Dear Man/Dear Woman: A Noteworthy Conversation … March 19th, 2016

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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Dear Woman: I read your note four times. The first two times, I did so to understand what you were saying to me and to let it sink in. But I read it two more times just because I was afraid there was going to be a quiz.

For you see, as much as you hate being treated as a weakling, I despise the fact that you think I’m dumb.

I understand you hear it from everywhere: “Women are smarter than men.”

I’m not dumb. It bothers me.

So I suppose when I get defensive, I start looking for ways to overpower you to compensate for my alleged stupidity.

Then I watch “Law and Order: SVU” and it tells me that women are constantly raped and killed. Word has it from “Fifty Shades of Grey” that you ladies enjoy being dominated. And then the religious system out there proclaims that I’m supposed to be the “king of my household.”

I’m so damn confused.

So here’s what I want you to know: I’m just like you. It’s about my heart, not my penis.

Don’t you understand? I’m a man, but I’m just as emotional as the next human. Hell, I cry when my football team loses the championship. Is that any different from weeping over lost kittens?

But I just can’t tolerate being treated as dumb, so I strike out at you by acting like you’re the weaker sex.

So you feel treated as “weaker” and I feel treated as “dumber.”

Let me tell you this: I can love you but I can’t change the world. I’m not Superman, and if that’s what you need, then you probably should become Supergirl.

I want to be able to tell you where I’m weak without you thinking I’m less.

I want to have an idea without it being dismissed as ridiculous.

And then it will be easier for me to stop treating you like you’re an underling.

The reason we can’t negotiate a deal is that our egos get in the way. I keep waiting for you to treat me like I’m smart, and you want me to treat you like you’re strong. And all the time, society tells us that we’re “weak” and “dumb.”

The only thing I can promise at this stage is to inform you that I’m not going to listen to what our culture tells me I should be.

I don’t think you’re weak.

Please don’t think I’m dumb.

Yours,

Man

 

 

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Coupling … February 27, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

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Over the Christmas holidays a friend asked me to go to a movie. I joked with him that two guys in a theater together might be perceived as “gay.”

In the midst of what we consider to be a great transformation of cultural awareness in the United States of America, we are also simultaneously becoming more cautious, provincial and suspicious. At times I wonder if I could take my fifteen-year-old granddaughter out to dinner without people musing whether it’s an episode of Law and Order: SVU.

And then there’s the issue that for eighteen years I have been traveling with a vibrant woman who is talented, plays music and is a great business partner, but I still have people asking if we’re married. How many married people do you know who make music together? There’s a difference between two turtle doves in a nest and a pair of eagles, soaring high.

This led me to think about the dilemma faced by Jesus in the Good Book, when he decided to send his friends and disciples out two by two. How controversial that must have been.

• Could he send two guys together without everybody thinking they were Greek homosexuals?
• How about a man and woman, without everybody speculating on their copulating?
• Check this one out–could two women go out in that male-dominated society and make an impact for his Kingdom Movement?
• One black, one white?
• How about  Jew and  Gentile?
• And what would happen if you mixed a Samaritan in there, whom, it seemed, everybody hated?

Yes, the decision to send people out two by two–coupling them–was probably one of the more radical propositions Jesus ever initiated.

Because even though we proclaim that our world needs more good news, human beings are actually drawn to bad news, even as they insist how ugly it is, and then whisper the gossip to every living soul they meet.

So this I know:

1. Do what works.
2. Don’t expect it to be accepted.
3. Get the chip off your shoulder and refuse to be defensive.
4. Keep doing it … and bear fruit.

America will be a much better country when we get out of our national funk of abiding arrogance …  and crippling fear.

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Click for details on the SpirTed 2014 presentation

Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about scheduling SpiriTed in 2014.

click to hear music from Spirited 2014