Faith in Faith
“If you can’t have faith in what is held up to you for faith, you must find things to believe in yourself, for a life without faith in something is too narrow a space to live.” George E. Woodberry
Now that Mother Teresa’s talk of her lapses of faith in God – her Higher Power—is public knowledge, some see her struggle with faith as a reason to justify their own avoidance of any. That’s very sad for those who doubt the existence of a Higher Power yet relate to one are those who may have the greatest faith of all.
Recently, I had reason to look back at my own relationship with my Higher Power. I remembered those days as a single mother with a sick child when challenges seemed insurmountable. I remember my conversations with God then: “Listen God, I’m not asking for a miracle. I said I’d do this and I will, but You need to send me the strength to do all this.” I also remember my screaming arguments with God. “Hey you up there. You’d better have a star in heaven for me for all this stuff You’re asking of me.” And sometimes, shaking my fist in His general direction, I would shout, “Okay, I’ve had enough. Get Yourself down here and do something to help right now.”
I was convinced I had no faith in this Higher Power. After all, I was screaming at Him, wasn’t I? But after reading about Mother Teresa’s feelings of abandonment, I had what’s been called an “electric light over my head” moment. I may have been as mad as a drunken hornet while I struggled but I spoke to Him. And I did it on a regular basis. Seesh, I thought yesterday, I had a lot of faith. P.S. I still yell at Him sometimes and I still believe He hears me.
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Joy to the World . . . and then some
“I do it for the joy it brings, cause I’m a joyful girl.’Cause the world owes us nothing, we owe each other the world.” Ani Difranco, American Singer, Song Writer, and Guitarist.
Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary says that joy is inspired by success, good fortune; or is a state of happiness. It also says joy is a source or cause of delight. That’s such a nice juicy happy word – delight. To me, it means laughter, happiness, giggles, hugs, and all kinds of loving things.
Some people have the gift of knowing they are happy – even delighted – at the moment they are experiencing that emotion. I envy them. Most of us look back and remember happy moments and that helps us recognize that We’ve had them. Some people are so busy looking for them they miss those moments. But some others – like the folks I met in Athens, Greece one year — have those moments nailed. They know they are happy exactly at the same moment that they are happy.
I once watched a Greek man I knew order dinner. He had worked hard all day, through his afternoon siesta, and on to ten p.m. when most Greeks finish working. Yet here he sat, totally relaxed, reading the menu aloud with joy. He was enjoying himself so much one would think it was a national holiday. He ordered food for his table like a potentate gathering up special bits for his favorite wife. It was so in the moment and so charming. Small wonder Zorba the Greek was so appealing and so believable.
I learned in Greece that living in the present moment is part of the path to joy.
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Dream Girls — and Boys
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” C.S. Lewis
The mailman came and the mailman went. She walked to the lobby mailboxes and inserted her key into her apartment’s box. The letter in it was very fat, stuffed to its utmost, and this is how she knew she had not been rejected.
“They always send a one page, “Sorry but No Thanks” letter when they reject you,” she thought as she hefted the heavy envelope in her two hands. Still . . .
She didn’t have the patience to take the letter to her apartment before opening it. And so it was that the woman’s neighbors heard her screams. Out they poured from every door near the apartment lobby, fearing their city neighbor had been molested in some way.
Are you alright, Susan, they asked, one after the other. She waved the open letter at them. “No, no, I’m alright,” she gasped. “I’m fine. I’m better than fine.” She hugged the letter to her heart.
Well, then, what? they asked in chorus.
And that’s how her neighbors, young and old, male and female, learned that in another month, at age 62, their elderly neighbor would become the oldest graduate student in the nearby university. (She graduated in 1996.)
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What! You say you have no talent? Bah, humbug!
“Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.” Henry Van Dyke
Most religions have a concept of how we each received the talents and skills we have received. My favorite is this: As we stepped through the door to our parents and our lives on earth, each of us is handed a surprise package wrapped in red sunlight tied with star ribbons. The packages are filled with talents and skills, each tailored especially to each baby.
Some babies get a talent for reading; another for music; still another, a talent for numbers. Some of us may get a talent for friendships; another for learning; perhaps still another for understanding what they see and hear. We all get something. Each of us gets our unique combination of talents. Some talents may be blazingly apparent; others may be smaller but just as valuable. Using your talents hones them, makes them grow, shapes them.
No matter what talent you have been given, use it in every way possible. As author Henri-Fredrick Amiel said, “Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.” My family priest says we are the stewards of our gifts.
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Love makes the world go around and around
“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” Morrie Schwartz
From the words of the Apostle Paul to Snoopy the Dog, love is said to be the most important essence in our lives. Even physicians and psychiatrists write weighty tomes of how love – given and taken – influences our mental and physical health. Love’s even be proven to affect our longevity.
But how do we ensure that we get our share of love or at least enough to sustain us?
To get a friend, one must be a friend. To get love, we must be able to give love.
During college, I spent summers teaching at Adirondack Mountain summer camps. One camp had a tradition I learned to love. It was called “Peanut Pal Week.” It went like this: Late one evening, camp counselors cracked open peanut shells, put a slip of paper with a camper’s name on it in each shell ( after eating the peanut inside) and glued the shell shut. The next morning, each camper took a peanut shell.
They cracked open the shell, learned their Peanut Pal’s name, told no one, and spent the following week doing secret kindnesses for their Peanut Pal. My Pal sent me an extra dessert (theirs) one evening. Another time, my Pal had a group sing for me outside my cabin. All sorts of loving little things were done for each camper that week . . . and of course, everyone tried to guess who their secret Peanut Pal was.
On the final evening of that week, we had a camp party. Each Peanut Pal dressed like their Peanut Pal. Mine was a huge surprise to me! A very shy 13 year old wore my camp uniform ( with appropriate bosom padding), wore super-large eyeglasses perched on his freckled nose, and wore a sign on his back that said, :”Can you guess who I am?” Of course, I felt great affection for this youngster remembering all the effort he had put into my Peanut Pal experience.
You needn’t wear a sign to show that you can be loving to others. Just forget yourself and be a Peanut Pal for awhile.
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Happiness is where you find it
“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.” James Oppenheim
Once upon a time, some years ago, a musical group my family knew called The Harmoniacs took me with them to a veterans’ hospital in Orange, New Jersey. This hospital was not just any veterans’ hospital. It specialized in treating war wounded military who were amputees and paraplegics. I was sixteen and a singing student. The male Harmoniacs’ female singer canceled her appearance at the last minute. Desperate, the Harmoniacs asked my guardians if I could accompany them to sing for the veterans.
At the hospital, we moved from ward to ward, entertaining very badly wounded men. One young man of 20 lay flat on a bed, unable to move any part of his body but his eyes. As I stood near him singing, I could see he was listening intently. His eyes followed me. My heart was breaking as I smiled and sang. He’s not much older than I am, I thought. I tried to imagine his life and it was unimaginable to me.
Soon after, as we moved through a long hallway, a door slammed open and laughter and shouts greeted us. “Watch out, we’re coming through,” shouted one man in a wheelchair. “Keep going, don’t stop. We’re winning,” shouted another man as he slam-bam wheeled down the hallway, followed by a rag tag group of other men in wheelchairs. We quickly flattened against the wall. The guys were having a wheelchair race!
I was incredibly impressed with their courage. But mostly, I was forever touched by their ability to find happiness under their wheelchair wheels in the midst of such great losses. And yes, their startling humor and sense of fun makes me feel, even now when I remember them — as I do often because of our involvement in Iraq’s civil war, ashamed of my own occasional binge of self pity.
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Patience IS a virtue
“Learn the art of patience. [It] creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.” Brian Adams
Did you ever notice how some folks drive as if they are the only ones on the road and everyone else is deliberately in their way? And that being the case, they have the patience of a mosquito on speed. Not considering anyone in their path or near it, they tail gate until you see the color of their eyes, zip onto entry ramps without warning — or blinker lights – and act as if they are in Trump’s helicopter high above the peasants. Have you also ever noticed that it is these same “shall be nameless” folks of all ages and genders who then wear out their middle finger as they endanger everyone else?
That, my friends is big time IMPATIENCE.
Not being on speaking terms with patience causes small and large problems in our lives and in others’ lives. On the other hand, patience can and does prepare us for the larger problems in life and helps us see the best ways to handle them.
As U.S. actor and Comedienne Gilda Radner said before her tragic death, “Some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what’s going to happen next.” In short, being alive takes patience.
Meditation for the Day
“How poor are they who have no patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees.” William Shakespeare
Action for the Day
For one week, I will teach myself patience. That means I will expect delays in my routines – a longer line at the motor vehicle department than expected, a doctor whose office is short of staff and therefore moving more slowly. A longer line at the market. Whatever. I will keep a magazine or book or something else I’ve been wanting to read with me. [The long market line is a good time to poke through those tabloids I swear I don’t read. Hey no one’s perfect!]Then when impatience rears its foolish head, I’ll pop open my emergency patience package and dig in. Time will pass; my stress level will zoom to zero. I will look good, feel good and maybe even lead the masses.
Integrity and such
“Never do anything that you wouldn’t do in Macy’s window.” My grandmother . . .
My grandmother Mary who bragged about her days as a 20s flapper and joked about having rouged her knees also advised us that “honesty is the best policy”, “never lie because it’s too hard to remember and one lie leads to another”, “never cheat someone” and most of all, “Never do anything you wouldn’t do in Macy’s window’. The last meaning that you should never do what you wouldn’t want the entire world to know.
As a ten year old, that meant not stealing, returning a small purse my brother and I once found with three hundred dollars in it to its rightful owner, and not smacking each other around. As a teen, her words translated into not stealing, not lying, and not making out with the neighborhood Irish boy down the street in a parked car.
More things got added to it as we went along and some of them were not sins of commission but sins of omission. They include not stealing, not lying (except “little white lies” which include telling Aunt Julie her new hairdo is smashing when in fact her bald spot is not disguised at all), not hurting someone else – and even more important, helping others less fortunate and being as kind and respectful as possible while not giving up ones own rights to the same in return.
Now, as I settle into a mother/grandmother/worker/player role, it means being protective and kind to my family and my small dog and the neighborhood elderly who sometimes need a bit of help. It also means I can do what I want to do and to heck with convention but I still remember never to do anything I wouldn’t do in Macy’s window. Of course, the list of what I would do in Macy’s — or Gimbel’s — window has expanded greatly since grandma first taught me.
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Self esteem is what?
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that’s my religion.” Abraham Lincoln, U.S President
Self esteem is the spark of self love inside us that makes our lives happy and our heads and hearts at peace.
Sometimes the most self confident among us feel it slipping when they hit an iceberg in life: any unexpected loss can do it – to anyone.
One friend of mine has a fall back position that always lifts her up when life’s adversities start pushing at her self esteem. Lose a job? She volunteers. Face the death of a loved one? She volunteers. Confusion about her future? She volunteers. For her, it never fails. She comes out of every volunteering experience with a deep sense of success, some new talents, another shining note for her resume, and a newly revived conviction that she is pretty capable and very much appreciated.
She’s helped what is now called “at risk” children paint murals in their poor neighborhoods and volunteered as a press aide for fundraising that ultimately restored a historic property. She has volunteered with the Salvation Army to help Katrina hurricane victims and volunteered with the American Red Cross to man a computer center where disaster victims communicated with our government. She has helped a New Orleans policeman find his family during Katrina. She’s helped pack box lunches for the homeless. She’s shared lunch with Alzheimer patients.
“It’s such a blast to step outside myself whenever things feel a little rocky in my life and get out and do something. It stops me from self pity and the possibility of depression and quickly helps me feel in control and appreciative of myself and my abilities. I always think of Dustin Hoffman in the movie “Heroes” when I volunteer. Like it may not be what I am always but I can be a little bit of a hero to someone, somewhere, if even for just a minute or two,” she says.
Listen until their brains are all over the floor
”When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” Ernest Hemingway
When I started working as a reporter, I was totally inexperienced at interviewing. At first, I would try to write down every word the person said. This was good but I would sometimes wonder what the person really meant by something he or she said. Was the person’s words fact, sarcasm, or their sense of humor? Eventually, I realized that just listening to words didn’t always enlighten me or my readers. For instance, if a city official said, “I think the budget for the year needs adjusting and that might happen,” it was too general to truly inform a reader.
Then I switched to using a tape recorder and making little side notes in my pad. “He’s smiling; she’s laughing here. . .” Worse. I not only had to translate all these thousands of words and “Uh…. So….. huh’s” but also note laughs, frowns, shrugs, silences . . .
I finally learned how to listen with not only my ears and ears but with my mind. Because journalism depends greatly on integrity, it also depends on an ability to listen so closely to the person interviewed that you can hear the answers to “What? Where? When? Why? How?” I also learned to phrase follow-up questions that would fill in any gaps in the replies I had got initially. My readers demanded and deserved this kind of listening.
Since I conquered aggressive listening, I have a ball. I learn so many new things and meet so many new people regularly that I never feel bored. I never feel lonely. My brain gets a daily workout. I have the amazing and certainly unpredicted luxury of asking experts in any and every field “What, where, when, why, how.” I’ve had the totally thrilling joy of listening to geniuses opening their brains to me without reserve. I’ve been permitted to clarify question their statements until “their brains lie all over the floor.”
I once spent two hours having tea and cookies with my favorite world-known — and totally handsome and sexy — actor listening to him talk about his work and the craft of acting.
Let’s face it, folks. Listening isn’t a bad talent to develop.
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