Problems

Problems everywhere. My Nigerian brothers and sisters call problems Wahala. You would either hear, "Wahala no dey finish," or "Problems no dey finish." They both mean the same thing - we don’t run out of problems. Problems don’t ever finish. Everyone is dealing with problems, whether at school, work, home, church, sports, the store, or elsewhere. Wherever there are human beings, there are problems, and they don’t seem to go away. You solve one problem, and another problem manifests itself in a different way. Wherever you turn, there is one problem or another, and it sometimes feels like all our lives are simply geared toward solving problems.

Here’s a story:

There was once a pregnant deer who began experiencing labor pains. It was evening, and the forest was covered with black clouds. Due to the black clouds, lightning had fallen in the forest, and the forest had caught fire. The deer had to leave where she was, came to the riverside to drink water, and gave birth. When she looked in the river, she saw anxiety visibly displayed on her face.

Just as she was about to drink the water, she heard the noise of some movement in the bushes on her left side. She looked to her left, saw a hunter aiming at her with a rifle, and immediately became more afraid. She thought in her mind to run away from there, but as she turned to run away, she saw a ferocious lion hiding in the bushes on her right side, ready to attack her.

So, the deer has a hunter on one side, a lion on the other, a forest fire on the third, and a deep river on the fourth. The deer could not cross the river because it was very deep and full of crocodiles. Death was all around her. There was no way to escape. The deer thought hard about how to save her life, but there was no way out. Then the deer thought to herself, "If death is so certain, then why be afraid? Why not die with dignity?"

With that thought, the deer calmed down, drank water fearlessly, and hoped for the best. Seeing her drinking water, the hunter began pulling the trigger, and at that instant, there was a loud CRACK! from a lightning bolt in the sky. The hunter’s hand trembled due to the sound; he missed his target, his bullet hit the lion, the lion got injured, and its eyes fell on the hunter. The lion started running towards him, and the hunter started running to save his life. With the lighting, it started raining heavily, and the forest fire was extinguished.

After drinking the water, the deer saw that there was no longer any lion, and the forest fire had been extinguished. With this knowledge, the deer wasted no time; she ran to a safe place and gave birth to one fawn.

It was just by sheer luck that the deer escaped and gave birth. No idea what happened to the injured lion and the hunter - they had their own set of problems to deal with.

Somehow, we do our best to solve problems. Some of these problems are caused by nature, and some are caused by human beings, including you and me.

Some problems are intractable, and so we tend to manage them as best we can. But whether intractable or not, we should always avoid labeling human beings as problems to be solved. Human beings are not things, situations, or circumstances.

Several years ago, a parishioner came to speak to me about her husband's gravesite in our yard. She bought fresh flowers and placed them on her husband’s grave regularly, but by the time she returned the next day or so, they were gone. "Someone has been stealing these flowers," she would say to herself, so she came to speak with me about it, exasperation clear in her voice.

I was taken aback, wondering how someone would specifically target her flowers and steal them. I apologized and thanked her for her dedication to her husband, but I couldn’t offer any tangible solution to the problem. What surprised me was that there were flowers on some graves, so how come her flowers were the ones targeted?

My question to myself was, was she the problem that needed some fixing, or was there indeed a problem?

It isn’t lost on me that there are times when we see other people as problems to be fixed. But no human being is a problem to be fixed. God created you, and Jesus Christ died for you - you are, therefore, not a problem to be fixed.

Back to the story of the parishioner who didn’t stop complaining about her flowers... It wasn’t until one evening, one when I worked late into the night in my office, that I noticed what was going on. I left my office, got in my car, and started driving off campus. It was then that I saw a herd of deer by her husband's grave, eating the flowers the sweet lady had recently put there. I called the parishioner in the morning to let her know that it was, in fact, the deer at the church that had been chewing up those flowers, and that she wasn't being targeted. And the deer didn’t touch the other flowers because those were all artificial.

French Philosopher, Blaise Pascal, once said this: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” To sit in a room quietly is to confront yourself, face the reality of your individual existence, and ask yourself questions you may want to avoid. We seek distraction because to sit with ourselves is to deal with the problems that we cause or can cause, or even to see ourselves and others as problems to be fixed.

Yes, we may have issues and problems, but we are not a problem to be solved or issues to be fixed. Each human being is a semblance of God’s gift of infinite love and generosity to the world.

Our ability to embrace this aspect of ourselves, that we are not a problem to be solved and certainly not an issue to be fixed, makes it ever more possible to see others in that same light, that they are not problems to be solved nor issues to be fixed, but individuals to be loved.

Each of us is a gift and a child of God who simply has problems, and those problems do not define any of us.

On this Ascension Day, we rise with the resurrected Christ above any and all problems.

Happy and Blessed Ascension Day!

Manny+