Translating a World on the Edge

IF…

By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Photo by Beekaboo, 2008, MorgueFile.com

Loss.

We all deal with it. Nothing stays the same no matter how much we might want it to.
This goes for bad times as well good ones.

So, in our bad times, there is always hope.

And in the good times, there is thankfulness for the moment we’re enjoying.

Our lives on earth are short. It is short-sighted not to think so. In fact, it is foolish.

We can moan and groan over the people and things we lose, or we can look for a lesson in the loss.

There is always a lesson.

In the loss of the negative: If we are finally rid of something that we did not want, we may be more careful next time to use our heads and avoid such.

In the loss of the positive: If something wonderful came our way, we will no longer take our joy for granted should such a gift be given us again.

We will be stronger in both situations, knowing objectively that our time here is forever moving from high to low, from up to down.

Vocal: Tracey Lawrence

Photo in Public Domain

“I decline to accept the end of man… I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.” ― William Faulkner

If we believe there is a God who created each of us, then each of us is a child of God. And each human person has the divinity of God within him, or her. We call this divinity within us, the soul. It is the only part of us that doesn’t die. That makes the soul, and what happens within it, essential. 

As Faulkner says, the soul is spirit, just as God is spirit, and capable of great compassion, enormous sacrifice, and  inexhaustible endurance. We see these capacities expressed in many good people that we know, and sometimes we express those same qualities ourselves.

But often, compassion, sacrifice and endurance are not expressed by a person’s spiritual nature. Sometimes, he expresses the opposite. To an author, this is food for a story. This is the opportunity to illuminate the battle between good and evil as Faulkner does in his work.

Because there is today, and always has been, a battle between what is inherently good, and what is inherently evil, it is natural for an author to write about it. In a story, this plays out in particular characters—-people like us who struggle with what they believe is right and what they know is wrong. All of this happens in the soul, where our intentions lie. And we either shine our soul, or sully it, by our various decisions to accept good, or evil.

Most of us don’t like to hear that we can choose between good and evil. Some of us don’t even recognize immorality anymore. We can’t put a face on it because today’s humdrum, saccharine tolerance for ‘anything goes’ has blocked it out and blinded us to the better call in our own souls. But a thing is not good or evil because it’s trendy or popular.

I think, deep down, most of us know that truth is truth. Deep down, we know that absolute Truth endures, that it is not relative to public opinion, and that it is a twin of immortality. For me, it is most important for a writer to remember that, too.

How many of us call ourselves Christians? Probably most who read this blog.

But what does it mean to be a Christian, a follower of Christ? Jesus Christ was crucified. Does it mean we’ll be crucified, too?

It may. At the least, we will surely suffer. Life sees to that.

At times, we cause our own suffering by the bad choices we make. Other times, another person, or a circumstance out of our control, may cause it. We may even be betrayed, as Jesus was for thirty pieces of silver.

But one thing I know. God does not cause our suffering. God is loving, always and forever. He never changes in His love for each of us. And He showed us that on the Cross.

Every suffering we encounter is difficult. We don’t want to go through it. We pray for a way to get out of it, just as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane when he asked His Father to take it from Him, but assenting that if He would not, then the will of His Father be done. That is the covenant between Son and Father.

Just as with His own son, sometimes the suffering does not leave us. Even when we pray for it to disappear, God allows it to happen for some purpose we may never know in our earthly life.

As my grandmother consistently told me, “Offer up your suffering.” In other words, we may be suffering for others in a redemptive way that only God understands.

This is what Jesus did, according to the will of His Father. He gave himself away, for each and every one of us, leaving His Holy Spirit within us, leaving us as Temples of Himself, leaving our own self to be used by Him. This is the covenant God offers us. The same covenant He offered His Son. But we have to accept it.

Do we really believe that He is within us and that we are to be messengers of His Holy Spirit? Are we ready to give ourselves away as Jesus did?

Photo by Mzacha, 2009, MorgueFile.com

Brothers and sisters:
Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another;
for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
The commandments, You shall not commit adultery;
you shall not kill;
you shall not steal;
you shall not covet,
and whatever other commandment there may be,
are summed up in this saying, namely,
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Love does no evil to the neighbor;
hence, love is the fulfillment of the law. —1 Rom 13:8-10

And yet…….

More than 4 million women experience physical assault and rape by their partners. More than 3 million children witness domestic violence in their homes every year. Children who live in homes where there is domestic violence also suffer abuse or neglect at high rates (30% to 60%).

According to the Center for Relationship Abuse Awareness:

Relationship abuse is a choice and it is a learned behavior. For these reasons, it is difficult to say that relationship abuse is caused by any one single factor. However, the following beliefs and attitudes are common for abusers:

• Sense of entitlement
• A belief they should have power and control over their partner
• Belief that they can get away with it
• Learned experience that being abusive gets them what they want
• Belief that their lives should take priority

Get Help: http://www.safehorizon.org/page/domestic-violence-statistics–facts-52.html Call Our Free Anonymous Domestic Violence Hotline: 800.621.HOPE (4673)

The following is from Three Keys to the Kingdom, by Mother M. Angelica.

THE WAY IT IS

As human beings, we are creatures of emotions, creatures of intellectual abilities, and creatures with the power to accomplish.

Some people spend their time and thoughts in feeling, hearing, seeing, and listening. Whatever cannot be felt or experienced they will not accept. We call these people emotional.

Some people spend their time reasoning and thinking out everything,—and so—anything that cannot be fully understood, they will not accept. We call these people intellectuals.

Other people have only one goal in life, and that is to do as they please, when they please, and they impose their will on others. We call these people domineering.

When any of. these people seek God in their own way, we find the emotional person seeking the consolations of God rather than God.

The proud intellectual seeks knowledge about God, but he never knows God, because he cannot accept the mysteries that he is unable to fully comprehend.

The domineering person seeks God and loves God as long as God does his Will. He cannot accept a “No” from God.

Most of us weave in and out of these three categories all our lives, and we never succeed in being changed into Jesus.

Christianity is a way of life, and it demands a change of heart and a change of mind. It entails a lifelong struggle to change our emotions, our way of thinking, and our way of acting.

We can relate with our emotions in regard to God or neighbor, and so as we look at our Memory to see how we can change it, we will quite easily grasp its role, its weaknesses, and its strength.

And so it is with the Will. We are all well aware of the strength of our Will and the Will of others. It has been the cause of success and failure, joy and sorrow, in our daily life. And so we shall understand the Will as we see its role and weaknesses and strength.

But this is not so true with the Intellect. How we understand, judge, discern, and form opinions, is a mystery—a mystery because the very faculty by which we understand does not comprehend how it understands.

We add Faith to our Understanding, and we give it light; to see things above itself. Faith is something that we have, but it too is something we cannot explain.

And when we say that we must be humble to have a deep Faith, we add an ingredient that is positively repugnant, to something that is already difficult to grasp.

And so, when we get to the faculty of our soul that we call Understanding, we will have to plow a little deeper; so the seeds that will be sown can reap a rich harvest of a new way of thinking.

Our Christianity changes and transforms us from sadness to joy, from darkness to light, and from slavery to freedom. We must seek the way to this “spiritual revolution”‘ that we may be set free from ourselves and live in Him and by Him. We must be a witness to a sad world, of Heaven on earth, of peace amidst turmoil, and joy amidst pain.

So we shall look at our Memory—not to dig in, but to root out.

We shall look at our Understanding—not to comprehend but to utilize.

We shall look at our Will—not to lose it, but to redirect it

Photo by Katno, 2015, MorgueFile.com

She recalled her life as a child, before she turned fourteen. That part of her past held no secrets, there was nothing to hide then. There was only the peaceful escape that came as soon as she shut eyes, when she simply unwrapped any first thought and let it go, seeing it spiral and dance like a striped, toy top spinning from the hand of her grandfather. The image of her grandfather followed many first thoughts when she was a child, but he’s been dead for years.

Back then, she’d been certain her thoughts she came from angels, those she talked with. Not only the stone angels in her grandmother’s garden, but other angels, everywhere, and not one looked the same. She laughed a lot then, pointing at nothing, and playing with children no one else could see. She opened her mouth to drink in colors, tasting red and orange leaves, purple dawns, dark velvet skies that sparkled with diamonds. She drew into her skin the softness of a breeze, and into her ears the symphonic twitter of birds, the lazy sloshing of the Suwanee, and the sweet sound of silence.

In time, she responded to conversations not yet had, and answered questions not yet asked. While her mother called her ‘peculiar,’ and her father lifted his chin and tightened his lips, her early childhood had been a wonderfully bright world, a world with no shadows–until she turned fourteen. Then it transformed into something colorless and dark as the slow-flowing river she stood in. —Faithful, copyright Kaye Park Hinckley, 2015

Was there a time in your life when everything changed? What did you/are you doing about it?

We are all broken people in some way, wishing that we were not. We might like to be like another we know. We might moan and groan about the trouble that has fallen upon us. We might strike out at others. We might curl up in a ball and wish the world would go away.

The girl in the story above was betrayed by someone she trusted.  It breaks her for awhile, but then….well, if  Faithful is ever published, you’ll find out. The point is there comes a time when, if we allow it, our sight will change. We will see things differently.

Our earthly lives are like jars of clay. They can be beautiful but they are fragile and easily broken. The genuine treasure of each life is beyond the container of our bodies. It is not temporary, but eternal.

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. –Corinthians 4:17-18