Away for a while

Good morning, God--

It most certainly has been a long time, hasn't it?  Here we are in June, and an entire semester has gone by without a word from me to you.  At least, not here.  But you know why--a very busy semester that took a lot out of me and that needed me to focus very strongly, and that left little time for other pursuits.  It was a good semester, but a very trying one.

I just got back from Spain, and I'm very thankful for the chance to study there once more, if only for a very short time.  It was a fascinating experience in many ways, and a good learning experience for me.  And I learned much more than just some more Spanish, though I'm still not quite sure yet exactly what it was that I learned.  I'm still processing.

In any case, you know that time away from doing something like this is not time away from truly caring about life and living.  It's time away from an extra duty that is beneficial to me but that takes a lot more to accomplish than I'm able to give for that period of time.  It helps to remind myself of this fact every now and again.

In any case, let's get going once more!  I'll keep it up as long as I can!

A reply:

As you know already, no apology or explanation is necessary.  When you do give such an explanation of what has happened, you generally do it for yourself, not for me or for the other person.  Sometimes it's to make yourself feel better about something, sometimes it's to try to make the other person feel better about something.  In a strong relationship, it's really never absolutely necessary, except as a way to make one or the other feel better.

I certainly don't feel neglected or deprived.  I know your situations, and they are what they are.  In another era of your life, you might have dropped a different task during the semester.  This semester, you dropped these notes and responses.  That's really okay.

Thanks for the note!  We haven't been out of touch--the touch just hasn't been in written form!

Trying to See Needs

Good morning, God, and thank you very much for this new day.  The semester has started so I'm back to school, and it looks like my classes will be very enjoyable once again--thank you for that. It's school that I'm thinking about right now, not surprisingly, and the students that I work with--I wonder more and more each year that I teach about the needs of those students, about the things going on in their lives that are difficult for them. I think that this may be a benefit of growing older, feeling more compassion and trying to understand people on levels that are much different than the levels on which I used to understand them.

If I could ask you anything, I would ask you to help me to be there for them--especially on the academic level, of course, for that's why I'm there and why they're there. They're students at a university and I'm a teacher, so my main focus needs to be on the academics.

But that doesn't mean, of course, that I can't encourage them as people rather than as students; that I can't offer them support when things get difficult for them; that I can't show compassion and understanding when they're necessary for someone else to see. What I don't want to happen is for me to get so caught up in what we're doing academically that I lose sight of the fact that these are young human beings who are trying to find their ways in life and who could benefit from a bit of caring and a bit of other people's experiences.

I want this to be a good semester, and I know that in order for that to happen, it depends mostly on me--what I do and say, and what I don't do and say. I'd like to ask you to be there with me to help me to maintain that balance and to be an effective teacher, mentor, and colleague.

Thank you.

a reply:

You're welcome. And thank you for making compassion and understanding such an important part of who you want to be as a teacher. Most teachers, as you well know, do get caught up in their topic areas and in the performance of students that they neglect the human side of their students; they forget to even think of the pain and the confusion and the fear that their students may be feeling at any given time. They may look fine sitting there quietly in your class, but it's almost impossible to know what they may be hiding--if anything--if you never even consider the possibility that they may be hiding something important.

Many people get so focused on their work that they never consider just what the other person is experiencing in different areas of his or her life. It's so easy for us to see student, customer, client, server, officer, janitor, and so on, that we forget to see human beings with hopes and dreams and fears and such. Yes, it is a benefit of aging to be able to see more clearly with compassion and love, but aging doesn't guarantee this benefit--it only happens for those people who are open to it and who are working their ways towards love and compassion as a way of life. So stay on this road. It's a difficult one at times, but it's one that provides great rewards--for the person who feels it and the people whom that person is able to affect.

Have a great semester. Your students are great people--I made them that way. Treat them as such, and they will return the favor. Most of them, at least--not all of them are ready to do so. And they're the ones who need your love and compassion most of all.

A difficult year to come

Good morning, God, and thanks for this new day that I've just begun to experience (in my waking state, anyway--I experienced several hours of it while asleep!). I'm looking forward to all that this day has to offer and all that I can give to this day. I have a lot of work to do this week, but it's doable--not anything that's going to overwhelm me and make me miserable. As long as I prioritize well and make sure everything gets done, I should be fine.

This is the beginning of a year that's very frightening to me. There are many changes in the wind that promise to be extremely negative, very harmful to very many people. History has given us a lot of important lessons that many people are ignoring, and we seem to be walking down paths that in the past took us to some horrible places. It's very frustrating to think that we're about to go to those places again, that we're going to be experiencing things that we had thought we had put behind us.

My fear isn't necessarily for me. I've been around a while and I've experienced a lot of different things, and I know that I can make it through hard times. My fears are for the people who are going to be harmed by the new policies and realities, especially the poor, the people who now can't afford to do much with their lives--they're going to be hit the hardest and are going to suffer the most. This is not going to be a friendly world for those who are struggling--there's going to be no last resort for them, no hope for them to work their ways through and out of their situations. I fear for the elderly and the disenfranchised, for they're going to be losing services and resources that they've been able to depend upon for years--and their losses will be tragic.

On the other hand, when I think of what the people of Syria, Iraq, North Korea, and many other countries have been going through for years--even lifetimes--this particular threat to our country seems much less daunting. I realize that I've been very fortunate to live in the country and the era in which I live, and I don't want to be whining about a little inconvenience in my life. I still have a lot of privileges and gifts that I really do appreciate, and I don't want to take those for granted or undervalue them.

I am apprehensive about the year. There will be many difficult times to go through, and much more conflict than we're used to experiencing. I'm fortunate to live in a place where that sort of thing will be minimized, but I will be witness to it somehow or another.

And the most important part of it all is, of course, what will I do to help to maintain the peace and the equanimity? What can I do? Perhaps that's what I fear most--knowing that I have the potential to help in certain ways, but not meeting that potential.

It's going to be a difficult year that we need to take day by day.

A reply:

You're definitely right: it's going to be a difficult year. Politicians and media personalities have spent years spreading divisiveness and anger and fear among the people of your country that your population is used to anger and hatred and fear and mistrust. When conflict does arise over the next year--and arise it will--people don't have enough problem-solving strategies that don't involve more conflict to be able to deal with issues in peaceful, productive ways. Your politicians long ago gave up cooperation with those with whom they disagree, so there will be very little of people working together to deal with problems. In much of your country, people resort to name-calling and insults when they're faced with opposition to what they believe is true, and that type of "strategy" is definitely not effective at all in providing positive outcomes.

You can look with hope at some things, though. Many people who have been passive for years are now realizing that they cannot be passive now if they don't want their society to be permanently and irreparably damaged. They are speaking out and they are supporting causes that try to repair and improve the world. You're going to see more people involved in discussions, more people donating to important causes, and more people questioning the status quo than you've seen in quite a long while--since at least the Vietnam war in your country.

There are theories among psychiatrists that say that as a collective consciousness, the current political situation is either a self-punishment among the people who have voted to make it reality, or a necessary self-motivation tool--human beings never thrive and shine as much as they do when they face adversity, and there will be much adversity to face in the coming months.

It will be important to take things day by day, but it will also be important to develop longer-term strategies for dealing with certain issues. What will you do personally if and when certain legislation is proposed that will hurt people or the environment? What will you do if there are proposals that threaten clean water or that add to the unequal distribution of wealth in your country? You can't focus exclusively on these things or dwell on them to the detriment of your work, for you're entrusted with the teaching of many of our young people, but you do need to have some sort of idea in mind of what you're going to do in certain situations, if anything at all.

You've had some good ideas already. Start acting on them rather than just adding them to the list of "ideas that I've had." They do no good on that list, but they may do a lot of good as the results of action.

Christmas

Good morning, God, and thanks for this new day in our lives. It's Christmas Eve, and Christmas comes tomorrow. It's a day that I love to experience every year because it's a day when we're supposed to be focused on love, peace, joy, and hope. It's a day that originally was about you "coming" to earth as a person to be some sort of savior, though since you're everywhere all the time, it doesn't seem to be all that necessary for you to have to come to earth to "save" us. You do that all the time just by being, it seems to me. We're the ones who tend to shut you out of our lives, and that could make us feel that we need an intercessor when dealing with you.

I think I love Christmas mostly because of the ways that people focus on each other rather than themselves. Of course, I realize that much of what people do for others does come with selfish motives, but all in all, during this time of the year people are willing to do more for their fellow human beings with less question than we're willing to do during the rest of the year. It gets our focus outside of ourselves and on others and their wants and needs, and gets us in a frame of mind that allows us to try to meet some of those wants and needs.

I often wonder what the world would be like if we could approach life and living and other people in that way, every day of the year. I think that Christmas acts as a wonderful reminder of what we're supposed to be like and how we're supposed to act, but the shame of it is that it's wrapped up in a day that's now more about commercialism and getting than it is about compassion and giving.

So what do we do about Christmas? How do we make it about love and hope and not so much about the presents? When I look under the tree I see a lot of presents, and it's just my wife and me--shouldn't we be able to have a simple Christmas with no presents at all, and still enjoy the day just as much? Or am I compensating too much for having had so many Christmases with very few gifts? Or am I over-analyzing, and we just found quite a few things that we simply wanted to give to each other? I know that they're not super-expensive gifts, just some things that we thought we would like. I don't want to think too much about something that shouldn't be thought about too much, like motives for gift-giving.

A reply:

Christmas is rather complicated, isn't it? It's about the story of a virgin birth many years ago that didn't even take place in December, combined with non-religious holidays having to do with the winter solstice, now about gifts and food more than about togetherness and love. The togetherness is still there for many, many people, yet it's somehow become less important than the gifts and the parties and such. While it is nice to see children get excited about getting gifts, for example, you do them a great disservice when you teach them to equate a day with such an important message to getting gifts that are, for the most part, unnecessary in their lives--they may be enjoyable things like toys and books, but the vast majority of the gifts that are given are completely unnecessary, when all is said and done.

But isn't that what often makes gifts so special--the fact that they're things that you want, but wouldn't necessarily buy for yourself, or couldn't buy for yourself? A gift should be about the recipient's wants and needs, not about just needs. There are times in our lives when there isn't enough money to satisfy many of the wants, and then it's important to focus on the needs. But all in all, a gift is a gift, and there shouldn't necessarily be a need to quantify its value or justify it.

The gift that I gave to you--the gift upon which Christmas is based--is the ability to hope and to love. That's what the holiday is about, and you can make it whatever you want. It can be just as valuable with a thousand gifts under the tree as it can with no gifts under the tree. The gifts are a beautiful reminder of how good we can feel when we put our minds on others and their wants and needs. My hope is that people remember how that feels and continue to focus on others for the rest of the year. Of course, I can't force them to do so, so most people simply get caught right back up in their own little rat races or dramas, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try!

The gift I gave to you is my love, and I ask you to pass it on, any way that you know how, all day, every day, if possible. It's yours to do with as you please, but remember that the more we share it, the more it grows. Your goal is to help it spread around the entire world and to become a part of every person on this planet. A world of human beings who all are focused on love would be a beautiful world indeed.

Family Ties

Good morning, God, and thank you for this new day that we all have to live through. It's full of possibility and potential, and I'm grateful that I have a chance to live through it and experience all that it has to offer. I'm in Colorado now, visiting my parents for a couple of days, spending some time with them for the holidays, and it's pretty enjoyable so far. It's been warm and rainy, though a cold front and a storm are in the process of moving in.

It's really fascinating to me to consider family ties. In my family, I could easily have rejected the ties--there was enough strife and enough anger and pressure and dysfunction that waling away from it and never looking back would have been a very logical act. But I didn't do it, mostly because I've always known in my heart that doing so would have been a mistake. And now that my parents are much older and life is much different for all of us, I do see just how silly--and destructive--that would have been. That said, though, I do recognize that I've spent much of my time living rather far away from them, not necessarily on purpose, but that has been the reality.

I think it's safe to say that it's pretty impossible even to define family to the satisfaction of everyone involved. There are the genetic ties, of course, but past that, there are so many ways that different families diverge in their ways of being and of treating each other that it would be useless to try to find universals in our ideas of family. And that's okay, I suppose--the important thing is for me to define family for myself and to decide how I'm going to interact with my family so that they know that I love them and that they have someone to count on, rather than focusing on what I can get from family--even though that, too, is very important.

A reply:

Family is a fascinating concept, and one that allows people to feel a bit of security in a world that's constantly changing and that offers very little in the way of consistency. Of course, your concepts of family are changing a lot in today's world, which leads many people to feel extremely insecure, for that one part of their lives that used to be consistent is not longer so--some people are just as afraid of the changes in their own concepts of family as they are of the changes going on in the world around them. These people suffer greatly, for the refuge that they could and should be able to count on is not at all available to them. Having to go through life without any sort of safety net is truly a daunting task.

You've been right to keep the ties to your family strong, though you've also been fortunate that your family is one with which you can do so. And I would challenge your assertions about family and ask you to reconsider them as ties to your parents, for your ties to your siblings aren't nearly as strong. And you know why. Your siblings bring you down, while your parents don't do so. And you know that you can do nothing personally to change your siblings' situations or relationships to life, so maintaining strong ties with them would be extremely frustrating and possibly damaging to you and to the people in your new family.

It is a very good thing that you've maintained a strong relationship with your parents, and it's obvious that you'll continue to do so. This relationship will be something that helps you out in difficult times and that allows you to give to others in the form of being there for them, and giving them something to be proud of in their own ways. You'll constantly have to decide whether or not to strengthen your ties with your siblings, and that decision will be based on whether you can handle doing so, and whether the relationship will be balanced or imbalanced, healthy or damaging. Follow your heart.

Liars and Deceivers

Good morning, God, and thank you for today--we have a new day to make our ways through, with many new possibilities to explore and people to meet. Life is going on and on, and we're making our ways to the end of the year and the beginning of a new year--a year that I have to say doesn't fill me with hope and enthusiasm, given the fundamental changes that we're going to see, as well as the conflict and anger and frustration that are going to become part of so many people's lives in the near future.

I have to say that I don't understand how many people can see the lies and the manipulation that our president-elect is saying and practicing, yet still support him. It's frightening. They seem to feel that anything is okay as long as it fulfills their personal agendas--to the point of electing a leader who can't be trusted. At all. Not with anything he says or anything he does. I'm incredibly disappointed that this man has been made president, and I'm very fearful of what he's going to do to the people of this country. Now more than ever, we need your help, it seems.

Of course, I can't let the fear control me or dominate my life. I have to do the best I can to make sure that within my sphere of influence, things stay as stable and reliable as possible. But it is very difficult to watch other people support wrong, and to be unable to do anything about it.

A reply:

It's going to be a difficult time for very many people. Many people will become disenfranchised, alienated, threatened, fearful, angry, hopeless. Many others will learn from the status quo that it's okay to lie, that the ends justify the means. In some cases, it will become hard to hold people to high standards of honesty and integrity when their primary model of these two qualities shows little to none of either in his life.

Your focus, though, must be on what you can do to make things more positive for yourself and for the other people in your life--your family and students and friends and acquaintances. Even for strangers whom you've never met before. Enjoy their company, help them out, model the integrity and honesty that you feel should be the norm.

And be aware. Whenever this type of change occurs, there are other changes that happen, too. More people become concerned and are willing to step out and take action on issues that before, they would have been glad to leave to someone else. More people are often willing to speak out for the good when more people are speaking out for the bad. People pull together in ways that they hadn't before, because they feel that the stakes are higher and they feel the threat of being personally affected by the negative new paradigms. There will be new groups formed and old groups will strengthen, and these groups will fight for social good, the good of all. Join them or support them.

The sun will come up again tomorrow no matter who is in which office. It's easy to say that this sounds defeatist, but it's not. It's stating a simple fact. And what you do with your life and your resources still is up to you. Have faith--in me, in yourself, in your fellow people. Things will be okay, even though there will have to be conflict in order to make sure of that. There will be hard times, and there will be times when it seems that hope is lost--don't let those times get the best of you. It really is all up to you. Hang in there, and do good. And keep the faith. The liars and the deceivers always have their downfall, and they usually bring it about themselves.

A Different World

Good morning, God, and thanks for this new day! Thanks very much also for a nice Thanksgiving Day yesterday, and a safe and warm place to live, as well as the work that I have and the opportunities I have.

It's been quite a while since I last wrote you. There have been several occasions when I've wanted to, but it's been difficult with all that's been going on, both in my life and in the world in general. It's very hard to get a true feeling for how things are these days--there are so many negative things going on in the world that sometimes it's hard to stay focused on the positive. From our recent election here in the States to the protests at Standing Rock to the situation in Syria and the potential problems that are going to be hitting us over the next several years, things are getting kind of difficult to comprehend, much less handle.

In many ways, it seems that the world has changed significantly over the last few years, and not for the better. I know, though, that there really hasn't been a change in the world itself, just in what we see and what other people are willing to share. Violence and hatred and greed and prejudice have always been a part of some human beings' lives; it's just that now, we're seeing more of those things because more people feel comfortable in putting them out there for the world to see.

I think that my main concern is what I should do, now that these things are out in the open so much? How should I react? Should I do anything at all different, or simply keep on doing what I'm doing as far as the teaching and the websites are concerned? Mine is a minuscule voice in this world, and I don't know that it would have any effect at all, especially on its own. But with whom can I join voices? How can I work to make my voice heard in a way that will be effective--that will help people to see what's truly important in life, things like honesty and integrity and love for our neighbors? I know that people have been trying to get/help other people see these things for as long as human beings have been on this planet, but have met with limited success. How can I be more successful--or even slightly successful?

I suppose if one word could describe my overall feeling about the world and everything in it right now, that word would be "discouraged." The world right now is not a place that encourages in most places and situations, and I'm feeling more and more the world around me as I grow older/grow up. It's quite a shame, but it's very real.

A response:

You've joined a very large club, that of human beings who have been discouraged by the actions and words of their fellow human beings. It seems that many people, no matter how much positive they have in their lives, are simply too afraid of losing everything to be able to understand that life isn't to be controlled and manipulated, that it's to be lived in a manner that shares love and compassion rather than a manner that focuses solely on personal gain, especially financial.

You live in a country that is truly blessed with wealth and abundance, but that has been manipulated and controlled by a relatively few people who have money and supposed "power." You and I know that the power they believe they have is fleeting and transient, but they are able to control and manipulate others due to their influence over other people who are too afraid to stand up to them. Their control has led to many unfortunate things, such as the disparity in wealth between those who have much and those who have little, the destruction of nature, the disenfranchisement of many minority groups, and the terrible reduction in the effectiveness of public education. Your country no longer has an educated populace in general--it has many, many people who function on a visceral level rather than thinking things through, for thinking intimidates them and makes them feel awkward and impotent.

When all these dynamics work together, it leads to results such as your country saw in its recent elections--when a hate-filled, misogynistic, racist, and not very smart person is elected to the highest office in your land. And many, many people simply cannot believe that such a thing can happen--even though this is a rather natural result when so much fear is present among your people.

Discouragement is a natural response when one sees that in spite of very obvious reasons for not doing something, people do it anyway. It's a natural response to seeing people not do something that seems to make complete sense. It's a loss of faith that the people who surround you really care about the world and the people and plants and animals in it. It's the loss of sureness that all that we do serves some purpose, that our actions and mere presence on this planet actually mean something.

Sometimes discouragement comes in a very big package, and it seems to overwhelm you. It sounds like you're there now. But keep your hope, because all is not lost. Life moves on, children continue to be born, and the world still needs its guides and teachers. You have your very concrete tasks in life that you've accepted fully, and it's up to you to continue to teach and guide, helping people to face life with less fear so that fewer things like those that just happened will occur in the future. We need to build our young people up so that fear isn't their biggest motivator. Only then will what you see around you start to resemble any kind of ideal that makes kindness and love its cornerstones.