Letter: Be kind and forgive one another

In the past few years there have been those that we love dearly who have gone on before us. I deeply mourn the loss of their smiles and their voices during this holiday season.

It saddens me so to see the turmoil of our families and am reminded that none of us are promised tomorrow. Our lives are such a short time on this Earth and much too short to spend in anger with those we hold dear in our lives.

I am asking you to think. Truly, if you woke tomorrow and found that person no longer there, how would you feel? Would you have regret knowing the last word you ever spoke to that person was in anger? Or that the last time they saw your face, it was scowling at them? Or the last time they heard your voice it was saying angry, hurtful things?

Where do our children stand in all of this? We spend our time teaching them how to love each other and be kind to others and not speak badly of others. What are we showing them? How are we hurting them?

Forgiveness is a difficult thing to do, especially if you feel you have been wronged by someone. But sometimes, a truce must be called in order to begin the way to forgiveness. As different as we all are, we cannot expect everyone to think and feel the same as we do. Sometimes we just have to agree to disagree and move forward. When the walls come up and you are continually stuck in the same place, it creates a rut, and then a bog that will suck you deeper into the pit.

I am asking you all to think. What is this season for? This is the season for thankfulness. What are you thankful for? I ask you to begin to thank God for everything in your life, and I do mean everything. Try to think of all you have and thank him for each thing. For the place you live, that you are able to afford the place you live, that you have an income that allows you to pay for it, that you have food, that you have friends, that you have beautiful healthy children, you have decent clothes, a warm place to sleep on cold nights, you have a blanket to cover you, and you are not in prison. If you really think, you have all sorts of things to be thankful for. Think of those who have nothing.

Please, let’s set our eyes on the reason for these holidays, and in the words of the most famous person I know, “Be ye kind, one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.”

Gloria Robertson

administration

Denham Springs

Comments

1) Comment by Adopt a Dog - 05/12/2012

And you shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endures to the end shall be saved. Matt. 10:22

2) Comment by Whatchange - 05/12/2012

You are right Adopt a Dog, but the mere word "GOD" invokes all kinds of dredged thoughts and words. The whole point of this letter is "This is the season for thankfulness". She does use "This is the Season" so one could assume it is to include Thanksgiving. What the letter writer was really asking is, what if a love one we treat badly or fight with is gone tomorrow, how would we feel. I can honestly answer that question. I lost a son a few years back, we were fighting at the time over something so stupid, he was wearing his hat backward and I didn't approve. We argued, he left mad and I went inside mad, he tried to make up, but my hard headedness and stubbornness would allow it, I was right, he was wrong, the last time I saw him, I just drove up from work, he was home talking to his mom, he walked out the door to go somewhere and stopped and tried to talk, he said hey, as I walked pass him I said yep. The last words I ever spoke to my son were yep. Words cannot even began to explain how I feel. I have lost a brother to birth defect, a sister to cancer, a son, brother, and niece to accidents, the latter three a year apart, and yes I still believe in the God all mighty, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, Virgin Mary, and the Holy Trinity, I do not push it on anyone and I truly don't care what anyone's beliefs are, but it simply amazes every time a letter such as this one is written and the word "God" is used one time, that is all most get from it. The entire point of this letter was missed because of peoples hatred for God, or maybe, its just the belief people have in something they have no proof exist, something that people feel in their hearts, and the power of that belief is so strong that it invokes fear in those who don't. Who knows. I going hunting now.

3) Comment by Adopt a Dog - 04/12/2012

Maybe I'm confused, but I don't think I see the word Christmas in there anywhere and the word "God" was only mentioned once. There's a whole lot more words in this letter other than that one word.

4) Comment by Springer98 - 04/12/2012

@tradewinns, Job ch2 v10 Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity? NAS

5) Comment by Whatchange - 04/12/2012

Actually they believe Jesus was born in September, approximately six months after Passover. Christmas is celebrated in part because the pagans celebrated "The feast of the Son of Isis" and then the Christians stepped in. Here's something to think about also, the bible talks about the shepherds tending their flock during Jesus birth, what Shepard in his right mind would be tending his flock in the dead of winter. Really, I'm just giving a hard time people, I really don't care what you celebrate, believe in, or when you celebrate your beliefs or disbelief. Personally, I hate Christmas, to commercial, the whole meaning is lost due to greed, I can't wait for it all to be over, heck normally I'm out hunting the week of Christmas, you know killing things. I just like listening to the believers and non-believers argue and throwing a little gas on the fire.

6) Comment by Chucky - 04/12/2012

Last comment on this ( I think) you can not prove God, you can disprove Him by taking two plants and praying that one lives. and watering and giving nutrients to the other. when the one you prayed for stops living you say “I told you no God”. That was the way Communist Russia used.

7) Comment by Chucky - 04/12/2012

ebonics -for not far. you can add Easter Ostara, All Souls Samhain, and others....get over it, they all believed in gods and goddess greater than them-self.

8) Comment by Chucky - 04/12/2012

As far Christmas not being the 'Birthday of Jesus' (for what it is worth) the Catholic Pope just said the date was wrong. It is a day that has been set aside to celebrate it ( the birth of Christ). Happy And Merry Yule in the Pagan way.

9) Comment by tradewinns - 04/12/2012

it is a fact that the celebration of the winter soltice by the pagans was adopted by the christian religion because the people would not stop their celebrations. the birth of jesus is not the real holy day for a christian, that day would be easter. easter celebrates the "rising from the dead on the third day" proving he was god's son. that there happened to be a spring soltice was i'm sure coincidental.

10) Comment by chem - 04/12/2012

Agree with tradewinns: Good letter until the god part. I do not celebrate christmas. I do not believe in the myth of jesus. Most christmas days I work if I can. I do not receive "christmas" gifts nor do I accept them. Christmas, like religion, is a sham.

11) Comment by DMJ - 04/12/2012

Why Dec 25? Because that's the day my employer gives me to take off of work. I didn't choose the date of the holiday; the pagans did when they recognized the Winter Solstice thousands of years before Jesus was "born." Besides, like most atheists, I come from a religious family and they DO celebrate Christmas. We generally don't talk about Jesus when exchanging gifts (I'm pretty sure he would be against the materialistic and gluttenous aspects of the modern-day interpretation of this holiday, anyway). Look...It's like I always say- with religions, pick the good, discard the bad and/or useless. The weekly symbolic cannabalization of the ghost of a dead prophet/god/son of god? Yeah, I don't need that. Getting together with friends and family to exchange gifts? I like that very much. Like it or not, Christmas has been co-opted by people of all faiths and or no faith....like me.

12) Comment by Whatchange - 04/12/2012

DMJ; you are right, but Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Jesus, that is my point. Why hold your get together on the day that is set side to celebrate his birth, you could pick any day, after all you don't believe, so why Dec 25?

13) Comment by nimby? - 04/12/2012

"and on earth peace , good will towards men" ....

14) Comment by DMJ - 04/12/2012

You don't need to believe in Jesus to get together with family and exchange presents and eat delicious food. I know this for a fact. What's your point?

15) Comment by Whatchange - 04/12/2012

Of the seven commenters, how many of y'all celebrate Christmas? On Christmas Day do y'all maybe get together with family, eat good food, talk bout old times, growing up, your lives now, your kids lives, enjoy the company of loved ones, but when the gifts are exchanged, do you say, I don't believe in Jesus so there is no need for me to celebrate his life, I didn't bring a gift nor do I expect one for me or my family, or do y'all just sit at home watching TV. I'm just curious as to how y'all handle Christmas.

16) Comment by DMJ - 04/12/2012

Yes, thank God for everything. Every crummy, unfair, mean, unfortunate, bad thing that's ever happened to you and anyone you know....thank God for that. Yes, thank God for everything you have. And if you have nothing.....you can thank God for not giving you anything. I'm being facetious, of course. The belief in God is strange; you invent someone, a creator, who gets all of the credit and none of the blame. Why? We don't need this belief to live moral, fruitful lives or to forgive one another? We don't need to thank anyone except for the people who actually made the good things in our lives happen- our friends and family. So...when saying grace this Festivus, remember to thank the people that cooked the food instead of your imaginary friend in the sky who had nothing to do with it. Barookatah. Amen.

17) Comment by Michael Gary Scott - 04/12/2012

This is difficult to do when the leadership of this country is based on hate and putting one group against another.

18) Comment by bourbon-soda - 04/12/2012

It would be a nice gesture if all the atheists would volunteer to work Thanksgiving and Christmas for those less enlightened, who should, of course, reciprocate on some special atheist day like the Feast of Saint Darwin or Random Matter and Energy Day.

19) Comment by Wallop - 04/12/2012

I agree with Chucky. Whenever I read stuff such as above, I take the good and ignore anything I find to be irrelevant. I think what one must first do, though, is shrink one's ego into its proper place. That takes a lot of work, and constant practice.

20) Comment by Bighug - 04/12/2012

I agree with tradewinns. All the hundreds of gods are merely inventions of man, usually for the benefit of the inventors. I've had people tell me that their god created a universe so huge that earth is smaller than an atom in comparison, yet that god needs 10 percent of my meager earnings! Somehow I suspect that god never received a penny of it.

21) Comment by Chucky - 03/12/2012

Rabbi Daniel Polish "to live with a God we cannot fully understand, whose actions we explain at our own peril." It's a mystery tradewinns.

22) Comment by tradewinns - 03/12/2012

you were doing so great then you had to bring God into it. if you are going to thank God for all the good things in life, remember to thank God for all the misery there is also. my sister was diagnosed with cancer 13 years ago and was given 6 months to live. well she survived anyway. my mom like to say how lucky she was to have survived. i liked to ask how lucky was she to "catch" cancer to start with (she was in her 30's). christians like to thank God for all the good they encounter but want to blame something else for the bad. if God is indeed all knowing and powerful and can hear every prayer muttered, God could stop all the bad there is. it isn't self inflected. so when you thank God for the good remember to ask him/her why they didn't take care of the bad at the same time.