Redlight Crossing

Hey Everyone,

If you follow this blog and enjoy reading my thoughts and every once a great while interacting with me. Please proceed over to redlightorphanage.wordpress.com

This is the new home of Redlight Crossing. Redlight Orphanage is the original idea where Redlight Crossing came from so I decided to go back to the source and begin there. It's fresh and gives me a new start on writing. Thanks for following and hope to see you over there.

Ryan

I love surfing. It's been one of my favorite sports since High School when I spent a short stint living in Australia. While living there I had the opportunity to learn to surf on some of the greatest breaks in the world. Surfing has always been an area of release and contentment for me. I never realized how much I took for granted living near the coast in Orange County until I moved to a place that is 3 hours from the ocean and a cold, windy, choppy, mushy one at that.

Why do I tell you this? Well, lately I've been feeling discontent. I'm not sure what it is but I feel like there is something coming, something great but I can't figure out what it is. There is an anticipation in my heart, a yearning for something more. The feeling I have is similar to the feeling of anticipation you get while waiting for the drop in on a wave. When sitting in the ocean on a surfboard there is a mixed feeling of contentment and anticipation. You are content because you are doing something you love, often in a group of people you like, but there is also a feeling of anticipation. The horizon is your view, your back to the shore. A rolling blanket draws near you, slowly rising and falling. You wait and wait until finally you see that one ripple in the blanket that you know is going to peak. Your heart jumps and you quickly rotate your body and board around anticipating the wave that is rising behind you. At the right moment you begin to paddle. You dip your hands deep within the water, pushing with deep strokes the water underneath. Suddenly, you feel yourself being sucked backwards and the tail of your board begins to rise. At the right moment you quickly pop and feel the momentum of the wave push you down the face of this powerful force of nature.

Suddenly, it is no longer your power that is pushing you but the natural momentum given by the wave. This feeling that I have, this discontentment/anticipation, is like sitting waiting for that wave to raise me up and generate that natural momentum forward. I feel like there is something greater that is supposed to be part of my life. I'm not referring to God, or my relationship with Christ, I'm referring to who I am as a person and where God is guiding me. I'm sitting, staring at the horizon waiting for that one peak to show its head so I can turn around and paddle.

It seems that there is a Civil War beginning to brew in the United States. This Civil War is not one that carries with it rifles, missiles, grenades or even death in the literal sense. This civil war carries with it apathy, action, words of meaning and words of fluff. This is a civil war between two opposing cultural movements: pop culture verses activist culture.

The season in political history that we are facing now is ranking up there with other divisive political eras that we have seen. Partisan politics are demonizing their opposition and creating an ever-growing schism with seemingly little hope of collaboration or compromise. This negative trend that we see occurring in our political theater is also creating problems between lay citizens who also demonize each other for supporting opposing agendas. But despite all these arguments, debates, fights and mudslinging there is a positive battle that is occurring.

Each generation is targeted by popular media and told to consume and buy and you will look cool, be popular and don’t need to do anything else outside of own the right things. Our entertainment is becoming more and more mindless, not challenging people from an artistic perspective but causing them to enter into a vegetative trance while they forget what is going on in their lives. Some may call this a healthy escape but I call it a tragic demise. Our brains are becoming mushy, our logic is becoming flawed and our desires are growing increasingly self-centered. At least that’s what popular culture wanted to happen. That is until people got pissed off. A righteous indignation has stirred among this generation. A desire to have a voice, be heard and change the world. Now not everyone agrees on what is the right side to be on in the political debate but people are rising to combat against the apathetic popular culture that contributes to materialism and consuming. The one thing that we can all agree on is that something has to change.

Finally, we are seeing people who were caught up in the apathy of the American Dream being moved to action. Grassroots organizations are popping up supporting various causes both political and social. People are actively pursuing change in most areas of the political, social, economic and even religious arenas.

I’m encouraged by these actions. I don’t agree with Tea Parties, I have my own political bent, my own religious beliefs, but beyond my personal views I would rather see people acting on their convictions than sitting by and allowing a media culture to tell us to just sit on the couch and watch people who live on the Jersey Shore ruin their lives. The war against the apathetic media is taking place. People are being stirred to action in relevant, meaningful areas rather than focusing on themselves only.

Is this war near an end? Not at all, we still see headlines about Tiger Woods overshadow real world issues. People are still more concerned with Jesse James cheating on Sandra Bullock than they are with the rise of obesity in the United States or the fact that children in Africa are being kidnapped and drugged into becoming child soldiers. The war is not over, the battles have only begun and right now the media and popular culture still have the larger army, more weapons and the overall advantage. But the people are rising, people from all walks of life, from different world views and these people will not settle for a meaningless life anymore. They will stand, they will fight, they will find meaning and leave behind those things that have held them in a personal prison. The Civil War is beginning.