Suggestion 2

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It's not about what you get (from the world), it's about what you add.

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I received this Suggestion on the first snowman day of 2002. I was in a good mood because I knew my kids and I would probably get out and do some snow sculpting when I got home. I had already seen some kids up (7:00 in the morning!) planning their snow creations. Half way through my run, I met two kids (3 & 5 years old?) who didn't even know how to make a snow man. Their dad looked on while I taught them how. They were really excited when I told them it was up to them to decorate their snowman.

Only the PBGs could arrange that my unique talent would be useful to give joy to those kids and to bring that family together that snowy morning.

Message Archive

From Mo:

Posted 12.14.2003 3:37 PM Damsels in distress

Sometimes the single act of a rescue which doesn't seem to have any redeaming qualities to it at the time may be that wink from a stranger that becomes a sign that there is a bigger picture than what we see. Who knew that my friendly smile in church to someone I don't feel comfortable with all the time would lead in a small way to that person getting baptised? In some ways I think it would be better not to know how a small action can ripple into something larger. That you could get a woman to smile at all in the midst of an angry, tragic change may be the angel in you reaching out to comfort her when she needed it most.

Red Faced Squirrel replies

Oh, I agree completely. I thought it was nice of the PBGs to arrange that she be there for my baptism too. She seemed even grumpier yesterday. But, my helping her out may have touched her on a deeper level and who knows how long that 'infection' will 'fester' in her heart. It is my job to be me and do what I do and let go and let God after that point. I have to focus on what is my job and let others take care of there own lives. I have decided that I am a servant of God and that I must do what is in my God madate (from either his Calls (can I have an unlisted number please) or from my own feelings of 'right-ness') for every decision that is presented to me by life. If the call is to go to Red Deer to help out a friend, I go to Red Deer (if Mo lets me to of course). In short, you gotta be true to who you are. Period. Oh, and listen for that small God voice. That is important too.

Posted 9.29.2003 5:13 PM Messy stories

I really like where you're going here, a proactive approach that has to ride out the storms and find happiness where it can. I hope to read more soon!

Posted 9.17.2003 11:47 AM Humor

Like fire, humor can warm the soul or burn the fingers and takes lots of practise. I follow that ancient clown, Jesus, who talked of being non-judgemental and kind but having goofy stories to make a point (anyone tried sewing with a camel stuck in their needle recently???).

Posted 9.17.2003 11:45 AM Playing around, are you???

What on earth is Noahidism? or Jainism? Is that like silly things that Jane of Jungle says? I'm glad that you're not into that youngest of femme fatale's, Miss Atheism. She really is quite young, only about 3 or 400 (if that). It's okay to play the field for a bit and we can learn so much from them all (ask me about Gnosticism some time).

Posted 9.4.2003 11:12 AM Spiritual doggy biscuits

But, I want some doggy biscuits! I'll be a good puppy too, and never miss the newspaper. I guess the PBGs' love is to treat me with more respect than that. I'm not a dog, I'm a partner and bribing implicates imbalance.

From Twisted Squirrel (TS):

Posted 12.16.2003 11:43 AM Inspiration

I think you may have missed your calling, or maybe you are on the path. Perhaps one day you will discover that people will look to you to minister in an official capacity. I admire the fact that you always look for the good in people and situations. A quote that I liked and recorded goes something like this "Perhaps it is not the goal but the journey we should appreciate." Take care my good friend.

Encouragements:

Posted 10.07.2003 10:44 AM To: wazzoo Advice

You are each other's strength. Give your daughter what strength you can spare and both of you will be stronger for it. The night is darkest before the dawn. If what you need is an ear, I will listen. Kia Kaha

Links

croxis - "Dream like you can touch the stars. Love like you have never been hurt, and Dance like no one is watching". Warning, adult content

Suggestion 1

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It's not about fee for service.

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This Suggestion, because it was the first, took a long time to formulate in my consciousness. It is, I think, (so far) the most important tenant of the PBGs. I began to understand this Suggestion when they [the PBGs] provided cans on days I didn't clean up my 'alley' or chose a different path than the one they suggested. For me, this Suggestion means that following the PBGs does not lead to monitory gain or spiritual doggie biscuits. Return on investment is not part of the contract. The flip side of this Suggestion is that if you choose the way of the PBGs, you can be guaranteed that your participation is part of the grand scheme and will be beneficial to someone, somewhere, sometime in the big PBGs' time-frame. No promises, just a guarantee!

Introduction to the PBGs

If you have found this on-line journal by an act of fate (or more likely because of a google search) you may be wondering what "PBGs" stands for.

That is a long and interesting story. Some of the answers to that question are contained in my journal entries themselves. Some of the answers are left up to you to find on your own spiritual journey.

For the impatient here is the quick answer: PBGs is a short code-word for Pop Bottle Gods.

And now for the longer answer. Here is what I have determined about the PBGs thus far on my journey.

I am a Runner (no, not a Jogger, a Runner) and I have spent many lonely hours pounding the pavement training for marathons. If I were to go into the reasons I run, this would be an even longer story, so I'll leave that for another day.

Anyway, over the summer I started a conversation (sort of a thought experiment at first) where I thought about God.

Now, don't get me wrong... I am not a 'religious nut' by any means. I go to church with my family, but for most of my life I have been a questioning Agnostic. I am not, myself, a member of our church. Until recently, I didn't think I had any kind of faith.

God was too big a concept for me to handle in my own musing.

So I imagined my own pair of gods whom I could interact with (notice the lower case 'g' on that folks). You may say "this guy is nuts! Not one but two gods!". Well that is what came to me. I have since learned not to argue with where my mind wanders.

Bear with me while I digress a bit more. I also pick things up on my runs. During my runs, I pick up grocery bags (usually stuck on bushes) and fill them with pop cans and bottles I find lying around. This practice started out as a way to justify buying expensive running shoes ($100+) on a very small running budget. Because of this habit of mine, I am always looking around and squinting at bits of garbage trying to determine if I am seeing a slurpie cup top or the bum of a beer can.

The PBGs came into the picture when I started wondering to myself about why some days there were lots of cans and bottles and other days there were virtually none. I invented small gods to be in control of a small aspect of my confusing world. The Pop Bottle Gods were born.

It wasn't until much later that I discovered that these small fragments of the 'bigger' God (you know, the one everybody else believes in) were simply a metaphor that made it easier to deal with my God phobia.

After my run, I would often relate what I had been thinking about to my well-read church-going wife. It stared out as a fun game and she would sometimes jokingly ask "How were the PBGs today?" We came up with the short hand name to hide our embarrassment for inventing a god (2 actually) and so that we could talk about it without people asking a lot of questions that required long answers.

One day, she said "You know, that sounds a lot like what I reading recently" in a book about spirituality.

After this I started paying more attention to the thoughts that occurred during my morning runs. In fact, I started a journal to record what the PBGs and I 'talked' about.

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This is that journal. It is part running log and part spiritual journey. Share it with me. See where I am at. Laugh at me if you want. Take away with you only the parts that make sense and discard what doesn't fit for you.

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Just a note about the Suggestions and Suppositions

• Suggestions are the commandments of the PBGs. They are meant to be followed. Like most commandments, they are deliberately vague and can be interpreted anyway that makes sense to you. I call them Suggestions because, hey, these are minor gods, after all. Who are they to tell you how to run your life.
• Suppositions are not quite strong enough to be Suggestions, but have a supporting role. I haven't attempted to attach Suppositions to a specific Suggestion.

Accumulated Index

This here is a list of ALL the pages in my blog by title. It is a handy tool for me when I am doing self referring links and it removes a long list of links from my sidebar. I will only be updating it periodically, so if you want current links look to the current page or the archive pages

October 2006

July 2006

June 2006

March 2006

February 2006

January 2006

September 2005

August 2005

July 2005

June 2005

May 2005

February 2005

January 2005

December 2004

October 2004

September 2004

August 2004

July 2004

June 2004

May 2004
DATE: 5/31/2004 04:25:00 PM Marathon Training Commences
DATE: 5/28/2004 10:36:00 AM Word Fails Me
DATE: 5/18/2004 03:22:00 PM Intolerant Reply
DATE: 5/17/2004 01:08:00 PM Love Each Other
DATE: 5/14/2004 10:38:00 PM Past, Present, Future
DATE: 5/14/2004 01:22:00 PM Seattle Marathon Picture
DATE: 5/13/2004 10:39:00 AM Inspiration by TNT18
DATE: 5/07/2004 10:19:00 AM Senseless Death
DATE: 5/05/2004 01:27:00 PM Note To Self
DATE: 5/05/2004 12:31:00 PM Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death

April 2004
DATE: 4/27/2004 09:53:00 PM Conservative
DATE: 4/26/2004 10:41:00 PM  Give us this Day...
DATE: 4/21/2004 12:34:00 PM Pressure to Change
DATE: 4/16/2004 10:00:00 AM  Unclean Spirit
DATE: 4/09/2004 08:48:00 PM  Between a Bunny and a Hard Place
DATE: 4/08/2004 09:38:00 AM Internet Hand of God
DATE: 4/08/2004 02:06:00 PM Not your Every-Day Rat food!
DATE: 4/06/2004 11:21:00 PM Yes, but am I a Christian?
DATE: 4/2/2004 09:52:01 AM Spam Report: Is It A Stroke?

March 2004
DATE: 3/30/2004 11:34:00 AM Spam Report: $25 Million for nothing
DATE: 3/25/2004 12:38:06 PM Bible: Chapter and Verse
DATE: 3/23/2004 09:22:37 AM Spam Report: Not Tickle-ish
DATE: 3/8/2004 09:54:42 AM Spam Report: Administration Masquerade
DATE: 3/1/2004 02:03:12 PM Running Record
DATE: 3/1/2004 01:00:27 PM Mel Gibson´s "The Passion of The Christ"

February 2004
DATE: 2/27/2004 09:27:14 PM Given Up For Lent
DATE: 2/24/2004 12:57:48 PM Phone Phobia Action
DATE: 2/18/2004 04:00:02 PM One Step Back
DATE: 2/5/2004 10:09:34 PM Memory Palace
DATE: 2/4/2004 09:24:37 AM Consider a Change In Direction

January 2004
DATE: 1/29/2004 06:59:03 PM The Innocent and The Shy
DATE: 1/28/2004 11:09:46 AM It´s Blog-citing!
DATE: 1/25/2004 02:59:04 PM Phone Phobia
DATE: 1/23/2004 09:13:25 AM New Phase
DATE: 1/14/2004 12:01:08 AM Revisit the Past
DATE: 1/13/2004 10:17:57 PM Will Blogging save the World?
DATE: 1/12/2004 12:39:01 PM Native Spirituality II

December 2003
DATE: 12/16/2003 06:49:47 PM Pop bottle of Intent
DATE: 12/14/2003 06:59:54 PM Baptism day
DATE: 12/13/2003 07:27:02 PM Rescue Mission - there will be a test
DATE: 12/11/2003 06:41:07 PM Voice of God?
DATE: 12/5/2003 07:58:10 PM Seattle Marathon Trip

November 2003
DATE: 11/30/2003 08:17:48 PM Seattle Marathon Race Report
DATE: 11/10/2003 12:01:02 AM See a drunkard in the rain
DATE: 11/8/2003 08:24:24 PM Fishy Philosophy
DATE: 11/1/2003 12:01:48 PM Provided That Which I Needed
DATE: 11/1/2003 12:01:42 AM Mustard Seed Advise

October 2003
DATE: 10/24/2003 05:50:59 PM Ants go working...
DATE: 10/20/2003 11:42:25 PM Supposition d)
DATE: 10/7/2003 06:15:29 PM PBG Club: not mere Doofuses
DATE: 10/7/2003 12:01:40 AM Word of the Day: Arborescent
DATE: 10/5/2003 05:43:30 PM Native Girl
DATE: 10/3/2003 12:01:57 AM Spam Report: Sara Freder is a Fake
DATE: 10/2/2003 12:01:09 AM Suggestion 7

September 2003
DATE: 9/30/2003 08:51:00 PM Bridge to a new Stanza
DATE: 9/29/2003 12:01:33 AM Boy´s Group.
DATE: 9/27/2003 12:01:37 AM A Matter of Focus
DATE: 9/20/2003 09:15:13 PM ... And the Thought That Didn´t
DATE: 9/19/2003 12:01:22 AM Stay Strong
DATE: 9/18/2003 09:51:51 AM The Thought That Got Away
DATE: 9/17/2003 12:01:20 AM Bus Friend
DATE: 9/16/2003 05:09:39 PM Promiscuous Faith
DATE: 9/14/2003 10:03:06 AM Recommissioning Sunday
DATE: 9/13/2003 12:01:20 AM Whose God is it Anyway?
DATE: 9/11/2003 12:01:43 AM Suggestion 6
DATE: 9/11/2003 12:01:12 AM A Dream for Hunter
DATE: 9/10/2003 10:18:10 AM Hills Alive
DATE: 9/9/2003 10:21:03 AM Time Heals All?
DATE: 9/8/2003 10:23:05 AM Easy Community?
DATE: 9/6/2003 12:01:35 AM On The Path (I think)
DATE: 9/4/2003 12:01:33 AM Be Consistent
DATE: 9/3/2003 10:12:04 AM Back To School
DATE: 9/2/2003 12:01:32 AM OOPBGB, PPBGs
DATE: 9/1/2003 12:01:59 AM PBGs Summary

August 2003
DATE: 8/27/2003 11:37:52 PM Supposition c)

May 2003
DATE: 5/4/2003 12:01:35 AM My New Run Group
DATE: 5/2/2003 12:01:25 AM The Ground of Being

February 2003
DATE: 2/1/2003 12:01:18 AM Training again

January 2003
DATE: 1/5/2003 12:01:59 AM More training
DATE: 1/4/2003 12:47:07 PM Just training

December 2002
DATE: 12/29/2002 12:49:29 PM Beauty, Eh?

November 2002
DATE: 11/10/2002 12:01:34 AM Have Oil, Will Travel
DATE: 11/5/2002 12:01:14 AM Supposition b)

October 2002
DATE: 10/29/2002 06:49:11 PM Lion Baptism
DATE: 10/29/2002 12:01:27 AM Suggestion 5
DATE: 10/28/2002 12:01:20 AM Suggestion 4 (2)
DATE: 10/25/2002 12:01:46 AM Thoughts - Freshly Squeezed
DATE: 10/24/2002 12:01:53 AM Air Ferrets Aloft
DATE: 10/21/2002 12:01:16 AM Gotta love those PBGs
DATE: 10/20/2002 01:41:55 PM Where are you Love?
DATE: 10/19/2002 12:01:09 AM Suggestion 4 (1)
DATE: 10/18/2002 01:50:41 PM Fears of the Dark
DATE: 10/17/2002 01:57:19 PM Spiritual Advisor?
DATE: 10/15/2002 12:01:56 AM Mostly Quiet.
DATE: 10/14/2002 12:01:03 AM Suggestion 3
DATE: 10/12/2002 12:01:09 AM Quiet Running
DATE: 10/11/2002 12:01:41 AM Supposition a)

September 2002
DATE: 9/21/2002 12:01:09 AM Suggestion 2
DATE: 9/18/2002 08:30:42 PM Message Archive
DATE: 9/16/2002 12:01:23 AM Suggestion 1
DATE: 9/15/2002 12:00:36 AM Introduction to the PBGs

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LAST UPDATED: Nov 14, 2004