You can view the video version of this blog by clicking the link below:
Your living your life in dread. The future ain't happened, the past is dead, and now is all 'dey is.
This is a bit deep today, and I'm not meaning to offend anyone by today's video.
My dad was a Methodist preacher. Now, Methodist preachers take an oath to willingly itinerate, and that means they'll move to anywhere the bishop in their district assigns them, usually for a year, and our family moved about every 2 or 3 years. I'm getting into the weeds, here.
The first assignment my father had was a small town in south central Illinois, in the late 1940s. The way he told it in the days before he passed away, the Chicago Mobs, starting with Capone, used town as a storage place for all of its illegal slot machines. He never said that they ran that town, but I'm sure that people lived in fear, at least a bit.
He was a young firebrand preacher then, with a kindergarten aged son and a 3 year old daughter, I hadn't been born yet. He got together with other preachers to try to make a difference in the town. And he was met by threats from the thugs on his family and children and encouraged to leave town.
He asked the bishop to move him somewhere else out of fear for his family. They moved him to Caseyville.
Bob told me about some of the things going on in this town at that time. About the Drive-by Tommy Gun attacks on bars and restaurants and, I suppose businesses that fronted the gambling. I'm not sure he meant this little town or Chicago, and I searched the internet and could not find any accounts of these things in this little town.
Anyway, he related how people, like a woman and her twin babies in the baby carriage getting gunned down in the crossfire, and other women and children...and men, suffering injury and death in these turf wars.
I was responding to these accounts he was relating about the innocent victims, and he stopped me cold and said, those women and men were not innocent. Everyone in town knew that the shootings were taking place in a certain section of town, and only people that were frequenting those bars and gambling places were the ones getting caught in the crossfire. Everyone knew better than to go into that section of town and these people were NOT innocent, but participating in the whole scenario.
The reason I'm relating this, is the lesson I got out of this. The Media often colors the news and throws around their points of view about the “victims” of certain events. They point out who they want to be the perps and the vics to further their point of view, whatever it is.
And the other point is, you can actually invite trouble into your life by your actions and choices. Heck, I may be doing that now.
My dad's intentions were good about trying to do something about the moral character of the town at that time. Had he been single, I'm sure he would have continued to stand up to the thugs, maybe unto death. But he apparently hadn't thought out, ahead of time, the consequences of his actions on his family, and he ended up having to get his family to relative safety.
The women...and men....and the children in their charges that got gunned down in the crossfire also made choices about where to be and what they did to become victims, but they weren't innocent. They ALSO invited trouble into their lives.
The ultimate lesson here is that right now, right here, where you and I are in our lives, the jobs we have....or not....the homes we have....or not...and I suspect even the parents we were born to and the country we were born in, if you believe in the permanence of the spirit and soul,... all of it is the sum total of the thoughts we've had, the choices that we've made.
Thoughts create reality. Everything around you, every screw, nail, thread, on up to cars, lights, houses, skyscrapers, and cities, started out as an thought or an idea in somebody's head.
So, I know this was a bit deep, but that's the point. Yes, you are what you eat, it's been said, but, really, you are what you think,...thought....and thunk.....Thoughts create reality.....
Think about it.....