Blog 1595 – 01.31.2020

(The thirty-second anniversary of Larry & Linda’s 1st Date)

The Eve Of February

February is the shortest month of the twelve on the common calendar and this year as every fourth year though usually only twenty eight days it is twenty nine to adjust for that extra fourth of a day it takes our planet to circle the sun each year. I have only known two people in my seventeen Leap Years that were actually born on the twenty-ninth of February, a younger man named Kevin and a lady nearer my own age named Eva. I always found it fascinating that if they only celebrated the anniversaries of their actual birthdays that both their ages would be greatly reduced, not as much so as dog years compared to human years, one for seven, but one for every four.

Albert Einstein in his E=MC Squared theory postulated that time is relative. I believe that we are all relatives on this adventure in time and space, and that both time and space are merely constructs that we not only find ourselves in but can bend with our thoughts.

I was just thinking yesterday of a Christian song that I first heard as a boy. It goes:

“Only believe, only believe, all things are possible, only believe.” People believe, and I am no exception, a lot of nonsensical, stupid, and hurtful to themselves and others things. Some inquiring minds therefore conclude that anything having to do with faith is bogus and unreliable. I do not go quite that far, though I have rejected a lot of the things that I once believed. I happen to believe that discarding the beliefs that no longer serve us is the way we become the highest and best versions of ourselves. And we all do that to some degree but religious beliefs are often the hardest to let go of. And it is to the degree that we fail to recognize and let go of those stunting out-grown beliefs that our religion is little more than superstition. Wow, Crazy Dave, you are rushing in where angels fear to tread again. I think not and that, my friends, it has been for me and many of us our biggest problem in life – thinking not and allowing others to do our thinking for us. Be they salesmen, politicians, teachers, or preachers no one can ever think for us as well as we can for ourselves.

Life has a way of circling us back to face over and over again those same out-grown beliefs so that we may let them go, so that we can grow, so that we can go a little further up or down the trail that we more than likely determined for ourselves long ago, before this particular adventure began. Of the twelve men that Moses sent into the land of Canaan to spy out the land ahead of the multitude of the children of Israel, only two came back with reports of a land flowing with milk and honey. The other ten saw only giants and insurmountable difficulties in possessing the land. The nays won the vote and so a few days journey from Egypt to Canaan turned into forty years wondering around in the desert like homeless nomads till those who could not discard their fearful belief about giants died off and a new generation of milk and honey craving children grew up. Or maybe they just got tired of eating mana every day, heavenly food that was never intended to be more than temporary rations.

There is an added line that I often quote from George Beverly Shea’s version of the wonderful song, The Love Of God, the great singer speaks the words after singing: “Oh, love of God how measureless and sure, it shall forever more endure, the saints and angels song. “Out there beyond the horizon, there’s more, there’s more.” Yet, my friends, we are unlikely to every find it sticking close to the shore and holding on to fearful beliefs that the mere holding on to will ever cause us to fail to launch out into deeper and deeper waters.

It is almost a new month, Honey, time to put away as the Apostle Paul would say, a few childish thoughts and trade them for some perhaps more adult ones. It is only in believing that we are to remain like children, ever willing and ready to learn and discard things and thoughts that no longer work for us. January 2020 is done, time to move on to bigger and better things. February even has an extra day for doing it this year. Happy birthday, Kevin, Eva, and all you young quarter-timers out there.

And happy anniversary to my lovely wife Linda who after that first date thirty-two years ago thought my name was Larry when she called to get my number. She more than any other has had my number for a long time.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White