SENSITIZE 60
Every morning, Mr. Cring takes a personal moment with his friends.
Today: It’s all about emotions. Cring reminds us, “Don’t forget to remember.”
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G-Poppers … May 5th, 2017
Jonathots Daily Blog
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Old people don’t like to change.
Perhaps better stated, older folks think they’ve done all the changing they need to do.
It fascinates G-Pop that we spend so much time trying to appease the tastes, mentality and standards of individuals who have basically retired their dispositions, and use much of their gray matter considering longevity.
Perhaps it’s the fact that once we’re given our first prescription for high blood pressure and cholesterol, we are forever lost to discussing our treatments. Is it because older folks accumulated all the savings bonds and property, and seem to be in power?
The wealth of our nation actually lies in the elasticity of young minds–the flexibility of those who have not yet determined what color they would like their den to be painted.
It’s why Jesus said that the message of the Gospel is geared to the child-like mind, and only those who are willing to acquire such thinking can truly comprehend it. It is also why Jesus said you can’t put new wine into old wineskins. When the fermentation produces expansion, the old skins literally explode.
Yet children are relegated to a status of property, propaganda and proof of our prowess and parenting. So we ask:
- What are your grades?
- What do you like about school?
- What do you want to be when you grow up?
- What do you think of your teachers?
We trap our offspring into a prison of education and tell them not to contact us until they’ve graduated reformed. So they mimic us. It’s what they’re taught to do.
So rather than having a cultural and social revolution with every generation, causing us to grow in intelligence and openness to one another, we implant the prejudice and bigotry of the former generation firmly into the minds of those who are haplessly controlled by us because they live in our homes and feast at our tables.
We’re missing an opportunity. And because we’re ignoring it, we are condemning ourselves to more wars in the same areas of the world–just with new names.
Teach your children. Teach them well.
Otherwise they’ll end up with their father’s hell.
And here’s what G-Pop thinks we should teach them:
1. Love people.
There is no better species due to arrive. You can live with the monkeys or dine with the lions, but you will eventually find that their habits are even worse than your brothers and sisters living next door. People are the best that God offers us. If you’re upset about it, contact the Creator. He has not made a more magnificent contraption, and there is no sign that He’s upgrading the model. Love people or die complaining.
2. Respect people.
Get rid of your color charts. Get rid of your expectations. Keep your moral code to yourself. If you have a plan of salvation, enjoy it, but don’t force feed it to anyone else. Every human being is given three square feet of influence, and once you step out of your own, realize you are trespassing. Don’t be surprised if you get shot.
3. Work with people.
Working with people is easy. You listen, then you try. Just make sure that the trying is a test and not selling out completely. In other words, if you’re going to dye a piece of cloth, it’s a good idea to cut off a small unit and try the dye on it first, to see how it takes. As long as we’re willing to be wrong, working with people can be quite fun. But when we insist that we “have to be right” because we’re invested in the project and therefore need to make excuses for the failure–then we become obnoxious paper clip counters.
It’s rather doubtful that you can take anyone over the age of forty-five on a journey to love people, respect people and work with people.
Pick your target market. It will be the children of the Earth who still don’t have enough assets to sit on their asses.
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G-14: Jungle or Garden?… March 7, 2014
Jonathots Daily Blog
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I think most people have found themselves in the embarrassing situation of arriving late to an appointment, being held up by traffic, and requiring an ice-breaker to share when entering the room of awaiting friends.
One of the favorites quips is the gasping exclamation, “It’s a jungle out there!”
It usually evokes some laughter–partly due to its corniness–but mostly because we have all become a bit convinced by society, entertainment and even religion that human beings are depraved animals.
So rather than looking at life and our potentials with optimism, we find ourselves desperately trying to avoid the human representations of silly monkeys, ravenous lions and venomous snakes.
Somewhere along the line we have forgotten the beautiful explanation that man and woman were spawned in a garden. Maybe it’s too idealistic. Perhaps the world around us will not permit us to believe that such beauty is attainable and such blessing within our grasp.
I just don’t know what we ever gain by allowing the underbrush of weeds and human mediocrity to surround us, causing us to retreat to our caves in fear. Yes, I think there’s a choice. Am I going to continue to live in a jungle or am I going to do my best, before I leave here, to turn the earth–or at least my portion of it–into a garden?
Two things are necessary to transform a jungle into a garden:
1. You’ve got to cool things down.
Jungles are steamy and hot, breeding all sorts of creeping, crawling vermin which welcome such a searing climate. Sometimes the greatest thing we can do in any situation is to refuse to participate in frenetic energy and heated debate, find a quiet place, sit down and wait for things to cool off. I do think it’s what Jesus meant when he suggested that the “meek inherit the earth.” As long as you’re struggling, punching and fighting with everyone for the dead carcass in the middle of the Serengeti, you are exhausting yourself–not to mention casting your lot with the more unseemly actions of the beasts.
Cool things down.
Occasionally I find myself in an argument and realize that the flame is rising and the intelligence is leaving. The situation requires that somebody shut up. When I actually am wise enough to do so, things cool down.
2. Clear things out.
I have been focusing this year on eliminating the scrub brush that suffocates my life, making me feel paranoid and claustrophobic. There are things I just don’t need, require or even desire anymore. Maybe they were once status symbols or security blankets, but now they’ve just become all-encompassing. If you’re going to grow something, you often have to remove what is occupying space but is useless.
Clear things out.
When you cool things down, all the hot-headed animals and the plant life that is tropical disappear. When you clear things out, you find soil underneath the tangled mess of weeds. Then you’re prepared to plant a garden.
And what is a garden? A glorious three-step process. A garden give me the chance to:
A. Seed what I need.
Yes, to actually get specific instead of hoping for the best or praying for miracles because I failed to do my job.
B. Grow what I know.
I realized last week that I don’t lack wisdom. I lack frequent flyer miles using it. There is so much I can do, say, share, perform and be that I squander in pursuit of things unknown or beyond my capability.
C. And finally, receive what I believe.
Having come to peace with myself and my own gifts in the garden I have cleared off, and knowing that things have cooled down, I can be a good farmer. Yes:
- Seed what you need.
- Grow what you know.
- Receive what you believe.
You can think whatever you want–I believe we were born in a garden … and have settled for a jungle.
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity
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
The Lambs–Lying with the Lions… April 9, 2012
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There was a time in our country when lying was expected from little children and politicians who got their hands caught in the cookie jar. It was simple–there was the truth and there was the avoidance of the truth, which we boldly called “lying.” It doesn’t mean that lying had not occurred since the beginning of time. After all, the very first sin, from a Biblical perspective,was lying, not disobedience. Adam and Eve could have survived the trauma of a poor choice had they not lied to the Judge on court day.
Somewhere along the line, the lambs of life–average human beings who used to be ashamed of deceit–are now actively “lying with the lions”–those man-eating, corporate giants and political sharks who have always found it easier to reject reality. It has been a process.
When I was born, lying was “bad.” There was no caveat to that. If you lied, you were “bad” and that was the end of it. Even when Lucy lied to Ricky on the television show back in the fifties, she eventually got caught, suffered some consequences and had to learn a lesson.
A little time marches on and there is a subtle transition–away from “lying is bad.” The new byline was, “lying is out there–so be careful.” It echoed the paranoid mind-set of the 1960’s, a belief that big government and big everything was out to get us, so we’d better be on our toes.
But then there was a drastic turn. We can speculate on what caused it, but I believe one of the greatest contributors to the loss of veracity in our country was Watergate. Even though the populace denounced what Richard Nixon did, the definition of lying changed from being “bad” or “out there” to “lying is a weakness.”
Once lying becomes a “weakness,” we all can hide behind the frailty of our character and still come out of the experience fairly unscathed, which took us into the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, where another transition happened. We began to believe that sensitivity was primary for communication, and therefore, lying became “merciful.” Don’t tell people the truth–it could hurt their feelings. Don’t share the extent of the problem with folks–they can’t handle it.
Which brought us into a time of one of the greatest misconceptions, which is: “lying is human.” You see, once we establish that something is human, we can do it on the sly and if caught, blame our genetics. It’s a slippery slope. Why? Because the philosophy of “I’m only human” negates the special significance that God gave to the creation of our species, placing within us His own image. So I don’t think you’re going to find much mercy in the Creator by saying that you’re “only human.”
But once it became accepted that “lying is human,” we arrived at President Bill Clinton. Just as Richard Nixon and Watergate deteriorated the American conscience about the subject to merely referring to it as a weakness, when President Clinton repeatedly misled us, it gave license for a new translation of the situation. It was the arrival of the notion that “everyone lies sometimes”–which immediately led to another step: “lying is a part of life.” Now, you can see, anyone who would stand against lying or even suggest that we as people could tell the truth would come across as unrealistic, or even worse, self-righteous. If” everyone lies sometimes,” you just might not have control over when it’s your turn.
Yes, we began to forfeit authority over our own selections. So lying became “a part of life.” And since it’s a part of life, lying became fodder and fuel for the comedic mind. Soon, in our movies and our television shows, lying was portrayed as something very funny. Unlike the Lucy show, liars in our new art form often do NOT get caught. There is no recompense for their deeds. They are even portrayed as the heroes, who did whatever was necessary to achieve the goal.
It has become almost like “lying is a different way of telling the truth.” Lying is the cushion we lay down on the ground, to ease the fall. In a strange sense, with the introduction of reality shows, lying has become admirable–a shortcut through the park to get to the market. It is a way to achieve your purposes without having to explain your motives.
Which brings us to where we are now–a situation where the lambs–those who once held fast to integrity–have now mated with the lions–predators who have never honored the rules of the jungle–and birthed an offspring of sheep with claws and teeth.
Truthfully, most people believe that lying is “American.” If we’re “doing it for America,” and if we’re Americans and as long as our motives are “good at heart,” then whatever we say to get what is “God ordained.”
There you have it. We have gone from “lying is bad” to “lying is American.”
We have gone from Thanksgiving dinner with the Pilgrims and Indians, where there was a mutual respect because there was a general need–to avoid starvation–to calling those Native Americans “savages” and thrusting them onto reservations. We have taken the spirit of Watergate and mingled it with the events of Monica Lewinsky to generate a resignation of ultimate deception.
It all happened because we grew up believing that (1) inconvenience is nasty; and (2) that truth, more often than not, is inconvenient.
I must be honest with you and tell you that I dreaded writing an article about lying. I have grown up in the same climate and am susceptible to the little splotches of darkness that have stained all of our souls. But here’s what I’ve come up with:
I avoid telling lies at all cost. When I do tell one, I inform myself that I must own up to this as soon as possible because it’s the only way for me to maintain dignity. And finally, if I am so foolish that I allow myself to get caught, I will never piggyback one lie upon another, but will immediately admit that I am the culprit.
It is a formula I call avoid, own and admit. You may not be able to completely escape the inclination force-fed by our society, to distribute what is now called “misinformation.” But you can learn that lying is really the only sin. Everything else is just a mistake, awaiting our repentance.
Some of our lions–those we elected to be the leaders of our country–have set an example that now is being absorbed by the lambs. Candidly, our lambs will have to “trickle up” truthfulness to our lions. It won’t come from the other direction. If we want greatness, we must be willing to do great things.
And the greatest thing a human being can do … is stop lying.
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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.
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