From the Stacks … November 20th, 2020

Jonathan had an acute awareness of the brevity of life. My son rediscovered this particular essay demonstrating that very thing and was moved by it. Jonathan wrote it on his birthday in 2011.

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Musings Upon Turning Sixty

 

I am a child of God

The heavens reverberate with a shudder of grief when I am in tears

The angels from a million pinnacles give a shout when I find joy

For I am part of a universal plan

A determining factor in His Almighty decision

Whether I fly by night or drive by day

All of heaven is hushed and brought to action

When I am in need …

This is a poem I wrote on a Greyhound bus when I was twenty years old, on my way to meet up with a friend who was in need. I had two packets of Zesta crackers, a can of Diet coke and exactly $1.25 in my wallet for other incidental expenses. I didn’t care. After all, I liked Zesta crackers. I also didn’t care that I had $1.25 in my pocket.

Truthfully, I still don’t.

I wake up this morning sixty years of age. My birthday

Sixty is significant.

First of all, you’re no longer in your fifties–that in-between season, in which you’re not quite an old codger yet, though you’re past many “studly” possibilities.

No, sixty is different.

It’s the gateway drug to Medicare.

There are sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour. Sixty is three twenties, six tens, four fifteens, twelve fives… Now I’m just being ridiculous.

The reason I shared the verse at the beginning of this essay is that I could have written it today and it would have been just as fresh and true.

I still believe it.

I still believe that I am a son of God–not in the sense that I must be careful handling my water glass, lest it gain alcoholic proportions, but a son of God because I am included in the mind of my Creator and Father.

Everybody in our generation is concerned about “liberal” and “conservative,” right and left–but honestly, my friends, I’ve always prayed for a straight, plain path and avoided the drastic turns based on society’s pressure to conform.

In the 1960’s, when I was  teenager, it was posh to cast a jaundiced eye towards civil rights and social reform while rallying around the American flag regarding Vietnam. It just never made sense to me to go halfway around the world to kill off the people in a small country in the name of democracy when we hadn’t yet given full rights to all of our citizens.

In the 1970’s, it was all about partying and lavishing oneself with platitudes of perfection and dancing the night away. Since I knew I wasn’t perfect and wasn’t a very good dancer, I chose to work on my personality, principles and trying to practice what I preached.

In the 1980’s, while the religious community was becoming obsessed with social issues, I continued to expound upon the notion that since God does not look on the outward appearance buts looks on the heart, we should spend more time working on our own internals and not so much about our other people’s  morality.

Likewise, in the 90’s and even coming into the 2000’s, I just could never sign on the dotted line” of the Contract with America. After all, who’s America were they talking about?

The reason for my choices?

It’s because I know how limited my faculties are, how fragile my talents and how weak my resolve.

The problem with self-esteem is that it so easily loses its steam–always having to be boiled up again. Truly, a waste of time, energy and talent, perpetuating self-involvement and little awareness of the needs of others.

Today I am sixty years old. How do I feel?

Starting with my feet–they feel about seventy-five.

My ankles are hangin’ in there at about fifty-two.

My knees are about ninety-one.

My hips maintain a really cool forty.

My waist? Well, let’s not go there.

My heart is a mystery, but certainly has more creaks than it used to.

My face has a myriad of ages, depending on how much sleep I get.

My eyes are a split vote–the right one an octogenarian, and the left one, still floating around thirty-five.

 My emotions are daily cleansed so they’re like a newborn.

My soul is always attempting to be as old as God but as young as a child.

And my brain? Well, my brain is still twenty years old, riding on that bus, believing that God cares …  about me.

Don’t be so concerned about the right and the left. Look at where you want to go–and steer your life straight ahead. Because after we’re gone, no one is going to discuss our faults, only our good points. If we don’t leave behind much of a record of righteousness, we probably won’t be mentioned at all. What I want people to remember is that I started out doing something and on the morning I passed, I was still doing it.

So let me call sixty a bookmark. 

I have fewer chapters to write than those that have already been edited.

But that means I have the complete capability of going for a great twist in the end.

Things I Learned from R. B.

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Episode 5

R. B. really liked girls.

They did not share his interest.

There were many reasons for this.

First and foremost, R. B. had an opinion on almost everything, which he spoke clearly and loudly, leaving little room for input or variation on his stance.

He also thought of himself as being macho, trotting through rehearsal camp without a shirt, which might have been effective had he not sported the motif of skin and bones.

He was very religious, making it clear that women were equals except when they were married. Then they needed to be submissive to their husbands.

And finally, he maintained the hygiene standards of a twenty-four-year-old single man whose mother apparently gave up on confronting him in his early teens.

This did not stop him from trying.

The female members of the cast often looked over at me haplessly, wishing I would stop R. B. from flirting. I did occasionally step in when it was obvious that his overtures border-lined on verbal rape. But R. B. never missed a beat.

Then one of the sponsors of our show caught wind that we had gay men as choreographers. Even though these “sodomites” had left, during the process of their departure, they had outed our producer as a “penis preferrer.”

The sponsor was outraged. He requested a meeting with me to find out what I planned on doing with this obvious sinfulness in the organization. I invited the cast to the meeting so they would be privy to all conversations, with nothing done behind their backs.

The premise was simple.

My sponsor, who was named Tim, was telling me about my producer, who, ironically, was also named Tim, accusing him of being “homo.”

Tim, the sponsor, assumed that once I understood the situation, I would kick my friend and producer to the curb, restoring righteousness to the surroundings. He also let me know that the other sponsors, who were not as religious as he was, also did not approve of the producer’s lifestyle.

When Sponsor Tim was finished talking about Producer Tim, I sat and stared at the cast. I was curious to see if anyone would speak up.

They sat quietly. It was an era when, even if you disagreed with the treatment of homosexuals in America, you had a tendency to keep your mouth shut so as not to uncork the wrath of the religious right. Also, the mental health professionals of the time considered same-sex relationships to be “aberrant behavior.”

R. B., who had never lacked a prejudice or two, spoke right up, saying, “I think that Tim has to go.”

Feeling some need for comic relief, I patted the sponsor on the back and said, “Tim, you don’t have to go.”

There was a much-needed laugh in the room. However, it was quickly swallowed by the monster of intolerance.

R. B. did not think I was funny.

“You know what I’m saying!” he said. “We can’t have a homosexual working for us and think that God’s going to bless!”

Bouncing off R. B.’s theory, I asked the cast, “Do you think Jesus would kick the homo to the curb?”

You could tell they wanted to say no, but remained mute—like we all do when yellow seems to be our favorite color.

Sponsor Tim pursued. “You know I admire you,” he said to me. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”

“Thank you for that,” I said. “Truthfully, Tim, I don’t know what the right thing is. But I know what the right thing is for me. I’m looking at something called loyalty. I don’t know how immoral it is to be a homosexual, but I do know how immoral it is to be disloyal to a friend. The only reason you’re sitting here tonight talking to me is because my friend, Tim the Homosexual, believed in this project, got investors, and even arranged for this beautiful facility wherein we sit. I consider that to be good fruit—and since I know that good fruit doesn’t come from a bad tree, I think I’m going to stand with my buddy and keep working with him out of loyalty, because I consider it to be true morality.”

Tim the Sponsor glared at me like I had just been belched on the beach by a huge whale. There was the inkling in the room to applaud, but it was quelled by provincialism.

R. B. stood up and left.

Amazingly, Sponsor Tim accepted my stance and said that because he loved me, he would honor my decision and not interfere. If you think about it, that was remarkable.

After the meeting, R. B. came into the room, where I was alone.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to quit the play,” he said.

I didn’t say a word. After a long pause, he continued. “Sin is sin and wrong is wrong. Even if we think we’re defending for the right reason, evil still lurks to destroy us.”

As brave as I had been with Tim the Sponsor, I suddenly was worried that I was about to lose a cast member nine days out from the premiere. I buckled.

“Listen, R. B. Give me a break,” I said. “I’ll check into this. If there’s truth to it, we’ll cross it when we get to it. Okay?”

R. B. peered at me for a moment and then sprouted a smile. He stood to his feet, hugged me and sauntered out of the room.

All at once, I realized that he had never intended to quit. He just really enjoyed threatening.

Salient…July 30th, 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.

Anita Bryant.

I would guess, to my average reader, the name neither rings a bell nor stimulates any particular memory.

But back in 1977 (when a few determined dinosaurs still roamed the Earth), Anita Bryant was voted “The Most Trusted Woman in America.”

She was a former Miss America contestant who had a singing career and was well-known as the pitch person for Florida orange juice.

She was vibrant.

She was youthful.

And she was, as we gradually discovered, quite political.

For you see, when the Fort Lauderdale City Council passed an ordinance removing all limitations on lodging and civil considerations for the homosexual community, Anita objected.

And we’re not talking about an op-ed letter to the newspaper. She hit the streets, held rallies, and turned a local situation into a national debate over the issue of whether people who pursued a homosexual lifestyle should be granted all of their civil liberties.

She was in demand. Her performances were packed. She did interviews on all the Christian talk shows, and even one for Playboy Magazine. She was America’s sweetheart.

For you see, at that time in our country, the jury was not only out on the gay community, but was leaning toward the “rejection penalty.”

It was popular to be anti-gay.

It was considered patriotic to be against them.

As we arrived in the 1980s, and the horrific AIDS epidemic spread across the land, those who believed homosexuality to be an abomination to God also whispered that perhaps this new virus was the Almighty’s punishment.

Things changed.

Suddenly a little boy in Indiana got AIDS from a blood transfusion–and it was no longer merely an infection of the flaming queens. Ryan White, with his generous spirit, refused to believe that his particular AIDS was any different from the AIDS contracted by those in San Francisco.

He was humble, he was non-judgmental, and he was strong until the day he died.

He made those who condemned their brothers and sisters look foolish–especially Anita Bryant.

She is still alive, but unfortunately, her name is equated with intolerance instead of righteousness–or orange juice, for that matter.

An interesting fact that you may want to tuck away in your memory: lepers are remembered more favorably than Pharisees.

So here is your salient moment:

You can’t defend God or morality by attacking behavior and hurting people.

 

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G-Poppers … February 2nd, 2018

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President Trump is not a moron. He is also not a genius.

Although there are proponents who would suggest that he falls into one or the other of these categories, the truth of the matter is that Donald Trump is President of the United States. He achieved this by campaigning and receiving the lion’s share of the electoral votes.

G-Pop wants to make this clear.

G-Pop is the veteran of many presidents and can tell you that most of them were accused of moral indiscretion, the majority considered crazy, and all of them touted to be dictators who over-extended their power.

It is important to understand the nature, the function and the mission of the job.

Most of the time the President of the United States is not negotiating with foreign powers nor plotting global wars.

He is the closest thing to a daddy that 320 million immigrants have.

As our daddy, it is his job to provide a sense of security and a voice of kindness. That’s it.

G-Pop’s not even sure if it’s a political position. Approaching it from that angle only seems to render the job mean-spirited, stalling action and legislation.

He is our father, who art in Washington–and maybe someday, our mother who art at the White House.

Questioning the morality, sanity, motives, hidden meetings or deceptions of our President is just political maneuvering to gain control of our country.

What the position really requires is kindness.

No one understood that better than Abraham Lincoln. Although President Lincoln had good reason to be furious over the attitudes of the Southern states, his second inaugural speech characterized his tenderness toward his children in Dixie by saying, “With malice toward none, with charity for all…”

Yet every President G-Pop knows has selected to be vindictive against his enemies, contending that if you don’t punch back, they’ll just punch harder. But Abraham Lincoln, in four short years, saved the Union, freed the slaves and was able to end a horrible conflict.

Did he do it by being mean?

Did he do it by being angry and sending out nasty notes to his enemies?

Did he do it by sleeping with his interns?

Did he do it by torturing the prisoners of the Confederate Army?

No, he did it as kindly as a man can do when waging a war against insanity.

Kindness is when we look in the mirror and practice the words we’re going to say to another to get a sense of how it might feel.

You don’t have to be a moron or a genius to be President.

But G-Pop wants you to know that it’s the mission of our President to allow kindness to flow to the north, south and east…from the West Wing.

 

 

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Confessing … October 31st, 2015

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XXVI.

I confess so I can heal.

If I deny, I remain sick.

Too much of a good thing.

No such creature.

However, there is a possibility of too much of my good thing. An overdose of my definition of “proper” and my code of appropriate behavior.

In my lifespan, I have seen morality change so often that I think we might want to consider writing the list in pencil. Finding what is unchangeable and humanly fulfilling is like searching for the pearl of great price in a desert of my misunderstanding.

Thus my problem with William.

We had the same Mommy and Daddy. I have been trying to confirm that we have the same Father.

I am not a religious man by any stretch of the imagination, but I see no value in traveling through this life making effort to love my neighbor as myself, comfortless from having a Friend who encourages me and believes in the same aspiration.

I really don’t care if He or She is imaginary as long as He or She is attentive.

William checked out of his life too early.

He was an excellent teacher who became despondent because he cared too much. The interesting factor is that after each one of us checks out of our lives, we no longer care about how we treated the “motel room” provided. Yes, there’s a danger of trashing one’s own existence.

About 25 years ago I decided to love William no matter what.

Hell, I was lousy at it. The reason for my failure is that even though I pursued unconditional love, I realized that humanly speaking, once that is determined to be impossible, we become obnoxious to those we intended to bless. Simply put, in the process of loving William, I had too many goddamn ideas on what William should be.

• I thought it was helpful. It ended up being hurtful.
• I thought it was ingenious. It was proven ridiculous.
• I was never condemning. But I cannot truthfully say I was always consoling.

So for about nine months, I walked away from my relationship with William, giving him a chance to breathe air that wasn’t contaminated with my opinion.

The difficulty lies in the fact that William tends to alienate those souls who come his way, so after several months he recontacted me, figuring that a nosy brother was better than leading a faceless life.

So I’m off today to have lunch with him for the first time in over a year. I am scared and not ashamed to admit it.

I don’t want to be an asshole.

I don’t want to tread on his very thin ice, break through and drown us both.

So I confess to you that I am a caring person who realizes that caring is a dangerous thing. It only becomes valubale if the person receiving it has some place to tuck it away.

 

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Populie: God Bless America… July 2, 2014

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God is still pretty popular.

America, too.

Yet there are many people who believe the two are synonymous–practically inseparable.

Thus the populie: “God bless America.”

Politics loves this slogan because it enables them to incorporate just enough religion to get the evangelical vote and just enough patriotism to acquire the libertarians.

Entertainment plays off the idea by producing both tear-jerking war movies and also flicks that question the authenticity and purpose of nationalism.

And of course, religion is partial to this idiom simply due to the fact that if we are convinced that we are favored by God, we might be able to get by with a few more inconsistencies before Daddy calls a time-out.

Yet as we near Independence Day, I am focused in on the power and veracity of the statement, “To he who much is given, much is expected.”

So because I love my country, respect our attempts at democracy and favor our liberty, I would like to deny the populie of “God bless America” and replace it with, “God challenge America.”

I know that God chastises those He loves–to make us sharper and more powerful. Yet we are losing our authority, presence and respectability due to the belief in our exceptionalism.

• When it comes to women, we should be world leaders in equality, but we trail behind others.
• We should take it seriously to stop killing. After all, when we discover a few packages of tainted ground beef in a grocery store, every package is recalled. Yet if twenty-two children are killed in a school, we continue to taint our lives with guns.
• We should expand ourselves in equality by including others we do not agree with, honoring their right to freedom. God respects free will above all else, even purity.
• We should be a nation that excels in productivity. For instance, I think we’re taking the wrong approach to the minimum wage. To give people more money for what they’re already doing is not only foolish, but actually a slothful business practice. But by the same token, if we can encourage productivity in our work force while passing along the dividends by increasing paychecks retroactively or offering bonuses, then we’re making our workers part of the solution instead of tying them in with the problem.
• Why aren’t we leaders in morality?
• How about civility?
• Instead of arguing about the climate of the Earth, why don’t we at least see if there’s something we could do and then surprise ourselves by doing it?
• Why don’t we take our young generation and encourage them to be respectful, industrious and creative instead of working to legalize more drugs, to dull their senses?
• Why do we allow our older citizens to become bitter and calloused instead of demanding they use their journey to become wise and merciful?
• If we truly do have the best medical care in the world, why aren’t we healthier?

Hiding your talent and refusing to use it is considered to be the definition of a sluggard.

Knowing what to do and not doing it is the best example of sin.

And living beneath your privilege only generates self-pity.

The populie is, “God bless America”–a way to live off the past by pretending that the present is sufficient because a Divine Presence controls our future.

My hope in this season is that we will allow God to challenge America to live up to our ideals, abilities and dreams.

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

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Untotaled: Stepping 14 (July 22, 1965) Getting Over the Hump… May 17, 2014

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(Transcript)

It was a summer when my raging hormones were doing constant battle against my entrenched morality.

I was a good boy with a head full of bad ideas.

So when church camp rolled around, I had lost my earlier childhood passion for scripture verses and vespers, and was more intently interested in swimming at the lake and eyeballing the fruitfulness of the blooming damsels.

This year the church had decided to draft two older teens to act as counselors for us young’uns. They were named Jack and Jill.

Really.

They were three years older, which made them both extraordinarily intimidating and elevated them to the status of Olympian gods. They were so cool. Everything they did was cool.

So one day when they went up the hill together (not kidding) I decided to follow at a distance, careful not to be seen, to ascertain what such dynamic human specimens did in their free time.

They must have walked for about fifteen minutes before finding a very private clearing in the woods. Going over to a nearby maple tree, Jack lay down and Jill climbed on top of him, fully clothed–and then he rubbed his against hers to create theirs.

I was shocked, befuddled and completely titillated.

It was like watching zoo animals, except they knew algebra.

Trying not to stumble, I exited the scene, running back to camp to ask my friend (whose father was a doctor in Columbus and who seemed to know everything about everything) what exactly my eyes had beheld.

With the calm and studious nature of a professor, he explained that Jack and Jill were “humping.” I was a little put off by the term, yet everything I came up with–for instance, “rubbing” and “entangled”–seemed no better.

He said my particular viewing of humping was of the “dry” variety.

I was enraged.

I was engorged.

I was torn between my envious nature over their pleasure and my Biblical knowledge of the perils of fornication. So blending the two together–envy and disdain–I went to the pastor in charge of the camp and squealed on them.

He promised that no one would ever find out that it was me, and a meeting was planned to dismiss the two from camp due to their immorality.

Sensing their ultimate betrayal, Jack and Jill went on the “lamb” and Splitsville.

I felt bad.

Two reasons: I realized that I hurt two people to make myself look good, and secondly, I couldn’t get the humping vision out of my mind–not because it was unpleasant, but because secretly I wished it was me.

I learned a valuable lesson that year at church camp. It had very little to do with the Law of Moses or the major doings of the minor prophets.

I learned that it is my job to pay attention to concerns that pertain to me and to try to leave other people alone.

After all, we humans are a jumbled mess of emotion, spirituality, mentality and physical urges. To sit in judgment of one another sets up the scenario for our own comical fall from the throne of self-righteousness.

Because … when Jack goes up the hill and falls down, Jill often comes tumbling after. It’s just the way we are.

It’s all because deep inside of us, we are trying to … “fetch that damn pail of water.”

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

After an appearance earlier this year in Surprise, Arizona, Janet and I were blessed to receive a “surprise” ourselves. Click on the beautiful Arizona picture above to share it with us!

Click here to get info on the “Gospel According to Common Sense” Tour

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

Click here to listen to Spirited music