Dear Friends,
The month of June is a very interesting month. There are graduations to attend. The heat is on with all the wonderful humidity in the New Orleans area. There is also Father’s Day. So many things to be aware of in our lives. I was watching Family Feud recently and the question 100 hundred people had to answer was, “What is the most sad and happy time in a child’s life?” The number one answer for most people was graduation. Interesting isn’t it? I invite you to ponder the meaning of this in your life. Back to June. Some of us like the heat and humidity, Others though find this time of year very stressful. Father’s Day brings its own issues. Great joyful memories fill some of us, while others are sad over the loss of an opportunity to be close with someone very important in our lives. On a recent week of retreat I read these words from Scott Peck, “To have a loving relationship with one’s spouse and children is a great blessing. Not many people can say that about their lives.”
Where am I going with these thoughts? When I sit down to write I rarely know what I am going to say. It is a special time I have to connect with God who moves my fingers over the keyboard forming words that come from my heart in God. I watch God unfold before my eyes and look up to see what appears on the screen. Earlier in my life, if I was going to do anything like public speaking, I thought I needed everything written out ahead of time. That thought and resulting action was good for one period of time in my life. Now things have changed. I think and contemplate what I am going to say ahead of time and then right before I am ready to speak or write I pray and say, “Let Your spirit lead me Oh God.” I have also found this a helpful spiritual discipline in living life itself. By no means am I saying this is the way for everyone. How presumptuous that would be on my part! What I am saying though is life seems to work much better when we let God direct it.
Now let’s see how this fits into the month of June. What happens when there are major transitions in our lives like graduations? Do we look at them as an ending or a beginning, or both? How do we handle weather situations that make us uncomfortable? Is it the same as the life conditions that make us uneasy? What do we do with unmet expectations of those we love like Fathers? What do we do with unmet expectations of life? The answers to those questions tell us how much suffering we are encountering in our daily life. Jesus encouraged us to suffer for our faith not for expectations unmet. We certainly can suffer when we stand up for who God is and the way God operates in life. It is a challenge to let God be God. It is an even greater challenge to let life be what life is. By doing that we live in the moment.
As the Buddha said, “The suffering we unnecessarily feel comes from unmet expectations or as He would call it attachments to things or outcomes in life.” But just as importantly it can come from losing this moment. Graduation is wonderful when we don’t have to worry about the past or future, when we can rejoice in the moment of culmination of hard work for someone we love. Heat and humidity is bearable when we deal with the now rather than seeing June as just the beginning of another beastly hot summer in Louisiana. Father’s Day is good when we can let our Fathers know not only of the best moments we have spent with them, but also the pain from the lost or hurtful moments. This kind of sharing creates an opportunity to not repeat past mistakes with our own children. Forgiveness now can even become a reality with our Fathers dead or alive.
Just a few thoughts from my spirit to yours. What do you think?
Peace
Gary