Soul Scribe

Broken things are precious. We eat broken bread because we share in the death of our Lord and his broken life. Broken flowers give perfume. Broken incense is used in adoration. A broken ship saved Paul and many other passengers on the way to Rome. Sometimes the only way the good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them.

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

We get so caught up in the nitty gritty of rules and judgments that we forget.

 It’s not about the rules.

It’s about how you treat people.  It’s about finding that person in the corner and finding out who they are.  It’s walking the talk and how you live each day.  What kind of good did you do today?

You can be the most conscientious follower of religious practices and still not be who God wants you to be.

Don’t get me wrong.  Religion is important, but it’s not for show or the motions.  You’ve got to live it, not just attend it.

Religion is making our path to a relationship with God, as individuals and also community.  Everyday religion requires commitment that less and less people have time for nowadays.

We marginalize people for many reasons – they look different; they act different; they live different; they don’t look, act or live how we want them to live.  We forget that some people are even there.

Open your eyes and see all those around you as God does.  God sees each of us.  He really sees – not just the surface, but deep down into the soul.

If we really look at one another and see, we can make a difference.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained angels  unaware.

Hebrews 13:2

The gift of life is what God bestowed on us.  He created us to live.  Each time we make a choice that ends this gift, it is a thorn in the temple of the Lord.  We are piercing his heart over and over with our choices.  Respecting God’s gift is a sacred duty that we must uphold.

For Christians, the Christmas holiday is a reminder of this gift of life.  The birth of Jesus in this world was a gift to humanity – an everlasting gift of new life that welcomed us to be brothers and sisters in Christ.

And for Jews, Hanukkah (Chanukkah) is a celebration of the gift of life as well – an everlasting reminder of the miracle of the light and the gift of new life by God in the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Even for Buddhists, Bodhi day is a celebration of the gift of life – the experience of enlightenment for the historical Buddha and the gift of new life in Nirvana.

 It’s a question that we all ask ourselves in one way or another.

Theology is for those really holy people who can understand it, right?

Nope, wrong-o.  Theology is for everyone.  It’s not for monks wearing brown robes holed up in stone caves.  It’s for every living, breathing human.  Theology isn’t the same for everyone.  There’s book-smart theology for those real scholarly types.  There’s common-sense theology for those sweet gentle souls.  And for those of us in between, there’s a nice theology mixture.

Theology is about the journey to God.  It’s about growing and expanding our knowledge of faith.

And that’s the purpose for this blog.  I’m one of the in-betweens, so you’ll find a balance here of common sense and book smarts.