Sex

Sexual intercourse is about several things. First it can be  pleasurable. Secondly it’s a way of expressing love. Third it is about ownership. 

When two people have sexual relations with one another they’re giving one another a deed. It’s a deed to themselves at the deepest level. You now own me and I own you. We rarely think in those terms especially when we fail to think about sex beyond its pleasurable aspects. Yet we see its negative side in the jealous acts of a sexual partner who becomes obsessed and tries to jail his/her partner to hold fast to their deed. 

Sex is much more than a pleasurable activity it’s about ownership. When that ownership claim is handled lovingly it’s a beautiful thing, it’s a life time committment that creates life and creativity. When the deed to another person is claimed in an improper way it’s an ugly thing, it’s a selfish thing and it destroys life.

When the pleasurably side of sex seeks multiple sexual partners the deed becomes complicated. Rather than one person having free and clear ownership it’s as if there are many owners as in a time share to a vacation home.  Time shares are complex things and subject to wide-spread abuse. Families get messed up and children are harmed in untold ways.

As you can see I’m still trying to sort the ramifications out in my mind.

I’m back

Three and a half months ago I felt called away. I realize to many people this sounds like an excuse or even worse the voice of a total flake. Yet I can assure you I was turned away from this blog to write 197 brief stories of a different nature. Over the past few days those stories seem to be coming to an end and my blog style writing is back on my mind. No I’m not hearing voices but as I wake up in the morning ideas come to me.

Except when my mornings are rushed I wake up slowly. It’s a period not so much of prayer as most people think of prayer but a time in God’s presence. It’s not a lot of words, nor is it “Dear Lord please heal so and so, and what do you want me to do about this concern today.” It’s just knowing I’m in God’s presence, he’s close by and we are laying on the grassy lake shore looking at the clouds together. Then ideas come into my mind and we think about them together and after a while I get up and write about them.

The ideas I’ve been writing have a different feel than the ideas I blog about. They’re more fun; more about fun things and life on this side of heaven than insights into deeper things.

Today I felt I needed to blog again. This one will be followed by another one. Where I go from here will depend on what appears in the clouds.  For now I’m back on this side of the planet.

Crisis People

I go to a lot of Christian programs, events and functions and frequently someone stands up and says: “Take on a project that is so big it’s certain to fail unless God intervenes.”

What these people fail to add is that God presses us beyond anything we can imagine and usually only shows up way beyond the point we can handle. We say he’s never late but when we are all hung out there to dry or die alone it feels like he’s abandoned us. He’s the same God who made Sarah wait until she’d celebrated her 80th birthday before he allowed her to get pregnant.

My point in this is most people are crisis oriented when the temperature rises above 72 degrees and they panic. I see them all the time and they want me to bail them out. My name isn’t God. If you weren’t prepared to fail or to wait on him till you were 80 why did you start to begin with?

Just a minor complaint.

Claustrophobia depression

Every winter I suffer from Seasonally Affected Disorder; in other words depression. Except it hasn’t hit me yet this season and I’m three weeks later into the season than usual. The only difference I’ve noticed about this year as opposed to all the others is the shortage of snow. Today is February 4th and there is no snow on the ground.

By this time every other year I’ve felt the walls closing in on me. Claustrophobia is my primary source of depression and the open winter while nearly as cold as others doesn’t feel as restricting.

There are numerous sources of that closed in feeling including three consecutive days of rain, power outages, small and crowded spaces, airplane cabins and unresolved sin, but none as prevalent as winter with its dark days, cold temperatures and snow.

While I hear people praying for snow as if it’s something to be desired I’m never among them, not even for Christmas. As the television advertisement says “Depression hurts…everyone.” It’s as if the coffin lid is closed and nailed shut with me inside. The hopelessness is deafening. The darkness comes from inside me to meet the darkness invading from outside.  If you’ve never felt it creeping up on you as the season progresses you are indeed fortunate. Medication helps but only helps to a point as the depression stalks me minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day until the weather breaks with the arrival of spring.

I praise God for this open winter, for these three additional weeks of sanity; these three weeks of being able to breathe and experience life. It’s an amazing gift I’ve never experienced in February.

Middle age.

For Methuselah middle age was 484.5 years old, for Abraham it 87.5 years old. We don’t really know when we’ve reached middle age. Of one thing I pretty sure I won’t make it to 141 so I’m truly eligible for senior discounts.

The point is if we could determine the mid-point of our lives we could make a good argument for retiring and collecting benefits the day after we turn 36 or 42 or 45 or what ever our magic number turns out to be.

Then again that would be like living on death row for half our life and that’s not a good thing.

Most of us consider forty to be young but realistically its middle age for the bulk of our population. Isn’t it about the point people start experiencing a mid-life crisis? In the past couple years I’ve become more comfortable with my mortality. Arthritis and unreliable bodily functions tend to get a person on the same page with the subject of reality, and it isn’t as bad as you might think it is.

Knowing Jesus as my Lord and savior and my entry  pass into heaven is a big deal. It’s my get out of Jail free card and my right to go past Go and into his eternal presence. No being put on hold, no waiting for a representative to become available. It’s the fastest space journey known, exceeding the speed of light and the destination makes Hawaii look like a dump.

Just thought you might want to ponder on the idea of middle age. If not I’m not sorry I scared you.

Then and now

I spent many years thinking fame was my destiny, how could it be any other way, I’d been born for it. At different times I’d be famous for different things. As a kid I’d be a Hall of Fame Baseball player, after college I’d be a famous cartoonist. Then I was sure my fame would come as a top-notch bowler. Later I’d go into politics and become famous, maybe even President. Writing has always hung in there as a possibility, then I invented a new field sport and that was going to be the big thing. To be sure I showed some aptitude for each of these areas but the difference between my aptitude and what it takes to be famous is a huge four-inch wide pit where dreams go to die. 

Over time that manifest destiny I thought was mine for the taking slowly eroded and with that came a peace I’d never known. There is no longer any pressure to become famous, I’m content to just be “Ed.” If in the course of being “Ed” some measure of recognition happens that’s okay but if not that’s okay too.

I love people and if I can say or do something to make people feel good that’s just exactly what I love doing. Of course I need to tease folks along the way because that is my favorite thing of all, as long as it doesn’t hurt them in any way.

Delightful words

I like some words not because of their meanings, or because they spark good memories but simply because they’re fun to spell.

Rendezvous is my number one favorite word to spell. I learned to spell it one day when I was stopped for a long traffic light behind a car, a Rendezvous.

Cacophony is another great word. The first time I saw this word in print I thought it was pronounced kack- a – phony.

Euthanasia took me a long time to find in the dictionary and I have a great story to go along with it.

Coyote is another fun word to know how to spell.

Aardvark I have a fun story for this one as well.

Llama any time we double the first letter of a word it’s delightful, wouldn’t you agree Aaron and Lloyd.

Glabrous is great because it’s so close to glamorous and all the bald guys I know love the word.

Exacerbate. I had to look this one up to understand what our former District Attorney was talking about. It was a fun trip to the dictionary. (No I wasn’t in trouble with the law).

Do any of my writer friends out there have words you love to put on a page because they are so much fun spell?

Not so much today.

Most of the time the last half hour to hour before I get out of bed in the morning  I do two things; I pray and I think. My thinking rarely has anything to do with the up coming day’s schedule. My thinking is a meandering trip through thoughts most people would call a waste of time. I like to pick up ideas as if they are objects and turn them around until I see them from a new perspective. Then I get up and blog about strange things.

While it’s my pattern to handle my early mornings in this manner (Isn’t retirement wonderful), not so much over the last few days. The prayer is there but the inspiration and mental exploration aren’t what I’m accustomed too. This change seems to accompany my sudden desire to write  material I might be able to pull together into a fun anthology.  I’m not sure how long this new direction will last; I’m not good at long-term inspirations. In this regard I’m a lot like my dad. Mom use to say he had wonderful ideas that sounded very practical and do-able then three days later he’d tell her fifty reasons why his idea wouldn’t work, and he’d head off in a new direction.

The point of all of this is to let my friends know why I’m sort of absent from blogging and Facebook. If you see me back like I have been for the past two years it means I found at least twenty-five reasons why this anthology thing isn’t working.

God bless you my friends.

God’s expectation

God created me with a specific personality, with a distinct set of skills and limitations, and in a time and place of his choosing. I was raised by the parents he intentionally selected for me and I’m temped not by God but by Satan but only to the level God permits.

God doesn’t expect me to be anyone but the person he created me to be. I sometimes wish he would give me this or that skill or personality trait I admire in someone else. Yet I know superhero’s only exist in fiction. My desire to have the whole package is the same temptation the serpent used on Adam and Eve and the one that caused Lucifer to be cast down from heaven. Superheros are substitutes for God and he won’t allow it.

God expects me to be the best me I can be. Unless the Holy Spirit gives me a new gift I won’t be replacing Billy Graham nor will I ever run for the presidency. Those are not in my DNA and so I should focus instead on other matters like faithfully writing a blog and giving people encouragement.

Total Commitment

Being under control is usually a good thing, but not always. Total commitment is being all in and involves the risk of being out of control.

My father compared himself to my younger brother. He said “I don’t like to lift with all of my strength but Mark does.” Mark was a really good high school wrestler because he would use every ounce of energy he could summon to defeat his opponent.

I know a young woman who is very photogenic and has a beautiful smile but it is always a reserved smile. I’ve never seen a photo of her experiencing a real belly laugh. I see this because I’m the same way. I’m seventy years old and can only recall three or four times that I laughed so uncontrollably that my jaw and my stomach ached from the experience. Like my dad, I like to control myself and that makes me stop a couple of steps short of total commitment.

Those who will totally commit themselves to something are more apt to develop addictions than those of us who are under control but they too are the worlds most successful individuals. Total failure is often a challenge for them to get up and try again.

So here I am debating the pros and cons of control verses total commitment.