1 Thing You Need to Do to Be Alive … September 22nd, 2020

Jonathots Daily Blog

(4531)

Respond when someone knocks you on the head and says: “Are you there?”

Trust me–it’s true.

After nearly eliminating my life by accidentally taking too much insulin, those are the words I heard.

Are you there?

I wasn’t. But I was not gone.

So I responded affirmatively.

Death visits our lives more frequently than it should.

Don’t leave a welcome mat.

Sit Down Comedy …March 1st, 2019

Jonathots Daily Blog

(3971)

I do not want to expel my innermost feelings, like some sort of nattering ninny in a room which is progressively disinterested. After all, in our society, we encourage one another to be honest, when what we really mean is honestly lie.

How are you?

Fine.

How’s the family?

Busy.

Got any plans brewin’?

Oh, just the usual.

Have you had any deep emotional or spiritual experiences which have transformed you into a new creature in your journey on Planet Earth?

What??

With this in mind, I have decided to candidly present to you my feelings about dying—that moment when I will leave this Earth, or at least contribute my dust to its topsoil.

I want people to be devastated.

I want slobbering sobs.

I want people wondering whether they can go on without me.

I want my demise to be a topic of conversation beyond a single news cycle.

I want people to remember things that are probably fictitious, but still cast me in a great light.

I want people to note the vacancy left behind by me checking out of the room.

I want loved ones to keep loving me with the same intensity they did when I was alive—except having it enhanced by the realization that I am no longer among the tax-payers.

I want to be valued.

This is probably why I do noble deeds—or at least attempt to. Of course, there is an altruistic part of me that really does give a damn and wants to help people, but I also want to be remembered as someone who lended a helping hand.

I’m not one of those Bible-thumping sorts who believe “this world is not my home” and “I’m just passing through.”

I want an empty chair at the table, so people will remember I once filled it—often gluttonous.

I want to be treasured, and if that means my loved ones lose a few hours of sleep, shed some tears and shake their heads, speaking of how unfair it was for me to be taken, then so be it.

Of course, I also realize that much of this is highly unlikely. With the several thousand people I may know, and the several hundred who have personal contact with me, and the few dozen who share intimate details, I will be very fortunate if there is one.

Yes, if there’s just one person who gets to the funeral luncheon and can’t eat because I’m not there.

If there’s just one who sits around with other people, refraining from discussing how good the honey baked ham truly is, it will be sufficient.

If there’s just one who sits in a dark room and conjures memories that are so rich and full that it seems my presence hangs in the air, it will be enough.

Because that one person could remind the others, and then the others can be stirred to good thoughts.

I know it’s silly. I don’t care.

I don’t want to be part of a genealogy. I don’t want to slip through the cracks of a gravestone.

I want one blessed, holy, sweet person to wonder what he or she is going to do since I have vacated the space.

Just one.

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Recess… November 8, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2061)

The bell rang. Time for recess.

I looked around the room into the faces of twenty-nine other young souls like myself, in Mrs. Arnold’s third grade class and realized that the ringing meant different things to each and every one.

Some were smiling, wiggling in anticipation. Others seemed resigned, as if bored with the prospect. And there were those who were terrified–fully aware that in a few short minutes they would be out on the playground with their peers, trying to compete and falling short of the glory of childhood acceptance.

• There would be interaction.
• There would be competition.
• There would be challenges.
• There would be ridicule.

It is part of the process. And as we pursue a much-needed campaign against the brutality of bullying, we must be careful not to hamper the interaction among younger folks when they are separated from grown-ups–an exposure that brings about the necessary evolution toward character, confidence and realization.

For when you discuss “peer,” there are three different categories. If you think that each and every time children fuss, argue and fight, it is wrong–bullying–you are disrupting the human jungle that DOES provide a great barometer for cleaning out abnormalities and setting apart better paths.

For instance, I failed to be called a “fat boy” enough in school to rid myself of obesity. I was TOO well-liked, too personable and in some ways, too talented to be challenged over a weakness that has now plagued me my whole life. It should have been taken care of by:

1. Peer presence.

This is just the blending of kids getting together to discover solutions on the best way to get along. It is characterized by talking. This is why sometimes it’s stupid in school, to tell kids to be quiet. They are trying to find a way to blend with each other. Not everything can be solved by an adult guidance counselor. We need our friends to talk with, to blend with and to discover solutions. And sometimes this leads to:

2. Peer pressure.

It is essential in the human race that we learn how to bend. We must discover our differences and even be willing to argue about them in order to produce adequate compromises. Too many teachers think that because kids are arguing, it’s a sign of severe difficulty. The truth is, peer pressure teaches us to bend, acknowledge our differences, and if necessary, fuss our way through them.

I certainly agree that peer pressure can go too far and can lead to the promotion of violent behavior. But I will also tell you there is no person who appears to the youngster to be old, who can intervene and produce the results that they can hammer out, on their own, together.

When you live in the adult world, the only power you have over the young is to teach them right, wrong, manners and gentleness. Then they must go out in the midst of peer pressure and work out the specifics. Occasionally this can get carried away and lead to:

3. Peer persecution.

Some kids feel compelled to bind other children by bullying them.  How can you identify what’s bullying and what is viable peer pressure?

Bullying is when the arguing stops, one person ceases to speak and becomes the target of the other one, who dominates.

That’s right. If two kids are arguing, give them a chance to work it out. But if you come across two kids and only one of them is yelling, ridiculing the other child, who is standing there, without speech, just taking it–you have just come across bullying.

It is a mistake for people who are no longer in school, no longer youthful and no longer understand the playground, to try to come in and make things right for everybody by keeping things calm and on an even keel. You are just making matters worse. Learn the difference.

• The young students in our country need peer presence. They must be given a human mixer to blend, discovering solutions.
• Sometimes this leads to peer pressure, where kids will argue, trying to bend to one another’s inclinations, and in the process, uncover differences which eventually are included in the flow.
• But we should never let it go into peer persecution, where one kid binds another one up with bullying. This is easily identified by the absence of the persecuted child offering any verbal defense.

I recently heard about a young man who felt he was being bullied, so he committed suicide. Here’s my problem with that: why wasn’t there a climate where this young man could express to his parents, family or teachers his need for assistance?

And why are we attacking the very delicate procedure of peer interaction, trying to eliminate anything WE would consider negative, just because in this case, the system failed one young man?

I am saddened by his death, but alerted to the fact that the problem here was not just bullying. It was a fellow who didn’t think he could argue back to the peer pressure, and also did not feel that anybody outside the playground would either hear or have the power to change his circumstances.

We need peer presence. Students must learn to blend.

I think we need some peer pressure, to bend, where kids have the chance to produce some of their own solutions through argument.

What we do need to stop is peer persecution, binding, where one person is silenced as the others continue to rail against him or her.

Can we make these distinctions? If we can’t, we need to stop calling ourselves parents, teachers and leaders.

Our society is overwrought. Some things are necessary to create the cultural revolution in each generation that progresses the idea of humanity instead of trying to keep everything calm, but stalled.

I know it is possible. I did it with all six of the sons I raised. I let them blend and I let them bend. Only when they began to bind each other with persecution did I step in. Because of that, I think each one of them has grown up with a better understanding of who he is and how he fits in.

Bullying–it’s when one person stops talking and runs for cover, only to be chased by an assailant.

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The Presence of Absence… August 23, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(1984)

I am annoyed with the void.

• “I don’t believe”
• “I don’t care”
• “I don’t forgive”
• “I don’t change”
• “I don’t take crap”

I hear these statements screamed–a sociological rattletrap which is puttering down the highway towards a conversion to nothingness.

In the pursuit of personal freedom and individuality, we are completely abandoning the commonality and joy of being part of the human tribe.

It is the presence of absence.

It is the extolling of a vacuum, portraying that we are intelligent by having stumbled upon this emptiness.

God seems to be gone. Compassion is optional. Mercy is conditional–usually limited to those of our own household. Repentance is a joke because it requires that we consider our own lacking. And humility sucks–especially when we can blare our own horns to scare away the critics.

What I want to ask, very simply, is: do you really WANT to live in a world that is Godless, lacks compassion, is unmerciful, never-changing and arrogant?

I understand there are flaws in every system existing that is man-infested. But at least in the realm of spirituality, we will allow weakness to wheel its way through the front door of the sanctuary and sit in our midst without demanding that the person involved completely conform to some sort of mantra created by the intellectual elite.

I am tired of watching television or movies and being told that life sucks.

There you go. I should put that on a bumper sticker and slap it on the back of my van.

• I am frustrated up to my gills with the ocean of ideas that look on the dark side of life, contending that we’re being innovative.
• I don’t want True Blood. Matter of fact, I don’t want any blood.
• I don’t want Breaking Bad. I would like to hear about people who have the guts to do something good in the midst of insanity.
• I don’t want to hear about a Boardwalk Empire, where murder was the way to advance commerce instead of coming up with innovation and letting it play out.

I am weary of ill-doing.

Call it out–don’t critique society around you because you think it would make Jesus cry. Jesus is pretty resilient. But he does demand that we keep our hope for life instead of giving up and insisting that absence is our presence.

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The Absence of Presence… August 22, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(1983)

As for me, I like my fireworks to be explosive, lighting up the night sky with beautiful colors. I am not interested in any kind of firework that has been diffused of explosion and can only muster muted tones of brown.

In our attempt to make everything safe, common, accessible and equal, we gradually have taken all the “presence” from the institutions and outreaches that make human life rich with experience.

Chief among them, to me, is the church.

An organism that should exude life, energy, jubilance and spiritual unpredictability has been disemboweled by caution, tradition, suspicion and  judmentalism. It has become a Petrie dish for the study of prejudice or, at times, a sure cure for insomnia.

It is disappointing to hear those who have chosen a path of disbelief to win the day simply because the individuals who were meant to prosper and live abundantly under spiritual energy have decided to entomb their faith in the grave of repetition.

It is equally as disheartening to see a government that is “for the people, by the people and of the people” brought to a screeching halt, or maybe better phrased, a grinding cessation, by political stubbornness and arrogant posturing.

There are things that are meant to have a presence.

The word “church” should bring a smile to our faces and evoke memories of joy. And the utterance of the United States of America should put a chill of hope down our spines–for a world that struggles in tyranny and poverty.

Instead, we have surgically removed all the aspiration from our faith and our country, to whittle ourselves to a futile fussiness which we interpret as “adult debate.”

Jesus warned the Pharisees that they were concerned about the money and the organization of their religion, but had forgotten the weightier matters of judgment, mercy and faith.

Judgment: a decision to honor what is truly valuable instead of coins that can be counted.

Mercy: packaging what we evangelize to be appealing to human beings–our market.

Faith: being prepared to evolve toward greater understanding of God instead of diverse interpretations of scripture.

Until we put the presence back into our spirituality and our government, the absence will leave behind the anarchy of loneliness.

I am hopeful.

I refuse to be defeated.

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 personal appearances or scheduling an event