Comfort Food for Thought … April 14, 2013

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It arrived in a simple envelope with a return address from: Mike, PO Box 97, Kearney, NE, 68849. Inside were two one-dollar bills and a folded up piece of notebook paper. I unfolded it and read:

Dear Jonathan, I like your music. You seem to be real honest. So I don’t think you’ll lie to me. If you could take a moment and answer three questions for me, it would help me decide what I want to do next. Please just fill in the spaces on the letter and mail it back to me. I don’t have much money, but I gave you two dollars for your trouble.

Written on the paper were three questions with about an inch and a half of blank space  between each one.

Question 1: Is there really a God? And please don’t lie to me.

Question 2: If there is, does He care and how do you know?

Question 3: And if He cares, why does so much crap go on in the world?

I sat and stared at that piece of paper for a long time. I didn’t know what my friend, Mike, was deciding, but it sounded pretty important. And since he didn’t give me much room to elaborate, I figured I’d better make my answers really good and clear. So I began with the first one–is there a God?

“Mike, it’s more impossible for me to believe that where we have come to was achieved by accident than it is to believe that someone or some force set it in motion. I don’t like to be ignorant, but to me, it’s ignorant to think that the world became ‘accidentally’ magnificent, even if it took billions of years. So absent any rational explanation, I would rather believe in a Divine one.”

Question 2: Does He care?

“Not the way you and I want Him to. He has inserted comfort and joy into the workings of our earth. Comfort comes from other people giving a damn about each other and joy is achieved when we stop fighting against nature and the way things are and make our peace with it. So sometimes life seems cold because no one shows up to bring comfort and we fail to learn our lessons and seem abandoned of all joy. But when people do the right thing by loving each other and respecting the world around them, problems get solved.”

“Now–as to #3, why things get bad–God had one idea that you and I probably wouldn’t like very well. It’s called free will. He liked it so well that He built His whole universe around it. And even though faith, hope and love are always available, people often choose, with their own free will, to be angry, doubting and hateful. It sets in motion a slew of natural reactions that hurt a bunch of people. On top of that we disrespect nature and get in the way of progress.”

“Now I realize, Mike, that these don’t answer your questions quite the way you wanted me to, but the ‘comfort food for thought’ I give you is this: things in life are too beautiful to have been made in an ugly way. It’s up to us as people to bring the comfort. And joy comes when we learn the ways of life and stop fighting what truly works. And since free will is here to stay, we should spend our lives trying to teach one another to be more generous instead of closed up and cold.”

I read my answers over. At first I thought they were very inspirational, and then the words became more and more hollow and meaningless. So I quickly folded the note up, stuck it in an envelope, addressed it, put a stamp on it and mailed it off before I changed my mind.

Two years passed. The little note from Nebraska had completely slipped my mind.

Then one day I received a phone call from Kearney, Nebraska. The young man on the other end asked me if I would come there and share my talent. He said, “You probably don’t remember me, but my name is Mike. I’m a minister now.”

I paused and told him that I did remember. He said, “Much of what you wrote back to me didn’t make complete sense because I was ready to leave my faith and become an atheist. But then I realized that if I became an atheist, I wasn’t going to get a chance to be ‘comfort food for thought’ for anyone else. That seemed like a waste of time.”

By the way, I never got out to Kearney, Nebraska. I didn’t need to.

My little letter did all the talking … for me.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

Korny … March 23, 2012

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It’s what we decided to call it since we were in our early twenties and most of our smarts were south of our head.

The actual name was Kearney … Nebraska. And I was more than halfway there, crossing the Illinois border, before it finally soaked into my post-adolescent brain that we were driving too far to perform at a church with only fifty people.

But we were desperate. Now, there is a certain amount of desperation necessary to be twenty-four years old. But we had a rock/gospel group called Soul Purpose that had become a trio–nurturing a sound, writing songs and frantically trying to find people within a one hundred mile radius of our home in Westerville, Ohio, who had not heard us, rejected us, ignored us or were not already raving fans. (We originally were a quartet but soon discovered that it is chemically impossible for people of our age and maturity to co-exist in fours.) So the three of us were bound and determined to become famous for our musical abilities, writing talents and performance attributes, come hell or high water (whatever that means).

So when we were gigging at a coffee-house in Tiffin, Ohio, a young man from Kearney, Nebraska, invited us to come out to his church to share. Normal people would ask how far or how much. But we were musicians, so our only question was … “when??” It was set up, and through some careful budgeting we discovered that we would need twenty-five dollars to buy food supplies and gasoline for the journey there, which meant we would need twenty-five dollars to get home, and hopefully, if the people were generous, we could get an additional twenty-five dollars so we could languish in a motel one evening on the way back.

As you can see the plan was flawless, without error. There was only one hitch. We didn’t have twenty-five dollars. All we possessed was a birthday present one of the girls had just received from her parents, purchased at Lazarus Department Store. So with the agreement of my generous cohort, we took her present to Lazarus, returned it, got the cash and had the front money for “Tour Korny.” We went to the store and bought food supplies–baloney, bread, chips and candy (the basic four  food groups)–filled our van up with gas and launched. We were so excited. We were an American Band.

We arrived at the church and if possible, it was even smaller than our lowest expectation. There were thirty-eight people present–Nebraska farmers who stared at us a little bit like Three Dog Night had suddenly invaded their community. We sang our songs. We had some new ones. They were really good, even though I wouldn’t consider this particular group of people to be our target market. But they listened politely, kindly and even occasionally would applaud. The pastor seemed to squirm in his seat a little bit–because my hair was too long and the girls were not exactly dressed in normal Cornhusker fashion. But it was an era of greater tolerance–or perhaps simply better manners or just abundant fear.

We finished our program to an ovation minus the standing and prerequisite clapping. It was time for the offering. We needed seventy-five dollars to make the trip complete and to guarantee ourselves a nice motel room to sleep in and shower. I carried the offering plates out to my van and quickly counted the proceeds. $64.12.

We had suddenly moved to Plan B … or was it C? We had covered the cost of re-purchasing the gift at Lazarus, the money for eats and gas to return–and probably had enough left over to purchase some souvenirs to prove to our friends that we had actually left the state of Ohio. But we didn’t have enough for a motel room. I was tired, which by my standards today, I would refer to as totally exhausted. I knew we wouldn’t make it far on the road before crashing into a corn field. I didn’t want to sleep in the van at a rest area, so even though I was embarrassed, I walked up to the pastor and asked him if he would be so kind as to allow us to bunk out in the basement of the church for the evening, telling him that we wouldn’t be any trouble and would be gone before he arrived in the morning for coffee and morning prayers following hospital visitations.

He paused, wrinkling his brow. I wondered what he was thinking. I wanted to add further information, but really had none, so I just waited. He cleared his throat and then contemplated some more. Nervously, I interjected. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll even clean up the basement before we leave.”

It was so stupid that my brain wanted to run away in total humiliation. Finally he spoke.

“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s just … well, it’s just that I would want to make sure that you and the girls would not be in the lower regions of our Holy House–fornicating.” 

(To be continued)

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Below is the first chapter of Jonathan Richard Cring’s stunning novel entitled Preparing a Place for Myself—the story of a journey after death. It is a delicious blend of theology and science fiction that will inspire and entertain. I thought you might enjoy reading it. After you do, if you would like to read the book in its entirety, please click on the link below and go to our tour store. The book is being offered at the special price of $4.99 plus $3.99 shipping–a total of $8.98. Enjoy.

http://www.janethan.com/tour_store.htm

Sitting One

 I died today. 

I didn’t expect it to happen.  Then again, I did—well, not really.

No, I certainly didn’t expect it.

I’ve had moments of clarity in my life.  Amazingly enough, many of them were in the midst of a dream. For a brief second I would know the meaning of life or the missing treatment to cure cancer.  And then as quickly as it popped into my mind it was gone. I really don’t recollect dying.  Just this unbelievable sense of clear headedness—like walking into a room newly painted and knowing by the odor and brightness that the color on the wall is so splattering new that you should be careful not to touch it for fear of smearing the design. The greatest revelation of all? 

Twenty-five miles in the sky time ceases to exist.

The planet Pluto takes two hundred and forty-eight years to circle the sun. It doesn’t give a damn. 

The day of my death was the day I became free of the only burden I really ever had.  TIME.

Useless.

Time is fussy.  Time is worry. 

Time is fear.  Time is the culprit causing human-types to recoil from pending generosity. 

There just was never enough time. 

Time would not allow it.  Remember—“if time permits …”

Why if time permits?  Why not if I permit?  Why not if I dream?  Why not if I want?  Why does time get to dictate to me my passage? 

It was time that robbed me of my soulful nature.    It was time that convinced me that my selfishness was needed. 

I didn’t die. The clock in me died, leaving spirit to tick on.  

So why don’t we see the farce of time?  Why do we allow ourselves to fall under the power of the cruel despot?  Yes, time is a relentless master—very little wage for much demand.

I died today. 

Actually … a piece of time named after me was cast away.