Faith & Life Inspirational Message

Like myself, I am sure most of the people I know grew up knowing we were supposed to say, “thank you,” when someone gave us something or did something for us.  I can even remember some of those early lessons from my parents as they schooled me on the necessity of expressing thanks.  We probably learn it as a social nicety before we learn the real meaning of the expression.  So many times during my younger days, I recall my parents questioning me, “did you say thanks?” I am not complaining about that lesson in life.  I think it is a good one and, in turn, I tried to instill it in my two girls.  I am sure I sounded just like my own day when I would ask, “did you say thanks!”  Perhaps they found me as annoying as I found my dad with that ever-recurring question.  But that is ok.  I wanted them to learn to be grateful.   At some point in our lives, we begin to figure it out for ourselves.  When we are gifted, it is appropriate to expres...

I feel fortunate to spend much of my time with younger folks.  It is a privilege to work with college-age students.  They normally are full of hope and want the very best in their lives.  I agree this should be their perspective.  In the bigger global picture, they are actually pretty privileged---even though most of them don’t think so.  But if you look at all the young folks their age around the world, most of the ones who are my students have it made.  If I find any fault with them, it is how preoccupied they can be with their own issues and problems.  Again, I don’t find this surprising.  Most people are ruled by self-interest.  Even I have to admit that self-interest plays a big role in my life.  What I try to do is not let it be the dominant motif in life. That is why I espouse to be a servant-leader.  At least I can recognize that I want to be and act on behalf of others.  That’s the aim anyway.  Occasionally, we al...

Not many people in my world of connections have heard of Maximus the Confessor.  I am sure I never heard of him until I was in graduate school.  Since then, he has become an important resource.  He lived primarily in the seventh century.  He was born in Constantinople (modern Istanbul).  He became a luminary of the Orthodox Church, the counterpart to the Roman Catholic Church.  The thing I really like about the Orthodox Church---sometimes divided up among Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, etc.---is how grounded they are in the early church and the church fathers (and mothers) of that period.  Maximus is part of an anthology I am reading as a possible resource for a class I teach.  Bumping into him and reading his thoughts reminded me how much of a treasure he is.  I want to share one particular focus for both its insight and persuasiveness.  It comes in a section where he is dealing with two major issues: salvation and the eucharist (hol...

Maybe it is because I have grandkids and sometimes, I think they are cute.  Whatever, I smiled recently when I read a Tweet that told a very short story that illustrates for me what I characterize as misleading logic.  I had one logic class in college, billed as a philosophy class.  I barely passed it, as I recall.  And I remember nothing about it, except it was like being mired in a story question from arithmetic.  I always found those story problems difficult.  For some reason, I felt like I could work equations, but put it in story form and it became impossible.   The logic professor always felt like it was so simple as he tried to walk us from point A to point D or E.  By the time we left point B, I was lost---wandering down some back alley of logic.  “How did you get there,” he would ask?  I felt like that was a dumb question.  If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here!  And so is my background when I read this little story ...

I have not turned to David Brooks in a while, although I regularly read his offerings.  However, he recently shared some thoughts about wisdom.  That caught my attention because I am doing a series on wisdom.  As I have prepared to share some thoughts about wisdom, I have been struck by what a range of opinions folks have about wisdom.  Some think it comes rather automatically with age.  Others assume it is the same thing as knowledge.  And so, I eagerly read what Brooks’ take on wisdom is. Brooks begins by referring to people who think wisdom is a bunch of words---maybe words normal people don’t have.  But this is not where Brooks lands.  Listen to him.  “When I think of the wise people in my own life, they are like that.  It’s not the life-altering words of wisdom that drop from their lips, it’s the way they receive others.”  I love that thought.  Wisdom has to do with how others receive others in their lives.  When I he...

 Recently I wrote a piece about listening ears.  This reflection picks out another one of our senses, namely, seeing.  Analogous to listening ears, we can talk about discerning eyes.  When we talk about eyes, everyone knows what we are talking about.  Our eyes are the parts of the body that give us sight.  Most of us probably think we understand the world in which we live because of our capacity to see that world.  We have named all the things in the world we see. Although I am not blind, I assume even blind folks somehow “see” their world and have some kind of picture of the reality around them.  In college I had a friend who was colorblind, so I know he did not see the world in the same way I did.  My friendship with him provided one of the earliest instances in which I realized not everyone sees the world the same way I do.  For the first time in my life, I had to confront the possibility that our ways of seeing the world are relative...

I read an interesting piece recently which talked about Jane Goodall.  I like to confess up front, I like her.  She is an intriguing woman who has given her life to a cause that is very important.  I love the description of her as an English primatologist.  She is older than I am, having been born in 1934.  She spent 50 years living in the Gombe area in Tanzania working on behalf of the chimpanzees and garnered fame in her appeal to humanity to become concerned for the chimp’s long-term benefit.   The British newspaper, The Guardian, ran some years ago a piece on Goodall’s fifty years in the Tanzania field.  She narrates on of her earliest stories from that world.  We are told she witnessed a creature “in the act of not just using a tool but of making one.”  Before her observation folks thought only human beings made tools.  Now she was challenging conventional wisdom.  In fact, she comments, “I had been told from school onward...

There are many things during this Covid pandemic that will be remembered.  But one thing that stands out during that long, challenging pandemic period is the summer death of George Floyd.  Pictures of a Minnesota police officer kneeling on the neck of Floyd captivated a nation and, indeed, the whole world.  Most of us who saw that picture either do not know or forget how its situation came to be.  But we can recall hearing Floyd’s voice and seeing the officer continue to kneel on his neck.  9:29 came to be a repeated phrase to clock how long that posture continued.  The end was tragic. But to call it the end is not correct.  Tragically, George Floyd died that day.  But his name immediately assumed symbolic function.  His name came to signify the struggle for justice.  All of us who remember the summer of 2021 know that the death of Floyd precipitated demonstrations, outbreaks of mayhem in multiple cities and even more.  It was as if...

It fascinates me to see how folks can think about the past.  Certainly, there are built-in aspects of life that are given to this.  Birthdays, anniversaries and the like are designed to pull us back to the past.  We celebrate the numbers of years since the day of our birth.  We can celebrate all kinds of anniversaries---wedding, graduation, etc.  As I ponder this, two ways of engaging the past emerged in my mind.  The most frequent way we refer to thinking about the past is to talk about memories.  Memories are, as St. Augustine said centuries ago, the way we keep the past in our present.  By this he meant if we did not remember things, there would be no past.  We would only have the present.  The other way of dealing with our past is with some form of nostalgia.  Some people might consider memories and nostalgia to be the same thing, but I choose to differentiate them.  Memory is really the human capacity to keep a narrative o...

I am fortunate to be involved in a number of very interesting conversations.  Sometimes I go into a conversation knowing it is going to be a good one and other times I did not see it coming at all.  Such was the case recently.  I was with a number of folks I like---a group of Quakers.  I am used to Quaker gatherings where there is no “program,” no particular agenda.  Often nothing remarkable is shared.  But sometimes, the comments are thoughtful.  My recent experience was a mixture of the two.  What I took from it was a thematic focus. The focus was the idea of freedom.  Of course, that is a common idea.  Almost everyone I know would claim to know what freedom means.  I would agree that folks do have a general idea about freedom.  But I also think freedom is a pretty complex idea and that it has some nuance that perhaps the general public does not recognize.  To this point, I suspect most folks would define freedom as the ...

I have written a few books, so I have some idea of how much time and work goes into the process of producing one.  I know a few authors who seemingly crank out new books with speed, but most of us must labor and labor some more.  And once the book is out, it is not unusual to have some others read the book and then write a review.  Reviews can be a mixed bag.  Some are too gushy and say little more than the book is good or great or something like that.  On the other hand, some reviewers like to cause pain.  They will blast anything published.  It is as if they have never seen anything but trash! But I am nevertheless drawn to read reviews.  I want to see what others say about a book.  And so, I eagerly jumped into the review by a Catholic priest and Jesuit, Richard G. Malloy, when he penned his opinion of the new book by theoretical physicist, Brian Greene.  I know only a little bit about Greene.  He teaches at Columbia University, ...

I am still pretty active in my college and beyond.  That means a fair amount of reading and thinking.  I also am curious by nature, so I am usually open to a conversation or something that may seem extraneous to my own interests.  For example, I routinely read some business articles and occasionally a business journal.  I have an interest in neuroscience, although that is tough going.  I am not trained as a scientist, so the language and scientific developments can be tough to follow.  That is why I also like attending presentations made in my own field of religion and spirituality. Recently, I was a part of such an event.  A friend of mine, Kathleen Deignan, was speaking about Thomas Merton, my favorite dead monk.  I have known Kathleen for a while.  She is a nun, but one of the most lively, engaged and stereotype-blowing nuns I have ever met!  She belongs to the Sisters of Notre Dame, but she has been teaching at Iona College, near New...

I would like to have a dollar for every time I have heard someone refer to the “good old days.”  Usually, it is someone with some age on him or her.  I suspect young folks are not quite old enough to spend much time in memory.  They are too busy crafting their futures and enjoying the present.  Besides, they have not accumulated that many “old days!”  I happen to be at the age where there are more old days than days to come.  And I am ok with that.  Typically, the phrase, the good old days, is mentioned with some wistfulness.  When we make that reference, we are temporarily through our memories re-located back in that very time.  By definition it is a pleasant time.  No one thinks of sickness or tragedy in their lives and talks about those as the good old days.  This probably explains why people like the mental trip back to the good old days.  They were always days that we cherish.    Normally the reference to the goo...

Most of the people I work with on a daily basis want to be happy.  Those folks are college students.  If you ask a college student what they want out of life, they normally reply that they want to be happy.  Of course, they want other things, too.  They want good jobs and typically some kind of relationship and family.  But I find one big thing they all want is happiness.  I don’t blame them; I want to be happy, too. It is hard to imagine very many people who prefer sadness.  That said, surely there are many sad folks in the world.  And like me, you doubtlessly have been sad on occasion.  But no one I know prefers to be sad all the time.  Even though we may recognize there are appropriate times of sadness, we don’t want these to last longer than necessarily.   This the backdrop that I had when I recently read some words from Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who is Vietnamese, but living in France since the Vietnam conflict....

My colleagues and I often find ourselves complaining about having to grade papers.  Of course, that is not a fair critique of our work.  After all, we are the ones who asked for it!  But I never hear us complaining about what we asked for.  It is as if the students got together and decided to do some work in order for us to complain.  I don’t discount the amount of time it takes to offer good feedback to students.  Theoretically, that is why we are doing it.    I never forget that people before me did it for me.  Not for a minute do I think all the things asked of students are worthy.  I do believe some examinations are pretty silly.  Sure, any faculty can force students to learn things for a short period of time.  But I wonder if that is real learning.  Especially in an era when we can find almost all the information we want online.  When I was in college, “google” was not a word.  I never “googled” anything....

I have written about the recent death of the spiritual giant, as I described Swiss Catholic theologian, Hans Küng.  He died at peace in his beloved German university city of Tübingen.  I have been to Tübingen a few times and always enjoy a visit to the famous university there.  One of the wonderful late medieval European universities, Tübingen was founded in 1477 and became well-known for teaching theology.  Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, was a formidable teacher of dogmatic theology there and invited Hans Küng to join the faculty.  In my former piece I mentioned the key role Küng played at Vatican II in the early 1960s.  That ecumenical council significantly changed Catholic theology and practice.  That was when the local Catholic parish moved to using English in the Mass and not Latin.  In many churches the altar was brought away from the wall and, sometimes, placed right in the middle of the sanctuary.  We began to s...

Recently, the famous Catholic Swiss theologian, Hans Küng, died.  When I read the news, I was both a bit sad and very glad for my memories and his superb contribution to so many areas of religious life.  Küng lived all of my life---and then some.  He was born in 1928 in the Canton Lucerne into a Swiss family.  The father worked in a shoe store.  He went to Catholic schools and then on to the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome to study theology and philosophy.  He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1954.  At that point, I had never heard of him. Interestingly, he went back to Switzerland where he served as a parish priest for a couple years.  At that point, he was invited by the renowned Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, to lecture on the potential reform of the Catholic Church at the University of Basel.  Ironically, this was only days before then Pope John XXIII announced his intentions to call a council to begin in 1959.  Of cours...

I realize as I was typing the one word title, “Help,” it would be even better if I could add a voice tone to the word.  How we say the word communicates much more than simply seeing it in print.  I can utter the word, help, with a tone of desperation and have people scurrying to my aid.  This must happen often in the emergency rooms in hospitals.  Or we have heard kids---often our own kids---scream for help.  Even using that verb, scream, gives our word, help, a great deal of urgency.    On the other hand, I have often see signs in a window advertising, “help wanted.”  Or the sign might simply use a single word, help.  While this is an offer, there is no urgency.  I can read the sign with no particular urge to offer help. I don’t need a job or money, so there is little interest to help.  I shrug and hope they find someone who does want to help.    The third thing I thought about was the sign you might see at other stores....

A recent Gallup poll authored by Jeffery M. Jones shows some interesting statistics about religion and church attendance.  In some ways the results are not surprising, since they continue a trend line.  The poll indicates that attendance at a church, synagogue or mosque declined again.  For the first time in eight decades since Gallup has been following this, the number went below 50%.  We are told that 47% of US adults belonged to one of these three traditions---Christianity, Judaism and Islam.  Comparative numbers show that 50% claimed in 2018 to belong and in 1999 70% claimed it.   That means a sense of belonging has declined by nearly 20% since the beginning of this century. The Gallup poll assumes this sense of belonging means being a member.  The poll offers some conclusions, as the numbers over the years have been analyzed.  The first lesson notes that “The decline in church membership is primarily a function of the increasing number o...