In Paris with Pilot

With bank accounts more than empty caused by lavish hotel rooms and equal meals to suite any price range of suite, coffee twice a day and a San Francisco bay, travel expenses ate just as well for my three week shoot to China and now in this fall chill, -zero is forecasting the unpaid bill from not yet paid recent jobs will soon eat too. Recently home, I sit on the floor near my cat’s food box, empty, ripping up bread for her to eat, along with me. Neither of us have any money to buy the other anything of editable value so we feast like beggars on the streets of Paris, on a four course meal of the handout sourdough bread from Le’Gagnavalon. The granite rose, charcoal and tan stones that make up my kitchen’s floor help the Français de l’humeur.

I realized today that it could be likely that by chance I will never have a separation between social life and what others have called my passion. And that makes life a bit easier to navigate and I think that is so because instead of dividing which parts of existence go where and more importantly to some, when, everything seems to go together as it fits together. As it fits together, planned by the Hymn.

It is 530 am and simultaneously 5 videos in full 1440×1080 hd push a little blew bar of status as they upload fresh from the export chambers that rest in the depths of a late night fcp edit session. The videos will be seen by Congress week. Mr. Z.P, Genious Esquire was beside me, making my evening as a perfect assistant would, from 8 pm to 520 am helping any way he could. The original Pink Panther film played as the night went on.
5 Videos exported in two resolutions, color toned with audio fixed, all of that done today.
6am. Time for sleep, for just a little while.

Angelic chimes ping at seemingly random only narrate the joy of the completed movie files uploading to the internet.

A week of hard work can teach you that even a cat can get full on crumbs of simplicity and bread.

A reason continually

One of the most frightening, faint provoking, nauseating, empty set moments in my life is looking back (even the thought of looking back) on my all work and feeling it inadequate, unable to justify the current time, finding it average, all of it average. Like a hohum of a fall day, after all the leaves are gone and it isn’t cold and it isn’t warm.
I am trying to find a story in my photographs from 6 different countries that represents how life is changing because of how the earth is changing and I can’t find it yet, at least I cant find value in it yet.
The reason I create continually is at my hope because God is bringing glory to himself through it, but also, a small reason, is to forget what I had just been through in the mystery of the next moment ahead.

You’re lucky you’re doing something you don’t love and hoping one day to find what you love to be what you are doing.

In Participle; A Melody of Lessons

It has been proven to me that I am protected by God’s grace.  In Ukraine my cell phone was stolen and I did not fret. 2 hours later the criminal “felt bad” and sought me out and returned it. Two days ago my computer was stolen out of my hotel room without me knowing it. I left at 10 am and the criminal came in while the cleaning lady was present, stated he was me and took my computer and my passport. My entire Chinese project was on this computer. I received a call from the police saying that they had my computer, and that they had the criminal too. I said, “Why?” I did not freak out, at all. I had no even thought that i needed to stay calm. Two hours later after the criminal took my computer  he was caught trespassing in another hotel trying to sell the computer. Two hours later. Without me even knowing it was taken and returned. I did not get to meet either criminal. As I left the SF police station I told the policeman to tell the criminal that I forgave him and wasn’t angry but wanted him to know that God loved him.

I can not answer why God’s protection and provision looks like it does or when it works or how to obtain it. I can proclaim though that it is active without our effort or participation more often than some would like to think and it is most relevant to our understanding and noticeable in our ways when out into the world we, our soul steps and in the will of God then we, our soul found.

Jesus is the least of these so what am I to me? What are my possessions or my purpose? If I am passing prophets (without the time to talk for they are good without me) for the purpose of the Lords will in my life, than not only do I mimic the zealousness of the early disciples who wouldn’t give time to the poor asking for Jesus’ healing, but I make given plans more important than given purpose.

Don’t be frightened, dont be scared, this calling is for you.

At Grace Cathedral in San Francisco I began to write this message and I was reminded of two stories as my eyes closed, present, and open to the sounds of the youth choir i used to sing in echoing against the stone pillars. The youth choir live in between peaks falsetto and the troughs of the pipe organ.  Two stories about two friends I have met in my travels where God’s protection was present but did not look as “successful” as a returned cell phone or computer.

I am reminded that I have met others whose life in faith has shown protection that looked different. There were Elijah and Isaiah. My friend Elijah in Uganda saw his father get assassinated before presidential elections as a 13 year old. In the following minutes his family was killed as he ran into the jungle. His father was the rebel leader who overthrew Abote. For three days Elijah hid in dead bodies left in a pile in his town. When he got up he was taken into custody by child soldiers and fought with them for five years. An uncle recognized him and bought him out of that army. Two years later after being saved in flesh he was saved in spirit and is now pastoring in Kampala.

Isaiah, a pastor in Angola who was teaching both sides of the war about the Lord, sent his family to the market along his routine route one day so he could finish some activity during the war in 2002. That day someone had placed explosives in the road to assassinate Isaiah. The family didn’t come home and that day Isaiah had to pick up his family with the help of my other friend.

Mark 5 has been my “status” inside along with Romans and God’s personal gifting of vision and purpose.  Friends, the Lord has revealed to me something, not more than words can say, actually not words at all, but he has revealed to me an attitude of heart. There aren’t words with the attitude of heart.

We can’t expect to hold the knowledge of who needs Jesus. As the disciples were blinded by the mission of Jesus when the two blind men asked for help I am blinded when I relate the troughs and peaks with my strengths and my weak.  If you weigh measures of the Lord in possibility, then you leave yourself with room for doubt. Possibility doesn’t prove existence.  God’s love can’t be replicated. Prepare to be interrupted by the Lord while on the road to the Lord’s work.

I don’t currently own a working or complete pair of flip flops.

To Kill a Mocking CityBird

Welcome to my blog. I am a filmmaker and photographer. I currently have a head ache. I love Detroit, and well, now that my video is out, many Detroiter’s have expressed that they don’t love me or my video. Most people consider word choice more than meaning. Too few actually acquire the freedom to photograph. To photograph what comes along the way is to be living with a camera in hand. What am I but just another chamber of Detroit’s orchestra.  In my city, Shooting only adds to the music. Passing prophets for your purpose makes your works more than your meaning.

When you find your name on Michael Moore’s homepage, that is when you know you have done something polar. The Wall Street Journal purchased my content and my story on a dump truck that was hanging forever out of a fourth floor window at the Packard Plant and ran it front page in today’s paper. An editor told me it was the first time ever a photographer had pitched a story to the WSJ that they ran.  I am interested in telling my side of the story.

I just returned from doing a film series in China on the renewable energy sector to show to Congress/the Obama administration when I learned that this story was actually going to be in the WSJ. Not only in, but on the front page. If I didn’t have to edit all day tomorrow, I would tell you more about China, More about how I got to the actually film/photograph this dump truck event, and how my laptop with all my china work on it was stolen in SF today, only to be returned in 2 hours. Maybe more tomorrow.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125745924791631907.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTTopCarousel

PS. I am available for freelance work in Detroit/the world.

please know that all I have to encourage you with, you already have, posses, have heard before, and you have it in the full. You are looking to Jesus inside of me. And you are doing so for encouragement, so now with the knowledge you have, look to the Jesus inside of you. It is complete.

May I encourage you not to give, pray, act or love according to memory, but according to the prompting of the spirit.

Hello From Here

China Post’s to Come.

Dont Discount Your Effect

The Seeds of fruit go way beyond the farmers hand, way beyond the sowers hand and by the Lords will, eventually find home in soil rich for growth.Praise the lord that it is not a choice to bear fruit, but by his grace a harvest is before us.

http://dsimmer.com/2009/09/18/excuses-and-inspirations

Real Church 5th Anniversary, Live Bloggin

Pastor Chilly, paraphrased by Stephen McGee

What does God want to say to us on our five year anniversary. How does God make his church work together?

Our church has black, brown and white and all mixtures in between. This is a church that looks like heaven. Jesus purifies all of us, all races, of our sins. When we work together we can be an example in Detroit and Hamtramck. It is not a community event that will do this. It is Jesus. The symbol we use here at our church for the cross is a universal joint from an automobile. We live, in fact, in the motor city, so it is quite fitting.

Real Church The Universal Joint.

Three things to think about when looking at our church and how God is working; the motion, the mechanics and our mission. Pastor Chilly, “I’m know that I dont know everything”. So Today we will talk to 3 of our members who are smart and work in the motor city.

Romans Chapter 8:28 God cause everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

Phillipeans Chapter 2:2 Then make me turely happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with eachother loving one another and working together with one mind an purpose.

Paul is asking God what makes God whole wholeheartedly. If you throw a bunch of things in a car without thought it wont work. A U Joint causes the transfer of power and rotation along a bent path.

Mo Takes over the Sermon-

Three things we need for motion, a device and a designer.  we need a desire to move past the beginning. We can’t be satisfied standing still. We also need a device to transfer energy into motion. To make sure we work correctly, we need a designer and that designer is God.

The Church is the Universal joint that brings people together. Christians who are separate from a church home, God will find another member to take your place. So be humble. Second if you are a church that is not operating correctly, God will find another body who is humble and willing to do his will.

James 2:2 You see his faith and his actions worked together his actions made his faith complete.

The U Joint is the key to the drive line.  The u joint is great because it is designed to take pot holes. It does what the car does, because it is driven by the car. It doesn’t have a choice. It has to work when the car moves. It works though because it is strong and it is tough and it has to be resisdent.

Anthony Gancer Continues the Sermon-

We too like a U Joint have to be free of the things of this world. We must be protective. Keep yourself from being poluted so when the pot holes come

Phil 2:14 says do everything without complaining

WE need to be ready for Gods work. AND we need to know that we ARE ready for Gods work because we have been designed to move with and in HIS work.

We in the church bring stability to eachother. EPH 4:16 God makes the whole body fit together. As a church we want the holy spirit to drive us, but as the parts we know that the Holy Spirit uses us to go.

WE Not Me. We want this thing, this church to move. We Need Monday, We Need Sunday, We Need Wednesday. Why only one hour a week? Would you only want oil in your car for one hour a week? How bout a faith that is more than a song, more than a Sunday morning. E+very=Body*.  Think about it. We are all called to make disciples.

Back to Chilly- Serving God is Fun, No Me, Know He, Show Free, Grow We. Motion+ Mechanic+Mission=Ministry. If you drive around Detroit you will see a bunch of boarded up churches. If the church is not an active member of the community, if it locks up, it will fail. Be obedient to the Lord.

God has a plan and a motion to do that plan.