The Hardest Parts

Just think, it all started a few days before my eighty-fifth birthday. Now, it’s a little over two years and over a hundred and fifty essays later! And, of course, I’m working on the next hundred. And, as I have told you before, each word is still hand printed on one of my trusty steno-pads before being typed into Word by my trusty one finger. Today I was told to put my feeling of this blog thing into words. That is how the title of this blog came into my mind. When I started to write this essay, the title word “Part” had no s after it. As I started putting this essay together I realized how necessary that last s was. My blog’s “first hardest part” was the day I was told to start a blog. You may remember, I had no idea what a blog was, having never seen one before. So, I had to learn! The “next hardest part” was figuring out what to call the thing. I did not want those readers to have the impression that it was going to be a know it all blog. My “third hardest thing” came when I had to come up with a description. How do I describe something that I had never done before? About that time I felt I had things all wrapped up. Then “hardest number four” smacked me between the eyes! I had my blog all ready to go, but nothing for it to say! That was the day I ask My Friend what I was to write in my blog. The day I was told to put my pen to the paper and start to write! I thought; what help that was? I had no writing experience, what could I do? So, I did as I was told, I put the pen to the paper and started to write! When I stopped writing I typed it into Word. I found my printing had translated into a page and a half which looked about right to me. I failed to mention, as I’m sure many of you know, but I didn’t, that to put things into Word you first have to choose your font and its size. That didn’t prove difficult enough for me to list it as a “hardest part,” but having to learn how to us Word certainly was. I had many never done before decisions to make while learning to publish my blog. Decisions like deciding how long I wanted each essay to be. After looking at the first one, I decided five to six hundred words was about right. I never liked long orations. I think I possibly give “the hardest part number six” to trying to decide what to call what I do. Although someone suggested “words of wisdom” that sounded a bit conceited to me. I’ve decided essays are my best description, because they are just my thoughts as they come into my head. It amazes me each time I think how much I sweat, just trying to come up with that first page and a half of words, for that first essay. Today I find pages of notes for more essays. My old English teacher would be proud of me today. I’m sure she felt that I had learned nothing. But, many decades later I’m finding many of her teachings, yes, the ones I thought so boring at the time, have come back to help me today. You may wonder why I continue to publish these essays today, it’s because of a man in Africa, readers in Canada, England, France, Norway, and Brazil, and that couple in Taiwan! I hope it starts you thinking. It sure does me. I’m sure I have all those “hardest parts” under control and it will be a breeze from now on! One more thing; please don’t tell me that you are too old to learn!

Shapeless Thoughts

I’m going to go back a bit in time. Back in 1997 artist Ray Charles and his backup singers recorded a song. I’m not real sure of the title, but one line in the song made a deep impression on me. That line was; Just a shapeless thought in the shadow of my mind. That one line made me wonder just how many of our thoughts lay there in the shadows forever waiting for us to shape and develop them? It has always been difficult for me to find that one thought and develop it. My mind has always been full of those thoughts hiding in the shadows and all waiting for attention. I guess my mind is like a packet of seeds each seed waiting to be sown. If you are a regular reader of this blog, I’m sure you have wondered why these essays have so many different themes. Many have started with only a one or two word headline, but that is the way those thoughts are put into my head. It usually takes only those few words to pull the rest of the essay out of the shadows. It seems my mind works much like the hard drive on my computer that needs only a few key words to start a search. Each of us has been given the gift of thought, but like our outward appearance we are all different. No two of us look alike or think alike. I’ve found that most of us need something to trigger those thoughts and bring them out of the shadows. Sadly some find that trigger harder to pull than others. Sadly the goal of organized religions is to control our thinking and our thought process. My belief is it is far more important to teach people how to think, than what to think. The goal of education should be creating a desire to find and use OUR thoughts each has hidden in the shadows, to find and share those thoughts for the good of all. Much of today’s thinking of our kids is directed towards letting others do the thinking and only standing by and watching other’s thoughts happen. Seldom do we find great ideas coming from the middle of the flock. Most often we find those ideas coming from the Geeks, the breakaways, the loners, the thinkers, and the ones that will not allow the distractions from others to get in the way of their thinking. Then many times those ideas are returned to the group for fine tuning. The genius is the one that can see those thoughts in the shadows that no one else has ever seen before. Our God has given each of us untold numbers of those thoughts hidden in the shadows of our mind, but each of us must have a desire to find and use those thoughts. As I talk to people, it makes me sad to find so many unwilling to open the lid of that treasure chest of thought that each of us has been given.

Typical

A couple of days ago I had a person tell me that he was a typical American. What he was really telling me was that he was right and if I didn’t think like him I was wrong! He was as much as saying that what his prospective of life was the norm or typical. But, from my point of view, he was far off in his thinking. Throughout my life others, including my family and my religious teachers, kept telling me that I was not typical. Little did they realize that I always looked upon those words as compliments! Most religions cater to those typical people. They are the ones who sit and nod in agreement and approval. They are the easy ones. They are the ones that don’t ask questions. They don’t make waves. Several times I was told not to return! Could it be that I ask too many questions or maybe, they did not know how to answer those questions. Or maybe they were only taught to teach “typical people.” I’m sure that if you ask each grand leader of each of the world’s great religions to define typical, each description would be quite different. Although each would probably agree that each of us had started the same way and would end the same way. Now, I’m going to tell you my answer to one of those “why” questions. When someone asks me the question;” why aren’t you typical like someone else”? And, if they haven’t already asked, I’m sure someday they will. I look them in the eye and then I tell them that if my God would have wanted me to be like that someone else He would have created me like them. We must realize that typical has different definitions for different people. The place we live, the way we speak, the way we have been taught, even our own standards and goals make a difference on how we view typical. Because, we usually use the word as a judgment tool, that typical is nothing more than judgment . All of my life, I’ve had people trying to teach me better ways to do things I didn’t want to do in the first place. Tell me why I would want to do them better? Just because that better for them seems typical for them, doesn’t make me want to change MY life just to make someone else think I’m typical. Since I started this essay I have become more conscious of how often we us this word in our everyday speech. I was shocked to find how many times we use it in describing our foods, our friends, and in life around us. It is fun for me to have a common used word brought to my attention and then notice the many times and ways we use it in our everyday world. Fun and excitement for me, often can be found in a single word, but you must realize that I’m not typical.

People Of All Faiths

All things must have purpose. So, why this blog? I’m not here to convert anyone. The purpose of this blog is to get people to start thinking, to ask questions, to expect answers, and to find a purpose for themselves. My reasoning for this is; I ask many questions of many persons, but receive few answers. Most of my questions are simple like; what did you learn these past few days, or what exciting thing happened to you this past week? Often the reply is “nothing”! Can anyone go seven days and learn nothing? Or, can a person live those seven days and find nothing exciting in their lives? Can anyone waste seven of those precious days that God has given them and come up with nothing? If my finger is pointing at you it’s time to start asking questions, isn’t it time for you to find a purpose in YOUR life! In the days of our fathers and mothers their worlds were much smaller. Most of their lives centered around an area not much more than a hundred miles in any direction, but today I can write a six hundred word essay, like this one, then post it on my blog and then suddenly it becomes viewable to BILLIONS throughout the world! Just think about that! Within less than a second those words can be seen and read on every continent in our world! We must remember that everyone doesn’t see that world the same way we do. I feel that it is important for us to learn how others see things and feel it’s important for them to learn about us. For many years people could hide things from each other, but suddenly with only the touch of a finger we see things happening in our world. And, many times just as they happen! Suddenly we find our religions are no longer our tribal leader, our religious leader in that building down the street. No longer is it just a local call to worship or people dressed in fancy robes while chanting hard to understand things. With but one click we suddenly see people of one faith killing people of another faith! Look, that’s real blood flowing down that street! If it happens close by, could that be my neighbor’s blood? Or, could it be mine! We have to start asking those questions. We have to learn more about the others beliefs, aren’t they our brothers and sisters too? Many are afraid to ask that simple one word question “why?” Are they afraid they will get an answer? But, isn’t it time to start asking? That’s the purpose of this blog! To wake you up! To help you to start asking that “why” question! We will quickly learn that today’s world is no longer that small world of our Grandparents. It enables us to learn and see how others live and think. Never in history have mortals had so much ability to receive answers, but you must ask a question if you expect to receive an answer! Religions without questions are nothing more than an unopened book! We all should be a part of, but we must know what we are a part of. We all should learn to ask that “why” question, but most important, we must learn to ask ourselves the same question! Your belief is unimportant to me. It’s the you inside that belief that’s important to me. If you have been told to hate me just because I don’t walk through the same door as you that makes me sad! Aren’t we all headed for the same exit door? I don’t understand why the different way we get there should make a difference. If you should need a hug, a hand on your shoulder, or a pat on the back, I’m not going to first ask your religion. That was the way some of our father’s old religions worked. Progress has shown us that way did not work! Please help me make each new day “a day of understanding.” Are we really that different? When we bleed isn’t all our blood the same color?

The Right Thing

Who do you let determine the “right thing” for you? I’m sure your right thing is different than mine. After all, didn’t God create each of us differently? Sadly, most religions believe their right thing fits all. Conformity is the basic goal of most religions. It seems that their main goal is getting all their members to think the same way. Yet God, the same creator of all religions, created each of us differently. Does this mean that our God created us differently so we could be made the same? Think of how boring our world would be if everyone was the same and thought the same. But, isn’t that really what most of our religions are trying to do to us? Each of us was born with some kind of an inner belief. We were born to be inquisitive; we were born with a need to know, we just needed to have some kind of an answer for things. Sometimes we call that answer “faith.” It’s basically we believe in things we cannot see. I believe that my God is invisible, and will always be. That way each of us can picture our Creator the way we see Him or Her in our minds-eye. Some will tell you that they can see their God as an old man with long white hair and a beard living someplace up in the clouds to be called on only when needed. I see my God as one who is always walking beside me, always there, never waiting for my call. I never see Him in a long white robe, maybe even sometimes in jeans, but never in a five-hundred dollar suit. Yet that same God you picture at the same time you picture differently in your minds-eye is as real to you as mine is to me. Being invisible does have advantages. Just because we live in different countries and worship our God in different ways and even call Him by different names doesn’t make one of us right and the other wrong. It just makes us different. It just keeps us the way God chose to create us in the first place. Could we both be right and just heading for our same final goals in different ways? Many times we allow our “right thing” to be determined by others. That’s the easy way, if things go wrong we have someone else to blame! We know in our heart that “one size fits all” will not always work. Our differences are what our Creator gave us. Doesn’t that make our being different our God given right? Something that really bothers me is; religious leaders trying to govern my life by rules they say were made for me thousands of years ago. Rules that were handed down, then translated, then opinionated, and finally used by our teachers who give us their prospective of those rules and state that they are all “words of God!” When my God speaks to me today, are His words less important than those words spoken thousands of years ago? My “right thing” is different than yours. I plan on keeping it that way. And, I hope you want to keep yours different too.

Differences

Most religions will tell you that they are right and all others are wrong. I like to find that starting point that makes ALL beliefs the same. Why do most of those beliefs have to start on a negative? Why do we have to start with I’m right and all others are wrong? Doesn’t everything start from that same Creator, the starter of all things? My goal is to find that starting point, that point zero and find something we all can agree upon. We know we all came from a man and a woman. Isn’t that a good place to start? Something had to determine who those two people would be. But, that is only a part of our story, the point zero for each of us. In that determination was also: our time, our color, our point of origin, the basic religion or lack of that we would be born into. If you are one of those that credit fate for all of this, please tell me what you think this fate thing is. I believe that all of this happened because the Creator, the starter of all things, determined that it was time for our point zero to start. I believe that each of us is a part of God’s Will! I believe that each of us is an important part of our Creator’s plans! Never ask “why was I born?” Accept the fact that we are important to our God, or whatever we choose to call Him! And then, run with it! If we all would spend as much time appreciating all of the good things in our lives, as we do looking for the bad, we would make a better world for ourselves. Maybe make a better world for others as well. For some reason we find it easier to find and say bad things about others than to take the time to find and say good things. It seems that we often are more attracted to bad. It always seems to stand out! My prison ministry helped show me that there was a lot of good even in bad places. In today’s world I find hate makes the headlines, but good seldom makes the front page. I find that it is far more important to find something that we can agree upon than to always want to argue. You may be shocked if you are bad mouthing someone and I ask you to stop and tell me something good about that person. I expect you to be able to look for good along with the bad. Opinions must be a two-way street. Judging limits that street to one-way! Most will agree that there has to be a creator, a starter of all things. Isn’t that a good place to start? No one can teach love by hating. We all must do the best we can with what we have been given to work with. There is differences and sameness in all things, but there is also that starting point!