Good News and Better News … January 29th, 2018

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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Somewhere stuck between pissed off and tuned out, I waddle and wheeze, waiting for a needful kick in the butt, which I pray will actually be a whack of love.

For I am a human being. I look a lot like a monkey, but my Daddy is the King of the Universe (paternity test yet to be performed).

While we wiggle and struggle over the language of piety, politics and purpose, most of the human race is looking for a pleasant path to eating a good meal, while trying to get along.

Everything is too damn complicated. Matter of fact, writing this essay creates the risk of heaping another helping of opinion onto the stinky pile accumulated behind the house.

Can we simplify?

As far as I know (and I could be wrong, but not just because you think so–there would have to be some merit to your objection) every one of us needs:

1. A start of heart.

If we don’t feel, we don’t have any feeling. If we have no feeling, we have no empathy, and without empathy we start treating people like dogs (or even worse, because we kind of like dogs).

2. A goal of soul.

Even if there were no God we would have to invent one in order to lift our behavior above eye-gouging and tooth extraction.

I need a soul. I need to know you have one. Otherwise, if you get in my way, you could start looking like a cockroach and I might be tempted to strap on my killin’ boots.

3. A lane for the brain.

Parents, culture, family, schooling and misgivings have built cement freeways in our cranium. Unfortunately these roads don’t always take us to a healthy place. We need a lane in the brain to keep us from being insane.

4. A wealth of health.

I’m talking about your best health. If you’re like me, you’ll probably never be as well-structured as an Olympic athlete. But you can be the best pudgy, healthy rendition of the model that’s been provided for you.

These are the four things we’re all concerned about when we aren’t bitching. Once we begin to complain, life becomes too pat. “It’s your fault because it couldn’t be my fault because I have no fault.”

As you see, this is not a very fruitful profile.

So the good news is, if we will stop trying to change the world by preaching, the better news is, we might just start finding so much commonality that we are sympathetic to one another.

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G-40: Practical … September 5, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

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Crucifixion should never be discussed casually.

Damn those who study it as a theological necessity or a part of any kind of holy plan.

For after all, the idea of capital punishment isn’t particularly “capital.”

I came to live as a human. Of course, somewhere along the line, that does entail death. I guess I was hoping this would occur as an old, old man, from a mild heart attack as I was sleeping in Rome, after finishing up a spectacular revival.

Just not to be.

If God has a plan, He must desert it because He has cast his lot with humans.

Golgotha–the place of the skull. A cranium without face or brain, for that matter.

My feelings are mixed, tossed to and fro, squeezed by reality, only prohibited from smothering me by the expansiveness of faith.

The trial they put me through came to an awkward impasse–the witnesses against me constantly contradicting each other. It became apparent that I might be cleared on a technicality–maybe exiled back to Galilee.

Yet you can’t go back, can you?

What is their concern?

They say they are worried because I call myself God.

Alexander did it.

Caesar, likewise.

It’s nothing new. Whenever men gain power, they like to claim some aspect of divinity.

But see, here’s the problem: if God really has visited mankind, then why do we need religion or priests anymore? Scared the bejesus out of them.

So I stepped in and simplified their plight.

I told them I was God. I told them that they would see me one day and know I was God.

They deemed this arrogant and blasphemous. The proclamation sealed my fate.

They are killing me.

I am a reluctant martyr, a disappointed teacher, a rejected friend and a lonely savior.

I must warn them that their deeds will reverberate back to them with future consequences.

“Your house is left to you desolate!”

How can I tell them that chosen people must be replaced by people who choose?

I know this–you can’t save the whole world if you’re trying to promote one race.

So I took a haggard breath, wincing in pain.

I am trying to die well.

It is all they have afforded me.

 

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Think and Learn: Heal … January 25, 2013

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The picture is that of a knee scab on my granddaughter, Lily’s, leg. She acquired the injury while running to the bus stop with her pet bulldog and the fine animal decided to become exuberant, joining her in the scamper, but instead, ended up tackling her like a Baltimore Raven linebacker.

That was two days ago. It is now healing. That’s what it’s supposed to do. That is what is being accomplished.

We are supposed to heal, too, you know. Healing in the human being happens in the mind. The truth of the matter is, you can get emotionally to the point that you’re feeling. You can find a good reason for kneeling, based upon spirit and truth and seeing God’s will done here on earth as it is in heaven. But the healing of our woes and most of our body’s aches and pains happens in the brain. The spirit has to be able to get up there and renew that cranium device. And God, don’t we resist it.

Matter of fact, it is a huge problem in our society. Our thinkers refuse to learn and our learners are devoid of thinking.

Yes, the people who are leaders in our country, who should be thinking up new ideas on how to get us out of our doldrums, do not have the ability to learn the new things that are necessary to keep their thinking fluid. The young folks in our country, who do accumulate new information, are not being taught how to take those bits and pieces of data and put them into practice in a thinking environment. So our thinkers don’t learn and our learners can’t think.

Nothing gets healed.

What you want in your life is a brain that can think, remembering all the experiences that are pertinent to your situation, but is equally pliable to learn every new piece of valuable input provided, to make the solution process more effective.

How do we get there? How do we get to a place where our brain sets healing into motion throughout our entire being?

After we learn to feel, being touched by infirmities and tempted by the various devices in life, and then we kneel in worship at the beauty of spirit and truth, we have gained the good cheer and common sense to blend thinking and learning.

If I am stuck with what I currently know for the rest of my life, I am limited. On the other hand, if I am always learning and never “coming to the knowledge of the truth,” I am equally as perplexed. Healing happens inside us when we combine what we think and know with what we learn and acquire. It is the perfect balance.

Once you feel, you have a reason to kneel. And once you kneel, you can heal those things that ail your mind–to walk in newness of life.

Think–yes, indeed. Use your brain. Conjure all the memories of past victories and the lessons from the defeats. But then, allow yourself to be renewed by learning everything available to you, receiving counsel and blending what you think with what you’ve learned, in order to generate your healing.

It is a powerful way to live. It is the only way to be healed.

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