What an amazingly blessed week I have had! By a strange, unnexpected, and interesting turn of events, I have lost my suitcase, not through two different airports on an international flight, mind you, but on a bus in which you load your suitcase where you leave and you pick it up when you (and the bus) get to your destination. Some step of that didn't quite come to fruition and so for some reason when I went to pick it up today when we got back, it was not to be found. It is for this reason that I am unable at the momment to download pictures for you from the week because, though I have my camera -and all of my pictures!- with me (thank God!), I think that my memmory chip converter was in the bag. Strange. We will try to call the bus company tomorrow and track it down, which would make me very glad. I am so thankful to God, though, because nothing ABSOLUTELY necessary was in it. I.E., I still have my one pair of jeans, my glasses, my passport, and all of my money, not to mention my journals (the one I finnished and the new one I started), for which I am infinitely thankful! This is completely beside the point, but I have to say while I'm at it, that this is a situation in which I would say for the second time in my life "God has a sense of humor." That I would say it in this situation is precisely why I always got the impression that if God has a sense of humor, it must be in seeing us suffer or go through difficult situations, because it seems people always seem to use that saying when things go WRONG, or not how someone wanted or expected them to go. However, this is the second time in my life that I say this because the first was in the second week that I was here, in circumstances that revealed to me impecably clearly just how intimately God knows me and is involved in my life! It came clearly and wonderfully to me then: if laughter is one of the most beautful aspects of human nature, why would our Creator, who made us and from whom all good things come, not love to LAUGH!? So it is I have come to believe that God does, indeed, have a sense of humor, and it is not in seeing us struggle at all! Sometimes, I think that perhaps God's sense of humor (at least in the now two times that I feel I've experienced it personally) is what helps us not to take ourselves (helps me not to take myself) so seriously! In fact, isn't that what all humor helps us to do? In a life where we are constantly under the tireless birrage of every kind of imaginable worry, problem, or menial task of day-by-day existance, to be able to laugh at something -most especially at yourself!- brings such a lightness to your spirit, doesn't it?
Now imagine, if you will, laughing with your friends, or with your family, while watching a movie, perhaps, or listening to a story, or making funny faces, or ANYTHING that causes that bubbly sound of contagious giggles. What is the feeling that you get in your heart during that moment? Are you thinking about your bills, your homework, the argument you had earlier that day, a dissagreement with someone, the clothes that you will wear tomorrow, the laundry that still needs to be washed or folded? Um, personally I think it's safe to say that generally the answer would be: NO! When you laugh, especially with those you love, what is it that compells you to participate in such a silly and alltogether unproductive activity? Say it simply: you are happy! Happy. Happiness. I think that I have found a major cultural gap this week, a missunderstanding of this one word, which now means much more to me because of a new perspective of explanation.
What does this sentence mean to you: "Do whatever makes you happy." ...?
Personally, I think of a great number of things, but I'll leave it to what first comes to your mind.
At first glance, that was the advice that I was given at the youth vacation with the Movement this week (which, by the way, was not in Switzerland but in Northern Italy, near the boarder of Austria). It took much patience and many wonderful people to help me to finally understand an elementary and vital difference of the perception of this idea of happiness, that the people in the Movement know it to be (don't get me wrong; it is not that all Italians see it this way). There was a girl who helped me to understand what they were talking about when they said "happiness." She said that just a year ago she lived very differently; she smoked pot, for instance, and always went out partying with her friends. "When I went out with my friends," she said, "we were happy... but the next day, it went away. We were not happy. It was not true happiness."
The word I have heard more often than any other word this week is "desire." Every human heart has a Desire for the Mystery, which is the eternal, God, happiness (which are really all the same thing). This is basically the exact same thing as what I have heard since I was a young child watching the Doughnut Man fill dougnuts with doughnut holes: "There is a Jesus-shaped hole in every heart that cannot be filled by anything else." I just watched an online video called "Happieness and God," (I found the link on dictionary.com when I was looking up how to spell 'happiness' correctly because ever since watching 'The Pursuit of Happyness' I am always extremely confused whenever I try to spell that word!). In the video, the Gospel was quickly given. At the beginning the man said that people can try to find happiness in many things, such as a good meal, friends, or being financially well-off, but that the problem with those things is that they fade; they do not last and they do not satisfy. What my heart learned this week does not contradict anything that I have learned already; it was just a new perspective, a new focus, which I was so thankful to get to experience.
It's 10 thirty and I've had quite the action-packed couple of weeks (two vacations in a row, very little sleep, and climbing mountains I never thought I would see -or survive- in my entire life!), so let me just say this quite simply, because, though there are many words that can be and are used to explain and enhance upon the idea, the basic essance of it is actually so simple you will ask me why I have made you read so much just to get to this point. So yes, read it and revel in its simplicity, but please, if you decide that you believe it, do not take its power for granted.
WE EXPERIENCE GOD THROUGH LITTLE THINGS
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