Woodlands Treatment Center

Reflection 2007

"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in.  A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves" ~ Bill Vaughn

Ringing in a New Year is a tradition that is often filled with celebration.  Some of us host parties, are invited to the homes of friends, go out to lavis galas, drink too much champagne and set off fireworks.  It is a time to say goodbye and a time to look forward for possibilities.  Some others of us experience a time of feeling apart, a time of regrets and resentments, a time to llk at what might be coming next with dread.  How can this occasion present such pairs of opposites?

Perhaps we put a little too much emphasis on the endings and beginnings of this annual calendar change...and perhaps not.  It is a chance to look at who we are and who we are becoming.  It is an opportunity to make changes, offer amends and clean up our mistakes.  We can do a lot more than list our resolutions.  This is the perfect time to make a spiritual adjustment.  Let's really begin to slow down and live a day at a time.  Come to terms with the fact that the past is what it is and that the future is not a reality.  Get up in the morning with a clear plan to "do the right thing" in every situation that we face...and when we don't...make the adjustment, clear the are and move along.  This is how life becomes the celebration that God intends for us to enjoy.

My resolution this year is to truly live a day at a time!

Merry Christmas From Woodlands!

"I wear the chain I forged in life, replied the Ghost.  I made it link by link, and yard by yard;  I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.  Is its pattern strange to YOU Ebenezer Scrooge?" ~ Jacob Marley from Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol"

Christmas is upon us.  Except for last minute details most everything is set.  Decorations are hung.  Presents are purchased and wrapped.  People are beginning to travel and gather already.  What a season!  How blessed we are to have so much abundance even when we suffer hardshhip.  People are good this time of year aren't they?  We give more generously.  How can we carry this spirit into our everyday lives?

Christmas is an opportunity for redemption.  Jacob Marley delivers a sober message to Scrooge.  He asks his old friend and partner to look squarely at his life...to take a moral inventory as it were.  It is terrifying to look at the "ponderous" chain that each of us carries.  We are called by a power greater than ourselves to examine our wounds, explore our mistakes and wrongdoings and to assess the part that we have played in life so far.  We are asked to look into the future and run out the tape based upon our current course.  This is the only way that we can heal.  This is the means by which we can become useful to the world and to the people around us.  We will be transformed.

Dickens "A Christmas Carol" ends with words that we never hear on movie versions.  It says this; "His own heart laughed and that was good enough for him.  He lived upon The Total Abstinence Principle ever afterwards."  The story goes on with the familiar promise to each of us when we follow the call of redemption and recovery; "and it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possesssed the knowledge.  May that be truly said of us, and all of us!  And so as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!"

Winter Solstice and Christmas

"Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;  The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to lead them."

Today is a celebration of light.  It is the beginning of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere and of Summer in the Southern Hemisphere.  There have been festivals throughout history which mark this "triumph of the sun" since ancient times.  Light and illuminatioon are the focus of atention as the seasons give us hope for tomorrow.

It is no coincidence that this is the week of Christmas.  We have been marking the days of Advent in anticipation of the miracle of renewed birth.  This is our time of joy.  The whole atmosphere is infused with joy.  Once again we are given the oppportunity to do the right thing in response to this light, illumination, hope and joy of Christmas.

How does Christmas appear to young people who die of AIDS, to the millions without employment and social dignity...when children are physically and sexually abused...when women continue in many cultures as subordinates...when ethnic slaughter goes on in Africa, Europe and Asia...when the Earth is ravaged by our excesses?  How does light and joy come to these?  The light of the world comes in the guise of YOU.  We have the renewed chance for reconcilliation with those who suffer.  It is our opening to offer relief to our brothers and sisters who experience material, emotional, social, moral and physical poverty.

How can I illuminate life for others?  How can I bring joy, hope and light to the world?

A Thought For Advent

It is "the most wonderful time of the year".  Johnny Mathis reminded me of this with his traditional Christmas Carol on my way to work today.  This is the season of Advent.  The practice of observing Advent is one that is practiced by many Christians throughout the world.  It is all about anticipation.  It is about finding the gift in each day.  What a good thing to remember as we rush to Christmas.

One day, an old friend from high school days called me on the phone. He was going through a difficult time and wondering if and when things would ever turn around and improve. I knew he was in a lot of pain. I didn't know then that he was considering suicide.

"You are in the helping profession," he said, "If you could give a person only one thing to help them...what would it be?"

I thought carefully about his question; then I replied, "It's not one thing. It's two: gratitude and letting go." Gratitude for everything, not just the things we consider good or a blessing. And letting go of everything we can't change.

A few years passed and my friend called me again. His life had turned around. Two very large problems he was facing at that time sorted themselves out. The actual process of facing and working on these problems helped him redirect the course of his life.

Someone once asked the artist Georgia O'Keeffe why her paintings magnified the size of small objects, like the petals on a flower making them appear larger than life, and reduced the size of large objects like mountains, making them smaller than life.

"Everyone sees the big things," she said. "But these smaller things are so beautiful and people might not notice them if I didn't emphasize them."

That's the way it is with gratitude and letting go. It's easy to see the problems in our lives. They're like mountains. But sometimes we overlook the smaller things; we don't notice how truly beautiful they are.

If you're going to make anything bigger than life, let it be the power and simplicity of these two tools: gratitude and letting go.

God, teach me to use gratitude and letting go to reduce the size of my problems.