Around the world

April 30 is my mom's death anniversary. Yesterday I dreamt of her. I dreamt of our old house, my dad and some people I've known in my childhood.
I found this video of a song my dad sang at her funeral. I cannot listen to the song without remembering my dear and kind mother. I miss her.

God's gift of time

I love Hallmark cards. They must have a good pool of researchers and writers since their card messages seem to express whatever it is a person cannot verbally express.
The other day I was cleaning my cupboard, trying to sort out the throwables from those worth keeping and I came across a card. I do not know who gave it to me, or maybe I bought it myself. The message is so beautiful, it's worth sharing to people who are going through a time of grief.

We all need a time to grieve - quiet time for reflection to sift through memories and come to grips with what has happened.

We all need a time for tears, not for the one who is now at peace in heaven, but for ourselves as we realize that things will never be the same.

We all need a time to just "be," when we can open ourselves to God and let the reassurance of His everlasting love start to heal our broken hearts.

The ministry of kindness

A friend of mine gave this text to me more than twenty years ago. I read it everyday. It is not easy to practice, but I believe that if I just try to be kind, I would have done something to make the world better.

Of all the ministries open to souls consecrated to God, the most effective, the most far-reaching, the most consoling is Kindness.
Kindness is one of God's best gifts to the world.
It drives gloom and darkness for souls.
It puts hope into fainting hearts.
It sweetens sorrow. It lessens pain.
It discovers unsuspected beauties of human character.
It calls forth a response from all that is best in souls.
It purifies, glorifies, ennobles all that it touches.
It opens the floodgates of children's laughter.
It gathers the tears of repentant love.
It lightens the burdens of weariness.
It stops the torrent of angry passion.
It takes the sting from failure.
It kindles courageous ambition.
It lifts the unfortunate.
It leads back the wayward.
It walks in the steps of our Savior.
Let us become apostles of kindness
to partake of its sweetness, to aspire to its holiness.
The ministry of kindness is exalted, it is sublime.
It is Christlike!

Think well of others

The other day somebody commented on something I did, interpreting it in a way that has not even entered my mind when I did it. My first reaction was, I was flabbergasted. As I said earlier, I did what I did without even an iota of the intention she attributed to it. Then my reaction turned to irritation as I thought how it is very easy for people to think ill of others.
A few moments later I laughed at myself (when the anger and irritation have passed), as I thought of how I was, myself thinking ill of another. She might not have meant anything when she said that remark, but I interpreted it as she thinking ill of me.
Yes, how quick we are to judge. In a way, judgment is a defense for us. It's like passing the ball to the other court.
What is the key to think well of others? I think it is self-acceptance. When I have learned to accept and to love myself, warts and all, I don't have to defend myself anymore. When others think ill of me or speak ill of me, with or without reason, I can always remind myself that I am still a "work in progress" and I have all my lifetime to dedicate to it. When I have learned to accept and to love myself, I won't feel threatened when I see others "getting the better bargain". After all, the word "better" wouldn't be necessary in my vocabulary because I would be happy if I have what I need, without judging it as better or worse than what others have.
To think well of others is not easy. Only God knows what is in the realm of my conscience. Speaking well of others and doing good to others are always something external and I may do them not out of conviction but out of a sense of duty, shame, or conformism. But to think well of others, ahhh. That is the Christian call.

Holy darkness

Our painful experiences make us persons of depth, give us wisdom, make us more compassionate, and expose the constant need we have of purification.
"Though Jesus' love seems like a raging storm, it is the love that saves." In time we will understand, or, when we don't understand, it's all the better because it helps us to realize that we need God.

Making peace with the unsolved Why

When they finally located Jesus, Mary did not understand what it meant. She was left to live with the mystery of what had taken place. Her child was found, but she did not comprehend why he had chosen to be hidden from her. She pondered this life experience, reflected upon it, turned it over in her heart again and again. Oftentimes parents do not understand, either why children do what they do, why they choose values radically opposed to their own, why they respond as they do. Many times parents do not know why life has dealt them such a blow in the daughter who is missing or son who has died.
Sometimes we cannot figure out, either, why we have lost some part of our self that we have cherished and have had to painstakingly recover. Even after we stand in the temple of our soul and say, “Ah, there you are! sometimes we still do not understand why our depression was so lengthy, why our spiritual energy waned into hopelessness, why our enthusiasm faded into lethargy. We may not know the answers for why things happened the way they did for many years, and perhaps we may never fully understand the “why.”
There are circumstances when no amount of talking, healing therapy, good books to read, quiet reflection, intense research, or other deliberate searching adequately solves the story of “why.” Sometimes we can sit for years inside the experience of losing a treasure and not have the satisfaction of knowing “why” it happened. We can grind and grind our rational teeth, trying to figure out what went wrong and the reason for it. We can spend our energy blaming ourselves or others for what took place, or we can forgive whoever and whatever caused our great search and then move on with our lives. There may always be a piece of mystery that is left to sit in our soul, to tug us from time to time and keep us humbled by our inability to sort it all out.
Like Mary who pondered what she had lost and found, we also need to stand in the middle of the mystery of our life and reflect upon the message it has for us. By reflecting on our experiences, we can learn from them. Instead of just going busily about our life, we can let our inner eye scan our lost and found event and see what the deeper message might be for us. Once we have paid full attention to our experience, with all its hurt and turmoil, there comes a time when we must put the matter to rest even if we do not understand why this happened to us.
When we have lost a treasure and are searching for its return, it is time to reenter the temple of our soul. We ought to go searching all alone. It is essential to call on God for guidance and direction. In our frantic, heartaching, panicky search for our treasure, we need a deep center of peace and harmony. This can be nearly impossible to feel when we are in the midst of a painful search. Yet, we must constantly give ourselves to divine peace, begging that we receive this peace so that we can search with a heart of love and trust.

Joyce Rupp

Carry the cross throughout the world