Tag: life

Christmas 2025

~ Sal Umana ~ 3 Comments

For the past 60 years, I have been sending out a Christmas message to as many people as I had addresses for. But now that I am almost 97 and have just moved into Assisted Living at Casa Celeste in Seminole, Florida, I am fighting the temptation to “fageddaboudit,” as they used to say in Boston when I was a kid. Or, as my father used to say during the last few years I went home for Christmas, “Well, this will be my last Christmas.” Then he died at 94.

So, in case this is my last Christmas, I’d hate to deprive you all of the pleasure of hearing from me one more time. I remember well that the first thing my father would read in the daily Boston Globe was the obituaries. How I loved my dad—or “Puppa,” as we all called him. He would be 135 today, and he worked very hard to make this damn country much better than it was when he arrived here at age 14 in 1904. Thank God I.C.E. wasn’t around then, or I wouldn’t be writing this letter. But there was no illegal immigration then. As long as you didn’t have an incurable disease, they let you in, and you built the damn country with your bare hands and a pick and shovel up on the dirt roads of Maine.

Now you can guess where this Christmas message is going. This is a country of immigrants, starting with the Pilgrims, who in 1620 landed in Plymouth—about 30 miles from the pier in Boston where that young kid from Sicily landed. The natives didn’t really like the Pilgrims, who in turn didn’t like the Irish, who in turn didn’t like the Italians, who in turn didn’t like the Poles. But we married each other, and love somehow won—more or less. And their kids are really beautiful. Just look on my Facebook page and laugh your behind off at their names. They are now into the fifth generation, going on sixth, from Seattle to Florida.

I know we can’t have open borders, but why the reckless cruelty in deporting people as if they were animals? Why can’t we put all that money and manpower into creating a legal system that makes people wait in line so they can be absorbed into our society humanely? It sounds naïve and impossible, but Americans have always found a way when they had the will. Do we, the grassroots, have the will? The leadership won’t do it unless we demand it.

Call me naïve, but on Christmas we celebrate the birth of a Palestinian in an occupied country who was later executed by the government for teaching that people should treat each other as if we are all members of the same family, no matter what party we belong to or how much money or power we have.

I’m going to go on praying to Him, and I hope you will join me in praying for all our fellow Americans so we can together solve a problem that is tearing us apart.

Merry Christmas and Peace in 2026 for You and Yours,

Sal and Peggy Umana

The Cherokee Story of the Two Wolves Within Us

~ Sal Umana ~ Leave a comment

There’s an old Cherokee tale about two wolves, and I have been thinking about it a lot these days. The story goes something like this:

One evening, an elderly Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside each of us.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

“The same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one that you feed.”

The last line of this story keeps coming to mind as we navigate through these days and weeks. I have always understood the story’s message, but I feel like I am regularly being presented with opportunities to take the wisdom of the story to heart—to ask the question: which wolf am I feeding?

As humans, it is natural for us to experience a wide range of emotions. This is why both wolves reside inside of us. Experiencing some amount of grief, fear, anxiety, or uncertainty, would seem to be both a natural and normal emotional expression of the current situation. However, how much of these emotions do we allow? Do we continually feed them to the point that our bad wolf is dominating?

The tale of the two wolves is a great reminder that we have choice over what we let reside inside of us. Once we become aware of the two wolves, we gain the power to stop feeding the bad wolf and start putting that time and energy towards the good wolf, so that it can thrive.

That doesn’t mean that we will ever completely rid ourselves of fear, worry, or doubt. We simply move around them—towards love, kindness, generosity and hope. We practice keeping our perspective focused on the things that are positive, productive, and beneficial—both for ourselves and for others. This feeds our good wolf.

And this choice can define how we will experience the weeks and months ahead of us.

These cherished words from our native Americans remind me of the Apostle Paul’s admonitions about the fruits of the Spirit from Corinthians and Ephesians: “charity (love), joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, etc.”

According to St. Paul, we are given the Holy Spirit’s gifts to feed the good wolf within us, with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and all of the “amazing grace” that is given to us if we choose to accept it.

On the other hand, we can feed the bad wolf within us with pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, sloth, fear, deception, resentment, rage, and all the human natural urges we are born with. We are free to wallow in our natural instinctual sins, or we can, by honesty and humility, acknowledge them in us while the Holy Spirit is simultaneously offering us the grace of love and kindness and forgiveness.

We saw a perfect example of the good wolf / bad wolf at the memorial for Charlie Kirk a few weeks ago. Erika Kirk accepted the gift of grace and forgave the man who killed her husband.

Right after Erika fed her good wolf, the President fed his bad wolf by saying “Sorry, Erika, I hate all those who want to kill me.” While Jesus gave us the most difficult of all forgiveness stories: Dying on the Cross He said: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Where Have You Gone, Freddy Weigel?

~ Sal Umana ~ Leave a comment

They don’t call this a funeral anymore. They call it a Memorial, or better still, a “Celebration of Life“ I like that, but I would add “A Celebration of Death“, too.

I think we love Jesus because He taught us how to live, but even more, He taught us how to die. Jesus taught us by His words, but much more by His life, and by the way He died.

I would say the same about Fred Weigel. He taught us by the way he lived, and especially by the way he died.

    We are all blessed for having known Fred Weigel. And we will continue to be blessed if we allow Fred’s gentle memory to remain in our hearts.

    I have known Fred for 81 years. I first met him when he got off a bus at St. Mary’s College, North East, PA., on August 29, 1943. Fred had boarded a train in Hoboken, NJ., and was hurtling at high speed through NY state, heading for Buffalo, when his train crashed. The NY seminarians were in the second car, and ended up sideways next to the 1st and 3rd cars where many passengers were killed. But none of the seminarians was killed. This changed Fred’s attitude toward life—and death. They say “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

    The second time Fred faced imminent death was 20 years later, when he was a missionary in Santo Domingo, on the same island with Haiti. Haiti has many revolutions, but so does Santo Domingo. Fred was sent to protect his Bishop, Raimond McLaughlin, a fellow Redemptorist, who was threatened by the Dictator, General Trujillo.Fred stood at the top of the stairs where the Bishop’s room was. ( I saw the same spot about 10 years later.) The soldiers rushed up the stairs and struck Fred on the head with their rifle butts and he fell down the stairs. But he survived, thanks be to God, and we enjoyed him for another 60 years. (By the way, the Bishop survived, but the Dictator didn’t.)

    Fred seems to have developed a certain, je ne sai quoi, friendship(?) with death. 20 years after the near death experience, he left the Caribbean and came to Tampa and immediately enrolled at USF for a Master’s Degree in Gerontology which includes a good deal about death and dying, because old people have this funny quirk of insisting on dying on us.

    Then, as Fred writes in his own Obituary, he became one of the leaders of Hospice Care in Tampa Bay. Wow ! He spent the next 50 years helping people die, and eventually, learning how to die, himself. When Fred’s brother Richard died, (he was found homeless in NY), Fred called me from Tampa when I was living in Long Island. I went to the wake, funeral, and burial with him. Later, his brother Jack died, who was a very popular Deacon in Massapequa, Long Island. We attended that wake, funeral, and burial together. Then a few years ago, I spent some days with Fred as his wife Jeanne lay dying. Fred was reading a popular new book on dying. We prepared the memorial service for Jeanne together.  

    This was just before the covid lockdown, when I went on to write my book about joyful dying called “Entering Eternity With Ease.” Fred was a big help to me in writing that book. 

    I learned a lot about dying from Fred. Fred didn’t teach me. He did it the best way: by showing me. He modelled dying for me.

    Fred would not like it if I said he was a Christ figure. But Fred was a Christ figure. He still is now, as Christ was and is. Jesus was the greatest teacher ever, but he taught mostly by being the perfect model or example of what he taught. The way Jesus was born, in a stable. The way he lived and worked as a laborer and carpenter. The way Jesus died. The way He talked constantly about dying. The way he kept saying we had to take up our cross DAILY, yes, DAILY. But especially the way He died on a cross.

    Fred Weigel had his own cross. He was disabled for a good four years. It can be a cross to be disabled, to depend almost completely on others. To call an ambulance every time you fall down. I watched Fred do that many times.

    Yes, Fred, you are a Christ figure for me. I need you in my life in your resurrected presence now. Fred would be angry if I called him a saint – but he is definitely a member of the “Communion of Saints”, that Catholics believe in.

    I won’t say: “Rest in Peace” I won’t say: “You are now in Peace”.

I will say: “Stay with us Fred Weigel, we need you to teach us how to enter eternity with ease.”

The Difference Between Pain and Suffering

~ Sal Umana ~ Leave a comment

The greatest contribution that Buddhism has made to the world, especially to the Western world, over the past 60 years, is its teaching on suffering. That is my opinion. Others might say that Buddhism and the great wave of “New Age Spirituality” that swept over the United States in the 60’s taught us the importance of compassion, meditation, mindfulness, and all the other changes in consciousness. But to me, personally, in practice, the distinction between pain and suffering was transformative and life-changing. Mainly because a proper understanding of the difference between pain and suffering leads to compassion which is essential to being a fully human person.

I share here a passage from “Zen Miracles: Finding Peace in an Insane World” by Brenda Shoshanna, Ph.D. On Page14, she writes:

                                       PAIN IS SIMPLY PAIN

When we let mental machinations go, pain is simply pain. It cannot be avoided in life. To try to avoid it is part of the sickness. The more we are able to experience and accept it, the sooner our suffering subsides. We do not need to explain away pain. We cannot figure it out. We can, however, receive it. In the simple receiving, pain transforms into something quite different. Not only does the pain transform, but more importantly, WE do. As we practice Zen, we see that pain is not bad. It is simply pain. If we spend our lives running away from painful moments, we shut out a great deal of what life brings us, both the pain and the joy. We can neither laugh when we’re happy nor cry when we’re sad.

In Zen, we learn how to feel and accept painful moments, to become larger than our pain. When we are willing to accept our experience, just as it is, a strange thing happens: it changes into something else. When we avoid pain, struggle not to feel it, pain turns into suffering.

There is an enormous difference between pain and suffering. Pain often cannot be avoided. Suffering can. As we learn the difference between them, many fears subside.

As we practice, thought subsides and we become one with the sound of the birds, the heat of summer, the smile of a friend, the feeling of soapy dishwater on our hands. Thinking takes us away from that. But direct experience will bring us all the healing, joy, and strength needed for everything.

Shoshanna says: “We can neither laugh when we are happy, or cry when we are sad.”. This condition describes depression. When we try to run away from pain, we turn off our ability both to feel pain AND feel joy. We can neither laugh nor cry. That is why the name for this condition has been changed from “depression” to “anhedonia”, a Greek word that means “the inability to feel pleasure.” In the state of depression, or anhedonia, we have turned off our ability to feel, so that we no longer feel pain, or joy. We lose our taste for life. We suppress the energy we need to get through every moment. As Shoshanna says: “When we avoid pain, struggle not to feel it, pain turns into suffering.” Depression is excruciating suffering, because we lose our natural ability to accept pain, and we fight and resent the pain, making it unbearable. Pain cannot be avoided, but suffering can, by choosing to fight the pain by simply accepting it.

Suffering is the attitude that we have toward pain. Suffering is the anger that we have when we cannot deny the pain anymore. The brain tries desperately to help us by telling us that pain can be avoided, and it feverishly seeks whatever escape it imagines possible: It could be denial, it could be a search for anything that distracts us from ourselves: alcohol, drugs, sexual addiction of any kind, workaholism. Suffering is the resentment that pain chooses me. “Why me?” Suffering is the “pain/body” that mindfulness teachers like Eckhart Tolle describe that haunts us from our past when one thing or another did not go well for us. We suffer because we allow the pain to torment us. We allow the hurt, the resentment, the indignation to suffocate us. By obsessing, we turn pain of any kind, whether physical, emotional, or psychological, into suffering. The pain could not be avoided, but the suffering could have been, but we threw away our ability to avoid the suffering.

The worst thing that happens to us is that our brain tries so hard to avoid all this pain that it becomes the disease of pain avoidance, pain intolerance. Then we have to train the brain itself which has become sick. As Shoshanna says: “Pain is simply pain. It cannot be avoided in life. To try to avoid it is part of the sickness.” She goes on to say: “Pain often cannot be avoided. Suffering can. As we learn the difference between pain and suffering, many fears subside. Life is full of pain. It cannot be avoided. But we can learn from day to day to live with it. The more we are able to experience and accept it, the sooner our suffering subsides.

“As we practice Zen, we see that pain is not bad. It is simply pain.”

One of my favorite stories is about an American who went to India to learn meditation. One of his first experiences was the worst toothache he had ever had in his life. He begged the Zen master to let him seek out a dentist, but the master refused and made him sit with the pain for 24 hours. Eventually, the pain subsided, and only then was he allowed to see a dentist. As Shoshanna says: “When we are able to accept our experience, just as it is, a strange thing happens: it changes into something else.” This is how we learn compassion.

Compassion is first experienced as compassion for ourself, and then compassion for others. All of this is best learned by a regular practice of meditation a few minutes each day. Whether you call it Zen, or contemplation, or centering prayer, you will eventually find out the difference between pain and suffering.

If you have any questions about this practice, you can ask them in the comments.