Our Future Your Mistake

‘Our Future Your Mistake’ by CherryVega

Your Mistake Our Past

31 January – This is the pastoral text of Fr Reuter: Try to love everyone, even if they do not do everything right. If you forgive them, God will forgive you. Cherry has a note on the image in which she asks, ‘When mistakes can’t be undone, who will pick up the pieces?’ Good question. The usual response is: ‘You break it, you buy it.’ You break the cup, you pick up the pieces. Not me! I have nothing to do with it.

What the pastoral message is trying to convey is: If a mistake is made, and it’s on you, you pick up the pieces immediately. You don’t wait for the apology or the payback; you don’t discuss it to shame the other person.

Now, this is difficult to swallow, a difficult act to follow. This is ‘If someone strikes you on the left cheek, turn the right cheek also.’ It’s plain and simple Christianity. ‘Love your enemies.’ A paradox. Impossible to do! You must be crazy to do that. You give me 15 minutes of shame? I give you 15 minutes of shame, or even more! Revenge is easier and sweeter; you can feel the satisfaction. Ha!

If you don’t believe in God, if you believe more on your enlightened reason than anything else, let me remind you of Newton’s 3^rd Law of Motion. Formally stated, it is this: Forces always occur in pairs. If object A exerts a force F on object B, then object B exerts an equal and opposite force –F on object A (David P Stern, 2004, phy6.org/). You exert a +F, it comes back –F. I prefer another way of saying it: To every action there exists an equal and opposite reaction. Or, Every action brings a reaction. If that is true in the physical universe, why not in the psychical universe? That’s why you can be either reactive (simply waiting for the action) or pro-active (initiating the action yourself). It’s your choice. Another way of stating that is: If you apply Newton’s 3^rd Law of Physics to life, then you can expect 100% to be rewarded if what you do is rewarding.

Not convinced? Here’s another truism that everyone knows: What goes round comes around. Yoyo. Carousel. Earth. Quite simply, what you do comes back to you! If you don’t love, it’s bad karma: Why expect love to come back to you when you pass on hate, or indifference? How can you receive love if you don’t know how to give love? It is indeed true: It is more blessed to give than to receive because, then, in giving love, you have already received that gift.