Faith & Life Inspirational Message

I had a recent trip out of town.   It was a pleasant trip to a place I very much like to visit.   Since I was traveling for an organization I represent, it was not going to cost me much, except the time I would spend away from campus and from my friends.   I always miss that, but the trade-off is not bad.   I get to meet new people and, maybe, see some old friends.   So off I went.             I like being in different cities.   Each city has its own characteristics.   Often there is a different offering of restaurants---sometimes with local ethnic fare.   I like experimenting with different options.   It is on trips like this, I realize again how very provincial my growing up on an Indiana farm really was.   I don’t lament that, but I am grateful that I have begun to experience a much bigger world.   I am not sure we can understand and appreciate just how big and diverse...

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...

One of the things I know about myself is I prefer the routine and normal.   I hope this does not mean I am incapable of living in different kinds of times---special times and, perhaps, even crisis times.   I have had some of both, as would be natural for anyone my age.   But in the end, I prefer the normal and the routine.   Maybe that is because so much of life happens in that sphere.   However, special times do come at regular times.   There are the religious holidays. If you are Christian, the two big ones are Easter and Christmas.   If you are Jewish, there is Passover and Yom Kippur, which is the most important holy day.   Of course, Muslims, Hindus and other major traditions have their holidays, such as the Hindu Diwali.   As I write this, I realize a particular day can be a religious holiday for some tradition and just a normal day for another tradition.   I don’t know very many Christians who celebrate Diwali.   And th...

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 bondage a...