3-12-02, Sunday Journal
FREE & UNINHIBITED EXPRESSION
By Dalton Roberts
IPS Features
The thing I like most about email is the opportunity to meet so many interesting
persons from different cultures and religions. I live in Tennessee and love the
place I live and the people I live among. But I yearn for people who live in
totally different places and have differing ways of living and being.
One of my correspondents disagreed with something I wrote a year ago when I
questioned the value to me of divination techniques like Tarot Cards, Uuija
Boards, etc. We had a spirited exchange of opinions. I closed out my part of our
exchange by saying, "Thanks for the free and uninhibited expression of your
views. That's a vital part of friendships."
If I belonged to any group where I could not enjoy free and uninhibited
expressions of views, I would have to get out. There's no other way to learn.
There's no other way to test the validity of your own views. The only way you
can grow in such a situation is to grow more like the others in the group. In
other words, more un-free and unexpressive.
I don't like cookie cutter organizations. I don't want to be a cookie. I want to
be a Moon Pie. Today. Tomorrow I may want to be a vanilla wafer.
My friend Cyn sent me some Chocolate Honey Chewys last week. For days I was a
Chocolate Honey Chewy. But this morning I was a Carob-covered Rice Cake.
Well...to tell the truth, it's because I ran out of Chocolate Honey Chewys and
Moon Pies.
But thanks, Nanjo, for that free and uninhibited exchange a year ago. I learn a
lot from your words and even more from your grand and glorious rainbow spirit.
THE FINAL AMEN FROM DONNIE
Donnie Jenkins is one of the most intelligent and creative persons I know. A
grand musician and songwriter. A thinker who should be putting his thoughts down
regularly for people to cry and laugh over, then rub their chins and say,
"I wonder what he meant there?" and sometimes just leap up and say,
"Yes! Yes! Yes!"
Let me close today's Journal with one of my favorite quotes from one of his
emails: "Studying Christ's lessons is like seeing the Van Gogh painting, A
Starry Night. It whispers and shouts. It will make you jump for joy and cry like
a baby. It is rich, detailed, and endlessly in a process of your discovery. It
is a wonderful unending question, not a cold one-time rock-like answer. It lives
and breathes and has its one life. And it makes the life of any open-minded
person a work of art, too."
All I can say is, "Amen." No, that's not all I can say. I want to add,
"Praise God!"
~~~~~
You can find more Dalton Roberts writings and other goodies on his website. Just
click here http://www.daltonroberts.com/
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