Disappointments and Worry: Reviewing the Past and Looking Ahead

At this time of year all the local television news operations do a retrospective on the ending year.  In other words they review what happened since the last time they did the same type of report.

Many of us do the same kind of accounting in our own lives.  We look back at what happened. We look at what we did.  We also may look back at what we should have done or should have done better.

On the flip side, we may look ahead at our expectations, fears, and goals. 

In these reviews the challenge is not to panic ourselves, not overly shame ourselves and not get consumed in resentment.

The Past Year.

We live in a complicated world and it seems safe to say that the past year was what it was.   What some people see as good others see as bad.  For example, some people were happy that Barack Obama was re-elected and some saw it as a bad thing.  Another example is gay marriage--some people saw it as good and some saw it as evil.   Saying what the past year was is very much an individual matter. 

Hindsight is Not Merely 20-20. 

The old adage is that "hindsight is 20-20."  It is assumed that we look back at the past and can see more than we saw while we were going through something.   I think that is a mistake.  We never look back at the past with 20-20 vision.  We look at the past with a sense of weighted judgment.  

How we look back at the past depends much on our current emotion, and what appears to be a present consequence of the past.  We may be glad we made a choice, or we may be sad or even mad that we made a certain choice. 

I have met many people who admit having been consumed over many years by . . . and beating themselves up over the way things or people have turned out.   Some of these people were sold on these failures as absolute facts. They assumed reality--that something else would have happened if they did something differently.    From this point in the present, it does not mean that the better option would have happened. 

The Year 2013

However, many of us dwell on what we fear the most and if we dwell on it incessantly we can fool ourselves into believing it is a sure thing.    The emotion that we can feel in these cases is tiring. 

Mind you, I have to give some validity to this.  The news media is leading with the Fiscal Cliff in most newscasts.  It is some exquisite political drama, but it is also stressful because we do not know how it will affect us. 

From this point in the present we do not know what 2013 will bring.  While many events are possible,  I strangely take comfort in the idea of economic forecasting, which says the past will happen in the future.    There will be good and bad.  There will be good news and disappointment in our lives.   

Closing Thoughts. 

I think that it is your and my responsibility to take hold and give things meaning as we see fit.   As I get older, I find more and more opportunities to feel disappointment or feel worry.  As we get older we have the chance to see more and more nuances in the different life events which can create disappointment or worry.    Worry has never made me a better person and so the question is whether I will take those opportunities.  Not all opportunities are worth it because they do nothing to make us better.

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Christmas Eve-Seeking and Finding Peace.

Yes it is Christmas Eve.  If you did not get it, you will have to do without it.  If they are not coming then we will not see them.  It is either a matter of feeling some sort of peace or some sort of internal turmoil.

The world has continued to be full of turmoil since Sandy Hook.  Three days ago some suicide bomber went to a political rally in Pakistan and killed eight people with himself.  Today some ex-convict started a fire outside of Rochester, New York and then shot four volunteer firemen--killing two of them.  Here in Louisville, Kentucky a 20-year-old male was shot dead.  Psychopaths and sociopaths do not have empathy and do not value human life.

The World Does Not Offer Us Inner Peace

In this life, I have been hard-pressed to find that the world as we know has ever given a sense of peace.  The phrase that comes to mind is "dog eat dog."  The world that we live is in rough. 

The roughness seems amplified during Christmas time when the Christmas music comes out suggesting peace love and good will.   There is something disingenuous and ironic about Christmas music when the other 10 1/2 months are anything but good and fair.

Many of our workplaces are not fair.  In many of our workplaces we endure cronyism and dishonesty despite whatever policy exists to enforce order and fairness.   In these same workplaces, the grievance processes prove to be a joke because if the unfairness serves the purpose of management. 

Many of our families are not fair.  We have family members who are frauds who hold the power cards.  Dealing with them is like eating a packet of the pink packet sweetener.  We would like to feel closer to them but the price is to do it on their terms where they think they are being nice but their comments are nothing but sugar-coated abuse.

These global and personal factors are not going to give us inner-peace. Thinking about these things creates the feelings of pain, anger and loneliness.  If we are alone tonight, then we run the risk of dwelling on our pain.

Being alone on a night like tonight also amplifies the pain because there is the likely message of inferiority or deficit because if we are alone then there must be something wrong with us.   No one wonder there is more suicides in the month of December and at Christmas.

Finding Peace

Many people think that finding peace is this grand state that is supposed to be once and for-and-for-all.   The reality is that peace is generally a moment by moment matter. 

Finding Peace begins with recognizing you are feeling pain and chaos.  The next step is stopping thinking about the pain.  Stopping may have to be done one moment at a time.  I think that peace is best found when you are doing things according to your religious or moral code.

You may have to do a number of activities or "things" to stop thinking about the chaos and pain.   There are options to finding to peace even just for the moment.   We all have moments of pain and we have moments of peace. 

I had my annual viewing of  Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol  and in the prospective "ghost of Christmas future" portion, I saw a great example.  Bob Cratchitt and his family were grieving the death of Tiny Tim.  Bob was able to look at his surviving children, think for a minute and say "I am a happy man."  I counted my blessings along with Bob and I felt a moment of peace.

Peace Doesn't Have to Be Perfect

Since peace tends to last from one moment to another, it does not have to be perfect.  It just has to get us through.  Many people in AA have to pray the serenity prayer many times a day. 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Many of us not in AA could benefit from such a practice too.  This is a great way of stopping negative thoughts and getting your mind away from the negative.

Final Comments

Tonight, we celebrate the "Prince of Peace."  It has proven to be hard if not impossible for many to think about peace given personal and global situations.  It is a challenge for each one of us to feel or not feel it; it is a choice.

If you happen to be reading this and are feeling hopeless, I suggest you wake someone up or call your nearest helpline.  In most communities, it is 211.  Sometimes a person can be depressed beyond trying to practice thought-stopping and praying the serenity prayer.

I wish you peace tonight and peace tomorrow.



 

Reflecting or Nursing Grudges?

Dwelling on the negative can be what makes Christmas a terrible time.   It can masquerade as "reflection" at Christmas, but it may also be nursing a grudge and self-torture.

We are encouraged to be reflecting this time of year.  Sometimes the reflecting can be on the meaningful and fulfilling, but sadly it can be on the negative and painful.

The Negative Mental Filter

Many people have a "negative mental filter." When you have a negative mental filter brewing between your ears you are not just reflecting on a problem . . . you are dwelling on it.  Many anxious and worrying types are always dwelling on some problem.   Many angry people dwell on past hurts.

When someone has a negative filter, their persepctive gets skewed.  The negative issue, topic, or object makes everything else seem small.  The negative mental filter makes us disqualify the good things. 

The classic example of a negative mental filter is the vain 14 year-old who finds a zit or pimple on his or her nose in the morning.  They dwell and focus on the zit until it feels like the size of a basketball that will break their neck because it begins to feel so big.  They get false validation when an antagonistic peer makes fun of the zit and the 14-year-old will find other negative mental filters to dwell on.

Bringing it to Now

Now that it is getting less than 48 hours before Christmas, there is an opportunity to develop a negative mental filter. Some of us are thinking about the family members we are going to see. Reflecting about them will likely remind us of the past. If we dwell further we start to keep score about what they did and what they did not do. We will think about our previous opinions and hurts.

Many of us will see relatives or in-laws who have been hurtful or abusive in times past.  Maybe they have sleighted us and they have no clue that they have been hurtful.  Maybe they are addicted and have hurt us in their addiction by stealing from us or forgetting important matters.  Then there is the dreaded narcissist or borderline who do not care that they have been hurtful because they think they are the victim and are entitled to special treatment.  

In a bizzare sense those who worried about the end of the Mayan Calendar and the feared apocalypse of 12-21-12 may have been able to take a break from thinking about the family crazies.  However, now that the apocalypse proved to be another false alarm it is back to business as usual and that can mean dwelling on those evil family members and nursing drudges.

There is a valid struggle here. The hurts are real. Some of these family members were and still are acting lame. We think about them and we feel anger and sadness.  With family it is never just one time where there was a problem . . . it is a long string of problems that can include:

• Not getting invited to a wedding
• Someone obviously getting favoritism
• Getting divorced from our mother or father and marryng someone else and getting sucked into that family
• Favoring one set of grandchildren over another
• Unfair criticism
• Adult tantrums that disrupt weddings
• Failing to come to special occasions such as graduations or baptisms
• Humiliation at family events

We can ditch the non-family members who act lame but we cannot ditch the family members.  We are often still encouraged if not pressured to come to family events where we will be faced with these people.

The more we think about them and their behaviors and the pain we felt from their behavior, the more likely we will feel anger. The more we think about that anger we run the risk of nursing a grudge. 

The Grudge

The grudge is not just any kind of anger.  It is a type of anger where we feel self-righteous and where we feel like victims.  It is an anger that tends to motivate us to find justice in some manner. 

The grudge occupies our mind and takes prominence in our mind as a most important matter.  It makes us irritable and more easily annoyed by miniscule irritants around us.

When we are nursing a grudge, it keeps at a simmer in terms of the physical signs of anger.  We stay tense and we risk developing chronic headaches and stomach problems.  We may develop insomnia because the adrenalin produced keeps us awake like caffiene.

The Irony

The irony is that most of us who have nursed grudges feel like we cannot take our perpetrator head-on and say "I am angry" or "I am still angry with you."  We just see too big of a cost.   Instead what we do is continue to stuff it and take it out on other family members or we act in passive-aggressive ways.  Chances are in our anger expressions we become like the family member who we despise.    

It is not necessarily stupid to weigh whether or not you are going to hold your anger or make your statement of anger.  The families that we live in can be complicated.   Sometimes it sill seems to be the wiser option to hold your tongue and your anger because telling a fool you are angry with them only gets you more trouble. 

Possible Options

The best option is to get your mind off of the grudge.  That may be difficult this close to seeing them this Christmas.  However, the more thought you give something, the more important you make it.

I have written on similar issues in earlier posts and I would encourage you to look back at those if you are looking for ideas.  

Maybe reading can get your mind off of your grudge.







 

Perfect Versus Okay

As a school kid and a college student I was excited for the holidays.  I was looking forward to getting out of school for the holidays.  The race was essentially over and it was vacation.

As a working adult, the game is different.  There are demands on me to continue working and make appearances at different holiday gatherings.   With four or five days until Christmas (depending how you count it) I found myself feeling tired and glad that the Christmas Season is almost over. 

I still have Christmas shopping to do.  I am not exactly feeling the pressure yet given that I will have  the weekend before Monday at dusk when all the malls and stores will close.  I found myself feeling a certain grind.

In a post from last year I equated the holidays to be like a hurricane.  Many of us are all in a hurry to get everything we need and go home and lock ourselves in our homes until December 25 passes.  In that case there isn't a sense of grind . . . there is a sense of pressure.

What We Need Versus What we Think we Need

I have decided that the feeling of of hurricane preparedness comes with the expectation of how your Christmas should be.  We want to have everything that we need . . . or think that we should need. 

While we as human beings all have the same physical needs, we have many individual differences that distinguish what you need versus what I need. For example, an introvert needs privacy while an extrovert needs to be around people.  A baby needs to be cuddled with while a teenager needs increased boundaries.  A child needs to play while an adult needs to work. 

I am leaning to the idea that the more we are focused on making something perfect, the more we pile into the "need" category. "Need" is really a subjective concept.   Perfectionism tends to breed anxiety and anxiety tends to create a sense of more need.

Getting to Okay

"Okay" or "Ok" is not perfect, but it is "all right."  With being okay, things are satisfactory.  We have what we need.  We may not be in a sense of perfect peace but we are not in despair.

How do we determine if we are okay?    I think that a good place to start is asking the question:

Will it be a total disaster if something is missing?

I think that we usually are missing one or two things at the holidays.  We tend to be able to make due with the one or two missing things and we can look at the good and not dwell on the missing items.

If we are stuck in a fit of perfectionism we can make the missing seem like things are a disaster.
However being okay generally does mean that we are in a good emotional place and not a bad emotional place if something is missing.

Closing Thoughts

Being "ok" has a wide range of meaning.  It is neither perfect nor a disaster.  It is an individual matter.   You and I have a choice. 

I hope that things will be at least "okay" for you.

By the way, feel free to go back to the older posts to find something that may fit your needs today.  I am a therapist who likes to write and I hope I have something to offer you.  If you want me to write on a subject (or at least try), feel free to make a comment that includes your request.





 

The Mayan Calendar and Considering the End

It has been a most interesting if not leery Christmas Season in the United States.  Before the Fiscal Cliff and the Sandy Hook School shooting, people had concern about the Mayan Calendar ending and have been interpreting it to mean that the world is going to end on December 21, 2012.

It just goes to show that humans are interested in spiritual matters.  Over the course of human history, when there is something that challenges one's existence, people will mull over the spiritual--especially when it has to do with the end. 

With specific concern over the Mayan "Long Count" Calendar cycle ending, officials in Argentina have cut off access to Uritorco Mountain through December 22 to prevent people from committing suicide because they would be interpreting the end of this cycle to be the "apocalypse." Uritorco Mountain was apparently a sacred spot for the indigenous (Mayan) people.  Although this will be dated quickly the following site was full of good information (http://www.news.com.au/features/mayan-apocalypse-2012/argentina-shuts-uritorco-mountain-for-fear-of-maya-linked-suicides/story-fngjq0bi-1226540067814)

I am sure that people all over the world are asking: What if they are right?   It is only human.  The good news is that I have not met anyone who is freaking out over this.

However, the end of the world is for the most part a spiritual matter.  It makes us ask significant questions about who we are in this world and what we believe.

Dancing with Hopelessness and Meaninglessness.

When people consider the end of the world, it can feel stressful.  Thoughts are not sterile--they bring feelings.   People can feel panicked or despaired.  The end means that what you have is gone.  The end means you and all you value are gone.  The ones you love are gone.  By about this time, someone will likely begin to dance with hopelessness and meaninglessness.

We go back to the power of thoughts.  They are merely our mind in action but they can motivate us to act in strong and maybe permanent ways.  Some people contemplate suicide as part of the hopelessness and meaningless when the mind goes there.

Hopefully we find ways not to dance in that spot for too long. Most of us seem are able to move our mind out of that zone.

Perspective: Not the First and Not the Last

However, we in western society (maybe more North American society) seem to visit this fairly often.  From time to time we learn about "doomsday cults" who get publicized either before or after they act. 

Some of us older people will remember the Jonestown mass suicide in 1978 where Jim Jones convinced over 900 of his followers who went down with him to his utopia in Guyana to commit suicide because of expected doom, and the term "drink the kool-aid" took on a new meaning.

More recently, the "Heaven's Gate" cult committed suicide together in 1997.  They were worried that the earth was going to be wiped clean and they apparently believed that they were going to be transferred to some extraterrestrial body.

Christianity has had its share of dwelling on the end. There are a number of "televangelists" on TV who spend all of their air time talking about the end.  The Left Behind series sold millions of books and spawned a number of movies.    Harold Camping, founder of Family Radio was the last major figure to make a public prediction when the rapture was supposed to come and the world was to end (and he was the brunt of jokes for it too).

There have been many making predictions and there will others making predictions as to the end. While I think Harold Camping made his erroneous predictions out of conviction, I think that some people saw an opportunity to sell some books.  There will some other milestone in the future that some will see an economic opportunity to make a buck.

Seeking Meaning and Peace

In a generic spiritual sense, we hopefully look at the end as a way of measuring what is meaningful to us.   Pondering the end of your life is a very good barometer of what you value and see as important in the here and now.

I have heard this over and over again, if you were going to die, I am inclined that you would not ask for someone to bring you your gold and valuables to take with you.  You instead would ask for your loved ones to come to see you.    Why not make plans to see the people you love at Christmas?

We feel peace when we do what matters to us.  We feel a sense of fulfillment when we are engaging in what we value and when we hold to our values.

If you are feeling anxiety about the Mayan Calendar, I cannot get you over the hump, but I would encourage you not to dwell on it.  My favorite Wayne Dyer quotation that comes to mind is:

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there's nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.  (Your Erroneous Zones)
Getting Biblical

If you will allow me to get Biblical here, as a Christian, I hold that it is fruitless to try and predict the end of the world or when Jesus Christ is coming back to earth.   Jesus told his disciples before his crucifixion that

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. (Mark 13:32) (NIV)

Jesus told his disciples to continue living godly lives in preparation.  What matters was how they  lived. 

We at Christmas are remembering how this Jesus came to earth as a Baby.  Sometimes we forget that the baby grew up and did incredible things for the world . . including us.

Concluding thoughts

Yeah, the Mayan calendar had me review what I believe about the end. 

Here is what I have concluded:  My life is in God's hands.  If God doesn't come back I expect to be alive and I expect to finally get to that Christmas shopping I have been putting off. I also figure that I will come up with something else to write each of the next three days.

I wish you peace and fulfillment in what matters to you now.

LIVING COURAGEOUSLY WITH CONVICTION AT THE HOLIDAYS

Over the past couple of days listening and watching some of the deluge of news stories, I have noticed that 1) many pundits and critics in the media are no longer shocked but now angry over Newtown Connecticut.; and 2) many people are scared and wondering how much more stringent safety measures should be?  It sounds like a form of grief to me of a very strong kind.

Collective Grief and the Energy it gives us

I think that we do experience grief collectively as a society and as individuals.  It seems to me that the media has this ability to connect us emotionally in a very strong way.   Other than the media we seem to experience it collectively as we disclose our feelings in the small talk we make in churches, barbershops, in grocery check-out lines.  We also seem to be grieving collectively in our facebook posts and comments.  We experience it individually as we feel our feelings looking at news aggregating websites.  We feel the energy that emotions stir making us feel like we should just do something.

Anger

Anger is a large energy generator.  At the risk of over-generalizing, it seems that much of the “empathetic” society including the fourth estate of media has moved into the anger stage of grief over Newtown.   They are looking for causes and some are making wide sweeping conclusions that there needs to be more gun control.   Some of the news analysis and opinion is focusing on the mentally ill in his country as the problem.

The energy that anger stirs is also manifested in the extra-large letter to the editor section of my local daily newspaper.  It is stirred in the late night comedy show I usually watch where the comedian came out and made a statement that recognized the tragedy.  It is present in the emotions of people who are critical of gun control laws and how something should be done to keep mentally ill people from having them.  The anger motivates us to stand and protect ourselves.

Fear

However, fear is also an energy that makes us protect ourselves.  Fear tells us

“run stupid there is danger!"

This appears to be showing up also in statements about making schools safer.  As I have heard the fear at my place of work, I have heard people go into laborious detail about what all the possible risks are in a place.

It is hard to say whether the fear we are feeling is tangled with the anger or whether the fear is a logical reaction unto itself, but there is talk about giving teachers guns to protect themselves and the students. There is talk about how things can be made more secure in schools.   This fear still may be part of the societal shock.  

Fear and Anger are Powerful Emotions

It is in times like these where we may realize again that anger and fear are very strong and powerful emotions or energies in motion.  I have to use the word “may realize” because both rage and panic short-circuit common sense.   The energy of the emotions often bypass the rational thinking part of the brain where you and I think through the facts and look at things in a problem-solving fashion and makes us impulsive. 

I am mindful of mob behavior.  Mobs of people can run for their lives together and then they can get angry and become a lynch mob or start a riot.  The one commonality is emotion—they all share it despite what they are actually thinking and act impulsive in unison.

On the flip side, people can be paralyzed by their feelings.  To see someone having a panic attack is like watching someone stuck in their seat on a roller coaster or like a victim in a horror film in terror just before the villain is about to attack.    When someone (whether adult or child) is having an angry tantrum, you cannot get them to do anything else until they have gotten over the emotion.   Emotions can be like G-forces that push someone back against a wall to the point where they cannot move.

One of my favorite shows is Survivorman with Les Stroud.  Again and again throughout his shows, Stroud will talk about staying calm if you are stuck in a survival situation.  Staying calm can mean the difference between life and death.

If you are reading this, you are not likely in the Arboreal Forest of Northern Canada or in the Amazon Jungle or in the swamps of Southern Georgia, but you are probably in an emotional wilderness where the pressures of the holidays are combined with the added emotional stress of the Newtown CT school shooting.   The feelings are powerful and perhaps are making you feel like you are beside yourself and frozen in anger and fear and feel like you are just surviving.  I think when we are stuck in such situations we need courage and calmness because we just cannot stop life as we know it just because of the Connecticut school shooting

Courage

Without looking at a dictionary, courage is essentially going along with the conviction of what the right action is despite the fear and emotion.  It seems to me that courage is romanticized through the movies and TV as big gestures of one hero fighting an army or the hero making a daredevil move for whatever reason.  (My favorites models of courage were John Gage and Roy DeSoto from the TV series Emergency who climbed up in high and dangerous places to rescue people.  John admitted he was scared in a few of the scenes.)  

In our real world, courage is not that exciting or suspenseful.  Courage can be:

• telling someone no. 
• walking away when they want to fight you . . . and maybe you might be called chicken by the bully,
• saying enough is enough to one relative badgering another relative at the family holiday celebration,
• buying yourself a present because you would like it despite having low-self-esteem telling you otherwise,
• doing the right thing at your job when others are not,
• going out to the malls and sending your kids to school despite the fear of what happened in Newtown CT
• going to that holiday family celebration and trying to patch things up with that estranged relative
• finding joy at the holiday season in some fashion or form

Courage is based on your context or situation, and it may be going against some crowd or “grain.”  Typically, you do not have courage without some type of conviction where you believe that some value or principle is worth the cost.   Usually the cost is someone calling you a fool—the vast majority of our risks in the world are not ones of life and death.

 One does not always act tough when showing courage.  When you are showing courage it can feel like the wind is blowing in your face at hurricane-force speeds.  Courage does not feel good until after you look back at it from the future.

I hold that there are people of courage everywhere that go on living and doing what is needed because it is the right thing to be doing.  I'm trying to be one of them.

I hope that if you are feeling paralyzed by your feelings that you can find courage to start moving again.  and do something in the spirit of the holidays.       

Pondering the Reality of Evil at the Holidays

While in my last post I called what happened in Newtown Connecticut an unthinkable tragedy, I have been pondering it the last two days as "evil."  A public official in Connecticut called it evil.  My pastor called it evil in his sermon today.   Yes, 27 people including 21 first graders being killed in an elementary school by a shooter who then killed himself is evil.  How in the world do we comprehend such evil happening at a time where people are supposed to be nice to each other? (You know peace on earth and good will toward men.)

For all practical purposes we are entering a theological and philosophical discussion here versus one of self-help psychology.  Part of emotional journeys often mean considering philosophy and theology.  In a sense everyone has both a theology and a philosophy.

Definitions

There are different theologies and different philosophies so, let me be precise here in the definitions of what I am aiming to discuss.  For the purpose of this discussion:

• a theology has to do with how you see things regarding God (or God as you understand him, her, it) or as God pertains to a subject and    
• a philosophy is the system by which you order your thoughts and view the world.  

I am quite sure that there will be people who have a quibble with the definitions, and if you do, you can comment (it is about time someone commented).  For some of you this will sound like philosophy and for some of you it will sound like theology--it is your choice.

How Can a Loving God Allow Such Evil to Happen?

When it comes to theology/philosophy, people tend to ask how a loving God could allow such evil to happen?  It is a fair question and one to which there has been so much written that justice could not be done.  It serves to say that there is a continuum of views that go all the way

• from Atheism (God does not exist)
• to hyper Calvinism (God sovereignly made it happen for a purpose). 

In between the two extremes are a variety of views that go (I am not listing all of them)

• from a distant God who is not involved (Deism view)
• to a God who is in process and not all powerful (Process Theology view)
• to a God who allows free choice (Free will defense view)
• to a God who has created the best of all possible worlds (Theodicy view) 

The Free will defense and theodicy views are not exactly in conflict with each other.   It all just depends on who is talking to whom when the discussion is happening. 

As a Christian, I prefer to think that a loving and all-powerful God has given us choice.  He (I do prefer the male pronoun) will allow choice and stay out of the way unless he sovereignly decides to get involved according to His will.  He will allow people to choose and he will allow people to choose evil.  Sometimes that evil is horrific.

Mind you, it is not exactly easy just to make academic, theological/philosophical statements about evil to someone is hurting.  Theological discussions like this about the presence of evil in the world are just not something you are going to have when you are talking to a bereaved person.  We only have academic philosophical and theological discussions when we are in a good spot.

When talking with the bereaved who lost someone to a violent crime, the common sense option is to have little to no such discussion about such matters.  People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care!

Our Theologies and Philosophies are Challenged by Life's Collisions

Regardless, some of us have faith and have been regularly interested in spiritual matters and can fit life's pain into where it in our theologies and philosophies.  When I had been diagnosed with a brain tumor over 16 years ago and faced the reality that I could die, I was able to choose how to think in detail given that I had a seminary education (to me the fallen nature of human bodies means some people are going to get brain tumors--me included). 

However, not all of us have the interest and time to put into theological education beyond our attendance at church.    We are usually intensely involved with the day to day affairs of life and we only stop and think about God when we have a collision course with death and tragedy.   The times of tragedy force us to usually call us to times of reflection about what we believe and how things fit together.

Evil has happened in this world, is happening in this world, and will continue to happen in this world. Most of us deal with evil and horrible bosses, neighbors, co-workers, school-mates, professors, and family members every day and it will not make the news.   Many of us think about evil people who have abused us in the past and it will never make the news.  Many of us will have to endure evil family members at family celebrations in nine days and our suffering will be discounted and brushed away by codependent family members who say "It's just them."    However, only when the evil is catastrophic does it seem to shake us up to think about it.

So Where is God? Jesus?  The Babe in the Manger?

In a somewhat abrupt closing to this post, I think the Sandy Hook School shooting two days ago in Connecticut may challenge what significance Christmas will have for you and me.  Did your expectations and views get shaken and changed because of Friday?   I think that it is okay if they were.  You are entitled to question as it is a human trait to question. 

To me God is bigger than Christmas and I pray that God will be a very real and present comfort to the people of Newtown Connecticut.