Tag Archives: personal responsibility

Breakthrough

j-r-practix-with-border-2

Breakthrough: (n) a sudden, dramatic, and important discovery or development.

You don’t get rich by telling the truth.Dictionary B

You can’t even make your grits and gravy if your message is pointed.

Everyone is looking for confirmation that they’re doing great. You must formulate a philosophy that confirms that people are victims of circumstance, and therefore, the best way to overcome the “haters” is through positive thinking and self-esteem.

Put that in a book and you’ll make the best-sellers list.

But if you insist that personal responsibility, self-evaluation and productive effort are the keys to growing and expanding, your book will probably end up in the 50-cent bin at Barnes & Noble.

Why?

Because everyone wants a breakthrough instead of a realization.

Matter of fact, ministers receive millions of dollars by preaching to folks that if they give a “seed donation,” God will give them even more money.

It’s amazing how ridiculous this notion sounds.

But the technique works–mainly because people have a tendency to want pie in the sky… never discerning if pie is actually good for them.

 Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix 

 Don’t let another Christmas season go by without owning Jonathan’s book of Christmas stories

Mr. Kringle’s Tales …26 Stories ‘Til Christmas

Only $5.99 plus $1.25 shipping and handling!

An advent calendar of stories, designed to enchant readers of all ages

“Quite literally the best Christmas stories I have ever read.” — Arthur Holland, Shelby, North Carolina

Only $5.99 plus $1.25 shipping and handling.

"Buy

 

 

 

Blameless

Blameless: (adj) innocent of wrongdoing.

Dictionary B

People were killed because they happened to be in a night club with a man who brought a gun and a nasty vendetta.

It doesn’t make sense.

Human beings who insist on the world being sensible end up either committing suicide or writing really bad poetry.

But we are not blameless.

I want to find my fault in the fiasco. I am weary of studying the scrambled brains of troubled little boys.

None of us are blameless.

All have sinned and fallen short of glorious possibilities.

An attempt to point fingers–especially prompted by political motivations–is what truly enrages our Creator.

So I went off yesterday morning and did what I think I do best. I shared a message of good cheer enjoined with personal responsiblity.

For after all, I will never change the world by focusing on its tribulation.

I am also useless if I quietly intone to others, “Be patient because God is in control.”

I find value in the human tribe when I bring a spirit of good cheer with a simple idea on how to make things just a little bit better.

I didn’t shoot one bullet at the Pulse Night Club in Orlando, Florida.

But legislation is useless. I must share a responsibility to make this world a little bit more pleasant by offering a courtly grace to the next brother or sister I encounter.

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix 

 

Baby Boom

Baby boom: (n) a temporary marked increase in the birth rate, especially the one following World War II.

I am a baby boomer.Dictionary B

As with many other titles that have been thrust upon me, I have no idea in hell what that means.

I will say this–I often smile when people say the young people today are growing up in “much more perilous, dangerous and tempting times.” Honestly, there was no place crazier than the United States of America circa 1959 through 1972.

We were killing off leaders like we were part of a drug cartel from Columbia, and drugs were surfacing everywhere, which people experimented with in order to do their part in assisting the FDA.

We were also periodically threatened with atomic bomb annihilation, just to make sure we didn’t get too comfortable in our new hush puppies.

The music was turbulent. If you were a young man you were constantly threatened with being drafted and sent over to bleed in a rice paddy, and the sexual revolution, which was on the drawing boards, required a rotation of guinea pigs.

We were angry, frustrated, disconsolate, overjoyed and unrepresented.

I spent my teen years in that period, and even though I was a church-going boy and not a member of the SDS, when I look back on it, my life was surrounded by dying principles which were tumbling down around me like the walls of Jericho.

I remember one day, my father was in the middle of a speech about personal responsibility and how I needed to take more of it, when suddenly he stopped speaking, stared off in the distance and never continued. I don’t know what crossed his mind–but I think that even though he was an old guy, he realized that everything he was sharing was being disemboweled in his lifetime, and he did not yet understand what the New Order would require.

The travesty of the baby boomers is that they remained babies.

  • So we never got the boom.
  • We never got the sense of accomplishment.
  • We all just eventually learned to sign on the dotted line, and started attending financial conferences on better mortgage rates.

But I am an oddball.

I have maintained a spark of revival, revolution and rejuvenation.

It causes me to be adequately dissatisfied … while on my way to find some moments of satisfaction.

 

Donate Button

Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

*******************

NEW BOOK RELEASE BY JONATHAN RICHARD CRING

WITHIN

A meeting place for folks who know they’re human

 $3.99 plus $2.00 S&H

$3.99 plus $2.00 Shipping & Handling

$3.99 plus $2.00 Shipping & Handling

Buy Now Button

 

Ambiguity

dictionary with letter A

Ambiguity: (n) uncertainty or inexactness of meaning in language

Shouldn’t that be the United States of Ambiguity?

It is now a national pastime–maybe better phrased, our universal slogan. In the pursuit of finding safe language that is not offensive to anyone, we have come up with sentences filled with nouns, but absent verbs.

Politicians stand in front of audiences and list all the types of people they want to appeal to, but never come up with an action word to describe what they intend to do for these hordes of admirers.

Churches have fallen back on becoming more traditional and symbolic in their presentation of spirituality, for fear of offending those who want to have religion minus personal intervention.

And entertainment is always consulting focus groups to ensure that the material provided will garner the widest appeal to sell tickets, t-shirts and DVDs.

It’s all very interesting. And it’s all the process of taking political correctness to a new position: emotional stall.

We’re just stalled. We don’t know what to do, so we attempt to accept everything in part, without signing on the dotted line.

So in a world that prides itself on caution, the next heroes and victors will be daredevils.

The genius of the future will be the explorer who is not afraid to have an opinion and see it through to some sort of conclusion.

Ambiguity is ambiguous.

I know that’s not very articulate, but it says it very well, don’t you think? And it is absent the ambiguity of trying to find a way to describe ambiguity without offending anyone, while possibly causing the hearer to express some interest.

Here are three thoughts I share without reservation–or ambiguity:

  1. America is not exceptional in the eyes of God, but has an exceptional opportunity to do something in this day and hour which could ring true for a thousand years to come.
  2. People are not born any specific way–otherwise, God would have favorites and free will would be a joke.
  3. There is no replacement for hard work and taking personal responsibility for your own life.

You can see, these are thoughts that have both nouns and verbs. They contain very little ambiguity, and therefore open the door to discussion, debate … and hopefully some progress.

Affiliate

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Affiliate: 1.(v) to officially attach or connect to an organization 2. (n) a person or organization attached to a larger body

“Who are you affiliated with?”

“With whom are you affiliated?”

Whenever I hear either of these questions, I realize I am encountering someone who is discovering that I am not qualified to do what I do and is out to expose me or at least discredit my efforts.

It fascinates me that we live in a nation of freedom, liberty and supposedly independent thinkers, but we all scurry to the corners like cockroaches when the lights come on, making sure we have our little nest of individuals who agree with us, as proof of our credibility.

I don’t mind affiliating. I love to be around people. I enjoy folks. But I’ve always been a person who follows common sense with a side of spirituality and heartfelt emotion for dessert. Honestly, sometimes it’s difficult to sign on the dotted line with the causes made available to me because they don’t necessarily agree with that criteria.

  • I don’t make a good atheist–mainly because I believe in God.
  • I’m a horrible agnostic because I have actually seen faith work.
  • Republicans sniff me out and know I’m not part of the flock because of my generosity to people in need, and I am not totally convinced in the doctrine of “every man for himself.”
  • Democrats walk away shaking their heads sadly because I support the value of personal responsibility and don’t think that the taking of human life in any form, including abortion, possesses viability.
  • I’m a horrible Muslim. Bad knees. Can’t kneel on a carpet.
  • I can’t be Jewish. Too much ritual. Like my bread leavened.
  • Honestly, I don’t make a very good Christian because I like my life to be sparked by ideas instead of traditions.
  • I suppose in some ways I don’t make a great American male because I’ve never found pleasure in making fun of women when they’re not around.
  • Yet the females don’t accept me because … well, I guess that one is obvious.

I don’t have anything against affiliation. It’s just when I start following the butt of the person in front of you without seeing clearly where the crowd is heading, well … it makes me a little nervous.

So I have decided to try to get along with everybody the best I can, and in my private house of thought and worship, to allow the wisdom that trickles my way to rule the day instead of polling the masses.

So who am I affiliated with?

I guess anybody who’s willing to take me as I am.