Monthly Archives: February 2019

“Applauding the Sunset”

On February 9, 2019 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer


“Praise the LORD!

Praise, O servants of the LORD,

praise the name of the LORD!

Blessed be the name of the LORD

from this time forth and forevermore!

From the rising of the sun to its setting,

the name of the LORD is to be praised!” (Psalm 113:3, Christian Standard Bible)

One of the nicest parts of being at the beach on the gulf side of Florida is watching the sunsets.  And one of the nicest parts of that is watching it with other people.  Kids—especially girls—dance in the sand.  Couples kiss.  Some older couples dance.

But one of the sweetest things is that many people applaud when the sun goes down.

Why not?!  We applaud after a wonderful performance at a concert or a play.  Every sunset is a wonderful performance.

I don’t know how many of those who applaud the sunset are Christ-followers.  But I do know this: To praise the art is not far removed from praising the artist.  There is always still hope for those who appreciate beauty.  It is when people are no longer able to see the beauty around them that I am most fearful.

I do not believe that an appreciation of nature will save you, but I do believe that such appreciation holds promise.  The world’s beauty may only be a portico outside the house of God, but perhaps if you appreciate the portico long enough, you may ask yourself the crucial question, “I wonder who lives here?”  Perhaps you may even see that the door is open, and that there the smells of a truly Home-cooked meal are wafting from the kitchen.  Perhaps you will gather all your courage, humility, and faith, and go in to meet the Artist.

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“Guilt Prolongs the Problem”

On February 8, 2019 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer


Here is a meditation for addicts that I read just this morning.  This is a Hazelden reading from a book by Melody Beattie that everyone in the world should take buy and read until it has disintegrated.  We should also put a lot of her good suggestions into daily practice until they becomes part of who we are.  Here is today’s reading from her book on Hazelden’s “Thought for the Day” (https://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/thought-for-the-day, accessed 02-08-2019).

“Friday, February 8

Letting Go of Guilt 

Feeling good about ourselves is a choice. So is feeling guilty. When guilt is legitimate, it acts as a warning light, signaling that we’re off course. Then its purpose is finished.

 Wallowing in guilt allows others to control us. It makes us feel not good enough. It prevents us from setting boundaries and taking other healthy action to care for ourselves.

We may have learned to habitually feel guilty as an instinctive reaction to life. Now we know that we don’t have to feel guilty. Even if we’ve done something that violates a value, extended guilt does not solve the problem; it prolongs the problem. So make an amend. Change a behavior. Then let guilt go.

Today, God, help me to become entirely ready to let go of guilt. Please take it from me, and replace it with self-love.”

(From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation.)

I was especially struck by her statements that “. . . extended guilt does not solve the problem; it prolongs the problem.  So make an amend.  Change a behavior.  Then let guilt go.”

When I choose to prolong guilt, rather than choosing to make an amend to someone and to change my behavior, I am simply adding one more wrong thing to feel guilty about—my guilt.  Guilt itself becomes one more wrong behavior whenever I do not address honesty the wrong behavior that gave rise to the guilt.  Prolonging guilt is merely a way for me to avoid the hard work of trusting God, asking for forgiveness, and doing the next right thing.  Real guilt is good.  Prolonged guilt is not.

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“Sand in Your Shoe”

On February 7, 2019 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer


Wednesday, February 6, 2019

A good day yesterday!  A very good day!

What was so good about it?  Everything in particular!

Isn’t it strange how we have the expressions “nothing in particular” and “everything in general,” but we do not generally switch it around, except in very particular cases.

But why shouldn’t we speak of “everything in particular”?

Some folks say that we are troubled by little things (the particulars), because we are pleased by little things.

There may be some truth to that, but I suspect that there is another way to look at it.  Could we not be pleased with little things, while at the same time turning a blind eye to little things that displease us?  I have been practicing this art of late, and have found that even when I don’t get it perfect, the practice makes me happy  I don’t have to wait for joy until I entirely succeed.

It used to be very different with me.  I used to be irritated by everything and everyone in particular and in general.  The list of irritations went on and on.  I updated and added to it daily.  I was irritated by such things as

  • people who tailgated me on the highway,
  • people who drove too slowly on the highway, and were in front of me,
  • food that wasn’t exactly what I wanted,
  • gaining weight,
  • eating good, healthy food,
  • Democrats,
  • Republicans,
  • independents,
  • religious people,
  • atheists,
  • Caucasians,
  • races other than Caucasians,
  • having my sleep interrupted, and
  • my own tendency to be so easily irritated.

Nowadays, however, there isn’t much that irritates me.  Why?  Because I practice a simple discipline: I stop, take off my shoe, and empty the sand out.

What do I mean by this, you ask?  Simple!  Have you ever had a grain of sand or a small piece of gravel in your shoe?  Of course, you have.  What do you do?  Do you keep walking, and curse the sand or gravel?

Well, maybe you do keep walking and curse.  But if so, you are not walking in wisdom.  If you are wise, you sit down or stand, empty your shoe, put your shoe back on, and go on walking.

The same thing works for irritations.  The only difference is that it is your mind that you need to empty.

“But I’m not the problem!” I hear someone scream.  Yeah, I used to believe that, too.  It was those people who were the problem, it was these circumstances.  The whole world was out to get me.  If I wasn’t paranoid, that was only because I didn’t go to a psychiatrist for a diagnosis.

But these days, I am coming to an increasingly clear realization: My irritations belong to me.  My irritations are not caused by any external grain of sand.  I need to take a grain of sand with a grain of salt.  I need to examine my thoughts and expectations.  Those are what are killing me, not the grain of sand or the tiny piece of gravel in my shoe.

Let me illustrate.  I like watching reruns of the T.V. show, “The Big Bang Theory.”  I’ve watched almost all of them, probably several times.  Last night, at the time when the show was about to come on, my wife (who almost never protests about what I like to watch on T.V.) said, “I’m going to watch ‘Jeopardy’ or something.  You’ve seen all the ‘Big Bang’ shows several times.”

I was surprised, but not terribly upset.  “Oh, okay,” I said, and went over to my computer to listen to AccuRadio and grade papers.  “Just keep it turned down,” I requested.

Now, years ago, I would have turned my wife’s reasonable insistence on watching something else into a very big hick-hack.  I would have apologized later, but the damage would have been considerable.

Instead, she apologized—quite unnecessarily—and we watched “The Big Bang Theory” together, despite the fact that I said I did not have to watch it.  Not expecting to get your way all the time is a wonderfully freeing mental discipline.

Is there external injustice and wrong-doing in the world?  Yes!  And I need to be aware of that, and striving and praying to change things for other people for the better.

But there are thousands of irritating grains of sand that get into my mind on a daily basis.  And I am responsible for emptying my mind of those grains of sand, so that I can keep walking as I should. Maybe then, I would have more energy and focus so that I could make more progress in helping with external injustice and wrong-doing.

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“Tragedies: One Way they Happen”

On February 6, 2019 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer


Recently, a young man who was pretending to be suicidal lured some local police officers to his apartment.  He shot two of them, one fatally, while live-streaming it over the internet.

What causes a young man to go so terribly wrong?  There is probably no point in asking the question.  We will likely never know the answer.

However, I will tell you one way in which people can go terribly wrong.  It is the way that I went terribly wrong a few decades ago.

Now, I did not kill anyone, so set your mind at ease about that.  However, I was a walking time bomb, filled with lust and rage and bitterness.  And while the bomb has been defused, it is sometimes good to remember how messed up I was.  It might be good for you to hear how I got that way.  Maybe you can, at least in some measure, identify your own tendencies to go wrong.  I hope and pray that your tendencies aren’t as strong as mine were.  Still, the bottom line is that it is always possible for all of us to go terribly wrong.

Were there some external factors?  Probably so.  But I want to focus on how I myself contributed to my own demise.

It was really quite simple.  All I did was this: Whenever I came to two possible decisions about how I would live my life, I took the slightly worse one.  Having had eight beers, I would switch over to double shots of whiskey.  I would not allow my friend (who had stopped with three beers over the course of the evening) to drive.  No!  I was going to drive.

I could date this girl or that girl.  I would choose the one who was slightly worse for me.

Was there someone at work who was irritating me?  I would surprise them with a right hook to the face.

I was a mess.  It got to the point where there were no good choices to be made, only the choice between two evils.  And the evils were getting more and more evil.  I was quite close to making a final decision that landed me in prison or the grave.

Is this always the way terribly wrong decisions bear their bitter fruit?  Perhaps not, but I suspect that this is the way things go down more often than not.

Nowadays, when I come to the point of choice, I try to make the slightly better choice.  God has made some progress with me in that regard.  Therefore, I often get to choose between two good things.

We all have choices every day.  Oatmeal, or pancakes.  Leave on time for our appointment, or speed.  Call a friend who can hold us accountable, or call an old lover.

Great evil comes from little choices.  And little choices grow up in a hurry.

Great good also comes from little choices.  They usually grow more slowly than bad choices, but they do mature.

Choose wisely today!  I will try to do the same!

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“No Regrets!”

On February 5, 2019 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer


“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’” (John Greenleaf Whittier)

Today, I wrote the following in my journal, right after listing 50 items on my gratitude list:

“Today, God, no regrets!  Just praise, humility, obedience and gratitude!”

Like virtually every other human being who has lived more than four years, I have regrets.  In fact, I probably have more than the average member of my species.  Regret for the things I’ve done and the things I haven’t, regret for the people I’ve harmed, regret for not living out my own principles.

But these days, while not minimizing my screw-ups, I try to not wallow in regret.  While I have regrets, I try not to let the regrets have me.  The truth is this: Regrets have no beneficial effects, and many harmful ones.

How are regrets harmful?  Let me count the ways!

First, they can’t change what happened or what I did.  The past is a pretty stubborn critter.  I may reframe it or look at it differently, but the picture itself is not going to change.  I can learn from it, but I can’t teach it a single thing.  In terms of the Serenity Prayer, the past is one of the things I cannot change.  Therefore, I need God to “. . . grant me the serenity to accept the (past) things I cannot change . . . .”

Second, regrets harm my ability to move on, to grow, to become a better person.  What gets my focus gets me.  If I am focusing on the past, I am very likely to go back to the past.  In any case, as long as I am filled with regrets, I am refusing to live in the present.  And, the last time I checked, the present was the only time when I could live.  To live in the past is to die before my time.  I am a walking dead man when I regret my past.

Third (and related to the first two harmful effect of regret), regrets are an insidious form of self-deception.  When I regret, I am pretending that I am taking my past seriously.  I am not.  I am trying to substitute feeling bad for doing what is good in the here and now.  Allowing regrets to dominate me compromises the very positive qualities that I listed in my journal: “praise, humility, obedience and gratitude!”

Fourth, when I indulge in regrets, I am harming others.  How so?  When I am filled with regrets, I am not really available to those around me. And those around me need me.  I am focused on myself, when I regret my past.  Regretting my past is trying to drive a car, while steadfastly looking in the rearview mirror.  It is just a matter of time before I rear-end the car in front of me or run over a pedestrian.

Finally, regret is a form of atheism.  I am pretending that I am a competent judge of myself.  I am also pretending that my past attitudes, actions, thoughts, and words are too bad to be forgiven.  As a Christian, this is a form of heresy, bordering on a denial of the very existence and goodness of God.  Living even on the border of atheism is a dangerous place to live.

So, just for today, no regrets.  No looking back.  No beating myself up.  Just living well.  Just awareness.  Just love.

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