1 Thing You Can Do This Week To Smooth Out the Wrinkles in Your Life

 

Fix the next thing

Although we may insist that problems come in piles, what they actually do is accumulate because they are avoided or feared. Then we suddenly find ourselves with a heapin’ helpin’ of horror.

Intimidation sets in.

Intimidation brings a friend. That comrade is worry.

Worry takes twice as much brain power as reasoning and planning.

Why?

Worry demands that you remember something from the past that you think is going to happen in the present and makes you wonder if it will play out in the future. It’s exhausting.

Reasoning, on the other hand, suggests that you take what you know and apply it to the ongoing situation.

When you start fixing the next thing, you find that you not only are repairing things, but also eliminating the overwhelming sensation of being drug down by your insistent problems. Rather, you’re enlightened by them and given the opportunity, through them, to prove your prowess.

Fix the next thing.

Keep your other problems waiting.

After all, some of them deserve to be snubbed.

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G-Pop’s Coming — Part 2 … November 25, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2078)

Learning is what happens when we stop complaining and start believing that what has come our way is usable.

I guess the best way to describe my life is that I have gradually learned how to learn.

In so doing, I have become less critical of others because I understand the aching process involved in transition–but I have also become more motivated to escape the sidelines, nursing my injuries.

When I meet with my family this week and they ask the golden question, “What have you learned?” I’m going to tell them the following six things (of course, one at a time over a space of time, so as not to bore them):

1. People want experience without wrinkles.

Everywhere I go, audiences desire insight, excellence and maturity but because of our culture, they would like to receive it from someone who is young, handsome or pretty. Unfortunately, beauty and youth don’t always coincide well with wisdom and moxie. You have to make up your mind–do you want a beautiful billboard? Or a slightly beat-up but very functional moving truck?

2. The second mile is the new GPS destination.

Sometimes I wonder why people think they can get by doing what everybody else does and still distinguish themselves from the mob. You have to have an edge. You have to have a little extra oom-pah if you’re going to perform in the best polka band.

3. Sophistication is everywhere–and it’s annoying.

Somewhere along the line America has become more demanding than giving. We expect other people to jump through hoops as we feel only the necessity to hold them. We need an innocence in order to create revival–a belief that we haven’t seen everything yet, and what we’re looking for is not necessarily dazzling, just heart-warming and meaningful.

4. Good cheer is the new money.

People are so morose, despondent and out-of-whack that simply coming across with a willingness, a smile and a desire to pursue betterment pushes you to the front of the horde. Good cheer is when you purposely put on the mask of a face you deeply desire to be your own.

5. Indecision is killing us.

I don’t know when we started defining maturity as the act of holding meetings, discussing and deciding nothing. Sooner or later we will need to risk being flawed in order to actually move forward and discover improvement.

6. And the final thing I will tell my family that I learned this year in my journey across this United States is freedom isn’t always right–but it’s never wrong.

Unless you have some sort of belief that the U.S. should be ruled by Christian Sharia law, you have to understand that democracy grants freedom at all costs. This doesn’t mean that the things people select to do are always right, or even moral. It’s just that they’re never wrong–because the freedom exists in this country to do what you deem necessary, as long as you don’t infringe on the rights of others.

I see absolutely nothing in error in a church establishing in its doctrine that certain attitudes or behaviors are appropriate for the message they espouse. But if that same church lobbies for other American citizens to be forbidden to conduct themselves however they deem best, then that church has gone from a personal choice of worship to a position of robbing civil rights from their brothers and sisters.

So there you go. If I were to sum up all six of them, I would say this:

Find yourself, be happy, love people–but leave ’em alone.

That is what G-Pop learned this year as he traveled across this country. I’m in my van, driving to meet those who are willing to be called my kin.

It should be exciting.

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For Once … September 19, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2009)

For once, I would like to be a part of a civil discussion without all parties involved arriving with pre-packaged, shrink-wrapped conclusions.

I would rejoice to be part of a dialogue about God and science free of scripture quoting, name-calling and the contention that anyone who believes in the supernatural is bare-footed and living in the bayou.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a debate about men and women that doesn’t place one group on Mars and the other on Venus?

I would like to believe that faith doesn’t have to be considered foolishness and a lack of faith the definition of intellectual superiority.

For once, I would deeply enjoy listening to a truthful presentation on why five to seven percent of our population prefers sexual interaction with the same gender, instead of being pummeled by Old Testament scriptures decrying the practice or schmucky television shows portraying that everything is acceptable “just because we say so.”

How about a conversation on sexuality free of giggles about pornography and absent being shut down by prudes who think it’s inappropriate to discuss the subject with anyone under the age of thirty, when that’s the age group which needs the information the most??

Abortion–is it possible for us to take a more clinical approach to the subject, free of displaying a picture of a disembodied fetus or using quotes from females insisting on their right to terminate pregnancies at will?

How about a simple poster-board example of good food to make a good diet instead of making fun of fat people, forcing them to sweat profusely and insisting that obesity is an act of free will, while we simultaneously claim that everything else is genetic?

Would it be possible to interface with one another as Republicans and Democrats and ascertain what it means to have a government “of the people, for the people and by the people,” without inserting campaign slogans, fund-raising and just general meanness?

And for once, could WE be the generation that refuses to look at people as “old” and “young,” viewing them only as a demographic, but instead finds a way to connect the humanity in all of us, despite our pimples or wrinkles?

I don’t think things are going to get better until we admit that they’re intolerable. As long as we think it’s “our right to be wrong,” we will continue to be wrong when we desperately need to be right.

For once, I would like to put my beliefs, feelings, culture, family, attitudes and fears on display–and have them either uplifted or decimated by the truth that makes me free.

Are you game … or are you just going to continue to play the game?

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

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If You’re Happy and You Know It … June 9, 2013

(1,907)

Maybe it’s the notion that it’s summertime or that I drove by a lake on the way to my Sunday gig–or just the sunshine filling the air with warmth instead of chill that makes me reflect back on church camp. Church camp is one of those terrifying experiences mingled with lasting memories and benefits that are only recognized as you find a little gray creeping into your temples.

It’s terrifying because you are suddenly thrown together with a bunch of strangers who you deem to be more attractive, lining up to trail down to a lake for swimming, staring at one another in disbelief and confusion.

Lasting memories happen because it may be the first place you got kissed on the lips that wasn’t initiated by some overbearing aunt, and benefits arrive because a vesper service in the woods can certainly make God seem closer than scooting your bottom on a pew, hoping the sermon will end real soon.

But one of the things I remember is that joyous little ditty, “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” For all of its simplicity and child-like quality, it is actually a theologically profound message.

For after all, it declares:

• “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands”
• “If you’re happy and you know it, lift your hands”
• “If you’re happy and you know it, lend a hand”

and it closes out with the sublime realization that

• “If you’re happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it.”

No kidding.

I just wonder. If there was such a device as a face-ometer, which was used to evaluate the contentment of a human being, and it was brought into church on a Sunday morning, would the meter  register joy, or immediately dip into the red for a reading of malcontent?

What we consider to be childish often is what God considers to be truly human. So we have given clapping hands, lifting hands and lending a hand over to the care of the world for their celebrations of music and mission, and we use our hands only to fold in prayer or clutch an offering plate to procure funds.

Is this really the best deal? Some mainline denominational churches have such a fear of revivalism that they’ve forbidden clapping hands–and certainly lifting hands–as the taboo of tent revivals.

But if you go to a rock concert, people clap their hands ferociously and if a slower song comes on, they all lift their hands to the sky and wave them in unison. They even take their cell phones out to shine a beam and give light to the situation. Therefore an overpaid singer on a stage who is crooning some melancholy tune is worthy of hand-waving, but not “our Father which art in heaven…”

A politician posturing his political position is appreciated by applause but for some reason, we think God would prefer not to be touted quite so loudly.

If it were possible to express happiness without smiling, being joyful or exuding physical energy, I would be more than willing to accept the sobriety of typical religious worship. But the truth is, even those stern-faced, ardent believers who sit in their seats and fold their arms in an aggravating position of disapproval will go out to a football game or a country music show and hoot and holler at the players.

Sooner or later we have to realize that when people are happy and they know it, their faces will surely show it.

And a God who claims to be pretty upset when we worship other gods probably isn’t too pleased when clapping hands, lifting hands and lending a hand is reserved for adventures other than the kingdom of God.

So I must warn the good folks of Carlyle, Illinois, that I am of a conviction that happiness always shows up in what we do, not in what we pledge, plead, narrate, recite or hymn-sing.

So if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands, lift your hands and lend a hand. You might be surprised that once your face is notified of your intentions to be ecstatic, you will take the tension off those wrinkles and end up looking a lot younger.

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******

 Jonathots, Jr.!

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