Faith & Life Inspirational Message

In my spiritual journey I have learned many things, as would be expected.   Indeed, it would be sad if we were to be on a journey for a period of time and learn nothing.   That sounds more like stagnation than a journey.   One important thing I have learned is to balance working with the new---staying connected to the relevant things happening in our world---with the traditional---things like spiritual disciplines to keep me grounded.             A good bit of what I read comes from the spirituality in my contemporary world.   I do not fall for the illusion that anything new has to be better than the older ways of being spiritual.   But I am not so naïve as to think that most of whatever is new will have no staying power in our world.   For example, there is so much research coming out of our scientific community, we would be idiotic to ignore that.   Neuroscientists are discovering so much abou...

In preparing for a speech I have to do in a couple months, I have been reading a short novel by the German writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Hermann Hesse.   I had not read Hesse for quite some time.   I first encountered him in the 60s, when I was in graduate school.   Although he died in 1962, his writings were very popular in the 60s with all the chaos and searching that characterized that tumultuous period. Hesse grew up religiously in a Pietist family.   Pietism is a German version of Puritanism.   It is a Reformation movement that focused on feelings (and not just thoughts) and on experience.   Hesse also developed an interest in Buddhism and other Eastern religions.   His life seemed to be a life-long search for religious meaning.   It was for these reasons he appealed so much to the spirit of the 60s and later.   It is during this period we see the seeds of an interest in spirituality, rather than religion, be...

I have no clue when I first heard about a legacy.   I doubt I knew anything about it until college days or even later.   It might have been one of those things I heard about, but it never registers.   I doubt very many young folks pay any attention to those kinds of things.   By the time I was teaching and, especially, doing some fund raising, I became very aware of the idea of legacy.   Only recently and only occasionally have I given any thought to my own legacy. The word, legacy, often is associated with wills that dead people leave and about which the survivors learn in a court session or with the lawyers.   Often, legacies have to do with money and property.   Of course, some people are quite wealthy and their legacies to their heirs are remarkable.   My parents did not fit that category!   They left me and my siblings almost no money or property.   I did not care.   I did not have them as parents to make me wealthy! I...