He flies through the air with the greatest of ease,
This daring young man on the flying trapeze.
(George Leybourne)

HAVING LEARNED HOW TO DO SOMETHING EASILY IS ONE OF LIFE’S MOST WONDERFUL SATISFACTIONS. Especially when the thing was very difficult or awkward to begin with, there is a wholesome gratification that now comes from being able to do it easily. And not only do we enjoy what we ourselves can do easily, but we enjoy the ease with which others can do difficult things. Just last evening, I watched again the amazing performance of Michael Flatley and his troupe in Lord of the Dance. Irish step dancing is no easy thing, but Flatley and his friends do it with such joyous, exuberant ease that the result is enthralling, especially to those who know how hard it is.

In each of our lives, there are a number of helpful things we need to be able to do, and we should be willing to pay the price (in terms of discipline, sacrifice, and hard work) to do these things graciously and easily. Most good things are hard before they’re easy; that’s just the way the world works. So we have to persevere through our various apprenticeships and not give up until we’ve gained the mastery.

When the word “ease” is mentioned, however, many people think not of learning to do difficult things easily but of avoiding difficulty altogether. Some seem to envision a “life of ease” as a life where nothing difficult or unpleasant ever has to be done. And unfortunately, our culture seems to be headed in the direction of worshiping that kind of ease. But as W. Somerset Maugham said, “Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.” That’s just as true for individuals as it is for nations.

But properly defined, ease is something we should pursue. We’ll probably do more of the things we ought to do when they’ve become easy for us. But when we see people who can do those things easily right now, it would be foolish to want their skill without accepting the work that went into getting that skill. The “life of ease” is not one of lazy leisure but one of easy action — a life where good deeds aren’t as difficult as they used to be. Getting to that point is anything but easy.

“A life of ease is a difficult pursuit” (William Cowper).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Fortunately [psycho] analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist” (Karen Horney).

NOWADAYS, THE WORD “THERAPY” SUGGESTS NO MORE TO THE AVERAGE PERSON THAN “PSYCHOTHERAPY” OR PROFESSIONAL COUNSELING. But the word “therapy” is too good a word to limit to clinicians and counselors. To engage in therapy simply means to give help that is healing or curative in nature, and that’s something every one of us needs to be busy doing from time to time.

By the time our lives are finished, each of us will have become one or the other: a helper or a hurter. As far as our peers are concerned, there’s not much in between. So it’s good to aspire to being a helper. If others can say they find us to be good “therapy,” we will have been paid a high compliment indeed. It’s worth preparing our character and our conduct so that such a thing can be truthfully said.

The ability to help heal people when they’ve been hurt is not acquired accidentally. Healing is an art that requires skill, wisdom, and compassion, among other things. So if we want to be able to help those around us, we need to elevate therapy to the status of a goal in our lives. We need to start learning the tools of that worthy trade.

The therapeutic power of words is nothing short of amazing. Of all the things that human words can do, none is more impressive than their ability to heal. Sometimes even very serious emotional wounds can be helped by a seemingly simple balm: a word of encouragement, an expression of appreciation, or a suggestion of hope and confidence.

But if the words of others can be therapeutic — and they surely can be — then our own words can have that effect too. There may be times when someone we know needs to see a professional “therapist,” and at times like that, we may feel we don’t have much to offer in the way of help. But for every time when a friend needs professional help, there are many more times when a friend will need to hear the healing words that we can speak to them. Yes, it takes wisdom, and wisdom requires work, but we can learn to use the gift of language in such a way that those who hear our words are helped — and even healed.

“Words of comfort, skillfully administered, are the oldest therapy known to man” (Louis Nizer).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“We do not remember days; we remember moments” (Cesare Pavese).

IN OUR MEMORIES ARE THE SNAPSHOTS OF MANY MAGICAL MOMENTS. I don’t know how many moments can be stored in one person’s memory, but I know it’s a lot. My father, who at this writing is ninety years old, has a mental photo album that contains enough snapshots to entertain him long past the point when he will need to be entertained! And his has not been an unusual life. Like all of us, he has simply lived in a world where, as the days go by, there are lots of likable, “momentary” things to save up and enjoy later.

Good moments are things to savor. Occasionally, we’re aware “in the moment” that something special is happening, and we should consciously taste every drop of the event as it unfolds. More often, though, it’s only later that we recognize a moment’s goodness, and when we do, we ought to enjoy that memory’s taste with zest and gratitude. The memory may be of a private moment or one shared with others. Either way, good moments are meant to be relished.

One of the most thoughtful things we can do for others is to make a few moments for them. While it’s true that the best moments in life are often unplanned, spontaneous occurrences, it’s also true that, if we’re on the lookout, we can sometimes find an opportunity to make a moment memorable for someone else. It doesn’t always have to involve a grand gesture or a costly gift; it just takes doing something that says, “I’m aware of you. I acknowledge you. I honor you.” Extraordinary moments, in fact, tend to be made out of very ordinary materials: ice cream cones and park bench kisses, midsummer walks and late-night thunderstorms — things like these are what moments are made of. We don’t have to look far; we just have to look.

The truth is, moments, and the memories that bring them back to us, are windows that look out onto another world. Bound as we are by time, our lives come to us sequentially, one moment at a time. But with each moment, especially the ones that bring intense joy or sorrow, we get a glimpse of something beyond the walls of the workaday world, something that calls to us. Our best moments, then, are those in which we answer the call . . . to dream, to grow, and to live.

“Eternity was in that moment” (William Congreve).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them” (John Ruskin).

WITH MOST THINGS, YOU CAN THINK OF THE WHOLE OR YOU CAN THINK OF THE PARTS. Sometimes it’s necessary to identify and examine the parts, but that analysis doesn’t do much good if we forget the whole situation the parts are a part of. The “trees” may be interesting, but it’s dangerous to lose sight of the “forest.”

As finite beings with limited powers of observation and understanding, we’re not going to see the complete whole of anything we deal with. But even so, there’s great wisdom in always trying to see as much of reality as we can. Many, if not most, of our mistakes come from taking into account only a part of the truth, so we help ourselves greatly when we take the time to understand more of the subject, to hear more of the evidence, and to see more of the picture.

Not only should we try to see more of the whole of things, but wholeness itself is a characteristic worth valuing. We should appreciate it, honoring and giving thanks for things that are whole and healthy. We should aspire to it, making wholeness in all things one of our ideals. And we should contribute to it, playing a positive role in making the things around us more whole rather than tearing them apart.

Wholeness is even something we should seek within ourselves, and “integrity” is the word that describes this kind of wholeness. Integrity is oneness or unity between our character and our conduct. When our outer practice is in harmony with our inner principles, then we experience a wholeness that is one of life’s best possessions.

But in the most important sense, personal wholeness does not come from trying to integrate or unify the various parts of ourselves; it comes from taking our rightful place in relation to the larger reality of the world outside of ourselves. There is no wholeness without a peaceful conscience, and there’s no peacefulness of conscience without doing our simple, individual duty to the world that is our home.

“You exist but as a part inherent in a greater whole. Do not live as though you had a thousand years before you. The common due impends; while you live, and while you may, be good” (Marcus Aurelius).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“That song is best esteemed with which our ears are most acquainted” (William Byrd).

THERE IS A WONDERFUL DELIGHT THAT COMES FROM THINGS THAT HAVE GROWN FAMILIAR. New things are delightful too, of course, but with new things, it takes a while to get to know all of their nooks and crannies so that we can enjoy them fully. In the case of familiar things, however, knowing them well allows us to enjoy them at a deeper and richer level. For example, I’ve enjoyed many books the first time I read them, but I wouldn’t take anything for the great books that have become familiar to me. Each time I read them again, I love them even more. I “get” things that could never have been appreciated on the first (or even the second or third) reading.

To my way of thinking, there is a down-home kind of goodness that attaches itself to familiar things. E. B. White, who was a master at describing ordinary, everyday things, said, “Familiarity is the thing — the sense of belonging.” Even with inanimate objects, there is a rich sense of rightness in handling things that we’ve grown accustomed to through long usage. This morning, I fried my breakfast bacon and eggs in my favorite cast-iron skillet. I’ve used it thousands of times. I know every little scratch on its surface. Its handle fits my hand as if it were made for it. And while a new skillet might have its own attractions, it would take a long time to love it as I love this old one. As Shelley said, “Familiar acts are beautiful through love.”

It’s tempting to let our eyes roam here, there, and everywhere in a never-satisfied quest for the extraordinary. But while it’s good to be excited by the new from time to time, most of our attention needs to be paid to the familiar. Let’s not despise or overlook the value of the commonplace things in our lives: all the objects, the events, the places, and the people who are well known to us. I’ve been around a little bit, and I can tell you, there is nothing in this world any better than “the old familiar faces” (Charles Lamb). Familiarity need not breed contempt — in the grateful heart, it can breed great contentment.

“I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into today, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat” (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“There are comforts and compensations that one who has not suffered knows nothing of — like the lamps that nobody sees till the tunnel comes” (A. W. Barbour).

IN MANY WAYS BIG AND SMALL, LIFE HAS A WAY OF MAKING UP FOR THE THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN TAKEN AWAY FROM US. We hardly ever suffer loss in one area without finding that our capacity for joy has increased in another area. It’s the bitterness of loss that allows us to savor the taste of other things, and like “the lamps that nobody sees till the tunnel comes,” we see certain joys more clearly.

It’s good for us to learn to appreciate life’s compensations. To some extent, we all do appreciate the touches of grace that make up for our losses, but we need to appreciate them more consciously. If you’ve been wiped out financially but still have your health, don’t take it for granted. Enjoy your health! Savor it! Don’t let a drop of it go to waste!

It’s also good for us to find ways to be a part of life’s compensation to others. If your next-door neighbor has suffered some misfortune, you may be absolutely helpless to do anything about that misfortune, but your neighborliness may be a part of the way in which life is going to compensate them for their loss. Almost certainly, there is going to be something you can do, in some other area, to brighten their life.

And finally, it’s good for us to compensate others for the generous things they do for us, or at least to try to do so. Granted, some people shower us with such kindness that we could never repay them adequately, but it’s still a good idea to try. If we put our minds to it, we can almost always find some means of saying, “Let me make it up to you.” My father, for example, was a watchmaker. He repaid many a kindness by fixing somebody’s watch, free of charge, the next time it quit running.

We need to respect the fact that our world is governed by moral laws as well as physical ones. In the long term, if not in the short, wrongs tend to be righted. If we’ve been so foolish as to mistreat those around us, justice will eventually stand up and defend those who’ve been our victims. They will be compensated — and so will we. The medicine that we dispense to others had better have a good flavor, because sooner or later, we’re going to get a taste of it.

“This is a world of compensations” (Abraham Lincoln).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“God made man because he loves stories” (Elie Wiesel).

ALL OF US ARE WRITING STORIES, AND WE’RE SURROUNDED BY STORIES THAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE WRITING TOO. As Thoreau said, “Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told.” Our stories may not be written down with pen and ink, but even so, we’re all engaged in events that, were they to be written, would constitute quite a chronicle. The tales we’re telling by the unfolding of our human lives are immensely and endlessly interesting.

In its most basic sense, a “story” is a sequence of events. To have a story, you must have more than an idea, a truth, a theme, or a thesis. You must have some events, some happenings, and these must be successive: that is, they must be linked together, one leading to another. But the truly fascinating thing about stories — and it’s the reason why we like stories so much — is that the telling of a sequence of events can often reveal to us (or remind us of) ideas and truths that are outside our limited world of time and space. A plot is a powerful thing!

C. S. Lewis, who was very wise when it came to the magic of stories, said it this way: “In life and art both, as it seems to me, we are always trying to catch in our net of successive moments something that is not successive. Whether in real life there is any doctor who can teach us how to do it, so that at last either the meshes will become fine enough to hold the bird, or we be so changed that we can throw our nets away, and follow the bird to its own country, is not a question for this essay. But I think it is sometimes done — or very, very nearly done — in stories. I believe the effort to be well worth making.”

So we should love stories. We should love to hear them, read them, and tell them. And as for those stories we ourselves are living, we should be careful about them. Nothing is sadder in old age than to look back on a life that, if a truthful storyteller were to tell it, would be a hurtful story, an embarrassing story, or a shameful story.

But if our own stories are important, we should also be interested in other people’s stories. The tales that are unfolding around us every day are well worth paying attention to. You just never know when somebody’s else’s tale might be better than any you’ve heard so far . . .

“But that is another story” (Rudyard Kipling).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance, and tenacity. The order varies for any given year” (Paul Sweeney).

IT TAKES MANY KINDS OF CHARACTER STRENGTH TO MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK, NOT THE LEAST OF WHICH IS COMMITMENT. In any given marriage, the combination of character traits is blended differently; some marriages have a greater portion of love, some of partnership, and some of tenacity. But all successful marriages are built from the raw materials supplied by character. Personality may have gotten the thing started, but character is what keeps it going.

A good marriage is no accident, and when one has been built, it’s a thing of admirable beauty. Love stories are always refreshing, of course, but the most refreshing are those that have stood the test of time. Think of your grandparents, for example. Without knowing them, I’d venture to guess that they were married for quite a long while, despite difficulties that had to be overcome, and that their relationship is something you find it encouraging to think about.

It’s not stretching the truth to say that an effective marriage is one of the highest achievements a human being is capable of. Those who’ve paid the price to be worthy marriage partners have done something that requires far more substance than it would take to win the World Series or the Nobel Prize. If you know someone who has helped to build a good marriage, let them know they’re a bigger hero in your eyes than those who usually make the evening news.

Marriage is what we might call a dynamic relationship: within it, things move and change and shift. You can’t be in the marriage relationship without being changed — and without changing the person you’re married to. The question is not whether we’ll grow, but whether we’ll make that growth positive rather than negative. So may we commit ourselves, today and every day, to two important things: (1) growing toward greater health in our own character, and (2) growing toward a more healthful influence on the spouse to whom we promised ourselves, the one who’s being affected by everything we do.

“You don’t marry one person; you marry three: the person you think they are, the person they are, and the person they are going to become as the result of being married to you” (Richard Needham).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“No one tests the depth of a river with both feet” (Ashanti Proverb).

PRUDENCE MEANS BEING CAREFUL. It means using wisdom, good judgment, and common sense in deciding one’s course of action. When the harmful consequences of a plan’s failure would be greater than the helpful consequences of the plan’s success, prudence will say, “Don’t do it.” In the game of Russian roulette, for example, a person has a five-out-of-six chance of winning. But that sixth chance is so dire that a prudent person would not play the game at all. It’s prudence that keeps us from “courting disaster,” as the saying goes.

Of course, some other less-than-desirable traits often masquerade as prudence. “Prudence is no doubt a valuable quality,” wrote Robert Cecil, “but prudence which degenerates into timidity is very seldom the path to safety.” So whenever we say we’re being prudent, it’s often worth asking whether we’re being that or just plain timid.

And not only that, there are many times when prudence should not be the governing factor. From the standpoint of common sense, doing the right thing is often very imprudent, and many of the noblest deeds in the history of the world would never have been done had their doers allowed prudence to decide the question. Robert Hall summed it up nicely in this way: “In matters of conscience, first thoughts are best; in matters of prudence, last thoughts are best.”

But properly understood and wisely exercised, prudence is a very good thing indeed. It would be a coward who never considered anything but the counsels of prudence, but it would be a fool who never consulted prudence at all. Prudence should always be given a seat at the table when significant matters are being decided.

In the end, I think the best way to look at prudence is to see it as something that helps us in the areas of restraint and reserve. In this age of uninhibited excess, we need to get reacquainted with some things like simplicity and understatement. It may be trite, but it’s also true: less is sometimes more. Prudence can help us to get that “more” by putting the brakes on our runaway trains of thought.

“Tell not all you know, believe not all you hear, do not all you are able” (Italian Proverb).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

How many things by season seasoned are
To their right praise and true perfection!
(William Shakespeare)

WE PROBABLY UNDERESTIMATE THE EXTENT TO WHICH THINGS ARE EITHER HELPED OR HURT BY THEIR TIMING. The old adage “timing is everything” may be an exaggeration, but it’s certainly true that timing is critical. At exactly the right time, a certain thing may prove to be powerful, popular, or productive — while at any other time, the very same thing would fall noticeably flat. So what are some ways we could profit from pursuing timeliness? What does this quality mean when it’s applied to our character and conduct?

Timeliness means being prompt. Two identical thank-you notes, one written within twenty-four hours and the other written six weeks after the fact, will have two very different effects on the recipient. Why do we let procrastination drain the goodness out of so many of our well-intended actions? Promptness pays huge dividends.

Timeliness means being punctual. Two of your employees are very similar in most ways, but one is always at work on time while the other is chronically late. Which one are you going to think of as being more mature and responsible? Two of your friends are very much alike, but one frequently keeps you waiting past the agreed-upon time. Which one are you going to describe as being more courteous?

Timeliness means being predictable. It’s not enough to get the job done, and it’s not enough to deliver the product — the job needs to be done on schedule, and the product needs to be delivered on time. Those on whom our actions impinge need to know what to expect from us; they need to be able to depend on our timeliness. So predictability, as simple as it seems, is a great gift we can give to others.

In nothing, however, is timeliness more important than in our words. Whatever needs to be said, it usually takes some wisdom to know when to say it, and if we don’t exercise that wisdom, the encouraging benefit of our words may be lost on those to whom we speak. It’s one of life’s greatest challenges to learn timeliness in our speech, but when we do, once in a while, say precisely the right thing at exactly the right time, what a marvelous thing of beauty it is to enjoy.

“A word spoken in due season, how good it is!” (The Book of Proverbs).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com