The Twitterverse

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah" by Jules-Joseph-Augustin Laurens. DEA / G. DAGLI ORTI / Getty Images

Gospel Reading for today, 7/17/18:  Mt 11:20-24

"Jesus began to reproach the towns
where most of his mighty deeds had been done,
since they had not repented.
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!
For if the mighty deeds done in your midst
had been done in Tyre and Sidon,
they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes.
But I tell you, it will be more tolerable
for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.
And as for you, Capernaum:

Will you be exalted to heaven?
You will go down to the nether world.
For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom,
it would have remained until this day.
But I tell you, it will be more tolerable
for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”

I don't know what it is.....
Maybe it is because I have faced my own mortality too many times in my life?
Maybe it is because I have way, way, too much time on my hands?
Maybe, just maybe, it is because I now tend to listen and hear and see things and just soak them in and file them away in the back of my brain and don't respond to them. You would think that in this day and age of social media that the last option would be a true testament of enormous willpower. I'm here to tell you that it isn't. Some remarks are just too nasty, ignorant or downright evil to even bother to respond to. Why get yourself in an uproar with someone that you will never meet in person. You aren't going to change their mind anyway. Right?....

What is it that I'm noticing? It is how mean and nasty everyone seems to be becoming. What I have found by sitting back and observing is just how torn our society is today and how lacking it is in direction on how to be a good Christian and avoid the pitfalls of, well, just about everything that is out there. Normally, I don't dip my toes into any political discussions because, let's face it, I talk about religion and Jesus ALL the time. I can't alienate all of my friends and family by adding politics in there too so those opinions I keep to myself.

What is becoming glaringly obvious to me now is that these are perilous times we are living in, and time is of the essence for evangelization and bringing people to Christ. Social media is a perfect way to reach them. People, especially non-Christians, need to be pulled out of despair and  taught about the saving power of Jesus. Christians  need to be boosted up by the boot strings, well more like combat boots, so that their faith remains rock solid. Sadly, more and more people seem to be focused on what others are doing and saying and not spending enough time on what they themselves are saying and doing. (I include myself in that equation btw). Be aware of what is going on in the world, but be even more cognizant of the state of your own soul. When you die and face judgment, Christ isn't going to ask you what you thought of Trump's presidency, nor if you liked Hillary better. He is going to ask you what YOU have done and said about others and what YOU accomplished in your life. YOU will be accountable for everything that you uttered, or typed. I have to remind myself of that all the time.

I have found a few priests, on Twitter, that are steeped in theology (and they are pretty funny too). They lift my spirits and my soul and I highly recommend them to anyone who is seeking some solid guidance and a few laughs each day. Of note are, Fr. Harrison Ayre @christian_state and the other is Fr.Goyo @FrGoyo. We all need to just take a breath and relax for a minute so do yourself a favor and follow these gentlemen. For me, it is nice to have an anchor of faith, kindness and a chuckle or two and I think that you will find them beneficial to your life as well. They are a breath of fresh air in a stagnating society.

Peace, Love and God bless you all.

Mare

BTW ~ as for the nasty Nellies you encounter out there? Pray for them.

Clarity, Conscience and a Dose of Reality

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As I write my blog post this week I am reminded of the Mother Teresa quote about people.  I do not have it in front of me, nor remember it by heart, but it does have a line that says, “People will be unreasonable, love them anyway.” It reminds me of another famous quote, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” ~ Jesus Christ.

Judging by the way that barbs are flying left and right, IRL and on social media we have all forgotten that commandment, myself included.

Admittedly, I didn’t just dip my toe into the cesspool of ill dispute on Facebook over the last few days; I dunked my whole damned foot into it. Now, mind you, I’m not mad at myself for my response, nor that they unfriended me. I’m angry that I allowed that person to get under my skin. I’m even angrier that I broke my cardinal rule of social media and that is to leave my really personal stuff off of it. Nope, instead I hung it out there to dry, as publicly as a sorority pledge’s undies are hurled up onto a flagpole in the middle of a campus. Lately, I don’t like the person that FB and Twitter brings out in me. I don’t like the personas that it brings out in some of my friends, or acquaintances, either. Even the Pope said something that made me go, wait…. WHAT?  

Whatever happened to respect and dignity? I blame social media for the breakdown of decency. After all, anonymity breeds contempt. Visit a public forum or news feed on Facebook to see that in all its glory. I’m pretty sure that things that are said on there would probably not be said to someone’s face. Generally speaking, if you can call someone a demeaning term to their face you have some real issues that you need to address in yourself.

If your conscience is clear well then good luck to you and God speed. Just a little reminder~ your will is not God’s will. What is okay in your book may not be in His book. You may want to crack open His book so that you can justify your actions and words when your time comes. I’m not an expert on much but I can say, with absolute certainty, that you ARE going to die.  We all are. That rant you are about to post or tweet? You know, the one about how someone else is wrong and you are right or you are smart and they are stupid? Yeah, that one; God will ask you about that. God will ask me about that. Of that, I am certain.

Which brings me to clarity.

I’ve had health issues for a long time, decades in fact. Now, I’m reaching the age where my friends are catching up with me. I have quite a few friends that have horrible allergies and crippling, diseases like RA and MS. I have friends that are dealing with heart disease and I have friends that are dealing with end of life things like cancer and chronic, rare, diseases like the one that I have, Cushing’s. I have found in my own journey that the suffering and illness has brought me a breath away from God, both literally and figuratively. The sicker I got though, the more clarity I had.  It is true, when your mortality is staring you down you think about your life. You don’t think about the big house that you didn’t get to live in, your job nor all the money you could have made. You didn’t think about what celebrity said what and ponder about every political rant out there. You think about the people in your life and those you have known throughout the years. You think about the choices that you made, good and bad, and contemplate the outcomes. You think about the things that you did to hurt people, intentionally and unintentionally.  You regret the hateful words you said or wrote to people. You wonder about what will happen to your loved ones when you are gone and how they will fare without you. You think about God. While you lie in bed you have some pretty long dialogues with him actually. You find yourself bargaining with him; Lord, give me just one more day. You find yourself offering your suffering up to him. It is the least that you can do since some days you are too weak and ill to get out of bed, or to hold a rosary. You pray to him, often and with an open heart. You thank him for every little blessing he has bestowed on you that day and throughout your life. Having been in that state I know that suffering provides two things; It binds you to God in a way that you never expected nor experienced ever before in your life, and it provides you with an immense amount of clarity. I think that I can say, with utmost confidence, that those of my friends that have suffered the most have the most amazingly close relationships with Him. I think they will agree with me on that. I marvel at their devout faith and their love of life and all that is good in it. Though they don’t realize it, they are the very best of humanity even if they are too sick to hold their own fork. They have, and still do, walk through that purging fire of purity. Oddly, those friends, who should be the angriest of all, are the ones most at peace. Perhaps it is because they have learned to embrace the smallest blessings and accomplishments they have. Perhaps it is their closeness to God. All I know, and I include myself in this equation, is that as the world spins itself into turmoil and chaos, we seem to have a quiet peace and a clarity that this is the way it is supposed to be. I spoke to one of them about it. She feels it too. We don't comprehend it, but we accept it as God's will. I think that my own suffering has given me the clarity to see God’s goodness and example shining through them. I too have accepted a life in the balance between life and death. It is just out of my reach but never far from me. It is for me to learn from them and not the other way around. It has also given me the clarity to see the hateful actions and words that people do and say to each other. I know how distressed I am about it and how it is affecting me. I cannot even begin to imagine what it is like to see it all through God’s eyes. If I am weeping, surely God is.

We are all equal in God’s eyes, even though we are not equal in each others' eyes. I leave my closing words to James 4:11-12.

“Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you ~ who are you to judge your neighbor?”

Peace,

Mare

Social Media; The Good, The Bad and The Downright Ugly

Truly? I am on the fence about social media which is odd coming from a blogger. My personal favorite is Pinterest. On that site I like to include a little bit of me, a little advertising, butterflies and a bunch of purple colored flowers to accentuate and punctuate the page.  Twitter I am just getting the hang of and joined to follow a few on there because, frankly, everyone is on there. Do I use it to it*s full potential yet for the business? Absolutely not. Facebook is wonderful for a business to have to connect with our fans and to network with other small businesses. Blogging? Well by now you should know I have an opinion about everything, but am not necessarily comfortable with sharing them all. Nor do I think anyone needs to be preached too. You have your Priests and Pastors to do that, as well as your own consciences. However, I do tend to do it as well when I get a bee in my bonnet.  YouTube is a whole other ball of wax. If it does nothing else it proves that I do not have photo shop and that my video developing needs, well more development.

This post, though is not about our use of social media as a business; it is about the drawbacks of using it in your personal life. One thing that drives me insane is being with someone, at a dinner, or whatever and they are glued to their cellphone. To me, that is one of the rudest things to do and it gives the impression that the game or text they are involved with is much more important than those around them.

What I do not understand is Facebook. My personal page, not the business page, has followers. Why? To be honest - I am not that interesting. All I can assume is that they are from one of the business communities I belong to and are mistakenly following me instead of the business page on FB. It would freak me out a bit to think that they are so interested in what recipes I share, or quotes I like or what posts I *Like.* The only reason why I went on FB to begin with was to create our business page. I am an incredibly private person and do not share photos, health updates, where I am nor what I am doing on it and I actually cringe when someone *tags* me in a photo or I show up on a map because the person I was with posted it (i.e. at this doctor with my Mom - ahem thanks Tom).

This week on FB, though, bought out the ugly in me and the ugly in a *friend.* We were reduced to cyber arguing. Seriously? Not my finest moment, that is for sure.  It is the last thing I would expect myself to be embroiled in, but it happened. After thinking about this person, prior chats on there with that person and things that the person said to me about others I said to myself, self, it is time you learned how to unfriend people. Why should I open myself up to the possibility that the person is sharing my personal information with others, just as that same person has shared other*s intimate information with me? It is tremendously awkward to know an extremely personal fact about someone that I know just well enough to say hi to in passing. This event had me so rattled, upset and angry that I practically ran to confession yesterday. That is no small feat (or should I say feet?) on these wobbly legs of mine.

Still, it amazes me what people do post on their FB page. In this day and age I would think that people would be a little more savvy in what they share and in pictures that they post. One of my older friends recently took his page down as he is job hunting. It is a wise decision in my opinion and he is in no way a renegade. The more I read on there, the more I see on other types of media sites, the more I know that privacy is a thing of the past. The more I read of others lives the more I ponder who are these people? Then again, they are probably thinking the same about me.  If I could be affected by cyber-bullying from spammers, trolls and yes even Facebook friends while sitting here selling Christian products, well then nobody is safe. Oh my gosh, I feel it coming on I am going to preach........if we as adults are open to all the downright ugly things that the internet has to offer then I implore you to know who your kids are talking to on Facebook and other media sites.  I have only two words to say about that - Parental Control. At the very least, keep your kids safe! Stepping down from the soap box now.....

Have a good week, and God bless,

Mare