of Christ.

There were only two incidents I was taught where Christ showed anger. One was with money changers who were selling stuff in a sacred temple area. And the other was with a fig tree that didn’t produce fruit that frustrated Christ when he was really hungry. Two incidents amongst thousands of others where Christ showed nothing but kindness, compassion, sincerity, humbleness, generosity, and unconditional love. Storming the capitol and even angrily shouting at the masses with guns ablaze before that happened wasn’t offering any of those things.

It just appalls me when anyone believes that any political party or any specific leader can guide our nation to a closer relationship with God and Christ. Beyond the fact of whatever happened to the separation of church and state, the only way any of us will ever get closer to God and Christ or whatever our Higher Power is, is through a journey within each of us, not outside of us.

But, angrily tearing apart others, saying things like the Democratic party is the Mark of the Beast returned, or saying that Donald Trump is Satan himself, denouncing each other on social media in one argument after another about conspiracy theories and unfair elections accomplishes none of the goals of Christ. NONE!

I’m baffled at how people can label themselves a Christian and be doing the things they’re doing with one judgment after another lately. That’s pretty much what these capitol riots were all about. One massive judgment that went astray and led to serious mayhem and unnecessary loss of property and life.

People who label themselves as Christians often feel they need to carry the torch for Christ by doing actions they feel are justified under their Biblical understanding, but really are doing nothing but promoting their own egotistical beliefs.

Do you know what I think Christ would have done with this election? I think he would have embraced whomever won and in the same breath claimed the leader of the world was far beyond this world. He wouldn’t have stormed a capitol to prove any point. He wouldn’t have carried guns into Washington D.C. threatening for change. And I honestly don’t believe he would ever berate anyone for their personal choices of political party or their stances in them.

I have heard so much in recent times that the republican party is the only one that’s going to protect the Biblical ideals of Christ. I have also heard things like needless babies are going to be killed under the new democratic regime. Enough! This is why I abhor politics and honestly wish now that I hadn’t even voted in this past election, because none of this is showing the true teachings and love of Christ.

What matters is how we treat each other. That’s the Christ part I came to appreciate. And storming the capitol is not treating each other with the love and kindness that Christ brought. Neither is yelling at someone on Facebook in a comments area because they believe differently then you.

Our country is stuck because people are stuck on themselves and their selfish and self-centered beliefs. They think the solution they have is the only solution to fixing all this brokenness. To those rioters, their selfish belief was that our country will only be ok when Trump remains in office and to prove the illegitimacy of this past election.

You know what the flaw is in that?

Even if somehow proof of an illegitimate election had been made and Trump remained in office, there’s still half of our country mad because they didn’t get their way. Because everyone keeps placing their view of a better Christian world, or even a better spiritual world, on things like politics, political leaders, and the policies they’re going to make. When the only way a better world filled with the ideals of Christ is only going to come when each and every one of us STOPS JUDGING each other and STOPS BELIEVING the answer is a change out there in the government or anywhere for that matter, when it’s a change in our own very hearts.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

If there is one thing that definitely seems to irk me every time it happens during the holiday season over all the years I’ve been with my partner Chris, it’s whenever we receive a Christmas card addressed to us as: “Christopher Falbo & Andrew”.

Why does this irk me so much? Well, aside from the fact that I’ve been with Chris for almost nine years now, where one might think it be important to address a card to us with our full names after all these years of being together, those who continue to omit my last name are always family members and friends of his who have either met me many times before or have received cards back from us with my full name on them multiple times already. And even at the very minimum, it’s not too hard to locate my last name on social media these days because all of them have ties to either him or I on Facebook where my last name is clearly present.

While I know this may appear to you as something that shouldn’t be that big of deal, my last name is so very important to me today. I’ve worked hard to accept my biological name over the years, as I used to be so ashamed of it due to all the craziness that stemmed from my childhood. Having once gone by only my initials “A.D.” for almost two full decades, it was quite freeing to finally find enough healing and acceptance to start going by my full name again. Today, I am quite proud of my name and often refer to myself by my full biological name as “Andrew Arthur Dawson”, especially when I do public speaking or whenever I finish any of these blog articles. That’s why it hurts so much each time we receive holiday cards year after year after year from the same people who already know my last name but never take the time to place it on their envelopes. It honestly makes me feel like I don’t matter. But that indeed is the deeper issue.

Having been in my partner’s life for as long as I have now, most of his family have never really taken to me no matter how hard I’ve tried to connect with them. I came to acceptance of this a number of years back, but it still hurts nonetheless receiving cards from many of them where some have even put my first name in parentheses, “Christopher Falbo (& Andrew)”, almost as if it was an afterthought.

This distinctly triggers painful memories from my childhood where I never felt like I mattered to anyone and instead felt invisible everywhere I went, even in my own family home. Living here in Toledo has brought much of that pain to the surface for me to face and is presently what I’m working on now more times than not with my therapist, Linda Smith (who’s an excellent therapist for difficulties like this by the way!)

Thankfully, I do know deep down I do matter and that it ultimately doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things when my last name is forgotten or excluded by another on things like a holiday greeting card. But, having spent so much of my life defining myself by what others do to or think of me, I see now that there’s still plenty of work ahead of me to do in accepting others, even when they don’t remember for whatever their reasons, that my last name is Dawson.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Have you ever had that feeling inside like something bad, possibly even really bad, is about to happen? I’ve been having that very feeling a lot lately and I can’t seem to shake it no matter what I do.

I’m not sure whether it has to do with our country being so completely divided right now and hearing constant talks of civil wars and states seceding, or whether it’s knowing that guns have been selling out everywhere and the fact that many I know who’ve never owned a gun and been anti-gun now own several or more, or whether it’s related to these COVID vaccines that have been so completely rushed to approval that it doesn’t seem like they’ve had enough time to get fully tested to know their true impact upon the masses, or whether it’s connected to the countless abnormal weather patterns that have been happening and all the oddities I’ve observed in how nature is responding to them, or dare I even say this last one, could it be related to the growing reports of possible sightings of UFO’s that even seem to be making our headline news now, along with all those strange monoliths appearing in random places across the globe? 2020 really has been such an exceptionally unexplainable year, so who knows, maybe why I’m feeling this impending sense of doom is related to all of this or maybe it’s related to something else altogether. Frankly, I don’t know.

What I do know is that I don’t feel any sense of peace or normalcy in life anymore and I also feel like everyone is acting out of sorts, doing out of sorts type behaviors that don’t make any bit of sense to me. And given how I’ve always been a person extremely capable of understanding people and why they act certain ways, I find myself second guessing why anyone is acting the way they are now.

Truth be told, I just feel generally afraid of our future now and what it holds for all of us and I really don’t want to be. I feel like I should have a greater sense of faith in my Higher Power currently, but I’m definitely feeling like I’m falling quite short in that department lately. Prior to this pandemic though, I most assuredly didn’t feel that way, but here I am, ten months later, feeling like I’m living in an alternate reality, like somehow, I was transferred into a multiverse, to say Earth-2 for example. Of course, I’m joking about the multiverse part, but really, I feel completely at odds with our present reality.

Having spent the better part of a decade accepting incredible physical limitations due to health conditions out of my control, what’s been happening in 2020 seems like icing on a cake that doesn’t taste good at all. Sometimes lately, I even wonder if we’re suddenly going to see a headline hit our airwaves that says a huge asteroid is hurtling towards the earth, i.e. Deep Impact or Armageddon! I know, I know, maybe I’ve just watched too many doomsday movies over the years that filled my mind with plenty of post-apocalyptic visions, or maybe the absurdness of 2020 has simply got to me to too much and made them all appear far too real in the sense that anything crazy could happen now.

I most assuredly don’t know though what the future holds for my health, for our country, or for our planet, and although I wish I did, I know the only thing I can do in the midst of feeling like this, like something bad is about to happen, is trust that God has it all under control. Ultimately, that’s what’s kept me going for the past decade as I’ve suffered from one painful ailment after another with no end in sight. So, I guess it is time to totally apply that to this fearful feeling of our imminent future and trust that the same Source that’s guided me safely thus far, will continue to guide me safely through whatever else is meant to happen.

Peace, love, light and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson