Rumor has it

In the workplace it can surreptitiously move under the guise of “networking.” In the church it can be elevated to the status of “prayer requests.” But when brought to a court of law, it is usually called “defamation of character.”   

It can be dangerous and destructive. Written or spoken words intended to harm or hurt others can have serious implications, especially when those words are communicated in the public domain.

People engage in gossip for various reasons. Most of us have gossiped at one time or another; and we’ve been the victims of it, too. Chronic gossipers with destructive intentions tend to have poor self esteem; putting others down seems to make them momentarily feel better about themselves.

Gossip can also be a way of getting attention, giving the gossiper a sense of power. Being the first with the exclusive news gives some people an adrenaline rush.

And some people’s motive for gossip is simply revenge: They want to get back at someone who has hurt them in some way.

 Just as idle time is a devil’s workshop, so boredom is gossip’s incubator. I sometimes find myself asking, “Where do people have the time to come up with this stuff?”

And all it takes is a word pulled out of context, twisted in just the slightest way, and voila: You have a nice, juicy piece of gossip cooked to perfection and ready to serve a hungry recipient who chews on it, then passes it to the next gossiper. Naturally, it gets nastier with each helping.

Gossip is nothing new: We humans have been engaging in it for centuries. The classical Greek Athenian philosopher, Socrates, observed, “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.” The biblical King David spoke about those “who are always twisting what I say” (Psalm 56:5), and he called out a gossiper: “You love to destroy others with your words” (Psalm 52:4). Even Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t immune to gossip. One of the rumors about him was that he was “a glutton and a drunkard” (Matthew 11:19).

No, the rumor mill has been busy for many years.

But with the advent of texting, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, the old rumor mill has evolved into an electronic phenomenon, allowing gossip to go viral instantaneously. And once it’s out, it’s virtually impossible to retrieve. What’s in the public domain can damage a person’s reputation, and that can result in legal consequences. If you haven’t thought about it, you should. You might find yourself in trouble before you realize what you’ve done. And, you need not think you have to be a helpless victim of malicious gossip, either.

Defamation of character is passing along false information as fact. The intent has to be to hurt a person or an organization, and it has to be told or written to people other than the victim. So, if you tell the furniture salesman to his face that he is a lying scoundrel because he sold the furniture he promised to you based on what you said you would pay, that’s not defamation of character. But, sending an email to his customers or publicly accusing him of the same is. More specifically, slander is when defamation of character is spoken; libel is when it’s written.

If you are the victim of defamation of character, legal action may be your only recourse.  But if at all possible, try and ignore it. Making more of the matter can do just that: make more of the matter.

You can always take the tactic of Henry, whom Mildred, the church gossip, accused of being a problem drinker. She had seen Henry’s old pickup parked in front of the town’s only drinking establishment, and that was enough evidence for Mildred to pronounce poor ol’ Henry guilty.

When apprised of her accusations, Henry didn’t explain, defend, or deny anything. He said nothing.

But later that evening, Henry quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred’s house, walked home, and left it there all night.

Don’t you love Henry?

Near the end of her hit, “Rumor has it,” pop vocal artist Adele sings the words, “Just ‘cause I said it, don’t mean that I meant it.”

And I might add, “Just ‘cause you heard it, don’t mean that you need repeat it.”

Because that’s the way rumors have it.

Dealing with Stress

I was working my way through a row of tomatoes, picking what I could while pulling weeds at the same time. Lori was shoulder high in the okra, quickly filling one bucket and exchanging it for an empty one. Tossing the weeds to the side, emptying another bucket of tomatoes, eyeing the rows of ripe peppers, I said to Lori, “I’m overwhelmed. I’ve gotten behind, and I don’t see how we can catch up.”

The garden, meant to a stress reliever, was beginning to feel like one more thing that had to get done on a day already maxed with responsibilities.

It is easy to get so overloaded with good things that enjoying them gets buried beneath the very activity of doing them. We want the kids to play ball, then get exhausted from attending games and practices; we urge them to take music lessons yet pant from one rehearsal to the next; we want to stay healthy but struggle finding time for the gym.

Usually it’s not one huge stress factor that causes us to feel fractured; it’s a combination of several. I was frantically working in the garden after Lori and I rushed through the grocery store so I could prepare for a wedding later in the afternoon before I studied my sermon. And, walking from the garden to the house, I realized I was carrying, in addition to vegetables, the emotional weight of moving my son next week.

The problem was not the weeds in the garden but me and my commitments.

We are overloaded: responsibilities at work, email and text messages that seem never ending, junk mail stacked on our desks, and oh yes, house work and lawn work---all seem to pile on us like football players on a tackled running back.

We get so involved in what we are doing that we don’t realize what’s happening to us. One doctor has said that stress is the most harmful and widespread health hazard in our society today. So, what do we do about it?

Take time to step back and evaluate your situation. If what you enjoy doing has become burdensome, it may be because you’ve taken on too much. Ask yourself what’s truly important. Take time to identify stress makers and stress relievers. While we can’t always avoid stressful situations, we can make time for tension releasers.

Rest. When we don’t get enough rest, everything seems worse. Our bodies and minds can’t operate efficiently when we are tired and exhausted. There is a reason why the Lord told us to take a day for rest: It’s necessary for our spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being.

Take one day at a time. We can prepare for the future, but we can only live in the present. Jesus admonished, “Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matthew 6:34).

Exercise. A brisk walk or run can do wonders to burn off stress. Endorphins are released as you exercise, helping you feel better.

Set boundaries. Define what’s important to you, set boundaries, and then be prepared to defend them. If spending time with your family is a priority, you will have to say “no” to those who unwittingly call you to neglect that time.

Take control of your schedule. If you keep taking on more, something else in your life is edged out. Look at your schedule. Is it realistic? Are you expecting superman capabilities of yourself, thinking you are able to leap with a single bound from one item on the “to do” list to the next ? If you are feeling overwhelmed, like I did that day in the garden, you might be putting too much on your plate.

Take action. Someone has said insanity is doing the same things you’re always done while expecting different results. If you are stressed and continue living the way you are, you will continue to feel overwhelmed. You are the only one who can take steps to correct your course.

So, yesterday we went to a movie, and I forgot about obligations for a while, came home, sat under the stars, gazed at the moon, winked at my garden resting silently in the dark, told it to be patient, for I would visit it tomorrow, then closed by daily planner, gave it to God, and slept soundly.

The Unanswered Question in Theatre Number Nine

Why?

It’s the first question I asked, and likely the one you first asked too.

It still echoes from theater number nine in the Century 16 Theatre in Aurora, Colorado, where 12 people were murdered and 58 injured.

 And it’s the one question we will never completely know.

We will in time learn the details of the hows: how he ordered the materials police say he used for the deadly booby traps found in his apartment; how he purchased the guns; how he so elaborately rigged his apartment with explosives and chemicals; and how he allegedly staged his murders. We may even learn how particular social and personal conditions led to his heinous act.

We are interested in those hows, but it’s the why that eludes us.

Why would a brilliant, budding young scientist with a stellar academic record, a young man with no criminal history beyond a traffic violation, a student among the academically elite, working on his Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of Colorado-Denver, why would he meticulously plan and carry out one of the most deadly crimes in U.S. history?

We feel better if we can find a reason. The media once again jumped to conclusions. Within hours of the massacre, ABC News’ Brian Ross erroneously reported that a man with the same name as the suspect living in the same town was a member of the Colorado Tea Party. ABC promptly apologized.

Such efforts to politicize the murderous actions of a crazed man are futile attempts to answer the question, why.  

We may feel better if we can find a reason for senseless acts of violence. And it’s okay to ask why. It’s our nature to ask why because we want a reason, a logical explanation for a senseless, meaningless act. We want to bring order to chaos. We somehow feel that if we can find an explanation for the evil, we can take measures to avoid it.

This murderous action reminds us that intelligence and academic achievement do not always equate with sanity or good moral judgment. An intelligent mind can be used for good or evil, according to how one chooses to use it.  God is not a puppeteer. And evil by its very nature is senseless, opposing all that God is. We cannot always understand the why of evil. As the prophet Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

Our unanswered question in no way diminishes God’s presence among the grieving. Though we may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, surrounded by evil, God is still with us in our suffering and pain, even though the dark night may rise, momentarily extinguishing the light, and the pain may overwhelm, temporarily numbing our awareness of Him.

ABC News aired a video showing the suspect, James Holmes, speaking at a science camp at Miramar College in San Diego when he was 18. He gave a presentation on “temporal illusion,” which Holmes defined as “an illusion that allows you to change the past.” In the presentation, he says he studies subjective experience, which he says, “takes place inside the mind, as opposed to the external world.”

Somewhere in time the reality of the external world and the illusion of his inner mind collapsed into a reign of terror.

Why? Was it a “temporal illusion…that allows you to change the past?”

Unfortuanly it’s not.

It’s just evil.

Knowing there is no explanation for it, we lovingly embrace those closest to us as we call on God to bring hope to the hopeless and healing to the hurting.

When it comes to marriage, religion matters

It’s wedding season; May through August are the most popular months for marriage ceremonies. While planning a wedding, depending on the elaborateness of the ceremony and number of guests attending, can involve months of preparation---thriving in a marriage is a lifelong project, filled with challenges. Somebody said in marriage there are three rings:  engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering.

One of the most important aspects of a successful marriage is often overlooked and that is the role religion plays in a marriage, or to be more accurate, the dynamic of spirituality in loving relationships.

The recent split between Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise, with his commitment to the Church of Scientology supposedly having a role in her decision to divorce, is a stark reminder that in marriage, religion does matter.

The reason religion matters is because we are not only physical and emotional beings but spiritual ones as well. When we disregard that aspect of ourselves, we neglect something real and vital to our wholeness and wellness. As the French Jesuit priest and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, “We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience.”

Physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy are all essential to a fulfilling relationship where two people become one while maintaining their unique identities.

In Couples who Pray, authors Squire Rushnell and Louis DuArt challenge couples to pray together aloud for five minutes a day for 40 days, promising that the deeper level of spiritual intimacy will lead to a more fulfilling sex life. The authors maintain that love making, romance, and conversation increase 20-30% when couples practice praying aloud together and fear of divorce diminishes to 0%.

I’m not interested in the quality of Holmes’ and Cruise’s intimate life. However, Cruise’s commitment to his faith and Holmes’ apparent lack of the same appears to have created a rift.

Holmes was raised a Roman Catholic. Whether her conversion to Scientology was sincere and deliberate or a cavalier decision made in the heat of romance may be argued by both parties. According to Us Weekly, Holmes is fed up with Scientology’s rules and its demands of child rearing. The couple has one daughter, six-year old, Suri.

The venture of enjoying an intimate spiritual relationship within a marriage when the couple has totally different religious beliefs requires understanding, respect, and tolerance on the part of both people. The more convinced one partner is that his/her religious beliefs are the only legitimate expression of spirituality, the more problematic any unity becomes and the more likely the prospects are for a conflicted relationship. It's usually when children come into the picture that suppressed reservations of the other partner’s beliefs emerge.

Tom Cruise is a devout member of Scientology, which maintains that our problems began 75 million years ago when Xenu, dictator of the “Galactic Confederacy,” brought alien beings to our planet, placed them in volcanoes around the world, then vaporized them with hydrogen bombs, scattering the beings’ spiritual essences across the atmosphere until they attached themselves to humans, harming us spiritually, resulting in a plague of psychological and social problems, maladies from which only Scientology can free us through a process called auditing.

When it comes to religion, you might say Tom is from Galactica; Katie is from Rome.

Mark Ebner, who has reported on celebrities and Scientology for 15 years, said on the Today Show, “When it comes to Hollywood couplings within Scientology, either you’re in or out. There’s no half measures there. If you’re out, the marriage is as good as over.”

To be sure, couples of different religions can have fulfilled, intimate marriages. And couples with identical religious beliefs can have failed ones.

But all things being equal, the closer a couple is spiritually, the easier it is to find intimacy at other levels as well, with each strengthening the next.

Until two unique individuals, one from Mars the other from Venus, find themselves gradually becoming as one on Earth.