Going crazy. If we want to avoid it, we need to decide what we’re coming after.
Cring takes less than twenty minutes to decipher some puzzles—making them simple.
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TRANSCRIPT
“I don’t know whether I’m coming or going!”
When I was a kid my mother said that all the time. I thought she was serious, so I would occasionally explain to her that she was coming home. She always looked at me with a frown, understanding that my little childish mind could not comprehend the heights and depths of the struggles of the average adult American female.
And this wasn’t limited to my mother. Such a statement was not initiated from the ovaries. My father also uttered the same thought. Exasperated, he would proffer, “Just when I think I’m comin’, suddenly I’m goin’.”
They were part of a generation that was very upset that the world was changing. They had done nothing to prepare themselves for such an evolution, and they felt it was their duty to maintain the standards which had been passed along to them by other folks who did not know whether they were coming or going.
They had a pride in complaining.
You would think if we could come up with all these gadgets and organic vegetables, that we certainly should be able to escape the dreary profile and grumbling spirit that permeates those who discover that they’re responsible for their own rent, gas and utilities.
Off camera, the average human being either looks dismayed or depleted. Does it actually have something to do with coming and going?
Is there confusion that makes us believe that our coming should be our going and vice versa?
Because the same people who taught me to enjoy cotton candy and popcorn at a movie also gave me the information about racial bigotry and gender bias.
When are we coming and where are we going, for that matter? These end up being very important questions. For our primary goal—our chase for the gold—certainly has to be to keep from going crazy.
And going crazy is much simpler than it’s made out to be. If you’re legitimately mentally ill, and it can be proven by you running down the street naked quoting from the Book of Deuteronomy, a home will be provided for you with three meals a day and nice conversations with men or women who study the brain.
But if you don’t remove your clothes or become overly zealous on some issue, you can be a little bit crazy and end up limiting your possibilities and hurting the lives of those around you.
If we start off by understanding that we’ve made it permissible to be just a little bit crazy, we may be able to also understand why the world—especially our society—has been such a hotbed for growing “fruits and nuts.”
So, what is it that makes us “a little crazy?”
Any time we allow ourselves or other people to promote two insane ideas, we allow a little bit of crazy to inhabit our world and threaten us all. Here are the two ideas that do the trick:
TWO IDEAS THAT MAKE US A LITTLE CRAZY
- Life is not fair
- Life is hard
After all, not one of us will put up with being cheated in an unfair world, and we are all too lazy to do anything hard. Therefore, we will dump our responsibilities onto everybody else around us.
Yet truthfully, do you know anyone who, in some way shape or form, does not contend that life is unfair and much too difficult?
Yet I will tell you—when you think either one of these and allow it to seep into your soul, you will end up going to Crazy Town.
Now, you probably won’t blow up a building, but you will find yourself blowing up relationships, ignoring opportunities, and expressing ingratitude at every turn, while at the same time insisting that you’re really thankful.
If you want to go crazy, allow yourself to bitch to the world around you about how unfair things are, and how hard it seems to be.
Your job is to start coming, and where you need to come is TO YOUR SENSES.
Likewise, there are two sensible statements that should rattle around in our brains all the time:
- Life is what we make it.
- It’s my responsibility.
We may not like hearing those ideas when we’ve already ordered the refreshments for our latest pity party. Matter of fact, we may have put out the guest list and posted on Facebook or Instagram that “we’re under attack!”
But you do a great disservice to human beings when you lie to them by telling them that there is a creature named Satan who gets up every morning, trying to destroy their joy and contentment.
It causes them to go a little crazy because they’re always looking for or blaming the devil.
We must start coming to our senses.
OUR LIFE IS UP TO US BECAUSE IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY.
I’ll tell you this—if you’re not coming home, you’re going astray. And what is home?
Home is our testimony. It’s what we’ve seen and heard–the blessings that confirm to us that even though things may seem difficult, if we hang in there, a way of escape will pop to the forefront.
Home is also the people who love us instead of the people we WISH loved us.
You start going astray when you chase people who are running away from you instead of toward you.
Whatever their reasons may be, no matter how deep your devotion may be to them, chasing other human beings who really do not want to be around you makes you start going astray.
And what is the problem with astray? It’s not your home. Your home is where you can relax. Astray is where you have to be guarded—careful—because you’re on someone else’s turf.
When we find ourselves going astray we begin to look for carnal solutions:
- Unnecessary sexual encounters
- Drugs
- Alcohol
- And the worst drug of all: self-pity.
We need to work on coming home which, in a nutshell, is:
“My life is what I make it, so therefore, what happens is my responsibility.”
Would I want it any other way? Do I want YOUR actions to affect me so much that I become immobile? Do I want your opinions to stifle me?
Home is where we are content with what we’ve learned as we decide what needs to be done.
How about one more?
It’s our responsibility to be COMING TO GOD.
You may not know this, but God does not chase you. He doesn’t pursue you.
Matter of fact, if you want to believe He’s indifferent, He does a pretty effective rendition of that.
If you choose to believe He’s mean, then all the anger and evil of the world will be evident to you.
The Good Book says if you want to have God draw close to you, you have to draw close to Him. You’ve got to “come to God.”
Most people do a horrible impersonation of that by going to church. This is forever true and has always been. Church is the worst place to find God. If you’re really coming to God, you will never achieve it by going to church.
Church should be a place you go to strengthen other people and find inner strength from them. It is a fellowship. It is no more the “House of God” than the VFW Hall in a little town is the headquarters for a raging war. Church is a beer joint, not a vineyard or a winery.
If you have a plan of coming to God, you must realize that He does not dislike all the things that the church insists aggravate Him.
God is science.
God is Nature.
God is animals
God is the sun
God is the Universe
God is diversity
God is discovery
God is the rain
God is the mutation
God is the birth
God is the evolution
He does not live within the pages of a book as a character who is only revealed if you have time to read. His character, His fiber, His essence, surrounds us and infiltrates the air we breathe.
But if we don’t know that—if we don’t realize that God is not against things, but instead, celebrates the fullness of all things, we will go to church and pick our favorite sins and sinners, and lobby against them.
If you’re coming to God you must do two things:
- Value your life
- Honor the Earth
Otherwise you’ll end up going to church while you devalue your life because you believe yourself to be a helpless sinner and thinking that the world—and even some knowledge—is evil.
The success and joy you experience on your journey will be based upon your coming and going.
So maybe in THAT way, my mother was right. Because she did not know whether she was coming or going, she was always complaining.
The good news is, if you know where to come, you will know where to go.
The better news is, truth is never hidden. It’s always just the next thing to do, which we don’t think is enough.
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