Faith & Life Inspirational Message

“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...

It is with considerable trepidation that I write about my granddaughter.   Certainly it is not that she embarrasses me.   To the contrary, I am very proud of her.   That is one of the roles of grandparents, as I have learned from others.   Of course, she is cute, smart, and about the most amazing young kid of this century!   And of course, that is totally biased and ungrounded, but that is my prejudice.             Actually writing about my grandkid is something like pulling out too many photos of her and subjecting a friend with more photos than the one picture he or she probably is willing to look at.   I know it takes longer to read this than it would take to look at one picture and say something like, “that’s nice!”             I have begun to realize that my granddaughter is becoming my teacher.   That is probably not surprising to C...

Occasionally you see something or hear something that is instantly funny.   Sometimes it is the context or lack of a context that causes the laugh.   One such thing happened to me today.   I was innocently heading into a building for my next stop of the day.   As I walked by a set of doors, I noticed a sign posted on the window.   As I read it, I immediately broke into laughter.            The sign read: “Insanity is cancelled; Resumes next week!   I suppose for those who know more than I do, the sign makes perfect sense.   It was clear to me that since I did not have the right context, the sign was simply funny.   I did not know that insanity went on in that building!   And if insanity were happening, why would they want to cancel it?   Clearly, I was missing something.             Of course, I know “insanity” means sick---usua...

Maybe it is because I am a college professor---a teacher---that I have always been drawn to the title of rabbi for Jesus.   I call it a title because “rabbi” is not part of his name.   That is also true of the title, “Christ.”   When I was a kid, I assumed “Christ” was his last name!   To the contrary, rabbi and Christ are titles that describe something about the function of Jesus. To call Jesus “the Christ” is to describe him as “the anointed one.”   And to describe Jesus as “rabbi” is to say he is a teacher.   That aspect of Jesus I can relate to and appreciate.             After so many years teaching, I feel like I know a thing or two about the process.   And I am confident enough about what I have learned teaching that I suspect some of the same things apply to Jesus, the rabbi.   Let’s explore a couple of these learnings.          ...

I am still one of the people who read a variety of news accounts every day.  I even buy a hard copy of my local newspaper, but I may be the last generation doing that.  Neither of my kids ever buys a newspaper and I seldom see a student reading a hard copy paper.  I also read a fair amount of news online.  Obviously that is more planet-friendly.  And it gives me a wide variety of sources to consult.  Clearly, that is a huge upside of our electronic age.  In the early days of my life, I would never had read the London Times or an English version of a Chinese paper.  Now it is very easy.             I was surprised when I went online yesterday to see a story with an arresting title: 4 Teachings From Jesus That Everybody Gets Wrong.  It should not be surprising that I immediately clicked that site.  I was interested that the opinion was by a well-known New Testament scholar, Amy-Ji...

In a reading for class I hit a line in Kathleen Norris’ book, The Cloister Walk , that struck a chord in me.   I know I had read the passage before, but somehow it never hit me like it did this time.   It is in a chapter Norris calls, “Generations.”   The chapter talks about how there are generations of monks within a monastery, just like there can be generations within a family.   I never thought about that, but it rings true.             Norris begins a paragraph with these words.   “Monastic storytelling is a form of gossip, and like the best gossip, it often serves a moral purpose.” I had to laugh at that thought.   Most people I know probably do gossip (as I confess to doing on occasion), but probably most of us would deny that we do it!   Norris then moves on to indicate there are some dangers in the monastic life.   And I don’t doubt that.   Then she writes the line that I very ...

I have never met anyone who prefers the lack of love instead of love.   I agree with many writers in multiple spiritual traditions that humans want to love and to be loved.   I conclude that is a basic human desire.   I am sure we could point to the occasional person for whom this might not be the case.   But that person, I argue, is a person who has somehow become deformed or was malformed as he or she grew.   I have never read in any spiritual tradition where we don’t come to love at some point.   I have read so much about love that I sometimes think I have forgotten more than I have remembered.   I recognize how easy it is to think about love and even to write about love.   To think about love and to write about it does not mean necessarily that I am very good at loving.   In fact, most days I still feel like a kindergartner when I think about my capacity and execution of love.   So I welcome one more time to ponder love and see if...