Immediate Needs

In the Christmas season, especially, our thoughts turn to the countless people who cannot participate in either festivities or in gift-giving.
Perhaps you are in this category now, this year. Perhaps it's the first time in your entire life that the words, "immediate needs", have come to apply to your life.
In a time of hope - isn't that what our winter holidays mean to us? - for far too many, it's not easy to muster hope for our situations, especially when wishing for much better for those who depend upon us.
And yet, as in the time-worn image of a caveman in a snowy region, carefully sheltering a tiny bit of kindling in his hands, conveys - as he gingerly nurturing it, hoping that the moisture won't affect it, that a strong wind won't blow it away until he has a chance to place it in a dry cave and to encourage it to grow into a warm fire - faith is at the heart of hope.
Without faith, hope is a helpless feeling.
Without faith, our long-ago ancestors would not have had the strength to live through the seemingly interminable winters of the ice ages at a time when survival itself was extremely difficult for all primates and when nothing could be taken for granted.
Within our D.N.A. are certain tools that we might not appreciate enough.
As we all understand - especially since Oprah has stressed it in her media preentations - an attitude of gratitude is not only good for you, it's essential to adopt if you wish to prosper, and even more, merely in order to enjoy your life.
While it might not always be easy, especially during these times, focusing your attention on what you want to keep in your life by blessing it - blessing each and every thing in your life you love and want to keep, individually, as a habitual sort of exercise or meditation - is a simple way to express gratitude. And it's fun!
It brings each one of the things you adore and cherish to your mind, from your abilities, your bodily resources to your loved ones, from your autos and machines to the flowers in your garden and the wildlife in your world to mind. It enables you to spend a golden moment or two with each, held in your mind the way you would hold a cherished pet in your arms and to express love.
During the process, you'll notice a warm glow stirring from within your rib cage - a kindling coming to life - as your power to love and to appreciate grows.
Beneficial to your spirit and your health, the loving glow that grows will be added to if you retain this practice on a daily basis, and will assist you in first, recognizing the wealth you already have right now in your life, and two, your connection to our Creator, which will, of course, infuse you with even more faith and strength to achieve your aims for you and your loved ones.
Charity is born of this, and remembering the heart of the season, which is compassion for all beings, empathizing with the lives of those in the world who need far more than you need, and prayiing for each and every life and each and every place in the world is a holy way to honor the love within you in the season that is hardest for most.
Those gifts I'd mentioned that are legacies bequeathed within our D.N.A.?
Best explained in that analogy I had drawn above, of a cave man cherishing a small promise of light and warmth in his rough hands in the middle of winter, it's the small, quiet promise inside that tells us each that, even in the most difficult of times, the strength - a stubborn determination, a stalwart, heroic promise we make to ourselves, to our loved ones, and to God, that we will use every resource, every talent, and every breath in order to make it, just another step, just another day, until, again, the sun returns and our way is made easier.
And with that, the determination to share, to help others, to do what is right - this is the light within us that has caued, throughout the long ages, our specie to make it through countless hard seasons, through innumerable losses and sorrows.
This is how faith can carry us through until things turn around.
And until then, counting your blessings, finding ways - and there are always plenty of ways - to help others and to honor Jesus in His season, whether you are a Christian or not.
Also called the season of giving, even if you only have your needs met, you are wealthy by the standards of most of the world's people right now, and richer than most of the people who have ever lived.
Giving to those whose needs are not met is the best way to proclaim your own weatlh, and the best way to honor your spirit.
By having your immediate needs met, I am referring to the basic requirements of life - not to late mortgage bills and so on. If you have food and shelter you are rich by most standards and therefore, can share, even if it is only giving of yourself by volunteering to help others at Christmas.
Somehow those cave-dwelling ancestors were able to fan those little flames in the harshest winters and to carry on, even when their stamina was gone, even when sorrows plagued them and times were far more lean than most of us can ever imagine.
Do you think that they would be happy to see that their perseverance had only enabled self-centered, ego-centric, greedy humans to survive? The only way to honor their sacrifices is to remember others - the elderly, the ill, the homeless, the lonely, and the poor. As hard as it might be for you, imagine if you also had domestic abuse in the holiday season or were an incurable in a hospital.
There are so many easy way to share love in the season ! Just bringing a bouquet of flowers to an invalid at a nursing home - leaving it at the desk, asking an attendant to give it to someone who will not be getting a visitor during Christmas would be sweet. Use your imagination!
That light in the soul of humanity is our collective way of connecting to God as well as to our own strength, belief in ourselves as well as belief in the goodness of creation and a way of remembering that we are all here to care.
You'll feel that glow expand as you bless your life and as you share, and then you'll realize that the Christmas Season is not about buying things, it's about thanking God for the many, many blessings He has alrady given us, and yes, the very best things are really free and they're already ours. Rather than focusing on having more, recognize that the blesings of the sunshine, of our senses drinking in the beauty of nature, that we can exist at all are the supreme gifts, so revel in them and become a little shining sun yourself by shedding light for ohters.
Make yourself a blessing this year!