Translating a World on the Edge

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Last weekend, my husband and I went to New Orleans to see one of our grandsons in “The Music Man,” playing the role of the infamous Professor Howard Hill. Our grandson, a junior at Jesuit High School, was fabulous, and so was the production! You can see from the above picture how professional it was.

From the onset of the play, the audience instantly recognizes Professor Hill as a Con-man who gains the trust of a small town in order to sell them a bill of goods (in this case, band instruments) and make money for himself. Of course, in the end, he changes his tune, so to speak. The very successful Broadway play was the fantasy of American composer, Meredith Wilson.

But in real life, con-men, or women, are not fantasy. There are many, and they are real.

Can you recognize a Con-man? (i.e. a Confidence man, or woman)

He or she is a practitioner of confidence tricks–an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their confidence, used in the classical sense of trust. He/she makes himself a false shepherd that people will follow. And next, he or she exploits the characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty, honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, naïveté and greed.

If we practice awareness, we’re able to see con-men all around us. We deal with them everyday in our government, in business, and perhaps even in our own families.

They stir up trouble and create distractions so that their selfish ways can be accomplished.

A fanciful Con-man (or Con-woman) is great fodder for a play or musical. But a real Con-man is dangerous. This so-called shepherd of the people, does not genuinely work for, or care, for his sheep. He works only for himself and leads people astray to accomplish his personal ends.

Today, more than ever, we need good shepherds to lead our government, our businesses, our families. And I pray that we find the persons to do that–and that they will mirror our ultimate Good Shepherd, whose grace is always present, and available to everyone–even to the worst of Con-men.

I am the good shepherd.
A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
A hired man, who is not a shepherd
and whose sheep are not his own,
sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away,
and the wolf catches and scatters them.
This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd,
and I know mine and mine know me,
just as the Father knows me and I know the Father;
and I will lay down my life for the sheep.
I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.
These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice,
and there will be one flock, one shepherd.
This is why the Father loves me,
because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.
No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own.
I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again.
This command I have received from my Father.– Jn 10:11-18

By MUmland, Morguefile.com

What is the action God performs most often?

I think it’s that he welcomes sinners. In other words, He forgives.

Isn’t that wonderful? No matter how we fail, we can always be welcomed back by God.

When it comes to welcoming others back into our hearts, how do we compare to our wonderfully welcoming God?

Do we hold grudges? Do we plan for the downfall of someone who’s hurt us? Or do we open our arms to them despite what they’ve done to us.

If we hold a grudge against someone, the door to God will be closed. It will be absolutely closed, with no way to him. Only if we forgive others will we be forgiven. I am sure that many prayers are not heard because the person praying has a grudge against someone, even if he is not aware of it. Jesus says more than once that before we pray we must forgive. If we want Jesus, we must have a forgiving heart.
– J. Heinrich Arnold

It all comes down to this question: Can we forgive others as Jesus did on the Cross? Are we able to accept that we are sinners, too?

Welcoming back into our world those who have hurt us, is a Christian requirement. And God is waiting for us to do it.

By Dancer in the Dark, Morguefile.com

A seesaw is a long, narrow board pivoted in the middle so that, as one end goes up, the other goes down. A person sits on each end, and they take turns pushing their feet against the ground to lift their side into the air. Playground seesaws usually have handles for the riders to grip as they sit facing each other.

Life is like that, isn’t it? We face each other. We go up and down. Up and down.

One minute all seems right, the next minute our world comes crashing down. It might be divorce, death of a loved one, debilitating disease, loss of livelihood, a dream gone wrong, or hurtful words or lies, targeted at us by another.

Or we may be the one who brings down our own world by the bad choices we make. We are made to be people of goodness, but sometimes we corrupt ourselves through addictions, hanging around bad company, forgetting who we are—-children of God.

We are on a dangerous end of the seesaw then. We might think it’s over for us. But we should never give up trying to find our balance again.

One problem with a seesaw’s design is that if a child allows himself/herself to hit the ground suddenly after jumping, or exits the seesaw at the bottom, the other child may fall and be injured. For this reason, seesaws are often mounted above a soft surface such as foam or wood chips. In other words, a soft place to fall.

Because in life, we will certainly fall at one time or another. None of us is perfect yet. All of us here on Earth sin against our innate goodness.

And in doing so, we condemn ourselves. Still, don’t give up.

Strangely enough, God doesn’t condemn us. He forgives when we ask Him to. The softest place for us to fall is into His merciful and loving arms.

Photo by Clarita, 2006.Morguefile.com

First of all–why can’t we get it through our heads who we really are?

Why can’t we get it through our heads that  each one of us is a child of God, and that He created us  for a purpose? We are meant to be Christ-like.

We have something to do here on earth, something like Jesus did. We are not here to puff ourselves up, or to grab all we can before someone else does.

We are here for such a short time, but in that time we can make a real difference by how we live our lives. That difference can be a benefit or a hindrance to our fellow human beings. Why would we choose to be a hindrance?  Yet many of us do.

Why can’t we get it through our heads that we ought to treat others with dignity?

When we interact with another person, and actually see him or her as they are–made in the image and likeness of God, the same God who created us–how can we cheat them, or physically abuse them, or even kill them? For heaven sake–and I mean that literally–our purpose is to love them!

But secondly–love isn’t easy.

Loving someone presents many problems. One of the biggest is that even if we love a person, we don’t always love what they do. This is going to be true with parents and children, with spouses, with friends and co-workers. There will be times when we know they’re going in a wrong direction. There will be times when we recognize that they are actually sinning, a word that our society often choses to overlook or bypass. Are we to simply ignore this?

It would be foolish for us to ignore or tolerate sin, especially in someone we truly love and care for, because doing so puts them in danger. Sincere loving requires action, and that action is not to bury our heads in the sand because we don’t want to rock the boat of our beloved. Would we allow our toddler to continue peddling down a busy highway on a tricycle, or would we run out to snatch them back before they are literally killed? Would we watch our ten year old put a loaded gun in his or her pocket, and then smile as they go out of the door? Would we allow our teenager to pump himself or herself full of drugs just because he or she thinks it’s fun? Would we allow our spouse to jump into bed with a co-worker without a word from us?

But confronting sin in those we love (and in ourselves) requires courage. A loving action often requires courage, a compassionate courage to, at the very least, express to our loved one that we believe he/she may be in enemy territory.

If we do not care enough to act, if we do not care enough to attempt to unravel risky behavior in those we love, then we do not truthfully care about them at all.

We simply must have the courage to help those we are meant to love. We cannot be afraid to open our mouths. We are called to love. We are created to love. If we are children of God ourselves–and we are–then we must see that others are our brothers and sisters, and that we are intended to reach out to them in loving ways, without pomposity or self-righteousness. We must see Christ in others, and in turn we must act as Christ would act.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.–Matthew 9: 9-13