Writing for Sanity's Sake

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.

Whoever said words which motivated you. Words which made you love. Words which filled you with hope and gave you joy.

Whoever showed you compassion, or taught you compassion. Whoever let you know that to give is better than to receive, and a kind word is better than a hateful act.

Whoever told you that the light drives out the darkness and to treat each person as you would want to be treated. Whoever gave you cold water to drink and a warm hug to pass on.

I have seen so many posts again lately about the school shootings we have had over the past several years…since they took “God” out of the schools. I personally think that this particular line of thinking is pretty sad. Do we have a God, Jesus Christ in the case of Christians, who has gotten so mad and vindictive that the Courts of the United States ruled against having State sponsored prayer in school, that he is letting more little children get shot to death in schools to “get back at us?” What a pitiful point of view this is. I would want NO part of a God who would purposefully use the deaths of children to punish people. I really wish folks would think about what they are saying before they use this line. God IS in schools every day. In the hearts and minds of everyone who believes who take him there…no group of court can stop that. Prayer groups are still allowed in schools. American has become so diverse in nature, and in beliefs that we have to be neutral about what the Government can and cannot condone in schools. Live and let live.

If I were a stone of some type, I guess I would be a gravel. The kind they use in road paving, and to fill in mud holes. Utilitarian.

I could never be a gold nugget.

They are scarce and valuable. They are malleable and shapeable. They are extremely useful in so many things. Crowns of gold. Rings of gold that are used to bind promises of love.

Not a piece of silver.

A silver coin can lay in the ground for hundreds of years and then with a little polishing, can be as shiny as the day it was made. Silver is valuable. Circulateable.

Certainly never a diamond.

Shiny, hard and bright. A rare treasure. A stone to be cut and set in the most precious of objects. Jeweled scepters, and engagement rings for the stars.

No… Just gravel, with a coating of dust. Doing the job and getting it done. Filling the holes, paving the roads. Year after year.

I wouldn’t….I couldn’t, have it any other way.

To the night…sleep tight, all my loved ones and friends. Tomorrow we will find us a better day and maybe a better world. If not, let’s make the best of what we’ve got. Be kind to someone. Give if you can to those who have less than you. Hug and kiss your family. Love if you want to be loved.

And in your dreams, you may find solace…and occasionally perhaps a glimpse of wisdom. You may find true love, conflict and maybe betrayal. You may dream the idea that changes the world, a new paradigm for a new age….but then awake, and forget it all. Dream well this night…