From the Stacks … November 20th, 2020

Jonathan had an acute awareness of the brevity of life. My son rediscovered this particular essay demonstrating that very thing and was moved by it. Jonathan wrote it on his birthday in 2011.

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Musings Upon Turning Sixty

 

I am a child of God

The heavens reverberate with a shudder of grief when I am in tears

The angels from a million pinnacles give a shout when I find joy

For I am part of a universal plan

A determining factor in His Almighty decision

Whether I fly by night or drive by day

All of heaven is hushed and brought to action

When I am in need …

This is a poem I wrote on a Greyhound bus when I was twenty years old, on my way to meet up with a friend who was in need. I had two packets of Zesta crackers, a can of Diet coke and exactly $1.25 in my wallet for other incidental expenses. I didn’t care. After all, I liked Zesta crackers. I also didn’t care that I had $1.25 in my pocket.

Truthfully, I still don’t.

I wake up this morning sixty years of age. My birthday

Sixty is significant.

First of all, you’re no longer in your fifties–that in-between season, in which you’re not quite an old codger yet, though you’re past many “studly” possibilities.

No, sixty is different.

It’s the gateway drug to Medicare.

There are sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour. Sixty is three twenties, six tens, four fifteens, twelve fives… Now I’m just being ridiculous.

The reason I shared the verse at the beginning of this essay is that I could have written it today and it would have been just as fresh and true.

I still believe it.

I still believe that I am a son of God–not in the sense that I must be careful handling my water glass, lest it gain alcoholic proportions, but a son of God because I am included in the mind of my Creator and Father.

Everybody in our generation is concerned about “liberal” and “conservative,” right and left–but honestly, my friends, I’ve always prayed for a straight, plain path and avoided the drastic turns based on society’s pressure to conform.

In the 1960’s, when I was  teenager, it was posh to cast a jaundiced eye towards civil rights and social reform while rallying around the American flag regarding Vietnam. It just never made sense to me to go halfway around the world to kill off the people in a small country in the name of democracy when we hadn’t yet given full rights to all of our citizens.

In the 1970’s, it was all about partying and lavishing oneself with platitudes of perfection and dancing the night away. Since I knew I wasn’t perfect and wasn’t a very good dancer, I chose to work on my personality, principles and trying to practice what I preached.

In the 1980’s, while the religious community was becoming obsessed with social issues, I continued to expound upon the notion that since God does not look on the outward appearance buts looks on the heart, we should spend more time working on our own internals and not so much about our other people’s  morality.

Likewise, in the 90’s and even coming into the 2000’s, I just could never sign on the dotted line” of the Contract with America. After all, who’s America were they talking about?

The reason for my choices?

It’s because I know how limited my faculties are, how fragile my talents and how weak my resolve.

The problem with self-esteem is that it so easily loses its steam–always having to be boiled up again. Truly, a waste of time, energy and talent, perpetuating self-involvement and little awareness of the needs of others.

Today I am sixty years old. How do I feel?

Starting with my feet–they feel about seventy-five.

My ankles are hangin’ in there at about fifty-two.

My knees are about ninety-one.

My hips maintain a really cool forty.

My waist? Well, let’s not go there.

My heart is a mystery, but certainly has more creaks than it used to.

My face has a myriad of ages, depending on how much sleep I get.

My eyes are a split vote–the right one an octogenarian, and the left one, still floating around thirty-five.

 My emotions are daily cleansed so they’re like a newborn.

My soul is always attempting to be as old as God but as young as a child.

And my brain? Well, my brain is still twenty years old, riding on that bus, believing that God cares …  about me.

Don’t be so concerned about the right and the left. Look at where you want to go–and steer your life straight ahead. Because after we’re gone, no one is going to discuss our faults, only our good points. If we don’t leave behind much of a record of righteousness, we probably won’t be mentioned at all. What I want people to remember is that I started out doing something and on the morning I passed, I was still doing it.

So let me call sixty a bookmark. 

I have fewer chapters to write than those that have already been edited.

But that means I have the complete capability of going for a great twist in the end.

Sensitize … September 7th, 2020

SENSITIZE 101

“Are you a liberal or a conservative?”

Cring answers and explains.

Every morning, Mr. Cring takes a personal moment with his friends.

Cracked 5 … August 29th, 2020

Jonathots Daily Blog

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Things We Learned from the Political Conventions

A. They can easily be done without balloons or hats.

 

B. Hookers got two weeks off.

 

C. The other guy is a crazy, communist, conservative.

 

D. Smiling is not always friendly.

 

E. Nothing.

 

Sit Down Comedy … June 5th, 2020

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Mary of Moncrief, Michigan.

A triple threat in alliteration.

She is forty-six years old, the mother of three children who range in age from twenty-one down to a precocious ten.

She is the assistant manager at the local Nordstroms, where she has been employed for twenty years, ascending in the ranks, and well-respected.

The date is November 8^th, 2016.

Mary was awake early that morning. She had lost her battle with insomnia hours earlier, trying to remain still as a mouse, hoping that sleep would be merciful to her fatigue. Giving up, she rose, made coffee and cinnamon toast—one of her favorites—and prepared for the day in the quiet of a very chilly pre-dawn kitchen.

She had one thought on her mind: should she go vote before work, or wait until afterwards and possibly face long lines?

Actually, that wasn’t the primary question. What had been haunting her mind for weeks was whether she could cast a vote in good conscience either way.

Politically, Mary was a moderate.

At least, moderate for Michigan.

She had voted for her share of Democrats and a similar array of Republicans. She felt she was informed and believed herself to be open-minded to opportunities offered by both parties. But the past few months had left her in a whirl, dizzy from disjointed facts and accusations.

Donald Trump seemed unqualified to be President, but his journey as a mature man of business seemed respectable.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, seemed more prepared for the position, but less sure-footed in the midst of entanglements.

But still, that wasn’t the real problem.

Deep in her heart, Mary of Moncrief, Michigan, felt that everything was just moving too fast.

She wasn’t against progress–she was upset about the speed being used to achieve it.

So many issues.

Abortion, for instance.

Mary believed a woman should have the right to choose the conclusions of her life, but she was uncomfortable about how the subject of abortion—the termination of a fetus—had become so cavalier. She especially hated the phrase, “abortion on demand.”

Wasn’t a little more humility in order?

Mary also knew she didn’t hate gay people. She was one of the first ones in her local church to rally behind the idea of civil unions.

But lickety-split, she was expected to not only honor gay marriage, but to be supportive of it whenever it was brought up, so she wouldn’t come across as a homophobe.

It felt unfair.

After all, the world of psychology and psychiatry had, for decades if not centuries, contended that homosexuality was aberrant behavior which required treatment.

Now, since that diagnosis had been recently abandoned, they expected Mary and all the American people to quickly shed several generation’s worth of comprehension and join the parade.

It was fast.

Mary wanted equal pay for women in the workplace, but when she rallied with those struggling to achieve this worthy goal, she found herself in the midst of some who decried motherhood and made fun of the simpler values Mary held dear.

Mary was especially troubled by the spiritual indifference, which seemed to reject any soul who believed in God, deeming such a person irrational or uneducated.

Everything was so quick.

Marijuana becoming legal. If marijuana was so safe, why did the people who smoked it always portray it in their movies as a brain-staller—and a pathway leading to no motivation?

And then—the candidates themselves.

Mary of Moncrief, Michigan, was very worried about a man who mocked women, weaker folks and other nationalities with a sneer. But on the other hand, how could she support a woman like Hillary Clinton, who defended her husband’s mistreatment of a twenty-one-year-old intern in the White House, and even to this day, joined into the attacks against poor Monica?

As Mary sipped her coffee in the kitchen, she heard rumblings from the bedrooms above.

Soon her family would join her. Her thoughts would be blended with their desires.

Realizing how important her decision was, she scurried around, deciding to leave for work, going to the polls early to beat the rush.

She called out her good-byes and best wishes for the day, jogged to her car, got in and drove off.

She was nearly to the polling station when she veered off at a graveyard. She sat, staring at the frosty granite stones. Still they were—and at peace.

In a moment of deep reflection, she asked herself what all these people who had once lived would want her to do.

Who would they want her to vote for?

Mary just wished that one of those who wanted to be President of the United States would acknowledge that affairs, nations, wars and social revisions were happening at such a rapid pace that we all needed a deep breath—just to appreciate where we are, who we are and what we’re about to undertake.

Was there an order in it?

Did civil rights come before women’s rights or abortion rights?

It all seemed to be happening at the same time.

Was she supposed to feel some beckoning or even a requirement to vote for a woman since she was a woman herself? Maybe she would have felt differently if Hillary had even visited Michigan—instead of assuming that the unions and the black vote “had it in the bag.”

The Democrats took too much for granted, and the Republicans granted so very little.

Time was passing.

She had a tiny window—about twenty minutes—to go vote and still get to Nordstroms for her shift.

But after weeks—perhaps months—of deliberation, she was no further along.

So she made a very quick decision in her troubled mind.

That night, as Mary of Moncrief, Michigan, watched the election returns, she was so troubled that she felt a chill go down her spine.

Donald Trump was winning. Would he rise to the occasion and be a great President?

Should Hillary have been the one?

Even though the campaign had drug on for more than a year-and-a-half, now it all seemed to be too quick. Too speedy.

Mary was not a bigot.

Mary was not conservative.

Mary was certainly not liberal either—not by present standards.

Mary didn’t hate anyone.

But Mary also didn’t favor people just because they were of a certain color or even just because they were victimized.

As the night wore on, it gradually became more obvious and then official.

Donald J. Trump would be the President of the United States.

Mary didn’t know what to feel.

Maybe she was a little relieved that there wouldn’t be any more Clintons in Washington, but also a bit frightened that a real estate developer would be leading the greatest nation on Earth.

But most of all, she was in turmoil about herself.

For she had gone to work—and didn’t vote.

The B. S. M. G. Report

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As we depart this year

Let us leave behind some fear

2019 certainly weathered us with its conditions.

For we begin to believe that we are so susceptible to the climate of our times that it is beyond our control.

BAD

Too dry.

Yes, that was the problem this year.

In the pursuit of goals, or maybe even high ideals, we lost our humanity and became schoolmasters, instructing one another, incapable of maintaining a sense of humor about our own frailty.

Everything got really serious.

Even interactions we once took for granted—such as the give and take that happens between men and women in the attempt to discover romance and propagate our species—was isolated into tiny danger zones, so that eventually it just became safer not to talk to one another.

Our politicians are as dry as dust. One group hates poor people and the other despises the rich. Unfortunately, both parties believe themselves to be the messengers of truth.

We need to listen to the Earth.

We need to understand our place.

And once we find our place, rather than falling into a sand dune and suffocating, we need to uncover good cheer.

Good cheer is the by-product of a simple principle:

Since I am not the first person this has ever happened to, there apparently is a solution, or at least a reprieve, so while pursuing this, I will keep myself free from all despair.

We are presently too dry. It’s a bad thing.

SAD

Then again, there are times when we seem too wet.

Soppy, sappy and silly.

We’ve begun to believe that things that don’t matter at all have great significance and consecration. And of course, we continue to contend that human sexuality is tied into the divine workings of angels instead of the pleasurable grunting and groaning of humans who are doing their best impersonations of Brother Gorilla and Sister Chimpanzee.

We listen to elaborate stories that people share to draw tears to our eyes, so that we will favor them in a singing contest.

The liberals are worried about the children and poverty and the mistreatment of the persecuted masses while the conservatives shed many tears over the loss of values, family and morality.

I find myself constantly soaked with the false emotion of those who are either bitching their way through life or have fallen apart and don’t seem to be able to be put back together again.

MAD

A case can be made that our whole society has become too hot. With the ability to go from zero to sixty degrees of viral intensity over the smallest matters, it now seems that our worst enemy is our own tongue, which lashes out without ever considering that those we attack might just pull out an automatic weapon and blow our heads off.

I find that temper is fed by two evils:

1. Pride in oneself

2. Pride in one’s God.

When these two are put together, intolerance is the result, which can easily lead to terrorism.

We need to turn down the heat.

Neither you nor I are as good as we think we are, and neither you nor I can guarantee God’s will.

So relax.

Sometimes things need to play out—and when they do, if you have kept your mind from flaming, you might be glad you when you don’t burn up.

GLAD

I guess the old-time phrase was “chill out.” Is it still around?

The reason church people are able to tolerate Christianity is that it’s been a long time since they’ve read the Gospels.

Merely standing in front of a congregation of believers, reading the Sermon on the Mount and offering a cursory explanation would empty the sanctuary within a month.

We are way too concerned about having our opinions taken into consideration. The idea that our conjectures don’t matter would tear at the fabric of an egomaniacal need to be valuable.

So we should chill out—if we can remember what that means.

It was best stated by an itinerant preacher thousands of years ago, who gave a three-word philosophical insight for life on Earth:

Take no thought.

He then produced a list of things we don’t need to think about, which included most of our ego-driven demands.

He closed it out by saying, “Take no thought for tomorrow, for today has enough.”

The greatest thing that you and I can do to make 2020 a perfect vision is to stop thinking about so much.

The really important shit lights up, letting you know when it needs consideration.

Everything else is dim, dull and has been around since Methuselah—whoever in the hell he is.

Sit Down Comedy … October 11th, 2019

Jonathots Daily Blog

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I sat and listened quietly, almost mouse-like, as two fellows in their early thirties launched into a great debate, right before my ears, about whether the Joker, as presented in the latest film, would actually be as murderous as predicted.

The discussion became vehement, nearly volatile. Each one of the fine fellows was certain that he had a pinpoint understanding on the true character, if not mental profile, of the villain.

Internally I was smiling.

The truth is, they both could be right since the Joker is a fictitious character.

Yes—you can conjure almost any scenario about him you want in the pursuit of advertising your theory or feathering your nest with ticket sales.

Likewise, of late I have sat in the presence of my Republican and Democrat brothers and sisters as they have mused over whether Jesus would agree with some portion of their political piety. But you see, here’s the problem–in this second discussion between the politicians, they fail to remember that unlike the Joker, Jesus was not a mythical figure.

There is some actual historical confirmation of his life, quite a few renditions of his thinking, and even a record of his untimely demise, recorded for all time by the fastidious Roman Empire.

It is much more difficult to turn Jesus of Nazareth into a mascot rooting for your team.

The Republicans may want to make him conservative as the Democrats profile him as liberal, but the fact of the matter is:

Jesus was Jesonian.

He had a way of thinking, doing, being, believing, loving, caring and moving.

If you choose to study these motions and imitate them, then you might be able to call yourself a Christian. But if you’re going to ignore the biographical information available and the obvious choices he made as a human being, you may pretend he is a mythical being, but it will be very easy to prove his timeline.

Let’s be clear:

Jesus never claimed that he was “Almighty” or “a stable genius.”

He also did not profile himself to be the preacher for the poor—out to get the top one percent of rich folks.

He didn’t rail against abortion and demand that people sacrifice their free will.

But of course, he did favor children, and said they were “like the kingdom of heaven.”

Yet rather than going through a litany of issues that have been placed upon his shoulders as burdens to carry, let’s look at two things we do know about him, based upon his own words and actions:

1. On a fine afternoon, when approached by a rich, young ruler, who addressed him as “Good Master,” Jesus replied, “Why do you call me good? There’s none good but God.”

Now, Jesus had done enough kindly deeds, and dare we say, even merciful acts of miraculous proportions, to have absorbed up the word “good” without seeming to be puffed up.

But you see, he didn’t.

He portrayed that one of the great frailties of human thinking is to believe, promote and toot your horn as you trumpet your goodness to the populace.

Once again, he refused to call himself good.

2. Talking to his disciples one morning, he said, “When you’ve done that which is expected of you, call yourself an unprofitable servant.”

This was certainly an unpopular position with folks around the world who wanted to feel persecuted, let down, set aside or ignored.

Jesus made it clear that if you’re not excelling, you’re bitching.

So when it comes to those Republicans who love to talk about how great our nation is or what mighty deeds are being achieved, how they’re “the deciders,” or even how exceptional we are as a country…

Don’t get ready for Jesus to show up at the rally.

He kept his perspective.

Human beings don’t gain any power by insisting they have it.

There’s none good but God.

And for all my Democrat buddies out there, who think the bad rich people who have made money are the reason that the poor folks are unmotivated, broken, selfish and begging, they should take another gander at what Jesus really promotes before they dress him up in his blue robe and roll him out at the Convention. For Jesus said, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. If you do what you’re supposed to do, that doesn’t even get you in the door.”

Set your GPS for the second mile.

Now, if you like this statement of Jesus, I would invite you to join me and a chosen few in living it out joyfully. If you don’t, then hang around.

There’ll be an elephant or a donkey along real soon to carry you to the voting booth.

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The P Word … May 21st, 2019

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THE

WORD

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Today I have two words. Each one individually could fit our category, but together, they become a negative fiasco. So the P word—or words, in this case:

Political Pundit

I hope you can see my point.

Politics, as a whole, rather than being a launching pad for the discovery of truth, has become a rocket jettisoned into the landscape of reasonability.

And a pundit is someone who already has decided, and makes the circumstances fit the philosophy, and the questions conform to stump answers.

Let me further unpeel the onion of nonsense by stating that a conservative approach to life is incapable of providing all the answers.

Likewise, as we take off the rose-colored glasses, let us admit that being liberal doesn’t always honor the kind of hindsight essential to balancing power.

So since both suffer from inadequacy, a little humility might be in order with the body politic—and certainly, the absence of anyone who becomes a champion for one thinking.

Alas, we don’t do it that way. Instead, once we decide on our political position, we become pundits of the party line. This has degraded our national dialogue down to hurling grenades of insults.

We are crazed.

Until we stop accepting politics and funding pundits, we will be a nation under the control of whoever can fund the most outlandish plans and suit up the prettiest announcers.

Political pundits: two words that need to be removed from our lingo.

We don’t need politics.

Just get the facts and make decisions based upon our Constitution and the convictions of our national soul.

We don’t need pundits.

Because once we discover what direction we’re going—whether conservative or liberal—what we are looking to achieve is unity, not dissent.

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