KS&L 88 Holiday Service Part 2

The Karmic Savings and Loan Chapter 88: Holiday Service Part II      

       In part I of Holiday Service we discussed the element of spiritual service in doing things for other people throughout the year.  How do we view the volume of effort required for Christmas and Hanukkah?

       December is a challenge because there seems to be so much for everyone to do:

·      Shop for gifts, wrap presents

·   Get the Tree              

·   Decorate the Tree

·   Keep the tree watered

·      Plan meals

·      Grocery shop

·      Decorate the house

·      Plan parties

·      Grocery shop

·      Do the holiday cards, buy the stamps, write the yearly letter, collate and mail.

·      Help out at school, church and/or office parties

·      Grocery shop

·      Make the list of food gifts to give

·      Grocery shop

·      Make all the food, do the baking, package the items

·      Mail things

       This modest, very incomplete list above usually falls to women who think they have to do it all.  Getting your family members to help will reduce some stress and let everyone have the opportunity of doing service. This can be as simple as making the list and letting them make the grocery runs and some of the dinners so that you can do the extras.

       The real service is in the patience of doing the mundane, day-to-day things of getting ready. People love a house filled with the smells of the holidays. If your holidays were horrific growing up, mitigate the past sadness by making the present something warmly memorable.

       It is so wonderful to come home to a house beautifully decorated with bright candles and wonderful food. The element of the house and the food are tremendous service to all family members. 

       What makes it difficult for the person doing the planning, cooking, shopping and decorating is that people take their efforts for granted.  It just looks so easy. Family members frequently don’t seem grateful for what has been done because you always do it. They are not callous or unkind; it is just that your excellent work is normal to them. Your service is transparent to them but transparent or not, it does not change the fact that it is service all the same. Even if family members do not overtly recognize it, it is appreciated on some level.

       You earn the karma for your efforts because you are creating the memories that they will treasure and emulate. You are teaching them what a warm holiday looks and feels like, and that lesson changes the future. That is the purpose of this work, the reason for this effort: creating a pattern of love, hard work and togetherness. This is part of the element of what makes the holidays an important example of spiritual service. In essence, it is the real reason for the season, displaying your love through your service.

KS&L 176 The Death of Innocence by Tina Erwin

        Dear Friends, I wrote the following blog several years ago. The information in this piece echos the same cruel and inspiring elements that we have watched in the events in Newtown, Connecticut last Friday. My own aching heart goes out to all of those families. The extreme cruelty of this latest example of modern violence does not diminish the staggering acts of courage displayed by all of those teachers, staff members and children. Let all of our prayers be sent to give the living courage to face the challenging days ahead, for death on this level continues to echo out in truly agonizing ways long after the initial event. These families have many difficult days ahead of them. Please send them your prayers long after these first initial days pass. Compassion is appreciated no matter how recent or long ago an event took place.

       On one terrible day in October of 2006, death struck the Amish community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. On that tragic day, a man entered a one-room schoolhouse and shot ten Amish girls. Five of them have died. The person who took these lives is believed to have been severely mentally ill at the time of the event. He did not seem to show this illness previously so his actions came as a staggering shock to his friends and family.

       How do we as a people wrap our brains around the fact that this man did this terrible deed? How do we still our aching hearts at the sheer barbarism of his despicable act? How do we come to terms with the death of innocence? If we are parents, how do we still the fear that this engenders in so many of us. If this area of the world is not safe, then what is?

       Perhaps the way we come to terms with it is to look at the example that the Amish themselves have set. They have not lashed out. They have not blamed anyone and they have not cried out for vengeance. In the darkest of times is the finest time to live a spiritual truth. Perhaps that is what they are doing.

       Every single death has a purpose; if it did not, then why would we ever die? Why would there be so many methods of death - easy and hard, painless and painful, death at any and all ages? What could possibly be the purpose of the death of these little girls? What could we possibly learn from the sheer stark horror of the method this man used to create such harm?

       Perhaps, just perhaps it was an opportunity for every single participant and observer to learn some tremendous lessons. For the older Amish girls, they learned that they had a huge level of courage that lived within them as they offered themselves in sacrifice to save the younger girls. They must have been terrified yet they offered their own lives in the ultimate sacrifice. Would we be that courageous? 

       It is hard for us to face the fear that the smaller girls must have felt, but in the final moments, they learned how much the older children loved them. Perhaps it was their faith that got them through those chilling moments.  Perhaps they called upon their angels. We can only hope that they had the presence of mind to do this.

       And what of the mentally ill gunman? What was his lesson? He had a choice - he could listen to those unrelenting voices of hate and hurt or he could resist them.  He made a tragic choice.

       And what of his family? They were also his victims in a different way because they also lost someone they loved. The man they loved died that day. The man who committed those crimes was not the man that they knew.  Imagine their complete bewilderment. 

       Perhaps the most important lesson all of us can learn from these deaths is the nature of compassion as demonstrated by the Amish community.  There is no one to blame, no one to lash out at. There is no plausible explanation for the unexplainable.  So in the face of all of this, the Amish have chosen to offer themselves and those grieving with them, compassion. They say that they have forgiven the gunman.  What in truth is there to forgive? How do you forgive someone for murdering your children? Perhaps the answer to this is that they forgave themselves first. There is nothing in this entire world that they could have done to prevent this. They did not let guilt soil their compassionate hearts. They forgave the hate that this man displayed.  Somehow despite their pain, they came to understand that his pain was so great that only in this bizarre aspect of death could he work out his internal agony.

       The Amish are allowing themselves to grieve privately. They allow themselves the opportunity to let grief unfold in all those hauntingly private moments of what ifs and if onlys that every grieving person must endure on the journey to healing grief.

       Perhaps the other lesson the Amish are offering is that if they open their hearts and love more that their pain will be less. An open heart works both ways and lets in love as well as sends it out. Even a terribly wounded heart will heal faster if it can be allowed in those private moments of healing, to send out love. 

       Maybe the question is not did innocence die in that schoolhouse that day in October, but rather was the innocence of belief displayed in the compassion and love shown by the Amish to all the grieving parties. Hate hurts us longer. Love heals us faster. Perhaps the biggest lesson of that hard day is in every way, let us all love more. Let us all send the love of our own compassionate hearts to all of those who are grieving no matter where in the world they may be. Maybe in this way the innocence and purity that is the essence of love will become stronger in all of us.

KS&L 391 Christmas Grief by Tina Erwin

       (This KS&L was written before the Newtown sadness.)        

        This KS&L is dedicated to all families who are grieving or remembering someone who is no longer with them this Christmas.

         Last night I received a call from my long time friend Bonnie. She had come upon a terrible traffic accident on her way home. She was first on the scene, called 911, worked with authorities, and rendered what aid she could to the accident victims.

         She told me that she kept telling the on-scene police officers that she felt that there was a man by the side of the road who needed help. She had spoken with him and he said he was okay but that he had been the driver of the absolutely crushed car. She remembered marveling that he had ‘walked away’ from the accident since the car was not recognizable. The police officer kept looking at her, but he never once went over to talk to the man in the white shirt.

         Once she returned to her car, her small children told her that the man in the white shirt had come to the car and knocked on the window, but they didn’t put the window down. Bonnie was glad that her kids did as they were told. Then she drove her kids home.

         She called me later that night because she felt so much trauma after this experience that she needed help figuring out what was trauma and what was, well, something else. As it turned out, that something else was tragic.

         The man in the white shirt had died in that crushed car. When Bonnie and I made contact with him he told us that he really didn’t know what happened.  One minute he was driving home and the next minute he was in darkness. He was utterly baffled by his circumstances. Bonnie and I had to inform him that he had died. He was very quiet for a few moments. Then he began to allow himself to face the towering grief that his sudden death was generating. He immediately told us of his young wife, his children and that this wasn’t how he planned to end his day. He didn’t feel that he was supposed to die that day. This is Christmas! He’d ruined Christmas for his whole family!  As he told us this, the grief he felt at his own death began to overwhelm him. We gave him the spiritual aid that he needed. Souls that are killed this quickly go into a kind of soul shock. We offered him angels, healing and a path home to the Heaven World. Before his transition, he said he had seen the light he just wasn’t ready to go. We also asked him why he knocked on Bonnie’s car window. He responded that he ‘felt’ someone praying for him. In fact one of Bonnie’s daughters was praying for anyone who had been injured. The light of her prayer attracted him to her car.

         Finally, with our help, he reluctantly made his transition to the Heaven World. Then I helped Bonnie make some sense out of this event as she processed the trauma she had witnessed on several levels.

         Both of us pondered this soul’s sudden demise, especially now, especially 15 days before Christmas. Christmas, more than any other time reminds us of how much we love all the people in our lives. Thanksgiving does this, but there is something about Christmas that really makes our heart expand as we ponder what to get those who mean so much to us. Our gifts show how much we love and care.

         Christmas is also very much a children’s holiday. First time parents, long time parents and grandparents live for watching the bright faces of children as they become enamored of the lights on the tree, presents and the Santa Claus concept.

         Christmas time takes each of us back to our childhoods to remember a particularly magical Christmas morning or a special gift or event that happened.

         But for many people Christmas time is just tough. For this man’s family, Christmas will never feel the same. Instead of planning Christmas Eve, they will be planning a funeral.

         Perhaps it seems odd to discuss such profound sadness at this time of the year, but life events, especially poignant life events are part of Christmas, even when they are sad. This man’s wife and children will have to determine how to balance their grief while others around them are excited about the holidays. This almost bizarre juxtaposition of these two diametrically opposite emotions reminds us that Christmas is about love, the love of those who are no longer with us.

         Even if your friend or family member did not die at Christmas, their absence, even decades later, is still deeply felt at this time of year. It is often why so many people are sick at Christmas: colds/flu are the body’s way of grieving a past event.

          It is better to admit that you miss that person. Bring it to the surface and then take some time to remember the soul with your heart filled with love for this special person. If a parent is without one of their children, this is an especially painful heartache. If that parent is your friend or family member please do not wish they he or she could just ‘get over’ that deep personal loss. You don’t ‘get over’ a catastrophic life event: you learn to live a life that includes that life-changing event. And when you include that life-changing event it means that you cry about it sometimes.

         If any of you gentle readers find yourself either grieving the loss of someone special or helping a friend or family member to grieve this loss, welcome the tears that often come with heartfelt memories. Memories are alive and trigger emotion. We are not androids, emotionless bits of carbon. We are mortal, yet eternal souls having an exceptionally human experience. And human experiences demand that we acknowledge the love we have for someone who has left us today or fifty years ago.

         Perhaps that is the message of Christ: love never dies, life is eternal and life everlasting means that we will all meet each other again and again. Let this dynamic concept be the best gift we can give each other at Christmas time, the gift of love and compassion for everyone including the ones who are no longer with us.
       The Lightworker's Guide to Healing Grief and Ghost Stories from the Ghosts' Point of View are both great books to help anyone understand how to heal grief and how to help those souls who need assistance crossing over. Check out the prayer for assisting ghosts in the back of the ghost book. Both books are available on this blog.