Sit Down Comedy … September 11th, 2020

Jonathots Daily Blog

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I don’t feel good.

But I’m suspicious.

Both about feeling and about good.

Feeling seems to have such great promise until it arrives with its anemic personality and unnatural bend to the dark side.

It can’t be trusted.

First and foremost, it is not satisfied to just have a feeling—but instead, offers a diagnosis.

What I feel may be just a burpless bouncing of discomfort between my shoulder blades but is interpreted in my strain of brain as a pending heart attack.

I may just be a little breathless, but this is translated as respiratory failure.

Maybe lazy has won the day but it’s so much easier to declare it a pending crazy.

But I definitely don’t feel good.

How can I tell?

I’ve altered my schedule—my Holy of Holies.

Normally, after my kitty-kat nap, I go into the bathroom, piss and brush my teeth before heading into the music room to begin my afternoon writing session.

I did not piss, nor did I brush.

I came right to the music room and was no bettered by deleting efforts.

Something’s wrong.

Now, there is a beauty to this—and there is an ugliness.

Let me begin with the ugliness.

The ugliness is that I can accidentally sustain this feeling of uncertainty by fostering self-pity.

I can baby myself right back into the nursery.

I can convince myself of all sorts of pending gloom and doom.

Why? Because I’m fat.

That means every chest discomfort could be a coronary.

Every breathless exhibition is my BMI trying to smother me.

And every single pain that might exist in my legs is my aging, tackling me for the grave.

So you see, if I don’t get out of this mode, it will turn into a bad mood and it can mold my whole evening.

So I come into the music room to talk to you about it today.

I am not anticipating sympathy.

I’m not requiring that you confirm your mercy in my direction.

I’m using you as a sounding board. Maybe abusing you would be more accurate.

Because I don’t feel good.

But I will tell you that even as I talk to you about this, I feel a little bit better.

That little tiny headachy part in the front of my brow is gradually dissipating.

I know it’s nothing serious—I know I’ve underdone something, when overdoing would have been welcome.

Or I’ve overdone a plate of something when a saucer was in order.

But it doesn’t make it any easier.

I am fully aware that I am childish about my concerns and need to at least deduct the “hypo” off of my “chondria.”

Also—I owe myself a piss and a brush.

When will that happen? Is that gone for all time? Have I robbed my self of a urination and a tooth cleansing?

You can see, it can become very complicated.

I don’t feel good.

I don’t think it’s going to end with my demise.

But I have to admit, there are times it does reprise,

And is important for me to know how to surmise.

 

Good News and Better News … March 26th, 2018

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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I was honored to spend a week high in the mountains of Colorado with friends. It was many years ago, when I was traveling all over the country, pretending I was significant and well-known.

Although I was grateful for the invitation, within the first 48 hours I realized that the altitude was making me uneasy. It was a weird sensation.

I was breathing but it seemed I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. It made my backbone tingle with apprehension. I couldn’t sleep because I was a bit frightened that I was breathless, even though there was no evidence of that fact.

The air was too thin–at least, for me.

When I finished the visit and descended, I immediately lost all my symptoms and felt like I was actually getting air into my body. It was markedly different.

Emotionally and spiritually, I feel much the same way in our country today. I am still getting some respiration to my heart and spirit but it is not a sensation of breathing. It’s more like suffocating. The climate is too thin with substance to sustain any of us.

Human beings are not complicated–if you think they are, you should go back to the drawing board and view their inception.

Humans require two distinct pieces of input:

1. To be inspired

That means the things that come into our lives should enrich us. Even if we find them challenging, we should be fully aware that our experiences are lifting us up on the shoulders of new possibilities. There is no replacement for this.

What we are given in our culture is a warped representation of reality, which we are supposed to accept as inevitable evidence that human beings are nothing more than animals. It is demeaning. It leaves us gasping for hope.

2. To be entertained.

By entertainment I am referring to finding joy in what we do instead of trudging along in an “adult life” which is predetermined to be problematic.

It is the joy of the Lord that’s our strength. Even though weeping may come into our lives, it should not endure. There should be an awakening every morning, to fresh ideas.

We are not allowed to be entertained anymore, but instead, overwhelmed. The powers that be tout that we are in the “information age,” but the data provided is rarely uplifting, but instead, debilitates us with the wickedness of the world around us.

Just as I had to escape the thin air to be able to breathe again, it is the responsibility of sane men and women everywhere to refuse the inadequate sniff of experience being proffered as truth.

The good news is that we are human beings, and therefore we need to be inspired and entertained.

The better news is, the God who created us sent His son to tell us to “rejoice and be exceedingly glad.”

 

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

Untotaled: Stepping 52 (October 17th, 1969) Kentucky Woman… January 31, 2015

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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(Transcript)

Even though I know that going to church is not a sign of spirituality, if you have lived a life of attending the sanctuary, to suddenly cease and desist can certainly be a sign of some emotional, or even spiritual, regression.

From the age of twelve through seventeen, I attended church three times a week. That sounds a little odd in our world today, but it seemed normal at the time.

In the fall of 1969, I lost interest in the venture. I went only once a week, and then only if there was going to be a youth group meeting to discuss the Saturday night coffee-house.

I fancied myself the leader of that project, even though I think I placed the crown on my own head. I was always there for the coffee-house. It gave me a chance to share, sing and perform.

Then one Saturday night I showed up and there were strangers present. They were from Lexington, Kentucky, and had come to conduct a youth revival, to instruct us in some of the fresh changes going on in the church world.

They were led by a girl named Bree. She had long, blond hair, wore hippie clothes, talked so softly that you had to be completely silent to hear her, strummed a guitar now and then, and loved to lift her hands up and “worship,” as she called it.

All the young people in our church loved her.

I hated her.

She was stealing my spotlight. And I use the word “hate” because I had not yet reached an age when I was able to dislike something. I either loved it or hated it. She got my hate vote.

She challenged my authority by daring to take attention away from me. She pissed me off because when I questioned her, she answered me sweetly. And the other kids were drawn to her because unlike me, she seemed to love them for who they were instead of bullying them into being something else.

The animosity was so great that even though they only stayed for a week, it became necessary for Bree, the pastor, a couple of elders and myself to have a “sit-down.”

I was looking forward to it because I was prepared to show these religious leaders how this “strange woman from Babylon” was coming in to teach the “young’uns” peculiar ways.

The meeting was a disaster–at least for me. Bree was so self-effacing and gentle that she won over the room.

Three days later, Bree and her friends climbed into a van and headed back to Kentucky. Before she left, she found an opportunity to have a private moment with me. I thought to myself, Oh, here it comes. Now we’re going to get her real personality.

She walked up, gave me a quick hug, looked into my eyes and said, “I love you, Jonathan. The Lord has revealed to me that you’re going to be a great man in the Kingdom.”

I couldn’t breathe.

I still find myself … breathless.

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

click above for information on 567!

 

Enough to Live, but … January 23, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

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 …not enough to enjoy.

I’ve gone through a serious transition over the past month, discovering that a rudimentary concept in my mind has been faulty since I was a child.

The realization crept into my consciousness about three months ago when I was eating at a Chinese buffet and I looked around the room and saw that all the patrons, just like me, were egg-shaped–and I don’t mean Foo Yung.

It was a location where people had come to eat–to have fun. For after all, isn’t that the message? “All you can eat.” In other words, tap the greatest desire for your appetite for food, envision how much that might be, and then go for it.

I also discovered an interesting thing about myself at this  feeding trough. I started off by going to the buffet bar on my own, until I got so stuffed that I was too gorged to get up from my chair. So then I sent someone else to acquire additional “fun” to eat–all the while convinced that I was having the time of my life. Until, that is, I had to get up from my chair and waddle to my car, nearly breathless from the excursion, having ravaged my digestive system with over-abundance.

At this point I did not incriminate myself. I realized it was quite simple. Food, which was meant to be fuel, I had turned into fun. Just for the record, food is not supposed to be fun. It is intended to be fuel. And then, once we understand that it is offered to us as “enough to live but not enough to enjoy,” we can find our good cheer in the planning instead of through overeating.

Food was never meant to be spontaneous–and if we make it a split-second decision we will get busy and start looking for fast food.

So as I realized that food is not meant to be fun, but instead, fuel, I found that planning my food, making really neat choices when I go to the store, is the true fun.

Yes, I am allowed to have fun at the store so that when I sit down to eat my portion, I am partaking of fuel.

We wonder why America is becoming obese. Let’s consider this: sex, which was meant for enjoyment, is now viewed as life. And food, which was meant to be life, is our source of entertainment. Yes, many people would rather eat than have romance.

The same thing is true with spirituality and education. We’ve flipped it. Spirituality is meant to be a rejoicing in our soul, permeating our entire being, while education is the knowledge that allows us to function better.

We’ve done a switcheroo. Spirituality has become austere, a learning process, while we are trying to make education more fun for the kids and ourselves.

I am not saying that what was meant to keep us alive cannot become a source of contentment. But this state is derived by gaining control through selection, purpose and discovery.

And I’m not saying that which is fun in our lives does not have intrinsic value. But this is tapped when we understand that feeling energized does not need to eliminate the possibility of learning.

Today is my twenty-eighth day of my food regimen. It revolves around the realization that eating is intended to be enough to live–not enough to enjoy.

My radical pleasure in the experience comes from planning, considering nutrition and from amazing myself with the types of food that are available to satisfy me without killing me.

So the next time you start a project, ask yourself, “Is this to live, or enjoy?”

If it’s meant to be enjoyed, suck the experience dry and then take the passion from that endeavor into your next venture.

If it’s meant to give life, then allow it to do so, and find your good cheer from pursuing the angles, choices and revelation that make you feel really smart and powerful.

Will I succeed in my latest adventure?

As long as I can keep life and enjoyment in perspective, I’ve got a fighting chance.

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

Click for details on the SpirTed 2014 presentation

Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about scheduling SpiriTed in 2014.

click to hear music from Spirited 2014