The Power Of Prayer

A little time-out for an expression of deep appreciation.

After a depressing year of setbacks and struggles, leading to a rather melancholy Christmas, my wife and I find ourselves in amazingly better spirits this week, thanks to a Heaven-sent series of sudden circumstances that have made many hoped-for dreams come true.

It took a lot of work, and I fell short of the goal a few times along the way, but we did our best to remain cheerful despite the torrent of bad news that hit us personally in 2008, and that struggle sure paid off. Which is why I wanted to write this post. I firmly believe in the power of positive thinking, and that this ongoing effort to renew our positive attitude, coupled with persistent prayer, brought a trio of timely blessings to our lives over the past few days, more wonderful than I ever would have dared to ask for.

As it always seems to happen with miracles, they all fell into place at the absolute last minute, renewing light after a despairing period of prolongued darkness.

So (keeping a long story short…), despite the negative signs that filled each day all the way to Christmas Eve, I won’t be losing my job this spring after all, thanks to an incredibly fortunate turn of events, which means we don’t have to move away as we dreaded we might; the personal health problem that worried me so much this past year was able to be addressed successfully, so far anyway (that’s an even longer story); and, last but not least, we were able to find a new dog to replace our old buddy who passed away late last year... and the stream of coincidences that led us, step by step, to finding such a perfectly suitable replacement still leave me awestruck by it all. Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

As the old saying goes, to become happy you should first act happy. To which I've learned to add: to act happy you have to first believe that you should be happy.

Seeing the forebearance of others carrying much bigger crosses than my own made it just a little more possible to imagine a time beyond our present problems, seeing their determination to remain cheerful despite their situation made it that much more probable to resolve to stay cheerful myself, seeing their faith in action made it just that much easier to keep my own.

And now my perseverance has been rewarded, in all respects, even fulfilled beyond my expectations, for which I humbly Thank God for these blessings that He has seen fit to have come my way.

Thanks to the power of prayer, for us, in our little world, it seems to have become a truly Happy New Year.

The Migration of Joy

It’s been hard for my wife and myself to keep the joyful spirit of Christmas this year; seeing my friend’s family soldier on through his onerous cancer treatment, my wife keeping a watchful eye on her far-away friend as he deals with his wife’s worrisome health decline, the despair of my retired colleague slowly losing his eyesight, the haunting memory of my co-worker who committed suicide, another co-worker fearing her father’s stay in the hospital this month will likely be his Final Visit, our grief in recently losing our old dog to old age… all this avalanche of bad news has made it a struggle to keep finding reasons to be happy, and I find myself challenged indeed to feel “merry” this Christmas.

Christmas time seemed so much simpler, when I was a child. The anticipation triggered by waking up to the first snowfall of the season, the thrill of shopping for The Right Gift for my parents and each new sibling as they were introduced to their first Christmas with our growing family, and especially the delight of waking up to a sea of presents under the tree on Christmas morning. Those were the days…

The childhood innocence that accompanied the narrow joys of Christmas Past must today co-exist with the adult awareness of the bigger picture within which these tableaux take place, in Christmas Present. It seems such a petty thing to shed a tear over, what with each day’s new horrors to contend with, but the passing of our dog has really hit me hard, and I miss my little buddy terribly.

How to live in hope for good times ahead, when the world gives us every reason to abandon such ideals, when each day seems to take away far more joy than it provides? The Christmas season carries the whispered answer, half-hidden but nevertheless visible, if we but have the insight to perceive it: the lesson that joy is a gift that we can give to ourselves, anew. As every thing changes, some things must never change, they must be re-embraced, they must be re-created, so that there may be a re-joicing… the experiencing of a renewed joy.

We change as we live, as our lives change us; we gain and we lose, often both at the same time, in a way that the child with his nose pressed against the frosty window, gazing expectedly at the freshly-set white blanket of snow in his front yard, could never have foreseen, or understood.
The objects, the places, even the people, that bring us joy are ever-changing as well... not always changing for the better. And maybe this is the hardest lesson to learn of all; that it is not the material present that brought us joy, but the spiritual love that inspired the initiative to give the gift in the first place. The source of that love is as ever-changing as life itself, as new friendships are made, new families are formed... new pets are found to replace the old.

In the blizzard of life’s constant change it’s hard to see the snowflake that remains unchanged: the lifelong ability to migrate from a focus on the decay of the physical, towards that which can’t truly be seen or touched, only felt; as real as a promise is real, actual in the way an imagined hope may be actual. It’s hard to act on the faith that, despite everything we learn about life as we live it, life includes the possibility for rejoicing. Renewed joy is out there, somewhere, waiting for us to move on, and find it again. Like a fresh snow blanketing the neighborhood, each one is different, however much they are similar to the ones that came before. Each one is special, however much it stirs memories of the past. Like snowflakes: countless in the ways in which they are unique.

Pressing my nose against the window and seeing the first snowfall this weekend, this older child now with white in his hair as well as his front yard looked into his past to see his future, and hopes that by this post he will commit to keep working on that act of faith required to rejoice in time for Christmas.

"The Grave Is Not The Goal..."

The US election has been really getting to me lately. I needed some serious cheering up yesterday, and got it at Mass, ironically through a sermon on death.

I find it hard to resist the idea that no matter who wins the election Tuesday, we all lose. So how to remain optimistic about The Day After? Ultimately we have two choices, don't we: to live in hope, or to live in despair. No matter what we do day to day on stage, we all share the same last act: a cold grave. So how to live happily ever after? I see our old, old dog, wracked with age, and I can see what lies in the near future for him, as he approaches his last Christmas with us. It's the same future in store for us all. So why try to accomplish anything, if it all turns to dust?

How to live in hope of a better future, when the present seems so grim?

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but if there's one thing I've come to understand on my uphill climb it's that, whether we are happy or sad, whether we are living in hope or in despair, both are ultimately our personal choice. Whether you're picking one or the other, both involve struggle, an exhausting battle with ourselves, within ourselves, to force us to see everything there is to see, leaving nothing out because it might affect the image we expect to find. I work with a colleague who is relentless in seeing the worst in every situation, such is his supreme negativity, and I can see the immense effort this takes, to sustain that kind of overwhelmingly negative and pessimistic point of view. He has to work damn hard to refute my little observations of the good shining all around him. Just as, these days, I have to work equally hard to continue summoning some light at the end of the tunnel.

To move towards the light, to live in hope, to choose to be positive, is not to live a lie, through selective reasoning and clouded judgement. Doubt is necessary to faith, for what else sharpens our wits and exercises the mind sufficiently so that our perception skills are at their peak proficiency for the task at hand: not just to look, but to see, as far as the eye can see... even straining to see a far-off time and place beyond the grave, by placing death in the middle, rather than at the end.

From the pulpit yesterday I was treated to a poem whose stirring message could not have come at a better time for those of us wondering about our tomorrows. What better medicine could there be, what better incentive could there be, to help us dream of a more pleasant Day After Tomorrow..?

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
"Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us further than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act -- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.

H. W. Longfellow
A Psalm Of Life