All I Want Is World Peace

 

In Miss Congeniality, a movie staring Sandra Bullock who grates at everything 'girly', her character must enter a women's beauty contest, I'm sorry, scholarship program as Candice Bergen's character corrected her, to find out who is trying to harm everyone involved in the pageant.  During the interviews with the women, everyone is asked what their greatest wish was, and everyone says, "World Peace.'

You know if I could ask every single person on this planet to wish for World Peace for  their birthday, I wonder if it would come true?  If we could all for just a moment bring to mind Mother Teresa's quote, "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” I wonder if we could actually make world peace happen?

What keeps world peace from happening?  I know the easiest answer is sin. But what keeps us constantly sinning?  Our forgetfulness of God? Our pride to not apologize to each other much less to God? Or is the lure of sin whispering in our ears day in an day out. But why should that be more influential than God's love shouting in our ears?

If only we could remember minute by minute, day by day that God loves us, we truly could have peace everywhere. But it takes everyone remembering that day by day and minute by minute. Is it so much to ask? 

Is because we are all individuals, so different?  Not so according to Mahatma Gandhi who said, 'No two leaves are alike, and yet there is no antagonism between them or between the branches on which they grow.”

Yet those leaves and the trees they grow on aren't given souls like humans are.  Unlike the trees or leaves, we were created in God's likeness and also given a free will.  Trees have to become trees, and leaves have to be leaves. They don't have a choice in how they will grow.  They just do their thing.   But humans are different. God did give us souls as well as the freedom to choose.  Can you imagine loving something so very much you give total freedom to it? 

That's really hard when you are in a relationship or raising children.  To give total unrestricted freedom means we have to trust, not only in those other people, but also in the freedom God gave each and every one of us. We have to trust that freedom that each of us has.  Yet sin whispers in our hearts to not trust that freedom. Sin encourages us to restrict one another, to be fearful, to be selfish.

World peace has always been a wish for many people.  We wish good will on everyone in our songs and poems and stories.  Yet it is still so unobtainable.  We know we must want world peace.  But how can we get there?  We can each individually choose to be peace loving until someone comes along and destroys our peace.  Somehow Jesus was able to keep choosing peace when he was being hung on the cross and mocked. Somehow he still chose to forgive and even ask his own Father to forgive those who don't know what they are doing. 

As we move to holidays when we are supposed to be of good cheer and wishing peace on earth towards every man, woman and child can we do it like Jesus did? Without reservation, without holding back anything for ourselves?  Can we truly strive for world peace beginning with me?

The Adults Aren't Coming!

 

I had to laugh the other day when my adult daughter was telling me about a workshop she had attended for her business and the first thing the presenter told the group of small business leaders was, "Okay, the adults aren't coming, let's get started!"

In other words, don't wait for more knowledgeable people to do things for you. YOU are the knowledge base now, you are the leaders, you are the heads of business. YOU have to be the ones to lead.

I instantly thought of how that applies to many of us in whatever stage of life we're in right now.  When you are growing up, your parents and other elder family members were usually telling you where to be, when and how to dress. But as we reach our twenties and thirties we have to grow up and make adult decisions.  Yet, so many of us 'adults' from age thirty to sixty are still waiting for our parents to tell us how to do things whether it's how to fix our homes, live our faith, raise our children or live our lives.    I can hear you saying, "Whoa there lady, not me! I am adult, I can do all those things just fine!"  And yes true it's not like we're all still living in our parents' basement yet.  But how much do we engage in the world in our decision making?  What I mean is, do we volunteer to teach Sunday School or think that someone 'older' in the parish would be better to do that?  Do we volunteer for community committees to improve our town or think that the older people have more knowledge about social concerns or politics?  We've lead ourselves into a trap of thinking we're adults, but not engaging as such. 

We could blame the fact that our parents are living longer so they are still doing these things. But that is no excuse for us to sit back and let them do it all.  It would be better for us to work along side those older adults and learn from them, not let them do it all.

The adults are not coming because we are here. Right now, in the moment and we need to sieze these moments before we truly cannot participate in them or before all the 'older' adults are gone and we never took the time to learn from them!

 So be the adult in your life. I know you don't 'feel' like the old and wise. But you are.   Take charge, take a stand and don't be afraid to say, "Hey, I'm the adult here!!!"

True Christmas Spirit

 The year 2020...wow, what a time we've had...

It has been a wonderful reminder for us that we need to rely on God and on our faith to get through each day.  Jesus is walking side by side with us through all of this.  And there have been lots of time He is carrying us too.

Jesus is totally the reason for the season.  But sometimes we can be reminded even by the secular world that there is more to Christmas than the presents.  This commercial is cute... I know it's about Santa...but it is the point of the commercial that was important.  And I think this year has really driven home the importance of family and being together and for us also relying on our faith.  

It has been hard for so many people not being able to get to church.  There are member of my family that still cannot get inside church because of a state wide order... so live streaming and Masses on television and radio are getting them through these times.  So it has been very important to me to make sure I get our Sunday Mass live streamed every week, something we never did before 2020.  And each Sunday over 300 people join in to watch Mass and have formed an online church community checking on each other.  It may not be perfect but it just like the Christians of old who had to hide out in the caves and connect with each other.  It's just another facet of a faith that will not be stamped down, forgotten or ignored.

So here is to faith, family, and remembering what is important about everything. God has us in his hands and will never forget us.

Enjoy this Santa moment because it made me laugh and cry.  Christmas