Jonathots Daily Blog
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Jonathots Daily Blog
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G-Pop’s five-year-old son came strolling over carrying a dirty, beat-up baby blanket with frayed edges, which had been the source of great comfort and solace to the little chap for years.
He handed it to G-Pop and said, “Fix it.”
The blanket did need some help.
The ends were torn and worn from being drug on the ground and any memory of the original color had faded beneath a cloud of general “dirty.”
G-Pop’s son even brought along the family sewing kit to aid in the repair. G-Pop peered at the blanket and then down into the hopeful eyes of his child.
“I don’t need the sewing kit. It won’t help. What I need is a pair of scissors.”
The five-year-old squinted. “Why?”
Why indeed?
G-Pop realized that the ony way to fix the blanket was to carefully take the scissors and meticulously trim off the ripped regions on the perimeter. They could not be fixed. They would never be woven into the one piece of cloth. They were gone.
They were needfully gone. A new border needed to be negotiated. Otherwise, the blanket was worthless.
G-Pop was thinking about that today as he was mulling over the situation in our country.
We are a tattered patchwork, and our ends are frayed. Attempts to sew things together or make them right are useless because the substance to stitch is just not there.
Here’s the truth: No matter how honorable foolish people are in pursuing their goals, the end result is still foolishness.
No matter how many flags are waved for the glory of a cause, if that idea is unrighteous, unfair and bigoted, it needs to cease to exist. It is frayed; it is torn. And it will continue to tear into the other fabric if we allow it to blow in the wind.
It is time for America to bring its security blanket to the forefront, and for us–as “we, the people”–to take scissors and cut away the nonsense.
After all, some things are wrong because God and Mother Nature got together and decided they were wrong. Yes, Science and the Divine often have meetings, and generate or terminate parts of the Earth.
So grab your scissors, starting with your own life, setting an example for those around you, and:
1. Trim back opinions.
Opinions are stop-offs on our way to the truth. To spend too much time touting them is to delay the arrival of common sense.
2. Clip the need to debate.
If the goal of a debate is to find out what is really workable, then perhaps it has merit. If it is to change the minds of those around us by using words, statistics and intimidation, it is fruitless. The time we spend debating could be put to better use by creating.
3. Snip the separations.
If America is a melting pot, let it melt. And while you’re at it, jump in the pan. A stew should be so well-cooked that people have to ask you what kind of concoction it is instead of looking inside and noting a predominance of chicken.
Thus, America. We shouldn’t be identified as white, black, Hispanic, cultural, ethnic, Anglo-Saxon, Asian, male or female.
The blend should be complete.
If you are saying anything before “American” it is contentious, be it African, Asian, Mexican, white or female. Just “American” will do fine.
The tapestry of our country is frayed. The extreme ends cannot be repaired. We must trim them away, allowing a new edge to our common understanding.
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Jonathots Daily Blog
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How important is self-esteem?
Damaged people.
They are everywhere.
It would be foolish not to include ourselves.
But as important as it is to acknowledge the damage, it is even more essential to prescribe the correct repair.
Self-esteem is like going out and buying a large picture to hang over the hole in your wall. It is not a solution, but rather, a temporary fix.
Self-esteem functions under three very dangerous premises:
1. Because you were born, you matter.
2. There’s no one quite like you.
3. Therefore, you are special.
This particular “candy-bar philosophy” has no grounding in reality.
There are concepts, however, which have proven to have longevity. For instance, the Bible says:
A completely different approach.
In self-esteem, we are encouraged to ignore our problems and deny our commonality. Unfortunately, if everybody is special, then nobody’s special. If everybody matters, then it’s difficult to get personal attention.
So what should we be trying to achieve? Self awareness.
I have some good.
I have some bad.
I have some lazy.
I have some worry.
I have some fret.
I have some genetic predispositions.
I have family.
I have responsibilities.
I have real pressure.
I have phony pressure.
I also have my present talent so I can launch my solutions.
If we cannot be self-aware about our status, we will lean on “puffy” principles, which make us appear more grounded than we actually are.
When we remove the pressure to be right and eliminate the need to be the center of attention, we can begin to understand that the Earth works when we allow place for each other.
Thus, sometimes we’re the head and on other occasions, the tail.
Ironically, self-esteem robs us of the worth we could possess by taking on simple tasks using our ability–and basking in the joy of completion.
Here is the essence of self-awareness:
We are saved by grace.
But we are distinguished by service.
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Jonathots Daily Blog
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The travelin’ man
Loves his home
Doing what he can
Demands he roam
He takes his turn
As the home fires burn
To speak to the few
Frozen in the pew
Stirring the Holy Breath
Of the Body’s pending death
He leads with a boyish smile
Delivered in a homespun style
It’s time to display The Kind
And show what our seek did find
We can’t live and merely survive
To struggle within as we strive
Not much able for walking
But still ready for talking
About the Great Repair
A worker born to care
Where does he sleep tonight?
Waiting for the morning’s light
To rise, to fall in love again
Just another son of man.
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I like to sneeze. I didn’t used to like to do it. At one time in my life, I thought every sneeze was a precursor of the common cold, lending itself to bronchitis or even pneumonia. I now realize that a sneeze can be quite a pleasant experience–the body’s way of expelling something unnecessary in the nasal passages so the little troupers can work better. If you think about it, a sneeze feels good–clears the head and lends itself to an invigorating nose blowing. It’s not only healthy to sneeze, it’s also quite beneficial to accept the fact that sneezinghappens (although I don’t think you’ll ever see that on a bumper sticker).
Original caption: Not faked. I was trying to take a hankie photo cos I have a cold and sneezed! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Here’s the question: what else happens? What other factors are so common to us as human beings–and needful–that they pepper our existence every day?I can immediately think of two: failure and fear.
Let me play prophet. I predict that you, sometime during this twenty-four-hour period, will experience a failure, and will need to deal first-hand with a fear cropping up in your life. You see? That’s a guarantee.
After all, chances are you won’t win the lottery. It’s unlikely someone will walk up on the street and tell you how beautiful you are. You probably won’t get that promotion. And rainbows are saved for special occasions–or we wouldn’t pull the car over to stop and look at them. What IS going to happen to every human being every single day is failure and fear.
Now, nobody wants to talk about this because it sounds negative. But believing that failure and fear are negatives is similar to thinking that every sneeze is going to lead to death. Just as the common sneeze is available to us to expel unnecessary invaders in our sinuses, failure and fear come into our lives to excavate and evict emotional, spiritual and mental intruders. It’s just hard to understand that. It’s difficult when anticipation paints such a beautiful picture of what could be–to end up, in its place, with a smeared finger-painting done by a five-year-old.
Failure hurts. Then fear comes along to try to relieve the pain by replacing it with an ache of its own. And then, of course, we have the compounding situation that we begin to experience failure because we’re afraid. So on top of the natural conclusions that happen via time and chance, we add unnecessary decisions brought about by weakness and anxiety.
So how can we learn to be the kind of people who approach failure and fear like we do sneezing? After all, spirituality is not expressed through the amount of study we pursue, but through the confidence that is left behind through the graduation.
If you believe in God, your face should look more hopeful than the face of someone who doesn’t believe. It can’t be faked; it has to be real.
Since I am going to fail, what is my best reaction to the inevitable shortcoming that invites my long-suffering? Jesus said it was good cheer. Of course, good cheer sounds like something we wish people at Christmas time, as we are surrounded by bows, presents, pine trees and holly. But good cheer is the awareness that filure is our friend. Good cheer knows that most failure is the way to get rid of bad ideas, and if we stop resisting the natural conclusion to pursuing an inadequate path, we don’t have to waste time having our feelings hurt or wondering where we made a bad turn.
The only real certainty in life is uncertainty. So how can I co-exist with an uncertain life plan and still be of good cheer? It’s really quite plain: prepare to adjust.
For instance, when they repair your car, they tell you to come in later on to have it adjusted. We don’t question that–it makes sense. Driving down the road can shake things up, make things different and loosen up parts. We gladly comply. Yet when we make repairs on our lives, we think they should be air-tight and never need a good screw-down. Ridiculous.
Good cheer is the willingness to watch out for signs that tell us we need to adjust, and then to go ahead and do it without feeling loss or frustration over the revision. That is what keeps us from fear.
Fear is what comes into our lives when we lose love. What is love? Love is a committed affection. So fear enters our thoughts when we lose our commitment. And what should we be committed to do? Pursuing our plan and preparing to adjust. It’s not merely pursuing our plan. We must be willing to commit to the evolution that is inevitable in all things earth-bound.
And then we have to maintain the affection. You see, there are people who make corrections to their previous plans, but they do it in such a nasty, angry way that they abandon the joy and fun in the process. Is there anything uglier than feeling compelled to do good? Affection for life is what gives us passion for each other, ending up with yearning to have a closeness with God.
When we lose our commitment, the fear of what is going to happen next overwhelms us. When we walk away from our affection, the fear that we’ve placed our faith in the wrong project taunts us.
Ssince failure and fear are as common as sneezing, and we intelligently follow the action of sneezing with, “God bless you,” we should follow all failure with good cheer and all hints of fear with love–a committed affection.
In conclusion, I will tell you that in touring on the road, my plans are dashed dialy without apology or the courtesy of a phone call. I am often frightened by the mortality of aging and the limitations of my skill and finance.
What I do is maintain my sense of good cheer by fully being aware that God has nothing to gain by making me look like a fool. I overcome my fear by recommiting to quality ideas that are evolving and finding new reasons to give a big hug to why I do what I do in the first place.
Failure and fear are much like sneezing. They help us expel foreign objects from our being that intend us no good. If you can learn to at least understand them, if not enjoy them, you gain the control of your next move and brighten the countenance of your future.
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I don’t like to be vulnerable. I understand the importance of it; I appreciate that we best express our humanity one to another by admitting our foibles and allowing others to get a quick peek into the cellar of our disappointment. It doesn’t make it any more pleasant, though. Especially when you’re traveling on the road and touring, you need to be careful not to come across desperate, needy or cloying. I don’t ever want anyone to contribute to my work on the road because they’re afraid that my bald tires will blow out on the freeway as I leave town.
That’s why it was difficult yesterday in South Lyon, Michigan, when I was sitting in my green room preparing for the morning’s activities, and a spry, bright-eyed gentleman walked in and told me that my van was leaking from the radiator. I wasn’t upset with the news. I wasn’t nervous or concerned about the repair. After all, if you drive a vehicle around the country, you will have a certain amount of expense to maintain it. I just don’t like the sensation of coming across as a vagabond with no means of caring for my own needs.
Let me make something clear–at no time did this fine gentleman ever cause me to feel diminished. It was all in my head. So I put it out of my mind, went into the morning service and had a grand time with these outrageously inspired individuals. During the service, the gentleman who had discovered our radiator leak asked for help after the conclusion of the morning’s program, to assist us in putting our van in good enough shape to send us on our way. So while I had the blessing of interfacing with the audience, three or four of the men from the church went out and ministered to my Ford. They were astute, aware and qualified.
So by the time I finished trying to give a collective hug to the entire congregation and made my way out to my transportation, these gentlemen already had everything under control. They had filled it up with “Stop Leak,” told me of some needful repair, and I was on my way.
As I drove towards my lodging, I still had those misgivings–about being too open and available. But then I came to the realization that if I hadn’t been “leaky,” those fine folks would have had no way of expressing their affection, mercy and graciousness to me.
I realized that I was asking this congregation yesterday morning to expose themselves, open their hearts, show their fears and discuss possibilities on how to plug up the holes in their lives. I was expecting them to do this without I, myself, ever presenting my own lacking. Oh, I am very willing to be self-deprecating or even forthcoming, but in some areas I like to maintain control.
Areas like my radiator.
But “he that would gain his life will lose it, and he that will lose his life shall gain it.” Temporarily yesterday, I lost control of my van. It was put into the capable hands of intelligent, caring brothers. I closed down my ego and I opened up the potential for receiving generosity. Because of that, it was a better day.
Here’s the truth: Mitt Romney is leaky. Barack Obama is leaky. My dear God, Jesus was leaky. He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, pleading for a better solution, while God watched his blood to drip onto the ground. We’re not looking for people who aren’t leaky. We’re looking for folks who will allow others to help them.
I had a blessing in South Lyon which actually enabled me to become more of a blessing to them. I am leaky.
When I try to plug those on my own, I lose the benefit of showing a part of myself that is more relevant to those who are searching for greater humanity … and less deception.
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A voice writing in the wilderness
Jonathots Daily Blog 