Faith & Life Inspirational Message

It is commonplace for people to think of churches, synagogues and mosques when you talk about religion.   Everyone would say that those are not the only places where religion can happen, yet most of us associate religion with those kinds of venues.   I think that is much less so when we talk about spirituality.   I am sure there is a wide range of definitions of spirituality, but most folks I know think it is different than religion.   While many of us think spirituality may be related to religion, few people I know think the two are the same thing.             I am not sure I associate religion with churches, but I do think there often is an institutional aspect to religion that most of us do not associate with spirituality.   And since I spend most of my time teaching “spirituality,” whatever that is, I am more focused on that.   So when I am with students, I am often talking about spirituality in ...

Spirit and body are two important ideas that have been involved in spiritual history for centuries.   Concerns with both spirit and body are seen throughout the scriptures in many religious traditions.   We don’t have to look to scriptures to find awareness and discussions of these two themes.   Every one of us should know a little bit about both spirit and body.             We should know something about the body because each of us has---or is---a body.   The body is an amazing thing.   It is partly a machine.   It is mostly to me, anyway, a miracle.   I never cease to be amazed at my body---how it works, etc.   The body clearly grows and develops.   I marvel at the eight pound little baby.   Within a year that baby’s body doubles in size!   It is a good thing that is not our annual compounding rate!   All things being normal, our early third of life means we have a bod...

There are a few books I keep going back to read.   Maybe it is because I am getting to the place where I can’t remember everything I read.   That may be true, but that was also a problem in my twenties!   Even in college, I could not remember everything I read.   Unless you have a photographic memory, that is going to be a problem for everyone.                One book I return to time and time again is Gerald May’s book, Will and Spirit.   I find that book so helpful, because he develops what he calls in the subtitle a “contemplative psychology.”   Until his recent death, May was a psychiatrist who founded and ran a spirituality center in Washington, DC.   He spent most of his adult life working at the intersection of psychology and spirituality.   He works with some basic concepts in ways that I find quite illuminating.           ...