Like Licking Honey Off a Thorn

Fleck.

BEGIN

THE BATTLE WITHIN

When I was a young boy, I remember my Elementary School Teacher impressing on our class that, in an election, one should never bad mouth an opponent. Rather, one should concentrate on defining oneself! You got ahead NOT by pushing someone else down, but by lifting yourself up. Quaint idea, isn’t it. And yet so often, many of us have a tendency to blame others for our failures and our broken dreams. True, an adverse or hostile environment can indeed affect our well-being, but in the end, it is our own actions and reactions, - along with our attitudes, which have, by far, the greatest effect on our spirits.

A Pastor was visiting with a church member in her living room. As they sat and talked they looked through a large picture window into a neighbor’s yard, where there was some laundry hanging out to dry. The Pastor and his congregant commented on how dirty the laundry was. How disgusting, they thought! Don’t they know about basic hygiene? As the Pastor was leaving, he and the woman stood on her front porch, taking one last glimpse at the neighbor’s unsightly laundry. But low and behold that same laundry was now bright and clean! In fact, the neighbor did not have dirty laundry at all. The congregant and her Pastor had been observing that laundry through the congregant’s dirty window!

One hears a lot these days about Jihad. It’s almost a dirty word to us in the west. But not many realize that the Jihad being bantered about as a war cry is really the lesser Jihad. The greater Jihad has to do with the battle going on within each soul between truth & falsehood, -between fear & love. This Jihad is present in all human beings, and for far too many, that battle is given up way too soon. The greater Jihad should begin at a young age and continue throughout one’s life.

News flash! The struggle for truth and peace never ends! Too often folks give up the quest for inner truth much too early in life, and eagerly move on to the lesser Jihad, whose major concern is the defending of one’s faith against aggressors (both real or perceived). This Lesser Jihad is the easier of the two. However, without the greater Jihad being present and in good working order, the lesser Jihad makes little sense because you wind up defending your delusions and your insecurities rather than your faith, - be you a Muslim, a Jew, or a Christian.

Peace doesn’t mysteriously materialize once everyone in your world is doing exactly what you believe they should be doing. Peace is not about control. It is about love. As author Frederick Buechner says, Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of love. Peace, or the lack of it, has to do with how we visualize the world around us, and our attitude toward that world. Peace is not found in the successful bending of the world to our form, but rather it is found in the act of allowing our form to be bent to God’s love and will for us.

Peace (nirvana) does not bloom when the institutions and people that surround our lives live up to all of our expectations for them, but rather it happens when we ourselves seek to live up to the expectations that God has laid before us, - and it is then that we begin to take off, embracing full and joyful lives. And what does God expect? Check out the 10 commandments for starters. Then read Micah 6:6-8. Begin with baby steps. Take 30 seconds every morning, noon and night to offer a prayer of thanks to God. Forgive one person a month, maybe starting with yourself. Visit at least one person a month. Say thank you now and then to your spouse, your children, your parents, or your friends just because!

So, in the battle within, always seek to discipline your heart and soul in the Light of God in Christ. Do this so that others may not have the power to dictate your level of peace & joy. Let God’s love fill you!

The Rabbi’s Gift – Author Unknown

The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of anti-monastic persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth, all its branch houses were lost and it had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and four others, all over seventy in age. Clearly it was a dying order.

In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. The rabbi is in the woods. The rabbi is in the woods again, they would whisper to each other. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.

The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. I know how it is, he exclaimed. The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore. So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time then came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other.

It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years, the abbot said, but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?

No, I am sorry, the rabbi responded. I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.

When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, Well what did the rabbi say? He couldn't help, the abbot answered. We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving --it was something cryptic-- was that the Messiah is one of us. I don't know what he meant.

In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi's words. The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that's the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the Abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people's sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred.

But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn't mean me. He couldn't possibly have meant me. I'm just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I couldn't be that much for You, could I?

As they contemplated in this matter, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate.

As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed the aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, and to pray. Then they began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.

Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi's gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.

CHOICES

There are times when I think I’m kinda smart. Naturally, those times don’t last very long at all, - thank the Lord. But if I give that notion any thought at all, I am easily humbled, because I know that my failures in this life do vastly outnumber my triumphs. This doesn’t mean that I’m super deficient or that I just don’t try. It simply means that I am very human.

Anyway, how smart do you feel today? Ready for a quiz?

(Answers are at the end)

  1.  Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?

  2.  How long did the Hundred Years War last?

  3.  Which country makes Panama hats?

  4.  In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?

  5.  What is a camel’s hair brush made of?

  6.  The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?

  7.  What was King George VI’s first name?

  8.  What color is a purple finch?

  9.  Where are Chinese gooseberries from?

10.  What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?

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It was more than 10 years ago now that my life was in danger of losing much its color, and of slipping into pale shades of hollowness. I was angry. I was hurt and I was frustrated. I felt hemmed in. It seemed the harder I looked for some light (for The Light) the more it simply flickered weakly in the breezes of my discontent.

Enter the story of the man in a flood who refused a rescuer in a rowboat by shouting out, God will save me!. And then the water rose, and he drowned.

Subsequently, he got to see God up close and personal, and he asked Him (with some contempt) Where the heck were you? And the Lord God says to him, Hey Einstein! Who do you think sent the boat?

Well, that sort of happened to me many years ago. I was in my first day of summer trucking and was carrying the barnacles of much church infighting. Some church people can get quite nasty and mean sometimes. Anyway, I had stopped at a Truck Stop to fuel up and to get a CD book to listen to.

It was then that I saw it sitting there, all alone among all the cheap novels.

by Steve Chandler

I said to myself, I think it’s speaking to me. And ya know what? It was! It was my row boat. I made the choice, and I jumped in! By the end of the day, I was refreshed and renewed, - peacefully excited even! Head above water!

What follows here is not from that CD (although I highly recommend it), but it is a story that I am sure the heart of Mr. Chandler’s book would embrace. It’s all about attitude.

It’s about a man named Michael

who is another man’s rowboat.

Michael says to his friend,

"Each time something bad happens,

I can choose to be a victim

or I can choose to learn from it.

I choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining,

I can choose to accept their complaining

or I can point out the positive sides of life.

I choose the positive sides of life."

Yeah, right, it’s not that easy, I protested.

Yes it is, Michael said.

Life is all about choices.

When you cut away all the junk,

every situation is a choice.

You choose how you react to situations.

You choose how people will affect your mood.

You choose to be in a good mood or in a bad mood.

The bottom line: - it’s your choice how you live life.

Soon thereafter, I left the company I was working for

to start my own business. Michael and I lost touch,

but I often thought about him when I made

a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Michael was involved

in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a

communications tower. After 18 hours of surgery and

weeks of intensive care, Michael was released from

the hospital with rods placed in his back.

I saw Michael about six months after the accident.

When I asked him how he was, he replied,

"If I were any better, I’d be twins.

Wanna see my scars?"

I declined to see his wounds,

but did ask him what had gone through his mind

as the accident took place.

"The first thing that went through my mind

was