Translating a World on the Edge

Christmas is meant to be a time of joy and happiness, but for many people this isn’t the case. We may be facing difficulties that keep us from experiencing the full joy of Christmas–the loss of someone we love, financial problems, sickness, troubled relationships. Sometimes even buying gifts for our family seems overwhelming rather than enjoyable. All these crosses, and more, can alter our participation in this Holy Season. But have we considered that our crosses can also increase our closeness to Christ?

We talk freely about the Cross of Christ. In church, we talk about it as a gift. But have we really applied it to ourselves and our circumstances?

We all have our particular crosses to bear.

Why is this? If God truly loves us, shouldn’t He make it easy on us?

Why should we have to go through so much pain and sorrow?

Two words: Resurrection and Redemption.

Pope John Paul II told us–and showed us–what it means to have a part in the cross of Christ. He said that it means to experience, in the Holy Spirit, the love hidden within the cross of Christ. It means to recognize, in the light of this love, our own cross. It means to take up that cross once more and, strengthened by this love, to continue our journey.

Real LOVE means dying to self, and that means seeing our crosses in a different light, even though the hard times can put us in unfamiliar territory, not to mention uncomfortable and sometimes seemingly unbearable situations.

Taking up a cross and dying to self is not easy.  We can only do it if  we first recognize, and then are open to the grace that God is constantly offering us.  From that grace will come great strength, and the knowledge we are somehow changed and co-operating with our God, not only in our own Redemption, but possibly the Redemption of someone else. After all, we never know how God will use our personal suffering to teach others.

Are we able to turn our spiritual eyes upward, to see above our problems–to see ourselves in true union with Christ? Isn’t this the best Christmas gift we could give to ourselves and those around us?

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Do you sometimes feel as if you’re wandering?

At times, it’s difficult to see the path we’re on.  It may be a path not particularly good for us. It may be a path of sin, yet  we don’t want to change our direction–even though there’s a restlessness inside us that says we should go another way.

“For Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.”—St. Augustine

Talk about great sinners! St. Augustine was  truly one of them—until he became a converted sinner. . . and a saint.

As Augustine later told it in his work, “Confessions,”  his conversion was prompted by a childlike voice he heard telling him to “take up and read”  which he took as a divine command to open the Bible and read the first thing he saw:  Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, called  “Transformation of Believers,”  consisting of chapters 12 through 15 – wherein Paul outlines how the Gospel transforms believers, and the believers’ resulting behavior. The specific part to which Augustine opened his Bible was Romans chapter 13, verses 13 and 14:

Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.

Other philosophers, as well as people he lived around,  pointed out that  Augustine ought to  change the path he was on. One who pushed him toward conversion  was his own mother, Monica, who harped day and night, for many years,  about his strictly human obsessions.

In  “Confessions,”  St. Augustine writes about how much he regrets having led a sinful and immoral life, shows intense sorrow for his sexual sins, and writes on the importance of sexual morality.

Most of us are like St. Augustine.

We live in the “City of Man,”  and ignore the  “City of God.”

Augustine writes: Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.

Nevertheless,  St Augustine believed  that God intervenes in the life of mankind by direct action—the action of grace– at certain definite points in time and place.

This is what happens to us, too. Our wandering spirits yearning for ‘something else,’  until  we encounter the grace of God—maybe because of a situation, or through a person. This encounter with grace causes us to change our ways.

What a gift is this Grace, this ability to change!  We can go from a lost and lonely soul, to one who recognizes the love of God, and yearns to be worthy of it.

The word ‘Love’ has many connotations today.

“Oh, I love that dress!”

“I love the way he sings!’

“I love to dance, or eat pizza, or go shopping!’

On a more serious level, we say we love our spouse, our children, our parents, our friends.

But even deeper than that— what does it mean to love?

Love is an action. It is a choice we make. When we truly love , we do something beyond what we think we’re able to do, or maybe even beyond what we want to do.  Yet we do it anyway.

Many times you’ve heard, “Love can change the world.”  But we’re not in charge of the larger world, only the world in which we live and that may be a very small world for us—-the world of our family,  the place in which we work, or the interaction with the same people we see on a daily basis. So how do we love them?

As Mother Teresa said, “Never let anyone come  to you without coming away better and happier.”

There are indeed  people in our lives who always seem to make us feel better or happier, and we want to be around them because they are showing us love–a love similar to the love of God.

Some of us who try to develop our relationship with God,  find that we are happier, more secure, and even more loving after prayer, remembering that He gave us his son, Jesus, as the ultimate example of how to love.

In this season celebrating  Jesus’ birth,  we are busy, busy, busy. But let’s take a few minutes to thank God that we have something to be ‘busy’ with—that we have people we care for and people who care for us.

And then, let’s take the further step of also trying to become for those people, an example of how to love when–quite frankly–they are not being very lovable themselves. We may be surprised what that kind of unselfish love can do in our small and personal world.

Because we live in a world of infinite possibilities, people often disagree when addressing important moral and ethical issues. For some questions, there just doesn’t seem to be a right or wrong answer. And in some situations, there seems to be several right answers.

Life isn’t black and white. It’s a million gray areas, don’t you find?–Ridley Scott

So what about the grey areas in our lives? Well, I’m  a writer, so the grey areas are a favorite theme of mine, but those themes are always set against an absolute truth.

This interest occurred years ago, when I was an Art major at Spring Hill College. I learned about the shadowing color Grey–not only as it appears in Art, but in life.So as a writer, I see it this way: In my characters–and  in life itself– there are always two extreme actions: Good and Evil. To ignore them in Fiction is to ignore Truth. Think of two ends of a horizontal line. At one end is the bright white of absolute Good. At the other end is the darkness of absolute Evil. In between those ends are lighter and darker hues of the color of GREY. (You might call these areas of relativism.) The farther we travel from either end, it becomes more difficult to see, or find our way back to the other.

The fact is most human beings travel daily along a line like this. They travel toward one end or the other, to the light of truth, or to the frequent darkness of a stubborn relativism. But in between the two ends is a lot of area in which to turn in an opposite direction—–either a fall, or an epiphany.

This is core for a writer of Catholic Fiction—the possibility of spiritual epiphany with a turn to TRUTH is always present in the work, though it may not always be accomplished by a character. The difference between creating a story and real life is that the fiction writer is pretty much in control.

But in our regular everyday lives, possibilities and the choices those possibilities present can be puzzling. This is why an informed conscience is necessary. And this is why we have to look for absolute truths, not relative truths,  to guide us.

From gotquestions.org: Why is it so important to understand and embrace the concept of absolute truth in all areas of life (including faith and religion)? Simply because life has consequences for being wrong. Giving someone the wrong amount of a medication can kill them; having an investment manager make the wrong monetary decisions can impoverish a family; boarding the wrong plane will take you where you do not wish to go; and dealing with an unfaithful marriage partner can result in the destruction of a family and, potentially, disease.

As Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias puts it, “The fact is, the truth matters – especially when you’re on the receiving end of a lie.” And nowhere is this more important than in the area of faith and religion. Here on Earth, we can’t afford to ‘just get by.’ We want to form a conscience that perceives genuine truth and use it to guide us. Because eternity is an awfully long time to be wrong.

Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/what-is-truth.html#ixzz3LDQFnNcm

How would the world be different if women didn’t exist? It’s an interesting thing to think about. According to MensMagDaily.com, everything men do, every decision they make, every item they buy is directly related to how women will react to it. Everything revolves around women, how to get ‘em, how to keep ‘em, how to please ‘em, it’s all about them. If any man in the work place was told to sit down and think about why he did something, it would all come down to a woman.

Christianity also looks at the importance of women, especially in marital relationships. St Thomas Aquinas used the idea of equality in marital friendship to argue against polygamy and in favor of an unconditional love between husband and wife:      

        “The greater the friendship is, the more solid and long lasting it will be. Now there seems to be the greatest friendship    between husband and wife, for they are united not only in the act of fleshly union, which produces a certain gentle    association even among beasts, but also in the partnership of the whole range of domestic activity. Consequently, as an indication of this, man must even “leave his father and mother” for the sake of his wife as it is said in Genesis (2:24).   

Furthermore, Aquinas believed that the fact that Eve was made from Adam’s rib indicates that she was not above him (as she might be had she been created from Adam’s head) nor below him, like a slave (as she might be had she arisen from his feet). She comes from his side, indicating that she is a partner and companion. These statements of the equality of man and women – not the statement of male superiority – were new and radical. The specifically Christian attitude toward women – not the pre-existing pagan attitude – was new and radical. It has taken some time, though, for the wheat to be separated from the chaff.

According to Church Father Gregory of Nazianzus, throughout history Jesus has protected women:

The majority of men are ill-disposed to chastity and their laws are unequal and irregular. For what was the reason they restrained the woman but indulged the man, and that a woman who practices evil against her husband’s bed is an adulteress and the penalties of the law severe, but if the husband commits fornication against his wife, he has no account to give? I do not accept this legislation. I do not approve this custom.” (Oration 37:6)

By establishing one moral code obligatory on men and women alike, Christianity fostered a lasting commitment of unconditional covenantal love, protecting the family structure and putting the sexes on an equal footing.

So when God made woman, he literally rocked the world of man.

How long can you drive your car without filling it with gas?  Some cars get better mileage than others of course, but without gas any car will stop running.  Not to fill it when you have somewhere to go is ridiculous.

Yet some of us live our lives as if we need no gas, as if we are so all-important that we don’t worry about what we do, who we hurt, or ignore, or abuse, or even kill. We become so pompous that we don’t think we have to forgive anyone for what they may have done to us. After all, we deserve our payback, don’t we?

But then, how can we call ourselves Christian? We are driving our life along dangerous and —dare I say sinful— roads? Where is the gas of our Christianity?  Where is Jesus Christ in our actions?

Many call themselves Reverends, Pastors, or ministers of God. But shouldn’t ministers of God  be the primary advocates for God’s pre-requisite for salvation: Forgiveness?

Without the gas of Christianity, which is forgiveness, sincere Christian love cannot exist.  So, that sort of  Christian car is only a façade that takes us nowhere. It will NOT run. In fact, it will come to a dead stop.

Christianity without forgiveness is not only useless, it is deceitful and brimming with the darkness of lies.

And what we do in the dark will always come into light.

Whoever walks in integrity walks securely,  but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.–Solomon, Proverb 9

Are you a person who likes convenience? I certainly am. I like things to be available when I reach for them. I like for places to be near by so I don’t have to struggle to get there. I like people who are easy to be around so I don’t get my feelings hurt or find myself irritated by someone’s presence. That’s why, for me, Convenience is the first, necessary ‘C’ in the title of this blog.

The second of the necessary C’s is–for me–Comfort. I simply don’t want to be uncomfortable, or frazzled, or stressed out. I don’t want to be too cold, or too hot, but ‘just right.’

Of course, believing that those first two C’s (convenience and comfort) will always be present in one’s life is wholly unrealistic. We all know that “we can’t have everything” no matter how much we may want it.

In one of my last blogs, I spoke about spending the month of November at my favorite beach, Indian Pass,  located between Port St. Joe and Apalachicola, Florida. I had great plans to get a start on a new book entitled Something in the Water.  But just as I began, many things went wrong, not only with the pretty old house in which we were staying–I also came down with pneumonia. None of it was convenient or comfortable. Despite that, I’d still have to say the month was nearly spectacular–I wouldn’t take anything for the time I spent at Indian Pass.

Why is that? Well, it brings me to the third necessary ‘C’, as in Christ. God.

Because God is the all-powerful entity that puts everything into focus–no matter how inconvenient or uncomfortable it may be, and probably will be. God carries us through the inconvenient, the uncomfortable.

God gives us the strength to go on by realizing  value in our inconveniences and discomforts. God can even show us beauty in our suffering.

This poem was found in a dead soldiers pocket after a battle in the Civil War: Read it carefully. Apply it to your own life, and I believe you’ll see how true it is.

I asked God for strength that I might achieve ;
I was made weak that I might humbly learn to obey.
I asked God for help that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked God for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I was given nothing that I asked for;
But everything that I had hoped for.
Despite myself my prayers were answered.
I am among all men most richly blessed.

If you grew up in the South, a common destination was ‘Mama’s.’ The expression doesn’t mean that Daddy isn’t there, too; but when we refer to going to our home place, it’s always, “I’m going to Mama’s.”

And when/why do we go?

We go when we’re upset, when we’re hungry, when we want conversation, or hugs or understanding, and to step back onto our home base. For all those things, we go to Mama’s.

And when we leave that place, we take the memory of it with us—a lamp in our thoughts.

Mama’s is a state of mind. A place of refuge in an often stormy and even dangerous world. Mama’s is safety, security. It is roots.

Why do we need this? Because there is so much in our lives that has become temporary, disposable things that have no deep meaning—in fact some things that have no meaning at all except in our possession of them.

Here’s what J.R.R. Tolkien says in “The Fellowship of the Rings.”

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”

Of course, I realize that Mama is absent in many homes, that abuse, neglect, abandonment, and violence are prevalent, and it is tragic that so many children have to live with this opposite of what home is supposed to be. How can we change this?

It starts with the sort of training–or lack of it–that parents have gotten in their own homes. And it comes with a loving commitment to everyone present in Mama’s house.

Thanksgiving is a number one reason to go to Mama’s, for memories, for sustenance, for love with a family. I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving, especially if you’re celebrating it with your Mama.

As for me, there was, and still is, no place quite like Mama’s. My mother’s house has been sold now, my mother and father are gone, but they haven’t left my heart, and never will.

Laughter, one of the attributes that make us human, is seen to be more and more important to our individual well-being.

Babies start laughing when they are only a few months old, but they smile before that. Some babies can even be seen smiling in a sonogram before they are born! One might say our lives begin with a smile.

So what happens? What brings us so far down that, at times, we cannot muster a smile? I remember my grandmother’s instruction to me as a child, words to tell myself when I was discontented over something: God give me the grace to put a smile on my face. But I thought then, I’m not happy, so why should I smile?

Later, I understood. If we are parents, we are teachers. And  if we’re teachers to our children then we had better smile, because if we don’t smile at our children, we pass on that the world is not a good place for them to be and this could become a definite problem for them as adults.

A smile is contagious and it can change attitudes; our own attitude and the attitudes of others.  When my family lived in North Alabama, I knew a young woman in my church with seven children. I taught several of the children over the years in CCD classes, religious education in our parish. Every one of her children smiled–unceasingly. The first time I met their mother I understood why they did. She smiled, too—-at every one! She did not have an easy life, certainly not with seven children less than a year or two apart. But she smiled. And her smiles taught me a lesson.

Though I never accomplished it as well as she did, I tried smiling at my children even in the most frustrating circumstances. And being children, having begun their lives with a smile, they naturally smiled back at me! The frustration disappeared, even if the problem did not. Discipline is much more easily given—and taken—with a smile.

“Peace begins with a smile,” Mother Theresa once said. “Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.” Did you ever see a picture of Mother Theresa when she wasn’t smiling? Even when she was tending the sick and dying, and especially when she was talking about love, she was smiling.

So, I’m starting today. I’m going to smile at everyone today. I’ll let you know what happens.