Clueless

There are so many issues around today it is hard to keep track of all the things we are supposed to be upset about!
Thanks to the internet, the 24-hour news channels, the other forms of social media that are growing exponentially, we are bombarded with disaster, tragedy, scandal and manipulation minute after minute (and then there's Fox News!) Even if we are able, by massive endeavor, to keep up with those issues that we care about, there are still those additional concerns tapping us on the shoulder for our attention. And when we have to set limits, draw boundaries, turn away from the Issue of The Day (which is how long most them last or are remembered), we have to deal with our own guilt for doing something!
There is a story about a Sister who was sent to India as a missionary. Soon after she arrived, she found an infant on her doorstep. Obviously, someone knew a religious would take pity on the child. But the next day, there was another baby on the doorstep. And the day after that! Finally, the good Sister turned to an experienced missionary: what she do about these children? The missionary thought about it and then told her.
Ignore the babies.
The actual parents would still be there and would see what happened, and the word would go out to the community. There were other resources they could call upon. There were other ways to handle babies that needed more than the parents could provide. But, in the meantime, the Sister would have to make a tough choice and do what she had been sent to do, rather than dealing with all these babies  she was neither equipped to deal with nor experienced enough to take care of.
I am not suggesting that we should be callous and not care for those in need. If anything, the need is greater than it has been in a long time, and some who might be helping seem to be looking for ways to cut back. But for those of us already trying to handle so many issues (issues not ours personally), we need to decide what is important to us, and how much we can do.
This should not be an excuse to avoid doing what we can do, nor to limit what we already do. It means being aware of what is possible.

Misspoken

I almost feel sorry for the poor dope.
Almost everyone has seen the video- gone viral many times over- of the North Caroline pastor of one of the non-denominational megachurches that have sprouted like fungi all over the place,  Charles Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church, who is preaching an old-fashioned hellfire and brimstone sermon. During this homily (if that gentle word is appropriate), he offers his solution (Final Solution?) to the issue of homosexuality: put all the lesbians in a concentration camp-style barbed wire enclosure, and the gay men in a similar separate one, and just leave them there until they die! Oh sure, he proposes regular food drops by airplane, but it would essentially be a prison.
The instinctive response of most would be (I hope) revulsion and fear, regardless of sexual orientation. And attempts to get interviews for another view from the man's congregation just make it worse: a parishioner who seems just as hostile and unloving and defensive as that pastor must be (the video of the  sermon was taken down the day after it was discovered by less involved people.)
But I have seen things from the other side of the pulpit. And while I would never spill out such bile (I hope!), I know I have said some things in a sermon- not quite of this caliber,  to be sure!- which hindsight suggests to me I shouldna said. It is, alas, all too easy to let your mouth get ahead of your brain or your heart.
Does this mean I would let this pastor off the hook? Not by a damn sight!
But it does mean that not all the foolish people should be made into some sort of lesser creature.  Simply because this man (and his congregation) are dehumanizing a large part of the population doesn't mean that we should do the same to them out of our outrage.
So the suggestion that someone has made is so good: make a contribution to the gay-rights organization of your choice- in this pastor's name! That's Charles Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church (I recommend Human Rights Campaign, an organization I support.) I understand a significant amount has already been given, and I remember the scriptural injunction to love your enemies. Besides, it drives 'em nuts!

Perfectly Unclear

It was that radical journalist H.L. Mencken who once said something to the effect that for every problem there is a solution that is quick, easy, obvious- and wrong!
Of course, that doesn't stop us from opting for the simplest solution, does it? I know a woman (ahem!) who walked around for several days taking stomach remedies before she checked with a doctor and found she had appendicitis! Sometimes we just don't want to deal with reality, and would rather put up with all the pain and inconvenience rather that face what we fear.
So clients come to me and are frustrated because their problem is not cured in just one 45-minute session. Maybe it is because people are used to going to their medical doctor and walking out with a prescription that will make them all better. Or it may be us clinicians under the sway of money-conscious insurance companies who feel we have to settle everything within the limited number of sessions given us.
Now, even Freud realized that psychotherapy did not tie up everything in a neat package with no loose ends; he talked about people reaching the level of a "livable neurosis." But he was not pretending to have the Answer in just 10 brief sessions. Nor should we think that a treatment plan holds the keys to life, the universe and everything. 
Maybe it is time to stop confusing Brief Therapy with being more focused and efficient and admit we are simply encouraging people to deal only with the Crisis of the Week rather than the deeper issues causing the problems. It leads to Serial Therapy, with clients returning over and over like someone stuck in a revolving door. It actually encourages dependency on the therapist who can make everything better, rather than treating clients as adults who are able to live the full lives they want.

Love and Like

We have been duped by "happily ever after."
Too often people fall in love and plan on going off into the sunset together, "happily ever after." Whether it is from watching too much television or other overexposure to fairy tales, the assumption is that love will conquer all and anything about the other which is unlikeable will be resolved (within an hour or half-hour including time for commercials.)
And maybe that might be possible, but the divorce statistics cast doubt on that. Couples who have married their True Love return from the honeymoon and discover that those annoying habits so easily overlooked before have grown in scope and importance. Yes, you may still love him or her, but you don't like 'em a lot!
We are not talking here about what I call the Jekyll-and-Hyde  syndrome, where a person deliberately conceals  an ugly behavior in order to deceive another. Abusers, alcoholics, others of that type will seem quite nice and even lovable during the courtship, but then become totally different once saying "I do." Yes, that is an issue, but no, I'm talking about something much more common: how can you love someone you don't like? Or conversely, if you don't like someone, should you love them?
We have made the whole issue too monolithic and  cut-and-dried. Even with those we don't like, there is some redeeming factors that we do like. We can handle that in reverse: when we do like someone, we are willing to tolerate those quirks that we are all too aware of. But first we have to accept the reality that it is possible to love someone and  not like everything about them.
"Love" and "like" are not mutually exclusive. In fact, it helps if we do like the one we love. Friends make the best lovers, and vice versa. But that does not mean we  need to put up with those things we hate in the people we love. It just means that those times when we don't like someone very much, we can still love them.
All  this is much more work than just giving up on the whole thing. It means deciding if the person is really as  important to us as our heart tells us. It means hanging on when the most important person in your life is driving you crazy. It means recognizing those things in the other you value, and like.
Sorry, there is  no "happily ever after." But there is "happily today."

The Following Is Not A Political Advertisement!

Yes, it was a brave if foolhardy thing to do, coming out as President Obama just did in favor of gay marriage. Of course, after the vote down South, it might well have been expected, passing an amendment to their state constitution that marriages (even civil unions) were to be only between a man and a woman. How many voted for Amendment One (as it was known) out of their own values and beliefs and how many voted that way as a form of taunting the current administration? In other words, how many voters really understood what they were voting for rather than what they were told they were voting for?
Those who cry out against gay marriage try to frame it as the preservation of marriage itself. Which would seem to imply that, if that choice were generally available, people would desert straight marriage as an institution in droves in favor of homosexual unions.
It is especially bizarre because homosexuals are stereotyped as promiscuous, flittering from one shallow sexual encounter to the next. But when these same people dare to talk of love and commitment to one another, that is somehow not acceptable either. Never mind the pain and anguish gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender folks go through finding someone they want to spend the rest of their lives with, especially because it is even more complicated than the mating rituals of the straight. We would consign them to a "damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't" status where we can assume whatever superior posture we like in regard to their frantic search for happiness.
I am, of course, not addressing the real issue behind such homophobia; in my line of work we call it "homosexual panic." When someone reacts so strongly to someone else's sexual orientation, it often is because of fear. Fear of the Other, fear that we might feel something, fear that, given the right time and place and our own  mood, we might...
Yes, there are those who are coming from a thought-out, faith-based perspective. Never mind that they are just as wrong as the gay-baiting homophobes. The trouble arises, not where they begin in sincerity and honesty, but where they end up, with shrill condemnations of others who are doing no harm to them.
No, we won't go into the sufferings of those who are asking for nothing more than an equal place to stand. Beatings, suicides, alienation of family and friends, that all deserves fuller attention another time. Nor am I talking for or against the current presidency; the frothing-at-the-mouth of some in that discussion are a whole 'nother thing, too.
But I can't help but consider the issues behind the issues here.

Moneymoneymoneymoney

Ya know you can make a small fortune in this line of work? You start with a large fortune...
Too much these days is being measured by the financial yardstick. How much will it cost? Will it make a profit? And, goodnessgraciousheavenstomurgatroyd (as my daddy would say), be sure there's no debt involved!
Which of course, immediately eliminates lots of things worth doing but do not carry a balanced budget. I'm no expert in finances (that's fer sure!) (get out of my head, Dad!) but I realize that some things can't be evaluated by a balance sheet.
What is the price of a sunset? Give me the cost of love. Tell me the way you can price the good feeling that comes from helping someone in need. How do we figure out the budget on a hug or a kiss?
But we get so caught up in things, which have a clear value attached and which we can measure and weigh and know the worth of the result. This is vending-machine thinking; we put in our money and expect to get concrete answers.
But some questions, as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke put it, don't have answers. We just have to live the questions, he wrote to a young would-be poet. And some things are worthwhile no matter the cost.

What You Say...

Don't laugh, but there was a time when I dreamed of becoming a journalist/ Yup, a reporter. Most kids want to something like a cowboy or a firefighter or an astronaut, but me, I wanted to grow up to be a newshawk. And given the job market for same as well as the status of newspapers...
But it gave me a lasting sensitivity to the way things are expressed. What is actually said can be drastically different depending on the way you say it. I remember the famous scene from the western The Virginian where a friend calls the hero an insulting name and the hero laughs it off. But when an enemy uses the exact same word, our hero snarls the immortal words, "When you say that, smile!"
People today will often say one thing and the way it is said says its opposite. One time a pastor of a conservative Christian church showed this when he was preaching on the love of God. He leaned forward in the pulpit and,  with a look of absolute abhorrence, spat out, "God loves you!" How many people in that congregation must have recoiled with the thought, "Thanks anyway, not interested!"
How often do parents unthinkingly tell their child as they punish the kid, "This hurts me more than it hurts you"?
And many are not even aware of how they come across. They perceive themselves as caring, even compassionate, as they say vicious, self-serving words. Their actions put the lie to the words they say. I might see myself as determined and committed, but someone else experiences me as rigid and inflexible.
This is why e-mail and other forms of cybercommunication, which strips away the frills and other furbelows we use to cover our naked words, can seem so stark. Our anger, our fear, our confusion stand obvious for all to see. We do not always catch this, as we hear the words in our heads as we write. But when a correspondent reacts not to what we thought we wrote, but what actually appeared on the computer screen, we can be dumfounded to have someone reacting to us in a way that puzzles us.