Tag Archives: integrity
On becoming who you are
In early summer, I look for good commencement speeches. I look for speeches that offer sound advice for living, insights that help me wear my life better, timeless truth dressed in fresh language. Most of what I find offer little more than ordinary boilerplate, quickly and easily forgotten. A few rise above the ordinary and […]
We’re all in this together
Last week I reflected on Jesus’ comment that we Christians are the salt of the earth (Matt. 5:13), a seasoning presence in what might otherwise be a tasteless world. If we simply live our faith as authentically as possible, like salt is simply salt, we might make a tasteless world a little more savory and […]
Changing the conversation
“What’s the point of this life?” my friend asked over dinner. No doubt, it was a rhetorical question, the kind people ask knowing there’s no completely satisfying answer. It was also, no doubt, a question that arose from a deep hunger to have an answer and from the knowledge that the only answer that counts […]
Finding wholeness in contradictions
In the rending of our society and politics into ever more deeply opposing camps, “… we have somehow found ourselves in an era where even the brightest, kindest, most idealistic people spring to judgment … in a heart-flinch. Questions invite instant opinions more often than they invite conversation and contemplation ….” That’s how Maria Popova […]
Allow
Yesterday I wrote that the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids (Matt. 25:1-13) is not about how we prepare for what comes in the future but “is a characterization of a way of living that makes us and keeps us open and receptive to the fullness of grace – call it the kingdom of […]
The use of money, part 2
Enough small talk. No more chatter about what team we favor for the playoffs, or which apple we think makes the best pie, or what we like to do in our free time. If we’re going to know one another, Thomas Merton – if we take him seriously, and if we take our life seriously […]
Integrity
There’s nothing quite like being around someone who is perfect to remind me how imperfect and inadequate I am. Maybe that’s why I’ve had trouble with the concept of saints. People surrounded by an air of perfection in this life can make me feel inadequate; people fortified by the perfect invulnerability of sainthood can make […]
A terrible wholeness
On a high rock promontory overlooking the Mississippi River, I used to sit in the thin shade of an old pine tree to recollect the fragments of my life and to remember who I am. The tree was gnarled and worm-eaten and showed little green; the years and harsh weather had stripped away much of […]
God blesses a heart of integrity
Thursday would have been the ninety-ninth birthday of Ferdinand Friendly Wachenheimer, a man worth remembering on this All Saints Sunday. A war correspondent during World War II and colleague of the great Edward R. Murrow, you probably know him, if you know him at all, as Fred Friendly. A former president of CBS News, Friendly […]
