That God Remarks to the Angels Every Day About Us
1. “They sure like to talk.”
2. “Why do they all want to be so different from each other?”
1 Thing You Can Do to Escape Distractions
Don’t talk about what needs to be done—do something
As you read this, you might conclude that this statement is so practical that it sounds common, and therefore could be considered just drivel.
But if you take a candid look at the flow of our present national conversation, you will discover that we have replaced taking action with a series of debates and dare I say, Town Halls, where we discuss all the life out of every idea, until it’s pronounced dead on arrival.
Yes, we’ve begun to believe that thinking, wishing, praying and conversing is equivalent to doing something.
How about a powerful piece of advice?
No problem is solvable—that’s why we’ve dubbed it a problem.
If we sit around and discuss our impasses and struggles, we will only grow more cynical and therefore, open the door to a stubborn spirit telling us we’ve done enough.
For instance, if the dilemma in the world is starvation, then find one family in your community which needs groceries and take over a few every week.
Discussing world poverty will provide no relief for the pangs of hunger.
But if you move out on what you have, there will be one family who benefits because you did something.
Likewise, if you believe that millennials are spending too much time on social media, then simply offer a millennial the opportunity to join into something other than download and scan.
Stop stumbling over the problem and start studying the elements that cause it.
Pick one problem and do something to address it.
You can yell all you want about gun violence or insist on the need for gun control, but it’s much more intelligent to take a group of kids at your church or in your neighborhood and present the pros and cons of what a gun is and what a gun can do.
The first step to removing yourself from being a clown is to take off the makeup.
If you look like everybody else, then you are everybody else.
So don’t discuss what the problems are. Instead, do something.
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Iz and Pal (Bedouin Buddies)
Jonathots Daily Blog
(4112)
Sitting Twenty-Nine
A priest, a rabbi, a mullah and a professor of psychology went out into the desert.
Although it sounds like the setup for a joke, it was the actual makeup of a committee which had been formed to handle the situation created by an Israeli boy, dubbed Iz, and a Palestinian lad, Pal.
It was Tuesday—two days before the rally—and the four gentlemen of distinction, who had received permission from the town council to go out and try to reason with the boys so as to avoid a public display of confrontation, lending itself to shame, prepared themselves for what they might encounter.
Everyone agreed it was a noble venture. Blessing was given to the team, a few prayers uttered, plans made, provisions collected, and a scheme devised.
On that same Tuesday morn, Iz and Pal woke up to view four over-dressed grown-ups ascending their hill, breathing heavily and already perspiring in the heat. One was wearing a black shirt with a little piece of white collar. Another, a robe and turban. There was a younger one in blue jeans and a loose-fitting t-shirt, and the final gentleman sported a navy-blue suit with a striped tie.
When the entourage was within ten feet of the boys, the suit and tie spoke up. “Good morning, young men.”
Staring at the four intruders, trying to restrain a giggle because they all looked so very serious, yet appeared like a quartet of Frosty the Snowmen melting in the sun, all the two young fellows could do was shake their heads. They said nothing, so the robe spoke out. “We’ve come to talk with you boys about what you are doing here.”
Pal held up a banana. “What we were doing was having our morning fruit. Did you know that this one has potassium?”
“Fruit, huh?” said the blue jeans. “What do you guys like to eat?”
Iz chuckled. “Are you here to become our friends, so you can talk us into going back home?”
“Why would home be such a bad thing?” asked the white-collared one in a soft voice.
Pal piped up, tossing his banana peel to the side. “I suppose yours would be just fine. So feel free to return any time you’d like. To your home, that is.”
Both of the boys laughed and gave each other high fives. There was a tightness—an inflexibility—in the air. Iz and Pal were gleeful over their tart responses and precocious language, but the foursome of invaders seemed less than impressed, and absolutely determined to demonstrate their control.
Blue jeans spoke again. “Hey, guys. My name is Mel Rollins, and I’m a professor of psychology at the college.”
“A head doctor!” Pal poked in an attempt to keep things salty.
Mel paused. “Okay,” he said. “That would be fine. I just want you dudes to know that I’m not here to change your minds or get you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Iz smirked and nodded his head. “Good. Then this should be easy. We want to stay here. We thank you for coming, and please pass the message along that we’re just fine.”
The robe interrupted, absent any civility in his tone. “You children know we can’t do that. I am the mullah at the mosque, and I have a responsibility to carry out the wishes of our people. We cannot allow wayward sons to do as they please.”
“Why not?” asked Pal. “You certainly allow grown-ups to do as they please.”
“Listen, I am Rabbi Molstoy,” spoke the shirt and tie. “What has possessed you boys to do this?”
“Where do you get ice cream?” asked Pal.
The one with the white collar spoke. “Well, first you get milk and sugar…”
Pal interrupted. “No, no! I didn’t ask you how to make ice cream. I asked you where you get it. You see, that’s the trouble with you guys. You want to find the hardest way to do everything—anything that makes you feel miserable enough to appear like you’re really smart. We’re kids. We know you go to the store and buy ice cream. Our goal is to get the ice cream, but not have to make it, or even wonder if it’s got too much sugar in it. That’s you. We just want ice cream.”
Blue jeans eased in. “So, this is about ice cream?”
Iz burst out laughing. “No,” he said. “Get a grip. It’s about us. We want to be friends. Our families won’t let us because one of us is a Jew and one of us is a Palestinian.”
“Now, that’s not true,” said the shirt and tie. “Mullah Tianza and I talk together all the time. Enjoy a meal.”
Pal clapped his hands. “Great, Iz! Did you hear that? We can go home, because there’s no longer a separation between our faiths! There is no mosque and synagogue. There is no killing in the street. The rabbi and the mullah are eating together! So everything has changed. What are we thinking? Maybe we are just crazy boys. Maybe the sun has scrambled our brains. While we’ve been out here the world has reformed and everyone loves each other. How foolish can we be? We should listen to them. Right? Right, Iz? We are absolutely out of our minds.”
Iz looked over coldly at his sarcastic friend. “Wrong,” he replied.
There was a moment of silence. The committee which had come to gather up foolish boys was left standing in the desert heat, staring at one another. Now they had a choice.
Were they going to listen, or had they just come to talk?
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1 Thing You Can Do This Week (To Escape Shame)
1 Thing You Can Do This Week …
(To Escape Shame)
Shame can visit, but it must not spend the night.
Shame is welcome to come and remind us of our weaknesses and lead us to repentance as long as it packs its bags and gets the hell out of our way so we can step out and be born again.
You will never fully comprehend your potential as long as shame is hanging off of you–dragging you back to the past.
The Past Won’t Last
The past offers no nutrition for your present, and limits your prospects for the future.
The one thing you can do to escape shame is:
Talk about it and walk out of it
Anything we’re able to discuss, confess, reveal or admit loses its power to choke off our breath and life.
When we’re silent or we claim that something is too painful to speak, we cripple ourselves and paralyze all of our God-force. You’re never going to be able to walk out of something if you’re crippled.
If you are still telling the story of something that happened to you two years ago, and it brings tears to your eyes, you are in the grip of shame and it will not allow you to be successful.
Literally, the more you talk about it the less you will need to talk. And the less you need to talk, the more you can walk.
If there is shame in your life, grab one, two, three or as many people as you can tolerate, and tell them about it. Tell them until you don’t cry anymore, but instead, gain an introspection and insight that empowers you instead of diminishes you.
Then you can boldly stand and say, “It happened. But I’m happening. Therefore, this will happen.”
Click the elephant to see what he’s reading!
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3 Things… March 22nd, 2018
Jonathots Daily Blog
(3619)
To Do When You’re Trying to Lose Weight and Suddenly Become Convinced That You’re Hungry
1. Drink.
Water, tea, cola–some sort of fluid. Eight ounces. Don’t chug, but drink it down in less than two minutes. Fills space in your stomach.
2. Change your location.
Leave the room, depart the house, take a nap, go to bed early. The brain changes with your whim and motion.
3. Tell the person with you that you are struggling.
Talk. Speech relieves the instinct to eat because it uses the mouth. If you’re alone, pick up your phone.
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3 Things… January 4th, 2018
Jonathots Daily Blog
(3542)
You Can Do to Make People Believe You Are Smarter
1. Talk less
2. Make more eye contact
3. Carry a planner–old school
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Addled Essence… March 29, 2012
(1,468)
All teenagers are drug addicts, induced into a life of dependency by their very own mother. Yes—Mother Nature comes along and takes these boys and girls who are enjoying the equality of chilled-hood and injects them with drugs to completely change their environment. The girls get estrogen and the boys get testosterone–and the human race gets really screwed up. So for the boys it becomes a hair-raising experience and the girls scurry along, trying to keep abreast of the situation.
Seriously, we refer to this as “adolescence,” but in my opinion, it’s more addled essence. The essence of oneness the boys and girls had is suddenly addled, shaken to the foundations by the introduction of puberty minus explanation. Yes, there seems to be a dearth of information. What we tend to do is hand the young ladies a tampon and a Midol and the young men a sports drink and a football–and hope they find a way to work it out.
Unfortunately, they don’t. It begins an adversarial relationship which is never quite overcome, even as adulthood sets in and the later years of graying are achieved.
Boys are taught to be macho. “I want what you have.” Girls are permitted to be prissy. “I have what you want.”
So rather than being a playground–a joint experience of discovery or a class project resulting in understanding–we have a free-for-all of misinterpretation and domination. Society does little to relieve it, promoting the idea of the war between the sexes in its entertainment and its news articles. Politics continues to promote a glass ceiling, where women are supposedly encouraged to rise in business, but are greatly praised for remaining homebound. And religion—well, religion teaches abstinence without any sense of those who are abstaining understanding the depth, beauty and complications of their appetites.
So of the three choices available for these burgeoning, blooming, bountiful beings—those being abstinence, promiscuity and masturbation—we tend, in the religious community, to blatantly favor abstinence while secretly acknowledging that our children “might not follow the letter of the law.” In the secular community, we quietly allow for promiscuity, while insisting that we have instructed in abstinence.
God gave testosterone and estrogen for a reason. They are inside every one of us to teach us our individual importance and our corporate responsibility. So we end up with an addled essence in our teenagers, which causes the average parent to throw his hands up in the air in desperation, hoping that his precious offspring will outgrow the stupor. They don’t. They carry the adversarial attitude into adulthood unless someone stops them from being so brain-dead from the experience that they can see the necessary coalition between men and women.
We have to decide what we’re going to do. These young humans, who are under the influence of testosterone and estrogen, must be monitored for their better health. We cannot leave it to chance and hope that a few Bible scriptures will inspire them to abstain, or a couple of well-written teen comedies will cause them to wait until they “fall in love” to become sexually active. I think there are four steps to help us deal with the addled essence phase of humanity, to keep it from spilling over into the adult life and making us all believe that men and women were never meant to get along:
1. Talk. I know what you’re thinking. “Tennagers don’t want to talk.” Exactly. I also don’t want to lose weight. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m fat. Create environments, possibilities, interludes, dynamics and opportunities for conversation. Talk about sex. Talk about the opposite sex. Talk about their bodies. Don’t criticize them for pursuing masturbation out of curiosity when the alternatives you offer them are cold showers and the Gospel of John. Talk.
I raised six boys. We talked about sex more than anything else. Why? Because testosterone dictated the subject matter. Talk. Don’t be rebuffed; don’t lose the faith. Find a closet, tell them you’re going to clean it out, shut the door, lock it, turn on the light—and talk.
2. Remove the dominance of the physical. For the love of God, can we stop teaching that men are the aggressors and women are the prize? Anyone who knows anything about sex is fully aware that if a woman is not in touch with her own sexuality and able to have an orgasm, that the sexual act settles into an action of futility. Stop acting like “sex is for men and having babies is for women.” We are not all fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. If women do not enjoy sex as much as men do, the process breaks down. Remove all indications that physical domination has anything to do with romance.
3. Establish commonality. Every high school male should have to go through six weeks of home economics and every female should have to spend an equal amount of time understanding weight lifting and being involved in some form of team sport. We fail in our society by misunderstanding the cultures around us–including the culture of gender. Because I have spent time in a kitchen, I no longer believe that cooking is a female task. Because the women in my life know how to lift a box, sweat a little bit and carry their own load, they no longer contend that men are beasts of burden. Commonality produces cross-reference, which leads us to understanding and culminates in compatibility. Separating boys and girls to make sure they don’t do nasty things just makes them more ingenious on finding better locations for nastiness.
4. And finally, we should use the addled essence—from age thirteen through twenty-four—to inform these discoverers that the trio in our life is essential to make us a quartet. What I mean is when we’re emotionally clean and able to be honest with ourselves and others—even of the opposite sex—it allows for spiritual awareness instead of trying to follow rules line by line. And when we are spiritually aware, we have a great thirst for knowledge which makes us mentally informed. Then our physical–our bodies–are prepared to be honest, aware and informed in making choices. Without this process at work, human sexuality becomes a “shame and blame game” instead of a “same and tame” one. We try to shame people into being pure and then blame the ones who fail, instead of teaching that even though estrogen and testosterone have created different urges in us, we are still 98% the same. And the more we understand our similarities, the greater our ability to tame our appetites–to more fruitful delights.
We must learn how to deal with our addled essence population. We hide our heads in the sand, hoping they will work it out on their own, when they are under the influence of drugs beyond their control. So you can worry about marijuana, cocaine and meth if you want. These are dangerous. But until we address the difficulties brought on by estrogen and testosterone, we will thrust our chilled-hood into addled essence, and therefore cripple them for the adult walk–limping instead of sprinting.
Because unfortunately, if you have gone through the twelve years of addled essence, you arrive at age twenty-five feeling the responsibility to pay your bills and get married, which leads to the next condition, which I, tongue-in-cheek, have named … You’re Kidding.
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Listen to Jonathan sing his gospel/blues anthem, Spent This Time, accompanied by Janet Clazzy on the WX-5 Wind Machine
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Below is the first chapter of Jonathan Richard Cring’s stunning novel entitled Preparing a Place for Myself—the story of a journey after death. It is a delicious blend of theology and science fiction that will inspire and entertain. I thought you might enjoy reading it. After you do, if you would like to read the book in its entirety, please click on the link below and go to our tour store. The book is being offered at the special price of $4.99 plus $3.99 shipping–a total of $8.98. Enjoy.
http://www.janethan.com/tour_store.htm
Sitting One
I died today.
I didn’t expect it to happen. Then again, I did—well, not really.
No, I certainly didn’t expect it.
I’ve had moments of clarity in my life. Amazingly enough, many of them were in the midst of a dream. For a brief second I would know the meaning of life or the missing treatment to cure cancer. And then as quickly as it popped into my mind it was gone. I really don’t recollect dying. Just this unbelievable sense of clear headedness—like walking into a room newly painted and knowing by the odor and brightness that the color on the wall is so splattering new that you should be careful not to touch it for fear of smearing the design. The greatest revelation of all?
Twenty-five miles in the sky time ceases to exist.
The planet Pluto takes two hundred and forty-eight years to circle the sun. It doesn’t give a damn.
The day of my death was the day I became free of the only burden I really ever had. TIME.
Useless.
Time is fussy. Time is worry.
Time is fear. Time is the culprit causing human-types to recoil from pending generosity.
There just was never enough time.
Time would not allow it. Remember—“if time permits …”
Why if time permits? Why not if I permit? Why not if I dream? Why not if I want? Why does time get to dictate to me my passage?
It was time that robbed me of my soulful nature. It was time that convinced me that my selfishness was needed.
I didn’t die. The clock in me died, leaving spirit to tick on.
So why don’t we see the farce of time? Why do we allow ourselves to fall under the power of the cruel despot? Yes, time is a relentless master—very little wage for much demand.
I died today.
Actually … a piece of time named after me was cast away.
Jonathots Daily Blog 
