Met More for Us … December 11, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2091)

A caterpillar is just a maggot who has purchased a really nice coat.

Both of ’em are larvae–larvae being that phase in which something that’s come out of an egg is trying to resemble what it eventually needs to be.

Human beings are no different.

One of the reasons I believe in a Creator is that there is so much of birds, amphibians, cattle and monkeys in the human being, that you can see that God reached the end of His evolutionary fit, and just threw everything in the pot and made human goulash.

And this is why we love babies. It’s the egg phase. They’re cute, we can pretend they’re going to grow up and become great people, and we even distinguish their drool from the spittle of our next door neighbor’s offspring.

Then … they become maggots.

Somewhere between the age of thirteen and thirty, these little wunderkinds transform into ugly, creeping, crawling, cheating guppies.

We lament.

We decry.

We complain to our neighbors, seeking comfort because this “glob of goo” couldn’t possibly have come from our loins.

Time passes. They have children, cocooning themselves within a house, a mortgage, credit card bills and elongated PTA meetings.

Here’s the problem: nobody ever makes it out of the pupae to become a damn butterfly. Human beings seem to stop in the cocoon phase, encased.

So we’re cute as babies, ugly as adolescents and young adults, and trapped as grown-ups.

Where are the butterflies? Where is the beauty, flight and excitement that explains why the whole process was initiated in the first place?

In nature we refer to it as metamorphoses–but what I want you to understand is this: in our species, it’s met more for us.

God never expected our lives to end when we birthed our first child. We are inteded to take the new generation and teach by example how to fly off in the direction of our dreams.

Last night I sat at a table with my twenty-four-year-old son, celebrating his birthday. I suppose, to some people, it would look like he was in his larval phase. He is.

Perhaps in a couple of years he may even be embarrassed by some of his current choices, and cocoon in a relationship and a family. But if he’s going to be truly spiritual and whole, he will emerge from that cocoon in a wave of repentance–and soar.

• I was an egg.
• I was a really despicable maggot.
• I cocooned in my soul to regenerate my hopes.

And now, by the grace of God and the beauty of determination … I am a Monarch.

 

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Groomers… October 11, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2032)

Graying baby boomers.

Groomers.

I am, of course, talking about those individuals born between 1946 and 1960, who broke the sound barrier by exploding like an atomic bomb, witnessing the end of segregation and the voting in of the first Catholic President.

They left a footprint on history. Maybe better phrased, they stomped their boots into our consciousness. Even though many people criticize the destination of this generation, it is difficult to challenge the authenticity of their origin. Now their ages range from fifty-three to sixty-seven–just beyond being parents, and still a little young to be the grandparents of adolescents.

Many of them have left the church and politics and are looking for other distractions to fulfill the aching memories of their youthful escapades.

But we need these graying boomers to come back to the church, the political arena, the social maneuvering and the emerging etiquette of our country–to bring the passion of the 1960s into our present age.

There are three things that baby boomers believed which have vanished from our present social climate, leaving us overly concerned about our personal needs and too short-sighted in our world vision. These are the three things the graying boomers, which I call groomers, should reinstate in their children and their budding grandchildren:

1. To question is to care.

I know my parents were annoyed because I would not “leave well enough alone,” as they phrased it, always challenging the ideas around me. Why was I able to do so? Because I was not alone in doing it. I wasn’t a renegade–I was in the flow of a generation which believed that many things were questionable, so therefore, go ahead and do it–question.

2. We can change the world.

Call it idealism or dub it presumption–but the baby boomers, for a season, believed they could affect the temperature of our country and clear out the dark clouds. There was no sitting or “waiting on the world to change.”

3. We’re all brothers and sisters.

The music, the movies, the books and the romance of the time were riddled with the notion of brotherhood and a greater understanding that “it was so groovy, now, that people are finally gettin’ together.”

This trio of ideas is in the genetic makeup of the baby boomers, although it seems to have been lost through years of cynical half-hearted participation. It is ironic that a generation which criticized possessions ended up selling out to them.

But there’s still that seed.

Nowadays someone who questions is viewed as being “a troublemaker.”

We need the groomers to come along and teach the younger folks that it’s all right to peer into the soul of our society and demand better angels.

Likewise, nobody in our age believes we can change the world. So what’s the purpose of personal improvement if your voice is going to be drowned out by the din of repetition?

Groomers need to remind the younger ones of protest, creativity and the power of cooperation. And instead of shrinking our love down to our personal families, it would not hurt for the groomers to remind the world once again that we are the family of man.

Our generation needs to be groomed by those who remember when music was not just downloaded, but taken into the heart.

We could begin this in the church, since we have so many gray-hairs there already. We might as well put ’em to work.

Who knows? It might make them feel young again.

Who knows? They could be the spark of a new revolution.

 

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

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