There is a Calling in Life That is Not Religious

There is a calling in life that is spiritual but not religious. It comes from deep within us and from influences outside of us.

It comes from losses and longings, from lessons not yet learned, from lost loves, from emotional hurts we felt but never healed. It comes from thinking we failed our parents, from missing obvious life messages, from disappointing ourselves. It comes from sorry parenting, from unrealistic expectations we accepted, from betrayals received and given. It comes from faulty theology, from the wrong ideas about God, from fears that we are born bad and stay bad. It comes from kids or teens or adults who bullied us, from sexual abuse, from relationship battering, from being belittled in some wounding way or ways.

The call also comes from memories of being loved, from the embrace of grace, from cheerleaders on the sidelines of our life, from the nurture of people who clearly believe we matter to them and to the world. It comes from extraordinary moments, from being thoroughly loved, from the delights of intimacy, from having someone truly knowing us and truly known by us and being okay with one another.

This spiritual call, this inner pull within, wants us to be more open to life. It comes from music that touches something personal within us and identifies a yearning. It comes from books we lose ourselves in and close them changed in some way. It comes from movies that move us to tears, that give us insights we need, that guide us to discoveries we would not find on our own. It comes from relationships that envelop us in tenderness and affection, that instruct us in love, that connect us to deeper parts of who we are.

This I think was the call of the mythical Eden; the call within Adam and Eve. The story is not about their sins but about their wanting to know. And wanting to know is always a dangerous business. Not wanting to know is safe. It keeps us as children dependent and awkward, incapable and incompetent.

What Adam and Eve experienced once their eyes were opened was the incompleteness of their humanness. Their hunger was to know more about who they were and why they were there. And that is the spiritual calling of life. It is always calling us to more awareness, to clearer self-understanding, to the wonder of life, and to the place and places, to the individuals and people, where we are to unfold our better truer selves.

“Fatih,” the wise Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel once said, “is not an insurance, but a constant effort, a constant listening.” Yes. Faith in ourselves, in others, in God, in life—happens when we listen and obey the call within us and outside of us. The call to fulfill our humanity. To deepen and broaden it. To always allow it to take us, when we are ready, to someplace beyond where are now.

If I had five minutes to evacuate--what would I take with me?

If I was told there was a bomb in my building and I had five minutes to evacuate my apartment I’d grab a grocery bag and quickly toss these items into it: 1. A photo of my grandparents, Mom and Pop and me, when I was 15 years old. I learned what love is made of from them. I learned what it is to be kissed on and hugged in arms so tender they felt like God’s arms. I discovered self worth from those two angels in human flesh. Of all the people in my life, they were the ones who made me feel I counted. Honestly, whatever capacity I have to love others came from them. 2. A sentimental, dog-eared, stars in the margin copy of Pat Conroy’s, “The Prince of Tides.” It is a book I have read three times and often return to for its wisdom. It is a harsh, profoundly tragic novel, the story of a family so broken and tortured by such flawed and wounded people that it is sometimes difficult to turn the next page. And yet it is the story of such Herculean courage and endurance that you want...

A Losing Strategy

OPINION PAGE (c) 2024 Timothy Moody The Republican strategy to mock and judge others has passed into some form of insatiable, all-devouring nastiness. It is so poisonous and contemptuous that it is now just evil. Republican Governor of Arkansas, Sara Huckabee Sanders, suggested to a crowd of Trump supporters Tuesday night that Kamala Harris can't be humble because she doesn't have any children of her own. When will Americans decide they don't want government leaders who are so arrogantly insensitive, as Sanders was, that they offend everyone? This crude, villainous rhetoric transcends political partisanship. It’s evil, dangerous, and insulting. The poet Ezra Pound’s brief lines are appropriate here, “Pull down your vanity, How mean your hates” To suggest that someone cannot be humble because they don't have children is not just a cheap political comment. It's an attack on a person’s humanity and worth. And that is now, and has been fo...

OPINION PAGE:

OPINION PAGE © 2024 Timothy Moody The apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump last Sunday afternoon at his Trump International Golf Club was foiled by the Secret Service. Details are still coming in about it, and it's not yet known why the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, apparently wanted to shoot Trump. The botched attempt was amateurish in every way, just as the one in July was by a kid 150 yards from Trump. Conspiracy theorists are having a field day. The former President is, of all things, blaming these attempts on his life with what he called the “violent rhetoric” of President Biden and VP Harris. Of course, that is absurd, especially coming from Trump, who has consistently been guilty of that very thing since he became president in 2016 and even before. His speeches, X posts, and comments on his Truth Social platform have been endlessly filled with threatening language and incitement to violence. He suggested those protest...

The Unclad Soul

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