accept it: you don't accept it.

i don't like it when people say "i know  for a fact." drives me crazy. just like when people, especially athletes, say, "(blah, blah, blah)......know what i mean?" drives me crazy.



M.Scott Peck, american psychiatrist and author of The Road Less Traveled, brilliantly said in the opening of that ground-breaking book published in 1978 that, "Life is difficult. Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

the problem is, even those of us who accept it, don't accept it. even Christians who have the difficult life example of Jesus Christ don't accept that life is difficult. we might think we accept that life is difficult, we might say we accept that life is difficult, but (practically) nobody accepts that life is difficult. on the contrary, we think that life should be, if not easy, per se, then at least pretty nice most of the time. and when it's not, look out.

people mix up expecting life to be difficult and accepting that it is. i'm not sure that there's any worse confusion in all of life than that one.

expecting problems is one thing. you look around, you see tons of them, and you figure, sooner or later, some of them are gonna come your way. you expect them. but when they actually show up, you say, "why me?" and if you don't say, "why me?" you at least say (or think), well, dammit.

why dammit? why not, "life is difficult - and because i truly understand and accept that life is difficult, my life is no longer difficult. because now that i accept that this problem makes my life difficult, this problem no longer makes my life difficult." why don't we say that? 

because we don't believe it. and we don't accept it.



and i, for one, know that for a fact.  



know what i mean? 
 

what i really want

a synthetic life, bumping into

walls on your 

cell

phone. and people,

you

don't even 

see.



eating big box at red 

lobster or fri-

day's o'charley's pan-

era or

chili's texas road-

house ruby

tuesday's.


good-bye, ruby

tuesday.



shopping big box

this Christm, i mean....

holiday.



designers. custom.

high end.

surprise me, why don't you,

with a 

pie.



from your

kitch-

en.








  

step one: have a face.

"Remember when the news used to be delivered by a neighborhood kid, not by your phone?"

that was the question posed this morning by a website called The Good Old Days. and it is one of the best questions ever. and yes, it has everything to do with paris.



despite what we are commanded, it is hard to love someone you don't know. it is hard to thank someone you've never seen.

it is hard to leave a Christmas tip for the paperboy who doesn't exist.



it is easy, at least easier, not to care about people without faces. not to even realize they are people at all.



it is hard to tip a non-existent paperboy at Christmas.



but, it's easy to blow him up. 



 

 





 

why my profile pic is still my profile pic

there isn't anything wrong with changing your facebook profile picture to support france. there isn't. 

but, there is.

 

i know that every single person who has changed his or her profile picture to the red, white, and blue of the french flag has done so with nothing but the sincerest, most compassionate, most grieved, most loving intentions. i do not doubt that for one split second. and i appreciate it.

but, i think it's wrong.



color has become such a big deal. too big a deal. we have ribbons in every color of the rainbow. including the one in the color of the rainbow. 

women (and men) wear pink wigs. because.......pink wigs cure breast cancer.

 

changing your colors makes you feel empowered. lulls you into feeling like you're doing something, when in fact, what you are doing is nothing more than what you should be doing every day - being loving and supportive. why broadcast that you're a loving and supportive person only in the aftermath of a tragedy? 

and if red, white, and blue is loving today, then don't ever change it back to your regular profile pic. change it to reflect the next tragedy.

on the other hand, if your kid was killed in paris last night, and if seeing your friends bathed in red, white, and blue today (and for the next 3 or 4 days) doesn't seem like it's gonna do much to prevent somebody else's kid from being blown up here in the united states tomorrow, then writing a letter to barack obama, blasting him for being a traitor to all of western civilization, might. 



(don't forget to cc: your congressman or woman.)





 





  

pumpkins as decoration. and yes, the dreaded S word - starbucks

i just drove by the entrance to an upscale subdivision and its gates and pillars were seasonally (and tastefully) decorated with pumpkins. and i thought...........wait a minute.


in many regions across the country, front yards and front porches are sporting mums and pumpkins and indian corn and cornstalks. as if we're rural people. as if we're farmers. as if we're any more connected to the fields where those products came from than the man in the moon. if we were really tuned into the earth, we wouldn't be sitting in upscale cafes drinking "pumpkin" (yeah, right....nothin' pumpkin about it) spiced lattes. we'd be on the front porch, cuz it's hot in those fields. chuggin' lemonade. with water that came from the well.

i think it is disingenuous to have it both ways - pumpkins in a subdivision and lattes at starbucks. make a choice. quit fooling yourself with romantic notions. it's phony. it's like the set for a movie or something. cozy and cute.

and phony.



the plain red cup, however, is not phony. starbucks is not a Christian company. they make no bones about that. nor should they. they are what they are.



are you?









 

hearing voices

you know that still, small voice in your head? not the crazy one......the one that's God.


i didn't grow up being taught that the voice in my head is God but rather, that it was my "conscience" or my "common sense" or some other non-divine thing. i didn't grow up being taught that if it snowed on my birthday it was because God arranged that - i grew up believing that if it snowed on my birthday it was because the atmosphere and the temperature and some condition way out in the pacific ocean caused it to snow on a day that just so happened to be my birthday. sure, God could have arranged it to snow on my birthday, but He didn't. He had bigger fish to fry.

i was taught to vaccinate children, not to not vaccinate them and if God doesn't want them to get rubella, they won't get rubella. 

my parents told me that God helps those who help themselves. (no wonder they're republicans.)

my teachers told me to study. i don't recall a single one of them ever telling me to go light on the studying and big on the praying and if i do that, i'll end up valedictorian.

one of my mom's favorite pieces of advice was "do things in the right order. finish your education, THEN get a (good) job, THEN get married (if you want), THEN have children (if you want). reverse any of that and you're in a big mess." 

she never once said, "do whatever you want whenever you want, put the cart before the horse if you feel like it, just know that God will guide you and won't let you get lost." 

my dad is smart. he's one of the smartest people i know, maybe THEE smartest person i know. he loves the Lord, and he figures the reason the Lord gave him a good brain is because the Lord wants him to use it.

and he does.

and he taught me to use mine, too.



"God helps those who help themselves." THAT'S what was for dinner at my house - not beef.



but, as an adult, i have run into more and more people who rely heavily - some even solely - on the voice that isn't their conscience but the voice that (they believe) is God's.


i don't know how to distinguish the two. or if there even are two. and regardless if there's one or there are two, i don't know whose i am hearing. everyone else seems clear about who is talking. i am not.


everyone's talkin' at me/i can't hear a word they're sayin'/only the echoes of my mind..........



 

 

 

weatherism. and soup.

since it's the national pastime to be offended, i'm offended. i'm offended by people who assume i like sunny, warm weather. OF.FEND.ED.


people can. not. be. lieve. it. when they learn i like winter. i like cold, i like snow, i like ice. i like driving in it. i like being stranded in it. i. like. it.

no, you don't, they say. you don't like it. you might think you like it, but you don't really like it.

i do, i say. i like it.

well, they say, you wouldn't like it if you lived in minnesota.

i would.

you would not, could not in alaska.

i would. could! on a boat! with a goat!

in a box! with a fox!



i like it.



besides. soup in hot weather is no fun.


neither are green eggs and ham.

can we talk?

we communicate often. but not well.


the digital age has brought us in regular contact with people we would have never in a million years known or had the opportunity to "talk" to. (yeah, i know......never end a sentence with a preposition. sue me.)

to be able to see what ben carson tweets? what the pope just posted? to see the inside of tom hanks' house? to listen in while reba mcentire explains what happened to her marriage? UNreal.

and yet, for all that intimacy, we know each other, i think, way less than we knew each other back in the day when we didn't know each other. you're just not gonna convince me that talking on a computer is equivalent to a front porch with some lemonade. you're just not. 



i get up every morning and within minutes of checking my phone and my laptop, i have been around the world at least 3 times. i know what tie vladimir putin is wearing today and whether or not it has a spot on it. i watch videos of tsunamis and it doesn't matter what time zone anyone lives in anymore, all you gotta do is click.

i see the pictures of your kids and you see the pictures of mine. here you are at a restaurant, laughing and looking adorable, and there i am at a restaurant, laughing, and there we are at a restaurant, and there they are at a restaurant and, well, the restaurants must be happy.

i can count the hairs on your cat's head.

i know when your blood pressure is up and when it's down. i know how much you weigh. i know if you're gluten-sensitive, doin' the PALEO thing or the Jesus Diet, how big your pecs are, and if you died overnight, shocking us all.




  but to think.......i never knew you.

no, we really DON'T need one more cute picture of you behind the wheel

selfies are...........wrong. stop taking them.


i am turning over a new leaf. (well, as much as one can turn over leaves in georgia. Lord, what i wouldn't give for an entire woods filled with color.)

but, i am turning (notice the tense of the verb......i did NOT say "turned") over a new leaf. i am going to stop being so self-centered - as much as i humanly can given the fact that God made me (and you) self-centered and then said, stop being self-centered.

i don't know why God made us self-centered and then said don't be self-centered. would an earthly parent let a kid run wild (well, actually, YES......all the TIME).......but, would an earthly parent let a kid run wild and then when he starts running wild say to the kid, stop running wild? like i said, YES.....an earthly parent would. but not a GOOD earthly parent.

now, am i saying God is not good? no. but i AM saying He has an odd way of going about things.

be that as it may, making me (and you) self-centered and then asking us not to be self-centered is how He wants it, so how He wants it is how it should be.



stop taking selfies.