Faith & Life Inspirational Message

As the Christmas season comes round, I am reminded of a one-liner I heard one day while listening to a lecture by Richard Rohr.  Rohr is one of my favorites.  He has a way of saying some very significant things, but often with a twist of humor.  No doubt, this is what endears him to so many people.  And it is also probably why some folks, particularly some Roman Catholics, find him troubling and wish he would quit speaking and writing.  The line I wrote down, as Rohr was speaking, went like this.  “The operative image of God is Santa Claus!”  Of course, this line is basically about God and not Santa Claus.  Rohr is offering a theological look into his own mind.  It is not a comment on Santa Claus.  In this instance Santa is an image or a symbol.  Let’s look more closely at Rohr’s theology to see if it makes sense in our own lives.  Clearly not everyone has the same idea with respect to Santa Claus.  However when Rohr uses the Santa Claus image, he is making an assumpt

It came innocently in the middle of a dinner conversation.  I had joined my daughter downtown for a quick dinner before we both headed to our respective homes.  Somehow the talk went back to her years in high school.  Oddly, it centered on math, which I think she secretly enjoys.  But then she said, I do have issues with infinity!  I am sure I blurted out laughing. I have never heard anyone put it that way: “issues with infinity.”  Of course, I could not resist asking what that meant and why did she have issues with infinity?  Of course, she was still talking about infinity in the mathematical realm.  Since I stopped just short of calculus, I don’t claim to know much about “higher math.”  So I both know what infinity means and I really don’t have a clue. She continued by explaining that she was told somehow one “can approach infinity” but one cannot “actually get to infinity.”  Ok, so I don’t know enough math to go further.  Essentially, she was troubled by the idea of infinity and

I was just sitting there waiting for a friend.  I watched the kid walk by dressed ready for a workout in the gym.  He carried a ball against his side nestled into the bent arm around the ball.  He opened the door and walked on into the gym and began bouncing the ball. I have seen this a million times.  I played basketball since I was a little kid.  Every evening I would go to the barn to do the chores and in between drawing water for the calves, I would stop, pick up my ball and begin to dribble around and shoot.  But I never looked at it---or “saw” it---like I did today.  The thing that hit me as I watched the kid slowly walk onto the floor was the ball.  With a flick of the wrist the ball headed straight for the floor.  And the amazing thing was the ball rebounded off the floor in a perfect straight trajectory right back into the kid’s hand.  This action was repeated as he walked further onto the gym floor.  There was a rhythmic down-up-down-up and so on.  He had disappeared behi

I never claim to be an expert on emotions and the emotional life.  In fact, I am not sure I know that much.  But I do deal some with the issue of emotions in some of the classes I teach.  And I have read a fair amount.  I am not a therapist.  I have referred people to therapists because I did not feel competent to help them with emotional issues.  I know I have some significant growing up to do. I had an encounter recently which provoked the reflections I am sharing here in this inspirational piece.  I am calling it the “spirituality of maybe.”  That might make no sense, so let me begin to explain and develop.  My thinking was prompted by a question I asked someone.  It was clearly a yes or no question.  And the person responded, “Maybe.”  For example, I could ask if you wanted cream in your coffee and I expect an affirmative or negative response.  “Maybe” does not tell me anything.  Of course, I can make up things and assume I know what you mean.  But that is dangerous! Other question

People reading this inspirational piece may have no clue who Sallie McFague is. She was an important theologian in the late twentieth century and for some years in the twenty-first century.  She very recently died and I had not known this.  I did not really know her, although I met her a couple of times.  I was very helped by some of her books and other writings.  I especially liked a couple books called, Models of God and Metaphorical Theology .  I want to share some gratitude and to share some of the thoughts of Franciscan sister, Shannon Shrein, whose writing informed me that McFague had died. As the title of the above books would indicate, McFague did a great deal of work around the theme of metaphor.  In case you forgot, a metaphor is using one figure of speech that is familiar to talk about another thing that may not be familiar.  An example I often have seen used is the metaphor, “war is a chess game.”  In this case the chess game is the familiar term and it is used to describe

From as young as I can remember, I was taught to say thank you.  I don’t know that it was important to me, but clearly it was important to my parents that I say thank you.  Eventually I learned that it was important to me, too.  And then when I became a parent, I was just as serious about teaching my two girls to say thank you.  My experience is not much different from most other people I know.  And of course, we all know those people who never say thank you or, if they do, it is half-hearted or begrudging.  We come away with the feeling they never really mean it. I still think it is a good idea and I do it as a matter of habit.  But I also realize that for many of us, it is effectively a social norm.  It is part of the normal social interaction among people---friends and strangers alike.  And it is a good thing.  I am glad I do it and I intend to continue doing it.  But I also realize it is rather matter of fact.  It is a habit, albeit a good habit.  It is better than not doing it. Wh

I use the word, spirituality, with frequency.  I am also aware that this word is tossed around in many different ways.  In fact, I do think that many of us use the word without being very clear what it means.  Sometimes, I think some folks want to use the word to say something like, “I’m religious, but not really into religion.”  Usually that means they are not part of an institutional form of religion.  For many, that simply means they gave up going to church or to the temple. When I use the word, spirituality, I am wanting to point to the “lived experience” aspect of religion.  Spirituality always begins with experience in my understanding.  For example, it is one thing to say, “I believe in God.”  It is quite another to say, “here is how I experience the God in Whom I believe.”  That is spirituality. It is for that reason I consider dealing with spirituality to be more difficult than dealing with religion.  Religion---at least, in the Christian sense---typically begins with doct

Years ago---indeed decades now---there was quite a buzz about the theme of faith development.  James Fowler was one of the more prolific, as well as earlier, thinkers in this field.  Maybe his most famous book was called, Stages of Faith .  It was published in 1981.  The subtitle of his book is revealing: The Psychology of Human Development and Quest for Meaning .  I knew Jim fairly well.  When I first started graduate school, he was finishing his doctoral work and was a teaching assistant and became a professor for a little bit.  He later moved on and became famous while at Emory in Atlanta.    Basically what Fowler did was become immersed in the psychology of human development.  He read people like Erik Erikson, Piaget and others.  Fowler rightly concluded that even people of faith are human.  Therefore, religious people go through stages of human development like all other folks.  But Fowler became creative.  He suspected there was a comparable development of faith for people.  It w

The title of this inspirational piece is actually the title of Sister Ilia Delio’s relatively new autobiography.  Delio is a Franciscan sister who has become quite well-known as a theologian in the Catholic Church and beyond.  I started reading her writings a few years ago and have found her to be a great teacher.  She holds doctoral degrees in both science and theology.  She writes insightfully on God, evolution and the nature of the world and where it is heading.  She helps me be conversant in a culture that sometimes sees religion as too old-fashioned.  She is influenced by Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit writer on evolution and God who spent much of his life in disfavor from the institutional Catholic Church.  He was a paleontologist who spent much of his adult life in China.  Searching among distant past of the earth, de Chardin realized that responsible theological thought had to take seriously the findings of contemporary science.  He died in 1955, before Vatican II began to get

Some periodicals and magazines I read regularly.  I am not particularly looking for anything.  I know they have some good writers and routinely I find things that I am glad to know.  I am not sure where else I would have found out these things.  I know I could survive without knowing them, but they help me to thrive.  Recently I was reading one of those periodicals and happened on an article by Amy Morris-Young.  I don’t know Amy, but I would like to meet her. The title of the little article was catchy.  “The everyday miracle of calmness,” I read at the head of the page.  I was hooked.  I began reading, but had no clue what would come.  I remember reading some of her things before, but don’t recall anything particular.  The early part of her story narrated how she and her husband and son now drive somewhat farther from home in order to attend a church that is a little more spirited and engaging.  That is certainly not novel.  I have known people for years that would bypass one Quaker m

Maybe it is because I spend most of my time working in an academic context.  Maybe it is just because I am obtuse and complicated.  But sometimes it seems to me we all make life too difficult.  That is not to say life does not get difficult.  Lord knows it does…and so do I!  But what can save us from difficult lives? Humor is the best medicine, I think.  And I don’t know that it saves us from difficult lives.  Perhaps in the end, nothing can save us from difficult lives.  But I am convinced humor can serve us well.  Sometimes life is not as difficult as we make it to be.  Sometimes, life really is difficult---and no one can deny it.  But even in those times, humor helps.  I am not one who tells jokes.  Mostly, that is because I can’t remember them!  When I hear a good joke and have a hearty laugh, I am sure I will never forget it.  But ten minutes later, I cannot tell the joke!  My humor comes more out of the situation.  I think I can be situation ally funny.  My humor is not int

One class I teach focuses on different aspects of theology.  It is an interesting one to teach, but is fraught with some tricky discussions.  In a classroom of average young adults, there is a widespread range of beliefs.  Certainly a number of college students grow up in the church.  In my part of the world there is always a fair number of Roman Catholics.  And just as predictably, there is a range of the normal group of Protestant churches---Methodists, Episcopalians, and the rest.  It is not unusual for there to be some larger non-denominational churches represented.  And of course these days, there are typically quite a few who never went to church and sometimes, some convinced atheists in the room.  It is an interesting mix. Talking about God usually goes fairly well.  Even for a number of the students who never went or seldom went to church, they still believe in God.  This is the “I’m spiritual, but not religious” group.  And some believe in a Higher Power or some entity not usu

A great deal of attention is developing around the theme of global warming or, sometimes, described as our climate crisis.  I know many people do not see it as a crisis and, likely, don’t like the crisis language.  It is an easy topic for cynicism or even dismissal, because to the normal person, the evidence seems flimsy.  When winter rolls around and snow begins to fall, I hear the cynical remarks which snarl, “Where’s global warming when ya need it!”  When it is twenty degrees outside and the north wind howls, it is a tough sell.  But I trust the scientific community and there is near-consensus that our earth is in peril. Personally, I feel the attraction of cynicism.  I am old enough to be quite confident that global warming won’t get me!  The end of planet earth is surely not coming this calendar year.  Because it seemingly happens slowly, it is easy to delay or deny.  No doubt, I will be dead before there is much of a price to pay.  But I am not willing to head down that cynical p

Recently I was sitting in a Quaker worship service.  It was one of those Quaker gatherings that come together in silence.  At the appointed hour, the room becomes quiet.  People begin to settle into the quiet.  I purposely have used the word, quiet, to begin the process.  Although I don’t want to chase it here, it would be fun to figure out whether there is any difference between quiet and silence.  Right now I assume there is a difference. I understand quiet to be a lack of sounds.  As the Quakers began that worship service, we all got quiet.  There was no talking.  In fact, most people close their eyes, so there is not even the curiosity of looking around to see what is happening.  Who is fiddling yet with their phone?  Who just came in thirty seconds late?  Sometimes I find it difficult not to look up to see who that was!  These are the times I realize I got quiet, but I have not yet begun the silence.  I have not even begun to settle in. Quakers talk about the process of “settling

For those of us in the Christian tradition, we are in Advent Season.  Advent is a four-week lead-up to Christmas.  I must admit, I enjoyed learning about this stuff since Quakers are not very liturgical.  I am pretty confident I never heard about the “liturgical year” until my college days.  It was that time in college when I became aware of what so many who grow up in the Roman Catholic tradition, Episcopal and Lutheran traditions, take for granted.  Advent is the beginning of the Christmas season and matches, in some real way, Lent as the lead-up to the Easter season. The primary theme of Advent is “preparation.”  People are supposed to begin the preparation for the coming of Christmas.  It is easy these days to see how bent-out-of-shape our preparation has become.  These days preparation is likely to mean the beginning stress of Christmas shopping, etc.  I already begin to sense the frenzy in some voices of those who talk about “taking all Saturday” to get the gifts