Faith & Life Inspirational Message

I have been a lifetime member with the Quakers, officially known as the Religious Society of Friends.  I never minded being called a Quaker, although in our earliest days in seventeenth century England, it was a term used in derision.  In today’s parlance they made fun of us.  Apparently, when the Spirit really came upon folks, they literally quaked.  I suppose that would be funny, if you were watching and had no sense of the Spirit.  Maybe I should not claim the name, however, since I am not sure I ever had such a strong experience, I quaked! I also rather liked our longer, official name.  I am actually fond of the word, society, in its original meaning.  In today’s language society is such a general, all-encompassing term, it is fairly meaningless.  If we talk about the American society, I am not sure what we are describing.  In its original meaning, it suggested more of a smaller, tight-knit fellowship.  I like that the Jesuits are al...

It is not unusual in the realm of spirituality to talk about the heart.  One can even say it is central to understanding who we are.  Just as our physical bodies cannot last very long without the beating of our hearts, so we can conclude spiritually can’t last too long without attending to the heart.  With this in mind, I thought it would be instructive to turn to some of my favorite authors to see how they describe the heart.  I invite you to join me in hearing them speak about the heart.   We can no better than begin with some words from the Hebrew Bible---words that are planted deep in the Jewish soul.  And all of us Christians should be very familiar with these words from Deuteronomy.  In Judaism these words form what is known as the Shema---from the first word of the quotation, “hear.”  The Deurteronomist says, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and ...

I am fairly certain people who only see the title of this inspirational piece will misunderstand what I plan to do.  Typically, we think about shelters in a two-fold way.  In the first place shelters are those designated places people can go to in times of danger.  Hurricanes and tornadoes will send people to shelters.  Often the shelters are schools, maybe the local YMCA or military building.  Shelters are designed to put us in safer places than our houses and work places.  The second meaning of shelters suggests places of incarceration.  It is where we send troubled teens in order to protect the community and the teen himself or herself.  In this piece I don’t have either place of shelter in mind.   Instead, I recall the opening line of the Psalm used in the last worship of the day monks have in their Liturgy of the Hours.  The monks call this last worship Compline---which means to complete the day.  For centuries monks followed t...

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 g...

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 ...

I have the pleasure of meeting on a regular basis with a great, but small, group.  It is billed as a contemplative group, but that sounds rather sophisticated.  Essentially, what we are trying to do is figure out how to live our lives with as much meaning and pizzaz as we can.  It involves basic things like paying attention, adding a bit of discipline to our spiritual journeys and being grateful for both the big and little things that come our way.  We are all special people in God’s eyes, but we are not necessarily called to do spectacular things.  As Thomas Merton once said, we are supposed to become the people God wanted us to become. Recently, we focused on a little article written by Dacher Keltner.  I don’t know Keltner, but I appreciated how he leads the reader into a consideration of the concept of awe.  His article talks about how to create an experience of awe by doing a walking meditation.  While I am interested in things like walking m...

Recently, I read an article that nearly brought me to tears.  The article was about touch.  In fact, the title of the article was arresting: “The sacrament of touch.”  Mark Etling is the author.  I have not heard of Etling, so I was interested at the end of the article when I found a brief biography.  We are told he is the spiritual programs coordinator at a Catholic Church in Illinois.  He also teaches at the School of Professional Studies at Saint Louis University.  But in a way, this has nothing to do with the story he told, which I found so gripping.   He begins his story with a compelling sentence.  “Last spring, my wife, Terry, was diagnosed with a Stage 4 glioblastoma brain tumor.”  Of course, I do not know Terry, but I immediately felt for her.  I have been through cancer; both sides of my family have been through it.  And I have offered a great deal of ministry to folks wrestling with this dreaded announcement that can...

Ash Wednesday came and went yesterday---I’ll call it Covid Ash Wednesday.   Few in our area found themselves in church for special services.   So that meant few emerged with ashes on their foreheads.   I saw a few of my friends with this distinguishing sign of the ashes.   Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of a rather extended period of Lent, which leads us to Easter.  Growing up as a Quaker this was no big deal for me; in fact, it was no “deal” at all.   I never went to any service on Ash Wednesday.   Until recently, I never had ashes placed on my forehead.   I never entertained the idea that I should “give up” anything for a season.   I never thought about “taking up” anything either.   When you are surrounded by people like yourself, you think everyone must be exactly the same.   That is called provincialism or, in some circles, narrowness.   That was my life when I was growing up. Quakers always told us no day was any mo...

Most people I know are people of hope---or at least they say they are.  If we listen to the language of folks around us, it is surprising how often we hear references to hope.  In my own academic community students are always using that term.  They hope to do well on the exam and in the course.  They hope to see their friends.  They hope for so many things.  Older people are not much different.  We hope to see our kids or that our kids do something significant---or even insignificant.  If the teenage drives the car out of the driveway, the parent is hoping she will be safe.  And the list goes on. I don’t belittle hope.  I cannot imagine life without hope.  It is sad, to be sure, when we encounter someone who truly despairs.  Despair is literally to be without hope.  Our country contains a countless number of folks who are depressed.  Many are clinically depressed and take medication to help with this.  Many other...

I keep reading so I don’t shrivel up and become a blob sitting in my chair watching television all day.  It is hard to imagine Jesus doing that.  And if I somehow want to claim being a follower, I have to do better than blob-living!  Some of the reading I do is not directed to some specific end.  Generally, I want to be more informed.  I want some ideas to provoke me to think, ponder and see where it takes me.  And so recently I ran across an article in the periodical, Aeon.  This is more scientifically based, so it challenges and keeps me mentally engaged. The article was entitled, “Cognition all the way down.”  It was by two Tufts University professors who are rather big names among scholars.  I loved their subtitle: “Biology’s next great horizon is to understand cells, tissues and organisms as agents with agendas (even if unthinking ones)”  “Oh boy,” I thought as I dived in.  It began by admitting that biologists were “properly s...

Occasionally, I realize I can read and read and wonder if it is like “binge reading.”  I realize this is probably not fair to those folks with an eating disorder and I mean no disrespect.  Of course, I think reading is good, healthy, etc.  I can’t imagine a life in which I could not read things.  I remember the liberation that comes from being able to put various letters together to get words and, then, watch the magic of sentences as multiple words combine to make deeper meanings.  For example, the simple word “cat” is barely interesting in itself, but put it in a sentence with a verb and that cat starts doing amazing things!  My interest in the cat soars.   But I also realize I can read things and never do anything with the ideas, advice and suggestions.  Learning with no application may not be adequate.  Surely this is true in the life of faith and in our spiritual journeys.  Faith is not simply an intellectual exercise.  As impo...

The title of this inspiration, people in transition, comes from a line in a recent essay by Sister Joan Chittister.  Chittister is a Benedictine nun in the monastery in Erie, PA.  I have visited that wonderful, lively and hospitable group of Benedictine nuns.  I spoke there on occasion and found a receptive audience, which was much more attentive than almost any class I ever teach!  I don’t think Sister Joan was in the audience that night, nor did I see her the next day at breakfast.  But I know she lives in an apartment somewhere removed from the monastic buildings themselves.  I suspect she had better things to do than trek to the monastery to hear some Quaker! For years I have followed her, read some of her books and appreciated the inevitable prophetic witness she brings to any situation.  Her recent article focuses on the question, rebuilding our economy?  She begins with this observation/question: “Amazing, isn't it, how quickly life changes...

Anyone with some awareness should recognize that race has been an issue from early on in our country---and other countries around the world.  As a white guy who has been privileged in many ways, I cannot fully understand what it means to be black in our society.  I can care and share, but I still do not really know.  In many ways it has been an issue that has been part of my life from the very beginning.  I know one thing I can do is to continue to learn and do better.   When I think about my young life, it was very provincial.  I would have been racist without even knowing what that meant.  In my rural Indiana, there were very few black families.  There were signs of segregation, but I would not have noticed them.  My family did not hate blacks.  But we were not cognizant of the social justice issues that already were in play.  I would come of age in the 1960s and surely the race issue became front and center in those days.  N...

From time to time, it is important for me to write about some standard issues in spirituality.  One of the most standard issues, surely, is prayer.  Certainly in the traditional Western religious traditions---Judaism, Christianity and Islam---prayer is seen to be central to the practices of the religion.  Prayer is commonplace to these traditions, and yet I am sure many followers within these traditions find it difficult to pray on a regular basis.  And many probably don’t even care.   I recall the opening words of her chapter on prayer in her book, An Altar in the Word , when Barbara Brown Taylor says, “I know that a chapter on prayer belongs in this book, but I dread to write it.” (175)  I am sure she gets a laugh from her audience when she reads out loud the following couple sentences.  “I am a failure at prayer.  When people ask me about my prayer life, I feel like a bulimic must feel when people ask about her favorite dish.” (176) She follows...

Sometimes I think I am a sucker for soul.   What I mean by that is to confess I have a long-held interest in questions, such as what is the soul?   I can imagine this initial intrigue was focused on what happened to people at death.   Christian churches that I knew about usually talked about the soul going somewhere to be with God.   Clearly, the body was done, as death set in.   But what about the soul?   And where or how was it during a person’s lifetime?   This intrigue only became more pronounced when people would use “soul” to talk about music, food and other things.   What made some music “soul” and other forms of music apparently not?   Often it would be used of the music and food, which African Americans played and enjoyed.   I was interested in what qualities they brought to food and music that made it soulful?   I was willing to accept the truth of that.   I simply wanted to know more. Recently, I bumped into som...

Yesterday was Super Sunday.  In fact, it was not the first Super Sunday (now counting: LV or 55, as they are calling it).  I went to our Recreation Center where I saw some college students…mostly junior and senior athletes on my campus.  As I looked out over their young faces, I realized they never knew life without professional football’s Super Sunday.  In their lives there has always been a Super Bowl! I think they were a little stunned when I told them I remembered a time in American history when there was no Super Bowl!  Of course, that makes me at least 50 years old!  In fact, it is a little difficult for me to remember those days.  But I do recall (I think) the third Super Bowl (III).  That was the year Joe Namath, quarterback for the New York Jets, prophetically called the victory over the Baltimore Colts, the heavy favorite.  More than anything, that probably made the Super Bowl what it was to become. Yesterday each thirty-second comm...

My Franciscan friend, Dan Horan, writes a regular column for a nationally known Catholic publication.  Dan has a large following, so I am delighted with the messages he chooses to put out there.  His most recent piece focused on the late archbishop and now saint, Oscar Romero, from El Salvador.  I know fairly well the story of Romero.  After studying in Rome, Romero became a priest in 1942 during the buildup of WW II in that country.  In 1977 he became archbishop of San Salvador.   He became quite active in social justice work.  He labored on behalf of the poor and oppressed---often by his own government.  His country became embroiled in a civil war.  Romero spoke out against American aid coming to his country to support the military junta.  He wrote President Carter to that effect.  Sadly, in the spring of 1980 he was assassinated while saying Mass in the Chapel of a hospital.   I was intrigued what my friend, Dan, was going t...