Faith & Life Inspirational Message

Recently I was at a gathering for a friend and colleague who passed away.  It was not a funeral or memorial service, although the conversation sometimes reminded me of a Quaker memorial service.  Inevitably the thoughts of all who gathered were on the guy who had lived eighty plus years, but now was part of that world which has moved on.  He had been retired for quite a few years, but clearly he had made a mark in many different ways on many different people.  Maybe that is one sign of a good life. But the experience provoked me to think about life and the memories left after our earthly life is history.  I realized that memories are the residue of our lives.  They are the “what’s left over…”  Of course, sometimes we leave wills and the courts disperses whatever material goods we leave to various folks in our families and friends.  All of our stuff is given away---to a surviving spouse, kids, etc.  Our stuff is not residual. But memories are ...

I have been working my way through the fairly recent book, Thank You for Being Late , by Thomas Friedman.  The subtitle of the book is revealing: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Acceleration .  Friedman is the well-known New York Times correspondent and author.  His earlier book (2005), The World is Flat , was wildly successful.  He is a good writer, bases his thoughts on a ton of research and addresses the big issues of our world.  His current book addresses issues like climate change, technological change and all the challenges of life in our crazy world. Friedman writes in a clear, focused way.  He makes so many good points that I want to copy and use in my own presentations and writings.  The other thing he also does is introduce a huge number of other writers, thinkers and researchers into the mix.  Everything he offers is science based or research based.  He does not shoot from the hip.  Even when he offers his own so...

Sometimes while I am reading, I run across an interesting sentence or even phrase that jumps out to grab my attention.  This often will happen even in article or books that have no special meaning to me.  This happened in a recent article I was reading in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  I read this weekly education publication to stay current with the themes and trends in higher education.  The piece had to do with the teaching of humanities and, particularly, the state of literature in our colleges and in our culture.  So this is not exactly in my own field, but I am nevertheless interested. Of course human beings have been reading and writing for a long time.  Writing has served multiple purposes.  Sometimes it is for spiritual or philosophical edification.  It is easy to think about the sacred writings in the many different religious traditions.  All the major religious traditions have their sacred scriptures.  And even in many ...

I am assuming the title of this inspirational piece makes no sense.  It would make no sense to me if I had not read a story near the end of Thomas Friedman’s book, Thank You for Being Late .  The last couple chapters of his book narrates his own life as a kid growing up in a suburb of the Twin Cities in Minnesota.  Friedman is a little younger than I am, so everything he talks about I recognize.  And I appreciate his analysis of those times of the 1950s-70s and how that differs from our own times today. This particular story which gives us the odd word, skyboxification, comes from his reflection on a fellow citizen of that suburb, Michael Sandel.  I recognize Sandel’s name, because he is a famous professor at Harvard.  He lectures to huge crowds on such topics as justice.  I have listened to some of the podcasts and read some of his stuff.  It is first-rate. As Sandel reflects on his time growing up in the Minneapolis suburb, he makes the point th...

Anyone who knows much about the early Christian centuries would recognize immediately that the title for this inspirational reflection is much too general.  The desert tradition, usually capitalized, refers to a specific group of men and women in the third to the fifth centuries of the Christian era.  This group of believers saw threats to their Christian way of living in the emerging culture of the Roman Empire---an Empire that would embrace Christianity in the fourth century.  They were fully aware of the irony of the imperial powers taking on the faith that their predecessors once persecuted. The Desert Tradition birthed the monastic movement as we know it in Christian circles.  The term, monachos , in Greek simply means “solitary one.”  Originally, these early monks withdrew from their society.  They left the cities and villages and withdrew to the desert.  In many ways they imitated their Lord Jesus in his time in the wilderness.  They were...

My friend and Franciscan friar, Dan Horan, recently wrote a column about fear in our culture.  He makes easy connections to the political craziness of our times, the economic fears many folks rightly seem to entertain and the numerous other maladies that can assault us.  There is no reason simply to rehash his arguments and points.  Rather what I want to lift us is a quotation he uses from Martha Nussbaum, a contemporary popular writer in philosophy. Actually, what I want to share are some thoughts from the neuroscientist, Joseph LeDoux.  LeDoux makes an interesting distinction between fear and anxiety.  He suggests there is both a physiological and psychological dimension to both of these.  And then LeDoux is quoted.  “Fear can, like anxiety, involve anticipation, but the nature of anticipation in each is different: in fear the anticipation concerns if and when a present threat will cause harm, whereas in anxiety the anticipation involves uncertainty ...

Doubtlessly, you have heard and many times used the phrase, ‘coming to our senses.”  If I use it, I assume folks know what I mean.  Sometimes we might add some detail about what it means in a particular moment.  After hearing it and using it all these years, I realized I had never taken any time to think about that phrase. Why is it so powerful and meaningful?  And is there anything spiritual about it? In this first place I think it is meaningful and powerful because it is rooted in our ordinary way of thinking about ourselves.  Most of us learn early on about our senses.  When we get to school, we learn there are five senses.  At least there are five senses for most of us we learn.  Occasionally, we come across someone who is deaf or who is blind and that makes us realize the five senses are not absolutely a given.  But being normal means we have all five.  We may learn some things about ourselves such that we are more visual learners o...

When I saw the title of a recent article, “The last monk of Tibhirine,” I knew I had to read it.  I suppose most folks---even religious people---do not know the word, Tibhirine.  It immediately connected for me.  I remembered one of the earlier spirituality books I ever read by Charles de Foucauld, founder of a monastery by that name in Algeria.  de Foucauld wrote a book called, Letters from the Desert , which I enjoyed very much. de Foucauld had been in the French army, but then had a religious conversion.  He felt called to be a monk and to live among the Muslims.  And so he found himself in the desert among Muslims.  His life would be a living testimony to interfaith dialogue before it was even called such.  I was intrigued by what people would do when they had a burning faith.  He was a witness to one form of deep commitment.  Others joined his movement and lived a kind of communal witness to this interfaith dialogue. But it came to ...

I like to follow Pope Francis because so often he teaches me something or causes me to look at things in a different way.  Such was the case again recently.  The source of his wisdom came from the reporters’ pens on his trip back from a meeting with the Romanian Orthodox Patriarch Daniel.  I know a fair amount about the Orthodox Church and how its various manifestations---Greek, Russian, etc.---interact with the Roman Catholic Church.  Much of my interest stems from my long-time intrigue with and involvement in the ecumenical movement.  The ecumenical movement recognizes the diversity within the Christian church and works for ways we can still be faithful together.  Realistically this side of paradise, there probably will not be full Christian unity.  We are a long way from people simply identifying as Christians---especially in this country.  Instead folks still identify as Catholic, Nazarene, Baptist and so forth.  The real question then is...

One of the nice perks I still enjoy from teaching in a university context is a request to read and review books.  Usually, these are books I would not purchase to have for myself.  In fact, at my age I am trying to limit the things that I call my own.  But if you took a look at the shelves in my study, it is clear I have not done anything yet about collecting books.  I tell students, we actually had to have books once upon a time before everything was on the computer or online.  I just received a book that I am intrigued to read all the way to the end.  It is entitled, The Temple in Early Christianity , by Israeli scholar, Eyal Regev.  I do not know him, so that will be a treat to get to know a younger scholar.  And I have to admit, the theme of the temple is not one I am excited about pursuing.  But that is precisely why I like doing this kind of thing.  By agreeing to review books, I will read something that otherwise I would never hav...

Recently, I picked up a friend at the airport.  Normally, I would think very little of this.  I would dismiss it as simply what friends do for each other.  And indeed, that is what friends do for each other.  I have done it for business colleagues.  It makes me wonder if I were to draw a line.  Would I do it for a stranger?  I realize I have never been asked by a stranger to pick him or her up from the airport.  That would be strange! In my case picking up someone from the airport is easy.  I only live ten minutes from the airport, so the inconvenience is minimal.  I don’t even have to park and walk to where I can find the person.  I simply show up in the front of Arrivals and soon the person comes out.  In the case of my friend, it was really easy.  I looked good because I had done a good deed.  But I didn’t even think about it as a good deed.  She is a friend and that’s why I did it.  That could be the e...

I never thought too much about it.  Quakers have historically argued for the equality of men and women when it comes to spirituality.  Even when Quakers began in seventeenth century England, they felt like God was just as likely to speak to women as to men.  And they felt like women were given ministries to do just as men were given ministries.  Hence in my lifetime, there often has been an incongruity between my religious tradition and the culture.  I knew my religious tradition held to a radical equality of the genders.  And I also sensed that the culture in which I lived was patriarchal---that is, male dominated. And so when the crazy 1960s spawned so many different kinds of movements, it was not surprising one of those movements was the feminist movement.  Clearly, feminism has a complex history that extends to our very day, but let me be simple and say feminism is concerned for the equality of gender.  In a certain way a feminist is someone...

At some point in my teaching career, I realized there are certain basic themes I want to address in almost every different kind of class I teach.  One of these themes is the twin ideas of contemplation and action.  Too often in the history of the Christian Church, these twin themes are treated as either/or.  Either one is a contemplative or one gives life to action.  But I think all of us are called to be both contemplatives and active in life if we are to live a fully rich life.  Of course, I am not the only one to think this way.  There are many others, but one of my favorite writers on this subject is my fellow Quaker, Parker Palmer.  He treats this theme in a rather full fashion in his 1990 book, The Active Life .  The book focuses on three sub-themes, which come across in the subtitle: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity and Caring.  There are many places in the book where Palmer makes the case for both contemplation and action, but one...

Recently I read a book review of a new book I want to buy and read.  The book is by Deanna A. Thompson and entitled, “The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World.”  It was not the book which first caught my attention.  It was the title of the review by Melissa Jones called, “Virtual connectivity helps us to attend to life’s pain.”  By now when I see the word, “virtual,” I assume it somehow has to do with the internet.  In this case I was correct, but I didn’t fully appreciate what I was going to learn.  The review started slowly.     Jones first talked about the “research-to-practice gap” that exists in health care.  Essentially, what is at stake here is the amazing research done by so many different folks in the health care world, i.e. physicians, nurses, etc.  And yet their findings do not trickle down into the actual practice with sick folks needing help.  This was an interesting point, which I had given no thought. ...

By now regular readers of my inspirational pieces know I have an appreciation for the life of monks and nuns.  They have taught me they are not special simply because they took monastic vows and now live a cloistered life.  Although Franciscans and Dominicans are not technically monks, I still put them in this category of “special people.”  Again, I know a Franciscan would be terribly frightened if they thought they were special simply because they were trying to follow the way St. Francis of Assisi outlined.  They would insist they are no more special than any other serious follower of Jesus.      In fact, this is one of the most important things I learned about monks when I first had some exposure to their particular way of life.  Growing up as a Quaker, I never heard about monks.  Actually, I knew almost nothing about Roman Catholicism, so knowing about monks would have been even more of a long shot.  When I was young, I think ...

When someone wants to talk about theology and becoming a theologian, some people want to duck or run out of the room!  Of course, if you are going to be a Christian (or a Jew, Muslim, etc.) you will have some theology, whether you think about it or not.  A theologian is someone who thinks about what he or she believes.  Theologians strive to make what they believe have some coherence, consistency, etc.  For me personally, theology made a great deal of believing possible.     I will elaborate with some personal examples.  I came of age during the Vietnam era of the 1960s.  It was a tumultuous time.  I had dutifully gone to church as a young Quaker.  For the most part in those early years of mine, “going to church” was considered part of what it meant to be an American.  It would not be unusual to hear someone query, “did you go to church today?”  Most of the farmers in the area in which I lived did not work on Sunday, exc...

I recently had the occasion to re-read parts of a book that I enjoyed years ago.  I picked up Sharon Daloz Parks’ book, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams , first published in 2000.  In essence the book deals with the question how people---and especially young people---think about faith and the role faith plays in helping people make sense out of their lives.  She spends a good amount of time in her second chapter helping the reader understand just what that word, faith, means.  Of course, it is a word used by most of us in many different contexts.   If we are religious, we probably think faith is the common way to talk about how we believe there is a God and, probably, somehow God loves us, protects us, and wants the very best for us.  She captures well the old-fashioned meaning of faith with which I grew up.  Faith “is the assumption that it is essentially static.  You have it or you don’t.” (16)  As a kid, I remember the people who would ...

I like to follow what Pope Francis is up to for a couple reasons.  He is a fascinating guy, so paying attention to what he says and does is more interesting than following other people of similar stature.  And secondly, he is Pope!  As Pope, he heads up a group of over a billion people and that makes him an important figure on the global scene.  If I were to add even a third reason I like to follow him is because he very quotable.  He has learned to speak in ways that are not obtuse and complicated.  While he was returning to Rome from a recent trip abroad, he talked with the reporters who accompany him on these kinds of trips.  I have never been on one of these trips, so I don’t know the format.  But it is easy to imagine the Pope being quite aware he is not only talking to the reporters on board, but also to countless people around the world.  I am also confident he knows he is both addressing a Catholic audience and a much wider audience a...