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| Irwin Blog Dec. 8, 2007 |
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| Saturday, 08 December 2007 | |||||||||||
   
Celebrating the Holiday Season
Posted by Irwin Kula 1. We say Happy New Year, but is there an enduring happiness we can find? Enduring happiness comes from reaching for a higher level of needs. A great meal makes us feel good, but satisfying a physical need is not enough. Happiness depends on satisfying emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs. It requires stretching yourself to act with care or compassion. A drink is fun, but you can’t find happiness satisfying the wrong need. 2. How do multi-faith families celebrate the holidays? We are in a brand new period, crossing boundaries and making it up as we go along. There are no objective answers. We need to recognize that there will be loss (certain practices, continuity, etc.), but there will always be gains if there is honesty and communication. Multi-faith families invite increased self-awareness. When done right, the sum of compassion is increased. 3. The holidays are a time of psychological and spiritual celebration, in which and hope and renewal can flourish. Cynicism is the most dangerous quality, and is the opposite of faith. Unlike doubt and anxiety, which offer invitations to grow, cynicism is a form of death. 4. New Year’s offers a chance to say goodbye to the past and begin anew. In America, a currency of forgiveness must be reasserted all the way up from the individual to the nation. It is hard to feel good until we find a healthy way to let go. The frenzy of holidays is an attempt to avoid feeling the full dimensions of the past, but a party or an expensive gift doesn’t replace the need for an apology, which is what allows for newness. 5. Regarding Iraq, on both sides in America people have been nasty. When a country is at war, it is not strange to bring the war home ─ it produces an anxiety from which we try to escape. But there is accountability on both sides. The right wing needs to stop questioning the patriotism of the left. The left needs to stop seeing the right as war mongers. This will enable us to begin a new conversation and let go of a piece of the past.
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