Dear old and new friends,

     Americans of means are diligent to eat healthy foods, and grocery store shelves are loaded with all variety of food options displaying large labels that read Natural. Yet to date there are no regulations regarding what can be labeled as natural. So a fine reading of the labels on products is necessary to avoid unhealthy foods with lots of fat, added sweeteners and artificial coloring or additives.

     Would it not be wise to also be seriously concerned about what is in the creed or creeds in which we believe? A remarkable reality is that your daily life reflects what you believe; yes, be you an atheist, agnostic or a believer! Among the variety of today’s creeds are: I believe the goal in life is to get rich…or to be successful…or that being prosperous is a sign of God’s blessings. The creed of the majority of Christian believers is the Apostles Creed which is typically recited robotically without asking if one honestly believes all that is being proclaimed. Catechism doctrines are useful teaching ways to explain countless centuries of accumulated beliefs, but they shouldn’t eclipse an original, natural creed.

     A “natural creed” contains no dogmatic assertions, morality laws or stale old beliefs of former ages. What kind of creed doesn’t contain dogmatic beliefs? Albert Einstein, himself an agnostic, gives us a clue when he said, “The most beautiful emotion is the mysterious. To sense that behind everything we experience there is something that the mind cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly; this is religiousness. Those who cannot wonder and stand in awe are as good as dead.” A natural creed is a primitive response to mystery, to that which is better than us and bigger than anything outside of us, that’s so good we don’t even have a name for it. Experiences of such awesome mysteries would include a star-studded night sky, feeling the mesmerizing power of ocean tides, being in love, and the uniqueness of a human face, even one’s own.

     The religion of a “natural creed” is simply an indestructible living trust in a personal God. Its morality is a personal response to being loved by a gift-giving God applied to all situations. A natural creed’s prayer is not futile SOS attempts to contact God but living aware/awake and responding to the abiding Holy Presence in everything. Its credo is that the Kingdom of God is here, not in heaven. Eternal Life isn’t something to come in the future, it has already begun for us. Surely, such a wonderful natural belief is free of doubts and uncertainties. No, since doubt and faith are two sides of the same human experience.

     This being the mid-point in this Springtime of the Spirit, consider setting aside a sufficient period of time to look honestly at how you live your daily life. Since it mirrors your creed of beliefs you can see what you really, truly believe.

Dear old and new friends,

     This time of the year a bare wooden cross perhaps draped with purple cloth is the central image in Protestant churches, while in Catholic ones it is a cross with the dead Jesus on it—a crucifix. Both of these crosses present us with a crux, a problem. Historically during Christianity’s first thousand years neither one of these crosses was seen! In place of the cross of death, a cross of the victory of life over death, a beautiful artwork in silver or gold, embedded with jewels and precious stones, was venerated.

     The crux of the cross is that art images have enormous influencing power, or they once did. Today our eyes are numbed blind to images, their power diluted because we are daily saturated in a tsunami of images on television, in magazines and newspapers. It has been said that we now see in a day, or even in a few hours, more images than someone in the 12th century saw in their entire lifetime! To see an image of art then required being inside a church, whose walls offered fresco painted images that taught the viewer theology, scripture and the splendor of the resurrection.

     The last decades of the first millennium a new religious image appeared. The earliest surviving crucifix is the Gero Cross of 970 which is a carved oak, full life-size image of the dead Jesus nailed to a cross. Rapidly, such life-size crucifixes spread across Europe becoming increasingly more and more grotesque and bloody. The Emperor Charlemagne then decreed these full-scale crucifixes be placed at the center of all worship places in an effort to unify his kingdom by convincingly converting his Saxon subjects baptized by the sword (Of note: Zealous Charlemagne also decreed that anyone who ate meat in Lent merited the death sentence!)

     These new crucifixes proclaimed a new spirituality of suffering, death and a fear of hell, and asked the logical question, “Who was responsible for this horrendous crime?” Preachers provided the answer using fiery, agonizing images of hell. “You Saxons are guilty! You have murdered the Lord of Life by your sins!” That guilt-laden explanation lingers in today’s sermons and pious devotion, and it haunts with culpability those who looked upon crucifixes. Words from authority figures appear toothless, yet all words are living art images possessing incredible power, especially when repeated over and over and over, which is the secret of propaganda.

     In 1095 Pope Urban II initiated the First Crusade, calling European warriors to take up the sword and wear the cross as their symbol to wage a holy war against Islamic forces holding Jerusalem, and against all unbelievers. The pope commissioned Peter the Hermit to preach the Crusade through France and Germany. His preaching on Good Friday in Cologne, Germany called upon the crusaders to force Jews to repent of murdering Christ and accept baptism at the point of the sword. Cologne’s subsequent slaughter of Jewish men, women and children was the first Christian pogrom against Jews. It is estimated that before turning east to the Holy Land the Crusaders killed approximately ten thousand Jews in Germany alone, where previously for centuries Jews and Christians had lived peacefully side by side. Peter’s diatribe of vicious hate speech against the Jewish people spread quickly across Europe, repeated by other preachers who created exaggerated bloody, gruesome accounts of Jesus’ death. The Jews had now replaced Christians and their sins as the new culprits guilty of Christ’s death.

     Instead of the cross as a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice for our sins, or of him as the scapegoat carrying humanity’s sins away to his death, recall that God is love. As the Spirit drove Jesus into the desert so the Spirit of Love drove him to Calvary’s cross. The cross isn’t about sin or guilt, but about God’s love. The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar says the first crucifixion took place in the heart of God as a total self-emptying in unconditional love to become one with all humanity and creation. That first crucifixion showed the helplessness and vulnerability of God’s love. The cross is an Icon-image of evolution where suffering and death are essential for the birth of new life. Theologian Ilia Delio says that the cross is about the wildness of Divine Love that’s stronger than death. Sadly, we eclipse its atomic energy by domesticating it when we use it as a decoration and by a lack of prayerful awareness when making the Sign of the Cross on ourselves. An old Russian saying is that you can tell the depth of faith of another by how she or he makes the sign of the cross.

     In this reflection we have also considered the power of words like those used in hate speech towards the Jews. Words are more than just sounds. Words create vibrant living art images in the mind. Words like weapons can kill and injure, so our Teacher taught us derogatory remarks about others are equal to murder and merit the fires of Gehenna. The many centuries of insulting Jews by hate speech and derogatory jokes led ultimately to the deaths of millions in the Nazi Holocaust. Be vigilant of your words. Beware of echoing those whose vivid speech condemns abortion. Wash out your ears after hearing anti-Muslim, anti-police, anti-immigration and anti-racial black or white speech. When tempted to use any negative speech, pause and then obscurely make on your closed lips a small sign of the cross.

                       
                                             And God stepped out on space,
                                             And he looked around and said,
                                             “I’m lonely…
                                             I’ll make me a world.”
                                                         -- God’s Trombones by James Weldon Johnson
                       
Dear old and new friends,

     Forty days is a long time to be all alone in the desert. Did Nazareth’s stone mason/carpenter after thirty some years of cramped close village life taste there the acidic bitterness of loneliness? Solitary confinement today is considered the harshest punishment, just a notch above capital punishment. So why did God’s Spirit drive him into the desert for forty days when today scientists equate the health effects of loneliness to that of smoking 22 cigarettes a day?

     Modern loneliness doesn’t require retreating to a desert or being estranged from others. Paradoxically it is found in public gatherings, happy social events, Sunday church worship and hectic work sites. You can encounter it in loveless marriages, the staffs and residents of nursing homes and senior care facilities, in the homes of the elderly and infirm who live alone, and surprisingly by those with a microphone standing before large audiences. As John Lennon and Paul McCartney sang in the Beatles’ song Eleanor Rigby, “All the lonely people, where do they all come from?”

     Loneliness is the new black plague in spite of television’s endless display of us being always happy people, smiling with perfect white teeth, selling this or that—but that isn’t us! America psychologists tell us we are in the midst of widespread psychological depression. This “epidemic,” according to psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman, has gone hand in hand with the loss of psychological and spiritual guidance. There is a nostalgic longing for the wise neighbor at whose kitchen table we once could confidently unload our inner feelings. People hunger for someone who will listen to them with no personal benefit except to wish them well. Ironically, flooded with an array of hi-tech message devices, people cannot find anyone willing to genuinely listen with only his or her welfare in mind.

     Looking for a personal mission in life requiring no special education? Consider becoming a listener. Sounds simple, but it isn’t. It requires not giving advice (which we all love to do), not judging and simply the ironclad patience of listening. You can minister anywhere. When encountering anyone—stranger or friend— carefully look at her/his eyes for the dullness of loneness’s lack of joy. Then say a few words invested with sincere caring to them with the hope of rescuing them at least for a brief time of being frozen in isolation.
 
                                               A Spirituality of Solitude

     Seriously consider adding to your spiritual practices time in solitude. Turn off all your hi-tech gadgets and phone, and just be alone in silence. Self-imposed isolation is frightening. So let the Spirit “drive” you into it confident that it is a holy place. The Spirit drove Jesus into the desert for 40 days, and the same Spirit drove Buddha to a Bo Tree, there to sit alone for an extended period of intense contemplation. For both of them their solitary times ended with enlightenment, and each began to teach and minister to others. What gift is hidden in our dread of silent solitude that we try to fill up with music or worthless entertainment. Is it the same gift that Buddha and Jesus discovered? Neither spoke of what it was, but their lives loudly proclaimed it.

     Perhaps Mark Twain may have given us a hint in his observation, “Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anyone….” (And I will add…or to themselves.) Could it be if truly sufficient time spent, not counted in minutes per day but in a true solitude, one is liberated from life’ s distracting three-ring circus of frivolous triviality so that very slowly one’s moon turns its dark side towards us? Once that happens its darkness and all that is secreted in it could be lovingly embraced and converted.

     Or in their long solitude did Buddha and Jesus slowly descended down into their underworld of the Unconscious, symbolized by the dark side of the moon? We each have such a subterranean consciousness which is not some reservoir of animal drives; rather it is the unexamined reside of our earliest training and feelings about ourselves and the world. It is unexamined since as small children we weren’t old enough to make judgments of the behaviors of our parents or the influences of our home environment that were influencing us. Yet in each of us that unconscious contains the deep motives of our adult behavior and the drives that determine our conduct. So we are blessed when we attempt to confront that hidden inner consciousness that can lead to conversion, real growth and the self-assurance to become whom we were destined to be.

Dear believing, doubting and non-believing friends,

     Hearts, hearts and more hearts are everywhere you look these days, so if you got ashes today don’t let them float down and blind your eyes to Valentine’s Day, only days away. Valentine’s Feast of Lovers and Friends is an ideal companion to Ash Wednesday’s annual launching of Lent’s season of reform. But why do I need to be reformed? “I go to church every Sunday, leaving an offering of 10% of my income; I pray before meals and twice daily, read scripture every morning and am a volunteer at the soup kitchen—and I keep all the commandments!

     Really, you keep “all” the commandments? For Jews and for Jesus, the Great Commandment isn’t one of the famous Ten, rather “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength.” (Deut: 6, 5; Matt. 22:37) To test if we keep that commandment you and I need the Italian Dr. Santorio’s 1602 invention of the thermoscope, what we call a thermometer. We each need a heart-thermometer to give us the degree of our love’s fervor for our Beloved Creator and to measure the degree of the heat of our love for those dearest to us. If your thermometer numbers feel off a degree or two, you’re fortunate that the annual season of reform that begins today provides you with 40 days to rekindle and stoke up the fires of your love.

     After recovering from falling in love we all tend to love moderately within limits, not with great passion. We do so logically to insure our beloved’s death will not drive us mad. Marriage with its routine and sameness also lessens the once explosive fires of love and causes a lack of frequent gratitude and loving gestures and expressions. Marriage vows are necessary since we physically quickly change, and our once passionate love over time cools down until it is as lukewarm as today’s ashes. In the case of seniors, their once fascinating youthful love over the decades matures into an infallible ironclad companionship. Older lovers of God, after years of intimacy, experience that same confident calm love of companionship with their Beloved Lord.

     Unfortunately, believers deceive themselves that fidelity to the laws of God and the church, along with Sunday worship, suffices for love. Non-believers and halfhearted ones don’t hate God but experience the opposite of love which isn’t hate, but apathy. When it comes to Divine matters they are indifferent, uninterested and, when forced to attend church, are bored. The temperature of their relationship with God is lukewarm. Also in failing marriages and love affairs any love left is likewise lukewarm.
​
     If fifty percent of American marriages end up dead in divorce, one wonders what percentage of God-human love relationships end up the same way? The Good News is if your heart thermometer measures your love of God as tepid, even if you are a doubter it can be re-enkindled. Surprisingly, enkindled love is conducive to enkindling belief, which is really Good News since it is healthy to deny the existence of some Gods we were taught existed.

     One answer to how God looks upon the degree of your love is found in the book of Revelation 3: 15: “I know that you are neither cold nor hot…So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Those are the acidic hateful words of a god of whom you should be an atheist! It is healthy and holy to be a non-believer of that Revelation spokesperson, like several other false gods who are found in the “Good Book”…but who don’t really exist!

     For half-hearted or devout believers, here are some suggestions. Begin to say aloud frequently throughout the day, “I love you, God.” When you experience a love gift from the Divine One like escaping some accident or finding some forgotten hidden money, say, “Thank you. I love you, God.” As you drift off to sleep as a final prayer of the day, “I love you, God…or Lord…or my Beloved.” Review your life and your talents, personal gifts you’ve been given, or a marriage partner or children, and see them all as individual love gifts to you from your Beloved God.

     Regardless what you may hear from the pulpit or read in the Bible, God believes in you, even if you don’t believe in him/her. God’s love for you is always unconditional, more passionate than any human love; no matter if your love is nonexistent or only lukewarm.

                   Happy romancing your Valentine lover and your Divine Beloved!

Dear old and new friends,

     Today’s marriage vows have remained unchanged for centuries except from the relatively recent historic deletion of the bride’s vow to “obey.” However, those vows need to evolve. Some readers may stop here saying, “I’m not married, so this reflection doesn’t apply to me.” But please read on because marriage is only the introduction to this reflection which is about your tomorrow. The conventional marriage vows today conclude with “…in sickness and health until death do us part” or “…all the days of my life.”

     Love before marriage wasn’t even considered a reality until the 18th century. Today’s acceptance of marriage as a sexually exclusive, romantic union between one man and one woman is a rather recent historic development. Today half of all American marriages end not by death but by divorce…and there are those who fall in love and live as life partners without ever being married. Realistically that pledge of “until death do us part” is the desired ideal and could be compared to the rings on a tree that grow yearly. A happy loveship (more intimate than friendship) lived with loving fidelity, affection and care grows daily into much more than “until death do us part.”

     That “much more” is expressed in a possible new four-word ending to our marriage vows promising love “…in sickness, health and death for all eternity.” The theologian Diarmuid O’ Murchu recalls author Michael Talbot’s words, “We are, as the aborigines say, just learning how to survive in infinity.” In addition, he says, “At this stage of our human evolution the human mind can scarcely grasp the notion of the infinite.” He then challenges us by saying the most controversial principle of quantum theology is, “The concepts of beginning and end, along with the theological notions of resurrection and reincarnation are invoked as dominate myths to help us humans make sense of our infinite destiny in an infinite universe.”

     We have been taught God is eternal, without a beginning or end, and it seems heretical to conceive of ourselves in the same way, but the new quantum physics dares us to do so. We proclaim that the Christian God is love, and so that love surely shares in the Divine’s infinity. To daily attempt to live with the conviction that you will live forever radically transforms how you view today’s daily little hangnail irritations. Marvelously, you don’t have to create some great masterpiece to become immortal.

     As we struggle with this new conception of personal infinity may we find support in Woody Allen, the American film actor, director and writer. He has been acclaimed a genius by the French and praised by Americans as one of the greatest film directors of modern times. Allen himself is more lighthearted: “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying!”

 
                                           An Indiana News Item
 
                        A second-grader at an Indiana public school was
                        “banished” by his teacher after telling his classmates
                        he didn’t believe in God. The 7-year-old was forced
                        to sit by himself during lunch for three days and not
                        to speak to other students because his teacher said
                        his views on religion had offended them. His parents
                        have filed a lawsuit
 

Dear old and new friends,

     Reading the above news item, it seemed to me that the young 7-year-old student’s atheistic belief was far more disturbing to his teacher than to her students because of the way she responded. Why did she impose the severe three-day excommunication, including speaking to his classmates, unless she “feared” he might evangelize them?

     Not surprising his second grade classmates were offended when he told them that God didn’t exist. According to Dr. Justin Barrett of Oxford University, “Children are born believers in a supreme being (God) and do not simply acquire religious beliefs through indoctrination. He further states if a group of children were abandoned and raised alone on a desert island they would all believe in a God. So the young second-grade atheist’s disbelief must have come from atheistic parents who either enlightened or robbed him.

     Scholars believe from their research that children have a predisposition to believe in a Supreme Being/Creator since they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose. As a result, small children resist the idea of evolution and are believers in creationism. Believing in a Supreme Being, depending upon the circumstances of your birth and childhood, may be addressed as Allah, Krishna, Yahweh or God. We enter this world believing in God, which isn’t the same as having faith in God—which is trusting God. From our education in Christianity we acquire faith…and with it fear! It’s a dreaded fear of God, of offending by sin and being tortured in Hell’s raging fires.

     In life’s progression then comes the radical earthquake of adolescence’s passionate sexual urges, the embracing of evolution and the radical expanding of one’s frontiers with the infinities of the Space Age, not to mention today’s Internet and the array of technological marvels. Meanwhile, the majority regardless of their graduate and post-graduate degrees lack any education in religion and theology, so their basic understanding of God remains that of childhood or early adolescence.

     At the same time, we are witnessing the slow death of institutional religion as major churches suffer ever-decreasing members and regular attendance at church services. At this moment we are also in the midst of a universal secularism which is a new untried experiment in human history, and only time will tell its consequences. In the midst of this confusing flux, you personally can be struggling whether you believe in or have faith in God!

     In a time of personal crisis, you can pray with faith, calling upon your loving God for help. And when church authorities use man-made doctrines in God’s name to prevent people from being whom God made them to be, you can find yourself to be an agnostic—not a disbeliever, but a holy doubter.

     Basically, religion, like the arts, is an attempt to find meaning and value in this life. So whenever you question the value of religion, briefly recall its purpose. Then wherever you are on your life journey—whether only halfway through or perhaps nearing the end—and you seriously wonder about your relationship with God, find joy and hope in psychologist Ernest Becker’s wise observation, “In our innermost soul we are still children, and remain so throughout life.”

Dear old and new friends,

     Stories have been our teachers since prehistoric days and fairy tales were our very first teachers before preschool or kindergarten. Before they were Disneyized the old fairy tales like Three Little Pigs or Little Red Riding Hood taught critical life lessons. We can even at our present age benefit by recalling Little Red Riding Hood. But why should we? First consider a recent email from FBI director James Coney that informs you, “The FBI in conjunction with other investigation agencies and global intelligence networks has found that you have an over-due payment of ten million, three hundred thousand US dollars in Citibank. Please reply.” Secondly, in recent years Bernie Madoff pulled off the largest fraud in U.S. history of almost $65 billion scammed from his clients. Scams like these appear daily in your mail, on the telephone or at your door in thousands of different disguises. Shrink yourself down to a child student again to study this summary of Little Red Riding Hood.

     The girl has no name other than of her favorite red velvet hat (in some old versions) or hooded cape that had been given to her by her grandmother. Sent by her mother with a basket of food for her sick grandmother, she was admonished, “Don’t wander off the road. Go directly through the woods on it to your grandmother.” Along the way Little Red Riding Hood meets the Wolf who entices her to enjoy wandering amongst fields of beautiful flowers alongside the road. The Wolf asks her where she is going, and she tells him…even giving him directions to her grandmother’s home. Then the Wolf says he also will visit her and departs as she continues to leisurely picks flowers. The Wolf pretends to be Little Red Riding Hood, enters the house and eats the grandmother. Little Red Riding Hood suddenly recalls the purpose of her journey and returns to the road going straight through the woods to her grandmother’s house.

     Arriving she knocks on the door, and the Wolf now wearing grandmother’s nightgown and lacy cap uses a false voice telling her to come in. Using the same imitation voice, the Wolf invites her to come join him in bed, and she takes off her clothes (in the original 17th century version) and climbs into bed with the Wolf. “My, but you have long hairy arms,” says Little Red Riding hood. “All the better to embrace you dear,” replies the Wolf. This exchange continues with his long legs, big ears, eyes and finally his big teeth. Then the Wolf falls on Little Red Riding Hood and devours her.

     Either Little Red Riding Hood was stupid or she wanted to be seduced! The taking off of her clothes says she is now of the age intrigued by sex. Desires for money, sex, anxieties about our health or a quest for a mate all make us easily gullible victims. Experts also tell us that we are instinctively trusting people; if the swindler’s story is plausible and compelling, we presume it is true.

     Warning: In times of social instability, change and economic uncertainty such as ours today, swindlers, con artists, chiselers and hustlers abound. Our technological age is ideal for them to have access through the Internet and email to a vast range of a potential “gull” (old term for a foolish, easy deceived man, hence the term gullible). Be constantly on guard for the insincere story which is a challenge since we ourselves engage in deception. According to a study, we tell a lie on an average of three times in a 10-minute conversation on topics such as how we feel, our health, complimenting another on articles of clothing, food, etc. We know advertisements lie to us, as do politicians, so perhaps it is easier for us to be fooled by the larger dangerous lie of the con artists.

     Also in anxious times of disruptive change, like those in past history we can be hoodwinked (monks beware: the term comes from having your hood pulled over your eyes) by holy hustlers whose churchy religion sells hope now and at death. Cassocked or robed hustlers usually have been swindled themselves before, so make convincing merchants of mystical mischief. In the Middle Ages monks drilled holes and inserted tubes in Blessed Mary statues to make them appear to weep so to draw pious gulls to donate sizeable sums. Real religion is the endless quest in our messy world to find the Divine. Churchly religion finds God in miracles of seeing Jesus’ face in a pizza or the Divine in supposed miraculous visitation of Mother Mary on a neighbor’s garage roof.

     Beware of being spiritually greedy. Be wary of being piously blind to churchy religion that encourages judgment of others or a hatred of or aversion to sinful others, instead of embracing unconditional loving found in real religion.

Dear old and new friends,

      In our last reflection we proposed jettisoning our fears of yesterday that we carry in our backpacks into this new year 2016, even the really old ones, relics of our cave dwelling years. It is important as we begin to consider how in the process of getting rid of fears we acknowledge some of them are valid, healthy and should be respected, say like our ancient fear of lightning.

     If you have fears preventing your full enjoyment of life, naturally you ask how to liberate yourself of them? The eminent psychiatrist Karl Menninger said once, “Fears are educated into us and can, if we wish, be educated out.” Each of us is different and we’ve had different fear educations, but our commonly educated fears are snakes (yet only a few species are poisonous), people who have different color skin than ours and strangers. Politicians aware of these embedded learned fears use them to encourage fear laden prejudice against aliens and those with black or brown skins. The Church also is a teacher that instills fearful intolerance of those of different sexual orientations.

     Among the fears we lug along with us in our human backpack are relics, prehistoric ones. No one educated us to be afraid of the dark. That is tattooed in us from the time when wild animals lurked outside the circle of fire of our ancestors. A dark bedroom when we were small and defenseless was terrifying since it hid all kinds of imaginary monsters. And after we can sleep peacefully in darkness without a small light, that old fear is resurrected as natural and healthy when at night we walk alone down a darkened street. A fear of one age should be educated out of us, while later in life it needs to be preserved in another life situation. Gun merchants make a very good living off fears of dark skinned African Americans and Hispanics, and fears of strangers.

     As Dr. Menninger wisely said, with our fears educated into us by parents, politicians and merchants selling all kinds of security devises, we can “if we wish” become our own teacher and educate ourselves out of them. Astute, wise Menninger knew we can unconsciously be afraid not to be afraid…which is to be liberated! The wise teacher of Nazareth Jesus is called a savior, which is a liberator, who taught freedom from fears by challenging us not to fear but to love what we fear.

     Actually, you and I have been self-teachers since we were children. At an early age we self-learned that fire can burn and be painful, and in our later teens to wisely take only calculated risks since some risks were stupid and could be lethal. And now regardless our age we must teach ourselves to discard negative, opposed to the fullness of life, fears. But how? A good student listens to the teacher and wishes to learn.

     So listen and respond to the voices of fears admonishing and scolding you. Teach yourself to talk back when an anxious voice urges you not to do something; disobey it, contradict it and “do whatever it is.” Education needs to be repetitious, so your corrective voice must be repeated, repeated and repeated until it is no longer necessary. This emptying of the mind is an inner resource of peace to deal with fears.

     The oldest way of teaching was telling stories, and this one is from ancient Japan:

     In the end of the 17th century Lord Yama-ro-tuchi went on an official trip and took with him his tea master, a renowned instructor in the art of tea. They stayed at a royal villa, and one day Lord Yama-ro-tuchi urged him to go for some sightseeing, and the tea master departed attired as a samurai with two swords. While on his way he came upon seated on a large stone a muscular Ronin (a samurai who has lost his attachment to a lord and often lived by robbery) who said, “Seeing you are a samurai, I would consider it an honor if we engaged together in sword play.”

     The tea master was fearful and didn’t know what to do, saying, “I am a tea master only dressed as a samurai, and am completely unfamiliar with swordsmanship.” The Ronin grinned, as his real motive was to rob this traveler. The heart of the tea master was flooded with the fear of finding it impossible to escape and not wishing to die an ignominious death that would shame his Lord. Suddenly, he remembered that shortly before he had come upon this large Ronin he had passed a swordsman training school near Uyeno. Instantly he decided to return there to learn how to honorably die, and said, “If you insist, we will engage in swordsmanship, but first I must attend to an errand for my master. I will come back here, but please allow me the time for this duty.”

      The Zen master at the training school listened to the story of the tea master and was impressed he wanted to die an honorable death, and said, “I will teach you, but first may I have a cup of your tea?” The tea master was pleased, and entered into the elaborate ceremony of the tea ritual forgetting all about his approaching tragedy. The Zen sword master suddenly cried out, “You have no need to learn the art of death! Your state of mind you presently have is sufficient for you to cope with that despicable Ronin. All you must do is what you’ve done here in the tea ceremony.”

     Returning to the brawny Ronin he apologized for the delay, and then began to repeat his tea ritual. He calmly took off his outer coat, tranquilly tied his sleeves with a string and gathered up his skirt. Then with serenity drew his sword and raised it high over his head. At this incompressible peaceful behavior of a once timid tea master, the Ronin robber dropped to the ground and begged his pardon before jumping up and fleeing away.

Dear old and new friends,
    
     As we enter into this new week of a new year the journalist Mignon McLaughlin reminds us, “The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it.” Regardless if you are trying to live differently in this new year or are simply going on with life as you did in old 2015, check your backpack. Not only children going to school or hikers wear a backpack, each one of us does. We carry and are affected by our past experiences and past thinking. Does that mean we are supposed to examine our thoughts about life back in 2000 or 1960?

     Further back than that even, for we carry on our backs attitudes, thinking and fears that go back to when we dwelled in caves. The Ice Age began 2.6 million years ago when glaciers and ice sheets covered for a prolonged time northern parts of the world. Seeking shelter from the bitter cold and icy winds, it is believed former tent dwelling hunters inhabited caves for protection. If you live where bitter biting cold, snow and ice are common this time of year in North America, you can identify with your most ancient ancestors seeking the warmth of a fire in the shelter a cave. Scholars believe we today are still hardwired with some of the attitudes and thinking of those prehistoric times!

     This brief review of history is directly related to our daily needs and those of the poor. While the Salvation Army bell ringers aren’t collecting for the poor now, the daily needs of the unfortunate are just as real, if not more so than at Christmas. Compassion is a 365-day attitude of the heart, not just at the holidays. However, after all the many requests for our generosity in the days before and at Christmas, we can easily suffer from what psychologists call “psychic numbering.” This causes us to see but not feel, and to justify our lack of compassion by saying, “I gave at the holidays.”

     Take the case of a small child in dirty clothes and face who stops you on the street and begs you for help. Moved by compassion you reach for your billfold. Then another identically poor dirty child appears begging for help. Suddenly your loving compassion suffers a serious puncture, if not a major leak. Because of what’s hidden in your backpack it doesn’t take ten other children for us to react negatively…only one more! It seems we are prehistorically psychologically wired to help only one person at a time! Also studies show we are less inclined to donate to large scale relief for some major disaster because of cave day thinking such as “My gift is only drop in the bucket.”

     For a really fresh “new” year, lighten your load and enliven your life by disposing of as much as possible of your back pack. Keep your mind up to date with the times as you jettison cave dwellers’ fears and discard childhood worries in a personal evolution of your mental habits.

Dear old and new friends,

     Wishes for a "Happy New Year" are exchanged these days with neighbors, strangers on the streets, clerks in stores and echoed from out of television sets. A happy, blissful, joyful, cheerful and delightful 2016 is for many people however unattainable if not impossible. For most the only difference of this coming New Year will be its number; otherwise it will smell like, look like and most of all “feel” like old 2015.

     Every 13 minutes in our country someone feeling life is too painfully sad will take their own life! While homicides have fallen by half since 1991, suicide is now the second leading killer for those ages 15-34. To ask why this is the case is politically impolite or incorrect for taxes must be cut, not increased. “Cut back on spending” is the righteous battle cry of the conservative right…and the reason we have closed or curtailed local treatment for the mentally ill. Depressed people, instead of finding treatment in a local mental facility, find themselves in homeless shelters, jails or pondering suicide.

     The fellow citizens suffering depression we walk pass on the street, shop among or work with don’t wear signs signaling their unhappy dejected condition. They are prisoners of a most horrifying penitentiary—one with no exits! A human being can survive almost anything as long as she or he can see the end of it in sight, and insidiously depression makes its victims feel there is no escape, except death. The author Eugene O’Neill spoke for a large majority of us when asked to write about happiness replied, “I will write about it if I ever happen to meet up with that luxury.” To wish “Happy New Year” is wishing an unattainable luxury to those seriously depressed, angry with another, aching with a broken heart, in a bitter divorce or unemployed.

     “Happy New Year” is like “Thank you for your service” spoken to soldiers in uniform in public gatherings or airports. Military personnel report when they hear that it sounds like a platitude, a hollow expression. The active military, who are only 0.5% of the population, report they feel civilians regard them as guard dogs, a necessary evil. They also feel whenever civilians thank them for their service that unspoken is “I’m glad you serve, so I don’t have to…or my kids won’t have to.”

     Expressions of gratitude or wishes for a happy new year must flow from your heart and not just your lips. As children we learned from fairy tales that wishes are very powerful, so look before you wish. Look to see beneath as best you can whoever is standing before you, or use your imagination for each person has a story. It may be one of heart wrenching sadness, of fear, loneliness or exclusion because of their sexuality or physical appearance. It may be one of family discord, broken relationships or a seemingly unattainable bright future. Then inhale, filling your greeting with soul and love, and whatever you intuit will bring happiness to that person.

     Think un-American, since an old fashioned USA dogma is happiness and contentment come to those who work hard, have the right attitude and strive for self-improvement. This conviction undergirded a recent Republican politician’s solution to poverty which wasn’t new jobs with equality of wages. His proposal was sending poor people to happiness courses to improve their attitudes!

                                 Three questions for your meditation

     1. Do you think you need to attend a happiness course to improve your attitude?

     2. Can anyone wish another what they themselves do not possess?

     3. Does expressing a wish fulfilling “Happy New Year” have more potency when you are a happy and contented person in solidarity with the employed, the less fortunate, and depressed?