Faith & Life Inspirational Message

The concept of friendship has been an important one for quite a long time for me.   And I am sure the phenomenon of friendship has been important to me since I was in the first grade, at least, and probably even before then.   I have taught a few times a college class on spiritual friendship.   Every time I have done that, it has been a special occasion.   It seems that teaching a course on friendship creates a special opportunity for significant personal development among the students.   And fortunately, I am the beneficiary of that experience, too. I have studied the idea of friendship, so I probably know more about the history, the philosophy and theology of friendship than most people know.   I have valued the way Aristotle talks about different kinds of friendships.   I appreciate the way Cicero, right before the time of Jesus, developed some profound ways of understanding how friendships are formed and how they should be lived.   Friendsh...

Much of the time I get material from the things I read.   But sometimes I hear interesting things.   Such was the case yesterday.   I was with a group of people whom I very much like.   They are gracious.   They are warm and quite hospitable.   I like to sit back and watch them do what seems very natural.   I long ago concluded that people who live in the Spirit do what comes natural to the Spirit.   I think people of the Spirit naturally begin to focus on others, rather than themselves.   People of the Spirit know the first thing you do is to welcome the other.   They do this even if the “other” is stranger.   I am sure they see a stranger who has not yet become a friend.   That is a neat way of looking at the world.   It certainly is a way of peace making. It is a way that begins in trust and hopes for the best.   Some would call this naïve.   The bolder critics would call it stupid!   It is naïve an...

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.   ...

“Friendship is an adventure and a journey that changes us over time.”   That is the first line of a group paper the folks in my class on Spiritual Friendship are writing.   It is an interesting project.   They have been a good group, they are working hard and I respect that effort.   So instead of the normal classroom assessment protocol, i.e. exams, we are in the process of writing together a paper defining and detailing what the students have learned about friendship.    The focus is on the nature of friendship.   This is the simple question, what is friendship.   Most people could offer an answer to that question, but I am confident the students could add some depth and breadth.   They have centuries’ worth of thinking from other luminaries of the past.   They can cite Aristotle and Augustine.   They have read people like Cicero and a medieval monk that virtually no one has ever heard of, namely, Aelred of Rievaulx.   Ael...

Sometimes when I am dealing with students, I encounter some who are not very responsible.   If it were that simple, we would have narrowed the range of the problem.   However the problem is bigger than the student population.   Certainly in my past I have been irresponsible.   And I am still all-too-capable of not being responsible, even in my ripe old age!   And clearly, there are other adults with whom I deal who are not very responsible.                But it does not even stop there.   We all can cite examples of businesses, which did not operate responsibly.   We know some banking establishments in the mid-2000s that were involved in shady practices that cost thousands of people much, if not all, of their life savings.   We know major sports programs that have cheated on grades---obviously not responsible behavior.   So when we talk about the ethics of responsibility, we...

Recently, I took the opportunity to undergo one of those tests that we all should do when we get older.   Of course, there are ranges of these tests that are good for older folks to do.   There are a number of good reasons for us to do these things, but probably the key issue is called self-interest!   The problem here however, it sometimes does not seem to be in our self-interest.   In all honesty I had no interest at all in doing it!   And I could come up with ten reasons why I “really did not need to do it….not now anyway.”             To follow my own “logic” here would only prove my stupidity.   I know there are other ways I opted to be stupid, but most of the time when it comes to my health, I sacrifice stupidity and go with safety.   Throughout the process I am always intrigued by the guile and gravity of my mind.   It is one creative, tricky little dude!   Sometimes I don’t eve...

I enjoy reading Thomas Merton.   In many ways Merton’s life is so different than my life.   And yet so much of what he says makes sense to me.   And so often what he says helps me think about my own life and how I am trying to make sense out of my life.   I suspect Merton speaks to so many people because he experienced so much in his life.   Merton lived through both big wars of the 20 th century and, then, was active through the Vietnam War.   He was an unlikely person to join a rigorist monastery in the middle of Kentucky.   But again, he made that experience something that spoke to people well beyond a Catholic monastery.   And he still speaks to people long after his untimely death in 1968.             In a very real sense I consider Merton a friend.   I never met him, although I do know and am friends with people who did know him.   I think the idea of friendship is a good w...

I very much enjoy it when I read someone I respect who is dealing with an issue or theme that I think is important.   More often than not, these experiences are both confirming what I think and also tend to take my own thought further or deeper.   Just such an experience happened recently as I turned to the daily newspaper.   I still buy a hard copy of my local paper.   I also read two or three online papers or news sources, too.   I hit this article by David Brooks in my local newspaper.   But since he is syndicated, it also appeared in the other online newspapers.            I was immediately drawn to the article by Brooks’ title.   It read: “Startling Adult Friendships.”   It also had an interesting subtitle: “There are Social and Political Benefits to Having Friends.”   I have had a long interest in the topic of friendship.   In fact, I teach a class called “Spiritual Friendship.” ...

The title of this inspirational reflection was the title of an email my daughter recently sent to me.   I noticed there was a photo attached.   I did not have a clue what the email subject line, a tea party with some friends, might mean.   I know some of my daughter’s friends, so it could be that she met with someone I know and who wanted to wish me well.   Her friends are thoughtful that way.   Of course, it could be about either of her own two kids, my own grandkids.   However, I had no clue what they knew about tea parties!             The text of the email was short, but it set the context.   The text went something like, “things were a little quiet in the basement, so I popped down to find…”   Those words obviously were meant to lead me to the photo, which would connect to the subject line of the email.             So I had to o...

Recently I read an interesting article that basically told me what I already knew.   The article focused on the happiness theme.   That is not surprising, since happiness is an “in thing” these days.   There are many studies that attempt to show us what happiness is, how to be happy and how to make it last.   I have said many times that I am certainly for happiness.   It is hard for me to imagine anyone saying, “No, I prefer being unhappy!”       The article was helpful as a reminder.   And it put together some important information for me to share with you.   I am convinced that happiness is not always a spiritual issue, but it can be a spiritual issue.   Personally, I am not sure that happiness should be a spiritual goal, but I am certain that happiness as a byproduct of spiritual goals is a good thing.            The author of the article, Ramesh Ponnuru, works in ...

When I said it, I knew my attempt at humor did not work.   Oops!   Instead of a laugh, I could see the slightly furrowed brow and a hint of pain.   Oops!   What I had intended did not work.   In fact, it turned into a mini-disaster.   There was no need of an ambulance or first-aid.   There was no bleeding.   But I had caused a slight hurt.   Oops!   There was no physical pain.   There was no malice on my part.   In fact, I meant well.   I was trying to cultivate a relationship.   Instead, I damaged it.   Oops!   There are all sorts of words that describe these kinds of situations: unintended consequences, hurt, destruction.   I rather like the innocuous little word, oops.   It must be one of the earlier words we learn and use.   Surely it is pre-kindergarten.             Oops!   It is a vibrant word.   It is only one syllab...