Tag Archives: faith

Anticipate

dictionary with letter A

 

Anticipate: (v) to regard as probable; to expect, predict

 

The key to life is to possess a treasure of optimism, which is pilfered sufficiently by your pessimism, to welcome realism.

In other words, if you lead with pessimism and pilfer with optimism, you never actually become realistic, but instead, cynical.

If you try to lead with realism, you usually end up favoring either optimism or pessimism, tainting your original adventure.

This makes the word “anticipation” nearly obsolete in the lifestyle of those who want to move forward with a sense of achievement and good cheer.

Because quite honestly, if I anticipate that my family and friends will continue to love me with the intensity I desire, I am always disappointed with the natural human drop-off.

If I anticipate that my next business foray is going to be a bonanza, I will be only adequately impressed if it reaches my wishes and greatly despaired if it doesn’t.

Anticipation, unfortunately, is what people believe faith is meant to be.

The thought is that rallying behind the concept that having hope that a certain conclusion must be achieved is the best way to trick oneself into excitement and intimidate the universe into compliance.

But faith is actually an optimism which is adequately interrupted by pessimism, thus creating reality. For after all, faith is the substance of things hoped for (optimism), the evidence of things not seen (pessimism).

I get very nervous when I get around people who anticipate that the project we are pursuing is going to be a roaring success.

The wise steward of all good things is always joyfully stacking up boxes … while simultaneously perusing the room for additional containers.

 

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Ancestor

dictionary with letter A

Ancestor: (n) — a person, typically one more remote than a grandparent, from whom one is descended.

I certainly am glad that all my ancestors decided to have sex, so they would set in motion the possibility of my existence.

After all, it’s pretty miraculous. After working twelve-hour days in the fields, planting, cultivating and harvesting, they were exhausted after sunset, and must have had pretty good libidos to have worked up the energy to culminate the day with hanky-panky.

So for that I am grateful.

I know there are people who are very sentimental about their lineage and pay good money to acquire information on their family tree. But honestly, if I had known my ancestors, I would be very disappointed because they probably wouldn’t like me.

  • Their work ethic was stronger than mine–mainly because they had to survive. And I talk about words like “success.”
  • They died much younger than me from exhaustion and lack of healthy choices and medical care. During that shortened life span, they probably suffered more pain due to overexertion.
  • They had bigotries and prejudices which I would have found annoying or ignorant, which they might have misinterpreted as rude behavior.
  • Their spirituality was peppered with superstition instead of salted with knowledge and faith.
  • They controlled their lives through morality, which was regionally defined, and also locally monitored and enforced.
  • They weren’t in favor of new-fangled gadgets, often resisting them until such discoveries were forced on them by city councils or national laws.
  • My ancestors revered ignorance as a badge of honor and the symbol of their faithfulness to a God they truly did not understand.

There was much good about them. Their hard-headed, strong-willed and determined natures made it possible for them to survive the wilderness, which I now call a freeway.

But the disregard for the progress of history and the rights of people would have rendered me a radical and a renegade in their midst.

I believe it’s possible to be grateful and at the same time, fully aware that I was born in the right time and the right place to do the right thing–so that my descendants will not have to look back and giggle too much … at my stupidity. 

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Amoral

dictionary with letter A

Amoral: (n)  lacking a moral sense of right and wrong.

What is morality?

It has changed so many times in my lifespan that if I did not have a sense of humor, I would risk becoming jaded.

I have watched the Moral Majority peak and decline, becoming the minority.

I desire some stability. I think morality orbits a single shining sun of promise:

Don’t kill.

  • Don’t kill yourself.
  • Don’t kill others.
  • Don ‘t kill faith.
  • Don’t kill hope.
  • Don’t kill love.

There you go.

What kills me is dependence and addiction.

What kills others is alienation and gossip.

What kills faith is cynicism.

What kills hope is a lack of support.

And what kills love is fear.

So morality, to me, is living a life free of addiction, without judging others, refusing to become cynical, lending a hand to those who are hopeful, and casting out my fear.

Perhaps that will last longer than the latest critical attack against some hapless minority.

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AMA

dictionary with letter A

AMA: (abbr.) American Medical Association

Much to the chagrin of a physician or two who have crossed my path, I look on the medical field with the same level of respect–and caution–that I do with politics and religion.

I know that doctors want me to have faith in them and to accept their diagnosis and treatment without question. But like politics and religion, medicine has things it does well and other things yet to be achieved.

For instance, politics affords us a rudimentary form of democracy which is certainly better than any other style of government presently available. But it also thrusts upon us politicians, gridlock and a ridiculous amount of debate, which stall needful expansion.

In the same fashion, religion stands as a symbol of goodness and kindness in a world gone mad, while simultaneously translating the mercy of God into the misery of restrictions.

The American Medical Association is much the same. Although they offer many advances, it is undoubtedly true that much of what they do will be viewed in the future as the equivalent of placing leeches on the body of the ailing George Washington.

It’s just important to understand:

  • What medicine knows and what medicine doesn’t know
  • What religion does well and what religion does poorly
  • And how politics advances the cause of humanity, and also how it can deter

So here’s a clue: don’t do anything until you understand. And that doesn’t mean that you should comprehend, or why don’t you “get it?”

Move out on the basis of your own understanding.

Several years ago I told my personal physician that a certain medication made me feel sick, and rather than lowering my blood pressure, was actually raising it. She doubted my assertion. So the next time I went in I brought a report, explaining that the pill was under scrutiny and needed to be carefully administered. She was still not convinced, but I insisted that she take me off the medication. When she did I started feeling better.

Two months later the drug was removed from the market.

This is not my doctor’s fault; she was following the precepts of her particular religious practice. It was my responsibility to avoid something I didn’t understand.

There are many things I don’t understand about politics and religion–and also medicine.

But rather than assuming I’m ignorant, I just choose to delay joining the party … until I’m sure of what’s in the punch.

Altar

dictionary with letter A

J. R. Practix

J. R. Practix

Altar: (n) the table in a Christian church at which the bread and wine are consecrated in communion services.

Sometimes I am embarrassed at my lack of interest in religion.

I am extremely intrigued with faith, personal consecration, devotion and the quest for better things.

It’s kind of the way I felt when I was a kid and my friends would become involved in new, popular activities. My only interest in the venture was whether or not it was fun. But my friends would get picky about the pieces of a puzzle or the trinkets that went inside a game board.

One of my companions became totally obsessed with marbles–to the point that he had buckskin pouches to carry them in, and they couldn’t be mingled with each other because the purees had to be separated from the bulgers, which had to be totally kept apart from the cats’ eyes. So every time I played with this kid, he was yelling at me about procedures and propriety. instead of just shooting marbles.

Yep, I guess that sums up my spirituality.

I’m just shooting marbles.

When you want me to cherish the sanctity of an altar, or discuss speculate on whether bread looks like the human body and whether wine is a symbol of blood or is actually transposed in substance…well, I’m outta here.

I’m against altars–mainly because they don’t alter anyone.

They make us feel superior because we think more than other people, rather than weighing our worth by what we feel and do.

So go ahead and worship at your altar, and know all the significance of each and every holy piece placed upon it.

But for me, I believe if you’re going to enjoy yourself, you need to learn the importance of relaxing and appreciating more than worshipping and revering.

Allotment

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Allotment: (n) the specified amount  of something allocated to a person

Sometimes it’s not that words are bad. It’s just the company they keep.

I remember when I was in school. We had a principal and a vice principal, and I discovered after a while that the job of the vice principal was to wander the halls and tell the students why certain things couldn’t be bought for the school. It was because there was no allotment in the budget.

Yes, he was there to douse all hope for improvement, blessing or pleasure.

Somewhere along the line, good news has to be brought to human beings or we become old way too soon and cranky without needing to manifest such a negative emotion.

I know there are people who make their living teaching others how to budget money. Actually, there are famous public speakers and motivational authors who travel the country, instructing in financial solvency and ways to make sure that you don’t “live beyond your means.”

It’s difficult to find fault with them, but in some ways, I still do.

Because the thing I know above all else is that coming out in the black at the end of the month can often be a reflection on your mood. The amount of pain, struggle, scrimping and self-righteous hoarding often done to achieve a balanced budget is certainly admirable, but not very pleasurable.

Sometimes you have to step out of the “allotment” and go with the moment’s sensation of celebrating the goodness of life. I know it’s irresponsible. I know it’s the kind of thing that maybe our ancestors would have frowned upon, but I occasionally find out that there isn’t an actual allotment for anything of value, yet value is still required.

And if faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, then to believe that we cannot launch out in faith without peering at it in our wallets may be against the whole concept in the first place.

Sometimes what we need, require and dream is more important than making all the aspects of our lives add up.

  • I know it’s risky.
  • I know I’ve been foolish and ended up looking fool-hardy.

But life is more than allotments. It’s reaching the last breath of your time on the planet … and smiling because you did it well.

All

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

All: (adj & pron.) referring to the whole quantity or extent of a particular group or thing

As a writer, it’s a word I don’t get to use very often–because putting it to work immediately conjures an image of inclusion without exception.

In other words: “all the people suck.”

You can imagine, there would be some objection to that sentiment.

Even if you trimmed it down to “most people suck,” you might be accused of being overwrought.

“Some of the people suck” is more temperate, but still appears that you think all the people suck and you’re just playing it safe.

So most writers, to protect themselves from the marauding horde of critics, will use the preferable: “a few.”

Yes. A few people suck.

This enables the reader to escape the condemnation of being a sucker, and determine, in his or her own mind, who the rejected few might be.

But there are things I hope really will continue to be believed as applicable to all:

  • How about liberty and justice for all?
  • How about God loving all the world?
  • I like this one: All our possibilities are possible as long as we don’t deem them impossible.
  • All we have to do is love one another.
  • All human beings are equal.

So to me, “all” is a word of aspiration, faith and welcoming. And even though I am careful not to use it when I get in a gruff mood–to rain my verbal fire and brimstone down from my personal heavenly perch–I do greatly enjoy including all my brothers and sisters … when I know blessing is waiting around the bend.

 

Alabama

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Alabama: (n) a state in the southeastern U.S. on the Gulf of Mexico, capital Montgomery, statehood, Dec. 14, 1819.

A state of mind.

Even though I must tell you, having traveled all over this country, that there are nests of belief, custom, culture and theology that persist or flourish in their particular homeland, the hatchet job that has been done to our fifty states to promote causes, newspaper articles and political agendas is abominable.

Nowhere is this more evident to me than in the perception of Alabama.

I would be amiss if I merely portrayed the “sweet home” aspects of this particular state. Like every other principality which has ever existed on earth, it is riddled with mishaps, bad judgments and incoherent ideas being fostered as “normal.”

But to personify Alabama–or any part of the south–as the hotbed for bigotry, ignorance and inequality is not only short-sighted, but comes from a place of arrogance and a desire to limit the qualities that these dear folks can offer to our country in faith and hospitality.

Some of the worst memories I have of my journeys have been in the south–especially Alabama–and also some of the golden treasures of people and discovery have also been found within its borders.

Here’s the truth: people live where they were hatched, take the best parts of their surroundings and mingle them with tolerance and love to form a workable way of being. No matter where they abide, if they accept the portions of their culture which alienate them from the rest of the world, they have gone down a foolish path. But if they set aside childishness, they gain eternal perspective.

Prejudice was not born in the south. Long before slaves were brought to this country, there were slaves in Rome, Greece, Egypt, China and every corner of our globe. Those who were intelligent, historical and also spiritual learn to recognize the limitations of their upbringing in deference to the mercy that the God of our creation requires of His children.

I love Alabama. I love Massachusetts. I love California–not because of the history book or the spouting of their individual Chambers of Commerce. No, it’s because I have met people in each of these locations–and many others–who have overcome their ancestors to be born again … to newness of life.

 

A la

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

 

A la: (prep) 1. a dish cooked or prepared in a specified style: e.g. apple pie a la mode. 2. in the style or manner of: e.g. afternoon talk shows a la Oprah.

May I give you my “a la” list? Maybe better stated, a reality a la “wish.”

  • Success a la humility.
  • Music a la emotion.
  • Faith a la evidence.
  • Hope a la progress.
  • Love a la tolerance.
  • Nationalism a la vision.
  • Equality a la action.
  • Debate a la cohesion.
  • Purpose a la common sense.
  • Bible a la humanity.
  • Entertainment a la inspiration.
  • Humor a la edification.
  • Encouragement a la critique.
  • Family a la expansion.

There are certain things that were meant to go together, and when they are separated, they wander about the earth in search of a mate. If you become a match maker to these estranged lovers, you ignite a passion that sets the world on fire with potential.

Yes … potential a la “what’s next?”

 

Agree

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter AAgree: (v) to have the same opinion on something; to concur.

Sitting around a table on this holiday morning with family members I have not seen for months, our discussion gradually drifted from the mundane to the sublime, landing in the controversial.

We are a typical family in the sense that in many facets we grow together and in specific areas we have separated over issues, causes and matters of faith.

As the conversation had ebbs and tides from calm to heated, I realized that complete agreement was virtually impossible, but that the only way to truly acquire the kind of agreeing that leads to commonality and pursuit of purpose is to submit to a respected source.

Common sense is a great place to meet.

What is common sense? It is taking the precaution to make sure that what is procured, or even pursued, has the benefit and insight to provide for the common good.

  • Because after all, freedom without responsibility is merely another name for chaos.
  • And responsibility minus the inclusion of freedom is the institution of tyranny.

Yes, it takes wise people to agree–because tapping common sense to create the common good is only achieved by purposely pursuing commonality.

“Whatever two shall agree upon, it shall be done.”

Although we go through stages in our lives where we view ourselves as lone wolves, that profile leaves you howling on the top of the mountain in the middle of the night with an empty stomach, lonely.

We walked away from the table this morning a little closer because we realized how far apart we are in certain areas, but acknowledging how needful it is to tap the common sense that gives us reasons to agree.