Tag Archives: natural order

Befall

Befall: (v) something bad to happen to someone.Dictionary B

The secret to life is not in obtaining wealth or feigning contentment.

It is also not merely achieved by professing faith in God.

And certainly never conjured by denying His existence.

It is understanding that God is a process, not a reaction.

Since He is a Creator, He had a plan. Having a plan, in order to maintain the integrity of that original blueprint, there has to be a Natural Order.

So it is in studying science and Nature’s laws that we gain the greatest insight into the mind of the Creator. Otherwise, we manufacture a mythical Giant in the Universe who runs His kingdom by emotion, levies punishments against those who are found in disfavor and bestows blessings on the subservient.

I became a much happier man when I realized that there is actually very little in life that befalls me.

Almost everything that comes my way was invited by me, ushered in by me, welcomed by me, accidentally acquired by me, or was the fruit of me. I tapped a process and the process responded.

  • Sometimes, it is a gusher of blessing.
  • Other times, I hit dry wells or poison streams.

But it is not because the God of creation is reactionary and temperamental.

What befalls me is the end result of the sowing I have achieved coming to fruition … as my reaping.

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Artless

Artless: (adj) without guile or deception; simple and naturaldictionary with letter A

I believe the phrase is, “I’m going to date myself.”

It doesn’t mean that I’m going to wine and dine some portion of my being over a very expensive dinner. I believe the idea is that I’m going to let you know how old I truly am.

I don’t do this very often, but for the sake of this essay I will succumb to a bit of nostalgia.

The character’s name was Eddie Haskell. He was on a show called, “Leave It to Beaver” (which nowadays could not be spoken aloud without giggles).

Eddie Haskell was the smooth-talking, courtly, insincere friend of Wally and the Beav, who was constantly getting them in trouble because as soon as the adults left the room he turned into some sort of devious devil from the dark pits of hell, devising plans of mischief.

Now, I will tell you–it is possible to be Eddie Haskell without being evil. Matter of fact, most of us are taught a “Haskellian” approach to life. And here it is:

“The harder you try the more successful you’re going to be.”

I object to this contention. Here’s what I’ve discovered:

Trying hard is exhausting.

  • Once exhausted, it is very easy to lose the glimmer of your original goal.
  • Once that’s gone, you end up doing things because you have to.
  • And if you look at the world around us, there is an almost-universal grimace of compulsion instead of passion.

Life was never meant to be hard. If you get around people who think it’s hard, you should leave quickly before you, too, become jaded.

The artless way to live is a three-fold process:

  1. Learn how nature works.
  2. Don’t argue with it.
  3. Develop a plan that works within the natural order

There you go.

Most of our struggles are due to the fact that we are determined to ignore what has proven to be true.

Eddie Haskell thought he could manipulate adults by “acting nice.”

All he ended up doing was making the grown-ups cynical, looking suspicious himself, and ending up blamed for all the misdeeds.　

 

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Admonish

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter AAdmonish: (v) to warn or reprimand someone firmly

I really do not know why this word is in the dictionary.

I suppose it’s there because we all have accidentally or ignorantly decided to admonish another human being, only to discover that we were given bad attitude, resistance and actually, more often than not, pushed them right back into their iniquity.

For after all, it is a word usually associated with child-rearing. You know–those occasions when we sit our offspring down and explain to them in vivid detail the error of their ways and the danger of their path.

But writing this essay today, I have to ask myself if I have EVER heeded an admonishment.

I have come to myself and decided to change certain behavior. But every time someone ELSE has made it his or her mission to create that change in me, I have resisted to the point of rebellion (although in the presence of other folks I might pretend I had heeded the heated advice).

But I didn’t.

Truthfully, I resented the hell out of someone treating me like I was a teenager taking the car out for a joy ride without permission.

This is why I yearned for my eighteenth birthday–so I wouldn’t have to listen to people tell me what to do. I am a typical son of Adam and Eve in the sense that if you tell me there’s a tree from which I should not eat, it is the location where I will probably decide to have lunch.

Honestly, it’s how I can tell that parts of the Bible ARE divinely inspired, and other portions are the inventions of men trapped in their own culture and time, who did their best to venture a good guess.

You can encourage people. I am not so certain you can admonish them.

You can exhort people. Admonishment will go out the back door as quickly as it came in the front.

You can steer, cheer, jeer, and leer at folks and probably get by with it. But when you sit them down and try to recreate the atmosphere that should have happened when they were children being instructed on Mommy and Daddy’s knees, you are about to unleash all the fury of their frustration.

So what can we do if we know that someone is destroying himself and is steeped in great error?

The two paths available to the wise man or woman who want to affect their world are:

  1. Set a great visible example
  2. Pray that God uses the natural order to bring truth to the forefront.

There you go.

So “admonish” is in the dictionary because we do it with our children–to limited success.

When we try to apply it to our adult friends, we have generated the definition for another word: futility.

Acclimate

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Acclimate: (n) to become accustomed to a new climate or new conditions.

When I started traveling across the country to see first-hand what CNN and Fox News only partially cover, I would arrive in a new area and finding myself stopping up in my nostrils or developing a sore throat. People explained to me that what was happening was that my body was “acclimatizing” to the climate because there was some sort of pollen, dust or air mite which I was not accustomed to, aggravating my sinus cavities.

It really sounded pussy.

Even though I am glad there is a word called “acclimate” and I sure the process does go on, still–proclaiming that we need to acclimate to anything is like announcing that “we plan on pursuing breathing today.”

I think when I finally got fed up with the notion that my nostrils were wussies and passed on the knowledge to my brain that they needed to buck up and stop being so snotty, I ceased needing to have a box of Kleenex next to me just because I landed in Albuquerque.

Yet I would have to admit that for most human beings, if you removed all dialogue, discussion and interchange about their “acclimatizing to circumstances,” most of them would appear to be deaf-mutes. It seems to be one of the more interesting topics in the human family. As we sit around and discuss things that are well beyond our control, in the purview of the natural order and usually irreversible, inserting our feelings about their existence is downright ridiculous.

For instance, I do not comprehend what a discussion about the weather achieves on any level. I am neither intrigued, frightened nor impressed with “Storm Watchers” who appear on my TV screen in some frantic mode, foretelling that rain is coming, and with that could be hail, lightning and maybe even “tornadic activity.”

Nature has been doing this for a long time, and therefore is quite professional. WE are the amateurs, and the sooner we become aware of the inevitability of rain falling on the just and the unjust, the quicker we will restore our peace of mind.

So even though I know a certain amount of acclimatizing is necessary, I would rather not discuss it.

I think the only ongoing joke in heaven is the angels and God giggling uncontrollably over human beings thinking their opinions really matter.

Accept

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Accept: (v.)1 consent to receive 2. agree to undertake 3. give an affirmative answer to

What do I accept?

Even though I concurred with the above definitions, accepting something has another ramification for me. It requires loyalty.

We have too many people who accept things in life only to turn their backs on them when the least little difficulty challenges the concept. We often are more afraid of inconvenience than we are of failure. Inconvenience is inevitable, since we live on a planet which refuses to follow our will. Failure, on the other hand,  is optional. Failure is a decision to turn tail and run instead of taking the time to learn and evolve.

What do I accept?

1. I accept my personal responsibility to encapsulate the best possible human behavior I can conjure within the confines of my own skin. In other words, I have no intention of blaming you for the world’s problems because I plan on staying too busy in reformation.

2. I accept my family and friends as those who have joined me on the journey. They are no better than any other human beings–just closer in proximity.

3. I accept the law and order around me as being the best we can come up with at this point until wisdom shows us a better way.

4. I accept that there is a God because the absence of such a being leaves us with a godless world.

5. I accept that I am not better than anyone else. I am also on a path to prove this daily.

6. I accept that there is a natural order to life and when I learn the precepts of the organization, I can prosper. When I don’t, I have an immediate reason for my incompleteness.

7. I also accept Jesus as the best example I’ve found to explain why human beings are here and how they should get along. And also, since I am sometimes a bit lost and hapless, I will also receive him as my savior.

All these seven acceptances do not make me perfect or even qualify me to speak my convictions aloud with authority. They are just ways for me to set a solution in motion–and remain loyal to a cause instead of constantly bitching at the cosmos … because it deters me.

Abstemious

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abstemious: (adj.) not self-indulgent, especially when eating or drinking. “We only had one bottle.” “Very abstemious of you.”

It’s not fair.

Well, of course, it IS fair. It’s just more powerful to begin an essay like this with an obtuse proclamation of disparity.

I can go into a restaurant and watch somebody eat a total of three thousand calories at one sitting (being a fatty, I have total awareness of the calorie count of every known food) and watch as that individual, who has consumed this humongous amount of food, stands up and leaves, appearing to be as thin as a razor.

I, on the other hand, can meticulously consume twelve hundred calories in an entire day, and not shed one single ounce in the process.

I do not know if it’s some great cosmic joke. I am not sure if it’s some sort of genetic foible. It could be that there is a missing link in my own thinking that needs to be inserted, or a demon which needs to be driven from my deep, dark, fatty soul, to allow me to walk in the “thinness of life.”

But last night I ran headlong into the situation. Finishing up my evening, having not yet consumed my dinner, I was hungry. Now, understand–as a fat person, I don’t need to be hungry to eat. Matter of fact, there are nights when I’m watching television when I am quite full, but still am taking a mental inventory of the contents of the nearby refrigerator.

But last night I had actually expended energy and was famished. Yet I wanted to remain faithful to some unseen code of behavior, which would allow me to be considered a “fatty-in-retreat” instead of a plumper, charging ahead for more gain. So I ordered myself a twelve-inch veggie sandwich from Subway, brought it home, purchased a small bag of chips and ate it. Although quite delicious, when I finished it, I began to look around the room to find out where my dinner had gone.

They tell you if you wait twenty minutes after eating, you will feel full. I’m sure this is true, but twenty minutes might as well be three days unless you put me into a coma. I am going to start looking for alternatives. What can I further consume which will make me look righteous in my pursuit of weight loss, but still satisfy the little fat boy who live in the basement of my house?

I’m sure I did poorly.

Can I tell you?–I’m tired of doing poorly. It’s not that I am tired of pursuing upright eating. No, it’s just that sometimes I feel like I’m going against the natural order of my existence in an attempt to look better or buy more time in the calendar of my years.

Don’t get me wrong. I will still be here today–parsing my calories and analyzing my food.

Abstemious–choosing to avoid certain things.

Because it’s my lot. Some people can’t do what I do, and I can’t eat three thousand calories at McDonald’s without having someone roll me out the door in a wheelbarrow, doing chest compressions.