With Independence Day just around the corner, it might be a nice time to reflect on how fortunate we all are to live in this amazing nation, even when it seems like everywhere you turn things have gone wrong over the past few years. But some amazing things have also gone right — pinpointing some very special attributes of our country.
Yes, there are still way too many people without jobs and the housing market is still in a slump, but all of us have adjusted remarkably well to one of the worst economic struggles in the last 100 years. Report after report and study after study show that Americans have used the experience to reexamine their values and adjust their desires.
Despite the fact that many people had to drastically cut their own personal budgets, they still felt compelled to give to others around $300 billion last year; that’s remarkable. We did it not because our government forced us to, but because we wanted to. Incidentally that’s the key difference between socialism — where government supplants our moral right and obligation to help, which the Catholic Church squarely condemns — and social justice — where we choose to help because of our moral character. That character is alive and well in America!
And it seems that when the chips are down Americans go to church — attendance has continued to rise in America since 2008, when the whole economic turmoil started according to the most recent Gallup reports. Maybe that’s because nine out of 10 Americans say they believe in God (that number is only one in five in nations like Denmark and Sweden) — and most believe our nation was founded upon the divinely derived innate value of human beings. When times get tough, we go back to the source of our strength, our beliefs and our nation.
When times get tough in America, we stick together, especially with our mates. A report from the CDC released in May shows that the divorce rate has gone down for two years running after years of rising. Though some cynics say it’s because people can’t afford to get divorced, others point to the more sensible conclusion that since the number one reason for divorce is historically financial, maybe Americans are starting to revaluate their reasons for splitting as they reevaluate all their other economic indicators.
Finally, let’s take a look at crime in America. You would think that tough times would make crime rise, especially when it comes to theft. On the contrary, the overall crime rate is dropping like crazy across the board according to the FBI’s Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report. Robbery dropped 8.1 percent, murder decreased 7.2 percent, aggravated assault declined 4.2 percent, and rape decreased 3.1 percent.
Experts can’t really point to a reason for that decline. Maybe money really is the root of all evil — when we are too obsessed with it. Or maybe we simply need a wake-up call every once in a while in America to remind us of our commitment to each other, to God and to the values that this country was founded upon. After all, this wasn’t the land of wealth of and wonton pleasure, but the land of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And we Americans don’t give up on that, or each other.
When times are tough, we respond, ready to fight arm in arm not just for our own selfish needs but for what’s right, what’s just and for the rights and welfare of others. That’s what God created us to do, and He gave us this blessed nation, unlike any other on earth, to do it in.
Hope vs. Faith
Hope: Expectations for the future
Faith: Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. Belief in a set of principles
“Don’t lose hope,” said the waitress to one of the regulars at a little cafe I frequent. The patron had just poured her heart out to the waitress about losing her job. The property management company she worked for lost their shirt in the real estate crisis, and the thirty-something single mother of two got laid off. “Keep the faith,” I muttered as she left the cafe. She smiled and thanked me for my concern.
But can such platitudes offer any meaningful comfort or direction when we are at the end of our rope?
Unemployment is still in the stratosphere. Most economists say we had better get used to that because we won’t see that number coming down for years.
Foreclosures are still out of control and may see another rise. Experts say the worst of this is behind us – but that really doesn’t make anyone who has been foreclosed upon feel any better.
Oil and gas prices are through the roof.
Everywhere you look nowadays the papers are filled with stories of people struggling to make ends meet.
So what do we all do about it? Don’t lose hope and keep the faith? But what does that actually mean?
Well maybe hope –looking forward to better times to come – makes it easier to keep going. Psychologists and common sense tell us we can endure anything for a limited time, as long as the end is in site, and we know that better times lie ahead.
But how do we know that good times lie ahead – and how do we deal with the ones we got.
That’s where faith comes in.
Maybe hope without faith is missing the point of our lives – that there is a great value to finding some solace in the situations we are in – even the worst of them.
If you believe in what you are doing and why you are doing it, you can endure more than you ever imagined.
But faith can help us find happiness within the experiences of our ordeals themselves and how we deal with them? Because tough times make us realize the value of our lives can’t all be measured, understood or based on our prosperity, our fortune, misfortune, or end result at all.
Our value is wrapped up in the way we live, the people, the principles and the God we live for. And in turn those are the reasons to endure the toughest times life can offer – to keep going – for all those principles and people that we love.
And we will get through. But when we do, we will have much more than our rediscovered prosperity? We will have the knowledge and know-how it took us to get there. We will have the confidence in our ability to weather tough times. Most importantly, we will know better what we value, and who.
We will all keep working hard. Because that’s what Americans do. In fact, when the chips are down, you can’t beat our spirit, our ingenuity and our faith in each other, in ourselves, and in our God to see us through.
We keep going because we know that every day, every hour, every second that we spend helping spread God’s love through our own compassion, our understanding and our endurance gets all of us one step closer to making the Lord’s Prayer a reality – “Thy will be done – on earth as it is in Heaven.”
And I HOPE none of you give up on that.
7 Days of Simple Exercises to Turn on Your Heart!
Times are tough all over. People everywhere are struggling more than in decades. Add to that all the timeless tension of living your everyday life – struggles at home and on the job (if you have one!).
So here is a series of 7 very easy exercises you can do this week to prepare for the rejuvenating magic of Easter. They will not take more than a minute or two each day.
Day 1
Pick someone you love and write down why are they special to you. (THIS DOES NOT HAVE TO BE ROMANTIC, JUST ANYONE YOU LOVE!)
Day 2
Think about the nicest thing anybody did for you today or last week.
Day 3
Think about the kindest thing you did for anybody else today or last week.
Day 4
Recall something positive that you saw somebody else do THIS week to help someone else that filled your heart with happiness.
Day 5
Reflect on the person you picked on Day 1 and write about how their love and support for you has changed your life in one simple sentence.
Day 6
Read the person you wrote about on Days 1 and 5 what you wrote..
Day 7 (Easter!)
Go to Church – Smile at everyone there. Observe all the love that’s there. Tell God how much you love Him and spend the rest of the day spreading that love everywhere you go!
All materials above are From Chris Benguhe’s latest book “Overcoming Life’s 7 Common Tragedies: Opportunities for Discovering God,” available at Amazon.com which examines the positive potential of tragedy to bring people closer to each other and to inspire them to realize their ultimate purpose. He also pens a regular column for the Catholic Sun in Phoenix, Ariz.
It’s not about whether the glass is half full or half empty, but about the value of the glass – the glass of our lives is always valuable.
Send this to 10 People You Love!
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.
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.
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.
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.
By the time you read this, the New Year will have already begun, which means it’s time to start fresh with a new attitude and a new plan.
With just about every single pundit telling you how bad things are, how about a quick look at what didn’t go wrong?
Well, first we dodged a few bullets this hurricane season. Though we saw the fourth most active hurricane season on record, the United States escaped with far less damage and deaths than could have been, say for instance if Hurricane Ike had made landfall as a Category 4 storm instead of a Category 2.
And knock on wood, we still have not suffered another terror attack on U.S. soil since 2001. Regardless of what you think about our government or the current administration, somebody was working pretty hard to protect us. All those individuals deserve a hand, and thank God for them.
Speaking of keeping us safe, the crime rate went down last year in the United States. Last September, the FBI’s Crime in the United States report showed a decline in crimes in almost every category.
On the health care front, the rates of almost every disease have dropped dramatically in America over the last several decades, according to a report released in June 2008.
The American Heart Association reported coronary heart disease and stroke age-adjusted death rates are down by 25.8 percent and 24.4 percent, respectively, in the last decade. In fact, their 2010 strategic goal for reducing deaths from coronary heart disease has already been achieved.
Last year, the American Cancer Society informed us that the death rate from lung, colorectal, prostate, breast and other cancer types all fell. The cancer death rate for men has fallen by 18.4 percent since 1990 and for women has fallen by 10.5 percent since 1991.
Yes, cancer is still the second leading cause of death in the United States, right behind heart disease, so we all need to keep working on both of these societal issues. But those figures aren’t flukes; they are the result of a lot of hard work by dedicated Americans in the health care fields, the scientific community, in academia and government as well as everyday Americans trying harder to take care of themselves so they can live longer, more fruitful and productive lives for their loved ones, for society and for themselves.
None of that is accidental either. We care about our children, and it shows. They care too about living a better life. Do we have more work to do letting our children know about the value and the importance of their lives? You betcha! But things are getting better, not worse.
Ultimately, what did go really wrong this year came down to money — the way people use it, and how a bunch of it disappeared from our bank accounts. For many of us it was downright disheartening. For others it was truly a catastrophe.
This is a time for those of us who can still pay the bills to realize we have been spared this year from so many other catastrophes, that maybe we should be pretty grateful, and maybe we should reach out a little bit more to help because of that.
Beyond the irony of a film borne of the poverty of the slums of India taking top honors in an industry predicated on money and excess, there is a lesson for America in this unlikely winner — that despite the onslaught of economic woes facing this nation, things aren’t as bad as they seem.
“Slumdog Millionaire” is the compelling rags-to-riches tale of an 18-year-old Indian orphan from the slums of Mumbai who winds up one question away from winning millions on India’s “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” when he is arrested and accused of cheating. To prove his innocence he tells police and the audience the story of his life, which will explain how he knew so many answers.
And oh what a tumultuous and extraordinary life it is.
Ultimately, he is vindicated and wins. But more amazingly, the viewer realizes his entire life of struggle, of pain and suffering, led him to his “destiny” and to his eventual prosperity on the television show.
Juxtapose it with our current socioeconomic situation in America, and its sweeping success at the Oscars is even more amazing.
The hundreds of people paying thousands of dollars to attend the Academy Awards, donning priceless gems and extravagant outfits notwithstanding, almost 40 million Americans tuned in to watch the show. Many of them watched on big screen TVs, I’m sure, while probably sitting on their cozy sofas, probably right after eating a nutritious, or at least filling meal, all relaxing on a Sunday evening, safe and secure, knowing that at least they had a roof over their heads, food in their bellies and nothing they really had to do, except enjoy the show.
And they all watched as a movie about a man’s struggle to endure total poverty led him to success and a greater understanding of his purpose. Yet, they all probably rose the next morning to read about how America is in dire economic straits, facing a crisis, purportedly so bad that we have no choice but to beg the government to extricate us from it at whatever the cost.
Maybe we all have an opportunity to pull our “elephant” heads out of the proverbial “eye of the needle” as Christ informed the rich man who wanted to get into heaven, to realize there is nothing wrong with money — except the obsession with having it, or what we are willing to do to get it, and how we react when we don’t have as much of it as we want.
We have watched politicians, banks and mortgage companies promote and protect fraud and deceit in order to boost their bottom line in the short term.
We have seen everyday people lie about income and make illegitimate promises to pay so they could have more than they could afford or need and a nation of people seemingly obsessed with having more stuff.
We cannot find success and prosperity through self-centered indulgence. That’s not how America was built. It was by upholding the principles of community responsibility, social integrity and the work ethic that worked to make America great, and will again, not because government told us to do it, but because we wanted to.
Realizing that might not only help us to be better Americans and human beings when times are “tough,” but ultimately could lead us all to be our own successful “Slumdog Millionaire”!
