Faith & Life Inspirational Message

Who am I?   That is a question almost everyone entertains and, perhaps, spends a good deal of time in life figuring out the answer.   It is not unusual for us to come up with a few different answers in the process of living our lives.   I am confident I would have answered that question differently when I was ten years old than I would today as a relatively mature, older guy.             I know there are some religious traditions that scoff at the idea there is even a real me.   For example, Buddhists question whether there can ever be a self or a real me.   Of course, we can pretend there is one; we can act as if there is one.   In my world of illusion I can have a self-illusion.   I am sure there are some psychologists who do not believe there is such a thing as a real me.   I am hoping they are not correct.             As a Christ...

I have the pleasure throughout my day of engaging some very interesting people.   Many of those people are students.   And others are adults of various ages and stages.   I don’t do too much with the younger children, so I can’t speak to that level of human development.   I have read about the earlier developmental stages, but I don’t have a great deal of practical experience.   I have watched my two daughters grow through the various stages, but that probably is not sufficient evidence for stating truths about life. As I have paid attention to the range of conversations over the years, I conclude there may be two fundamental human questions.   I am sure others could argue there are many other fundamental human questions.   Of course, many might agree with my two questions.   Right now I posit these two. The first fundamental human question asks, “who am I?”   Essentially, this is the human question of identity.   I can’t tell you ...

A good friend of mine sent a short article to me.   I had to laugh when I saw the opening line, because it means she knows me fairly well.   The first line goes like this: “ Are you a perfectionist?   Or do you strive for excellence?”   I felt like someone just peeked into my soul!   I am sure that once upon a time I would have answered “yes” to both questions.   Yes, I am a perfectionist.   And yes, I am striving for excellence.   It caused me to stop and ponder, which I think, is a very spiritual way of going about things.             I made some spiritual progress in my early pilgrimage when I realized I was a perfectionist.   Being a perfectionist is not an awful thing; it is just an impossible thing.   Even people who are very good cannot pull off the perfectionist hope.   We are all too human to be perfect.   So I was better off when I gave up that dream…which was...

Sometimes the classes I am teaching hit really interesting issues and the students and, even I, are challenged by the idea and have to figure out what we really think.   This happened recently.   Often I can see these issues coming and know the students will be challenged.   Other times, I am as surprised as they are.   This latter was the case on this one. Students were reading a chapter in a book on contemplative spirituality.   However, one student picked on what could have been an obscure, not very important sentence in the chapter.   But the question turned out to be not only interesting, but also challenging.   The sentence talked about “being in the world, but not of the world.”   The student said that she was perplexed by what this meant.   And the minute she confessed that she was perplexed, about twenty-five more said they were unsure what it meant.   We had engaged an interesting text and issue. Sometimes in these situ...

In class yesterday I was having a discussion with some students about life, meaning and purpose.   I don’t believe that our lives come with a ready-made meaning wrapped within.   Finding meaning in our lives is not like going to the Christmas tree and picking up a “meaning package!”   I suppose some people might wish it were this easy.   But I don’t want it this way.             I believe meaning can come to us in a couple ways.   In the first place, I do think we can “find” meaning.   But meaning is not the Christmas package simply laying there waiting to be picked up, opened and, voila, we have our meaning.   Meaning can be found, but even this finding process takes some work---sometimes hard work.   Finding meaning presupposes that we are seeking.             This form of seeking can take us into many different venues.   Fo...

Recently I have been privileged to work on a project that focuses on hands.   When I first was asked to do this work, I thought, “How hard could that be?”   As with things that seem so deceptively simple, it was not so simple!   I will spare you the details of the work.   It was not inherently spiritual.   But it did provoke some interesting and, I think, spiritual considerations for me personally.   These I will share.             If you have two hands---which most people have---you probably are like me in the sense that I don’t pay too much attention to my hands.   Since I have had hands all my life, they seem to be there as a given.   They are a normal, natural part of the human anatomy.   I know they allow me to do a myriad of things.   And many of the things I can do are actually pretty astonishing.   But I must say, I think most of the time I am not aware of my hands. ...

I like to follow the monastic (Catholic) lectionary.   As a Quaker kid growing up in Indiana, I would have had no clue what the word, lectionary, meant.   And if you had told me that it meant, “daily reading,” that would not have helped too much.   I would not know that many in the liturgical church tradition follow a daily reading of Christian scripture and other supplementary readings.   All of this was designed to be a devotional aid in relating to God on a regular basis.             And now in my adult years, I find the lectionary a helpful tool.   For those of us who want this kind of discipline, it is very nice for someone to have organized a daily regimen of reading.   This provides a good basis for reflection and meditation and other disciplines.   I personally like the fact that I am focusing on the same texts that my monk friends are doing.       ...

In the process of writing for another project, I had the occasion to return to one of my favorite authors, Thomas Moore.   I recalled he had commented on some ideas that I was trying to develop in my project.   In brief I am thinking about the issue of identity.   On one hand, that is fairly easy to determine.   Most of us would claim that we know who we are.   On the superficial level, it is easy to describe our identity.   We have a name.   Most of us stick with the names our parents gave us.   As kids we may gain a nickname, but we all know that is not our ‘real name.”   And often women change their names when they get married.   But even if this happens, there are times when they will refer to their maiden name as if that is actually more basic to their identities.   And in this country we all get social security numbers.   Of course, we don’t like to think about ourselves as a number, but the fact is, that number poi...

I have been teaching for a long time now, but I never tire of the freshness of what I am doing.   I feel very fortunate to have groups of young people troop through my classes.   I suspect that most of them really don’t know what they have signed up to receive in my class.   That may be true for most college classes, but I doubt it.   I should think if you sign up for a Chemistry or Accounting class, you have a pretty good idea what the content will be.   However, when eighteen year-olds sign up for a class called, Contemplative Spirituality, most of them have little clue what that really means.             In fact, I am frequently surprised that students keep signing up for something like this.   Generally human nature is not up for taking on the unknown.   Most of the time most of us prefer the known.   I am grateful for the chance to have so many walk into the room the first day of the s...

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 ...

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.           ...