In crisis, the wrong question to ask is, "What have I done to deserve this?" The right one is, "What am I now being summoned to do?" Each of us has a task. Every life has a purpose. We can bear the pain of the past when we discover the future we are called on to make.
Happiness has many entry points. Some are simple, like appreciation, and others, like forgiveness are more complex. Today, let's look at the letter "F" covering fun, focus and forgiveness.
As Jesus hung upon a Roman cross, he forgave one of those with him and promised him a place in paradise. This challenges our tendency to think of terrorists as pure evil, unrepentant and undeserving of good will.
Usually, the people we're closest to and trust the most are the ones we inevitably (and most of the time, unintentionally) hurt, or are hurt by. It's because we love them the most that they can hurt us, and it's because we trust them the most that we aren't always thinking not to offend them.
Rather than lace up my boxing gloves, I chose to find the lesson in the Internet backlash. I called on a message from A Course in Miracles, "In my defenselessness my safety lies." In this video, I share my experience and the spiritual solutions I use for handling negative comments.
This Mother's Day, I will go to church and spend time with my mother and my son, Calvin. Calvin and I will reflect on the fun times he had my other son, Casson Xavier "Biscuit" Evans, who was killed in a drive-by shooting when he was only 3 years old.
I think one of the easiest ways to be happy is to understand forgiveness. We all make mistakes, everyone of us. But not everyone understands how important it is to truly forgive.
Whenever I'm embroiled in this kind of dynamic and (hallelujah!) manage to make it out the other side, I get majorly humbled -- all concepts of myself as a conscious, loving, evolved human being completely blown to smithereens.
For years, as Mother's Day approached, my stomach would have its usual knot of anxiety, my brain running overtime, telling me to send a card even though I had never lived with my mother, even though she pretended she didn't have a daughter or grandchildren.
Being a Christian is not easy because it requires that we do things within a certain framework. As Christians, we have chosen to follow one who set the example for us. Jesus said that we must forgive someone as many times as needed.
The Rev. Michael Lapsley barely survived a letter bomb attack by agents of the South African apartheid government who sought to kill him. The bomb exploded in his hands. In the wake of the recent Boston bombings, he reflects on his own experience of physical and psychological healing.
Not surprisingly, if you look for Christian reviews of "ParaNorman," you will see many focus on warnings to stay way from the occult. Sadly, this response misses the profoundly deep moral message behind this film.
All of it is skin-tingling close; all of it is impossible to touch -- in my understanding of it. Why? That's the big question we all want answered.
These studies show us the cost of not forgiving others can be physically taxing on us. It seems like the world appeared more daunting to our participants who had recalled an incident where they had not forgiven their perpetrator.
I wonder if how I look at people and what I think of them has any relationship to justice in the world. When I look at people and make judgments about them in the privacy of my thoughts, am I just looking at them or is my looking and my judgment really just?
Individualism, disdain for the rights of the unborn, dismissal of the sanctity of all life -- including that of bombers -- and the preponderance of assault weapons in America: All represent a societal sickness that lures many sheep away from a life-giving shepherd to follow another who leads them to their destruction.
