Faith & Life Inspirational Message

I had not really thought much about it until my friend mentioned it in his remarks to me and some of my younger student friends.   He is a pretty “big person” in our part of the world.   He is a name of national prominence.   I feel fortunate to have a good relationship with him.   Apart from a good friendship, I don’t get any special things from him.   The best thing is his willingness to take time to speak to my student friends.             The “it” he mentioned was in the phrase, “paying it forward.”   There he was in front of us saying the real reason he was spending time with us was to “pay it forward.”   It was appropriate.   He did not have to do this.   He wasn’t going to get anything personally from doing it.   In fact, we could actually be seen as a pain in the neck for him!   But he wanted to pay it forward.         ...

One of my favorite authors, the late monk, Thomas Merton, had a great answer to the person who asked him what he wanted to be?   Merton responded, “I want to be a saint.”   The first time I read that line, I sat back with the exclamation, “Whoa!”   That is an audacious aspiration.   I can’t imagine telling someone I want to be a saint.   Perhaps, the real reason I would never tell someone that I want to be a saint is the fact that I really don’t want to be a saint!             It is probably true that Merton and I don’t really mean the same thing when we say, “saint.”   Since I did not grow up Roman Catholic, I never had anything to do with saints.   Occasionally, the authors of the New Testament were called saints.   Reference would be made to St. John or St. Paul.   Since these guys wrote what we now call “Scripture,” there was no way I would have aspirations equal to them. ...

May this day bring you a taste of grace---grace without which everything in life begins to dull or maybe even become overwhelming.   Life and grace is what the whole Easter season has been about.   I emphasize life and grace.            If we look at the calendar, we know that Easter is over.   Spiritually the challenge now is not to get over Easter!   In saying this, I have in mind more than just the Christians in our world.   I want to include all humans.   Chronologically, Easter is history, but this should not mean we lose its mystery.   Not to lose its mystery is to continue asking God to touch those parts of our lives, which have become deadened.   It means realizing some days we feel like we have been deposited in the tomb.   We may feel deadened.   We require that angelic visit to proclaim life again.             We need...

It is with some trepidation that I use “spiritual direction” as the title for this inspirational reflection.  It is not that I am against spiritual direction.  In fact, I am very much for it!  I figure most of us would be better off with some spiritual direction.  I know I would.  So what’s my trepidation?  It comes from my Quaker heritage….more about that in a minute.             When you see the term, “spiritual direction,” you could take it in a couple ways.  One way to take the term is to see it literally.  We all know what the word, “direction,” means.  It means north, over there, up there, etc.  Direction points to some space or place.  Direction is someplace besides here.  When we ask for directions, we are asking how to get there.  In the old days we consulted maps.  Maps charted the course we could take to get to a desired place.  Now we use tec...

As I have mentioned so many times, when serendipity comes my way, I am delighted.   I always feel so lucky when serendipity hits.   I feel good when I recognize that serendipity has just graced my life.   Sometimes I wonder how many times I miss something that is serendipitous, just because I failed to notice it?   This time serendipity came in the form of a John Lennon quotation.   I like John Lennon and the Beatles, but I was never a huge fan.   The quotation from Lennon did not even come from some music.   Instead it came rather innocently in some regular mailings that I receive.   Often I do not even read those things.   For whatever reason, this time I read it and Lennon’s words leaped out at me.   I am thankful.   I also am curious, so I did some research.   It seems that it is pretty dubious that Lennon ever said the words I am about to quote.   But I don’t care.   It is not important to me that they ...

To be free, oh, to be free.   Freedom has always been a major theme of American culture.   Indeed, this country was rooted in a political and religious quest for freedom.   Any of us with any age hears the resonant voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. and others in the turbulent 1960s calling for freedom to ring out.             But freedom is a much older concept than these North American colonies, now global super-state.   And freedom certainly is not an American concept alone.   Freedom goes back to those Jews who experienced liberation from Egyptian bondage.   It is as old as those Greek philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle.   Freedom has been an issue on the national scale as well as on the individual scale.             Freedom is always the opposite of bondage and slavery. In many ways I would claim never to have experienced bondag...

As the Christmas season comes round, I am reminded of a one-liner I heard one day while listening to a lecture by Richard Rohr.   Rohr is one of my favorites.   He has a way of saying some very significant things, but often with a twist of humor.   No doubt, this is what endears him to so many people.   And it is also probably why some folks, particularly some Roman Catholics, find him troubling and wish he would quit speaking and writing.   The line I wrote down, as Rohr was speaking, went like this.   “The operative image of God is Santa Claus!”   Of course, this line is basically about God and not Santa Claus.   Rohr is offering a theological look into his own mind.   It is not a comment on Santa Claus.   In this instance Santa is an image or a symbol.   Let’s look more closely at Rohr’s theology to see if it makes sense in our own lives.    Clearly not everyone has the same idea with respect to Santa Claus. ...

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...

As Americans, we enter the Thanksgiving season.  Already people are wishing me a “happy Thanksgiving.”  I am delighted with that greeting.  And I would be delighted if someone next week wishes me a “happy Monday.”  But I guess Mondays are supposed to be normal…not so happy, not so awful. I am not sure I do major holidays very well.  I am not against them.  They celebrate important events in national, religious, and often personal lives.  Thanksgiving is an American deal.  In Turkey it is just another weekday!  As an American, I welcome it.  And I hope it is happy. I am confident one of the reasons I am not sure about major holidays is the trickiness of expectations.  For example, Thanksgiving is supposed to be “happy.”  Christmas is supposed to be “merry” and, of course, we return to the “happy” theme for New Years.  Clearly, for too many people there are too many lousy things going on to gear up to be “happy” and “mer...

I arose early this morning---long before the first glimmer of light appeared in the eastern sky.  With my first step out the door, I was aware of how cold it was again going to be today.  I could feel it on my exposed cheeks and the sound of the snow’s crunch underfoot told me that sub 32-degree weather still engulfed us. Having a hot cup of coffee and sitting inside a warm room means all is well---for me.  But I know that people will complain about the cold weather, and the snow will be condemned as a nuisance or a problem. As I think about this negative view of the winter weather, I wonder what would happen if we looked at the snow as this season’s blessing from nature.  The snow is white---for centuries this has been the religious color of purity.  Let us look at the snow as God’s natural way of purifying this part of the world.  I want to be able to see my “white world” this day and appreciate the beauty of its purity. It is so true of our world a...

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...

On its own the title for this inspirational journey makes no sense.   Of course, the words are understandable.   Everyone knows what ordinariness is.   And sweetness is a no-brainer!   But together, who knows?   What is missing is a context.   Actually, context is more important than we usually think it is.   So often, meaning is gained when we know the context.   For this phrase, “ordinariness into sweetness” (the text), to mean anything, we need other surrounding words (providing the “con,” which means “with,” for the text!).   Those surrounding words form a context.   They would shape to how we are supposed to understand “ordinariness into sweetness.” Let me build the context by making suggestions.   The first suggestion is when I came up with the phrase, “ordinariness into sweetness,” I was thinking of Halloween.   No doubt, now the “get” half of it!   Halloween---candy---sweetness!   And you are exactly rig...

Sometimes my ideas for an inspirational reflection come in odd ways.   The idea for this piece originated in the classroom.   We were discussing a section from Kathleen Norris’ book, The Cloister Walk , which is one of my favorite books.   One of her paragraphs made reference to the French phrase, point vierge .   Because I have read her book a number of times, I am familiar with the term.   And I also know that Thomas Merton, my favorite monk used the phrase in a very significant way.             The French phrase is translated in various ways.   Literally it means the “virginal point.”   It suggests that time at dawn---the breaking of the new day---when the light is just beginning to appear.   It is the point where night meets day.   It was used by Merton to talk about “the still point.”   All this I knew, but I was still curious about the phrase.   So I chased my curiosity...