My sweetie gave a piano concert yesterday afternoon in our s
mall town. Forty of his friends and acquaintances came to enjoy the short, easily accessible classical music pieces by Debussy, Ravel, and Moussorgsky. He gave a short introduction to each piece, telling the audience what to listen for. They applauded each song with longer applause at the end.
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My favorite Christmas card this year says
Wishing you MORE WAG and LESS BARK this holiday.
Hope your holiday is filled with UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.
This is good advice for every single day of the year, whether or not it is a holy-day. In fact, practicing this well wishing–for ourselves and for others–turns every day, every meeting with an acquaintance, every encounter with a difficult person into a holy day, a sacred space of connecting with another person.
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Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning a changed man. This change of heart, change of mind is the result of deep insight. Not just intellectual insight that says, “Oh yeah. Unh-huh. I understand.” but the deep embodied insight that can turn our life around on a dime.
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The Ghost of Christmas Future shows Scrooge his own tombstone. Seeing how ill-remembered he is, Scrooge has a conversion experience.
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The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge his own death, with the charwoman, the laundress, and the undertaker stealing his possessions. The only people showing any emotion over Scrooge’s death are a couple who owe him money, who are now released from that debt.
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Scrooge notices 2 emaciated, dirty children hiding under the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present. GCP tells Scrooge to beware of these children, the boy named Ignorance and the girl named Want.
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Scrooge goes back to sleep, but is soon awakened by the Ghost of Christmas Present who takes him on a tour of his neighborhood. Cheer and goodwill are happening all around Scrooge, yet he is immune to it.
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The Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge memories of his childhood and as a young man. Scrooge loved his sister (the mother of his nephew Fred). He loved a young woman, Belle, who rejected him when she realized that money was more important to him than she was. He loved his employer, Mr. Fezziwig, from whom he inherited his business.
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Before we move on the the Ghost of Christmas Past, i want to highlight Jacob Marley’s Dharma talk on generosity.
“Mankind was my business.
The common welfare was my business;
charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.
The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water
in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
Nowadays, social media has the effect of selfing. We want our “self” to look good to the world. As one techie told me,
Facebook—Who I am.
LinkedIn—Who I am professionally.
Twitter—Who I am right now.
Pinterest—Who I want to be.
Google Plus—What I think.
Instagram—Romancing my life. How I want to be perceived and received by the world.
Throwing off the shackles, the fetters of cyberspace is not easy. In our heart of hearts, however, we are indeed interested in the greater good. And Jacob Marley eloquently states the conundrum we still find ourselves in, 175 years after Dickens published this timeless story.
Today, we use a different vocabulary than Marley’s charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence. We might say generosity, compassion, patience, and kindness. These are the true qualities our heart aspires to. These are qualities that we seldom exercise when we are in cyberspace.
Look someone in the eye today. Make a note of the negative judgments, the assumptions you are making about this person. Instead, look for the good in them, and in everyone you meet today.
Let me know what you find.
