Will someone please proofread my love letter?

I’m writing this love letter, and this girl said she had a lot of stalkers, so I just want to make sure there I’m not saying anything that might possibly be construed as creepy.

Okay, here it is:

Dear __________,

I really enjoyed the time we’ve spent together.  I feel like there was a special connection between you and me (us?)  And I hope I’m not being too forward in saying that my place in your life may have moved from the bush outside your window to the bush inside your heart.  I think you are beautiful, and I expect my parents will too when you meet them.  I have already told them all about you, of course.  And I do realize that we have not known each other very long, but five minutes of small talk can go a long way when you found your soul mate; and you are very beautiful on the outside, which I take to be indicative of the beauty within.  Like with pie.  Sometimes I lie awake and think about you and how great we could be together and how cute our little children might be (key words: “might be” cause you just never know, right) and that - to me - is proof enough that true love can exist at first sight and that I have found it in meeting you.  I can’t even remember how I coped without having met you.  I would do anything for you, and without you, I do not see the point in living.  Enclosed are photos of me with other people, whose heads I have covered with pictures of your face that I found on your facebook page.

Hugs and Grandparenting,

—J.m. Gatewood

Whattya think?  Think she’d like it?

XD

Peace is Just Two Fingers

You ever notice how black people on tv get offended sometimes whenever the concept of slavery is brought up?  Turns out that relatively recently in human history, a mass subjugation was undergone in Africa; which transformed into a bleak form of racial slavery that continued on to modern U.S. society - and in such a short amount of time, it became so integral and rendered Americans of European decent so dependent on the concept that it took an entire civil war to eradicate this addiction.  It took quite an unnecessary toll on the attitudes of African Americans, which their children largely still inherit.  Racial profiling still exists to-day.  This is not what this blog is about.

A lot of truth gets confused in people's heads because of a stigma.  For instance, the idea I proposed in my last blog about everyone being a slave to one thing or another.  A person can look at that, think of the value they place on freedom because of the country they are in; think then of the contrast, the embarrassingly awful form of slavery that the country that called itself "free" was found guilty of not-so-long ago.  After these thoughts, it's easy for a person to convince him or her self that the biblical passages that refer to slavery are archaic or even barbaric.  If a person is a Christian already, perhaps an idea such as slavery has become ignored due to the discomfort in addressing it.  Many Christians will replace "slave" with "servant" in order that images of abused Africans are not so easily aroused in the western mind.

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you.  You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land.  You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance.  You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way.  (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)

 If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years.  Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom.  If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year.  But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him.  If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master.  But the slave may plainly declare, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children.  I would rather not go free.'  If he does this, his master must present him before God.  Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl.  After that, the slave will belong to his master forever.  (Exodus 21:2-6 NLT)

The Israelites were not historically a slave society (in legislation not in practice).

"Guterbock refers to 'slaves in the strict sense,' apparently referring to chattel slaves such as those of classical antiquity. This characterization may have been valid for house slaves whose master could treat them as he wished when they were at fault, but it is less suitable when they were capable of owning property and could pay betrothal money or fines. The meaning 'servant' seems more appropriate, or perhaps the designation 'semi-free'. It comprises every person who is subject to orders or dependent on another but nonetheless has a certain independence within his own sphere of active."  --[HI:HANEL:1.632]

Cultural anthropologists also point out that New World Slavery is historically unique.

"Scholars do not agree on a definition of "slavery." The term has been used at various times for a wide range of institutions, including plantation slavery, forced labor, the drudgery of factories and sweatshops, child labor, semivoluntary prostitution, bride-price marriage, child adoption for payment, and paid-for surrogate motherhood. Somewhere within this range, the literal meaning of "slavery" shifts into metaphorical meaning, but it is not entirely clear at what point. A similar problem arises when we look at other cultures. The reason is that the term "Slavery" is evocative rather than analytical, calling to mind a loose bundle of diagnostic features. These features are mainly derived from the most recent direct Western experience with slavery, that of the southern United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The present Western image of slavery has been haphazardly constructed out of the representations of that experience in nineteenth-century abolitionist literature, and later novels, textbooks, and films...From a global cross-cultural and historical perspective, however, New World slavery was a unique conjunction of features...In brief, most varieties of slavery did not exhibit the three elements that were dominant in the New World: slaves as property and commodities; their use exclusively as labor; and their lack of freedom..." --[NS:ECA:4:1190f]

Clearly, if we are not careful, we can allow to-day's over-distortions of ideas to paint over scripture with a meaning that isn't there.  It was evidently commonplace for the servant of an Israelite to decide to stay that way.  Especially after so many years of being a servant, a deep relationship is formed between servant and master.  There have been some cases in fact, where the servant is elevated to more importance to a family that the children of that house.  I'll get back to that in a second.

One thing I notice is that in Genesis 24, in the story of Isaac and Rebecka, (which I will revisit in a later blog you should keep an eye out for) there is a servant depicted throughout.  The servant is commonly named Eliezer, meaning "helper" or "God of help," due to the fact that 60 years before the account, Eliezer was Abraham's servant.  He MAY have had a different servant by that time.  This servant is a servant TO THE CORE.  Think less like a farmer's slave, and more like a rich person's butler.  He is even trusted by Abraham to go all the way to his homeland to pick up chicks for his son.* 

*He also trusted him to "put your hand under my thigh." [Genesis 24:1-4]  Some master-servant relationships were REAALLLY close.  XD

If you haven't read the blog I wrote just prior to this, you should probably read it before proceeding.  I'll wait.

C'mon, hurry up.

.

.

Ready now?  Ugh, fine.

Zzzzzz...huh?  Alright, where was I?

Oh yes.

So....

As the popular saying goes, "God loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to leave you that way."

This means that in order to become a servant to the benevolent Lord, there is no pretense, no amount of "goodness" you have to achieve before "deserving" it.  The sort of transference into "goodness" happens after you've started following God's will, and it happens because you are following God's will.  "Goodness" is following God's will.  Any moral standard you had in your head beforehand is good and all, but you'll find it's been incomplete and baseless, and much of the time very difficult to motivate yourself properly to achieve.

Nothing you do earns you any right into Heaven (which I have called repeatedly in my blogs "Home;" this is what I am referring to).  If you lived a perfect life without sin, hypothetically, you would not have any right into heaven because of it.  Housing there is on invite-only.  Graciously, everyone's invited.  Obviously, not everyone is willing to leave their malicious masters.

In C.S. Lewis's "A Great Divorce" he depicts a bus full of people who went to Hell, who were transported to Heaven to have a look.  They were invited to leave their luggage behind; their vices, addictions, selfishness and so on and come to live in there instead.  Except for one sex-sinner, every last person made the same decision they made on Earth in their lives: the unwillingness to let go of the "selves" that made them miserable. In the end, it is not really God who "sends" people to Hell, but it is He who learns they will not follow Him into Heaven.  He relents and gives them what they think they want, instead of what they really would want, should they see any reason into it.

"If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth), we shall not see Heaven.  If we accept Heaven, we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.  I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned was precisely nothing; that the kernel of what he was really seeking, even in his most depraved wishes will be there - beyond expectation - waiting for him in 'the High Countries.'" --[http://www.jknirp.com/lewis6.htm]

Now, God doesn't just leave us as slaves either.  The Bible teaches us that we are to be elevated to His sons and daughters!  We are called not just into a master-servant relationship, but a parent-child relationship.  This has huge ramifications.  It implies a lot about why God might Love in a corrective manner rather than in the manner of passive adoration, as some would have you believe.  It means that God is actively conditioning in each of us the traits of His family: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness and self-control.  Have you ever had someone tell you that they can tell you're a part of your family because of some behavior or mannerism that is similar to another relative?  In our Father's family, the greatest trait people can find in you that would indicate that you are a part of it is Love.

"For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship.  When we cry "Abba! Father!"  It is the Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.  I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.  for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God."  --[Romans 8:15-19]

This is a fact, that I don't deserve to be a son of God and yet God sent his son down to taste death at the hands of his enemies so that in the wholeness of God's selfless love, I should become a son of God myself.  this fact brings me to such a gratitude that humbles me out of my pride and gives me confidence beyond all fears.

--J.m. Gatewood

    Christian

Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy

You're all probably wondering why I haven't blogged lately.  I haven't been so concerned with relaying the science behind picking up the shattered pieces of your life and making yourself happy again as I once was.  All the pep talks are still in my older blogs.

A recent study I read from Psychology Today says that placebos have exactly as much affect on people when they know it's a placebo as when they don't.  Evidently there needn't be any manipulation or lies to make people feel better.  The very act of faithfully swallowing a sugar pill becomes an aspect of prayer.  Every affirmation, recitation, ritual, or wish.  Bring it to the god you serve.  When you envision the most important thing to you; the thing you dedicate all your decisions toward, what do you see?  That is who you pray to.

That's what's been weighing on my mind mostly lately.  Who do I belong to?  Here's an excerpt that my friend Brandon Walker pointed me toward:


"If we use Kierkegaard's definition we can categorize various "god-substitutes" and the particular kinds of brokenness and damage that each one brings into a life.  So we could discern some of the following:

• If you center your life and identity on your spouse or partner, you will be emotionally dependent, jealous, and controlling.  The other person's problems will be overwhelming to you.
• If you center your life and identity on your family and children, you will try to live your life through your children until they resent you or have no self of their own.  At worst, you may abuse them when they displease you.
• If you center your life and identity on your work and career, you will be a driven workaholic and a boring, shallow person.  At worst you will lose family and friends and, if your career goes poorly, develop deep depression.
• If you center your life and identity on pleasure, gratification, and comfort, you will find yourself getting addicted to something.  You will become chained to "escape strategies" by which you avoid the hardness of life.
• If you center your life and identity on relationships and approval, you will be constantly overly hurt by criticism and thus always losing friends.  You will fear confronting others and therefore will be a useless friend.
• If you center your life and identity on a "noble cause", you will divide the world into "good" and "bad" and demonize your opponents.  Ironically, you will be controlled by your enemies.  Without them, you have no purpose.
• If you center your life and identity on religion and morality, you will, if you are living up to your moral standards, be proud, self-righteous, and cruel.  If you don't live up to your standards, your guilt will be utterly devastating."

-Timothy Keller
Quoted from the footnotes of "The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism".

Both this book, my pastor, and Project 86's newest album "Picket Fence Cartel" featuring THIS song:

(warning: loud music)


 Managed to feature the same theme at the same time in my immediate perception, which usually means God's stressing something, and NOT JUST TO ME.

The idea is that people are naturally slaves.  Not that we intend to be slaves, we just are.  Even if you say "I will not build MY happiness or significance on any one or thing," you are actually building your happiness and significance on freedom and independence.

"According to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things." --Timothy Keller, the Reason for God.

Good book.  Seriously.  It goes on to illustrate how in every scenario, serving any master other than God means to build your identity on something finite that can be destroyed leaving you without a self.

We all have our little weaknesses; our masters we tend to want to serve, our idols... our enticing false promises of immediate gain that in the end won't make you happy.  I won't tell you mine, because I'm goofy about when and where I reveal my heart's desires.  The problem is that we think if we got everything we've ever wanted, if we finally achieve all those goals we set for ourselves, that we'd be finally permanently satisfied.  I am finally rich and famous, upperclass, powerful, top office, wife, kids, mansion, six horses, eleven limos, two turn tables and a microphone... but statistically, people are even MORE depressed or balls-to-the-wall crazy AFTER they've achieved everything they'd wanted.  That's because they'd been trying to quench the unquenchable.

It's like the movie "I Love You Beth Cooper," where this nerdy dude who's had this borderline creepy crush on this cheerleader for YEARS, finally sorta gets the girl and starts hanging out with her only to get hit with the reality of who she really is.  He was in love with an imaginary version of her in his head: a lie to himself that kept him driven to achieve his goal.  Most goals are like that; different than how you thought.  Of course, in the movie, he decided the real Beth Cooper was better than the fantasy version and went with it.  Movies are cool.  They give you examples of how to "go with it."

You've all heard of Job right?  The account from the Bible where Satan makes a wager with God that he can break the faith of God's favorite servant Job, and he proceeds to do so by slowly and tortuously taking literally everything away from Job, including his health?  In the end God blesses him with way more than what he had to begin with, of course.  Which is awesome.

There's another story where the Devil makes a wager with God that he can break his favorite servant.  It's a more fictional account, and instead of Satan taking everything away, he GIVES EVERYTHING to this man.  This is the account of Faust I'm speaking of.  This story is quite a bit more convoluted and therefor makes a terrible fable to use an example.  But I do find it interesting that all the Mephistophelian character was trying to do was get Dr. Faust to desire to stay on Earth away from his heavenly father for even a second longer in order to win the wager.

That's all a devil needs sometimes is an appeal - a little foothold.  It use to be that people had a PRETTY good sense of truth and falsehood too, but these days with the entertainment media, and with capitolism, and ESPECIALLY with the post-modern idea that the truth is somewhere in the synthesis of a fact and its negation; people have become largely ambivalent and don't do a lot of thinking for themselves.

We live in the age of information, where all human knowledge is accessible readily to any one person, but if you ask someone for a simple truth like "is murder wrong," this is the first time in history you might actually get an answer diluted with moral relativism or at least a justification regarding some tricky circumstance.

I'm not innocent either.  VERY early on, I was twisting my parent's words around to find the grey area where moral relativism lay so that I might get out of some punishment at the cost of learning important lessens.

The most classic combatant to this comes from Jesus Hisownself, from when he was healing people on the sabbath.  The idea of sabbath was to make sure people didn't overwork themselves and employers allowed employees and servants resting periods.  Jesus argued that if your donkey fell into the river on the sabbath you would still pull him out.  The law was made for the benefit of man, not man for the benefit of the law.  One shouldn't invent a hypothetical situation where a general wisdom, such as don't steal stuff, is no longer wise and then use it to testify against the whole wisdom.  That would be disastrous.

Anyways... uh.. .where was I?  Yeah, so I've decided that to truly live a happy life you've got to give up everything and follow Jesus.  When I say everything, I mean it.  When Job was in the midst of tribulation, his so-called friends (by no one's suggestion, not God's nor Satan's) abandoned him.  I bet the friends he made after that were a bit better.  Probably even the elimination of his old wife and kids were a blessing in disguise, though the scripture doesn't say it.  I speak from experience here, having dropped school, house, friends and girlfriend all at once to live out on the streets and try to hear from God.  If you can get away with NOT doing what I did, blessed are you.  But you DO have to give up worshiping whatever you are worshiping in place of God.  Truth is, it's not going to quench your thirst anyways.  The master you currently serve is an abusive tyrant.  How many times have you seen someone stay in an abusive relationship for seemingly no good reason?  That's you and your current master.

I know, I know, I'm preaching, and I'd always said this wasn't a God blog.  That's why I haven't been posting lately.  All I want to do is tell everyone I know that salvation and freedom from tyranny rests solely, eternally and easily in the hands of Jesus the Christ.  Now everyone can say goodnight to the bad guy.

--J.m. Gatewood
   Christian



P.S. One more track cause I'm funky.

The Truth, the Past, and the Underpants

I acted in a play once in college called "The Underpants," which was written by Steve Martin, who is evidently some sort of comedy genius.  There is a scene in it where the character I played stole a kiss from the unwitting female protagonist and then immediately passes out and has to be resuscitated by means of cold water to the face.  A photographer took a picture of this kiss one night and the photo made the Oregonian newspaper.  I have the page framed and hung on my wall as a conversation piece.

And since Steve Martin is wholly responsible for making the event of me kissing a girl worthy of a Portland newspaper, I feel like I owe him at least the honor of following him on Twitter.

During rehearsal one night for this play, we were running the final scene where the King comes into the house and everyone's surprised about it.  I remember the director - who had been pleased with our acting and use of comedic timing thus far - was unhappy with our rendition of being surprised at the arrival of the King.

We were just being surprised the wrong way.  He tried getting us to play make believe and shake the proper response from us.  He'd say "pretend the President just walked through the door," to which we replied "you want us to throw tomatoes at him?"  He then attempted "well, then pretend Tom Cruise or some famous celebrity walked through the door.  Or some sort of personal role model."  And when he saw we were looking at each other confused, he added "Like Jesus."  And for the most part we actors replied "so you want us to ask him questions?"

The director was frustrated that we college age actors couldn't relate to the way that Germans would have felt had the King walked in.

See, for us who grew up in the age of information, respect seems to have a different face.  It works different, talks different, behaves different.  We don't respect authority simply because they are in a seat of authority.  We can't.  We have to know everything first.  So our initial reaction is incessant questioning - especially of intention - and judging.  And we're not horribly wrong for concluding that's the way we have to go about things.  Here's why.

The first election I remember being old enough to give a crap about was Clinton.

All the way up to the highest authority IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY could NOT BE TRUSTED.

Also, we grew up with the internet.  That means we not only had access to exponentially more information than our parents, but since our brains were sponges, we developed almost scary instincts about how to FIND that information crazy fast and better than our parents could given the same technology.  And we did find that information and used it to weigh our leaders, actors, bosses, educational facilities, institutions, even our own parents. 

We were the first generation of children that couldn't have faith in the strength and infallible wisdom of our parents.  

We did eventually get it right, in case you're wondering, the reaction to the King.  I can't remember what the solution was.  I think we just needed to stop overthinking things and go from the gut.

"Did you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you do in your head? You can look it up.  I know some of you are going to say 'I did look it up, and that's not true.' That's because you looked it up in a book.  Next time look it up in your gut.  I did.  My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works."

--Stephen Colbert

I wholly believe that within the next couple of generations the children of the information age will be able to properly adjust society to the ramifications of the booming industrial age.  

In the meantime, I personally will follow God's authority, and if anyone asks me what the right direction is I will say "there's only one way, up."  Or "there's only one way.  Up."  Or "there's only one way up."  Or some variation.  Honestly, if I'm saying it out loud you can't tell which one it is anyways, can you?  And does it matter?  

In a world where there's so much information, none of which leads to any real truth, people have started to become ambivalent and unwilling to figure out if truth exists at all.  After all is said and done, God is still the most likely authority to lead you to any answers of substance whether you believe He exists or you don't. 

Here are some other things to meditate on:

• You can still get service with a smile by smiling first.
• Everyone around you is a genius you can learn something from.
• There is a magic word with magical powers to attract people: "hello."
• Sharing is contagious: it spreads tangible material around that is infected with love.
• Raising your voice will only strengthen their resolve against your words.
• Fighting doesn't make you king of the mountain and it doesn't prove you're in the right.  Arguably, it never has.
• Honesty doesn't mean saying whatever pops into your head without a filter. It takes careful consideration.
• Rules are made for the benefit of man, not man for the benefit of the rules. 
• Asking for help doesn't hurt anyone's opinion of you, and it gives someone else the chance to feel like a hero.
• Remember to sleep.
• I am rubber and you are glue.
• Do unto yourself as you do unto your neighbor.
• It's not an eye for an eye, it's a favor for a favor.
• Don't trust your future self to get around to what present you putting off.  Chances are you won't have improved that vastly at not procrastinating by then.
• Coincidence is the process of miracles.
• It's never not now.
• UNLIMITED INFINITE POSSIBILITIES!

Speaking of procrastination, I've discovered an article in Psychology Today magazine, which my mother bought me a subscription to for Christmas, bless her heart, that describes a way to form better habits.  Specifically, I believe it gives exercise as an example, but it would work anywhere, and it's certainly helping me.

The idea is that you are more likely to remember to do something without putting it off if you attach the thought to something you're already doing regularly.  An if/then scenario, in other words.  I say to myself: "when I'm done with dinner, I will immediately do some curls."  I have set up the event "if dinner, then curls" in my mind.  When dinner roles around, it reminds me of curls.  Our minds are awesome at doing things that way it turns out.  Food for thought.

--J.M. Gatewood

Probability Significator

Even cavemen got butterflies

No one wants to see you fail on stage.

Bear with me.

When I strap on my guitar, plug it into the P.A. and step behind the microphone, ready to kick off into a song, everyone is looking at me waiting to see what I'll do.  This is true for anyone who has ever been behind a mic.  It can be scary.  Here's why it's scary.

Note: I believe in God.  I like to use cavemen in my examples a lot because they paint a simple picture of the functions of human adaptations that aren't always clear.  Not necessarily because I want to claim that I know what we were like a few thousand years ago.  Purely speculation.

So imagine a couple thousand years ago and everyone is cavemen.  We're all living in tribes of about thirty some odd people.  Perhaps about half of them are women.  Perhaps half of that half are between puberty and menopause.  Perhaps half of that half are healthy and disease free.  That leaves three women tops for a strapping young lad to mate with.  Of course you don't talk to them, cause either the alpha male in the group will drop a rock on your head or you'll say something totally unromantic and she'll tell all her friends what a loser you are and you'll never reproduce.  That was a real concern back then I imagine.  Butterflies in the stomach?  Totally a necessary adaptation.  Those with a predisposition for caution often had the best chance for survival.

These days, there are about three hundred and seven million people in the United States alone; most of which are networked together via the internet or telephone (as opposed to back in the tribes of thirty who didn't tend to talk much with neighboring tribes).  Tons of those people go out clubbing, or to bars, or to malls, or to churches, or to all sorts of various social events just to meet people they've never met before.  If you flirt with someone wrong, you might never have to see that person again for as long as you live, and you've probably inflated their ego in the process, failure or no.  And the man or woman in this person's life is very likely not particularly emotionally mature, and neither are they.  You might not be either.  Nobody is in America.  So relationships around here don't last forever.  Which means if you're REALLY dedicated to winning the heart of someone already in some sort of committed relationship, you can always come back later.  Still got butterflies in your stomach?  Stop eating butterflies.

Sure, your body makes you picky, which helps narrow things down on a biological level.  Sort of.  Various chemical "smells" we pick up off of the opposite sex are indicative of what sorts of antibodies that person has, and we're programmed to be attracted to a balance of like and unlike antibodies; so as to better produce offspring that are immune to more pesky diseases.  It's still pretty practical right now if you think about it, (and still has an extremely powerful effect on the limbic system, I can attest.  I had a more potent hit of pheromones recently than I think I've ever had.  It can get blinding if you aren't careful.)  at least until humans develop the technology to start swapping contagious antibodies through the air.

Where was I?

Oh yeah.

So, what happens when you get behind a mic is that a lot of people are watching to see what you do.  In caveman land, that usually meant you were a chief or a shaman or in some kind of powerful position.  The kind of powerful position that people put their trust in for their VERY SURVIVAL.  That's a lot of pressure.  Especially considering if you steered them terribly wrong, and you yourself survived, most tribes would shame the hell out of you.  You would be a complete and total outcast.

This is not true of performance art or REALLY any kind of public speaking to-day.  In fact, ESPECIALLY with performance art, everyone just wants to enjoy the show.  If I go up there with the guitar, get nervous about what everyone thinks of me and choke, nobody ENJOYS it.  If I go up there confidently and play and have a good time, everyone has a good time with me.  I mean, people pick little mistakes apart to themselves all the time, sure.  But it's mostly it's because they want you to succeed.  Some people enjoy being a critic about you to other people, but it's usually not even about you.  It's about making themselves look better.

In case you haven't figured it out already, I'm not talking about me and my performance art.  I'm talking about you and your life.  Every.  Day.

See, there's been a lot of melancholy flying around me lately. People not happy with the way life treats them, the way their luck is going, the way their day is going, as though these arbitrary abstract concepts are sentient and try failingly to cater to their pleasure.  Says to me that people want to believe in God.  Of course not the God that makes Himself known to them, because they've heard He's got rules and they're afraid those rules won't be what they want to do; that the God who answers their prayers will take them AWAY from what they think will make them happy.

What people think will make them happy is actually what will make them comfortable if miserable yet delusional.  God wants people to be happy, but.. you know... ACTUAL happy.  Not that cheap-o KayMart brand tofu based happy.  The real juicy meaty part of the happy with the K-1 sauce.  Those that would say "there is no absolute" are stating something that ultimately defeats itself, for that sentence is itself an absolute.

"The thief comes to kill and steal and destroy.  I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."  --John 10:10



That being said, Shakespeare (who I HATE quoting) or one of his various characters, said "All the world is a stage."  This is true to the extent that you're always making impressions on people wherever you go.  And in everyday life - just like on stage - no one wants to see you fail.  Not really.  If you're relaxed, having fun, cracking jokes, comfortable, making eye contact, rolling with the punches, it's super contagious.  People will enjoy themselves more around you and you will enjoy yourself more around you.  Your opportunities will improve with your networking, and with it your luck.  If you're always truly seeking to make the best of each moment, every day's events will accumulate into a good day, and life will be good.  The downside is that everyone on your Facebook news feed who has Facebook status's that say things like "today isn't going so well" and "eff my life" and "just my luck" will start to REALLY annoy you.

Life is suppose to be a complex roller coaster of experiences, not just of sad ones like heartbreak and loss and pain, but of truly beautiful ones like passion, like movement, change, action, laughter, the RUSH, the THRILL... music.

I had a friend once tell me that the only thing that time guarantees is heartbreak.  He means it optimistically, as if to say the idea is that all relationships end, if not in breakup then in death, which is the absolute best excuse to keep the passion cubed into each individual moment.  There's one more thing besides heartbreak that can only exist if time exists and that is music.  Every song ends as well, but you know if it didn't... boy you'd sure want it to.  Life is this way.

If me or one of my band mates plays a wrong note on stage, we all know to kick in to make it sound right, to compensate.  Having a good team is indispensable.

Maybe it's off to a rocky start, but you can always play off of it.  Play a couple more notes to make it sound right, roll with the punches, get a good rhythm going, seduce your audience, establish a rapport.  Then you gotta build in dynamic of course, slowly, like you're dangling a string in front of a cat.  Can't just give the ending away, cause no cat wants a string that's just sitting lifeless on the ground, there's no challenge in that; no vigor, no thrill.  Build it into something interesting, make it something to CARE about, something to invest in; you're worth the value, so act like it.  Dress like it.  Make it passionate, even if it means closing your eyes and ears to the outside world sometimes and taking a leap of faith.  When I finally explode through the climax and into the other side, I want to be able to say I experienced everything I came here to experience; all of the UNLIMITED INFINITE POSSIBILITIES that were so important that I bothered to come to this planet, this stage, and signed this contract that says I've got to die, just for the privilege of singing this song, or dancing this dance for the limited time I'm here.

In other news, happy Black History Month!

With Love,
--J.M. Gatewood
Probability Significator

Mothers: A Poem

Mothers: A Poem by J.M. Gatewood


Mothers scare the crap out of me.

There are like... 2 billion of them. 

82.5 million in the U.S.
 
And they can usually vote. 

The average number of kids a mother will have is 2.

On average there are about 4.3 babies born each second.

Most mothers are single mothers.

How do mothers make the bulk of their decisions?

Whatever's best for the child, right? 

Shit.  And there are billions of them.

Mothers are the single largest minority group in the world.

Which also makes them the largest niche.

You want to make money? 

Appeal to the mothers. 

You want to rule the world, you say? 

Appeal to the mother's vote. 

That's probably how we're going to allow mass human microchipping to happen. 

Do YOU know where your kids are???

Mothers scare the crap out of me.

The end.

Fashionably Late Ophiuchus

I recieved word this morning that astrology has suddenly changed.  Evidently, that thirteenth constilation - Ophiuchus - that didn't get invited to the zodiac mixer party two thousand years ago is suddenly being recognized as a sign you can be born under.  This means that it's getting itself squeezed into the year making everyone else's sign smaller and pushed over slightly.  So, if you've been a Libra all this time, now you're probably a Virgo.

The list is as follows:

Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16. 
Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11. 
Pisces: March 11-April 18. 
Aries: April 18-May 13. 
Taurus: May 13-June 21. 
Gemini: June 21-July 20.
Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10. 
Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16.
Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30.
Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23.
Scorpio: Nov. 23-29. 
Ophiuchus: Nov. 29-Dec. 17.  <--The new guy
Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20.

Why this is causing chaos:

Forgetting all that horoscope nonsense for a moment, the zodiac was designed originally as a personality profiling system, like Meyer's Briggs or however you spell it, based on observation of seasonal effects on personalities.  The original astrologers used the stars as a sort of calandar for the year (like most people did in those days) and wrote up a neat little way of remembering the all the profiling business by assigning a sort of heavenly mascot that related to that month's observed personality.  The constilations were not all the same size, so creative liberties were necessary to take, and since there was already a twelve month calandar, poor Ophiuchus got the boot.

However, for the past two thousand years, this system didn't lie stagnant while people mindlessly accepted the assessments at face value.  They've been making improvements.  They've mapped out rising signs, moon signs, saturn signs; they got more specific by seperating each month into decons and cusps.  This older-than-the-hills zodiacal system has become so hammered out and so widely accepted that statistically it's fairly accurate despite it's being an arbitrary assessment of personality based on date of birth.

Now all that work's gone out the window.  It's all over the news, but none of the articles are being specific, and Wikipedia is ominously silent about it - behaving as though nothing important is occuring.  For instance, by who's authority was this change carried out?  There's already arguments between western and eastern definitions of the dates, so why is this suddenly something we all have to accept?  Is everyone's personalities suppose to change because of this?  How are the decons and cusps going to be divided?  What is Ophiuchus's personality profile?  Who is everyone compatible with now that the math's all off?

To make matters worse, the sun signs are off by a month already due to lack of accounting for the equinox.  So if you were supposedly born a Cancer and found out the sun was really in Gemini when you were born; NOW you have to make room for Ophiuchus, making you a Taurus.  But you just spent your ENTIRE LIFE thinking you weren't even compatible with Taurus.  Or whatever.  I'm not even knowlegable about compatibilities. Well... the original astrologers made the calandar first priority and the alignment of the stars second, so I doubt the fact that the sun was in Cancer when I was born made me any less a Leo.  (Technically, the sun was in the constilation Hydra when I was born.  That explains why I grow three more heads everytime I'm decapitated.)

So that's why everyone's all in an uproar to-day about the zodiac.  To be honest, I think it's all a publicity stunt to get people paying more interest in their horoscopes.  Which is silly because horoscopes were created after the original zodiac as a publicity stunt - and it's based on the premis that the stars could predict things.  They can't.

When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the LORD your God. The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, the LORD your God has not permitted you to do so (Deuteronomy 18:9-14).

Divination = predicting the future.

Let's be clear about this, since I just KNOW someone's going to ask me about the hypocricy of prophecy in all this madness: It's easy to be wise in retrospect.  Once we know the outcome of an event, it is much easier to see what we should have done.  For the most part, this information is no longer useful since the time for taking action has passed us by.  Let it be demoted from information to pure data.  The gift of PROPHECY as the Christians use it, is not so much concerned with predicting the future as it is making known the will of God to His people at a time when they still have the opportunity to do something about it.

And as far as Ophiuchus goes, if you don't like it, don't change anything.  It doesn't mean your personality has to change unless you want it to; unless you see it as an opportunity to change your self-view in a way that creates opportunities you once denied yourself because that just wasn't the kind of person you are.  If that's what it takes to destroy your limiting beliefs.  Otherwise, the whole system is largely man-made and you are a human, so you are free from being put inside a box like that.  You know better.  You've got UNLIMITED INFINITE POSSIBILITIES.

I got a call about that New Year's Eve show from my other blog, by the way.  Evidently that pub's business has tripled since we played and all kinds of people are asking for a cd of us.  So we've been invited back to play paid gigs there, me and my sisters.  If you follow me on Facebook and feel like Goldendale is not too far away for you to travel, I will post about it so you can make it.  I'm pretty excited, since it's always been my dream to play professionally. 

On that note, I'm going to sign off and practice.  Infinite love!

--J.M. Gatewood
Probability Significator