Faith & Life Inspirational Message

I have some new thoughts on gentleness.  I have written in the past some on gentleness.  But as with all good subjects, there is always room for more information and new thinking.  Much of this continues to happen to me because I read things and because I am in conversations with people who provoke me to think further about some things.  This happened just recently in a group with whom I gather on a regular basis. Our group read some excerpts from an article by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre in the journal called Weavings.  That journal offers what I would call “practical spirituality.”  Ideas are profound, but down to earth.  McEntyre set the stage when she says for her “real gentleness comes from a place of spiritual abundance.”  She rightly points out that the etymology of our English word is the Latin, gens, which points to generosity and gentility.  As with much good writing, McEntyre tells a story. She sets us up with some preliminary words.  She says that “We can only afford to be ge

It started with a phone call.  Immediately when I answered the phone call, I knew who it was.  It was my good friend.  He is now retired and no longer a regular presence in my life.  But he and I talk fairly often.  I always like to hear from him, so this phone call was no different. It was a short call.  He wanted to have lunch with me and I was just as happy as he was to have lunch.  So when two people want the same thing, it is pretty easy to agree on a plan of action.  So we had lunch. I will confess, however, I really did not go for the food.  That part was not elaborate.  There was no caviar!  I had a basic sandwich and settled for water to drink.  That does not qualify as a sumptuous meal!  If you look up the meaning of “sumptuous,” you will discover it means things like extremely costly, magnificent, rich and luxurious.  The place we went for lunch would never conjure up these kinds of words to describe it.  It was not extremely costly.  In fact, my friend bought my meal,

I had to laugh.  After reading a blog a friend of mine sent to me, I had to laugh.  I am not a blogger.  But I have this friend who is an active blogger.  I understand that is an important part of what is called “social media.”  And I know she and others think I ought to be more involved in things like this.  But I can only handle so much technology! Basically the blog she sent me is a little article.  So had it appeared in print somewhere, I would have been happy to grab it and read it.  The title of the blog is “Laugh Harder, Do Better.”  The author, Ross Smith, offers a compelling case for laughing through your day.  Smith wonders whether “that laughter is a serious success metric for a healthy, creative, and innovative organization?”  He implies it could be.  I find this interesting since I have done some writing on innovation.  Could it be that healthy, innovative organizations are those who find a way to add---or at least, allow---laughter in the workplace?  I think the answer

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 love running into little articles that engage me, make me think and then encourage me to share what I just learned.  It was such an article by Tom Smith that most recently caused this reaction in me.  I don’t know Tom Smith.  I laughed a bit, because the name sounds like a made-up name, like John Q. Public.  But I read that Tom Smith lives in Shiloh, IL.  He is married, has kids and three siblings who have all died.  He writes this article as a consequence of his last remaining sibling, Sharon, dying.  She was 74, so we can guess how old Tom might be. Early in his article, Smith recognizes that “Dying is a unique and sacred experience…”  He then quips that it is not an acceptable sacrifice simply to save our national economy, as some current politicians have claimed.  I agree with him when he flatly declares that his death “the state of our economy is not a worthy reason for anyone to die, either by poverty, malnutrition, poor health care or COVID-19.”  His sister died of a fairly ra

I was presenting a seminar recently where I mentioned trust.  Trust, or faith, is one of the classical virtues about which I have written.  Certainly, people who are spiritual know something about faith and the life of faith.  When I am dealing with people in business or other venues like that, typically I switch to trust language.  For some folks, to talk about faith is the last thing they want to do.  They may have had a bad experience with a church or who knows what.  I prefer to use trust and faith synonymously, but I know others will differentiate those words.  For the purposes of this inspirational piece, just know I am using them to mean the same thing. Often, I contrast trust and manipulation.  If I can manipulate you, then I don’t have to trust you.  By manipulating you, I can make you do what I want.  Even worse, I can coerce you.  I may be stronger than you are or smarter or something like that.  So, I coerce you into doing that or saying this.  Of course, none of us want to

I am never as good at being spiritually disciplined as I wish.  Maybe that is to confess that I live in hope.  The hope is twofold.  The first hope is that being spiritually disciplined is itself a good thing.  Somehow it makes sense for life---at least for my life.  It is better than not being spiritually disciplined.  But that is always tempting---more by default than intention.  Amazingly after all these years, it is still too easy to forget, to get busy…whatever.  And I don’t do anything.  The second hope is that I can do better than I am doing now with my measly efforts.  No doubt, this is partly why I like to visit and stay in monasteries.  The monastic life is wrapped around a daily schedule of worship and work.  Most of us have some kind of schedule---even folks who are retired often manage a de facto kind of schedule.  But it usually does not take seriously worship, certainly not the way the monks intend.  Clearly, we are not monks.  I am close enough to the monastic world, I

When I am not sure what to think or when I am tired of thinking about new things, I turn to some old friends for conversation.  Not all of these friends are available by phone or any other medium.  Some of them are long dead. Some even died centuries ago.  But thankfully, they left a legacy in what they wrote.  And that was preserved and we can turn to it whenever we want.  One of my old buddies is the monk, Thomas Merton.  Merton appeals to me because I think we were probably about as different as you can get.  He did things I would never consider and thought things that would not occur to me.  Every time I read him, he opens my eyes to something new or different or deeper.  I am grateful for friends like this.  Of course, I like my living buddies, too.  But contemporary conversations are not always crisp or insightful.  I am ok with that, but turning to the old giants never leaves me disappointed. Recently, I ran across some words from Merton.  I am not sure where I saw them nor do I

Anyone who knows Bob Dylan may recognize the title of my inspirational piece also to be the title of Dylan’s 1979 song, Slow Train.  I certainly don’t know Dylan’s works like many people, but I can appreciate his talent and insight.  During our current times, I thought about the lyrics of his song.  I have no clue what he really intended or how he would mean the words, but here is how I choose to understand and apply them.  I want to quote him extensively. The song opens with this line.  “Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted, can’t help but wonder what’s happenin’ to my companions.  Are they lost or found?”  We can ask many questions.  Who are his companions?  Are they his friends?  Let’s personalize it.  Who are my companions?  Is that simply another word for my friends?  Or can I widen it---broaden it?  If I am a person of faith, why can it not be global?  In the broadest sense, my companions are all the human beings on earth.  And if I am ecologically sensitive, it is even bro

In the summer of 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered a phrase that has become known worldwide.  Armstrong and his co-pilot, Buzz Aldrin, land the lunar capsule, Eagle, in the so-called Sea of Tranquility on the Moon’s surface.    In a footnote to history, Michael Collins remained on board Apollo 11.  Probably this is when the phrase, “the eagle has landed,” originated.  Armstrong makes history when he steps outside and takes a step on the lunar surface.  It was nearly 11:00pm Eastern Standard Time.  It is at that moment he says, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”  I am old enough to remember that night.  I was in Indiana at a Quaker gathering.  But that night there were not really Quakers and all the rest.  I am not even sure there were only feelings of Americans.  Certainly, there was some pride in being an American and all that.  But the giant step for humankind, as Armstrong proclaimed, was not simply an American announcement.  It was global, inclusive

The theme of friendship has been important to me for a long time---at least two or three decades.  And no doubt, friendship has been important to me most of my life.  That is probably true for you, too.  In saying that, I am not referring to the rather modern version of Facebook.  I understand with Facebook, I could have hundreds of friends!  But I don’t feel deprived by not being on Facebook.  Some day maybe… A couple times, I have actually taught a class on spiritual friendship.  I have enjoyed tracing the idea of friendship from Aristotle through key medieval figures to our own contemporary world.  In some ways I think the ancients understood friendship more deeply than we do in our age.  It is too easy in our age to be superficial.  It is too easy to claim a friendship with someone after barely meeting him or her. However, I don’t want to dwell on the philosophical or historical levels.  I want to stay with the everyday, real level where most of us live our lives most of the ti

I have been pulling together some thoughts about hope for an upcoming presentation on that topic.  As I give thought to hope, I realize I have spent a lifetime having hopes, but never spent any time thinking about how I created hopes.  I doubt that I am unusual in this.  Obviously, almost everyone hopes in something and hopes for a lot of things.  I know there may be a few folks who somehow have given up on hope.  They know only despair.  I am not sure what to offer those folks.  But the rest of us do have hopes---maybe always have something for which we hope. One of the first things to hit me was the fact that hope exists both as a verb and a noun.  It is easy to say we have hopes.  Those are nouns.  We have hopes in our brain like we have money in the pocket.  Our hopes are always future.  And then at some point, that future becomes present.  And we either see what we hope for materialize or we don’t.  I don’t know that we have any eternal hope, although we might hope for eternity. V

​​​​As I sat in a meeting, it hit me.  Everyone on the call seemingly were complaining.  It was a fairly large group on the call, and they are all smart.  So being the creative human beings they are, there was no shortage of things about which we could complain.  Often our complaints were directed against someone else.  After a while, I realized the complaining was about to lead me to complain! ​That is when I had to stop in my tracks, reflect and look for an alternative.  I don’t blame the folks on the call for complaining.  We are living in a time that is pretty taxing.  Nobody prayed that we would have a pandemic---global in its reach.  Unfortunately, that is simply an extreme example of what can happen to any of us individually.  I remember when the doctor told me that I had cancer.  Suddenly, I had my own personal pandemic.  The world was not affected, so almost everyone else went on their merry way.  I am sure I complained. ​Complaining has an upside.  The Psalms are spo

Occasionally, it is important for me and, probably for all of us, to return to our roots and revel in that.  Tradition is another word for roots.  In my case that is the Quaker tradition.  All of us grow up with some kind of tradition---or with the lack of a tradition.  Not all traditions are religious.  But we grow up with tradition.  However, at some point we usually have to decide whether that tradition is for us.  As an adult, do I still want to claim and be claimed by that tradition? In my case, the answer has been affirmative.  As a boy, I did not learn that much about my own Quaker tradition.  Or what is more likely, I heard a good bit about it, but did not pay much attention!  But as I grew older, I came to appreciate more and more that tradition into which I was born.  There are some really good things about that tradition. However, I do find that tradition challenging.  Sometimes, I am convinced Quakers of old---those founders of the tradition---were so much better at bei

​​It is doubtlessly true that nearly all of us have experienced some anxiety in our lives at some time.  Some of us are probably predisposed to be anxious more of the time.  Some of us are predictably anxious.  By that I mean, there are times or occasions when we are probably going to be anxious.  It could be before a doctor’s appointment, right before an exam, when we have to speak public ally and so on.  I suspect that some of this anxiety is normal.  Clearly, athletes will talk about butterflies before the game begins.  Like butterflies, anxiety typically wanes, once we are engaged with or beyond that which made us anxious. ​I certainly know I have been anxious.  Maybe I am even one of those who has been more anxious than the situation would have merited.  No doubt, I have done it myself.  And likely, others have helped the process.  I suspect that as a parent, I may have added some anxiety to my kids, when it was not necessary.  We put pressure on folks and, then, wonder why t

​​​​Boredom is not a new thing.  But I suspect it is not centuries old.  Likely, it is a phenomenon of our more modern world.  Too many times, I am sure I have used the phrase, “I’m bored,” or “that was really boring.”  It was usually a commentary on my own situation or, more likely, a commentary on something or someone else.  I know I have even used it in a context that would be surprising.   ​For example, I very much like basketball.  I loved it when I played it.  I enjoyed it even well into some old age, even though I wasn’t any good anymore.  I have enjoyed watching it ever since I can remember.  My dad was a high school basketball referee.  I remember going with him even before I went to school and sitting on one of the benches to watch the game.  Nevertheless, I know I have come out of watching a game and said, “That was a boring game.”   ​All of us who have had kids know what it is like to hear their complaint that they are bored.  Or more likely, the complain about som

We all know about stress.  Some of us live with a great deal of it.  “Relax,” they say.  “I wish I could,” is often my reply!  There are so many stress inducers in our contemporary life.  Our jobs are often good at inducing stress.  Traffic sometimes does it while we are trying to get to our jobs.  Health concerns have to be one of the major stress inducers.  And of course, relationship issues are guaranteed stress inducers. There are a few people who seem to me never have to worry about stress.  Maybe that is because they never have to worry.  Or they chose (somehow) not to worry.  I don’t know how they do it.  Perhaps, it is genetics.  Maybe some folks are bred to have no stress inducers.  No matter what happens, they are unflappable.  But I am not like that. Certainly, I think the kind of environment one grows up in has a great deal to do with stress.  No doubt parents teach us a great deal.  I do think they teach us how to stress out.  When I ponder my own home environment, I t

Seeing the title of this inspirational piece doubtlessly made some folks wince.  Others may actually have chosen not to read it because they don’t want to read about choosing winners.  I admit up front, I have mixed feelings about it.  In part I know this has to do with my own Quaker tradition, as I understand it.  And part of it also has to do with my life-long involvement in athletics where winners and losers abound.  Finally, I wonder whether also wanting to live a spiritual life helps or only complicates the process. I begin with my own reservations and, perhaps, anticipating what folks thought who did not even want to read about this.  Winners certainly imply losers---at least in our culture.  It separates people.  There are winners in all corners of our culture.  People who get paid more are clearly economic winners.  The poor have-nots struggle to get along or, maybe even, survive.   The same is true of the whole justice system.  Lady Justice may be portrayed as blind,