final days forum

Listening to a Superior Voice

After the Summer of Rage, incivility continues to simmer throughout the U.S. -- on vociferous talk radio, cable news, websites, tell-all books and even in some pulpits. Unfortunately, the nation can't collectively make an appointment with Dr. Phil to explore what ails it, but as individuals we can seek help.

In the film, "Madea Goes to Jail,"  Tyler Perry's Madea resists anger management when she verbally jousts with Dr. Phil and behaves as if her fury is his fault.  The exchange between the two is dead-on because many of us behave with the same ghetto-fabulousness when we wear irritation like exposed skin...And it doesn't matter what neighborhood you come from for this term to apply.

We can roll our eyes and justify our raving, but in the end, anger obscures truth and barricades peace. Think back: hasn't this been true? We sought to hear God amid the crashing noise of of our circumstances, fumed at him as the mountains of life quaked about us, but when does he most often answer us? In the stillness. The prophet Elijah learned this and was privileged to witness how God is no less magnificent when his voice is still and small.

If we want to live like children of God, does that include changing our perspective on anger? Without learning to deal with anger daily, without learning that a quieter voice repels wrath, we will look as ridiculous as the prophets of Baal in Elijah's day. They screamed, hollered, cut themselves bloody and called out to a god who never answered.

Judy Howard Ellis

Will the recession steal your creativity?

This recession is sneaky.

Not content to rob the country financially, this recession aims to nab our creativity. The gift of our ingenuity is the real prize this recession season seeks. The media reports about the lingering misery of the nation's financial loss, but the news shrouds the most lethal weapon -- the underlying lie that we can't get beyond this recession.

Chaos always attempts to trample the resilient order within human beings, that part of us that says: "Wait a minute! The last time I faced this, it actually turned out OK..." or "Whoa! Remember how I actually achieved more after I lost so much?"

When we give up, when we freeze in place because of chronic problems and overwhelming odds, chaos wins.

If you're out of work, you have time to think. If you want to quit a job you're clinging to because it keeps the lights on and that's about it, take time to think. Great minds seize the freedom to conceive dreams and visions and hopes even when their lives are constrained.  Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich  about a Soviet labor camp touched me when I read it in high school because of the gritty survival it depicted. And I'm still amazed by Paul, who wrote inspired words to his friends in Philippi while under what traditional scholarship says was captivity in Rome.

I have not faced a Soviet labor camp or house arrest, but stories like these and the recession itself have taught me this: Chaos may limit circumstances, but chaos can't capture my spirit unless I submit to it.

Because of this recession, much has been lost, but much more is to be gained. The American Express card may be gone, but because of creative thinking during this recession, you may reach the Dave Ramsey sweet spot where you resist all plastic. The house may be gone, but its loss may drive you to build a business that builds you a new one, not to mention houses for others.

What we do now, what we create when we fight worry with work, what we reinvent ourselves to be despite the financial ashes -- will determine how luminously we emerge when this sly recession passes.

Judy Howard Ellis

Photo: Russian writer and Nobel prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn looks out from a train, in Vladivostok, summer 1994, before departing on a journey across Russia. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia after nearly 20 years in exile. Photo by Mikhail Evstafiev