I’ve decided to return to posting after weeks of not. Mainly because I’ve been too depressed. LOL. So much for carrying my blog title as a renaissance of light. LOL. I have relatively few followers or visitors and have been told I write to long and not often enough. I’m sure they’re right but I’m me and I guess if writing a short story in rambling disjunct wordsmithing and structure is the product of my mind so be it. I would like to reach many. I’m selling no product, so you don’t have to skip the ads. In the end I only write really for my own self-understanding to keep my sanity (whatever that is) and write my cry outs to the ultimate reader of One.
I have another valid reason for not writing, it is that I ventured out of myself and found myself for a lack of a better word press secretary for a dear friend of mine fighting a unknown brain ailment. He has seizures that the guys with the big brains can’t figure out and are life threatening. I understand his struggle with seizures as well as a complicated personal life. We were state presidents of the then 10,000 member Florida Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees). I have seizures that are controlled with meds, he is not so fortunate yet. This 30 years later has brought us back together as comrades in arms and as dear friends. Now understand, this group was a powerful community service organization in the day and is now almost extinct today. However, the past members (because it was for young people under 40) keep in touch as they have gone on to other careers. I found myself in the strange position of running liaison between his close family and friends to the larger group of friends and yes prayer warriors.
He may not recover, but another amazing thing is happening. You see, as much good as this organization did; the members were sometimes naughty and sometimes debaucherous in their actions. The bad along with the good and the opening lines in the Jaycee creed even says that “Faith in God Gives Meaning and Purpose to Human Life” well in the name of having fun and way to much beer we mostly blew that line off.
But an amazing thing is happening now with for some unexplained reason I find myself three wives late (the last one took at 23 years) leading an incredible prayer revival of prayer warriors from these thousands to pray for our common friend who might have been any of us. As I pray, I am going into basic training mode like offering the difference between offering sympathy, compassion, “our hearts and prayers go out to you” and wielding prayers like a sword that is in combat to fight for people and situations and righteous causes. Using the power of an un-understandable, at times, God to fight to the death if it requires, to prevail. Because in the end no matter if we or my friend live or die this fight is to prepare us for life eternal and you really have to believe that that is real victory. If not than what the hell are we trying to do here. My friend will live on and all those praying in my ragtag army of veterans some new recruits will win the day one way or another. My dear friend you will be more than a conqueror.
Category: Jaycees
Times, They Are Changing
I’m taking you on another side trip that I’m prone to do, but rather than writing an epic novel, I’m breaking things up in smaller digestible portions and dribble the drivel, so to speak. I’m writing one today, referencing Father’s Day, but this post is about the Jaycees again.
As you recall from my previous posts, this was (now nearly extinct) a leadership training organization through community service originally for young men from ages 18-36 and later expanded the upper age to 40 to make up for declining membership mainly. The Supreme court also ruled that women must be admitted and merge with the men from their previous women’s group the Jayceettes kind of like the current Boy Scout/Girl Scout thing going on now. Before the merger, the men had their own meetings and projects, which included lots of beer and a bit of raucous naughtiness while the women were more civilized with Tupperware parties and such for fundraisers and sandwich luncheons. The men had occasional team-building sessions with an occasional stripper for entertainment and lots of beer. However, the men always came home to their wives, and that was that. Things radically changed after the merger, and in my opinion, carried naughty into debauchery, but maybe more on that later.
The local chapter meetings were raucous, to say the least, the merger happened just before I became president of the Melbourne Florida chapter, and we quickly initiated the ladies into how guys ran meetings, which in the end corrupted marriages and caused harm rather than good as the supreme court forced us to do. Having separate groups by gender accomplished more in the community for good and less destruction of the family unit than merging men and women to do the same thing, albeit coming at it from different ways.
For example, if something was brought up on the agenda, that was not to the liking of the general membership the local president or whoever was presiding at the meeting could expect to be pummeled by several beer cans followed by a group chant of “How d’ya? How d’ya? How’d you like to bite our ass”, to the tune of “How d’ya? How d’ya like to be my gal.” Although the strict parliamentary procedure was followed until this open rebellion ensued, as a tradition when a new president took over, all the past presidents on the first or second meeting would sit together and heckle the meeting disrupting business to “initiate” the new president.
Now I’m not one to be outdone by fun at my expense, on this “past Presidents night” me and my board who sat in the front of the room while these hooligans sat safely in the back hurling insults and whatever they could propel like a missile toward the front of the room, I had a plan. My theme to get elected was “No BS” depicted in a clever logo of a bull depositing one of his pastural treasures on the ground (“clever,” I thought to gain votes with this bunch). Well, after enduring a reasonable amount of this abuse, we implemented a counter-attack. Earlier that day, I dispatched a special task force to forage the local cow pasture. They carefully selected several garbage bags of dried Cow Pies (cow droppings for all you city folk). The cow pie ammunition was previously placed under the table by each board member. When the abuse reached a fever-pitched frenzy, and the hooligans thought that they had the last laugh. I asked for a motion (under Roberts Rules of order) to put down this rebellion. This was kind of like Thomas Jefferson putting down a rebellion in 1807, under the Insurrection Act. Kind of like what Trump is contemplating concerning the nonsense going on in Seattle right now. One of my board members made the motion, and it passed quickly, and I gave the order to commence firing upon, which on cue the board opened up a fierce barrage of cow pies quickly taking the steam out of the rabble-rousers. Then much like after the Whiskey rebellion of 1794, everyone put down their arms alcohol was hoisted up in the air, and the union was saved one more time.
It’s hard to believe that many of this ragtag organization alumna went on to be prominent community leaders, business leaders, and politicians.
Tales from Depression and Dealing with it. 