Category — making a difference

Severe pressure, like the kind that squeezes a grape to reveal the juice that is inside… It’s part of life. There will always be times of severe pressure and when we find ourselves in those stressful, pressure-chamber type situations–take a deep breath and let yourself experience it.

There is a passage in the Bible that is pretty cool. It talks about loving your neighbor and all that, but then it talks about pressure and hypocrisy. Jesus was always good that way about humbling people and making them really look at their motives.

Here’s what it says:

If someone wants to take your coat, don’t try to keep back your shirt. Give that to him as well. Give to everyone who asks and don’t ask people to return what they have taken from you.

If you love only someone who loves you, big deal. Even sinners love people who love them. If you are kind only to someone who is kind to you, will God be pleased with you for that? Even sinners are kind to people who are kind to them. If you lend money only to someone you think will pay you back, don’t think highly of yourself.

But love your enemies and be good to them. Lend without expecting to be paid back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be the true children of God.

That rocks my socks off. That means, when the pressure is on, when someone has just slammed me unjustly and I’ve got the best comeback ready to roll off my tongue, can I go somewhere within myself and find my inner peace? When I am being squeezed to the point where “what I am truly made of” is about to come out, can I make the decision to be someone else? Can I change?

I can and I have to. Because if I change, it will directly affect and bring change to others. One person really can change the world. I’m not saying it’s easy, but what I am saying is the next time you feel the pressure rising up inside of you because you are in a situation that is unfair, unjust, or just plain stressful to the maximum level…….picture yourself walking through the fire. Allow yourself to be purged of everything that is within you that you don’t like. It all comes to the surface during pressure…all the garbage.

If we can learn to view pressure and stress as an opportunity for inner cleansing, we can be the change that the world so desperately needs.

“The real voyage of discovery lies not in finding new lands, but in seeing with fresh eyes” Marcel Proust (1871-1922), French writer

We hear all of the quotes that become meaningless cliches in our minds after a while…Oh you know the ones–life is what you make it, never give up on your dreams, love is the answer, and so on….

Without trying to convince you of something that you haven’t heard a million times, may I say to you today, that these are not mere cliches. These were the passionate beliefs of people who changed the world in one way or another. They ring true and always will. Just because they have been reduced to “inspirational quotes” doesn’t mean that we should not take them to heart. Indeed we should use these words to take us higher, to another plane of thought, the place where dreams are born and hopelessness is not an option.

Are you feeling less than hopeful today? Have you lost your spark, your fire, and your tenacity somewhere down the line? New life can be breathed into your dreams, you know. Nothing is ever really dead. Dreams just go to sleep for a while.

It is not that the simple principles of love, peace, and harmony have become outdated or don’t work anymore. No, it is you that has soured over the years. The disappointments, the failures and the pain have robbed you of your convictions. What was once a hopeful and optimistic view of life has surrendered to cynical laughter at the very remembrance of ever being so naive.

There is a story in the Bible that I am particularly fond of that deals with this very issue of dead and hopeless existence. It takes place in the “valley of dry bones.” (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

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In today’s freebie-hungry society, many people are always looking for a deal. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about saving a buck whenever I can, but once in a while we need to take a moment to ask ourselves whether we are a giver or a taker on this earth.

I don’t want to be remembered as a taker. You know the type. The people who seem so nice and easy going but would knock you down and trample you underfoot to be the firs person in line if someone announced they were handing out $5 bills.

Being a taker is not an attractive quality. It’s a sign of an immature, selfish nature and people don’t really care to hang around that for very long. The ironic part of being a taker is that they inevitably end up last in life. The harder a person pushes to get what they want, the further away and more elusive it becomes.

Being a giver is not just part of our nature. It is something that must be actively developed. It’s a settling of our inner spirit and is really a part of self discipline. The best way to keep a conscious awareness of being a giver is to think of these two words “add value.” Everywhere we go, everyone we come into contact with, ask this question, “Did I just ADD value to that person or situation, or did I take it away.” This takes diligence and a focused effort, but the good news is that once this way of thinking is practiced for a few weeks, it will become a part of who we are.

The fun part about adding value to a person’s life is that if it’s a stranger, it will just be a blip….an isolated incident that has taken place in their life, but with some people it makes such a profound effect, that it is almost startling.

Once there was a man in front of me in the grocery line. Once the cashier gave him his total, he looked at his cash and change for a minute and then asked her to take a few items off the bill.

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“Homelessness is an inadequate experience of connectedness with family and or community.”

This definition comes from a homeless website and forum I belong to. If homelessness was merely the lack of a place to rest your head at night, wouldn’t all of the homeless shelters be overcrowded? Amazingly, they are not.

Well, I guess that is too vague… Homelessness comes in different forms and I am sure that there are people, especially in today’s economy, that have found themselves to be temporarily homeless, and for them the definition really is the simple fact that they don’t have a place to lay their head at the end of the day.

But homelessness, as in the form I am speaking of is becoming more of an epidemic every day. Read the definition again and really think about it…  “an inadequate experience of connectedness with family and / or community.” I live in a 3,000 square foot, two story house but that quote could describe me at times.

I remember when I was a teenager and lived in my first apartment. After an extremely abusive childhood I thought that moving away from my mother and grandfather would be the beginning of a new and wonderful life. It was, in a way. I had a good sales job right from the start and could support myself without even needing a room mate, although I’ve had my share of those as well. Being an only child, I wasn’t ever really lonely when I lived on my own, but I do distinctly remember nights that for whatever reason, I would become extremely sad. Curled up in my bed, cats purring by my side, I remember crying myself to sleep. Every time this would happen to me I would say the exact same thing (out loud) between my sobs. “I want to go home…I just want to go home.” Now you psychologists out there might think I was on the brink of suicide and “home” meant death…but that’s not true. “I want to go home” had a very clear meaning in my mind’s eye. “Home.” I wanted to find that happy, carefree, connected place where people loved me, parents hugged me, and someone was always there to kiss my boo-boos.

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I don’t know but I get pretty disillusioned with society today. Does anyone have a life that matters? Does anything have a long term meaning or a point? Are we changing anything really? Or do we lie in bed at night staring at the ceiling, wondering if tomorrow will be a part of our destiny or if we are really “missing it” somehow?
I’m ready for change. I mean, something radical…There are people everywhere on the brink of suicide and here I sit. Our society has become a disconnected team of introverted people who don’t know how to communicate, humble themselves, or even give a hug to an unsuspecting stranger.

I found this video and if you never watch anything else on this site, I think this one is well worth the five minutes it will take up of your life. We need more people like this…just bare, vulnerable, making a statement….

What statement do you make? Did you make one today? Could you have? Could we all have? I think it’s time for a real change. Money doesn’t matter anymore. The only thing you can take with you is a relationship with another human being. Cynical people….You know they weren’t always that way.They just got tired. I think it’s time we help to make the cynics smile…Don’t you want to FEEL again? I know I do…

I did not write the following article. It was written about an American lady who works at the American Embassy. With her Gucci bag, Italian leather shoes, and designer clothing, she is brought to a work site in Uganda, where “Bead for Life” is going on….

This is the story of how walking out of American life into a Uganda work camp for about an hour affected her entire outlook. Hopefully she still has the vision with her and has been truly changed by her experience…. I think everyone needs a mission trip.

Gucci Is Not an Acholi Word
The first thing that I noticed about Carol was her fancy pointed high-heeled shoes as they sank into the red dust. Clearly she had not anticipated where she was going today when she got dressed, what the Acholi Quarter really was. I had been trying to arrange a meeting with her for the past month. Today as rag tag children crowded around her car chanting “Muzungu, muzungu, muzungu”, I saw a lovely woman in designer jeans, a silk blouse, and Italian leather shoes hesitate to leave her car. I wondered if it had been a good idea to bring her to meet the beaders and to learn more about BeadforLife.

Carol works for the American Embassy. I had heard that she might be a source of high quality magazines for making the beads. She seemed like a possible ally in finding the raw materials for the bead project.

As Carol alighted from her SUV, children rushed forward to grab her hands, happy to accompany foreigners through their dirt village. In the total absence of toys, books, TV, radio, and snack food our arrival broke up the children’s routine. We strolled around the village, a small parade of white women and black children. We visited the rock quarry where Acholi refugees eek out a dollar a day in the hot sun by breaking huge boulders into small pebbles. The high heels were struggling, scrambling up eroded hillsides, stepping through rock piles, and avoiding mud. The barefooted children scampered effortlessly.

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