Translating a World on the Edge

To say that our country is divided today is an understatement. People ask, “What is the right way to go?”

There are times when people disagree so severely that it seems they will never get together. This is sad, but it’s happened before, not only in our country, but in many of our own families–when no one agrees, when every one is rigid in his or her opinions, and each side draws a line in the sand saying, “I will not move.”

What lies beneath this divisiveness?

The conflict between two words: Pride and Arrogance
Pride says, “I am very important. This is what I’d like to do.”
Arrogance says, “But I am more important than you. So, you will do what I say.”

I think of the American Eagle,  the symbol of American Freedom. The Eagle has two wings. One wing cannot be more important than the other–or the bird will never leave the ground.  It’s entire purpose–the reason it was created–will be ruined.

Like the American Eagle, 0ur country can, and should, hold onto pride. But it cannot hold onto  arrogance and continue to fly.

Most of us don’t like the connotation of the word, ‘struggle.’  It evokes thoughts of difficulty. We don’t like difficulties.

We don’t like bumpy roads that cause us to lose equilibrium.

We don’t like to climb mountains that exhaust our strength.

We don’t want to swim a channel that seems much too wide for our meager swimming abilities.

Except struggle increases our balance, our muscle, our talents.

Struggle is the fire that hardens the clay of our lives and turns an earthen vessel into something altogether unearthly.

Struggle can produce  people who are out of the ordinary, simply because they have had to work hard.

As parents, we don’t like to see our children struggle.  We want to relieve them of difficulty.  We like to ‘fix’ them. We want to save them from anything that hurts–even if they’ve concoted their own unsavory  situation.

We should let them know we are there for them. But I think there are times when we shouldn’t be too quick to ‘save’ them. We should allow them to ‘save’ themselves, to strengthen their wings from within. 

The moth in a cocoon struggles to get out of it, and by doing so,  it  grows stronger—strong enough to fly completely away from the cocoon that once tied and bound it.

Today is my birthday and I want to thank God for it.

I thank him for a loving husband I can count on, for my five amazing children and their terrific spouses, and soon to be ten fun-loving grandchildren.

I want to thank him for having had wonderful parents and grandparents. I want to thank him for my precious sister, my loyal cousins, my fantastic friends, and all the readers and supporters of my first novel and this blog.

I’m grateful for the happy times I’ve experienced, and for the lessons learned through the sad times. God is truly awesome. I don’t know how anyone goes through life without knowing Him. He is my greatest, continuing birthday gift.

Oh Lord, How Great Thou Art for giving me this life.

And for never leaving me alone while I live it.

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.

This morning, I was thinking about The Trinity. The Holy Trinity. God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and The Holy Spirit. Three persons in one God.

I know it’s a mystery that we can’t understand with our human reason which is so inferior to the mind of God–almost like a tiny ant trying to figure out a human being.

But first, I considered how the relationship between the three persons is a similar to our own relationships. A person can be a father. He can also be a son. He can also be a loving friend. And he is still one person.

Then, because I’m a writer, I thought about The Holy Trinity as a story.  I thought about characters and points of view.

In The Holy Trinity Story, The characters are:  God, who always was, is now, and always will be.  His point of view is  from “being” itself. God creates. and nothing exists without His creative action, which is Love. His calling a thing into being is an act of Love. Love is the action in this story. And love needs to express itself.

And that expression is Jesus, the Son of God, God’s example of how to love.

Then we have The Holy Spirit, the third character in the Trinity Story, and the one who remains with us always. The Holy Spirit is love in action through human beings.  Love always needs an object to love. So we are characters in the story, too.

As I said, we cannot really understand the mystery of the Trinity. So my impressions are just that–impressions. But the impressions each of us have of God color our relationship with Him.

Have you wondered about this awesome mystery? Do you have impressions of it? If you’d like to express them in the comment section of this blog, please do.

The following is one young man’s impression. I think it’s very good.

Isn’t it odd that in many things, we can be doggedly determined, and other things we put off, and put off, and put off?

Sometimes I’m a number one procrastinator.  I begin most every Monday with a plan for all the things I need to do better. By Tuesday, I’m waning, and by Wednesday, it’s all but forgotten–until Monday when I begin again.

But what if there were no such thing as new beginnings? That would mean the absence of Hope–something no one can live without.

If we don’t have hope, we literally shrivel emotionally and physically. We  need to believe that things get better. New beginnings, even Mondays, can be sources of hope.

Where does hope come from?   Many times it comes through prayer.    Jesus would not have told us to pray The Lord’s Prayer unless He knew our Father in Heaven would hear our prayers.

And the ability to hope is within us. We are born with it,  part of  being made in the image and likeness of God.

So today, on Monday. I plan to do some things better.  Maybe this time I’ll be successful. But if I’m not, I won’t get discouraged because there’s another Monday coming.  And I have hope.

You may have heard a phrase that goes something like this: When tough times happen, the tough get going.

But that isn’t always true. At times, those who seem ‘tough as nails’ fall apart and into desperation. That kind of a person is likely to put up an emotional fence around himself or herself to keep others away. I think it has to do with pride–exactly because this person has been thought of as strong and can’t let others see his or her weakness.

So, they close people out.

They won’t let themselves be loved–even though they know that good times often follow bad times.

I think of the recent flooding in Colorado, where the homes and livelihoods of individuals were washed away. In the flood waters that devastated them, they literally found pieces of gold!

If you’re a person who closes out others when bad times come, don’t close out Jesus, too. Let Him hold your hand through the mess.

Let Him lead you.

Let Him love you.

“God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else—God is in this person’s life. You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. ” ~Pope Francis

Think of the stem of a rose. It’s not particularly beautiful. In fact it has thorns.  We don’t  look at the stem, except to avoid it. Instead we look only  at the beautiful flower.

This is often the way we view people.  We like the flamboyant, the showy. We pay attention to the beautiful, the successful. Most especially we pay attention to people we think will do  something for us. We want flowers. We don’t want thorns. Thorns are dangerous. They can hurt.

But don’t we have thorns as well? I know I do.  There are times when my own actions disappoint me so much that I feel very unworthy to be God’s child. But I am, and so are you.  Even when– not if–we are covered by the thorns of  life. God is in with us—-in fact, within us.

Between our thorns, no matter how thick, stiff, or close together they are, there is a small space. And often from this place comes the brand new sprout of something  we may never have considered.  It is tender and new in the beginning, but it has the possibility of becoming something gorgeous.  We ought to look at others in this way, too. The thorns don’t take away from the purpose of the Rose.

Does anybody reading this like to wait? I know I don’t. And I never have.
Still, growing up, when I wanted something I wasn’t sure I could have, I was frequently given the advice, “Wait and see.”

Of course, that requires patience. The timing of something we desire doesn’t always come quickly. And waiting is difficult.

Some things we wait for are out of our control; they depend on others. (more…)

We shouldn’t forget to teach our children courage. We do that by being courageous ourselves and encouraging them in the lesson. I learned the lesson many years ago. In the years since, I’ve faced seemingly more serious things, but this little incident in my youth taught me to stand up for my values.

We used to call it “going along with the crowd” when a person acted in a way contrary to what he or she had been taught at home. When we’re young, it’s so easy to do that, because we don’t want to be judged as different from our peers, especially the popular peers. So, we allow them to lead us into situations that we know may not be good for us. Today, some of those particular peers might be labeled as bullies.

I remember one incident in high school when there was an attempt to “bully” me.  Clubs were thought to be important then, and in my high school, the only high school in town, there were four clubs—two for girls and two for boys. Future members were voted in as Freshman and then made to “pledge,” like in a college sorority or fraternity.  For the girls, that involved wearing no absolutely no make-up, carrying around candy or gum for members, and doing jobs or favors for members when ever they asked.

I was agreeable to all that, until I was ‘assigned’ to one of the senior girls in ‘the club’ to which I was pledging. She grabbed me before a Biology class and told me to cheat while grading a paper for a boy she especially liked—we often swapped our test paper with another student, and while the teacher called out the answers to the whole class, we checked the wrong ones, then turned the student’s paper in to the teacher.  The senior girl did not want me to check anything wrong on this boy’s paper. She said he was to make 100 percent, no mistakes.

I was petrified, but I told her no, I wouldn’t do that.

“Well, she said, “if you want to be in ‘the club,’ you’d better do it, or I’ll see you get kicked out of the pledge group.” (BTW, this girl was the daughter of a local Baptist preacher, and I was one of very few Catholics in my school.)

I honestly didn’t think that long about my answer.  My parents had taught me to stand up for what was right. So again, I told her no.

She didn’t think long either. She made good on her promise and went to the club officers to have me kicked out of the pledge class.

Fortunately, one of the officers was my good friend’s sister, and she stood up for me. “Kaye is a Catholic,” she told the rest of the officers,  “And Catholics won’t cheat.” (Wow–not quite the truth–I only wish it was so. Catholics are all too human,  even back then!) At any rate, pity was given because I was a Catholic, so I wasn’t kicked out.

This kind of threatening, or bullying, doesn’t just happen to the young. It happens to all ages; in business, friendships, and families. “If you don’t…., then I’ll…..”

I was lucky enough to have been taught to stand up for what I believed in, no matter the threat. That long ago incident gave me courage to stand up for much more important things later on.

Oh yes, and one more thing–at the final, and dreaded, initiation of pledges into ‘the club’, the Senior girl again chose me as her own. She was ‘paying me back,” she said.

It took my mother half the night to get the Crisco and Corn meal  out of my hair, and half a tube of toothpaste to get rid of the garlic the girl made me chew! But again, I was lucky–I enjoyed every oyster she poured down my throat. I never said a word to her, but I just love oysters!!!!