Jack Pelham

Many of the people I know
Are safer than they think.
In one way or another,
They shy away from dangers
That are barely real —
If they are real at all—
Or from a past that can be
Neither present nor future
But with their help.

They tremble at the klaxon warning—
Not realizing that they themselves
Are the ones making it squawk.
They feel the foreboding trepidation,
Not realizing that they are the ones
Fanning into flame the dying embers of
What has gone before,
And fueling it anew with the imagination.

They have got themselves talked into
Not being free. Not being safe. Not being OK.

It’s only talk, of course.
A mere notion.
And its only power—
If it has any power at all—
Lies in the chance
That someone might pick the fear of a tiny thing
And believe it to be much more than it really is.

They fear, of course, that those fleeting feelings
Of embarrassment
Or of doom
Or of despair
Or of remorse
Are permanent and unbearable.
They have no idea that such things
Are only temporary and tolerable.
They have no idea that they can
Move past such things.

In believing hands, such fear becomes
The monster they think it is—
The very reason for their failures—
The bane of their existence—
The Nemesis who shall have
Robbed them by the end
Of much of what
They might have wished for
In their short lives.

Few have little idea that the gloriously simple
Defenses against it
Lie merely in refusing to adopt it,
And in being willing to endure
The unsettling feelings
Until it is all finally settled.

For those who can but
Refuse to believe it —
Who can stand the test—
It is done at their refusal of it.
It falls disarmed and lifeless
To the floor—
Where one may look at it
And ponder what all the fuss
Was ever about,
And regret that anyone should have ever
Spent so much time
Cowering at what as
But a shadow
Made of make-believe and difficult feelings.

Few realize that, upon deciding
What to believe about themselves
In the mundane matters of life,
They run such risk of being entrapped
In the simple habit of believing
What should have been rejected already—
What could have been rejected already—
What could be done away with once and for all.

They are safer than they think.
And when they figure this out—
And when they dare to believe it,
Pushing through the brief discomfort of it—
You will see them fly!

It is the grandest irony,
I think,
That Herr Hitler—
Wicked narcissist that he was—
Was eventually brought down by the decree
That all communiques of the Reich
Should bear the salute, “Heil Hitler”.

It was discovered to be the one thing
Every dispatch would have in common.
And that was the clue that proved sufficient
To decode them all.

That a mortal—
Any mortal—
Would consider his own praise a proper
Prime directive for his people
Is a monument to his twisted heart.
Who could be so deformed of mind?
So misconstructed and dastardly?

Such hubris is a signal for those who recognize it—
A beacon in the darkness—
A lighthouse on the rocky shore.
Yet, so many see such narcissism without a clue
As to the dangers it signals—
With no idea of the things
That such tyrants tend to do—
Even as they “Heil!” their own Hitlers.

They come together,
These people,
Each beautiful in their various ways,
Offering up their strengths
As gifts to us all—
Having received them
As gifts themselves.

One is the bearer of a grand fact,
And the other of a great skill.
One of a kind heart,
And his friend, of a keen diligence.
And they set them all in the center,
Where we may all make use of them freely.

And we do!

And what comes out is
Greater than what was put in.
And we are more than we were.
Together, we do what we could not have done.

And it changes us inside.
And we are better than we were—
Better for the give-and-take of it all.

Together we look forward.
And there is such kindness in it.
And how can this not be the way
The world was meant to be?

If you could see what I see,
You’d be all in.
You’d drop your hesitance
And shake off the inattention
And push yourself to do your best—
Which, as it turns out in this real world,
No one else can do for you.

If you could see what I see,
You’d be distracted from your inconfidence
By the beauty of what we’re doing here,
And you’d forget you had once been so insecure in yourself.
You’d lose sight of yourself—
And of whatever it is you are currently so certain
Is wrong with you—
And you’d see what it’s like
To be freed from oneself
In the pursuit of something worthy.

If you could see what I see,
You’d see that it is not about me,
Nor about you,
But about the fact that some things
Are just so right
And so beautiful
That they are worthy of our time
And our energies
And our attention,
And that what we are doing here
Is a good thing indeed.

And if I can manage to show you—
To inspire you—
Then we shall be partners in this,
As fellows on a trek to the same destination.
And you will find other partners, still.
And we’ll all have a share in this good thing
To which someone else once introduced me,
Having learned it himself from yet another.

And this thing about life is very good.

I went along with you to where
I did not know how to go myself.
And what seems the wonder of it all
Is that you did know—
That there are wondrous places and things that
One will not know already,
To which he can be guided by someone who already does.

And along the way, I did not know if the destination
Would be worth the journey.
But you already knew it was.
You knew it was worth it.
And so you helped me to make it there, too,
That I could see it for myself,
And take somebody else there someday—
Them wondering whether they should have
Come along with me—
Just as I, too, had wondered that at the journey with you—
Until at last, I saw it for myself.

Here’s a little sampler for my friends. It’s the accompaniment and rehearsal tracks for a Christmas piece I just wrote for my combined choruses. There are no words in what you’re about to hear. You’ll have to come to my concert to hear that! (Or wait until we’ve posted a video afterward!)

Billy has got his mind made up that he’s a Christian, and for him, that settles it. There’s no need to consider how much he knows about Jesus or his teachings—or how much he understands them. There’s no need to weigh out whether he has learned to reason like Jesus or treat people like Jesus. There’s no need to survey himself as to how much be believes each one of Jesus’ teachings is true and accurate and desirable. There’s no need to consider his failures, and the number of times he does in fact not act like Jesus, nor according to his teachings.

A non-Republican, non-Democrat perspective.

by Jack Pelham

Globalists (by which term I mean Communists) have been slowly chipping away at the defenses of the United States for a very long time. They promised back in the 50s to do it, and if you read their long-known strategies, it’s scary to see just how much they’ve accomplished since then.) America has grown dull, however, and relatively few among her see these developments as particularly alarming—yet–even though elected officials from both major parties are complicit in this subterfuge.

Yes, it’s that classic frog-in-the-slowly-heated-pot thing, where they play the “long game” against us, working under the radar of our awareness so that they don’t overwhelm our ability to keep pretending that things are pretty much OK. America has had her alarmists, of course, but she has not listened, and is still not listening. And so, she is about to learn the hard way, and history may well write “They told you so” on her headstone.

I am a true Constitutionalist who thinks that the US Constitution, while not perfect, presents a form and function of government that is superior to our modern-day de facto version of it. As a Constitutionalist– a strict one — I cannot throw in with either major political party. (And I don’t like the minor parties, either, for many of the same reasons, along with some other reasons that I won’t bore you with here.)

There is a fire that burns in the hearts of some—an American Fire.  It’s a fire of the mind that starts when certain principles and ideas are mixed together.  Not every American has it, nor does every American want it—nor understand it.  Yet in a few, it burns so fiercely that it startles the rest to see someone care so much.