|
From the Pastor&
The similarities between me and my father are different.
-- Dale Berra, Yogi Berra's son
I love truth, wherever I find it.
-- John Wesley
I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes,
refusing to be stamped or stereotyped.
-- Writer Virginia Woolf at age 52.
Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change
their minds cannot change anything.
-- George Bernard Shaw
A lot of young people, and those not quite so young, will graduate from schools and programs in May and June. A graduate is one who has completed a course of study at a school or college. But we can never stop learning and reading. It's impossible to learn everything in twelve or sixteen or twenty years in a classroom. We are always learning and growing, especially in our Christian life. How can one really say that he or she is a graduate when the most basic meaning of the word disciple is "learner." A disciple of Jesus Christ is a lifelong learner. We are pilgrims in this life, and we never quit the pilgrimage until we die.
One of my favorite spiritual writers is the late Thomas Merton. He has influenced my thinking and my life since I first read his autobiography when I was in high school. In his book, Contemplative Prayer, he writes: We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!
In a world that is constantly changing and evolving, one can't prepare for a career, but only for competencies within a chosen career. I want people like my doctor, my lawyer, my banker, to be competent and to keep on the cutting edge of their specialties. As a priest/pastor I need to keep reading and studying if I am going to be a spiritual leader in 2001. I've been out of school for a few years, but I am still a "home-schooler."
Everybody we meet has something to teach us. I read that one's life begins to slope downward when one becomes an "expert". We are always students of everything and of everyone. We really never graduate. We are always called to sit at the feet of the Master and learn. Only 11% of those who call themselves Christian read the Bible--and that's a serious problem.
We could learn something from our Jewish brothers/sisters. Traditionally Jews do not study alone. They are assigned a study partner who functions as a sounding board, another voice of the tradition that checks and balances one's own inclinations, and who contributes both intellectual insight and spiritual formation to one's learning journey.
In Florida there is a sign before a very long bridge that reads: It is against the law to run out of gas on the bridge. Hopefully we won't run out of energy, imagination, creativity and learning before we cross over to the other side.
Fr. Bill
|
|
