Faith & Life Inspirational Message

There are a few people I follow in the sense that I want to hear and read whatever they are putting out there.   My interest in these kinds of people does not parallel the people the general culture follows.   For example, when I go through the checkout counter in the grocery store, I read with some amusement the cover of the various Hollywood-type magazines.   I usually don’t even know the people about whom the magazine is putting forward.   People are pregnant, getting dumped or duped or generally making a scene out of their lives and I don’t care.   I just want to pay for the carrots!            I am not really interested in the sports stars upon whom our culture lavishes so much blabber.   I don’t care about Tiger, LeBron or Michael.   Certainly, they are accomplished in terms of a skill set for a particular sport.   But that says nothing about the kind of human being they are.   Many a...

I don’t know why I am always surprised to find rich possibilities for spiritual musing within the worldly, secular realm.   It happens frequently and I am always surprised!   I should not be surprised because I think almost all of us Americans live most of life in the midst of secularity.   Maybe the monks and the recluses don’t, but most of us do.   I know I do…and I am a professor of religion!             Living life in the midst of secularity is not bad.   But it is not spiritual either.   I don’t think the Spirit is missing from the secular world.   But in the secular world, most of us are not in touch with the Spirit and, probably, most of us may not even be looking to get in touch with the Spirit.                This is what hit me as I was doing the most secular task of all.   I was reading the business section r...

Very often the things that wind up causing me to think a little more about life and how to make spiritual sense out of life come from the ordinariness of my life.   I do affirm there is a sacred dimension to our world.   What I am not sure about is whether there is a non-sacred dimension.   I realize for many people, this is backwards.   It would be easy to find folks who would be quite sure the world is secular, if not outright profane, and they would not be at all convinced there is any sacred dimension.               It would take a book to define and develop what I or any other person means by “the sacred.”   Since I don’t have that ambition nor space to do that here, let me simply say for me “the sacred” is the sense of the holy---the place or space where one senses the Presence, the holy and the mystery.   I believe that dimension is all around us.   However, I also believe that m...