Kennedy Raes

I am a dedicated candidate eager to guide youth on spiritual matters and promote spiritual growth. Skilled in teaching and mentoring, possessing in-depth knowledge of Sunday school curriculum, scripture, and content. I am skillful in planning and coordinating spiritual growth activities and guiding children in completing projects and activities. My experience has expanded my ability to build relationships. I aim to enhance understanding and well-being among diverse groups, I leveraged skills in crisis management and compassionate care at Arc of the Quad Cities. Specializing in behavior redirection and communication skills, demonstrating a knack for fostering both individual and group progress through innovative lesson development and supportive interactions. I am open-minded and committed to serving with the utmost patience and respect. I am an organized and dependable candidate successful at managing multiple priorities with a positive attitude. I have the willingness to take on added responsibilities to meet team goals. I strive to be a detail-oriented team player with strong organizational skills and the ability to handle multiple projects simultaneously with a high degree of accuracy. I seek to maintain a full-time position that offers professional challenges utilizing interpersonal skills, excellent time management, and problem-solving skills. My background involves being a knowledgeable Sunday school Teacher with three years of experience teaching preschool to Junior High groups. I also served as the church Clerk for a year at my local church. I have become successful at planning detailed, creative lesson plans to enhance people's faith and spiritual relationships while promoting personal growth. I am committed to honesty and have gained knowledge of being skilled in program management, teaching, and counseling through my many different experiences. I will bring a strong understanding of youth-related concerns and social media proficiency. I have a compassionate nature that was formed concretely after many experiences, deep reflection and fully giving myself to Jesus. I have been a dedicated Sunday school teacher and caregiver. But most of all I have been a human being, and I continue to wake up as one every day, but I'm saved by Christ and I want everyone to feel the salvation and peace that I have gained through receiving the love of God. I am committed to providing spiritual education for youth. I hold myself in the highest regard to most importantly, be true to God and to have compassion and respect for each person I am blessed to encounter. I am approachable and committed to building relationships and fostering a sense of belonging and understanding through the love of Jesus and scripture.

I wanted to include a very thought out and in-depth piece of writing that I have done on the different perceptions, feelings and variety that my relationship with God has gone through. Through my writing I hope you can see the different stages of my faith and understanding. Throughout my pieces of writing I try to bring much understanding towards adversities in life and the human existence itself. Throughout my pieces of writing I hope to convey the importance of God and the salvation that is gained through following God, knowing God and loving God. I lived in complete delusion, chaos and was a prisoner of my own mind until I was freed by the love of Jesus, by his sacrifice I am able to know God and in this know love. To me love was born, and that has been the greatest devotion and gifted charity of my life. The following words are my thoughts when I was in a place in life that I would consider to be a metamorphosis. A pupa, undergoing heavy growth and transformation. Title: A return to the sculptor.

Wonderfully beautiful I sit. Listening and breathing in all that is around me. My days are surrounded by the flatteries of light hitting different angles of the wall, the different shades of yellow pierced with a hue of orange throughout the day. My ears reach each sound, each wave exchanging different tones. Concentration in solitude. I'm in a dream, dancing in a small box. I live up high maneuvering in the sky, in my magic carpet I store over towns and cities exploring seeing, and hearing the sounds inside them. I do this all in my box. Solitary confinement. My sentence given, by myself, truly a will I wished. So that I was able to search deep inside of myself and see the transparency from my skin to my soul. Therefore I removed myself and trapped myself in this little box. And I've danced in it for days, wept in it for long nights. But in a motion picture, I am there. It's all so beautiful, that I see myself hovering over my own body. I feel death approaching me. But not the death of the body but of the mind. United with the time of death I feel myself giving birth. Eating ever so much inside of me yet, growing. So slowly it feels as though the growth of the unborn child inside of me is eating every part of me. It is so painful. Striking a sickness so horrific that I have never broached it, neither here on earth nor in the dwellings of my mind. Anesthesia has fallen upon me at this point and I feel myself in the final hours of surgery. Cautiously I am opening myself and removing whatever ghastly things lay inside of me. So ever gently is the surgeon, and as my hands ravishingly cut into my skin parting my organs, searching for whatever lies inside of me. I am also a body on the table lying there and as I am my mind reaches far in the depth of my consciousness as I lie still under the hallucination of my denial of the surgery I am enlisting on myself. But slowly the hallucinogenics fade away and I am struck with the horrific sight of my destruction. My body cannot move but my eyes feel as though they are opened and my senses all are united. I scream and I holler feeling the pain more abominable every minute. I look up at myself. She is grinning hard as she is working. Shaking I scream at myself "Wake up, wake up!" but my eyes will not correlate with my body and everything lies shut. So I am tortured by myself until my eyes glide to the side and on a small tray there are tools used to close what my surgeon has sliced open. Wondrous is the fascination of what the surgeon is proceeding to find and take out. So I lie still in the wake wondering what is to come. Wonder is bright and brightness creates warmth. Sacrifice but wondrous beautiful death leading but still proceeding may follow after the glorious journey of stillness that lies inside of that hospital room. And as everything starts to fade and things grow more still than they are suspected to, death becomes a wistful tune that you long to embrace and dance to. Only the ones with the most still of thoughts can feel this warmth. Death is something that is no longer feared. It now appears to be restful. But the slumber does not truly come after death but before. When fear is held souls become restless. Repeating this unrest tribulation over itself again and again. But that does not always have to come of the body for death is truly of the mind. The mind is what dies in the end not the body. Figuring that the brain is where the soul is categorized; when someone becomes lost in the function of their brain that is when everything is pronounced to be gone. There is no function left inside of them and they are dead. So while not being brain dead in the sense that there is no oxygen circulating in the brain. Rather, the complete death of all influences and expectations that the brain holds, all patterns of itself, all behaviors, and all hardwiring completely imploded, gone and dead. At last, the surgeon raises his hands as a conductor facing his orchestra lifts his hands in the arms to start the beginning of a triumphant symphony. Nothing is too dismayed as the surgeon moves his hands over to the small tools and tidally starts to patch up his broken mosaic statue that lays peacefully under his arms. Now, even more beautiful than it was before, now having more depth and more traces of patterns, the statue arises. The sculptor father of the mosaic who had skillfully spent hours slaving over to repair and bring back to life what he loved most now looked into the eyes of his beloved. And ever so tenderly embraced the beauty with a harnessing embrace studying himself and piercing into her the reins of his soul became one with his creation. So in my box, I sit studying myself looking at each pattern that paints my soul. Finding the Mosaic inside of me. And once realizing the statue that covers me peering at the surgeon and wistfully waiting for the kiss of death. Returning to what is my beloved, my sculptor who slaves upon me working diligently waiting to bring me back to consciousness. But my rest is tender and sometimes I think soberly at the thought of losing it. Yet the embrace from my sculptor that I will surely feel finally brings every single color on me to life and changes me more than the thought of just peering into his eyes. So at once the sculptor reaches over to the table, grabs the tools, and starts to mold me back together. At once I am awakened with a glow and enveloped by a kiss. Death has bestowed upon me its graceful touch. But with the new sculpted version of myself, each sound and color that appears through my eyes becomes different and new and I have been brought back to life. Always having it inside of me just brought back. I return to my sculptor. Love is finally known.

The next piece of my writing is a mixed concentration on the character of God and the duality between human existence and the ability to understand God. It is the search to find God and understand him fully. It is a piece of contemplation. The contemplation is focused on concentration and understanding is born from the piece.

Title: No Comfort without God.

When you look up at the vastness permeating above in the night sky, fear of the unknown would consume you without tickets of light being the stars, your entire world after sunset would be pitch black. But with only pockets of light, we can see through what are the darkest hours of the day. When those stars reconfigure themselves back together spreading and consuming the darkness that surrounds them they will bind together and together there will only be the day for the stars' are the light. Genesis 1:3, “And God said “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day” and the darkness he called “night” And there was evening, and there was morning- the first day.” Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the Earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” The world's words have died to me, they are not of God. The endorphin substrate of euphoric highs that are given in the unconscious psychosis mental state is no longer satisfying. I can't eat them anymore, they are unappetizing. To explain this I have to extend on the notion that there is an equal and opposite reaction to each action, Newton's third law. Understanding this to be a relative truth that exists within your psychotic fantasies better known as the unconscious, this mistress also goes by mental illness. She is anything that is untasteful and that is hard to swallow. She is anything that is not good for you. She is comforting in the moment but she is plotting for your death while comforting you. She's a killer and only knows deceit. She is only trying to survive and so she cannot truly help anyone but herself. For a long time, I've been in question with the story of the fall of Lucifer and his 1/3 of the stars. If I have gained anything from being delusional in life it is the ability to understand the path to unconsciousness following unrighteousness. And while there are thousands of situational analyses that can be given by what is to be the mental mindset of darkness himself. I believe the more pronounced question that is immensely more endearing would be, what is the mental mindset of darkness currently, what is the situation that it is in currently what are its actions facilitating and why are they being facilitated? Because at the baseline, if anything is being hunted, if a predator wants to kill it, the prey is only trying to survive. The moral longevity of your life is unconsciously and consciously your entire moral dilemma resulting in your entire mental psyche. The darkness and the impurities that lie within it are being hunted by the light that will flush it out. The light will encapsulate it and consume it. It will not collide, it will not burn it it will not water or dilute it down. The light will completely consume the darkness, becoming darkness, death, from its consumption the darkness will be embedded in light and the darkness will no longer exist. Only light will be surrounding. For the darkness will have been eaten. So the darkness only does what it can to survive and in that survival, it is fed. Trying to survive is its only thought and creates multitudes of actions, it keeps going and going and it never rests. Because it needs to eat to survive to keep running from what is chasing it. But the hunter has not brought for war. The hunter is training, he is not running but instead, he is waiting and observing and he is becoming everything that his prey is not. And so she being the darkness, becomes a killer unconscious of what she is killing. She's delusional. And she's demented because she is only saving herself in a world filled with others. The want for survival becomes her only source of life at all. Without it, she would die and the Hunter would only have to walk to find his dead prey. So she kills herself slowly, reaching for nothing but death for that is her only thought. There's nothing beyond the thought of death and trying to escape it. But there's nothing left for her on Earth. Where she is, it's gone to her, for she's killed everything that surrounds her. This is the tragedy of falling into sin, unrighteousness, and darkness, this is an image of hell. This is selfishness, ego and urge at its very core. This to me is a mindset that one can get himself into and I believe it's the very mindset of Satan himself, its ego in all of its fulfillment, and all of its lies and ambitions, they amount to nothing but urge. There's no stillness there's no thought upon the action and so the equal reaction being opposite is multitudes of growing light. Putting the notion in place that the more the darkness tries to kill the stronger the light becomes. That is why I can no longer give myself to anything but God. Because God is only light therefore thinking upon him on each action creates a reaction for his purpose. For God is the Hunter. He is the vessel of life itself and so he is also the opposite, the vessel of death. So to run from either one, life and death is to run from God because God is both. You cannot have one without the other. There must be understanding in both. Because to understand both is to understand God. You see the hunter is not truly a hunter at all but instead, he is a shepherd. He is a shepherd who has lost one of his sheep and he is searching for that sheep. And the Sheep is delusional, it's deranged, it doesn't remember him. It is hypnotized and no longer what it truly once was and what it truly is. The delusional sheep forgets the comfort of the shepherd and it forgets the trust that it has for a shepherd. But the shepherd does not forget. The shepherd knows his sheep. God is not hunting but instead watching over and this panics the Sheep because without the shepherd it is not truly itself and therefore only ponders on what surrounds it. With the Shepherd not there to protect it everything is immensely terrifying and so the delusional sheep logically believes that everything is out to kill it. When the Sheep sees the shepherd following it the shepherd is the most mindful creature that the Sheep has ever seen so it is the most terrifying. The sheep must lie down and let the Shepherd come to it so that in the stillness the shepherd can remind the sheep who they are. But the sheep that is delusional is always running and it never sits down. And this is not hypnotic this is a choice. It will not surrender, it will not surrender its ego and ask for help it just runs. Without strategizing or trying to look farther from what is in front of it, the deloused sheep just is going and going. When you start to strategize and look farther from what is just in front of you, you have to sit down. And right at the moment without necessarily knowing what will happen when the creature sits it will and when it does the shepherd will find it. The shepherd is the most mindful creature of them all the shepherd is more powerful and much bigger, that is the only thing that the delusional sheep knows to be certain, that is its only fact. But what the delusional sheep does not know is that the shepherd, its hunter, wants to save it. What the Sheep does not know is that the shepherd wants to carry it back to its flock. And without understanding this no matter how many thoughts you can perceive to be authentic and not just a means of survival will never equivalently measure out to the greatest thought of them all, to the most powerful action and opposite reaction. Which is life and death which is something outside yourself, that is something that you have no control over. There is nothing that you can do to inhibit nor exercise it, it just simply is and it is outside of your realm of reality being yourself. This is because we are able as human beings to understand this to be true. After all, we were able to sit down we were able to discover and wake up to the knowledge that God exists. And because of this, we were able to actualize outside of what is to be ours. We have been saved, the shepherd has come to us and he has returned us to our flock. Understand and be able to conceptualize that there is something beyond ourselves and it is not a conceptualization that comes from human intelligence, any species on Earth has the same limitations of death and life that human does. But the human while being affected by this, and creating actions upon actions in the causation of the realization of the fact that there is death in life. Because of this, there is enough causation for God to make himself known. And as God being omniscient understands that the result of creating life would create death he understood that in the long term, this would create a relationship of understanding between him and the human being, resulting in authenticity resulting in love between him and the species that was able to conceptualize him. That is why in the Bible it refers to man being made in the image of God. We are given the thousands of actions that God took, the thoughts upon multiplying thoughts of God's creation, we are the causation. Because of this it is our lives it is our trial and our responsibility. There's no escaping it. We can understand because we are in the middle of both life and death and God being of both was able to create a level of actions that resulted in the human. This is because of the undoubted love that the human would be able to feel for the shepherd after being so lost and never being able to find comfort in being able to rest. When the Sheep was able to rest and be saved by the shepherd its understanding of the shepherd would grow deeper than an ever would have been able to. To stay in the flock and not run away on your own will, you have to stay in the stable stability of the love and comfort of the shepherd and you cannot stray to your existential thoughts created by the ego you must find rest and truth in your Shepherd. Jesus amplified this in human flesh. This is why Jesus Christ is the son of man yet the son of God and is God himself because Jesus is all of the actions, emotions, trials, and adversities of God that has created death in life and created our existence as we know it, this is also the feelings and the reality of the human being. It is Jesus's ability to never stray from the love of God and to always be seated at the right hand of the power, of God. He never strays away from the shepherd, he never becomes delusional because he knows what is beyond death he knows the critical validity of life he understands and loves both unconditionally. He only gives unconditional and unwavering love to everything that is around him and because of this absolutely nothing contempt's him into delusion because when love is being received and given the father only reciprocates in love. But the world When love is given will reciprocate in hate. Jesus and the crucifixion of Jesus is the first and the greatest tragedy, this is because he only gave love and the people who he loved and who loved him crucified him and chose murderers and thieves to be chosen to live over him. The very people which he died to save, killed him. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34. Jesus understands that the delusional flock of his sheep has led him out to slaughter. Yet, he understands that they are delusional and he only sees them for what they were born as, for what he cared for and loved. So while being brought and beaten to kill, Jesus only loves unconditionally and when Jesus resurrects from the cross and is brought back to life he comes back to save the very people who deceived him and killed him. When one was brought to know Christ and love God on earth while Jesus was living and ministering they were and are saved. Matthew 9:2-8 “And behold, some people brought to him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” Jesus came back for the ones who were still lost he came back for the delusional sheep. So you must diligently watch the shepherd because the consumption of delusion is the biggest deceit that will ever befall your existence. The deceit is the hunger for survival, that is not needed. That is the darkness because it has consumed all of itself and cannot feed off of rotting corpses that it has already devoured. So watch the shepherd closely, do not stray from him, do not reach to be beyond him. For you are nothing without him, only meat. The shepherd sees you that's the most fulfilling part of his existence. God sees you as his child, the most dependable species on Earth. That is what we are, human beings when we are born. That is beautiful because God sees us as this and God only wants to fulfill you, he only wants you to depend on him. Because he knows that everything else will consume you. He wants nothing but for you to love him so that you can trust him. Creating the bond between the creator and his children. You will stay with him so that you will not become delusional and raptured from what is your flock. But the shepherd is not cowardice in the slightest, the shepherd is full of the most maddening rage that has ever been known. The shepherd will kill what tries to consume his delusional sheep and he will do it fiercely. He will do it so skillfully that the sheep cannot even see the shepherd protecting it and that is because the shepherd is so bound to snuff it out that he stifles it within not a moment at all. Do not fear God's love. But instead fear and be comforted in the knowledge that God will take away every ounce of darkness that you rely upon. You will fear if your comfort is darkness if that is the god that you serve. That god is false, he's replicable, he's incapable, he is not almighty nor omniscient, he makes mistakes, he is eventful. Truth and love are where God's actions and thoughts are concentrated. When the darkness is no longer a comfort but instead a fear, and there is fear, more fear than what could be the moral result of not acting upon the comforts of darkness, fear of being in darkness and of darkness, hell is to be away from God. When the sheep is fearful that it is not with God and it can't see God or feel him the Sheep is not lost at all for the Sheep is reliant on God the shepherd and that is when the comfort has been formed. The Sheep needs to come to this realization and it is not delusional while in fear of being away from God instead, it is learning that there is no Comfort without God. Love is truly known. And there is deep empathy and deep sorrow for those who do not love Jesus and do not know God. So let me have empathy for their vulnerability. For God is all, all-encompassing, and all surrounding. 1 John 4:9-11 ”By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

The next piece is the story of the butterfly. It is the story of the butterfly ready to emerge. It is the butterflies' perceptions and songs of the joy it lives in through it’s new life. Title: Song of my heart.

The spirit of life is all surrounding. Only God is surrounding. Only God is felt. Not even the mountains around can compare to God's all-consuming presence. He lives in all. In all and each reflection. He speaks and there is faith. There is sincere adoration and joy that is sung throughout the surrounding environment. His voice echoes with time and he answers in the innocence of a child and the tone of a lion. For God is the Father of all. He is all. Living in all. Not watching but living. In truth, he is found. And in truth, you will find him, and in truth, authenticity will be born, understanding will be reached and love will be had. For God only, is love. In every reflection, he lives. Alive is our God. Not only high in the mountain tops, not just deep below the trees, not only in the air and sunshine, not only in the ocean and breeze but in every Adam. Every pixelation down to the microscopic resources that are used to create what is surrounding, that is God. So have faith, for he lives in you. He is beneath and over everything you see, besides you, beneath you, and the very breath you breathe. That is God. So let him be known, and let him be feared, for he holds the breath inside of you that you will forsake and he will hold dear. Sing his song. Keep your head up, and turn your face to God. He will restore you. He will redeem you. As Jesus, our Savior said to his disciples: “Consider how the wildflowers grow. they do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon and all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothed the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you- you of little faith! And do not set your heart on what to eat or drink; Do not worry about it. For the Pagan world runs after all such things, and your father knows what you need. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. “ Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no mouth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Luke 12:22-34. Do Not Worry. These words are understood by every creature. And so, there is peace. This is the song of my heart, through this song I have gained a new perspective, through this song I have received a new life.