2010: My hopes and thoughts on the New Year

As we close 2009 it seems to me that the past 13 months has felt like 13 years. I still have hope.

Thirteen months ago we were thrown into a recession. We had just experienced what had seemed to be a near-crash of the financial system when the housing bubble popped. We talked about the great depression and made comparisons with it.

While I am not an economist, I would rather have called it the credit bubble. Too many people who would not have normally qualified for the regular 30-year conventional loan were getting these large adjustable rate mortgages (ARM's) with obscenely low rates that were attached to other economic indicators. They were living outside of their means, and when the interest rate went up on their mortgages, they were immediately in arrears.

The banks sold the bad loans and their buyers resold them and converted into securities and derivatives. They had been coined "toxic assets." In November 2008, the federal government bought with tax payer money much of the toxic assets from banks in essence bailing out the banks. The damage had been done to the economy.

We saw the pain slowly creep through the economy. Banks were laying off people. People were not buying cars and so General Motors and Chrysler both declared bankruptcy and reorganized. The pain trickled through the automotive sector and then into other economic sectors. We probably all knew someone who lost a job.

We probably all endured some of the pain passed on in some way. Restaurants were giving out smaller portions. Our employers did not give us raises. We did not get our holiday turkeys or any of the spiffs.

We were expected to draw within ourselves our own sense of intrinsic reward for having a job. Some of us (me especially) were expected to do more with less all the more. It was all the more difficult when you have abusive and neglect management not caring about morale. I sure felt exploited at times.

As different times bring different terms. The most poignant term to me for this recession was "under water." This referred to a mortgage holder who has or had a mortgage that was for more than the assessed value of their home.

There was one benefit to the recession. Gasoline/petroleum prices went down. This is my layman theory: there was less credit for speculators to compete for oil futures. When the credit dried up, the dollars dried up to inflate oil futures. The oil futures deflated and our gas prices practically dropped from around $4.67-$5.00 down to below $2.00 per gallon in late 2008.

When diesel and gas prices were high, we were getting a trickle-down effect of higher grocery and other consumer goods due to the dependence on trucking. When the fuel prices dropped, so did grocery prices, but then people without jobs and with lower pay still had an equal problem with buying power.

That aside, many of us have learned to be simple again in our expectations. Many of us have re-learned the difference between wants and needs. Many of us will do a better job in managing our personal affairs and in being sensible.

It sounds somewhat crazy but Nietzsche and the Bible were in half agreement about what trials do to you. Nietzsche said "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." The Epistle of James in the New Testament said
²Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds,
³because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
⁴Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not
lacking anything. (New International Version)

Trials do make you stronger in some form or another. For those who seek to learn, they will be more mature and will not make the same mistake twice.

We will lick our wounds, get up and figure out what we will do. Then we will make effort to do it.

We will not always get where where we want to go, but we will put the past and the present behind us and be somewhere that is at least different if not better.

So, at this point, I have hope. I am trying to take inventory of the different life and professional lessons I have learned in the past year. I have hope that I can put what I have learned to use in 2010.

As with most years, the new year is full of most of the same from the past year. People will be people like people have always been people. Some of the same things will be happening:

• Politicians will sling mud
• Babies will be born
• Dogs will get run over in the road
• Bosses will act dumb
• Your crazy relatives will continue to be crazy
• Your brain-less in-laws will continue to be brain-less
• You will have moments of laughter
• You will have sad moments
• You will find yourself angry at times
• What you hoped for is not all going to come true.
  

So, the year is ahead of us. We will have choices and we will be stuck in some situations where we did not seem to have a choice. We will only get out of those stuck-situations when it is time that we get unstuck.

I will do my best. I hope that you do too. It is all that we can do in the end.

A Message of Christmas Hope. December 26 comes 24 hours later

I have have hated Christmas since 1977 when my mother said, "just bring the gifts in and we'll open them around the TV."

In my high school, college, and seminary years when I was home for Christmas, it was some of the most boring times. I could not wait to get into the next school term because a break from school was a trip into boredom.

For at least 32 years since my mom's thoughtless comment, Christmas has been a struggle. I have wanted fulfillment and meaning. There have been a few Christmases that were better than others, but Christmas for me is drudgery as the the holiday itself as the story of the Incarnation does not always move me emotionally.

It has been a little better with kids. They, in their child-like mindsets believe in the magic. Their happiness with the toys at least reminds me that there is more to the world than their problems.

The past few years when they have been able to read advertisements and comprehend TV commercials have been a little annoying: "Daddy, can I have that? Can I? Can I? Can I?" I am able to steel my annoyance with the memory that I did that to my parents at that age too. But it all feeds back into my cynicism.

Okay, while I have gotten little feedback about this blog and I am not sure if people really read this outside of one of the guys I go to church with, I seek to offer you an unique message of hope:

It is okay if you are having a depressing Christmas.

You do not have to have a merry Christmas if you are not feeling merry. There is nothing particularly wrong with you if you are depressed with Christmas as we know it. However,

You just need to survive it.

Commercialism and the music industry has been trying to sell us that we should buy . . . buy . . . buy. They and the news media have insinuated that it is our patriotic duty to go out and max out our credit cards because the retail sectors base their whole business plans on holiday sales. They pass on the not-so subtle message that jobs are on the line if stores do not make their sales projections.

Christmas has traditionally been a time where Christians remember the birth of Jesus Christ. The birth of Jesus is a magnificent story where God comes to earth in the form of a human baby to offer salvation to the world, but I wish to clarify. . .

Christmas as we know it is not in the Bible.

Christmas is an observance that was started by church leaders in the 4th Century AD as an alternative to a pagan celebration. There are certain pagan symbols that were mixed in over the years. For example . . . the Christmas Tree is not in the Bible, neither is the lamb talking to the shepherd boy in the apocryphal song "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

The problem with Families.

We long to have connection and intimacy with the people who get labeled family because we are genetically related to them. However, there are a number of humongous if not catastrophic problems with them.

Many of us out there have family members who do not return our phone calls. We and they have relationships where we are both control freaks and we can't really stand each other for more than two minutes at a time if even then.

Many of us have family members who are just evil perpetrators who have fooled other family members into thinking that they are just the greatest thing since sliced bread. We get around them and we feel sick and angry because we were abused and other family members are in total denial about it.

Many of us have family members who simply have their heads stuck up their own posteriors (I had to clean this one up). They do not listen, nor do they comprehend what we are saying or writing. Some of them are also addicted to substances, sex, work or gambling and they are not emotionally and mentally in gear.

I have no easy answers for your pain today. I have to admit that life is full of pain and coping means

tolerating the distress that we have.

We can only tolerate distress for so long. We must get away from it sooner than later. That is why some people attempt or commit suicide at the holidays--they are stuck in their emotions and days can feel like years.

Now that I mentioned the S-word, I am encouraging you NOT to consider it. It is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Don't get lost in your emotions.

When people get stuck in their negative emotions, they do not look at the facts. This is when people make mountains out of mole hills. So Let's look at these five (5) facts . . .

1. The Christmas holiday season lasts approximately 30 days each year.
2. December 25 lasts only 24 hours.
3. December 26 comes at the same time every year and marks the end to the regular Christmas season.
4. Being alive on December 26 means that you have survived another Christmas if you did not celebrate it.
5. Surviving Christmas is an acceptable option when you are not celebrating it.

I have my ideas of how to survive Christmas in a healthy way, but I am assuming that if you are reading this, you have a brain of your own to make your own decisions.

See you on December 26.