What is worth doing?

What can a lover of stories

offer the Author of All?

What can a philosopher and crafter of words

give to the Maker of his mouth and mind?

What can a thinker think up

for the All Knowing?

What can the drawer of silly cartoons draw

for the Artist of the skies?

What can one who loves to sit and ponder do

for the One who never stops working, doing and moving?

What can a man who divides his loyalties give

to the God who deserves only pure worship?

What can a man who's sin is always around him

give to the Holy God?

What can a man who loves God but hates life

teach his brother? Teach his sons?

No Compromise

i had a rambling introduction to this that was longer than some posts i write but deleted it. You should thank me. In its stead and memory i'm going to try an acrobatic maneuver i rarely attempt and should never be performed without a delete button... i'm going to attempt to get right to the point!

Relationships, whether they be political, corporate, nuptial, filial or divine are often full of compromise. That is not the point.

Compromise has two meanings. That is not the point either, but it's operative to the point. The first is for at least two parties to make concessions in order to reach an agreement favorable to both. Or to look at it through ol Ben's spectacles, a compromise is an agreement that leaves both sides equally dissatisfied. This is what most people, i gather, mean when they use the word.

The other meaning is to accept lower standards than are desirable. This, i'm afraid, is what most of us are actually doing. This too is not the point but it is the outstretched arms in which i hope to land the point. There is an alarming span of distance between two people coming together to agree on something and one person avoiding an argument by giving in. Most likely to be followed in true passive-aggressive style, by taking something later on and justifying it as 'owed' to them for being so sacrificial the rest of the time.

Now you may be sitting there thinking, "I don't do this! I'm not like that!" That's because you are the person someone doesn't want to argue with. All jabs aside, it may not be that you are a bully (though i'm not saying you ain't) it could be the compromiser is afraid of the topic or unsure how to broach it. The facts are there could be hundreds of reasons why we just give in and go along and we probably don't fall on just one side of the line or the other, we spend a lot of time on both sides. We may play the potentate at work but live in a congenial shell at home.

So what? We get along. Why should we care? Because if we're accepting lower standards then there must be higher standards in which we Could be living. If i gotta explain that to ya, i won't.

So what closes that alarming gap? What's the crucial difference between the two definitions? How can we stop living lies? How can we explore those higher standards?

Communication. Open. Honest. Communication.

Cliff diving

i hate vacations.

i'm not sure why i keep taking them. No, i do not have a job that i love so much that i can't leave it. Quite the opposite in fact. No, i don't vacation in Kirkut, Beirut or Somalia. No, that second beer while overpowering the handful of cookies in my stomach at the moment is not enough to bring more than a flush to my ears, it is in no way effecting my ability to form coherent thought, though i'm glad small children aren't darting in front of my keyboard. Impairment begins at the first drink you know. That just leaves the Sanity Clause, but you can't fool me, i'm too old to believe in Sanity Clause.

Besides which, my viewpoint of vacations might just make me the only sane person on this here rock. How? Lemme zplain it to you, Loocy.

Vacations suck for the very simple reason that they show you, for a very, very, very, very, excrutiatingly brief period of time how life should be and then... just when you are starting to settle into it, just starting to believe the fiction, just when you are starting to let that small spring at the back of your neck, the one that tightens with each person you do not kill that oh soooooo desperately needs to be beaten to death with whatever blunt object happens to be nearest to hand when they cut you off, say something totally rude or utterly ridiculous or just happen to breath the same air as decent folk, the one that winds a skootch tighter every time something ELSE breaks in the house you will never finish paying for, the little spring at the back of your neck that cranks down just another notch on your spine every time you wake up to the alarm clock and realize that that wretched audibilized version of a hernia that is yanking you from the four hours sleep you so desperately needed means you are NOT beginning another day pursuing the thrice blessed dreams that are rapidly running for cover in the cursed light of day like the cockroaches that they are but instead will be throwing your body, soul, strength, will and creative energy into the chipper/shredder that will crank out someone else's inane, self-serving dreams for another day, just when that spring starts letting out a little of the accumulated tension of a month's, year's, lifetime's worth of tightening and you are finally, FINALLY able to hear your own heart sing a Jimmy Buffettesqe tune of que sera sera without a moment's panic as to just que the hell is gonna sera, right at that moment, that moment before you throw all caution, luggage, barking rottweilers and mother's lectures to the wind and quit the path your on for the mad path conjured by that same tune and finally find out if it's possible to live like a man or woman created in the image of God...

you come back, sit back down, plug in, bow your head and retake the yolk that society has chained you to.

Now if you can come up with a cognizant defense for this madness then i'll laud you with the title of Less Crazy Than Me.

Ah, who'm i kiddin'? i'll just laugh and tell you why you're wrong. And it might begin with the popularity of alcohal. Pass the bottle will ye?