A Christmas Card

Many of us receive and send out Christmas cards. They are a great and simple way of keeping in touch with our friends and family. Many times these days, with the advent of digital photography and printing, we can even send out pictures of our friends and family.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that oftentimes, the cards come in, stack up, and I really don’t pay a ton of attention as to whom they are from.

I received a card from a friend of mine the other day, however, that really made me pause.

You see, this friend of mine owns a small country store in an area that is in many ways depressed economically. He has struggled to make it with this store ever since he opened the doors, as there has never really been a high enough volume of business to really make it profitable. Add to this that my friend is not originally from this country, and doesn’t speak fluent English, and well, you’re probably getting the picture that its been an uphill battle for him.

Most days, since he really cannot afford to pay for any real hired help, he has to work the store himself, open to close. The hours are so very long, and I’m sure that most days he arrives home completely exhausted, and spent from another day of toiling seemingly for not much.

And, yet, this man who doesn’t have much in the way of material wealth and who has even less in the way of time, found the time to send me a Christmas card this year. The card didn’t say much, just a heartfelt appreciation of my friendship, and his signature. And yet, this relatively simple card meant probably as much or more than any Christmas card I’ve ever received.

It meant a lot because I know this man has very little to give, except his appreciation for his friends. And, I know that pains him, because he’d love to be in a position where he can give more. But, no gift, no matter what the price tag or how fantastic it might be, would ever really top the gift of this simple Christmas card he mailed to me.

He took the time to do it, because it was really all he could give: His time. And, it meant so much to me, because in spite of the fact that he can’t afford to give much at all, he gave what is most important, and most limited to him…namely, his time to remember me.

How often do we agonize over finding the perfect give during Christmas for a loved one or friend? Plenty. And yet, its often the simplest of gifts, at least on the surface, that make the most impact.

It’s a smile to someone who is down, when we don’t really feel like smiling. It’s our time, when we feel like we have none to give. It’s a friendly word to a friend who is down on their luck, when we ourselves need a friendly word. It’s listening to your spouse or loved one talk about their troubles, when what you really need is a shrink to hear yours.

These are all truly gifts, and gifts we can all give one another. They’re free insomuch as there isn’t any real monetary value associated with them. But, they do cost sometimes, because we may not feel all that giving when we are called upon to do so.

When we give of our time, love, and energy, what we are really demonstrating is God’s love for us all. God wants us to love one another; perhaps above all else he wants that for us. When we take the time to do this, I know He’s smiling somewhere.

So, think you have nothing to give this Christmas season? Go buy your friend a Christmas card, and send it. You have no idea the impact it will make.

I sure was surprised.

-The Minister

The Meaning of Christmas

Christmas time is indeed upon us. And, with the arrival of this festive season comes the deluge of the holiday movies. Many of us are suckers for these each and every year.

Oh sure, there are the timeless classics like “It’s a Wonderful Life”, but there are also the ones featuring stars we’ve never heard of in formula-driven romantic comedies. All of these movies, sappy and schmaltz-filled though they may be, do tend to at least dance near the real meaning of Christmas, whether its stated or not.

All my life, I’ve been taught, and then repeatedly told, what the real meaning of the season is. Which, for Christians, is the birth of the savior of mankind, Jesus Christ.

But for me, certainly lately, its taken on an entirely different meaning.

For me, the concept of God taking human form, and then humbling Himself to be placed in a lowly manger, surrounded not by kings, but by animals, is a very powerful notion. I can’t imagine a more loving Creator than one who decides He’s going to live as a human being, as one of us, to experience our pains, our challenges, so that He may know fully what it is to be human.

What it says, and thus means, to me these days is simply this: We are not alone. No my friends, we have a Creator who loved us…and still loves us…so much, that He lived among us. He walked as we walk, saw as we saw, and ultimately, felt enormous pain as we feel, only ten times worse in His case. Finally, He died as we all will die. Only, His death was a new beginning for mankind.

His spirit lives among us now. We see it in a friend’s smile, feel it in a loved one’s touch, hear it in laughter, and know it in quiet moments in nature.

We are never alone, in this sometimes bleak world. When I wrote that the holiday movies at least dance near this fact, well, they do. Most of them involve people finding each other and becoming more whole because of it. That’s indeed what God does, finds us, walks with us, and heals us, helping us become more whole. That, to me, is what Christmas is all about: An end to being alone.

I’ve heard it said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that “…if only we knew who walked beside us…” we would never fear or feel loneliness again.

Truer words have never been spoken.

-The Minister

Funerals

I attended the funeral for the father of a good friend of mine last week. This friend’s dad had shown me a great amount of kindness at a time when I needed it, and I never forgot that. He was a good man, who unfortunately had to suffer the ravages of cancer before he passed on to greener pastures.

I’ve often been struck at funerals by a sense of peace. Oh, to be sure, there is also a sense of great grief and of sadness as well. But, in most cases, I feel a sense of peace, that the departed is going home to be with the One who created him.

I got that same feeling again, during a remarkably calm and peaceful service, and I knew that my friend’s father was indeed well on his way home.
What struck me most about this particular service, however, was what happened after the service. My friend didn’t know that I was attending the service, as it had been a whirlwind after his father’s death, and we just hadn’t really touched base about it. As I went up to him to offer my condolences after the funeral, I touched him on the shoulder from behind, and he spun around in surprise at seeing me there.

Then, a wonderful thing happened. Instead of the usual shaking of hands that most guys do, we just hugged one another in a very spontaneous display of both grief, and joy that the long battle with cancer was all over. Nothing much was said between us, and honestly, nothing much needed to be said. There was an understanding between us that everything was going to be all right, and that as long as a person has friends, he is never truly alone.

The moment lasted but a handful of seconds, but it is a moment I will never truly forget.

For you see, in that moment alone, I believe the two of us transferred to each other God’s entire hopes and dreams for our species, namely, to love one another, and by so doing, love God. That’s truly all God wants. We tend to complicate it, by building hierarchies and bureaucracies around this message, so that it gets harder and harder to hear sometimes.

For my friend and me, for that moment, we heard the message loud and clear.

Love one another friends. I truly believe its all He really wants out of us.

-The Minister

Thanksgiving?

So another Thanksgiving has passed, and as usual this time of year, I try and take stock of all that I have to be grateful for in my life.

Only, this year, that list is a bit clouded, at least at the moment. Oh, to be sure, having spent the Thanksgiving holiday with my wonderful family, I saw many reasons for which to be thankful. Both mine and my wife’s family are doing pretty well overall.

And yet, this morning, as I write this, I’ve learned that a dear friend of mine’s father has just passed away, having lost his long battle with cancer. And yesterday, one of my nephews fell and broke his arm, leaving his poor mother to deal with both him, and her newborn child. Other family members and friends are facing their own particular battles as well.

Kind of gives one pause for a moment. I mean, I try and be grateful for all that I have in life. And yet, life pays me back for this with more suffering and problems. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t discouraging to be human at times.

Through these clouds I know that eventually, rays of sun will break back through. Today, however, I’ll have to admit I’m struggling to maintain an attitude of gratitude. I guess that comes with being a Minister of the Mundane. There are some days that are just worse than others, and really are mundane. The challenge is to hold on during these times, recognizing that they too will pass, and that God is still there, walking alongside of us all, especially during the gray days.

I have to lean pretty hard on God sometimes, when the clouds have covered up what is otherwise a pretty darn good life. When the “mundaneness” of life has really closed in, and I’m failing to see all that I do have for which to be thankful, I’m really left with no choice but to lean on God, my friend, and ask Him to see me through. As He has so many times, He will see me through the cloudy day, and back into the sunshine.

This is my message to you gentle reader, that there are just days when we need to remember that God is here for us to indeed lean upon. I’ve chosen to call myself a Minister of the Mundane because so often, that’s what life is…seemingly mundane days, with some doses sprinkled in of more than what we think is our fair share of suffering. It can be hard, when we are lost in the mundane details of our lives, to remember we are divine creatures, created by a loving and divine Father with the intention of overcoming the “mundaneness” of life, and letting our divine natures shine forth.

But that is exactly what we are…divine creatures. And, being divine, we can indeed overcome life’s circumstances, and be so much more than what we ever thought we could be. The trick is, on those cloudy days, to call upon God, our heavenly Father and our best friend, to hold us up, and to guide our vision back to where we can see the goodness of life.

I started this chapter with a question, namely that of was it really a Thanksgiving this past holiday? Despite the hard times, yes, I’d have to say it was a time of thanks. I’ve found that, even when I don’t feel like it, when the mundane life has swallowed me whole for a moment, if I can just look to the heavens and utter the simple phrase “thank you”, I’m so much the better for it.

Being thankful may be the hardest when tough times have descended, but its also these moments of gratitude when you don’t feel very grateful that build your soul.

And, that is work worth doing.

-The Minister

Creativity

When we exercise our wonderful ability to be creative, its my opinion that we draw pretty darn close to God.

After all, didn’t the Big Fella exercise the ultimate example of creativity when he created the universe? Yep, I think He knows a thing or two about creativity.

All kidding aside, it stands to reason at least in my feeble mind that if we are created in God’s image, then we have been given the gift of creativity with which to produce some remarkable things. As children, we seem to instinctively know this. Just watch your own children playing sometime; you’ll quickly notice that they are creating all the time.

As kids we used to create almost every day. Whether it was baseball fields out of tennis courts or dirt lots, or new worlds to conquer and explore out of a neighbor’s backyard, there seemingly was nothing that stood in our way in terms of using our imagination. We created a whole, whole lot out of seemingly nothing.

So, what happens to us as we age? Why does it seem that our ability to tap into our creativeness seems to diminish with time? Did we suddenly become shut off from our own internal fountain of imagination, just because we got older?

Well, yes, sometimes we do get shut off from our own ability to create. “Real life”, whatever that is, sometimes discourages us from utilizing our creative abilities. For a variety of reasons, oftentimes the temptation is to tend to shut down our imagination, and focus upon what is real and concrete. If we aren’t told outright, then it is often strongly implied that imagination is the province of children and daydreamers.

So, off we go to live in our inside-the-box lives, cutting ourselves off from a veritable fountain of youth: Our imagination.

I think this is a sad, sad way to live, yet I too at times have fallen victim to what others have perceived I should be doing, namely being “normal”, and keeping my “nose to the grindstone”, leaving that imagination stuff to kids.

What a load of bologna!

There’s nothing written in the great Handbook of Life that says as we get older, we must leave our imaginations behind. Nothing. Not a sentence. Heck, not a word. Imagination is the stuff of dreams, and dreams are the ingredients of creativity, and ultimately, creation. If someone hadn’t imagined as a grown-up how wonderful it would be for man to go the moon, then, well, we wouldn’t have ultimately made it.

I’ll bet that person was pretty much dismissed as a day-dreamer too.

Folks, God wants us to create. God wants us to use our imaginations, or else, why would he have seen to it that humans would ultimately possess this capacity? Our ability to dream, and then follow through on those dreams, is what makes us different from the animals, and all other living creatures. We can imagine possibilities. We can see these possibilities, and then if the desire is strong enough, make them real through creation.

What greater tribute can we give to God then to use our own abilities to create the future?

So go ahead and imagine. Heck, tonight, why not go outside, and just picture yourself standing at the plate with the bases loaded, down 3 runs, in the bottom of the ninth inning, in the last game of the World Series. See yourself in a little play of sorts, a recreation of a potential heroic moment that many warm-blooded American males dream about. Have some fun, and play…the neighbors might think you’re a bit daft, but who cares?

And then, swing for the fences. You just might connect.

-The Minister

Finding God at the Office

Do we see God at the office?

Does He walk in the halls of business, where it seems that all too often there is but one goal, and that goal doesn’t include God?

Good questions these, and they are ones I have wondered about for most of my career. I’m one of those seekers you see, an individual who always wonders just exactly what he is to be doing with his life. For the most part, I’ve always worked at least part of my time in an office environment, even though I have traveled a fair amount for work too. Most offices that I’ve seen are not the types of structures that inspire deep philosophical debate and thought. Oftentimes they seem quite cold and impersonal, devoid of much personality. One would think God really wouldn’t like being cooped up in an office. Heck, we humans struggle enough with it, think God really wants to spend His time in an office too?

Ever since the turn of this century, when Americans experienced both attacks from enemies outside of our borders, and attacks on our very moral fiber from enemies within the office from multiple corporate scandals, we humans have started to really question just exactly what we are doing with our time. For the vast majority of us, we need to work to put bread on our table. Work, however, at least in the modern sense of the word, isn’t exactly full of meaning and joy, especially when its conducted in a drab office environment. So, we, oftentimes joylessly, drive off to our offices each morning in the hopes of finding some small kernel of meaning as we try and earn our “daily bread”.

How then, do we make sense of our workaday lives? How do we find the meaning? How do we see God at the office?

The answers to these questions, like most of life actually, can be found in the fabric of our everyday, mundane lives.

When groups are gathered together working creatively on a project at work, well, seems that could be one great place we’d find God. I’m banking that God, the ultimate Creator, sure does love it when His children get together and create themselves.

When folks are sitting around the break room just having a good laugh at something, seems like God is probably there too. After all, He created laughter, so he darn well probably appreciates a good joke as much as the next guy!

And, when a co-worker takes time out of his or her busy schedule just to listen to a colleague’s problems and life challenges, sure seems like God’s there too, being as compassionate as always. To show love and respect to another human being is something that God has hard-wired into all of us. While sometimes we can forget this, we always get opportunities in life to remind us that life is all about love, and that’s truly it.

We find meaning at the office when we find God. And God it turns out, is in every nook and cranny of every office building. We just need to keep our eyes peeled, and more importantly our hearts open to His touch. While offices are cold and impersonal many times, the people that inhabit them are flesh and blood, people with emotions and feelings, and joy and pain. We don’t have to all be doctors to be healers. Every day, the office presents us all opportunities to help heal one another. When this occurs, work isn’t so bad, and has a lot of meaning after all.

I’m writing this on a Monday, and I’ll admit, getting up to drive to that cold and impersonal office was not high on my list of life’s most enjoyable moments. But, turns out I did manage to laugh a little bit, to exercise my creativity some, and to listen to a fellow co-worker as he needed someone upon which to unload his problems.

All in all, not a bad day.

-The Minister

Trying Not to Get Anywhere

If you’ve visited a bookstore lately, and strolled down the “Self-Help” section, you’ve probably noticed that the shelves are stocked full of every possible title imaginable, on every possible subject. Sometimes, I think I can hear the shelves actually moaning under the weight of all those books.

I mean, if you want to lose weight, find religion, lose religion, and find weight…it’s all there my friends. Every conceivable angle is covered, for a nation I’m guessing is obsessed with trying to get to some level of perfection.

As for me, well, guilty as charged. I too have from time to time gorged myself at the table of “Self Help”, only to find that while the quantity of “food” was staggering, the taste was a bit flat.

Just yesterday, I watched on television a couple being interviewed on finding one’s passion in life. The couple was certainly well-meaning; I do not mean to say I’m cynical about their claims of helping folks find their true calling in life. It is a noble pursuit.

But, lately, for me at least, I’m perhaps noticing for the first time that true happiness, true peace of mind really, can really only be obtained by purposely trying not to get anywhere. I have started my own little practice of meditation. It is through this daily practice that I am, for the first time in literally decades, seeing that by parking my butt in the present moment, and staying there for 45 minutes at a time (the length of time I generally meditate), that peace of mind is found now, right here, at this very moment.

I’ve always been one of those folks who believed that “someday”, peace of mind would be mine, when work was over, kids were out of the house, and all the bills had been paid. But, life continues to happen even after all of these events have transpired, at least that’s what I’ve heard. So when exactly was this peace of mind I aspired to possess going to happen?

Peace of mind, contentment, and happiness are qualities that have to happen sometimes almost in spite of everything else that is going on in one’s life. There will always be challenges. There will always be bills to pay, mouths to feed, and everyday trivial annoyances in one’s life. Peace of mind, if it is to ever happen, must happen by us choosing to have it, and choosing more importantly to practice living in the present moment.

I am far from an expert on meditation. For that, I recommend that you look elsewhere, as there are many great books on the subject that will get you started (here I am taking digs at self-help books, and I’m promoting another self-help book! But, trust me, this is different!). I’ve just started my own practice really. But, I can tell you that it does help to show you, and me, what living in the present moment really is like. For 45 minutes at a time, I sit and watch my thoughts go by, trying not to cling to any one of them, and just sit, immersing myself in the lovely and beautiful present. When I am finished, I find that I am much calmer, much more optimistic about things, and this feeling permeates a lot of the different aspects of my day as I move through it.

Meditation is quite literally a “non-striving”, a purposeful time-out from life, or perhaps I should say time-in to the present moment, where we just sit, and be. I really believe this is how God wants us to live our lives, just moment by blissful moment. We humans tend to believe that we will magically arrive some day, to a place where peace of mind and happiness reside. So, we continue to buy all the self-help we can get our hands on, to lead us to this blissful destination, as our everyday lives tend to not resemble utopia in any way, shape, or form.

Perhaps one of the great truths in life is that happiness is found right here, and right now, this very moment, despite what your particular circumstances are in your own life. God doesn’t truly want us to agonize over our mistakes in the past (yep, I’ve sure done a lot of that), or worry about all the possible calamities in our future (yep, check that one off for me too). He just wants us to enjoy this moment fully, this wonderful mostly untapped moment right in front of us, and then move naturally on to the next one.

So, it’s a bit of a paradox really. But its been my experience that God works through paradoxes a lot of times. Only, they really aren’t paradoxes to Him, just to us.

By trying not to get anywhere, you tend to arrive here.

And “here” is turning out to be a mighty fine place after all.

-The Minister