Jonathots Daily Blog
(3325)
DUDLEY
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Jonathots Daily Blog
(3325)
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this inspirational opportunity
*******
To our friends at Roseland: click the piano for information on Cring & Clazzy
Jonathots Daily Blog
(2300)
The young congressman sat in his chair, completely confident in his pre-prepared answers and the stump speech that had provided him both election and platform to be the pundit of honor on the broadcast.
The question posed was simple. “Is it in our best interest to…?”
Then the interviewer offered a series of global flare-ups, hot spots and dangers in the world.
No specifics or ideas were offered by the politician, but a resounding repetition of a theme.
“We are America. We must think about America. We must take care of America. And we must be careful not to have our greatness diminished or tarnished by these difficulties. Yes, it’s popular. “America is great.”
But in the pursuit of that idea we have inserted a lie–America is better than other countries.
Religion loves this populie because it enables us to preach a gospel from a position of certainty and piety and send missionaries to the rest of the world because of their heathen status.
Entertainment has always adored “in our best interest” because it enables us to portray our great nation as the savior of all humankind.
And of course, politics adores the notion by bloating the voting block with over-wrought notions of superiority, causing them to “gloat on their way to the vote.”
Here’s the truth: 25,000 miles. That’s the entire circumference of our globe. It’s not much, when you consider that 3,000 of that is the continental United States.
With the addition of Internet, air travel and all sorts of technological surprises, we’re nearly sitting on top of each other.
Our smog floats to China, as does theirs to us.
We need to engage a simpler philosophy about our responsibility to one another other than looking at the bottom line or our cultural imperialism to determine when we’re going to be involved.
I have arrived at a rudimentary three-step process in ascertaining who I am, why I’m here, and what is expected of me if I’m going to continue to consider myself human instead of just a creature fighting for survival.
These are the three questions and my answers:
1. Who is God?
He is my Father. Any other answer to that question either diminishes the love of our Creator, eliminates His existence or generates such mystery that we’re involved in a theological paradox.
2. Who am I?
I am a child of God. I select to be a child, but not because I’m immature or untested. I select to be a child because in so proclaiming myself to be one, I admit that I am still a student of the planet and in the classroom of understanding myself and others.
3. Who is everybody else?
They are my brothers and sisters. When I start putting too many names on the human beings that surround me in this world, I become convinced that our relationships are complicated with twists and turns of culture and preference. The humans on this planet are my brothers and sisters. If we’re not linked by family genetics, we are linked to the genetics of our Creator.
Now, you might find this little trio of ideas to be very elementary in a world where we constantly hound one another with more questions than answers.
But if you begin your life by knowing that God is your Father, that you are a child of His desire and that everybody around you is brothers and sisters, the decision-making process of what is in your best interest clears up very quickly.
If I were involved in the present situations, I would realize that as a child of God, with brothers and sisters all over the world, my job is to assist and avoid killing.
Any chance we have to assist in a creative way eliminates some of the death toll.
Every gun we send over to a foreign power passes on the impression that we’ve picked sides. That means that a gun will eventually be pointed back in our direction.
I am not a pacifist unless by that term you are referring to someone who seeks peace. I am a realist.
And no man or woman that I kill in the pursuit of our best interest is going to go unnoticed by the children that he or she has left behind.
Answer the three questions.
If you’re an agnostic or atheist, you don’t believe there is a God, so you can’t be a child of God, and the human beings on the planet often tend to be your competitors.
If you’re overly religious, you don’t believe that God is your Father, but instead, a Force–often of punishment–so you feel that you’re a depraved sinner, and therefore you project that inadequacy on everyone around you.
God is my Father.
I am a child of God.
You are my brother or my sister.
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity
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Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about scheduling SpiriTed in 2014.
Jonathots Daily Blog
(2182)
It takes billions of years to evolve billions of years.
Therefore, it stands to reason that following billions of years, billions of things probably happened.
Yes, in the culmination of billions of years, the universe was birthed–with a tiny little baby planet called Earth, occupied by a bizarre diversity of flora and fauna, sharing one common concern: survival.
It is a situation which Nature blindly accepts, but a Creator ponders:
Monkey angels.
The Creator formed a being which was unwelcome in the arms of Mama Gorilla, and required a bit of rehab in order to hob-nob with the angels–a homey with no natural home.
Human: monkey angels.
A little bit of everything tossed in the crankcase, never quite certain if the engine will actually turn over.
Monkeys are unimpressed and angels are baffled. Are we a joke? A drunken experiment? A paradox? A mystery? Or the pride of the original “Big Banger” Himself?
It certainly explains why we feel insecure. It clarifies our nagging sensation of not belonging. It justifies the search to find ourselves.
It is why our monkey curiosity caused us to choose the wrong tree, leaving our angel abandoned in the jungle, needing the garden. We require both a cage and the freedom of the sky.
The entire creation of monkey angels seems a bit tongue-in-cheek. It is suited to those who have the playfulness of the chimpanzee and the resilience of an archangel.
Monkey angels: more than survival–chasing the banana for further study.
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity
Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about scheduling SpiriTed in 2014.
Jonathots Daily Blog
(2119)
Each of us considers “normal” to be whatever we view as acceptable behavior, and has become our fallback position. So if you grew up around worriers, it seems natural to worry. If you were surrounded by gruff, unemotional human beings, you will think it is bizarre to be gregarious. If your background is in Judeo-Christian values, then you will be caught in the paradox between “do I love my neighbor as myself?” or is it “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?”
Even though we all believe we’re on a quest to find a remedy for our everyday problems and even our nagging addictions, we might want to stop and realize that the resources we tap will certainly determine the quality of the treatment.
Yesterday as I met the delightful and hungry souls at Cypress Trails United Methodist Church, I realized that each of them was joining into a body of believers while secretly pursuing a private belief system of their own, which had been infused into them from the time they were tiny children, and is now “normal,” even if unfulfilling.
For we are much more likely to accept an unfulfilling life than we are to question our “normal.”
To challenge our upbringing means we put ourselves on the outside, looking in–and that sense of abandonment can be terrifying.
But every remedy I have found in my life has demanded that I question my resources, values and even faith to set in motion a new miracle for myself.
After all, in my case, it is difficult to get over obesity because I was taught that food is love. It’s like trying to remove affection from existence. It seems unnatural. It seems ungodly.
Take a moment every day and ask a simple question: am I doing this because I have chosen to do so and it has proven to make me a better human being, or am I repeating behavior that I learned, which has trapped me in the person I am instead of the person I desire to become?
In the realm of spirituality, ten commandments that we dangle over the collective head of humanity does not always jive with “judge not, lest ye be judged.”
You have to make a choice.
And when you’re choosing, just make sure that what you follow breeds life … instead of stifling it.
The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity
Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about scheduling SpiriTed in 2014.