Reluctance to Ask

Because the implication of his response is so significant, I can be reluctant to ask the question.

Someone To Agree

He said he wanted to be heard, when he really wanted to be agreed with.

Freedom

When you can say the immediate choices are not your own, there should be freedom rather than frustration.

What Is Good

There is awareness, a realization that even though it has no name, there is something about which I need not worry and it is the assurance that what is good, whatever that may be, will stay so.  It happens every so often and there is no need to pursue to what it may refer.

Jesus's Doubt

Since he alone had heard God's voice, you might wonder did Jesus doubt it had actually occurred.  As he walked away from the Jordan, or maybe the next day, did he doubt what had in that moment seemed so real.

Love Beyond Comparison

On reflection, there may be validity in the notion of a single great love, but others are not diminished for being other loves.  Others are instead themselves and so complete in themselves.  They are different rather than less.  Love is not a comparative process.

One Real Love

He has decided, with the same lack of reason so common to much of his thought, that each life is entitled to one real love, but most people settle for something less.  They may become aware that it is settling, and so they will sense regret and will wonder what that one real love might have offered.  He thought too some of us might find and lose that love and only in its loss would we realize what it had been.  It seemed, as often is so, that he had perhaps half a thought and sought to make it more true than it could be.

A Different World

The kings came back by a different route and hopefully they returned to a different place.

Many Truths

Any number of things may be true but that does not make them essential.  It means at best they are factual.  It does not mean they are less true for being of no significance to someone.

Smaller Gifts

We had thought it important to make a contribution, to somehow give a gift to the world, to bring about a better society, and almost always it was on a grand scale.  Over time, it has seemed smaller and more intimate gifts are better ones.

Our Investments

Only about our time and energy have we actual choices and so how we invest them become significant choices.

Able To Give

We can ask from people only what they are able to give.  To want more than that is to disparage the gift they have made available, saying it is not enough.  Be grateful for what is offered.

True Meaning

They kept saying, "But what do you really mean," as though behind each statement had to stand another, one even more obscure.

Drifting Into The Past

It is hard some days to be present in the present moment, to not notice and to move toward memories, and it is hard not to wish ourselves off into a different place, a new time, one whose time is not yet here.  Maybe instead of resisting the call of reminiscence or the hope of what might one day be, we should instead drift closer to them, even if only to visit.

Digging Holes

No matter how deep the hole you dig, it will always be empty.  In fact, the deeper the emptier.

What Can Never Be

Asking for what can never be, you should eventually become somewhat less surprised when it does not happen.

When To End

At the point where people recycle issues without changing them, it may be time to end.

Try Silly

Have people try silly -- they already know angry and sad too well; and as well as they know them, they are no better for that knowledge.  Silly can work no less well, and might well be a decided improvement.  Only our supposed dignity is at risk

Love Grown Old

There is an intensity to young love that gives people something to do while getting to know each other, and as nice as it is it cannot compare with the satisfaction and familiarity of love grown old.

When Life Is Frustrating

If we find life frustrating have we perhaps asked more of it than it can provide, or do we overlook what is actually there?

Thriving By Being Better

They seem to think their goodness derives from someone else's less being good, or better, their being bad.  A silly way to be and yet they seem to thrive on it.  As long as "good" is a relative term they can, if only for a while, be better.

All-right-ness

I think of it as a voice when it is more a realization or awareness.  It said this morning what it has said before and each time it is assured enough to convince me it is so.  It said, "It will be all right."  I suppose I want it also to say I will be all right, but that is not so important to know and in truth my idea of what might constitute "all right-ness" is not the best standard.  Better to instead wait and trust, settling into the awareness once again.

The World Evolves

Despite all the attempts to manipulate and manage events, the outcome is only temporary and in time the world evolves around its apparent controllers.

Disbelieving Life's Essence

Those aspects of life that only infrequently occur, those moments when there is satisfaction and peace, when we do not need to question or stand in the way of life, are the more essential and so the more real; but we are not used to thinking that what consumes so little energy and uses so little time is what life is composed of in its essence.  The depth and value of life have less to do with time's length or with the energy it might consume.

Cruel Penalty

Why ever would someone want a dog to keep on a rope or chain out in the yard or in a pen that permits no real movement?  Do they not know that animals grow?  They do not, and had not meant to, stay cute.  Is this tying-up and penning a penalty imposed upon their aging?  Is that the meaning of this exile?  If so, why are they so willing to display their ignorance and what seems such cruel behavior?

Anachronism

The intent was to be modern and as relevant as could be, but marching in behind the streaming banners with his flowing robes he offered a sense that we had instead returned to the Middle Ages.

Wander

When there are too many directions and too clear a pathway it may mean we should instead wander.

Real and Actual

There is a distinction between real and actual, so that what is actually happening can still lack reality.

Narrowing The World

Young children, because they are so young, can think the world a small place and at the center they see themselves.  Some, perhaps because they are more resistant to maturing, may resent the notion that it is not so small and that it has no single center, but many.  It is the same when as adults we become frightened and less secure, and we react by narrowing the world, closing it around ourselves to keep others away.  We say they are not there, and if they are then they are less central than we are.

Young beliefs and frightened churches act the same way, focusing on themselves as so very true and central; and if other beliefs or churches are present at all, then because they are not us they must be less -- less real, less true, less loved by God.

Living in a bigger world gives children more to explore and with awareness less to be frighted of.  Secure people recognize they are not undone by the presence of others, no matter how distinct they might be.  They find instead there are opportunities of more to be shared, and new awarenesses to be had.  Grown-up churches can do the same.

Considering The Past

Aspects of our past will present themselves as it is time to consider them.  If we pursue them, they will be unavailable.

Entertaining Death

He decided this might be a reasonable time to die.  He was without debts, had no outstanding disputes with anyone, and even had friends who could be sad without having to be overly distressed.  It was a good thought and for a time it entertained him.  It was hard to decide how he would be welcomed into whatever was next, but he had a fair sense of who would be there to receive him.  This thought returned for awhile and then it stopped.  Life was again as reasonable a pursuit.

In Another Time and Place

I was correcting papers and realized that despite the activity I was, and for some time had been, remembering another time and place.  It was White Plains a long while ago.  The sense was of the happiness with which those memories began and this time no sadness had to follow.

Sing Right Along

We can make light of the old ways and pretend we've grown beyond our heritage, but when the songs play we sing right along and are glad again to be part of the story and of its people.

Scaling Back Expectations

Maybe we could provide what people want even if they want only a single aspect of what we would rather provide.

Life's Background

Great events are only the background against which ordinary life takes place.

Welcoming Santa

According to the paper, now that it is November Santa will be starting his arrivals, coming to some towns and shopping malls by helicopter and to others in a fire engine.  He is to parachute into some places and to others he will be driven.  A bit less dramatic, he seemed more welcome when arriving only once and then in his sleigh.

Walking Away

There are places where we need to stand so we can say we have come back to them, and that we can also walk away.

Responding to the spectacular requires no faith

Just Being

We act as though life can be complete only under certain circumstances.  It might be more satisfying and offer greater joy were those things so, but life is always complete just for its being.

Stature of Not Knowing

There is a certain stature attained in not knowing most of the celebrities featured in the Thanksgiving Day parade. It is not unlike reading People magazine and wondering who were they.

Competitive Entertainment

They even have competitive entertaining and so the cleverest remark is significant, as is the most devastating response, the hardest time given, and the more alliances made in this verbal combat.

Trust First

Trust is the environment in which change can happen, and without it there is no therapy.  Unless someone feels safe and is assured that while it may be difficult it can be worthwhile the therapy cannot even begin.  Trust is acquired not from what we say, though what we say (or do not say) can be an aspect.  It comes mostly from the atmosphere created, the sense that we will never hurt the person who is here to find healing.

People of Then

Being angry at people in our past is to be angry at people who no longer exist.  They were the people of then, so let them stay there.

Walking Instead

While the running start is impressive it leads usually to an exhausted finish and the intensity of the going left no opportunity to notice, much less savor, the scenery through which we passed.  Better to walk and sometimes stop, altering direction now and again and sometimes having none at all.

Only Words

People keep wanting him to be different than his words suggest we all should be.  They want him to say it is only words, and that once they are said we can all act as though we had done enough.  The saying was sufficient disclaimer, prelude enough to do whatever else we might wish.

Working Toward Nothing

The more we do, the less we attain -- no matter what we accomplish in the process.  We might instead make "nothing" the goal and so working hard will be eliminated, and we can then attain the serenity of "being."

Each Moment

Because each moment has unlimited depth, we have infinite time.

The Last Are First

Because they are last they are already first.  Because of their humility they have no need to be exalted.  Being the servant has made them the principle, the center.  Becoming is not the question.  Acknowledging what is adds nothing essential.

The Old Mistake

I made a mistake.  I've made it before.  I looked at pictures from when the boys were little.  We were together then and life was made of hope.  It was a time that won't come back and so I cried, as I do each time.  There is no way, nor inclination, to share this sadness.  No way not to wish it could not be then, and that the future would have been longer than it was.  It is not that today is empty.  In so many ways it is so very full, and it offers a different satisfaction.  All it lacks is that it is not then instead.

Mastering the Cliché

I am mastering the cliché.  I am becoming good at stating the obvious.  I have an ability to see what everyone else does, and to say so.  I do not even need to make it appear profound.  I do not even need to take credit for all this simplicity.  I think it may be progress.

Beginnings and Endings

That journey of a thousand miles -- the one that begins with the first step -- is not over until the last step has been taken.

Three Generations

At the wedding Bob stood behind Chris -- two blocks of an integrity and value that have never a need to be named -- and behind them it was not hard to imagine my father standing, the third block of which they are built:  the generation before, the one who contributed to now, and through on into then.

Point of View

People exist as they are in themselves, a reality more essential than what they have in my perception.

God's Wars

They are preparing to fight and determined to have it be for religious reasons.  In India, Hindus and Muslims are gathering at a sacred sight for their sacred battle, while in Israel Jews and Palestinians at their sacred sight with what passes for holy zeal, their enthusiasm matched by Protestants and Catholics as determined to paint their hatred in shades of sanctity.  There is little reason to think any of them have understood God, no matter under which name they might call him.  "Holy" and "war" are terms that do not go together.  They are contradictory concepts, and it is silly to think God, who created the entire world, would have to think one spot more sacred than another.  If people are so determined to fight they would do well to do so under different auspices, giving it a more accurate name and attributing it to someone willing to have it be his.

Our Invitation

We are not invited to take up Jesus's cross, but our own.

Another Meeting

Another meeting with more talk, and more papers.  Time spent with nothing accomplished, and another scheduled so we can do more of even less in the months ahead.

Note to Therapists

No one wants to be told what he already knows.  He instead wants to be shown the significance of it, its application to him today, in the situation in which he finds himself and with the dilemma that makes it hard to penetrate the cliché.  No one in crisis wants a lecture that was of little value (true though it may have been) when life was more manageable.  Neither does anyone want to hear what he already believed before it wore so thin.  Respond, then, to the need that is rather than with the answer that is available.

A Walk In The Woods

We walked in the woods and woods have no form, and so nothing is expected of them.  There is no correct way for them to be in being as they ought.  It makes each step, each new view, an adventure, an occasion for discovery and so tiny seedlings are a wonder instead of just a plant and coming suddenly into a meadow can be like steps beyond time.

A New Way of Being Together

You have visited my dreams and there is no sadness in them, not even in the waking to find you are not here.  This is, in its way, progress -- not in the sense of acknowledging that distance and the still terrible loss, since that was always known.  Maybe it is in the satisfaction of being together in ways we could only wonder at so long ago, ways that make the absence different than it had been; and while it is less than we might once have wished it is not less than we now can offer.

Finding People In God

He writes of finding people in God rather than having to find them in him.  I am not sure of all this distinction might imply, but it does seem a more satisfying notion.

Assertiveness

He did not ask would they be interested in a change in career.  He instead said, "Follow me."

What Changes

Should someone become who I want him or her to be, then to some extent there would be a changing of self, a diminishing or enhancement, but a change nonetheless and it may be presumptuous to think he or she is better just because I might be more at ease with this new edition.

Distinction

There is a need to distinguish between self-centered or self-focused, and selfish.

Who You Are

Who are you means who are you now, not then or not someday.  And it does not begin with illnesses or limitations.

Almost Parallel Lives

Lives run parallel to each other, sometimes nearing and for a time they may intersect, but they are not a single line -- nor could they be without undoing the uniqueness of each.

Making It Your Own

Having the same condition is not the same as having the same disease.  Each has it his way, incorporating and expressing it in his own personality.

Lessons Learned Growing Up

There is a book about learning life's essentials in kindergarten.  I have not read it but think it is true that much is learned early on, but more is learned later.  I think for us much was learned outside Schifani's store, in Inwood Park, and in the other sacred places of growing up.  Among the ideas I acquired in that two or three years we now call "adolescence" were:

1. When you have a job, you do it.  You do the whole thing, and if you don't like it you do it even better.
2. Whoever is with you, no matter that he be a jerk, is with you and so is your responsibility.  You take his back.
3. Each play of the game is the game.
4. Friends come first.  Family is important, but first come friends.
5. Trust is earned.
6. You do what is right and what is right may not always be what some might think.  It is instead what you know to be so.
7. If you only do what is expected, you get only what was predicted.
8. You don't ask.  People can offer, but you do not ask (and even when they offer, the initial inclination may be to say "no.")
9. If people cannot understand some things, explaining will make no difference since it is not a matter of reason or logic.
10. Being together is at least as significant as anything done together.
11. Integrity counts.
12. It is O.K. to be smart, especially if you can do other things too.  This applies to other skills as well (such as sports) so that one-sidedness, no matter how well developed, is more a limitation than an asset.
13. John Ford's movies (especially the westerns) embody a number of values.
14. Be contemptuous of emotional display, particularly of a public nature.  Feeling is O.K., but it is expressed in moderation at most.
15. If someone knocks you down, he does not win unless he can keep you down, so you keep getting up and you do it until that other person gives up.

Only later did I realize that some rules, no matter how long we have had them or with whom they are shared, might be good for only a time or a particular place, but not forever.  And so, some rules learned long ago have been incorporated or reaffirmed (most, in fact) and a couple have been allowed to end.

Settled But Unsettled

I have, I think, settled into the moment and can exclude from now what does not pertain, and yet I speak to the dead, sharing with them what is beyond their span of life.  It is a not-uncomfortable inconsistency.

First Change

First change.  If you still need an explanation, you can look for it later.

Believing in Belief

Believing in belief may suffice.  The concept of belief, even if it has no specific object, is enough.

Justifying the Doctor

Going to the doctor there is concern we will not be sick enough to justify the trip.  The time and expense involved make it important that there be "something" though we can hope it will not be terrible.  The worst we could hear is that nothing is wrong.

Forgetfulness

The workers early into the vineyard forgot they had not needed to endure the idleness and uncertainty of a day with nothing to do.

Being Ourselves

In their lives and relationships people accept roles or invent them and then become good at portrayal, so good in some instances that it seems to become them -- as Yul Brynner seemed to become the King of Siam.  A king like no one else could be, but it is limiting as well if there is no occasion to move beyond and well out of that role so that we instead be, rather than portraying, ourselves.

Conditions of Forgiveness

If forgiveness is a good idea, then the king should have forgiven his servant no matter how the servant treated his colleague.  Making it conditional diminishes the action.  Perhaps, in the same vein Jesus might have prayed that they be forgiven no matter what they had done, rather than making their ignorance the determinant.

Oversimplification

To say, "That's what it's all about" or "That's where it's at" or to offer similar simplifications is only slightly short of silly.

The Sad Gospel

He can find in any Gospel the saddest thing to preach on.  It is not a gift.

Relative Worries

Short-term anxiety -- worrying about meeting today's debts and handling the moment's needs -- is not all that great, but it is more reasonable than long-term distress -- worrying (and sometimes obsessing) about what is still far away.

How Little

I had forgotten how little they used to be.  Maybe when they actually were little I thought them bigger than they were.

Misinterpreting the Message

Facts and the form in which they are enacted may differ and so there will be conflict in relationships, though the argument is about the fact as interpreted from the manner in which it is expressed.  It is people saying they are not loved only because the form in which love is expressed by each may vary.

Memory Fades

Building monuments assumes they will have significance for people beyond those who raised them, that sometime in the future people will recognize the importance of the individuals or events that inspired the builder.  How readily memory fades and how even the most mundane of present moments can take precedence over the greatness of what was is more surprising than might have been realized.

Apology

Hopefully having made his point -- whatever it might have been -- Jesus apologized to the Caananite woman.

Tides

Because there are tides we can build new castles each day.

Only the Present

Nothing actually happens in the future.  Only as it becomes the present are choices available.

Foregoing Fame

He has decided to forego his fifteen minutes of celebrity.  If more of us would do the same, it would be an improvement for all.

Alternatives

You are not supposed to tolerate or encourage craziness, but rather point out options to it.

Mastering Solitaire

Mastering the game of solitaire is less an accomplishment the more you look at it.

Losing The Present

It is true that life is not as it should be, that no matter how good it might be there will also be the absence of what might have been.  Is that reason enough to let the present be lost?

Conditions of Addiction

It seems that intensity of life is the actual condition and addiction is instead a symptom of it.  At the other end are those whose lives are devoid of activity other than pursuit of their addiction, and so in those instances absence of intensity is the condition.

The Ultimate Meaning

I think sometimes there is a more ultimate meaning, but it must be so because it cannot be perceived.  Perhaps the more significant the ultimate meaning, the more obscure it will be.  And so maybe it really is better to focus in the moment.

Risks of Reason

Why must he have such dramatic, though determinedly inane, solutions to every problem or question?  Why will reason never suffice?  Perhaps reason would require a greater risk of self, an investment beyond what he thinks possible.  The drama about which he fantasizes might have all the impact of suicide.  It is also as destructive and leaves real response to someone else.

Doing Nothing

There is a difference between not doing anything and doing nothing.  We are not idle when doing nothing.

Mistaken for Guidance

It pretends to be guidance, but it is instead a failure of trust.

The blockhead does not set out with that as his goal

Games Some Parents Play

There is a child intent on performance and needing the response of his family, but they are unfortunately a diverse audience and so when one smiles the other frowns.  As one is drawn closer, the other draws back.  Applause and rejection have to go together even though he shifts from one action to the next as fast as he can.  There are a lot of children being the board on which parents play games, games more cruel than anything else.  To respond only to himself might mean both would frown and maybe for now that is too much to tolerate.  Maybe someday, and maybe then his parents twill deal more directly.

No Reasonable Explanation

It is probably as well that we avoid an explanation of that Gospel which says we are not worthy unless we deny father, mother, spouse, and children.  There is no good and reasonable explanation of such things.

Moments

I have ended up cherishing moments and memories I might not even have saved had life been different.

Wholeness

Because it is a hospital we may think people bring to it just their illness, as we can think they bring only a mind to school and a soul to church.  Wherever they are, they are there with the wholeness of their being.

A Fleeting Glimpse

We never did find the girl with the fireman's hat.

Naming Not Blaming

If you name it, you have not thereby caused it.

Not So Great To Know

Knowing what motivates behavior makes it no less distressing and only slightly more tolerable.

So Near The Surface

So quickly does the sadness return and it is all at once there with all of its intensity.  I sometimes think it always will be, since it is never so very far away.

Being Helped

Each adult held one of his hands.  Each was helping him walk down the stairs, but each was going in a different direction and one was not as tall as the other so his hands were being held, and pulled, from different heights.  Neither adult thought the other very helpful, or not as helpful as she would have been alone -- but each held on, pulling from her level.  It is not easy being helped.  No matter that he might have done it poorly alone, it might have been better to try.  But there had been no choice, and so he helped through his endurance -- and by so doing, helping both of his helpers far more than either were helping him.

Escaping Silence

You go all that way to find the silence but then can only tolerate it for five minutes.

Missing

I don't know how not to miss you.  I suppose I don't want to know such a thing.

Trusting Those Left Behind

I suppose Jesus realized at some time he would be unable to tell them all they might need to know, and that he would have to trust them to find it within themselves, or to not need it after all.  I wonder if in the realization he found peace.

Settling Into Being

There is less need to hurry, less need to achieve.  It used to be important to have someone hear what I needed to say.  Then it was important just to have said it.  Now, neither the saying nor the hearing is essential.  There is to life less time and that is a satisfying rather than a threatening notion.  It is easier now to settle into being and not feeling driven to become.  Accomplishing is not a priority.  Narrowing into the moment, but needing to do nothing about it, is becoming more the norm than was the sometimes-frenzied drive to leave a mark on the world, and to have it be known as mine.

I am not anxious to have it be over, but were life to end it would be O.K.  It would not be important that no one beyond this small circle would ever notice my absence, and I will be no less satisfied than I might have been had more youthful dreams actually followed.  There really wasn't the need to become the new Francis Xavier, John Carboy, Martin Luther, or anyone else.  To have become them would be repeating what had already been and there really was no need for that.  I can instead be grateful for this moment, as grateful as I have been for many that preceded it, and in this moment I can sometimes find all that life could contain.

Silliness The Virtue

We should not try to be silly -- or maybe silly is the virtue and it is dumb we should try not to be.

Our Presumptive Selves

We are reluctant to offend or upset them and so we become (or try to) who they would be most at ease with, but then we resent them -- never having given them a chance to have an actual role, an actual choice about how they might want to respond to what we never showed them.

Being the Best

Those who play best work hardest at the game, noticing where they have been less successful and being more annoyed by the lapse.  They are getting better scores, but having far less fun.

The Difference Sacraments Make

Colin said Churches with sacraments feel they can overlook other aspects while those without sacraments must concentrate on fellowship and social action.  It seems to be so and also it seems the non-sacramental congregations are the more satisfied.

Changes at Church

Church has become a terribly sad place.  It is filled with more memories than it is with their fulfillment.  There is a labored sense to the singing as it becomes more dirge-like -- the same few hymns moaned or shouted in accompaniment to a service become so frightfully routine.  The preaching sounds as hard to speak as it is to hear, and each week there are fewer people.  I appreciate the boys coming along but I sense that given a choice they would readily be anywhere else.  I would too.  It is more burden than celebration.  We endure.

Taking Notice

We pass through a number of settings and situations as though we could handle them well.  In fact, we pretend we are but it is only passing through and if we are fortunate we will sometimes recognize this is so.  There will be an occasion to make changes so we might stop for awhile, stop passing through and instead notice.

Indifference Takes Hold

It seems there are fewer opportunities to validate what is right, less occasions in which to find goodness recognized or people pleased to act as they ought.  It is not that something terrible has taken the ascendency.  Rather, indifference is the more prominent -- an absence rather than a presence.

Like Golf

Life is like golf.  No one really knows how to play, no matter how long he or she has been at it, and each of us can appear quite ridiculous as we go along.  There are, in both life and golf, the times when it all comes together and even if it is but one shot of the hundred taken it keeps you playing.

Life's Rules When Applied to Me

There are points of awareness, moments when what has been obvious also becomes actual in my own life, and so it is not so much a fact or generalization.  It is there to become more essential and acted upon.  I had always known we were each individuals responsible for our choices and so not needing to make them based on someone else's principles or expectations, but then I saw it applied to my life, the specific instance who is me.  I had also known we cannot live a full life in the habitat only of our heads, but that too became real -- or it is at least becoming so, as it has at other times and has been recognized until I again slid into my mind.

Why and how life becomes more personal and why it happens now rather than when it might have are mysteries and perhaps they require no answer, though sooner would really have been better, and not having to re-learn (or becoming "reaware") might have helped.  Less instances of saying, "Yes, that is true" would have been beneficial, less saying so and then just moving on might have saved a lot of trouble and a fair bit of superficiality.

Squirrel's Attributes

Squirrel won again.  My most recent and to date most elaborate device could keep him from the birdfeeder no more than five minutes.  James said it means squirrel may be smarter, though I thought more focused might be the case.

Our Typical Selves

We probably have a typical pattern of response and so our personality is the focus rather than the specific event.  There is then a typical way of handling an occurrence, be it great or small.  The response will be a variation on the usual pattern whether its immediate focus be terrible sadness or great joy.  To all of life's events we bring ourselves and in each instance it is us that we will be.  There is then no "typical" response, but only us responding in ways "typical" of us.  The events do not alter us so much as we incorporate them into who we have always been.

A Kind of Loss

I resent (though that is not the word I want) the loss of all that never got to happen.

Wishes

I will sometimes say as a fact what I actually wish were so.  It is not a good idea, since so much stands in the way of the wish -- things within me more than those on the outside, but that makes them no less real, and maybe instead they become more so.

Our Essential Depression

It seems we hoard our depression, resisting any threat to it.  Why do we guard it so?  Perhaps because we consider it so very essential.

Defense

The greater the defense, the greater the number of enemies we perceive.

Behavior and Belief

While we have control only of behavior, the value or significance assigned to the behavior will depend upon more essential though less tangible factors -- such as belief.

You Have A Choice

You do not need to respond to all that someone offers.  Your choice is what aspects will be of interest, or to offer your own.  Arguing about what is presented, expressing annoyance, or any such thing is of no value.  If you must say anything, say, "That is something," since it is and the specific whatness of it is unimportant.

After Addiction

Having moved beyond the addictive part of their addiction people are finding themselves with religious experiences marked by submission and fear, experiences and punitive as they had been years ago.  It was a God who might give but who as readily might take away, and in as capricious a way.  Sadly, they were calling this spirituality.

Like Father, Like Son

I notice myself saying and doing what my father would say or do.  I am glad I can smile at most of them.

Hoarding His Personal God

The more he talks of his personal God and of his personal relationship with that God, the more estranged he becomes, and God as well.  He thought the personalizing was other than the hoarding and perhaps it was, though exclusive things and solitary involvements have so little environment in which to grow, no place in which they can naturally occur.

Living Forward and Backward

"There is this difference," he said.  "You live forward looking for what might be coming.  Anxious you are to see round the bend and on down the road, while I live backward looking toward what was and wondering why it went so quickly by.  I've no need nor wish to see as you do.  Someday neither will you, but that is not today so I'll not pull you back -- as long as you don't try dragging me forward."

Different Realms

Some things will always be special.  What follows is not less for being different or for happening later.  It was just not there at the beginning and so was not there to share in a moment, or a time, that does not become retrospectively available.  Some friendships and some loves are this way too.  They were there when things happened -- things that cannot happen again; or they were a first, a realization or sharing or what no one else will ever know.  It is not that one is better for being then or that the other is more for being now.  They reside in different realms and each can be sacred.

A Place for Outrage

Perhaps we all need a time of outrage and its focus is less significant than is its occurrence, but its duration adds little and the sooner we can get on to a more productive use of self the better.

Use It

God did not give you a brain because he had run out of cabbage.

Making Room on the Mantle

We carry within us the entirety of our heritage, some being more prominently displayed while other aspects surface only occasionally.  It is as though there was only so much room on the mantle and along with the treasures passed down we must find room too for items more valued by the present generation.  If we only had space enough for faded photographs and tarnished pieces, we would be displaying the history we had at best heard about from someone who may have heard it whole.  It is not too different with our Church where the old and respected things, the heritage none of us got to create, can be displayed more prominently than is the moment.  While it is venerable and in some ways a wondrous thing, it is faded nonetheless.

Fear of Dying

He was telling me how afraid he is of dying.  He is terrified of what is not even a likelihood, much less an actual prospect.  Perhaps were it closer he would not have been so afraid.  Maybe had death come near enough to be recognized he might not have wanted to run.  Death is an aspect of life and while it is more uncertain than some others it is not an aspect that need engender such dread.  I wished he were not so afraid, but I did not wish him closer to it so that he might better understand.  Instead, I said what I so often do.  I said, "It will be all right."

Guilty For What

There are so many people feeling so terribly guilty about what they cannot even name and all they are sure of is the terrible penalty for whatever it might be.

Questions Instead

He used to have all the answers.  He now has some of the questions.  It was a better than fair exchange.

Celebrate Life

Life is to be celebrated rather than solved.  It is a statement rather than a question.

Fleeing The Moment

When we are uncomfortable in the moment, when we are focused instead on something else -- a different person, a different place -- then we have lost the moment, given it away to fantasy, and while at times it is hard not to, it is not wise.  My tendency when fleeing the moment is to be drawn toward what was, or to bring forward from then the people who were parts of moments past.  At times it is my effort (or my wish) to share with them what currently is, but mostly it is the familiarity I am seeking.  It is inviting them to notice or to ratify what is available (and sometimes sadly so) only to me.

Second Guessing

There is no shortage of knowledge about what should have been, how we should have acted, what we should have said, and to whom; or about what we were meant to do in any of the responses we envision for them.  We know how we meant to react, though at the time it was equally clear that doing (or saying) nothing made more sense.

Original Ideas

If you really wanted an original idea, you should have been born three thousand years ago.

Too Much Intensity

Too much intensity about anything, especially over time, indicates a limitation in the focus or in the individual who has narrowed life to accommodate this single issue.

A Week Without Evil

I wonder could they do a week without mentioning sin.  I wonder could their belief tolerate no reference to evil.

Going to Lazarus

Lazarus was already dead by the time word of his illness reached Jesus.

Would-Be Memories

Because he knew how it would have been, he can remember what never happened.

Stuck

For all the changes I would like to think are possible, making them is less easily done.  I run backward rather than forward, and I suppose reasonableness is not the issue.  Making sense is not the same as making anything happen.

The Answer

You would still be the answer to so many things, and were you still with us so many of those questions would never have arisen.  But life is as it is.  And death is too.

Through Another's Eyes

The more we look through another's eyes the less accurately will we see.  All that we will notice is what we find so unsettling and offering it to someone else only precludes our understanding, and our coming to terms with what we have so far only feared.

Settle In

We settle too readily into routine, becoming too quickly the expert, the fixture.  The wonder is hidden until lost and there is no sense of the newness in each moment.  It is time perhaps not to move, but to instead notice and to wonder all over again.

Solomon did not ask for an understanding mind

A Question of Focus

Narrowing our focus, the details become more grand than they are.  Broadening our view makes detail disappear into limitless, though blurred, horizons.  Both views are accurate though neither is true.  We must know when to alter focus, aware that ease with either may signal the onset of obscurity.

Respond to Anxiety

Unless we respond to our anxiety we risk being overrun by it, and sooner rather than later is the better rule.

A Contented Man

The man born blind had not asked to be cured, nor did he ask an explanation when Jesus put mud on his eyes.  He went and washed as told and when able to see he found no need to tell what had happened.  Called by the court he went, and questioned he answered.  He avoided debate offering only the facts of what had occurred.  Leaving them he did not rush to find Jesus, but permitted himself to be found.  He listened, believed and would be content to go had not the Pharisees needed to speak again.  In the end he is sent away, and he goes -- still accepting, as content within himself as he apparently had been at the start.

The Therapist's Paradox

Why are the issues I can so clearly and cleverly resolve in someone else's life so much more complex in my own; and why do I hesitate to undertake what I support and urge them to do?

Why Ask Why

It seems we spend a good deal of time asking why when it is not the right question and maybe none would be.  It seems so many things just are, that events occur and consequences may follow them, but the why is not available.

Partial Truth

As long as there is only one correct response, one right way to be, a single proper way to act we will run after it, letting go whatever seemed only partially true, not realizing that partially true things are as true as anything else we might run in pursuit of.

Kinship With Jesus

Had Jesus remained transfigured, he would have lost his kinship with those he had brought to this mountain.  His radiance would have intruded upon the bond between them.  Perhaps he was, underneath it all, a person whose garments were meant to shine, but that would be no more than a barrier were it to remain.  People can marvel for a little while in the face of such glory but marveling is not sharing.  It is too one-sided to permit communication.  Whatever it might have foreshadowed, their relationship was grounded in a moment that could not be wasted on too much of the brilliance and brightness of transfiguration, and so it was ended.

Knowing The Truth

Knowing what is true means the issue is incorporated rather than having to find ways to pretend it is not so.

More Time For Life

The longer we defend, the less time will we have for life.  The hiding intrudes.  That is all it does.

The Unexamined Contract

Since he got sick he seems bewildered, uncertain who to blame and for the moment he attaches his anger and disappointment to almost anyone or anything.  He has yet to blame God, though I think he may want to.  It was with God he had made what seemed an agreement -- well-being in exchange for praise and compliance.  His belief allowed for a notion such as "testing," but because he already had such a firm belief he doubted the need for "tests" in his own life.  No, it must be because of someone or something else.  In the meantime, the landlord, the city government, the water department, the newspaper, and a few others will have to suffice.  They get to be blamed for their limitations, and the limitations in what seemed a contract can go unexamined.

Being Well

We are good at getting better, but have trouble being well.

Life Is Like Life

Life is like life.  It is not like our fantasy about it.

The Extra Person

I have for some time been the extra person, the one single among couples or the one who brings the children.  I have not minded the role and at times have not found it an uncomfortable one, but neither is there anything satisfying in it, and as the boys are getting older I could do without it.  I am tired of being alone, alone at least as I have become.  I have no interest in marriage and like the independence that begins at my door, but it is sometimes less independent than it is lonely.

Simple Therapy

The simpler the therapy, the more readily does the process become for the clients.  There is no need to know everything in order to make significant changes and causes (specifically when it is more speculation than fact) need not be pursued.  Therapy should offer points of reference, true statements as universal as possible in their application; and freedom to question what choices are truly available.  In the very beginning ownership by the client has to be established, as does the therapist's role as consultant and sometimes teacher -- but not as healer, and never as magician.

Action and Procrastination

The difference was her ability to say what was best and do it because it was best.  His tendency was to acknowledge the fact that yet, there was a better way, but he could also temporize, postponing the action and hoping it might not be necessary.

Toward the Future, Away From the Past

To move closer to what might be is not the same as moving away from what has so far been.  Those things already are and so their significance is assured.

Standing Aside

It has been a long time in changing but there is a sense of change, a sense that maybe it will be O.K., that nothing need be done other than standing aside.

Fear of the Convergence

There are aspects of my life I should think of reconciling, allowing them to come together to the extent they might be able to, yet my inclination is to protect them by separating, keeping them at a distance, each one distinct, each complete and exclusive.  It is as though approaching one another might endanger them all.  It evidences a lack of trust, a fear of losing something (or of having something be lost), but trust is always the problem.  It is hard to trust people with whom important aspects of life are shared.  It is hard lest they be hurt in the convergence.

Naming Therapy

Retrospectively we know what we do and we call it therapy once it gets beyond technique.

Less Crazy

One thing we might do is tell people they are less crazy than they had feared, even if it will make our treatment of them less spectacular.

We, The Bullies

There is an invasion of Panama, not unlike the incursion into Lebanon or assaults on Haiti, Grenada, the unsuccessful attack on Cuba, and last century's assault that gave Teddy Roosevelt a hill to charge.  It is also how some would like to handle Nicaragua, and maybe Colombia too.  There is assumption of a right that does not exist, a role based on size and presumed power.  It is triggered more by this nation's vexation than by anything else and is more a reflection of annoyance at differences that should not concern us.  It is as though the violence were the response we all along had in mind.  It was waiting to be vented so it could build again into a new confrontation.  Perhaps, like other bullies, there is uncertainty about self at the base of this action.  Maybe it is fear we might be ignored if we did not bellow once in awhile.  Perhaps, while the violent inclinations of our country cannot be ignored, its opinions will be.  Our deeds undermine and devalue our words.  Beside what we say is that inability to wait, to trust in time and to trust the people on whom we would intrude.

It is the failure to recognize the rights of Panamanians as being "theirs," their country's paths being theirs to choose and it is doubting that they would on their own see the value of what we might offer.  No nation -- not even those we treat as inferiors (while nodding to their sovereignty) -- is better for being assaulted.  No one is going to thank us for the destruction, no matter how we might think it is for their own good.

We would, as a nation, be better off saying this violence is the mark of our immaturity, our fear and supposed self-interest.  It would only be true and might take the deceit away since it masks what we do only from ourselves.

The Insecure Psychologist

There is in psychology an inclination to find the most obscure or esoteric explanation, though others are available.  It calls for elaborate, and so tangential, reasoning, preferring it to the more obvious, more direct, explanation.  Perhaps this tendency speaks to our insecurity.

Not for the Bucket List

While there may be things we might yet want to do, we should be able to say the more essential aspects of life are up to date.

Opinions vs. Advice

When you ask some people what they think, they answer with what you should do.  They have either misunderstood the question or their role.

Choice of Therapy

The type of therapy we practice is determined by the degree of trust we can place in others, among other things.

Before Enlightenment

He started with answers to questions he had neither the sense nor the experience even to ask.  His answers sounded more profound than reasonable and required none of the sensitivity with which life might have tempered them had he waited.  It is all right sometimes to be pompous and so absolute, as long as the matter can be re-opened once reality has dawned.

Never Mind The iPhone

Why ever would someone want a car phone.  There are few enough private places and few of us are in such demand.

Sincerity

Sincerity is not lacking, and they are good, but that does not make them any more effective, or any less dull.

Storyline

Maybe it comes of watching so many movies, but we still expect more drama, more clarity (and maybe even some background music) than life can provide.

Dad - 4 years

Losing Jake

No matter what else we might talk about we at some point come back around to the talk of the old days, a period of two or three (and certainly no more than four) years that have been the foundation of all the rest.  They were the friendships that were best and things done together, and none of them could have had the same meaning were they not shared.  Now, as it was when it all began, there is Jake.  He is at the center of the recollection, as he was when it happened -- and as he will be as often as we have these conversations.

There was no question that he was the leader, even if no one ever needed to say so.  He was funny, intense, alert, concerned, and any number of other things.  Beneath them by only a bit was the rage that may in the meantime have caused him to lose himself.

Why Have Rules

There are too many exceptions.  So many, there is little point in having any rule at all.  They keep it to complain about and to blame when things go poorly.

Guilt In Control

It is not bad because you feel guilty but you still feel guilty, and so it has control.  That means it is compulsion.  There is in the "have to-ness" of feeling bad an absence of choice.

What Makes A Gift

Is it still a gift if no one wants it?  Is the value in what it meant to the giver or must the receiver concur?

Prejudices or Principles

There are ideas and sometimes prejudices pretending to be principles, and there are people killing and dying in the name, who believe it is the basis or their value, or immortality.

Leave The Past

Where did we learn it?  Do we still want it to be true?  Would it be O.K. if it changed?  It would be if you left it alone.  The sense you can rescue the child of then and alter the rule gets in your way.

Hidden Memories

I have memories hidden all over, like squirrel has hidden his winter store.  I know where some are and can find them when I choose.  Others (and maybe most) I stumble over having forgotten they were here here and of those some are more sad for being only memories but others are delights.

Savoring Each Moment

There is a certain rush to complete things, to get them quickly done, hurtling steps along the way.  Better to savor instead each moment and in arriving there will be no sense we are not them home.

To Risk Loving

The sense that we are cared for makes caring easier.  That we might be loved lets us risk loving.

The Saved

I am never sure which thought delights him more:  that he is saved, or that others are not.

A True Master

We go from master to master to hear such obvious things, and sometimes what is too obscure to be real.  True masters will show us ourselves.  They are more a mirror reflecting our essence.  The others will show only who they wish us to be, or who they would have us become.

What Is There

See what is there.  If you want to pretend it is different, make that a separate activity and call it pretense.

Better to Trust

It makes more sense to trust than to pretend we can manage or control.

Responses Not Required

Don't be afraid to ask but require no response, either of yourself or anyone else.  Notice, wonder, and be grateful.  No more is needed, other than the celebration of yourself.

The Dilemma of Prayer

He was trying to say prayer is both efficacious and sometimes answered in ways other than what was intended.  It proved a dilemma.  It was all right if left as meditation, reflection, or conversation, but once it got into the asking prayer seemed a lost cause.

Overpromising

Had Moses not said he would stand above the battle with the staff in his hands, there would have been no need for him to do so.

A New Guide

In this process -- whatever we might call it -- there are junctures where what had seemed so accurate and compelling are of no further use.  They were important guides and do not now become false.  Rather, they cease to be as essential as once they seemed and a new model, guide, or formulation becomes necessary.  Just what it will be in its final form remains to be seen.

On The Way

The lepers were not cured when Jesus said the words.  Nor were they better for arriving at the priests.  They were healed "on the way."  The tribes did not become a people when leaving Egypt.  Nor had they to wait until they reached the promised land.  It happened "on the way."  The disciples did not believe when they left Jerusalem and arriving at Emmaus was not the key.  It was "on the way" that they met him.

Wandering Jesus

It speaks well of Jesus and of his parents that when he was lost they did not assume he would be at the temple.  He range of interests was presumed wider and perhaps it was only in desperation that they went there.

A Reluctant Decision

I don't know to what extent I oppose abortion, but it does seem a right about which people should be less jubilant.  It should be a decision reluctantly reached and it should be undertaken, or contemplated, with more sadness than relief.

The Next All-Explaining Truth

I have discovered that one final, all-explaining truth so many times that I should not be surprised to find there is just one more, and like most of the others it is a contradiction of what went before.

My Gifts

I am best at sadness and at denial -- two of the less highly prized gifts.

Instead of Seeking

Seeking may not be the best approach to finding, not if it is that driven sort that forges through so much in such a frenzied way.  Instead of seeking, noticing might be the better approach.

Having ignorant disciples is no compliment

Stimulus, Response

When you hear the Gospel, you have a fair idea what the homily will be.  Same stimulus, same response.

Trapping God in Symbols

It is not that they believed their statue was God.  They knew no statue had brought them out of Egypt and into the desert.  No statue had fed them or brought them water from the rock.  They knew God, but they could not see him; and because they needed to see they wanted a representation, something that might remind them of his strength.  That they used their most precious material and fashioned it into something that was a symbol of power made it easier for them.  It was not God.  It could not be since they had made it.  They had no illusions about what they had made, and maybe even thought it would be all right to have -- but it was not what God wanted.  No matter that it was only a symbol.  Any attempt to contain him, to limit him to limited images, would get in the way.  He wanted it understood that no image, no statue, no representation of any sort could suffice.

The signs, even in gold, did not serve as even the bleakest suggestion of his being.  Nor was there ever anything to mirror in even the most remote manner the power of God.  I wonder do we risk the same error, thinking that what we do or make might be our attempts to contain God, losing his grandeur in our symbols or our words, thoughts and so very inadequate ideas.  Like the genie trapped in a bottle, God contained in our theology would make sense only in a story.  A realer God is really beyond all that, so far beyond that our attempts to think of him are to spend our time poorly.

God is, and he is beyond whatever might emerge from however much time or energy we could give to efforts as pointless as the fashioning of a golden bull.  Like the people in the desert, we may only do it for ourselves but it is hardly a sufficient reason.

An Old Question, Revisited

Back around came the question of C.C.D. and I am again inclined to say it is unnecessary.  It seems more an obligation and if it is more it is hard to say what that might be.

Helping Less, Seeing More

As I feel less responsible for others, I can more clearly recognize their strength.  As I feel less need to help, they appear to need less help as well.  So, whose need was being met?  Maybe I am not my brother's keeper.  Maybe being his brother would have been the better gift all along.

Overlooking Ourselves

While life is very simple there are points in it which can appear complex.  It is at those points that contradictions appear and perhaps they arise as we try to be more responsive to others, to what we see as their needs -- even though they may only seem to be so -- and in the process overlook our own.

A Heavy Moment

There is no enthusiasm in our celebration and so it weighs upon us, an oppressive moment refusing to end.

Use Fewer Words

There are not very many things to be said.  There are not so many ways to say these few things.  The harder we try, the more do we disperse rather than consolidate the truth.

At The End

We pretend we begin at the beginning when in fact we find ourselves at the end, wondering however did we get there.

Hearts Never Hear

I tell things to my heart, those things my mind could hear and so readily acknowledge, but hearts never hear.  Instead they feel and so all the words and reasons go sliding right by.

Why People Get Better

In addition to wondering why people develop the problems they do, we might ask why they get better.  What are the factors making now the time for change.

Recurring Thoughts

Here I am with recurrent thoughts pretending it is not something I should attend to.  Not even I am this dense, no matter how hard I try.

Where We Are, Who We Are

Where we are often determines who we will be and so we can truly blend into places, becoming part of that environment despite its inconsistency with where we were or where we might go next; and it is not adopting but becoming -- being as home in each place and with each group we find there.  All call us by one of our true names.

A Sure Sign

He's far too sure of what he says to have had experiences of his own.

Healing The Clients We Like

That we work best with clients we like indicates it is not the method but the relationship and this is probably confirmed in their having a more significant degree of progress.

Questioning Faith

He was saying how uncertain he becomes when thinking what he really believes.  He was reciting the creed, as he had done each Sunday for hundreds of Sundays, but for whatever reason he noticed today how the words emerged and with them a sense that maybe this was not his belief.  Maybe only parts of it were, or maybe there were more aspects fitting less well than they should have, and so he stopped -- allowing the congregation to carry on the faith for at least one day.

Seeking Security

The more they spend on guns, the less secure they feel.  Perhaps they might want to try it the other way -- buying less to feel better.

Obliged To Be Anxious

We can think anxiety an obligation and say, "You ought to be worried.  You must be anxious.  You have felt this badly before, so what are you waiting for now."

Away With Evil

It is our belief that evil should not exist that makes something like psychotherapy a possibility.  In other cultures, evil -- or anxiety -- are not questioned.  People feel sad.  They are in pain.  Life is less happy than they might sometimes wish.  But it is not a crisis.  It is simply how life is.  For us, that acceptance is less available, and so we resist how life is, saying it should instead be different.  No pain, no sadness.  Away with the evil.  Make it better.  Make it happy, or failing that make it not hurt.  It is self-confident and maybe even hopeful to think that we can, by wanting it so, make life change.  Or maybe instead of hopeful, it is foolish that we are.

A Therapist's Motive

I think I got into this business so I could be the one asking, and so I would never have to tell.

It Just Happens

Mike was saying family transitions do not occur as planned.  There is no "going to happen."  It just occurs, and often with sadness.

Only Facts

Thoughts, ideas, beliefs of all sort as well as what happens in random fashion or what others have chosen to do:  they are all only so many facts.  They are what they are, and they will have for each of us only the value we give them.  We are no obliged to react in any prescribed manner or according to any formula, no matter how time honored (or time worn) they may be.

The Irony of Looking

The closer we look, the less we are liable to see.

Do Not Discount The Distractions

Those were not distractions; rather they were the essence of the whole thing.  Notice, don't exclude.

A Dream Instead

Had Martin Luther King said, "I have a thought," would people have been so moved?

Vulnerability

Without vulnerability, there would be no need to trust.

Seeing Our Essence

Most aspects of definition are less significant day-to-day than they seem when standing alone in the abstract, and so how we define ourselves is more of an evolving awareness to which we periodically refer and over time it becomes more complete, though not more complex.  In this sense the progress is less in adding on than it is in taking away -- deleting aspects that are seen to be less essential than they might have.  More is involved in our noticing than in our finding.  It is coming to what we had not set out to find.

Time for Change

The time came for her to change, but then it passed and so it cannot come again.  She settled instead and wished she might call it success.

Choosing Forgiveness

We do not have to forgive, but holding onto anger makes no one better.  Forgiveness is how we control the event.  We own it by dismissing it.

Reduced to Giving and Receiving

Were we to live in terms of someone else's need, or what we thought his need might be, we would be doing no service to that person nor to ourselves.  It would be making giving the essential aspect of our being, and receiving the essence of him.  It is intruding into the person's life, obliging him to receive -- and there is as well an expectation that he be grateful for the gift he may not have wanted.  If he is not grateful we might even blame him, accusing him of being unappreciative.  We might respond by giving even more if he does not respond, but we might also resent event more -- as might he as well.

The Cost of Reverence

It seemed after visiting the First Parish Church that what our own had gained in reverence may have been bought at the expense of community.

After the Spectacle

They had gone there to pray.  That in the process Jesus was transfigured is secondary.  Like much that is spectacular it drew their attention, but in the end it was perhaps less substantive than it seemed.

The Intimacy of Silliness

It seems there is greater intimacy in the capacity to be silly together than there is in the sharing of passion.

Any Answer Will Do

I heard two kids talking.  One said, "Are you still doing that?"  The sense was that any answer would be fine.  If his friend was it was because he was supposed to, and if he wasn't he was still on schedule.

Awareness Instead

We are pursuing knowledge when we should instead be open to awareness.  Knowing infers a struggle, the breaking of the code and forcing facts to yield their hidden meanings.  It is too intense and all one sided.  Awareness is instead a coming to understanding, the watching of what had always been.  In knowledge there is a sense that something must be done with it, that it has to be applied.  Awareness is just had.  It has no application and needs none.

Trying to Explain Church

James wants to know why Church has to be so elaborate, why religious belief cannot be at least as vital with less ceremony.  It is a reasonable question and I was left having to rely on tradition as an explanation and community worship as our reason for being there.  I was satisfied with neither aspect of my explanation, and I was wondering later why I was there.  I think it is like so much of what I do.  It is looking for a link to a different time and hopefully a bridge that will link it to now.  It is hoping for the vitality I thought was there.  It is that tradition or continuity that brings me, sometimes reluctantly, to Church, though I wonder was it there even when I had thought it was, or wished it might be.  It is not yet just a habit.  Hopefully it will not become just that since that would not be reason enough to stay.

Receiving What Is Offered

Part of the gift we give is taking what someone offers.

Being Stoic

I am not effusive and never was, but it does not bother me.  I do not hug clients or people I have only just met.  I do not gush, but then I never knew anyone who did, or who did so with any kind of grace.  I don't mind if conversations lag, and am grateful that some of them do.

Settling for Appearances

People are paying a high price for the appearance of intimacy and they will pretend that what is available is what they had needed.

Your Spiritual Self

Recognizing a spiritual dimension to self is the precursor to belief in anything beyond self.

The Big Disappointment

They do not exactly say so but there is always the suggestion that if people would just have enough faith they would live forever, if they would only mobilize the resources within themselves no disease would have a chance.  I heard -- or thought I heard -- an ad in which Bernie Siegel seemed to be saying it again.  It must be one hell of a surprise when they get sick and if sick can slip past that mobilized faith dying must surely be a let down.

Better Just To Listen

About the time he seems ready to hope, there is no reason to.  He tells me this a lot and I used to tell him he was wrong.  I would say life was the gift and just by living he was ahead.  He did not argue.  I don't tell him that anymore, or anything else.  Instead I listen, and sometimes I nod.  He told me it would be all right if life ended.  He would not give back the gift, but it would be O.K. not to have it.

Opposites

Only in physics (or is it chemistry) do opposites attract.  In other instances they have to look for each other, then justify having found one another if their opposition will not be reconciled.

What They Choose Not To See

They have their secret sins and private weaknesses, as do we all; but they have chosen not to see that they are not just what is sad or weak and so no matter how capable they are in the company of others they find their heart most at home in the dark.  They have not understood who others know they are.

Suspicious Behavior

I am always suspicious of therapists using confrontation.

Surprised By Integrity

Why is the emergence of integrity such a surprise.

Post-Resurrection Blues

Lazarus, once having been raised, may have lost some of his stature as an authentic person.  He had, though not by his choice, gone beyond usual boundaries and so had now less in common with those who would die only once.  Perhaps they treated him differently, maybe even with respect -- though he was the lesson rather than the teacher -- and maybe even his family was at a loss.  Having already mourned him, they may not have understood what next to do, and there could be no pretending what had occurred never took place.  I wonder too what he told himself, how he tried to fit and maybe to justify his so suddenly being different, since he could ignore it no better than could others.  Perhaps, once the celebrity faded (and the first-century equivalent of the talk show circuit concluded) it was an embarrassment of sorts, one that would make his next death not unwelcome.

The More Essential Part

More than most things people seem reluctant to acknowledge a spiritual dimension to their lives.  Too bad, when it is the more essential part.

Sadness For The Living

At Nain Jesus responded to the woman's distress rather than to her son's death, knowing that dying is sadness only for the living.

Imagined Conversations

I sometimes picture us together and imagine even what we might say.  Not long conversations, and often no more than a glance, a smile, or the touching of hands.  So real for the emptiness that is actually there.

Appreciating Ismael

Ismael is becoming a deacon.  It is the acknowledging by the Church of service and faith that have been present for a very long time.  When I first met him he lent me his faith so that mine might have reason to be.  He was more my father in faith than anyone, except maybe Bo Welsh.  He believed in a very essential God, one who was kindness and concern.  While he might have asked the questions, it was in him that I found the answers.  He was well beyond foolish speculation.  When I wanted to think he was willing to act, and when I would have talked Ismael was not afraid to pray.  If I could complicate things, he had no need to.  I had the title but he had the ability to see God's faith.  I hope the Church appreciates the wonder it is receiving.

Responsible For The Outcome

Trust means we do not feel so responsible for the outcome.  It is doing today and tomorrow only when it comes.  The temptation to manage or control, to minimize the need or inclination to trust and in so doing we take over God's role, providing our own assurance that it will be O.K., that there will have been no need to worry.

Friends With God

The comparison of our relationship with God to that of child and parent is adequate in terms of the trust involved, but as far as the freedom of what is shared, the doubts and speculation entrusted, friends may be a better model.

Free Yourself

Another very obvious notion, one repeated and read so often its significance might be overlooked is that truth will make us free, a freedom that is within us and were we to deny or diminish it we would invite slavery to partake in the lie.  It will make us free, but not popular and it may not always make us happy.  It will not invite contact with those uncomfortable with truth but it will increase our capacity to be close to ourselves.

Saying Yes

I think we were always saying, "yes but..." when there was not "but," only the "yes."

Only if we make it a losing contest need we fear losing

What A Terrible Homily Says

I suppose I occasionally welcome a terrible homily.  It provides a focus for my annoyance at Church, its reluctance to progress or its determination to pursue issues of so much lesser significance.  But the homily this Sunday exceeded what I might, in even my most perverse mood, have anticipated.  At the end, he apologized for its length though content was the more offensive aspect.  Aside from his own prejudices it seemed nothing could be favorably viewed.  While nothing in the readings suggested it might be the appropriate topic, he talked about priesthood using himself as the model.  He went on to speak ill of families, who were self-centered; people who might pursue marital therapy, because it was not the right choice; other priests, since too many were involved in aspects of the ministry he considered less significant and so were neglecting what he considered important; lay ministers and deacons who were deemed fadist; people taking up other careers, since selfishness and money must be their motivation.

He also took up, though perhaps not intending to, the ignorance of his own family noting his father's inclination to hit them should they alter the cadence of a prayer they would say.  I am sure it was as sad a recitation as it was aggravating, but I was not interested in being sad.  To tell him what a blockhead he was would have meant nothing.  Fortunately, I will not be hearing him again.  That is to be the Merciers' distress more than mine, though it is an embarrassment to the Church in general when fools think themselves the soul of our faith.

Contempt for the Unsaved

Here he comes all "born again" and while he does not insist we join him in this salvation he is not so subtle in saying that none other is possible.  It is a very select group, the saved, and I think we might not be impressive enough for inclusion.  One must merit the election.  It is not unlike joining and exclusive club, and once in it is expected you will say there is nothing wrong with the common people, except that they are not (and never can be) us.  He is here now for our edification, and we for his not so well concealed contempt, benign and enlightened though it may be.

Unremembered

At some point in life it seems important to be remembered, if not by the world at large, at least by someone and so we give things to others hoping that looking at them they may remember who it came from.  But there are a number of people with nothing to give and no one with whom they might share.  While all of us cease to be and no one's memory is so very eternal, they will end so much sooner.

Faithfulness to Faith

There is a debate in the courts about Christian Science.  It is saying that children of this faith need to be protected from it, that they should not have to rely on spiritual healing, though their parents are free to.  It is the same argument that would say Christian children of the early centuries would not have to join their parents in the Coliseum, since their lives were more important that the community's faith.  If believing, and in some instances believing on behalf of our children, did not sometimes require risk it would not be believing.  There is a risk, and as in this case, there was death but death is not always the worst prospect.  Faithfulness to self and to the faith itself is sometimes more essential.

Healing Those Who Need It Most

Jesus cured all those in need of healing but perhaps others were also ill, though not needing to be rid of what caused their distress.  We can all have pain and none are better for it, but for some it leads to greater despair and so it is better that they have it taken from them.  Others were perhaps left to endure the normal courses of distress.  It was less a question of what was fair than it was of saving or securing people in the ways they had need of, making Jesus' ability to discern an aspect of the cure.

The Sacred

Marriage is a sacrament, but family with all that is shared is the sacred.

Hidden

If we hide things, people may think there were things to be hidden.

A Place To Be

The disciples thought people needed to be fed and to find a place to stay.  Jesus fed them.  They would have to find for themselves a place to be.

Managing Dopiness

When I see people acting as dopey as I sometimes do, I realize it would be O.K. to stop.  Should they wish to continue, that it not my choice.  Only my own dopiness is available to me.

Deepening Life

In the beginning of life, movement is outward away from the center of self into family and then into society, with self seen in terms of relationship to and sometimes in comparison to those around us.  At some juncture, there should be a parallel movement -- beginning in adolescence -- back inward, and this becomes the more prominent track as life progresses, and as reflection enables a deepening rather than just a lengthening of life.

A New Home

As people get older the center of their lives shifts and so they become more like visitors in the homes in which they were born.  It becomes where they had been, but where they now are is different and where they might one day be even more so.  It can be disconcerting and requires some treading on unfamiliar ground, but to not change -- to not call someplace else home -- would be far sadder in the end.

Calling It Love

When we can finally call it love, there is no risk in the sharing.  It has a naturalness and inevitability we could not have thought likely were love not its name.

The Frailty of Church

We become so intent upon defining Church, focused primarily on its mission or role.  We see it as system and society, as component, participant and embodiment of both God's plan and our own.  It is all part of whatever else we would see and for all of its divinity we delight most in the frailty of its being human.  It is what we seem to love and despair of in nearly equal measure.  It is always so essential and at the same time so lacking.  We draw it close and feel driven back.  It never meets our expectation yet it sometimes will exceed itself, going beyond where it is mired and find in practice all of the promise it has always had.

We are critical of Church, bound so inexorably to it and enraged by its failure as much as we are delighted by its ability to be what nothing else might ever become.  Church will never meet our needs, exhaust our speculation or fail to awaken within us the fierce loyalty and intense pain that only family can engender.

Hope With No Conviction

It had become no surprise that anything good or promising would be followed, if not undone, by some disappointment.  It was discouraging and invited despair.  It made it hard to hope with any conviction.

Imagining The Worst

She noticed an inclination to think what might happen -- actually what might go wrong.  She would then decide how she would respond to each problem that might arise.  Soon she was conducting within herself so many dialogues -- more often than not they were arguments and so generated some anger, which turned quickly to frustration, and highlighted new prospects for failures that might occur.  Fortunately none of the feared situations ever materialized.  Had they, there was no energy left with which to face them.

Time For Yourself

The more time and energy you invest meddling in lives other than your own, and the more you respond to questions to which you cannot have the answer, the less will you have available for your own life (and so you should not wonder why you see it as so filled with frustration) or for those questions to which you can offer a reply.

Dedication of the Dilettante

His is the dedication of the dilettante, intense and short-lived.  It is not entirely without value, but neither is it as significant as it might seem in its flash and gleam, busting onto one stage after another.

Why We Serve

Is there in the inclination to provide service, and always to the least able or most needy, a drive to affirm our own value, to continually earn -- but never really acquire -- a sense of worth?  Whatever is given, it is to meet our need and fill our emptiness.  Perhaps, were we to focus instead on the need and worth of this other person, seeing his dignity and celebrating his significance, there might be greater satisfaction for both of us.

In Between Self-Sacrifice and Selfishness

For a time we were consumed in giving, determined to deny any aspect of self not devoted to someone other than ourselves, but that diminished our dignity as well as our gifts since the self we were sharing had but little value.  There followed a consuming desire to move into ourselves, to dig into our souls for what few nuggets we might find and we turned society to our fulfillment-demanding, in some sense, that it repay us for our gift, unsought though it might have been.  But that too was incomplete since it magnified our individuality to gargantuan proportion overriding any sense of shared being.

The Wrong Roles

When we see our roles as containing the pressure inside the cooker, rather than turning off the heat, we have a problem.

Unnecessary Test Prep

We do an awful lot of preparation for exams that will never be given.

Integrity At Risk

If you determine the value or decide what will be at risk, you will hopefully notice your integrity is not at risk in very many instances.

A Proposal for Reincarnation

He has decided reincarnation would make sense if people had to come back as the person he least liked in the previous life and he would have to keep it up until there was no one he did not like.  It made as much sense as some things and more than a few others that have become more popular.

When Life Is Mostly Memories

There is, I suppose, a time when life becomes mostly memories, a time when the present holds less interest, less satisfaction, than recalling what used to be.  This could seem a sad time, but only to the observer.  The rememberer, even though he might sometimes cry, is not in so sad a place.  In memory live those important people and sacred moments, the ones that make right now less essential.

At Home On Vacation

They went away and all they brought back was a tan.  They went to a foreign land to stay with Americans at an American hotel in a distinct area, a segregated area isolated from the people in whose country they stayed.  Too bad, but no surprise.

The Need To Talk

Not everyone needs to talk as much as we may need (or is it want?) to listen.

God's Continuing Concern

Although we can experience it as abandonment or the withdrawal of God's active concern, such is not the case -- not even in those frightful times when we can see so little in which to secure our hope.  I think we can believe in his continuing concern and if it were not available through faith we would have to call it despair.

Prayers For All

There is a tendency to give global significance to what is more personal in nature, and so we can think all creation is focused upon or reliant upon us, as though the sun shines or it doesn't because this day is significant to me; and because of what I do, the events of the world can be altered.  This thought has a part to play in our prayer as we ask that phenomena of nature be placed at our disposal, that it rain or not, as though it were to be ours alone.  In prayer such requests are perhaps less appropriate and inclined to overstate our will, as though we should know and ought to judge how events beyond us should evolve.  There is less consideration given to the well-being of the population than is reasonable.  In prayer it might be better to ask that all be as well as it might be and that God's care reach into all lives in the manner God would wish, even though so doing might call for more trust than we have on hand.

Wisdom From "Harvey"

"No one ever brings anything small into a bar."

"For thirty five years I struggled with reality, and finally won out."

-- Elwood P. Dowd (in "Harvey")

An Awareness of the Promise

The Promised Land is less predictable.  It may change and in its lushness there can be a settling, a lulling of the soul, so that the enthusiasm of first believing might become dulled.  But the desert, for all its barren harshness, stays constant.  It offers no distraction and so there can be an awareness again of the promise.

Doing Nothing

There are any number of things about which we can do nothing at all.

The Place Where Intimacy Is Found

The people are not brought from Egypt into the land they had expected, but into the desert which is not a trial to be endured.  It is instead an aspect of their salvation as real as anything that might follow.  It is perhaps in the desert that they will be most certainly God's people.  They have stopped being Pharaoh's and as time goes by they will be less God's, unless they can return to the desert, the place where the intimacy is really found.

Remaining Anonymous

For better or worse most seem intent upon remaining anonymous and so to offer them an occasion to lead or to be in any way prominent -- the best at something where they are not being part of a team, or better yet a group or an even grander collective -- is to drive them farther inward.

Factors Beyond Our Control

What can be done depends upon more factors than are available to our control (the setting, the clients, the expectation and orientation of agencies), and so goals in treatment are necessarily limited -- especially long-term.

Advice Not Given

He was feeling so terribly depressed and wanted to know how to get through this day.  All that came to mind was:  avoid Western music.  It was not what I said.

Belief Before Change

Knowing was unavailable but to know would have been of little value.  Only when there was believing could there be change.

Learning Forgiveness

They brought the adulterous woman expecting he would say what was so obviously so, that she had made a mistake, but it was just too obvious to say and no one would be better for hearing it again.

The Cost of Inaction

Knowing something may not mean a person will act upon that knowledge, only that there is one less place to hide; but sometimes things can seem whatever they might cost and so pretending ignorance is not an option.

A Certain Kind of Freedom

If I could trust them to be themselves, believing they truly do know themselves better than I ever could, then I too would have greater freedom.  It would be that freedom we acquire by giving up judgments not our own to make, only to be anxious about.

My Sadness, My Pain

People sometimes seem annoyed that I do not "share," that I do not offer them my sadness or my pain so they might respond to it.  I do not wish I could do what they want, and in a sense they would not appreciate I have no interest in how they might acknowledge what I feel.  There is none of this "sharing" in part because I do not want what they would offer; and in part I want my feeling to stay my own, something about which I might tarry but which is available to no one else.

Trust In Others

I would very much like to decide to stop worrying about any number of people and all sorts of things, to trust them more, or believe they will be themselves, as they understand they should be, and in time -- but only when it is time -- they will become as complete as can be and as faithful to themselves as it is within their power to be.  Of course, I have yet to begin this since trust is so often beyond me and too I may think, or like to thing, they need what I might offer as much as I sometimes need to offer it.

Overlooking The Essence

Anytime we begin to feel we have uncovered the one, unique, only or absolute anything at all we can assume we are in error, that something essential has been overlooked or minimized.

Another Paradox

One more paradox:  the darkness is the light.

Giving It All Away

If I could give it all away then I would not have to worry about what to do with it.  I would instead be free.

Staying Free

The slavery ended as they crossed the Red Sea and in the desert was their freedom.  Whether they again surrendered it when they came into the land is a separate question.

Places We Might Go

I was reading Yankee and thinking there is a place to go or something we might see.  They are the places that do not interest the boys and things they would see only out of politeness.  If I ask they do not say "no," but the most enthusiasm they can muster is "maybe," or one of those psychologist-sounds signifying they heard, but can offer no commitment beyond that.  It is all right since they are not so often the "we" of these thoughts.  It is instead "we" as I wish it might be -- as I assumed it would be all those years ago when we were together and what seemed only a beginning had the end already in sight.

Awareness is the beginning of choice

Not So Important

It is after a while less of a surprise to say of more and more that it is not so important.

Faith And Belief

The response of faith is the believing.  Anything else is separate from it.

Teaching And Learning

If you came only to teach, not realizing also and more so your need to learn, you have misunderstood what was expected.

Another Dream

In the dream I said I wanted us always to be us, to be together, not just be you and me.  When I awoke it was not that way, not really.  The "us" we have is of wish and memory and whatever one might call the way I talk to you in a way more real than most prayer.  It is not at all as we had planned when we expected always to be us, growing into a very old us before we would have to think it might end.  At least today, the dream was the better part.  Waking could not compare.

Too Much Activity

We are in less danger by far from becoming contemplative than we are from activity.

Choose Your Presentation

The more formal the presentation, the less effective will it be.  People have no shortage of facts.

Less Formal

The more formal the presentation, the less effective it will be.  People have no shortage of facts.

No More C.C.D.

Someone was telling me the boys should be in C.C.D., but I decided "no."  They never liked it.  They never seemed better for having gone, only sadder.  I mentioned this and was told that was not as important as the discipline.  That is not a good enough reason.  In fact, it was more than that -- it was actually dumb but I thought it best not to say so.

Finish Being Children

People become adults when they finish being children, which for many would place puberty somewhere in the fifth decade, and they would still be ahead of others (including me, I sometimes fear).

Spending Time

If time were important, how you spend it might be a concern.

The Wrong Process

What is the name for a process focused on distinctions, on claiming characteristics or offering indictments better seen as observations of what is wrong, rather than factual statements of what ought to be?

Balancing Trust and Control

There is in many situations a need at some point to decide when trust should begin and control should decline.

Being Old

When, as younger people, we think of being old it is as young people.  We think we will have the same vitality, interests and capabilities; but that is not how it will be.  We will be old as old people, which is how it should be.

Selling Oneself

They were talking of their marketability as though uninvolved in themselves, as though there were no self -- only this product.  It seemed odd to hear, but apparently not to say.

Things With Meaning

Any number of things probably mean nothing at all, and those that have a meaning probably don't have an eternal one.

Underselling Catholic School Week

It was Catholic School Week and so it was the featured player at the liturgy.  It seemed hard for the speaker to find a way to claim to be better -- rather than as good as -- the public school.  It seemed like trying to justify one's being without offending others.  The problem is in justifying, which grows out of comparison.  The school needed to sell itself as school, as religious school; and there it began to stumble over clichés, bumping into amorphous sayings, and back-pedaling from anything people might be reluctant to hear.  Crashing on through phrases well worn by time and use, the speaker tried to say nothing while sounding like she had just what someone might want.  Having spent a suitable amount of time at it she gratefully sat down, no more grateful than were her hearers who -- too polite (or deadened) to scratch their heads and well past the point of yawning -- stood to mumble their belief.

Slow Down

Slow down.  Notice what you do.  See what is going on.  Spend hours instead of days.

Speak From Within Yourself

If you can respond from within yourself, there is no need for anxiety about how someone else might hear or see you.  How they might perceive what you say, or how they will understand who you are, is within them and so cannot reasonably be your concern.

Misunderstanding

There are a lot of people saying "have to" when that is not what they have to mean.

Awakening to Spirituality

Sometime around age 40 I began to have a sense of what spirituality might involve.  I had earlier known what Church might mean and I was well-versed in social action as its mission, but it took longer to understand about this more essential aspect of ourselves, and of God.

Beyond Salvation

He feels obliged to save the Church from its errors and meanness.  It is an impossible task, fueled mainly by anger; and because it relies on the Church acknowledging its error, it can never be complete.  It will never be saved in the way he would wish.

Faith in Being (Not Just Doing)

The aspect of God we most often see is his activity.  He is creating, gathering, leading, saving, renewing, interceding, and his love is always in movement, seeking and embracing.  The life of Jesus is seen mostly as mission, as his doing and acting, moving always toward Jerusalem and the redemptive act that will occur there.  The Spirit of God is also described as movement, as an active infusion or the power that derives or impels the Church.  We have from the very beginning the question of action being the complement to faith, the implementing (and so the validating) of belief being in what is done about it.

It is, of course, true.  But it is only one aspect.  In addition to what God may do -- what he is now doing and all he has so far accomplished -- there is his being.  Jesus too is an essential self apart from whatever he did, or now does.  He was the one who also prayed, and who went apart, the one whose silence is stolen by the crowd's demanding to hear.  He had required reflection not only as renewal so that he might go on doing, but also (and more so) so he could sustain himself in who he was, enhancing the bond of being he shared with his father.  The Spirit, apart from being the breath of the Church, is its soul, the ground of its being, the essence in which it rests.

Jesus' Doubt

At the wedding, Jesus said his time had not yet come.  Maybe he would have continued to say that had Mary not intervened.  Maybe he was reluctant to begin, unwilling to risk what seemed to be the power available to him.  Maybe they both knew that once it began, once it really was his time, there would be no turning back.  Maybe at that moment her faith exceeded his own.

Making Exceptions

No sooner had we determined than we started listing the exceptions to it.

Unbound

We are alone unto ourselves, which can sound either isolated or complete, since we are each an entirety, a unitary being; but aside from this uniqueness we can think of it as distinctness, a separateness that is not to be fled so much as it could be embraced.  Whatever bonds we share, we are all right not being bound as well.

Addicted to Action

We had thought that what was done -- be it social action, celebration of Eucharist, study or any number of acts -- was important, as though action were the only way of making things real, or of acknowledging how real they might be.  They had reality -- they were factual (or not) -- apart from us, and we became more real for our doing of them.  Perhaps the concern with doing, with action, only limited our capacity to provide a truer, if less substantive, sense of being.

It is perhaps our discomfort with what is most real that made us less satisfied with nothing to do.  Even meditation had to conclude with a resolution to do something, a putting into practice whatever had been the focus of meditation -- which had itself been framed as an activity.

The Holiness of People

He thinks there is a holiness apart from God that is no less sacred for being distinct.  It is the holiness of the person or object, the sanctity it has in itself, rather than what it may have in relation to, or in common with, anything else or anyone else, even God.

Ask The Questions

Why do you need an answer before daring to ask?  Why do you not let go without assurance of where (or if) you will come to rest?

A Point of Being

The darkness is not to be passed through as though its value were only in the ability to endure it.  The darkness is instead where you are to be, a point of being rather than one of pain.

Arrival

When others start thinking you are lost, it may mean you are beginning to arrive -- not at a location, or a place even in thought, but in nowhere:  where destination is no longer an issue.  It is not a passage through, or even passage.  It is not presence, either of good or even your own essence; and it moves beyond the point of paradox since that too is without a meaning lost for attempts to express it.

A Vision

While putting away the decorations, I had a sense this might be the last time I do this and if it is that would be all right.  It is not the first time the prospect of dying has visited, but it is never a frightening realization.  It does not intrude.

[Another Christmas has come and gone.  The decorations were brought out, hung and are back again in the attic.  So much, I suppose, for premonitions.]

Moment to Moment

We can think all time has been leading toward this moment.  It has, and in this moment there is some fruition, some finalizing of the process, but it goes beyond now as well.  There is a further culmination, one to which we will contribute by what we bring to this moment.

Recasting Our Limitations

In recognizing our limitations we are only acknowledging what would be true even without our saying it is so.  If we can also recognize God's power and restorative nature of his love, our limitations will be no less real but there is an opportunity to know they are not so significant after all.  Our weakness is the receptacle of God's strength.  Our lack is filled by his affection for us, so that the emptiness loses its importance.  We become small shadows illuminated by the sun.  The darkness had been deep only in the night with which it could join.

Starting With Self

Relationships progress from the inside outward, beginning with oneself and if that is not a favorable relationship none other can be as satisfying as it might be.  However, this intimacy with self seems so often overlooked, or it is minimized under the pretense that introspection is more morbid than beneficial.

An Elusive Hope

He has slipped into that terribly angry depression, the one where dying would not be unwelcome.  He said there was no reason to hope and nothing in his life that might justify it.  Nothing ever got more than "almost better," and each time he had wanted to begin to think maybe this was the time "better" might last it was the time something happened to undo it.  It did not have to be something tragic -- just enough to signal the foolishness of hope.  Hope had, in fact, been the way he knew sadness was coming.  It followed as readily on his wary beginning to trust, and each time he would fall so low into it that even drawing even with life was harder to do.

Life can be that way.  It can seem to be more penalty than gift, an experience to endure.  There is so little to celebrate and hope is an elusive thing.  While we may need to most as life seems worst, the well from which we draw can seem to run dry.  Hope is hard and at times I have wondered was it more pretense than anything else.  In his life, and sometimes in all lives, we sense more pain than anything else, so little basis to trust that God or anyone else is playing fair.

So far the depression has yielded and life can be renewed, for this little while longer.  I would hope it can, but hope is one of those individual things that restores only one life at a time.  It can be spoken of but it cannot be lent, and so we can share his sense of what is so real in his life, and wish it were different; that maybe next time it will last when hoping becomes a choice.