Surprised by Pope Francis' Stairway to Heaven?

As our Lifestyle blogger, I've asked Wal Ozello to provide some coverage on Pope Francis' historic visit to the U.S.  Here's his thoughts on why this Pope is  a rock star.

If Justin Bieber  released a song the quality of Stairway to Heaven, you'd be justified to be surprised.

If Coach Urban Meyer started spouting love and admiration for the Wolverines and that state up North, your shock would be understood.

A WTF would be completely okay if you saw someone walking on the water during your early morning run along the Scioto River. 

But no one should be astonished by Pope Francis' message or his actions during his trip to the U.S. In fact, we should have expected it. 

As humans, we pick and chose what we want to believe is right and wrong. We end up justifying in our minds are our actions and beliefs. For example, we may stand against abortion and gay marriage and cite a few biblical quotes to support our beliefs but things like supporting immigration amnesty may be in direct conflict of  our personal rules so we ignore the Catholic belief of "Love one another." 

The fact of the matter is, the Pope doesn't have the luxury of believing in some of the teachings of Christ and ignoring the others. He must be the voice of Christ in today's world, challenging everyone he meets to act completely like Christ - not just how your perspective says you should. He know that you can't always get what you want, but I'm sure he prays that we all get what we need.

And if there's anyone that should have the truest perspective of what it means to be Christ-like, it's the Pope. And not just this Pope... any Pope.

Which is probably why we're surprised by Pope Francis' message... many of his recent predecessors have not been as outspoken as him. Some of them may not have carried the cross like Pope Francis does. And certainly some of them may have been more focused on the nuances of the rules, rather than the golden rule itself.

"Be nice to each other," sounds simple and it's easy. All you need is love.

The best thing we can do as Americans, whether your Catholic or not, is to listen to Pope Francis' messages and admire his actions.

The worse thing we can do is forget about him after he's gone.

Remember...  "There are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on."

Wal Ozello is Music and Lifestyle contributor at pencilstorm.com. When he's not blogging about rock n roll or supporting others, he's writing science fiction novels. His suspense filled time-travel books, Assignment 1989, Revolution 1990, and Sacrifice 2086 can be found at Amazon.com.

Top Ten Awesome Things About 2013 by Wal Ozello

Top Ten Awesome Things About 2013

At the end of the year, people make lists. Lists of best Sporting Moments, Entertainment Moments, Songs, Movies, etc. I believe that 2013 was an awesome year, one of the most awesome in a long time.

So here, below, is my take on the most awesome things in 2013. 

1) Catholic Church selects its first pope that actually talks and acts like Jesus. Pope Francis is definitely awesome. Not only does he say the most inspirational things and encourage us to be more human, kind, and loving to each other, the guy actually practices what he preaches. For example, instead of living in the Pope Palace, he’s decided to live in more humble apartment on the Vatican campus. Good things are in our future because of this guy.

2) Rush was inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. Okay, they are Canadian but they are the three most amazing musicians ever, and they all play in the same band together! How they’ve been shunned by the Rock Hall for over 10 years is beyond the 10 millions of fans they attract. This induction showed that the fans opinion really matters, that musicianship and talent really matters, and that the people who pick the Hall of Famers do have an ounce of intelligence in their brains. 

3) President Obama goes from our first black president to being just the president. Barack Obama being elected our first black president was an amazing historic event, but what’s even more amazing is that eventually we stopped talking about him being black and just talked about him being president. I don’t think the color of his skin is the most dominant thing about him anymore. Now he’s getting beaten up by the Republicans just like every other white Democratic president before him. That’s a step forward in equal rights.

4) Jennifer Lawrence becomes the first mega-celebrity of the century who is not an asshole. This was a huge year for Jennifer Lawrence. She’s a great actress and starred in just about every awesome movie that was released in 2013. We’d expect this to be followed with reports of her driving crazy drunk, shoplifting, naming her baby some bizarre name, etc., etc., etc. Instead she shunned all that and tried to stay as normal as could be. We haven’t had a celebrity like this since Michael J. Fox in the 1980s.

5) We found Iran’s phone number. We’ve gone decades not talking to Iran. They’ve hated us, we’ve hated them. But while Congress was complaining about Obamacare and the economy, the Executive Branch started opening up some dialogue with Iran and had some conversations that may lead to more conversations about them not using Nuclear Arms and us dissolving some economic sanctions. This is what a world power should do – reach out to the crazy little guy and build some bridges. Maybe they won’t be that crazy anymore.

6) Divorce rates may go down now that Gay Marriage is legal in over a third of the U.S. That’s right folks, 18 states have legalized gay marriage and few more recognize out-of- state gay marriages. Do the math, that’s 36% of the states in our union. Furthermore, the U.S. Supreme Court said the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act was illegal. This is awesome for civil rights, great for humanity, and frankly good for the economy.

7) Ohio State Buckeyes beat that team up North, again. Sure, we didn’t have an undefeated season and fell out of the National Championship, but we’re still going to the Orange Bowl and we beat the Wolverines. That’s awesome. Frankly, I’m one of those people that believe even if we have a 1-11 season, it’s still an awesome thing as long as that one win is against the whores from Ann Arbor. 

8) Most unproductive Congress in modern history. The 113th Congress passed a total of 65 laws including measures like post-office renaming and commemorative-coin authorizations. Why is this awesome? Would you trust this Congress to do anything right? The less laws they passed the better off we are.

9) Casting begins for next Star Wars movie. If you don’t think this is Awesome than maybe you don’t understand what Awesome really is.

10) End of the year proves that 2014 will be better than 2013. We had a great last quarter in 2013. Repubs and Dems actually talked to each other and passed a budget to last two years. That’s awesome. We added a bunch of jobs in November and had the lowest unemployment rate in four years. That’s awesome. If we keep this momentum going into 2014, then things are only going to get better. And that’s truly awesome.

You may not agree with all the things on my list, or might find some of the things I said offensive, but it’s my list. Feel free to create your own. But what I think is inarguable is that 2013 was awesome, and we are positioned to make 2014 even better – if we all try to.

Wal Ozello is the author of Assignment 1989: The Time Travel Wars and is the lead singer of the Columbus hairband Armada. He's a resident of Upper Arlington, Ohio and a frequent customer at Colin's Coffee.