Letters to the Lord: Learning to Live in My World of Wars

By Don Reeves

War would be wonderful if for the sake of Global Safety and Security in the 21st Century we could, collectively, learn to fight with timely tactics of Constructive Self- Criticism and Creative Caring.
But current strategies Miss the Mark!
We must develop the New Heart-Ware and train to explode Missiles of Meaning filled with Soul-Searching Shrapnel that effectively counters: Ego-Centered Thinking, Self-Destructive Fears, and Lack of Combat with Corporate Myths, Earth-Shaking Political Pot-Holes, Raging Religious Ruminations, and Mangled/Simplistic Presumptions that money-making-greed is the Way-to-Wonder in a Word of Wars!
Chaplain/Colonel Don Reeves, USAFR (Ret.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479730421

Don Reeves

DONALD D. REEVES Presbyterian Minister Chaplain/Colonel, USAF (Reserve/Retired) College Teacher: Philosophy/World Religions/Biblical Survey Educational Gleanings: Bachelor of Arts, (Double Major: English/Religion), Bethel College, (TN); Master of Divinity, Vanderbilt University Other Graduate/Post-graduate work: Vanderbilt Graduate School of Management, Memphis State University, University of Omaha, Institute of Reality Therapy (Los Angeles, CA) (Certification as a Reality Therapist, under the tutelage of psychiatrist Bill Glasser, M.D., founder of Reality Therapy Institute) Career Pathway Stops: Minister of Education, Senior Pastor, Psychiatric Hospital Chaplain, College Vice President, USAF Chaplain/Colonel, (22years of service---8 yrs Active Duty, 14 yrs, Guard & Reserve), Management Consultant, Presbytery Executive, High School & College Teacher Currently, semi-retired & teaching Philosophy, World Religions, & Biblical Survey at Northeast Alabama Community College. (Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers - 2004) (Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year - 2005) Extra-curricular, career activities: ....Writing: Nashville TENNESSEAN, Feature articles; Annual recipient of 3-Star award for Outstanding Letter-to-the-Editor Writing for 8 consecutive years McKenzie (TN) BANNER & Scottsboro (AL) DAILY SENTINEL: weekly columnist; United Methodist Publishing House: Church School curriculum (Children, Teens, Adults); THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER & THE CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN: Feature Articles; USAF Chaplain Service: Editor/Writer for three USAF Chiefs of the Chaplaincy LETTERS TO THE LORD: Learning to Live in My World of Wars, pub. 2009 (Available on Amazon.com) ....Speaker/Emcee: Keynote Speaker/Emcee/Seminar Leader for Government & Civilian Agencies/Organizations ....Hobbies: Motorcycling, Theater, Fishing, Golf, Basketball (at 57 years of age, represented Tennessee in 1996, all-age, National 3-point Shootout, Chicago, IL, placing 13th) ....Special Point of Pride: Authentic descendant of the Davy Crockett family ....Contact Info: P. O. Box 528, Rainsville, AL 35986 E-Mails: [e-mail] Home & Cell Phone: [phone] [e-mail] “THE ONLY REAL SECURITY IS LEARNING TO LIVE WITH INSECURITY.” Don Reeves

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Copyright © 2012 by Don Reeves.

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Foreword

Don Reeves is a very funny guy. He is also deeply religious. Those two statements aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, believe it or not, they are actually complementary.

Our word humor is derived from the Latin humis, which means earth or of the earth. It is therefore the opposite of godly or transcendent. In ancient drama, people who tried to ascend too high and become like gods were always brought back to earth with a bang. That was the essence of Greek and Roman comedy. It always involved some kind of pratfall or loss of dignity. This idea or technique survived in the old Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton movies—people who got above their station in life were always stepping on a banana peel and falling on their backsides.

Don is funny precisely because he is religious too. He thinks in dialectic terms of earthiness and transcendence. His mind bounces back and forth between the ridiculous and the sublime. One minute he sees the craziness of a situation, and the next he is thinking about God. This dialectic forms the basis for most of his Dear Lord columns, and for the ones where the Lord answered him as well. It is the kind of humorous religious monologue that made Garrison Keillor a best-selling author and established the late Grady Nutt as a comedian on the old Hee-Haw show.

What is at work in all three cases—Keillor’s and Grady’s and Don’s—is a kind of juxtaposition, a yoking of humor and seriousness, which results in glimpses of truth and honesty that couldn’t be achieved any other way. By poking fun or holding something up to ridicule, they strip it naked for a moment so that we can see it for what it truly is instead of for the priggish or self-righteous thing it appeared to be before it was held up for contemplation.

Like those other humorists, Don never hesitates to include himself among those he makes fun of. If he offers us a photograph of a bunch of people who have been acting like fools or posing as something they aren’t, he’s always sitting in the middle of the front row, waving at us for all he’s worth. This is why we like his writing so much. He’s not poking fun at us. He’s reminding us of what we’re all like, of what it is to be human and fall short of the glory of God. He’s saying, Hey! Ain’t God great!

The glory of God. Now, that’s worth talking about! More often than not, Don makes us see that glory in little glimpses of how the light falls on human beings who have been behaving stupidly or missing the point about something.

We can’t look on God and live. That was established when God had his little conversation with Moses on the mountain. So we have to be content with seeing the transcendent in those awkward moments when we ourselves have tried to be God but have only managed to overshoot our marks and fall on our posteriors.

It takes a special talent to do what Don does. A lot of preachers try it and aren’t successful. And a few comedians try it, but most don’t have the depth of religious experience that Don has to make it work.

So the writings in these pages are very special. They’re about us, but they’re also about God. And sometimes they’re even truer than scripture, if that’s possible—or at least they’re easier to understand.

I’ve known Don a long time. In fact, I was one of his seminary professors back in the days of hippies and moon shots and the Cold War. Even then he had the knack he exhibits in this book, of looking at everything from a humorous perspective and making us more aware of God by doing it. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d ended up on the stage or in a TV studio instead of behind a pulpit and a teacher’s desk. But I’m glad he became a preacher, because what he brought to the role has greatly enhanced it—which it certainly needed in our time.

In a way, he’s still preaching—in every chapter of this book. But the best part is, we don’t usually realize he’s doing it. Not until we find ourselves saying Amen when he finishes, and realize he has thrown another zinger over the plate.

Keep pitching, Don. We need your insights.

John Killinger

Preface

Once upon a time, in lands lost in the hazy Past, there seem to have been people who Learned from Life.

Momentary location was their School House. Daily Routine their Classroom. Self-Reflection their Instructor. Whomever they met, whatever they were doing, wherever they happened to find themselves provided Today’s Learning Experience… necessary for Living toward Tomorrow.

But some learned to look backwards and wonder and ponder within themselves and beyond themselves… and question.

They often became known as Wise Ones, Oracles, Prophets. And they left a Heritage of Thinking that came to be called, sometimes… Wisdom, sometimes… Philosophy, sometimes… Religion.

In our own 21st Century World, we seem to have lost some of their expertise.

We have learned to Want… to Get… to Buy… to Have… to Own. But we seem to have lost the art of Linking our Learning with the Art of Learning to Live.

We seem to live with less Thinking, think less about Learning, and learn little from Life. We have substituted Knowledge for Wisdom, Opinion for Philosophy, Doctrine for Religion; and our Future may well be in Jeopardy.

Between text messaging and TV watching, we spend little time thinking and most of our time feeling.

The little attention we give to real Learning moves between accidental and incidental. And the idea of ‘soul/psyche’ offers little appeal, except in emotional emergencies.

Several decades hence, I began to experience periodic moments of ‘starvation’ for Conversations with my Inner Self. Yet, the idea of ‘me-talking-to-me’ felt crazy. So… . with whom could I talk?

Then… . I thought of… GOD! Whatever ‘God’ seemed to be to me… . surely He/She/It could be a sounding board!

The enclosed Letters to the Lord represent my conversations with Me, through talks with God, whatever God is ‘like’.

Start where you wish. ‘Listen’ where you choose. Use however you desire.

Don Reeves

All the Wars That are Mine… .

Dear Lord,

As I enter the 7th decade of my life, I become more and more aware of the simple fact that… most of all… . I am a Paradox.

After a lifetime of seeming to feverishly live each day to accomplish single tasks, reach particular goals, complete special projects… I look back and realize that somehow each effort was aimed at cornering an achievement, arriving at an ‘end’. And each end was presumed to be

Product, about which I could Ponder and of which I could be Proud.

But the ‘paradox’ is that no ‘finished’ moment/task/effort is a final ending. Rather, each is simply a beginning… . the beginning of new efforts to seek new endings which would offer new ponderings and create new pride. Yet, life is ‘motional’, a journey in Process, not a succession of completed Products.

And, as one on a journey, I am as mobile and multifaceted in my Inner Self as I am in my Outer World. I am a synchronized combination of Mind/Body/Soul, never only each, always ‘all’.

Lord, what a surprise to discover the disparity between who I’ve always thought I was and who I really have been! What a shock to realize that the world and its culture have ‘kept me going’ with dreams of great endings that ultimately only led to endless new beginnings!

No wonder I’ve so often felt more frustration than restfulness, at the end of many days!

So, here I am. It’s Confession Time. I’m ready to reflect more on Who I Am, than Who I thought I Was. I’m ready to consider how Mind/Body/Soul, the integrated working parts of my Being, have brought me to this point. I’m ready to try to search out the Meaning of Mystery that makes me… ‘ME’. I’m ready to do more than project an image that says, "Hey