I can remember the times in my life when I thought I never was going to laugh again. I can name various passages in my life when this suspicion has haunted me. The days were wearying; the nights were restless. Everything felt grim. The days were grey.

But guess what?—laughter always does come again. In time, on its own volition, it catches us unawares and despite the pain, despite the anguish, despite the feeling that life will never be the same, never again be normal, suddenly, unplanned, without our doing anything, a belly roll of laughter bubbles up from some archived spot in our soul. We throw back our head, we howl with delight, and we think, “Oh, my goodness, where did that come from?”

If you are having a hard time getting through the days, if you are suspecting that you will never laugh again, let me make a promise to you: Yes, you will. Yes, you will.

Laughter is where you least expect to find it.

After one of those niggling days where you come home concentrating on everything that’s gone wrong, I looked out into the yard. It was September and I had filled the birdfeeders. The garden seemed to be a flitter with wings, and birdsong, and chickadees rushing at the sunflower seeds. I’d broadcasted mixed birdseed so ground feeders, the doves and the flocking grackles were feeding on the earth—suddenly my heart lifted and I laughed. Comfort just erased the worries I’d been gnawing at, little worries, not the major heartaches, but ones that can ruin beautiful days and lovely moments. My heart just healed suddenly from that day’s aggravations, and I took a coffee cup out to a garden bench and watched the riot of feathered things racing through the trees and swooping to the feeders and calling across the acres to one another—Food here! Fresh birdseed! Last one out is a pokey birdling!

After a long season of sorrow, the major kind, I decided to fill my life with the kind of people I liked, people who knew how to play. And I was happy again, and we laughed together doing unimportant but life-giving things—cooking meals, canning peaches, going to movies.

After that same long season of unending stress and loss, a son said to me, “Oh, it’s just good to see you happy again!” I had forgotten that other people watch us, and gauge our happiness aptitude, and our sorrow or our joy rubs off on them.

Yesterday, I sat with a granddaughter who is reluctantly practicing her lessons. “Here,” I said. “Let me play with you. I’ve wanted to take up piano again. Let me see what I remember.” So we fingered the chords and figured the time—one, two, three; one, two, three … and the onerous piano lesson became a laughing place. And we raced through our scales—together—When the Saints Coming In and What the World Needs Now Is Love … and a couple upper-clef trials for some piece from Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Definitely, I was laughing again. And my granddaughter was laughing so much she didn’t want to leave the piano when I was done.

So, if laughter seems far away, find the people for whom laughter is easy. Shamelessly ride on the coattails of those who delight in the ridiculous. Let the people who love you report to you on your happiness aptitude. Immerse yourself, completely and forgetfully, in some childlike activity—with a child. Laugh with them all—practice laughing again if you have to. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha (it works). Get down on the floor with a child (or on a piano bench). You won’t have to look for laughter. It will find you.

This is one of the things that will get you through the days.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen and a group of volunteers are putting together a 24-Hour Advent Retreat of Silence and planning the template as well as the retreat-leader training for 3-Day Retreats of Silence. Visit the Hungry Souls Web site for more information on the Silent Retreats.

Karen is also part of an international team of men and women heading the Global Bag Project, a microfinance enterprise for women who live in developing areas of the world. The idea is to sell reusable shopping bags, made by Third World bag-makers, to provide sustainable income for them. Visit www.GlobalBagProject.com if you are interested in learning more.

She is also continuing to developing both her Christian blog, Gettin' Thru the Day, as well as her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com. She is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing,” which will be posted on her site.

What if you could take a dose of medicine that would cure non-clinical depression, crankiness, anxiety, personality complaint disorders, feelings of deprivation, as well as love neuroses? Would you take it? Furthermore, if this medicine was free, had no negative side-effects, caused no drowsiness, did not interact dangerously with other medications, was safe for children, and could be used despite pre-existing diseases of the heart and thyroid, high blood pressure and diabetes, would you use it?

Then, what if you discovered that the cure affected by one dose had measurable impact, and that by taking daily doses, like vitamins, you could keep the cure working?

Is there such a wonder drug? There certainly is. It is called thanksgiving. Being grateful. Giving thanks. When I was a younger woman, with four small children, a husband who was an inner-city pastor, and insufficient funds to manage all this, I decided that my gratitude aptitude was deficient. So I spent three months journaling only prayers of thanks—no requests for those three months, no “gimme-gimme-gimmies”—just a growing list of things God had done for me that I added to each day. The phrase “all good gifts come from God and from Him are all things given” has become a breath prayer, begun long ago, that I repeat over and over. I find myself whispering it in my soul almost unconsciously.

What are the results of developing this “attitude of gratitude”?

The systematic study of positive emotions within psychology only began in the year 2000 due to the fact that this field was mainly focused on the negative impacts of distress. Since then, scientific research has gathered evidence from controlled studies indicating that grateful people experience higher levels of well-being. They are happier, less depressed, less stressed (were you aware that an estimated 90% of health problems doctors see are stress-related?). Grateful people are more satisfied with their lives and social connections. They feel as though they have greater control of their environments, they are more intentional about personal growth, have more purpose in their lives, can reach out for support from other people when they need to do so, and when hit by negative circumstances they can reinterpret and learn from them (this is called resilience, a substantial indicator of emotional and psychological health).

The list of proven impacts from giving thanks goes on and on, and is so lengthy we will end here (except to mention studies indicate that grateful people sleep better!).

As a personal observation, I will testify that the impact of practicing gratefulness was so tremendous on my personality, lifting me from the default position of the icky catalog in the first paragraph, that I have practiced it since every time I turn to work in my prayer journal, which except for rare occasions, is daily. I generally find at least a dozen things I’m grateful for each day. But more than a dutiful practice of developing a helpful habit, I find that now, after decades, there is an inner joy of giving thanks that seems to be going on inside me all the time that I notice only when I turn my attention inward. Perhaps this is what writer David Steindl-Rast, in his book Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, meant when he said, “Prayer is grateful living.”

So if you are really having trouble “gettin’ thru the day,” try thanksgiving. That lovely Scripture from the Psalms is short and sweet, easy to remember; “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.” Psalm 106:1b, NIV.

In order for gratefulness to have lasting effects, however, you will have to make gratitude an attitude—it can’t just be a one time dose that you take. Even pharmaceuticals prescribed by doctors sometimes need a week or two to kick in before they have positive impact. Since it takes at least 30 days to break a bad habit as well as to make a good habit, begin by listing all the things you can find for which you are grateful. Try to add to your list every day. I promise, the practice of gratitude will help you defeat the demons that beset you.

Steindl-Rast talks about the person who does not believe in God. If you are in that category, please hear that gratefulness works for people like you just as it works for those who attempt to be devout believers. “Even people whose worldview does not include a divine Giver to whom their thanks can be directed often experience deep gratitude in those moments. They experience it no less strongly than others, even though their gratefulness gets mailed without an address, so to say. In any case, we know from experience that whenever we are truly awake and alive, we are also truly grateful.”

Gratefulness is a medicine that can help you make it through the days. And unlike sleeping pills, soporifics, it actually wakens the inner slumberer, the dormant sleeper, the inattentive snoozer missing the beauty in each moment and the meaning that is in all of living.

It is a medicine that, unlike some, goes down smoothly.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen Mains is part of an international team of men and women heading the Global Bag Project, a microfinance enterprise for women who live in developing areas of the world. The idea is to sell reusable shopping bags, made by Third World bag-makers, to provide sustainable income for them. Visit www.GlobalBagProject.com if you are interested in learning more.

She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Furthermore, Karen is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com, in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published.

Somehow, growing up, I totally missed the popular-music culture. “That’s your era, Mom,” a son will say to me. “Don’t you know who this is?”

No, I don’t know who it is. Between birthing and raising four babies, helping my husband plant an inner-city church in Chicago, taking young adults who needed a place to live into our home, and launching my own professional writer’s life, there simply wasn’t time to become an expert in pop music. Ask me about the civil-rights movement; ask me about the economics of poverty; ask me about building churches around the gifts of the laypeople or about creative worship philosophy; ask me about child-rearing theories; ask me what I read during my own young adult years (a lot); ask me about the mystical writers—I can hold my own on any of these topics. But truthfully, I wouldn’t know The White Album from Purple Rain.

Church music?—well, my father was head of the Music Department at Moody Bible Institute. It would be an understatement to say I was overexposed to sacred music. Classical music?—my husband and I have loved the world-class Chicago Symphony, and, when we have any money, have held season tickets. We enjoy the intimacy of chamber music and are supporters of the Orion Ensemble. We have profited mightily on long car-drives, listening to CD’s from The Learning Company; right now, we’re playing The History of Classical Music.

Finally, in my sixties, I am attempting to rectify my pop-music ignorance by listening to “Greatest Hits” and “Best of” albums. Recently, I’ve enjoyed Van Morrison’s Still on Top. In fact, this Sunday on the way to church, I was captivated with the seeming religious progression of his lyrics. The album begins with Gloria, Here Comes the Night, Brown-Eyed Girl, then eventually progresses to In the Garden with its amazing invocation of praise to the Trinity. What caught my attention most, however, perhaps because I have been thinking about this blog, was Stranded.

The writer is “stranded at the edge of the world,” and this is a succinct expression of the ennui so many feel caught in the “hustle and hustle” of modern life. We don’t know where we are or why, there’s no one to “give us the time of day,” and “every day, every day” we’re stranded.

All great artists, and Van Morrison’s biography seems to indicate that he is considered to be a truly great artist, voice the inner anguish and distress of our common humanity. This is one reason I need to listen to their music: What are these people saying? For whom are they speaking?

You may be one of those folks who is having trouble “just getting through the day.” If so, think about this (a thought that has been deeply medicinal to my soul during rough passages—really rough passages): There is nothing you have experienced that literally hundreds of thousands haven’t experienced before you. This thought doesn’t trivialize my anguish; instead, it comforts me. While being stranded at the edge of the world, between “the devil and the deep blue sea,” I am not alone. Others are familiar with this pain, this cessation of desire, this lostness.

Not only is there comfort in misery, but hundreds of thousands of others have found a way through the desert, through the wilderness, through the vacant lots, through the sour soil of living. Listen to the music and you will find this thread.

Morrison, on this one album, takes us through “the dark night of the soul” in Tore Down a la Rimbaud, to “can’t stand up by myself; don’t you know I need your help” in Real Real Gone, and to the lyrical moment of recovery, of finding one’s self again in The Healing Game—“Here I am again, back where I belong … back in the healing game.”

All great artists face periods when the music stops, the words go, the inner vision is blackened, the math no longer makes sense. Van "The Man" Morrison, the mystical, the magical, searching ever for “a certain quality of soul,” has known them well.

Once, at a younger time in my life, when I had exhausted myself and was real, real gone, I listened over and over, for six months, to the music of Chopin, until finally I was back in the healing game, inner-city ministry. Perhaps if you’re in one of the stranded places, at the edge, the precipice, with nowhere to go, your soul will find some peace in the music of those who know, have been there, and can sing forth that message of comfort in commonality.

We have been where you are; we have survived. Life is good again. Stay with us.

Karen Mains
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Karen Mains is the Co-Director, with her husband, Dr. David R. Mains, of Mainstay Ministries. She leads silent retreats, is a spiritual coach to thousands who have followed the Mains’ ministry through radio and television broadcasting and their writings. Karen is the award-winning author of the “Tales of the Kingdom” Trilogy, and is now crucially involved in a team that is creating a microfinance for women project in Kenya.

This blog is about—guess what?—getting through the day.

I ask people, “How ya’ doing?” And so often I hear the same response. “Jes’ gettin’ thru the day,” people answer. “Jes’ gettin’ thru the day.”

Believe me, I know where these folks are coming from. In some circumstances, getting through the day is almost more than any of us can do.

However, at my age (67), I’ve learned a few lessons and have advanced, for the most part, from “jes’ gettin’ thru the day” to attempting to live each day as though it is a minor work of art (some days are major works of art). And yep, some days are just plain blah!—but not many, not many at all.

After years of being in ministry, and after conversation with friends who are on local church staffs, we concluded that some 80% of the people in congregations are facing problems too big for them to handle. For these people, getting through the day is a major undertaking.

Perhaps, some of the things I’ve learned and am still learning, some of the things I’m facing and will face, and some of the life lessons I’m activating, will help that 80% who just don’t know how they’ll make it from day’s beginning to night’s end, not to mention the nights in between.

The first thing I know—I positively know—and have taught to my children, all of whom are adults now and married with children of their own, is that we all have a choice. We can make this a good day or a bad day. We can make it a good life or a bad life.

“Look,” I’ve said umpteen times during the child-raising years. “You have a choice. You can choose to make this a bad day or you can choose to make it a good day.”

As hard as this may seem for those facing horrendous situations, this is a basic interior attitude over which we do have control—we don’t have control over most of the bad things, minor and major, that happen to us. We do have control over how we will respond to it.

If you’re part of the 80% just getting through the day, how are you going to make it a good day, despite the circumstances? Do you want to choose to make it a good day? Or are you going to let all the woes, the worries, the injustices rob and cheat you of a good day and a good life?

Love to hear how some of you defeat the darkness on this most personal of levels—choosing to make it a good day.

Karen Mains
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Karen Mains is a national-award-winning author of more than 26 books. She is involved right now in helping to create a microfinance women’s pilot project in Kenya—the Global Bag Project, which seeks to sell reusable shopping bags made to provide sustainable income to help bag-makers around the world lift themselves from poverty. Her book about the refugee crisis in the world, The Fragile Curtain, won the 1982 Christopher Medal, which is awarded to works that uphold the highest values of the human spirit.

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published. Additionally, she and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Also, Karen is preparing for the upcoming (Advent) Silent Retreat, which is still open for registration (see the Hungry Souls Web site for more information; click "Retreats of Silence").
 

We now have 300 African-made kanga-cloth bags in the Global Bag Project office. Carla Boelkens and I will gladly hold home-based bag parties in the Chicagoland area. Just sign up at info@globalbagproject.org and we will get in touch with you. Carla and Doug Timberlake fly to Nairobi September 4. David Mains is using frequent flyer mileage and will have to transit alone via Turkish Airlines through Istanbul, then down to Nairobi. Pray for him; he is 73. They will be organizing personnel and systems to purchase fabric, train bag-makers, ship bags overseas, and filming, hopefully, three more bag-maker stories (every bag has a story). To see the first such story, of Mary Nduta, watch it on YouTube.

For contributions of $30 (+$6.95 shipping/handling), we can provide you with a kanga-cloth, artisan reusable shopping bag. Shipping and handling are extra. Jim Whitmer and his wife, Mary, photographers par excellence, have put together a YouTube “Dancing Bag” clip. That link is HERE and will show just a sample of the kanga-cloth patterns that are available. The bags are cotton; the fabric is made in East Africa. The bags’ bottoms have a firm lining, and the straps are reinforced. Proceeds go directly to the Global Bag Project and are helping to sustain the living of Christian sisters and their families. Some of the HIV/AIDS widows we work with are struggling with health issues. There are 30 or more children involved with these mothers. Pray for renewed health for our African friends. Make out a check for $36.95 to The Global Bag Project, and send to P.O. Box 30, Wheaton, IL 60187.

Please pray for safety and strength for David, Doug and Carla. We also need financial donations to underwrite some of the expenses. David and Karen are taking out a home equity loan to provide liquidity when needed, but in this economy and at the end of a summer without many gifts, your contributions toward the project will be greatly appreciated.

The Global Bag Project is our way of helping Microfinance Women in Africa who have real needs for basic income to provide for their needy families. 

Your Christian Blogger Karen Mains

We are considering the modern dilemma of feeling “out of step” resulting in a need to “get back our rhythm.”

Two quotes from Dorothy Bass’s Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time give us a broadened idea of the rhythmicity that can be found in life.

“Happily, our home is a planet where the days begin to grow longer in the northern hemisphere just as Christmas arrives. Six months later, they start growing shorter again. Spring comes to every clime, however different it may appear in Norway, New Zealand, and Ecuador, and so does autumn. Human beings respond by elaborating on nature’s turnings: in every age and place, we develop seasonal rhythms of planting and reaping, of fasting and feasting, of letting go and starting afresh. These rhythms run through the days and the weeks, stitching them together until they come full circle over the course of a year.
   
“Within the rhythms that encircle a year lived in Christian faith, season also follows season. The natural tilts and turns of the northern hemisphere, where the Christian seasons of faith originated, set the stage: Easter follows the vernal equinox, Christmas the winter solstice. But the larger motions that govern these seasons belong to the story of God—a story in which nature is present but one that nature doesn’t write. Amazingly, even though this story began before time itself and reaches beyond the end of time, it is a story that has room in its narrative for each individual who encounters it in the present day. Within the Christian practice of living through the year, the gift of time becomes a means of entry into this story, a mysterious opening into participation in the life of God.
   
“Like the orbit whose span they measure, years are round. Each one begins at a certain point and arrives back at that pint before it can run its course once more. It forms a circle.”

For most of us, unreflectively rushing through the days of our lives, one season bumps into another. We have not developed a mechanism of living deeply, or living intentionally, in this most basic of life cycles, the yearly rhythm. “Is it spring already?” we ask. “It seems as though it was just Christmas a few days ago.” “Where has the time gone? We can’t be in another year already…? You mean summer’s almost over?” These are questions that become symptomatic of how out of rhythm, how detached from the moving circle of the year we have become.

Are you living each day as though they were beads strung aimlessly on an endless string, or do you see the returns and repetitions, the cycles and “circles” within the hours, the days, the weeks, the months and the years as a holy gift designed by God for some certain purpose, as rhythms that have sacred meaning?

How are you going to learn to live in the year as a circle in time? What must you do or change in your life so you will notice the days?
Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen and David have spent a great deal of time launching the Global Bag Project, which seeks to provide sustainable income for bag-makers in developing countries by selling their reusable artisan shopping bags in developed nations. This is the aim of the project: Through microfinance, women are helped to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. Every bag (and its bag-maker) has a story. The first such story is of Mary Nduta, a Christian woman from Nairobi, Kenya. If you would like to see Mary’s story, go to this YouTube link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcWFLbQ3u0M&NR=1

Other News:
Karen, through her ministry of Hungry Souls, has opened the registration for the Annual 24-hour Retreat of Silence. The Wednesday-Thursday 24-hour cycle will be for women only; the Friday-Saturday cycle will be for men and women.

Here are the details:

In 2009, the first retreat will run from Wednesday, beginning with dinner, December 2 through Thursday, ending by 4:00 p.m., December 3. The second retreat will run from Friday, beginning with dinner, December 4 through Saturday, ending by 4:00 in the afternoon, December 5.

This will make room for those who work during the days and don’t feel as though they can take time off during the week.

Our fees will be $120 for a single room with private bath. However, if you register early, by October 15, your fee will be $100. If you bring someone who has NEVER attended a Hungry Souls Advent Retreat of Silence, the welcome fee for any new attendees (and for you) will be $90. (The weekend retreat costs us $5 more. Add that amount to the fees – $125, $105 or $95.) The cutoff date for registrations is November 25. Since we must give a firm number to the Bishop Lane Retreat Center in Rockford, IL and pay for that number, we cannot return payments after the cutoff date.

Valerie Bell, Karen Mains and Sybil Towner will lead these two silent retreats again this year. This Hungry Souls Retreat of Silence is a guided retreat. We begin silence at 9:00 the first evening. If you are interested, contact our volunteer registrar Melodee Cook at Cook2210@aol.com.

If you are outside of the Chicagoland area and would like to fly in for any of our Silent Retreats, our staff or volunteers will be happy to meet you at the airport and facilitate any sleeping arrangements that might need to be made for our silent retreats.