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It’s All Super (859)

Part Two — The Supernaturals

July 31st, 2010

          Some folks love to read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  They are fascinated with the cosmic battle between angels and demons. 

          To them God is awesome.  They like the fact that He is omnipotent and all-powerful much more than omniscient—all-knowing.  They blend their Old and New Testaments freely, with the God of Wrath periodically donning a mask of mercy for those who are truly subservient and obedient. 

          They strongly contend there is an incarnate Satan, desperately trying to lead the saints to destruction.  They envision a hell just as prevalent and important as a heaven.  They are deliriously fascinated by the second coming of Christ and with the symbolism of the Book of Revelation, with its white horses, battles, goblets of gold and gates of pearl. 

          They are the supernaturals.  Their spirituality must be laced with an intergalactic coating of milk-and-honey-dipped, powerful-and-potent purpose.  “God is big.  God is a judge.  God is our Savior.  God is concerned over the tiniest increments of iniquity that may lurk in the darker corners of our hearts.”

            They fear God and express their best moments of worship within the confines of that trepidation.

          They are the supernaturals.  To them, everything is super as long as it’s beyond their grasp, beyond their comprehension and beyond their control.  Their literature is filled with notions of a struggle which culminates in their own deaths and a heavenly reward granted beyond their actual value and life’s work.  They are often afraid of the dark because they don’t know what looms in the shadows. 

          To try to approach these people with a practical, simple or childlike vision of an eternal quest is not only fruitless, but deemed by them to be heresy.

          They are lovely.  They are delightful.  They are faithful.  But they are unique unto themselves in the sense that the earthly journey matters very little to them as compared to the heavenly odyssey.  The Bible is the Word of God, written by the finger of God, anointed by the Spirit of God, given by the divine inspiration of God to men of God. 

          It is useless to argue with supernaturals in an attempt to plant what one might call “new seed.”  It is much better to find points of agreement and condescend to their style and desire, with notions that are more universal in their commonality.   For after all, God is pretty awesome.  It would be difficult to be the King of the Universe without being powerful. 

          Are these people fruitful, from an earthly perspective?  Honestly, usually not—because looking over one’s shoulder, anticipating being pursued by devilishness is not the best way to keep from running into a wall.  So because of that, the supernaturals often have many walls, and they often bang right into them. 

          Fortunately for their doctrinal profile, they have a devil to blame.  They are good prayer warriors, but not so good at trench warfare. They are good to call if you’re searching out a scripture of particular interest, because they will know book, chapter and verse, but they certainly are not very well versed with good communication skills with their fellow-man.

          They believe.  And like the devils described in the book of James, that belief produces mainly fear and trembling.  To them life is hard—and the hardness of life is a badge of honor.

          Once you identify a supernatural, the best thing to do is to allow him to maintain his faith with as much dignity as possible while you find points of sharing and caring rather than offering new ideas that seem too daring.

          These folks are the supernaturals.  They are everywhere.  And unless their dogma begins to bark and bite at other human beings, they should have the right to pursue their scriptural dream to its conclusion.

          Did I always feel this way?  Absolutely not.  I have been one of the supernaturals, and therefore understand their predilections.  But my journey has taken me down another path, and for a season I felt it was my duty to warn these warriors in the spiritual realm of the dangers of their selection. 

          But—all I did was aggravate ’em.  Now I embrace them.

          I neither love nor hate fundamentalists.  I don’t despise or extol the supernaturals.  I just find that we have a whole lot more to agree on than we ever thought possible, and those things that would separate us need not do so, because they can remain vacant from our interaction.

          So if you’re a supernatural, should you change your life and become something different?  That’s not my business.  But I will tell you this:  if you’re planning on bearing fruit that is obvious to the humans around you in this existence we call “earth life,” being a supernatural is not the best maneuver.  Because the promise of a heavenly home is not a premise for good goal-planning here on earth.

          So you have to decide for yourself.  If we’re going to make every person who’s a supernatural an enemy of the human family, we will welcome terrorism all over the world.  For instance, I don’t understand the Muslim faith.  They are the supernaturals.  But I do agree and appreciate many of the tenets they hold dear.  Can we please talk about those for a while?

            The sower went forth to sow seed.  Some of that seed falls in the soil of the supernaturals.  The best they can do is grow aTree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Leave them alone and let them enjoy.

          Tomorrow we will talk about the superficials.  

It’s All Super (858)

Part One  -- A  Super-story

July 30th, 2010

          For after all, when all is said, written and done, the Bible, by its very structure, is a story.  I would agree that it’s a super-story, but it is a tale woven over many centuries, unfolding a variety of possibilities, all to be discerned in the mind of the reader.

          Nowhere is this made any clearer than in the parable Jesus told about the sower who went forth to sow seed.  In this tale, Jesus describes a gentleman who tosses off his offering into the ground with little concern about whether it is ingested one particular way or another, and, as the story goes, it falls on quite different types of soil.

          I would like to take a few days to talk about this “different soil” idea, because I think in the realm of Christianity, we try to convince one another of our take on the story more than trying to share the story and let the seed fall as it may. 

          Yes, it’s become more of a competition:  “My super-story is better than your super-story.”  We start calling each other names, we begin to doubt one another’s authenticity, and worse, we disinclude one another from fellowship—all because we fail to understand that because the gospels are stories, they will be interpreted in the lifestyles, spirituality and minds of those who hear.

          For instance, Jesus didn’t tell us that “stony ground” people should become “thorny ground” people, or that “thorny ground” people should become those who bear thirty-fold, and so on and so forth.  I have just come to the conclusion that learning WILL take place.  It will either happen now or later.  It will happen in this lifetime or the life to come.  But it will happen.  And when we spend all of our time trying to convince one another of our particular interpretation of the story, we end up frustrating our fellow-travelers instead of inspiring them.

          I think it’s all super—and it’s just a question of what kind of super you end up being that will determine your level of receptivity to the seed of spirituality that falls on your heart.  For I would agree that change is a good thing—as long as it’s my choice. 

          When it is the subject of your sermon, your theology or your evangelistic push, it ceases to be change and becomes manipulation.  And oh yes—you can manipulate people for a brief season, but in the long run, they’re going to play out their version of what they think super is.

          Is this good?  Is this bad?  As you discover in the parable of the sower, it is not an issue of good and bad.  It is the reality of what is actually happening in our moment.  If we are to spend all of our time trying to transform other human beings into the image of what we think is super, we will not only anger our potential convert, but we will find ourselves faithless in the end through our fruitless endeavor.

          So what are the supers?  What are the various phases of human behavior concerning receptivity to the great story of spirituality?  Let me start that tomorrow with the first one—supernatural.

 

My Little Chickadees (857)

July 29th, 2010

          Mike wanted to do something special for his daughter, Emily, for Easter.  She was only two years old.  Mike was only twenty-one and I was twenty.  Mike had seen a show on television about little baby chickens, and had thought to himself how cute they were.  He decided to buy a half-dozen of the little tykes and present them as an Easter present to his daughter.  He was a-twitter, thinking of the delight that would fill her soul.

          So Mike and I made a journey out to a little farm which was making a killing that spring selling chickens.  I mean, literally.  As the mama hens were being taken to become Colonel Kentucky buckets, little chicks were being sold to suburbans who were enamored with the notion of a unique Easter surprise. 

          The true miracle was how inexpensive they were.  If memory serves me correctly, we bought them for two dollars apiece, and the guy was so generous that he let Mike have six for a mere ten dollars.

          So we placed our six little chickens in their box with air holes in the top onto the seat of a car and headed home to plan the Great Escapade.  First of all, can I tell you, or at least try to describe, the amount of racket that six baby chickens can make when they’re confined in a box in the back seat of a car?  I was frightened that neighboring vehicles might think we were committing genocide on a whole species of birds.

          The second thing I learned was that baby chickens have a tremendous amount of energy, because when we released them from the box, there was not even a second of time that passed before the six little chicks ran off in completely different directions from—impossible to pursue.  Matter of fact, Mike and I tore off chasing them, pardon the expression, like chickens with our heads cut off, and after a very careful search, were still only able to retrieve five of the original six. 

          Somewhere in Mike’s house there was a little chicken living on his own.

          Every time we would try to set them down, they would scatter.  And they would never pair up by scattering in the same direction.  It was always five distinctly unique paths.  So finally, becoming more mature chicken wranglers, we constructed a V-shaped wedge out of two pieces of wood and blocked the little chicklets from escape.

          Even though it was not Easter yet, Mike decided he’d better show off his gift to little Emily before there were more major escapes.  So Emily was ushered into the room blindfolded, and when Mike removed the covering, she looked at the little chicks scurrying and bumping into each other in their corral, and screamed at the top of her lungs and ran out of the room.

          Mike was crestfallen, and I just couldn’t stop giggling.

          Mike, in his disappointment, stepped back in disgust and tripped over one of the boards, freeing the little chickadees.  They ran rampant about the house. This time we only retrieved two.  (Perhaps the other three found their friend and started a quartet.)

          Mike took the two last little chickens, found a farm, slipped into the driveway, crept through the pasture and returned them to the coop.  Thus ended our experience of becoming chicken buckaroos.

          Some things are just not meant to be corralled—and some creatures may not be smarter than us, but are decidedly faster.  And certainly, some ideas are best discussed over a cup of coffee and eliminated before implemented.  So the moral of my story is quite precise.

            Don’t buy baby chickens.

Packin’ Up (856)

July 28th, 2010

          I have just completed a two-week visit with my granddaughters—Lily, five, and Isabella, eleven.  Jerrod and Angy certainly have done a good job of making people and not messing them up too badly just yet.

          There were many highlights to the visit.  About five days in, I noticed that we were running out of toilet paper in the bathrooms in our home.  Curious, I quietly observed.  It soon became evident why we had the sudden loss.  It was not due to an outbreak of dysentery, but rather, Lily throwing large clumps of the cottony material into each toilet, testing its gulpability.  I’m sure most adults would become frustrated, or even a little angry, over such a maneuver.  But I thought it was rather ingenious.  I mean, if you lack something to do, what could be more fun than watching a toilet swirl and swallow?

          She is delightful.  She has the brain of a thirty-year-old, the body of a munchkin, and the speech patterns normal to earth inhabitants if you add on an occasional “th” prefix or suffix.

          The other young lady is named Isabella, as I’ve already told you.  She is eleven years old and teetering among the worlds of child, adolescent and pending woman.  It is truly God’s great design—and sense of humor—that we are all given certain weapons of intellect and sexuality long before we are permitted to unsheathe them. 

          On the next-to-last day of the visit, when her father had flown in to pick her up, she asked me, with tears in her eyes, if I would baptize her in our swimming pool.  It was a neat moment.  Many people have been baptized in my swimming pool, but each one has a significant memory, and this one was to be no different. 

          We made some calls, invited some friends, and at four-thirty  yesterday afternoon, with a beam of sun shining on the pool, she and I entered the water together, and I quietly told her the story of a brave young crusader for love and justice, who was forced by circumstances to make a life-and-death choice to confirm the power of his message. 

          His name was Jesus.  Had he run away from his critics after preaching boldly, we probably would never have heard of him again.  But because he stood the test ’til the end, the message of love lives on.  I asked her if she believed in that message.  She nodded.  I asked her if she believed in the messenger.  She said yes.   

          I told her that he, himself, also was baptized.  And then I dipped her into the water and swooped her back up.  She was elated.  I was elated.  Pardon my presumption—Jesus was elated.

          So we had dinner, finished our night, and this morning they took off for their home in Miami .  Do I think my granddaughters are better than anybody else’s granddaughters?  No.  But I do think they have done a good job of holding up their part of keeping the human race a little more sane, and matters of earth a trifle more sound.

          I look forward to seeing them again, but I have total confidence that they’re going to be fine if that never happens. 

          Why?  Because the message of love lives on.   And we all have the blessing of knowing that the water can rush over us and wash away all of our fears.

The Four Things I Would Suggest to Aliens From Outer Space Upon Arriving on Earth  

Part Five  – The Conclusion (855)

July 27th, 2010

          I finished my four suggestions.  The aliens took it into committee—obviously a universal foible.  The discussion went on for several days and at the end of the time a report was issued.  Let me give you the general feel of that document. 

          They first of all thanked me for all of my suggestions about approaching life on Planet Earth.  They found great merit in many of my ideas, and included them in their final assessment. 

          But they decided that making complaining absolutely forbidden and determining it useless was both a little bit optimistic and judgmental.  After all, don’t human beings and creatures of all ilk and size have the right to their own personal opinion?  Aren’t there things that do need to be changed, and therefore if not complained over, might remain the same?  So on my first point of complaining being useless, it was decided by the aliens that during their visit to Planet Earth, they would take a profile of “look-see.”  In other words, fussing about something that you don’t like will be acceptable as long as it’s not a detriment to the community as a whole.

          On my second point—it’s all about people—they felt it was an extraordinarily insightful position.  But they also contended there needs to be laws, regulations, stipulations, guidelines, codes and just a general timber of order lest anarchy take over from the will of the masses. They also put forth the contention that because people are in a state of flux, that to merely consider their feelings in matters was to leave out the greater need of the entire society.  I had to wonder whether they thought society consisted of an array of present ideas or rather, the people who are walking through this time and season, but there was no time for my input into the consideration.  After all, the report was done.

          Point three—inconvenience equals power—now this one they found totally erroneous.  Even on their home planet, it was considered normal to be put off by intrusion and hassle.  They thought it was quite important for people to be able to voice their disapproval with the conditions around them.  We most certainly would not want a generation of individuals nervous to share their feelings.  They saw no power in inconvenience.  So they thanked me for the thought, but felt it was ill-suited to their purposes.

          And on my final assertion—what we make of it is God—they appreciated that my heart was in the right place, but felt that such a doctrine would be offensive to religions of all sorts.  After all, if God doesn’t have an ultimate plan for each and every one of us, how can we truly be special?  They shared in their report that God must be a separate entity from the actions and will of humankind, otherwise, wherein lies His power? 

          So, to make a long story even longer and even more obtuse, they passed their report out amongst the travelers and released them into the community of man- and woman-kind.  The visitors were faithful to the contentions of the document, and sure enough, in no time at all, the contingency from another planet not only blended into the existing society on earth, but assimilated so much that within six months they were completely accepted and a part of the day-to-day activity.

          In fact, no one even noticed that they had a third arm.  Rather handy when you think about it.  So amalgamated were they into this society, that all the values, ideas, cures and notions they might have brought with them from other places were soon forgotten.  Earth went back to being Earth, having survived its latest intrusion and invasion from the heavens.

          So that’s the end of my story.  As I told you earlier, it is just that.  A story.  But the moral of my tale is quite simple.  If you don’t take advantage of the realization that you are an alien to this planet, needing to bring freshness and gentleness in changing the climate and atmosphere of your surroundings, then you will soon find yourself completely absorbed by a process, which by our own admission, seems inadequate.

          So maybe it’s better to just go ahead and sleep, eat and live on your own spaceship—and just visit Wal-mart when you need supplies.

The Four Things I Would Suggest to Aliens From Outer Space Upon Arriving on Earth  

Suggestion Four – What You Make of It IS God (854)

July 26th, 2010

          He called me and asked if he could come over and see me for a while.  I had some spare time so I agreed.  He came in and sat down.  He was a warm, robust fellow with some tattered edges, displaying a bit of the forlorn.

          He asked me if I would be willing to listen to his story.  Once again, I saw no reason to discourage this traveler.  He commenced his tale.

          He was born into simple means.  He grew up with a family filled with anger and a bit of violence threatening at every turn.  He was an adequate student and enjoyed a bit of sports, but had a greater interest in music.  He graduated from high school and was working in his local community in a Christian coffee house when it was discovered that his girl friend was pregnant.  This was unacceptable to those who congregated in the local worship house, so they asked him to resign his position at the coffee house, and he and his girlfriend went up to New York to get rid of the child and hopefully, all the stain of sin and local rejection that accompanied it.  He couldn’t go through with it, so he returned and birthed his first son, which was quickly followed by a second one.  The small community was never really able to forget the transgression, but he remained for a season, trying to pursue a new career in music.  Unfortunately, he was a novice—and poor—unwilling to take a job for fear of losing his dream.   This brought greater tribulation and criticism from the surrounding townsfolk.

          He started writing music and began a group and became quite successful, making a decision to move to Nashville , Tennessee .  While there, another boy was born.  He traveled the country singing his songs, eeking out a living while attempting to maintain the integrity of a family budget.

          Then one day one of his sons was hit by a car, nearly killed, suffering a severe brain injury.  This led to a six-year journey with the young man, who never fully recovered.  His father taught a little college and traveled some more—city to city—searching for a way to use his talents.

          He decided to take his little family on the road and traverse the country, performing in churches or anywhere audiences were willing to listen.  One son played the drums, another the bass guitar, and they carried the other young man along, placing him tenderly on the front pew of every house of worship.  Then one day, that boy contracted pneumonia and died.  Three months later, another young lad was born.

          The man went on to tell me that when he was in his forties he discovered he had diabetes and had to have a tumor removed from his body, and he nearly died.  Following that he lost the majority of the blood in his veins through some sort of leakage and nearly died again. 

          Along the way, he found three other young boys in need of a home, and he welcomed them in.

          While battling his diabetes, he had two toes amputated from his left foot, but all the while he continued to travel, writing more books, more songs and even launching out into symphonies and screenplays. 

          He went on to share with me that most recently he had lost weight—from 451 pounds to 362, even though his right eye was beginning to bother him from the diabetes and his right knee creaks and complains, yearning for retirement.

          Still, he travels on.

          He met friends.  He saw his sons grow up into men and launch into their own careers—many of them resembling his.  He welcomed daughters-in-law and then grandchildren.  He shared that he was always looking for a new way to do an old thing with a fresh light.

          Some tears welled in his eyes as he told me he didn’t know how much longer he would be around, but he wanted to make sure he finished the journey the same way he started.  He shared with me that he wasn’t sure he was a talented man, or a good husband and father, but that he always believed that what you make of life is the only God that people will ever see.  If you dwell on your illnesses or your limitations, then you’re telling all of your friends and those you meet that God ails in inadequacy and is stalled by incompletion. 

          He finished his story and he sat quietly for a moment.  I was wondering if he was done.  And then he looked up and I realized that he was me.

          Yes, the last thing I would tell any alien visiting us from outer space is that God is not what we make of Him. 

          What we make of what we are given is the only God that will ever truly exist.

The Four Things I Would Suggest to Aliens From Outer Space Upon Arriving on Earth  

Suggestion Three – Inconvenience Equals Power  (853)

July 25th, 2010

          Just to put your mind at ease and to relieve the tension with some people’s concerns, I DON’T really think I’m in contact with people from outer space.  What I’m doing is what they call in the writing world poetic license.  I’m not really a poet, though, and since no one has granted me a license to do this, it may appear to still be obtuse.

          But anyway, the third suggestion I would give anybody visiting Earth is that inconvenience equals power.  

          Have we not all learned that the things we seem to want the most aren’t always the best for us?  Calories are delicious but they produce fat.  Cigarettes make you look cool in a movie, but they’re addictive and they kill.

           And it’s also true with our obsession with convenience.  Matter of fact, for some folks it’s become a spiritual doctrine—that if they sense any problems on the horizon whatsoever, they begin to believe that it’s God intervening to discourage effort. 

          Once again, I must return to the basic premise of Earth spirituality:  free will is even stronger than love.  It just is.   Jesus loved people a whole lot, but when mankind wanted to kill him, free will for that moment was greater than love.  And it’s still free will that allows us to accept or reject the message he brought.

          Since free will is such a strong part of the human journey, it only stands to reason that how we use it determines our success or failure.  People who worship convenience always end up at the tail end of the line—munching scraps.  Why?  Because nothing is convenient.  If anything were convenient—or if even important things were convenient, all the sluggards and lazy folks would eat ’em up, instead of them being distributed to the perseverant and patient.

          This is my problem with a society that basically claims to be Christian while maintaining more or less a Buddhist approach to living.  For Buddhism puts forth the notion that uncomplicating our lives and relieving ourselves of appetites and the desires for pleasure is what makes us happy and grants us the sense of inner peace called nirvana.

          It just ain’t so, Joe.

          What truly makes us happy is discovering what we want to do, but intelligently preparing for the fact that problems will arise to try to stop us from getting what we want.  If we maintain good cheer through the tribulation and keep our heads on straight, we will be granted ideas that will not only allow us to survive, but also conquer the difficulty—because it’s inconvenience that grants us the power to separate off from the herd instead of cowing in the corner, frightened of all the bull.  May I present a three-step process?

1.  Be different.  I didn’t say be weird.  I’m not even suggesting that you be different for difference’s sake.  But if the normal reaction is to give up, then don’t.  If the policy of society is to criticize, then you spend some time considering.  If being mean has become the pattern of behavior acceptable in the masses, then lead with “nice.”  To me it is the real definition and application of the scripture that says:  “Come out and be separate.” It does not mean you should drive around in a buggy and have no electricity.  It means that when average folks become put out and put off by inconvenience, it is an excellent opportunity for you to establish your talent and individuality by seeing something through to a conclusion.

          I just don’t think there’s any reward until you get to the end.  Beginning something may be exciting, but the middle is often muddled down with pesky problems.  If you’re going to achieve exhilaration, you must make it to the end, and that means you need to survive inconvenience and find the power of that sensation.

2.  Understand the order.  Some people think that everything should begin with God.  Unfortunately, that is completely against all Biblical truth.  God always requests that we move before He moves.  We draw nigh unto God and then He draws nigh unto us.  If you want to have a venture filled with prosperity, you have to move past the inconvenience.  And when God sees that you’re moving, He will move.  And when other people see that you are moving with God, they just might join you. 

          No disrespect to our neighbors south of the border, but we are in the middle of a Mexican stand-off in this world.  You and I are waiting for God; God’s waiting for us, and other people are waiting for somebody to do something.  So we pray when we should move, we complain when we should pray and we pray to be moved instead of moving out on our prayers.

          See?  It’s a matter of getting things in the right order.  When I move past inconvenience, looking for the power, God smiles down because He is an entity that perceives the heart and joins me in my effort, and other people see that something is actually happening and they consider joining the escapade.

3.  And finally, take a second.  A second mile, that is.  My problem with committee meetings?  They think, with their planning, that they will cover every eventuality that might arise in the pursuit of a project.  Isn’t that funny?  The best you can do with planning is to figure out what the first mile is—in other words, what it will take to achieve your purposes if everything goes well.  But of course, everything will not go well.  Inconvenience is what Planet Earth uses to separate off the doers from the mere believers—because it is in the second mile that we find God, true adventure and fulfillment,

          Yes, if I were talking to my alien friends, I would tell them to be careful in making plans that aren’t flexible to the possibility of adaptation. 

          I would tell them they would need to be different, or they will end up being thrown in the heap with all the discarded refuse.  Then I would tell them to learn the order of how things work—my effort, followed by God’s blessing, culminating in the support of others.  And then, of course, to take a second.  There’s nothing wrong with planning for the first mile, as long as you pack a good sense of humor that’s ready and prepared to go two.

          Inconvenience is life’s way of finding out if we are serious or just curious.  Inconvenience is God’s way of determining if we’re going to enjoy the journey, or just desire the blessing.  And inconvenience is how other folks ascertain whether we are achievers or just planners.

          So my dear alien friends (which, by the way, as I pointed out earlier, don’t really exist—at least not yet), don’t be afraid of a little inconvenience.  It gives a lot of opportunity to prove what’s really deep in your heart.  

The Four Things I Would Suggest to Aliens From Outer Space Upon Arriving on Earth  

Suggestion Two – It’s All About People (852)

July 24th, 2010

          I certainly need to insist that our visitors from outer space take a moment before they leave their craft to understand a second, very important point.  Although we have beautiful trees, Earth is not about its greenery.  The mountains are quite stunning, but their majesty is not the high point of our attractions.  The oceans are enormous and immense in their scope, but after all, just an accumulation of water.

          What makes Earth special is people.  It is also what makes Earth dangerous.  It’s what makes Earth bizarre.  May I add the words unpredictable, pretentious, joyful, creative, intelligent, ignorant and … goofy?  All of these would apply to Earth’s greatest attribute—humans.

          I do know there are those who would object to the animal kingdom being left out of the equation.  But it even takes human beings with their care, objections and preferences, to bring out the best in our furry and feathery fellow-inhabitants.

          People are what make this planet interesting.  So anyone visiting from another galaxy certainly would have to understand why people are so important.  We have this basic, audacious-but-divine notion that we were created in the image of God.  We also are fully aware that we were bad boys and girls, and ignored that injection and chose our own willfulness.  But our poets, prophets, priests and even a few good politicians are luring us back to our better selves.  At least sometimes.

          Enough that we are worthy of cosmic consideration.  We are an interesting folk.  We have the sexuality of the jungle with the abiding faith that we will live on in some fashion eternally.

          Yes, I would have to tell my visitors that people are at the core and the center of both Earth’s desire and God’s will.   So any attempt made to interfere with their progress or intercept the heavenly love intended for them is abominable. 

          It is all about people.  And when I forget that, I start looking for other reasons for God to exist.  I don’t need a divine being who is intrigued with physics and chemistry.  I need a heavenly father who’s proud to be the Papa of his children.

          So welcome to Earth—home of six billion plus Homo sapiens who have scattered abroad in search of finding their original roots in the genetic DNA of a universal God.  They may take different paths and they may believe different things.  They may stumble more than they rise, and they may go backwards more than forwards.

          But God loved the world because it was filled with people.  So welcome, visitors from outer space, and may I introduce you to our best representation of what we believe all goodness should eventually be?  People.  God’s answer to hope and His frustration with life.

But isn’t that what being a parent is all about?

The Four Things I Would Suggest to Aliens From Outer Space Upon Arriving on Earth  

Suggestion One – Complaining Is Useless (#851)

July 23rd, 2010

          I got’cha.

          The title is too long.

          The Four Things I Would Suggest to Aliens From Outer Space Upon Arriving on Earth would cover the whole front of a book.  (But you see, there’s method to my madness.  At least that would eliminate room for a picture of me.)

          But I am serious, in my comical way.  Aren’t we all aliens in a certain sense?  We all have to go through a three-step process.  We adopt this planet through birth, we adapt to this planet through aging, and we become adept on this planet through practice.  So since I’m a little bit of an alien myself, what I would tell these outer space folks is very simple.

          First of all, I would assume that if they’ve made it all the way here from another planet, then they’re probably not out to kill me.  Why?  Because if they were a war-like people, they would have already killed each other off on their home base and would never have gotten the funding to reach us.  After all, isn’t that why we’re not traveling through space?  We’re too involved with chasing down terrorists living in huts in Afghanistan to build rockets to other galaxies.  So I would assume that these were intelligent creatures that have made their way to our atmosphere.  And it is the blending of emotion, spirit and intelligence that promotes progress. 

          So being individuals of that style, I would come right out and tell them that the most important thing about living on earth is this:                                                         

                                                            Complaining is useless.

          Not only do complainers fail to change or improve their condition, but they actually lose valuable time that could be set aside for growth.  Complaining is what people do when they’re convinced they’ve been cheated.  Complaining is what fills the air when people have given up on the notion of creativity.  And complaining is the timber of conversation when individuals think they know better than God and His natural order.

          Complaining has three major problems.

1.  It just wastes time that could be used for planning our adaptation.  Yes, my alien travelers, there is always an answer—or as the Bible calls it, a “way of escape”—from every trial, but often it has a time limit.  And if you waste valuable moments discoursing on your opinion about the circumstances, you will often find that opportunity will knock and have already headed to the next door.

2.  Complaining always bores our allies.  People who could have gotten their backs, shoulders and wills behind you suddenly are thrust into a whirlwind of nasty discussion about unwanted information, which leads them to want to escape you even more than the problem.  Allies are nice if you want to fight against stupidity.  Introducing a little stupidity of your own through complaining causes you to become the first skirmish that the allies must fight.

3.  And finally, complaining halts learning.  I’ve never seen a complainer have his ears tuned to new ideas or innovation.  Complainers are just angry that their present tool chest doesn’t have the right hammer to break down the wall.  And, my alien friends, when learning stops, God walks away, toting his great knapsack of wisdom, and leaves us to our own devices.  That’s even scarier than the biggest problem you can imagine.

          So there you go.  Welcome to my world—well, at least the world I am visiting also—and I will take you to my leader, and my leader will probably tell you to “take no thought for tomorrow.”  In other words, stop complaining.

           So if you had a rough space trip, you might want to rest up and get a good attitude before you step down on terra firma. Because it may be too hot, it may be too cold, it may be too damp, it may be too dry, it may be too mean or it may be too nice, but it’s ours. 

          At least for now.

People Who “Get It”  (#850)

July 22nd, 2010

          Last night I settled my soul into an evening of interfacing with a room full of strangers in Manchester , Tennessee .  For after all, it is the bane of my existence.  I am always the “stranger in a strange land”—appearing at first to be stranger than others, and then, in some miraculous stroke of heavenly genius, being afforded a brief moment of revelation followed by a short interlude of fellowship.  And then I’m on my way again.

          As I looked at this gathering before me last night, I realized there are some folks who just have an advantage, because they “get it.”  I often become saddened for those who don’t.  I mean, they’re wonderful folks—delightful—but they’re held back by an inner child still hiding and tugging on mama’s skirt. 

          It’s too bad.  Some people assert it’s culture, or, maybe even worse, just their personality.  Can we get something straight?  Nobody chooses to be reclusive.  Nobody wants to be left out of the party.  I don’t think anybody even desires to be paranoid.  These are diseases of the human heart that need remedy instead of bed rest.

          So what can I tell you about the people who “get it?”  What do they share in common?  And if you’re not one of those people who get it—if you find yourself retreating and avoiding advancement—what can you possibly do to change your lot?  Well, I think people who get it have three things in common:

1.  They are not afraid of people.  The surest way to guarantee alienation (which, by the way, normally leads to some form of poverty) is to be frightened of the human race, wondering when the Bogey Man is going to leap out of the bushes and chomp on you.  Shy is a lie.  We aren’t shy.  We’re afraid.  And fear casts out all possibility for love.

          We’ve convinced ourselves that the human race should audition for a position of our consideration.  Unfortunately, the human race doesn’t show up to perform for us.  All folks think about themselves until we come along and let them think about themselves, which causes them to have a limited interest in us.  If you don’t like that, be prepared to be lonely.

2.  People who get it always have a DAILY story about why life is good.  Can I make it clear that talking about the weather is not conversation?  Also, asking people “how are your kids?” or “where do you come from?” does not lead to in-depth friendship.  And may I add that re-telling stories from the past—where you have mentally stuck yourself in a time capsule—is not very interesting either.  Fascinating people always have a daily story about the goodness of life.  The anecdote may start out bad, have twists and turns, but in the end, it restores faith. 

          And it’s fresh.  The surest way to appear to be old is to talk about something that happened more than a year ago.  If the Lord’s blessings are fresh daily—which is what the Bible says—then so should your stories be.

3.  And finally, people who get it have a common trait.  They all pick a mood.  Nothing is a greater turn-off to the human beings around you than to be moody and for them to have no idea who you’re going to be from day to day.  I can even work with grumpy people if I know they’re always going to be grumpy.  I can work with smart-alecks by preparing to wisecrack with them.  And I can get along with the joyous people around me because I know I’d better come prepared to be enlightened.  This notion that our moods should reflect the décor of our lives is what causes us to be useless to our fellow travelers, who have no idea what incarnation of us is going to show up at their door.  Yes—people who get it are smart enough to pick a mood and ride that pony all the way home.

          Now, I’m sure you can come up with reasons why people are afraid, and why they don’t have a daily story and what may have stimulated a moodiness inside them, but it doesn’t change the fact that it leaves them desolate of possibilities—and quite alone.

          For instance, a fine gentleman came up to me last night.  He was not afraid of me, he had a wonderful story to tell, and his mood of openness and inner jubilance never left. 

          I would probably follow that man into battle.

          Wouldn’t you?

Con-Text  (#849)

July 21st, 2010

          The dumbest things I’ve ever done in my life have occurred when I’ve actively pursued the present fad, which was deemed to be “smart.”  I didn’t question it.  I didn’t put it to any kind of a test.  It seemed to make sense.  It was a technological wonder, or it was easier or pleasurable in some way.

          Case in point:  Texting. 

          Simply because we can do something does not mean we should.  Just because some technician is able to come up with a way for us to communicate through a telephone messages which we type out to other people does not mean by any stretch of the imagination that it is a preferable way to communicate or, dare I say, even acceptable.

          We now have a whole generation of people whose eyes are constantly cast down to gaze at tiny screens in their hands, to make contact with people who are not presently with them.  Meanwhile, there is often a roomful of individuals who go unnoticed and untouched by the texter.

          We now consider this to be normal behavior—simply because we have the technology to achieve it.  That’s why I call it con-text.  Con, as in contrary, convoluted, convicting and controlling. 

          It is not acceptable.

          Oh, there’s nothing wrong with texting—and I’m sure it is a very quick and valuable way to get hold of someone, but to me it is like a bathroom stop.  It is a private matter—not for public observation.  As I will not urinate in public, I have no intentions of texting people while in the presence of other human beings.  It is a personal matter that should be done privately, and you should excuse yourself from the room to achieve it.

          I don’t think this is even a matter for debate.  There are four questions we should ask about every possibility that comes along that is deemed to be progress:

1.  Is it going to make me more emotionally sensitive to myself and others?

2.  Is it going to increase my spirituality by making me more accepting of the brotherhood of man?

3.  Does it make me more intelligent and on point for what I need to do in my life?

4.  Does it make me stronger in my physical being?

          If the answer to those questions is “yes,” then go for it.  But if some negativity arises, then back off and reconsider the option.  

          Texting is a great advantage when you need to get in touch with someone.  But it is a form of escapism from reality when it is used to avoid a present conversation with human beings that are with you.

          Don’t try to text in front of me.  I will confront you.  I will make fun of you.  I will ridicule you.  And I will do it for your own benefit, because the loss of personal contact with one another is the surest way to welcome in the warring of souls and the battling of nations.  No, thank you.

          Texting?  Yes.

          Texting in the presence of others to the absence of conversation?  No.

          End of story as far as I’m concerned.

          It will demand that intelligent people make a stand over something that could be beneficial, which has become all-encompassing. 

          If you want to avoid doing dumb things simply because they’re in style, make sure you find out what this new style is requiring you to forfeit to obtain the privilege.

Tossing Your Cookies (#848)

July 20th, 2010

WELCOME TO THE CONVENTION!!

1.  For the pleasure and enjoyment of our guests, the management invites each and every one to take one (1) cookie from the jar—compliments of the house.

2.  Additional cookies are available to our patrons at the reasonable rate of $1.59 each.

3.  Please place all monies for the purchase of extra cookies in the white envelope provided on your left-hand side (exact change, please) and then put the envelope into the box on your right, utilizing the slot provided (sealed—for your protection).

4.  Do not take cookies without using the above envelope procedure.

5.  The cookie compound is counted hourly and under twenty-four-hour camera surveillance from Confections Enforcement, Inc.

6.  Penal code 947-38C of the Management Handbook states, “All violators of complimentary cookie courtesy will be assessed with a fine of no less than $500 and perform 150 hours of community service.”

7.  All those who ignore the above rules will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

8.  Also, individuals caught selling his or her complimentary cookie will be asked to leave the premises immediately.

9.  Cookie time, as we have dubbed it, is for your blessing.  Enjoy!

10.  We will be watching.

 (Don’t you think that sometimes “whosoever will may come” just needs to be enough?  Otherwise you might be in danger of discovering how the cookie crumble(Don’t you think that sometimes “whosoever will may come” just needs to be enough?  Otherwise you might be in danger of discovering how the cookie crumbles ... )

The Cycle (#847)

Part Four  –  Resurrect

July 19th, 2010

          It had been ten years. 

          Yes, a decade had passed since I had first begun to write a novel on the life of Jesus, which I had entitled, I’M … the legend of the son of man.  It was his life told in his words with the inclusion of back story and incidents—filling in the missing years based on the nature of his character and the research I had done, studying the practices and signs of his time.  I had completed twenty-two of the sittings (chapters) when I stopped.

          I got scared.  The cultural and spiritual mood was a return of religion to the catacombs and a staleness of any kind of progressive thinking in the realm of spirituality.  I was not anxious to be persecuted, even if by chance it would have been for righteousness’ sake.  I was chicken.

          So for ten years I let this aspiration lay in a tomb.  I didn’t forget it.  I knew exactly where it was located the whole time.  Then one day, realizing there would never be a good time to do a radical thing, I took my beat-up typewriter and walked out onto a beach in Panama City , Florida .  It was March, so the sun was shining, but as you well know, the breeze on the beach may be one of the more frigid experiences that any human can survive.

          I sat under a little thatched-hut enclosure with my fingers so frozen that I could barely move them across the keys and I typed, Sitting Twenty-Three. 

          I felt resurrection fill my soul.  That which had been dead was alive again, and that day, on that freezing beach, I wrote thirty-seven pages, and breathed life into that which was discerned to be dead.

          I cannot explain in totality the rejuvenation I sensed.  Gone was the fear.  Gone was any apprehension about presuming to tell a story in a different way.  I was free.

          Because as much as I hate to see things die, I do love a good resurrection—but I’ve never seen a resurrection occur without a death certificate.  Most of us would rather see our dreams go into a coma, living on life support as we peek through the curtain every once in a while to make sure the body is still “pinking up.”  Sometimes we have to unplug the life support to allow the transition of death to usher in resurrection.

          I meet people all the time who have their dreams in a closet.  Maybe it’s a novel.  Poetry.  Plans for building an airplane.  Brochures for that trip to the Far East .  They pull out the dead fragments every once in a while and paw over them, trying to pretend there’s still life. 

          Let it die.  It makes the resurrection so much more powerful.

          I spent a week in Panama City , and during that week I wrote an additional five sittings.  It took me another two years to complete the work, but it was completed—and the book has been distributed and sold to thousands of people.

          Did it change the world?  I don’t know.  It’s not dead yet.  But sitting on that beach in the chill of the air, I experience the glory of the open tomb.  Resurrection is as much a part of life as being born.  And being born is the only way to usher in a life that confirms the value of the initial birthing.  And death is often the only way to allow life to make the transition to produce more eternal consequences.

          Where is your moment to be born—when your emotional birth links with your spiritual birth to create your passion?  What are you doing with your life, to confirm the power of that experience of being born?  Are you being faithful in the small things, to allow God to make you ruler over many?  And can you see the time of death for the present rendition of life, to allow for the possibility for a new incarnation?  And can you lie quietly, waiting for the summons from the heavens to resurrect your dream in a whole new body? 

          This process of born, life, death and resurrect sometimes happens all in the span of one day.  Other times it takes weeks, months, years.  Presently I am sitting at the gravesite of several demised “dream-friends,” waiting to see them raised from the dead.  It is a beautiful process, but it begins when we step out of the square into the circle of life, let passion overtake normalcy, allow death to cleanse the earth and prepare to resurrect in a more powerful form.

          This has made all the difference.  This is why I am who I am and I’m going where I’m going. 

I certainly welcome you to join me.

The Cycle (#846)

Part Three – Death

July 18th, 2010

          I hate to die.  It hurts.  I also don’t like the lack of air. 

          It was a chilly February morning and I was sitting at an old piano playing my song, The Blood of the Son Makes Us One, in a warehouse in Shreveport , Louisiana .  I call it a warehouse because that’s what it was really intended to be, but we had transformed it into a theater, a meeting place for artists, and just a general fellowship hall for friends of a more creative bend.  We were a tiny rag-tag group of young individuals who insisted we had something to say and a burgeoning ability of how to say it through our craft and art.

          We had raised quite a stir in the little town since we had blended Christ with the Arts—a particular mixture that no one in the Louisiana community found tasteful.  So someone had contacted the Zoning Commission, to object to us holding plays and the like in a warehouse, insisting that it must certainly be against the law.  It became quite a broo-ha-ha in the town, with everybody in the city government taking sides one way or the other.

          I was tired.  I had worked for about three years in this community and had done some really good things, although certainly nothing resembling the traditional fare.  As I sat at that piano and played my song, I saw my little world of my own creation dying around me.

          The Deputy Mayor came in while I was playing the tune and told me that he was willing to fight for us to keep the building if we wanted to.  I said, “No, thank you.”  Because as I sang my song, I realized that sometimes things have to die for people to ever remember that they actually lived.  Sometimes our last breath, rather than being exhaled into the common atmosphere, needs to be breathed into the next project.

          I hate death.  But I do understand that it is often the only way to commence a new life.  In the midst of my being born and living out that birth through my talent and perseverance, I have often sat at the deathbed of one of my dreams.  It is never pleasant.  It seems to have a finality.  There is even a little fear and insecurity involved in it because you wonder if you had done something more, if the demise could have been avoided. 

          But sometimes before all sensibility leaves you, you have to say, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. Into your hands I place my dreams.  Into your safekeeping I bury the present to prepare for the future.”

          I realize now, if the little warehouse in Shreveport had not died, the world that has been created around me would never have had a chance to live.  It didn’t feel that way on that frosty February morning.  It felt cold, clammy and final.

          But it is wonderful to be able to walk away from your own tombstone knowing that it wasn’t the end—just the cessation of a dream. Sometimes dreams die.  We should mourn them.  We should remember them and memorialize the beauty of the transition.  But if we are people of faith, we will never believe that death is the end—even the death of a single dream. 

          Here’s what you do when a dream dies: 

(1)  Have a funeral and say good things. 

(2)  Place a marker for the accomplishment that was achieved through the living process. 

(3)  Get ready for the third day.  

The Cycle (#845)

Part Two – Life

July 17th, 2010

          After you’re born comes life.  And for a while, people are really impressed with how cute you are—until one day you poop too much or cry at the wrong time.  Then you just become “alive” instead of “born.”

          What you do when you’re alive determines an awful lot on how successful your birth ends up being.  Because even though I was born into a world of art and music that night when I was twelve years old, I could never convince anyone that it was worthy of either finance or consideration. 

          I got married, started having kids, and people wanted me to step back into the square.  (Maybe that’s why they say people are “square.”)  I refused to re-enter and be corralled.  And that’s when my life began. 

          Because after you’re born and you make your statement with a big howl and you link your emotions up with your soul to create a passionate spirituality, you have to back it up with life. 

          The Apostle Paul may have been right, that “by grace we are saved through faith,” but that’s only how God sees it.  People, on the other hand, demand a résumé.  Evidence.  There’s a lot of living that happens between being born and dying—and if the only thing you have to show for your life at your funeral is a Diploma of Baptism and a Death Certificate, well … it just may be a very short ceremony.

          Because even though I was born and people understood my passion, they still wanted me to work that passion in around being “normal.”  You see, “passion” and “normal” just can’t live in the same house.  Oh, they try.  But normal keeps telling passion to calm down, and passion keeps screaming at normal to “get out more often.”  Bless their hearts, they fuss a lot.

          So some people literally have to kill their passion to get along with their normal.  Likewise, you just might have to smother your normal to allow your passion to live in peace.

          I tried to take jobs and look like everybody else and be respectable, but I just didn’t have my heart and soul in it, so my mind tended to drift, and my body drug along, unwilling.  Some people thought I was lazy.  I wasn’t lazy.  Just wearing uncomfortable shoes—shoes that were not meant for me.

          So I learned I could counteract the normal folk who lived in the square world, if I did three simple things:  (1)  Didn’t borrow money from them very often.  It is really quite amazing how you can develop greater independence if you simplify your life down to where you can subsist off of what you make through your heart’s desire. (2)  Got better and better at what I thought I was good at.  It’s a little hard to argue with improvement.  But if you don’t get better at what you do, people have a really fine case to make for why you shouldn’t be doing it any more. (3)  Got comfortable in the lower seat.  Nobody is hated more than a prideful rebel.  A quiet rebel, on the other hand, can get by with a whole lot more without being noticed, and buy some time for talent to make a way.  Demanding opportunity is the best way to make sure you never get it.  Using little chances to show your wares may be the best way to ultimately make a sale.

          Yes, there’s a whole lot of living that happens after you’re born.  There are many temptations to let normal wrestle passion to the mat and pin all your dreams on the next paycheck.  How you live those moments—mingling just the right amount of passion, effort and humility—will determine whether people interfere or intercede on your behalf.

          Because as I got better—and less prideful—and earned enough money to cover my three squares, the angels came and ministered to me.  God sent his human best friends to help me out in my pursuit of what gave me birth.

           It’s good stuff.  It’s called life—just the right mixture of suck, muck and luck—enough suck to keep you on your toes, enough muck to make you humble, and enough luck to look towards believing.  

The Cycle (#844)

Part One – Born

July 16th, 2010

          It was the first time I ever saw or heard a gospel quartet.  I had just turned twelve years of age and I was absolutely fascinated with the whole experience—four guys singing together with just enough silly to make me giggle and just enough spirit to put a tingle down my spine.  The concert ended and everybody headed off to the fellowship hall for eats and treats and interaction time with the singers.

          Everyone except me.  I was born.  Let me explain.

          My mother had graciously given me physical initiation onto the planet twelve years earlier, and reading, writing and arithmetic had certainly welcomed me into a world of mental activity.  I had even “walked down the aisle” and had been dunked into the waters of baptism, spiritually rebirthed.

          But that night, after that gospel quartet concert, I was born. 

          Because while everybody else headed off to get brownies and Kool-Aid, I grabbed three of my friends and we beat a path into a Sunday School class that had an old beat-up Huntington piano, and I chorded off on that ancient instrument a B-flat version of “Kneel at the Cross” and commanded my friends to take certain vocal parts. 

          We were going to be a quartet.  We weren’t going to sit and listen to other people sing.  We were going to do it ourselves.

          We were halfway through the second verse and just beginning to get the hang of our notes when the door of the classroom popped open and in walked a deacon with a red face and an angry voice.  He rebuked us for not being part of the church family by not participating in the fellowship and getting to know the singers.  It was scary.  I listened carefully.  I nodded my head.  He left. 

          I looked at my friends.  One of them was so frightened by the attack that he left the room and joined the festivities.  But three of us stayed in there—just sang more quietly and pursued our birthing moment.

          I was born that night and I’ve never regretted a single moment of it.  Somewhere along the line, to find your emotional birth to mingle with your spiritual awakening, you have to step out of the square into the circle of life.  Your circle.

          Humanity has a flaw and that flaw, very simply, is a predilection to corral ideas and the mass of human conglomeration into a confined area where control and manipulation is more possible.  Everyone, if they’re going to link their heart with their soul, has to step out of that square into the circle of life.

          It’s called being born.

          I think it’s what Jesus meant when he said “being born again.”  It’s more than a spiritual realization of salvation, but an emotional tugging that yanks you towards a passion that makes your spiritual energy have greater meaning.

          I got yelled at for missing the fellowship.  I got called into the pastor’s office and was given a lecture on blending in instead of doing my own thing.  But I didn’t listen.  Because my heart confirmed to my soul that what I was thinking was what I should be doing.  I was just twelve years old but I was born. 

          I meet people in their seventies, even in their eighties, who have never had that emotional experience of discovering what sparks their plug.  Maybe they were afraid to step out of the square.  Maybe coloring within the lines made too much sense to their young mind.  Maybe careless leadership, yelled just a little too loudly, shocked the creativity out of their heart.

          But no one does great things pressed shoulder to shoulder with the majority.  Somewhere along the line you have to see the way out, step in that direction, and be born emotionally and hook that heart up with your soul and start thinking about what you want to do.

          I was born.  It set me on a path that now, forty-six years later, I’m still pursuing as I drive down the road towards Ohio .  Do I have regrets?  Thousands of them. 

          But nothing to match the magnitude of the joys I have experienced through choosing to be different than those who line up for the party.  

A Friend of Mine  (#843)

July 15th, 2010

          The call came in last night.

          A friend of mine was in trouble.  What kind of trouble? you may ask.  For after all, we love to distinguish such matters, even though it doesn’t make us very distinguished.  There is “acceptable trouble:.” 

          Medical matters—an accident, a sickness or even a difficult diagnosis.

          Also financial matters.  We feel great compassion for those who have suddenly arrived at their last dollar. 

          Marital indiscretions?  Not so much, even though we’re careful not to judge, since human sexuality is such a common mud puddle. 

          Stealing?  Well, no.  Can’t tolerate stealing.  Maybe we’ve all stolen something, but because we weren’t caught, we have very little sympathy for those who are

          My friend was arrested for possession of drugs.  Wow.  Now there’s a no-no.  Almost all of humanity would bristle and become pious over such indiscretion.  But I guess if it’s happening to you, it doesn’t feel much different than being diagnosed with cancer or having a really bad flu or an unexpectedly large electric bill or even being caught with your pants down.  It just sounds worse, doesn’t it?

          Somewhere in our human brain is this list of acceptable sins, unacceptable sins and notorious activities.  But basically, they’re all kind of just “sin,” aren’t they?  Sin, which I think is truly best defined as falling short. 

          Yes—falling short of expectation, culture, spirituality, potential and even the letter of the law.

          It’s interesting to me that the Bible says that Jesus was a “friend of sinners.”  Please note with me that it doesn’t say EX-sinners.  These were not former transgressors.  Surely they’d had an encounter with something purer and richer than their present lifestyle afforded, but it didn’t mean that they had cleared out the cabinets of all their dented cans. 

          Yes, if a friend of yours is going to be a sinner, then occasionally you will have to deal with their sin and find a way to still remain their friend.  Otherwise, you’re not a friend of sinners.  You’re a preacher to sinners.  You’re a passing acquaintance of sinners.  You’re an instructor of sinners.  Or … you’re a judger of sinners.

          So how do you console without condoning?  How do you comfort the individual without giving aid and comfort to the enemy?  How do you express tenderness without appearing to be duped?  You probably can’t.  So then it comes down to a choice.  Are you a friend of sinners, ready to stand with them as they struggle through their battle with internal evil?  Or is it just a line on your résumé, to make you look as if you’re open-minded and willing to be merciful?

          It is the most difficult part of being human, and certainly of being a Christian.  How can I be the light of the world without blinding people?  How can I be the salt of the earth without making them want to spit me out?  I guess it boils down to the fact that the word “friend” doesn’t have an asterisk after it.  It isn’t qualified at the bottom of the page with a footnote that says:  *When things are going good and I think you look pretty.

          Friendship is going through the crap with people and keeping a shovel nearby to help them clean it up, even though it doesn’t seem much different than the last time. 

          So when the call came in, I had to make a decision.  Was this my friend, or was he just a sinner?  And was I going to be a friend to the sinner, or just run and hide behind God’s robes and act scared of the iniquity?

          We talked.

          It was candid.  He knew I didn’t agree.  But he also knew I wasn’t going anywhere.  I guess to me that sums up God. 

          He doesn’t always agree, but He’s not going anywhere.

Rearing or Raising?  (#842)

July 14th, 2010

          I had boys, not girls.  Now one of those boys has grown up and sprouted himself two girls of his own, so I have acquired a pair of granddaughters.  They live in Miami , but presently are spending time in my home while attending a camp in Tennessee .

          I don’t really know what to do with girls.  I mean, grown-up ones I understand.  Little girls, though…

          Actually the whole situation with children has always baffled me, especially when we got into this quandary over whether we were “rearing” children or “raising” them.  I really don’t think it should be a grammatical issue, do you?  I could never get into the term “rearing” because it’s the same word we use for cattle.  “Raising” always seemed better to me.  Even though “rearing” does connote that you’re getting to the rear—behind your children—instead of leading them by a leash, I still think the term is a little bit agrarian.

          But I think America has bringing up children way out of proportion.  My two granddaughters are eleven and five years old—great ages.  The five-year-old is easy.  She likes dolls, excitement, cartoons and anything that goes fast and crazy.  The eleven-year-old is a bit more complex.  She still likes dolls and things that go fast and crazy, but she’s also up to date about current events, history and has an uncanny awareness of the lineup of songs on the Beatles’ White Album.

          So it’s always been a dilemma to me because I refuse to be part of the “pining parents,” walking around lamenting that “they grow up so fast.”  Am I the only person who thinks they don’t grow up fast enough?  I mean, kids are more interesting when they can talk about stuff, right?  Don’t you find them more fascinating when you don’t have to think about various uses of Play-Dough?  So why do we pretend that we don’t want them to grow up?

          I think it’s because, for a brief season when they’re between the ages of three and ten, we can feel like Parents Rearing Children.  (Or is it raising them?)  They hug us a lot during that era.  They think we’re funny.  They think we could lift a car if we wanted to.  They think we know the President of the United States ’ home telephone number.  It’s a great boost to our ego—until they become eleven and they begin to notice that we have a few more gray hairs and we don’t run fast and we must be getting old because we have trouble finding our car keys.

          Then, for a season, they become more or less quiet, subdued enemies that we give room and board because if we don’t the law will move in and put us away.  Maybe things would go better if we just got it right from the start and developed a more mature relationship with our children that was based on one magical word:  honesty. 

          It’s really hard for a kid to rebel when his or her parents have been honest.  Oh, they try.  But it’s the teeny lies we tell ourselves and to others around us that give them the ammunition to be little pains in the ass as they add birthday candles to their under-appreciated cake. 

          For instance, I told my oldest son that his mother and I were not yet married when he was conceived, and that we even considered aborting him.  Why?  Because the whole story is beautiful.  We decided to get married—against all odds—and rejected the idea of losing him.  He knows he is here by real choice.  It’s a hundred—maybe a thousand—little things, revealed at just the right moment, that make your relationship with your kids viable instead of painful.

          Yes, I think we make a mistake in America by believing we’re raising children instead of nurturing young adults, and then we wonder why they’re so confused when they reach young adulthood.  For after all, “what do you want to do when you grow up?” may be a good question for small talk, but encouraging them to do a little bit of it now really does prepare them for being human.

          So I don’t know whether it’s child rearing or child raising, but I’m glad mine is over.  All my children are adult—and my friends. 

          Now I have granddaughters, and if they don’t want to eat vegetables … shoot, I just give ’em candy.

The Story (in 4/4 Time) (#841)

July 13th, 2010

God gave us Jesus

People killed the messenger

 

God called it salvation

Men made it religion

 

God gave the Spirit

Religion started a circus

 

The Spirit honors faith

The circus promotes oddity

 

Faith makes us whole

Oddity keeps us weak

 

Wholeness is true holiness

Weakness is festering frustration

 

Holiness is loving others

Frustration is destroying ourselves

 

Others spread the goodness

Ourselves seek an escape

 

Goodness leads to God

Escape ends in destruction

 

God gave us Jesus … 

 

Choices (#840)

Part Four – Happy or sad?

July 12th, 2010

Let’s review.  Choices: 

What or how?  People who ask how are always darkening the picture with the prospect of severe difficulty to achieve mediocre results.  Just simply inserting what into the question involves me instead of excluding me from the potential of changing the world around me.

Easy or hard?  Easy is not the absence of labor, but rather, the even distribution of it.  Hard is eyeballing the project and determining the more difficult way to set out to begin.

And then, God or the devil?  Mankind made a choice in Eden to mingle the elements of good and evil, thus ending up with a bizarre compound of indecision—because that’s what happens when good and evil are mixed.  It leaves us confused as to which way to go and who to trust.

So now we come to our final pairing.

He was thirty-one years old, in a world filled with Greek philosophy, stoic Judaism, and belligerent, eclectic Romans.  And out of the clear blue sky, he begins his personal manifesto and doctrine with the word happy.  It wasn’t because he saw it all around him.  It wasn’t a reflection of his society.  It was because he believed deep in his heart that he was the son of God, sent to show the personality of the Father.  So he let us know right up front that that persona was drenched in happiness.

But in our world today, sadness has become a sign of maturity and deliberation over the more adult matters and choices of our existence.  We do believe that “somber” is the best way to communicate faithfulness.  As a result, happiness has been relegated to the realm of the childish, the deluded or the mentally deficient.  Yet at the same time, we all despise being around the wise and the prudent, who don their dour features and instead, we yearn for a child’s giggle in the creeping darkness. 

What is happy?  And is sad the opposite of happy?

To me it’s really simple—a single point.  It all boils down to:  Where is heaven? 

If you believe heaven is a kingdom awaiting good people who have struggled through their lives in this veil of tears, only reached through death, then that’s enough to make anyone sad, twenty-four hours a day.

But if you believe, like that thirty-one-year-old Nazarene, that the kingdom of heaven has come and is dwelling among us, and can even be ushered in in a greater way through our lives and actions, well, then, there is no reason to delay your joy waiting for a crystal sea beyond the clouds.

Why are most people sad?  Because the only heaven is beyond their comprehension, their reach and even their lifespan.  Why are some people happier?  Because they believe the kingdom has come and His will can be done here on earth—just identically to what it is like in heaven.

I can not recommend spirituality to you if you decide to be on the lay-away plan.  If you keep laying up treasure in heaven without getting a dividend check here on earth, I can certainly understand why your misery makes you sad.

Heaven has started.  It is available.  It is real.  It lies in those who ask what they can do instead of how this can be done.  It is living inside the travelers who find easy ways to lift their burdens instead of collapsing from the sheer hardship of the endeavor.  And it certainly is alive in those souls who are looking for God instead of a devil under every rock.

I don’t know whether you can be a Christian if happiness is not at the forefront of your campaign.  But for happiness to achieve its rightful status, heaven must have already come down and the glory must have filled your soul.

Happy or sad? 

Don’t you think it’s strange that those who purport to believe in God the most seem to have the more sour expressions?  I guess I would be sad, too, if I thought God was punishing me with a human life to see if I was worthy of a celestial one.

What makes me happy is knowing that the fun and joy I’m having now gets to continue—except I’ll be allowed to be at Party Central.

Make your choices, but do not deceive yourself: 

How hard the devil hits you will make you sad.

What is easy and God will make you happy.

     

Choices (#839)

Part Three – God or the Devil?

July 11th, 2010

            “Scare the devil outta ya.”

          Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that were possible?  Actually what happens is that we get the devil scared into us, and then the notion of a decaying, festering evil permeates our minds with both vile thoughts and paranoia.

          Yes, hear me say it loud and proud:  the more you talk about evil, the more evil you will have.  The more you discuss the devil, the more he desires to join in with the forum.

          One of the major choices we have to make in our lives is between God and the devil.  If you’re not a religious person, it may come down to evaluating good luck and bad luck.  Or ying and yang.  Or varying degrees of karma.  It may be assessing whether the world is inherently enriching or demeaning.  But it certainly affects the energy we use to face our day.

          Some people insist that if you believe in God you must believe in the devil.  I don’t know—maybe it’s the word “believe” that troubles me.  I believe that the presence of common sense is a perfect gift and that every perfect gift comes from God.  I believe the absence of common sense is the introduction of fear, and all fear eventually lends itself to evil.

          Is that evil called the devil?  Most of the evil I encounter has two eyes, two ears, a nose and a human body—just like me.  When I begin to believe that my life is controlled supernaturally, either by God or the devil, I become apprehensive in the presence of both. 

          I’m not comfortable with that.  If He’s my Father in Heaven, He should be at least as good a papa as I am, and I wouldn’t do anything to scare the crap out of my kids (unless it was for fun). 

          When the devil is introduced into a conversation, spirituality is displaced by superstition, which tries its best to wear the cloak of righteousness, but ends up only clad in the filthy blanket of bigoted terror.  Yes, one of the greatest evidences of true evil is bigotry against other human beings.    Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  And the writer of the Epistles said, “To the pure all things are pure, but to them who are defiled is everything defiled.”

          I’ve never been around anyone who believes in the devil who doesn’t eventually start looking for the demons in me.  No, thank you.

          It is a choice—and it is one you need to make if you plan on achieving any level of contentment and productivity in this human journey.  Is it God or is it the devil?

          If you’re trying to change your thinking, here are some ideas:

1.  Remove fear.  If you take the fear out of your life and replace it with love and you still feel the presence of evil, you give me a call and we’ll come over and have an exorcism.  But until fear is addressed and replaced with love, the evil that we sense and battle is spawned from within us.

2.  What’s the point?  Ask yourself, what does God have to gain by hurting people?  Why would God allow evil to even come close to competing with him?  Human beings welcomed the knowledge of evil—that’s why it exists.  We bring the information about what is dark through our eating of the forbidden fruit, but once you remove the need to have knowledge of evil to report darkness and to extol wickedness, it no longer has the ability to stand up in our society.

3.  What do you lose by just believing in God?  I have friends who become angry at me because I don’t uplift the potential for an organized force of evil.  It baffles me.  If I am going to be wrong, I would rather err on the side of believing in good than the caution of looking for darkness.

4. And finally, to hell with the devil.  If he’s out there, let him come forth.  Otherwise, let’s shut up about it and get about the business of blessing some people.  I do believe in evil in the sense that I know that it exists.  But more often than not, it wears loafers instead of cloven hooves.  So because it has no power over me that isn’t first in me, I will ask it to get out of me.

          We need to make a decision and a choice if we’re going to be fruitful human beings.  Whether we call it bad luck, Satan, witchcraft, karma or just stupidity, it is not wise to give the devil his due.  Here’s an idea:  if you really want to frustrate evil, the greatest spiritual weapon is to ignore it and replace it with the passion of creativity.

          So we have one more—a very simple one, but one that seems to confound the wisest sage.

Happy or sad?

Choices (#838)

Part Two – Easy or Hard?

July 10th, 2010

“My yoke is easy.”

That’s what Jesus said.  It might be significant and meaningful if we actually knew what a yoke was.  So the only word we tend to hear in the sentence is “easy.”  The problem?  We have an object without knowing what the subject means. 

A yoke was a wooden brace attached to oxen to carefully and strategically place the burden on their shoulders and backs so that they could pull a load.  The successful caretaker of the oxen would do this job very carefully so as to get more work out of the ox and more productivity by pulling larger loads with less effort.

There is the key.

The definition of “easy” is finding ways to do more while making it feel like less.  The definition of “hard” is finding difficult ways to do all your tasks, which makes failure easy.

So easy is not the absence of work, but rather, how we place the burdens and responsibilities on our shoulders.  And hard is not a factual representation of the intensity of the labor, but instead, a pre-conceived idea about the level of complexity and the ferocity of the ordeal.

You can tell an awful lot about people by whether they think life is easy or whether they think life is hard.  Here is the fascination thing:  people who think life is hard are much less productive than those who believe the journey to be easy.  You would think that because they believed the task was more arduous this would cause them to dig in and create more possibilities. 

But actually, it just makes them tired before they start.  Is there anything worse than being tired before you even start?  You know that the quality of what you’re about to do is going to be diminished, and this brings on an internal depression that limits the intelligence of using all available talents.

I can tell if people are going to be successful by whether they think life is hard or easy.

Yes—the yoke is easy.  But let us never forget—the yoke is on you.  And what makes it easy is how well you evenly distribute the weight to create the most pleasant pulling sensation.

Here are some suggestions for those people who think life is hard and want to learn how to simplify and make things easier:

1.  Organize.  The more complex the need, the more necessary it is to take extra time to plan.  Organization is the only sure way to lighten the load.  People who work with me often comment on how much fun I make jobs.  Fun is impossible unless you organize the task to take away the unnecessary and replace it with more speedy choices.

2.  Focus.  One of the greatest powers in prayer is bringing a concentrated vision to a needful project.  Meditation and prayer are genuine forces for clearing the mind of the clutter of fear and apprehension.  Just knowing that someone is in the yoke pulling with you (because the fact of the matter is, the yoke is engineered for two)—the assurance that God is tugging in the same direction that you have decided to go—is a huge plus for relieving the mind of both tentative energy and nervousness.

3.  Stop.  Put it on pause.  Everyone deserves a rest anyway.  I am suspicious of things that suddenly become overly burdensome.  Just stopping for a moment to find out if you missed something or if there is a better way, can save you hours of time and tons of frustration.

4.  Listen.   There are people smarter than you.  There are folks who have been down the road before you.  They know shortcuts.  Independence is the most certain way of finding the hardest method to journey.  Listen and garner nuggets of gold from great prospectors.

I will not work with someone who thinks life is hard.  I will not become unequally yoked with a person who is looking for reasons to complain instead of succeed.

Easy does not mean there is no work.  Easy just means we’ve evenly distributed the load to make things run smoothly.

So once you discover that what is better than how, and easy sure beats the tar out of hard, then we come to the big question:  

God or the devil?

Choices (#837)

 Part One – What? or How?

July 9th, 2010

I often have people walk up to me or even write to me and ask, “How can I be a better person?”  I think they are always shocked when I respond, “You can’t.”

It’s not because it’s impossible to find ways to better our lives, but that magic lies buried deeply within the treasure chest of our choices, and honestly, our particular choices are so deeply ingrained in our training that unless we violently confront them, they will continue to process within us the same results to which we’ve become accustomed.

You see, the problem is the word how—as in “How can I?”  For instance, if you tell a kid, “I’d like to see you do better in school” and the response from the young person is, “How?” you can pretty well guarantee that the results are going to be stained with inadequacy and a lack of effort.  Because people who believe that life is a procedure that has to be fastidiously followed to a painful conclusion normally find a reason to not even begin to make a start of it.

I will tell you right now: 

Life is not a how.  It is a what.  

Because when people inquire of me, “What can I do to better my life?”—well, for that I have a positive answer.  I ask them, “What do you know for sure?”

Yes, the first step to making better choices is to understand that pursuing the “how” of life is a frustrated and fussy attempt to wrap our effort up in a burrito of disbelief.   But when you ask “what” you allow for the possibility of a specific talent to be unleashed that can begin to challenge the difficulty.

So if you grew up in a household where everything was “how this” or “how that” or “how could this work?” or “how can we do that?”—what can you do to change to the “what” factor?

1.  Take an inventory.  What’s available to you?  What are you willing to do?  What are you able to do?  What is your present emotional, spiritual, mental and physical make-up? 

2.  Come up with an actual number.  Not a hope.  In other words, “I can give three hours to this.”  “I’ve got ten dollars.”  “Here’s what I believe and here’s what I don’t.”

3.  Find a place to start.  The gospel of completion is over-rated—because more often than not projects do not have a beginning, middle and end.  They often have a beginning, a pause, an evolution, a re-start, a middle, another evolution and a surprise conclusion.  Don’t be afraid of the change that brings newness.

4.  Celebrate progress.  It’s the only way to avoid focusing on the negatives.  People who try to anticipate all the difficulties that may come in a situation spend all their time anticipating the difficulties.  It’s as simple as that.  Today will have enough problems and you’re no worse off if you’re surprised by them than if you have fearfully anticipated them.

If you want to make better choices, one of the first changes you can install is replacing the philosophy of how with the energy of what. 

Because when all is said and done, we will not be judged on technique, but on how well we used what we had.

Tomorrow we’ll move on to another choice … easy or hard?

Two-by-Two (#836)

July 8th, 2010

“And he sent them out two-by-two.”

That’s what Jesus did when he was finally ready to release his message to the masses without his presence being there at the time. 

Well, of course, “masses” is an overstatement of the fact.  The “Kingdom Movement” that Jesus had begun was in a fledging phase and desperately needed to communicate itself well—clearly and succinctly—to the surrounding citizenry.

Jesus decided to have people pair off.  It is something we would normally just read over, like it was a suggestion at the end of a recipe on how the entrée might be served.  But it’s very important.  I think we’ve lost the power of two.  Is it possible we’ve become a nation of individuals who spend half of their time doing their own thing and the other half of the time rationalizing it, explaining it or apologizing for it? 

There is something about two.  You don’t get it with three.  You put three people together and they’ll still pair off against one.  You go to four and you get two pairs, any way you look at it.  Five is two pairs and an outsider. 

No—I think we like to pair off.  I think it may be the true power of marriage.  If two people can become so committed to one another and affectionate to each other’s needs that they can actually be honest about better choices, then they are invaluable to one another. 

Because if Jesus would have sent out individuals, he would have had so many different interpretations of his concepts, based upon personal preference, that there would have been no way to define the message.  That’s why we have denominations today.  One guy stepped out of the crowd of believers and said, “I think it’s this way.”  So he got a bunch of people to agree with him, and you had a bunch of people agreeing with one guy.

You see, when you have two people, there’s always one person who is available to question how the other person handled the last encounter.  It doesn’t have to be mean, just effective. 

There’s always the danger of two people butting heads for power, but there’s never the third person there to grant an imbalance of power to one or the other.

Two-by-two is a pretty smart idea—somebody to talk to around the fire at the end of the day.  Somebody to question me when I get funky.  Somebody to have an idea that I didn’t think of.  Somebody to take an idea from me that they failed to conceive.  What does it take to make two people work well together?

1.  A love that is balanced equally between commitment and affection.  

2.  Eyes that see, ears that hear, a mouth that speaks without remaining silent, a nose for trouble and a heart to arrive at what is truly better instead of maintaining “what is truly mine.”

3.  A sense of humor that is always prepared to laugh both ways—at the circumstance and at oneself.

4.  And finally, a willingness to escape the self-righteousness of “one” to become the dynamo of “two.”

Yes, it’s very difficult to believe you are a self-contained miracle-kid when there is another person equally as motivated and individualized, loving and challenging you. 

Two-by-two is a pretty smart idea.  Yet in a season of individuals manifesting their own wills, it may be difficult to restore the sanctity of such a duo. 

But if we could, we might just find ourselves doubling our possibilities.

Two-by-Two (#836)

July 8th, 2010

“And he sent them out two-by-two.”

That’s what Jesus did when he was finally ready to release his message to the masses without his presence being there at the time. 

Well, of course, “masses” is an overstatement of the fact.  The “Kingdom Movement” that Jesus had begun was in a fledging phase and desperately needed to communicate itself well—clearly and succinctly—to the surrounding citizenry.

Jesus decided to have people pair off.  It is something we would normally just read over, like it was a suggestion at the end of a recipe on how the entrée might be served.  But it’s very important.  I think we’ve lost the power of two.  Is it possible we’ve become a nation of individuals who spend half of their time doing their own thing and the other half of the time rationalizing it, explaining it or apologizing for it? 

There is something about two.  You don’t get it with three.  You put three people together and they’ll still pair off against one.  You go to four and you get two pairs, any way you look at it.  Five is two pairs and an outsider. 

No—I think we like to pair off.  I think it may be the true power of marriage.  If two people can become so committed to one another and affectionate to each other’s needs that they can actually be honest about better choices, then they are invaluable to one another. 

Because if Jesus would have sent out individuals, he would have had so many different interpretations of his concepts, based upon personal preference, that there would have been no way to define the message.  That’s why we have denominations today.  One guy stepped out of the crowd of believers and said, “I think it’s this way.”  So he got a bunch of people to agree with him, and you had a bunch of people agreeing with one guy.

You see, when you have two people, there’s always one person who is available to question how the other person handled the last encounter.  It doesn’t have to be mean, just effective. 

There’s always the danger of two people butting heads for power, but there’s never the third person there to grant an imbalance of power to one or the other.

Two-by-two is a pretty smart idea—somebody to talk to around the fire at the end of the day.  Somebody to question me when I get funky.  Somebody to have an idea that I didn’t think of.  Somebody to take an idea from me that they failed to conceive.  What does it take to make two people work well together?

1.  A love that is balanced equally between commitment and affection.  

2.  Eyes that see, ears that hear, a mouth that speaks without remaining silent, a nose for trouble and a heart to arrive at what is truly better instead of maintaining “what is truly mine.”

3.  A sense of humor that is always prepared to laugh both ways—at the circumstance and at oneself.

4.  And finally, a willingness to escape the self-righteousness of “one” to become the dynamo of “two.”

Yes, it’s very difficult to believe you are a self-contained miracle-kid when there is another person equally as motivated and individualized, loving and challenging you. 

Two-by-two is a pretty smart idea.  Yet in a season of individuals manifesting their own wills, it may be difficult to restore the sanctity of such a duo. 

But if we could, we might just find ourselves doubling our possibilities.

Plugs (#835)

July 7th, 2010

Have you ever lost the plug for an appliance?  You know, I’m talking about the cord.  And you think to yourself, no big deal.  I’ll just run down to the Radio Shack and get another one.  Often, you may be intelligent enough to take the appliance with you to make sure the cord fits.  And then you realize that your particular appliance was manufactured in some country with eight syllables and ten consonants and for some reason or another, there is no plug that will fit it. 

It’s frustrating.  You don’t know whether to be angry at the manufacturer, the Radio Shack or your hapless appliance, which used to hum along in harmony with your purposes, and now sits there powerless.

Why aren’t there universal plugs?  I guess that’s why they came up with adaptors, or even transformers—so that cantankerous electrical units can find a home almost anywhere.  But shouldn’t there be some sort of universal plug?  I mean, can’t somebody sit down with a manufacturer and say, “Why didn’t you make it all the same, so we could, like, interchange plugs with each other?”

Of course, we have the same problem in life.  Not everybody plugs in the same.  We can pretend that it’s all right with us—that some people demand a different cord to reality—but we really wish they would become more adaptable.  Matter of fact, we create laws, philosophy and religion to try to get people to adapt themselves to a more universal concept.  But some people are stubborn.  They like their little niche in the wall and they don’t want to adapt, and my God—they certainly wouldn’t even consider transforming.

So now we’ve created a whole society where we pretend that it’s all right to be different, while we secretly—or even openly—mock the differences.  Can we really propagate a manifesto of “different is okay” and privately wish that everybody were the same?  And if you are different, how different do you dare be before someone gives up on finding a way to plug into you and sets you on the shelf without power?

Because that’s what I do with my appliance.  It just wasn’t worth the trouble.  I went out and bought another one, making sure that its plug was more amenable to the outlets.  Are we doing a disservice to human beings by telling them they can “be themselves” and then creating a world that has only one or two available holes in the wall? 

It reminds me of when I was in school and teachers insisted that some kids were quiet and some kids were outgoing and some kids were studious and some kids were athletic.  You see, here’s the problem.  Quiet and studious kids don’t always make it.  There has to be some ability inside each one of us to present ourselves in a good light and good form, or opportunity doesn’t knock and our window to success remains painted shut.

Is it fair to preach a gospel of acceptability, while internally we’re printing pamphlets promoting pandering? 

I don’t think I would ever buy another appliance that wasn’t willing to acquire an easy way to plug in.  And somehow or another, I think it’s a disservice to tell people they can “be themselves” when our society demands a certain quotient of conformity.

Revital  (#834)

July 6th, 2010

Come one, come all!  One night only (unless it occurs during the day).  Turn off the computers, the I-pods, the twenty-four –hour news cycle and the general noise that tries to drown out all reason! 

Come! Experience instead of watch. 

Think, feel, laugh.

Yes, think instead of knowing.

Feel instead of merely believing.

And laugh at life and yourself instead of criticizing the world around you with a childish giggle.

Revital—to resurrect the living parts so that we might celebrate them anew. 

·        Permission to cease being afraid.

·        Confirmation of the power of fun

·        Ordination of the beauty of being human without incrimination.

Revital—to take our seat at the front of the church, which has been vacant and left dormant by the apathy of religion and the intimidation of tradition.  Yes, there’s a whole church available—unseated.

Revital—to energize our humanity and believe again that God is not ashamed that He made us that way.

Revital—to find our better nature, expose our darker portions and rejoice over the liberty to do so.

Revital—to worship with joy instead of repetition; to ask the question instead of assuming the answer; to embrace again without anticipating repudiation.

Revital—to receive our freedom without needing our independence.

Revital—to breathe life into that which is assumed dead and to bury that which is needfully decaying.

Come one, come all! 

It is a time of refreshing! 

It is a piece of reality we have not yet seen in the show—music so the heart can dance, humor so the mind can heal, and intimacy so the spirit might be reborn.

Revital—it is your time. 

It is your day.  

An Inconvenient Meeting  (#833)

July 5th, 2010

I spent this past Saturday having lunch with my brother’s widow, her son and one of my two brothers that still remain alive.  I was performing in the Ohio area and it only seemed right that I should have such an encounter.

 It was not convenient.

I know the proper thing is to always portray family matters as positive and full of promise.  But as I drove up the day before, on that Friday, I thought to myself, what am I trying to do?  What is the significance I am trying to bestow on this moment?

 I’m not close to these people anymore.  Matter of fact, my brother has been one of my worst detractors over the years.  I don’t know my other brother’s widow that well, and only enjoy an email relationship with my nephew.

The conversation will be difficult.  I’ve always hated small talk.  Often, I’ve hated small talk so much that I’ve hoped it would shrink and disappear.  But it never goes away; just stays small.  I’ve never had small talk become big talk, and I’ve really never been in a family meeting that has generated the warmth of discovery that I’ve found among strangers.  Maybe it’s because we’re braver—more brazen, even—with those who do not share our genetic code.  And certainly that boldness promotes a richer exchange of ideas as opposed to passing around recent photos.

As I drove up that Friday, passing through Cincinnati on my way to the capital, Columbus , I wondered how many names would be mentioned of people I either never knew or somewhere along the line had forgotten.  How many times would I respond to questions with, “Yes, I think I remember.”  Or, “My goodness.  That was a good time.”

But on that drive up to the fateful meeting, I realized that being comfortable and having everything convenient is not always the best thing for us as human beings.  Because it is when inconvenience is allowed to present its dilemma that we really find out what’s important and what is just passing fancy. 

I had an inconvenient lunch with family on Saturday.  It went better than I thought—mainly because I just didn’t think too much about it.

A Passage for Two (#832)

July 4th, 2010

Martha arose early.  She had grown accustomed to that.  Since George had been headquartered at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania , she had found it very difficult to lounge within the partial warmth of her Mount Vernon home, knowing that he and the brave young troops were freezing in the wooded areas surrounding the camp.

But she also arose because she was relieved.  Finally a decision had been made.  Finally there was an end to the turmoil caused by a noble notion which had brought nothing but pain and suffering.  Last week when the emissary arrived from England to their home, Martha was suspicious, even hostile.  But his words of consolation and forgiveness and opportunity, brought from the very throne of King George III, had soothed an aching spot deep in her soul. 

She was tired.  George was tired.  She feared for his health.  For after all, what value is there in having freedom if the end result is the loss of your own personal life?   And so many lives were being lost—and not to British or Hessian muskets, but rather, to disease, famine, consumption and even typhus. 

What price was there to pay for the dream of independence?  It wasn’t really even an issue of freedom—because the Crown granted great freedom to its subjects.  Commerce was encouraged.  Worship.  And even opinions were bounced around in heated debate in the House of Burgess.  No—it wasn’t about freedom.  It was about independence.  And like a spoiled fourteen-year-old brat, the Colonies had decided it was time for them to set their own destiny and manifest their own wishes.  And just like that insolent boy, Martha now knew the American citizenry was too young.  Too unorganized.  Too frail.  And certainly, too headstrong.

It was not easy for the representative from England to convince George of the wisdom of this new way.  But at length, it finally made sense.  King George III had agreed to let the Colonies rule as a unit with General George Washington as the Governor Pro Temp.  He would report directly to the Parliament any grievances and concerns of the populace.  Yes—he would still maintain his leadership as General, but not of an army; instead, of a people who would gradually emerge to the maturity of independence.

 And Martha would be able to spend more time with him.  There would be trips to England and opportunities for the two of them to sing and dance instead of struggle and fight.

Her beloved George had left the night before to go and share the new mission with his troops and representatives from the Continental Congress.  She was confident that he could convince them of the foolishness of ongoing struggle with the greatest military might on earth.  Why fight your mother when she merely wants your best?  What is the value of independence if it only gives you rags and forbids you riches?

Today would be spent packing, preparing for a journey to London to meet with the king.  There would be freedom, but no independence.  But there also would be peace, with no bloodshed.

Yes, it was for the best—because a great leader must think about more than the sanctity of liberty.  He must also think about the precious value of human life.

George and Martha Washington had made a decision for all posterity.  The colonies would remain under British rule, yet autonomous, with their own new governor.

Martha was relieved.  Life would be easier.  Life would be simpler.  Life would be absent the pain of futile, misguided misery.

July 4th, 2010.

 How tempted were the Washingtons to perform the sensible deed?  How easy would it have been to give in to the logic of the times?  Of course, my story is completely fictitious, for George and Martha Washington did not relent, and the purpose of my stopover today is to merely pose the question: 

What are we selling out today?

Freedom’s Just Another Word (#831)

July 3rd, 2010

It’s that time of year again. The sun is shining, the smell of charcoal is in the air, swimming pools are once again finding their purpose (nothing quite as sad as a disillusioned swimming pool) and, of course, July 4th—Freedom Day.  The speeches will fly—along with the Roman candles and the hawkers and even some drunken slurs by rednecks, giving a six-pack salute to their favorite forefather.

Some will talk about the freedom of religion.  I’m certainly glad we have choice on how to worship God—or even not—in this country.  But I also will be candid with you, that freedom of religion has caused us many problems, including a religious community seemingly incapable of having any vision for the social change that truly does make all men brothers.

I do give a hearty “amen” for those who stomp and cheer for freedom of speech, although I must admit I lament much of the speech I hear and wonder if it does more harm than good. 

I guess it’s even important that we have the right to bear arms, because even worse than only criminals having guns is the notion that only our military would have them.  Historically, armies which are granted weaponry exclusively—exceeding the capability of the citizenry—have become tyrants and dictators.

It’s even nice to know that we have freedom from illegal searches and seizures.  I really don’t want someone with eight weeks of training in a police academy to decide whether or not I warrant a cavity search.

But when this time of year rolls around, the freedom that I celebrate is the freedom to be wrong.  You do understand, there are places in this world—many, may I add?—where simply being wrong, especially at the incorrect moment, can place you in a Gulag cell or even exile you away from friends and family forever.  I love this country because we have the freedom to be wrong.  And baby, we sure have exercised it freely.

·        We had a good chance to consider what we had to do to stop Hitler, but questioned whether or not it was necessary to go atomic on Japan . 

·        We let our children roam the streets, protesting a war in Vietnam and only shot a few of them, but because we are willing to be wrong, we have investigated that and called it a national disgrace.

·        We told a President that he didn’t have a right to lie to the nation, and another one that he should keep his pants zipped in the Oval Office. 

·        We let people screw up real badly, and as long as they use their freedom of being wrong wisely, we welcome them back into our fold.

But it makes me wonder if this year, when we cheer and clap for freedom in this country, we could just stop this year and consider our wrongs without feeling it takes anything away from our rights.  Because the freedom to be wrong is what keeps the United States from becoming an overly zealous  bear, possessing no conscience, swatting at the squirrels in the forest.

When we do something well, let’s applaud it.  When somebody’s better than us, let’s learn from them.  And when we suck, let us be the first ones to discover the true height and depth of our “suckdom.” 

Yes, on this Independence Day weekend, the freedom I celebrate is the freedom to be wrong—because when things do go wrong, the true joy is in having the liberty to admit it and make it right.

Sexual History—It Repeats Itself (#830)

July 2nd, 2010

Can you imagine if you went to the doctor’s office and after examining you and running some tests, he sat you down and said, “Now here’s what we’ve learned.  You seem to have a leaning towards a runny nose, a red throat and your voice is not very clear.  You are the kind of person who always feels worn out and runs a temperature a little higher than normal.  Also we discovered that you have a predilection towards intermittent coughing.  So it is my decision that you should probably study these attributes and use them to the best of your capability in further pursuing your life.”

You’d look at him and say, “Excuse me, doc.  Don’t I just have a cold?  Can’t it get better?  Won’t it just naturally change?  Should I adjust my whole lifestyle to having a cold?”

Yet as ridiculous as it may sound, every single day in America , psychologists and counselors do a battery of tests on people and tell them, based on their present answers, what their personalities and even aptitudes appear to be.  Excuse me, guys.  Isn’t it possible that people are just going through an emotional or psychological cold?  And if we cured the cold, wouldn’t they be a little more gregarious, open-minded, caring, or even stable?

Here is something I know for sure: 

Every human being continues to approach life in an attempt to confirm his or her upbringing until they finally establish a thinking and philosophy of their own. 

Nowhere is this any more obvious than in human sexuality.  If you were taught that sex is dirty, you will probably go out and try to pursue dirty sex.  If you were taught that sex is sacred, you will bottle up all of your inclinations toward passion until you find a partner who, whether satisfactory or not, becomes your representation of sexual fulfillment.  If you were taught in your home that sexuality is for experimentation, then you will probably go on the hunt, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, with unfortunately, similar tragic results.

We all, one way or another, develop a sexual history which continues to repeat itself until it is interrupted by some trauma or redemptive force.  So good girls end up with bad boys and good boys end up with mediocre choices, which often thrusts them into frustrated bouts of infidelity. 

If we do not define what human sexuality is, we will act out a history book full of unsatisfying encounters.  You need to sit down and ask yourself, what was I taught bout sex?  What do I know about sex?  And what do I wish to pursue, sexually?

After all, there really is nothing worse in the realm of sexuality than people who preach how sacred it is and then hypocritically finds themselves sliding into the mire of degradation.  May I make four observations about human sexuality?

1.  God loves sex.  No creator would so meticulously put together such an intricate, well-planned pleasure-ride unless He was completely enamored with the process.

2.  Sex is spirited, not sacred.  It is meant to be enjoyed between two people who have made a commitment to one another and have found deeper reasons for being together other than mere physical pleasure.  But once those two people have agreed on their commitment, pleasure is the goal and pleasure is the only acceptable ending.  And that goes for both parties.  Whatever it takes for both partners to come out of a sexual experience with a physical release is right for them.

3.  Women should be the aggressors.  If women do not want sex, whether marriage is in place or not, sexual intercourse becomes either prostitution or rape.  It’s a strong statement.  But when men are considered to be the aggressors, more often than not, women become receptacles instead of participants.  It is flawed, foolish and has little function for ultimate joy.

4.  And finally, the most important part of building a good sexual history for yourself is to have a good “sex of humor.”  That’s right.  We don’t do it much differently from monkeys, and our particular style of gyration is comical in more ways than one.  Making it too serious or Godly or clinical or meaningful, even, is to remove the true humor and fun of the event.

So as you look at these four things and compare them to your upbringing, how does it measure up?  Because if your life is a quest to prove your parents right, you will be limited by their scope and potential.  Every parent should want their kids to do better.  So for my children to do better than me, they must make better choices.  And to make better choices, they must find more informed paths. 

You will continue to repeat your sexual history until you update the manual and as your sexual history goes, so goes your emotional and mental health, and most importantly, your spiritual well-being.

Why is sex so important in the general configuration of life and even our relationship with God?  Because it is the physical demonstration of what He hopes we will spiritually do with the whole world:  enjoin ourselves and become one.

So we’ve spent some days talking about human sexuality.  The subject is as deep as the ocean and as shallow as a mud puddle.  Understanding both possibilities brings you to maturity, where you’re prepared to change your sexual history so you don’t have to keep repeating yourself.

God loves sex. 

And all I have to say is, “Glory be to God.”  

Men and Women Both Want It (#829)

July 1st, 2010

Little Women.

It is both the title of a book by Louisa May Alcott, and a term we refer to as condescending and chauvinistic in our more enlightened moments.  But simultaneously, we live in a society that firmly believes women are little.  If you don’t like the word “little,” how about “lesser?”  You could go for the synonym of “inferior” or the popular, fundamentalist word—“weaker.”

We have used that excuse to forbid personal rights, individual status, financial equity, salvation, voting, parental authority, divorce equality and certainly business status for the female of the species.  And please understand—this was not a one-time event.  Each human privilege had to be won in itself rather than collectively through the revelation that men and women were not meant to be separated.

It is amazing to me that the religious and secular communities agree on so very little, but on the issue of women they can sit in a room together and posture, preach, giggle and laugh about how women “just aren’t quite as good.”  

The end result?  About fifty-three per cent of our society spends more than half its time trying to get air to breathe instead of providing emotional, spiritual and mental oxygen to our planet.  In my calmer moments I am astounded and in my more human interchanges, I am enraged; and nothing is affected more by this stupidity of unequal evaluation than human sexuality.

We teach that men are the hunters and women are the gatherers and receivers.  It renders human sexuality a sport for predators rather than a play-time for partners.  To reinforce this, we have countless television shows where women are murdered, sliced up, abused and subjugated by domineering men.

So my point is, what has this belief system, which is shared by the secular and the religious alike, gotten us?  At least confusion, and in many cases, utter social chaos.

Let me just work the story.  God made men and women as equals.  The Bible says he called BOTH of them Adam.  Adam decided to give the woman a name so as not to confuse himself: Eve. 

Did Eve have different jobs in the garden than Adam?  No.

Was she less important in the mixture of the upkeep?  No.

She was, as Adam stated, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.”  That sounds pretty equal to me.  How about you? 

So evident was her independence and freedom that she went off on her own and made decisions.  One of those decisions created what we call the fall of man.  Yet they did it together—equally.

Whether you believe the story or think it is merely a tale or hyperbole, it is at this point that the sexes are separated by terms of punishment.  Men are to endure physical labor by the sweat of their brow, and women are to endure personal pain through birthing the offspring.

Find and dandy.

Let’s say we accept the whole story as true.  Then we also have to accept that with the arrival of Jesus came the institution of salvation and the reinstatement of Eden into our lives.  This is why the Bible says that in the Kingdom of God there is neither male nor female.  If we accept our salvation, we accept the original agreement that God gave to humanity.  “Bone of my bone; flesh of my flesh.  My equal, my companion.”

That means that men don’t have to work by the sweat of their brow and women are not cursed with menstruation and having children.  Instead, we cooperate in the effort to both earn our living and bear out a lineage. 

It also means that men are not the domineering sexual hunters and women the prey.  It also means there is an equality in the sexual appetites.  Because without that equality, women are constantly insisting on being wooed (and usually won’t), and men spend all their time trying to do (and then get so old that they don’t).

It’s pathetic.

I know this for a fact:  if a woman is not equally excited and involved in a sexual encounter, then there is absolutely no way that it can end successfully.  Would someone like to refute that for me?  So why would we want to believe that women are disinterested in sexual relations and need to be seduced?  Isn’t seduction what got women in trouble in the first place in the Garden of Eden?  So why would it be so magical now?

If we would teach our children that men and women both want it—they both want respect, they both want equality, they both want opportunity, they both want social place, they both want salvation, they both want to vote, they both want to speak and be heard, and they both want to have an orgasm—then our young men would not be walking around frantic and confused and our young women would not play the role of roses waiting to be deflowered.

I think we have to make up our minds.  If you are a secular person and you do not believe in the Bible at all, then stop picking pieces of the document to reinforce your prejudice against the opposite sex.  If you are a religious or spiritual person who does believe in the tales of the black leather-bound book, then you must allow the redemption of Jesus to return men and women to a status of “garden partners.”

We can’t walk a line between these two worlds simply because we want to propagate a myth to sell books, perfume and electric drills. 

What’s it going to be?  I would not spend five minutes working with a woman who did not feel she was equal to me and who would not admit to herself that she liked to get hot and bothered and achieve sexual satisfaction.  Such a creature would truly be detrimental, weaker and eventually, destructive to be around. 

When will we learn?  Men and women both want it.  And through the redemption of spiritual rejuvenation, it is a reality that overcomes cultural stupidity.