Salient…June 25th, 2018

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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There are matters that are too important to ignore or leave to chance. These are salient moments.

Shall we take a look at a fascinating window of time that occurs in all human beings, from birth to about five years of age? Each one of us is so vulnerable, so needy, so inquisitive and so desperate that we are prepared to be taught to be Earth-dwellers by our parents. Sometimes this extends all the way up to age ten.

Three very intricate systems are introduced: manners, morals and motivation.

This is the period when we develop our ethics–perhaps a work ethic or a social one, but certainly a mental gear we adopt to deal with life and with others.

Most generally this instruction is completed by age eleven, because here comes puberty. For the average parent puberty can be best defined as this: “My children have lost their hearing in favor of their genitals.”

It is difficult to provide additional instruction during this period. Sometimes after a serious error, there will be a brief season of curiosity from the adolescent, but then the trio of temptation, taunting and teasing pulls them right back into the melee of mayhem.

This lasts until about age twenty-five. (Of course, it could be twenty-two, or thirty, depending on the person. But for the sake of this brief essay, I shall characterize it as twenty-five.)

At twenty-five young folks wake up–sometimes after a hangover or after getting their first threatening letter from a bill collector for their student loans, or perhaps realizing they might be in love.

A realization strikes: “Maybe me, an individual, could become us, a family.”

So three new friends show up to invigorate manners, morals and motivation. They are concern, confidence and clever.

We, as humans, develop a legitimate concern for others while building confidence and finding clever ways to use what we have more expansively.

It is a massive transition–a needful one. Without it, many young persons never become actual adults at all, but linger around their families, particularly their parents, coming back for another schooling in morals, manners and motivation.

This concern, confidence and clever births some children, buys a house, acquires job promotions and takes us, as people, to about the age of fifty. (Once again, this could be younger or a little older.)

At fifty, having tapped the fruit of concern, confidence and clever, people want more. There is a wrinkle in the spirit of human beings which causes them to wistfully wish to make a difference and leave behind a legacy.

It is at this point that we pursue wit, words and wisdom. It carries us through to our dying breath.

Yet we certainly know individuals in their seventies who have never escaped concern, confidence and clever–or maybe never even learned morals, manners and motivation.

This is a passage. All human passages are entered only through the power of repentance.

So here is your salient moment:

Gather up all your manners, morals and motivation, and stir in your concern, confidence and cleverness. And if you have reached the age, add on your wit, words and wisdom.

Finish the job.

Of course, if you’re led of the Spirit and you’re a creature who knows how to use faith, you don’t have to wait for birthdays to dictate your future.

As the Good Book says, “today is the day of salvation.”

 

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The Mars and Venus War … July 14, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

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I think it would have to be a really creepy laboratory–moss hanging from the rafters, bats flying by at odd intervals, spider webs and very little light. I mean, if you’re going to create a castle to experiment on how to destroy mankind, you might as well make it ominous and bizarre.

In this hostile environment, you must sit down and draft a hideous plan.

You could simulate the demise of humankind by creating a race war: black against white, red against yellow, brown against tan. But here’s the thing–human sexuality has us falling in love with all sorts of different colors, and eventually, on this little orb called earth, we will probably end up being the color of the dust from which we were created.

Perhaps in your laboratory you could propagate a religious war–where the faithful of one inclination decide to go on a crusade to destroy the infidels of another. But you see, human beings are strange. There are always a few–be they Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, or any other number of faith flavors–who come along and preach brotherhood, goodness, kindness and mercy.

I suppose you could try to use global warming, thermonuclear war, terrorism or some other frightening specter to dispel life from our planetary home. But we always seem to find some ingenious person who comes up with a great idea just in the nick of time–to make a light bulb instead of cursing the darkness.

So I think what I would do in MY sinister arena is promote an ongoing conflict between men and women that is masked by comedy–but at its root is a nasty bit of viciousness which eventually causes the two genders to lose desire for one another, believing the linking to be futile.

Yes. Just convince everybody on earth that men and women are incapable of getting along, and pretty soon you’ll have fifty per cent of the people fighting the other fifty per cent. What a devious stroke of macabre genius!

And then, here is the final unbelievable addition: you’re able to convince EVERYBODY that it’s true, whether they’re conservative or liberal, Christian or Jew, north or south, circumcised or uncircumcised–English muffin or bagel.

Then you can sit back in glee and watch the whole carnival implode on itself as one tiny little Calliope breathes its final notes.

OR … we could realize that God made men and women. He made physical differences so we could pleasure one another and also procreate the planet. Pretty good system. (Please note that God rarely asks us to do anything that improves our situation without giving us pleasure in the process…)

He told both man and women that they had dominion over the earth. He told both of them that they were equally responsible for caretaking the territory. Matter of fact, if you want to follow the theme of the story, woman came from man. How different could she be?

Yet we insist that somehow or another, through the manipulation of our culture, the laziness of our ethics and the backwardness of our theology, that men and women are just hobgoblins to each other.

If you will allow me: God made male and female.

The physical differences between us create the potential for continuing our existence. Yet the Father said “in the kingdom of God, there is neither male or female.” That means when we actually reach out of ourselves to higher thoughts, deeper spirituality and greater understanding, both genders take the same journey.

If you happen to be a Christian, you believe that the promise of your Messiah came through a woman. After all, it was a virgin birth, with some assistance from the Divine but none from Joseph.

The truth is, none of us know exactly what the differences are between men and women because no one has tried to accentuate the similarities. We truthfully spend more time figuring out our commonality with the porpoise and the chimpanzee than we do with Dick and Jane. It not only creates inequality, it fails to energize the potential which exists by the fusion of the two sexes in unity instead of conflict.

So I will not join in.

Any female member of the species who wants to come into my space will be treated as a human being, and the anticipation will be that she can pull her own load and she will be heard in all circumstances. I’m looking for reasons to get along instead of poking holes into the possibility of great fellowship.

So if you want to join this generation’s slide into insanity by negating one another based upon our sexual organs, you can feel free. it’s a very popular idea. But if we’re going to survive, we’re going to need each other–women and men.

And if you believe men are from Mars and women are from Venus, and you’re not prepared to build a space ship–be prepared to have the planet you so adore diminish in beauty, because there aren’t two caretakers.

 

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

Right or Privilege … May 2, 2013

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His name was Henry Ford.

He was one of the early innovators in the gasoline combustible engine, which was referred to as the “horseless carriage.” We now call them cars.

Of course, at one time he had a prototype of such a vehicle and needed to test drive it to see how it worked in a world which was not suited for such activity. There were no paved roads, and on the dusty highways were horses and pedestrians instead of smoky engines from experimental automobiles. So you can imagine, at first he was an annoyance, or even a laughing-stock.

I wonder what his approach was. Did Henry Ford feel he had a right to the roads because he was smart, clever or entitled? Or did he feel it was a privilege to use the roads since they were normally occupied by horses and people?

Another interesting thing about that invention is that it quickly gained popularity–but it also created immense problems. So even though most of us insist that we have a right to drive a car, it was obvious from the first that those rights had to be curtailed for the common good.

For instance, everybody had to drive on the right-hand side or we would run into each other. Roads had to be paved, which meant there had to be taxes. It was agreed that a license was needed to prove that one was actually able to drive one of the contraptions. Tags were put on the vehicles to both identify them and garner some revenue for the state. Policemen issued tickets to those drivers who would not follow the rules and inhibited others from having a safe journey. When you add toll roads, seat belts, safety checks, car insurance and emissions onto the list, what started out as a “right of passage” is now presented as a cautious privilege.

Yet no one objects to this. The addition of demanding seat belts has lessened the death toll on the highways. The careful scrutiny for alcohol-drinking drivers is keeping us from killing off innocents.

So is driving a right–or a privilege?

Let me give you a definition of what I think a right is. You have the right to do almost anything you want if you can answer this question: “Can I do this without hurting anyone else?”

If the answer is “no” you don’t have the right. I don’t care if the Constitution tells you that you do–the Constitution will eventually have to change for the common good.

Here is the definition of a privilege: “Can I do this without hurting myself?”

So you see, driving is not even a privilege. We are not permitted to sit in our vehicles without a restraint because in doing that, we could kill ourselves.

No, driving is an opportunity. And what is an opportunity? “Can I do this with necessary boundaries?”

So as we assess the issues of our day–be it abortion, immigration, gun rights, gay marriage, terrorism or even political gridlock–we need to ask ourselves if we’re dealing with a right, a privilege or an opportunity. Democracy allots for all three–BUT puts restrictions on privileges and opportunities.

Does a woman have a right to an abortion? Go back to the definition: can this be done without hurting anyone else?

Do I have a right to own a gun? Back to the issue of right, privilege or opportunity.

As you can see, when you remove arguments about morality and replace them with more civil discussions of whether in a Republic such as the United States, we are entitled to some aspect of our lives as a right, privilege or opportunity, it puts things in perspective. Of course, there will still be variances of opinion, but if we’re going to make all of our future plans in this country based upon codes of morality or spiritual ethics, we will be at each other’s throats incessantly. There has to be a different yard stick.

Is this thing we are contemplating a right (can I do this without hurting anyone else?) a privilege (can I do this without hurting myself?) or an opportunity (can I do this with necessary boundaries)?

It is a doorway to the kind of compromise that can be grounded in common sense instead of shady backroom deals.

 

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