Met More for Us … December 11, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

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A caterpillar is just a maggot who has purchased a really nice coat.

Both of ’em are larvae–larvae being that phase in which something that’s come out of an egg is trying to resemble what it eventually needs to be.

Human beings are no different.

One of the reasons I believe in a Creator is that there is so much of birds, amphibians, cattle and monkeys in the human being, that you can see that God reached the end of His evolutionary fit, and just threw everything in the pot and made human goulash.

And this is why we love babies. It’s the egg phase. They’re cute, we can pretend they’re going to grow up and become great people, and we even distinguish their drool from the spittle of our next door neighbor’s offspring.

Then … they become maggots.

Somewhere between the age of thirteen and thirty, these little wunderkinds transform into ugly, creeping, crawling, cheating guppies.

We lament.

We decry.

We complain to our neighbors, seeking comfort because this “glob of goo” couldn’t possibly have come from our loins.

Time passes. They have children, cocooning themselves within a house, a mortgage, credit card bills and elongated PTA meetings.

Here’s the problem: nobody ever makes it out of the pupae to become a damn butterfly. Human beings seem to stop in the cocoon phase, encased.

So we’re cute as babies, ugly as adolescents and young adults, and trapped as grown-ups.

Where are the butterflies? Where is the beauty, flight and excitement that explains why the whole process was initiated in the first place?

In nature we refer to it as metamorphoses–but what I want you to understand is this: in our species, it’s met more for us.

God never expected our lives to end when we birthed our first child. We are inteded to take the new generation and teach by example how to fly off in the direction of our dreams.

Last night I sat at a table with my twenty-four-year-old son, celebrating his birthday. I suppose, to some people, it would look like he was in his larval phase. He is.

Perhaps in a couple of years he may even be embarrassed by some of his current choices, and cocoon in a relationship and a family. But if he’s going to be truly spiritual and whole, he will emerge from that cocoon in a wave of repentance–and soar.

• I was an egg.
• I was a really despicable maggot.
• I cocooned in my soul to regenerate my hopes.

And now, by the grace of God and the beauty of determination … I am a Monarch.

 

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Emotional Cabbage… February 22, 2013

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I had to laugh. The slender young woman on the television set was explaining that the key to weight loss was portion control.

Of course, dear friends, if I could control my portions, I wouldn’t be a big fat boy, now, would I? If I was able to put less food on my plate and convince myself that I was satisfied, I would certainly be slim. Unfortunately, I can’t do that.

So the key to my weight loss is to trick my body into believing that I am eating just as much as I was before–but making sure that all that food going into my mouth is much healthier and has many fewer calories.

Casseroles help–just taking a baking dish and throwing in a whole bunch of stuff that looks delicious, cooking it up together and knowing that you will be able to fill your plate up just like you used to, but with about one-third the calories.

And one particular thing to add to that goulash is cabbage. It is a great filler, it is absent calories and aside from adding a little gas to your diet, it makes your plate of goodies look robust and full.

Yes–the key to weight loss is to change the amount of calories without changing your desire to enjoy good food.

Of course, the body is not that different from the human emotions. Everyday of our lives, we need confirmation of our status, reinforcement of our ego and encouragement of our pursuit of happiness. If we don’t have this we will start getting depressed, fussy and critical of other people who seem to be improving their lives while we are standing still.

So just as you need cabbage in your casserole to make your dinner seem like bounty, each and every one of us needs emotional cabbage added to our everyday, repetitive chores, to make us feel full of passion. Without this, we start feeling starved and cheated, stealing dignity from other people to make ourselves look better.

So what is emotional cabbage? Every day we need:

1. An opportunity to use our talent. That may sound silly, but most individuals work a job and perform duties that have very little to do with their actual talent. It is something they have learned to accomplish to make a living, but their heart’s desire lies in other areas. If your quest is not being pursued daily in some kind of opportunity you have created for yourself, be prepared to go to bed feeling a little emotionally empty. Each and every twenty-four hours, we need an opportunity to use our REAL talent.

2. To keep that emotional cabbage churning, you also need a challenge to that same talent. Repetition–even of good things–often makes us believe we are spinning our wheels, going nowhere. We require a challenge–because a challenge gives us two very important things. It puts our abilities to the test and secondly, it gives us the chance to celebrate our victories and correct our mistakes.

3. And finally, to have emotional cabbage in your life, you need a good, hearty, DAILY cleansing laugh. It may sound silly, but I will tell you this–if you are seeking an opportunity to use your talent and you are challenging your talent, many funny things will come your way. Laugh. Good cheer is when your whole being confesses that nothing is too serious to ever bring you down.

I call it emotional cabbage. Without it, we feel hungry for more, even when we’re too exhausted to do anything else.

• An opportunity to use your talent
• A challenge to your talent
• And a good laugh

It will keep you pure in your heart. It will make you believe that good things are possible. It will create a loving spirit.

It will make you valuable to your fellow-man.

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Sweet, Salty and Hot… October 6, 2012

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Live from October 1st filming

At last night’s gig, we received a “chili” reception.

What I mean is, they had a chili cook-off before our show. Fortunately for us, they set aside some of the magic potions for us to take back to our motel and enjoy. As I sat down in front of my bowl, I thought about how marvelous chili really is.

The first magnificent thing about the concoction is that it’s simple. Three major ingredients–beans, meat and tomatoes. If you don’t have those three elements in your chili, you may have come up with something that is in the household, but not in the immediate family. It takes beans, meat and tomatoes to make a basic chili.

Now, some people like their chili sweet, others salty and certainly there are those who prefer it hot. Each one of these groups would insist that their particular preference is the actual definition of chili, but truthfully, the mixture is best presented by the inclusion of  … beans, meat and tomatoes. Otherwise you end up with goulash or Sloppy Joe. Whether it is sweet, salty or hot, it is still called chili and therefore gets included on the menu.

As I munched on my meal, I thought about how much better off we would be if we approached our Christian faith the same way. In other words, once all the ingredients are in place, whether you like your faith sweet, salty or hot makes little difference. As long as you don’t mess with the holy three, you’re in pretty good shape.

And what would those three be? What would define a good Christian experience, establishing the necessary pieces to call it such?

1. We “bean” with Jesus. (I apologize for the pun. It was available, I was weak, I took it.) How can you tell that someone has “bean” with Jesus? They consider him to be the example for living instead of just the sacrifice for sin.

2. We “meat” the requirement of loving one another. (Again, my apologies.) Referring back to Jesus, he established this as the criterion for knowing whether someone was his follower. If they do not show love one for another, they have started their own club, just displaying a cross on their steeple.

3. No tomato is better than any other tomato. Hop in the pot and join the stew. Anyone who makes distinctions about human beings and judgments based upon any feeling of superiority has ceased to follow a Christian philosophy and has amalgamated into their thinking some sort of cultural preference that shuts out those folks that Jesus loves.

There you go. That’s how you make a Christian. Those are the ingredients.

Now, to continue, some people like it sweet. Their God is love and will always love, in a loving way, the whole world, which needs a loveable hug.

I don’t care if it’s sweet, as long as they’ve “bean” with Jesus, “meat” the requirement of loving one another and accept all the tomatoes off the vine.

There are those who like it salty. They’re interested in points of doctrine, deep theological discussions and will even dabble in some of the psycho-babble of our time, linking it with Biblical implications.

Who cares–as long as they stir in the beans, meat and tomatoes?

And certainly, there are those who like it hot. They want the message to burn all the way down to their innards, believing the Word of God to be infallible, without question, searing away the evil in our world and establishing the good.

More power to them–as long as they accept Jesus as the source of wisdom, they love one another without question and they include everybody in the gift of salvation.

You see? Chili is like being a Christian. If you get the basic ingredients in place, flavoring it is just fun, and I don’t mind if you flavor it one way or another, as long as you can still see the evidence of those three main ingredients: Jesus, loving one another, and an open door to everyone.

They sent home a couple of different kinds of chili with us. I ate one of the warmer varieties, which stung my tongue, and Jan opted for the more benign, kindergarten variety.

But you know what? We both had chili.

And just like in the Christian experience, when you get it right and all the ingredients are in place, there’s one thing for certain: it’s a gas.

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