Waiting on God

The past couple of days, I have been dealing with some issues - well, one issue - that I need(ed) God to help with. So, I have prayed about it and waited and hoped. Some days, my faith was great and I “knew” that God would show me the way, and that He would do what was best for me, (hopefully, answering my prayer in the affirmative). On some days, my faith deserted me and I was in despair. I did not even have the energy to pray. It was overwhelming to live through the next minute, and I found myself needing to create “plan B”, in case things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to, and I needed to create conditions so that God would not start from scratch in helping me with the next thing.

God was not in my every thought and deed. It was only when I stopped to reflect on what I had done that I realized that I was doubting God, and I was creating a backup plan, and that even for the backup plan to work, I needed God’s intervention. I confessed my sins, prayed for forgiveness, and the grace to believe and have faith. I am still going through that process. It will be another couple of days and weeks before I know for sure that everything is okay. It will be a trying time and my reliance on God will be tested. So, may be instead of just praying for what I want or need, I should also pray for the grace to believe, to not doubt, to fully surrender to His will.

A couple of days ago I was reading about the Israelites… during Exodus, when they were waiting on Moses to come back from the mountain, they lost patience or hope and created gods. The article dealt with this in a different context from what I am going to bring here. I was wondering if my “plan B” is similar to creating a (false) god - something you can worship and rely on and look up to when the true God appears to be taking his time in executing your “plan A” and despair creeps in.

It has not been easy waiting on God, but I intend to keep waiting and praying and believing that it is going to work out for the best, whatever the “initial” outcome is.

A great article: The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Diamonds

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

Accounting for Heaven and Earth

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.

Spirituality in cleaning a burned pot

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.

Stewardship Sunday: make a baby for the Church or increase your weekly offerings by $4.58

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!)

The God of New Beginnings

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.

Thankful for life when you have nothing…

Here is a classic in my opinion. It reminds me that I can still be thankful even when I seem not to have anything to be thankful for.

Here is one more Nina Simone song/video that I really like.

Mother Teresa

Thanks to Paul Collins Collins Fine Art www.collinsart.com for allowing me to post this FINE ART here. I saw it a couple of weeks ago and I could not resist sending the artist a request for permission to have it here. I would like to buy this piece some day.

Open Book Secrets?

Why reveal yourself to the world?

A couple of my friends have wondered why I blog, and why I write about my thoughts (and feelings) for the world to see. I am not sure if I have given a complete and satisfactory answer to them. I know that I have given them an honest answer/explanation. Most of the things I share, are inconsequential to me (and them). People will know something about me, my thoughts and reflections, and then what? I understand the fear of sharing your life with “strangers”, but I am not sure there is anything a stranger can do with the info I provide. So I have no fears or misgivings about my thoughts/life being out there, even though I am a private (and introverted) individual. The thing that made me start blogging is that I have all these ideas that come into my mind that I never really share with anyone. Some could be helpful, some are just interesting that they even crossed my mind, some is just knowledge that I may come back to later, and some of it is just a way for me to let out the pressure, emotions, feelings, ideas, etc. I could have made it all private, where nobody could see it, but that would mean things that can help somebody would be hoarded. I am not sure I want to keep information that is useful for the general populace to myself. A way to overcome that would be to have several blogs… private and public. Kinda a pain. But that’s what I am doing… I have a private journal/diary… online! and I have a public blog. I share some of my thoughts and feelings at this blog. But not nearly enough. There are things that I cannot write here at all. What are my fears, desires, deepest thoughts, memories, food for thought, reactions, etc. Those are things that I have determined, I cannot share with the public because they are so so so… private and personal to me. I have also determined they would do nobody good if they saw it. May be people could take advantage of me then. May be some would be mad that I thought this of them. etc. So what people see here is not all that I am. I am not sure it is possible to figure out a person even if you read their most private diaries or journals. You will have a very good idea, and then what?

Why go online?

I have been transforming to having most of my stuff online for a while. Leo, at zenhabits.net made me realize that this was the right thing to do. He had his own reasons for doing what he does. He didn’t mention journaling. He, however, mentioned things like saving his photos and (other) files online. Of course, you can make these public or private too. You just need to spend some time thinking things over and learning about the system and yourself to see what’s best for you. Anyway, why go online? Well, several reasons. It is portable, as long as you have Internet connection. Thus you don’t have to carry a ton of things around and worry about losing any of it etc. I think it is secure. You don’t have to worry about somebody finding your stuff if you don’t want them to. Well, for the most part! Hackers or system failures or whatever can end up making your info open to the public or you can even lose it all. But I would rather have a stranger read my info and not know what to do with it, that somebody whom I have considered a friend or best friend, do the same and use it against me or get hurt or ask me a million questions or misinterpret what I wrote 10 years ago. I don’t have to worry about where I kept my diary/journal at all or who has access to it. If somebody figures out my username and password, props to them!

Why keep a journal at all?

You can look it up online to see why it is important to keep a journal. For me, there are several reasons. First, I forget important things all the time. Sometimes people get hurt when I don’t remember stuff. Sometimes I just appear dumb. etc. Keeping a journal and reviewing it every so often, enables me to help my brain remember things that are important or interesting, that I would otherwise not remember. Second, it helps me keep track of my goals, thoughts, visions, etc. David Allen said it best in Getting Things Done: “There is no reason for you to have the same thought twice, unless you really like that thought”… (or something like that). I want to record things and free my mind for the next thought, idea, vision, emotion, etc. Third, I think that when I write, I feel better… I know myself better… I understand my life better… I guess because I have to explain things - for example, why I feel a certain way, instead of just accepting the final product/emotion/thought/decision. There are more reasons, but that’s all I can think of right now. Oh, well, one more reason…. What proof is there that I existed at one time? If I look back to my great grandpa… the only proof of his existence is my grandparents and my parents and me.. I guess. There is no other record for me to see them. No pictures, no journals, no stories that anyone can repeat to me or let me read/see; nothing to tell me that he even envisioned my presence some day… well, I don’t mean to set a high standard or judge them harshly. May be it is not even important! But I would like to leave some traces behind. My thoughts as to how I would want to raise my kids and why. Why I would like my kids and grandkids to have a better life than I did/do, and what I am doing about it. May be in the future, somebody will discover how xgq3445(&&(>> (I don’t know what they will call us at that time!) thought. I don’t know. I think, therefore I am. I write, I am.

I may change my mind about all this some day!

What I am thankful for on 8.31.07

Another month gone. Thank you Lord for the life! Thank you for my life and that of my dear friends and family.

I am thankful for the few hours I slept the past couple of days because I enjoyed the time that I was not asleep.

I am thankful for the people I work with. I am thankful for the company I work for. I am thankful for all that I have learnt. I am thankful for both the good days at work, and the not-so-good days.

I am thankful for everything that was done to make my birthday nice and memorable. I appreciate the effort that went into it. I appreciate how nice people were this week, and their presents. May God bless you a hundredfold!

I am thankful for the wonderful memories. I can go back to anytime and choose what to make me smile. So many wonderful places that I have been to. So many beautiful days I have spent with people I love or have loved.

I am thankful for my ability to make people laugh. There have been times when I have been so funny I have made myself laugh.

I am thankful for the friends that make me laugh. Almost all of them are wired in a way that they make me laugh so hard, I wonder how life would be without them.

I am thankful for my ability to laugh. I know there are some people who cannot laugh, either because of a chemical/hormonal imbalance or because of life experiences. I am thankful for my ability to “get” jokes and funny things.

I am thankful for the luck or grace or good fortune. When I look back, I wonder how some things worked out. The places I ended up, the jobs I found, the friends I made, the love I found, the help I received, the lessons I have learned. The more I reflect on such things, the more I see that I a very lucky person. So I am thankful.

I am thankful for the pain. For the times that I felt life was not worth living. For the times that there was no way out. For the heartbreaks. For the loneliness. For the low self-esteem. For the doubts. For the sins. For the things that made me angry, frustrated, and weak. All these things made me the person I am today. I love this person. All those things made me realize that I would be nothing without certain people. I would be nothing without God. It made me appreciate the books I have read, the people I have met, the faith I have gained, the education I have. I think I became more thoughtful, knowledgeable, faithful, … I just got better as a person.

I am thankful for Chess and for everything that led me to this game. I am thankful for the people who taught me how to play the game. I am thankful for the people I played the game with so that I could get better. I am thankful for the chance to meet Zengani, Kajani, JAC, Steve, and other Chess players and organizers. Mom, thanks for the support!

Thank you for the computer!

Thank you, Jules, for getting the cake for me! Happy Birthday R.C.!