Change

What Matters Most………….                  Commentary by Jim High

My two Grandmothers taught me a lot about change.  Oh, they didn’t say “Now pay attention, this will be a change.”  In fact, while they were alive I didn’t realize the changes that they had experienced.  Grandmother High was born in 1874 before the invention of the automobile.  As I think back now, I never heard her talk about those days.  But I do clearly remember sitting with her in front of the TV in 1968 as our astronauts circled the moon on Christmas Eve night.  In one life time she experienced going from no automobiles to space travel.  She died at 94 before Neal Armstrong stepped out on to the surface of the moon becoming the first person to leave earth and walk on another object in the Universe.

Grandmother High never flew in an airplane.  But, my Grandmother Boggan did once in her life.  She was born in 1890 before the Wright Brothers took the first flight at Kitty Hawk, NC.   In 1974 our state insurance association organized a trip to visit Lloyd’s of London.  I decided to take my Mother and Grandmother, since like me neither of them had been to London.  I don’t think Grandmother Boggan had ever been outside of the State of Tennessee, except to Tupelo to visit us.

I will never forget the experience of standing with her in front of Buckingham Palace on a bright sunny day to watch the changing of the guard.  She was like a little girl at Christmas time.  She said that she never in her wildest dreams would have expected to be standing on that spot.  I imagine she never expected to live until she was 12 days from being 100 either. 

Two very full lifetimes full of constant change.  Without meaning to they taught me to always accept change, to not be afraid of it, and to always take advantage of it.  Now that I am getting old enough to look back on my own life, I can easily see the advantage of this lesson, so perfectly exemplified in the lives of my two Grandmothers.

When I started my insurance career we had no fax machine, no cell phones, and no computers.  We did have a copying machine of a sort.  You put a piece of pink tissue like paper over your document and ran both through the machine.  Then you put the pink tissue on another kind of special paper and ran it back through the machine and the image was transferred.  We didn’t make many copies; it was just too much trouble.  Our calculator was a manual contraption where you put in one number, and then pressed a lever the number of times that equaled the other number.  It’s too complicated to explain further, you had to see it in operation to really understand how it worked.

So I bought two electric calculators the first month they were available.  Each one cost over $500 and my competitors in the insurance business around the state thought I had lost my mind.  We got a fax machine and a Xerox copier, and I was the second agent in the state to convert my bookkeeping to computers.  We had to send everything off to be processed, in Texas I think, but we got back meaningful computer generated reports and monthly statement.  Immediate acceptance of these changes and modernizations helped my business to grow and made life easier for my employees.

What matters most is to understand that change is you friend, not your enemy.  Change is going to happen whether you accept and embrace it or not.  You are so much better off if you find a way to incorporate change into all areas of your life.  This is the most valuable lesson I learned from my Grandmothers, and they didn’t even know they were teaching me.  And there is a lesson in that also. Someone is always watching and learning from what you are doing right now.

4:50 AM

What Matters Most……..Commentary by Jim High

We called my Mother’s mother “Grandmother Sis Sue.”  She died just twelve days short of her 100^th birthday.  But she lives on with me at 4:50 AM on most mornings.  Let me explain.  As a young boy I went to the orthodontist in Memphis every month for eight years so he could work on straighten my teeth.   Way back then there were few orthodontists and since Sis Sue lived in Memphis, it was easy for our family to make the 100 mile monthly trip for my teeth, and for a weekend visit at Grandmother Sis Sue’s house.

I guess over the years we were there on a lot of Sundays, but I never remember going to church, or anyone else going to church while we were in Memphis visiting.  I think we went enough at home to make up for not going while at Sis Sue’s house.  So it was interesting to me that sometime after I graduated from college she started sending me a subscription to Daily Word from Unity.  I thought it was a little daily devotional booklet like the one our Methodist church gave out that I never read, so although it came every month, I never read it.

But Grandmother Sis Sue dutifully renewed that annual subscription every year for me until she died.  I couldn’t tell her I never read them, and thankfully she never asked.  They just kept coming month after month.  I wasn’t thinking about the Daily Word subscription when she died, but several months later the invoice for the renewal subscription came directly to me, so now I had to make a choice.  Pay it and continue not to read it, let it lapse, or send in my check and then actually read it every day.  That invoice was like my dear sweet Grandmother sitting there looking at me to see what I would do.

Well you know the rest of this story, or at least you think you do.  Yes, I sent in the check, and yes, I started to read the daily messages of inspiration.  And that’s what they are.  Unity, I discovered, is very different from the traditional church where I still belong, but never attend.  Unity’s message is that there is only one power and one presence in the Universe.  This one power and one presence lives in and through all of creation, and is in us and all around us.  Actually it is us and everything else in the created Universe.   And that message has literally changed my life.

I’ve always loved books and can spend hours in a good bookstore.  I began to check out the Spiritual and New Thought sections.  That is where I ran across the Conversations With God books by Neale Donald Walsh, Science Of Mind by Ernest Holmes and all the current books by biblical scholars like Marcus Borg, Bart Ehrman, Bishop John Shelby Spong, John Dominic Crossan and a host of others.  Until I discovered Unity, thanks to my Grandmother’s careful persistence and quiet but steady resolve, I never knew about the spiritual path or the oneness and connection of everything in the Universe.

What matters most.....is that every morning when my alarm goes off at 4:50 AM, and I get up to start my day with Unity’s Daily Word, Science Of Mind, the Tao and whatever book I am currently reading to expand my knowledge and understanding of this Universe we live in, I think about and thank my Grandmother Sis Sue.  Some mornings I actually talk out loud to her, and I always sense her presence in the room with me.  If I could see her, I know she would be smiling.

The Right Thing

What Matters Most............Commentary by Jim High

President Obama’s first few months in office and his trips around the world, if they show us anything, show us the power, correctness and justice of always doing the right thing.  It is amazing to see the reactions of people all around the world to this man who has set out to transform the world by always just doing the right thing. 

No matter what the issue, be it in government, business, community, family relations, religion, or just within your close circle of friends, doing the right thing is always the thing to do.  Sometimes this is hard and many times people refrain from doing the right thing because it means change, or it might make someone mad, or upset some group or person with different opinions.

I watched President Obama answer questions at the Press Conference at the conclusion of his trip to the 34 nation Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago a couple of weeks ago.  A reporter tried to ask him a difficult question by saying that didn’t he worry about how his efforts and his words would be taken back home by certain groups.  President Obama said, yes people would be certain to try to make something political out of his efforts, but that he did not worry about the politics of it because he was convinced that he was doing the right thing, and that the vast majority of Americans had voted for him so that he could change, not only the policies of United States, but the relationships between all the nations of the world, by starting to do the right thing.

Let me be clear, doing the right thing is not just one person’s opinion of what should be done.  The right thing is not the Democratic or Republican thing to do.  The right thing is not the Baptist, Jewish, Islamic, Methodist or Catholic opinion.  The right thing has no liberal or conservative side.   The right thing has no relationship with the rich and powerful, or for the poor and disadvantaged. 

So how do you know what the right thing is?  The right thing is what works to help all people.  It is what is fair to all people.  It is what provides justice for all people.  It is what comes from and is motivated by love, care and concern for all people.  It is not easy to get yourself to the point of knowing what the right thing is, because most of us have lived for so long doing the wrong thing, thinking only of our own needs, following a policy of more for me and to hell with everyone else.  Doing the right thing can put you in a very strange feeling place. 

But President Obama starts out with a clear idea and statement of the end result that will make real change and create benefits for everyone, and then he begins to make decisions that move in the direction of the goal that everyone wants because it truly benefits everyone.  That is what doing the right thing is all about.  It is thinking of the needs and concerns of everyone and working in cooperation with everyone for the common good of everyone. 

What matters most is that each of us deep down inside knows the right thing to do.  As little children we are born with the spirit of love, care and concern for others built into who we are as human beings.  So as adults our job is to dig down deep inside and judge all our actions and relations with others by the standard of just doing the right thing.  I believe that we all intuitively know how to do that.  Always doing the right thing is the next stage of evolution that the whole world is moving toward for the benefit of humankind everywhere.

© 2009#4  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467    

Think Outside The Box

What Matters Most……Commentary by Jim High

My brother and I have an on-going Email dialog on many topics, but most especially on religious topics, and the Christian religion in particular.  Recently he posed an interesting question.  It was the kind of "out of the box" thinking that I love, so I gave his question careful consideration.  Here’s his question and my answer.

What would religion look like if we never died?  If we had figured out
how to maintain our bodies indefinitely, or put another way, how
important is our mortality in regard to religion?

Where to begin?  The fear of death and the non-understanding of death during the millions of years of our evolution into conscious aware human beings is the major cause for the creation of religions.  But I sense that you are asking what if we now discover how to live forever, because if we had always lived forever, the world would be a very crowded place and I don't think we would have religions.  At least not like the ones we have today.  But, if we someday discover how to live forever, we will have the same overcrowding problem, and our religions will again have to change.

Man, the human animal, invented his religions.  They have changed and changed, and are still changing as time moves on.  We can't conceive of three eyed people, but they tell us we have the makings of a third eye in our heads, which was long since abandoned by the evolutionary process.  At least I think read that somewhere.  Likewise we also can't conceive of a world without a God.  But since the idea of God was created by man, someday we will have no recollection of our current concept of God, just as we have dismissed that third eye.  We have a lot of evolution ahead of us, both physical and cultural.

So what will religion look like in the future?  Well it will be universal, not multiple and almost tribal as it is now.  All people will understand, feel and honor their connection to the Universe from which we came, the planet on which we live, and the Life Force within us that moves everything endlessly forward.  That knowledge will cause everyone to get along and appreciate each other, to live in peace and harmony, and to have care, concern and acceptance for everyone else.  Remember at that future date we will all be instantly connected to everyone and everything in the entire world through the continued evolution of the Internet.  We might even have tails that we use to connect to plants, animals and each other like in the movie Avatar, present day religions are actually a hindrance to this progress, unless they change and embrace the future, rather than holding tightly to the ideas of the past.

This description of religion’s future brings up the question about morality, or the good without God question that is addressed in the book on Humanism that I recently read.  Morality is nothing more than doing what is right and proper according to the general standards of society.  These standards change over time, so does what is moral.  You have to always consider and be aware of what improves rather than tears down, what helps rather than harms another person.  We do not need a God to be good.  Being good has its own rewards, and being bad brings grief and disaster. 

What Matters Most…….is that mankind has a long way to go, and some religions are  taking us backwards instead of forward, but some day maybe in a 1,000 years the human race will get there, and look back on 2010 the same way we now look back at the year 1010, or even 1010 BC.  Of course, our technology might kill us all before then and poison our world for life of any kind.  In that case the Life Force of the Universe will just start over again, either here on earth or somewhere else in the Cosmos.  It has all the time there is, we don't.

                        © 2010 #12  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Genealogy

What Matters Most…             Commentary by Jim High

The branches of our lives, where we come from and who we are made of is something all of us have thought about at some time.  Many people spend countless hours and lots of money researching their past ancestors.  It is lots of fun, they tell me, like being involved in a real mystery story, which it actually is for most of us.

I was lucky; one of my distant relatives did all the research on the High Family Tree.  She published a book of over 12,000 Highs going back to the first one of us to come to America, Thomas High in about 1660.  I bought a copy of her book and easily traced back through the twelve generations that resulted ultimately in me.  A couple of times along the way I almost didn’t get to be here, because my some of my great, great, great grandfathers almost didn’t have children at all, or “heaven forbid” did not have a son to carry on the line.

Isn’t it interesting that most genealogies work their way backwards through the males.   But in those twelve generations from “old Thomas” to “old Jim” there were twelve mothers also, and every one of them has a genealogy.  This could get really complicated.  And it is, because those of us living today are the product of a vast array of people from the past.  We have some of all of them in us.  It makes us who we are.  I know about twelve generations of my Father’s family, but only three on my Mother’s side.  I’d love to know more; maybe I’ll find someone who’s written a book about her family, which is the only way I’ll know.  Doing the actual research is hard, time consuming and costly.  I’m going to pass on all that effort at this point of my life.

I was lucky in another way.  When I was growing up in the 1940’s, four generations lived in our house.  I never knew my great grandfather “Private” John Allen, a United States Congressman from 1885 to 1901, but until I was eight years old, his wife, my Great Grandmother lived in the downstairs bedroom.  Upstairs were my Grandfather and Grandmother, Father and Mother, Brother and Sister – we all lived together in that house.  I lived on there until I was the only one left – 61 years.  My brother and sister are still alive, but they had moved out long before my Mother died. 

One of my prized possessions is a photograph of me at three years old sitting on the living room couch next to my Great Grandmother.  She is reading to me.  That picture and four others taken by my father when I was three hang in my apartment.  They keep me grounded in a way.  I am reminded of where and who I came from and all the branches of my personal genealogy. 

It is a very moving experience to look at yourself in the mirror.  I don’t mean just a glance, but for a long time studying your own face.  It is even more powerful to look at yourself back when you were just three years old, with your whole life ahead of you.  My great grandmother, my grandparents, and my parents all set me on the right road, gave me a good start and I think they would be pleased with how I have turned out.  I know that I am.

What Matters Most however is the future, not the past.  Are you setting your children on the right road and giving them a good start?  And if you don’t have children of your own, are you doing this for the young people you come in contact with?  Our lives will all come to an end some day, but we can all live on in the lives of those who come after us.  Your future genealogy is way more important than your past genealogy.

© 2008 #6 Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Pets and Plants

What Matters Most.........Commentary by Jim High

My family had a series of dogs as I was growing up.  My favorite was our little Chihuahua.  He/She, I can’t remember, use to lie on top of my stomach while I lay on the floor on my back.  “Frisky”, our Boston Terrier, was run over by a train.  Fortunately I didn’t witness this event, but it was a traumatic time in our family, never the less. 

What’s my point?  Most everyone has had a pet sometime in their lives and understands the connection you have with them.  And be it a dog or cat, a bird in its cage, or even fish in a beautiful aquarium, you feel in some way attached.  Everyone talks to their pets, and most will say that in one way or another they talk back.  It’s a wonderful feeling, and also a huge responsibly, because your pet needs you and depends on you. 

But have you ever talked to other animals?  Communicated with them in some way?  I have and do all the time.  Once while reading a book and sunning myself at my lake cabin, a small yellow butterfly was buzzing around my head.  I waved it off over and over again, tried to catch it in my fist, but it seemed to be winning this battle.  Then I had a flash of insight.  I held out my finger and mentally invited the butterfly to land there.  In a few short moments it did.  I then slowly turned my hand until we were looking eye to eye.  And using a soft voice I told my butterfly friend that it should leave me to my book and the sun’s rays, because it risked death should one of my swats reach its target.  I said we both had a right to our peaceful enjoyment of the afternoon.  Then I gently shook my finger and it flew away and bothered me no more.

Now you can think I’m crazy or you can begin to try it yourself.  Just remember that not even people who hear and understand our words always do what we want.  But talking is always better that killing, and talking always brings understanding, if not action.

I think I get my love of house plants and gardens from both of my Grandmothers.  The one I grew up with worked every day in her outdoor garden, and the one we went to visit every month had a house full of plants.  This is where I learned that the best fertilizer for a plant is love and recognition. 

Yes, I talk to the plants in my apartment and outdoors.  They respond in the most wonderful of ways.  They bloom and grow and thrive.  I use to have some large elephant ears growing just outside my garage, and every morning when I left for work I would roll down the window, reach out and touch the nearest leaf to say goodbye, and whatever else came to mind.  It’s kind of amazing what you will find yourself saying to a plant.  And in the evening I’d stop to say hello and ask if its day had been as good as mine.   That leaf grew to be twice as big as all the other elephant ear leaves and lasted the whole season.  I really missed it when the winter weather finally killed it.  Obviously, I still remember it, and that yellow butterfly.

What Matters Most is the understanding that everything in this world of ours is connected to everything else.  Everything has its place and its life to live.  Everything is important.  When this realization becomes a part of who you are deep inside, your relation to the whole world and every living thing takes on a deeper meaning which enriches you life.

© 2008 #11  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

What Matters Most………Commentary by Jim High  

Dawn 

Dawn is the most important time of each day and most people rarely see it.  If you don’t see it, you will never understand its power.  And you will have no chance for that power to change your life. 

I’ll admit there was a time in my life when seeing daybreak in the mornings was not a high priority for me, and then I visited Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, one of my all time heroes.  During the tour we were told that Jefferson would get up before dawn and walk the lawn in front of his home waiting for the sun to bring dawn and light to the land again, and thinking about his approaching new day.

It was a powerful and moving story.  So much so, I started to get up to see what the dawn might do for me.  As a practical matter, I realized that being up early would give me extra time for taking care of the many details of my daily life, maybe even time to read, learn, and understand some new things.

I had the perfect place to try out this new practice, my cabin on Pickwick Lake.  Early in the morning before the sun begins to appear over the hills on the opposite side of the lake there is no light anywhere, no noise to be heard, nothing but quiet and solitude.  I thought of it as “My Monticello”.  I would set the alarm, get up, fix coffee, take my cup out to the deck overlooking the lake and sit quietly waiting for the first rays of dawn to appear.

When you can get yourself to a place like this your mind actually slows down and your thoughts become more organized and clear.  After only a few days of doing this I came to understand I was witnessing the beginning of a day that had never before appeared on this earth.  Yesterday is gone and can never be changed, and whatever yesterday contained does not have to be repeated, unless of course, it was wonderful. 

You don’t have to go anywhere special to experience the dawn of a new day.  Dawn happens wherever you are.  But since the exact time of dawn changes from day to day, I picked a time early enough to be ahead of it year round.  That time has now become 4:50 a.m. every morning; not just at Pickwick Lake, but at home and even while on vacation.  Dawn over the ocean or in the mountains brings its own special benefits.  The two extra hours in my day has allowed me to read and learn from nearly a hundred books a year since I began my practice of greeting the dawn everyday like my hero Thomas Jefferson.

There are all kinds of dawns -- clear, stormy, foggy, hot and muggy, cold and crisp, and every dawn is a promise of a new day.  Dawn is when the Universe speaks to you if you are listening.

What matters most can best be said by the words of this poem by Kalidasa, the renowned Classical Sanskrit poet who lived in the period 370-450AD.

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!

Look to this Day!

For it is Life, the very Life of Life.

In its brief course lie all the

Verities and Realities of your Existence.

The Bliss of Growth,

The Glory of Action,

The Splendor of Beauty;

For Yesterday is but a Dream,

And Tomorrow is only a Vision;

But Today well lived makes

Every yesterday a Dream of Happiness,

And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.

Look well therefore to this Day!

Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

                                                © 2008 #18  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467