Tomorrow...

...is my last day at the office for the year. I would up being ahead of schedule with my work, so the rest of the day will be spent on the things that get put off from the day to day.

This is also the time of year that I write letters to a few people, who have had some impact on me during the year. The act of writing (and sometimes I never send those letters) acts as sort of a "closing out" of the year. In one case, I must write a very difficult letter to someone who has acted in very poor judgement at my expense on a personal matter. Part of living with our own humanity, is living with the humanity of our friends -- to the point of wondering if they ever really were our friends. The virtue of love demands that we choose our friends wisely. It is all well and good to love every person created by God; quite another to call them "friend." They are not identified by how we address them, but by who they are.

They can also be identified by who we are. It is not unheard of, for example, for alcoholics who join AA to have to give up all their drinking buddies. Those still caught in their addiction are incapable of being true friends to anyone, let alone those in recovery. I lost some of my friends when my wife left me over twelve years ago. I didn't do anything to these people, but now I had a different place in their lives. I kept more friends than I expected, but I did lose a few.

I lost a dear friend this year. They do not fully realize this, as in the aftermath of their betrayal, they simply assume they can go on as "hail, fellow, well met." And yet I am compelled to confront them with the evidence. To quote an old German proverb, it matters less whether they lied to me, than that I no longer know whether to believe them.

I have learned over the years -- whether in my professional or personal life -- that "what goes around comes around." In my federal service career, I have been confronted by formidable opponents in the office environment, who were ultimately the architect of their own ruin. I have learned in my social life, that those occasions when I injured someone, it came back to haunt me. I have seen it happen to others as well, whenever they hurt me.

I used to think it was all about really good karma. But I have begun of late to conclude, that it is really about the Cross. If we do not take up the Cross, it will find us. The great Holocaust that took the lives of six million Jews eventually led to the downfall of its perpetrators. John Henry Newman once wrote of how life is an absolutely fair paymaster: "As ye soweth, so shall ye reap."

I pray for an abondonment of all human hope, in favor of Divine hope. "Adveniat regnum tuum, fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra."