THE JOY OF THINKING WELL OF OTHERS

Saint Therese of Lisieux

Sometime in my life, I resolved to try to put myself in the place of others in my estimation of them. Curbing my natural skepticism and critical nature has proved to be no pic nic, I can assure you, as I have often had to backtrack, review, revise, and then move forward with the current iteration of that plan for kindness and understanding.

"Nothing is sweeter than to think well of others."

Saint Therese of Lisieux

In the current case of Donald Trump, this is particularly difficult, because he is doing and saying evil things. How do I think well of someone who is hurting so many people?

"President Trump's Twitter account has been pure fire lately...
This is the kind of WHITE NATIONALISM we elected him for."
Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin

Firstly, I am unable to put myself in his position. I don't travel in anything like his circle of business or politics, but most pertinent is that I simply can't imagine myself doing and saying any of the horrible things he does.

allthatsinteresting.com

"32 Donald Trump Quotes You Have to Read to Believe"

"It is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than

for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle."

Jesus

The pursuit of power has always baffled me and, although I have had plenty of experience with people who deliberately hurt others in order to benefit financially, I never have understood their larcenous hearts. Most disturbing are those who find delight in hurting others.

Fortunately, these types seem to be in the minority. (I have personal experience with only one individual in my life, who exults in damaging people just for the pleasure of it. There has been no period of time in which I was in touch with that toxic character that they weren't enacting some plot to harm me or some other person in her orbit. Nevertheless, I have no insight. The situation is too far outside my ken.)

Jesus and the money changers

So, what do I do about this contradiction? I wish to think well of others, give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and look upon all with the kind regard demanded of us by our faith. How does one do this when faced with evil? I will not pretend that evil is good. So, what is the answer?

My latest resolution is to pray for people who are doing evil at the same time that I lobby against their hurtful actions, which is difficult, but that's the point, isn't it? Jesus knew what he was doing when He told us to pray for our enemies and do good to them. The spiritual exercise it demands is fearsome.

allthatsinteresting.com

"32 Donald Trump Quotes You Have to Read to Believe"

What occurs to me as the most important aspect of this is that I do not presume to know the inner heart of a person. I do not know what Donald Trump thinks. His words are a clue, but they aren't absolutely definitive. None of us has x-ray vision of the soul and we cannot say with authority exactly what are the motives of another person, even someone who speaks as much as he does.

It is crucial, for me, that I do not label any human being "evil" because I would be eliminating the Lord from the equation thereby. I would be dooming that human being to a life devoid of the possibility of repentance and rehabilitation. Certainly, I myself have benefited from the forgiveness of the Lord in the past. I must give everyone else that same assurance.

allthatsinteresting.com

"32 Donald Trump Quotes You Have to Read to Believe"

During these difficult times, when Trump's government is ripping children away from their parents and throwing them in cages to sleep on cement floors with paper blankets, crammed in with too many other children, none of whom have proper food or hygiene or anything necessary for mental and emotional health - and deporting all the immigrant children who are getting vital medical treatment not available in their country of origin and who will die without it - I want to scream to the heavens. You bet I have wanted to call Trump the most horrible of names. I have wanted to curse him and damn him to hell. It takes great restraint not to do so.

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

allthatsinteresting.com

Currently, there is a large group of people who are supporting government actions that are obviously evil - things that violate every precept we supposedly hold dear in our country - while at the same time confidently believing they are saving the world. Outsiders tend to presume that the people in that group know they are wrong and are deliberately doing wicked things in order to benefit in some way. That is sometimes the case, but not typically.

allthatsinteresting.com

"32 Donald Trump Quotes You Have to Read to Believe"

For whatever reason, whether through some brain washing, exotic fascination, or religious fanaticism, this group will support damnable atrocities of this administration, while at the same time asserting righteousness. I am frequently reminded of the Nazi era in Germany where Hitler rose to power, not through force, but through the support of ordinary Germans who somehow did not realize they were cooperating with evil. What is happening in our country is very similar to that time period. Trump's words are very similar, such as calling the news media "the enemy of the people," and "fake news."  Hitler called the press "lugenpresse," ("lying press') and likewise demonized vulnerable groups of people, i.e., the Jews, the gays, the disabled, the elderly, and the immigrant.




The term "lugenpresse" has started to be heard in Trump rallies, yelled out by the "alt right" supporters of Trump. It isn't surprising, since the Nazi Party and various white supremacist figures have lauded Trump. You can read more about it:

HERE - IN AN ARTICLE IN BUZZ FEE NEWS; and,

HERE - IN BREITBART

It is quite clear to me, and no doubt to all my readers, that this adoption of a Nazi propaganda tool by the American right wing is the antithesis of American democracy, in which respect for and support of journalists is enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution. It seems incredible to us that Trump sycophants aren't bothered by it.

Prior to his election, Trump talked about demolishing the First Amendment so that he could sue journalists who write unflattering things about him:

"We're going to open up those libel laws so when the 

New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total 

disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is 

there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can 

sue them and win money instead of having no 

chance of winning because they're totally protected. 

We're going to open up libel laws and we're going 

to have people sue you like you've never got sued 

before." Donald Trump

The First Amendment protects free speech for a very important reason. It is the bedrock of our democracy. We are a country in which our citizens are free to speak their minds. Any attempt to quash that freedom is a sure sign of a dictatorship or fascist movement attempting to assert itself. I am free to say anything I like about Donald Trump and his cohorts. My spiritual orientation is what makes me want to keep an appropriate "lid" on what I say about his spiritual condition, but if I were to be compelled by law to conform to a rule of only saying flattering things about him and his policies, I would definitely be in the resistance on that score.

Some day, the mist may clear from the psychic eyes of the die-hard Trump supporters in government, and they may recognize their error and thereafter change the way they operate. I need to leave a space open for those folks to have the time to transcend their current condition, while at the same time, I fight to protect vulnerable people who are Trump's targets. It isn't easy!

Every day, I fight this battle. I try very hard not to succumb to the natural human impulse to say that he is evil personified, or the anti-Christ or whatever other slur that comes to mind. I keep thinking about former president Jimmy Carter and how he was always extremely respectful of his colleagues and his competitors alike. In the debates, he always used to say "my esteemed opponent."

Instead of reacting against the personality of Trump, I am trying to focus on the really excellent example of the dignified, respectable, truly Christian Jimmy Carter, who has a gravitas that Trump will likely never have. Once again, it is a matter of where one puts one's attention, right?

Hate the sin. Love the sinner. Repeat.
God save us all, including Donald Trump

 Silver Rose

THE EVIL OF ASSUMPTION

"Nothing is sweeter than to think

well of others."

Saint Therese of Lisieux

As mentioned previously, this blog is sporadic, due to the natural ebb and flow of American life for a disabled senior lady living in a low-income apartment in the Southwest. Just the process of the cooking, cleaning and suchlike exhaust my aging body.  Since I started this blog with a view in mind that my personal experiences may speak to the larger class of people to which I belong, I am sure you understand that this is an intensely personal collection of writings in which there is almost nothing of what you'd call a "professional" vibe.

San Felipe de Neri parish church

Old Town, Albuquerque

(Photo protected by copyright-

No use allowed.)

Father Dennis, at San Felipe de Neri parish church once told me that advocating for the vulnerable is the way that I can turn the injustices perpetrated against me to the benefit of others. 

Swami Swahananda also helped me come to terms with some of this with his stories and corny jokes! 

One of his jokes deals with the difference between an optimist and a pessimist. When an optimist is thrown into a cell in which there is a large pile of horse dung, she crows with delight and starts digging through it, exclaiming "I just know there is a pony in here somewhere!" This describes the job I am doing with my blog just perfectly. Giving you all a glimpse into my personal experiences and how they relate to my quest for holiness (and sometimes just plain old survival).

I have some stories to tell you from my life, with all the above in mind.

Swami Swahananda

Something happened recently that has made me want to talk about the damaging aspect of assumptions, but it's a big topic, so I will focus in on a previous time in my life when this issue was particularly prevalent and personally ruinous.

One of the primary reasons I left the Hindu convent was my inability to deal with the constant gossiping lies of the other nuns. It was wrong of me to assume that these women should be better than any other group of ordinary women, but I was naïve about this. I should have realized that, just because one is a nun is no guarantee that one is ethical and immune from temptations. [Personally, I suspect that the tendency of women to gossip and tear one another down is the reason why men are in charge of the world to begin with, which is another issue I'd love to research one day.] At any rate, I experienced constant shocks when I ran up against this unattractive and unexpected state of affairs.

I  used to frequently catch one particular nun hesitating on the back stairs, with her head cocked in the particular way one does when listening in on conversations of others. Later, she would share these nuggets of information, though not always in their original form. Invariably, she would mishear or misconstrue something. It was comical, as I look back on it now, catching her poised on the stairs like that, but at the time, I felt the atmosphere in this place to be toxic, instead of spiritually helpful, because I was often the target of unkind speculation and gossip. The swami used to say they were jealous of me but I never understood why that would be the case.  

(I even woke up once to see my bedroom door cracked very slightly open, and this nun with her ear placed against the sliver of light that came through, which I thought was exceedingly bizarre. Was she listening to me snoring? I never could figure it out, and I was having enough problems with those people without calling her out on something she'd likely deny anyway.)

At that time, chocolate candies kept disappearing quickly from the snack cupboard, and several of the nuns assumed I was the culprit. I MUST have been, in their minds, because I was the chubby one. Without verifying their suspicions, they passed this rumor to residents of the ashram. 

The thing is - I wasn't the one gobbling up all the candies. I am not overly fond of chocolate.

The nun I used to catch eavesdropping in the stairwell went on vacation, and while she was gone, the chocolates remained in the cupboard.  It wasn't until she returned, and the chocolates began to regularly disappear once again, that the other nuns realized their error. Meanwhile, they'd spread their meanness all over the neighborhood, making me the butt of jokes. There is no way to suck this sort of thing back into the gossip machine once it's been spread everywhere. However, this experience did not keep them from continuing to spread lies - lies that live in the minds of others, even to this day.

When I first joined them, they spread rumors that I was lesbian, but by the time I had left, the same people were saying I'd been carrying on an affair with one of the ashram's male devotees while I was in the convent! Apparently, they couldn't make up their minds about what sort of sexual sins of which I was guilty! Horrible. Just horrible.

The physical work enjoined on the less senior nuns, which included me, was much more than my body's congenital deformations could tolerate. My back gave out and I was in a wheelchair for a short time. One of the senior nuns went to the swami and claimed I was "faking." He knew this was a lie and he immediately reported to me what she had said. I accosted her in the kitchen when she was preparing herself a nice tea tray and questioned her about it. Unused to the direct, honest approach, rather than the typical passive-aggressive rumor mill, she was nonplussed and hemmed and hawed. I called her to account for herself and she could not.

YEARS later, when I visited the swami to celebrate our arrangements for my taking sannyas, the back injury I had sustained in the convent had blossomed into a full-on disability that was largely responsible for my having to stop working outside the home, but because the nuns in the convent had spread the rumor, years previously, the devotee with whom I had coordinated part of my visit refused to park in the handicapped parking spot and made me walk a considerable distance to every location we visited while we were there. I was completely at her mercy and she flatly refused to use the handicap placard I brought with me. At the end of this visit, I was in terrible physical pain because of this woman's cruelty.

Another devotee tried to force me to move from a spot where she wanted to sit, even after I explained I was disabled and needed to remain where I was.

While the hosting devotee had offered to "put me up" she had instead placed me with her sister, above the garage, with a long set of stairs and no bathroom. When I asked to switch with someone who was NOT disabled, the sister coldly refused. She and the other guest looked down their noses at me. The lies of the nuns, from many years ago, had come to roost. (The next day, the sister drove me to an event. On the way, we stopped for an errand and I saw her use her dead mother's handicap parking placard so that she could park in a convenient spot for herself. Rumor mongers are often hypocrites.)

These are just a small portion of how I have experienced, first hand, the destructive power of assumptions, lies and gossip.

"Gossip can also kill, because it kills the

reputation of the person! It is so terrible

to gossip! At first it may seem like a nice

thing, even amusing, like enjoying a candy.

But in the end, it fills the heart with bitternesss,

and even poisons us."

~ Pope Francis

While I was a nun in that Vedanta convent, I started reading about Christianity, and was struck by the kindness and love of Christ. I had no experience with Christianity or Christians, but I really warmed to the Catholic mystics. I naively imagined that the Christians would be kinder, more gentle, less prone to gossip and rumor. But when I left the convent to investigate further, I discovered that people are the same everywhere. I had no problem making friends, but as soon as Trump came on the scene and I began to object to his misogyny, xenophobia, racism and bigotry, all but a handful of the Catholic friends turned their backs on me because they love Trump and were mad that I did not share their enthusiasm for him. His policies, words and actions are the antithesis of Christianity, yet many Christians are almost slavish in their devotion to him.

"He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding

to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies,

he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the

father of lies."

~ Jesus in John 8:44

This week, I have come to hear of yet another assumption about myself that led to gossip in the apartment complex where I live. It is a complete lie.  I have come to the point in life where it no longer surprises me. I have seen it SO many times. After all, I've been lied about by experts. I DO worry about the souls of the people who are spreading lies, though.

A Christian would say that Satan loves assumptions because they lead to gossip that is based on lies. Generating lies and promoting their dissemination is dangerous to the soul of the liar because the dark one is the father of all lies.

"I would rather you make mistakes in kindness

than work miracles in unkindness."

~ Mother Teresa of Calcutta

For the love of God, save your souls and the souls of your fellow Christians by avoiding making ASSUMPTIONS about people that lead to gossip. When you hear something derogatory about someone, don't spread it to others. You don't know if it is true or not, and you don't want to be linked with Satan.

Remember what Therese of Lisieux said about how pleasing it is to think well of others.

THINK WELL OF OTHERS and be blessed!

Blessings
Silver Rose