Faith & Life Inspirational Message

I often wonder what goes through folks’ minds when they see the title of my inspirational reflection.   When I use the word, mindfulness, I wonder what sort of connotations that has for the people who read this.   If they have some awareness of Buddhism, they might figure I am doing a Buddhist thing today.   Certainly mindfulness plays a very important role in Buddhist spirituality.   But mindfulness is not a Buddhist concept.   It is a more general concept which plays a huge role in Buddhist practice.             I suspect there is a role for mindfulness in every major religious tradition.   Clearly, the word, mindfulness, may not be used in all the traditions, but the idea is there. In fact, it is difficult for me to imagine anyone who is religious or spiritual who is not mindful in some way.             Let’s take a general look at what ...

It all began with an evening dinner with a friend.   Dinner with a friend is always easy.   We don’t have to impress each other.   The conversation flows.   The interest is mutual and the verbal exchange is satisfying.   Reflecting on it gives me a chance to ponder the beginning and development of friendship.   Even though I teach a class on spiritual friendship, I don’t pause enough to value the gift that friendship is.   As I reflected on it, I realized there are some fundamentals of friendship.   I know we could list even more than I will list here, but these five surely are fundamental to any significant friendship.   I would name the five fundamentals of friendship to be connection, affection, attention, care and good will.   Let’s look at each one of these.   Surely connection is an essential ingredient of friendship.   In fact, we could begin a definition of friendship as the art of making a connection.   ...