PoHymn: A Rustling in the Stagnant … May 13th, 2015

   Jonathots Daily Blog

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Someone Else

I consider my ache and pain

Then often try to refrain

From complaining of my lot

Blessed by all I’ve got

Please help someone else

 

My talent is very small

To heed a mission call

I am vacant of the will

To chase the dreamer’s thrill

Beckon someone else

 

I am still feeding a child

With appetites often wild

Not ready for common display

My motives in disarray

Find someone else

 

I’m as poor as a pauper’s purse

As beleaguered as a battlefield nurse

Waging a war of my conception

Dodging the pleas for deception

Certainly someone else

 

But the more I resist

The more you persist

So it has finally come to this

Pursuing my hit and many a miss

Alas, I am someone else

 

 

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Populie: We’re Only Human… November 26, 2014

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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A mite of monkey

A little lion

A bit of bird

A teaspoon of turtle

A cup of camel

A dab of dog

A pinch of perch

And a dash of dinosaur.

Human beings. That’s who we are.

We are the storage warehouse–the culmination of all evolution–and the art museum for the Creator’s masterpieces.

Yet “we’re human” is used as an excuse instead of a motivation.

Politics loves the populie, “we’re only human,” because it provides an adequate excuse for the latest scandal.

Entertainment extols the virtue of our limitations so as to look on the darker side of our appetites, providing for a more venial outlook on our progress as a species.

And of course, religion feels the need to make us look as weak as possible in an attempt to maintain the strength of the Almighty.

We get sucked up in it.

We begin to believe that we are just part of the animal kingdom, even though Jesus jokingly, tongue in cheek, told the disciples they were worth “many sparrows.”

If we do gain a moment’s breath of spirituality, we’re encouraged to seek false humility in our attempt to worship God instead of seeking the “Christ in us,” which is the hope of glorious things happening.

Here are three things about human beings. I would ask you to place them deep in your memory banks and make sure, the next time you’re feeling sorry for yourself, that you recall these ample axioms:

1. We are created in God’s image.

If you’re an atheist, you are still aware that going into business with what you perceive to be your nearest relative, the chimpanzee, would certainly make for a failed project. We are unique by creation. If you do not believe in such a thing, we at least are unique by design.

2. We can feel, pray, think and do our way into or out of any difficulty.

There is no other species which has ever lived on earth with that quartet of possibilities.

3. We can choose to love.

Other animals mate, have bonds, maintain connections through offspring, but never really get the choice of loving.

These three things, combined, grant us an inner aura of divine nature, which can either be tapped or drained. The choice is yours.

But do not allow yourself to become part of a culture which, in an attempt to do away with God and personal responsibility, degrades the human being down to the level of porpoise instead of uplifting us to purpose. 

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Jesonian: 12,206 … August 10, 2014

 

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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12,206.

It’s the number of days that Jesus of Nazareth lived on this earth. Give or take a hundred here or there.

I would never be so presumptuous as to tell you that I know all the specifics of the times and dates of the life of the Nazarene. But for the sake of discussion and discovery, come along with me, and let us agree that 12,206 is pretty close.

The reason I want you to examine this with me is that six years of that life was spent in Egypt, as a boy in exile, having been threatened by Herod the Great. So for six years of his life–or approximately 22% of his existence–he was a stranger in a strange land, alienated from the people of his origin and left to discover, along with his refugee parents, who were aliens in Egypt, exactly who he was, what he could do, and survive all the difficulties associated with the process,

For twenty-four years, or approximately 71% of his term, he lived as a carpenter in a tiny village with a family of about seven people.

Only three years, or about 8% of his life, was spent traveling, sharing, teaching and interacting with people in his ministry. And only about two of those years included healing, exorcisms and resurrections of dead people. So although we consider him to be the celebrated healer of Galilee, only about 5% of his life was spent in that pursuit.

He had one night when he was arrested, about 4.5 hours on the cross of his death, thirty-six hours in the grave and forty days of life after the resurrection before he ascended to heaven.

He spent forty days in the wilderness preparing himself by challenging his appetites and being tempted.

All of those moments in his life which we call his ministry, was less than 10% of his journey.

Almost 3/4 of the time he was alive, he was Jesus of Nazareth, son of a carpenter, brother to Jude, Simon, James, with at least a couple of sisters, and with his mother, Mary.

To me, the message he left behind through this lineage of his life is:

1. Learn to get along with people.

2. Take some time to get to know yourself; otherwise you’ll enter life much too defensive to be any help to others.

3. Don’t be afraid to be a stranger because in doing so, you find out what you’re really made of and the power of your values.

4. When you do finally decide to travel, move among your fellow-humans with a heart to forgive and a desire to heal.

5. Understand that there will be those who will try to hurt you.

6. Be prepared to lay your life on the line.

7. Trust God to bring you through.

He was a human being who lived for 12,206 days, spending most of them communicating, through his life, how to better understand the people around him … and offer a helping hand instead of a critical spirit.

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The Gospel According to Common Sense (A Remake) … March 20, 2014

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I have a heart cluttered with emotion.

I possess a soul yearning to believe.

I am caretaker to a brain which can think, but prefers to react.

I live in a body filled with appetites and desires.

Sure looks like I’m a mess.

But it’s my mess.

“You break it, you own it.”

Remember that one?

So I need something to get these parts to work together.

Theater focuses on emotions.

The church, on the soul.

Education, on the brain

And the world, on the body.

I need more.

Common sense.

It isn’t so common–or we might stumble on it more often.

So here’s a clue to common sense–a passage, if you will:

I will clean my heart by being more honest about what I feel.

Pleasant and not so pleasant.

I will reawaken my soul by looking for God in people

Instead of begging the heavens.

I will think about good things more than bad.

It’s like a breath mint for the mind.

Then I will use my clean heart, loving soul and fresh brain to teach my body to exercise healthier appetites.

Finally, I will do the world a favor:

I won’t call them crazy, but I won’t go crazy with them.

Common sense.

When our common need with one another calls us to sit down and talk sense.

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The Night Visitor… October 2, 2013

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He comes very late at night, although I think he would insist it is actually early in the morning.

You see, that’s the problem. He not only has his own opinions, but definitions for terms that are separate from mine.

The creepy part is that he insists he IS me–and in my weakened state of sleepiness, I find it difficult to resist his will.

• He has the same memories I do.
• He has many similar beliefs.
• He has encountered the emotional conflicts and victories which are part of my history.

But physically, he is smaller. Yes, he takes up less room. And he lets me know it.

He shares ideas with me which certainly make sense in the dim light of the evening, which don’t come to mind when I’m in the shining light of the day. He has four repetitive, nagging subjects:

1. Why didn’t you act kinder?
2. Do you really think you’re achieving your goal?
3. Why do you think you can continue to be so fat and survive?
4. Wouldn’t it be easy to change these things?

You see what I mean?

It’s an annoying mixture of reality, self-righteousness, valid points and impossibilities.

But when I’m lying there on my bed, it does make sense. I do feel the inadequacy and the conviction to improve my situation. But somehow or another, this vigorous being who visits by night is completely vanished by the morning light, leaving me with the emotions of upheaval without the step-by-step solutions to victory.

Yes, I am abandoned.

It doesn’t make me angry. It doesn’t make me sad. It just baffles me enough that I want to eat something. It triggers the worst part of my appetites, which are devouring my future birthdays.

I want to figure out how to turn the conversations with my night visitor into a true motivation, to trim up the areas of my life that have caused me to become lumbering and clumsy.

But how can I retain the impact of the midnight confession into breakfast time  and the construction of a realistic “things to do today” list?

The truthful answer is I don’t know.

I’m not sure if my visitor is an incriminator to demean me or an angelic presence trying to spur me on to more noble causes. I’m not positive that the encounters I have with him are beneficial or just aggravating enough to cause me to slip a little further down the rock-slide of bad habits.

But I guess it’s just like everything else–if we view it as good, we can somehow carve it into a position to strengthen us. If we view it as bad, it can be used to discourage us and leave us wanting.

There are parts of the philosophy of my night visitor that I desire to possess. Honestly, I can’t be as hard on myself at ten o’clock in the morning as he is at two o’clock in the morning.

But if I can take bits and pieces, maybe I can launch a great idea which could eventually cause the man that I am during the day to make peace with the visitor who comes by night.

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Six Pounds, Seven Ounces … July 11, 2012

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Johann Luther Cring is now part of the human family.

He arrived at 5:25 A.M. this morning–nineteen inches long. His daddy was so overcome that tears flowed down his face, making him feel simultaneously engulfed in joy and embarrassed by his outpouring.

We had dinner with them just hours earlier at Ruby Tuesday’s and they both were much more prepared than I was when it was my turn to be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth. All during the meal I thought about how this scene was so much like what God envisioned for His earth–the grandparents, sitting at a table, gazing at their children who were about to give birth, knowing that their offspring were much more prepared than they had been.

The best way to describe me as a new father was muddled and befuddled–and still, I was able to squeak out a passing grade when final exams came around. So I am confident that my son and daughter-in-law are going to be able to plug into this experience much easier than I did.

So on this auspicious occasion, I would like to give four pieces of grandfatherly advice to my freshly birthed Johann:

1. Drink the water. Don’t listen to those paranoid losers out there who line up like innocent cattle for slaughter to buy bottled water at a dollar a throw. The water that’s in those bottles was taken from a tap somewhere in the US and shipped to you as “Artesian something or other” and is really just what you are drinking from your faucet. If you’re going to spend your whole life afraid to drink the water, you’re going to miss a lot of opportunities to kick butt and take names.

2. Stay hungry. Johann, I pray that you do not spend your life worried about cholesterol and calories. Develop a lifestyle where you work hard, enjoy it and come home hungry. Human beings were meant to have appetites and if you spend your entire journey trying to suppress these blessings, you not only will be grumpy, but you might end up being homicidal.

3. Love everybody. I’ve never seen anybody killed in the street for flashing a smile. You will be tempted to be prejudiced against certain individuals because it happens to be the mindset of the moment, but just go ahead and love everybody and let God figure out who the bad guys are.

4. And finally, don’t lie. Oh, you will probably run across occasions when a good lie seems necessary, but every time you lie a little piece of your soul crawls into the corner and dies. If people can’t handle your truth, they probably won’t be around to listen to your Christmas wishes either and provide adequate gifts. Don’t lie. It’s a waste of time and makes you begin to believe that no one can be trusted, which is the first step towards living in hell.

Religion, politics and business will try to get you to break these four rules, but they are wrong.

• Drink the water.
• Stay hungry.
• Love everybody.
• And don’t lie.

Any human soul who actually follows this philosophy will not only prosper, but will have enough left over to bless everyone around him.

Welcome, grandson. Don’t be afraid of the world. Walk in love and understand that the world will be intimidated by you–because you are the only force that God has created … that can truly change it.

   

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