Faith & Life Inspirational Message

Since I teach in a university setting, I spend quite a bit of time with traditional college-age folks—18 to 22 years old.  I very much like being with them, listening to them and helping them, when I can.  I don’t even like to say I teach them.  I prefer saying I help them learn.  I don’t think this is a matter of semantics, as they say.  It is the truth of how I understand things.  I am not sure we can teach someone something unless they want to learn it.  Oh, they might memorize something short term or even act in compliance with an order.  But to learn something means making it my own.  And since I teach religion, this is especially true. Sometimes students want me to give them the right answers so they can get an A on the test and in the course.  They are concerned with grades rather than learning.  Don’t hire someone like that!  They are not life-long learners and they will crumble in times of crisis and change.  You cannot memorize life!  Rather, I help them develop their curiosi

I am not sure where my fascination with words began.  Like most folks, I don’t remember those early days of beginning to speak.  I loved watching my two girls learn to talk and now I have enjoyed watching grandkids reach that very human plateau of communicating meaningfully with words.  Maybe when I began learning a second language---in my case Latin---I began to appreciate the meaning of words.  Anyone who translates a foreign language into English knows there is an art to choosing the right English word to communicate what you think that foreign word is wanting to say.  I am fairly certain I began at an early age to appreciate the power of words.  Of course, I could not have put it that way.  No doubt, when we tell our first lie, we realize we can manipulate how people think and feel.  With luck, we also feel a little guilt when we lie.  But we do learn about the power of words to shape a world---maybe our parents’ world in the first place.  Another stage that fascinates me is the qu

One of the best things about teaching my class on Spiritual Disciplines is the fact that I get to engage in practicing some discipline myself.  I try to do this all the time, but like so many people, I find it is not easy to do by yourself.  When I am teaching the class, that semester’s practice of discipline goes much better.  Being responsible to myself and others in the class makes my motivation higher.    We use a number of books to help both students and myself understand the nature of spiritual disciplines.  One of the books I use is by Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World .  This book offers a simple look at all the possible disciplines within our reach.  One such discipline is walking.  In her chapter, “The Practice of Walking on the Earth, Taylor leads us through a deeper sense of how walking can be a spiritual discipline.  And then, she assists us in making it a discipline of the Spirit.  I try to walk every day, so this was a huge help for me.  Let’s take a closer loo

I have the pleasure of leading a group which meets regularly.  I know most of the folks in the group through various experiences in the past. Some have been in class with me.  Others I have met through some work I have done in various retreat centers.  But there are a few who have because of another friend in the group.  It is wonderfully diverse---but not in every way.  We are from all over the country and range in age from 20 to 90.  Not all are Quakers.  I cherish the chance to be with them and think about important things. Each time we gather, I provide a small reading---sometimes only a paragraph or so.  Recently we looked at a passage from the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton.  In one of his better-known books, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, written near the end of his life (1966), Merton reflects on what it is like to live in the present.  That sounds simple enough, until we realize how often we are not in the present.  In this passage Merton first notes that “In a time of drast

My phone rang and I immediately could see the name of an old friend calling.  That’s the advantage of technology that identifies many of those who call us.  It makes me smile about the old days when the phone would ring and picking up to answer was always like greeting a mystery.  You never knew until the other voice said, “Hello.”  In this case I knew who was calling.  I have known the guy for a long time.  However, it has been many years since we have talked.   I knew about his cancer diagnosis and knew things were not going well.  Of course, that is a general statement.  When someone says that things are not going well, you don’t know whether that is a temporary setback and whether it is life-threatening.  Even after the phone call, I don’t know for sure.  But I do know it is not a temporary setback.  I know that my friend is a person of faith.  That said, I had no clue why he was calling. When I answered, it became clear that he is dealing with some serious issues.  He is undergoin

I recently had the opportunity to speak about competence.  This is a word that is much discussed in the business world, including health companies, major leagues sports and the like.  Obviously, no major league team desires a teammate who is incompetent or only barely competent.  If you are a baseball player who cannot hit a curve ball, you have no future in the majors.  Certainly, no employer is looking for incompetent workers.   Behind the word, competence, is the verb to “compete.”  I love making this kind of point to students, because they don’t always associate a noun with its verb form.  And my comment usually is “you cannot get a noun if you don’t do the verb.”  That means competing is what finally brings competence.  Perhaps I might even say that there is a step before competing.  That step includes preparation.  Often the preparation period is lengthy.  If we continue with the baseball metaphor, we first have to learn to catch a ball and to throw it.  If you have ever played w

Sometimes in the life of a person on their spiritual journey is the chance actually to believe what you say.  I am currently in one of those places.  To be aware I am in one of the places where I will decide some course of action is both sobering and humorous.  My issue is certainly not life and death.  The good news is whatever I decide will be good.  It is such a luxury to have a choice between two good things.  But sometimes that kind of choice feels quite difficult.  I am sure I will chafe under the weight of deciding, but I want to remember ultimately, I am lucky to have choices that will turn out well.  I have been on a faith journey for decades now.  Early on had I been asked about living this long and having this much time to grow in my faith, I would have guessed I might be further along.  I probably figured at that younger age, I would not have as many questions as I actually do.  Surely, I assumed by now I would have figured it all out.  Actually, I do not have it all figure

There are many wonderful things for which I am grateful because I can teach college students.  While I know they are students, in my mind they simply are my younger friends.  They are living their lives, as I am living mine.  My role with them is to help them think about life and help them choose ways to live their lives more fully and more meaningfully.  My way of doing this is not to spend any time telling them what they should think or how they should act.  Instead, I choose to join them in conversation.  I want to assist them to become more reflective, more able to listen to others and themselves and to ask good questions which can add quality and depth to our lives. One class I particularly enjoy is called Contemplative Spirituality.  The goal in that experience is to learn to live life contemplatively.  That is my goal, too.  If I can live more contemplatively, then my life will be fuller, richer and more deeply meaningful.  “Count me in,” I say!  In the beginning my younger frie

It was just another Sunday to join a Quaker community in worship.  I have been doing that my whole life.  Some Quakers meet in silence, like Quakers of old.  Other Quakers were influenced by their Christian neighbors in the nineteenth century and developed a worship experience more like a typical Protestant experience.  I am quite fine with both types.  I learned a long time ago that the Spirit can be present in either type and can be absent.  I prefer to go to a community where the Spirit is more likely to be welcomed and embraced.   I was about to say, I went to meeting for worship, as we call it, not expecting anything special.  But that is not quite true.  I go to every meeting for worship expecting it can be special in some fashion.  That is part of the mystery of the endeavor.  You can never be sure to whom or how the Spirit will speak.  Of course, it does not always seem that special when I look back on the experience, but it is still good.  I keep going.  It is important to me.

In a familiar passage Jesus asks the gathered disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29)  Peter jumps in to answer that question.  He says to an earlier question that some folks say Jesus is Elijah, others think he is John the Baptist and even others say he is one of the prophets.  Each of these figures is important in Jewish history.  To associate Jesus with one of these figures is to align him with their ministry.  But that is when Jesus turns to his disciples and ask their opinion.   Peter responds, “You are the Messiah.” From this, Jesus proceeds to tell the disciples that he must suffer and will probably be killed.  Peter and the others don’t want to hear any of that.  Instead, they want someone more powerful, someone to get after those who have harassed and persecuted Jesus and his followers.  In effect, they want to get even with some folks---to hit back, as revenge so often wants to do.  I have read and likely spoken from this text many times.  I know what the Greek

The strange title of this inspirational piece is the same title for a brief essay I read in a periodical I routinely check out.  Like you, I had no idea what this author, Verla Wallace, wanted to tell me.  I did not know this author, so I did a quick check to see who she is.  I found out Wallace is a business woman, journalist and broadcaster in the Chicago area.  Because I found the title of the essay so intriguing, I jumped into reading it.  She opens the essay by citing the Irish author, Cormac McCarthy, who apparently says somewhere “that insights spring from the subconscious and require a lot of ‘staring at your shoes.’”  Obviously, I had to read on---just as you have to read on.  Wallace begins to share her own view of what McCarthy means.  She says, “I don't think he literally meant we must stare stupidly at our shoes, waiting for something magical to happen.  I suspect it was his way of saying we need to stop and give our minds some breathing room and often answers will com

I am not sure when I first heard the word, ecumenical.  That probably would be because if I heard it, I would not have known what it meant and, therefore, would have dismissed it.  I doubt that the word would have come up in conversation with the farm folks I hung around with when I was a kid.  I am certain it was not a common word among the Quakers in my part of the world.  There may have been pastors and the priest in town who knew the word, but I don’t remember ever hearing it.  But then, I don’t remember hanging out with these guys!  (And they were all guys then.)  I suspect I learned what the word meant when I was in college.  Surely, I would have learned it in a Christian church history class.  By the time I got into college, Vatican II was well underway, but I don’t recall anything about that.  Vatican II entertained a number of very important things---not only for the Catholic Church, but with implications for all other Christian traditions.  Because I had no association (save

I have finished Sophfronia Scott’s wonderful book. The Seeker and the Monk .  It is a book that links the lives of Scott, who is a writer by vocation, and Thomas Merton, the late monk by vocation.  Scott is a still-young African American writer who left her very poor home in northeast Ohio to attend Harvard.  From there she earned a Master of Fine Arts and has found a way to make a living writing down her thoughts.  A few years ago, a friend introduced her to Merton, the Kentucky monk who died in 1968.  In her imagination, she and Merton became conversational buddies and the book is the result. I am pretty familiar with Merton, so I have read her book with some interest.  She does a good job of mining Merton’s journals and some of his other writings to pick out timely topics and both give Merton credit for dealing with these in ways that still make sense.  And she takes him to task for being shortsighted and at places inadequate for today’s generation.  She is bright, engaging and sees

Recently in class we wandered into an interesting discussion that I have continued to ponder.  We were talking about the future.  I noticed how the students moved back and forth between talking about expectations and about hopes.  I asked if they were the same thing.  Most folks did not think they were the same.  So if not the same, how are they different?  I agree; I don’t think they are synonyms.  Obviously, both hope and expectations have to do with the future.  Neither have happened yet.  I am sure I have not fully thought my way into the two dimensions of future, but here is where I am in the moment.  Let’s start with expectations.  I know our word, expectation, is rooted in Latin.  The root word is specto or spectare .  I would translate it as “watching” or “seeing.”  We get our English word, spectacle, from that Latin root.  So, the root word suggests expectations are our way of watching or looking out for the future.  The two letters on the front of the word, “ex,” is a prepos

Whenever the Benedictine Sister from Erie, Joan Chittister, writes something new, I read it.  And then I usually figure out how to share it with folks who may not know her or miss something new from her fertile mind.  The good nun and I are not personal friends, but I feel like I have known her for years.  I laugh, because a few years ago, I gave a lecture at her monastery to a wonderful gathering of nuns and greater Erie community folks.  It was well-received, but she was not in attendance!  She probably never heard of that Quaker guy who was also talking about Thomas Merton.  I even spent the night at the monastery and enjoyed their hospitality, but no Chittister.   So, it is appropriate that her new little article on the Beatitudes begins with some human---a joke in fact. She shares a joke, which she said makes her laugh.  Here is the joke.  "Computers are so powerful that pretty soon the country will be run by one computer, one man, and a dog," the teller says. "Real

I came up with the title for this inspirational piece while reading a short article.  It was part of the recent alum magazine my alma mater sends.  Since I went to a reputable place, I trust what they include and send out to all of us.  Unless you have a huge amount of money in your will for them, they are better off if most of us live a very long time!  I promise to keep giving until I am dead, but they are not in my will.  The title they used which lured me in stated, “Eat This, Not That!”  I thought it was going to be about food, but it was more about exercise.  And it was basically a summary of some articles. Since I walk a fair amount almost every day, I felt like they were preaching to the choir.  But I read the article anyway.  The article opened by sharing some statistics about how sedentary Americans have become.  With all the technology available and the entertainment we have at home, sometimes there is little incentive for folks to do anything but work and play around on the

I keep reading in order not to go stale and implicitly assume I have learned all that I need to enjoy life.  I am already aware of how much stupid, superficial stuff there is to keep us occupied.  I know what it is like to feel like I am doing something important, when in fact, it is an ignorant waste of my time. I know what it is like to do something I consider worthwhile, while others think it is silly and useless.  Religion is one of those big areas that gets life commitments from some folks and snickers or disgust from others.    One of the things I recently read resonated with my spirit.  John Gerhring wrote about his visit to a Trappist monastery in Virginia.  I thought I knew Gehring; I know a guy by this name.  But this John turned out to be a Catholic program director of a Washington, DC organization---not my John Gehring.  But out of curiosity I read on.  I am glad I did.    The title of his little piece is what attracted me: “What I learned being silent with the monks.”  I a

I was running a few minutes late, but I decided I still had time to stop by my usual coffee place for a cup of coffee.  Since Covid, that normally means picking it up at the drive-through window.  Timing is everything the saying goes, and my timing was not very good.  I know if I go earlier, the line is not long.  And so, it takes less time to move through to my desired coffee.  If I am later, as I was this morning, the line is longer.  This is another one of those perverse laws of the universe! Because the place I stop is popular, there is always a line of cars.  Dutifully I pulled into line behind an older SUV.  Claiming to be spiritual, I should settle into prayer and supplication or something like that, as I inch toward my goal.  However, I was more intent on trying to will the line to move faster.  Obviously, my powers were weak that morning, since we were in more of a creeping mode.  Looking at my watch did not make the line move any faster either.  If I had been more aware, I wo