Jonathots Daily Blog
(4008)
Sitting Fourteen
Left alone.
Young boys run on energy, not smarts. They are fully capable of performing the duties of an army but are minus the insight to know where to march and when to struggle.
Pal paced around the tiny campsite. He flailed his hands in the air, enraged with everything he saw. “Somebody is gonna know we don’t got nothing!” he screamed.
Iz sat quietly, stilled by the circumstances, in what seemed to be a mountain of resolution, but most probably was just a crumbling hillside of destruction.
Karin stood stunned, staring at the two boys, trying to decide what her duty was going to have to be in this youthful fiasco. She needed to be decisive, yet she didn’t trust her own take on the events.
She realized that she should try to talk the boys into going home. But then she considered Iz. What causes a twelve-year-old boy to contemplate death? Could any of that responsibility be laid at the doorstep of his family?
Then propriety chased down her musings. They certainly needed to go to their parents. These boys did not belong in the desert. If she left them there, the soldier might return with his buddies, to drive them back into town in disgrace, or even for punishment.
The whole thing was so crude and so nasty. It all could blow up and just promote more smugness in this region already permeated with piety.
But in her heart, Karin was a journalist. Her ethics forbade her to be a party to façade. She couldn’t allow herself to become the third wheel in a doomed game destined to produce nothing.
She considered—who would everybody blame? Of course, her. Here she was, out on a lark, trying to get a story. Some scoop to help her maintain her edge as a lead writer for a dead periodical. But she wasn’t looking for a cause. She didn’t want to become “Mother” to the Middle East version of Leopold and Loeb. All she wanted was a story.
Unfortunately, she had fumbled her way into a tragedy.
Pal finally wearied himself of pacing, leaped upon Iz, and the two boys were rolling in the sand, fighting, growing more angry with each flip and punch. So Karin shook herself awake from her deliberations and ran over to pull the boys apart.
“What are you guys doing?” she screamed. Somehow she managed to squeeze her body in between the wrestling pair.
“He won’t talk to me!” Pal spat.
Iz said nothing, just continuing to thrust at the air with his arms.
Karin lost all patience. She threw both boys to the ground and straddled them. “You’re going to listen to me!” she proclaimed. “I don’t know what you think you’re achieving by beating each other to a pulp. Hell, I don’t know why you’re disappointed that the hand grenade didn’t blow you to smithereens. I don’t know why you’re both so damned nuts. But here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to sit here until everyone is calm and I can sprout some sort of an idea.”
The boys were mad, their chests heaving. They wiggled and squirmed, but Karin’s firm thighs held them in check. They tried a series of insults.
“I hate you.”
“You really are fat, lady.”
“You smell bad.”
Karin laughed at them. At length, the twitching ceased as the young gents lay panting in a pile of exhaustion.
Slowly Karin released, dismounting her captives. “Here’s what we’re gonna do,” she said. “First, let me tell you what I think. There is nothing we can possibly to do determine what that soldier is going to tell or not tell. Secondly, I think the best thing is for me to get a ride back to town—somehow or another—and just talk to my editor and find out if I can get someone else with some brains, or someone maybe willing to share the pain, to become involved in this whole mess. And finally—this is the most important. You guys need to rest and promise me that you won’t claw each other’s eyes out.”
Iz was insulted. “We are friends,” he retorted.
Karin was relieved. He sounded a bit more normal.
Confident that they could no longer kill each other with a grenade and might be too worn out to box each other to death, she headed down the hill toward the nearest path that resembled a road, hoping to find some vagabond with wheels, who might be willing to pick up a disheveled female.
It could be a wait.
But she knew the next stop was her editor.
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Jonathots Daily Blog 
G-Poppers … January 5th, 2018
Jonathots Daily Blog
(3543)
G-Pop has a heart to share something with his children.
There is a certain hint of sadness that settles into a life filled with goodness–goodness, in this case, being defined as a willingness to learn and adapt to the ways of Earth instead of ignoring, rejecting or refuting them.
Once we make our peace with the planet of our birth, and cease to turn our backs on its beautiful, natural ways, some goodness makes its home in our hearts. This is not always permanent, but it visits enough that we should always keep the guest room ready.
But finding the goodness of life does introduce brief periods of melancholy.
After all, if you do decide to “love your neighbor as yourself,” you might actually begin to have empathy for people, even though they don’t love you the same way.
If you pursue becoming “the salt of the Earth,” you might shed a tear over a tasteless society.
Discovering ways to be “the light of the world” just punctuates the darkness.
Contentment sweeps through your soul when you cease to judge others, but realize that their paths will contain sadness and struggle, and find joy in living instead of acting like the whole journey is about making heaven, and speculating with too much revelry about who occupies hell.
There is a certain sadness that accompanies goodness; a mourning that follows being blessed, which requires comforting.
It does not leave us inconsolable–we are not without remedy. God will need to dry our tears.
Rather, it is the sense of yearning to continue to find the grace of God by simply complying with the flow of Earth, and feeling pain for those who continue to rebel.
The Twenty-Third Psalm phrases it best:
“Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life…”
Yes, when the sweet blanket of forgiving goodness covers our wounded souls, it is our mandate to feel deep, heartfelt mercy for those who are chilled by reality.
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on January 5, 2018 at 2:06 pm Comments (1)Tags: contentment, darkness, earth, G-Poppers, goodness, goodness and mercy, guest room, heaven, hell, inconsolable, light of the world, love your neighbor as yourself, melancholy, mourning, peace, reality, rebel, refuting, remedy, sadness, salt of the earth, struggle, tasteless, Twenty-Third Psalm, wounded