Author: thegraymaniac

It was a beautiful, flawless day today. One of those days which are as rare as diamonds…or better yet as rare as a sapphire, because the sky was sapphire blue with tiny white inclusions we call clouds.

Up at Mentone on the brow for Colorfest, an already beautiful venue turned into a cross between a carnival and a fair, with the magic smell of kettle corn and barbeque. Hustle and bustle as folks stroll the vendors looking for treasures. People walking their pups. Leaves starting to turn, and fresh smelling air.

Oh people, please forgive me for having a care about anything else besides the beauty this world offers, and the chance to commune peacefully with the people who

populate it.

I saw not a frown today among the people, I heard not a coarse word…except against the myriad of yellow jackets feverishly working their fall schedule, and I wondered, wondered really hard, what would it take for our lives with each other to always be this way?

What sorcery was there afoot today which was able to mix football fans from four different SEC schools together in peace, even though many were wearing their tribal garb? Was it an early Christmas with good will to all men?

I pray…yes me, I pray that God took a snapshot of today’s conflagration, and is pasting it in his scrapbook for future use….please.

From the book of John in the New Testament, KJV:
41 Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. 42 Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. 43 Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. 44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. 45 And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. 46 Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? 47 He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.

After reading this, I had to think for a little while.  Who is it in this day and age who tells lie after lie after lie, electronically broadcast to millions and millions of people every day through “social” media?  You know don’t you?

Matthew 6:24 says the following:

“No man can serve two masters: for either he
will hate the one, and love the other; or else
he will hold to the one, and despise the other,
Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Mammon is money, or the representative of money.  The Jews of Jesus’s time were told they must honor God by making donations of their “mammon”  Thus the interpretation of the world.

Who is it that serves money in this day and age? Prosperity gospel preachers, politicians, the leader of the United States.  Plainly this verse, plus many others in the New Testament bear witness to the fact that it will be harder for a rich man to “pass through the eye of the needle, then to enter into heaven”

That’s a hard test.

So very many in this day and age are turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to lies and saying that many of those lies are “of God”  They are stating that the person committing most of the lies is “from God”  I certainly don’t believe the man being referred to is “of God”

So very many are serving Mammon, and turning their eyes away the words of Christ.  I have to think it will be to their detriment in the end.

 

I think tonight. But only that. Of words which I cannot speak. Words of sadness.

Aged beyond maturity in the recesses of my brain. Turned to vinegar instead of wine.

Unshareable.

This is my last stopover, before I move along.

I just dropped in here for a few lovely years,

To see what was going on.

In the end, the stars and the Universe will be my final home.

I just dropped in here for a few lovely years, and

Soon I will be gone.

Gold and silver are dropping. They are dropping so that the super rich, who understand the monetary secrets of the world need to control more of it. It all reminds me of the upcoming yearly classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” There is much, much more to this movie than just the obvious. At one point Harry Bailey is talking about the panic which is hitting the banks….the depression era. He says: Can’t you understand what’s happening here? Don’t you see what’s happening? Potter isn’t selling. Potter’s buying! And why? Because we’re panicky and he’s not. That’s why. He’s pickin’ up some bargains. Now, we can get through this thing all right. We’ve, we’ve got to stick together, though. We’ve got to have faith in each other.

But, that’s not happening is it? The media continues to divide us. The political parties keep on dividing us. They make us hate each other. Hate. We cannot stick together and have faith in each other while looking at each other through the haze and fog of hate which is being spread by the ultra-rich owned media. Our politicians are simply pawns of the power of the money behind them. Look at gold and silver, dropping. The rich and super rich will be buying while the rest of the world panics over the instability of a financial system built on “smoke and mirrors”

Today there are sick people who are having serious health problems, perhaps even having surgery. Think of them, and pray for them if you are a praying person.

There are people who are hungry, feed them if you can.

There are people who are burying loved ones, wish them peace.

There are people who are fighting wars, wish them understanding.

For those who hate, wish them love.

For those with who you disagree, try for resolution.

Because all of humanity are passengers on the same ship, and traveling in the same direction. If something happens on the ship, then we all go down together.

Humility is a virtue, and pride cometh before the fall.

It is ironic to me that Columbus has a federal holiday just the same as Lincoln and Martin Luther King. It’s actually worse than that really. We were taught in school how Columbus was a great explorer and hero. In actuality Columbus never thought the world was flat. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand never thought the world was flat. Columbus was after..wealth…fame, and a lucrative trade route. He stumbled onto a new continent and so.. he got the fame, and he got slaves on his subsequent trips to the Americas in in 1493 to 1496. He had his men cut the noses and ears off of the Lucayan Natives so that these natives, who had been so friendly with him on his first voyage would get the message that he meant business. He demanded their woman as sex slaves for his men, and because he had seen the natives wearing gold necklaces on his first trip…he demanded GOLD. The natives rebelled, and Columbus and his men went to battle with them, and slaughtered them. Many of the bodies of the Indians were fed to dogs…some still alive. Not getting the gold he wanted, he took 500 back to Spain as slaves…only 300 survived the trip. He came back on other trips to find that gold…but it eluded him, falling to subsequent Conquistadors to find it instead.

As a first grader we had a play about Columbus. One of my friends Terry Roberts played Columbus. I played one of the Indians. I’m glad I was on the right side.

Columbus doesn’t deserve a holiday. He deserves for History to be corrected and show him for the bad man he really was.

The band festival today made me a little nostalgic. I’m there watching my two granddaughters, who are 15 and 16 years old. I’m looking around at the people with band shirts on from my home town and I realize….I don’t know a lot of them! I remember the years when my own children were in the band and we went to these festivals. Wonderful fall tradition of cool mornings and warm afternoons, of trees with leaves turning red and gold in all different shades. Memories of the hamburgers grilling on the gas cookers, smoke filling the air. The great festivals we used to have at home, with all the camaraderie, and all the work! All day long stuck in a soda trailer selling cokes, and snacks to hungry band kids from all over Georgia. Wonderful wispy remembrances. I wonder where that time went? Now it’s the turn of other, younger parents to do the things that need to be done. I see a young man sitting in front of me, pony tailed and sun glasses pushed up on his cap full of life grinning at the band and the girls. He’s probably seventeen maybe. I wonder, how does it feel to be seventeen? I don’t remember. Actually, I don’t remember feeling any other way than I feel right now. Funny isn’t it? I know I’m not seventeen, but since age overtakes you a day at a time, a month, a year, you grow older and you feel as if nothing has changed. Yet you don’t remember seventeen. I see the changing of the season and the colors of the leaves and the crispness of the air and I still enjoy it so much. I just won’t enjoy it for as many more times as those young ones out there on the field today. I’ve reached my Autumn and though I still THINK I feel the same as I did back in 1967, I know I’m getting a little tired, and the body isn’t going to recover and make the comebacks like it used to. And really, I’m ok with that. I honestly am.

If whatever you do, or think, or feel does no harm to others then do not be ashamed. if your actions make you happy without harming another human being, then those actions are not wrong, no matter what anyone tells you.

You cannot be charged for a crime for what you think. Its only when you express a thought that hurts or harms another individual that makes you wrong.

The philosophy of living a decent life is not as complicated as we make it. For almost every question, the simplest answer is usually the correct one.

My utmost respect to those who practice the

philosophy of love and non-violence as a way of life.

Where have all the flowers gone? I thought about the Peter, Paul and Mary version of this song the other day as I was playing another one of their hits “Puff the Magic Dragon” on my guitar where Eli and I could sing it together. Eli had learned the song at school this year, and I wanted to do it with him. It’s always been a “magic” song for me, because I learned the three finger “picking” method from it.

That was in 1967, and here I am almost 50 years later…and can still just pick up my guitar, and with a couple of minutes practice, it all comes back to me…..

All of those fall nights when I was 17, and had all the basic normal dreams that any seventeen year old might have. Senior year, and trying to figure out what great and important things the future held.

I knew nothing. I still know very little, compared to the overwhelming amount of sheer knowledge there is in the world to accumulate.

What I mainly do know, and have learned in those fifty years is that it’s much more important to sit down in your bedroom and play and sing “Puff” with your five year old grandson (and granddaughters….since I repeated it with Rue and Evie on Friday) then it is to worry about things over which you have little or no control.

It’s better to read them books, and tell them how much you love them.

What’s more important to you?

After Eli went home, after we had finished singing “Puff the Magic Dragon” I prayed that he and Rue and Evie will see more days of happiness in their lives than they can imagine. I wished that their generation can find the answers to the questions that really need to be asked. There are so, so many of those questions.

Then I sat down and started singing: “Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing…..”