Author: thegraymaniac

I’ve noticed a lot of folks are doing the daily thanks in November for the good things in their lives. I think it’s a really good thing, and I wanted to take a chance to give thanks for the wonderful things which I have experienced in my life. I haven’t been doing it daily, so this is my “one time” thing.
I’m very thankful for my family…my wife, children, grandchildren. My Mom and Dad, my brother. (And all of my other loved ones who are connected to the ones I have just named. I could name them all, but they know who they are! ) I believe my one major goal in life, starting way back when I was a teenager, was to have a family and to do the very best I could to be a good Father. I could have chosen baseball, or golf, or music, or a career of some other sort to be my main life goal…but I had a different scenario in mind. I am thankful for being able to experience so many fulfilling things through my wonderful, supportive family.
I give thanks, or course, for all of the other things most everyone else does. Life and a chance to live it. Living in a great country, where we at least still have the freedom to come and go as we like and to do many things people in other countries can’t do. Thankful that folks can still go to Church and worship where they want, when they want. Thankful for modern medicine, it saved my life. Thankful for advances in technology, which allows me to communicate with you! Thankful for so, so many little things: running water, books, refrigeration, friends, classmates, prescriptions, underwear, automobiles, you name it, and I’m probably thankful for it.
I am thankful for music and the influence it has had on my life. I haven’t been a “commercial” success like I thought I wanted to be, but I have enjoyed the love of music just for the sake of its beauty and the satisfaction it gives me to “make” it and to listen to it. Thankful for guitars too!
I am thankful for growing up in the small town of Trion, Georgia. I am so thankful that I went to school with the people who were my classmates. That small group are like brothers and sisters to me. All of us went through so many things together. Butt whooping’s, schoolyard fights, proms, dances, football season, band, term papers, tests, Ms. Roberts, Mr. West, playing basketball in the old gym, eating at the “Y”, having plays in the old theatre, fishing in the river, sneaking out of class, loving each other, and hating each other (sometimes, but not for long) Living in a small town meant being able to walk from one side of it to the other without having to take food and water to survive. It meant spending the night at your best friend’s house so much that their parents threatened to claim you on their tax returns. It meant playing “pick up” baseball every day during the summer, and “choose up” football every day during the winter. It meant watching the river flood our beloved school to the point of uselessness. It meant the Skating rink, and the one theatre in the Country were all the places you had to go for “proper” entertainment. It meant knowing which guys had the most “bad ass” cars in town. I’m thankful I got to play baseball and then golf. I had two or three of the best coaches a boy could have in Dugan Peace, Jesse Emory, and J.W. Greenwood. J.W. taught me that it’s better to be lucky than good any day. Ha! It was good, and I am thankful for all of it.
I am thankful I got to go to college for five years, and although I didn’t finish, the knowledge I received has served me well. I went to both West Georgia College and the University of Georgia. I am thankful I met my future wife there, and very thankful she decided she wanted to spend time with me. (And still is!) I am not proud that I didn’t graduate. It’s been a thorn which I and nobody else, put in my side and has stayed there for almost 40 years now. But, I am thankful it still pricks me at times when I start something and I am tempted not to finish it. It has helped me finish a lot of things I would have not have, otherwise. It helped me to encourage all of my children to finish…which they all did pretty much on their own without much help from me at all!
I’m thankful I took Typing II in High School instead of Shop. I made a lot of money typing College papers for other people, and learned about as much from that as I did from my classes. It also helped tremendously my ability to edit for incorrect grammar and spelling. Makes it easy to write these epistles on Facebook too!
I am also thankful for some of the things which I have experienced in life, for which others may think to be a little odd. I experienced the death of my first child, and though it was heart wrenching, I am thankful for her, and the fact that she lived and she was ours…mine and Paula’s. She paved the way for our other children and a deeper appreciation of them for me, than I might have otherwise had. I looked at them many times and thought of her and was extremely thankful that I had three other chances to be a Father. (For as I have previously said…I think it’s my purpose in life) Her death prepared me at a very young age for the realities of life, that bad things happen and you must overcome them lest they overcome you. I am thankful that even after 43 years I can still sit here and have tears fill my eyes when I think of her. It proves to me I’m still human.
I am thankful I had some hard, manual labor jobs at the beginning of my working career. They made me determined to look for better ways to make a living. They (along with my wife) shook me out of a rut I was in and might have stayed in, and gave me impetus to go on to better things. I am thankful that I eventually found some very good people for whom I enjoyed working. I am thankful for the people I worked with, both good and bad. The good ones confirmed my philosophy that there ARE more good people than bad in this world, and the bad ones helped build my character to withstand and persevere against things which are wrong, and to have some ethics in life. I am thankful for the very hard and nerve wracking battles I had against unethical peers, who only cared for themselves and not others…who only cared for the numbers and not the people, and I am thankful that most of the time I won…though not always, and sometimes at a heavy cost.
I am thankful that I have had enough financial resources to live life at a “good” level, though never at a “super-secure” level. (I am not anywhere near rich…and never will be) It has taught me that envy is never a good quality. It has taught me that some of the things I coveted turned out to be unnecessary, and that the wealthiest people are not always the happiest. It has taught me that I should have paid better attention in “Economics 101” at West Georgia. It has taught me to be innovative in order to survive, and to try and help others who have even less. (And there are many, many of those out there, believe me…I feel blessed for what I have in comparison to a lot of people in this country and in this world)
Finally, I will end up by saying I am thankful that our Creator has allowed me to enjoy all these things and allows me to continue to be here and enjoy them. Thank you God.

I believe when I first became conscious of being an individual human being, and of having a responsibility to become “something” to the world….something of consequence, I was very afraid.  I was not even a teenager when I first had these thoughts.  “What will I be?” “What will I do?”

I wasn’t obsessive about it, just concerned.

I dabbled around with music.  I have played guitar and sang.  I sang at schools and churches.  I sang and played at functions, at skating rinks and at dances.  But, I never became a “singer” for a living, or a writer.  I tried, but I couldn’t quite get it done.  I couldn’t drive the nail into the center of the board.  I couldn’t quite close the deal.  I wasn’t in the right place at the right time.  Lord, I wish there had been a “Voice” or an “American Idol” show around in the seventies, or even the early eighties.  I’d have sure tried to get on.  I’m not sure if I would have gotten in, but I’d have tried.

I thought about sports too.  Baseball mostly.  I had some talent there, and just didn’t pursue it past my teenage years.  I became enamored of golf, and although I never was nearly as “good” at that game as I had been at baseball, it suited my goofball nature better than baseball.

I thought about these things this morning while I was sitting on the couch, drinking a cup of coffee and looking over my “Ancestry.com” account.  If you have ever dabbled with that site, I don’t have to explain what it’s all about.  It’s a place where you can plug your name and some dates into a spreadsheet of sorts and from there you plunge headlong into your ancestral past.  I’ve been playing with it for a long time now.  I’ve traced ancestors from my Dad and Mom all the way back to nearly the Middle Ages.  It’s amazing how the information has evolved over the years since I first started meddling with it.  I have found everything from Civil war soldiers to ancestors who were on the Mayflower, to Kings of England.  Most of my ancestors are more mundane, however.  Farmers, mill workers, lumberjacks and jacks of all trades.  I was working on some clues for one of my ancestors who was born in 1840 and died in 1907, when it  hit me.  That’s the same exact number of years I have been on this earth.  Then the rush of time hit me hard in the face, like a tractor trailer going seventy five.  The lifetime of that particular ancestor of mine is my lifetime.  My years.  My current number.

I wondered what their dreams were when they were 12, or 15 or 18.  I wondered what their goals for their life had been.  I wondered if they had achieved them.  I cried in my coffee because all this time I have been looking at these ancestors, it has been from a cold, impersonal and technical way.  It’s been purely from an informational standpoint, and never from a human relations one.  They were not, and are not just a name and some numbers on a page.  They were people.  People who lived and died, loved and cried, built and tore down, sang and danced, worked and played.  People who did everything I have done, and will do.  Just in a different setting and a different format.

I wonder if someday there will be a man or a woman sitting around and looking at the research which I have done on this site and thinking:  “What the hell was he thinking?”

I hope perhaps instead, that the memories I have tried to instill in those loved ones around me will be remembered, as my Grandma used to say, “until I pass out of memory”  Once that happens, I’ll be just like my dear relative who lived 67 years, during the Civil War and much strife and pain in this country…..I’ll be just a name and a number on a page somewhere, or on a stone perhaps.

Reverie

When I was a little kid, I found that I didn’t always have to have another person to play with in order to have fun. I guess you might say, I had a vivid imagination. I created my own worlds to play in, and stayed in them for hours and hours sometimes. Many times when I stayed at my Grandparent’s home I would go up behind their house into the hills alone, and stay there most of the day. I would hunt for arrowheads and many times would find one or two. I made myself bow and arrow and shot them at invisible enemies. I dug into the red clay dirt and made a cave in which me and my gang of outlaws hid. I climbed trees….not too high because I was afraid of heights, but high enough. I took sticks and limbs which had fallen from the great high oaks and hickories, and built little cabins. I cracked those hickory nuts, and ate persimmons and liked them. I lived many lives there. Only the way my Grandmother’s voice carried in the thin mountain air served to draw me back into the reality of the world of others.

At home I also had my sanctuaries. The old river dam at Trion was a second home. I fished there with a cane pole pulling out many a tiny bream that my Dad would look at and judge and then say “throw ‘em back…too small” I went on my own many times to the jagged limestone rocks which jutted out into the river at many places and jumped from one to another, sometimes making it, sometimes not. I swam at the “boat dock” sometimes alone, sometimes with friends like my ol’ buddy “Barbeque” who lived on the same street as me. Countless times before I ever played organized baseball, I would play the entire World Series in my back yard. Throwing the baseball up against the rugged red bricks on the backside of our house, sometimes clipping the siding…much to my Mom’s dismay but drawing very little ire from my Dad, who seemed to understand where I was coming from. Playing with my dogs, especially my old buddy Lobo..who was a mix of just about every kind of dog a man could think of, and about as tough a fighter and survivor who ever lived. He was near death so many times, and brought back to life with Peroxide and love, you would think he had a cat’s nine lives. He taught me a lot about the will to live, and how strong it is in every living thing.

I also developed a knack of “inside the house” entertainment too. I would sit around and read comic books by the hour. Uncle Scrooge comics at first, and then graduating to Superman and Batman, and finally becoming excited about the “new” Marvel comic books which were coming out. Spiderman, and The Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, The Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man. I bought them all, just as soon as they came out and then followed them religiously. They were cheap, and it was what I spent my allowance on. If my Mom hadn’t thrown them all away when I went off to college, I might be rich today. I also loved books, and constantly had my nose stuck in one. If I was inside, I was reading. Listening to music and reading. I loved the big 33’s and bought the ones which were cheapest at the store. That means I listened to a lot of Broadway, since they were usually 99 cents versus 3.99 or more for the “Rock and roll” records. I can still sing most of the songs word for word. “Some enchanted evening…you may meet a stranger…” or “I could have danced all night, I could have danced all night and then have begged for more…I could have spread my wings…and done a thousand things, I’ve never done before” Yep…My Fair Lady, The King and I, Oklahoma, Camelot…and on…and on…I was a weird child.

I’ve done so much as a child, before my adult life started, even though much of it was on my on…inside my head, that I don’t feel like I was “cheated” during my childhood. I don’t feel deprived. I feel…normal. My adult life has been equally fulfilling. A lot of you have seen the pictures of my family. I love them as much as I appear to…believe me.

Now, I don’t know how other people feel…don’t know how they experience things. None of us do. We live our entire lives side by side with other human beings, but we have no earthly idea exactly what’s going on inside their head. We assume they process and navigate information the same way we do. That can’t be so, otherwise we would have a world full of people who are essentially alike. I think one of the things which has brought the human race to where we are today, is not our similarities but our differences.

We need to celebrate that fact. We are all a universe inside the frail body of a human being, and even after that body fails us that Universe will go on. Together we will go on.

Tonight the air has a bit of coolness to it. It’s the week before the first of September.

The first week of September. Traditionally, when I was a kid, this was the first week of school.

I know that nowadays the kids go back early. By now they have been back for a couple of weeks. They already are doing their homework, the band is practicing for the first football game. Humdrum has set in and they are already looking forward to Fall break. But, things weren’t always that way.

The week before school started back….in the fifties, and especially the sixties, was my second favorite time of the year, right behind Christmas week.

Baseball season was long over, and the dog days of summer with their ninety degree days were starting to subside. Boy, was I glad!

What started out on May 31 as enthusiasm for a long break from the regimen of learning, ended up as loneliness by the middle of August. I’d read all my comic books two or three times each. I’d listened to all my 45’s over and over, until I knew all the words to all the Elvis songs by heart. Even “Just Tell her Jim said Hello”.

I was stuck in the house listening to my Mother tell me all the things she needed me to do over and over and over….

So, when the last week of August rolled around and Daddy asked me if I wanted to go pick up some school supplies, I was ecstatic.  School was starting back!  It was for real and not a drill!  Soon, I’d get to see all my friends again, get into a comfortable daily routine, and get out of the house for 8 hours every day.  Don’t tell anybody, but I really loved school.  I know that’s weird, but I did

There were no Walmart’s back then, so it necessitated a trip to Sears and Roebucks in Rome.  Daddy always liked going there anyway to look at shotguns and such, and Mom liked it because they had a large inventory of clothing back in those days. Back then Sears and Roebuck was the equivalent to a shopping mall all rolled in to one store, and if they didn’t have it in the store, you could order anything, and I do mean anything, from their gigantic catalog.  That regular Sears catalog weighed about 12 pounds, and was 6 inches thick.  I never liked the regular catalogs, but oh the Christmas catalog!  When they sent that wonderful, gorgeous Wish book out sometime in late October, I could spend hours upon hours gazing lovingly and longingly at all the treasures it contained.  Somewhere, packed away now, I have a 1963 Sears Christmas catalog that I bought some years back at Trade day.  I sincerely wish I could find it and thumb through it again.  Ah…the memories.

But, back to school supplies.

When I first started to school back in the fifties, we were instructed that we need yellow #2 pencils and “wide rule” notebook paper.  My Daddy would buy several packs of the yellow pencils.  In the depths of my memory, I think the pencils were made by Dixon Ticonderoga.

The pencils we had in the first through the fourth grade were excellent pencils.  It seems like one of those fine deep canary yellow instruments would last a month, and the graphite was extremely hard to break.  This would have been 1955-1958. After thinking about it a little bit, I looked it up and found out that they hand made the pencils up until 1958, when they started “mass producing” them.  Well, there ya’ go.  After the fourth grade, I went through a pencil a week, sometimes one a day.  You could sharpen one of the mass produced pencils in one of those super sharp grinding sharpeners, which hung on the walls in all the rooms and sometimes you had to sharpen them three or four times to get down to some lead that wasn’t already broken.  I trace the decline in American education and the reputation of American made goods being superior to all others, back to those pencils!

I found a package of old Dixon-Ticonderoga pencils at Trade day a few months back, which came from the early 1950’s.  I’m saving them for the apocalypse…if and when it gets here.

Of course, being kids, we would eventually “push the envelope” in our later years in grammar school and use the frown upon #3 leaded pencils, and even….sin of sins…would sometimes use the #4’s if the teachers didn’t notice.  That graphite in those pencils was as hard as a rock, and the subsequent handwriting on the paper was very light!  I remember one of our seventh grade teachers swearing that we were trying to make her go blind straining to read our papers.  Most teachers simply outlawed the use of the lighter pencils for any school work.

Along with the good old yellow #2 pencil, there was “Blue Horse” notebook paper.

Being from Georgia, we were inundated by Blue Horse products, because the manufacturer, Montag was in Atlanta.  Blue Horse had one of the neatest marketing ploys ever!  There was a picture of the Blue horse on every package of paper you bought from Montag, worth a certain number of points.  You would cut the little blue horse out, and save it, until you got enough points to send them off and redeem them for a prize!  Back in early 50’s, Montag put out a price paper that had “over 50,000 prizes for all you girls and boys”  Those prizes ran the gambit from a tiny little beanie (which I finally saved enough points to get one year) all the way to the “horse head” blue horse bicycle for the top rewards gatherer.  Schools also would get money for students sending in premiums for prizes to Montag.  As you can imagine, the blue horse brand of paper was quite popular in the 50’s and 60’s with both student and school.  I remember kids going around and begging and bullying to get those blue horse heads!  I hid mine until I had enough to get that beanie.  It was a piece of junk that fell apart in a couple of weeks.  Quite a disappointment.  But it was good paper, and you could count on it to fit into almost any notebook, because of the way they punched the holes.  The paper sold for a nickel a pack and contained about 25 5-hole punched sheets, allowing it to be conveniently placed in either 2 or 3 ringed binders.

Later on, they also sold wire ringed notebooks with some really hard colored cardboard on both sides of the paper.  Those things lasted practically forever!  I remember keeping a really thick one of those notebooks all the way from the 8th grade to my Senior year, in which to keep my personal notes and other things, such as doodles, drawings, poetry and genealogy notes.  I kept that notebook for many, many years….right on up until somewhere in the late 70’s to mid 1980’s before it fell to the wayside somewhere.  It might still be lurking around somewhere in a box in my storage building or somewhere else quite obscure.  I wish it would turn up, because I know there are some great memories hidden inside.

I think I had an episode of near insanity today at work.  I think it was due to what I was doing at the time. Because it’s all so absurd!  I was standing there this afternoon in this clerk’s office talking about doing DCR’s on CAR’s, and all that kind of stuff (and if you know what I am talking about….poor you!) and then I thought, this is crazy!

What has humanity come to when we place such importance on doing documents on how to produce rugs at the optimum quality to go into people’s bathrooms?  Not only documents, but entire Manuals, thick manuals at that!   Heck, the first time somebody puts them down, they just gonna get pee’d on by their six-year-old.  It was so stupid, and hit me with such a weird feeling that I  had to physically grab hold of the desk where I was sitting to keep from jumping up and  running down the hallway howling and whooping at the top of my lungs.  (I restrained myself, however)  It was a surreal experience.  I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone almost and that I was not really real, but just living in a kind of strange and hideous netherworld.  I hope I never feel that way again, honestly!  It was disconcerting.

Back in my Grandparents time, people worked the land for their food.  They had cows and chickens and other animals to help provide what their family needed.  Grandma made most of the clothes, and a lot of other things that were used by the kids.  There may have been three or four other books in the house besides their old worn Bible.  Everyone was kind of left to their own imagination for entertainment.  Guess it was really kind of boring, honestly.  It was simple anyway.  Maybe simple is good!  Maybe simple is the setting for which a lot of us are pre-set.

I don’t know exactly when the change happened.   I think maybe right after World War II.   Things have surely changed though.  Technology keeps making giant strides forward like some kind of possessed behemoth running amok here on the Earth like something out of H.G. Wells, trying to take us over.  It’s like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, only WE created the alien technology, it didn’t come in a pod from outer space!

We have gone from the agrarian age, that age of simplicity and “boredom” (which equals out to time to do things we can’t find time to do today) to the age of information ( which equals out to NEVER having time to do everything we think we NEED to do)  in a space of 60 years or so.  From my weird experience in the office I am almost positive that our brains (at least some of our brains, mine included) are unable to absorb the pace of technology that has run over us like a steamroller on hot tar.  It’s flattened a lot of us!  I use a computer; as a matter of fact I am using one to write this.  But if you put a gun to my head and said tell me how it works or I will shoot your brains out, I would have to say “Is pushing the Start button a good enough answer?”  I can’t tell you how MOST things work, I only just learn to use them out of the necessity of not being left behind in the dust by the scads of younger folks who want to climb over me on their way up the corporate ladder!

I am afraid I have bought into this unreality though.  I use DVD players and Nintendo’s, and Computers to play games, and to work and sell things on EBAY, which is a place for selling things in which the customer never gets to touch or feel the merchandise until AFTER they buy it!  I use Satellite Radio, my car diagnosis itself for problems and tells me when it needs to be fixed; my Mom has a pacemaker that the Dr. can adjust by holding the phone up to it.  And on and on and on we go!!  Woo-hoo what a crazy ride!

I wonder now, if we could go back 100 years, after having a taste of this “Brave New World” would we?  Before Jet planes and electric guitars, would we?  Before electric shavers and microwaves?  Before Atomic bombs?

I don’t know about you, but if the Big Red Button was sitting in front of me that said “Go Back”  I don’t think I would even hesitate a second before I pushed it.  Would you?  At least I think it would keep me from running down the hall someday at work, in a fit of insanity hooting and yelping like a hound dog!!

We have one of those Amazon “Alexas” and from time to time I’ll holler “Alexa play songs from:  ”  and then just choose an artist I want to hear and she’ll start playing the songs.  I asked for songs by the group “Chicago” today while we were in the kitchen messing around.  I’ve always loved them.  In my list of favorite groups they would have to be #2 behind the Beatles.  I’ve always loved their songs…especially with the brass in the background.  It always makes me a little sad at the same time too, though.  Hearing that “band sound” always reminds me of a lost opportunity to do something I really wanted to do.

I always loved music when I was a kid.  I sang, and played guitar and I could “pick up” tunes and play the chords for them and sing just “by ear”  I never learned to read music though….still haven’t.

In the seventh grade in school, in the spring time was the time for band tryouts for the next year.  I always wanted to be in the band.  I’d looked forward to it for several years leading up to that time when I might be able to join.  I did all the sign up stuff and tryouts on the instruments and was told that my instrument would be…..a clarinet.  A clarinet?  That was a surprise, as I’d always supposed I’d be a trumpet guy, and I liked the fact that there were only three buttons on top of a trumpet.  The damn clarinet looked like something from outer space with all of those buttons and places to press down.

I gave it a try though, and I finally got some sound out of it.  So, we then went on to have some practices.  They put a sheet of simple music in front of me, and after going over what it meant a couple of times, we had to try and play.  I couldn’t discern heads or tails out of that sheet of music with all of it’s notes and squiggles and dots.  Other people didn’t seem to be having as much trouble as I was having, so I figured it was me.  I was such a dummy I couldn’t learn to read music.

I followed along for a couple of weeks by ear.  If I heard it once or twice through I could replicate the melody pretty closely.  I wanted to ask about the music though.  I wanted to get somebody to teach me how to understand it…how to “read” the music.  I was too embarrassed to ask the band director though.  I got increasingly frustrated as we got new music.  Finally, a few days before school was out, I went to the office and dropped out of the band.

In hindsight, I wish I had asked for help, and if not I wish I had stuck with it even without asking.  I think I could have “faked it” good enough to stay in the band, because once I learn a tune…I don’t forget it.  Maybe if I had stayed until band camp the next year, they would have stuck me on the bass drum…cause I was a big guy.  I supposed it wasn’t meant to be though.  At least I got to try.  My poor Paula wanted to play in the band at her school in Maryland, but didn’t know what to do to sign up.  They had nobody there to even ask them if they wanted to play…no adviser or teacher to guide them in how to sign up for band.

So as I listen to the brass play in the background on “Saturday in the Park” I wonder what might have been if I’d been a little more assertive and if someone had been there to tell my wife, “this is how you sign up for band”

We lived band careers vicariously through all of our children, I suppose…..but it would have been nice to have been a “part” of something during my High School years.

I guess there are advantages to being a “lone wolf” too…….

We are all Children of the Earth, regardless of what you personally believe concerning creation, or evolution, or anything of the sort.

I often wonder why we humans set ourselves above nature, above other forms of life and consider ourselves to be the only spiritual form of life here on Earth.  After all, if you believe in the Bible, you will know that Genesis says: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”  Notice he just did that for man….not for woman.

The book of Common prayer says:  “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother “Any man”; and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him and give him peace. Amen.

The same type of thing is mentioned in the Apocrypha, Sirach 10:9

If one is not of a religious bent, but purely scientific, I believe it would take even less convincing that the components of our body are transformed into some other form of matter once the spark of life leaves us.  Matter is not created or destroyed, it only changes form.  If you are buried, or if you are cremated…if you are given to the sea, you will eventually return “to the Earth”

Many times when I am standing in a natural setting, such as I was this morning, on a solitary, circular track, in a thick and hazy fog, with just the sound of the birds and crickets, I feel as if I am in just as sacred a spot as St. Peter’s Cathedral.

I’m in touch with creation, I am in touch with God….

I am a child of the Earth, just like every other creature who crawls, swims or walks on this globe.  And one day I will return to it.  No matter where the spirit within me goes, I feel like it will be at peace.

I’m still a follower of Jesus.

I still read my Bible.  For the most part I concentrate on the gospels.  You know….Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  I’ve looked in them recently for any verse in which Jesus advocates war.

There are a lot of verses about swords.  That was the prime weapon of the day and age in which Jesus lived.

In Matthew 26:52 Jesus said to Peter: “Put your sword back in it’s place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword”

Famously, in Matthew 10:34  Jesus said that: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”  This certainly sounds ominous when cherry picked, but when read in the context of his exhortation to his disciples in the entire chapter, one can immediately see that Jesus is speaking of himself as a sword which will divide the world into faction of believer-vs- nonbeliever:

35 “For I have come to turn `a man against his father, a daughter
against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law –
36 a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’
37 Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me
is not worthy of me;
anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me
is not worthy of me;
38 and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me
is not worthy of me.
39 Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Thus not telling people to go to war, but telling them that the war they must fight is internal, a war of acceptance that a person must fight against himself and all others with the love for him winning out against all other loves.

But Jesus never advocated war:

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

So, when I see a pastor from a huge Southern Baptist church in Dallas saying that God has given the president of the United States “authority to take out Kim Jung Un”  I have to wonder where in the Bible he gets his information.  Perhaps God is speaking straight to him.  But, mostly I think he’s incorrect.

I’m not too sure a lot of the things that are being said are Christian in nature or intent.

I’ve come to the point where I have quit calling myself “Christian” and simply say I am a
Jesus follower.

I still believe.  I just believe differently than I have believed in the past.

I believe in love over hate.  I believe in treating other people like I would like to be treated.

I also believe that Christianity has been kidnapped by some people in an effort to either enrich or empower themselves during their human existence here on Earth.

That’s not what it’s all about.