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.

The Therapist's Choice

It is probably time to get out of this business.  It is becoming increasingly anxious and as some things go well others may be getting ready to go badly.  It comes of dealing in the lives of other people and looking at their pain when there is no choice about how to deal with it.  Whatever I may offer, there is no sense they can respond and have such intense suffering.  So well hidden that naming it, much less dealing with it, is a difficult prospect.

Our Responsibility

If we would make anything our responsibility, we would be saying that while it may not really belong to us neither can it belong to anyone else.

Understanding The Paradox

If we were to understand the paradox, that would mean it had not been as paradoxical as it had seemed.

Thomas's Response

At another time and with a different focus, Thomas's response to what the others had experienced might be called the scientific method.

Old News

There they are, blowing up the world's resources.  They are doing it in Lebanon, and have been for years, just as they have in Ireland, Iran, different parts of Africa and almost all of Central America at one time or another.  They are also doing it in the Philippines, and in any number of cities in this country.  It has been going on so long in so many places you might wonder why we still call it news.

The Point

What's the point of being miserable if no one notices?

Enduring

There go the endurers, hanging on until rescued by night.  They will have made it through one more day of their life's sentence.

In The Tomb

They ran so quickly to the tomb you might wonder what they expected to see there other than its emptiness.

Still Evolving

There are probably aspects of evolution about which we are not yet able to even think, stages that go so far beyond our conception of what looks possible, even in our dreams.

God's Stake

He was saying he wondered was God as serious about life as he had been, had he maybe lost interest somewhere along the line and withdrawn to be more spectator than participant.  He asked was it likely God had started settling for whatever came along, rather than being active in the process.  I said it seemed unlikely, that God had said he was in this for the long haul, but that may have been more hope than belief when I thought later about it.

Why ever would living forever seem appealing

The Wonder in Resurrection

I wonder was Jesus surprised to find himself being raised from death.  I hope he was.  I hope it was as great a wonder for him as it was for those who came looking for him.

Losing Happier Times

There definitely are those days when life does not seem so great a gift, but there are others that are better.  Of course, even the good ones could do with a bit of adjusting.  Falling into the unhappiness is so easy to do, and it never seems a surprise, while the happier times are more fragile and losing them is rarely more than minor news, an item for the second section.

The Sweet Sounds

Aside from some instances of speech, the best sounds the world hears are a bat hitting a ball and that ball being caught in the pocket of a glove.

Searching for The Sure Thing

There are inclinations, trends and probabilities; but not so very many absolutes.  Perhaps because so few things are sure, we tend to treat possibilities as though they were absolutes.  And then the probable can become the sure thing.

Finding God in Church

No question of sincerity in the service.  No doubting the intensity of the sermon.  The choir with its usual ardor was slamming out the music of the past four centuries with a determination no one could doubt, but the sacrament -- the truly holy aspect of this whole affair -- was in the congregation.  It is in parents holding children and in people holding hands.  It is in their being family or in their smile to friends or to strangers.  The sacrament -- the presence of God -- is at the altar, but it is more evident here in the people who face it.  They brought, at least today, as much as they found.

Get Up

Don't you think it is about time you stopped reading about some things and started to practice them.

Why People Protect Their Pain

A number of people are unable to tolerate the prospect of wellness.  They can better tolerate pain since that is expected to hurt.  It is congruent, no matter how painful.  But suppose they tried feeling better, or pursued healthy relationships, those that are supposed to be so good.  Suppose you were to reach for them, and you still felt bad.  You would be out of step, and that is more frightening.  You would have no more hope that someday you might try getting better, and we need hope if we are to survive.  Perhaps it is why some people will settle so readily for survival.  It does provide the protection for our hope.

Off Topic

The more they discussed the case, the more information they had and the more questions they were able to raise.  Of course, while it was stimulating for those discussing it, it seemed to offer so little to the person being discussed.

Being Outraged

Groups of social service workers seem so frightfully somber, so intent upon not avoiding an opportunity for outrage.

At the Center

We take ourselves so seriously, assuming for no reasonable reason we are the culmination of so very much and that we ought to be the frame of reference for whatever might come next.  A bit silly, of course, but perhaps better than courting insignificance.

Relationships Come and Go

Our choice is not always to either let go of things or to cause them to change.  We do not always have an option about altering relationships, drawing closer to some and farther from others.  Sometimes our only choice is in acknowledging changes that happen despite us.  We are not letting go, but rather recognizing they are gone.  There may be alteration, but we have not caused it.  We can at best say it happened.

Finding Problems

If you are determined to find a problem there will be no shortage of them, and each can be made to appear as dire as you wish it to be.

Odd Progress

Odd how they thought it was progress only if it included economic advantage.

The Problem With Rules

The more extensive or universal we try to make a rule or principle, the more vulnerable and the more intrusive it is liable to be.  What had application to the life or the individual will falter as it is extended to others and in time it may not really apply at all.  It will have become too universal, seeking a universe having very distinct needs and a different understanding.  Better to offer little more than the manner in which we believe as individuals, and saying at times how that belief might extend into action, allowing others to recognize, and maybe adopt (or adapt) what is available.  It was our rule or understanding, at least for now, and others may accommodate it to their lives, incorporating it into their own beliefs.  This was we can perhaps avoid the insistence and the animosity so often so evident in the lives of otherwise good people.  Less extensive rules with less universal applications are more respectful, even if they require more trust.

Born Blind

The man born blind might have wondered was it as worthwhile as he thought it would be.  He could see, but seeing meant he would have to explain and explain again just how it happened, which led to not a few accusations and a demand that he account for the fact of his sight.  "Why," they wanted to know and they were insistent upon an answer they would be willing to accept.

He had known how to be blind.  He knew what was required and had no real sense of the sight he had never had.  It was not really a loss, and so perhaps there were few regrets.  Now it was different, so much more difficult.  People who had never noticed him were noticing now, and doing so with a vengeance.  Seeing included all of these indictments and so much anger that had not been directed at him before, but having once seen there was no more security in blindness.  No going back, no pretending to be sightless once more.  He might close his eyes, and even close them tight, but it would not work.  The seeing was out there and he wanted to look.

Having no answer to the questions, he did what was available to him:  he believed, and in the end it was all that was needed.

Playing A Part

They act as though they were appearing in the story of their lives, featured players but never the star.  Or maybe they have a variety of roles in lives that belong really to no one at all.

As Good As It Can Be

We must trust life will be as good as it can be.  To want it as good, or as fair, as it ought to be is asking more than life can provide.