One More Day Alive

Last month, just a few weeks before Thanksgiving, I walked into a coffee shop I frequent and the ever-effervescent girl behind the counter was ashen face, with smears of wiped-away tears revealing what her brave face was otherwise trying to hide. She was in trouble.

“What’s wrong?” I asked sincerely and quietly, making sure we had a private moment.

“I can’t pay my rent this month, and I think my daughter and I will be kicked out of our apartment. I really don’t know what to do.” She went on to explain the personal series of unforeseen events that had led to a shortfall this month, almost too ashamed to elaborate.

Luckily I know a few things about how to get help in such situations. I told her to contact her local St. Vincent de Paul which assists those in short-term financial need with help paying their rents or mortgages as well as for utilities and groceries.

Things worked out. Thank God I asked. But what if I hadn’t? And what if she hadn’t told me?

A couple of years back, I wrote about the importance of asking for help. Since then the world has been turned upside down financially, and this Christmas there are even more people in need in this nation. If you are one of them, don’t be afraid, ashamed or just plain too shy to ask for help.

God wants you to get help if you need it. In fact, if you don’t ask, you are doing yourself, God and the rest of the world a big disservice.

Here’s why. Answer these simple questions: Do you enjoy helping others? Do you grow in your spirit and in your relationship with God and others when you help? Of course you do. What would happen to you if others never allowed you to help them? That would be denying you all the grace that you receive through loving others.

You should be proud of your need. Because it allows people to help you, and enables God to work through them in your life, bestowing grace upon them as well.

So if you don’t allow others to help you, you are denying them their access to that same grace. And the only way that others really know you need help is if you ask for it.

God created us to live in community with each other. He designed us to need each other. I am not smart enough to understand everything God did and does, but I do know what is in the Bible. And the idea that we are created in the image of God and that all human life is sacred and innately valuable is irrefutable.

If all that is true, do you think that God wants you to disrespect yourself or subject yourself to abuse? Denying yourself the love and support of others who God works through is not respecting yourself and others.

Now all of this is not a rubber stamp for all those children out there to spend the next couple of weeks nagging their parents for all the toys their hearts desire. I am clearly talking about those who are in true human need reaching out to others.

And that also doesn’t mean you cannot give at the same time as you receive in whatever way you can. Though you may not believe it right now, you reaching out may allow someone else to talk about their needs, to share with you their feelings or simply to cultivate a new relationship or deepen an old one in a way that will help that person now or in the future.

For instance, a few weeks later I rushed out of the house without my wallet — and the coffee was on the house.

Merry Christmas!

Anyone who would like to contribute to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul may do so by calling (602) 850-6737. Those needing help this Christmas can contact their local parish SVdP

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

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.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

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.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites