I do not know what I was looking for… but in my searches, I ended up finding and reading the following article: The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Diamonds, by Rabbi Dov Greenberg. It is one of the greatest pieces I have ever read about life. You can find it at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/8087
Yesterday, I laughed so hard, ~~I think I dropped a tear or two~~ at this Mourning Wood Extreme video: (thanks, Catdiva!)
Today, I have had several similar experiences… one was watching Stephen Colbert on youtube. Whether he is “praising” George W. Bush or talking to Charlie Rose or running for President, he is amazingly funny!
The other hearty-laughter times have been when reading A.J. Jacobs’ THE KNOW-IT-ALL. So far I have made it to baculum and you just have to read the story to see what I am talking about.
A.J Jacobs is my all-time favorite, funniest, and yet instructive, story-teller (both written & audio).
So, I am thankful for all the times that I have laughed - which is pretty frequent - and the many times that I have laughed so hard I cried with laughter, which is not as frequent!
Sometimes I have “insights” that are not fully formed, but I just want to write them down so that I don’t forget the ‘idea’. This is one of those times. I am just saying that what I am about to say may not make sense, not just because the reader has a different point of view, but because I have not clearly communicated my thoughts and impressions. Caveat lector!
I rarely think of my work as being related to spirituality. However, the past couple of days, several things have happened that have made me review or revisit how I look at Accounting. For example, there are times when a report or statement is one Cent off, and I cannot go forward without finding where that one Cent belongs. It is easy to “fix” things, but it cannot and should not be done, because: first, it is wrong, second, it just doesn’t work at times. For example, if you are paying $3 million and the report you printed out says you are paying $2,999,999.99, one may think that you can just give one of the payees 1 Cent. No, not really? If you overpay one of the people, they will come back and ask (may be), but surely if you underpay somebody, you might as well not do it in the first place. What if you narrow it down to a particular person? You see to whom the 1 cent needs to go, do you just throw it in there, on her account? Not really, it may belong to a particular invoice, or period (month, quarter, or year)… Things like this make accounting hell sometimes. You cannot check off something as okay (it foots) when it does not. You can bet on it that it will come back to bite you; well, most of the time. Most of the “checks and balances” that you find in life, have their source in Accounting. For example, if you make $1 million during the year, and you make this money from work, gifts, and businesses, you are expected to report that you made $1m to the tax authority. You may wonder, how would they know if you told them that you made only $0.9m? Well, for starters, your employer tells them how much they paid you. Second, the gift giver is supposed to report how much he has disposed of in gifts. Third, the people that made payments to you need to have backup for the claimed expenses, so there will be receipts with your tax id on it showing money flowing to you. Fourth, if you deposited any money in an interest-earning account, the bank has to report the interest that they paid you, and of course, the money you deposited will show. Last but not least, you cannot spend what you don’t have. By looking at your statements, the tax man can have a good idea of how much income you made. Of course, my list is not exhaustive, but it gives you an idea of how, given time, the tax man can figure out how much you made (or spent).
Accounting has another basic side to it, which may or may not be looked at as “checks and balances”, the double-entry system. For every transaction, there is a debit and credit to it. A simple example would be if you bought a one dollar pen for your business. This is an expense. Your cash would go down $1 (credit your books), your supplies (expense) would go up $1 (debit your books). At the end of the day, your debits and expenses should match.
One last point that I need to bring up, is budgets. It is hard to imagine a functioning business that does not have an accounting budget. This just shows you what you expect to make or spend for the year. The fun is in the details. But as the year goes, you periodically look at items in the budget and see if you are where you thought you would be at a certain point in time. If something is so below/over-budget, you investigate it before the year ends (well, usually).
Well, enough accounting. So I thought about that and I wondered if the principles of accounting are applicable to other non-monetary issues. For example, if somebody hurt my feelings, what would be the equivalent in accounting? If I sinned, what happens in Heaven that is similar to accounting? So here is what I thought of as a possibility.
Assume that we are dealing with Cash, and the normal (or good) balance is a debit. Let’s also assume that good acts are debits. Then if you help somebody out and you feel good and the other person is appreciative of your actions, and Heaven is also rejoicing, then:
Debits: your good account in your heart; the recipient’s view of you; your good accts book in Heaven.
Credits: effort needed to do the good act; the recipient “pay it forward” account; your sin book in Heaven(?).
Similarly, if you hurt somebody’s feelings intentionally for no good reason, you can make the necessary entries.
At the end of the day, how you feel, the financial health of the organization, you and your fellow men, will depend on how accurate and how good your books are. Just like in accounting for businesses, the accounting for both Heaven and Earth, doesn’t lie.
The closest I could come to relating the accounting budget to life in Heaven and on Earth, had to do with expectations and potential. I think that’s what an accounting budget does, it sets expectations for performance with the conviction or commitment that the organization has potential to live up to those expectations, whether it is to cut costs or increase revenues or both. So what are our expectations and potential. On the expectations side: we are expected to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, we are expected to work as if we are doing it unto the Lord, we are expected to discover what we are good at and devote it to the betterment of ourselves and of the human race, we are expected to discover our potential… It is not an exhaustive list. I presume that God and our fellow men, from their exposure and intimate knowledge of us, have a good idea of what we can do/be. That being the case, I do not think it is outrageous to think that each one of us has a budget of good works that we are expected to perform.
What if, in God’s budget, He saw that for the world to be a good place to live, I would have to help one person every day or every week. I would also have to give 20% of my income to my church, etc. If I help twice that number, and give less to the church, I am sure it may throw off the budget, but I cannot say by how much. It is not for me to know what the budget is. All I can do is my best. Just like at a company, the presidential team may have the budget, which the man in the warehouse does not know of. The man in the warehouse just has to do his best; make the best nuts and bolts for himself and the company.
If men can plan things with extraordinary precision, be it accountants, rocket scientists or Chess players, why would God do any less? Why wouldn’t God have a plan or budget for enough food or medication for everybody? Why wouldn’t God have enough leaders and doctors and followers and … for the world to function properly? I believe God has it all properly budgeted. It is just that we don’t take time to figure out what’s important and how best to allocate and manage the resources that we are. We are self-managing resources in God’s budget.
A couple of days ago, I think it was Tuesday night, I decided to cook for the week. I filled one of my biggest pots with meat and put it on the stove and turned on the gas as low as I could… I didn’t want to use the crockpot, so I thought I could just cook the meat for a couple of hours at low, and then the next day, when I had more time and energy to cook, I would finish off the cooking. (Browning, making soup, and freezing whatever I needed for the future.)
After 2 hours, I decided to raise the heat to medium so that it would cook quickly. I did this as I was getting on the phone, so I reasoned that I would attend to the stove right before I went to bed. That was probably around 9pm. It was a little cold, so I decided to get in bed to keep warm as I talked on the phone. The next time I got up, it was a little before 2am. I turned, but I could hear a “hissing” sound, and there was a very strong smell. The sound was drops of vapor that were falling from the top of the lid of the scorched pot, onto the bottom of the waterless hellishly hot bottom of the pot!
I turned on the lights to find that my place was filled with smoke and for some reason, the smoke detector didn’t go off, even though it was flashing (meaning that the battery was okay and it was “working”?). I turned off the stove, removed the plate from the stove, sprinkled a paper towel with a generous amount of lemon juice and covered the meant with the towel and covered the pot again. I had read somewhere that paper towels, and newspapers are good at absorbing smells, and lemon juice is also a good odor killer. Came back to bed, and I couldn’t just stand the smell of burnt food all over the house. I thought I felt dizzy at one point. I opened all the windows and the living room curtains. I came back to bed and I couldn’t sleep, so I spent the next 3 hours or so, listening to inspiring teachings from a retreat that I had found online. The windows were open for the next two days and the smell almost vanished. Oh, lighting candles overnight helped the other day.
Anyway, I had to come home for lunch on Wednesday to throw away all the meat - I was seething! I debated whether to throw away the burnt pot with the burnt meant or try to savage what I could from the pot. It was the worst burning I had every seen. 4 hours of medium gas heat is not a joke. I think the burning happened in the last 30 minutes to an hour before I got up, but still. I decided to try cleaning the pot. So after removing the black and dark brown meat, I filled the pot with water. I added a generous amount of soap, lemon amonia(?), Comet powder (with bleach), and left it alone for about 7 hours. When I cleaned the dishes at night, I decided to give the pot a shot and I was nicely surprised when I threw away the black water, that the pot was as clean as new! It was so unbelievable! I look forward to cooking in it again for many more times.
I wondered what could have happened if I had thrown it away. I could have lost a “good” pot. The fact is, it was not a good pot, but the truth is, it was a good pot. Zengani explained to me the difference between facts and truths years back.
If I had thrown away the pot, I would never have known that it would have been so easy to clean. Not that the knowledge matters much for its own sake, but it changed the fate of my future pots, should they burn.
How is this related to spirituality?
Well, when we sin or do something wrong, we become scorched one way or the other, in the eyes of some of our fellow men, and possibly in the eyes of God. It may be easier for men and God to write us off than give us another chance. It may be even harder for ourselves to give ourselves another chance, to say that something good may become of us, only if we could find a way to clean the burned pot that we have become. How does the cleaning happen? Well, it may start off by us recognizing that something bad has happened and we need to take some corrective action. May be ask for forgiveness, may be commit to not committing the mistake or sin again. May be we need to change our mindset and look at the possibility of things being better instead of throwing the soul away together with the man/body which would have happened if I had thrown away the meat with the pot.
That was my small moment of spirituality as I meditated on the significance of the burnt meat, pot, and how I was able to give the pot a new life.
Of course, later on I realized that I could have died from the smoke inhalation. I could have become sick at the least. But none of that happened. Why am I still alive? It is a question that I try to answer each day when I make it home safe, when I consider the many times I could have died on the road, etc. A fire could have started from the burning of the pot - I don’t know how, but it seems possible that it could have happened. It didn’t. So much grace, so much to be thankful for. So many reasons to try to live a better life each day. So many reasons to embrace life and appreciate what I have.
When it comes to Banks and other services providers (SPs), there are times when I “lose” money because of my own fault, sometimes because of other people’s fault. For example, there was a time when I transferred money from one bank to the other about 10 days prior to the day that I was going to write a check from the latter bank account. The transaction was supposed to clear both banks within 5 (business) days. It cleared the first one within 2 days, and it took a long time to clear the second bank because the paperwork was sitting on somebody’s desk for over a week! In the mean time, the check I had written was returned, I was charged all sorts of fees everywhere. To add salt to the wound, the bank that was sitting on my check charged me overdraft fees! After fuming and everything on the side - (this is very important, don’t be mad at the customer service, even when they are behaving like jerks) - I called the payee to find out if they could waive the fees, since it was not my fault. No they wouldn’t. What could I do to make sure that my record was clean? A letter from the second bank, stating that they had messed up etc. I had called my first bank during the 10 days to find out what was happening and I had detailed notes on when they made the funds transfer etc. Then I called the second bank to tell them what had happened… they did an internal search for the transaction and found the hangup. They offered to process the transaction ASAP. I said thanks, and then got the details of the person I was speaking with and reference number for the problem - and then continued to tell the person how the delay had impacted me. I started with something that the person could help me with, waive the fees at the bank. She did that for me. Many thanks. At this time, the only thing that was remaining was the fees that the payee (of my check) charged me. I went on to ask for a reimbursement of those charges. I was told to go to a local bank (branch) for some paperwork… anyway, after things didn’t quite work out here, I spoke to the regional manager and then emailed her proof of all the charges and reversed charges and remaining charges and she decided in my favor within 24 hours. It’s been a couple of months, but I am sure I saved over $200 in fees. ($35 overdraft fee, $50 returned check fees, $30/day late fees, and other ridiculous fees that you agree to when you don’t anticipate things getting that out of hand.)
The one thing that I usually get in trouble with is “free-trial” stuff. Usually, it is stuff that I don’t NEED, but I just WANT to try (so that I know 
) - the latest incident was stamps.com - I have AVG anti-virus software. The “lean” package is free for home use, but you could get the full package - anti-virus, firewall, spy-ware, etc for a year, free of charge, if you try out a bunch of things. So I choose to try out stamps.com for a month, “risk-free”. I knew that I could cancel the same day once I got the activation code - but I was like, I may print some free stamps, or I may …. I don’t know. I guess I can cancel when everything is good - I feel like calling customer service and answering all the questions about why I was canceling (before the free trial was over) etc. I waited too long even though I knew it was getting really really close, and then it was a weekend, and stamps.com customer service does not open on weekends! Anyway, I called in on the following Monday or Tuesday to cancel, and the guy was gracious on the phone. Asked me why I was canceling, told him that I never send anything in the mail. That’s true. I was never going to use the service. I thought everything was okay until a couple of days later, I see some charge, $15.95 or $15.99 had hit my credit card! Nice. I had dealt with this before, only this time, I thought the problem was that I had canceled the service late. As usual, I told myself, I don’t make $15.95 in 5 minutes, so I might as well take the chance to do that for once! Call customer service and see if they can refund me the money. All they may do is say, “NO”, but I could save money if I convince somebody to do it. The CSR told me that the service was not a free trial, it was a risk free trial! What’s the difference? I cannot remember the details, but they charge for their service in advance, so once I exceeded the 4 weeks, I got billed for that. AND they were about to bill me for the next period that had started when I called them, but they decided to give me a courtesy one time waiver etc. (I could have been billed over $31 for something that I never intended to use! I considered just dropping the request, but I was like, let me press and see what he says.) So I apologized for my misunderstanding of the situation, and asked if he could do me a big favor by refunding me the money. He sternly refused. There are times when I dislike male CSRs and at other times I dislike female CSRs! At other times, I love them both! Thing is, most of them are good. It’s just that sometimes these things will go your way, sometimes they will not. So I asked him one more time if he could do it, he said he could not. I thanked him for his help, asked for his name, and then asked to speak to his supervisor. After a minute or so, I was on the phone with his supervisor, and I explained the situation, what I had understood from my talk with the CSR, and what my position was. I told him I understood their position, but I needed a favor - a refund of the fees, as I never intended to use the service. “Okay, can you hold, I will see what I can do.” “Thank you very much.” I meant it each time I said thanks - when I was given the opportunity to speak to the supervisor, to when the supervisor told me he would see what he could do - sometimes it may be too late to reverse stuff. A few seconds later, he told me he had reversed the transaction and it would appear on my card in 5 to 7 business days. “Thanks so much, I really appreciate it.” He offered to give me the reference number, normally, I would take it, but this one time, I said no - I told him that I trusted him, so I didn’t need the number. I hope I will not need the reference number!
So, I figured I could just share these two of the many experiences I have had, whereby calling customer service for whatever needs, be it reversing outrageous charges, to canceling your cable (and you end up getting one or months free of charge), to asking for a lower interest rate on your loan or credit card - pays off. After all, all they may do is say “NO”.
My car radio is messed up. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It seems to be a small problem that I haven’t gotten around to have somebody look at. It worked consistently for about a week and then I get into my car, thinking that I would listen to NPR - and the things is dead. Then I remembered when I was in my early teens, one of my friends had a cassette player - Stereo, I guess - and it was/looked old - some knobs were broken etc. The way to get the cassette to play was to put a paper clip in this hole that used to house the aerial (antenna)! I wonder who figured that out. But that was the only way. That triggered a thought/idea: when things don’t work… what do people do? Ummmnnnn,… kick them! So banged the radio a couple of times - really hard - because I was kind of ticked off - well, just frustrated. And Lo! and behold! The CD that had been stuck in it weeks and months ago started playing - and we have lived happily ever since. I hope that will not become my solution to fixing things when they don’t work. I just thought I should share.
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote here. I have all sorts of explanations and excuses, but the fact remains that I didn’t write. My other goals were also left unattended and some good habits that I had developed or I was in the process of developing were neglected. Chess has suffered most. My life has not been all bad. I have enjoyed most of it…
So today is the going back day. I just decided to go back to the things that I was doing or wanted to do. My process will be simple… write my journal - update it, and make sure I log in at least once a day, even if it’s for 2 minutes; review my goals before I go to bed tonight; document the progress I have made or I had made; review the many to-do-lists that I have and see what I can knock out in 2 minutes or less, in 5 minutes or less, etc and chip away.
The most important thing is to get back on track. So blogging and Chess and other things are up and running.
Today is Stewardship Sunday. Today’s sermon was inspiring and funny. We were reminded that it is our duty to give to God what is not ours in the first place; that we can give through the things/property we own, through time/service, and through talents. One of my favorite Jesus’ sayings: if you cannot be trusted with small things, how can you be trusted with the bigger things. (Well, something like that!)
The funny part of the homily was when Father Vic told us that the Parish ran a deficit of about $70,000 last year. This was due to Teacher salary increments and lower school enrollment. The former increased the expenses, while the later reduced the income. Not a good combination. The Priests, (we have two), had come up with two solutions/alternatives for us: either we stop having 1 or 2 children and go back to the old Catholic way of 10 or more to increase future school enrollment, or we should increase our weekly contribution by $4.58(?)!!!
What a tough choice! (I may do both! I will just ask the Church to take care of all the expenses for the 10 kids!)
I was diagnosed with Lactose Intolerance a couple of weeks ago… since then, I have made a commitment to watch what I eat, I have also forgotten that I am Lactose Intolerant and indulged myself in Ice-cream and cake “binges”! After a couple of days of that, it caught up with me this weekend… and it took a while for me to figure out that the pain was related to the tons of lactose I had consumed. Anyway, I was talking to my best friend while in bed and … soymilk came up in the conversation. Today, I got Lactaid (looks like Milk to me) and soymilk… but I wasn’t sure about the SoyMilk. I bought it anyway! I kept wondering if I should have done my research beforehand! So I was researching Lactose Intorelance, SoyMilk, etc. I found a very good article at dietician.com. Actually, it’s question and answer post(s) on Milk (allergies and more). I would strongly recommend reading it if you have any issues with Milk or you just wonder why you should drink milk, or what you should do if you are not drinking milk but you are wondering if you are losing out on some essential nutrients, or if you are wondering what’s up with Horse Milk - You can copy this and paste it in your browser, http://www.dietitian.com/milk.html or just click here.
Who know who reads what I read and what they are going through. I just thought I should share… it might help somebody. Oh, no regrets on the SoyMilk! Thanks for the suggestion!
Today at church, the sermon was about the God of new beginnings. One of the Readings was on the Prodigal Son, found in Luke 15. The lost are given a chance if they decide to go back to the Father. During the Sermon, the priest mentioned the politics of the Church in the selection of Pope John XXIII; he was selected as a “fill-in-Pope” because of his advanced age. The Cardinals were trying to avoid “controversial figures” among themselves; people who could bring drastic change to the Church. They reasoned that the old guy would hang around for a couple of years and then die without much “activity”. However, the old guy they went for is the one who brought about significant changes most of which arose from the Second Vatican Council. The priest mentioned that Pope John XXIII believed that each day was a new day, chance, opportunity, to make an impact, to live life fully.
I chose to look at how this homily can be applied to every day life:
1 - When you get up, you can look at your life the way Pope John XXIII looked at his life. It’s a new day. A new opportunity to make changes that can improve your life and/or the life of those you come in contact with. It may be something that you have been putting off for a while, like reconciling with an old foe, or cleaning your desk at home or work.
2 - I have always believed that love gets better the next time around. It’s just a personal belief. It helps me to handle break-ups better. It helps me to love the next person better. It helps me to let go of the past, and embrace the new situation and give it a chance. It helps me to accept people as they are. It is not a grass is greener on the other side attitude. It is just an attitude that you adopt when the grass on this side has disappeared. You don’t spend time going back to how ol’ grass tasted. This attitude can be applied to loss of a job. You can tell yourself that you will get a better one and work towards achieving that. You can apply it to a broken car/computer/etc… after you fix it, it drives/works better.
3 - There are times when you make a mistake or mistakes and you cannot see how God comes into the picture. (He is always in the picture, by the way.) So, you just need to look at whatever happened as a thing of the past. You are starting off anew; wiser, better informed, and determined to not repeat the mistake. You focus on how you want to live your life, henceforth.
The application comes from the fact that we are created in the image of God. If He can gives us a new beginning after we mess up, then we have the power to do the same. We can give ourselves a new beginning in the non-spiritual world.
