Category: blogging

Almsgiving Doesn’t Come With A Disclaimer

On By dotluvs2writeIn blogging, Inspirational6 Comments

homeless man

 

At times, while driving to the mall, I see homeless people sitting or standing by the side of the on ramp. I’m betting all of us have seen a homeless person at least once in our lives. Sometimes, we’ll wonder what brought them to their present condition, and some people will suspect these people aren’t truly homeless. Years ago, I used to think this way. You know that view… the one that thinks if someone is standing by the roadside disheveled and holding a self-made cardboard sign, that he/she is most assuredly a drug addict or alcoholic. So, what does one do with this mindset when he/she encounters this “pseudo-poverty-stricken” individual? Why, nothing, of course. Nothing but walk on by or drive on after the light turns green.

Today at church, my priest spoke about this very subject—this belief that the person asking for anything you can give, or perhaps, money, is a wasted, deceitful human being.   As a Christian, I don’t believe questioning the motives of a homeless person is a prerequisite to giving what you can to these people. Christ never said feed the poor (sometimes money is all you have to give), clothe the naked, but only if you’ve investigated whether they truly are poor. No, you just do it. Why or how the person got to that unfortunate and tragic circumstance in his/her life is not our business. Our business is to give to the person because they are made in His Image.

Today, my priest shared a story about one of our Orthodox Saints—St. John the Almsgiver of Alexandria. He was the Patriarch of Alexandria in the seventh century. I’m sharing his encounter with a beggar from oca.org:

The saint never refused suppliants. One day, when the saint was visiting the sick, he met a beggar and commanded that he be given six silver coins. The beggar changed his clothes, ran on ahead of the Patriarch, and again asked for alms. Saint John gave him six more silver coins. When, however, the beggar sought charity a third time, and the servants began to chase the fellow away, the Patriarch ordered that he be given twelve pieces of silver, saying, “Perhaps he is Christ putting me to the test.”

st. john the almsgiver of alexandria

(St. John the Almsgiver of Alexandria)

This is an amazing and extraordinary example of how we Christians should try to be. We must see Christ in all people, including the homeless and those in prison. The Orthodox Christian Nativity Fast starts this Wednesday, November 15. I pray I have the opportunity to give to those less fortunate than I, and hopefully, bring a bit of comfort to their lives.

 

A Lifelong Dream Unfolding

On By dotluvs2writeIn blogging, InspirationalLeave a comment

rose and book

 

Today Will Be the Day

Today will be the day that I ask him to go to counseling with me.

Today I should tell him how much working out our marital hardships means to me.

Today I will be honest with me and with him on why I withdraw from his touch.

Today I’ll make the effort to show him I care.

Today the therapist will meet with us and begin to develop a deep connection with us. We will grow comfortable talking with her about every painful aspect of our relationship in a calm and secure place.

Today we will concentrate on us, not our jobs and grown children. It will be worth everything.

Today I will tell him I love him.

Today we will start anew. Our relationship’s Band-Aid will be removed and the rugged scab of hurtful mistakes of the past will shrink and crumble away revealing the smoothness of healing.

Today has come and gone, and I leave a white rose at your grave. The stings of regret are lessened only by the flow of my guilty tears as I gather myself to drive home to an empty house and empty bed.

(this example of poetry is why I’m not a poet)

 

She grew up the daughter of an Air Force officer, moving every two to four years. She struggled through elementary and secondary schools with painful shyness, comprehension problems, and a strong dislike of academic work. Reading was a painful chore, and reading for fun didn’t really exist in her early years.   But she was able to write despite these obstacles. Her imagination was huge with no limitations, and she wrote what fermented in her active mind.

kaleidoscope-imagery-beauty-imagination-words-best-describe-retro-childhood-favorite-light-glass-work-42754517

Her first short story, “Mr. Happy” sprouted in second grade. Within those five or so pages, she illustrated and wrote everyday adventures of a red circle with arms and legs and a smiley face—Mr. Happy. In high school, she began to write voraciously, scrawling down sagas of families and friends through a trilogy set in the Civil War era, to friends shipwrecked on the usual deserted island.

When she graduated from high school after much turmoil in keeping an interest in what she was supposed to be learning, she had no future plans to go to college or work. Being a late bloomer in physical development and mature matters of life after high school, she only had an interest in writing, playing, and hopefully marrying one day. Small ambitions, one would say in this day and age. Nonetheless, her parents gave her the sobering truth that she could not live out the dream she wanted most of all—to be an author. They explained the difficulty in getting anything published and minimal pay that wasn’t enough to support oneself. So, after a failed year in community college, one year off working at a record store, reality struck, and she decided to go to business college because she had taken typing in high school and did well at it. Business college was vital because it taught her discipline in work and the seven English classes helped teach her what she didn’t learn and/or ignored throughout elementary and secondary schools, even though she wrote correctly!   She graduated from the business college in a year and five months and went job searching. She ended up in a great position as a word processor at an employee benefits consulting company for the next three years.

Power of Words

In that time, she joined a writer’s guild and wrote her first novel. Soon, she learned her word processing position was being phased out, and she moved south where her parents had relocated recently. It was down in Louisiana where she found her future husband (an Air Force civil engineer), married, and moved to Ohio, where she had her first son. Her second son followed three and a half years later.

Between marriage in 1997 and 2014, she wasn’t able to write anything. Not until after two years of homeschooling her sons in 2013 to 2015, did it pique her interest through the history, literature, and science courses her younger son was taking that she decided to go back to school. Initially, psychology was her major, but stumbling upon the list of different degrees that included English Creative Writing in the university’s website, she changed her major to English Creative Writing, which she had no idea existed until then. The passion she once felt for writing was rekindled, and she began writing again in September 2014. She is still attending the university as an online part-time student and is set to graduate in the fall of 2018. She has written one novel, five short stories, and two plays. They are all still in the revising phase.

sophia petrillo gif 2

In the words of Golden Girl, Sophia Petrillo, the woman in the story above is yours truly.  But, of course, you knew that.  Today, I am writing and unfolding my dream I have had the majority of my life. I am thankful to my husband’s working that I am able to have this opportunity to go back to school and write again. I couldn’t do this without him. The revising of my current novel I started in January 2015 continues, but will finish up in the next few months.   My two plays are going to be read aloud by actors at a local theater for my benefit to hear what I’ve written and see how it flows, so I can decide if or what I might want to revise. This reading is set for December 7, 2017. I am very excited about this. Also, one of my short stories has been entered in a contest through my university’s English Department, which will be published in their journal if my story is chosen first, second, or third place. As I continue through my university courses and keep writing, in the next several months, I hope that some of my works will be published out there for all to read and hopefully enjoy.

woman at desk writing

 

 

Cutting Off Love: Growing A Cold Heart

On By dotluvs2writeIn bloggingLeave a comment

cold heart 2.jpg

 

It’s hard to love. It’s easier to not care or make the effort a lot of the times. Truly loving others takes complete sacrifice of self. How much do we sacrifice ourselves to love another? It takes trust and vulnerability.

One of the Greek words for love is agape: sacrificial, unconditional love for others. This is the type of love I am writing about. Agape means loving all people no matter if they are your family, friends, strangers, or even your enemies. Sometimes it’s difficult to even love family members or extended family, but we make an effort to keep the peace and a connection.

There are three words I believe are the most vital to me in struggling to become a loving human being: (1) sacrifice, (2) generosity, and (3) empathy. These three words define, for me, what love is. Therefore, in reality, I do not believe I am at that stage of agape in my life. Sometimes I feel I am light years behind.

There are certain road blocks on our journey in life that cause a breach in connecting with others and growing in this love that is perfectly shown through the Holy Trinity:

  • Judging Others. I found this causes me to become prideful and distant from the person I am judging, and my heart becomes less soft and less warm. This is the reason why, in Christianity, judging others is considered a sin. It blocks you from loving the person which results in missing the mark of what we are to be — loving God and our neighbor.
  • Envy and jealousy. This causes a strong dislike for another human being whether a close relation or a complete stranger. It’s sinful because it brings forth enmity in our hearts for others.
  • Disliking others because they’re not like you. We all like people who are like us, but I think it’s true we struggle to like others who aren’t like us, who have different ideals, beliefs, tastes, interests, etc. This is seen most dramatically in the realm of politics. People become heated over certain political topics, and they attach themselves to one of the political parties and seem to sign a type of oath in blood that they cannot detour from the party line, or they are considered disloyal and traitors to their party. The political arena requires teams to belong to, like in sports or college fraternities. If you dare to agree with another team member’s opinion or the team’s perspective on an issue, you have soiled your position on your team. This common, “us versus them” activity causes us to require an enemy, even if there aren’t really any. We feel good being a member of whatever group we’ve joined, and when outside groups insult a member in our group, we naturally vehemently defend them. But what happens to the heart? Where in this sports game, party bickering does love fit in?
  • Hating people who commit awful, murderous acts. I’m not saying we should excuse the heinous acts. The act is horrible no matter the circumstance. But when I read the comments in a news story trending on social media about someone killing someone else, such as “I hope she/he rots in hell,” “blow him/her away,” it’s really disturbing and sad, and frankly, inhuman. It is difficult and sometimes painful to soften our hearts towards murderers, but we can pray for them that God softens their hearts and that they repent and feel remorse for what they’ve done. We don’t have to like these people, but we can love them as fellow human beings but still hate the act.   What I do in these cases is just what I said in the latter sentence. I pray for them, and I also try to remember all humans are made in God’s Image. We live in a broken world, and we’re all broken, spiritually ill, and need healing. I admire those who have shown love and forgiveness to the people who committed deadly crimes in tragic events, such as the Amish families did when a troubled man holding a decades long grudge burst into an Amish school house and shot dead several little girls, or when the African American members of a Charleston, South Carolina church were randomly shot dead by an unstable white man. They exhibited the capacity to forgive the men who had brutally killed their loved ones.

All of us have missed the mark. I know I’ve hit every one of those road blocks on my life’s travels. How do we change our hearts from cold, dark, hardened rocks to softened, warm, loving hearts? I believe I work on myself in loving others by trying earnestly to not go the path of those road blocks on my journey on earth, and in doing so, I can become a true human being the way God originally created me to be. It takes training one’s mind in diligently being mindful of our thoughts to not allow the judging, hate, and envy to prop up a tent in our heads and settle there. But we should think of good things about the person instead of judging what they said or did. Maybe skip comments in news articles and not get caught up in too much of the news and political stories, which invite constant judging and loathing of others.

warm heart

When moments of love enter your heart, you feel good. You feel joy. Nothing quite compares. Through God’s help, love, and mercy, I pray to be a loving, sacrificial, empathetic, and generous person…to be fully human.