1 Thing You Can Do This Week

Stir Your Heart But Lower Your Pressure

It often seems that people become nosy, interfering, nervous and worried because they haven’t settled in their own hearts what their part of life truly is, and what they should do to remain passionate.

They intrude in everybody else’s business.

They increase pressure—on people around them, themselves and even the pressure on their own religion or politics to perform miracles that are not in the making.

What you treasure in your life will be nurtured in your emotions and your passions.

If you haven’t decided what you value, then you’ll try to become involved in everything and the craziness will overwhelm you.

Here’s the truth:

• I don’t care about everything.
• I am not interested in everything.
• Therefore, I am not involved in everything.

My level of activity is limited to my passions.

If you don’t have your heart focused on what your true treasure is in life, you’ll create anxiety in yourself, trying to be proficient at everything.

Stir your heart and lower your pressure.

Tell your heart where you feel excited, where you want to be involved and leave other people alone.

Do yourself a favor–don’t comment on everything.

I don’t have an opinion on everything.

I don’t want to have an opinion on everything.

I don’t want that responsibility.

So I stir my heart everyday to do what thrills me.

And by faith I believe the other parts of life that need to be taken care of are being stirred by the treasures which are in the hearts of my brothers and sisters.

 

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Sit Down Comedy … August 2nd, 2019

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Hurling insults.

It may be the only exercise that many folks are getting.

We’ve become very concerned about being offended, yet are we becoming more offensive ourselves?

An interesting question.

One of the favorite insults is accusing one another of being racist. I think we must understand the path of intolerance. It begins with”

Prejudice

“I have an idea that I hold to be true.”

Opinion

“That idea has become my foundational thought.”

Bigotry

“I believe my idea is so good that I am prepared, willing and in the midst of sharing it with others.”

Racist

“I am convinced that my idea is supported by both nature and God, and therefore means that I must enforce it, alienating some group of people.”

As you see, it’s not easy to be a racist—and no one who is truly a racist is ashamed to admit it. They are loud and proud.

I think what each one of us needs to do instead of hurling insults is take a look at where prejudice tries to wiggle its way into our lives.

There are four encounters which give us the opportunity to use our speech in different ways if we so choose—or arrive at a unity of one voice.

First there’s Platter Chatter

These are the conversations we have with friends and family over dinner or during fellowship.

Next, the Pew View

These are the scriptures, sermons and ideas promoted by our particular religious organization.

Third is the Work Week Speak

I’m referring to the “around the cooler talk,” which sometimes is not cooler. It can actually be hotter.

And finally, the Walk Talk

This is a social environment with people we do not know, so we must be cautious in sharing our ideas and beliefs in front of them.

Is your conversation more prejudiced during Platter Chatter with your family? Does your church have a view of lifestyles that disincludes some people from salvation based on their choices? How about the bigoted jokes spoken at work? Can you refrain from laughing loudly, and in so doing communicate your disdain? Or must you object? And what is the profile of your interchanges around strangers?

In trying to figure out the amount of racism you have in your life, you have to concentrate on whether bigotry has found a home inside you—whether somehow or another you’ve formed your own personal opinion based upon a prejudice that has lingered in your mind.

So ask yourself:

Is your Platter Chatter, Pew View, Work Week Speak and Walk Talk all the same? Or do you allow a little more opinion, prejudice and maybe even bigotry to appear in certain environments, which you don’t permit in others?

It’s a great way to analyze your situation, and it also makes you a bit more cautious about slinging the term “racist” around.

It’s something to ponder.

Of course, there always is the choice of going for a long walk instead of hurling insults.

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Sit Down Comedy … May 24th, 2019

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I thought I would send along today the ideas that give me the spine and create the backbone for my faith and human journey.

There happen to be ten of them—but this has nothing to do with the original Commandments, just more or less my relentless respect for the symmetry of a good essay.

1. Don’t be so shitty.

2. Create instead of bitch.

3. My opinion sucks.

4. Don’t speak in God’s name.

5. Politics makes assholes. Flee!

6. Get good enough that you can be humble instead of needy.

7. No help is coming. Learn to laugh!

8. No one is better than anyone else.

9. Pick up your trash.

10. Don’t try so hard.

That’s about it. I could elaborate, but I think that might be best left to you.

So here it is:

The Ten Principles in “My Heeling Dogma.”

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1 Thing You Can Do This Week To Help Civilization and Not Harm

 

Stop Inserting Your Opinion

You may think people want to hear it—they really don’t.

If they ask for your thoughts, it is mostly to confirm what they have stated and believe. If you are not exactly on point, they will no longer be interested in your input.

At this point, you may be tempted to do something even worse: defend your opinion.

May I give you some ideas? You might view them as guidelines, or at least an interesting read:

1. If you weren’t there, don’t speculate.
2. If you aren’t pregnant and it’s not your baby, stay out of it.
3. If it’s not your bedroom, then quietly shut the door and walk away.
4. People may disagree with you. That does not make them ignorant, bastard elitists.

And There Are Even More…

5. Go ahead and enjoy your God. Let others wonder, deny or search at will.
6. If you are not female, do not speculate on a woman’s place.
7. If you didn’t try it, be quiet.
8. If you don’t know, then go.
9. If it’s not your life, cut the strife.
10. And finally, if it doesn’t bless, avoid the mess.
    

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The K Word … April 16th, 2019

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THE

WORD

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I lived in Nashville, Tennessee for nearly twenty years. Overall, I found it a very pleasant experience.

Yet seventy-four miles south of my home, on Interstate 65, was a town called Pulaski. It is the community where the Ku Klux Klan began. So most assuredly, confidently and sadly, I will tell you today’s word that should never be used again—the “K” that should not be spoken—is the Ku Klux Klan.

The K Word is the Ku Klux Klan

It’s not so much their views. I don’t agree with anything they say. Yet if they were coming from a position of personal experience, I might need to consider their perspective. But no member of the KKK has spent fifteen years playing in the National Football League, surrounded by black men. If they had done this and come out with a negative insight, then I would have to conclude that they had a right to their opinion.

Or if some of the members had lived in Israel for ten years and after the visitation, had stated that Jews were greedy and less than human, I might question their premise but certainly would have to acknowledge that they had been involved in a live-in experiment.

But there’s no member of the Ku Klux Klan who has spent any time with members of the black race or the Jews. They are not well-traveled individuals who, after careful research, developed a doctrine of the division among the races, with the hypothesis being that “white people are better.”

These are little boys and girls who were never allowed to formulate their own thinking but instead, absorbed the prejudice, anger and fallacious notions of their ancestors.

Unfortunately, these ancestors came to the conclusion that keeping their cotton crop in the black was much more important than the blacks who made it possible for them to have a cotton crop in the first place.

They are childishly ignorant—ignorant because the philosophy they cling to was long ago abandoned by people of reason, science and emotional well-being; childish because they’re still trying to please parental figures, aunts, uncles, grandfathers and ancient kin who held to a belief system that found its only power by leaving others powerless.

There is a school of thought that if you want to do away with the Ku Klux Klan, then let them speak their mind, let them be heard, and they will be revealed for who and what they are.

Unfortunately, unfoldings in our country over the past ten years tell us that giving breath to a murderer is granting license to murder.

This is why I’m saying the KKK should never be mentioned. It should not be discussed. It should not evoke either anger or apathy.

We should pretend that it does not exist until it’s so small that evolution can swallow it back into the earth—where it will finally die—with the graves of those who were once so presumptuous.

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3 Things … March 7th, 2019

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Which Can Strongly Impact Other Human Beings

1. Remember a personal detail about their present pursuit

 

2. Listen to them without giving opinion (sometimes even if they ask for one)

 

3. Protect them from roving critics

   

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G-Poppers … September 22nd, 2017

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She wanted to make sure G-Pop knew the story.

Even though she had messed up her life to the extent that most of her friends had abandoned her, leaving her to her own explanations and tales of woe, she still needed confirmation from G-Pop that he found some good in her bad.

Always looking for a way to find some good in our bad.

It’s why we come up with a story, a rendition, a plot line, and worst of all, an explanation.

When she started to offer excuses about what happened, G-Pop stopped her. She was a bit surprised and thought he was being judgmental. She immediately became defensive and challenged his Christianity and his charity. He explained that he had no judgment for her whatsoever–just some sage advice:

A story is useless.

When ignorance, stupidity or carelessness invade our lives with some form of mishap, what we need to give is a report. Not a story. A simple report.

It’s not that different from what we did in high school, when we stood in front of the class to cite our discoveries upon reading a book. We weren’t allowed to elaborate on the tale, or make up things the author might have chosen to do. Rather, we were told to showcase the actual events and offer some feelings on what they meant to us.

Here is a powerful thought–our story will not take away our responsibility, even if we enhance it into a Hollywood production with props and special effects. What garners the attention of our fellow-humans is when we have the audacity and tenacity to give a factual report. Here’s how it should go:

1. This is what I did.
2. This is why it was wrong.
3. This is what I could have done.
4. This is what I would like to do to make things better.
5. What do you think? I value your opinion.

This five-step process places us within the ranks of human beings trying to move forward through change, instead of merely sporting a nasty attitude.

Give a report.

It’s a little piece of wisdom G-Pop offers to his children on this Friday.

 

 

 

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