Faith & Life Inspirational Message

It is with considerable trepidation that I write about my granddaughter.   Certainly it is not that she embarrasses me.   To the contrary, I am very proud of her.   That is one of the roles of grandparents, as I have learned from others.   Of course, she is cute, smart, and about the most amazing young kid of this century!   And of course, that is totally biased and ungrounded, but that is my prejudice.             Actually writing about my grandkid is something like pulling out too many photos of her and subjecting a friend with more photos than the one picture he or she probably is willing to look at.   I know it takes longer to read this than it would take to look at one picture and say something like, “that’s nice!”             I have begun to realize that my granddaughter is becoming my teacher.   That is probably not surprising to C...

Most of the time I am absolutely convinced spirituality is about learning the simple lessons the complexity of life has to teach us.   I am also persuaded that our level of education has an indirect correlation to our capacity as students to learn these spiritual lessons.   Since by worldly standards, I am pretty highly educated, I probably am the worst kind of student of life and spirituality.   I am a slow learner, but I am trying.   For the most part, I still find being in the school of life interesting and thought-provoking.             Since I have advanced degrees and am a professor, I usually don’t think about finding teachers to teach me things.   That is my job!   And that’s how my problems begin.   I see myself as a teacher and in many ways I don’t know anything.   Perhaps the first step in growing is to realize and accept truth as it is revealed to you.   I had a little less...

Most days I do not think too much about it.   But yesterday I became very aware of how many words I use.   That is not surprising, since I am still teaching.   And certainly we know that teaching entrails speaking, even though I never lecture to the students.   I could lecture, but that would prove nothing except that I could talk all the time.   If I am talking all the time, how could I know whether they are learning anything?             I do not spend every waking hour talking.   In fact I am essentially an introvert.   So I enjoy time by myself.   Solitude has never been a problem, especially since I have been an adult.   As a teenager, I am sure too much time by myself caused some anxiety.   But teenagers are anxious as a matter of course!   So I was probably no crazier than any other teenager.             I am cu...

I am aware that I have three consistent teachers of spirituality.   Two of them are pretty obvious: other people and books.   In fact, books really are other people, but most of them I have not met.   Some of them are deceased---maybe long-ago dead.   Others are people who are living, but I have not met them.   I value these teachers very much.   I am always open to meeting new ones, so that my learning can continue. The third teacher is also fairly familiar in the literature of spirituality, but this teacher often is not recognized or overlooked.   This teacher sometimes goes by the name of nature.   However, I like to widen it beyond nature.   Too many times folks limit nature to the outdoors---to trees, water, etc.   Those are very valuable, to be sure.   Instead of just saying nature, I like to mention the third teacher as my natural and normal surroundings.   This obviously includes the outdoors---the winter sno...