Postcards From Myself

Right now is the time of Lent for many religions. For the liberals religions, like mine, we may not observe the rules of Lent, but it can still have value for us. So first we need to know what Lent is and a brief history of Lent.

According to that all knowing source, Wikipedia, “Lent, in most Christian denominations, is the forty-day liturgical season of fasting and prayer before Easter. The forty days represent the time Jesus spent in the desert, where, according to the Bible, he endured temptation by Satan. Different churches will calculate the forty days differently.“Later it goes on to say “There are traditionally forty days in Lent which are marked by fasting, both from foods and festivities, and by other acts of penance.”

It is that fasting and abstinence, most often most associated with the Catholic religion here in the States, that we most often associate with Lent. There is much more to it, of course, and I don’t mean to take this holy time to lightly or casually, so no offense is meant to any of the pious reading this. I welcome your input.

Observed from the outside I see two important ways that lent affects me and may affect you. First is that, as with any self-imposed deprivation, this time of sacrifice can actually lead to over indulgence before and after. Consider Mardi Gras and Carnival for example. Both of these are direct anticipations of the austere time to come. People who are about to go on diets experience the exact same thing. Right before you got on that diet, you binge. Next week you can’t have that chocolate cake, so you are going to have even more of it now to make up for it. In many ways people use Lent as more of a time for recovering from the prior celebrations than as a time of penance.

The second thing though I think is the real importance. If we do not overreact before and after, if we can mediate our compulsive over-indulgence, then the time can be a great time of reflection and possibility. If you do chose to make an honest abstinence from something, then why not replace that with offerings to the less fortunate or to a worth cause. If you choose to not have your daily Starbucks injection, why not take that money and accumulate it and make a donation to your favorite charity such as Habitat for Humanity or Friends of New Orleans or the Red Cross?

Also, keep a diary or even a blog during this time to record your feelings. You may go through times of desire, temptation, self-doubt, and triumph. What is also very interesting is what happens when the time is over. Do you go back to your old habits? Have you broken a habit permanently? Or is it just back to business as usual. All of these are very personal questions with no right or wrong answer. They are questions that only you can answer and only if you take the time to place value in self-discovery.

Please, let’s not forget New Orleans. In this time of Mardi Gras and Lent and election, please don’t forget that there are those who still need help. In this time of political pundits, military spending, and economic recession there are families who still sleep in tents so that they can stay near the only home they have ever known. And the only life they have ever had.

Please don’t forget the New Orleans. The land of jazz and gumbo, of Bourbon Street and the Saint Charles streetcar is as much a part of the fabric of this country as is Broadway and the California sunshine. The scents and sounds of this bayou city run through our food and our music and our literature. From Toole to Rice, from Storyville to the Mississippi, the subconscious blood of this nation flows through the Crescent City.

Don’t forget New Orleans. And her sisters. And her brothers. The township and parish just down the road. The city and county the next highway and interstate over. The Gulf Coast of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. The scattered children of a proud land blown by the wind and washed by the waters.

We can’t forget New Orleans. The lessons that were taught must not be wasted. The lives that were lost must not be in vein. The tombs of St. Louis remind us that all time passes, but it is the job of those left to make sense of the past. The voices call to us from attic and stadium, from the light and the dark, and they reach out to us with palms empty but full of hope.

I can’t forget New Orleans.

– Michael

I read this post on Steve Whitehead’s blog and it got me to thinking about inner peace and what we find peaceful. Then, as I sat in the Sunday morning service at the Unitarian Universalist Church here in Charleston yesterday, I began to consider it again. OK, so my mind was wandering a bit, but it seemed appropriate at the time. In the story from the above blog, the king says,

“peace does not mean to be in a place where there
is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to
be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in
your heart. That is the real meaning of peace.”

I began trying to relate this to my own life. I must admit that recently I have been trying to find peace by finding a way to withdraw myself totally from the noise and trouble. What I have begun to come to realize is that I need to find my own peace, my own way, within that noise and trouble. If you look at many of the people we admire, such as Martin Luther King or John F. Kennedy or whomever, we admire them not because the extracted themselves from noisy and complicated situations, but because the were surrounded by those situations and yet had an inner peace that allowed them to rise above and transform some of that chaos into order.

Now I am not saying that I can do this on any of the order of magnitude of those gentlemen, but I don’t have to. And neither do you. What we do need to do is rise above the chaos in our own lives so that we can view it in such a way as to be able to make sense of things and take some control. Scratch that. Control is too definitive a word. We need to be able to offer guidance in situations that are beyond our control.

As I was writing this and preparing for another hectic workday, I pulled up one of my favorite blogs, Zen Habits. I try to do my writing and reading of blogs in the morning before work as it helps to focus my day. Anyway, today’s entry at Zen Habits is 17 Unbeatable Ways to Create a Peaceful, Relaxed Workday. How serendipitous, and a great way to start the day and the week.

So tell me, where to you find your peace, and what do you do to help create it?

There is a lot of information in this world, so why are you afraid to admit you don’t know all of it? When I talk to a technician about a problem with a computer, I would much rather be told, “I don’t know but I will find out” than to be told a lie. Don’t make up an answer so that you won’t seem stupid. In the end it will probably turn out to make you look dumber that you really are. And worse, arrogant.

There is nothing wrong in taking a quiet pride in the things you know and are an expert at. Your job pays you for what you know. Your kids look up to you for what you know. But when you begin to make things up, you not only make your self look worse, but you take away the worth of those who do know. If a friend asks you if you have heard about a new movie coming out, instead of trying to puff up an bluff through it, why don’t you say, “No, I haven’t. Would you tell me about it?” Now you have not only let them feel like an expert but you have also shown an interest in what they are talking about. That will make them feel good to.

The above example about a movie is a fairly innocent one, but I have seen much worse. We all have encountered the salesman at the electronics show or car dealership who would like to have you believe that he is top dog and really knows his product. Now, what do you think of him, his product, and that store or dealership when you find out he he was wrong? That he totally made up what he told you? Most likely you will never go back there and you will tell others about the bad experience. On the other hand what would have happened if he had said, “hold on a second and let me find out for you?” He would have had your respect and you would have had the correct info.

So, next time you are tempted to claim knowledge of something you don’t know about; next time you are about to bluff your way through a situation, ask yourself this. What would happen if you just admitted your lack of knowledge and quickly followed up with the promise to find out the information or asked the questioner to fill you in. Most likely you will go up in their esteem.