Friday, October 06, 2006

What goes around comes around

Every now and then Mother Superior and I go out to a movie together. It is rare that our schedules and duties allow us both to go anywhere at the same time. This time we went out to see a movie called "Idlewild". First, friends a small disclaimer - I may have lived a good deal of life in my time, but this does not mean I want to see it on the silver screen. Yes, there is a scene in the movie where I found myself saying, "Why do they always have to put the obligatory scene like that in the movie." I have often thought there should be disclaimers on movies that read something like, "Some scenes may not be appropriate for children and nuns".

What is important is a line from the movie. One of the main characters in the movie is a man named Rooster. One of the running themes in the movie is a whisky flask that never seems to be more than arms reach from Rooster. The front of the whiskey flask, which we see throughout the movie, has a picture of a rooster on it. This same rooster is animated. The upshot of which whiskey flask talks to Rooster giving him advice and comments.

At one of the crucial moments in the movie, the whiskey flask rooster talks to the human named rooster and says this:

"What goes around comes around Rooster - its called karma"

Rooster goes on in the movie to discover the truth of these words. I won't spoil the movie for you by telling you how.

But it brings up a point that Sister Frances and I talk about alot - what goes around comes around. In other words Karma.

Recently there has been a rash of key loggers going around the internet. For those of you who don't know what a key logger is - it is a rather vile little program that creates a record of the actual key strokes you make as you type on your computer and sends them over the internet to some unscrupulous person who uses the information to victimize you.

This prompted a comment from me this morning at breakfast, "Why do so many people dedicate such a larger portion of their lives to victimizing other people. How can they do so without thinking that there will never be any repurcussions?"

Yet people do this and in plenty. Recently a member of the House of Representatives the United States victimized his teens by sending the sexually explicit messages. The result is he ended up having to resign his position in congress.

The list of crimes and victims goes on and on. They cover an international scale to a personal scale. They crimes or simple wrongs may have been anonymous or done right out there in the open.

So often we see wrongs such as these and too often see no results of wrong doing. It may be someone at work. It may be someone we know. We may find ourselves saying, "Why don't they ever get punished for that?" The same person who wronged someone may later have some tragedy befall their lives; then look at the heavens and say "Why God? Why me?" If they listened to the still small voice within, they may hear God saying, "Remember that person you harmed last week?"

Don't get me wrong. I am not trying to paint God as some hairy thunderer waiting to reek havoc upon the unsuspecting masses. On the other hand, recently Anne Graham Lotz, the daughter of the Rev. Billy Graham was interviewed on The Early Show By Jane Clayson. This is an excerpt from the interview:

Jane Clayson: I've heard people say, those who are religious, those who are not, if God is good, how could God let this happen? To that, you say?

Anne Graham Lotz: I say God is also angry when he sees something like this. I would say also for several years now Americans in a sense have shaken their fist at God and said, God, we want you out of our schools, our government, our business, we want you out of our marketplace. And God, who is a gentleman, has just quietly backed out of our national and political life, our public life. Removing his hand of blessing and protection. We need to turn to God first of all and say, God, we're sorry we have treated you this way and we invite you now to come into our national life. We put our trust in you. We have our trust in God on our coins, we need to practice it.


She is right in that we cannot expect to call God in to save us when something goes wrong and yet tell Him to get out of our lives the rest of the year. If we harm someone on purpose, if we push God from our lives, then why should He protect us?

Think about it.

So no...the bad guys don't win. Karma is Karma, whether in this world or the next. Too many people don't believe in an afterlife until they are one step away from it. Grandmother, God rest her soul, used to say, "the world is full of old people trying to work their way into heaven." Yes, she said this because she was one of those people. To many people God, by whatever name, is a being "measured and far away" to use a phrase from Thoreau. St. Therese, our dear sister, felt God to be real, close and personal. He was not some historical personage.

I will leave you, this time with the words of Dr. Wayne Dyer, the author and motivational speaker. He had this to say about Karma:

"How people treat you is their Karma, how you react is yours" - Dr.Wayne Dyer