Self-Fulfillment v Self-Donation

Finding your reason for being, your purpose in life is critical. “Who am I and why am I here?” are necessary questions for any individual who aspires to become a fully functioning mature human. For millennium after millennium, these questions have been asked and answers sought for within the context of man’s relationship to his Creator. Given that God created me, He is the One who defines me, the One in, by, and through whom, I find true meaning and purpose, and my highest good. Today, however, answers to these questions are often searched for within the realm of man’s relationship to himself. I want answers because I want to be true to myself and realize my full potential so that … Why? What for? Well, because I want to experience true self-fulfillment. Tragically, the answers we find within this realm will diminish and degrade our souls.

When my quest for meaning and purpose is reduced to self-fulfillment, then all things—all values, all experiences, all people, and all choices—are interpreted solely within the realm of the Kingdom of Self. “Does seeking after x help me attain or maintain self-fulfillment?” “Does y help me to feel better about myself or not?” “Will doing z make me happy?”

In the Kingdom of Self, values such as Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, are all approached from the standpoint of my needs, desires, and demands, rather than as reflections of God’s being that place demands upon my being. Here, in this realm, God and values must be de-formed so as to comfortably fit within my present predilections and personality. We can hear this self-orientation in the individual whom has been confronted with the demands of, say, the value of Goodness or Love, and says, “That is just not who or how I am.”

Even in our quests for personal transformation, we all too often approach and engage values and people solely as means for our ends: for helping us to get where we want to go, to transform us into the persons we intend to become. However, transformation is only achieved indirectly: it is a by-product of my relentless pursuit of honoring values that lie outside of and above me as objective realities.

Consider the differences between seeking to honor and worship God solely because His being places a demand upon my being to do so, and, in contradistinction, honoring and worshiping God so that I may be transformed. The first pursuit is all about placing appropriate honor where it is due, regardless of costs and benefits, whereas the latter approaches God as a means to my ends. The former will certainly broaden and deepen my soul but only as a by-product of my pursuit; the latter approaches God and all values primarily for self and, so, impoverishes my soul.

Self-fulfillment, transformation, and finding our place and calling in the world occur indirectly, as a result of our primarily seeking to know and honor God and those values that are reflections of His being, with all of our beings. Life, then, isn’t about self-fulfillment but of self-abandonment and self-donation.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

Yes, You Can!

I recently had an email exchange with a lady who, after reading my book, was taking exception to my assertion that each of us has a unique calling to become Legendary Leaders within the worlds God has placed us. She began with telling me that my book was “romantic” rather than “realistic,” followed up by charging me with “setting people up for severe disappointment,” and, seeking to sum up her issues with me, she wrote, “You are telling Frodo that he can be Gandalf.” 

 

Me: Not at all. I am telling Hobbits to aspire to becoming legendary Hobbits who leave a legacy to their families, friends, and communities, worthy of their faith and calling, and for Wizards and Elves to do the same.

 

I use to be severely frustrated by people who believe their calling in life is to run around telling everyone they know what they are not capable of accomplishing. For such people, all aspirations are futile, dreams are childish nonsense, and visions are dangerous hallucinations. Over time, however, I realized that their crusades were fueled by fear and guilt and I began feeling sorry for them, for when they said, “Life isn’t like that,” what they actually were saying was, “If life can be like that, what happened to my life?”

 

An excerpt from chapter one (The Soul of a Legend) in Legendry Leadership:

 

As children, we knew that we were not cut out to be average or ordinary.  We dreamt of greatness and glory, of fantastic achievements and gripping adventures.  We were going to be the scientist who found the cure for cancer, a heroic soldier in the Special Forces fighting for liberty and justice, a school teacher whose students go out into the world equipped for a successful and full life, an artist whose body of work provoked and awed people for generations to come.  And then we encountered the cynics—the so-called realists—who told us that we were living in fantasy and wasting time and energy indulging in such wishful thinking.  The cynics were accompanied by the well intentioned whose expectations of us were much lower than our own. “No,” we were told, “that is not your path.  You are meant to be someone else, someone other than the person of whom you are dreaming.  Really.  If you take the path of your dreams, your life will end in misery.  It’s for your best that you listen to me.”

 

Some brave and independent souls are able to resist the counsel of the cynics and ignore the expectations of the well intentioned.  Many are not.  I am not saying that those who submit never achieve anything worthy of honor or never become honorable individuals.  I am suggesting that, from time to time, they are struck with the awareness that they could have been so much more, could have accomplished even greater things.

 

Soren Kierkegaard said, “There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”  Fear keeps us from seeing.  Fear keeps us from recalling our dreams.  Fear keeps us from childlike faith.  Fear of despairing over what could have been enslaves us to what now is.

 

How do you overcome these fears?  How do you resist cynicism?  How do you begin overcoming the fear of disappointing others?  How do you revive your dreams?  St. John wrote that there is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love (I John 4:18).  Love is the key: loving God, loving self, loving others, and loving the gift of life.

 

Loving God, we remember that, with and through Him, all things are possible.

 

Loving self, we remember that we were created “a little lower than the angels” and that He that is within us is greater than he that is in the world.

 

Loving others, we remember that we have gifts, talents, and wisdom with which we were meant to serve.

 

Loving the gift of life, we remember that every moment of our existence is a gift we are to cherish and steward.

 

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

Thoughts On Strangling Grace

See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled.

-Hebrews 12.15

Forgive me my sins as I forgive those who sinned against me.

-The Lord’s Prayer

Bitterness strangles grace. It erupts over disappointments, pain of (perceived) unjust treatment, hurt feelings, and defiles me. It also infects and defiles others, for in hearing of the wrongs you have suffered—I know, who doesn’t like to hear of the “evil” of others!—people take up your offense.

Bitter people find it impossible to keep it to their selves but insist upon spewing it all over others with their angry, hateful attitudes, actions, and words, and then wonder why so many people keep them at an arm’s distance. Bitterness not only strangles God’s grace but the grace of others, as well.

As I grow comfortable with my bitterness, it warps my calibration skills, where, in my ears, your honesty is heard as hatefulness, and my venomous sniping at and criticism of others as “the unvarnished truth.” With a heart filled with unresolved issues, of course it all sounds so reasonable to me.

Long-term bitterness establishes a wall of invulnerability around my heart because I grow to believe that desire, hope, love, and the external world, are all danger zones. Such defense mechanisms keep me from the love of God and others, leaving me with a shriveled soul.

Bitterness toward God springs up because I am angry over what I don’t have and, therefore, ungrateful for what is available. Here, my pain moves from anxiety to despair and bitterness. In doing this, my heart is no longer resting in God with a faith that He knows what is needed for my highest good. And my soul begins disintegrating.

Bitterness starts with the hurt, the offense, or the (perceived) injustice. Rather than taking the experience to God and asking for His light and grace, I silently plant the seed of bitterness in my soul, caressing it like Gollum’s precious ring. I then nourish it with constant attention, purposefully blocking out any other interpretation of the event, any understanding that is contrary to my basis for being angry. I know what happened. I know what you meant and intended. I am a mind reader, for crying out loud: your words and explanations are only denials and deflections. And anyway, why should I give you an opportunity to ask forgiveness? I’d lose all the power I have over you.

The bitter-weed killer is light and love. When I am hurt, rather than expressing anger at the individual, I go and share: “You hurt me.” Put it all out there so that the light can dispel shadows and darkness. Yes, anger is easier and less messy. Anger condemns and relegates the offending party to the outer reaches of my universe, until they kneel and kiss my ring. There are no mitigating circumstances, no room for self-doubt or humility on my part, no place for love believing the best; only my edict of “Guilty as charged.” Less messy, for sure, but also insures there will be no healing or transformation.

Eating the delicious morsels of past wrongs against me, I am feeding on death. Whereas love keeps no record of wrongs, bitterness is rooted in remembrance. Until I deal with and let go of such memories, all other works, everything I am doing for love’s sake, for God’s sake, is corrupted. Unforgiving people remain unforgiven. (See Lord’s Prayer)

And if you know an individual is hurt or offended with you? Jesus: Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that you brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

Is God Moody?

For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty heart: only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.

--George MacDonald, “At the Back of the North Wind”

Twenty years ago I attended a Wednesday morning church service where I was regaled by one of the associate pastors on, “The Moods of God.”

“It is critical,” she said, “that we daily discern what mood God is in.”

Being how I am, I spent the next fifteen minutes doing a riff (in my head) on God’s moods.

Crikey. God is really ticked-off today. Better not leave the house.

Hey look! God is quite cheery. Now’s the time to ask Him for this week’s winning Lotto number.

God is weary of my two-timing ways so has given up on me. I need to do something big to leverage His love…Hmmm, I know: Become a missionary to Africa!

Okay. You can stop wincing. The thing is, most of us actually relate to God in such a manner. While the Bible reveals God as immutable* (never changes) and self-sufficient** (lacks for and needs nothing), and, therefore, as not having “passions” (mood swings), we, however, experience Him as being otherwise because we believe He IS other than whom He revealed Himself to be in scriptures and in Christ.

Take, for example, God’s love:

God’s love is unchanging: it does not increase because of our obedience or decrease because of what we do or leave undone. God loves because of Who God is: period. We, however, believe that His love for us runs hot or cold, depending upon the level of our obedience or maturity. In other words, we anthropomorphize God’s love so that it is akin to the love we experience as humans. Our love is often based on what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, so God’s love must be the same.

Consider the parable of the Prodigal Son. When his son wished to take his inheritance and go live his life as he pleased, the father loved him … and let him go. Every day thereafter the father still loved his son. When the son was wallowing in a pigsty, his father was home, still loving him. Sure, what the son was experiencing was a world of hurt. The father didn’t do this, didn’t shove his son’s face in dung. This all happened because he left his father.

All that the father had for his son was love. He wasn’t back home angry and condemning his son to all who would listen. In fact, every day he searched the horizon to see if today would be the day his son came home. When he finally saw his son from afar, the celebration for his return was in full swing by the time he walked through the gate. When he arrived home, there was no recrimination or condemnation: just a party filled with love and joy. In other words, the father’s love is the “same yesterday, today, and forever.”

God does not have mood swings. God’s love for us never changes. He is always showering the world and us with love and goodness. What does change, however, is how we experience His love and goodness in our day-to-day lives. This depends upon the contours of our hearts.

*“ Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Hebrews13: 8

**“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. Acts 17: 24, 25

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

Words of Steel and Soul

When [Churchill] walks into the House, it is as if History itself materializes before our eyes, and is holding us accountable.

-- From Leo Rosten’s essay, “Winston”

Obama fatigue is setting in. Indeed, I’ve gone from Obama fatigue through full-on Obama Epstein-Barr to end-stage Obama narcolepsy.

–Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg’s description of how he is experiencing the speeches of President Obama can just as easily be said of the majority of our political leaders on both sides of the aisle. [WARNING: Long Sentence] Here we are facing terrorists, the return of a cold war with Russia, economic disaster, disappearing borders, Ebola, and the continual disintegration of our Constitutional freedoms, and our leaders seem to think it best to put us to sleep with words that say everything and nothing so we won’t notice our houses are being ransacked.  Whereas Winston Churchill “armed the English language and sent it into battle,” present day politicians bastardize the English language, so we won’t notice the nature of the great battles before us.

In times of great peril we need leaders whose words instill vision, courage, and hope, not words that put us to sleep both physically and psychologically. We need bold, bare-naked words that leave no doubt as to exactly what is being said. We need words of steel that slap us across our collective face and challenges us to get a grip and stop whining about petty grievances that only distract us from our real enemies, both domestic and foreign, who are determined to destroy us and our nation,

Consider some of Winston’s* words:

“The deadly, drilled, docile, brutish masses of the Hun.” No political correctness, here!

“Hitler has liberated Austria from the horrors of self-government.”

“It is better to be frightened now than killed thereafter.”

Describing Parliament: “Good honest men who are ready to die for their opinions, if only they knew what their opinions are.” Sounds familiar.

On Prime Minister Baldwin’s government: “So they go on in a strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift…all powerful to be impotent.” Ouch.

When Parliament was jubilant over Chamberlain’s deal with Hitler:

“All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into darkness….It is a fraud and a farce to invoke the name [self-determination].

We have sustained a defeat without a war….We have passed an awful milestone in our history…The whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged….Terrible words have been pronounced against the Western democracies: ‘Thou are weighed in the balance and found wanting.’”

“And do not suppose this is the end….This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year….”

Words matter. How we perceive the person speaking also matters. Once we lose respect, once we doubt the integrity of the speaker, even the most erudite sound to us as so much white noise. Leo Rosten makes this point when he writes, “It was Churchill’s very refusal to be ‘expedient’ or utopian that made him the one man whom England, on the brink of disaster, had to turn.” Winston’s words had the ring of trustworthiness.

The London Times made the same point: “In the hour when all but courage failed, [he] made courage conscience of itself, plumed it with defiance, and rendered it invincible.” Winston’s words could not produce something in others that was not already within the man himself. His soul fueled his words.

Words matter

The quality of the person’s soul matters

Awareness of where the lines of the most critical battles are forming matters

Clarity of vision matters

And congruency of words, soul, awareness, and vision matters most of all, when it comes to choosing leaders.

* All quotes taken from Leo Rosten, “People I Have Loved, Known, Or Admired,” McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1970

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

The Sins of Moralism

Grant me, O Lord, that I might see my own trespasses, and not pass judgment on my brother – St Ephraim

(Christians) seem to think that if they can move more and more people toward living “morally,” that we will then have a better society, nation, world: that “GOD will then be on our side, once again.” The problem with this assumption is that it is based on the idea that we humans can save ourselves (or our nation) by being “good.” +

People whom are primarily driven by morality are usually judgmental and haughty. Such people are often self-righteous busybodies, running around behaving as if Christ abdicated His throne and left them in charge of governing the world or at least their neighbors. +

Moralism only places value on those who adhere to a particular moral code. Loving others, treating all people with the dignity and respect due them, because each is made in God’s image, is nowhere to be seen among such people. +

When societal “morality” becomes the Christian’s Be All and End All, the means by which they seek to establish it will be legal: if we can just pass the right laws and get rid of the “wrong” ones, then all will be well. However, when we depend upon laws to keep everyone in check, what we will end up with is a revolt of slaves wanting to throw off their shackles. It is the heart that must be converted to love and obedience to God. If this doesn’t take place… expect a revolt. +

Moralism. Christians should consider the instructions of the Apostles Peter and Paul:

Peter’s advice (Acts 15) to Gentile converts whom the Jewish Christians were demanding be circumcised, if they were to be “good Christians”: “We’re not going to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols (stay away from idols and idolatry), from blood, from the meat of strangled animals (watch over your testimony before the Jews to whom you are a witness for Christ), and from sexual immorality.”

Paul’s advice to Thessalonians (I Thess. 4)

Love each other “more and more,” “mind your own business, work with your hands … so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” And then, “If you do this, you’re good to go.”

What moral burdens do we Christians place on people, today?  I’ll wager it is far more than what Peter and Paul handed down. And have you ever met a moralist who minds his own business? Crikey: these people consider meddling in the lives of others to be their highest calling. +

God has never been impressed or even amused with people running around thinking that they can leverage His blessings by their proper behavior. It can’t be done. We can’t “save” ourselves via our “uprightness,” “integrity,” “sacrificial life-style,” or “following the straight and narrow.” You and I both know what lies in our hearts, in the hearts of the best of us, and it isn’t pretty. It is a heart being purified through a living faith and trust in Him and His grace that God is after in us. Trusting in our own morality is abhorrent to Him because, as Isaiah pointed out, compared to God’s purity, our “righteousness” appears as nothing more than so many filthy rags.  +

Antidote to Moralism:

Maintaining a constant awareness of my own desperate need for God’s mercy and grace.

I am the chief of sinners. -St. Paul

Note: Not “was,” but “am.”  

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

Transcending Tragedy and Suffering

Elie Wiesel, writing of his boyhood experiences at Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps and the pain and anger that remain to this day, in his book, And the Sea Is Never Full

Does this mean that I have made peace with God? I continue to protest His apparent indifference to the injustices that savage His creation….

            And what about my faith in all that? I would be within my rights to give it up. I could invoke six million reasons to justify my decision. But I don’t. I am incapable of straying from the path charted by my ancestors. Without this faith in God, the faith of my father and forefathers, my faith in Israel and in humanity would be diminished. And so I choose to preserve the faith of my childhood….

            I never gave up my faith in God. Even over there I went on praying. Yes, my faith was wounded, and still is today. In Night, my earliest testimony, I tell of a boy’s death by hanging, and conclude that it is God Himself that the killer is determined to murder. I say this from within my faith, for had I lost it I would not rail against heaven. It is because I still believe in God that I argue with Him. As Job said, “Even if He kills me, I shall continue to place my hope in Him.” Strange. In secular circles my public statements of faith in God are resented.

What do you say to encourage such a man, to help bring healing to the gaping wounds brought on by God’s “apparent indifference,” and the anguish and anger that constantly haunts him and those who survived along with him?

What I would have said to him at 22 would have deserved a baseball bat upside my head. “Do this, believe that, memorize these scriptures, and all will be well.” Today at almost 62, if I met him, all I would have are my tears and an unfathomable admiration for his witness.

Nothing and no one makes the suffering brought on by such tragedies as his go away.

Do you disagree? Then tell me this: When Job saw God, did it make all of his horrific losses disappear? Did his children come back to life and sit down with him and break bread that night or were they still dead in their graves? His suffering remained: only now, after seeing God, his faith and worship were deeper than his abiding pain.

Christians here in the US don’t much take to focusing on any theology dealing with tragedy and suffering. This is no surprise, as they don’t often deal with the tragedy of Christ’s crucifixion. “Let’s jump right over to the resurrection. That’s the ticket to the charmed Christian life!” The fact remains, however, that Jesus’ death is ever a tragedy. Yes, His resurrection gives new meaning to His suffering, but if we fail to keep the “tragic” as part of the Truth we bear witness to, we are glossing over reality and offering a peace or healing that is only skin deep.

What can a God who knows nothing of pain and suffering offer me in my dark nights of the soul? Sharing the love of God with others without sharing the tragedy of all tragedies at the Cross robs our listeners of The Anchor of Hope that comes with knowing that, as the God-Man, Jesus Christ suffered. He knows of our suffering, knows how to pray for us, and knows how to use it for bringing us closer to Him.

And, regarding our own spiritual journey, if “take up your cross and follow me” means anything, it means Christ does not promise us the American Dream. What He does promise to do is use what St Paul called our “dying to self,” for our soul’s sake, for the sake of our increased union with God, and being further conformed to His image.

Tragedies and sufferings, in and of themselves, do not redeem or restore us to God. This can only happen when we choose to convert them by seeing it as a means to an end. It is only through transcending the suffering by embracing Christ’s cross and then taking up our own for His sake, for love’s sake, that we open the door to a deeper union with Him.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

What Men Live By

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. –St John

In Tolstoy’s short story, What Men Live By, we meet the angel Michael who has recently disobeyed God in not taking the soul of a young mother with infant twins. Having no other relatives, she had begged Michael to stay his hand, at least until her daughters could make it on their own. He agreed. God didn’t. Shortly afterwards, God takes the mother’s soul and Michael’s wings, telling him that he will not get them back until he learns the answers to three questions:

What dwells in man? What is not given to man? What do men live by?

Our first encounter with the mortal Michael is outside a shrine, where he is sitting, naked and freezing, and wondering how he was going to go about learning the answers to God’s questions. A shoemaker named Simon sees him but, as he has just returned from an unsuccessful attempt at collecting a debt owed him, he is in no mood to help a stranger. After he walks past the naked, shivering man, however, his heart is filled with pity. He then goes back, gives the man his only coat, and takes him home.

Michael would later explain that when he first saw Simon all that he could see in his face was death, as he only cared for how he was going to get bread and clothing. But when he returned, “he was alive, and I recognized in him the presence of God.”

At first, Simon’s wife Matryona is livid with her husband; so much so that Michael later notes that she was covered with the stench of death. But as she was hurling bitter accusations and condemnations at her husband, Simon turned and asked her, “Have you no love of God?” and her heart was filled with compassion for Michael. They invite him to live with them, giving him the very last of their food, without any knowledge that he was a fallen angel.

Lesson Number One: Love dwells in the heart of man.

As an apprentice shoemaker, Michael’s skills became so renown that people were now beating down Simon’s door and asking him to make their shoes. One day a rich man comes bearing fine leather from Germany and explains that he wants his shoes to fit just so. They agree to the price and Michael sets about to make the man’s shoes. When Simon comes to inspect the work, however, he sees that Michael has made a pair of slippers. While anxiously explaining to his apprentice that this could ruin their business, a lady walks in, tells Simon that the man has died, and that she needs slippers for his burial. Michael walks over and hands her the soft slippers he had been making. He had seen the angel of death standing behind the man when he had come to ask Simon to make him a pair of shoes.

Lesson Number Two: No one knows when his time on earth is going to come to an end. When the evening comes, no man knows “whether he will need boots for his body or slippers for his corpse.”

After six years of working with Simon, a woman walks in with the twins of the mother whose soul Michael had refused to take. She had adopted them and reared the girls as her own. She had come to ask Simon to make them each a pair of shoes.

Lesson Number Three: It is not given to man to know his own needs. “All men live not by care for themselves but by love….God does not wish men to live apart, and therefore he does not reveal to them what each needs for himself, but he wishes them to live united, and therefore reveals to each of them what is necessary for all.”

Michael survived, not because he was able to fend for himself, but “because love was present in a passer-by.”

The orphaned twins were cared for because of the love of a stranger.

Therefore, we do not truly live by the thought and effort we spend on meeting our own needs, “but because love exists in man.”

Tolstoy via Michael: “I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love." Michael then sang praise to God, as wings appeared on his back and he returned to heaven.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014 

Turn On the Lights and Ask

You do not have because you do not ask. -St James

So many people go through life wanting what they refuse to ask for and then constantly creating back-stories to justify their passivity.

I am not worthy.

It wouldn’t really work, anyway.

They wouldn’t say yes, because…

She is mean

He doesn’t love me

They are selfish

It’s better to not set myself up for rejection.

It would only start an argument.

Asking will make me look needy.

And then?

The promotion goes to one of your peers because he went and advocated for the position, while you “humbly” kept mum.

Your raise was a mere cost-of-living-adjustment because you didn’t make a case for being worth more than this.

You remain frustrated or otherwise stressed in a relationship critical to you, because you won’t make your needs or wants known.

In other words, you provide no room for the materialization of all the possibilities that would be created by simply asking for what you want.

“But what if the answer is, ‘No’?” Well, how badly do you want what you want? What is it worth to you? If their answer was negative and you still want what you want, maybe you need to reframe your request. Maybe there needs to be a longer and more in-depth conversation about your wants or needs, as well as those of the one to whom you made your request: a conversation that either changes their mind or transforms the nature of your request. And maybe you need to begin adjusting to the reality of, “No,” and moving on to “What now?” which creates a new set of possibilities.

When you make the unknown known it causes a shift in your relationship. Maybe the shift will not be in the direction you had hoped. Maybe it will. You don’t and can’t know until you ask.

As long as you want what you want yet don’t have it because you have not asked, there is going to be a degree of agitation or confusion or frustration on your part, isn’t there? What is this going to produce in the relationship? And believe me here: many of those unspoken wants and needs that you think you have stabbed to death and buried have become vampires that are sucking the life out of you and your relationships.

Think of Asking as an act of turning the lights on and Not Asking as choosing to keep your heart hidden in the dark. Now tell me this: which of these are filled with possibilities and which is a self-made dungeon filled with vampires? However scary walking in the light can be at times, I think Undead Wants and Needs slowly sucking my life’s essence away is scarier. But maybe that’s just me.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

El Salvador

[In El Salvador], the rich have freedom to live and the poor have freedom to die.  --Dr. Virgina Funes

El Salvador is around the size of Massachusetts and is the most densely populated country in Central America. Here in the US, about the only time we read of this nation is when there is a volcanic eruption, a hurricane, or an earthquake. As horrible as these natural disasters have been here, Salvadorians are also experiencing the daily soul crushing disasters that always follow in the wake of extreme poverty.

The average monthly income is around $300.00

Out in the rural areas, people are living on less than $1 per day in makeshift shacks that have neither running water nor electricity

Fifty-percent of the children here are living in extreme poverty.

Given the extent of poverty, over one-third of the people lack access to either public or private medical care. The cost of medicine in El Salvador is the highest in the region. People are suffering with cancers, digestive disorders, HIV/AIDS, heart disease, and respiratory infections. Seeking to address this disaster, the government decided to provide free healthcare, which, in turn, created a demand that exceeds the nation’s resources.

This is why we are here, why we have brought in 15 million dollars worth of medicines.

Next to me is Luis Morale, the founder and director of Fundacion Corozones de Vida; a non- profit organization based in Metapan, El Salvador. The organization provides various forms of aid throughout El Salvador. Luis graciously joined with us, utilizing his extensive network to help us distribute the medicines we have brought in.

One of our first stops is the women’s prison in San Salvador where we distribute desperately needed medicines. This place was built for 1,000 inmates. There are over 4,000 women incarcerated here.

The “cells” are chain link fences, with upwards to eight women in an area made for one woman. 

As I am walking by these cages, my mind races to find the appropriate adjectives to describe this place: appalling, disgusting, dangerous, degrading, heart wrenching … but none of these words come close.

Just when I thought I had seen the worst of this place, however, I noticed all the children. My heart vomited.

“What kind of madness is this?”

As I turn and look at our team members, I see horror, tears, and compassion. Instinctively each of us fans out and begins talking and playing with these children.

There are 85 children here, 5 years old and younger, living with their mothers. I asked how long they would be here and was told that once they are around 5, they are removed and sent to live with a member of their extended family. 

We had a great team of physicians and nurses helping us to distribute the meds. Walking around talking with some of these women with what limited Spanish I can remember, each and every one of them repeatedly thanked YOU, our donors, for sending them the medicines they and their children so desperately needed.

The hospitals here are not places we here in the US would ever take our loved ones. Throughout the day, I saw and heard that there were not enough rooms, not enough beds, not enough food, not enough caregivers, and not enough medicine. Gratefully, the physicians and nurses are highly trained and skilled, and care deeply for their patients.

We spent considerable time talking to various doctors, as well as community leaders out in the rural areas where the meds we brought in were to be distributed.

Dr. Hector Valencia, the chief surgeon over the cancer ward at the hospital in San Salvador where we were bringing in a bulk of the meds we were distributing, told us that there is a dangerous lack of antibiotics, medications for HIV/AIDS, pain management, and pretty much any and all medications needed for cancer patients.

The wealthy people here in El Salvador can fly to Panama or Costa Rica or even to the US, and receive the medical care they need. But the poor are stuck in their shacks and can only walk so far. These are the people whom you helped by sending in all these medications.

Small Gifts, Big Smiles!

Forty years ago when I first started traveling to Developing Nations around the world, one of the first things I discovered was how often I was asked … for shoes! The requests almost rivaled that of being asked for food and medicine.

In this shipment to El Salvador, we included almost 4,000 pairs of shoes. When we distribute food or medicines, it is always a very traumatic experience to witness the diseases, the desperation, and the people who are at death’s door. But passing out shoes to children: it was an awesome experience! 

As always, a deep “thank you” from the bottom of my heart for making this shipment of help and hope to El Salvador a reality. Because of your generosity, hundreds of people are receiving medical care that otherwise would never have taken place.

Monte