Blog 1080 – 08.10.2018

Anniversaries Come And Go

When I first started writing this blog over three years ago now often I found it quite a chore to force myself to write something each day but that has changed over time till I am always wishing that I had more time to spend writing. It has become to me more like breathing and as necessary and important in my life. And at some point in my future when working for my livelihood becomes at least fewer hours a day, I hope that I will be able to spend larger portions of my time writing my heart out.

Much like a painter’s medium is light and color, and a musician’s medium, vocal or instrumental, is sound and melody, my medium is thoughts and words and my aim is always to string some encouraging ones together for myself and for you my friends. The number one fan of the man from Tennessee is alas and always will be me but then I have come to know and love me best. That, I think, has prepared me most to love each one of you better. For you see I do not need your love and adoration to be the writer, speaker, singer-song writer, teacher that I strive to be. Oh, like everyone I want everyone’s love and adoration but I do not need it. I am, as I think healthy minded people should be, self-fulfilled or self-actuated in that way. Nobody else knows us better or is better able to love and appreciate us the way we want to be understood and appreciated. Co-dependent or “people who need people” are contrary to Barbra Streisand’s hit song not the luckiest people in the world – far from it, not only are they mostly miserable but they suck the like and life out of others with their huge black hole like need to be loved. It is only when we come to love ourselves for ourselves that we can truly feel satisfied and have something to offer others. For people who “need people” love is not a victory march but is a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah, as one verse of Rufus Wainwright’s great song, “Hallelujah” says.

Today is another special anniversary for me. Twenty-nine years ago I talked the lovely Linda Lee into consenting to be my wife, confirming that I really am a persuasive speaker. I am glad and grateful that she and the wonderful son she gave me are ever and always a part of my life. Though I see them both too seldom and we are more often than not divided by hundreds if not thousands of miles they are always near and dear to my heart.

Anniversaries like birthday cake candles glow and come and go. One thing is as constant as the sun and that is the love in own hearts. I am reminded of what I learned in Bible College many years ago about how Jesus planned for his Gospel or Good News to be spread – beginning in Jerusalem, then the surrounding towns, then in ever widening circles till all the world knew. I have for some time had a skewed view sort of take on Jesus’ Good News. To me it was never about building a church hiarchy or a religious, or political organization but meant to be just another in a long series a simple love letters from God that reads something like:

“I love you, I always have and always will. All that sin, guilt, sacrifice stuff was just a misunderstanding on your part, I never left you, and I never will, all I ever wanted for you was for you to love yourself enough to let me love you and show the wonderful abundant lives that I have always had in mind for you.”

That, to me, my friends is the whole Gospel or Good News. And it is for everyone not just a few religious folks.

Happy Anniversary, Linda Lee.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White