1 Thing That Is Certain … August 10th, 2020

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Uncertainty

I feel people are frustrated and confused simply because they are not told the truth.

We have never made the planet safer by insisting that people are better than they really are.

On the other hand, we have propagated arrogance, which has led to belief in super-races, chosen people or exceptional countries that end up damaging the lives of those around them.

I have found it very comforting to understand how life works, and rather than doing commentary on how unfair it is, standing in awe of how fair the unfairness ends up being.

Please join me in the cosmic notion of uncertainty.

Life is:

1. You don’t own it, but it is in your name.

2. You don’t control it, but the steering is your job.

3. You can’t demand help, but also can’t complain.

Now, if you’re completely uncomfortable with these three stipulations, you have probably just tracked down the source of drama in your life.

But if you do comprehend them—or at least snicker—you’re on the road to understanding something very important:

There may not be a road at all.

1 Thing You Can Do to Clear Up Your Confusion

 

Stop Believing in Mythology

You aren’t supposed to walk on water. You’re a human being. You swim. It isn’t a lack of faith that you can’t tiptoe on the waves.

God didn’t plan your life; you have free will.

God doesn’t have a bank. The money you desire will come your way, derived by hard work or the generosity of others.

There aren’t “gods” flying around, taking care of your foibles.

There isn’t a devil plotting your destruction.

The stars are not aligned to give you your daily horoscope, but rather, in symmetry with the orbits and pathways of the Universe.

No one can see into the future because there is no future until you make it.

And God doesn’t have a favorite, or “Chosen People.”

Come on along, join the gang with the rest of us.

For after we remove all the mythology, the supernatural is how naturally we can make things super.

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1 Thing You Can Do This Week to Make a Practical Step Forward

Save Critique for Yourself (and Yourself Only, May I Add)

Even though there’s a theory blowing in the wind that constructive criticism actually exists, most critique that leaves one’s lips and floats in the direction of another soul generally manifests some sort of destruction.

There’s only one person who can handle your critique—you

Why?

Because you know when to give it, how to present it and when to drop it before you start crying.

It is not a courtesy you can promise to someone else, who might fall victim to your burst of opinions.

Critique has value when it is offered in the mind of one human, heard in the heart of the same being and set in motion within the soul of the identical person.

After all, three things are for sure:

1. You can hear it.
2. You will recover from the experience.
3. You can change.

Now, this makes for great critique.

All other attempts are hidden forms of malice, jealousy, confusion, ignorance and selfishness.

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3 Things … March 14th, 2019

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 (It is in the first thirty-five seconds after a mistake, foible, surprise or even tragedy that human beings often complicate their situation by being stunned into either over-reaction or no selected profile.)

You Can Choose to Do When Confronted with an Unexpected Trial or Tribulation

 

1.   Reach over, hold your own hand and remain totally calm in the midst of the chaos

 

2. Always add humor when distraction tries to swallow up the moment

 

3.  Remain silent and do not add your voice to the confusion

   

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Good News and Better News … August 1st, 2016

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I always request a church newsletter–every place I go. I imagine the staff might speculate on why I want it. They might think I’m trying to confirm whether our appearance was adequately advertised, but since I’m already there, it would be fruitless to know.

The reason I read the church newsletter is that I’m trying to figure out what they’re doing and where they’re going.

It’s very important. Without a definite idea on doing and going, we can find ourselves whisked away with many a tornado of confusion.

So I read the newsletter of Enola Emmanuel United Methodist Church while I was sitting in my green room before the program.

The main article was about “branding”–passing on an easily identifiable image to the surrounding community concerning mission.

Here’s the dilemma: in branding, we too often try to chase spiritual goals, using limited human abilities. For instance, we extol the importance of prayer, witnessing, church attendance and Bible reading to human folk who spend most of their time working, eating and sleeping.

Jesus had a different idea.

He told us that the world was full of tribulation but there wasn’t anything we would be able to do about that.

He also said the world would need to be overcome. He placed that chore on himself.

He gave us a human mission: “Be of good cheer.”

Yet if you share this with people, they look at you as if you’re silly or irresponsible. But good cheer is the only thing we can accomplish with energy.

It begins by understanding that church should not be a service or a worship experience, but rather, a rally. We need to teach our congregations to:

1. Be

“I will find joy, joyfully”

2. Of

“I will join with others”

3. Good

“Together we will discover what is valuable”

4. Cheer

“Linking in fellowship, we will celebrate goodness”

Removing celebration from church is like taking the breath out of lungs. It leaves us with reverence and no praise. The Gospel of Jesus was intended to be human-friendly, not ethereal.

Sit down, take a pen and paper and write what turns you on. Make a list of the things you find joyful, enhancing and enriching. Then go out and find a way to do those things while benefitting others.

There is an empty chair waiting in the church for the person who will dare to be real and admit that he or she is human, and not ashamed of it.

The good news is that branding is finding our way to “be of good cheer.”

The better news is that cheerful people are a great draw.

 

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G-Poppers … April 22nd, 2016

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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G-Pop wishes for his children to listen carefully.

Yes, during this season of great confusion, it is important to be careful how we hear.

With rivers of information flowing through the countryside with greater speed than ever before, there are also mounds of misunderstanding pouring out raw sewage of stupidity, tainting the flow.

Beware the liberal.

Also beware the conservative.

The thing to remember is that truth has no agenda–just a message to make us free; free of the obstruction of needing to stand behind an opinion.

You can always identify the words that are rotten with antagonism.

They blame.

Each political party, every religion, countless races–all point a finger at one another to create blame.

Is there blame? Perhaps. But such accusations need to take a journey through scrutiny.

It begins with the facts. It’s difficult to get them. Websites, news reports and pundits tend to obscure them behind statistics and endorsements.

Listen to all sides, and then find that sweet spot in the middle, where truth has cuddled up, waiting for the persevering soul to discover it.

Find the facts. Don’t be so sure.

Once you find the facts, then it’s important to decide who or what is responsible. Finding the responsible parties is not a decision to target blame, but rather, discovering who has the power to bring solution.

Who is responsible?

Could it be that we are responsible?

What part of the responsibility can we take onto ourselves, to make sure that something will be addressed?

Then, once responsibility is addressed, any blame that needs to be brought forth in order to clean up the nastiness can be pointed out without fear.

• Facts.
• Responsibility.
• Blame.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work if you go the other direction–blaming someone and making them responsible to fit your allegation.

G-Pop must warn his children that if they pursue the facts to ascertain responsibility, to correctly place blame, that they will find themselves being neither conservative nor liberal–just real.

It is a season when goodness will be determined by those who are not so intent on advertising the badness in their adversaries.

To do this requires a set of ears tuned to history and the love of humankind … instead of listening for reasons to confirm our suspicions and alienate one another.

 

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Jesonian: Rome, Jerusalem and Antioch… July 19th, 2015

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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The religious system is confused.

Confusion normally sets in when what we have set out to do fails miserably, and rather than admitting our lacking, we choose to cover it up with freshly concocted stupidity.

All the churches in the United States are desperately trying to hang on to every blade of grass to keep from falling off the cliff into oblivion.

The level of disinterest for all things spiritual is growing daily. Rather than allowing for candid reflection and legitimate repentance, a strange sense of nostalgia has set in, causing these diminishing denominations to grab on to one of two efforts: to either become more Rome or more Jerusalem.

For some it’s an issue of attempting to return to the tenets of the Mother Church in Rome and put greater emphasis on sacraments, liturgy, tradition and form. They cite statistics telling them that most people want their church services to be somber, guarded and filled with relics of childhood memories of spirituality.

• So communion around the table becomes more important than communion of the saints.
• Repetition of words becomes more prevalent than the repetition of our ongoing commitment to one another.

Although many of them are Protestant, they secretly yearn for a reconciliation with Catholicism.

Then there are those who think the key to expanding their spiritual borders and increasing their attendance is Jerusalem:

• More emphasis on praise, worship, Old Testament practices and an apocalyptic geyser of predictions concerning the end of the world.
• If you can’t make people happy, then make them glad they’re sad because they’re waiting for Jesus to come back and make everything right.

And even though Jesus continues to stand at the door of all of these churches and knock, no one opens up to him because all of them are possessed by forms of godliness while denying the power of the Gospel to transform our everyday experiences.

There is a third choice. It is characterized in the Book of Acts by a body of believers who lived in Antioch.

• They were not Jews.
• They were not Romans nor Greeks.

They rejected the term “Gentile” and instead embraced a new name: Christian.

It was a mocking title placed upon them by their pseudo-intellectual neighbors, referring to this new breed of thinker as “Little Jesuses.”

They liked it.

They understood that to be a follower of Jesus was to embrace the lifestyle he proclaimed in his Sermon on the Mount and in all his dealings with his fellow-humans.

The Roman church will not give us the intimacy required to show mercy to others. We’re too interested in our own absolution.

The Jerusalem church will not provide us enough Jesus of Nazareth to transform the lives of the congregation from Old Covenant to New Covenant. And looking to the eastern sky for a Second Coming eliminates a vision of the entire horizon.

We must go back to being Christians–but in the style of Antioch, not Rome or Jerusalem.

That particular position functions with two Jesonian tenets:

1. We should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
2. And we will love our neighbor as ourselves.

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