My Tattoo

Ξ August 16th, 2008 | → | ∇ Cultural Architect Stuff, Jay, Tiffany, Uncategorized, family, friends, general life stuff, pictures by me |

Yep there it is. on my right forearm. I know that several people love it and several people hate that I got a tattoo, but I just wanted to share why I did and the reason for where I did. So,

1. The tattoo is of a window in a church that my brother and his wife attend before he passed away. My brother told me he felt called into ministry at his annual conference, and right before he could get started on track to actually be a minister in the UMC he came down with cancer. So, I felt this was a wonderful reminder for me of how much I loved Jay, how much he loved me, and to allow him to be with me as I follow Christ in the ministry.

2.  The window its self is a Trinity Window. It represents the Trinity (Father, son, and Holy Spirit) I have always been a huge Trinity kind of guy, and love the understanding of relationship, and mystery found in the understanding of the Trinity! So, this Tattoo represents God in all the forms that God has chosen to reveal himself to his creation.

3. The Tattoo is on my right arm. In the Old and New Testaments, the right hand has always had the imagery of someone’s actions the “doing” of someone. (hence Christ sits at the right hand of God the Father because he was the ultimate actions of God) And we are to keep the ways of God on our right hands and on our foreheads) to remember that our being/thoughts and actions are to be those of God’s in the world. I desire to be the hands and feet of God in all that I do, so every time I look down an see this tattoo I pray that it reminds me to attempt to live out this passionate desire in my life and in the lives of those around me. I actualy wanted the tattoo to be on my hand, but Craig would not do it because we use our hands so much that it would eventualy just fade away and i would have to get the same tattoo over and over again.

4. When I went to Guatemala on the mission trip one of the things I noticed when we were doing prison ministry to the gang members, was their respect and immediate connection to anyone in our group that had a tattoo. I did not think about this until afterwards, but I also pray that through this Tattoo I may be able to develope relationships with others that I might not have normally been able to by finding some common ground of a Tattoo and possibly being able to have a chance to exaplain the meaning and purpose behind my tattoo and maybe have the honor of finding out about the same meaning and purpose behind thier tattoos.

Well, I am blown away by the responses I am getting from the Tattoo, and surprised that my Father and Mother got over the shock fast. (only 2 small moments of awquard silence over the phone. ha ha ha ha) I am sure that many others will be shocked, and mad over time, but all the more reason to be able to develop relationships and get to love others. If anyone is interested I got my Tatto from a good friend that I went with to Guatemala named Craig. (In Guatemala he was doing tattoo cover ups for gang membersthat wanted out of the gangs and covered up their gang tattoos with Christian art…amazing) Anyway Craig owns two Tattoo shops here in northern KY called:

<–click picture for the link

Craig is now actually going through a 3 year process to go into the ministry as well in his own church, so ministry all the way around, heh.

Here are a picture Tiffany took on her iPhones of the work getting done: