Daily Postings

Watching the documentary on Katrina and its devastation of New Orleans and other cities in Mississippi and Alabama, it was easy for me to sense of how hopeless the situation was for those people.  Yet, they never lost hope.  They lost their homes, everything they ever owned: their money, their treasured possessions, their family heirlooms, relatives, sometimes mothers and fathers, and children.  What more could a human being lose?  And the remarkable phenomenon is that these brave people never lost hope, and now hardly five years later, they are well on their way to recovery, not of all they lost, especially their loved ones, but they have been miraculously recovering their lives and are facing the future with pride, with hope and with determination.

It is clear from all those poor folks who were interviewed in the midst of the catastrophe that they were people of faith, and their trust in the Lord never wavered.  They were crying and desolate but their spirit was not crushed. 

And this is a powerful lesson for all of us.  When the worst that can happen happens, and when things seem most bleak and hopeless, hope and trust in a God who cares will see us through.  We can never peer into the mind of God, but God has the genius to bring good out of the most impossible situations.  How he does that is a mystery, and the resolution of most difficult and impossible situations is just as impossible for out human minds to understand, but it happens, and the storm that we thought was inevitable, mysteriously turns calm down and passes in an instant.  And we wonder what happened.  Miracle? Yes, but miracles are everyday happenings with God, so it shouldn’t be surprising.  When situations are at their worst and most hopeless, God is at his best.  So, never lose hope in our loving God who cares for us more than we could ever understand.

We are the strongest and most progressive country in the world.  We have been extraordinarily blessed by God with not only natural resources in our soil, but personal emotional, intellectual, and spiritual resources that make it possible for us to enrich the world.  Though we have had a difficult few years because we have taken our blessings for granted and are now struggling to correct the mistakes we made, we should not panic and fall into the dangerous trap of pessimism and emotional depression.  There is nothing more paralyzing than fear.  Fear destroys our ability to make decisions, and stops progress.  It is fear more than anything else that is preventing our economy from moving forward at a faster pace, and causes those less noble among population to blame our problems on others.

And what is sad, is that with all the greatness we have in our country and in our people, so many are developing a mentality of hopelessness that is going to lower us into a state of national despair. Unfortunately, when this comes from leaders themselves, the whole population is demoralized.  National leaders should never preach a dark future;  it has a dangerous and self-defeating effect on the whole country and demeans us before the whole world.  We should always think positively and with hope, especially when we are in difficult times.  That is what inspires us to pick ourselves up and with a sense of pride move boldly forward.  Noble souls inspire  hope.  Lesser people feed on fears.

There is a strange phenomenon taking place in Christianity.  So many people tell me very frankly that they believe in Jesus but they can’t stand religious institutions, so they practice their religion on their own.  It reminds me of so many families I counseled during my years of parish work, when people would tell me, “I love my family but I just can’t stand them, so I never want to see them again.”  There’s something puzzling about that kind of thinking.  One of the things that puzzled me was that the ones who said that were always in their eyes the innocent victims, and it may be true, but I often found out later on that they were very much part of the problem, and were the ones who were often mean to the others but were never able to be honest with themselves, and own up to their own meanness.

Belonging to family is always difficult and is never easy, but they are our family.  And Jesus expects us to be caring and kind to one another, and be responsible for one another.  There is never an excuse to refuse to tell a brother or sister that a father or mother has died.  That alone reveals a lot about that so-called innocent person.  Nor is it ever excusable for a brother or sister to ignore a dying brother or sister, or even a very sick brother or sister.  That is cold blooded meanness and also reveals a lot about that ‘innocent’ person.  It can be nothing more than a refusal to forgive and to intentionally hurt, especially if the person is dying.  And the mandate of Jesus to forgive carries a heavy responsibility.

And it is the same with the Christian family.  And Christianity is not an institution.  That’s just a contemptible name given by persons who have turned sour toward the family. The Church is the Sacred Bride of Jesus. It is the mystical body of Christ as St. Paul writes. It is the living presence of Jesus, but still it is a family. That is the way Jesus structured it.  And families are always difficult. All human relationships are difficult.  But, walking away is rarely the answer.  That’s mostly an expression of “I just don’t want to be bothered.  I want to be on my own, then I don’t have to put up with others.”  And I often wonder is it really justified or is it an indication of a self-righteous attitude towards others. 

When Jesus structured his followers as a family, it was for profound reasons, and they were so that we could care and share with one another.  And that means putting up with one another.  Walking away is often just putting down the cross that Jesus so often talked about, walking away from the responsibilities we have for one another.  One of the things I always admired about monks and nuns is that they are living in families, big families of people totally unrelated to one another and committing themselves to live together for the rest of their lives. And if a biological family is difficult, a religious family is many, many more times difficult, yet they struggle each day putting up with some persons they absolutely cannot stand, and still manage to be charitable to one another, most of the time. 

And the worst part of leaving the Christian family is that they also leave the family meal, and that family meal is the Eucharist, the meal which Jesus so humbly and wonderfully offers to us, his own flesh and blood.  To walk away from that is putting oneself in a very, very precarious position.

Salvation is not cheap, and if we think we are going to find an easy way to heaven, we may want to reconsider Jesus’ warnings.

The daily pace of most of us is so hectic, it is hard to relax and just dream.  And yet dreams are the engines that drive us.  And it doesn’t have to be fantasies, or day dreams.  Sometimes, it means just taking a few minutes in a busy day, to go off for a few moments, in a quiet space and just open our soul to the beautiful things a loving God has placed in his creation.  There is so much healing in nature. Just a few minutes each day, allowing a quiet space to embrace us so we can enjoy the simple things in that space which may be no bigger than a back yard, or a little park nearby, a quiet place to meet God.  One day, when I decided to sit down outside in one of gardens, I noticed hundreds of tiny creatures I had never noticed before.  There were all kinds of shapes and sizes, and colors and all so different, and I am sure, in God’s plan all having a different purpose.  I was fascinated, and just meditating on all these creatures, and watching them and trying to understand what they were doing, filled me with wonder.  And I began to realize that the world of tiny creatures is just as vast as the world of the creatures in our dimension that are so much a part of our daily life.  For over a half hour, I sat mesmerized at what I was observing, and it made me understand a tiny bit more of how fascinating and awesome is the mind and heart of God, that gave each of these little creatures an infinitely tiny purpose to their brief existence.  That little distraction took my mind off a problem that had been starting to stress me out, and for that brief time, I had a beautiful moment with God.  So peaceful, so healing!

I keep getting more and more emails from friends expressing in so many clever ways their hateful attitudes towards Muslims and immigrants.  I know from other friends that these things always get back to Muslims living in our communities, and I cannot help but think of the sum total of all this hate spreading around the country and the effect it has on decent law-abiding Muslims and Mexicans.  They must live in constant fear that so many Americans have such demeaning and hateful attitudes towards them.  It just struck me today that the sick people who indulge is these cyberspace hate messages are our ‘patriotic’ American equivalent of Muslim terrorists, with the same mentality, but our terrorist tactics are psychological, and these sick people might be called American psychological terrorists.  Of course, like the Muslim terrorists, they consider themselves good patriotic American Christians, dedicated to God and the noble American ideals.  What they are doing is daily sowing the seeds of hatred throughout the country and their children and grandchildren will reap the harvest of their parents’ hate years from now when our country will be rampant with race and religious confrontations threatening another civil war at a time when white Americans will then be a minority, and all those we have demeaned will turn on our grandchildren.  What the parents sow the children reap!

Ever since I began writing some thirty years ago, I soon realized that if I was going to be a good writer, I had to have a passion for truth.  That is very difficult because it is not easy to sift through all the debris of people’s carelessness with truth.  During my life I have come across only a few people who impressed me with their accuracy and honesty in maintaining their devotion to truthfulness.  These people I respect because of their brutal honesty in facing the truth about life around them and the truth in real situations but moreso in facing the truth about themselves, as painful as it may be for them.   For these people I have great respect.

I have become very disheartened with the news lately, especially the television news, because I do not see journalists as having a passion for truth, and a persistence in searching for truth.  In generations past there were real professional journalists and reporters.  Today, journalists are more like referees in dog fights.  They do not present to the public what is true.  They interview a person with one view then find someone with a conflicting view and then match them up for a fight.  And any intelligent viewer will know that neither is telling the truth, and that the interviewer is interested only in fomenting a heated controversy to keep up his ratings.  And this is all day long.  The unfortunate thing is that so many people believe what they feel comfortable in believing whether it is true or false.  As a result it is very difficult to have intelligent discussions with people because so few know what they are talking about.

Unfortunately, as an author, I have a reputation for truthfulness to protect, so I need to know what is true, and what is false.   So, I spend endless hours trying to understand extremely complex issues of our times, so when I write I have a reservoir of objective facts at my fingertips.  Thank God for the internet and for search engines, because it makes possible a remarkable accuracy in tracking down information about almost anything.

As Christians we should have a passion for truth, because it was the driving force behind Jesus’ whole mission.  When Pilate asked Jesus if he was a king, Jesus answer was, “You say I am a king.  For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”  Pilate said, “What is truth?”

And Pilate expressed the cynicism that infects so much of today’s world in its attitude towards honesty and truth.

I am surprised at how many people make decisions based on emotions, and how many public figures exploit people at such a base level.  The level of our public expressions of values has sunk so low it is a national embarrassment.  My father taught us from our earliest years not to live the way we feel but to make decisions based on principles.  We didn’t know what he was talking about, and surely we didn’t always live that way, but it made such a deep impression on us, that it eventually it sank in, and as we got older we realized what he meant.  He tried to impress on us that feelings are dangerous and can lead you astray and create chaos in your life.  “Live on principles,” was the guiding star of his life.  “Don’t judge people on feelings, and don’t make decisions based on feelings.”

One of the most dangerous types of decisions based on feelings is the way so many people buy things.  My father used to say, “If you don’t need it, don’t buy it. Once you start to buy things because you like it, it becomes a habit, and there’s no end. If you like it, you buy it.  And then notions becomes needs, and when that happens you end up going into debt.  And that’s why banks invented credit cards, so people who have run out of money can still go deeper into debt.  And you watch, those things are going to be the ruination of our country.”  And that was almost fifty years ago my father said that.

And one of the reasons so many businesses fail is because people can’t be content starting out small and gradually build up the business based on what they can afford.  They see a possibility of making money on something and jump on it because it seems appealing, rather than evaluating the possible chances of success in the venture.  To make business decisions based on a hunch or merely because it’s something you like to do is no way to start a business or run a business, and to keep jumping from one notion to another is the quickest way to go broke and end us a nervous wreck.

To be successful we must have a plan, and we must think thoroughly through each step to make sure our progress is based on very reasonable calculations, and not just notions or feelings.

And there is a spiritual aspect to this whole way of conducting our lives, because how we makes choices how we are going to grow, and that has profound implications for our spiritual growth.

One of the worst areas to make a decision based on feeling is religion.  People make decisions about such important issues as God, and faith and worship and religion on how they feel about these important areas of their life. If they don’t feel comfortable about a teaching of Jesus, that’s reason enough to reject it; or they pick a religion that makes them feel good.  Whether the religion is faithful to all that Jesus taught is irrelevant, and makes no difference, as long as it makes them feel good.  That is not the way we treat God.  As creatures, the way we make decisions about religion should be based upon what God has taught us as to how he wants us to worship and what he wants us to believe.  Worship and belief is not something we choose, it’s a belief system and a system of worship and a way of living that the Creator chooses for his creatures, not a matter of how creatures tell God they will deal with him.

Sometimes life is so complicated you wish you could treat it like a blackboard and erase everything and start over.  Well, we can.  We may not believe it, but God can change the most complicated things and make all things simple.  Not that they go away but that he can in a way make us immune to the depressing and stressful anxiety that overwhelms us at times.

Imagine if Jesus were to appear to you in the midst of your anxiety attack, and surprised you by his presence.  Would you be anxious?  Not for long, especially if he asked you why you were worrying.

Well, he does that if you ask him.  Frequently during each day, just close off your mind from everything around you and place yourself in Jesus’ presence.  He is there.  He promised to be.  Share with him your worries and your anxiety, and know that he listens.   Immediately, you know that he cares and will help resolve the most complex problems troubling you so they will not have the devastating effect that worries you.  This takes trust, but in time you will learn to trust and that trust is very freeing, and very healing.  And it is not make-believe.  Just place yourself in his presence every now and then each day, and his presence will become more and more real.  And the more real it becomes, the more peace you will have, because he really is by your side all day long, and when he is by your side, what is there to fear?  He can control all the circumstances of our lives.  I know because my life has been so unbelievably complicated that I could never understand where it was leading and how the most frightening circumstances could not possibly be fatal or tragic.  But, for some reason they all passed over and settled like a calm after a raging storm.  Even now I can only stand aside and look back in wonder

I think every one of us could write a book about what we have learned about life.  Life has the ability to teach us a lot about God, but we have to be aware and take time to stop and think.  When we are growing up we are continually pressured to be successful, and learn how to achieve goals and accomplish difficult tasks.  But, what I learned is that God has his own plans, and if what we set our hearts on goals that are not what God has planned for our happiness, we are going to have a hard time being successful. So, it is important that we open ourselves to God and ask him to help us understand, so we can work together as partners.

But, even in some endeavors that are important to God, we sometimes have a difficult time achieving what we feel and know is important, and we may often fail.  But, that’s okay.  I have tried to do things I know I should do and things I knew God wanted me to do and with my best efforts I failed.  We also know we should avoid things we shouldn’t do, and at these we fail often.  But, I learned that God is so unlike us.  He is not upset with our failures. The beautiful thing about God is that he does not measure success by accomplishment, but by the sincerity of our efforts, and how hard we struggle.  It is the struggle that makes us strong, and sometimes that is what God is really trying to accomplish within us, and that we be strong where we are weak.  In time, he grants the success, but only after we have accomplished his goal first, and that may be helping us grow in some way, or be proficient at something we may be defective in, or to learn something that we need to know for what God has planned for us in the future.  He does have a plan for our lives.  We don’t just live for ourselves.  God wants each of us to accomplish something special, and gradually gives us what we need for that.  So, try to be patient and know that you are important to God, in touching other people’s lives and making a difference for your having lived here.    

Life is fragile.  We all make mistakes, and we all have problems, and we all want to do better and be better.  God understands that, and understands us. He made us, and he chose not to make us perfect.  So, be kind to yourself, and learn to forgive yourself.  Forgiving yourself is the key to opening the door to loving yourself. Once you love yourself, you can love others. You are not evil. God does not make evil persons.  We are all week and do evil things, but we change.  Remember we cannot become perfect in one day.  All God expects of us is that we try each day and make a little more progress each day.  He overlooks the rest, and is patient with us as we are learning to grow.  We are like children learning to walk.  What kind of parent would punish a child for falling with every other step?  Be patient!  God loves you, even though there are some who don’t.  That’s their problem.