Life: from nasty, brutish and short to beautiful and eternal...

Life: from nasty, brutish and short to beautiful and eternal...

Thomas Hobbes once said: human life is nasty, brutish and short. And for sure, not all the world's population enjoys the benefits of electricity, clean water, security, freedom from diseases, happy relationships and marriages, affordable education and healthy, and daily food and drink....progress and evolution seem spotty. However, irrespective of whether all share in these moral and material blessings, our Easter faith adds an important dimension to human life: the resurrection has taken the course of evolution beyond time and space to life in God. Human life has become beautiful, Godlike and eternal, not "nasty, brutish and short."

What Your Handwriting Says About You

What Your Handwriting Says About You

“Handwriting reveals a lot about the way you are socially, the way you think, the state of your ego, your energy levels, your attitudes toward sex,” says Lowe, “all kinds of things.” On that score, handwriting — and its analysis — are far more emotionally expressive than any email or text.  “Handwriting is really a compilation of everything you’ve ever experienced and the way you’ve reacted to it,” says handwriting expert Sheila Lowe. Here are some curiosities about it:

1. “The handwriting of somebody who has a lot of fears and anxiety is much narrower — it pulls back,” she says. In contrast, “somebody who’s really outgoing and friendly and happy-go-lucky, their handwriting is going to be more expanded.”
2. “If you’re feeling sad or contemplative, then the writing tends to get smaller — it’s like you want to disappear,” she says. “If you’re feeling happy and expansive your writing may get bigger and lean more to the right,” which Lowe says indicates leaning towards other people.
3. “Somebody who has a lot of swirls and loops might be someone who wants to draw attention to themselves,” says Lowe. “Usually people who have a lot of self confidence don’t need all that stuff. They keep things fairly simple.”
4. The handwriting of a host who’s feeling fun and frivolous, for example, “would be on the larger side — larger than medium which is 3 mm high,” says Lowe. “It would be more round and probably have somewhat inflated lower loops in their lower-case g’s, y’s and f’s.”
5. Writing can also reveal how smart you are. “Highly simplified writing is a sign of intelligence,” she says. “If you have a lot of elaboration then the appearance is more important than the message.” 
6. “Earlier in the marriage, my handwriting was very small — it was not a happy marriage,” she says. “And then later I deliberately changed my signature to be showier — a little more flamboyant, which is not really me.  I was trying to assert my independence.”

BUT who will roll away the stone for us? And why back to Galilee?

BUT who will roll away the stone for us? And why back to Galilee?

            He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him. This is the key to our Easter morning promise. The women did not hear that Jesus was raised to sit at the right hand of God on some throne in some far away heaven. What they heard was much more radical. He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him.

            Where is Galilee? Galilee is where these disciples came from. It was their home. It was the place where they had families and jobs and ordinary routines. It was not Jerusalem — the Holy City, the center of power — but Galilee, the place of everyday life. Go back to your ordinary, every day lives. Go back to where your jobs and your families are. That's where Jesus will meet you. That's where you'll find him and be empowered by him. Go back and continue this story. This is not the end; God's business is not finished. This is the beginning. This is where your work begins. This is where your life begins.

            This is the message of Easter to us. Don't stand at a tomb, paying homage to a dead teacher. Don't set your sights on simply putting ointment on wounds already dealt. Go back to the place where you live your life and meeting the Living Saviour there. Go to meet the God who chooses to walk among us with a power greater than all the powers that can ravage us and ruin us and lead us to despair. Go to meet the Christ who cannot be stopped by the world's intolerance or fear or violence or greed. Go to Galilee, go home, to the place where God has planted you and find Christ there, continuing to rise above the wrecks of human injustice, day after day.

            Christ is alive and friends, that means that we can also live. We don't need to just exist in a dog-eat-dog world; we don't need to just get by. We can live; because when we have the courage to go to Galilee and meet the Living Lord, then we are given the power to live a life that will not be stopped by meaninglessness or loneliness or hatred or injustice or disease or poverty or anything else in all creation.

            The Easter promise is that the same Jesus who could not be held back by torture, by death, by stones rolled in front of tombs, is the Jesus who is alive today and here today and available today to live in you, to rescue you and heal you and empower you and set you free from any tomb you've ever known.

BUT who will roll away the stone for us?

Perhaps this is our question as well on this Easter morning. We, too, have come to pay homage to a great teacher, a charismatic leader, a good man. We come to give honour to Jesus, but we also come with questions on our lips.
Who will roll away the stone for us?
Who will roll away the stone of sorrow from the dark tomb of our losses? Who?
Who will roll away the stone of bitterness from the dark tomb of our failures? Who?
Who will roll away the stone of cynicism from the dark tomb of our jaded vision of the world? Who?
Who will roll away the stone of indifference from the dark tomb of the world's suffering? Who?
Who will roll away the stone of grief from the dark tomb of our broken hearts and broken relationships? Who?

God has already done it. Alleluia!

The 4 relationship killers that end marriages.

The 4 relationship killers that end marriages.

1. Keeping a "why should I have to change" attitude.

"Basically, they're saying, 'My partner needs to change, and if I like the changes they're making, I'll make changes myself," That attitude handicaps the whole process, since both people are going to have complaints. Changing should be in parallel, not sequentially.

2. Withdrawing into a "bubble." 

Another toxic behaviour: hiding out in a protective bubble. 

People withdraw into protective bubbles because they're afraid of showing any vulnerability.  So if you're going to start changing in sequence, both people need to emerge from their bubbles.

3. "Just getting used to it."

 It's a familiar story: Two people meet, fall in love. They get hitched. They have kids. Their careers advance. Kids leave home, and the parents say to themselves, I married a stranger.

So what happened?  While two people might live together, they don't automatically share one another's lives.  Slowly, the energy animating the relationship ebbs away.

The withering comes from a lack of conscientiousness about the relationship itself — and an unhelpful assumption that if you've known your partner for years, then they should automatically know what you want.  

4. Adapting too much.

Being in a relationship means two individual humans living in the same space and doing all sorts of things together. Naturally, those individuals aren't going to fit together like gears inside a watch — people have different habits, preferences, and value systems.  That behaviour comes from three assumptions:

• "I have to please my partner in order to be accepted." 
• "We can't want different things, because if we want different things, the relationship won't last." 
• "If I speak up, I'll be criticized. The consequences will be too negative." 

If these assumptions take hold, the relationship can get stuck in toxic dynamics, like hostile-dependent, where one person dominates the other, or conflict averse, where no one brings anything up.

Forgiveness, a Grace not a Wish…

Forgiveness, a Grace not a Wish…

One of the most beautiful words in any language is the word “forgive.” The word is a common one but the essence of the word is in the last part, “give”. To forGIVE means to give someone a release from the wrong that he has done to you. It means to give up any right of retaliation. Forgiveness is a matter of love and not of how many times. Forgiveness costs especially when it means accepting instead of demanding repayment for the wrong done; releasing the other instead of exacting revenge; reaching out in love instead of relinquishing resentments. This is never possible by personal efforts alone, BUT by the grace of God. May the Lord grant us this special grace in this Lenten season and ever more.

GOSPEL...

The message of Christ in John 3:16 can been called a summary of the Bible and summarizes the entire Gospel as well. Maybe because we can find the acronym, GOSPEL Let us listen very carefully: “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not Perish but might have Eternal Life;” (3:16).

The last place you thought to Look...!

The last place you thought to Look...!
            Think about times you have lost something and, after looking high and low, finally discovered it. Perhaps you said to yourself, "that is the last place I thought of looking for it!" Keep this experience in mind as you reflect on the readings for this, the third Sunday of Lent.
            In the first reading, we are given commandments as God's signposts to discover Him. The other two readings make clear that the commandments were but the beginning of our way to God. Something more was needed if we were to mature in our knowledge and love of God. The last place God's people thought of looking for a key to this mature growth was a cross. But a cross, as it turned out, was the key.
            The truth is that we, like the Jews and the Greeks, look for Jesus in spectacular deeds and words of worldly wisdom. A true understanding of Jesus is to be found in an unlikely place - in the mystery of the cross.