The Mercury – Monday

Effective counseling or talk-therapy…

• Will help you see that you are not that special.

• Will help you understand that you are absolutely unique and an incredible gift to your family, to your community, and to the world.

• Will help you see that you don’t need help as much as you perhaps think you do.

• Will help you see that there’s wisdom in seeking help regularly.

• Will help you see that life itself is doing its very best to help you grow up and all you really have to do is to cooperate with its efforts.

• Will help you see that you have a very specific calling, a role to fulfill, a task to complete, and this greater purpose will be difficult to find, pursue, enjoy while you think life is about meeting your needs, feathering your nest, or looking for happiness.

• Will help you leverage your skills and talents and desires for the greater good of all.

• Will help you identify what you want and what you need to do to get what you want.

• Will help you show up, stand up, and speak up for yourself in ways that are really good for you.

• Will help you see that it is possible to live without being a victim.

If Jesus would remain a baby, I would find Christmas shopping much easier. But every time I venture out to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child, by purchasing a gift for someone I love, I am stumped. I do not know what kind of gift to buy that will somehow declare the birth of the Son of God. I do not have the where-with-all for a gift that marks the birth of a King. Besides, every time I begin to shop in honor of Baby Jesus, I see him whipped unmercifully upon a cross. Nothing so confuses my shopping at Christmas than the sight of blood spilling from his side and, although I resist the thought, it will not go away.

Before I can do much looking around the malls, Jesus jumps out of the crib, fully adult, onto the streets in front of me and I can hardly keep up with him. He’s healing people and getting into all kinds of trouble with medical experts. I am lost about what to do. Besides, any free moment he goes to the wrong places. He goes to the seedy parts of town. He goes to places I have never been before. He mixes with rejected people. He goes to City Hall and hurls insults at those in leadership who are without mercy.

Downtown, he is outspoken and scathing to those who are unfair in their business practices no matter who they are or what positions they hold. Jesus detests double standards and addresses them at every encounter.

I want to shove him back in the crib where he was safe. I want him back in the crib where we were all safer. Then, just when I thought he would stop in at a church or two – perhaps a cathedral built in his honor – he’s off into a bar befriending losers. He’s talking politics in a way I have never heard. He’s talking about fairness and justice and mercy and truth. I want to tell him not to mix politics and religion but I hold my tongue and blush with the absurdity of it all.

If he would just stay in one place like a baby should is all I can think.

It’s not long before he gains in popularity and I am in a jostle with the crowds for his attention. But it’s not the kind of popularity I was expecting. I will never be able to get a gift at this rate. Prostitutes love him. Drunks run to his defense. The poorest of the poor are out in their masses. He dances in the streets with children and people he has only just met. Young men and women with piercings all over their bodies form a circle with him, and they celebrate like long lost friends, reunited. Then, instead of heeding the city ordinances and honoring the local businesses, he feeds the entire crowd by some miraculous display.

Now what do I buy? Clearly, anything I spend on any gift, if I am really out to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child has to be grand. Yet it has to be modest. His birth couldn’t have been more modest: a shed was the delivery room, an animal feeding trough, the crib. Secrecy, shame and danger were the backdrop of this dramatic night while poverty dictated the details. So I cannot spend much. Yet it was the greatest night the earth had ever seen. It was the greatest moment in all history. It was the night angels sighed! It was the night the hosts of heaven longed to witness; the night the order of everything was disturbed forever by Love’s intervention.

I try to tell him he’s ruining things: that he is too quick to befriend the wrong people. Clearly his mind is elsewhere. I plead with him to befriend the religious and civic leaders but he will not listen. Soon, as if to prove me right, they are up in arms against him. Everybody who is anybody wants him gone. They call him a hindrance to tourism, a threat to peace and they accuse him of not attending church!

Next, he’s looking crucifixion in the eye.

If only he would remain a baby.

It is so much easier to shop for a baby.

(First published in The Indianapolis Star – who knows when…… but it sure got me some mail……!)

The Mercury / Monday

Seven longings I have for myself, my children* and students (past and present):

• Personal Responsibility: that we live without blame, without the belief that someone, or something, is responsible for our futures, or, has caused our failures.

• Absolute Forgiveness: that we become women and men who are able to forgive others even when it’s neither deserved nor necessarily recognized as needed.

• Radical Hospitality: that we live with open doors, hearts, hands, and minds, ready to welcome strangers, waifs, loners, dignitaries, politicians, pastors, prostitutes, presidents, addicts, and enemies into our homes with generosity, love, and kindness.

• Self Definition: that we are able to stand up for ourselves, think for ourselves, express our unique views, beliefs, and vision, without harming others.

• That we be Interesting and Interested – given that there are enough lifeless, bored and boring people already.

• That we Love and Trust God – not a weird (often dangerous) perversion created and perpetuated by anxiety-ridden, budget-driven pastors and politicians, but the Exciting, Vibrant, Intimate, Brave, Edgy, Deliberate God of the Ages, Who, without question or reservation, loves ALL people with clarity and passion and Who gives dignity and inestimable value to ALL.

• See Beyond: that we be men and women who can see beyond the limitations we set for ourselves and the limitations others set for us (usually in “love”).

* no pressure boys

The Mercury

Healthy and unhealthy attraction – it’s about much more than what or who meets the eye….

When you are emotionally strong, determined to achieve declared personal goals, and are looking for healthy adventure – you will attract people who are similarly strong and motivated.

This alone is enough incentive to get your act together, as much as it is possible, before you launch into seeking a life-partner or even a casual date.

• Healthy people attract healthy people.

• Healthy people are less likely to play relationship games.

• Healthy people don’t make relationships into win or lose contests.

• Healthy people are looking to give and to share and explore rather than take and get, preserve and hold.

If you are emotionally vulnerable, lacking in direction, seeking a savior or someone to rescue you from your woes – you will attract someone who needs a person just like you. Of course, when he or she comes along, it will feel like a match made in heaven.

• Unhealthy people attract equally unhealthy people.

• Hurt people attract hurt people.

Committed victims (those who use a shattered past for sympathy or gain), those who wallow in their wounds, tend to enter new relationships with old and familiar patterns. A relationship that seems to offer great hope will usually quickly descend into games of possession, control, and manipulation.

Attraction is about far more than what meets the eye. It’s far more than skin deep. Health calls to health. Ambition calls to ambition.

Sadly, unresolved issues and traumas find great comfort, albeit temporary, in those who’ve known equal relationship trauma – and little is as attractive for some, than to have someone to rescue or someone willing to try.