Month: April 2018

Life is like a balance scale. You must balance out the things you want with the things you really need. You may never have all you think you need, but then…did you truly need it after all?

As a child and a young man I would often dream of what I could become. What I have become is much different. I would not have imagined this. Nobody dreams of growing up to become “ordinary”. But ordinary is not bad, it is simply what has been weighed out in the balance, through choice and through chance.

After all, free will is what has been given to we humans as our heritage from the trials and errors of our ancestors, and through natural selection, or from God if you will.

We should not fail to exercise it, but we should realize at the same time the moral limitations it puts upon us. We should weigh in the balance that which makes us happy and productive against the idealism of that which we think would make us more satisfied.

Sometimes they are one and the same, but most of the time they are not, and those are the times which cause us to get out of balance, and to hurt ourselves and others whom we love.

As one of my favorite fantasy writers Brandon Sanderson said in his book The Hero of Ages:

“Somehow, we’ll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be. But for now, we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.”

Even in a crowded room, or on the beach by the sea. Even at a meeting, or a sporting event. A person can feel alone. It depends on where you are in life, not where you are at.

Even as I walk alone. Along the road. In the woods. By the stream or river. I am never lonely, because I know I am never far away from love. My family, my friends. The creator of all things are always near.

That is where I am at in life. You can find me there with just a little effort on your part. There’s room for many, many more.

Am I assuming too much when I assume that I am not the only one tired of politics and political non issues? And it’s only April still, with a long way to go.

I’m weary of blog reposts about borders, and Supreme Court decisions, and memes about bathrooms.

I don’t care where you pee, just be sure and flush.

I’m also not too certain there is anything I can write here on Facebook which will cause the income equality gap to get better. And I don’t think it really matters to anybody much who I plan to vote for, and why.

I’ve stopped being religious, but I still believe in God. It’s possible believe me.

The thing which concerns me most is time, and spending what I have left wisely and with love, with the people I love.

Oh, I know some of the external things going on in the world may have some periferal effect on me, but they will be manageable, short of some unforeseen disaster.

What I have here, now, and for the years ahead, is what’s important to me. I’m not trying to change the world, but simply trying to minimize my interface with it in order to maximize my relationships with people I care for…which also includes some of you, my friends.

It’s difficult to express what I am feeling. I guess it’s the speed of time…the fact that it is running by much faster now than when I was younger. It’s all relativity you see.

When you are five years old, one year is 20% of your entire life so it therefore seems to pass slowly. When you are ten, it’s 10% of your life…and so on. If you reach 80 years old one year is like..what?…1.25% of your life, so a year relatively speaking, seems to fly by. Even now, at age 65 I’m already thinking about buying Christmas presents for this year. This week has gone by in a flash. They all seem to now.

I have to therefore reduce the magnitude of things I need to do to a manageable level and by choice do the things which count the most, which involve my family and close friends. It doesn’t mean I won’t still do things which fall outside these parameters…just means there will be fewer of those “things”.

I’m not giving up trade day, or healthy walking times. I’m going to give up worrying about some of the things I previously mentioned, unless of course I get riled up.

Isn’t it enough for most of us to deal with our own “business”. To live and let live, and quit worrying about the petty things that the world around us wants to thrust upon us as being SO important.

Our justification for our actions should be taking care of our own, and letting others do the same. We don’t have to quit dealing with important issues but maybe we need to look more closely at what is really important. But in the spirit of not telling anyone what to do with their Facebook page, please put on anything you want because I will exercise my right to selective reading.

So, back to dealing with time. A lot of it has passed since I started this post so now it’s time to rest and sleep. Tomorrow will be here very soon.

I think tomorrow might be a good day to rest. Sunday is a traditional day for rest. I might even sleep in til 7 am if the storms don’t come rolling forth.

I remember my Grandmother Stewart was not a sleeper. If she slept five hours it was something. Many times when I stayed there Grandpa would still be snoring (I think he had sleep apnea) while Grandma was already up stirring around. Grandma made him wake up and start a fire during the winter though, and as soon as I would hear him clanking that old wood stove I would extricate myself from under the five quilts I was entangled in upstairs and come running down to the heater.

Grandma lived to be 100, so I guess she was the exception to the rule about needing plenty of sleep to live a long life. She never napped much either.

Grandma died in December 1999. I was supposed to be a pallbearer, but I’d had a heart attack and a stent just a month before she died so I couldn’t help carry her as I had done with Grandpa in 1993. They played such a large part in my childhood, but as I became an adult and had my own family my visits were infrequent. I think we all run into that pattern of life as we live it.

You regret the time you might have been able to spend with your family, much more when they are gone. I apologized to Grandma once for this, and she simply said “Don’t worry about it honey, I understand”

As I approach 65 I am beginning to also understand. We have what we have when we have it. Live it that day, that week, that month. There is time enough to love if we take it, because it does not take much time to show it in the present. A hug, a kiss, a word, a touch. An unexpected tenderness or an emotion expressed. It’s better done now than wishing it done later. Believe me, I know.

I’m afraid from where I sit, I really don’t know much about the Universe. I’ll freely admit it.

The Universe is big beyond my imagination. It boggles my mind to even try and contemplate it. I watched one of those fantasy mock ups which takes you from our planet out into the Universe. Everything keeps getting bigger and bigger, while Earth gets tinier and tinier. There’s a star out there, they say, which will hold a billion of our suns. A billion! Damn…that just blows my tiny fist size compilation of gray matter.

It’s hard for me to believe that human beings have books that we wrote which tell us all about how the universe came into being and why. How the Universe was created. Religions say these books are divinely inspired. Maybe so. I won’t step on anybody’s beliefs, I promise you that. I’m for people believe whatever they want to believe and me believing what I believe and let bygones be bygones, and live and let live. I’m very tolerant about most things. I can’t stand loud boom boxes, and could do without constantly barking dogs, but even with those I’ll let most the instances flow by like a river as long as they are not too extreme. I despise human actions which result in harm to other human beings.

Science has come a long way over the centuries and we have what I believe are some relatively (no pun intended) simple theories about what makes the Universe tick. We think they are pretty deep and informative, but I’m not really so sure about that. What we think we know might not even be close to right. We may be way wrong. Humans are smart in a human way, but perhaps in a Universal way we are still just babies.

There’s umpteen theories about what happens to us humans after we die. We place a huge amount of emphasis on those theories. I think I’ve read about most of them. I’ve read about some of them extensively.

I lay there at night sometimes and I think, and I puzzle and I worry and sometimes I pray and sometimes I don’t. I try my best every day to do what my conscious tells me is right, especially over the past 5 years or so. I try to take care of my grandchildren in a kind way, and I love them and my children and all of my family. That’s about the best I can do.

So…I’ll take what I get when my time comes.

I expect at the very least to have a long peaceful sleep.

Jesus Christ

born 0- died 33 A.D.

A beginning which is celebrated as a world wide holiday, we call Christmas. A death…and resurrection, which is celebrated as a world wide holiday, we call Easter. The little (-) in between is everything he did and said in between those two most celebrated of holidays. There’s a lot of stuff in that little dash that’s really important, actually if you don’t go by all of the things that were said and done during that little (-) then the other two dates really don’t matter that much.

It’s the same for all of us. We all have a beginning and ending date. Go to the graveyards and cemeteries and look at the engravings on all the stones. Then, think about the little dash. That’s an entire lifetime of living. That’s the time that counts. That’s the days, weeks, months and years of our lives. The important stuff. Live it every day. Love it every day. Don’t forget to interact with kindness with those around you who are in their (-) living too.

One day when we have finished that second date…it’s not the number of years in between which will count, it’s the content of what happened during that (-) A lot can be done for other people if we want to do it. Very little can be done, if we are living selfishly for our own selves. Some people live a hundred years and never even approach what Jesus did in a mere 33. Consider it as you go about your daily lives. I’m trying to.

Washing the Car

I had a dream last night. In my dream, me and my brother Mike, Ted, Matt and Stacy were all over at the old house on seventh street. It was a beautiful day like today, and we all had our cars lined up on the curb of the road in front of the house. Dad had his bucket and his car washing “mitt” ready and we were all going to wash our cars!

Now, there’s really a lot of truth in that dream.

One of the Sunday afternoon rituals for many, many years was to wash our cars on nice sunny days.

We used to go over to Mom and Dad’s house on most Sundays for lunch. That was a ritual which began farther back than I can remember. We started that tradition when they lived on 8th street, back when our kids were very young. Mom and Dad moved to South Carolina for about five years and then moved back down to Georgia in the late nineties. After they move back we resumed our regular Sunday visits.

Mom would cook dinner most of the time, occasionally we would order some food, especially when Mom and Dad began to get older. Some days it was hectic, especially after mine and my brother’s children grew up and got married! But it was our get together time, our family time, our sharing time. Looking back from where I am now, it’s time that can never be replaced. Time which was as precious as gold. Only we didn’t know it then.

My Dad’s house was situated right next to the road, and his outside water spigot was near the front of his house. He always kept the right supplies right there on the edge of the front porch. A coiled up hose pipe, a bucket, a fuzzy mitt and a bunch of car washing liquid.

As I mentioned earlier, my brother and I would park our cars out front when our kids were little. If it was a sunny day, we’d break out the hose pipe and have a go at the cars. I was always the more reluctant of the two of us to wash the car, so I usually went last. After I was through, my Dad always did an examination of the car.

“You missed a spot here” he would say

I usually had, because I was in a big hurry to get it done. I’m not a big fan of hand washing a car. Car washes are more my thing. But I did it for Dad.

As my kid’s, and my brother’s children grew up we continued the “car washing” tradition. All the boys have at one time or another…and most many times, lined their cars up in front of that house and washed the road dirt off of them. Most of the time, we’d hook up Mom’s old vacuum cleaner with a drop cord and vacuum out the dirt too. We had clean cars.

I hadn’t hand washed a car since my since my Dad died in May of 2010. As I said, I’m more of a “car wash” kind of guy.

But in the dream I had last night, my Dad was chewing my butt out for letting my car get so dirty. I was first in line, since I’m the oldest, and I couldn’t get that damn car washed to my Dad’s satisfaction. “You missed a spot” he repeated again and again. And I had! Mike and Ted and everyone else behind me were getting mad. “Can’t you get that thing clean” I heard somebody say “We ain’t got all day”

I woke up with that last phrase echoing in my head.

So after I got back from eating breakfast with my brother and sister in law this morning, I got my bucket, my towels and my soap, and pulled my car into my driveway between my house and my neighbor’s house. I got my little step ladder so I could get the top good. I washed it one time, but I wasn’t happy. I had missed a spot. I washed it again, and then one more time after I had let the warming sun dry it out good enough to see the teeny tiny spots I had missed the second time. At one point, I thought I could actually hear a voice coming from my car saying “Oh baby…rub it right there”

Well…it WAS a dirty little car, after all.

Then I took the full size towel I had brought out and wiped that car down from top to bottom. I looked it over once, twice, three times. There were no spots. Not even on the windows, because I had done them inside and out.

I turned around to look, but my Dad wasn’t there to inspect my work.

At least not in person. I could hear him inside my head though: “good job son, I knew you could do it” Finally!

On days like this beautiful day, I sometimes wish I had continued to live in that old house over on seventh street.

Or maybe instead I wish this house I live in, in which I have lived in since 1987, had a water spigot situated more conveniently for car washing.

But that was then and this is now, and the one thing you have to know about life is that it changes, and keeps on changing.

I have two little dachshunds who sleep in their crates, their beds, in our bedroom. Every night when it’s bedtime I tell them “go to bed” and I break one of the little “snap” treats in half to give them.

These little wafers rarely ever break evenly, and I’ve always told them “first dog in bed gets the biggest piece” That’s always Hoosie, the smallest and oldest. Always most obedient, in this case anyway.

Daisy, the black and white piebald, always hangs back. I thought she was just less obedient, but I noticed the reason she hangs back is because she is waiting on my wife….her “Mommy”

So, there’s the conundrum. Should I be rewarding obedience, or loyalty? Obedience might one day save their life if the situation ever arose where they really needed to obey. Loyalty might do the same, or perhaps even go a step further and the stubborn loyalty might protect the “leader of the pack”

Both of these are qualities which we humans also exhibit. Which is the better in us? Should we be obedient, and if so, to who and under what circumstances?? Should we be unquestionably loyal, and if so how long, and to whom?

I decided with the dogs that I would just alternate nights of giving them the biggest piece. As long as both are being rewarded for what they perceive is their best quality then I don’t think they care who gets the biggest piece. After all, they are dogs and it really doesn’t matter to them. The only thing that would bother them would be getting no reward.

As for we people, I wish decisions which we must make could be so easily discerned. Nothing is ever that simple for us though. Too many nuances and careful considerations must enter into deciding who gets the biggest piece. A lot of times we still get bit on the hand too.

Time for me to close up my “crate” and get some sleep.

Because we are human, we look at things in a human manner.  We process everything  through one of our five senses.  We see the eagle fly through human eyes, hear the waves break on the seashore through human ears.  We feel the softness of a baby’s skin through human touch, and smell our morning coffee through our human noses…no matter what size they may be.  We taste the sweetness of honey, so carefully made by the bees, with the taste buds on our tongue.

Many things can fool our senses.  Plunge your hand into an extremely cold bucket of ice water, and you may at first think your hand is on fire.  Close your eyes and let someone give you something to taste.  You may have an extremely hard time telling what it is you’re tasting.

Although we are an extremely successful species, there are others whose senses of perception of the things going on here on earth are much better.  A silver Grizzly Bear can smell you from 18 Miles away. He can smell you from up to 48 hours after you are gone, and can tell if you were afraid or not. Fear apparently smells different.

There are animals who can see four spectrums of light instead of just the three we see. They can also see the ultraviolet light spectrum. It’s like having one of those UV flashlights built into your eyes. You could ascertain movement much more quickly, and could see the trail of chemicals most creatures naturally leave behind. You could track down practically anything.

Then, there are the Monarch butterflies who have generational inherited memory. Since their life span is only a few months, the information about the tiny spot they must migrate to in Mexico, while its winter time in North America, is somehow genetically passed on from generation to generation. Imagine being able to go somewhere your parents traveled during their lifetime, using their memories instead of your own.

There is much, much more to learn and much more to perceive in this world then we will ever have time to learn or perceive.

I’ve gotten to this point in order to make a much more important point, perhaps a much more controversial point.  The point is, that we are human and we look at things through our human perception. Everything we are, and everything we know, or think we know, is based  upon eons  of human perception which has been stacked up in our human brains, and evaluated through our human brain’s method of evaluating things.

When something is beyond our human ability to evaluate it and understand it, we come up with alternative explanations for those things we don’t understand. We put God into a box.

Yes, that’s correct. We put God into our human box.

We box God, or our creator, THE creator or initiator of all things, the creator of the entire Universe into our human box.

We here on this third planet from the star Sol, in the Milky Way galaxy, which is in the “local galaxy” group of galaxies, which are located in the Virgo super cluster of galaxies.  There are a lot of super-clusters in our part of the Universe, which is confined to furthest thing we can see in the Universe, which is about 13.7 billion light years away. It’s absolutely mind blowing to even try and imagine the number of stars in the Universe which might possibly harbor life. It’s beyond imagination to try and comprehend the size of the Universe.  Yet we put our creator into our human “box”

Oh, I am not assigning blame!  Far from it.  I am only seeking understanding and one of the many ways I seek to understand is by writing down my thoughts.  I used to do it on a blue ruled sheet of white paper, with a number 2 pencil.  Now, I peck on this keyboard and I think about things.  Sometimes, as in writing this piece, I go for weeks at a time thinking, then coming back and revisiting.  So, I am not assigning any blame, and I am not judging the way that anybody thinks or believes.  It’s only my opinion that we put God in a box.

More than likely, I am wrong about this thing.  I am not sure that any way of thinking, any human way of thinking, will ever be totally “correct”  I am not sure that we human beings can even really know the meaning of “correct” way out here in the back of the pasture, in our little corner of the Universe.  That being said, I think we have come up with some creative ways to think about things.

We think about how special each and every one of us is, and how different and unique we all seem.  We consider that God, or our creator, thinks about each and every one of us, and listens to each word of our prayers.  We have come to the conclusion that God is in control of everything in our world.  All of this may be true.

A God who is not in a box could do just about anything.  Without our human restrictions, there is no telling what God could and has done in this wonderful Universe in which we live, in this wonderful world in which we dwell.  There is a possibility that for each and every single on of us, there is a separate and equal universe in which we live.  There is a possibility that for each of us, there will be a separate and equal afterlife into which we will go when we leave here.  There could be quadrillions of parallel Universes, that could be functioning at the same time, just on different planes of existence.  Wait….

I lost my train of thought.

There could also simply be a creator who formed this world and made us in his own image and who sent his only begotten son to offer salvation to us, if we will only believe in him.  Is that boxing God in?

I guess I will think about this some more and one of these days, I will get back with you.

Or not.

The Pasture by Larry Bowers

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan’t be gone long. — You come too.