Meditating to Heal

Caring for others:

We are at a time in our lives when we must look beyond our own interests and look to the welfare of others. Jesus is a part of us, coming in the form of the poor, the sick, the disables, the rejected. It is only there that we confront him. He was and remains always on the side of those rejected by the Pharisees (think the rich and powerful).

We are faced with overwhelming deprivation in the United States; this should be a call to act in favor of those on the bottom rungs of society. WE have to act now to reduce the fate of those living in poverty. The Spirit of Truth (think God) draws us toward a much-needed greater empathy of our neighbors’ conditions, much needed is the training our minds and hearts to utilize the tools afforded to us, both on the government and non-government levels.

Reading about ALICE, (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed), my eyes were opened to the realities of trying to live in communities, such as Fredericksburg, but also all around the United States. Over half the jobs in the Fredericksburg area, requiring a high school diploma pay less than $20.00 per hour (a total of $800.00 per week, or $40,000 per year). Yet, when looking at living expenses in the area, the minimum income required for a family of four to live above poverty is over $60.000 per year (or $25.00 per hour). Making less than $25.00 per hour forces the family to eliminate one or more necessities. It is no wonder that there are so many homeless students in our area schools. Jesus opened the door to God’s Love to all people, not just the Pharisees.

The number of people who shop at The Table at St. George’s and who make livable (?) wages is surprising; but reading about the cost of living compared to the average income, it is no wonder that our needs for greater funding to keep The Table a worthy force against malnutrition continues to grow. The Table allows people to shop every week. Although I commend other food sources and their abilities and desires to assist our ALICE neighbors, I do question how some can restrict a household to shop only once every six months. Somehow, this does not acknowledge the words of Jesus when he said that what we do to the poor, we do to him.

We need to pray our existences, acknowledging the dignity of our own life and the dignity of others. We need prayer to discern how to factor this gift delegated to each of us by Jesus; we need a path bringing us back to live in a world filled with God’s undying love for all his children, particularly those in need. We must do this, not for ourselves, but to honor the lives of all God’s children.

 

The Feast of the Transfiguration

Malcolm Guite’s “A Sonnet for the Transfiguration” begins: For that one moment, ‘in and out of time’, On that one mountain . . . and ends thusly: Eclipse that glimpse of how things really are.

This makes one think about what the scene on the mountain really means. I am basically referring to Luke 9: 28-36. You can read it to see how you might interpret it. In this scene on the mountain top, Peter sees three images: Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Three very important prophets in biblical history. All were messengers from God, to whom nobody really listened until many ages later. All were spurned in their life on Earth.

Many times, the apostles lacked understanding of what Jesus said in his parables; and Jesus took the time to explain their meanings. By the time the Transfiguration occurred, the apostles were not yet commissioned, or taught, all that Jesus later conferred on them. Understanding this, could Peter have misinterpreted, or at least misidentified, the three images. (I am thinking the Trinity here.) All three figures were semi-clouded in mist, so this could easily have happened. A voice, presumably God’s, says, This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him. They kept silent? Why? Did they not understand?

Perhaps the transfiguration occurred in the minds and hearts of the apostles, not in Jesus. Guite ends with the words, as things really are. Jesus was not transfigured on the mountain; He was always the Son of God, living as the true earthly image of God. (Think about the dove coming from heaven when John baptized Jesus.) I feel that the Transfiguration occurred in the eyes of the apostles. For the first time, they truly saw Jesus as Jesus truly was . . . as he truly is.

Just something to ponder on . . .  

 

Ripples in life, as the ripples in water, are both hypnotizing and mysterious.

Like the ripples on the surface of water, my life has affected many people. The ripples are on the surface, but below the visible plane; these ripples create dynamic changes in people. We just do not always accept or see these changes. They may be far into the future.

For many years, I thought my life was a failure. As I reflect on what I did with my time, I did not, and to a certain extent, cannot accept the fact that much of my life was wasted, non-productive, and replete with failures.

In my schooling, I was not a scholar; I was not an athlete; and I was definitely not a part of the in crowd. I even failed out of college – twice. So, I joined the Marines to toughen my inner being. It did just that . . . sort of. I was not a great Marine, due to physical issues. My injuries earlier in my life kept flaring to keeping me from any true success. I was medically discharged before my unit was sent to Vietnam. Now, don’t get me wrong; I had no desire to go into combat, to kill, or be killed – or worse. Other than strengthening my fortitude, what purpose did my joining the Corps do for me, or the country? I seem to have wasted three years of my life. Pride, in itself, is no reward.

For almost thirty years, I labored as a small businessman, joining my parents’ retail business after my discharge from the Marines. I joined this business to assist my mother, when her camera salesman quit suddenly. I did not realize this at the time, but I was then trapped in this business for thirty years, due to the self-loathing of my mother and her constant threats of suicide. I left the business as a failure, broke, in debt, with only thirty years’ experience dealing with people for my efforts. This, however, prepared me for the next stage in my life.

Reflecting on this, I can now say that my long-held guilt of leaving the Marines early and the inability to turn the retail business into a profitable entity, did, in all likelihood, affect many people. I see now that in addition to giving me an understanding and compassion for others, my hiring of many young people over the years matured them in many ways. I remember one young lady, Rachel, whose only desire was to finish school, marry, and be the best mother she could be. Several years after she worked for me, she did return to share her new status as a mother. Another young employee, a boy, wanted to attend college and become a doctor. Unfortunately, I lost touch with both, but I am sure that they are very successful in whatever they are doing now; remembering that they are now both in their sixties. I am also sure that most of the others, and there were hundreds over thirty years, have been successful mature adults. Unfortunately, I have lost touch with them, and I remember few of their names and faces.

In 1993, I began my quest to becoming a teacher, by working as a swim coach for a local high school. This began when my son was still in school, I was the president of the booster club, and the swim team coach quit suddenly. For three years I labored as a coach, and a retailer. However, since 1997, after becoming a productive teacher, I did virtually everything in the school to promote the welfare and opportunities for all students. I had both boys and girls hug me for affection and thanks for how I treated them. As I have remained friends with many of them through Facebook, I continue to revel in their achievements.

Thinking about my early teaching career, I tutored a young lady, fat and on drugs, who would not conform to high school rules or society. I think we talked more about life’s successes and failures than we talked about history. She did graduate on time; I was hired as a full-time history teacher; and we parted ways. I met her years later, when she thanked me for all of the frank talks we had. She is now a history teacher in New Hampshire. One of the first students I had, when teaching in high school, was a young boy who had mild Asperger’s syndrome. He was in one of my history classes, and also asked to join the debate team I was mentoring. He is now an international banker. Another young man, who has Cerebral Palsy, has matured into a bright college student, majoring in film animation. Many of the young people I mentored are now parents in their own right and share their lives with me through Facebook.

My efforts with these students are ripples in the lives of many, as they go and share their talents with others. They are not only creating ripples on the surface, they are making waves in the lives of many.

I may at times revert to the insecure feelings I had before entering teaching, but deep inside, I know that what I have done for others is more important than any feelings of self-importance and success on my part. As I continue to teach at a local community college, I still am happy to know that I am affecting the lives of my students.

My wish now is to finish my life as a part-time English professor and a writer of inspirational literature that may or may not be shared with the general public. I still would like to be a positive influence for those around me.

I am reminded of the verses in Proverbs 17:3: The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests hearts. I believe that the only thing stopping me is the same type of ailment, magnified, that caused my early discharge from the Marines, but the Lord reached into me, and I am cured of the life-long pain that I have had from a severely injured back.

May God bless all of those I have influenced.

Last night, I attended the weekly prayer session at St. George’s; the meditative practice is called Lectio Divina. If I parse this expression: lectio means to read, to reflect, to respond; divina means divine. Together, we understand that the session is to read passages from the Bible, reflect and discuss how a certain word or phrase alters or enlivens your understanding of life, yours and those around you.

Last evening, we studied part of Psalm 119 (vs 105-112). In this passage, there is one line that really upsets my apple cart. Verse 111 reads: “I have inherited Your testimonies forever, For they are the joy of my heart.”

I meditated on one word in that verse, the word testimonies, or better yet, prayers, guidelines, or any number of other words one may use as the sermons and parables of Jesus that remain with us. This is not a message for just Christians, as it appears in our bibles; it is a message for the world to study. Jesus did not just preach to the Jews in ancient Israel, he upset the Pharisees by going outside the Jewish to include all, such as the Samaritans.

Jesus struggled for 40 days I the deserts of what we refer to as the Levant. He fought with a least three opposing forces: God, himself, and the devils within him. I present the question as to which force is the most compelling. For Jesus, or for us. His internal devils were reflections of himself maturing in his old-time society, which he rejected as a human concerned with those at the bottom. These we call temptations.

Jesus called his disciples to follow him. How can we follow him? Is it truly, or realistically, possible? I try; I meditate daily to accept Jesus’s testimonies. But I am tempted by society’s norms. My wilderness in the very society we live in today. I am physically and psychologically unable to lay down my fishing nets and give up all I have attained to live the life that Jesus did.

I play the lottery. As many know, my wife, Linda, is one of the leaders of the feeding ministry (The Table) at St. George’s. I play the lottery with the main purpose of donating enough money to allow The Table to operate with having to apply for grants. It takes many tens of thousands of dollars to continue assisting those in need. So, I play the lottery in the hopes of winning millions to assist my brothers and sisters in Fredericksburg. You would think that I could win with such a lofty objective in doing God’s work, following Jesus as best as I can. But, I have an ulterior motive also, which is to allow Linda and I to live with a mortgage and other necessary expenses. So, there we have it: I am also looking for personal gain. Obviously, I have not won the lottery. God has not reached down to award this man-made honor to me and my church. This is not what Jesus preached. He condemned the money handlers in the synagogue. There are many better ways to serve those at the bottom of society; winning the lottery is not one of his high points.

I continue struggling; we continue struggling.

I meditate on Jesus’s testimonies, daily, and they are the joy of my heart. The last line of that passage (verse 112) reads: “I have inclined my heart to perform Your statutes forever, even to the end.”

I try, which is what I think Jesus would want me to do.

 

I was in deep conversation with God this morning; actually, I was arguing with Him as usual. Even though I know I am one of His children, and I may not have advanced from the typical teenage mentality; but I know that He loves me.

I was trying to convince Him that I am not only one person; there are too many sides to my personality and my life. I am one person to my wife; one to each of my children; one to my students; and, one to those I pray with. However, I do try to shed all of these different personas, when I sit back to have my daily conversations with God.

God knows that realistically, I am merely a hollow piece of rock, much as a cave in the higher hills of an arid wasteland. When all the different layers are peeled from my personality, I am merely one of His sons, an entity that relies completely on His grace. My life is nothing without His understanding and Love. I know this deep within me, even as I surf with old-age pain, even as I argue with Him, knowing that I can never win.

At times, I am a galaxy unto myself that awaits exploration. I struggle to the depths of my soul and the heights of my imagination to understand how and why I do the things that I do. My travels through my galaxy are usually at the pace of medieval travel. When I feel as if I am travelling as a meteor, I look at my trail to see that I have only progressed, or for that matter, regressed, only a few inches. I laugh, when soaring as a meteor, I think that Don Quixote on his flea-bitten horse travels farther and faster than I do.

Most of all, as with many, no, most people, I suffer with a brokenness that only God can heal. When I was born, I was loved by my mother, my father, and my older sister. Through life, we argued, we fought, we parted in anger; but, through it all, as I look back on that one-inch travel, I see a family full of love. A love that we mortals say transcends all other love; but we are wrong. As strong as that love seems, we cannot place our eternal life on that love; doing so leaves us open to be broken. As I reflect on my life with my family and the love that saturated our very beings, it was only a transitory love; one that does not transcend the grave. My mother, my father, and my sister are no longer of my world, except within my mind. I still love them, but it is not Love, God’s Love.

Their love no longer exists in this world. It is of a different, greater word, the world that belongs to God. This is why I suffer from brokenness, why I am a rock on a dusty road, worn down by the elements; I rely on the love of others to get through life. My wife is wonderful, supporting me in everything I do; support for each other helps us travel our slow inch-by-inch journeys. When I die, or when she dies, there will be brokenness, because this love cannot surpass the grave. Only God’s Love does.

I try each day to pray, to converse with God, to argue with God. I crave understanding how I fit God’s plan. How I go through each day depends on the Love that God gives me, the Love that takes me from my brokenness, the Love that embraces me through eternity.

The realization that only God knows me, knew me before my birth, and only God will know me after I die, is not only comforting, it is supportive as I endeavor to continue glorifying God. The other realization is also shockingly comforting and very difficult to appreciate. I knew God before my birth, and I will know God after I die.

I wonder that there is no reason why I cannot achieve oneness with God now. Jesus, the Son of God, knew God on this earth. I feel as a son of God, I should endeavor to do the same. I will not be able to perform miracles, but I can comfort people in their times of trouble. I cannot forgive their sins, but I can show them how to talk with God, so that they know that He forgives them.

So, perhaps I am wrong; perhaps I am a single person. That person is a son of our heavenly Father, who wants to explore, to learn, to share my oneness with God. As Jesus did, I seek my own personal wilderness to find my Father; to argue with Him; to plead with Him; and, finally to accept my reason for being. As Matthew said: “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they see your good works, and glorify your Father, who is in heaven.”

I pray daily that I do.

 

I had a very interesting dream last night. A dream that on the surface is very disturbing, but when I looked at it thoughtfully, clarity struck me in the gut. Let me explain my dream:

I was a recruit in the military, and selected to be the acting platoon sergeant as we traveled to a combat zone. There were several wiseguys who thought one of them should have been chosen, and they decided to be total disrupters. This may have been my remembering a scene from the movie To Hell and Back, when this happened in real life to Audie Murphy. Only in my case, I decided to defend myself and get these few in line immediately; unfortunately, I chose fists to accomplish this, but that only created more problems.

I awoke this morning with a screaming headache, my dream fresh in my thoughts. My wife continually asked if I was all right. My response was that everything was perfect . . . except my dream kept intruding in my reading the news, another distressing thing in the mornings.

In finally dawned on me after reading the daily inspiration from the Henri Nouwen Society, “When someone hurts us, offends us, ignores us, or rejects us, a deep inner protest emerges.” And, “It is precisely here that we have to dig deep into our spiritual resources and find the center within us.”

My inner voice is telling me that I have to face reality. I wake up each morning reading and hearing about the murders in Washington D. C. then I read about some inane thing that a congressman says about female senators. My natural instinct is to ignore this and get on with my day, my life. Maybe God is telling me something else. Spiritually, I am an activist; in the real world, I a m a strong participant in church and local social issues, but not in politics. I cannot believe that God wants me to get politically active. We will have to talk about this, and this should be a very interesting conversation. “Oh God, what . . .

How active are you in your conversations? Are you preparing your answer to something someone said; or, are you planning a humorous retort, if you are uncomfortable? One final question: Is this listening?

All too often, I am guilty of all of the above practices. Guilty as charged!!!

I am too busy preparing my own responses, because I sometimes want others to see how deep a thinker I am; I want to show off my education. When I do this, I am a lousy conversationalist. However, when I am listening, truly listening, I am not preparing my answers. I am hearing what the others are saying, learning their ideas, their feelings, and what they think about a subject. When I do this, my first response is usually a question, a question to clarify what someone has said, or to gain more insight into his position. The result of this is a fantastic conversation; it is an unforgettable experience when two or more people are actively engaged in listening.

 Recently, I participated in a small talk-back session after our church service. The Gospel reading dealt with reaping the harvest, separating the tares (weeds) from the wheat. If you want to read it, it is the last half of Matthew 13. Being the educator that I am, I took notes during the service; my memory is not as it used to be. So, I showed up to the talk back with my notes clutched in my hand, and never looked at them. Yes, they were lying in front of me, but the conversation was very engaging. I was listening to what others were saying, getting more out of the service, because I was hearing what others, besides myself, thought about it.

 I am involved in a Lectio Divina group a church. We read short passages from the Gospels, meditate on them, then speak about what our views are and how these views control or influence our lives. Or, what influence this may have had in our pasts. We are not allowed to ask questions or to interrupt those speaking. We can refer to what someone has said when presenting our own experience or thinking, but only as a reference, not a critique. We are forced to actively listen. This is a great learning experience and great practice for me as an educator; it has aided me in my conversations in my literature classes, because I am not judging the student on his or her answer; I am listening to what my students are saying about the readings and asking questions to help them clarify their thinking, which helps them, when writing their essays.

 One final thought; each night, I meditate before going to bed. This meditation is another form of listening,listening to God. By the end of each day, enough has happened that I need to clear my mind of any negativity that may have crept into my mind. It is a fifteen to twenty-minute time of listening for God’s words. Sometimes, I am given answers to questions and problems I didn’t know I had. Other times, God has given me an idea for a prayer or a complete poem that I write down immediately. (Remember my bad member!) Most of the time, though, I am too revved up to really listen, and I just sit there, fretting over my day. This is helpful, also, because during this quiet time, when Linda has retired, I can let the day drain from my mind and then go to bed and sleep, rather than fret.

 Each day when I wake, I pledge to myself to listen!!!

 I get several emails each day that are designed to keep my 74-year-old mind active. In one day, I received three that really made me think. The good thing about these is that they allowed me to compose this entry in my mind, while driving to New Jersey for the funeral of a dear friend.

 The first was a tweet about the opening of the Episcopal Council and the words of the Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry. He spoke of the Jesus Movement. In simple terms, if we think back to the 1950s or 1970s, we remember that the Jesus Movement was begun due to the realization that the youth will not come to church on their own; the church must go out to get them.  I think we have forgotten to do this. In our rush to create a better mission for our churches, which includes outreach to those in need, we have allowed our youth and young adults to slip between the cracks.

 We are so involved in assuring that our children get a good college education, designed so that they can get a well-paying job, that we forgot to introduce our children to things that matter most. My thought is not to diminish this effort for success, but to supplement it. We have not introduced a strong faith to our children. Jesus commissioned his disciples to go into the world to bring the good news to all of the people, to go into the word to share the Good News of God and Jesus Christ. We are too enveloped in the desire to be money rich that we forget the truly important goals in our lives. We also were trained to succeed, sometimes disregarding the spiritual costs.

 The second thought-provoker of the day was the email offering the Bible passage of the day to assist in my meditation. From Psalms 105 “Sing to God; sing praises to the Lord; dwell on all his wondrous works!” I wondered what the message from God was for me this day. Two thoughts with identical messages were blaring at me from my computer. I am not one to stand on a corner and shout out my religion to the world; nor, am I one to proselytize every chance I get.

 When I was a senior in high school in New Jersey, my Sunday School teacher asked the four boys in my class to select a passage from the Bible and adopt is as a code to live by. After much agony, and a great deal of procrastination, I selected the passage after the Sermon on The Mount in Matthew 5: ^“You are the light of the world. A city on top of a hill can’t be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they put it on top of a lampstand, and it shines on all who are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before people, so they can see the good things you do and praise your Father who is in heaven.” The final verse is the one of most importance to me. I have always tried to treat people as my closest brothers and sisters:

 I believe that my second career in education is perfect for me to perform this promise. With the two emails of the day and my adherence to Matthew 5:16, I know that God was telling me to increase my efforts to do good things for people. And so, I attended the funeral, met people I have not seen in years, met new people, and doubled-down on my efforts to treat them as close family. Jesus reminds us that the second greatest commandment it to love people as we love ourselves. That is quite a mission for a life. That is a very difficult mission in life. Instead of swearing at the driver who cut us off on the highway, we have to accept him as a child of god. The same for the person pushing her shopping cart filled with her life, wearing a heavy parka on a 90-degree day. She is a child a God in need, yet we pass her by shaking our heads.

 So, what about the third email: this came from Dictionary.com. I subscribe to their word of the day. That word was paroxysm: an episode of acute awareness. My paroxysmal moment occurred in the sanctuary several weeks ago, when I was engulfed in a euphoric aura of chills and perspiration at the same time. I felt a three-decades long burden of grief, anger, and severe back pain lift from my body, allowing me to stand up straight for the first time in several months. The almost permanent slope to my shoulders virtually disappeared. The next morning when I awoke, I no longer felt the need to walk with the canes that had been by permanent companions for years.

 Wondrous is the word I use to describe the mental progress I investigated while driving to the funeral in New Jersey. Refreshing! Meditative! Perplexing! I don’t pretend to understand my paroxysmal moment. It will take a while. This paroxysmal moment has been several months in length; but that is less than a split second of God’s time.

 Tell me your paroxysmal moment. I would love to hear from you.

 Russ Carter, July 21, 2017

 

 

Brother James Koester of the Society of St. John the Evangelist says: ”One of the great struggles of contemporary North America is the decay of community. We see it in our inner cities, and we see it in our suburban neighborhoods. People have stopped taking responsibility for one another because we no longer know each other. We no longer belong to one another. We no longer live in communion with one another.”

I recently wrote about the heart and compassion. What brother James says above is one of the cancers on our society. When I was a young lad growing in Newark and East Orange New Jersey, I lived in a neighborhood that was death to us young boys, who ran around getting in trouble. I remember a day that four of us were walking home from the local playground, and we passed a storefront with apartments upstairs; the building was being razed to make room for a mini-shopping center that would eventually cover the entire block. Most of the second floor was already demolished. This being a Sunday afternoon, there was nobody working on the building; there were many, and I mean many, broken bricks lying about.

What were we to do; this is obviously one of those instances when reason goes jet-propelled out of the window. We all took turns throwing bricks through the still mostly intact plate-glass windows of the defunct drug store. For the next ten minutes, all you heard was the impact of the bricks and the shattering of the glass. It was the most enlightening afternoon for the four of us. That is . . . until we heard sirens in the distance.

Well, the police were not as attuned to all the hiding places and escape routes in our neighborhood; needless to say, not one of us was caught by the local dragnet. That is . . . Until we got home.

By the time I walked in the back door of our third-floor apartment, my mother was standing there with her wooden spoon. If you were raised in the 1950s, you knew what the wooden spoon was for. My mother had the biggest, non-breakable wooden spoon on planet Earth.

When I joined the Marines in 1963, my drill instructor asked us why we joined the toughest military branch. When it was my turn, I said it was to avoid my mother and her wooden spoon. My drill instructor got nose-to-nose with me, much like the scene in Full Metal Jacket, and yelled, (as if I couldn’t hear him, standing this close), “Are you trying to tell me that your mother is tougher than the Marines? Me? Your drill instructor and father for the next fourteen weeks?” Not wanting to lie to him, I of course said, “Yes, Sir!” at the top pf my lungs. That was my first corporal correction in the Corps. Fourteen weeks later, while getting on the bus for Camp LeJeune, he pulled me out of line and asked, again nose to nose, but not as loud, “Private First-Class Carter, do you still think your mother is tougher than me?” I, of course, said, again at the top of my voice, “Yes, Sargent.” He booted me in the hind quarters and told me to get on the bus.

Well, my mother greeted me with the wooden spoon clutched firmly in both hands and started swinging.

If you grew up in the inner city in the 1940s or 1959s, you will understand that we had what I refer to as a front stoop neighborhood. Without air conditioning, everyone got out of their hot, stuffy apartments sitting on their front stoops. Everybody knew everybody’s business. It was a very close-knit, family-oriented community, one in which everyone looked out for everyone’s benefit. This unfortunately included any type of trouble that the young boys caused. Most days, our misdeeds were known to our families before we got home.

Ultimately, we all were driven to the local police department, where we confessed our crimes, and were given a sharp slap on our wrists and told to never do this again. Thinking back, all of the policemen were trying to conceal smiles. I am sure they were thinking of their own days on the streets as early teenagers; and, they also noticed that all four of us were rubbing our very sore rear cheeks.

Brother James is correct; we have isolated our lives behind closed doors in very comfortable air conditioning. This has reduced the vitality of our neighborhoods and created a sense of abject fear within us . . .all. We never locked our doors in the 1950s; now we have two locks on all doors and even alarm systems to protect our belongings.

What we have not protected is the closeness we have lost with our neighbors, other than a quick wave hello as we hop in our SUVs and head to our air-conditioned offices.

Recently, an Australian woman, having emigrated to the United States to marry, was shot by the police after calling 911 on what she thought was a woman being raped. A young woman trying to be caring towards another, and she is killed by the police. This will encourage people all over the country to stay inside their fortress homes and ignore what is happening to others on the streets of our cities.

I yearn and cry for the community we have lost in this country. I also grieve because I know that it may never return.

God help us, Brother James. Our communion is lost . . . forever?

 

You can’t force the heart to love, or for that matter, even to care about others. It is a wonder how often we try, how often our friends are critical when we seem complacent or worse, to ignore, those around us. Unfortunately, for us, compassion is something that we must learn.

What a terrible way to begin a blog, or a thought, especially one that others will read. Let me explain. Linda and I are sitting watching old reruns of the original HBO special Sex and the City. Funny! Shocking at times! Open!

We cannot force ourselves to fall in love. I remember when dating, there were times I thought I was in love, only to have misjudged not only me, but my date. Don’t get me wrong: I only proposed to one woman, and she accepted. That was over 50 years ago, and we are still living a life of true love.

Let me tell you a true story. We dated for a while back in high school, but it was not successful. While still in college, Linda was dating my best friend, Tom. Tom and Linda introduced me to a friend of hers in college, Nancy. Nancy and I were both fun lovers who dated, but never really hit it off; it was just one fun date after another, full of laughs. On one double date, I was arguing with Nancy, and Tom was arguing with Linda. Someone (I think it was Tom) suggested that we switch, just for that evening. It seemed like a great solution for the problems of that evening. To make a long story, short, I married Linda, and Tom and Nancy also married a year later. That was 50 years ago. We have given our hearts to our soul mates, forever.

But what about compassion. I said that we must learn compassion. I first wrote, but changed it: Compassion is something that we must earn. That sounded so right . . . originally. We don’t have to earn compassion; it is given to us freely by God. We just have to learn how to accept it, and how to feel it. We learn how to accept this gift from God, by giving it away. When we meet a person, or a family, who is going through hard times, we must be able to offer something, even if something is just understanding and consideration. We also can pray for those who are in desperate need for God’s love. We must learn to do automatically. Without thinking! This must be an immediate response.

We do, however, have to open our souls to allow God to enter our very beings to accept His compassion and learn to give it away. This is not as easy as it seems. Learning compassion is a slow process that we absorb almost like osmosis. It must seep into our very nature and develop it voice, the voice of God, within us. It has to become a core part of our being. If it is not, it will seem dishonest, and the people who need it will see the falseness behind our words and actions.

Just as God brings two people together to form a permanent bond of love, He also brings people into our lives who are in need of his Love and Compassion. We share this compassion because we all are his children.