Faith & Life Inspirational Message

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. ...

For some time now I have been aware of the reports and, sometimes, controversy over the whole issue of climate change and nature.   Some folks think we are heading toward a climate crisis—global warming and the like.   Other folks scoff at such an idea and assume everything is fine.   Most of us are scientifically not savvy enough to have a clue how to think about it.   I know I am not smart enough to be an expert.   In fact, it is a struggle to know enough to have an educated opinion.             What I know is I trust science.   Having said that, I also know quite a few religious people put no faith in science.   In fact, quite a few religious folks think there is a basic conflict between religion and science.   I do not find myself in that camp.   I see science and religious as compatible, but different, ways of seeing and understanding our world.   I like to think I am both sc...

No doubt, one of the best things that happened to me when I went to college was my narrow provincialism began to be challenged and changed.   Provincialism is not inherently bad; it is just limited.   To be provincial is to be limited to one’s single province.   My growing up province was a rural Indiana farm community.   It was a great place to grow up---wonderful people and the values they held to, like hard work, honesty, etc.   I have been forever grateful for this nurturing culture.   But it also was provincial.             It was provincial for me because it limited my view of the world---my sense of the incredible diversity and complexity of the world.   Provincialism is a form of limited ignorance.   Very smart people can be provincial.   Smart people can be ignorant!   I was one!   I didn’t know what I didn’t know.   College began to change that and I have endea...

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...

Reading the title of this inspiration piece probably makes no sense until you get an appropriate context.   The context comes as I begin re-reading a classic book for me, namely, Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek .   I have used this book in a course I teach and I always love returning to the pages of this contemporary contemplative of nature.   I don’t know how else to put it, except to say Annie Dillard is an exciting writer.   Originally appearing in 1974, the book reads as if it were published only yesterday.             The reader would not know it, but Annie Dillard summarizes the entire book in a paragraph in the first chapter.   I would not have known this until a second or third read of the book.   This summarization comes in a paragraph where Annie describes where she lives.   Quite simply she says, “I live by a creek, Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virginia’s Blue Ridge.”   A...

I realized some years ago that I actually receive many more gifts than I ever would have thought.   I realized this when I changed the way I perceive gifts.   As a young boy I certainly thought about gifts in materialistic terms.   That is why birthdays and Christmas are such wonderful events.   People are obligated to give you things!   Of course, the reverse is also true.   On those two occasions I am also obligated to give others some gifts.             Of course, material gifts count.   I have had some fantastic gifts over the course of my life.   A new baseball mitt that I received in my early youth was about the best gift a kid could have received.   Like me, I am sure you have received many gifts during your life.   Some were likely fairly expensive and others cost hardly any money.   In fact, some of the most touching gifts I have received have come from natural ...

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...

Even though I grew up on a farm in Indiana and spent a great deal of time outside, I would not say I am as attuned to nature as one might expect.   In some ways it is a little disappointing to realize this and admit it.   Of course when I was outside, I was surely aware of the weather.   If it is raining, you don’t need a very high IQ to know it is raining!   Awareness of the weather, however, does not mean you are generally aware of nature.             Every time I come back to Annie Dillard’s great book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek , I am reminded of my off-and-on relationship with nature.   I realize again how much I miss on a walk across campus.   I lament at how unconscious I apparently am so much of the time.   At one level, this is sad because it means I am capable of so much more.   At another level, it is funny.   It is funny because I sometimes think I am fairly aware and, th...

Sometimes when I am outside, it hits me how majestic and wonderful nature can be.   Since I grew up in rural Indiana, I have always known this to be the case.   However, we live much more insulated lives than people did when I was a little boy.   We live in controlled environments much of the time.   We use air conditioning to keep it cooler in the summer and, then, turn on the heat to keep the rooms warm during the winter months.   I am not complaining and am not suggesting we go back to the good old days! But I do think living life in an insulated way leads more of us to live more unaware.   Because our environments are controlled, we shape our reality as much as it shapes us.   This does not make us crazy, but it does allow us to live in a kind of illusion.   When it is nearly one hundred degrees on a summer day, it probably is a comfortable seventy-two degrees inside.   We have little awareness of the reality of nature.   And we n...

It was a beautiful sky, as I looked backward from the window of the plane.   I was flying from the West coast heading east.   The plane left the ground of the West coast and climbed into a sky bathed in bright sunshine.   There was not a cloud to be seen.   I knew, however, that the plane would be chasing the impending darkness of the East coast.   That gives a person the surreal sense of the day rushing by.             Normally, when we watch the coming of dusk, it is slow and subtle.   If we pay attention, we can sense the late afternoon sun begin to give way to softer light.   And then the colors of dusk come and, finally, the darkness of night itself descends.   As a farm boy, I watched that transformation a thousand times.                But the recent plane ride was different.   And it was at a vastly different s...

I enjoy sitting in my chair and listening to the wind blow outside my window.   Of course that presupposes that I am sitting safely in my chair and the wind is not really doing any damage.   When a big storm hits, that is not always a safe assumption.   It is one thing to notice a breeze.   It is another thing when the winds come with a storm.   We see those kinds of winds with heavy rainstorms and we also see them with heavy snowstorms. A brisk wind reminds me of the power of nature.   The power of nature gets my attention.   In fact, when the wind becomes really powerful, it can be intimidating.   Not only do I sense that this wind is really potent, but sometimes I am moved to some fear.   Intimidation is experienced as some fear.   And even the good fear we call awe is such that we are kept on guard. I have often noted that the classical languages of Hebrew, Greek and Latin have one word which can be translated “wind” or “sp...