Category Archives: C words

Commute

Commute: (v) to travel some distance between one’s home and place of work on a regular basis.

Sitting around the room at a party last night with a bunch of friends and family, a young man piped up and said, “I evaluate people on whether they voted for this President. If they did I know they’re stupid.”

Well, truthfully, this article could be read forty years from now and it would still apply to someone who felt that way because “their” person did not make the White House.

I did not condemn the young man for his judgmental attitude. I didn’t try to convince him that he was wrong.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

I did explain to him that he didn’t understand the mindset, simplicity and utter joy of small-town people all over America–who don’t have to commute an hour-and-a-half to go to work.

If they want a loaf of bread, they climb into their truck, drive down to the local market, where they spend much more time jabbering with their neighbors than getting their purchase. The trip back home takes no more than two minutes. There are no frayed nerves from traffic jams. There are no attitudes that the human race is full of assholes because they got cut off at the one stoplight in town.

It is much easier for them to be genteel.

But it’s also easier for them to be suspicious of the “big city ideas” trying to come in and take over.

When you live in a city where there’s a commute, you, yourself, develop a different pathway to sanity.

You may be more defensive.

You may be more interested in the government taking over matters of social order, since you don’t grow your own corn and soybeans.

You are not worse than the man or woman who lives in Iowa and only needs five minutes to get to their job or their barn.

You’re just different. Your perspective varies from theirs.

Wise is the soul who understands the simplicity of the village folk, and the struggle of those who commute.

 

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Community

Community: (n) a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.

Our little village was filled with community pride.

It was cute–a little bigger than a postage stamp, yet you could walk around the entire downtown area in less than ten minutes.

Growing up there, I was taught that community is not so much sharing a location, but rather, absorbing a basic ideology.

I’m not sure who came up with the standards or the principles which were passed down among the locals and inhaled like air, but generally speaking, you could do well in my community if you understood the mindset and the dress code.

If for some reason, you wanted to vary from the common universal brain, or clothe yourself in such a way as to gain too much attention, then you were initially viewed as comical.

If you persisted, you went from comical to being deemed confused.

And if confusion was maintained, then you would be considered dangerous and need to be dealt with by the negative approaches established by our community.

It was a very successful system.

We were able, through this system, to keep all blacks, Hispanics, gays, lesbians and long-haired rock and rollers far from our borders–without ever firing a shot.

The teeny tiny handful of those who remained were simply ostracized–or maybe just received really poor mail service.

None of the people in our community considered themselves prejudiced–just enamored by a preference. After all, if you wanted varying behaviors, you could drive twenty miles down the road to the Big City, where there were all sorts of options available, complete with rape, murder and a variety of other crimes. We were thoroughly frightened of the outside world, without ever being officially indoctrinated into a cult.

But our community was a cult.

I found this out when I wanted to stray from the daily routine and pursue my own ideas. No one struck me, no one physically attacked me, and no one even openly rebuked me. They just left me out of everything.

The system works to this day. All across America little towns have a network of gossipers who warn of suspicious arrivals, allowing the community a chance to provide the inconsideration to drive good folks away.

 

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Communism

Communism: (n) a political theory derived from Karl Marx advocating a society in which all property is publicly owned

Perhaps the most amazing part of life on Earth is that notions, ideas, religions, philosophies and promotional campaigns can spring forth, and need never establish their validity as long as they’re well-funded.

It’s a bit unnerving.

One might have a tendency to go chasing after the brass band that plays the loudest, because there is no monitoring system to determine where the band is going or if it has any future.

If you want to evaluate the intelligence and ultimate worth of an idea, measure it against three undeniable truths:

  1. Human beings like to lie
  2. Human beings are lazy
  3. Human beings are finicky

I suppose you could argue with these assertions, but in the long run, our race does not like to.

Race, that is.

We want things easy. We want our portion and half of yours. We want to vote on everything, even if it has already been decided by nature.

So it doesn’t take long to realize that communism, and even socialism, have absolutely no chance of ever working as long as the mission is undertaken by human beings.

What you will end up doing is making an exciting start, notice disappointing returns and have to either kill the people who are the laziest, or abandon the foolishness of thinking that any of us are able to share everything in common.

Karl may have made his Marx on Earth, but unfortunately, the system he conjured has a sympathetic edge, and no real ability to cut through the problems.

 

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Communique

Communique: (n) an official announcement or statement, especially one made to the media

My official communique to America:

President Donald Trump is our leader. It is now time for one group to stop incessantly complaining and another group to cease pumping their
fists as if they just landed on the moon wearing only Bermuda shorts.

This is our system.

We place someone in the White House.

You may feel free to debate whether we actually “elect” them, or rather, “process” them into the position, like Velveeta cheese spread.

If we believe our main problem is the person who is sleeping in the White House, then we suffer the slings and arrows of stupidity which come our way because we fail to recognize our true difficulty.

When I was a younger man, I would caution people not to treat people like dogs.

Now my message has changed.

Please–treat people like dogs, because you obviously love them, respect them and honor them more than you do human beings.

Until we can regain our sanity and realize that certain activities are not choices, but rather, anti-human race, we will have worse problems than whether someone we like sits in a chair in the Oval Office.

So the communique is very simple: look to yourself and those of your household, and make sure that your neighbors are being treated as well as Rover, Jr.

If they are, then you can stop worrying about the future of our country. Goodness has a tendency to get a grip and take hold.

 

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Communion

Communion: (n) the service of Christian worship at which bread and wine are consecrated and shared.

I get the same sensation when I go to Red Lobster with a friend and he or she insists, with a giggle, as the cheddar bay biscuits arrive, and they gleefully take one from the basket, that, “This is what Red Lobster is all about!”

I nod (knowing that soon I will probably nod off.)

Red Lobster is not about the cheddar bay biscuits. It’s about the seafood.

Just like baseball games are not about the peanuts and the Cracker Jacks. There’s a ball, a bat and a game.

And marriage is not about starting a family. It’s really about how much you enjoy having sex with this one person and hope you can keep it up for the rest of your life while you have a family.

I find myself going to church from time to time–reluctantly.

I don’t like that about me. It seems jaded. In this season of agnosticism it smacks of the predictable.

But you see, in church there’s just too much emphasis on the cheddar bay biscuits, the Cracker Jacks and the family.

Many of them center their whole agenda around communion–a symbolistic representation of the blood and body of Jesus Christ, which he gave for the sins of mankind.

It’s disconcerting to me.

First there’s the thought that I am such a piece of shit that God had to kill His own kid to try to make up for my buffoonery.

Then there’s the notion that a dynamic spirit which walked in the flesh among us for thirty-three years only gained significance in the last few hours that he hung, as an alleged criminal, on a cross.

What an insult to all things loving and eternal.

Yet if you lodge an objection, somehow or another you become apostate–which, if you don’t know what that means, is the religious system’s way of telling you that you don’t belong.

The truth of the matter is, I admire the hell out of Jesus.

Long before he bled, he led me into an understanding of how we might begin to see God’s will done on Earth as it is in heaven.

 

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Communicate

Communicate: (v) to share or exchange information, news, or ideas.

Sometimes a gentle breeze of wisdom will blow my way and leave behind a noble idea.

It happened to me recently.

I was at a store, considering buying a product, when I looked down at the instructions on how to put it together. Please understand, I was very impressed with the item–but very put off by the length of the instructions. Matter of fact, I walked away from that particular situation and found something simpler.

Is it better? I don’t care. It’s simpler.

Now the breeze that blew across my brain, depositing a universal precept, was this:

We do ourselves a disservice as human beings when we come with too many instructions.

When people need to be aware that they “can’t do this” or “shouldn’t do that” or “the following subjects are taboo” or “never bring up the state of Hawaii”… Well, after hearing all the instructions and you realize what would be involved in putting together a relationship with this person, the wise choice is usually to move on down the road to less complicated possibilities.

For verily, verily, I say unto you, the most difficult thing in life to do is communicate.

We shouldn’t put ourselves in the position of needing to do it often. The less we have to communicate, and the more that is worked out my mercy, grace, compassion and understanding, the better off we are.

So here’s a word to the wise:

Work with your design until you don’t have a helluva lot of instructions, and ideally, it’s better to show up already put together.

 

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Commune

Commune: (n) a group of people living together and sharing possessions and responsibilities.

Many good ideas would work well if we could keep them out of human hands.

There’s something about the greasy palms of the human race that make noble intentions slip from our grasp and crash to the floor, breaking
into a million pieces.

I have been a guest at five communes in my lifetime. They all shared certain attributes:

  1. A discovery of a separate and simpler life so as not to have too many moving parts.
  2. A realization that it was important to share common values, goals, tastes in food, and entertainment preferences.
  3. For some reason, an emphasis on male dominance and female subservience was thrust to the forefront.
  4. Children in the commune were normally very well-behaved, but looked a bit as if they had just gone through shock treatments.
  5. Money was eschewed as meaningless except that the surroundings were so sparse of frills that it was obvious that someone in the commune was lusting for a Snickers bar.
  6. There was a fear in the air that they would be exposed as unhappy, so they were overly careful about what they said.

The reason communes don’t work is the same reason that half the marriages in the country end up in divorce: we don’t always clump well.

We are too intelligent, too independent and too selfish from our jungle roots to be totally trusted to evenly slice the loaf of bread among four souls.

 

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Commotion

Commotion: (n) a state of confused and noisy disturbance.

“Turn down the noise.”

Wait! You can’t do that–because there is a holy proclamation to “make a joyful noise.”

Those who want things to be quiet and calm, in so doing, quell the spiritual party.

So what noise do we want to silence? Can we censor it?

Can we stop a commotion by hand-picking the sounds that will be allowed to mingle?

Should they be segregated?

Classical music over here, rock and roll over there? An accordion on a hill far away…?

What is a commotion? Commotion is the sound of something I don’t like. It’s a stirring and rumbling that is disconcerting.

It’s Grandma going to hear a rap artist, convinced that the entire atmosphere is a cacophony which could only be resolved by the second coming of Christ.

But it’s also a poor young eight-year-old having to sit in a room with a string quartet playing back-up at an oboe recital. That commotion causes him to create his own commotion.

If we’re going to only respond to needs in life based upon how loudly they scream at us, we will begin to have the mentality of an ambulance chaser … or the 24-hour news cycle.

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Common Sense

Common sense: (n) good sense and sound judgment in practical matters

Many years ago I wrote a book called “The Gospel According to Common Sense.”

I was very young.

I did a radio talk show, and the fellow asked me, “How would you define common sense?”

Now, one would think I would be prepared for that question, since I wrote a book with “common sense” in the title. But I think I was expecting “what is your favorite color?” much more than a legitimate question that had meaning.

But fortunately for me, I did not freak out.

I paused. Then I said, “To me, common sense is where Father God and Mother Nature sit down and agree.”

God might be a little idealistic, and the Natural Order does tend to be gruff and unforgiving.

But common sense is where mercy and Mother Earth embrace one another, and come up with ways to make things function–ways that don’t hurt anyone, have a bit of genius to them, and are so simple that everybody can do them.

We don’t talk much about common sense nowadays because we like to alienate ourselves off from others by proving our superiority–be it intellectually, spiritually or racially.

Common sense is looking for a logical solution that also happens to be common to us all.

If you’re determined to be better than the people around you, you might find common sense insulting.

If you’re depressed and think the whole world is out to get you, you might avoid common sense because it robs you of your vacation into self-pity.

There is no real power in life unless you can get God and Mother Nature to work together–His will being done on Earth as it is in heaven.

Yeah. There you’ve got it.

Common sense: heavenly answers that still work on Earth.

 

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Common Ground

Common ground: (n) a basis of mutual interest or agreement.

I do believe the quote is attributed to Sting, lead singer of “The Police.”

When explaining his tour into the Soviet Union, in one of his lyrics he offered the conclusion that “Russians love their children, too.”

It is so easy to sit on the precipice of destruction and discuss, like naughty brats, how much more our destructive weapons could kill your people than yours could destroy ours.

But in the long run, or in the short time it takes for a bomb to explode, people are dead–and most all of them look somewhat like us.

Anything that comes along to encourage the destruction of the planet, the deception of racism, the alienation of the genders or the false pride of a culture is the feeding frenzy for us pursuing the insanity of gobbling one another up in our social cannibalism.

Every single day, in every single way, in every single building where decisions are made about human life, three things have to be honored:

  1. Flesh may have color, but it is all basically the same.
  2. If people were created, they have one Father.
  3. We have not perfected a way to snatch life from death.

Slow down.

This is called common ground.

Everything else is just a silly argument among children about who can jump the highest, and who owns the shiniest bike.

 

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