This arrived on my phone from my younger son’s girlfriend this morning;
December 20, 2023
A note to my sons — shared also with you — about love
Love one another is surely among life’s hardest, crucial, most fabulous assignments.
Jesus commanded it.
He did not suggest it or consider it a good idea.
If we claim faith in Jesus, His commands leave us no options, no outs, or off ramps.
We are to love those who love us back and those who do not.
We are to love even those who for whatever reason, have chosen to reject and hate us. Hardest perhaps, we are to love those for whom we are invisible, those who regard us, if they even notice we exist, with indifference.
We are to love modern day Samaritans (the commonly rejected change from culture to culture, group to group) and Pharisees (today’s know-it-all blowhards who peer down at we lesser mortals) and teachers of the law and hookers and addicts and bankers and Rev. Private Jet pastors and prostitutes. We are to love those who treat us with the contempt shown to New Testament Samaritans.
Yes.
Everyone.
As you, my sons, love others well and as you learn to love even more people – it doesn’t come naturally – from the most distant or platonic of relationships, to the most intimate and sacred love and trust in marriage, you will be guided, sometimes cajoled, driven, even bullied by deep inner impulses.
Strong tides, forces unseen, forces felt but unknown will rise within you.
These inner pressures are sufficiently powerful that words expressed on any page will not be able to quell the force they will try to exert over you.
Love drills down deep for discovery of the opposite spirit, the counter-intuitive approach, the unexpected, the unanticipated means toward a loving, kind end.
Love your enemies is not some insurmountable-Jesus-hurdle.
He did not command it to trick anyone.
Loving your enemies is the gateway to loving all people, even to love those whom we may consider easy to love.
No one is easy to love.
Remember, what you can do to anyone you can do to everyone.
Love is really understanding the parable of the “good” Samaritan and trying to live it out daily.
Love, to imperfectly and briefly quote Paul, the Apostle, doesn’t return evil for evil.
Finally, read Paul’s summary of love in 1 Corinthians 13 and remind yourself over and over again, Paul did not have wedding sermons in mind when he put his heart on paper.
December 14, 2023
People will tell you who they are…..
….. with reasonable and trustworthy accuracy:
“The thing to remember always is that you’re surrounded by idiots. Once you get that right in your own head things start moving in your favor.”
“Everyone has something to teach me. I try to learn from everyone.”
“I never fly economy. Who’d ever do that? It’s like moving cattle. See you later.”
“It’s such a privilege to see the world. My company policy is everyone flies economy. Even the top brass.”
“I make all the decisions in our home. He leaves it all up to me. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“I just go straight to the top. I don’t mess with the lower rank employees, the paid by the hour sorts of people.”
“I try to live without blaming others. Yes, bad things have happened to me but I’m an adult now. I’ve got to live with what I’ve got and make the best of everything.”
“Wait for a table? Not me. I get what I want when I want or I don’t go back. I vote with my feet and they know it.”
(Said to me —- or overheard in a variety of settings)
December 13, 2023
Who and what do you want to be?
What kind of person do you want to be?
May this question help you to plan your day. I confess, it’s constantly in the back of my mind with almost all my daily interactions.
You’ve seen him demanding to see the boss, insisting on getting his way, banging fists on the counter. He becomes aggressive and threatening when things don’t go his way. You can be this person if you want. It all depends on what kind of person you want to be.
You’ve heard and seen her, raising her voice at a waiter in a fine restaurant because something wasn’t up to her standards. She plays dirty and attempts to humiliate helpers to land a free meal. You can be this way if you want. Everything depends on who you want to be.
You’ve seen him, kind and patient under stress, generous and openhearted, even when facing difficulties. You can be this way if you want. It’s always, and there are no exceptions, up to you.
You’ve seen her, helping the poor, serving the sick, making meals for neighbors, all-the-while undergoing her own stresses, suffering beneath her own burdens and loads. She serves while she herself deserves to be served. You can be this way if you want. Everything pivots on what kind of person you want to be.
December 12, 2023
Kindness
Genuine kindness expressed today, among us all –– colleagues at the office, the teachers in the staff room, doctors and nurses who pass each other running the hallways of a busy hospital –– wherever we find ourselves at work or at play, expressed kindness will be helpful to all.
Expressing kindness will change your mood and enhance your day.
Small acts of kindness might not change the world, but they will enhance our individual experiences of work, and add joy and meaning to the most repetitive of tasks.
Kindness in a nutshell:
Don’t gossip, or spread rumors, or tell tales about others. Don’t speak negatively about other people. Don’t lie. Try not to ignore people, or regard others as a means to getting your way — no one wants to be your stepping stone.
Be generous, and wide-hearted, open-handed. Offer accurate compliments to those who might least expect to hear kind words. Tip well, even if the service or food is not up to scratch. How you tip is about you, not the service or food.
Most of all, and this is a well-known secret to great fulfillment, do your job — whatever it is — very well. It is a powerful way to be kind both to yourself and to your boss!
December 9, 2023
Of course I believe in Santa
I saw Santa at the Children’s Museum with a feather of a child pleading her case. They were locked in discussion, a confessional of sorts, as she entered into detail of her every Christmas wish. Hands, eyes, and all of her face enticed Santa closer lest he miss a detail living so clearly in her head.
“Oh, you want, oh, I see it. Why yes, of course. Perfectly,” Santa said, his voice tapering off into her ear, “I will see what I can do about that.”
Then she nestled into his side, her shoulders comfortably enveloped by his plush red suit as if to declare her mission accomplished. He was a perfect depiction of everything I imagined him to be and the sight easily immersed me in the voices and music of my own Christmases past.
Santa came all year round to our home. I’d look through the window in April or mid-August and Santa would be strolling up the driveway on his return from visits to every home on the street. He’d be wearing dad’s shoes and one of his ties underneath the tatty red coat, but I knew better than to expose his identity. I wanted to believe in Santa and he in turn needed me to believe. Such faith had rewards. I knew better than to dash my own hopes. I wasn’t ready to lose my trust in Santa for anyone and certainly not by my own hand.
He couldn’t resist visits to the whole neighborhood and would drop in from time to time and inspire children toward good behavior, perfect obedience at school, and remind them to count their blessings one by one. At every appearance in our home we’d sing “The Little Boy that Santa Clause Forgot” and we’d all have to cry. He insisted on it.
The lines “he didn’t have a daddy” and “went home to play with last year’s broken toys” really got us going.
It was clear he sang to all the children of the world who’d had to skip childhood and who had known poverty; children who’s fathers had gone to war or whose fathers or mothers had fled their families.
Donning the suit, surprising the children, was our Santa’s way of making the world right.
His visits created intrigue in the neighborhood, and to every child he repeated the promise that this Christmas, no child on this street would be forgotten. As far as I could tell none ever was.
The last Christmas we had together was in August of 1994. We were riding in a car and in the curves of Bluff Road when spontaneously he began to sing, “Christmas comes but once a year.”
The car became a holy place as I heard once more of the boy who “wrote a note to Santa for some soldiers and a drum and it broke his little heart to find Santa hadn’t come.”
The tears we both shed required no encouragement for we both somehow knew this would be the last time he’d sing this nostalgic hymn.
Now this old song is top of my list of Christmas songs.
The melody emerges randomly in my awareness, most particularly when faced with children who are in need. I have had to silence it at all times of the year.
It was the little girl’s confidence, Santa’s grace, and the loving parents looking from the side that caught my attention last week. She touched his flowing beard and told him her every Christmas dream and I found myself listing my own requests with childlike zeal.
It gave me renewed hope that you and I, the real Santas of the world, could deliver a more hopeful tomorrow for “those little girls and boys that Santa Claus forgot.”
(First published December 9, 2000 in the Indianapolis Star)
December 7, 2023
In search of a “more authentic” Christmas? I’m happy to help…..
Are you longing for a more “authentic” Christmas?
You say you want to return to its real meaning, identify with Jesus more than you see done in the surrounding culture.
I have a few suggestions to facilitate your desire.
Please understand this is not easy. Most of whom we know do not live in a territory occupied by a foreign power whose despot representative despises locals and is especially violent toward infant boys after getting wind that one will be born who will be greater than he.
In your journey to be in touch with the birth of the Christ-child, I’d suggest you start by walking to Chicago, Cleveland or Cincinnati from wherever you live in the midwest. Take a donkey, or ride a camel, to St Louis. Wherever you choose to go, plan to arrive by Christmas Eve. Have at least one very pregnant teenager (a non-relative) of about 14 or 15 years old in your party.
The ride, the discomfort, the lack of certainty about accommodations, and the welfare of mother and soon-to-be baby along the way will enhance your appreciation of the season and sharpen your perceptions of how ridiculously off-target are our current traditions with sterile stables, plastic donkeys, unbounded shopping, people trampling over, killing each other, to buy a cheap TV in a world hung with mistletoe.
Take no money. Be prepared to be turned away by family and motel managers alike. You are accompanied by a pregnant, delusional teen who, apart from being no one’s wife, claims “innocence” regarding the pregnancy. Her claim that an angel said she’d conceive a child by God more than alienates your party from usual societal pleasantries, and you end up with a makeshift accommodation between two dumpsters at the rear of a very cheap motel.
On the journey, chat here and there about the political leader who slaughters all the boys in the Midwest. He has spurts of uncontrolled lustful power and an inordinate degree of submission from the troops who carry out his wishes. Remind yourself that for weeks, months and years to come, parents will mourn over the slaughter of their infant boys.
You get to successfully hide your infant from the brutal eye of the murderous leader, but this is little consolation, for although you are very grateful that the baby will not be murdered as an infant, you can hardly dispel the knowledge that he will, nonetheless, be ruthlessly murdered as an adult.
As you choose a parking lot behind a rundown motel in South Bend or Toledo, reflect on the oddness of the child’s conception and the rumor you hear that he will “save” people from their sins. This thought both encourages and disturbs you. You literally fall to the ground and worship a God who has given such a privilege while remaining aware of how those who seek no salvation usually treat self-proclaimed saviors.
The cattle are lowing, yes, but have you ever spent the night with an ox? Have you noticed how much distance you keep from the animals at the state fair? There’s a good reason you do. Somehow the lowly manger has become a sanitized, cozy corner. Live in a dumpster, add a few stray farm animals and let a few wild goats, dogs and rats enter regularly from stage left and stage right, and you are more likely to create something of the environment of the first Christmas.
Let there be no gifts, no tree, no glitter. Christmas earmarks the beginning of the second phase of a remarkably courageous journey of love, adventure and commitment on behalf of a determined God.
The gift is within the risk.
The value is within the danger.
The generosity is within the sheer lunacy that God constantly loves a recalcitrant humanity.
The UPS truck arriving at your door with a gift from Aunt Joan in Ohio does nothing to reflect the spirit of generosity that was evident with the coming of the Christ-child unless Aunt Joan has given everything she ever owned or valued, and, at the cost of her life, packed it off to you for Christmas.
——————
I paid a quick visit to a private school recently and was deeply moved by the commitment to quality education. The “building” has been declared unsafe and the administration is attempting to replace it……. If you’re interested in assisting let me know. Contact me privately. The student body is about 200 students from K to 5th or so……
December 1, 2023
Christmas meditation to get you into the festive mood…..
I post this at the beginning of every December so it may “ring a bell” —- no pun intended:
Adult Jesus Ruins My Christmas Shopping
Christmas shopping would be so much easier if Jesus would just remain a baby.
Every time I venture out to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child and try to purchase a gift for someone I love I am stumped.
What do I buy that will somehow declare the birth of the Son of God?
I don’t 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 get images of Him being whipped unmercifully and then nailed upon a cross.
Blood spurts derail my shopping. I resist the thoughts but they will not go away.
Before I can do much looking around the malls Jesus jumps out of the crib. He’s fully adult, almost running, sometimes dancing, celebrating on the streets and I can hardly keep up. He’s healing people left, right, and center. He’s getting into all kinds of trouble.
I am lost. I am out of control. No, he’s out of control.
He goes to the wrong places. He loves the seedy parts of town. He goes where I have never been before. He mixes with the rejected. He storms City Hall and insults merciless leaders. He is outspoken, scathing to those who are unfair in their business practices. He doesn’t care about rank, stature, or wealth but detests double standards, addresses them at every encounter.
I want to grab him, shove him back in the crib where he was safe, where we were all safer.
When I thought he would stop in at a church or two – perhaps a cathedral built in his honor – he’s off in a smoky bar with washed out losers. He’s talking politics like I have never heard. He’s hot on fairness, justice, mercy, truth. I tell him not to mix politics and religion 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 I am in a jostle with the crowds. It’s not the kind of popularity I was expecting.
Prostitutes love him. Drunks defend him. The poorest of the poor, the marginalized, the rejected, are out in their masses. He dances in the streets with street children and people he has just met. Young men and women, piercings and tattoos all over their bodies, circle him celebrate like long lost friends. Then, ignoring ordinances, he feeds the applauding masses.
Now what do I buy?
Clearly, anything I spend, if I am really out to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child, has to be grand. Yet modest. His birth was modest: a shed, a feeding trough. Secrecy. Shame. Danger. Poverty dictated the details for this dramatic night. I cannot spend much. Yet, it was the greatest night Earth had ever seen. Angels sighed! The order of everything disturbed by Love’s intervention.
I tell him he’s ruining things, that he is too quick to befriend the wrong people, but his mind is elsewhere. I beg him to befriend religious leaders, a pastor or two, but he will not listen.
Then, they are up in arms against him.
All but a few want him gone. He’s a hindrance to tourism. He’s a threat to peace and he’s being accused of not attending church!
Next, he looks crucifixion in the eye.
If only he would remain a baby.
It is so much easier to shop for a baby.
(Published first in The Indianapolis Star some years ago)
…………..
Yesterday’s brief outing to a beautiful market:
November 30, 2023
How to know you are “spiritually gifted”….
You have escaped the world of all-or-nothing behaving. You don’t throw in the towel because you failed. You try again. You seek in all your trying to do no harm, not to yourself or others.
You have escaped the world of black-and-white thinking and cast off your cloak of knowing it all. You know that people who give the impression of knowing it all, really don’t. Sometimes you engage them simply for the (harmless, of course) fun it provides.
You have embraced ambiguity. You understand that the world won’t crumble and the church won’t tumble and your family may indeed breathe a sigh of relief because you are able to admit there are a few things about which you are unsure.
You embrace your frailties, failures and feebleness with deep regret and sadness (sometimes) and humor (sometimes). You are aware that your constant striving, trying to prove whatever, trying to be right, distorts your beauty. You accept that you are a person, not a prized racehorse.
You desire to be more loving than you have ever been even if you are not quite theologically accurate or sound (who is?). You know that “accurate” theology has killed millions. You want your attempts at sound theology to at least lead you to greater love.
November 29, 2023
High maintenance individuals
High maintenance people require constant attention and seek constant approval. They crave to be the center of almost every conversation and will often become moody, resentful, loud, threatening when they are not.
They analyze every move, thought, word and action of others, and then read more meaning into statements, looks, sighs, attitudes than was ever intended.
They are easily hurt, quickly offended, quick to rebuke when they do not get the kind of attention they think they deserve.
Threats of withdrawal or desertion become a way of life.
High maintenance people are difficult, sometimes impossible, even in the most relaxed of circumstances. They pick fights, find fault, and personalize almost everything. They argue with people who are closest to them for no apparent reason. They often pick on strangers (waiters, helpers). They often live in a world of cut-off relationships where others are idiots and no one understands.
What can you do if you are in a relationship with a high maintenance person?
You can do very little that will not hurt, offend, or get a reaction – but you must make a stand.
High maintenance people seldom benefit from pity or patience or empathy.
They will only benefit from being constantly challenged to grow up.
(Please do not use this post to “assess” others…… look only at your own behavior).
difficultrelationships.com 