Ash Wednesday

Today marks the beginning of Lent. It's a solemn day; but, I'm going to start Lent in an odd way, by sharing something that makes me smile and fills me with joy. Daffodils. I love flowers, but, daffodils are my favorite. Dana and I planted these. Daffodils are like bright cups full of joyous sunshine. These are by our front door and it's wonderful to leave and enter our home sharing a smile with our daffodils :).

Question Authority

I came across this idea by a teacher - Julie Ackerman Link - that "question authority" can mean something other than "challenge authority." It can simply mean to ask questions and as such is advice she gives her students. She pointed out that some scholars believe students learn more from discussions - where they freely ask questions - than they do from lectures. As a teacher, I agree with this observation. In addition, discussions are a lot more fun ;).

The Value of Community

Today, my best friend shared this quote from Max Lucado:

Christ distributes courage through community; he dissipates doubts through fellowship. He never deposits all knowledge in one person but distributes pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to many. When you interlock your understanding with mine, and we share our discoveries . . . When we mix, mingle, confess, and pray, Christ speaks.

Recently, my sociologist students were asked to discuss the differences between three terms - religion, religiosity, and spirituality. Almost all of them gave answers that extols the values of spirituality (which was viewed as a solitary and individual affair) and dissed religion big time - sharing stories of how they had been hurt, disillusioned and disappointed by a church, synagogue, or temple congregation when they were younger. Religion to them empty, dry, and meaningless. It compared to spirituality in the same way that a stale Chips Ahoy cookie would compare to a homemade Toll House cookie hot from the oven. I spoke about how all human institutions and groups are made up of human beings and that human beings are fallible and imperfect and that any group - religious or not - made up of humans has its share of problems. I spoke about the value of community in my response and asked what value they could find in a community of believers - whatever the religion - and none of them came up with a single idea. My prompts and examples fell on deaf ears - this was a class full of people who had had their fill of religion and wanted none of it and this included those who still attended religious services!

I'm not sure where to go from here - this question comes up in every class and in every class the response is the same. I have no idea how best to respond to this. Whatever a student's religion, it saddens me deeply that they find no value in sharing that faith with other believers. Our society is individualistic and the divide between people seems to have grown immensely even during my lifetime. I'm not a preacher and my job as an instructor is not to share my religious viewpoint; however, as a scholar of religious studies I've visited many religious services in a wide variety of religious traditions and I've seen much of value there and I've experienced the Divine and met an answer to the hunger that is spirituality. How do I share that?

A Cuddle of Cats

It's official (I looked it up in several dictionaries) - the official term for a group of cats is a clowder. I would like to respectfully disagree. I think a better term would be cuddle. A cuddle of cats fits my years of catty experience far more than clowder - a word I imagine only Jeopardy champions ever have on the tip of their tongue. Take a gander at my cuddle of cats and see if you don't agree that clowder doesn't describe what you see nearly so much as cuddle.



I've learned a lot from my cuddle of cats. Lesson #1 is that it's okay to find and enjoy your place in the sun. It's a blessing and we are meant to delight in our blessings. It's what thankfulness is all about. Lesson #2 is that blessings are even better shared. Even, ahem, if you share them with a dog ;).

Helping

I came across an interesting quote today that expressed our tendency to pray to God to help where we are unwilling to meet a need ourselves. Of course, the Cosmos is a huge and complicated place and there are many things we literally cannot make better; however, I wonder if perhaps my first thought when I pray for another is to ask myself what I could do to help. C. S. Lewis wrote that if our giving doesn't pinch a bit and smack of being a bit more than we can easily afford, then we aren't giving enough.

I think often I want more, more, more for myself out of fear. This is an uncertain world and the current drama over my full time job taught me how very fragile my self-reliance is - it doesn't take much to totally change one's circumstances and I am often fearful of what lies around the corner. In Philippians 4, St. Paul states that he has learned to be content no matter his circumstances. I think equally important to present contentment is having the security to know that I will still be content - whatever tomorrow brings.

I am so, so far from St. Paul in my attitude. Though I wonder sometimes if fear and stress about possible hardship is, in the end, far worse than the actual hardship. I think it is. What do you think?

Friendship

"Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our job and the dividing of our grief." Cicero's words are a blessing as I spend a few moments this Valentine's Day thinking about my friends and how they have far more than halved my grief. 

"Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will life up his companion. But woe to him who is alone with he falls, for he has no one to help him up" (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). This verse also extols the value of friendship. 

Valentine's Day - these days - emphasizes romantic love; however, it is an important day to remember all the other forms of love out there - in my life I am very blessed by the love of God, the love between myself and my daughter, the love of my parents, the love I share with my furry family members, and the love of my friends. 

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for being a part of my life.

Expansion

I'm not sure if this is an attempt to work more of my life into my spiritual journey or simply a recognition that, in the end, everything we do is part of our spiritual journey. Spirituality, after all, isn't like a job, where you have set hours and time off and even vacations. Nor is it like making and keeping an appointment. It's who we are at the core and most essential part of our beings and everything secular, when looked at in that light, becomes an opportunity or opening for the sacred. I think this viewpoint allows for a great expansion of spirit, where we all too often spend our lives trying to thrust our spirituality into ever smaller boxes.