Look Forward and Up, not Back

This is the first day of the new year and I am promising myself to look forward and up, and not back.

I don’t make resolutions, so I don’t think my decision can qualify as such, but it is a decision, a decision which will be very difficult to do, I might add, but it is necessary. I have to look forward and up because if I don’t, I will get stuck in the past.

What I want most of all is for my life and my work to make a difference, even now, though I am not a spring chicken! I still believe that miracles happen, no matter one’s age. I still believe there is talent and are gifts inside me I have yet to birth. I cannot afford to get stuck.

Iyanla Vanzant has said that in order to grow, people have to “do the work.” She wrote, in her New Year’s message, “Do not be a slave to what “used to be” be open and willing to be do a new thing in a new way. It about a new level so STEP UP with your head up!” Moving forward and up means looking in, which is never pleasant, and yet, doing the work needed to keep our focus where it needs to be involves looking in and seeing what is there, not what we wish were there. It is, frankly, a “yucky” exercise, this looking in, but after the yuck comes release from something that has kept us from being our true, authentic and gifted selves.

What I want is, in spite of my weaknesses and foibles, to make a difference for somebody. I can give something, some part of myself, to someone who is struggling, who is sad or lost. I can share what I have and add something to someone else’s life. I am fairly reclusive, but I can ditch some of that and share what I have been given by God.

As I write this, I am thinking about how many people are struggling on this, the first day of a new year. I am struggling, but my struggle is nothing compared to what others are going through. I have a friend whose son is critically ill; he was in and out of the hospital so many times last month that I wondered how my friend was holding on. Yesterday she called and said he was in the hospital again …on the eve of a New Year. She cried. I cried with her. She said, “I so wanted him NOT to be in the hospital on New Year’s Eve.” I can share some of myself with her.

I have another friend who lost her mother three weeks ago…and her mother last week. I have had a lot of loss in my life. My mother, father and sister have died. As a pastor, I have lost so many people I loved. I can share with my friend, who, at 52, had never lost anyone close.

I think it was Deepak Chopra who wrote that there are no bad experiences; what we call “bad” are really life lessons. And I have learned that we waste good lesson time if we do not study what happened, do the dreaded “look inside” exercise, and learn the lesson or lessons we were supposed to learn. Another friend of mine calls the experiences that come from bad times “blessons.” A blessing and a lesson, rolled into one. Looking at my own struggles as “blessons” helps them to be bearable, and encourages me to get on with my life, to look up and forward …and not back.

My friend with the sick son sits today in a hospital where she sat all night at his bedside. She is afraid to leave. I am sort of afraid to go to her, because I don’t want to see her hurt …and yet, part of looking forward and up is about seeing who’s out there who can use what I have. I have lots of compassion. I can share that.,

I will be writing out my goals, personal and professional, for 2013 later today. Part of the plan is to look up and forward. In everything I do, I will have to make sure those two things are being done. I am going to force myself not to look back. I am going to leave what’s behind …”back there,” take my blessons, put them in a place close to my heart …and move as God directs.

I think people who make a difference in the world must do that sort of thing, don’t you think? I do…

A candid observation …

Entitlements be Damned

With the fiscal cliff debacle hanging over us, I find myself cringing every time I hear the word “entitlements.”

The argument, or part of the argument, as concerns how we get out of our financial crisis, is that the entitlements, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security – are just too expensive and are not sustainable. The Republicans are willing to budge on their desire not to raise taxes for the “wealthy,” IF there are substantial cuts in entitlement spending.

Those entitlements, however, are what help “the least of these.” I keep wondering what legislators are thinking. How are the poor, the elderly, and those who have worked all their lives and now need Social Security …supposed to live? Because one is poor, is he or she not worthy of being treated with dignity? And because one has grown old, is he or she not “entitled” to expect some financial assistance from the country in which they lived during the days of their youth, working to contribute to its economy?

If spending for Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security is cut, what happens to this broad swath of people who simply need help? Everybody needs help – even the wealthy. The difference between the poor, lower middle class, and for much of the middle middle class and the wealthy is that the wealthy have more resources to pull from when they need help. The poor have so little access to what they need for quality of life and, frankly, the wealthy are not concerned about them as regards their reality. If and when a poor person needs help, he or she is often forced to get money from predatory lenders, who charge them exorbitant interest rates. The poor really do not have a chance. They get ensconced in a downward spiral that goes faster and faster…And the wealthy are not concerned. The wealthy look for ways to make more profits – even if it is from or on the backs of the poor – and too often turn a deaf ear toward the cries of those who are suffering.

I read a story about a woman who had worked all her life, in a job where there were no benefits, including health insurance. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/gop-obamacare-medicaid_n_2347933.html) She began to feel poorly, but would not go to a doctor because she could not afford it. She began to look up home remedies, and tried some of what she read, but eventually, not even the home remedies helped. She collapsed on her job and was taken to an emergency room, where it was discovered that the had high blood pressure and congestive heart failure. The doctor asked her why she had waited so long to get help.

The insensitivity to the plight of the poor and the working poor is phenomenal.

Following this episode, she was able to get Medicaid, and was able to get the medicine she needs to keep her alive, but recently, her Medicaid allotment was reduced because of a state policy that said persons receiving it can only make a certain amount of money; this woman made over that amount, and so her benefits were slashed. Now, she is in the dangerous place of not being able to afford her medicine; the money she makes is just enough for her to pay her rent and utilities. The article said she is feeling bad again; the fluid is accumulating in her chest again, and her blood pressure is no doubt going up.

Hers is not the only story like this. The elderly, many of them, are not doing much better. It is heartbreaking to think about the elderly who worked all their lives and who now are malnourished because they cannot afford to pay their rent AND buy food. There is something terribly wrong with the way people think – or don’t think – about those who suffer.

And yet, the Conservative hard-liners insist that the aid these people receive are “entitlements” and should be slashed. The very word “entitlement” brings up negative feelings. Anytime anyone says that someone thinks he or she is “entitled” to something, there is a negative undertone that accompanies it. Slash spending, the Conservatives rail, on these dratted entitlements. Former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said that 47 percent of Americans think they are “entitled” to help from the government. The attitude is one of distrust and disdain; the implication is there that the poor and working poor are where they are because of some deficit in their characters.

Ironically, there is a lot of money in poor people; maybe that’s why the wealthy are not so concerned about them. The poor need and want to work, and have been willing, in the past and in the present, to work under horrible conditions for paltry pay. The poor are then penalized for being poor; they pay higher – the highest – interest rates on purchases they make. The wealthy take advantage of them and others who are not so steeped in how America’s financial system works. How else do we explain the antics of mortgage companies, who made millions, maybe billions, off people who were lured into getting mortgages they could not afford?

The attitude seems to be “let them eat cake” while the wealthy go blithely on their way, looking for more and more ways to make more and more money. Meanwhile, many of those same people want the spending on defense to be left alone or perhaps be increased. The stated reason is that we, the United States, need that money to defend ourselves, but the wars we have been engaged in since President Bush got us into them had nothing to do with defending ourselves. The massive spending, causing much of our current indebtedness, was done not to defend America, but to get America in a place where it could dip into and be a part of the huge profits that are available in the oil in the Middle East. By all means, spend money to make more money. It is not good business to spend money on that which loses money – and poor people make the government lose money, they would posit.

The wealthy think they are “entitled” to make more money. That’s what business is, and long ago, President Calvin Coolidge said that the “business of America…is business.” They poor and the elderly are not “entitled” to quality of life, not entitled to help from the country they helped prosper.

That is a really sad commentary on America and its “values.”

A candid observation …

Muttering in Times of Pain

For the past week, I have not been able to get the families of the victims of the shooting in Newtown at Sandy Hook Elementary School off my mind.

I have always said that Christmas, for the hype about the season being the “most wonderful time of the year,” is actually very depressing for a large number of people. Christmas for them represents, or makes more obvious, what is wrong or lacking in their lives. For too many, there is no family, no home, no “manger,” so to speak, for them to lay their heads or their hearts.

That is true in general, but for the families of the victims of the Newtown shootings, and for the victims of Hurricane Sandy, it is even more true. At a time where many are celebrating by giving gifts and eating way too much food, I would bet that many of the people in Newtown are forcing themselves to eat even a little, and for victims of Hurricane Sandy, left homeless by Sandy, I would assume that they don’t feel much like eating and laughing, either.

Dr. Martin Luther King talked about “redemptive suffering,” i.e., that there is value in suffering. If it does not kill us, it makes us stronger, and so if we endure the suffering, the assumption is that we come out of it better, changed, but better. That is true for the most part.

But it is not the afterward that I am thinking of. All of us have “new normals” based on painful experiences in our lives. It is the in the midst of the suffering that is the problem, the issue. There is no “quick fix.” One cannot take an Advil (or four), four times a day to ease the pain. The pain of suffering is ruthless and persistent, and it sometimes taunts the sufferer. There are lapses of the pain, when the sufferer thinks that the interminable pain is gone. But it comes back. Pain is peristaltic in nature; it ebbs and flows. There is an arrogance about it because it knows that it will leave when it feels like it. It is a spirit-virus, and it must run its course.

There is no remedy. We try to find one, like alcohol or drugs, or any number of other things, but those are just crutches, and not helpful crutches at that. Billie Holliday said it best in a song, “Good Morning, Heartache.”

That is what I keep thinking about as concerns those families in Newtown, and in the areas affected by Hurricane Sandy. Heartache is greeting them as they awaken this morning, rubbing salt in their already excruciatingly painful wounds. There are probably Christmas presents for the little children killed last week that were purchased weeks ago in anticipation of happy squeals this morning, but those presents will not be opened…and in the case of the victims of the hurricane, I wonder where in the world they are even waking up this morning?

Those families are in the “moment by moment” phase of suffering; I would imagine that even breathing hurts for some of them. I know that pain. I have been there.

The families in Newtown and the hurricane victims are fresh reminders of horrible pain, but throughout 2012, many have suffered horrible losses, and this Christmas is bitter…not even bittersweet yet. I think of the parents of young Trayvon Martin…and so many other families of young children who died this year due to violence.

I am praying for those families. The one thing that I have learned to do in the midst of suffering is to mutter. I mutter scriptures that remind me of the presence of God, a God who allows evil but who does not wish for us to crumble under the pain that evil causes. I mutter. Consistently. Constantly. Words that help me not to think about the pain in my gut that is eating my spirit alive. Everyone has his or her own words that they have read or found comfort in in times past. Powerful words become the antidote for pain. They help our spirits get the strength to push the pain from the depths of our souls out of our beings.

I doubt the parents and families of the victims of Newtown and the victims of the hurricane have the strength right now to utter anything. Right now, they are in the phase of suffering where even breathing hurts.

So, I will mutter for them today. It is my gift for them, to them. Today I will intercede for them and mutter the words that have helped me in times of excruciating spiritual and emotional pain.

Hopefully, the words sent up will allow these newly suffering people a manger on which to lay their weary and hurting heads.

Nobody gets through suffering alone. The crowds in Newtown have thinned out. The television cameras are gone. There is a loud quiet that is sitting on that little city. There is no commotion to serve as a distraction for their pain. So, I will mutter for them, because their suffering is just beginning. All of us need someone to hold us up when we want to simply stop living…

A candid observation…

A Good God in Bad Times?

In light of the tragic massacre of 26 people at the Sandy Hook

Elementary School in Connecticut , some people are going to gravitate toward God, seeking shelter from their pain…but some are going to turn away, maybe not forever, but for a while.

We have a need to have God “behave,” and protect us from bad things, especially when we think we are good people. The question of theodicy – i.e., is God all good and all-powerful? If God is all-powerful, and this happened, then is God NOT all good? Or…if God is all good and this happened…then is God NOT all-powerful?

When tragic and senseless things like this happen, people become confused about God. In general, they are not open to hearing about the need to forgive, or to show mercy…No, their pain, our pain as vulnerable human beings kicks in, and we get angry at God and wonder where God was when the disruption of our peace and stability occurred.

Elie Wiesel wrote, in Night, that as he was suffering in a concentration camp, he felt this anger. In one part of the book he wrote that summer was coming to an end and the Jewish year was almost over…people were suffering and for what? Because a maniac was in control and had no sense of shame or morals or compassion. Where was God? Why was God allowing this to happen? Wiesel wrote, “What are You, my God? How do you compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean. Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people‘s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?” (p. 66)

He and the other inmates were uttering prayers. “Blessed be God’s name?” Wiesel remembers asking. “Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because he caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? ” He goes on, asking why anyone would bless this God. His pain, his agony, is palpable.

It is in times like these that we often cannot find God, but it isn’t because God is not with us. We don’t really look for God, and if we found God, we are not sure of what we would say. Like Wiesel, we would wonder why we should bless this deity who is either not all-powerful or all good. Tragedies like this shake us to our foundations, and it takes us a few minutes to get back to our center.

These parents of the slain children are in mortal agony…there are no words to describe their pain. The spouses of the slain women are likewise in torment. How does one deal with the fact that he or she sent a child to school, only to have that child dead hours later? How does one reconcile the goodness of God with the fact that such a horrible thing happened to totally innocent people?

What I have learned is that we have to let ourselves go through the process of finding God in dark places. There is no quick and easy fix. We cannot take a pill and feel spiritually and/or emotionally OK. God comes to us…or we receive God…in fits and starts. God allows us to turn away over and over as we writhe in pain…and God receives us when we turn back to Him/Her. Emotional and spiritual pain, both of which is part of the emotion called grief, is like a spiritual virus that must run its course. It cannot be rushed. God allows us to rebel, to scream, to shake our heads in disbelief…and God waits for the pain to run its course, after which God hopes we will have a new awareness and appreciation for the kind of omnipresence that is God and that is with us, even when we cannot feel it.

That is a fact, but does not erase our rage or confusion or both about “what” God is, as Wiesel asks, when horrible things happen. God knows that we have a choice: to sit in our pain and be emulsified by it, or to get up, inch by painful inch, to serve God in spite of the loss and pain we have endured. God does not erase the pain we suffer; Jacob wrestled with God in his pain and wound up with a limp. If we are lucky, we will wrestle with God during our most acute pain, and walk away…albeit with a limp. The limp is the sign that we decided to hold onto God even when we were disgusted or angry or confused or all of the above, because we realized that in spite of our pain, in the end, God was the best answer to recovery and relief from that pain.

I wish that troubled man had not shot and killed all those children; I wish he had not shot the principal and school psychologist and teacher at that school. I wish he had been able to go to God for his tormented soul, or to a doctor if he needed psychiatric help…and yes, I wish God had lent a divine hand and stopped every one of those bullets. But that’ didn’t happen, and the result of that young man’s actions is a slew of people in deep pain. I hope they turn to God, even if that turning is, at this point, sporadic…because in the end, God is the best answer to the questions and the pain that they have.

A candid observation …

Second Amendment, Abused

Why do people go into populated areas and start shooting?

I am reeling with the news of the shooting in an elementary school in Connecticut, where it is certain at this moment that there have been “multiple fatalities,” including children and adults. The number keeps fluctuating, but it doesn’t matter. That anyone died in this manner is unconscionable.

Supposedly there were two gunmen. That has not been verified as I write this, but it doesn’t matter. The one alleged gunman who has been killed was wearing a bullet-proof vest, and reportedly had four weapons. A witness said she heard about “100 rounds” shot. The news is just devastating.

There will be the usual call for gun control, and the usual protests against it, with proponents citing the Second Amendment as the justification for people – anyone who wants to, basically – purchasing as many guns as they want. But when do the Second Amendment people wake up and smell the roses? Something is horribly wrong in this country.

Bob Costas got much criticism when he spoke up for gun control. He said nothing that does not make sense. He was not proposing that guns be disallowed entirely, but he did speak up for there to be control of the sale of certain kinds of weapons, like semiautomatic guns.

There is never a reason to go into a school or mall or church or post office and begin shooting, and there really is no reason for a civilian to own an automatic weapon. We are not a police state…are we? Gun ownership proponents defend anyone who wants to be able to own any type of gun he or she wants, but why? Why is there not intelligent discussion and action going on to get semi-automatic weapons banned for sale in this country?

In the mall shooting that happened earlier this week in Oregon, the gunman had a semi-automatic weapon. A guest on the Piers Morgan program this week defended people owning semi-automatic weapons, repeating the oft-heard rationale, “guns don’t kill people. People kill people. That’s true, but people with guns kill people, and in too many cases, the shootings have nothing to do with self-defense, which is why anti-gun control proponents say gun ownership is necessary. Having the right to bear arms does not mean you have a right to commit mass murder.

In this, the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” the “free” and the “brave” are taking advantage of this constitutional right. Perhaps there ought to be a review of the Constitution, or at least a review of this amendment, and perhaps a new amendment ought to be made that prohibits the sale of semi-automatic weapons in this country. Perhaps that amendment ought to say that the “right to bear arms” is limited to people owning handguns for self-defense and rifles and/or shotguns for hunting.

That would allow people to own guns and disallow people to purchase weapons for the “mass destruction” of human life.

There is no justification for what happened in Connecticut today. Children who woke up and went to school are now dead; some families’ lives have been changed forever. A principal and school psychologist are dead. Just who were these children and school officials threatening?

I think that no matter how bitter the thought, those who believe in gun control ought to speak up. Yes, I know the National Rifle Association (NRA) is a strong lobby with lots of power, but sooner or later the people have to speak truth to power, and the truth is…America’s gun policies are encouraging either sick or bad people to commit mass murder. A trial after the fact is not enough. A trial cannot bring back a beloved family member, innocently gunned down because someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or someone didn’t take his or her meds…It doesn’t bring the loved one back. Surely, gun control opponents understand the tragedy of that reality? Surely they sympathize with people whose lives have been ruined because someone decided to shoot a bunch of people they didn’t even know?

I think of Jim Brady and Gabby Giffords, whose injuries and changed lives we have all seen because of their name recognition, but I am also thinking of the families whom we do not know, families like those of the children and adults killed this morning, who have been thrown into despair. I don’t think the Second Amendment was meant to defend acts that bring that kind of despair on innocent civilians. That amendment was made in a time when new Americans were facing a hostile England, who wanted to take them down. That’s a very different situation than what we have now.

I cannot imagine being a parent shocked into the reality that his or her little child is gone because someone decided he had a right to take lives. The Second Amendment does not give anyone the right to commit mass murder.

A candid observation …