Blog 332 – 07.04.2016
(Excerpt from the book, Emily – The Little Girl Who Sang Her Song To Anyone Who Came Along
Episode 4

I learned far more from my daughter Emily than I ever taught her. Many examples come to mind but none more than a little book she turned me on to called the Tao of Pooh. Emily loved the Pooh character and the stories but this book was a great vehicle to introduce those raised in western thought: simply put “either/or thinking” where everything is either good or bad, black or white, positive or negative; to the eastern way of thinking: which is a more unified approach that views everything as not either/or but both. Louis Armstrong’s Its A Wonderful World song expresses the eastern philosophy quite well when he sings about “the bright blessed day and the dark sacred night.”

Thanks to Emily sharing the Tao of Pooh with me my mind became opened to a new paradigm. Several years later I would come across the Ten Intentions for a Better World and my mind was ready to accept one intention in particular that would have been harder for me had I not opened my mind previously to a new way of thinking. That intention is the one that says: “I discard any belief that is no longer serving me. I go to the source. I seek truth.”

Another of the songs that Emily shared with me, Teach Your Children Well also expresses the thought- teach your parents well. Emily did that for me, Sandra, her birth mother, and Linda, her other mother and I all learned a great deal from our daughter. I find it quite interesting the roles we play. Shakespeare wrote, “The world is a stage and we but players.” There is a parent in each of us and a child as well as many other roles we have or will play.

Through each of these performances, as it were, we learn to view life and ourselves from a certain perspective. And I believe the great lesson we are in this world to learn is Who and Whose we are. And by the way it doesn’t have to be Work doing it. It can be Great Fun if we choose. And Emily taught me a lot about how to have fun and enjoy life.

Not long after Emily concluded her thirty two year production called Emily’s Adventure In Time and Space I received a text from my beloved brother Robert. In it he wrote: “David, all I ever wanted was for you to be happy.” My Jewish friends would say, “From God’s lips to your ears.” I believe then and still do that God whom as I have already said and will say again and again “is all in all” wants nothing more than for us to be happy.

Emily taught me that and though she and her older brother Jesus chose a particularly painful “exit stage right” we don’t have to. God is never particularly pleased when his children choose to learn their lessons or teach through suffering. I believe his first best choice for us is the message the angels sang that first Christmas, “Peace on earth, good will to men” (mankind, all of us, big and little, short and tall). Some limit that peace by interpreting the phrase “good will to men” as “to men of good will” to that I say “God is in us (all) to will and to do his good pleasure.”

I hear my darling Emily quoting a Madonna song, “Papa don’t preach.” Believe what you will, choose to learn the hard way if you want, but I choose to reject any belief that teaches guilt, shame, and suffering are the only path or even the best path to enlightenment. We used to sing, “Who will suffer with the Savior.” Yesterday, on my drive back from Tennessee to Indiana I saw too young men carrying heavy wooden crosses down the side of the road. I also saw a black horse and buggy on the other side of the highway full of Amish folks. Both of these sights to me represent beliefs that should have been discarded long ago. It’s just my opinion (belief) but trust me I will drop it like a hot potato if I discover it is no longer serving me.

Okay, Em, the sermon is concluded. I was preaching at me mostly anyway. Don’t we always?

Your fellow traveler and Emily’s Dad.
David White