On wensday I bought a house for 1 dollar! This is truly a blessing! The neighborhood is poor and has it's crime yet so does otherneighborhoods around this city!  It's a black neighborhood by the public market and most are shocked that a white man like me is moving into a black neighborhood! It is this segregation in the cities across america that hurt us all!! Inorder for us to have unity we must let actions not words be our adornment! I have prayed to find a way to stop renting and meditated to haave a clear mind open to opportunities and it has come! My neighbor is close to 90 years old and has refused to move from the neighborhood! He is one of the first tattoo artists of rochester! He is white like me and this is positive!!!  See here in america there used to be cultural neighborhoods yet once industry grew irish families and italian families and such moved from their cultural neighborhoods to the suburbs turning the suburbs into a cultural melting pot! Yet they left the city to those who do not value a home as part of a neighborhood and due to drugs and poverty investing in a home becomes last! Paranoia from doing wrong sets in and then comes crime upon crime! It becomes about survival rather than living! This is the cancer!

It's mostly the young kids who's parrents are working 2 to 3 jobs to try to get out of the neighborhood or parrents who are on drugs that do the most crime! These children have the lease consequences legally! I hope to show by fixing this house up that race doesn't matter! There is even confusion from some black families on why I am there! Some wonder if I am a police officer working undercover or if I am a drug dealer from the suburbs trying to have a grow house in the city! They don't know what to make of me yet!!! This truly opens my eye's... whites are skeptic of a black in a white neighborhood just as blacks are skeptic of whites in a black neighborhood!

It is a small one bedroom home the yard is 33 feet across and 114 feet deep! there is no driveway or garrage! This I am at awe about since currently I don't drive! Prayers do get answered and we get what we need and not all of our wants! Also I have the chance to promote Bahai principles and through positive actions instead of words show that it is possable to live well in the city of rochester as in the suburb!

I also got a dog from a coworker... she is a small black dog that is not scary but lovable! People have asked me why such a friendly dog why not a pit bull or a doberman! I meditated about being open to have ears for an opportunity to have a dog and she was free!!! She is 7 weeks old! I have faith I tell people who ask me about not getting a scary intimidating dog! I have kept telling them this about the dog and the house and from people telling me to get barbwire fences to mean dogs or to buy a gun or even to hand a confederate flag they now have stopped and told me to invest in an alarm system! They are baffled when I told them no I won't get a gun I have faith, no I won't get barbwire I have faith, no I won't get a confederate flag I have faith in god and I beleive in unity which that flag doesn't promote! They used to shake their heads at me baffled but now they are a little more understanding of my principles and what I will and won't do!

Every writing I have come across in my readings from the koran to the bible to plato to the Bahai writings I see man has allways had struggles! Yet From the book of Job in the old testiment there opens my eye's on the devil! The devil asks god to test us because the devil is riddled with questions about mans free will! If we are free to chose our own path then we are free to turn away from god something the bible says angels arn't able to do! So the devil tests Job and his beleif and faith in god and he finds that Job keeps God with him through all these tests and strifes! Let actions not words be your adornment! God is there for me aslong as I am willing to fallow gods grace I will live a life and not just survive it!

A amn at work asked me how I choose the path I am on! He said how does an educated white kid like you who went to private catholic schools has a college education who came from an upper middle class family end up working in a warehouse and moving into the ghetto get there! I told him I have allways had faith in god and I hesitated from being a social worker/ psycholigist because I knew I would be good at it but it would only make me bitter and see the negative in the world and the sickness and knew not to fallow that path! I knew building multi million dollar homes when I was doing construction made me bitter and saw these clients as pridefull and having gluttony! I went into the military and found out I can't kill another person! That I have trudged the road to happy destiny and along the way have found these things out! I told him Baha'u'llah did the same! He lived his life and when he found his calling as a prophet he trudged the road to happy destiny still even after prison and assanations and such! He came from a wealthy family and could have fallowed a different path but it was his faith in God that he knew what was his path and what wasn't just as jesus a carpenter who could have stayed quiet and built houses! I am no prophet but I know that mans will and gods will are 2 different things! That inorder to seek gods will I will stumble and struggle! I told him I chose drugs as a teen drinking in my 20's and sought the easier and softer ways in life and I have allways been directed back to god!

He was there with me when I told him this he told me how he got caught up in life and away from god and I told him god sends prophets and he sent us Baha'u'llah! Seek the truth and seek god! He brought up how the bible has been reworded and how extreemists twist words to justify wars... I told him I had such views and still do a little but that I have found that because a preist is in the news for sodomy or a suicide bomber is in the news who says he was dying for islam that is their will not gods will! I know that and it seems you do to... I told him religion is a funny thing at times but all religions talk of spirituality! When we ended I told him when I was a child I was so curiouse about church and god and I was able to beleive and had innocent faith of god yet when I saw the world I became overwhelmed and didn't know gods will from mans will to me god gave man free will so he had a part of all this negativity! Yet now I have sought truth and it was my seeking to find out the difference in gods will and mans will that has given me an understanding god and man are 2 seperate things! I am not gods puppet but at times have been puppets of other men! Then the man that I was talking to told me I got him to thing he needs to try another church than the one he went to as a child!

My actions along with words that didn't debase him or berate him or how he grew up gave him a brief moment to ponder god in his life! The seed was there and still is there and was there before me hopefully I gave that seed but 1 drop of water and hopefully that seed will thurst for more! I am no storm trying to flood the world with a message from god just an ocasional sunshower I like to think! may my spiritual ray of light cast upon this mirror have every so often a sunshowerthat will give but 1 drop to the seed with in us all... the one drop that removes a speck of mud upon anothers mirror so to give the spititual ray of light more freflection!

James dean said dream as if you'll live forever, yet live as if you die today, jim morrison said the grand highway is filled with lovers seekers and leavers so eager to please and forget, wilderness... these men had their pearls of wisdom! Even martin luther king had his I had a dream speach!!! People thirst for unity but get overwhelmed by the will of other men! Fear and paranoia set in and then unity then seems a pipe dream! Unity is a quest we must trudge! May all who read this be on their quest to unity and if you don't think you are or don't thiink you can do such a quest I will tell you this it starts with simple small things! Prayer and meditation... conscious contact with god beyond bowing to the porcelin god after a heavy night of drinking or other fox hole prayers! Baha'u'llah has given us many prayers so if you don't know what to pray about then simply read one of his prayers! Step by step stone by stone man has built many things... so prayer by prayer I build my relationship with god and from there more and more is reveiled slowly!

I was homeless in october due to my divorse now that slowly I have built my relationship with god and let go of pride and ego to the best of my ability thus far I have a home!

So may this give you hope!

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