Special words for special moments!

Vayechi - Genesis 47:27-50:26

When Jacob was old, sick and dying, his son Joseph came with his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, so that Jacob might bless them.

Blessing only flows to those who want to be blessed. Joseph didn’t neglect this technology; he knew that his children could be empowered by his father’s words.

In Genesis 48:16 Jacob says: "The angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the children, let my name be named on them and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth."

What a secret! Jacob is invoking the blessings upon his grandchildren in the name of Hamalach hagoel oti (“the angel who redeemed me”)! A unique angel, with authority to bless and redeem him, changed his name.

Joseph, however, was still anxious. When Jacob reached out to touch the boys, he crossed his arms so that his right hand was on Ephraim. Ephraim was the youngest and Joseph felt that Jacob's right hand should have been on Manasseh, the oldest. He tried to move his father's hands.

We do the same! We are always trying to move our father’s hands. God is not anxious like us. God doesn't need to keep us anxious in order to establish his power.

Jacob refused to change his hands. He intended to bless Ephraim, the youngest, with his right hand so that Ephraim would be greater than Manasseh.

It was the right time, the right moment, and the right person to bless them. We have to learn to enjoy the moments and the timing to celebrate life. The Jewish people understand this principle very well. The blessings that we give to Jewish children before they go to sleep each night, as well as the blessings of the children at the Shabbat table, are the very same words today!

Special words for special moments!

We have to learn to celebrate these moments! Every celebration is actually a way to give meaning to an occasion. In other words, we make something meaningful; we create the celebrations and we do that in order to remind us about something special in our life!

Anxiety is a mental state generated within us in the expectation of something that happens in our favor. When this expectation is not fulfilled, we miss the opportunity to celebrate the blessings that God already provided us. We have to understand that life itself is miracle enough.

Lewis Carroll’s celebrated classic about the story of Alice in Wonderland addresses this issue well.

Alice meets a strange character, the Mad Hatter. This character was a man who fought against time. His watch tells the day of month, but not the hour of the day, and therefore it was always tea time. When Alice appeared, he was singing, laughing, and celebrating with his friends while holding on to a teapot made from fine porcelain. She interrupted the event and apologized for having invaded that birthday tea party.

The Mad Hatter laughed and said that it was not a birthday, but rather an “unbirthday.” For him, today was the priority. In his opinion, there is only one day during the year in which you celebrate your birthday. Therefore, the other 364 days are “unbirthdays” and those days are special and unique too! His happiness was much greater because he calculated happiness based on the “unbirthdays.”

We have to learn how to celebrate life by empowering our children and blessing them. We cannot miss an opportunity! Using Jacob’s technology, we should bless our kids using his words: “God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh” (Genesis 48:20).

Every blessing is unique because every day is a different and special day. Life is about making every day a special day. A day to bless and be blessed.

Shabbat Shalom!

Liquid Modernity

According to the Polish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, we are living a postmodern era that is based upon the concept of Liquid Modernity. This means that all social relationships are not solid. They move fast in many directions. We tend to not live under the roots. We keep changing and experiencing new values. The world is moving ever more fluid and less solid. Everything is disposable: religion, job, and marriage. If something does not work well, we simply replace it with a new one.

The work relations are changing fast since Henry Ford more than doubled the pay of his employees, making them by far the highest-paid workers in America in the 1910s. Although he declared that his employees would be able to purchase his cars, the primary purpose of the wage was to avoid the cost of replacing workers.

Marriage is no longer  a issue of commitment but an issue of status and convenience. Engagement and wedding rings are one of the most popular traditions, but even a “royal wedding” could be transformed in a “royal divorce”.

Although the  foundation of most societies was on religion, uprooting of these religious roots have occurred. Heritage is being ignored due to media that has become more influential in shaping values. Religion has become a brand, but not necessarily something healthier. The body is now a religious cult, where people go to the gym to work out and buy vitamins, creatine, special foods, and equipments to worship better. Of course, all of these supplements and devices quickly go to the basement. I remember the former Philippine first lady  Imelda Marcos with her six  thousand pairs of shoes. How big was her closet?

The luxury and sophistication of today will be the need of tomorrow. The excluded of today are the consumers of the future. Tensions and stress of today are more related to consumption than beliefs.

The Cartesian maxim says: "I think, therefore I am”, but it has been replaced by  the new liquid modernity maxim “I shop, therefore I am”. I am not a hypocrite to say I hate to be a consumer. Two things changed my life this past year. One was the electric toothbrush and the other was the iPhone. And I am looking forward to buying an iPad without any fetishism or attempt to worship a “thing”.

I truly believe that if Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie decided to create a religion,  thousands of people would like to be born again and be baptized according the their rituals only to have them as priests.

How will the post-post-postmodernity be? Any clue?

Personal marketing - Hulk Goliath Hoogan

If personal marketing can be seen as a process of conception, planning and execution of actions that lift a person to a distinguished place, then Goliath was the pioneer of personal marketing. He knew how to stir up a crowd and his enemies like no one else. He was the ‘man’ who knew how to get attention, how to plan his self-promotion in details and how to transform this into power, creating fear and terror in his adversaries.

‘Image is everything,’ and Goliath knew this very well. He created an image that made everyone around him feel completely inferior. Without any help from apress office or advertising agency, without the use of any type of media, Goliath turned himself into a myth!

Goliath was aggressive and egocentric, he spread pessimism and failure among his enemies, and he was gifted with an impressive coldness and openly demonstrated his disdain for others. In other words, he was authentic! He truly was himself and he used the best personal marketing ever created, which is authenticity.
Goliath was coarse, cruel and made no effort to hide this. Much to the contrary, he amplified this fact and made the most out of his characteristics.

Goliath did not feel uncomfortable about speaking in public, since he was a great communicator. And communication is result. The best communication is that which meets its objectives, and Goliath obtained success because he knew how to communicate, how to influence, how to threaten and disseminate terror among the Israelites. He was the champion of the Philistines, and through his bravados and offenses, he summoned the Israelites to give up the fight, challenging them to send their representative to face him in an individual duel. The loser would lead his people to surrender to the victorious nation. His words had an effect.

Goliath threatened and challenged the people of Israel for 40 days, in the morning and in the afternoon. A daily ritual that paired off the armies and defiled the Israelites exactly at their time of prayer. As the popular saying goes, words are words, nothing more than words, and words are carried by the wind. But the instruction from ABOVE does not state this. Words are pure power. When these words are associated with an image and adequate techniques and methods, they are enormously efficient, since they paralyze the listener, neutralizing his or her power to react.

The people of Israel were paralyzed, anchored, stranded like a transatlantic ocean liner that, as it gets dangerously close to the beach, gets stuck on a sandbar.
The psychological massacre suffered by the Israelites led them down into a deep anguish, a form of daily torture, a fright never before felt.

However, the solution  as always, came from the least expected source. The then young David, youngest of seven children of Jesse, was making a delivery, at the order of his father, which was to take food to his brothers who were in the battle field. He was responsible for the chain of supply, the logistics on the battlefield. By chance, he found himself in a scenario in which a giant named Goliath challenged and spread fear throughout the entire army of Israel. At that moment, David, armored with extraordinary boldness and optimism, assumed the commitment of battling against that giant in a heroic fashion. And it was at this moment that David revealed a faith that did not falter when faced with an enemy or a challenge. It displayed optimism for its people, who had only seen defeat before them.

Goliath’s personal marketing did not look upon David’s image favorably.
Goliath’s projected image did not tune into David’s receptor. He changed the station.

Most of us are defeated on the eve of the battle, so when we come face-to-face with some problem, with some giant of life, we accept defeat and give up even before the battle begins. Our minds are producers of giants; we increase the size of our obstacles to something far bigger than they actually are. This negativist vision of reality contributes to making us vulnerable when it comes to being knocked out by the adversary.

There were those, however, who did not cave into negativism.
David was a young man who was not afraid of challenges and who beat them because he fought with God’s weapons. David’s confidence was unswerving. He preferred to fight, he asked the king for permission for this. King Saul feared for David’s life, saying:

“Goliath is a fighter and you are no more than a mere boy.”

David was not the bit least concerned about this and responded:

“The Lord my God will help me win this battle.”

David convinced King Saul that he could face Goliath, and so Saul offered him the weapons and armor, but they were too heavy. David did not fight Goliath with the human weapons that he was offered. He rejected human armor. It was heavy and uncomfortable. That is why David headed out for battle without it, taking with him only a slingshot and a few stones that he had plucked out of a stream. There will always be a Goliath in our lives. Just like David, our alternative is to battle – we have no way out. The battle will bring us victory so that this alliance is known to all, since the best marketing is that which reflects the truth and is authentic.

Marketing cannot serve to subvert the individual, to recruit personal benefits or to change reality.

Old sneakers and luxury soaps

I am the kind of person that, when I buy something, I have difficulty using immediately. I keep things; preserve them, so that I use them for an appropriate occasion.

My sneakers can last for years, because I'll just use them again and again, and only get new ones when I totally destroy the old. When I say destroy, I really mean it.

I don´t act miserly; I don´t feel like I´m stingy. I prefer to say that I do it to avoid depreciation. If I buy a new pair of sneakers in the amount of US$160 and wear them 3 times a month, means that I use them 36 times a year. So every time I wear them, costs me US$ 4.44.

But if I wore them only 2 times a year, every time I wore them, it would cost me US$80!
But if old ones cost a few pennies ... then I have no mercy!

I'm the kind of person who, in spite of buying a portable HD, I prefer to be using an old pen-drives of only 2 Gb, and I will wait until the new HD becomes obsolete.

Of course, to avoid depreciation, I end up not enjoying the new things, the good news!
Newness of life is the same thing. We do not take possession because we rather preserve the old.
Have you ever received as a gift a box of luxury soaps with different scents? Cherry , Green Tea ,Chocolate , Orange, Plum, Almonds, Brazil Nuts?
They look great, they smell great, but do they taste great?
Although it´s exciting to receive them as a gift, with all those flavors, I feel a little bit confused because I am not sure I should use, eat or use it as decoration in my bathroom?

So is the kingdom of God, it´s not a matter of “garnish”!
The greatest statement we can do is: “the kingdom of heaven is available!"
It is a confession that changes our land, confronting the local reality and establishing the “newness”. A royal decree that will transform the reality.

We need to recognize the role of the KING! Accepting him as Lord is going beyond the point of accepting him as a savior .

It´s about time to declare that the kingdom of Heaven exist in all areas of our lives.

This is the true Shalom!

Onion’s tears

Let’s talk about onions. Onions are all full of layers and good taste ... the taste is unique!

I love the bloomin’ onion. It´s a dish consisting of one large onion which is cut to resemble a flower, breaded, and deep fried. It is served as an appetizer at Outback Steakhouse, which claims to be the dish's inventor.

It´s not so difficult to prepare this dish; the main problem with onion is tearing up. Even celebrity chefs cry when they chop onions…

By the way, it is not the strong odor of the onion that makes us cry, but the gas that the onion releases. When this gas encounters the water produced by the tear ducts in our eyelids, it produces sulfuric acid.

As our eyes automatically blink, they produce tears which irrigate the eye, and which flush out the sulfuric acid.

In fact, there is a Yiddish proverb that says:

Man is like an onion: after you peel away the layers all that is left is tears.

Tears are also the result of struggle. There are several levels of fighting. Each layer of the onion is a level of struggle. The struggle of the individual, the family's struggle, the struggle of the congregation, the struggle of the city, the country's fight and struggle of the world. We must act at all levels.

An onion and its layers are a nice analogy for human soul. Like onions, problems may have multiple layers, and if you do not dig deeply enough, you can finish up not solving the real problem, and without tears, nothing will be for real.

Let´s slice the onion!

The inner layers are our weaknesses. Unfortunately we tend to deny our weaknesses. Hiding them does not solve our problems.

You do not conquer what you do not confront. You cannot skip steps in the process of "peeling the human soul."

Facing weakness may be scary, but it’s also rewarding, like enjoyig a bloomin’ onion. If we don´t fight , we will remain immobilized.

If we have an addiction problem, if we are impatient, if we live immersed in a cycle of self pity, if we ever feel persecuted and rejected, if we watch cable TV channels that pollute our minds ... then we are stuck!

We need to get rid of things which trap us because we are born to be free. There will be tears, but we need to slice the onion!

We need to confront the problems. We need to peel our soul!

The snakes are smoking and the pigs flying!

The snake is smoking! Do you know the origin of this? In 1943, when the FEB -Força Expedicionária Brasileira (in Portuguese), the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, was created, a party existed in Brazil called Integralism, which spread out and perpetuated the Nazi propaganda.

It was formed in its majority of Germans from the existing south colonies. They were planning for a secession fight. They had installed espionage points in Rio de Janeiro, the nation capital at the time, the Military Command headquarters, as well as other places. Many spies were discovered and imprisoned. But at each arrest, it became frequent to hear new Integralist declarations, like “it is easier for a snake to smoke than for the FEB to embark to Italy”. And yet, eventually, the FEB embarked, and the snake smoked.

The expression “a cobra vai fumar” (“snakes will smoke”) was often used in Brazil in a context similar to “when pigs fly.”
This is only one of the innumerable versions presented for the origin of such a strange term. However, how can a snake smoke? And is it exactly for not fearing the enemy that it applies so well to those men who had fought in the operations theater in Italy, and in doing so surpassed what it seemed to be impossible: the victory!
That´s why FEB wore a divisional shoulder patch that showed a snake smoking a pipe.
But many centuries ago, in the desert, the people of Israel realized that "Snakes smoked".

The people spoke against God and against Moses, saying: "Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no food. There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”

They were speaking against the manna - the precious gift of God, a combination of sordid blasphemy with a disrespectful behavior!
They were speaking against God, speaking against His appointed leaders, speaking against His blessings.

When God invited them to sit at the table and eat with him, they simply decided to throw the table out the window!

God reacted! He sent them what scared them most!

Why are people scared of snakes? People are scared of snakes because if they are bitten by a venomous snake they can die in a few minutes. It may be the fact that they just slide around. They don’t walk or have legs, they just slide. Creepy!

God became angry and sent poisonous serpents that bit the people, and many died from those bites. That is wrath, that is anger!

The people came to Moses and said: “We sinned! Heal us!” Moses prayed for the people.

God ordered Moses to make a snake and set it on pole and everyone who was bitten sees it shall live!

What a lesson! We have to face the fear to be saved. We have to look to what scare us most and move forward to defeat the snake!

We are not really dealing with poison, but anger!

We are not really dealing with snakes, but with fears!

We are not really trying to avoid being bitten, but trying to be saved from death.

But God himself lifted up the snake and expressed that repentance depended on trust and commitment.

God reversed his anger into mercy.

In Yeshuas’ conversation with Nicodemus, Yeshua tells him that just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must he be lifted up.
We are poisoned, we are sick, we are lost in the midst of the desert, and we need healing!

All we have to do is look at the healer, who gives life.

Are you still scared of snakes?

Archimedes' Lever

Everybody says that the world takes many turns. Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump said: “My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get!”

Most of children’s outdoor areas have seesaws. The up-and-down movement is so real when we play with the seesaw and so real when we live our real lives.

It is a simple toy, traditional, with a foothold in the middle. Simple? Archimedes said: "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world"

Well that doesn´t sound simple at all.
Archimedes' Law of the Lever is wrong when our foothold is pride and arrogance; if it is, we will be crushed ...
The function of man is to seek humility!

In the Tanakh (Old Testament), is written in 1 Samuel 2:7, "The Lord gives wealth and takes a man's goods from him: crushing men down and again lifting them up”

I understand that the Lord alone has power to exalt and humiliate us. If we decide to do his part (exalt), he will do our part (humiliate). If we insist on our self-promotion, he will insist on putting us down on the seesaw! We are so proud that our pride doesn´t allow us to realize it. This is very serious. In fact, to depend on God is very difficult.

We depend on many things. We depend on food, water, air, and a properly functioning body. We depend on these things because they are essential for the continuation of our lives.
We depend on God in the same way. Without God, we would die. With God, we continue to live.
I cannot see any alternative to sincere humility without being touched by a supernatural

And why is this important? The answer is simple: alignment with God's Will is essential to a life of fulfillment. For a partnership that works, it's much more than just affinity, it s understanding, respect, friendship and loyalty.

At some point in life we will need a really friend. On the seesaw of life, only one friend can put us on top...