After a decade of unprecedented disasters in America, we can learn a lot about dealing with tough times from a tiny nation with nothing.
Only 700 miles from Florida, but a universe away, 20-foot-deep-ditches are overflowing with tens of thousands of bodies. Images of battered and bruised school girls embracing the lifeless bodies of classmates, mothers falling to their knees and crying out to the heavens, and hospitals, schools, churches and any building left standing filled with the critically injured literally dying for help fill the airwaves, the Internet and the minds and hearts of millions all over of the world.
With the death toll nearing 200,000, the situation in Haiti will soon outgrow the word catastrophe and enter the sphere of apocalypse. Yet for Haiti this isn’t a totally new experience. In 2004, a torrential rain drowned 2,000 people. Only a few months later, Hurricane Jeanne killed 1,900 more and left hundreds of thousands homeless. In 2008 three tropical storms killed close to 800.
However, the 7.0 earthquake that hit last month has clearly been the largest catastrophe Haiti has endured since the 1700s. With little to no infrastructure, the majority of Haitian housing has been demolished, leaving entire families and groups of families living in tents. The injuries have rippled into a cascade of Illness and disease. The Red Cross estimates that if more relief doesn’t come quickly, the death toll could top 250,000. Add to all that a lack of proper sanitation, and an avalanche of yet to be discovered problems threaten to overwhelm Haiti.
A helping hand
While Americans scramble to support their hemispheric neighbors, as well they should, I wonder if we truly appreciate exactly what our inspiring outpouring of love and support can teach us about our own problems.
Our government has rightly dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to this tiny island nation neighbor. Everyday Americans have pledged hundreds of millions more. We are all calling into telephone banks manned by celebrities who have millions of disposable dollars, and we are doing so from the comfort of our homes on our fully functional cell phones — giving money that, despite our economic woes, we can afford to give. The people of Haiti on the other hand have none of those luxuries or choices right now.
Haiti is the definition of desperation. This is the real meaning of hard times. And yet the Haitians go on — to endure, to persevere, to live.
It is not the end for Haiti, but a new beginning. And it is never the end for any of us, as long as we are living and breathing with the breath and inspiration of the Lord. Isn’t that the message of Job — the good news of our Lord — and the message of Psalms? “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
Maybe Haiti is our wake up call to stop living in a delusory world where we strive for comfort and ease — instead choosing to cherish the struggle that is life lest we be doomed to eternal ingratitude.
We are all in this together — life, that is — and nobody gets out alive. It’s what we do, why we do it, and how we do it while we are here that counts. Help Haiti, help your neighbors, help your family and friends, and stop wasting time worrying about how much you have or don’t have. After all, I’m pretty sure none of you out there are worse off than our Haitian neighbors.
–Chris Benguhe will donate half of his profits from all copies of “Overcoming Life’s 7 Common Tragedies: Opportunities for Discovering God” sold on Amazon.com through Easter 2010 to Haiti relief.
It’s that time of year again to rejoice in the coming of Christ, Who redeemed us from sin and offers eternal love.
It’s also when many “non-practicing” Catholics return to church for their annual visit out of tradition, family duty or habit, even though their hearts aren’t in it and some may be questioning the existence of God altogether.
Let’s all support them because you never know when that thread of faith will pull them up from the abyss of despair and ultimately inspire the rest of the world too.
Case in point: Anne Rice, the best-selling author of “Interview with the Vampire” and the “Vampire Chronicles,” had an amazing awakening after decades mired in despair and a career devoted to writing about the undead and the damned.
She recently shared a few thoughts with me about her rich Catholic upbringing and how suddenly in the summer of her 18th year, she inexplicably lost her faith. There was no major traumatic event; it just happened.
What followed was an extraordinary career writing the fictional accounts of a vampire named Lestat, a desperate soul searching for meaning in an eternity doomed to darkness. Rice married the love of her life, endured the horrible loss of her daughter to leukemia, then the miraculous birth of her son.
Faith rediscovered
But just as nothing made her lose her faith, nothing particular brought it back; the latter just happened — one day in December of 1998, right before Christmas.
“I wanted so desperately to get back to God,” revealed Rice. “I was running around so afraid and in such a state of despair for so long. I wanted to stop running from things and run to God.”
But Rice had struggled for years with “deep sociological questions.”
“How could I believe in God if so many bad things happened in the world?” explained Rice. “I wondered if the Church was right on one issue or another. Then I realized I didn’t need to know all the answers. All I needed to accept was that I loved God and wanted to reconnect with Him through the Church. I could surrender to Him in His infinite mercy. It wasn’t about avoiding questions; it was about love.”
She went to confession that day, and received holy Communion afterward. She remarried her husband in the Church. Soon her random loss and rediscovery of faith started to make some inspiring sense.
“Catholicism wasn’t just a religion for me,” said Rice, “it was a way of life. It influenced everything that I wrote even when I was away from the Church. I thought I was an atheist writing that book [“Interview with a Vampire”] but why did I write about someone who was grieving for loss? Why did I write about someone who was lost and searching? It was me searching for my faith, searching for what I had lost.”
That faith guided her, even when she was “lost,” and eventually led her back to the Church.
“When you grow up Catholic you feel that you have to be connected to the meaning of life,” said Rice. “When you break away from your faith, you still have that yearning. I never lost my desire to understand what the point of my life was.”
Since then Rice has devoted her life and career to the Lord. In her recently released “Angel Time,” she examines redemption, hope and the merciful, healing love of Christ for a hit man who retains an ounce of faith and is pursued by an angel until he comes to his soul’s senses — an experience Rice identifies with metaphorically.
“Coming back to the Church allowed me to replace a quasi despair about everything with optimism. I am no longer running around every minute afraid. Now I don’t feel like I am running at all. I am calm yet driven. I feel like life is a celebration.”
Hopefully this holiday a few “lost” Catholics can take solace in Rice’s redemption and might even celebrate their own. Merry Christmas!
It’s not about whether the glass is half full or half empty— it’s about the value of the glass. The glass of your life is always valuable.
That’s because we can fill it with opportunities to love and be loved.
As we face tough times this holiday season, maybe it’s important to remind ourselves of how special every single person we meet is, and how much they have made our lives worth living over the last year.
So here is a simple way to make a special gift that will help you to remember the most important gift of all – each other!
A. First, go rummage around your house for an old vase or glass jar that you have always liked but that doesn’t get enough use.
B. Then between now and Christmas you and every member of your family answer one of these five simple questions below each day on a slip of paper and place it in the jar.
1. Who do you love and why are they special to you?
2. What’s the nicest thing anybody did for you today or this week and how did it inspire you?
3. What’s the kindest thing you did for anybody else today or this week? How has helping that person helped you?
4. What is something you saw somebody else do today or this week to help someone else that filled your heart with happiness?
5. Who loves you and how do they show it? How has their love and support changed your life?
C. On Christmas day after all the other presents are opened take down the jar and start reading all the wondrous ways that you all have loved and been loved, and it will be the greatest Christmas gift of all.
Then keep the glass out somewhere for the rest of the year in plain site where it will always remind you of all the love you have now and long after the holiday season is past.
Now email this along to at least five people this holiday to remind them too!
Then go fill up your glass with all the reminders of God’s mysterious spirit of love.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Go to www.OneMoreDayAlive.com all this month where you will discover more FREE inspirations from with Chris Benguhe’s latest book.
Learn why tough times might be a window to the best times of your life!
GIVE THE GIFT OF JOY!
Best-Selling inspirational author DEEPAK CHOPRA declares “Chris Benguhe eloquently reveals the secrets to finding joy during hardships.”
Overcoming Life’s 7 Common Tragedies: Opportunities for Discovering God By CHRIS BENGUHE (Buy the book at Amazon link below)
One more day alive – it’s a miracle for everyone.
Because even the worst of times are windows to the best, and out of pain and struggle come inspiration and hope!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809143917?ie=UTF8&tag=beyondtragedy-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0809143917
Last week a teenage boy stuck a gun to my head. The peach fuzz on his face was still not mature enough to make a real beard, but the gun was all too real.
As I stared down the shiny black, cold-steel barrel of the gun, I wasn’t as scared as I was shocked — that a boy this young could be so desperate and so willing to destroy life.
It was just after dusk, when I parked my car at the edge of the parking lot at a local restaurant in Central Phoenix, only a few blocks from my home.
I emerged from the car and only made it a few steps before a young, wiry youth, donning a black-hooded sweatshirt pounced on me, pointing a small caliber gun in my face and screaming at me.
I had just given a teen talk at a local church a few nights earlier, and as strange as it sounds, the first thing that popped into my head was that he reminded me of one of those kids. Was this for real? Could this be some badly conceived prank? But the gun was no joke, and as I hesitated he became more irate.
I pulled a wad of five singles from my wallet and threw them at him. The flying cash distracted him long enough for me to make it into the restaurant and call the police.
Within minutes the place was swarming with cops, and half an hour later they had three suspects in custody down the street.
As a police cruiser drove me a few blocks away to where they were being held, I reflected on the whole event for the first time. I wasn’t as angry as I was sad. As I thought about the years of jail time he would receive for armed robbery, I wanted to sit this foolish boy down and drum into his brain exactly what he had done, and what he jeopardized.
What might have been
I thought about my mother who recently had a stroke and depends on me. I thought about my friends and the rest of my family who would be so extraordinarily traumatized by the event if this kid would have shot me.
I thought about his family and what they would lose if I were armed and shot him.
I thought about all the people this young man could help in the future.
I thought about the children I would never have, he would never have and all the ways the world would be deprived of one or both of us.
I know how much I have to offer; he obviously had no idea how much he could give, and he was willing to throw both of our lives away for a few dollars.
I wanted to tell him all of that and more as we neared the sea of flashing lights sitting atop the caravan of cop cars surrounding the suspects. The cruiser stopped 20 feet away, and three suspects were dragged from the back of an SUV and paraded in front of the headlights. None of them were him.
My heart sank a little. I could never look this misled youth in the eye and tell him why what he did was so insane!
But I am still here to help and to make a difference. And maybe there still is a way to get to him, by telling you to share this story with every young man and woman you know, so that they never make the same stupid mistake.
So that maybe eventually every one of them will know what he didn’t — that God created us to live, to let live, and to revel in the love that surrounds us no matter how much we have or don’t have everything we want. And that blessed mission is priceless.
The recent tragedy surrounding “self help” author James Arthur Ray’s sweat lodge ceremony in Sedona, Ariz., which killed three people has stunned the spiritual community there and left many across the nation condemning the author for abusing a culturally revered ceremony that he knew little or nothing about not to mention violating city codes which he made no attempt to adhere to.
But what nobody is talking about is the bigger problem, and the bigger issue that Ray represents – a cancerous culture of success that has permeated the American psyche, if not the world’s, and has practically become a religion unto itself. It’s an addiction that Ray and countless others like him have tapped into for profit – one which promises that you can have anything you want, whenever you want and however you want it or as the cover of Ray’s book Harmonic Wealth reads, “The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want.”
Well as a Catholic self-help author, who does not ascribe to this point of view, I think it’s high time that we call this ridiculous charade for what it is – snake oil salesman claiming to sell the elixir of life when what they are really selling is death – usually spiritual but in this case actual.
For God’s sake have we not evolved enough to realize that our happiness cannot wait for the good times to roll around in a world where tragedies and tough times never cease?
The bottom line is that for all of us, there is a reality, and no amount of positive thinking or perception twisting rhetoric is going to make it go away.
We can make that reality meaningful and constructive, not by becoming obsessed with changing it, but by finding a noble purpose in the way we deal with it, that purpose is to love and be loved by others.
What if our problems, our inadequacies, our imperfections and our failures don’t make us less worthy or less important but even more important because they give others the opportunity to reach out and love us – giving their lives even more meaning – and they give us the opportunity to reach out to God?
That means none of us are dysfunctional or any less worthy of life, no matter what we do or don’t do, no matter how many mistakes we make, no matter where we go right, where we go wrong, how much we succeed or fail or how well we fit or do not fit into society.
Or as Author and psychologist Viktor Frankl put it, “We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed.” Frankl suffered the atrocities of a concentration camp during World War II where his entire family lost their lives, culminating in his wife’s execution in front of his eyes. After overcoming the compulsion to end his own life, he realized that the pain he was experiencing because of their deaths was proof of his extraordinary ability to love, and he wanted to go and love some more.
I guess sometimes only death reminds us of the value of life, and that every day is one more day alive, a miracle, and an opportunity to experience that miracle in oh so many ways.
Hopefully these three deaths will not be in vain but will remind all of us that’s life’s value lies not in whether the glass is half full or half empty but in the value of the glass itself. That glass of our lives is always valuable.
Shakira –didn’t you know that you are supposed to be an egomaniac! You are not supposed to be tiptoeing around a university on your downtime expanding your mind by reaching outside of it and learning about others. You are supposed to be a totally self-absorbed, overly opinionated and undereducated narcissist like all the rest of the “stars”!
Oh wait a second – maybe it’s the other way around.
The most exciting thing about all the Shakira hoopla a few weeks back wasn’t the fact that she masqueraded as a boy to attend classes at UCLA last summer, although that seems to be what all the papers were talking about; it was that did so to blend into a classroom where she could learn something about history and about society because, in her own words, “’I needed a break from me. The universe is so broad, I cannot be at the center of it.”
That’s quite the contrast from the typical star mentality – one that really came to disgust me over the course of a decade long career as an entertainment journalist, one perfectly characterized by Ashley Simpson a few years ago when she declared, “I love to sing…I don’t do it for anyone else—I do if for me. I have had to learn that my voice is the most important one.”
Yes, it’s easy enough for most of us to dismiss stars like Ashley as nutty and narcissistic because we are adults and know they are. But what about our kids – they have not yet formed the confidence in their opinions and the knowledge needed to ascertain when an authority figure (yes stars are seen as such) is not only acceptable or not noble or worthy of their respect.
Where do you think Columbine killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris got the idea that their pain, their ideas, their anger, etc, were more important than the lives of those that they took? Could it be from the “stars”?
You see fame isn’t what it used to be. Once upon a time it was a byproduct of success owed to some great skill, craft or art; now it’s a goal to be achieved at all costs. Self-promotion has practically become an art form in itself. Actress and dancer Debbie Allen makes that point in the remake of the hit 80s phenom Fame.
I saw that firsthand from another perspective too after I quit my job as an entertainment reporter a decade ago and decided to lay low for awhile accepting a job teaching high school English for a year. I saw a whole lot of great kids who were being brainwashed by the media into thinking that they were at the center of the universe and that was ok.
Flash forward to 2009 and Shakira’s wonderful selfless quote. Now I don’t know how sincere she was when she said it, but it really doesn’t matter because at least she is trying to set a new standard, a new idea of what it means to be a star.
Is Shakira the exception that proves the rule of a self-absorbed media machine or could she be a harbinger of good things to come on the horizon of our fame and fortune front?
I don’t know but at least it is providing us some food for thought.
DON’T JUST FIND A JOB – FIND YOUR CALLING!
Have you lost your job? Are you hurting financially, struggling to get back in the game? You are not alone; the unemployment rate is skyrocketing, especially in places like Michigan.
But your job loss could be the ultimate opportunity to find your true purpose. And that might not just help YOU to find a new job but a whole new career and greater happiness than you have ever known by finding out what society needs and ultimately finding God’s mission for you.
Every one of us has something the world needs, and by learning how to share that gift with the world for all the right reasons, we are rewarded with all the things that we need.
That’s actually at the heart of capitalism, the most moral economic system on earth.
God gave you a special gift that nobody can take away from you, and when you use it to contribute to the world, the world rewards you. Finding your mission is finding the job or career that will allow you to do that.
But in a confusing and failing economic environment the true meaning and value of work, social responsibility and YOU has become muddled, if not completely lost. Too much government regulation on one end and too much corporate greed and malfeasance on the other end has caused the whole system to go haywire. That is not your fault.
Yet, your desire and ability to reach out to and contribute to the world is a divinely inspired asset that can and will still lead you to long-term and stable career success once you engage it. Because God gave every one of us something the world needed, and our jobs are how we offer that gift and are rewarded by society for it?
Finding your mission is finding the job or career that will allow you to do that. In other words, your economic value is assigned by God, and it is not rooted in how much you earn, but in HOW and WHY you earn.
This new perspective enables and inspires you to reach out to others to love and respect and to be loved and respected as an integral part of the human community, and finally to transform that whole life idea into a career strategy that will help you find and succeed at a new job.
Want to read more. Find out how to turn your job problems, and all your other troubles into opportunities to revitalize your life in Chris Benguhe’s new book, “Overcoming Life’s 7 Common Tragedies: Opportunities for Discovering God,” available here on this website or at Amazon.com.
Author and Columnist Chris Benguhe will be kicking off his W.O.R.K (Wealth Originated from Responsibility and Kindness) program at churches from coast to coast this fall. If you are interested in bringing Mr. Benguhe and his seminar to your church or other organization, you may contact him at cbenguhe@yahoo.com.
Consensus has a value, especially when it is reached through a common high value rather than the lowest common denominator. Isn’t it about time we find that when it comes to health care?
It seems like that highest common value should and could be the respect for human life.
The debate over healthcare is dominating the airwaves, and suddenly people are coming out in droves at town meetings speaking their minds, questioning and criticizing.
Let me buck all the other pundits who are getting all shook up and say this is the best thing that could have happened to America.
Because Americans all over the place are looking for the most just and effective way to take care of each other; wow – that’s downright beautiful.
Furthermore people are actually taking the time to scrutinize a policy decision and think about how it will change our nation.
Finally, and even more importantly, they are trying to figure out what is morally right!
Intellectuals forever have worried that a rise in populism in America was going to bring about mob rule – a society in which people no longer thought but simply made emotionally directed decisions that were supported by a swell of support.
When I first saw President Obama swept into the White House last year in a wave of popular euphoria, I marveled at the public swelling of support. But I was concerned about whether in all the excitement people were really examining and questioning his policies enough, especially those that dealt with the issue of the sanctity of human life.
But right now I am witnessing a greater responsibility in our population than I have seen in my life time, and a greater concern for humanity than I have seen in a long time.
Most Americans want to help those that are sick, polls show, but they are equally concerned about losing benefits for themselves and their loved ones to pay for it and wondering whether the elderly and those on Medicare will have their care compromised.
Then there is the very real concern for whether or not the government should have the right to decide quality of life and length of life issues. Though the bills currently proposed do not implicitly endorse euthanasia, as some overzealous pundits have stated, they do paint a picture of a new government healthcare system that will pick and choose who deserves what level of care. That could lead to government deciding ultimately who will live and who will die.
Personally, I think it might make a lot more sense to build on what so many others have worked to create – making it better, helping to make coverage available to those who don’t have it through cooperatives, lowering premiums with subsidies, and increasing our nation’s commitment to faith based human services charities. In a nation as wealthy as ours, that shouldn’t be that difficult!
But there is one thing I know for sure, something I also believe the America people are starting to understand more and more because of this whole discussion.
We all have a divine right to life, and we do not receive that from the government but from our Creator. (Gallup Poll results in May showing more pro-life Americans than pro-abortion rights Americans for the first time since 1995 is a good indicator.)
I think maybe we could find the answer to this problem by looking deeper into the innate value of life and how to honor God’s dominion over it. He gave us this precious life, and only He should decide when it starts and ends. But in the mean time, it’s up to us to figure out how to best respect it in ourselves and others.
Something amazing is happening all around us. As one of the worst economic downturns in history struck this nation last year, the nation has responded not by crumbling under the strain, but by downsizing, reprioritizing and reassessing their values. The results – a nation that saves more, spends less on things they don’t need, while remarkably has continued to give to charity.
That’s amazing and almost too hard to believe, if it weren’t true. And what it says about human nature is nothing less than extraordinary.
Here are the facts. Amidst an economy that saw housing values in many areas drop in half, an unemployment rate that nearly doubled and 54% of human services charities report a rise in human services requests, it was no doubt that people are hurting. We have all felt the hit in one way shape or form.
Yet look at some of these surprising effects.
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index – a Gallup poll that rates how Americans feel about the quality of their lives actually went up since last June.
Another Gallup poll shows that Americans have not only cut back on their expenses because of these tough times, something that you would obviously expect, but that that they have come to terms with their new budgets and aren’t that worried anymore. In other words, they have changed their expectations of what they want and they need.
The study showed that 71% saying they are cutting back on their spending and 88% saying they are watching their spending very closely.
But the result of that is that 78% of Americans now say they have enough money to satisfy their basic needs.
That brings up two points in my slightly twisted reality; one is that the situation is not quite as dire as some would have us believe. But secondly, that Americans have a pretty amazing ability to adapt, especially when they realize what and who is important in their lives. And this crisis has apparently helped us to do that.
And that brings me to my third amazing realization – giving.
Despite all the hardships that occurred over the last year, the total amount of charitable giving in the United States exceeded $300 billion for the second year in a row in 2008, according to Giving USA 2009. Donations reached an estimated $307.65 billion in 2008.
Now admittedly and significantly that was a 2 percent drop over 2007, but considering that the economic climate was reduced by a whole lot more, that’s pretty amazing reorganizing and reprioritizing. A caveat to that number is that religious donations soared to $106.89 billion – an increase of an estimated 5.5 percent.
Now let me throw in one more little interesting study for good measure The latest Gallup Values and Beliefs Poll, conducted annually each May, this year found the number of people who say that the moral values of America are getting better to have increased – in fact it doubled since the beginning of the year.
Christ once said that money was the root to all evil. Discussions of the meaning of that phrase about in theological circles, but generally it is believed to mean that the vicious and unrestrained pursuit of money at all costs lead down the primrose path.
So maybe an economy that forces us to slow down in that pursuit and reevaluat what we ant and need isn’t such a bad thing.
That doenst mean that we shouldn’t keep trying to improve, but that maybe fixing our economy isn’t as necessary as fixing our values.
After all if we all can whether this much of an economic hit and still be ok, maybe are perceptions of what we needed weren’t so clear in the first place.
But maybe they will be a whole lot clearer because of it.
Here’s a link to my latest TV appearance!
On Friday, July 24th, CatholicTV’s talk show “This is the Day” featured Reverend George Winchester, SJ, and Chris Benguhe. Fr. Winchester is a priest and a hospital chaplain. Chris Benguhe is a Catholic author and columnist for The Catholic Sun, the diocesan newspaper of the Diocese of Phoenix.
