Sunday journal, 651 words

If I had known the pleasures of keeping a daily journal of my thoughts and doings, I would have started it back in my youth. It has become one of life’s most dependable daily enjoyments.

Norman Vincent Peale kept a journal. He saw it as a vital part of one’s spiritual practice, sharpening the powers of awareness and instilling an attitude of gratitude.

He called the things we put in our journals "marvelous fragments of reality." Just yesterday I had lunch with a retiree who worked with me for over 20 years and I kept making little notes of the funny and insightful things he said. As I was typing one of his funny phrases into my journal I thought, "Like Norman Vincent Peale said, another marvelous fragment of reality."

I guess everyone has come out a walk in the woods at some time in their life with cockleburs sticking to their clothes. What Peale called "marvelous fragments" are the golden cockleburs of the day sticking in the mind from that days walk through life.

I don’t claim to be an expert on Buddhism but a few years ago I read in a news article that meditation would lower blood pressure. To learn meditation, I had to read some Buddhist authors because they have centuries of experience with it.

As I learned to release the cares of my life for a few minutes each day, the blood pressure came down. But I think meeting Hotei was the best thing I got from reading those Buddhist writers.

Hotei was called "the laughing Buddha." He would disappear into the mountains for weeks and make little toys and gifts, then descend into a village and pass them out to the children.

I found a Hotei statue and could not resist buying it. What a smile! Every time I need a pause that refreshes, I walk over and look at him, smiling from the inside out. That’s the gift he brought down the mountain for me.

Shortly after college, I found a copy of the personal journal of the great Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy. Anytime I was tempted to hate Russians during the Cold War, I would always think of Tolstoy and know in my heart that any nation capable of producing such a great soul could not be all bad.

Like many southerners, I grew up in a church with quite specific articles of faith. Like Tolstoy, I discovered that testing them was necessary for me and always resulted in strengthening my faith in the best of the values I had been taught. I came to realize that unwillingness to read other views came from my uncertainties and insecurities, not from my faith.

If we always believe what we’ve always been taught, we will always think what we’ve always thought. If we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll always get what we’ve always got.

I am thinking there should be a psychiatric specialty where you diagnose people’s personalities by their pets. Haven’t you seen people with bulldog personalities, then come to find out they owned a bulldog? Or nosy people who owned hounds? Or bullies who own Rottweilers? Or laid-back folks who owned Dachshunds?

Once I wrote my sister, "I don’t care for bouncy-bouncy, yippy-yappy, licky-licky little dogs. I want the tongue contained in the mouth at all times. Aw heck, I’ll just tell you the real reason--I want nothing in my house that’s got more energy than me."

Maybe people are maladjusted because their pets don’t fit them. A bulldog-type person with a Chihuahua pet is headed for an emotional crash. But relax. Relief is on the way. This is the age of specialists and it will not be long til you’ll have shrinks who can match you with the right pet for your psyche.

Take that bone and chew on it.

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