Faith & Life Inspirational Message

I have been privileged to be able to see myself as a leader.   I do bring some native talent to the leadership opportunities I have had, but I also have had a helping hand offered by many different people at a number of junctions in my life.   I have had many good leadership models to help me get clear about what leadership style fits my personality and my own Quaker convictions.   I also have watched some leaders whom I thought were not very good and were more of a negative model.   They showed me ways I never wanted to be seen as a leader.             I remember getting some leadership opportunities as early as elementary school.   In the bigger scheme of things, these were miniscule leadership chances.   However, they gave me an early chance to practice being a leader.   Much to my surprise, some other kids followed my lead!   I guess you are a leader if someone follows you.   ...

Some days I am sure there are some spiritual lessons I missed!   There is so much more talk and literature today on spirituality than was true in my growing-up years.   Perhaps there was more in the Roman Catholic Church, but I doubt it---not for the layperson anyway.   In fact, I never even heard “spirituality” language when I was a boy or even a young man.   The talk was always about “religion.”   For the most part, what I learned I learned by going to the little Quaker meeting.   There was the Sunday School hour, which never seemed very interesting or relevant to my life.                I became more actively interested in religion during my college years.   Part of the reason for this is those college years were the time I was trying to make sense of out my life.   Today I would talk about that as learning how to make meaning in life.   I feel fairly well along that road ...

Recently I was given a gift.   It was a little surprising to me.   I was given a pedometer.   I know many people have these gadgets.   I think they are probably a good idea.   But I never even considered having one myself.   Part of that, no doubt, is having been raised in an era when technological things like this simply were not a part of life.   Having a wristwatch was about as “high tech” as it came!   At one level, I suppose I always will be a child of the pre-computer age.             Even though I have had a computer for decades, I can easily remember life without it.   I certainly don’t want to give up my computer.   I don’t want to return to the pre-computer days.   They are not necessarily “the old days.”   The computer makes so much possible, I don’t want to live without it.   But I still can imagine life without it.        ...

Recently I saw an article in the local newspaper that presented some material with which I am familiar.   But it presented the material in an interesting way with a catchy title.   The title boldly proclaimed, “Nice Guys Finish First.”   When I saw the title, I did not immediately conclude I would know the gist of the article.   The article appeared in the Business Section, a place I do not normally assume I am going to get spiritual inspiration! I realized quickly that the article had something to do with organizational theory.   And within a few sentences I knew the focus was on the work being done by Adam Grant, the young, popular professor of organizational psychology at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.   This is one of the most prestigious business schools in the world.   In effect, Grant is one of the current “whiz kids” in business circles.   The book that put him in this elite circle is entitled, Give and Take .   It...

The title of this inspirational message might seem like an advertisement for some kind of drug treatment program or a stop smoking campaign.   Or perhaps more likely, it sounds like an early teenage admonition to refrain from sex.   And indeed, it could be all of the above, since they are all legitimate and worthwhile campaigns. I actually got the idea from the words of the late Trappist monk, Thomas Merton.   I have quoted Merton enough that folks know how much I like him.   Part of the appeal of Merton, I’m sure, is that part of his life overlapped my own life.   Merton lived into the 1960s, which was the decade of so much of my own personal and spiritual formation.   When Merton tragically died in Bangkok, Thailand in 1968, I was already in graduate school studying theology.   Merton was the most unlikely person to have become a strict Catholic monk. He had spent his early years living in France, England and the USA.   He was a bright, cu...

Sometimes I know I am using a word that college students would not know.   Fecundity is one such word.   Rather than choosing not to use it because they don’t know what it means, I choose to use it and teach them what it means.   I figure I am educating them!   I am helping them build their vocabulary, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will be more attractive job candidates when they are out there in the “real world.”             Fecundity means fruitfulness.   It is often used when speaking of plants.   It always makes me think of harvest time.   When it is applied to people, it could indicate a very productive or successful time.   It could suggest the outcome of hard work.   It might implicate a very talented individual who applied the talent to pull off significant outcomes.   There have been times in my life, which were fecund.   But it is not all the time. ...

It hit me as I was reading the first journals handed in by students in a course I am teaching.   Although I generally don’t think about it this way, I realized in a way I am forcing students to engage spiritual issues.   “Forcing” is a heavy word.   It makes me a little uneasy when I see myself as being “forceful.”   After all, I try to make my classes as full of choice and voluntary as I can.      I am forcing the students just because they are taking the class.   I suppose if one is going to be forced, this is about the most benign way force can happen.   I certainly am not coercing any of them to take the class.   But if they sign on for the class, then they are going to have to engage in some spiritual exploration and spiritual work.   The hope is that engagement will lead to spiritual growth and development.   I do not map out what the spiritual growth and development has to be.   In fact, different people will de...

I have long been fascinated by imagination.   We only have to spend a little time with kids to witness the power of imagination.   Even fairly young kids---toddlers---can imagine with the best of them.   Imagination is the formation of ideas and images, which are not present to us.   Imagination is, as the dictionary tells us, a creative ability.   Imagination is able to create worlds that don’t yet exist.   Imagination fosters alternative worlds.   Imagination is the key to the future. If memory is the key to the past, imagination is the key to the future.   Memory often is quite a treasure.   Memory is the way we capture mentally those times, which have passed.   Memory preserves.   I have fond memories of some of my own childhood days.   I have quite fond memories of the times my two little girls were growing up, learning things and beginning to make lives of their own.   I am very thankful for the gift of memo...