Faith & Life Inspirational Message

We anticipate another Labor Day for yet another year.  As holidays go, it is one of the least important for me.  Maybe it is because I grew up on a dairy farm, so Labor Day was pointless; we still milked the cows twice that day just like any other day!  But clearly, it is special in many ways for many people.  And I am always intrigued by the history of a special day. Labor Day was declared a national holiday in 1894 by President Grover Cleveland.  The traditional day of celebration apparently was chosen by some unions in New York.  Since I have spent some time abroad, I know the traditional global day of celebrating labor is May 1.  Sometimes these international days of celebration can lead to political protest and disruptions.  It seems President Cleveland was concerned about that, so he wanted to avoid that May date.  So the first Monday in September was a safer alternative. There are typical associations with Labor Day....

I have often dealt with the idea of purpose in many of my classes.  When I am dealing with spirituality, I am convinced one of the issues is having purpose in one’s life.  As I deal with students, I have the sense they know having a purpose is a good thing.  Obviously many of them do have a purpose.  But there are others who have not thought much about it.  They may have a borrowed purpose from their parents or maybe a coach or someone they admire.  They may have an implicit purpose, but have a hard time articulating it.     Often it occurs to me, younger folks may not have a clear sense of what a purpose really is.  Simply speaking, a purpose is the reason for something.  It can be the reason something exists.  It might be the reason something is done or, even, not done.  In short, purpose is the reason for being or doing something.     It is clear to me there are many different kinds of purposes.  The...

I enjoy teaching the material I teach.  I find it relevant to life and trust the students will discover the same thing for their life.  I am not confident that what I teach will help them get the kind of job they want.  But I am very confident they will not have a very meaningful life if they don’t start reflecting on the things I teach.  As most of us know, life is more than a job---more than even a career.  And even if we feel called to do what we do, simply doing that is not sufficient to the good life.     This is why one of the spiritual practices essential to the good life is to live virtuously.  The classical virtues---like love, courage, justice and the others---have been around a very long time.  They are aids to good relationships.  Without them, we will be heading for quicksand.  And so one of the practices I want students to work on is living a life of virtue.  If effect, this kind of life produces people of...

For some time now I have been aware of the reports and, sometimes, controversy over the whole issue of climate change and nature.  Some folks think we are heading toward a climate crisis—global warming and the like.  Other folks scoff at such an idea and assume everything is fine.  Most of us are scientifically not savvy enough to have a clue how to think about it.  I know I am not smart enough to be an expert.  In fact, it is a struggle to know enough to have an educated opinion.     What I know is I trust science.  Having said that, I also know quite a few religious people put no faith in science.  In fact, quite a few religious folks think there is a basic conflict between religion and science.  I do not find myself in that camp.  I see science and religious as compatible, but different, ways of seeing and understanding our world.  I like to think I am both scientifically appreciative of knowledge and religiously moti...

Two saints!  The Roman Catholic Church has a ton of saints.  Of course, that is a statement by a Quaker, a tradition that typically does not talk about saints.  As I grew up in the Quaker environment, the only time I heard “saint language” was about some of the writers in the Bible.  I did hear people talk about St. John or St. Paul.  As a kid, if asked about saints, I would have assumed saints are “Bible guys.”  Since I never gave it any thought, I never thought about women saints.        My own Quaker tradition has held the radical equality of men and women since the beginning of our seventeenth century.  That part of Quakerism rubbed off on me and I have been very happy about that.  I have always seen women as my equal.  In fact, I would usually assume women were, by and large, better saint candidates than men---myself included!          I am glad that my...

No doubt, one of the best things that happened to me when I went to college was my narrow provincialism began to be challenged and changed.  Provincialism is not inherently bad; it is just limited.  To be provincial is to be limited to one’s single province.  My growing up province was a rural Indiana farm community.  It was a great place to grow up---wonderful people and the values they held to, like hard work, honesty, etc.  I have been forever grateful for this nurturing culture.  But it also was provincial.     It was provincial for me because it limited my view of the world---my sense of the incredible diversity and complexity of the world.  Provincialism is a form of limited ignorance.  Very smart people can be provincial.  Smart people can be ignorant!  I was one!  I didn’t know what I didn’t know.  College began to change that and I have endeavored to keep growing ever since.  I have become more worl...

Many times when I begin to write something, I recall Parker Palmer’s opening words in his book, The Active Life .  Palmer says, “It is a mistake to imagine that writers are experts on the things they write about---at least, it is a mistake on my part!” (xi)  He continues by saying, “I write about things I am still wrestling with, things that are important to me but that I have not yet figured out.”  I think the same thing holds true for me.      The process of writing is basically the process for thinking.  It is equivalent to speaking.  I often tell students, I need to hear them or read something they write in order to know really what they are thinking.  I know first-hand how easy it is to be a passive reader.  I can pick up a piece of writing---be it a newspaper article or a chapter in a book---and read it passively.  From this I can generally tell someone about what I read.  In other words, I can describe some informat...

I decided to go to breakfast at a local restaurant instead of the usual yogurt or cereal.  That is certainly not a radical decision; people make this decision every day of the year.  My family was gone and it was an easy decision.  I went expecting to have nothing but eggs and bacon and a quick look at email.  In fact, I sat at the counter in order to have a quick breakfast and get on with my day.     There certainly is nothing special in all that.  I was not looking for nor expecting anything special.  All I wanted were some eggs and toast.  A waitress whom I have seen, but do not know, came fairly quickly and took the order.  I turned to the emails on my phone, which is an announcement to the surrounding world that I don’t want to be in a conversation.  In the context of my teaching, this was hardly a move to make me contemplative.  I guess I was not concerned with being spiritual at that time.     Within ...

The title for this inspiration may seem odd.  And it may not sound spiritual or encouraging.  Clearly, I have lifted some words out of context and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to have any clue the context if we simply see the phrase: appropriate amount of giving up.  This phrase comes near the end of an article I just read.  Sometimes I am not sure why I read these kinds of articles, but I jumped into it and was surprised where it took me.  The title of the article was “Industrious ants’ surprise secret to success: selective laziness.”  It originally appeared in the Washington Post and was authored by Joel Achenbach.      The article opens with a great line.  “Ants don’t tend to get into traffic jams.”  I am sure this opening line lured me to continue reading.  And so continue I did.  Achenbach follows the opening by says about ants, “They might butt heads (or antennae) momentarily as they go about their...

For a fairly long time in my professional life I have been interested in contemplation.  As I so often comment, “contemplation” is not a word I heard while growing up as a young Quaker in Indiana.  I am confident I was not paying attention.  I don’t think Quakers I knew were using that word, “contemplation.”  So if I had been asked about it, I would have offered a blank stare.  I am sure I heard about the word, “contemplation,” while I was in school.  I may have heard of it in college, but more likely I first heard about it in graduate school.  I can guess I encountered it first in some kind of history of Christianity class.  Because Quakerism dates from the 17th century, we have a bad habit of skipping from Jesus to the 17th century.  I knew almost nothing about the sixteen hundred years between Jesus and the origins of my tradition.  Quite a bit happened during that time!  Early Christian contemplative tradition is rooted in t...

One of the blessings of teaching is the chance to continue to read good books.  And often, it means the opportunity to re-read some of my favorite books.  In spite of our society’s penchant for the new and novel, I learned some time ago that there are classics that stand the test of time and continue to speak to humans in all walks of life.  Obviously there are classics in music, in architecture and in books.  One of the classics I have had a chance to read again is Quest for God by the great 20th century Jewish rabbi and theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel.  Heschel is one of the theological giants who came to this country as a result of the Nazi craziness of the 20th century.  Heschel was born in Poland in 1907.  He was educated in Berlin, Germany.  When he was lecturing in 1938 in Frankfort, Germany, he was arrested by the Nazis and deported to Poland.  He was encouraged to leave before he would be killed.  So he fled to London and in 1940 arrived in New York City.  He spent fi...

I try to live life appreciatively.  One thing I do appreciate is seeing notes, reviews or announcements of books I did not know existed, but which I now want to read.  That just happened with a small review of a new book by Alan Lightman, entitled Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine .  Lightman is a professor at MIT, prolific astrophysicist and author.  As I read more about him, I discovered how fascinating he really is.  He is one of the few people who can write both for the scientist and the humanities person.       Diane Scharper is the person who wrote the little review, which I saw.  I want to share a few tidbits from that review that hopefully might whet your appetite to pursue some of Lightman’s stuff.  Scharper’s opening line hooked me.  She writes, “Alan Lightman, professor and author of more than 15 books, including the best-selling novel Einstein's Dreams, says he is not a believer in God. But he wishes ...

There are many sources of information and inspiration for me.  I like to read things from other Christian traditions to supplement my own valued Quaker spirituality.  And I feel blessed by all the non-Christian friends I have.  And I appreciate chances to read some from their traditions, like Judaism, Islam and Buddhism.  Our multi-cultural society is so much different than the little, homogeneous world of rural Indiana of my growing up days.      One of the groups within Christianity I appreciate are the nuns and religious sisters.  I have never been an official Roman Catholic, although I proudly admit to some crypto-Catholic tendencies.  I obviously have never been a monk or nun, but I have learned about their calling and way of life and highly value what the monastic life has taught me.  Recently, I had the honor of speaking to a fairly sizable gathering of Catholic sisters in the city where I live.  Their warmth, welcome an...

In reading a recent article in a periodical I regularly peruse, I came across an interesting quotation by the late Cardinal John Henry Newman.  I recall having come across this sentence before, but it has been some time since I saw it and thought about it.  Newman said, “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”  It fits Newman and it fits our own times.  Let’s first look at who Newman was and then look at the times in which we live. One publication I consulted calls Newman “the 19th century most important English-speaking Roman Catholic theologian.”  I would not disagree.  Born in London at the turn of the 19th century (1801), Newman grew up an Anglican---the Church of England.  Newman was a studious boy and enrolled at Oxford by the time most Americans are still in high school.  It was evident he was a gifted student.  He graduated in 1821 and within a year was named a Fellow at Oriel College, arguably the premier c...

When I was in graduate school, one of the things we joked about was all the big words we were learning.  Learning the big words was not a joke.  We all understood why we were doing it.  The big words gave us an ability to be more precise about what we were discussing.  Our conversations were often about deep things that were not capable of absolutely clear description.  God is the biggest example here.  We would joke that if anyone described God precisely, that person did not know God.  And we felt like the joke was true!     We joked about our big words knowing that we could never use these big words in many of our venues of ministry.  If we were preaching to a group of normal folks, we cannot use the big words.  They would not be understood and that is the point of speaking---to be understood.  And if we use big words when they hampered our cause, then we were the joke.     I thought about this when I rece...

Who am I?  That is a question almost everyone entertains and, perhaps, spends a good deal of time in life figuring out the answer.  It is not unusual for us to come up with a few different answers in the process of living our lives.  I am confident I would have answered that question differently when I was ten years old than I would today as a relatively mature, older guy.  I know there are some religious traditions that scoff at the idea there is even a real me.  For example, Buddhists question whether there can ever be a self or a real me.  Of course, we can pretend there is one; we can act as if there is one.  In my world of illusion I can have a self-illusion.  I am sure there are some psychologists who do not believe there is such a thing as a real me.  I am hoping they are not correct.  As a Christian and Quaker, I am captivated by the early Genesis creation account that humans are created in the image and likeness of the Divin...

I have thought about some topics for decades now.  But it is always wonderful to come across someone who can shed new light on an old subject.  One such topic I have pondered for years is faith.  Anyone who has engaged religion in any form probably has thought about faith.  I reckon I first thought about faith---what it is and how it works---as early as high school.  Perhaps I thought about it even earlier than that, but I can’t remember.  However, I am sure faith was involved in my life long before I thought about it!  To be sure, faith is a word that is usually involved with religion and the religious journey.  I would even use it with respect to spirituality, assuming there is some difference between religion and spirituality.  But faith is not simply a word used in conjunction with religion.  And I would contend, it is not a religious word.  Rather, I might call it a human word.  If you are human, faith is part of your vo...

Reading the title of this inspiration piece probably makes no sense until you get an appropriate context.  The context comes as I begin re-reading a classic book for me, namely, Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek .  I have used this book in a course I teach and I always love returning to the pages of this contemporary contemplative of nature.  I don’t know how else to put it, except to say Annie Dillard is an exciting writer.  Originally appearing in 1974, the book reads as if it were published only yesterday.  The reader would not know it, but Annie Dillard summarizes the entire book in a paragraph in the first chapter.  I would not have known this until a second or third read of the book.  This summarization comes in a paragraph where Annie describes where she lives.  Quite simply she says, “I live by a creek, Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virginia’s Blue Ridge.”  Again, I am not sure I caught the connection between this sentence and ...

The title for this inspirational piece could also be written in a different way.  I could have chosen to say “alone and together.”  In either case the question in my mind is how people in general and how I in particular practice the spiritual journey.  On one hand the answer is obvious.  My spiritual journey is mine alone.  You cannot do my spiritual journey and I cannot do yours.  From this perspective to pose the question, alone or together, is senseless.  It seems like my spiritual journey is done alone.  There is no way I can speak for the majority of Americans who actually would say they are on a spiritual journey.  However, I would guess that many, if not most of them, are doing their spiritual journey alone.  I would say this even knowing that a significant portion of people on their spiritual journey are folks who go to church, attend a synagogue or mosque.   I say this because I do not consider going to worship---i...