My happy weekend at SCRC 2009

Good evening everybody,

I had one of the most happiest weekends in a long time. I was at the SCRC convention at Anaheim convention center, and I am so thankful for being able to partake in such a happy and Christ centered experience. Why? Because Happy the people whose God is the Lord!!. I was able to sit in on a series of talks given by a variety of religious and laity, which was such a blessing for me, truly.

The conference started on Friday, and I had heard several talks this weekend, followed by a mass in the convention center. The first talk I heard was titled, "Cheerfulness in the Lives of the Saints" given by Fr. Andrew Apostoli, whom is from New York. He was very good and very funny. He quoted from the bible, that "God loves a cheerful giver", and he had said that our joy/happiness imposes on our anger, moodiness, tempers and tantrums. By learning to give cheerfully, this will block our resentments and all of the above things just mentioned. He was also very bold in saying that "Joy is the surest sign of the Holy Spirit is in our soul. The enemy CAN NOT MIMIC JOY." When he said that, it made me feel so happy insided because it makes joy such a thing to aspire towards because it is only of God, through His son, Jesus. Only Jesus brings joy to us, because we know He is with us, no matter what, He is and always will be our source/fount of joy for all time. Which I don't know about all of you, but yes, I need to impose a little more joy to counteract my natural and quick responses of anger, moodiness, temper, with a few tantrums here and there...lol...

Fr. Andrew gave ways in which we can nuture and practice antidotes of joy to combat bad moods. I was not able to get all of them down on paper, but here are a few. The first is a sense of humor. I find this to be one of the most important of antidotes, just under Jesus of course. But a sense of humor is something we all have and all can improve on, especially to ourselves. I find it very theraputic to laught at yourself, no it's not easy to do sometimes, but so worth it, because the more we do laugh at ourselves the easier it becomes, and the funnier it is over time. I am referring to point that in retrospect, everything is 20/20, when time has passed we see how we have uselessly overreacted and how silly we really were, even though we did not think so at the time it was happening.

Fr. Andrew has said that cheerfulness/joyfullness is an infusion of the Holy Spirit, this infusion is how we can learn to be joyful in God. He stated "true sancticty makes you more human, and as we grow closer in God, He draws out our humanity." He specified this is something that does not happen over night, it's how we end up, that we must grow in this sanctity/holiness, so that's a joyful thought, there is hope for us all.

The second suggestion was to smile. The simple gesture of a smile, our "homework" for the day was that we had to smile to 5 people that we did not know. I loved that assignment, I even added a wave and a hello to my smile to the people I didn't know. Fr. Andrew said that smiling teaches us to take it easy and it is so much easier to do than frowning. And smiling is contagious, and smiling teaches us to take it easy, not to take ourselves to seriously. Fr. Andrew had said so much more, this is all I was able to get down on paper for this session.

The third session was titled " What does it mean to be happy in the Lord?" given by Fr. Andrew Apostoli, I had heard him earlier in the morning, so I was excited about this class. Fr. Andrew opened up by sharing the differences between pleasure and joy. He stated that pleasure is never filled, and it is temporary because we will still feel empty at the end. Joy is rooted in the soul, so it is all fullfilling. The cool thing about joy is that, it is rooted in the soul, but then overflows into our whole being, probably as we get older and older,by the grace and love of God. So Fr. asked the question, how can we remain in this joy? Talk about "cross" in life, especially considering that we are our own worst enemies at times. How crazy is that? I guess if it is a joyful crazy, then at least we can laugh about it later.

Fr. Andrew also gave us a list of what the enemies of joy, they are selfishness, escape, worry/fear, and self pity.

The first being selfishness, by being selfish we are doomed to be unhappy. We are unhappy because we turn to ourselves to make us happy which then will lead us to be let down, because only God and keep us up from ourselves. Eventually we will realize that we need to empty, by being humbled in humility, a hard cross for us to take but so necessary, why? So we can grow into a selfless love of Jesus, hence we tap into the fount of joy in Him instead of routinely tapping into ourselves which only leads to disappointment. We must forget ourselves, see the broader picture and trust in that. Then we can give of ourselves and share and play nicely with others.

While carrying our crosses, in our trials, in our sadness, we can not turn to ourselves and think we can make it better. We must turn to Christ, this is the only way we can, we can little by little, break down our selfishness and become selfless. We then can learn and to trust in our Lord, and we will attain joy and that inner peace that is so vital/crucial in our growth in the Lord. The devil likes to take away our joy, because then, we become consumed by our crosses and we will start to find escapes that fill our pleasures but will still leave us empty, stuck or addicted to things not of God. The devil loves to play on this in us, because in "escaping" we are usually either Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, the "HALT" that is taught in AA. Fr. stated when we are "halted" we are or end up being stuck and sad, which can be a real battle if we do not have our Lord to save us. The gentleness of joy that Jesus gives, will draw us out of our depression or repression of all of our sins and crosses, we just have to be open and to trust in Him by continually going to Him all of the time, He will love us through it all.

The final thing Fr. Andrew mentioned that is an enemy to joy is worry/fear. How things are going to turn out, is pretty much useless. Why? because we have no control to what has happened, what is happening or what will happen. Trust is the antidote to battle worry and fear, to trust in the strong arm of God no matter what. He quoted Padre Pio as he would always say, " Pray, Trust and Don't Worry". I thought of the song, "Don't worry, Be Happy" I love that song. Fr. Andrew, mentioned that when we worry, it is for nothing, because we have control over the situation, but we can control how we respond to things that we don't know how they will turn out. Our response should be JESUS CHRIST, that is our only response/reaction we should take, He will not let us down.

Self pity is another enemy of joy. Feeling sorry for ourselves and keeping the wounds fresh. By feeling sorry for ourselves, we tend to keep our hurtness alive, by re-living it, by re-playing it in our minds. We reherse all of the injustices over and over, its a vicious cycle that has no end because it is rooted in ourselves and not in Christ. Once we start to see this cycle and try to break it, we break into the Love and the tender joy of Jesus. This in itself, will bring us to grips with the situation, which then can lead to a permante cancellation to all of the "pity parties" we used to love to throw for ourselves. The party becomes a feast, a feast and banquet we can partake in every time we go to mass, and receive our Lord in body and blood. By partaking in the feast, that is the fuel we need to keep cancelling the "pity party" The Eucharist is the only place where unconditional love is tangible and present for us to commune with, no matter where we are in our lives, Jesus will see us through.

Saturday morning, I heard a great talk given by Sr. Nancy Kellar on the Beatitudes. She said the Beatitudes is God's plan for happiness, they are to stir up our expectance in the power of the Spirit and all of the great plans God has for us. We always need to want, to desire, to long for more in Christ. In reflection of this talk, a question came to my mind in, how do we find our joy in the Beatitudes?

1. Poor in Spirit: Sr. says this is a call to acknowledge our need of God and to recognize our need of God. For me, as I pondered, I found some joy in the fact that I will not need anything else but God. No matter how it gets broken down, it ALWAYS goes right back to The Infinite One. It sounds or reads so simple. Our God is a simple God in infinite ways. We are the ones that complicate or confuse His simplicites, no worries though because He will always Love us back to Him. After all of the reasoning, justifications, mistakes all of this stuff that happens on earth, I will always and forever need the Almighty God that is just the way it is. I am so glad He is infinite because human are just too temporal.

She used the analogy of opening our hands, letting the seeds fall to the ground, so He can heal us, and then we can be filled. I wonder if that the "opening of the hands" is our acknowledging it is out of our hands in the first place (whatever the situation may be), the "letting the seeds fall as they may" is the acceptance that is vital to the "emptying process", and the "so He can heal us" is the restoration in Christ, in the recovery of Love for Love, unconditional in the heart of God.

2. Mourn: to mourn our losses, our disappointment, our dissatisfactions, our difficulties in relationships. This helps us learn to accept forgiveness by crying our to God in our losses, to find Him in it and to hold onto to Him while we are there with it. Joy is the end result of the process, after a long, hard, sorrowful and mournful journey. The joy/acceptance on this type of loss, to me naievely is like all of these things seen or passed by on the road to recovery, like a "recovery road trip". Like the rest stops, gas stations, the scenic view points, like the cool colors of the sky at sunrise of the dry desert followed by the heat of high noon, to the plush green mountain sides, to the majestic colors in the sky of sunset at the beach, the u-turns we should have taken miles back but didn't. But in the stops the rest that can be had, the fuel for the empty tank, the vistas showing us really how small we really are, all of these things, the little things, that are there on the way to where we need to go. The destination is healing/ acceptance/freedom/joy. Now this journey is very customized to each person in regards to timing, but in the mercy, grace and love of God, the Father does loves us right back to his big heart, then we are joyfully free.

3. Meekness: This is God's will for us, to find our happiness and peace in God. Embracing God even when God's will is hard to go through. To embrace where God wants us to be, not where we want to be. To take repeated comfort in the fact we do not know it all because its just too much for any of us to know. People try to figure it out, whatever it is, and well for me its easier to leave all of that stuff up to the "Big Guy", He does take care of everything. So in the timing of it all, not knowing why things happen, we can find some joy in that by being thankful, very thankful that things have happened the way it has, because that is exactly how God wanted it, the Father always knows best, He always knows what is best for His people. If it would have been left up to us, we would have just made a huge mess of everything.

The timing of it all, the saying " we are all supposed to be right were we are " referring to the "master plan" or God's will, yet sometimes the timing really sucks, or so we ignorantly think and feel. But God's timing is always perfect, it just takes time for us to accept God's timing. God's perfect and unconditonal Love, THIS LOVE, is what rescues us , rehabilitates us, picks us up, sees us through all of those sucky days we think we have, just like how God did to our ancestors of the past, He sees us right back to Love, that crazy little thing called Love. We get by, day by day, one day at a time, one hour at a time, 15 minutes at a time. We may or may not see the depth, the extent, the extremity, the sensitivity, the whole picture at the time, but we keep trying, we keep moving toward Him, toward God, beat up and all. The mysteries of Love is truly a righteous and precious thing.

4. Hunger and Thirst for what is right: Repairing our relationships in community, forgiving one another for the sake of Love. By listening to one another more. Listening leads to compassion which then deepens our relationships across the board. Listening helps us meet people where they are at in their lives, and by helping them out wherever they are, helping them to Jesus, the way, the truth and the light. In Him, is where our strength is, in our faith in God, and we want all of our family in Christ to know the Lord. Our family being our human family, whom Christ died for on that cross wether they acknowledge it or not, Jesus loves them too. Taking things to heart, meaning things from the heart. Listening to the "interventions" how we learn from each other and to see the errors of our ways, be o.k with that, and from the heart try to change, again much easier said than done, hence the power and Love of God.

5. Merciful: Mercy received as we come in our weakness and sinfulness. We have unfathomable mercy in the cross and in the heart of our Lord Jesus. The cross is our unfathomable source of mercy, there is no shock value with God, His Love and mercy is what we need to get over the shock of life and how we deal with all of this shock treatment, that we inflict or incur in this life of ours.

6.Pure of heart: How God purifies us, the purification process. Purification is how God want to meet us, we can become bitter or better by how we embrace our purifications that come our way, how we embrace all of the peaks and valleys we experience in this life of ours. We need the ups and downs to experience and to learn from as we get older and more seasoned in life. Day in and day out. All of the good and bad days we have. All of the little things that helps us get through the day, all that is of God. To be able to see some of those things everyday, we can get glimpses of joy.

7. Peacemakers: My favorite one as a little girl, I remember wanting to be a child of God, I remember thinking that would be so cool, so I tried to be a peacemaker. It was hard then and still hard now, but with practice it does become easier. And I must admit, I had a great example of peacemaking in my dad, Harry Makahanohano Kaululaau. My dad was all about keeping the peace, not just in the house or between the kids or between him and my mom, but by everything. At first it used to look like people would take advantage of him because he was so easy going, but you know it never seemed to bother him, because there was peace, and that made him happy, which then made everything else seem so trivial. I still to this day aspire to be the peacemaking soul that man is, I just really thank God that he gave me such an incredible and humble father that I have in my dad. Thank you so much my Lord.

8. Suffer persecution for our Lord: Talk about examples and inspirations to live by, I will be forever grateful and humbled for all of the saints, angels, and religious that have lived and given their lives to the Lord our God for the salvation of souls. To know that we have Mother Church, The bible, The carrying of crosses, The living Body of Christ, from generation to generation. Each on of us, his people. How happy we should feel to have been with a family so deep in faith, so rich in the depth of life after death as we all have in my Lord Christ Jesus will all of his angels and saints in Heaven. To know, believe we are on in the Glorious and victorious Love of our God. Glory be to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lastly, what gave me personally the greatest joy of the whole conference, besides My Lord of course was all of the people I was able to share with. I went with my friend Demetria, then we hooked up with Bob, which then dialed us in with Alex, Yolanda and Lucy. It was too cool to how our Lord just put it all together, don't get me wrong everybody we met or saw there was awesome, it was just good to fellowship in an environment such as this, and by far, this was the best SCRC a girl like myself could have hoped for. So I just want to say a big Thank you to Demetria, Bob, Alex, Yolanda and Lucy for spending the weekend with me. Thanks guys. Thank you Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.