Making Life Choices

1. Is this task absolutely necessary to keep my life afloat?

2. Does this task buoy me up emotionally?

~ Martha Beck

Forgiveness

following quotes on forgiveness are from Rev. Ed Bacon:

In studying the great spiritual teachers over the years, it has been clear to me that forgiveness is essential to a healthy life. Jesus harps on forgiveness repeatedly. The great psychotherapist Dr. Carl Simonton claimed that the first characteristic in people who are especially vulnerable to disease is a strong tendency to hold resentment and marked inability to forgive.

"It is time now for you to be an agent of the power of forgiveness."
~ Rev. Ed Bacon

Last year, I interviewed author Connie Domino about her book The Law of Forgiveness on Oprah's Soul Series radio show. ... After reading and following the advice of The Law of Forgiveness, a friend said he made a list of those who had offended him over the years and then forgave them. He wrote me, "I woke up the next morning feeling 100 pounds lighter!"
...
Connie Domino's central argument is that you do not have to meet with the person you are forgiving. You don't have to begin to like them. Forgiveness doesn't mean you have to forget what they did to you. You don't even have to let down your boundaries protecting yourself from being hurt again by that person.
But something very deep within you changes. You will feel a removal of impediments that the state of unforgiveness builds up within you— "boulders" as it were within your personal flow of energy. Unforgiveness blocks your attempts to achieve your goals and dreams. However, once you forgive those who have hurt you in the past, you are freer to attain your life's goals and dreams.

One of the most dramatic examples in history is the role that forgiveness played in the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. President Mandela truly believes forgiveness is one of the most powerful instruments in the world. Immediately after winning the election in South Africa, he invited his former wardens from Robben Island where he was imprisoned for almost 28 years to be his honored guests at his inauguration. He believes that his forgiveness of his enemies helped his nation begin to recover from the bleak days of Apartheid.

Mandela appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu to lead the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Archbishop Tutu wrote a groundbreaking book about his philosophy of forgiveness in which he argued that for everyone there is no future without forgiveness.

The Rev. Ed Bacon is the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California.
Oprah.com on Wednesday, December 29, 2010 ©
http://www.oprah.com/spirit/How-to-Forgive-Rev-Ed-Bacon/

"Prisoners of Hope"

quotes on hope from Rev. Ed Bacon:

"The world of tomorrow belongs to those who give it the greatest hope."
~ Teilhard de Chardin

"It is not the way we deal with our human situation that is the basis for hope...hope is the basis for how we deal with our human situation."
~ Arden K. Barden

In his last Christmas Eve sermon, Martin Luther King Jr. preached about his dream having been turned into a nightmare in the church bombing in Birmingham, the increase in poverty during his lifetime and the war in Vietnam, which was then escalating.
Then he said: "Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close tonight by saying I still have a dream, because you know, you cannot give up on life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Christmas Sermon on Peace," The Trumpet of Conscience, p.76

"There are no hopeless situations. There are only people who think hopelessly."
~ Windred Newman

"Everything that is done in this world is done by hope."
~ Martin Luther

Cornel West in his wonderful book on the moral obligations of living in a democratic society, wrote: "To be part of the democratic tradition is to be a prisoner of hope. And you cannot be a prisoner of hope without engaging in a form of struggle in the present moment that keeps the best of the past alive. [Whether that struggle is a personal struggle with yourself, an interpersonal struggle with your friends, colleagues, or family members, or a struggle at the office, or a struggle on the political level.] To engage in that struggle means that one is always willing to acknowledge that there is no triumph just around the corner, but that you persist because you believe it is right and just and moral to persist. As T.S. Eliot said, 'Ours is in the trying. The rest is not our business.'"
~ Cornel West, "The Moral Obligations of Living in a Democratic Society," The Good Citizen, p. 12

In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela wrote: "I never lost hope that this great transformation would occur. ...I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there was mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going. Human goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished."
~ Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 615

The second thing I have learned about people who give others hope is this: there is this sense in them that "the good" will prevail in time, no matter what. Desmond Tutu calls it his belief that the universe is moral; he reminds us of all the bloody tyrants whose regimes inevitably bit the dust. Dr. King spoke about the arc of the universe bending toward justice. The good will always win in time.
~ Rev. Ed Bacon

Rebecca Solnit says that hope is not "like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. ... Hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope shoves you out the door. ... Action is impossible without hope."
~ Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

What is the hope for which God created you to bring to your world, to your family, to your business, to your friendships? Is it to teach a child in the hospital his or her nouns and adverbs, or is it to do your part to bring global peace? Whatever it is, be a bringer of hope. You will thereby be your true self—-the person God made you to be.
~ Rev. Ed Bacon

The Rev. Ed Bacon is a guest host for the Oprah's Soul Series radio show. He is also the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California.
http://www.oprah.com/spirit/The-Power-of-Hope-Saves-Lives-Rev-Ed-Bacon/

Teacher in the Burn Unit

When I think of hope, I think of this story about a retired schoolteacher who volunteered to visit and teach young children at a large hospital.

One day, the phone rang and she received her first assignment as a new volunteer. On the other end of the line was the classroom teacher of a young boy who had been hospitalized and needed tutoring during his stay in the hospital. The volunteer teacher took down the name of the boy and his hospital room number and was told by his classroom teacher that this boy had been studying nouns and adverbs in his class before he was hospitalized.

It was not until the visiting teacher got just outside the boy's hospital room that she realized he was a patient in the hospital's burn unit. She was prepared to teach English grammar, but she was not prepared to witness the horrible look and smell of badly burned human flesh. She was not prepared to see a young boy in great pain either. Everything around her made her want to hold her nose, to turn around and to leave faster than she came.

But something inside her kept her from walking away, so she clumsily stammered over to his bedside and said simply: "I'm the hospital teacher. Your schoolteacher asked me to help you with your nouns and adverbs," and she began to teach.

The next morning when she came to work with the boy, a nurse from the burn unit rushed up to her and asked her, "What did you do to that boy?"

The teacher began to apologize profusely, but before she could finish, the nurse interrupted her. "You don't understand. We've been really worried about him and his condition has been deteriorating over the past few days, because he had completely given up hope. But ever since you were here with him yesterday, his whole attitude has changed and he's fighting back and responding to treatment. It's as though he decided to live! What did you do?"

When the nurse later questioned the little boy, he said, "I figured I was doomed—that I was gonna die—until I saw that teacher." And as a tear began to run down his little face, he finished: "But when I saw that teacher, I realized that they wouldn't send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy...would they?"

Do you hear the angels singing?

quote from www.saintjameswestminster.ca/sermons/070610.pdf

Diane Komp is a pediatric oncologist, that is, she treats children who have cancer. A highly trained physician, she used to be an agnostic. That was before Anna died.
Anna was a little girl who had leukemia, in the days when recovery was rare. As death came close, her parents, the hospital chaplain, and Dr. Komp gathered at her bedside.
“Before she died,” Dr. Komp writes, “Anna mustered the final energy to sit up in her hospital bed and say, ‘The angels, they’re so beautiful, Mommy; can you see them? Do you hear them singing? They’re so beautiful, Mommy.’ And then she lay back on her pillow and died.”
The chaplain, who was uncomfortable with all this, left quickly, leaving the agnostic Dr. Komp to help these grieving parents.
What she remembers is that Anna’s parents were deeply comforted by what had happened, “as if they had been given the most precious gift in the world”.
Together, she says, we contemplated a spiritual mystery that transcended our understanding and experience.”
Diane Komp was an agnostic no more.

a mourning hut at the outskirts

quote from www.stpetersrwc.org/sermons/Sermon_6_10_07.pdf

It was once a custom in Russian villages, at a time when many children did not survive infancy, to have a mourning hut at the outskirts of every town. All women who lost children were sent to live in that hut for a month of solitude and grief.

At the end of the month, the hut was set on fire. The woman inside had to decide whether to live or die. If she came out of the burning hut, she was prepared to live, and she then rebuilt the hut for the next mourner.

As harsh as the practice may sound to us, it provided a graphic picture of the necessity we confront to decide to move out of the despair we find ourselves in when we are dealing with grief. That’s what those who have gone on must want for us who are left behind. They must want us to pick up our lives and move on with the conviction that the God who loves us also loves them.

God is not the God of the dead, Jesus once noted, but of the living. That means that those we love are still living with God. If we believe that, we have no choice. We must move on toward God-filled living again.

“I ain’t never seen anything like that before"

You may know the story of a young minister who was asked by a funeral director to hold a graveside service for a homeless man who had died while traveling through the area. The service was to be held at a new cemetery way back in the country. This man would be the first person laid to rest there.
As he was not familiar with the back woods area, the young minister soon became quite lost and finally arrived over an hour late. He saw the backhoe by the grave and noticed that the crew was eating lunch under a nearby tree, but the hearse was nowhere in sight.
He apologized to the workers for his tardiness, and stepped to the side of the open grave, where he saw the vault lid already in place. The young preacher assured the vault crew he would not hold them long, but this was the proper thing to do. The workers gathered around still eating their lunch. The young preacher poured out his heart and soul.
As he preached the workers began to say “Amen,” “Praise the Lord,” and “Glory Hallelujah.” The young preacher preached and preached like he’d never preached before, from Genesis all the way through Revelation.
He closed the lengthy service at last with a prayer and began to walk toward the car. He felt he had done his duty for the homeless man, and that the crew would leave with a renewed sense of purpose and dedication, in spite of his tardiness.
As he was opening the door and taking off his coat, the minister overheard one of the workers saying to another, “I ain’t never seen anything like that before . . . and I been putting in septic tanks for over twenty years.”

the future waiting to be born in you

"You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth, for the the hour of the new clarity."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Only Jesus

quote from David E. Leininger, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

An anonymous author made this striking comparison: "Socrates taught for 40 years, Plato for 50, Aristotle for 40, and Jesus for only 3. Yet the influence of Christ's 3-year ministry infinitely transcends the impact left by the combined 130 years of teaching from these men, who were among the greatest philosophers of all antiquity.

Jesus painted no pictures yet some of the finest paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci received their inspiration from him. Jesus wrote no poetry but Dante, Milton, and scores of the world's greatest poets were inspired by him. Jesus composed no music still Haydn, Handel, Beethoven, Bach, and Mendelssohn reached their highest perfection of melody in the hymns, symphonies, and oratorios they composed in his praise. Every sphere of human greatness has been enriched by this humble Carpenter of Nazareth.

His unique contribution to humanity is the salvation of the soul! Philosophy could not accomplish that. Nor art. Nor literature. Nor music. Only Jesus Christ can break the enslaving chains of sin. He alone can speak peace to the human heart, strengthen the weak, and give life to those who are spiritually dead."

Did Adam and Eve Have Children?

On one late night talk show, a panel of three university students were asked questions to test their intelligence. The questions ranged from naming famous politicians to pieces of art. Then the question was raised, "What were the names of Adam and Eve's children?" All of the students were silent. One girl finally responded, "Um, well, I didn't even know they had children."

~ Jennifer Scott, Carol Stream, Illinois

Prayer - like the anchor of a ship

Taizé - Dorotheus of Gaza (Sixth Century) Humility and Communion
quoted from http://www.taize.fr/en_article5234.html, underlining added

Barsanuphius: “Like the anchor of a ship, so will the prayer of those who are here with you be for you.”

The Letter from Calcutta quotes this text from Dorotheus of Gaza on page 4:

“Imagine that the world is a circle, that God is the center, and that the radii are the different ways human beings live. When those who wish to come closer to God walk towards the center of the circle, they come closer to one another at the same time as to God. The closer they come to God, the closer they come to one another. And the closer they come to one another, the closer they come to God.” (Instructions VI.)

Son of a wealthy family, very cultivated, so enamored of reading that he brought his library to the monastery, as a young man Dorotheus entered the community of Abba Serid near Gaza in Palestine. He became the spiritual son of Barsanuphius and John, two contemplatives known for the depth of their correspondence. These “great old men,” as they are called in the monastic tradition, moderated his absolute desire for contemplation and for this purpose suggested that he build a hospital for ill or elderly monks. The experience led him gradually to leave behind his properties, his books, his rich garments. He became the head nurse of the hospital built and paid for by his family.

His correspondence with Barsanuphius is famous for the “contract” which the two concluded: Barsanuphius would take Dorotheus’ sins upon himself (he suffered from an emotional life he had trouble controlling) on the condition that Dorotheus keep from pride, malicious gossip and needless words. In a moment of doubt, when he was thinking of leaving the monastery, he received these words of Barsanuphius which enlightened him: “Like the anchor of a ship, so will the prayer of those who are here with you be for you.” From these difficulties a strong attraction for the common life would be born, and the assurance that the prayer of others can support a vocation for one’s entire lifetime.

He would remember how sensitively these two “old men” accompanied him when, after their death, he founded his own community a few miles from his first monastery. For those who joined him there, he wrote down the “Instructions” that have come down to us. Characterized by a realistic outlook that does not ask for the impossible, he proposed a life made up of peaceful self-renunciation, with no excesses and resolutely communal.

For him, the community forms a true body where each member exercises a particular function. A monk’s solitude does not imply isolation. He wrote: “We should do what is said of Abba Anthony: he gathered and kept the good he saw in each of those he went to visit—from one, gentleness, from another, humility, from still another, the love of solitude. In this way he had all the qualities of each person in himself. That is what we should do, too, and visit one another for this purpose.” (Letter 1, 181.)

Dorotheus inserted into the wisdom of the desert a significant contribution of pagan wisdom. He insisted in particular on the role of personal conscience, a divine spark in every person, and defined virtue in the fashion of Aristotle as “the middle-ground between excess and lack”.

Dorotheus emphasized “keeping the commandments”, the only thing able to bring the grace received in baptism to the roots of evil in us, and on “openness of heart” to the man or woman who accompanies us. He especially condemned monastic pride, ascetical competition among monks, and placed humility at the summit of the spiritual life.

The advice he gave his monks to resist temptations without rigidity, but instead with calm and gentleness, still remains fully relevant today. At a time when many feel paralyzed by the fear of failure or doubt, these encouraging words of Dorotheus need to be heard again: “At the time of trial, remain patient, pray and do not try to conquer the thoughts that come from the tempter by human reasoning. Abba Peomen knew this, and stated that the advice ‘do not worry about tomorrow’ (Matthew 6:34) was meant for someone being tempted. Convinced that this is true, abandon your own thoughts, however good they may be, and keep a firm hope in God ‘who can do infinitely more than what we ask or think’ (Ephesians 3:20).” (Letter 8, 193.)

Last updated: 4 October 2007

Joy in Life

from The Bucket List movie:
Carter Chambers: [to Edward, of the two questions asked of the dead by the Egyptian gods at the entrance to heaven]:
"Have you found joy in your life?"
"Has your life brought joy to others?"

Proper apologies have three parts

from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

Be willing to apologize. Proper apologies have three parts:

1 ) What I did was wrong.

2 ) I’m sorry that I hurt you.

3 ) How do I make it better?

It’s the third part that people tend to forget…. Apologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself.

~ Randy Pausch ( 1960-2008 )

Dr Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture - quotes

following is copied from http://teamrich.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/pausch-last-lecture/

Quotable Quotes from Dr Randy Pausch’s Last Public Lecture for those who want a quick review of the lecture:

■ “Don’t Complain, Just Work Harder.”
■ “It is not about Achieving your Dreams but Living your Life. If you lead your Life the right way, the Karma will take care of itself, the Dreams will come to you. “
■ “Never underestimate the importance of having Fun. I’m dying and I’m having Fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day, because there’s no other way to play it.”
■ “We can’t change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I’m not as depressed as you think I should be, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
■ “Brick walls are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop people who don’t want it badly enough.”
■ “No one is pure evil. Find the Best in everybody…. Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you. It might even take years, but people will show you their Good side. Just keep waiting.”
■ “Experience is what you get when you Didn’t get what you Wanted.”
■ “Never lose the child-like Wonder. It’s just too important. It’s what Drives us. Help others.”
■ “How do you get people to help you? You can’t get there alone. People have to help you and I do believe in karma. I believe in paybacks. You get people to help you by telling the Truth. Being earnest. I’ll take an earnest person over a hip person any day, because hip is short term. Earnest is long term.”
■ “Show gratitude. Gratitude is a simple and powerful thing.”
■ “Having Fun for me is like a fish talking about the importance of water. I don’t know how it is like not to have Fun… I will keep having Fun everyday I have left.”
■ “It is Important to have Specific Childhood Dreams.”
He wanted to play football in the NFL; he wanted to write an article for the √World Book Encyclopedia; he wanted to be Captain Kirk from “Star Trek”; and he wanted to work for the √Disney Co. He also wanted to experience the √Weightlessness of Zero Gravity;
However, Randy, as a kid, knew that he did not have the necessary physical prerequisites to be an astronaut. So he focussed on the dream of being able to float in zero gravity. He got his wish when he and his students earned the privilege to use the KC-135 (also known as the “vomit comet”) – a modified Boeing 707 four-engine turbojet that NASA uses to simulate conditions of weightlessness.

■ “Be Good at Something; it makes you Valuable.”
■ “I’m sorry I won’t be around to raise my kids. It makes me very sad but I can’t change that fact, so I did everything I could with the time I have and the time I had to help other people.”
Pausch recently took his 5-year-old son to Walt Disney World to swim with the dolphins. As his oldest child, the boy will be the only one who may have clear memories of his father.

■ “I’ve never understood pity and self-pity as an emotion. We have a finite amount of time. Whether short or long, it doesn’t matter. Life is to be lived.”
■ “If someone rides on you for 2 hours, you know they care for you” (on his experiences in baseball training)
■ “To be cliché, death is a part of life and it’s going to happen to all of us. I have the blessing of getting a little bit of advance notice and I am able to optimize my use of time down the home stretch.”
■ If you want to achieve your dreams, you better learn to work and play well with others. Tell the Truth. That means you got to live with integrity.
■ A good apology has three parts:
1. “I’m sorry”;
2. “It was my fault” and
3. “How do I make it right”. The last part tells about your sincerity.
■ On Education: “Mark Twain says, “Don’t let your schooling get in the way of your education.” I always tell my students that they should spend their time in whatever way helps them learn. I’m perfectly happy if they cut my class because they were doing something that was a better use of their time” – Time, 10 April 2008.

Dr Pausch is a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction and Design at the Carnegie Melon University (CMU). He has done consulting work for Disney and Google, written over 70 books and is the creator of the Alice Interactive Computing Program – which allows students to easily create 3-D animations. It had one million downloads in the past year, and usage is expected to soar.

Without justice, there can be no peace

“Without justice, there can be no peace. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL II
FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE
WORLD DAY OF PEACE
1 JANUARY 2002

NO PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE
NO JUSTICE WITHOUT FORGIVENESS

The World Day of Peace this year is being celebrated in the shadow of the dramatic events of 11 September last. On that day, a terrible crime was committed: in a few brief hours thousands of innocent people of many ethnic backgrounds were slaughtered. Since then, people throughout the world have felt a profound personal vulnerability and a new fear for the future. Addressing this state of mind, the Church testifies to her hope, based on the conviction that evil, the mysterium iniquitatis, does not have the final word in human affairs. The history of salvation, narrated in Sacred Scripture, sheds clear light on the entire history of the world and shows us that human events are always accompanied by the merciful Providence of God, who knows how to touch even the most hardened of hearts and bring good fruits even from what seems utterly barren soil.
...
The enormous suffering of peoples and individuals, even among my own friends and acquaintances, caused by Nazi and Communist totalitarianism, has never been far from my thoughts and prayers. I have often paused to reflect on the persistent question: how do we restore the moral and social order subjected to such horrific violence? My reasoned conviction, confirmed in turn by biblical revelation, is that the shattered order cannot be fully restored except by a response that combines justice with forgiveness. The pillars of true peace are justice and that form of love which is forgiveness.
...
But in the present circumstances, how can we speak of justice and forgiveness as the source and condition of peace? We can and we must, no matter how difficult this may be; a difficulty which often comes from thinking that justice and forgiveness are irreconcilable. But forgiveness is the opposite of resentment and revenge, not of justice. In fact, true peace is “the work of justice” (Is 32:17).
...
For more than fifteen hundred years, the Catholic Church has repeated the teaching of Saint Augustine of Hippo on this point. He reminds us that the peace which can and must be built in this world is the peace of right order—tranquillitas ordinis, the tranquillity of order (cf. De Civitate Dei, 19,13).

True peace therefore is the fruit of justice, that moral virtue and legal guarantee which ensures full respect for rights and responsibilities, and the just distribution of benefits and burdens. But because human justice is always fragile and imperfect, subject as it is to the limitations and egoism of individuals and groups, it must include and, as it were, be completed by the forgiveness which heals and rebuilds troubled human relations from their foundations. This is true in circumstances great and small, at the personal level or on a wider, even international scale. Forgiveness is in no way opposed to justice, as if to forgive meant to overlook the need to right the wrong done. It is rather the fullness of justice, leading to that tranquillity of order which is much more than a fragile and temporary cessation of hostilities, involving as it does the deepest healing of the wounds which fester in human hearts. Justice and forgiveness are both essential to such healing.
...
Forgiveness is above all a personal choice, a decision of the heart to go against the natural instinct to pay back evil with evil. The measure of such a decision is the love of God who draws us to himself in spite of our sin. It has its perfect exemplar in the forgiveness of Christ, who on the Cross prayed: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34).
...
No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness: this is what in this Message I wish to say to believers and non-believers alike, to all men and women of good will who are concerned for the good of the human family and for its future.

No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness: this is what I wish to say to those responsible for the future of the human community, entreating them to be guided in their weighty and difficult decisions by the light of man's true good, always with a view to the common good.

No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness: I shall not tire of repeating this warning to those who, for one reason or another, nourish feelings of hatred, a desire for revenge or the will to destroy.

On this World Day of Peace, may a more intense prayer rise from the hearts of all believers for the victims of terrorism, for their families so tragically stricken, for all the peoples who continue to be hurt and convulsed by terrorism and war. May the light of our prayer extend even to those who gravely offend God and man by these pitiless acts, that they may look into their hearts, see the evil of what they do, abandon all violent intentions, and seek forgiveness. In these troubled times, may the whole human family find true and lasting peace, born of the marriage of justice and mercy!

From the Vatican, 8 December 2001
JOHN

Time

"Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. And once you've lost it, you can never get it back."

~ author unknown