Faith & Life Inspirational Message

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 k...

I would claim that I have been inspired at times in the past.  Since I know Latin, I know the word literally means to have air or the spirit blown into us---“breathed into.”  Normally the language of inspiration involves the Deity.  For centuries people would think that God inspired people.  To this end, inspiration carried the notion that it was an opening or access to special or revelatory knowledge.  In this sense inspiration was always a gift.  Inspiration came from the outside. I don’t disagree with any of this.  I do think inspiration is a gift in the sense that it comes from without.  This does not discount hard work or study.  Often they are prerequisites for inspiration.  I also like the idea that inspiration comes to us if we are open.  I suppose it is theoretically possible for inspiration to come to someone who is closed and not looking for anything.  However, the normal and expected coming of inspiration happens ...

With a title like this one, you might expect this to be a reflection by someone who has just survived a near-death experience. It could be one who escaped from a nasty car accident or a near-miss airplane landing. Lucky to be alive sounds like the relieved words of someone who stood in front of death’s door and turned around to walk away. “Praise the Lord,” we expect to hear them mutter. But my reflections have nothing of the drama suggested in the first paragraph. I have not had a near-death experience. I have certainly thought about dying and being dead, as I suppose is natural for anyone my age. I have fortunately never been in a nasty car accident. I have had some scary enough (for me) plane takeoffs and landings, but nothing that was disastrous. So I guess I have lived a fairly eventful, normal---maybe---boring life. That does not mean I cannot feel lucky to be alive. I do feel lucky. Let me elaborate. I have often quipped that there was no committee meeting scheduled when I w...

By now regular readers of my inspirational pieces know I have an appreciation for the life of monks and nuns.  They have taught me they are not special simply because they took monastic vows and now live a cloistered life.  Although Franciscans and Dominicans are not technically monks, I still put them in this category of “special people.”  Again, I know a Franciscan would be terribly frightened if they thought they were special simply because they were trying to follow the way St. Francis of Assisi outlined.  They would insist they are no more special than any other serious follower of Jesus.      In fact, this is one of the most important things I learned about monks when I first had some exposure to their particular way of life.  Growing up as a Quaker, I never heard about monks.  Actually, I knew almost nothing about Roman Catholicism, so knowing about monks would have been even more of a long shot.  When I was young, I think mo...

When someone wants to talk about theology and becoming a theologian, some people want to duck or run out of the room!  Of course, if you are going to be a Christian (or a Jew, Muslim, etc.) you will have some theology, whether you think about it or not.  A theologian is someone who thinks about what he or she believes.  Theologians strive to make what they believe have some coherence, consistency, etc.  For me personally, theology made a great deal of believing possible.     I will elaborate with some personal examples.  I came of age during the Vietnam era of the 1960s.  It was a tumultuous time.  I had dutifully gone to church as a young Quaker.  For the most part in those early years of mine, “going to church” was considered part of what it meant to be an American.  It would not be unusual to hear someone query, “did you go to church today?”  Most of the farmers in the area in which I lived did not work on Sunday, excep...

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 memory. And I am just ...

I have always been fascinated with titles.  When you read that sentence, you probably think of book titles.  Certainly, most people would say that book titles are important.  I would not disagree.  But when you think about it further, there are many other kinds of titles.  Since I have paid off my old car, I have the title to that.  It shows that I now own it.  The bank owns the title to most of our houses.  So apparently, a great deal of property comes with titles to show ownership.  But not all ownership is individual.  Some things are owned corporately.  The college where I teach is a private school, so that means there is ownership.  But it is owned corporately.  The appointed trustees, in fact, oversee their ownership responsibilities.  But no single person owns the campus or the buildings.  The same idea pertains to national parks.  All Americans, in effect, own Yosemite National Park.  Even tho...