Sit Down Comedy … October 18th, 2019

Jonathots Daily Blog

(4201)

“Love your enemies.” A peculiar idea.

First, how does that happen? If you’re really a lover, how do you make enemies? Do some people just hate to be loved—therefore they have to hate you because you’re the one who loved them?

Or is it that you fail to love your neighbors, and in the meantime, they turn into enemies, so now you’ve got a real problem.

How can you love your enemies? Doesn’t the word “enemy” connote some sort of conflict?

Does Jesus love Satan? They’re enemies.

Does Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi love Donald Trump? They’re enemies.

There seems to be a prerequisite of a certain amount of disfavor, if not hate, in levying the word “enemy” onto someone else.

So what’s the purpose of the love? Are we speaking figuratively, as in, “compared to the amount of dislike we could muster, we sure seem loving in our discretion?”

Or is it that condescending “love your enemy,” like they do with gay people?

“I love the sinner, but I hate the sin.” How does one do that?

For this to work, the sinner would have to believe he or she is sinning, rather than following a sexual orientation. Any way you look at it, it’s hatred.

So how do you love your enemies? Doesn’t it express a weakness that leaves you vulnerable? Someone gets ready to punch you in the face, and you say, “Listen—I love you.”

Do we think it’s a deterrent?

Does “turn the other cheek” spare a cheek from being hit? Or just make you defenseless?

God knows, pessimism is a destructive virus. But likewise, optimism leaves us all gooey and doughy—half-baked.

I don’t know about you—I don’t want platitudes.

I don’t want someone to say, “Love your enemies,” and then if I try it, they chuckle and say, “No—not that way.”

Or, “Come on, kid. You’ve gotta stand up for yourself.” But we’ve been standing up for ourselves for a long time.

Israel stands up for itself in the Middle East. So do the Arabs.

Standing up for oneself is really the formula for a stand-off, isn’t it?

Yet what good does it do to introduce love into a volatile situation?

It seems so ridiculous to people, even those who claim to believe in the Gospel, that they try to ignore it and think of all sorts of ways to hurt one another.

How did I ever get goddamn enemies? Did I think I was loving, but ended up being an asshole? Or did I insist I imitate a loving person while being an asshole? Come on.

Words are useless unless you know what they mean.

When the words “love” and “enemy” occur in the same sentence, I, for one, need more information.

I’d rather not have enemies. Will being a loving person help with that? Now, there’s an idea.

I don’t want to pick a fight. Picking a fight is such a futile process. There’s a chance you’ll win. There’s a chance you’ll lose. But if you win, you still must have some sort of concern toward the person you beat the crap out of. Otherwise, people will think you’re wicked. I guess it’s alright to be hateful as long as you aren’t wicked.

When people say they’ll pray for you, do they? Or is the statement the prayer?

I think maybe the human race could do much better if high-sounding ideas like “love your enemy” were better explained, and really shitty attitudes, like, “every man for himself,” were exposed.

My thought is, if somebody is your enemy and you aren’t able to whoop him, you’d better find a way to get along with him.

And if you think you can whoop everybody, it’s safe to say that you’ll eventually get whooped.

I’m not in the mood for a good whooping—either to give one or to take one.

So I guess the thought is:

Once you find out that someone is pissed at you, control the vibe.

Nurture the energy that flows his or her way, and make sure they have no reason to turn the feud into a vendetta and the vendetta into a war.

 

 

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Untotaled–Stepping 15 (August 17th, 1965): Mr. O … May 24, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2243)

(Transcript)

I called him Mr. O because he had a Norwegian name with five syllables that I could neither remember nor pronounce.

He was older than death.

What I mean is, his flesh was so gray and his movements were so slow that he appeared to be a creature coming from the grave instead of one inching towards the tombstone.

I didn’t like him. He didn’t like me.

I think our mutual displeasure began one day when I was mowing the lawn and the grass clippings blew onto his beautiful, graveled driveway. He came out of his house screaming at me, explaining that all I had to do was turn the mower around and pull it towards me, so that the clippings would go into my own yard.

Honestly, it sounded tedious, meaningless and frustrating.

So when I went inside and explained it to my mother and father, they had the opportunity to do something inspirational. They could have explained that since it was Mr. O’s driveway, he had the right to decide how it would be decorated.

But I guess they had problems with him, too. Because they rolled their eyes, called him a few choice names and walked away, leaving me to believe it was my family duty to continue to aggravate him.

So I did. I refused to mow in the direction he requested, blowing my grass across his well-kempt drive.

In retaliation, every time one of my balls rolled into his yard, he retrieved it and refused to give it back.

It was a feud.

It was ridiculous and could have been so easily handled if I had been instructed to give place to the feelings of another human being. But instead my childish sensations were justified instead of rectified.

I think my parents thought they were trying to be cool and side with their son. But I needed more than that.

I needed to learn how to live in a world that demands sharing.

Before I could grow up and become a decent human being, Mr. O passed away. So many things I would like to tell him.

• For after all, Mr. O had the right to determine what came into his own yard.
• Mr. O even had the right not to like me.
• And I must realize that Mr. O had the God-given right to be cranky.

For after all, if I am going to be mean to everybody I don’t like or who doesn’t like me, I’m going to be too busy pursuing vendettas … to ever enjoy myself.

 

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All I Know… August 19, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(1980)

Aggravated–even though he felt foolish to manifest such a nagging emotion. After all, the improvement in his circumstances certainly had eliminated any need for additional vendettas or sprouting frustration.

He could see. The power of that simple phrase was that just short days before, he couldn’t.

See, that is.

Call it a miracle, a transition, an intervention or just the “course of human events”–no matter what position you took on the issue, he had gained a great gift, which to his delight, was not dimming with the passing of time.

It wasn’t so much that he was angered by those who had passed by him as strangers during his dark time, musing over the question of whether his excesses or some genetic flaw passed on my his parents had caused his condition. That’s just what people do. When they peer at something unpleasant they start looking for dark reasons which caused the affliction, so as to distance themselves from both danger and responsibility.

He was shocked, however, when his friends, who had known him since his birth in blindness, pretended they didn’t know who he was, or weren’t sure he was the same person they had been acquainted with. Or they offered that dastardly opinion: “Since his healing, he’s just not been the same.”

It was terrifying–and enraging–to go through the questioning from the investigating elite, who kept probing with repetitive inquiries about the source of his new-found sight, only to reject his story and rebuke him for believing in some sort of “Godly gift.”

At times, he was tempted to deny the measure of grace that now permitted him to eyeball the world instead of merely considering what the images might be, since those around him felt he was a sinner or a friend they used to know or some riff-raff who was confused by the unfolding of events.

Yes, doubt began to creep into his own soul about his good fortune. But you see, he stopped himself short of turning into a denier of his own blessing … because he could see.

He had never done that before. It was impossible to reject the manifestation.

So after hours and hours of grilling by people with agendas to destroy his miracle, he finally simply stated, “All I know is this: once I was blind but now I see.”

Of course, this simple statement of trust did nothing to deter his critics. He was so grateful he was able to see–because if he had been surrounded by those who refute, rebuff, renounce and reject and was only able to hear their words, it could have turned into a living hell.

But his eyes gave him the ability to look past their short-sightedness into the face of a heavenly intervention.

Why couldn’t people just rejoice? He didn’t know.

But he did realize that faith is not what we believe–faith is when what we see and hear begins to jive … with what we hope

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