Faith & Life Inspirational Message

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 World , 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 this with another funny line.  She conf

The title for this inspirational piece could well come from Quaker spirituality.  Quakers have always been fond of the spiritual metaphor, light.  I suspect much of this fondness stems from the Quaker appreciation of the Fourth Gospel.  The author of that gospel, John, talks about Jesus as the “Light.”  Indeed, one of the chief functions of Jesus is to shine the light in the world.  The teaching and ministry of Jesus, hence, enlightens the people he contacted and touched.  Quakers went so far as to conclude every one of us has an “Inner Light.”  And I grew up hearing that we each had a “Light Within.” However, this inspirational piece is not about Quakers.  It is about Catholics; indeed, it is about one Catholic in particular.  The focus is on Father Solanus Casey.  Until recently, I never heard of this Catholic priest.  But he has recently come into the news and I have been fascinated by him and his story.  Solanus Casey has just been beatified.  This is an official step along the way

There have been many ways to talk about Jesus.  In fact, one of the special areas in theological studies is called Christology.  Christology basically focuses on how people talk about Jesus, particularly Jesus the Christ.  It is normal to hear it simply put as “Jesus Christ.”  This slightly alters the way I put it, namely, “Jesus the Christ.”  While my rendition doubtlessly will sound strange in most Christian ears, it probably comes closer to the way Jesus and the early disciples would have understood it.  But of course, I recognize when I say it this way, it sounds a trifle arrogant! It certainly does not mean that “Jesus Christ” is wrong.  Surely it is not.  But at the same time, we need to be clear about what we are doing and what we are affirming.  Let’s put a couple simple affirmations on the table.  The first affirmation boldly assumes Jesus was a real guy---a human being.  We can leave off to the side right now whether he was a guy who ever sinned.  The second assumption affirm

Poet and writer, David Whyte, has a short poem called “Twice Blessed.”  Whyte is one of the most thoughtful writers I know.  He is Irish but lives in the US.  One reason I like him so much is his ability with words.  People who know me know how much I like words, but my thinking is not poetic.  I have never written poetry and have not even read that much.  This is an area I am trying to do more of as I move through my life.   I was attracted to Whyte's poem because I respond well to the idea of blessing.  I probably heard this word in church as I was growing up.  It usually meant one of two things.  One thing was a “blessing” that one might say as a kind of prayer at mealtimes.  Sometimes my grandmother would ask someone to “ask a blessing.”  When you hear that as a kid, you naturally assume blessings are things you can ask for---much like presents at Christmas.  The other place I ran into the idea of blessing was at church itself.  Sometimes the last thing the pastoral leader woul

Sometimes I don’t even know why I read what I do.  I am sure often it is because I am in a trusted journal or reading an author I simply assume will have something interesting or useful for me to know.  Other times I am sure it is because I am attracted to a particular issue or maybe it is little more than an inviting title. Recently I was thumbing through (or I guess, technologically we should say, scrolling through when it is online) the journal.  I spied a title that read, “Gas stations, garages and God.”  Now who can resist that one! It turns out it was written by a Benedictine nun in North Dakota, Sister Hannah Vanorny.  I do not know her, but I do know about the monastery where she lives.  She describes her fascination with places like convenience stores, rummage sales and the like.  I really don’t have the same fascination, except for a convenience store if I need something.  But I wanted to know what a nun finds attractive, so I started reading the article.  It was interesting

Some who see the title to this inspirational piece may wonder who is Graham Greene?  Greene was an English novelist who died in 1991.  I never met him, but would dearly have loved to meet him.  I met him through his novels.  I also know he was a playwright and journalist, among other things.  He studied at Oxford and converted to Catholicism in 1926.  He worked for the London Times for a period and then spent three decades running around the world as a journalist.  Many of the themes for his books stem from this period of travels. The first novel of his I think I read was Brighton Rock (1938).  I like how the Encyclopedia Britannica describes it: “…the protagonist is a hunted criminal roaming the underworld of an English sea resort---but explores the contrasting moral attitudes of its main characters with a new degree of intensity and emotional involvement.”  Many would say his novel, The Power and the Glory (1940), was his best piece.  This is a moving story of a priest on the run in

Recently I had an occasion to speak to a group.  I was asked to help people make sense out of life when things are not going the way we planned or hoped.  Clearly, if we live long enough, we know this happens to all of us.  It is more a question of when it will happen, rather than if it will happen.  Actually, it has happened to me multiple times, as I am pretty sure it has for most other folks.   Related to this issue is the situation in which we find we are alive and doing things, but there does not seem to be any reason or purpose to what we are doing or even to life itself.  We hear people complain about going through the motions.  We might get a salary or paycheck, but we get no sense of meaning or satisfaction from things.  This kind of situation might well be a good way to describe hell on earth.  We don’t have to die to know what deadly feels like! With this backdrop, I gave some thought to how humans find or make meaning.  I am good either way.  If we find meaning, that sugges

A little story I read in the local newspaper gave me a laugh and, then, paused to think about it more deeply.  The story came out of Bay Village a well-to-do suburb in Cleveland, OH, which I know well.  It is a very pleasant place right on Lake Erie.  It is the kind of place most people would be happy to call home.  It is not a wildly rich place like a couple other suburbs around Cleveland and, of course, around every city in the US.  But it takes some money to live there.      The story had a racy headline.  It read, “In Bay Village, Someone Called Cops on a Sleeping Homeless Person.”  There was a bit more, but we’ll come to that in a minute.  Accompanying the headline was a picture of this figure lying on a park bench.  Up close you could tell it was not a real person, but actually a statue or something like that.  But it was life-size.  The rest of the headline read, “It was a Statue of Jesus.”  However, the headline gave us too much.  Reading it meant we already knew the punch line

I lead a small group of people in considering soul work.  We explore what it is and, more importantly, how to do it.  I have long been interested in these questions and expect I will likely die before I get all the answers.  I am not even sure what “all” the answers might even be.  I like the process of talking and exploring so much, I would hate to have it end because we figured out all the answers! Fairly early in the process, I realized there was an idea called soul friends.  I likely ran into this when I read Kenneth Leech’s book by that name, which was published in 1992.  Leech’s book is a primer on spiritual direction.  I was ok with the idea of spiritual direction if it were between two or more people who were friends and seeking the best for each other in the Spirit.  In fact, that idea excited me.  It has been a long time since I read that book and probably cannot recall much from it.  But the idea of soul friends continues to pique my interest. And so, I continue to do soul w

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 scientific behaviourists” who ‘Identify causal mechanis

I thought about the happiness trap as I was reading an editorial in an online newspaper.  I am aware that happiness is a big thing.  I am confident if you asked the college students I teach what their goal might be, a quick answer would be they want to be happy.  I concur.  I want to be happy, too.  I suppose any sane person would rather be happy than sad.  Happiness is a basic human desire.  The real question is how do we become happy?   The editorial I read approached this latter question in a helpful fashion, which leads me to want to share some of the insights.  Finally, for me the insights lead to some spiritual reflections.  The editorial is by Ruth Whippman.  She writes a piece entitled, “Happiness is Other People.”  This title gives away her answer, but let’s follow her argument in order to appreciate more fully that happiness is other people.   I admit I never heard of her.  So I did a quick search and found out she is a British journalist who came to this country to live in C

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 I choose to share makes the point.  “Action

I am for social justice.  If asked whether I am for social justice, of course I would answer positively.  Even those who are against it----or who don’t care---probably would say they are for it.  It is easy to conclude it would be un-American to be against social justice.  In fact, I would guess that most of us think social justice is actually about us.  We are for social justice because we claim it is important to be just.  And part of that claim is society should treat us justly.  It is our right---our human, American right. But I also know there are plenty American citizens who are quite sure there are some in this country who are being denied social justice.  And they are sure some of us are more privileged and that we are the ones who are not aware of social injustices.  No doubt, I know I am one of the privileged.  In fact, I have many markers or privilege: race, sex, education and so on.  I am set up for things to go my way and to get my way.  This seems perfectly normal for me

I have already had occasion to mention the recent encyclical published by Pope Francis.  It came out in the Fall of 2020.  An encyclical merely means a “circular letter,” meant to be distributed world-wide and read by Catholics and, hopefully, non-Catholics alike.  As he has before, the Pope, who took the name of St. Francis, medieval monastic figure, as his inspiration.  In the beginning of the document, the Pope frequently quotes the medieval saint, who admittedly is one of my favorites. It is a rather long document, which probably means many folks won’t bother to look at it, much less read it.  And so I would like from time to time to bring some of its contents into our awareness.  I think it is a significant document and asks us to ponder some serious issues for our own time.  I am sure this is what the Pope hoped would happen.   He breaks the document into many small subsections.  The first couple serve to introduce the entire piece to us.  And then in sections three and four, the

In preparing some remarks for a local congregation recently, I worked with a passage that comes early in the gospels.  It is well-known that the message of Jesus was that the kingdom or the reign of God was present.  I know some folks today who like to quibble with the idea of kingdom.  It is a political term.  I am not particularly fond of it, but it is the term the gospel writers use to describe the work of Jesus.  Certainly, kingdom was a term familiar to most people in that day, surely to the Jewish community.   What was novel in the message of Jesus was his proclamation that it was here and had come now.  Maybe that is when his trouble actually began.  In Mark’s gospel Jesus clearly raised eyebrows in his first instance of public ministry.  He entered the town of Capernaum where he went to the synagogue and began teaching.  And in the same story, he also healed a man.  It is surely the case that the gospel writer wants the reader to understand this is what the coming kingdom looks

I don’t generally think about attics, especially since the place I now live does not have one.  The bigger house from which we moved had a large attic and when we moved, it was a nightmare.  It had somehow become filled with things.  I am sure they went up there one by one and, at the time, were things we thought we would “someday” need or want.  Sometimes folks put things in the attic to “store” them.  Of course, out of sight, out of mind.   There is another attic law I think applies.  What goes up never comes back down!  I do remember carting things up to the attic.  I am not sure I ever remember bringing anything back down.  For the most part, it was forgotten.  Occasionally, I would go to the attic and that usually took three times longer than I expected.  I would be exposed to all these things that provoked memories.  I would start reading an old journal or magazine.  I would look at a book or a bunch of old pictures.  Naturally, nothing ever happened.  I would put stuff right bac

Some books are good enough to read again.  A few of the books I use for classes are books I have read more than twice and every time I read one of them, I am both reminded of why I thought the book was so good.  And I find new nuggets of insight that keep bringing me back to that book the next semester.  One of those books is a classic from the 1960s, Langdon Gilkey’s journal-become-book, entitled Shantung Compound .   I read this book first when I was in seminary.  And then one of my colleagues used it in a theology class he taught at the seminary where I first taught.  I was intrigued how he used the book and so when I began teaching an introductory type theology class, I began to use Gilkey’s book.  I find it still does the trick even well into a new century.  Oddly enough, the book is historically located.  It tells of Gilkey’s nearly three years as an internee in a Japanese prison camp located in China during WW II.   Gilkey had just gone to Beijing right after graduating from col

Let’s all be Franciscans was the thought that came to mind when I was reading a recent article entitled, “Why is Francis of Assisi the patron saint of ecology?”  I was very confident I already knew the answer to this one, but I wanted to see what the author, Brian Roewe thought.  As I thought about this, however, a smile came to my face.  Quakers usually don’t deal with saints, except may the Apostle Paul, who often is referred to as Saint Paul.  This doubtlessly comes because of familiarity from reading the New Testament.   I don’t think Quakers are against saints.  Rather I would say we are against singling out people and, possibly, missing others who are just as qualified.  That said, Quakers know not all of us operate at the same level of being spiritual.  And some folks are more public and, therefore, more well-known.  I can be flip and say it does not matter what Quakers want to do on this saint issue.  I am content to borrow a few saints that I appreciate and who model something

Recently I looked at the website of the Spirituality Practice.  We find this advertises itself as a “Resource for Spiritual Journeys” and that is a good description.  The home page contains a short article by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, who sponsor this website and are long-time writers in spirituality.  The title for my inspirational piece is a steal of their title: What is Everyday Spirituality?  I thought it might be a good time to re-visit a basic idea in my long years of writing on this topic.  They are always helpful to me, The first thing they say resonates with my own experience.  They confess, “First, perhaps we should say that it is not the kind of spirituality we grew up with.”  Me either!  Elaborating, they quip “We were taught that spirituality was the part of religion that focused on the ‘inner life.’  It was something that you did in a special place or time.”  Often it is contrasted with doing things in life---ministry and service.  The monastic tradition often referr