I'm 36,000 feet in the sky. While looking out the window at the cotton field of clouds, the words that come to my mind are: "The heavens declare God's glory."
-- Post From My jPhone
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Mr. Robeson
"The problem of talent is the problem of opportunity" - Paul Robeson
-- Post From My jPhone
-- Post From My jPhone
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
HOW DOES THE CYCLE GET BROKEN?
Below is a repost from a blog I had on my Myspace from Dec 2007. I think the conversation is worth entertaining still...
HOW DOES THE CYCLE GET BROKEN?
I read a friend's comment on a blog recently that said:
"That's a cycle in which needs to be broken. Mothers and fathers are much younger today. Couples are waiting til their mid or late 30s to have children and grandparents are raising their grandchildren. Meaning......Parents are too young to teach and grandparents are too tired to handle them. Day Care and Afterschool programs are being shut down everyday. Parents are working two jobs to make ends meet while the kids are doing what they want. Therefore, these teens are roaming the streets with nothing to do but, sex, drugs, and hustle.
How does the cycle get broken?"
I thought about this last question and decided I would respond. I wrote so much I thought it was lengthy enough to include it as a blog. So here's my response:
Answering that question is a whole blog. Here are some of my basic thoughts:
Stopping the cycle is a multi-faceted process – Home, Education, Community, Society, Church.
The first place is the Home. We need more fathers there. We need fathers to take responsibility and not just HAVE children, but RAISE children. A recent statistic I found states that 44% of Latino parents in the Bronx are single parents. We need fathers or the cycle will not be broken.
Which leads us to the second place called Education. Both in the home and at school, are we failing our kids? Do we even care what they learn? What are we teaching them – academically, socially, morally? Is the message consistent or are we saying one thing and doing another? Are we double-minded people teaching mixed messages? Do these kids know they are not mistakes or some cosmic accident? Do they know they have value and purpose? Do they know they are loved? Without consistent holistic Education for the mind, body and spirit of the child, the cycle will not be broken.
With the growth of single parent households as well as grandparents raising grandchildren, how is the Community involved in the process? This is the third element. A generation or two ago, you could have been spanked by the teacher, the neighbor, and your parents. Not anymore. In this individualistic society we so highly esteem, the greater Community has very little involvement in the rearing up of children. Teachers are basically handcuffed with what they can do in the classroom and parents are too prideful to let the neighbor correct their child. We need more Afterschool, Daycare and Boys & Girls clubs in all of our communities. We need older men to mentor these young fathers (many who have grown up in single-parent households - a whole other topic). Without the Community involvement, the cycle will not be broken.
If we look to our Society for help, we see a post-modern, secular, materialistic worldview that preaches rebellion and self-idolatry. All day long we hear sermons of irresponsibility & immorality through our music, our laws, our politics, and our entertainment. We help RAISE irresponsible young men and women and support our argument based on findings of psychiatrists and science. Having a child write 100 times on a piece of paper, "I will not throw a chair at my teacher" is now considered Corporal Punishment. Disciplining a child can get u thrown in jail. Saying Merry Christmas or using the word God in the public square is considered religious rhetoric. If we ever wanted to see a present day representation of Babylon, we can find it in the United States, especially in New York. At its core, if our society is not transformed, many cycles will not be broken.
And so, we desperately need the Church if the cycle is to be broken. The teachings and miracles of Jesus Christ must be exhibited in this world if it is to be transformed. The Good News of the Gospel provides hope for a world that is dying of hopelessness and dissatisfaction. God has designed our hearts with a little hole in it that only He can fill. Many of the reasons we have these problematic cycles is because people are looking to fill that hole with anything and everything else but God.
Jesus gives a Peace that is unlike anything this world could give and I can personally attest to it in my own life. But the Church must LIVE the teachings of Jesus. Then the world will know that God is real and that He designed human beings to be in community with Him and with one another. A real, personal God, who understands our weaknesses and sympathizes, and loves us into wholeness. That is the reason God made Himself low and came down in the form of a man, so that He could lift up the lowly, and break these chains which are holding us, our people and our communities down.
- Joseph Dominick
HOW DOES THE CYCLE GET BROKEN?
I read a friend's comment on a blog recently that said:
"That's a cycle in which needs to be broken. Mothers and fathers are much younger today. Couples are waiting til their mid or late 30s to have children and grandparents are raising their grandchildren. Meaning......Parents are too young to teach and grandparents are too tired to handle them. Day Care and Afterschool programs are being shut down everyday. Parents are working two jobs to make ends meet while the kids are doing what they want. Therefore, these teens are roaming the streets with nothing to do but, sex, drugs, and hustle.
How does the cycle get broken?"
I thought about this last question and decided I would respond. I wrote so much I thought it was lengthy enough to include it as a blog. So here's my response:
Answering that question is a whole blog. Here are some of my basic thoughts:
Stopping the cycle is a multi-faceted process – Home, Education, Community, Society, Church.
The first place is the Home. We need more fathers there. We need fathers to take responsibility and not just HAVE children, but RAISE children. A recent statistic I found states that 44% of Latino parents in the Bronx are single parents. We need fathers or the cycle will not be broken.
Which leads us to the second place called Education. Both in the home and at school, are we failing our kids? Do we even care what they learn? What are we teaching them – academically, socially, morally? Is the message consistent or are we saying one thing and doing another? Are we double-minded people teaching mixed messages? Do these kids know they are not mistakes or some cosmic accident? Do they know they have value and purpose? Do they know they are loved? Without consistent holistic Education for the mind, body and spirit of the child, the cycle will not be broken.
With the growth of single parent households as well as grandparents raising grandchildren, how is the Community involved in the process? This is the third element. A generation or two ago, you could have been spanked by the teacher, the neighbor, and your parents. Not anymore. In this individualistic society we so highly esteem, the greater Community has very little involvement in the rearing up of children. Teachers are basically handcuffed with what they can do in the classroom and parents are too prideful to let the neighbor correct their child. We need more Afterschool, Daycare and Boys & Girls clubs in all of our communities. We need older men to mentor these young fathers (many who have grown up in single-parent households - a whole other topic). Without the Community involvement, the cycle will not be broken.
If we look to our Society for help, we see a post-modern, secular, materialistic worldview that preaches rebellion and self-idolatry. All day long we hear sermons of irresponsibility & immorality through our music, our laws, our politics, and our entertainment. We help RAISE irresponsible young men and women and support our argument based on findings of psychiatrists and science. Having a child write 100 times on a piece of paper, "I will not throw a chair at my teacher" is now considered Corporal Punishment. Disciplining a child can get u thrown in jail. Saying Merry Christmas or using the word God in the public square is considered religious rhetoric. If we ever wanted to see a present day representation of Babylon, we can find it in the United States, especially in New York. At its core, if our society is not transformed, many cycles will not be broken.
And so, we desperately need the Church if the cycle is to be broken. The teachings and miracles of Jesus Christ must be exhibited in this world if it is to be transformed. The Good News of the Gospel provides hope for a world that is dying of hopelessness and dissatisfaction. God has designed our hearts with a little hole in it that only He can fill. Many of the reasons we have these problematic cycles is because people are looking to fill that hole with anything and everything else but God.
Jesus gives a Peace that is unlike anything this world could give and I can personally attest to it in my own life. But the Church must LIVE the teachings of Jesus. Then the world will know that God is real and that He designed human beings to be in community with Him and with one another. A real, personal God, who understands our weaknesses and sympathizes, and loves us into wholeness. That is the reason God made Himself low and came down in the form of a man, so that He could lift up the lowly, and break these chains which are holding us, our people and our communities down.
- Joseph Dominick
Friday, April 10, 2009
Women diagnosed with Brain Tumor, but instead had a worm
A healthy mother was diagnosed with a Brain Tumor. During brain surgery, the doctor finds out the tumor was actually a Worm.
Watch the news story and see the actual part of the brain surgery where the worm is pulled out. Video here.
- Joseph Dominick
Watch the news story and see the actual part of the brain surgery where the worm is pulled out. Video here.
- Joseph Dominick
Thursday, April 9, 2009
School faces lawsuit for dismissing student who refused to condone homosexuality
Would someone please tell me what a "remediation" program is?
- J
- - - - - - -
Charlie Butts and Marty Cooper - OneNewsNow - 4/9/2009
"Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) senior counsel Jeremy Tedesco explains that Julea Ward encountered resistance from Eastern Michigan University when she refused to affirm a counseling client's homosexual behavior.
"What we have here is a Christian who is a student in a master's counseling degree program who was dismissed, kicked out of the school, simply because she was unwilling to violate her own religious beliefs in not advocating for homosexual behavior within the context of the counseling relationship," he points out.
When Ward's supervising professor suggested she refer the client to another counselor who did not take issue with homosexual behavior, she followed the advice. However, the school said she could stay in the counseling program if she would undergo a "remediation" program to reconstruct her belief system and help her "see the error of her ways." Ward refused."
I found a longer article in The Catholic News. Read it here.
- J
- - - - - - -
Charlie Butts and Marty Cooper - OneNewsNow - 4/9/2009
"Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) senior counsel Jeremy Tedesco explains that Julea Ward encountered resistance from Eastern Michigan University when she refused to affirm a counseling client's homosexual behavior.
"What we have here is a Christian who is a student in a master's counseling degree program who was dismissed, kicked out of the school, simply because she was unwilling to violate her own religious beliefs in not advocating for homosexual behavior within the context of the counseling relationship," he points out.
When Ward's supervising professor suggested she refer the client to another counselor who did not take issue with homosexual behavior, she followed the advice. However, the school said she could stay in the counseling program if she would undergo a "remediation" program to reconstruct her belief system and help her "see the error of her ways." Ward refused."
I found a longer article in The Catholic News. Read it here.
Out-of-wedlock births hit record high
"Nearly 40 percent of babies born in the United States in 2007 were delivered by unwed mothers, according to data released last month by the National Center for Health Statistics. The 1.7 million out-of-wedlock births, of 4.3 million total births, marked a more than 25 percent jump from five years before.
While 28 percent of white women gave birth out of wedlock in 2007, nearly 72 percent of black women and more than 51 percent of Latinas did."
Read the entire CNN article here:
While 28 percent of white women gave birth out of wedlock in 2007, nearly 72 percent of black women and more than 51 percent of Latinas did."
Read the entire CNN article here:
Friday, April 3, 2009
Better than Twitter
What's better than Twitter? The answer is Flutter.
Check out the new phenomenon of nanoblogging:
Flutter video
- Joseph Dominick
Check out the new phenomenon of nanoblogging:
Flutter video
- Joseph Dominick
Twouble with Twitters
On Facebook I find some "Status Updates" to be silly, ridiculous, or TMI (TOO MUCH INFORMATION). The microblogging application Twitter takes this to a whole other level.
Check out this hilarious animated video which parodies the whole microblogging phenom called Twitter.
Check out this hilarious animated video which parodies the whole microblogging phenom called Twitter.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Worldofmoney.org
I want to give a big shout-out to worldofmoney.org and Sabrina Lamb. They have a Financial Literacy program for teenagers during the summer. This is their fifth summer doing this program. I visited an orientation last night with one of my goddaughters. It is off the hook.
Please hit up the website and support them. They are all about empowering teens with financial knowledge, especially those in the Black & Latino communities.
- Joseph Dominick
Please hit up the website and support them. They are all about empowering teens with financial knowledge, especially those in the Black & Latino communities.
- Joseph Dominick
Christina Lee in Concert
Okay, so I now have a Vimeo account. My videos look so much better there than they do on YouTube. :o)
Please check out this short clip of Christina Lee who in the middle of her concert flips the script and sings a ballad in Korean. It is so beautiful.
G-City Films video is here.
- Joseph Dominick
Please check out this short clip of Christina Lee who in the middle of her concert flips the script and sings a ballad in Korean. It is so beautiful.
G-City Films video is here.
- Joseph Dominick
The School to Prison Pipeline
"The School to Prison Pipeline is a nationwide system of local, state and federal education and public safety policies that pushes students out of school and into the criminal justice system. This system disproportionately targets youth of color and youth with disabilities. Inequities in areas such as school discipline, policing practices, high-stakes testing and the prison industry contribute to the pipeline."
Please stop the injustice. Check out this short but powerful video here.
Please stop the injustice. Check out this short but powerful video here.
Doctrine On Point
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a strong and beautiful foundation. But do you know what you believe? And can you support it as truth?
Chuck Colson writes a really good article, "Doctrine Bears Repeating", imploring all followers of Christ to make sure they know their doctrine. Check out the article here.
Chuck Colson writes a really good article, "Doctrine Bears Repeating", imploring all followers of Christ to make sure they know their doctrine. Check out the article here.
CITY OF TRUTH
This Saturday is the first City of Truth Leadership class. Wow, time has flown by so quickly. We are about to go from Pre-production to Implementation. :o)
Based on the response from the pre-orientation and the orientation, we have about 12-15 young adults slated for the program. I am really excited.
Well, let me get out of here so I can work on this Saturday's lesson plan. I will post back to tell you how it went.
Laters!
Based on the response from the pre-orientation and the orientation, we have about 12-15 young adults slated for the program. I am really excited.
Well, let me get out of here so I can work on this Saturday's lesson plan. I will post back to tell you how it went.
Laters!
Joseph Dominick Photography
Okay, so I am really enjoying photography. Soon you will see me doing it on a whole other level via Joseph Dominick Photography. Very few people know, but later this month I will be photographing a whole day wedding and portrait photography shoot in New York City. I will post a few sneak pics in May.
In the meantime, check out this great pic I took of Lebron James and Jay Z at a recent Nets basketball game.
My Flickr - www.flickr.com/photos/josephdominick
In the meantime, check out this great pic I took of Lebron James and Jay Z at a recent Nets basketball game.
My Flickr - www.flickr.com/photos/josephdominick
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