G-Poppers … November 24th, 2017

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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The world is not going to get better. It just isn’t.

This is not a negative statement–it’s not walking around in sackcloth and ashes, proclaiming doomsday. The world has, is and will continue to be filled with tribulation–wars, rumors of wars, nation rising against nation and so forth and so on.

There are only two futilities in life:

1. Waiting on the world to change.

2. Giving up on the idea of change.

Even though the world is not going to change, you are. If you don’t, you’ll fall into the same patterns as your parents, except with higher taxes, fewer advantages and more expensive prices on turkey and dressing.

You are supposed to get better. The question immediately comes to mind–how does one do that?

First by realizing that “better” is not an abstract concept. It is not a case of waking up in the morning and trying to improve all of your actions in order to please Mother Nature or Father God. Rather, it is one simple statement:

I am going to become a better bettor.

I am going to learn what to bet on, what to believe in, what to pursue, what is valuable, what is precious, what is current, what is in need of being handled immediately and what can be put off for later.

I am going to instruct myself on how to wager my time and energy. Otherwise I will be tempted to follow the gray cloud of the news cycle from one storm to another. I will discover the most miserable member of my family and think they demand the most attention. I will become a horrible bettor instead of a better bettor.

Valuable point: knowing what to bet on gives you the chance to discover opportunity to change something.

Nothing you change in your life will be more than two feet from your fingertips. Get used to it. Just think what would happen if we got one billion people to understand this.

So what is worthy of a risk? Where can I invest my precious time?

Find things that are true.

This means at least the folks involved are trying not to lie.

This lends itself to backing projects that are honest.

And what does honest entail? Occasionally admitting that you screwed up.

How about some justice?

In other words, if you are allowed to have freedom of speech, so do the many other tongues flapping around you.

Could it be possible to find something pure?

Pure does not mean that it’s free of dirt–it connotes that the people involved are trying to clean it up.

Get ready to bet on things that are lovely and of good report.

Stop being titillated by vile descriptions and sexual masochism.

Do we still believe in virtue?

What is that anyway? It’s realizing there are things that are universal, and that when they’re enacted, miracles happen.

And doggone it, go out and find things that are praise-worthy.

Our entire society is set for subjects that are bitch-worthy. Find something that demands that you stop, shake your head in amazement and speak out, “Isn’t God good?”

You will not change the world. G-Pop wants you to know that it is your duty to become a better bettor.

 

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Never Worship Where You Vote… January 5, 2013

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Yes, the snowman always votes for more snow–just as the surfer casts his ballot for bigger waves. Politics is the selfish game of pursuing our own ends while insisting it’s for the good of the country and relegating our dissenters as unpatriotic opponents.

It is not suited for children like you and me.

Now a worse thing has happened: political parties are being worshipped. Indeed, it seems to be a godly mission to advance the platform of your party while invoking the name of the Most High as your major contributor. So we’ve moved from the necessary to the ridiculous to the nasty, ending up in abominable. It is time to hide the children from such mayhem.

Here’s why: children need to learn to tell the truth. We insist on it. There is no greater punishment for a youngster than lying and covering up an iniquity that is usually easily exposed. If the truth “makes us free,” it is simply because we are relieved of the burden of maintaining an ever-expanding, ongoing fable about misdeeds. It is exhausting to be politically correct instead of forthcoming.

Yes, all parents want their children to be considered top-notch, but to achieve that status it is also necessary that each child of the household learn that there are seasons for setbacks and disappointments in order for us to grow more fully into completeness.

Children can’t be involved in politics because they need to tell the truth, and obviously, veracity is optional “amongst them who seek votes.” By the time we get done spinning, expanding, promoting, advertising and sowing disinformation about reality, it is often difficult to attain a clarity of thought.

Children should also stay away from politics because children must hear the truth before they can tell the truth. There you go. Lying parents bring forth lying offspring:

Parents who keep alcohol in their refrigerator should not be surprised when their fifteen-year-old comes home drunk from a party that was supposed to feature pizza and root beer.

Parents who fib on the phone to creditors should not feign shock when their dear little ones lie about their grades.

To tell the truth you have to hear the truth. There is a very intelligent word that says “faith comes by hearing.” We build up the confidence to say our individual situation aloud because we’ve heard other people do it without fear.

What is the worst atrocity about our political system? The lies of the Republicans and the Democrats will come down and crash on us for two or three generations to come. We have made it acceptable to be misleading. It is not suitable for children. It is the R-rated movie of government.

And finally, concerning those who desire a childlike faith, we must comprehend that to hear the truth, one must be willing to be wrong. Politicians are never wrong. If you don’t believe me, just listen to them. They are often misquoted, misunderstood, caught on a bad day, taken out of context, targeted by the other party’s kill committee, or they are just victims of a vicious news cycle.

It is rather doubtful in our present political climate if we will ever hear anything that resembles the truth.

Such a gift demands that someone be wrong. Until you are willing to say you are wrong, you can’t hear the truth. If you can’t hear the truth, you can’t tell the truth. And if you can’t tell the truth, you can’t be made free.

The combination of self-righteousness, combined with an unwillingness to negotiate, culminating in a worship of political ideals, has rendered our society crippled of the change which only occurs by the real truth convincing us of the error of our ways … and making us free.

I will not participate.  I have never participated, but in 2013, with my desire to have a childlike faith, I must avoid the bad boys and girls of the political system, who require that I worship where I vote–but won’t give me the freedom of truth.

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Kneiling… August 28, 2012

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I don’t know much about him.

I mean, I know his name–Neil Armstrong. I know that he walked on the moon. I’ve picked up bits and pieces about his history by listening to spurts of conversation over the past couple of days on the news blabber.

But honestly, I have chosen to remain ignorant about his specifics, and only consider his life as it pertains to me. Yes, I have granted myself a bit of indulgence. I don’t want to study the life of Neil Armstrong to discover patterns of behavior, reveal his denominational affiliation or find out if he’s conservative or if he’s liberal. I am fed up with that type of analysis. I am interested in what Neil Armstrong did and how it pertains to me.

He arrived on the scene in 1969 with his crew cut and space suit, climbed into a capsule which certainly promoted claustrophobia, and was exploded into outer space, to land on the moon.

It fascinates me that in that same time, the United States was fighting a war in Viet Nam while simultaneously opposing the same war, with young folks marching in the street. We were reeling, trying to recover from two recent assassinations in the previous year of Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. We had just elected a new President and were on the verge of fulfilling a promise by another President, who was also assassinated, who vowed to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Also in the midst of this pursuit of the moon, a bunch of hippies from New York were planning a rock concert, which ended up being one of the largest music festivals ever held. They called it Woodstock.

All of this was going on at the same time. (If we’d had a twenty-four hour news cycle, they actually would have had something to report on instead of trying to make hay out of all the straw polls.)

There was a sense that to do anything less than pursue radical excellence was to be  un-American. Even in my small town, our church started a coffee-house, which had grown to 125 kids showing up on Saturday night, in a town of only 1400. When some of the parents objected to the fact that the coffee-house was held in a church and they didn’t want their children pummeled with religion, our board just went down the street and rented a small house where the young folks could have their gathering. Nobody argued about it; nobody called it religious persecution. We just adapted.

In the midst of this confusion and activity, Neil Armstrong, from Wapakoneta, Ohio, took a trip to the moon. He walked around, said his famous line–“one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”–and returned, received a couple of medals, waved from a car in some parades and went back to being Neil. He didn’t host a new reality show. He didn’t start a business off of the fame of being the “Moon Walker.”  He didn’t appear incessantly on television news programs as an authority on every subject thought to be even partially peripheral to his expertise. He didn’t demand anything.

He walked on the moon and then he came back and lived on the earth.

It is a style I would like to study–a better way of “kneeling.” Some people take their posture of prayer and rise to condemn the world around them. But Mr. Armstrong did his “Neiling” and returned to be just one of us.

Here are three things I have learned about “Neiling:”

1. Do something well until somebody notices. Then you might get a chance to do it even better.

2. When you get that chance, do your best walking, your best work and leave behind an example of magnificence.

3. Don’t make a big deal about it, but instead, blend in with your fellow-human beings, thus confirming that the same potential exists in all of us.

It is ironic that the death of this great astronaut is simultaneously commemorated with the termination of manned flights into outer space. They say he was very upset about that. I would imagine so. Someone who prospered and excelled in a season of war, protest, rock and roll and dancing on the moon might find our times and attitudes a bit anemic.

This I know–an eighty-two-year-old man passed away who quietly lived his life with one major exception: for a brief season, to each and every one of us, he confirmed that there was a man in the moon.

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Mood Stings … June 12, 2012

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In the spirit of complete disclosure, I will tell you that I have consumed so much crab at an all-you-can-eat buffet that for the next four days, it smelled like the little critters were crawling out of every pore of my body. Like every good, red-blooded American, I have over-eaten my share of all sorts of delicacies over the years.

I remember one Thanksgiving, my son, Jasson, who is a normal-sized fellow at about 180 pounds, decided to weigh himself prior to the meal and also following. In the pursuit of great turkey and dressing, he gained seven pounds in less than an hour. Yes, eating is a great American pastime which normally culminates with either indigestion or constipation. These two obstacles don’t seem to stop us.

Everyone has suffered from eating too much or from ingesting the wrong foods at the wrong time. But it amazes me why we don’t understand that taking in large doses of entertainment and information will equally cause us to have mental indigestion or emotion constipation.  For some reason we think we can watch or do anything and just sweep it away from our thinking at will.

I am not suggesting that watching a murder mystery is going to make you go out and kill your next adversary but I am telling you that the entertainment we select, the information we absorb and the attitudes that pummel our minds DO leave behind what I shall call mood stings.

Yes, they affect our mood. And depending on how long we stay in that mood and what opportunities and problems may come our way which need to be addressed while we are still smarting from that sting, we can end up with lost revenue or even disaster.

I can always tell when people have spent too much time in front of the TV or movie screen. They get plagued by three moods that are very difficult to shake until you replace the experience with something that enriches your heart and plumps up your soul. Here are the three mood stings that can puncture your life with their nastiness:

1. Feeling vacant. Yes–sometimes after watching entertainment, rather than being filled with inspiration, you are instead engulfed in a sense of emptiness. Much of what we consider to be enlightenment in our society is really a sharp nail that pierces our souls, causing the air to seep out of our spirits. It leaves us feeling vacant.

I see it all the time. When my kids were growing up they would go to a movie and get up the next morning devoid of energy or any sense of drive or passion. They would insist that the movie was “fabulous,” but they never realized that it had drained them of all motivation.

2. Overly sensitive. How many zombies do you have to watch being killed before you lose all sense that life is being lost? How many women raped before they all look the same? How many bullets ripping through flesh and pouring out blood before human life doesn’t have as much meaning? We become defensive that human life is so worthless. If the end of the world is so near, why make a fuss over doing anything of quality? So instead of stepping up to pursue excellence, people become overly sensitive about their own space.

3. Suspicious. If you’re listening to a news report about cheating politicians, philandering ministers and terrorists around every corner, it may be a little difficult to allow any form of trust to exist in your dealings with your fellow-man. For instance, I was walking out of a door a couple of days ago and held it open for a young mother and her child. The woman was not grateful, but rather, suspicious about why I was being so nice. She even tried to take the door away from me so she could hold it for herself. I wondered what had caused her to become so careful in an environment where blessing was possible.

The wrong type of entertainment, news programs and even books can make us suspicious. And when we’re suspicious, we always close the doors to possibility and open them to attack.

These are mood stings.

Just as eating too much food gives you indigestion or constipation, taking in input from the outside world that is laced with hopelessness, despair and disrespect for human life can make you vacant, too sensitive and suspicious. And if God sends you a blessing in the midst of one of these stingings, you are certainly going to miss it because you are recovering from the shock of your ordeal.

So what am I saying? Should we avoid all entertainment? Should we stop watching things that might be a little bizarre? Not at all. But just as in the case of eating, you have to know when to push away from the table, and you also have to occasionally reach for an antacid to overcome your gluttony.

When I know I’ve run across a piece of entertainment or some broadcast that brought darkness to my mindset, I never end my day with that particular experience. Sit down and read a book. Say a prayer. Play a game of cards. Take a spiritual antacid to counteract the over-indulgence in material that was not intended to refresh you.

Remember–entertainment and news programs try to bypass the heart and soul and go directly to the mind. When you bypass the heart and soul you are speaking to a mind which is not rejuvenated or revived by spiritual regeneration, but rather, carries its own fears, prejudices and cultural upbringing. If you want to have a true experience in entertainment, the heart and soul have to be involved in order to renew the mind.

I never write a movie script unless it reaches the heart, which I know will expand the soul and therefore give the mind something fruitful to chew on.  But not everyone who writes agrees with that premise. So it is our job to beware. We shouldn’t turn into nuns or join an Amish clan, but rather, be more intelligent, introspective viewers. And when you do catch some program that lays a human body out on a slab like it’s a chunk of meat for dissection, come out of the theater and go do something else before you close your eyes and go to sleep.

Replace the gore with something more. If you do that, you can avoid the nasty mood stings of feeling vacant, being too sensitive and ending up suspicious.

After eighteen months of traveling across this country, what would I say are the main weaknesses in our nation? We seem to have a vacancy in our soul. We are way too sensitive, and certainly, overly suspicious of each other. It is the effect of mood stings.

And just like when you’re stung by a bee, the sooner you acknowledge it and treat it, the less itching will follow.

   

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