Tag Archives: counselors

Danger

Danger: (n) risk, peril

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Perhaps danger is in the heart of the fearful.

There is legitimate danger. Becoming too familiar with a tiger during feeding times is not faith, but rather foolishness lending itself to lethal danger.

But some things are not dangerous. Some things are poorly marked that way, by the timid minds of those who are afraid of human freedom.

My last year of attending church camp was froth with controversy.

The counselors were convinced that the best way to avoid difficulty was to cut any danger off at the pass. “Danger,” in this case, referred to activities which might stimulate teenagers to think about sex.

It is fascinating to me that once people cross the age of twenty-one, they forget that sex, to a teenager, is not a thought nor a temptation but instead, oxygen to breathe. Curiosity, sensuality, raging hormones and immense amounts of energy always collide in some way to manipulate an indiscretion.

We were given five simple rules for high school campers:

  1. Boys and girls were never to be left alone without supervision.
  2. Girls could not wear bathing suits around boys, only knee-length shorts and appropriate tops.
  3. Dirty jokes were forbidden, and if continued, would result in expulsion from camp.
  4. Girls would dine with girls and boys with boys.
  5. When swimming in the lake, a distance of two feet must be maintained between a girl and a guy.

The list ended with this admonition:

“In following these guidelines, we hope to avoid the danger of promiscuity and illicit behavior.”

Yet, nature always makes a way.

That summer, all the guys and girls learned of a cave just outside the camp, which was quickly referred to as “The Humping Hole.”

The girls—adorned in their knee-length shorts—would go in with their favorite guy, and hump through their clothes.

I will tell you—it was much more popular than the class on the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul.

Girls and guys also learned how to sit in such a configuration that they could hold hands behind their backs, and counselors never saw what was going on.

There was always a way, where there seemed to be no way, for teenagers to be horny.

For you see, the only danger in life is ignorance.

The more you know about a situation and the greater the knowledge you can possess, the better chance you have of escaping tragedy and forming a plan that is blessed by honesty and truly works.

Charlatan

Charlatan: (n) a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill; a fraud.

Even though I don’t believe there’s any secret to life–otherwise God would be a nasty uncle playing a game of hide and seek so He can take a nap–I do believe there are markers along the way, telling us how to make this passage of Earth-Time much more plausible.

One of those gems is to make sure you never critique anyone unless you’ve already scoured yourself to uncover the same condition.

If you call somebody a fake, you’d better make sure you’re not faking something yourself.

If you refer to somebody as a liar, you might want to precede that with an honesty session and unburden yourself of all your half-truths.

And if you claim that someone is a charlatan, you should be fully aware that the false claims you place on your qualifications–the additional bullet points you may slip into a resume–might equally define you as being a charlatan also.

Here’s a powerful message: take aim at yourself first, and then see if you can help somebody else.

Dirty people with dirty hands who come across other dirty people and try to help them end up just transferring much of their dirt onto the person in need.

God forgive generations of ministers, politicians, businessmen, counselors, teachers and even parents who voraciously took on the job of correcting…except where it came to straightening their own path.

 

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Antique

dictionary with letter A

Antique: (n) an object such as a piece of furniture or work of art which has a high value due to its considerable age.

For a brief season in my life I had more money than I needed and therefore convinced myself that I needed more money.

It’s amazing how greed does not go away when you find yourself in the black after bills are paid, but rather, settles as a black cloud over your soul, convincing you that if you don’t lay up more treasure, you will be swallowed by some catastrophe in the future, yet unseen.

So even though most of my journey has been spent clapping my hands in glee when the electric bill has been paid and cleared the bank, during this particular odyssey of finance, I became obsessed with a new word.

Investment.

Yes. Everything needed to be an investment.

So I was told my counselors (who were many since they discovered they could siphon off my wealth via giving advice) that houses were a good purchase.

I was told that if I bought a beautiful white grand piano, it would only appreciate over the years.

And of course, it was necessary, since I was now a person of worldly ilk, to go antiquing.

I was supposed to go to little storefronts which were jammed to the gills with fishy deals, and listen to someone explain how “this table was once in the den of Johnny Appleseed,” and had “already trebled in value and would certainly continue to do so.”

Having an untrained eye, to me it looked like a beat-up piece of wood which should have been broken up to fuel a fire years ago.

When I pointed this out to one of the enthusiastic “antiquers,” he stood back in horror and said, “It’s old. So it’s worth more money.”

I explained to him that I was getting older, and no one found me more valuable. He laughed a little (after all, I was still a potential sale).

Here was my discovery:

  • I bought houses and barely broke even on the turnaround.
  • That white grand piano had to be sold for less than half of its original value.
  • And all the antiques I purchased were viewed by garage sale people as worthless clumps of nothing instead of the posterity of Mr. Appleseed.

There is a bliss to poverty.

You don’t have to wonder what you’re going to do with all your money.

Macaroni and cheese still tastes good on Day Three.

And most importantly… you don’t have to deal with antiques.

 

 

 

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