G-Poppers… December 12, 2014

  Jonathots Daily Blog

(2441)

One of his granddaughters asked G-Pop about music. She was curious, thinking he might be old-fashioned in some of his views.

“What is your favorite song?”

G-Pop: The next song which is performed with so much passion that I can feel the meaning through the talent and heart of the performer.

“Well, G-Pop, do you like today’s music?”

G-Pop: I like good music, and since good music is timeless, there is no today or yesterday in it. Just the living emotion of the moment.

“Do you like playing piano?”

G-Pop: It’s great fun as long as I realize I am out-numbered, 88 keys to 10 fingers. Obviously, I’m going to lose some of those battles.

“Okay, G-Pop. What do you think God thinks about music?”

G-Pop: God is a groupie, hanging around backstage, hoping the crowd is moved by the hits…and waiting to spend some personal time with the artist. 

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Three Ways in Three Days to Escape the Maze… September 18, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2355)

Feeling trapped.

It brings out the worst in us.

Once we have the sensation of being a mouse caught in an endless series of twists and turns, we very quickly turn into a rat, clawing at our surroundings.

Perhaps it is a flaw of human character, but we have a tendency to blame others for our limited circumstances in an attempt to avoid the inclination for self-destruction.

It usually falls into three categories:

1. I don’t like what I’m doing.
2. I don’t like who I’m doing it with.
3. I don’t like doing it here.

If you think about it for a moment, these three statements can become the descending path that plummets us into inactivity, depositing us at the bottom, grouchy and unproductive.

So what can we do?

Take three days of your life and try to generate a GPS to escape your maze.

DAY ONE

Set in motion a culture of candor. You will be astonished how much freedom and peace of mind you can achieve simply by stating the facts or trying to live up to your press release.

In a twenty-four hour period, if you will be completely honest about your desires, as long as you’re not attacking people, they will appreciate the revelation.

A culture of candor relieves at least half the burden.

DAY TWO

Show what you mean. Don’t explain what you want, demonstrate it. Create a prototype for your heart’s desire. Even if it’s crude and not exactly to spec, let people know what you want to do.

Let me say, working in the music industry over the years, I have run across two types of individuals who dub themselves “artists.” There are those who believe they are camera-ready and studio suited and they’re just waiting for the big break. And there are those who are tired of waiting for the big break and have found a way to use their talents every single day, to demonstrate their ability, while improving.

If you’re not going to show what you mean, don’t expect people to understand your explanation. We all need a visual.

DAY THREE

And finally, move towards the movement. If you’ve had a day of candor and a day of showing what you mean, a bit of movement will come your way. It may not mirror your final preference, but if you always move toward the movement, something is always moving.

When you feel trapped in your maze, trying to reconnoiter your environment is exhausting because you never know if you’re going in the right direction.

But if you’ll take three days to create a culture of candor, show what you mean and move towards the movement, in no time at all you will begin to understand that there is a way to escape the mundane. 

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The Sermon on the Mount in music and story. Click the mountain!

 

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Entertaining … November 22, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2075)

I joined in the discussion.

Well, actually, I more or less monitored it by reading what people were writing back and forth as they discussed the value of entertainment on Facebook. It really fell into three categories:

One group thought entertainment was supreme, and that a message of inspiration could be added as long as it didn’t push an agenda or wasn’t too obvious.

Yet another contingency insisted that all entertainment had value because it was escapism from the rigors of adult life and the difficulties of our society.

Then there were those who believed that entertainment was in the eye or ear of the receiver and therefore was difficult to define because it was so individualized.

To some degree, at various stages of my life, I have held fast to each one of these ideas. But honestly, none of the three define entertainment.

Entertainment is the blending of entering and attaining.

One of the weaknesses in our society is that we’re losing “sweet” fellowship for “tweet” fellowship. We no longer press human flesh by arriving at a location where we sit with other human beings and enter into an experience that lets everyone know that “we showed up.”

Then I believe that it’s the responsibility of the artist, the teacher, the preacher or any communicator–to find a way to use the common sense and good cheer of life to help us all attain greater understanding of one another.

Entertainment and inspiration are not at odds with each other nor mutually exclusive. They are fraternal twins.

For after all, you will never inspire people if you are not prepared to entertain their fancy, and you never truly entertain folks if they leave uninspired, merely comparing your offering to others they’ve sampled.

• I will enter.
• I will attain.
• I will show.
• And I will grow.

And when you mingle these two together, you get the essence of God, who was both a show-off in the way He exploded the universe, and a practical philosopher in the procedure of how it operates.

Tonight I head to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to perform after a banquet. They want it to be entertaining. This might cause some people to pause, wondering if they had the material and the inclination to solely entertain.

I don’t worry about such things. Because I believe if you truly entertain, you inspire. And no inspiration ever happens without the audience being entertained.

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

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Apologies All the Way Around … October 20, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2042)

I need one from Jerry Falwell, Liberty University and all those people who participated in the Moral Majority, who inundated our society with vicious insults and threats.

I would certainly like one from Bill Clinton for his part in making politics scandalous, phony and treacherous through his affair with the little girl.

Wouldn’t it be nice to get one from Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart for taking the precious gospel of Jesus and turning it into a beach ball, which they batted around through greed, sexual exploitation?

I would love to hear a bit of repentance from the American church, which remained silent while segregation raged for decades.

I also would welcome some reflection from the Tea Party, which thinks it has the right to stifle any ideas contrary to what they deem to be their common good.

And I certainly think we are due a bit of contrition from President Obama for biting off more than he could actually chew, and so anemically launching a campaign intended to relieve the suffering of the poor, only to further confound them.

Without an apology, we have a series of assumptions:

1. “You know that I know I’m a little bit wrong, so why do we need to talk about it?”

2. “It’s not as bad as it’s made out to be, and if I admit too much, I open myself up for my critics to disembowel me.”

3. “Get over it. Let’s move on. What benefit is there in focusing on our mistakes?”

4. “Nobody’s perfect. So why should we waste time examining our imperfections?”

These excuses have prevented us from being a nation that purges itself from stupidity but instead, keeps souveniers which we later display to our children–for them to pick up and resell.

We need apologies all around, if for no other reason than to make sure that the cursed attitudes that kept us repeating the same ridiculous processes can finally be buried in a grave with a tombstone warning us of the deadly results.

Since I don’t know if these individuals will ever come forward with contrition, let me start:

• I want to apologize to all the people I spoke against in my past because I was ignorant of the freedom God gives to human beings to find their own path, without interruption from my scrutiny.
• I apologize to my children for being overwrought, too lenient or just not available.
• I apologize to my wife for being a less-than-adequate husband while trying to become a consummate artist.
• And I apologize to myself for being a morbidly obese man my whole life, and so far never being able to find a way to unlock my fleshly prison.

You see? It’s not that hard.

And even after the apology is given, it’s a good thing, every once in a while, to remind people that those errors not only disrupted the natural order, but must never be repeated again.

How ’bout it, my friends?

Apologies all around?

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

Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about personal appearances or scheduling an event

Why Homing, Part 2… September 1, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(1993)

It’s never an easy day.

Whether it’s the bird in the nest, the lion in the pride or the crow in the murder, any time the offspring is moved from its location with family into the surrounding world, it certainly is frightening. Yet every species of the animal kingdom faithfully execute this ritual with precision absent misgiving … except humans.

And truthfully, we’ve gotten worse at it:

• In the days of Judaism, a boy became a man at thirteen.
• In the Old West, a child was either married or given a gun to hunt for his family at sixteen.
• Move into the last century, and eighteen was considered the time to escape the rigors of the household and find your place.

Now we have people living in their home with their mother and father into their twenties and even some into their thirties.

Everybody jerks a few tears when they hear a story about people “stickin’ up for family” or “lovin’ their family,” or the phrase, “there’s nothin’ better than family.” But sooner or later we have to have a line of demarcation so that our children can become the next generation of adults, or else their procreation will not be parented well. Then, within three generations, we will have such a confusion of responsibility and role-playing that we won’t know who the parents are and who the children are.

So the time you spend with family should be a discovery of the artist, the soul, the thinker and the worker. And when you finally do get out into the wide open spaces, you will look for those individuals who carry the attributes which have been of value to your life.

It will make it easier to build friendships and long-lasting partnerships if you are free of suspicion and are not prejudiced against any one of the four, contending that one is supreme over the others.

• Yes, if your parents teach you that it’s important to be a thinker, you may deny the value of the artist, reject spirituality and assume that others will do the work based upon your great discoveries in thought.
• Likewise, workers can feel they are superior by sheer sweat.
• An artist can act like a diva because he or she does not understand the pure gold of hard work.
• And a spiritual person can totally ignore the advances of science and reject the beauty of entertainment and creativity.

If you teach your children to be balanced–to recognize the need for the artist, the soul, the thinker and the worker within the family structure–when they do leave the nest, they will easily find others who enrich their lives.

As Jesus said so beautifully, “My mother, my brother and my sister are those who do the will of my Father.”

Exactly. Family is everywhere.

May we all have the heart of an artist, the soul of a giver, the brain of a thinker and the will power of a worker–just enough to give us a balance so we can appreciate those human beings around us who teach us better ways to perform our duties.

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Why Homing… August 31, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(1992)

I ain’t no pigeon.

My understanding is that the pigeon can be trained to fly back to its nest carrying messages, to be cast to the winds again, returning faithfully.

In the pursuit of establishing loyalty to “the great American family,” I think we fail to realize the limitations of that organization.

After all, is our journey here on earth about doing what we were trained to be or training ourselves to be what we need to do?

When I look back at my own family and the family I was blessed to father, I see some distinct differences.

My birth family was seven people–four brothers, mother, father and myself. My parents were wonderful people–well suited to the era they lived in–but they had little awareness of how to guide children to a place of self-discovery, self-realization and ultimately, self-improvement.

I grew up in a generation stuck between Dr. Spock and Mr. Spock–so the instruction I received was an unusual mingling of coddling and science fiction. Because of that, my brothers and myself did not know how to glean the knowledge from one another which would have made us more balanced human beings. We were launched to be competitive toward one another, and at times, even critical.

The power of having a home and flying back to it is in discovering the gifts your family members have, and siphoning off valuable pieces of their process, to bolster your own pursuits.

I boil it down to four areas:

• artist
• soul
• thinker
• worker

In every family, one of the children–or perhaps one of the parents–probably possesses a predisposition toward a single element. This was true of my brothers and me. I was more or less the soul of the family, with my sights set on spiritual matters. A couple of my brothers deemed themselves to be thinkers. One was certainly a hard worker. And I think we could have become artists, if our parents had thought such a journey was respectable.

Unfortunately, a family CAN be a trap, because if one of these aspects is pushed more than another, we start to believe there’s a black sheep–one lamb won’t stay with the flock. In other words, if a family thinks that “working hard” is the most essential part of being a good human being, they may criticize one of their children away from being an artist because they don’t see any way to make a decent wage.

A family of artists may teach their children that the only important thing is to be creative, failing to communicate the importance of thinking and hard work.

Our homes should give us our first glimpse into the diversity of human attributes, and instead of criticizing the ideas of our siblings, we should incorporate parts of them into our own lives, generating a balanced existence.

If my brothers had acquired some of my soulfulness and I had latched onto their thinking and working, I certainly would have had an easier path, with fewer bumps and bruises. The purpose of a home is to introduce us to our first world, and realize that not everybody needs to be the same in their heart and dreams in order to be of value.

I tried to pass this along to my offspring when I became a father. Incorporating the beauty of heartfelt artistry with the spirituality of the soul, the renewal of the mind in thinking, while introducing the practical aspects of a work ethic creates a human being who’s ready to take on the next project.

So I think the family is good if it lets the artist, soul, thinker and worker be manifested and gives all four the chance to find home in the children.

On the other hand, I think family can be one of the worst things in the world when it quietly but determinedly demands that we conform to eat our turkey and dressing in peace.

It doesn’t end in our “homing.” There is another step. So if you were not taught to be flexible–yearning to adapt to positive notions outside yourself–then your next journey into the world can be quite harrowing.

 

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Corn on the Cob… April 12, 2013

(1,849)

On Sunday morning, I will journey to Helotes Hills United Methodist Church in Helotes, Texas. Please understand how delighted I was to discover that the word “helotes” translates as “corn on the cob.”

How perfect for me.

Because bluntly, by today’s standards–I’m corny. I don’t pursue macho things in order to be a man, nor do I favor feminine things, to make my sexuality ambiguous. I like things that are real and touch human beings as a whole, instead of segmenting us off into color, size, sexuality or gender.

I’m corny.

Unashamedly, I cry when I run across something that is moving to my soul. I like to love my country, even though there are those who overdo it and those who under-do it. I am not ashamed of my faith in God, although I don’t wear it as a badge to make myself a policeman over other people’s morality, or as a means of establishing my supremacy in traveling first class on the Good Ship Lollipop to heaven.

I’m corny. But what exactly does that mean?

1. I lead with my heart. I will not arrive in Helotes Hills desiring to maintain a healthy distance from these dear folks so as to qualify myself as an artist or a theologian. I want to shake their hands. I want to hug their necks if they’ll let me. I want to laugh with them and I want to cry. Nothing any good happens in the human family if we’re not ready to feel.

2. Once I feel, it opens my spirit. That’s right–faith is when we allow God to speak to us through the feelings of our hearts. Nothing registers in us as people simply because it’s read from the Bible. It has to come with some emotion: a story or some way to stimulate our innards. Then we open up our spirits and faith happens.

3. Once my spirit opens, my mind can be renewed. Yes, that means I can get a little fervor in my thinking. My brain actually lays there like a big pile of mush if I don’t give it some shocking new revelation that gets me thinking again. I want to have fervor. I want my reasoning to grow to the fullness of the measure of the stature of Jesus. I know that sounds corny. So be it.

4. And finally, I want my strength to be empowered. I want to give my body some focus about the best things to do instead of floating from one mishap to another, trying to pretend that things aren’t as bad as they seem.

I want feeling, faith, fervor and focus–so I am going to involve my heart, soul, mind and strength in the experience I will enjoy with the good folks at Helotes Hills.

After all, this is the corn–and I guess that would make me … the cob.

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