Faith & Life Inspirational Message

Recently I went to a local restaurant, sports bar place with some friends.   It was late afternoon and the plan was to spend a little time together after work and in a different setting than the one in which we normally interact.   I enjoy these opportunities to be with some folks I like, but some of whom I barely know.   I especially appreciate the chance to get to know some people who work at the same place I do, but whom I never have the chance to see.   I am always amazed to walk into one of these gatherings and see some faces and have no clue who they might be.   It’s a humbling experience, since I usually think I know most people who work at my institution.   Wrong!   I like the fact that getting to know and spend some time with people is the reason we are getting together.   Where we do it is not that important.   But I know food and drink often make the occasion more pleasant, so I am happy to participate. When we go to thi...

In a recent reading for a class, I ran across a very interesting thought.   It caused me to step back and assess the work I do as well as how I go about doing the work.   The idea came toward the end of a book by Roger Walsh.   The book carries the title, Essential Spirituality .   In effect, it details how people can engage and practice the contemplative life.   The ideas that I really liked came in the section on service. Listen to these words by Walsh.   “Do you want to kill time or build a cathedral, to see what you are doing as drudgery or contribution?   The crucial point is that we have a choice.   The same action can be seen in quite different ways because it is we who decide on the meaning and significance of what we do.”   The first line really engaged me.   I love the question: do you want to kill time or build a cathedral?   The answer was easy for me: build a cathedral, of course.   And that takes effort, ta...

Sometimes my life can get too complex.  It may be because too much is going on.  Perhaps it is something like the beginning of a new school year or a holiday season.  Sometimes it is self-inflicted.  For those of us who have a hard time saying, “no,” life can become too demanding.  Busyness is always a sign that life is bordering on being too complex. But I am aware that complex lives cannot simply be equated with busy lives.  For some people, it is the opposite extreme, namely, boredom.  I know some people who, in their own words, “are bored to death.”  Obviously they are not literally dead.  But their boredom is a form of being dead---a kind of pre-mortem deadness.  They are as good as dead.  When I sense complexity is becoming a pressing life issue for me, I know it is time to entertain its opposite: simplicity.  Simplicity has a hallowed history in my own Quaker tradition.  I know I have been “for it” all my life....