Unconventional… August 31, 2012

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I received contact this week from two friends. Both of them are believers in the life and times of Jesus. One is a Republican and one is a Democrat. They were each  sharing their particular rendition of what they believe to be the best profile for our nation in the upcoming four years. Each one believes himself to be a patriot of some sort; each one thinks that the other political party is detrimental, if not dangerous, to the progression of our country’s values.

Neither one believes that the philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth can be applied in purity into a real-world situation of social and political upheaval. They honor the idealism of the Master but doubt that the range of ideas that Jesus presented would practically work in real-time situations. How do I know this?

Because one’s a Republican and one’s a Democrat.

They pursue movements that utilize the name of Christ, but fail to engage his heart and will. They revere political ideas that truly praise him with their lips but keep their hearts far from him.

Here are two outstanding examples of Jesus principles that escape both approaches:

1. You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.  It seems that you can not be involved in politics and keep the sanctity of that idea. Matter of fact, it’s joked about and even given other names, like “disinformation” and “playing loose with the facts.” Here’s what I know: those who gathered in Tampa this week did so failing to recognize their most recent President, George W. Bush, and pretending as if the eight years of his administration did not exist. That’s called a lie. Maybe they didn’t like what he did. Then they should explain how the new platform and ideas will differ. Maybe they thought he got a bum rap from the press. Then they should speak to his honor and his goals. But to totally ignore eight years of a Presidency from your party during a time when you are allegedly celebrating your aspirations and victories is misleading and downright dishonoring of the truth.

And the Democrats will gather in Charlotte next week and will continue to do what they have been pursuing for the past several months–fail to take responsibility for the lackluster performance of the past four years. Honestly, there may be reasons for it. It isn’t like America exists as an island unto itself, able to produce all of its own products and provide its own resources. We are part of a global economy and there certainly are difficulties that arise because of our dependence upon other nations. But instead, the Democrats pretend. They pretend that things are a little better. They pretend that they do not have any responsibility in their Democratic party for what has transpired over the past four years. Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats do go back and invoke the name of George W. Bush–as the villain of the situation.

So Jesus says the lack of truth from both parties will cause our nation to be absent of freedom.

2.  Secondly, I become concerned with the political leanings of my two friends–one Republican and one Democrat–because Jesus told us that “the poor will be with us always and we should do what we can for them.” Unfortunately, that is not what I heard in Tampa this week with the Republicans. The Republicans hold to the concept that hard work brings prosperity, everybody wants to be better off and if we all just pull together, we can all be financially solvent and successful. We know this isn’t true. We know that no matter how hard some people work, there are limits on wages for that particular occupation, and certainly doors closed to advancement that would take them into a new tax bracket. It isn’t an issue of whether we discourage people from trying to climb up the economic ladder; it’s just that some people are given shorter ladders. To extol those who succeed with what we consider to be the obvious evidence of financial prosperity, while ignoring those who are still successful in their own way, but without the “dough to show for it,” is not only short-sighted, but could be deemed by the Master to be mean-spirited.

On the other hand, those Democrats who will gather in Charlotte contend they are on a mission to eliminate poverty by trying to make things more fair in the realm of capitalism. Let’s understand two things: (1) capitalism isn’t fair. It rewards those who have the most and then gives head starts to them in the race; (2) Jesus said “the poor you will have with you always.” We are not going to eliminate poverty. What we can do is give everybody a chance to excel and then provide an idea for what happens if they fall short.

As you can see, I’ve only mentioned two of the hallmark principles of Jesus, and both parties fail miserably to either address the ideas or set in motion a plan to honor the principles.

So as I thought about my two friends who are Christians, who have divided into separate political camps, I realized that the reason I remain apolitical is that I am not willing to sacrifice precious, powerful precepts which I know work in an attempt to compromise on lesser notions that have been historically proven to be ineffective.

We need something unconventional–but it is unlikely that this will ever come out of a political convention.

• The Republicans need to be honest about the administration of George W. Bush, take responsibility, and offer a plan on how they might right their own wrongs.
• The Democrats need to admit that they had no idea of the scope of the difficulties they were facing and that they spent their time spreading around idealism instead of hard-core principles to address the issues. They failed to embody the idea of hope–and the Bible says that “hope deferred makes the heart sick.”

Heartsick. That might be a good description of the American spirit.

So for those of you who insist on pursuing a political solution, may I point out a criteria for what you should require before releasing your vote? Here are the two questions. Which party comes closest to the truth by November 6th? And which party has a realistic approach to poverty instead of idealism or placing the issue on the back burner?

One thing is for certain–our country will need a little bit of luck and an awful lot of blessing to come out of this spin. To do that we must honor something other than ourselves. We must tip our hats to history, respect one another, work together and never stain the facts by ignoring the truth.

I love both of my friends dearly. I am just sorry that they are sacrificing the power of their belief for a temporary solution. The end result could be a complete loss of respect for the truth and the ignoring of the poor.

Jesus’ response to that would be, “I never knew you.”

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A Moving Experience… August 30, 2012

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I didn’t expect to stay this long.

When I arrived in Michigan twenty-four days ago, I had a full calendar of events taking me all over the central and eastern parts of the state. I devised a plan. I was going to move to a new headquarters every Monday, nearer to my business and engagements. But when I arrived in Lansing I found lodging so well-suited to our needs that I took a closer look at my plan and realized that I was already centrally located, and could just drive out to fulfill my obligations. So I settled into this one place for the past twenty-four days, which gave me my requirements, and I jettisoned myself around the Wolverine State via my van.

But today is moving day. It is time to move closer to Detroit where I can finish up my tour of this delightful location with these blessed people.

Moving day used to be a problem. You can imagine–if you had to lift your life out of your home every seven days, put it in a van and travel down the road to a new abode to set up camp, it could be a maneuver filled with indecision, frustration, labor and strife. Let’s look at those four things: indecision, frustration, labor and strife. Anyone over the age of ten will quickly inform you that all of those things are unpleasant, if not useless. But still we pursue them. Doggone it, sometimes we even feel grown-up, mature and sacrificial because we suffer through them.

I don’t agree. I sat down one day and looked at the things that made moving difficult, and rather than accepting them as my lot, I changed them. It really all boiled down to having just too many things to carry. So I made two important steps: I got rid of what I did not need and I incorporated the rest into fewer containers.

For instance, we were carrying around five clothes bags for our stage outfits. Clothes bags are not suitable for long-term travel. They are difficult to get into and they don’t exactly keep your clothing wrinkle-free. We got rid of the bags and substituted a lovely clothes trunk with wheels. We fold them up nicely, and when it is time to use them, we remove them and iron them as required. We also had our food and utensils spread through too many bags. I simplified that by moving into one case on wheels, also. So eventually, what used to take three or four hours to pack up can now be achieved in about forty minutes.

It removes the dread from my head. And when you take the dread from your head and instead, move towards solutions, you clean up mental pollution. You stop being afraid. It’s powerful.

So I woke up this morning looking forward to a move. Of course, something will come up that I am not expecting, but as long as it’s not mingled with my own inefficient disorganization, it probably won’t take me down.

I bring this up today not because I think you are horribly interested in my packing patterns. It is because I would like to introduce you to a simple four-step process for anything you will ever do in your life.

1. Have fun. If you think that such advice is cute and trivial, then you don’t understand anything about what makes our journey on Planet Earth successful. If you don’t find a way to make things fun, you will remove the joy from your existence–and the Bible makes it clear that “the joy of the Lord is our strength.” (No wonder most people look like they’re exhausted and it’s only eight-thirty in the morning…)

2. Make a plan. It doesn’t mean you’ll get to use it. It just relieves your brain of the tension of believing that everything is hanging out in the air without any resolution. Jesus said you should “count the cost.” Sit down and figure out what you can do, what you can’t do, what might come up, what has come up in the past–and blend it all together into a concise idea that you can pursue … while having fun.

3. Keep it easy. The minute you begin to complicate your life, you are mingling your arrogance about your talent with the unpredictability of Mother Nature. Jesus said that his yoke, which is basically his way of doing things, is easy–and his burden is light. The contortions that religionists put their congregations through in the pursuit of divine favor may truly be the only thing worthy of hell. Keep it easy. Don’t flatter yourself by thinking that you can handle it if it becomes hard. You can’t.

4. And finally, don’t worry. I was trying to think of a mental process or reaction that was more worthless than worry. I decided that a tie for first place might be wishing. But I still think worry would beat it out. Worry is the fussiness of simultaneously believing that life “should be easier” while trying to make it harder. Talk about double-minded! Jesus said,“Take no thought for tomorrow.” Don’t worry. And don’t come back with some cute little phrase like, “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have my problems.” I not only have had your problems, I’ve had mine. The Bible tells us there is no temptation that is not common to all men. Worry is what we decide to do when we really don’t want to do anything about something that demands effort.

So there you go. As I move out of my Lansing location and travel to Detroit today, I am fully implementing this quartet of possibilities.

• I will have fun.
• Because I have made a plan.
• And even though that plan may change, I am still going to keep it easy.
• And I refuse to complicate the myriad of twists and turns of life by worrying.

This applies to everything. It would even apply to solving the economic problems in this country–that is, if we had Republicans and Democrats who could have fun with each other, make a plan, keep it easy and not worry.

A moving experience–it happens every time I go from Point A to Point B without becoming frightened about Point Z, looming in the distance.

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A Lying Tongue… August 29, 2012

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So I decided to count.

I took yesterday morning and focused on the number of times that I told fibs in the course of a three-hour period. Even though I was alerted to the scrutiny, at the end of my little session, I had to admit that I actually told three untruths. Isn’t that amazing? Even when I was aware that a spotlight was being put on my language, I still ended up producing a bit of dishonesty.

Why?

After all, it is one of those seven thing that God hates. It says right there in Proverbs that He just really despises “a lying tongue.” And the reason He does is because a lying tongue is always located just beneath “a proud look.” Every little piece of pride that we manufacture to justify our present form of behavior has to be backed up by a series of lies to keep it going and real. And even though pride displays arrogance, it is a symptom of insecurity–and insecurity is why we all lie.

I’m sure there are people who stretch the truth because they just enjoy deceiving others, but most occasions for a lack of candor have something to do with the fact that we are ashamed of our truth and at least want to embellish it and make it look prettier.

It was a great exercise for me. I am one to extol the value of “telling it like it is,” yet when it’s time for me to do that into the mirror or into the face of adversity, I am just as prone to escape to the “little white something-or-other.”

God hates a proud look. We talked about that last week. And because of the necessity of reinforcing that over-blown image, it becomes necessary to lie.

Politicians lie all the time–not because they are immoral by birth. It’s because they find themselves needing to make promises when such proclamations are ridiculous and impossible. Thus, lies.

So a proud look breeds a lying tongue and a lying tongue exists because we have selected pride instead of simply standing behind the evidence of our fruitfulness. If you are going to be able to escape the pride that is born of ego, which leads to a lying tongue, you will need to come to three very specific personal conclusions:

1. It’s okay to be less than what people want me to be. Most of us become mentally imbalanced because we’re trying to live up to an expectation from other people which they, themselves, neither live nor pursue. If every person who was moral was truly moral, then morality might seem to be a good banner for a campaign for a better society. But the people who claim to be moral are always exposed for some of the greatest immorality. We should not rejoice over their failures, but we should be forewarned that arrogance leads to deception and lying, which always culminates in exposure.

I know that my family and friends hoped that I would be famous and rich. That was never meant to be. I have a message, not a product. If I had merely a product, I could hone in on it and make sure it was perfectly adjusted and fine-tuned to the tastes of the society around me. But having a message, I must be sensitive to history, reality and truth, and therefore, I do not gain immediate acclaim. I decided early in life that I would rather share a message that actually transforms human thought than produce a product that merely panders to it. So to me, it’s okay to be less than what the people around me want me to be. I don’t have to lie about the fact that I don’t have a college education–I can be honest that what I am is the by-product of what I have experienced, the sweat of my struggle and the blessing that God has given me by His grace.

2. Stop thinking about the right thing to say and test-drive honesty. The reason I use the phrase “test-drive” is that at first, you may only be able to say it in a room by yourself, then maybe to one other person who loves you. But eventually you have to be candid. It takes practice. It took me a long time to admit I was fat and not terribly attractive without either having a tear come to my voice or looking around the room for someone to contradict me.

Test-drive honesty. Start today. If you don’t, you’ll get behind the wheel of your life and steer yourself right into the ditch–and the ditch always involves some form of lying.

3. And finally, don’t wait to be attacked. Beat your critics to the punch. In the pursuit of self-esteem, we seem to have lost the power of self-deprecation.  If I notice my weaknesses before my adversaries are able to turn them into a slide-show, I retain the power. If my weaknesses are ignored by me and divulged by those who have less concern for my well-being, I am at the mercy of public opinion. If you want to know who I am and you haven’t figured it out by reading my jonathots, just ask me. Or for that matter, spend twenty minutes around me, and in that length of time you will know my weaknesses and my strengths.

The reason we lie is that we are protecting our pride. The reason we’re proud is because we are somewhat insecure that what we believe is really going to win the day. That’s as simple as it gets. So every politician who lies is really attempting to protect his or her pride, which means they are insecure about what they are telling us they are capable of achieving. See what I mean?

I am going to tell you the four things I can do. This is the truth, as far as I know.

1. I can fail. Even when my feet are set in the direction of prosperity and an inclination towards good, the luck of the draw or time and chance can withhold my reward.

2. I am not what you want me to be. I know that will disappoint you at some point or another. I apologize. Yet I need you to know that my job is not to please you, but to find a way to please myself enough that the love sprouting from my innards can be expressed to the world around me.

3. I am not satisfied with my talent. No–it is not enough for me to do what I am doing. Rather, I gain a sense of passion by multiplying my gifts, and in so doing, define what it really means to be a human being.

4. I am not better than anyone else. If you have seen people do stupid things, please understand that I am equally capable of the achievement. If you’ve seen folks excel, please allow me to opportunity. NoOne is better than anyone else. We have built a nation on that principle. Yet we manifest our American hypocrisy by departing from it whenever we want to extol our conservative nature or uplift our liberalism.

There you go–God hates a lying tongue. He hates it because it comes out of a proud look. God is not mean, He just doesn’t want His people to be so insecure that they have to be prideful and end up lying about it.

Are you ready to be vulnerable, so that you don’t have to be caught with your pants down? Let’s be honest–when you’re caught with your pants down, lying just won’t help.

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Kneiling… August 28, 2012

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I don’t know much about him.

I mean, I know his name–Neil Armstrong. I know that he walked on the moon. I’ve picked up bits and pieces about his history by listening to spurts of conversation over the past couple of days on the news blabber.

But honestly, I have chosen to remain ignorant about his specifics, and only consider his life as it pertains to me. Yes, I have granted myself a bit of indulgence. I don’t want to study the life of Neil Armstrong to discover patterns of behavior, reveal his denominational affiliation or find out if he’s conservative or if he’s liberal. I am fed up with that type of analysis. I am interested in what Neil Armstrong did and how it pertains to me.

He arrived on the scene in 1969 with his crew cut and space suit, climbed into a capsule which certainly promoted claustrophobia, and was exploded into outer space, to land on the moon.

It fascinates me that in that same time, the United States was fighting a war in Viet Nam while simultaneously opposing the same war, with young folks marching in the street. We were reeling, trying to recover from two recent assassinations in the previous year of Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. We had just elected a new President and were on the verge of fulfilling a promise by another President, who was also assassinated, who vowed to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Also in the midst of this pursuit of the moon, a bunch of hippies from New York were planning a rock concert, which ended up being one of the largest music festivals ever held. They called it Woodstock.

All of this was going on at the same time. (If we’d had a twenty-four hour news cycle, they actually would have had something to report on instead of trying to make hay out of all the straw polls.)

There was a sense that to do anything less than pursue radical excellence was to be  un-American. Even in my small town, our church started a coffee-house, which had grown to 125 kids showing up on Saturday night, in a town of only 1400. When some of the parents objected to the fact that the coffee-house was held in a church and they didn’t want their children pummeled with religion, our board just went down the street and rented a small house where the young folks could have their gathering. Nobody argued about it; nobody called it religious persecution. We just adapted.

In the midst of this confusion and activity, Neil Armstrong, from Wapakoneta, Ohio, took a trip to the moon. He walked around, said his famous line–“one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”–and returned, received a couple of medals, waved from a car in some parades and went back to being Neil. He didn’t host a new reality show. He didn’t start a business off of the fame of being the “Moon Walker.”  He didn’t appear incessantly on television news programs as an authority on every subject thought to be even partially peripheral to his expertise. He didn’t demand anything.

He walked on the moon and then he came back and lived on the earth.

It is a style I would like to study–a better way of “kneeling.” Some people take their posture of prayer and rise to condemn the world around them. But Mr. Armstrong did his “Neiling” and returned to be just one of us.

Here are three things I have learned about “Neiling:”

1. Do something well until somebody notices. Then you might get a chance to do it even better.

2. When you get that chance, do your best walking, your best work and leave behind an example of magnificence.

3. Don’t make a big deal about it, but instead, blend in with your fellow-human beings, thus confirming that the same potential exists in all of us.

It is ironic that the death of this great astronaut is simultaneously commemorated with the termination of manned flights into outer space. They say he was very upset about that. I would imagine so. Someone who prospered and excelled in a season of war, protest, rock and roll and dancing on the moon might find our times and attitudes a bit anemic.

This I know–an eighty-two-year-old man passed away who quietly lived his life with one major exception: for a brief season, to each and every one of us, he confirmed that there was a man in the moon.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

Slyly … August 27, 2012

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Stepping into my motel room a little weary and delirious from an exciting weekend of being around precious humans from Riverdale and New Hudson, I decided to unwind a few minutes before collapsing in totality by watching some television. Does anybody else notice that the accumulation of channels seems to be proportional with the diminishing of possibilities? But I eventually landed on some special about the Ed Sullivan Show in the 1960’s–all the rock stars that appeared on his program. I didn’t watch very long, but I did view an appearance, from back in 1969, of Sly and the Family Stone.

Promotional photo of Sly & the Family Stone for Rolling Stone, 1970 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I always enjoyed that band. Their songs–Everyday People, Dance to the Music, and Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself, were not only joyous, uniting us, but extraordinarily musical. As I watched, Sly jumped up from his organ and ran into the audience at the Ed Sullivan Theater and tried to get the stodgy white folks dressed up for a night of “going to town” to dance with him. There were no takers. Their faces mingled shock with attempts to curl their lips up into grins, to appear at least a little hip. Sly didn’t care. He kept dancing. He kept rocking. And he ended up thanking the audience for “letting him be himself” while taking a bow.It struck me as funny and alarming at the same time–because the people in the Ed Sullivan show watching the performers believed that they were America and these rockers were a cultural transition–an anomaly which would soon pass, and that we would return to a corporate sanity.

Are you ready for this? They were wrong.

It got me thinking. There are three things I avoid doing. When I was younger I did them because I felt I was some sort of crusader for a cause–against the “wooly bear monsters” of the world. I now realize that you can’t have a sword fight with the wind.

1. I don’t try to satisfy the dissatisfied. There are people who arrive with faces already in place and they have no intention of ever altering that countenance. They have already “decided.” Of what they have decided I am not sure, but when you tell them to “be of good cheer,” what they do is sneer. Any time spent chipping away at such stone will only break your chisel … or create a very ugly sculpture.

2. I learned that you can’t change the arrogant. Once folks decide they’re better than anyone else, they will fight you, argue with you and actually be willing to die for their own form of prejudice. We keep wanting to have dialogues in this country about things like racism, poverty and spirituality. That would require that the people indulging in the conversations would be willing to forfeit their present cemented views for more fluid possibilities. Can I give you a clue? It’s not going to happen. What happens is that the people sitting in the Ed Sullivan Theater, who think it’s foolish to dance to the music, just die. If you’re smart, you’ve been having conversations with their children, with the aspiration of creating a better generation. In other words, “Grandma and Grandpa, you are welcome to come along with us. Just don’t bring your bigotry.”

3. I get away from folks who hope things get worse. I occasionally go to churches where they are having Sunday School classes on Revelation, the Book of Daniel and the end of the world. This is a hopeless situation. There is no way you can offer a savior to the world if you’re secretly hoping that they don’t accept him so he can ride in on a white horse and chop off their heads. People who believe that we’re all going to hell in a handbasket spend all their days and nights weaving handbaskets. It’s fruitless.

You might cynically say, “Then who is left?” Well, let me borrow from Sly and the Family Stone. There ARE people who have not given up on the idea of human beings. Here is some fresh information. At the top of that list is God. I like to have my name put on a list where God is at the peak of the signatures.

As Sly said in the song, Dance to the Music, “You gotta find the rhythm.” If you want to make a difference, you’ve got to understand that no matter what you see, no matter what you hear and no matter what you think, people will be free. You can lock them up for years in the Soviet Union, you can try to use religion to prohibit liberty, you can blow up all the heathen nations in the name of Allah–you will end up being the fool. The rhythm of earth demands that people will be free.

Also as Sly and the Family Stone said in Everyday People, you gotta join the harmony. “NoOne is better than anyone else.” I don’t care if you agree; I don’t care if you have found some clever exception to the principle. Your particular cunning is not going to outfox the spirit of God which is no respecter of persons.

And finally, borrowing from Sly and the Family Stone’s song, Thank You for Letting Me Be Myself, each one of us should go out and write our own melody. Since we know that people will be free and that NoOne is better than anyone else, go out and find a reason every day to believe. I am sick to death of the religionists who tout a mere Ten Commandments and the atheists who contend they are geniuses by removing faith from their everyday walks. It is my job to find a reason to believe–and in so doing, write my melody line to go with the harmony of life and the rhythm of the universe.

So to quickly review, do yourself a big favor and stop trying to satisfy the dissatisfied, change the arrogant or hang around folks who are waiting for the end of the world. Instead:

• Find the rhythm. People will be free.
• Learn the harmony. NoOne is better than anyone else.
• And write your melody. Everyday find a new reason to believe.

This is the kind of idealism in the heart of a human being that makes God smile.

Ed Sullivan will always be known for being a kind of stuffy guy who let rock and roll have its day. He won’t be remembered for booking the guy with the spinning plates. So … stop spinning plates.

Get out there and rock your world.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

Heartlips … August 26, 2012

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Abundance. A ten-year-old boy once defined the word as “having much of much.” It’s a pretty good description. It’s when the amount possessed exceeds the room provided and the contents begin to spill out. It’s why Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

Do yourself a big favor. Replace the word “heart” with the word “emotions” every time you read it in the Bible, or even in literature. Because it’s what we are. It is the drastic uniqueness of our species above all other living organisms on Planet Earth. (A case can be made that your domesticated pet has an emotional connection with you but it would be speculation rather than being grounded in biological fact.)

But human beings are emotional. Not much is achieved in dealing with us until that understanding is brought to the forefront and is fully comprehended. Those who think we’re spiritual find themselves in a crying heap of despair, wondering why God has deserted them. Those who insist that we’re mental creatures are equally disappointed by a failing grade, occurring on a day when tension controls the atmosphere rather than the remembrance of study. And those who work so intently on preserving their physical well-being are left crippled by the anguish of pending events, forbidding movement.

We are emotional. Once that is fully placed inside of us as truth, we can begin to move forward and energize our spirits, renew our minds and allow our bodies to prosper.

Jesus also had another insight on “heart.” He said there was a danger that people could praise him with their lips but have their real emotions far from him. It explains why we often do things that we don’t want to do and perform them with insincerity.

Let us take this essay to distinguish the two types of abundance. Since we’re going to jabber, drawing off the multitude of content in our emotions, it might be nice to be aware of what is available, and maybe how to better determine that it is words of our choice instead of seepage from a dark place.

The two kinds of abundance are overflow and overwhelm. Overflow is a gushing of our own making and overwhelm is a flood that surprises us beyond our preparation. Let me give you an example.

A young woman came to me several weeks ago and said she had been raised in a household where her mother and father were always nervous, upset and frightened about calamity, especially finances. So every time she sat down to pay the bills, even though there was money in the account to do so, she was terrified and expressed belligerence to her family. She was overwhelmed. The idea of money had been taught to her as a negative rather than a blessing. So even when she had it and possessed the means to care for herself, what came out of her emotions, and even out of her speech, was anger and frustration.

Here is a truth: all of us, when we’re overwhelmed, live, act and speak what we were trained to do by our culture, family and schooling when we were too young to resist the tutelage. Now that we have the choice, we’re often unaware of the need to avoid the reaction. If you allow yourself to be overwhelmed, you will act just like your parents. Even though some of that may be good, none of it is your choice.

The greatest gift we can give to ourselves is to walk through our heart every morning and take an inventory of what is ours and what is fear. Because when fear has its way, we will become overwhelmed, and what will spill forth from us is a pre-determined, pre-programmed and pre-arranged decision to a perceived problem.

What we want is overflow. It is why the Bible tells us that it is important to find things that are good, praise-worthy and a blessing, and to think on those things–to allow ourselves to be saturated with inclinations of our own choosing rather than being overwhelmed and ending up overwrought.

We have mouths which eventually will speak, but we also have lips, which articulate much more clearly. It is the heartlips that we must focus on if we want to establish our individuality and become a person who is truly born again and righteously separated from our culture–a new creature.

I was driving down the freeway one day and missed my exit. Instinctively, I yelled, “Shoot!” and pounded the steering wheel once before going down a quarter of a mile and turning around to exit correctly. I realized that this particular outburst had absolutely nothing to do with me. Oh, of course, I was responsible for it; I was the one who actually uttered the words and struck the helpless wheel. But because I believed I was in a hurry and I was tired, I was suddenly overwhelmed by my mistake–angry–and gave the same reaction my father, brothers and numerous friends had showed me as a child growing up. I was overwhelmed–and when I was overwhelmed, I became the someone else’s vision of life instead of my own. It was ugly.

This I can guarantee you–if you allow your frustrations, misgivings and disappointments to build up, you will become overwhelmed, and what will pour forth from you is some of the poison you learned before you were able to deflect bad choices.

So how can you guarantee that the abundance of your heart will be an overflow instead of an overwhelm?

1. In the morning, don’t immediately leap out of your bed. Ask yourself one question before you put your feet on the ground. How do I feel about how I feel? You’ll be surprised. The first thing that will come to your mind is fear and frustration. That tells you that you’re about to be overwhelmed instead of giving forth from the reservoir of your own overflow.

2. Never interact as long as you know that fear is present. Fear is a cheap replacement for love. It is why our family members will often say they’re “worried” about us instead of hugging us, wishing us well and telling us they love us. We know that worry is not love, yet people often offer it as a replacement. It is not. Never pass on fear. Wait for love to come to the surface and then impart that gift to them.

3. Read your own lips. Since your heart HAS lips, learn to notice what your emotions are trying to speak to you. I realize that some of my over-eating is emotional. It is a replacement. But for what? You see, that’s the fun of our journey–discovering what we’re doing to replace what we really want. Read your own lips. When I grab for that extra snack at night, isn’t it just a proclamation that I’m bored and a little dissatisfied that I don’t have enough to do? Could be. It’s worth considering.

4. And finally, when you do become overwhelmed, identify it immediately and confess to yourself and someone else that you just allowed something to be expressed that really wasn’t what you wanted. Fear demands a unique treatment. It must be identified, confessed and then taunted by good cheer.

We all have heartlips. Because we’re emotional, we express our abundance, which is either an overflow–a stockpile of our own choices–or an overwhelm, an instinct to parrot what has been placed within us by our upbringing.

For I will tell you this–I love my parents, I love my family, I love my faith and I love America. But none of them are entitled to define my emotions.

My heart is my own, and I will determine my overflow.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

Good Golly, Miss Dollie … August 25, 2012

(1,618)

Two score and twenty years ago, our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be His signature, brought forth on this continent a new lady, conceived in Kansas and dedicated to the proposition that a young woman could grow up in Harlem and as long as it was a township in Central Ohio, might still end up healthy, wealthy and prized.

Her name was Elizabeth. Her papa, not so cleverly, decided to call her “Dollie” because he thought she looked like a doll. She had a swimming pool, horses, nice duds and a credit card from Lazarus, where she raised a debt.

One day she met a fat boy who dreamed of one day being a fat man, with an additional aspiration of becoming an artisan of music, notes, composition and thoughts, with a mind to whirl the change. They were attracted. Some would say it was chemistry, but in this case, it was biology class, sophomore year.

They started to date and developed a lust, which after all, is only three letters away from love. They consummated their collision on the dew-covered grass on the night of the last prom underneath the stars, with her Arabian looking on in bewildered horse-sense.

• She went to Europe. He went to the mailbox to retrieve no letters.
• She went to Mexico. He went to Taco Bell to purchase some Nacho Supremes.
• She went to college in Arizona.  He crawled into a big bird and flew out to disrupt her plans.

For you see, a baby had been conceived on that night of the last prom–a child that needed some immediate attention and was basically, at this point, being ignored. You may or may not know this, but it was against all traditions in the Buckeye nation to allow children to be pre-planted before weddings. So it was difficult to determine what to do next.

They talked, fussed and argued while eating the cheapest pizza available in Tucson. She bravely made a decision to fly back, against her parents’ wishes, and join him in the quest to find out if it was possible to live on nothing and have something.

Four children, one miscarriage, thirty-nine disasters and seven hundred and fifty thousand giggles later, she is still here. Many years ago, lust got bored, packed its bags in disgust and departed. But the love has remained.

Today is her birthday. What do you say about someone who has hung around for the better and the worse–and more frighteningly, has survived the mediocre? What do you say about someone who has shared a bed with you, rolling over in the middle of the night without commenting on who’s responsible for the aroma in the room? What do you say about an individual who has hung in there through criticisms, persecutions, prosperity and perfectly awful nothingness?

I know the normal procedure is to insist that when two people have been together, then ergo, everything has been terrific and no problems of any significance have ever cropped up. Of course, that is not only a lie, but would also be extremely boring. Every relationship is full of mistakes and regrets–because without doubt we would not have faith. Without some anger, we have no reconciliation. And without fear, we never really learn to appreciate the contentment of love.

What do I know about my little Harlem Township girl? She likes to have fun. That comes in handy. A stick-in-the-mud, after all, is just a broken piece of wood positioning itself in a nasty place. She likes to laugh. Fortunately for me, I have learned how to manufacture silly. She’s scared of responsibility. That can be rather endearing if you catch it in time. She’s drawn to her family. Blessedly, she extends that same courtesy to the other human beings she meets. She’s kind of lazy, which, as long as we don’t both do it at the same time, can be a source of delightful motivation.

And she has stayed. There is a lot to be said for remaining. Although people extol the great value of contribution, such blessing is impossible if you’ve already given up on the idea. She didn’t give up on the idea. I’ve been with her for forty-two years. There is no year that has ever been the same. We have been the subject of praise; we have been the target of criticism. But even though they tell you that marriages by teenagers cannot work, especially when they begin with a baby out of wedlock, we are the exception and we ignore the rule.

So I say, “Happy birthday.” You know, maybe that’s a very bad term. Because our real birthday is when we take the morning of our present existence and believe that God’s blessings are fresh daily.

So to you, my dear, I send this greeting. Happy Earth Day. This is your day. So we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Good golly, Miss Dollie. Two score and twenty years. Who ever would’ve thunk we would get this far? Certainly not that suspicious United Methodist minister who reluctantly married us in Sparta, North Carolina.

But he was wrong.

Thank you for staying on for the entire mission–looking for more trips to the moon.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity