NOTE:  This site will undergo extensive renovation in the next year.  :>)  Feel free to browse the TABLE OF CONTENTS.  Most of this material is more than ten years old.  The are lots of new thoughts coming, using the broad sweep of the past to explain the present and illuminate the future . . .

Check out Columbia Ridge Community Church in Troutdale, Oregon

(Recommended as a "safe" spiritual home for the wandering.)

Welcome to the home of the happy thinker!!!  This site is motivated by the sentiment expressed many years ago by a student of life:

 "I have observed that all who acquire enduring riches have ascended the ladder of opulence with two outstretched hands; one extended upward to receive the help of others who have reached the peak, and the other extended downward to aid those who are still climbing." (Napoleon Hill)

A related sentiment by Sir Isaac Newton:

"If I have seen further than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."

Making use of these thoughts, I have never thought that I was a great person.  But I know that I have been privileged to learn some really great things, some from the most brilliant minds of any age, and some from unexpected persons of no special repute.  The purpose of this site is to share freely something of what I have learned.  Bon appetit!!!

Human beings are relational animals. We are defined by our relations to other persons and things. When you meet someone new, usually questions are asked like:

    Where are you from?
    Who do you know that I know?
    What about your family?
    Where did you go to school?
    What kind of work do you do?

These and many other questions are designed to elicit information that will allow us to relate the other person (and be related ourselves) to a paradigm, or framework, that we each have. This is like a bunch of hooks (stereotypes) that we can hang information and people on. For example, if the new person does the same type of work as a cousin of yours, you will put them on one of the same "hooks" that you reserve for your cousin.

Many of the problems we have in life are relational. Either our paradigm is screwed up (our hooks don't reflect reality), or we have hung things on the wrong hooks.

I recommend the following foundational paradigm. There are four great relations in life that you need to manage properly:
 

• With God

• With yourself

• With your fellow man

• With things and stuff

There are common features to the management of each of these, and a proper balance of the four can make you very happy, indeed. This is the starting point and organization for the happy thinker. Stay tuned!!! 

The early stages of this site will necessarily be a bit choppy.  But after I get a substantial amount of material in place I will work on the organization more.  However, I am dealing with the most important matters first.  First, the paradigm, or issues to be dealt with.  Secondly, something about the priority of these issues.

Sometimes we refer to the priority as "vertical alignment".  A lot of frustration and unhappiness happens in life because people use a horizontal alignment program.  What this means is that they may recognize many issues as important, but they act as if all are equally important.  It's like your "to do" list.  If you have three things to get done today, and they are all equally important, you may start on any one of them.  If anything interrupts you, you may readily switch to another one of the three.  Further interruptions lead to further shuffling among the three things you need to get done today.  The usual result is that nothing gets completed.  Everything is in a state of partial completion.

When the next day comes, new items will be mixed in with the old incomplete ones.  Soon, so many things are on your plate, all given more or less equal priority, and your whole life creeps along, if it moves at all.  Anyone in time management will tell you that you need to get some vertical alignment in your list --- some things higher than others.  These higher items can then be focused on one at a time and completed one at a time.  What a marvelous system.

Vertical alignment applies to the four great relations outlined above:

• With God

• With yourself

• With your fellow man

• With things and stuff

They are listed here in their proper priority, as spelled out in the Bible, and as common sense has proven.  I have also verified the effectiveness of this order by my own experience.  I spent 37 years almost exclusively focused on the first relationship, with God.  As I struggled with this, my own self image was really poor.  In fact, I didn't even know there was such a thing as proper self esteem.  Consequently my relations with  my fellow men were pretty poor.  And I would have had to pay off all my bills just to get to be broke.  Whew!  What a disaster.

But something good was coming and I have no regrets about laying a proper foundation.  As one of my mentors, once said, "You can tell how tall a building someone is intending to build from the size of the foundation they lay."  I was working on a doozy, and it has stood me in good stead all these years hence.  (I have long since moved beyond the religious affiliations of my early years.  A historical summary is available.

The good book says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart."  This is the first and great commandment.  The second is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor, as thyself".  If you don't love yourself, you certainly won't love your neighbor.  Loving yourself comes first.  We're not talking about selfish narcissism, but a healthy respect and admiration for the gift God gave in you.  Someone once said, "You are God's gift to you.  What you become is your gift back to Him."  (Check out Robert Schuller's book, Self Love.)

After your own spiritual, emotional and physical needs have been met, you can draw near to your fellow men in strength, with the means to genuinely be helpful.  What a difference in perspective.

The fourth relation is to the material world.  Early in the book of Genesis we are commanded to be fruitful and multiply and to have dominion over the earth.  Personally, I have always felt a little guilty about only having five children.  I don't know whether I let the screwed up thinking of the rest of the world influence me.  (My wife had something to say about this, too!)  However, I am extremely pleased with that part of my life.  But I made no serious effort to exert dominion until I was 37 years old.

Having dominion means that you are in control of your finances, your finances are not in control of you.  Rotten attitudes about this by many Christians is one of the reasons that Ted Turner calls Christianity a loser religion.  A word to the wise:  If the shoe fits, wear it!

I'm going to have a lot more to say about each of these four relationships.  But this should at least lay out the groundwork.

Hang in there.  There's good times ahead!