Uncle Thor's Lessons, Anecdotes and Humor

The last time I saw Kenny, I was on my way to work. They had called me in early that day. I was walking my usual route. As I went past the park, I saw Kenny lying on the park wall. It was about 5:50 in the morning. He was waiting for the gin mill across the street to open. We waved. I made a gesture asking him if he would like to join me, but Kenny shook his head. We gave each other a knowing nod, and I continued. At the time, I was a substance abuse counselor and my place of work was a rehab. Kenny knew it. He was a full-blown alcoholic and part time park bum.

We knew each other since Kindergarten.

That incident happened well over twenty years ago. I do not know if Kenny ever did anything about himself. I have my doubts. I had let him know on a few occasions that if he ever wanted to give up the problem, I could help. Kenny never asked. He discouraged any further talk on the subject.

There are times when we see friends in distress, but we can only watch. They refuse our help. We must wait until they are ready to be helped. Talk and confrontation do nothing to hasten this. They know, and we know, and they choose to persist in self-destructive behavior.

Sometimes they ask for help, but do not count on it. More often, they continue in their way.

The only thing we can do is let them know we are there. The only message they will accept is our example. The hardest part is knowing that our best effort is not enough.

A good analogy is like a vote. On our best day, with all of our best effort and a fortunate boost of good luck, we can only provide 49%. Normally, we have much less. They always have at least 51% of the vote, so that no matter what we do, the choice remains theirs.

The hardest part is knowing there is nothing we can do until and unless they accept our help.

You have probably made an unintended purchase at a store, only to regret it later. This happens a lot with “impulse” buys. All the little gee-gaws. trinkets and gadgets placed by the cash register are done so to intentionally encourage impulse buying. Impulse or not, the purchase might be something of which you were unsure in the first place.

There is a way to cut down on buyer’s remorse. We call it The Fourteen Pound Rule. In effect, if it does not hit you with all the impact of a fourteen pound maul on the bridge of your nose, don’t buy it. You don’t need it. On the other hand, if it has the impact, then you are probably making a good purchase. You are more likely to be satisfied with something you really want rather than something you think you want.

Try the Fourteen Pound Rule yourself. It can cut down on impulse buys. It can help you spend less. The Fourteen Pound Rule can ensure that you make better purchases.

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When I belonged to a model train club, there was a fellow who bought whatever struck his fancy. He liked getting new things, but lost interest in half of them The man would then sell them to other members at rock bottom prices. He ended up wasting money. I think of the time he sold a slightly-used $300 set of boxcars for $50.

Buy the thinks you know you want to keep. Having it may be fun, but it is no bargain if you find that you do not want to keep it. Better a few things worth having than many things that bring no satisfaction at all.

Over twenty years ago, friends of mine had bought a time share in the mountains of Pennsylvania. They had the added benefit of being able to stay there up to ten or twelve extra weekends. The catch for the weekend visits was that they had to bring a friend. He would have to attend their sales promotion on Sunday afternoon.

Jay, the husband, decided to take a weekend while his wife was visiting relatives. He invited me. We drove up. Usually these guest weekends were spent in a sample time share apartment. For whatever reason, one was not available. They put us up in a motel room in the nearby town. We ended up going to a bowling alley.

The place itself was an old resort with a few golf courses, to which the time shares were a new addition. In fact, golf was the main theme of the place. Since I do not play golf, I found other things to do. From where I stood, it was a free weekend in the mountains hanging out with one of my friends.

The weekend ended with us going to the time share presentation. It was the usual hoopla. I was not interested. For less than half of what they charged for their cheapest time share, I could have bought a couple acres of land and put a small camper trailer on it.

After the presentation, I was introduced to a salesman. Most of the salesmen were actually time share owners who would get a few payments covered on their time shares if they closed a deal. The man they sent to me acted like he was my new best friend. He also looked as if he already mentally had his hand on my wallet. There was a lot of talk and a lot of attempted pressure. I told him I would think if over a few days, just to be polite. I had no intention of buying a time share. The man was insistent I sign then and there. He even said I could back out within three days. (If anyone tried that the time share folks would make it hard for them to back out. Better not to sign at all.)

Once the salesman realized that he was not making a sale, it looked like the air came out of him. He was outright rude as he walked away from me. The way he acted, it was as if I did something to hurt him. He did it to himself. He so wanted my money that he thought he had a right to it. It was as if he mentally already had his hands in my wallet.

Last week, we were passing a bedding store. My wife wanted to look at mattresses. As soon as we came in the door, a salesman latched on to us and did not leave us for a second. He was constantly trying to steer the conversation. Instead of looking at mattresses, we were hustled from one to another. At one point, the man said, “We do not use high pressure. We are about high practicality.”

A mattress that was on sale caught my wife’s attention. The salesmen insisted we buy it right away, because the sale might not last. He was very persistent about making a sale immediately. We told him we would rather think about it a few days. Once he realized we were not going to buy right away, he could not get away from us fast enough. It was the same attitude as the salesman at the time share.

I will give you a trick that will deter any high pressure salesman. It is the “Three Day Rule.” We do not make a major purchase without first waiting three days to think it over. If they offer to let us sign or make a deposit, claiming we can back out, we have a reasoned reply. We say that we would rather not sign at all until we made up our minds. One of their tricks is to say that the item might not be available in three days, or the sale might be over, etc. The reply is that we can wait for other sales. The point is that we will not make a purchase until we have considered it for a few days.

I recommend this to you. It is an antidote to high-pressure sales tactics and the insistence of signing on the spot. You must stick to it in order for the Three Day Rule to work. If you do, you will be pleased at how you avoid being cajoled into making purchases that you might regret.

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One of the gimmicks used to promote time shares and other real estate deals is the “mini-vacation.” You get to be a guest at their resort, time share or facility for the weekend, Part of the deal is that you get subjected to the promotional video and sales talk and the high pressure sales. In reality, the mini-vacation is not free. You are better off avoiding these gimmicks.

A more insidious trick is used by criminals. They offer you a mini vacation. While you are gone, their associates burglarize your home. Variants of the trick used free concert tickets. To the beneficiary of such gift, beware!

Heathenism is a thinking person’s religion. At its heart, it is practical and reasonable. Knowing that this world is a spiritual as the next, we know that anything that is truly spiritual must be practical. Blind faith has no place here. Faith only works when it is based on results rather than wishes. Blind faith hopes what it believes. Heathen faith knows what it believes from experience.

There are a few religions out there that deride the intellect in favor of blind faith. That is foolish. Intelligence is practical and spiritual. Willful ignorance is an exercise in stupidity. There is nothing practical nor spiritual there. In my experience and through many years of observation, stupidity is the father of many a tragedy. On the other hand, reason and thought are the parents of many a good outcome.

Many people run into trouble because they do not think before they act. They see an opportunity and jump on it before they have given it any thought. More often than not, these folks have had more than their share of problems as a result of it.

We had a saying: Think it through. That meant that when a situation arose, the first thing is to think it through to its likely consequences. Act only when you have thought it through. Something this simple can help you avoid a lot of unhappiness. Think it through before you act. A little thought is like an ounce of prevention.

Our capacity to think is a spiritual gift. We have the power of reason for a purpose. Use it! Good thinking leads to good results.

Some years ago, we had a customer who seemed like a regular fellow, if a bit prone to mischief. He had done a few stints in his local jail for what sounded like minor offenses. The man lived halfway across the country and we never met in person. We could not verify everything he said. Once we found out what his real problem was, we were appalled. We ceased contact. This happened about fifteen years ago.

One of the things that man had complained about was jail. He said he hated being put with the kind of people he met there. To hear him, you would think his loathing of jail would be enough to make him a law abiding citizen. He gave the impression that he loved his freedom and hated jail.

Last year, I happened to be on a website for another state doing some research. It was the same state where that man had lived. Among things on the website was a listing of chronic jailbirds. Out of curiosity, I checked on that former customer. What a surprise! Not only was he in jail at the time, but he had a string of incarcerations. He had spent more than ten of the past fifteen years in county jails. This was not a lengthy sentence, but a series of at least a dozen short ones.

The man is an extreme example of a unique question. Do you love one thing more than you hate another? In his case, the answer was evident. He loved his recurring crime more than he hated jail. The proof is that he spent more then two thirds of his time in jail.

The answer to the unique question is a matter of actions speaking louder than words. The answer is not in what a person says, but what he does.

That which you love most will be seen in your actions. Say what you want, but the proof will be seen in what you do. You might even convince yourself that you love something else, but the place where you focus the most attention and put ahead of other things is that which you love most.

I will give you another example. There was a man who was married and had an infant child. To hear him speak, he loved his family above everything else. However, he was not home all that often. He was either working overtime or helping someone with an errand. At least five nights a week, the man was out of the house. His friends warned him that he was damaging his marriage. He persisted in saying that he loved his family. The man kept up his routine of being anywhere but home. Needless to say, the day came when his wife left and went back to her relatives who lived hundreds of miles away.

The man cried that his family left him. Instead of sympathy, he was reminded how he neglected them. He loved hanging out with his friends more than he loved his wife and child. To put it another way, he loved hanging around more than he hated losing his family.

What do you love more? Do you love it more than you hate something else? That answer is in your own actions. Look at what you do. You might be surprised!

Is our world getting more and more chaotic? Are we subject to more storms, more crime and more disasters than a generation ago? One might think so if he judges from the news. Actually, the impression of increased troubles is a matter of perception rather than fact.

A generation ago, the reporting of news took time. The state of technology for reporting news, especially from remote locations, was far less capable than the tools available now. GPS and cell phones were virtually nonexistent a quarter century ago. Until the mid-1990s, beepers were common. GPS was limited to the military. Portable transmitting stations were not all that portable. Making matters worse, one could not broadcast from remote locations that had no electricity.

The upshot was that it took longer to report a story. Many stories went unreported because they had already gone stale by the time they could be broadcast. Many other stories were out of reach. It might take a couple of days to get initial reports from such distant locations as Indonesia or Somalia. The full report took longer because video had
to by passed by hand rather than broadcast via satellite.

Today, we can get reports from the most unusual locations , and we get them instantly. Storms and natural disasters get coverage because they attract viewers. The same goes for violent crimes, upheavals and man-made disasters. Bad news sells in this era when broadcast news is becoming a form of entertainment. It may seem that the world is getting worse, but in fact the ability to report bad news is getting better.

Do not be fooled. Though broadcasters will occasionally run a “good news” story or a fluff article, the stuff that sells is the stuff that mortifies, shocks and scares. Good news is less common because it does not have as much viewer appeal as bad news. The plain fact is that today as it was in times past, there is much more good than there is bad. Things that work right are not newsworthy because they are so common. News focuses on the uncommon, and especially so when it is bad.

When it comes to news, be it broadcast, internet or print media, be skeptical. Look at it in its proper perspective. They are not going to report that 99% of all commuters had a safe trip and arrived on time. The news media has become a venue of its own. It thrives when it attracts the most viewers. Like it or not, the trappings of entertainment and sensationalism are becoming a larger part of news presentation.

With that in mind, remember that the world is not worse. The world is actually getting better. In today’s entertainment news media, that kind of thing just is not newsworthy. Scary stories sell best, but the world keeps getting better in spite of all the woeful worry tales.

Recently, there have been advertisements for a film that is based on an interpretation of a Mayan manuscript. According to the story, the world is supposed to end in the year 2012. The basis for the interpretation is rather flimsy. Supposedly, the Mayan calendar ends in 2012.

A few things refute this. There is another Mayan manuscript which mentions future dates past the year 4,000. Even more important is the reaction of the Mayans themselves. They think it is silly, and that the doomsday interpretation is wrong. The Mayan doomsday is a fallacy.

I remember an incident over 40 years ago. There was a rumor going around that unless all teenagers went to church and prayed on a particular Friday, either the world was going to end or some other silly disaster would strike. Friday came, the churches were not full of teenagers, and nothing happened.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses predicted Doomsday many times, and each one came and went without a flutter. The only result was that the Witnesses had to make some sort of excuse to explain why their prophecy failed.

Many fundamentalist Christians believe that the book of Revelation in their bible portends dire events and doomsday. That take the book literally, when it is actually something else entirely. The book is more of a gnostic text, although with the use of Middle Eastern symbolism. It is allegorical and symbolic, not prophetic. Other people look at the prophecies of Nostrodamus as if they are infallible. Few know that some of that work was tampered with several times. Also, many of its prophecies have not come true.

There are people who regard Ragnarok as a portent of a future doomsday. A few Heathens even burn their nail clippings so as to help delay those events. Ragnarok is a composite story, and is at best a myth in transition. The stories are nice, but they are just stories. For the most part, the myth is an allegory of the annual cycle when the world descends into winter and then re-emerges in spring.

Doomsday is a thing of hype rather than fact. People have been predicting the end of the world since the earliest times. Doomsday myths occur in all cultures. Most center around a series of cataclysms, all of which are exaggerated versions of natural disasters. Many also have a human component, such as the great battle of Armageddon in the Christian book of Revelation. These stories need to be taken with a grain of salt the size of size of a basketball.

There will always be people who like to frighten themselves. They latch onto doomsday prophecies, much as a morbid few obsessed about the “Bomb” during the days of “duck and cover”. We do best to ignore them and their silly horror tales. Life is to be lived fully. A pall of trepidation is no way to live. Make up your mind that you will go forth confidently. Allow no prophecy to cause you worry. Remember that the power to make a difference goes to those who have faith in life rather than fear of troubles.

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My old jujitsu teacher had been a Marine at Guadalcanal. He remembered how the men huddled in their foxholes when the Japanese artillery shelled them at night. The men waited for the barrage to be over, hoping that they would not “get theirs.” Years later, he was reminded of it when he taught self-defense. The man was appalled at the people who were so afraid of “getting theirs” that they hid in their apartments. As he put it, “They are so worried about “getting theirs” that they never get to live.”

Better to live courageously than to hide in self-imposed confinement.

Perhaps it is like the turtle. The only way the turtle can go forward is to stick his neck out.

The basic idea of morality is the contrast between right and wrong. Various non-Heathen religions have attempted to deal with the matter. In their efforts, unfortunately, the issue tends to change from right versus wrong to good versus evil. It goes from a practical matter to a theological one. That is a cosmic shift, indeed.

Morality is not difficult. Most of us have a very good understanding of right and wrong. We do not need to contrive a set of commandments. I believe we can boil it down to a few simple statements: You are responsible for what you do. You are also responsible for what you know. If you know better, do better.

People who do wrong tend to try to convince themselves that what they are doing is actually right. I have heard this described as “justification and rationalization.” Usually, if you have to rationalize it, it is probably wrong. Those who do the right thing do not need excuses and contrived explanations.

Heathenism does not need a code of rules like the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments. Right and wrong is much simpler. There is no need to codify it. The key for us is in taking responsibility for our actions. If we each make a deliberate choice to do that which is right, then wrong is no longer a problem. Instead of fussing over right and wrong, we have the option of choosing right, better and best.

One of the things that differentiates experiential religion from Judaism, Christianity and Islam is a matter of direct contact. Experiential religion believes that spiritual beings and components can be contacted by the individual. We can know and even interact with the Gods. Likewise, we can each derive insight and knowledge personally from this contact. It is assumed, and rightly so, that we have the capacity to understand these insights ourselves.

Our monotheistic friends do not have this luxury. Even if they admit the potential for direct contact through what they call prayer, there is always a middleman lurking in the wings. For Christians, these middlemen are the clergy and their bible. To their way of thinking, any knowledge of “God” and other spiritual entities must be in accord with the bible and church doctrine. The church acts like a middleman which validates some experiences and invalidates others. No matter how you slice it, there is always something between the people and any spiritual insight.

The difference between our way and theirs can be summed up easily. We are doers. Our way is a way of action. There is mostly talking. An Asian man commented about Christianity, “Well, it is a talky religion.” There you see the difference between “walking the walk and talking the talk.”

Yesterday’s discussion concerned knowing the Gods, as opposed to merely knowing about them. The Gods can be known by direct experience. The Runes can also be experienced. Over the last year, I ran a series of exercises to help people experience the Runes.

The Runes and the Gods are not mere intellectual abstractions. They exist and can be experienced. The Runes are more than a bunch of magickal signs. Each Rune has an operating principle and an essence. Many of these principles correlate to natural laws that can be observed. All Runes have a practical component. Even if the Rune itself cannot be perceived, the results of its actions are perceptible. For instance, you cannot weigh and measure the essence of the Raido Rune, but you can see it in action through transportation.

Books are an accumulation of facts and ideas. Those books that describe old lore, Runes and Gods are the reports of their authors. They are second-hand information to the reader. Books can help, but the real work is in having your own personal experiences. Reading about Runes is rather dry when compared to consciously experiencing them. The whole idea of learning the Runes is to know them from direct and conscious contact. Books are like signs that point the way. A book is nothing more than that. The goal is not in studying the signs, but finding the thing to which they point.

You can know the Runes. As with the Gods, it is better to know the Runes than know about the Runes. Knowing “about” is like knowing the signs. When you know the thing to which the signs point, then you know the thing itself.

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We gave one lesson every seven to nine days, starting with Fehu and working our way through the Elder Futhark. Look through the archives to find the exercises intended to help people actually experience each Rune in turn.