MOVING ON, OR TRYING TO

"'I AM the Alpha and the Omega,' says the Lord God Almighty, who is, who was, and who is to come." (Rev. 1:8 TEV)

If God is almighty, all-powerful, then we can trust Him. I can trust Him.

I have let myself stare too long at the years I may yet have to live. Knowing that during those years I will become increasingly old (don't we all?) and increasingly weak and incapable of doing things and enjoying life. I may become sick and frail, unable to drive or care for myself or my home. It is a future none of us want to face, let alone live through.

Jesus' brother James wrote, "Remember this: whoever turns a sinner back from his wrong ways will save that sinner's soul from death, and cause a great number of sins to be forgiven." (5:20 TEV)

To change my own feelings of grief which are leading me down the ways of despair, I must change my attitude, my beliefs about sickness, arthritis, old age, and aging, and know that I don't inherit weakness, pain, and disability, but strength, health, and the ability to do and act. Yes, my mother was weak, in pain, and--thanks to considerable incompetence on the part of some (don't get me started on that story)--disabled in the last few weeks of her life, but before that she lived for 98 full years, dying only a few days short of her 99th birthday. She was strong, healthy, and able to do most things for herself. She went up and downstairs at will, dressed and undressed herself with little help from me, made her own bed, set the table, fed herself, and cleared the table and helped me with the dishes, read the newspapers and magazines, watched TV and enjoyed playing with our cats, wrote letters and signed checks, walked around the house and around the yard, clipped bushes and pulled weeds, sat on the front porch in the good weather, and talked about old times and current events.

"Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment." (Eccl. 8:5 KJV)

I must avoid thinking about the consequences of aging and other evil things, or acting like "an old lady" as my mother warned me. My spirit is ageless, eternal. Nana in her nineties always said that she still felt like a girl of eight in her mind even though her body had aged. I didn't understand what she meant back then, but I do now. I am whole, strong, and free. My body heals, reaching always for strength and health, no matter how injured or sick I may become.

Nana always said, "The less you do, the less you can do; the more you do, the more you can do."

James was right. "Remember this."

When my mom passed away last year, someone at the wake told me that the grieving was the easy part, that dealing with the legal and financial headaches was the hard part. Though I feared they spoke the truth, I didn't really believe them. After all, I loved my mother very much. She was my best friend and in every practical sense, the only family I had. I have since learned that they were right.

December was a blur of grief, of holidays I didn't want to celebrate. January was consumed with interminable hours-long phone calls, documents to be located, papers to be filled out and mailed. February is proving to be the month of waiting for promised letters, promised checks, promised phone calls.

I am not by nature a patient person, but I'm learning that when folder after folder in the rack on my table is labeled "Awaiting ... [this, that, and the other thing]", there is nothing you can do to hurry the universe along no matter how much you want to get through this and move on.

This summer I lost three kitties. Tipsy and Colleen were run over on different days near the 4th of July. I buried the kitten sisters next to each other between the lilac and the cardinal shrub. Pinocchio died of leukemia and feline AIDS. I buried him behind the garage in his favorite sunny place. Then my mom passed away. And just when I thought I had no tears left to cry, my 13-year-old kitty, sweet Sally May, died in the kitchen one night in January.

At the end of life for all creatures, we must release them to God, not that they weren't always His and in His hands, but that the time of our stewardship, our borrowing of them, has come to an end. And while we grieve here and bury their broken bodies, we know their little spirits are running free in the long grass of heaven.

It is the same also when we must let go of human friends and family members. "The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. Even so, blessed be the name of the Lord." To paraphrase an affirmation from the Unity School of Christianity, "We release them to God's care and keeping, knowing they are being guided to their good."

Even though our hearts are breaking and our tears flow, we must remember that to God, death is just a coming home to Him, and that someday we will see our loved ones again.

RANDOMNESS

I'm using Nora Holm's The Runner's Bible this month, and today's Statement of Truth is "The Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." (James 1:17)

I know from my research that "Shadow of turning" calls up an image of a sundial. It refers to time and the passage of time."Variableness" calls up images of the clouds forming, changing, and passing. We see the sun, the moon, the stars, and then we don't. Light comes and goes. But not with God. He doesn't come and go.

He never changes.

And yet He created a physical world full of change.

"God is Spirit" (Jn.4:24) existing in a spiritual milieu, but He created a physical, material world and physical beings who can't put their hands through it, who enjoy hot tea and lemon with sugar and who love to watch the sun "rise." Even on a gray day.

He loves variety, motion, change, beauty, randomness. This God, who created all things, and who never changes, created a universe that never stands still, where every snowflake, every leaf, every person is different, unique in some way.

Even snowflakes that appear identical formed in different places in a cloud, fell in slightly different spots. One will get the sun, the other be in shade moments longer before it melts.One leaf catches sun or rain, is on a plant or a tree that receives more water or less. One gets eaten by an insect or a deer, another is the resting place of a butterfly, or ends up pressed in a child's scrapbook to be gazed upon many years later.

No two creatures--created by God--ever experience life or existence in the same exact way. Ever.

Think about it.

Is any "random" event truly random?

A bug flits randomly from my lamp. Not "randomly" to the bug. It has some "idea" in its pea-brain--to get away from the heat or light or enemy, to seek food or a mate elsewhere. It has eyes. It sees a place that might be good to rest in or on or under.

Samuel Johnson said, "Nothing in reality is governed by chance, but that the universe is under the perpetual superintendence of Him who created it; that our being is in the hands of omnipotent Goodness, by whom what appears casual to us is directed for ends ultimately kind and merciful; and that nothing can finally hurt him who debars not himself from the divine favour."

THE LOVE OF GOD

Thinking once again about the common phrase, "the love of God." You hear it as a prayer and as a curse. "Oh, for the love of God!"

But what does it really mean? English is such a rich language.

Are we speaking of God's love for me? Or of my love for God? Or both?

Both, I would say.

A PRAYER from ST. PAUL'S LETTER to THE COLOSSIANS


I often find prayers in the Psalms that become my prayers, but yesterday I found one in St. Paul's letter to the Colossians that I thought was so beautiful and so perfect I wanted to share it.


Heavenly Father, please give me a complete understanding of what you want to do in my life. Make me wise with spiritual wisdom so that the way I live will always honor and please you, and that I will continually do good, kind things for others. Help me, all the while, to learn to know you better and better.


I pray also that I will be strengthened with your glorious power so that I will have all the patience and endurance I need.


May I always be filled with your joy, always thanking you, who have enabled me to share the inheritance that belongs to your holy people who live in the light. Thank you for rescuing me from the one who rules the kingdom of darkness and for bringing me into your kingdom. Thank you for purchasing my freedom with your blood and for forgiving all my sins. Amen.


Adapted from Colossians 1: 9-14 ( New Living Translation)

Sparks of God's Glory

I am currently reading a biography about a man who was sucked into Stalin's gulag. The man and his fellow prisoners suffered terribly in a camp far above the Arctic Circle. It is a depressing story with the only glimmers of light being hopes for release that were agonizingly dragged out, only to be dashed in the end. The only release for nearly all of the prisoners came through death. The man was an atheist, as were all of the others he knew. Religion of any kind, or any hope for salvation, is missing in this darkness.

By contrast, Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie, who were also prisoners at the same time, but victims of a Nazi death camp, were devout Christians who managed to spread hope in that horrible place. Corrie said, "You may never know that Jesus is all you need, until Jesus is all you have."

And it came to me that we are all in the same situation as these prisoners.

We spread joy or pain in our own worlds to our family, friends, neighbors, and strangers by our behavior, by what we say and how we say it, by our actions--how we drive; the things we laugh at or cry over; what we do at school, at work, or in our neighborhood, for others or against them; the kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and generosity we show, especially to animals, children, and the elderly.

We spread God's love or our own lack of faith wherever we are when we share our fears and worries, our hurts and anger, or our trust in God and our belief in His love, light, and peace. If we believe this world is all there is or that God has a better place for us after death will--or should--make a difference in how we live, speak, and act.

"Again Jesus said, 'God's kingdom is like what happens when a farmer scatters seed in a field. The farmer sleeps at night and is up and around during the day. Yet the seeds keep sprouting and growing, and he doesn't understand how. It is the ground that makes the seeds sprout and grow into plants that produce grain. Then when the harvest season comes and the grain is ripe, the farmer cuts it with a sickle.' " Mark 4:26-29 (CEV)

We don't know what will happen or who will ultimately be influenced by us when we put God's truth into practice daily in our lives. "You may be the only Gospel others ever read." We are all sparks of God's perfect glory.

God Moments

A neighbor was telling me about what she calls her "God stories"--miraculous things that happen to her--and how her grandson urged her to write them down. I often have "God moments" too, and her grandson is right--if you don't write them down, you tend to forget them.

I had such a moment on March 1st. On the cover of the March issue of RBI's "Our Daily Bread," is a photo of magnificent pink azaleas blooming in Maymont Park in Richmond, Virginia. And the Bible verse below the picture reads: "For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth." Song of Solomon 2:11-12.

My reaction was, "Yeah, right!" We had plenty of snow still on the ground here and I hadn't seen a flower since last fall sometime. The sun was shining here, at least between the clouds, but flowers? You've got to be kidding.

I assume the photo was taken last year, because this is, after all, March, and I don't think that even in Virginia it would be warm enough for azaleas to have bloomed early enough to get on a magazine cover. It certainly isn't in New York State!

Later in the morning I was out back and I spotted something purple by the back door.

A tiny myrtle flower! Blooming among the green leaves and the twig and dead leaf litter of winter was my first flower of spring.

It doesn't qualify as a miracle, except by people like me, who feel that life is full of miracles--composed of miracles--most of them so small we don't even recognize them, but miracles all the same. It was definitely a "God moment."

STAY CENTERED.

"Centered in God's presence, I find peace."

My first thought is, "I wish." What does it mean to be "centered"? It sounds like something from yoga, and I'm not into yoga, although maybe I should be. Between being overwhelmed every day, I have "new normal" days when I just go nuts trying to cope with my mom's dementia.

"Centered." It brings thoughts to me of the eye of the hurricane. Or maybe the eye of a tornado. Do tornadoes have eyes? The only one I ever saw was moving too fast for me to tell.

I try to stop and think about this and not just let these thoughts bounce around in my brain.

When I am centered, I am balanced. In balance, I am steady, confident, empowered, peaceful, and strong.

Unlike a hurricane, I have to stop spinning to find my balance. I am not a top or a gyroscope. I may live in the midst of a hurricane, but I need to rest, to connect to God. Without an anchor, I just keep spinning like a kite on a string in the March wind.

I need to be grounded on a rock. There was nothing more grounded on this earth than the Cross at Calvary.

Centering does not eliminate suffering, but it allows me to stop and connect to God and to find peace in the middle of my own private hurricane.

"Centered in God's presence, I find peace." It is not the peace that the world gives.

GIFTS AND TALENTS

"We have," St. Paul says, "different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully." (Romans 12: 6-8)

For years I looked at this list and said, that's nice, but I have none of those gifts, and went on.

The other day it occurred to me that in fact I have ALL of these gifts. And so do you! So do all of us.

Do you not have the gift of showing mercy? To your children when they mess up? Your spouse when they disappoint you? Your pets? To your friends? To other people's children? To stray animals? To strangers? Do you not sometimes yield the way to someone whose car cuts you off in traffic or someone who cuts in line in front of you in the supermarket? That's showing mercy to them, but Paul is asking you to do it cheerfully, gracefully, with a smile. If you have to, remember the times you may have done the same, or the times someone did it and you suddenly recognized the person as an old friend and how your attitude changed, or imagine they have a sick child they are trying to rush home to.

Do you not have the gift of leadership? At home? At work? Almost everyone has someone looking up to them or depending on them. Even homeless people may have someone they are bringing food to or showing the way to a soup kitchen or a shelter. Paul is just telling you to work hard at it. Don't do a half-hearted job of parenting or supervising others at work.

Do you not have the gift of contributing to the needs of others? Your family? Your neighbors? Your church? Charities helping people or animals, local or far away? Do so generously.

Do you not have the gift of encouraging? Of course you do. We all can encourage others as we go through life, whether they are family members, the new employee where we work, the tired clerk or waitress, the frightened stranger who is lost, the sad-faced customer, everyone we come in contact with.

Do you not have the gift of teaching? Of course you do. You don't need to be a professional teacher to teach. You teach your children, your friends or strangers when you tell them about a new shortcut to town, your employees at work, and anyone you tell about Jesus.

Do you not have the gift of serving? Of course you do. We all serve one another in one way or another. Whether it is in housework or yardwork at home or the services we perform on the job, we need to do it cheerfully and diligently.

"Ah," you say, "but what can you do with prophesying? I am not a prophet." Not in the Biblical sense of a prophet, perhaps, but we all have the ability to look at a neighbor's kid and we've all heard ourselves say something like, "that kid's going to wind up in jail or worse if he doesn't straighten out." Or even, "that gal's going to end up in a ditch if she keeps driving like that on icy roads." We prophesy how our own kids are going to turn out, how things on the job are going to work out, how things in our country or the world are going to succeed or fail. You may be in charge of planning for a group, a business, a school, a church, or a government. We have the gift of forecasting the future based on our knowledge and experience. Paul is asking you to use it in proportion to your faith in God. Take Him into account in your planning.

We all have all the gifts we need. Let the Holy Spirit guide you in their use. We may be the only Gospel our neighbors ever read.

WILDERNESS EXPERIENCE

"At once the Spirit sent Jesus out into the desert, and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him." (Mark 1:12-13 NIV)

Reading this, I was struck by the fact that in the same way we are all sent into the deserts of our lives.

In many ways our entire lives here on Earth are desert lives, desert experiences. "Forty" is the usual Biblical expression for "many," and can refer to our whole lifespan. And while we are here, we are all subject to the devil's temptations.

Wild animals can be both beautiful and very dangerous from snow leopards to mosquitoes, from grizzly bears to bacteria. They can be our friends or our enemies. Human animals can be the most frightening and deadly of all or the best of good friends and neighbors.

And unseen by us, our guardian angels always attend us, protecting and guiding.

CLIMBING OVER THE BIG HILL AND SMALL "STUFF"
I was asked recently how I combat the frustrations of aging.

First of all I depend on Jesus! Secondly, I depend on my friends, and I have the best friends anyone could have in the whole world. Was it an accident that I found them just before my world began crumbling? I don't think so. God sends us help when we most need it.

Also, you have to be patient with yourself and flexible and recognize that you're not as strong or as quick as you used to be and make adjustments or be willing to give stuff up or do it more slowly. I can't walk as far, so I park closer to stores. I used to be able to hoe out the garage in one day. I used to be able to mow the whole yard in one day. Can't do it anymore! And there's no point killing myself over it. I get stuff done. It just takes longer. And if I can't get to stuff, I remember "Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff." In the scheme of life, you have to set priorities.

It drives me craziest that I can't remember stuff. So I've learned that I can't multitask like I used to, and I have to make notes and lists. Those notepads that charities send are wonderful for jotting little things down.

And I rejoice in the things I can do and the beauties in Nature around me as the seasons change. I laugh with the kitties and ignore their mischief for the joy they bring us. And I've gone back to the things that always gave me pleasure, but which I don't have time for anymore. So I can't spend an hour doing needlework or sit and read 125 pages a day and whip through books, but I can find 10 minutes or so. And if it means getting up at 4 a.m. to do laundry or clean out my inbox so I'll have time to watch a baseball game or play with the kittens or write a chapter or a scene, then I do it. And I get to see gorgeous sunrises as a result.

I think getting older means learning what's important and what's not and playing through pain if you don't want to sit on the bench in the dugout. There'll be plenty of time for that maybe too if we're lucky.

WILLOW TREE
Well, the neighbors' enormous one hundred foot willow tree finally came down. In our yard. Naturally. The whole darn thing. Broke right off at ground level. I tried to get a tree service to take it, or parts of it, down years ago, but they wouldn't, even though it was hanging over our shed. Willows are nasty to cut and very dangerous for tree cutters. Previous neighbors planted it years ago, but the trunk had grown in our direction, making it a "line tree." I was willing to pay half to get it down since we were the ones in danger, even though I felt it was their tree and not a line tree at all, but the new neighbors always wanted to keep the tree. And I admit that taking the branches down which overhung our yard would have taken ALL the branches off. So it stood. Leaning.

Well, folks, in the Divine miracle department the whole tree--all of it--fell neatly along between our fence and right along the side of the shed. It fills the entire space of about 25 feet in width between the fence and the shed and from the back of the yard to the front of the 70-foot long shed. Neatly. I still can't believe it. Twigs grazed the side of the shed and chipped the edge of one shingle that protruded. Didn't scratch the shed or break any windows. And left a VERY narrow path right along the side of the shed that I can walk along ducking under leafy twigs and stepping on and over broken bits of tree.

If that thing had come down on the shed, it would have crushed it completely.

It missed both of my little Bradford pears except to trim off the side branch of the one pear that had two tops and I've been trying to figure out how I was going to prune off that second top, since I don't do ladders very well. Sheered it right off at the pear's trunk. I think the lilacs along the side of the shed may be toast, but they can be replaced. And if I ever get someone to clean up the mess, I may be surprised at what survived. Lilacs are tough.

At the moment, I'm considering just fighting the poison ivy (the willow was full of it) and ignoring it. Poison ivy spray is cheaper than hiring someone to clean it up.

The tree was loaded with poison ivy that I've been fighting for years with spray since it overhung our yard and dropped berries continually which made a carpet of poison ivy in our yard. A couple of years ago I crossed our fence and cut the vine with clippers since the neighbors wouldn't do anything. One of the vines was four inches in diameter, and another was six! I had to saw them, and I was afraid they'd heal so I sawed chunks out of the vines to prevent that. But they sprout continuously, so if I don't fight it, the whole side yard will be poison ivy.

It always made me nervous even to walk past that tree in a wind. We've had a lot of its limbs come down, but the big ones always landed neatly in a line along the fence even though they weren't pointing that way while they were up in the tree, and I always considered that to be a miracle, but I never ever expected the tree to fall like it did, diagonally at that precise angle. What the tree service refused to do--especially when I whined about my Bradford pears, which they said they wouldn't be able to protect--God did very neatly! Thank you, Lord!

And hey, I don't have to mow that section of yard anymore!

POINTING A FINGER AT GOD
When I was a kid and someone would say something mean like, "You're so stupid" or "You look like a witch," the other person would usually respond with "So are you" or "Takes one to know one" or something similar. But once when we moved and I started a new school, the kids there responded differently. They would say, "I know you are, but what am I?" Frequently, the response made no sense at all, and never having heard it before, I was confused.

Finally, one of my new friends said it had to do with finger-pointing, even if no one actually was pointing a finger at anyone else, but it was just assumed. Duh. Okay. I still didn't get it until she added that when you point a finger at someone, you have your fist clenched and three fingers pointing back at yourself.

Okay, dodo here finally got it. Sort of.

The other day here was just such a perfect day. The weather was fantastic, and if summer could be this way always, I thought, it would give heaven a run for its money. The clouds were magnificent and drew my attention upwards. For some reason, I thought of the baseball players who raise their hands and point heavenward to give God the glory after they make a great play, and I did the same. Instead of just thanking God for the lovely, lovely day, I pointed skyward and said, "You are wonderful, Lord!"

And then I looked at my hand and saw the three fingers pointing back at myself. The Bible says we are fearfully and wonderfully made. I am wonderful. My body is a wonder. My mind is a wonder. That I love God is a wonder. That He loves me is a greater one.

You are wonderful, too! We are all wonderful creatures. We are all wonderful individuals. Don't ever sell yourself short. "God doesn't make junk."

You are wonderful. I know you are.

CHOICES

We always have the choice to serve God where we are, or to run and serve Him elsewhere--or not.

If we allow ourselves to be guided by God's love, we may choose to stand and fight. But sometimes circumstances overwhelm us, and like any great general we have to learn when to sound retreat. To sacrifice is not always to lose.

Sometimes we must sacrifice one thing in order to obtain something better. The good general surveys the ground and looks for a better place to defend or attack from, and so a retreat may actually be an advance in disguise.

Allowing batters to walk in baseball counts in the statistics against a pitcher, but an effective baseball manager sometimes orders his pitcher to deliberately walk one batter so that he will be facing a weaker hitter, and any decent pitcher will often ignore his "strikes to balls ratio" statistic and deliberately throw a ball rather than a strike, hoping to get the batter to "chase after it" and strike himself out.

If we choose to stand firm on our ground and "fight the good fight," perhaps even to our death, whether that death is a result of our fighting or simply the natural end of our physical life, we must believe that we are where God wants us to be, doing what God wants us to do. Only then can we draw on His strength.

To give up one's life may not involve the sacrifice of our physical bodies, as in a war or other violent confrontation. It may be simply giving up our own dreams and hopes and yielding to the needs of someone else. That someone may be an elderly parent, or a child, a husband, or a wife suffering sickness or disabilities. Or it may be someone else entirely, someone who was even formerly a stranger, but who is now our friend or beloved. People give up their lives to care for animals, as well, or for the greater good of a number of people they will never even meet, but who they hope will benefit from their research or their labor.

If we choose to run away entirely from a situation, we may discover that we have taken our problems with us or encounter a completely new set of problems previously undreamed of. And yet, we may still choose to serve God in our new life.

Sometimes we may find that we cannot physically run from a place, whether that is a hospital bed or a jail cell, but we can still choose to serve God or not in our place. The mind and the spirit are free even if the body is not.

The same is true if we retreat or move on to something we hope will be better. The choice is always ours. We are always free to choose to serve God. Or not.

TRUE PRAYER

Too often my prayers become a series of distracting thoughts, ending up going around in my own little treadmill of repetition. A prayer book introduces other things, ideas, and people to pray for and about, brings higher thoughts to my weary mind, broadens my misty horizons, and lifts my spirit above my petty burdens.

But sometimes when I try to pray, my eyes skim over the familiar words. For years I have felt guilty and tried to go back and reread (re-pray?) with limited success. And in church I couldn't do that anyway.

Last week it came to me that it didn't matter. God knows what the words are. They are more to remind me than to remind Him! And if there is something I really need to see and have sink in, He always draws my wandering attention to it, so that often I find something new I would swear I never saw or read before!

The important thing about my prayer time isn't so much the words I say or don't say, but to simply be quiet in His presence, drawing His strength and peace into my heart and mind and spirit. And if "reading" familiar prayers keeps my mind on Him, even if the meaning of the words isn't penetrating, that's the important thing.

Prayer is perhaps as much focusing on God as it is petition, thanksgiving, praise, or intercession.

RUNNING ON BATTERY POWER

This morning I just felt totally whanged out.

"Lord," I prayed, "please help me get out of my funk and into Your joy." And with that, Sally May cat hopped up on my desk and made me smile and laugh. But like a butterfly alighting on you, she doesn't stay. She paws at my mug mat and my cup of green tea and then leaps away to sit under my lamp by my computer, as if to say, "get busy with your writing or at least your e-mail."

"I'm running," I said to her, "on battery power." "Whoa! THAT's the problem," I told her. "I'm supposed to be plugged into God's power, not trying to do everything on my own."

When I picked up my NLT Bible Promise Book, I found today's verse was 2 Corinthians 3:5 "It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God." Uh-huh. I think that's what I just discovered on my own. Well, not entirely on my own. I had some help there from the Master of the Universe and from a small, elderly but feisty, red and white kitty.

A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVES
I stared at the photograph for a long time, but I couldn't tell if it was a picture of a beach with ripples of water and distant mountains seen across a lake or bay, or of a desert with ripples of sand and mountains beyond the dunes.

Only the mountains were the same.

Perspective.

Is my life, I wondered, a desert, a beautiful but land-locked lake, or a salty wide-open ocean filled with endless possibilities?

And it came to me that my words and actions will show it clearly to others, even when I am not sure myself.

What do people see in me? What do they see when they look at you?

Brother Lawrence in The Practice of the Presence of God says "If we do what we can on our parts, we shall soon see that change wrought in us which we aspire after." Easier said than done. You have to live moment by moment--"in the now"--if you are to consciously choose anything other than your habitual response. It requires patience and self-control--both of which I find in short supply! But when I do change my thoughts, things change as well. "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:2) And conversely, I've found it to be true that we can be renewed by the transforming of our minds.

BEYOND FORGIVENESS
Alexandra Stoddard has a good one today in her Grace Notes: "Don't fight back. It's better to go for a long walk than raise your blood pressure. You are in control of how you respond to the behavior of others, not how well or badly others behave." Reminds me of the song, "The Gambler"--"You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run." But what happens if you can't walk or run away?

Doctors are taught to handle difficult patients by pausing and acknowledging their own anger, listening to the negativity, and then empathizing with the person, which doesn’t mean agreeing with them, but rather offering understanding, compassion, and sympathy. We can do the same.

I think for me one of life's hardest lessons has been to know when to stand and fight and when "to accept whatever is," surrender, and get on with my life. I'm still learning.

HELPING OTHERS
Before we can help others, we first have to SEE the need. If my neighbor falls in his house, I can't know he needs help. We would know nothing about Haiti's earthquake if the media didn't show us.

Secondly, we have to UNDERSTAND the need. If my neighbor manages to hobble out of his house and stands by the road waving his hand, I may think he's just saying hello. An earthquake is obvious, but the problems caused by desertification in Africa or deforestation in South America may not be.

Thirdly, we have to KNOW what to do and BE ABLE to do it. I can call 911 for my neighbor, but how to help people in the Philippines threatened by a volcano may be beyond my ability to do more than pray for them.

But if we CAN do something, it becomes our human responsibility to DO it whether it is for our neighbor or someone halfway across the planet.