Take Care of Your Soul; No One Will Do That for You

I often ask students whether or not they have a way to center themselves, even a minute or so in the morning or evening, perhaps just sitting still in silence or meditating or praying. Very few do so. Most say their lives are so busy with school, family and work, they don’t have the time. “Not just a few minutes every day?” I usually respond. And then I suggest they take stock of their time and see how much time they really have and what they do with it (most admit they spend a lot watching TV). And then I suggest they go out and buy a three minute egg timer and start using it once a day. I advise them to find a place where they get away from cell phones and other disturbances and start the egg timer and just sit there for three minutes. “If a thought comes to you, just dismiss it lightly, breathe deeply; focus on your breathing.” The ones who try this often report they feel more centered throughout the day and have more energy. It is a very old and simple prescription for the stress of life each one of us feels, more so in this age of email and texts and a hundred sounds and sights hitting us.

Few of us can go off to retreats. Not many have leisure days. But each one of us has a few minutes every day to spend doing nothing but staying in the power of silence, restoring ourselves, gaining strength for the day.

You can begin today to take time for yourself. Look at the picture below for a minute and be quiet. That’s the beginning. Take care of your soul, even if you don’t believe you have one, because no one will do that for you.

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New Revised Philosophy Book for Small Groups

I’ve added a short leader’s guide for using my latest book–A Teacher, His Students and the Great Questions of Life, for use in small groups in many settings, not just colleges and high schools, as it was intended. The leader’s guide enables people to use the small, 120-page, book in many ways and locations, whether as part of a college introduction to philosophy course or in community settings such as libraries or religious organizations. The book poses eleven great questions of the philosophical tradition (such as who am I? What’s the best way to live? Is there a God?) and provides short essays in dialog form to help understand the questions. The book is available form Wipf and Stock (www.wipfandstock.com) or in print or Kindle form from Amazon. Thanks to my students, I have kept the book short and inexpensive (less than $15).

(Students from Reading Area Community College visit a local elementary school to read books and encourage questions from the pupils. Students from this college encouraged me to write the book, suggesting it cost less than most textbooks, be shorter, and hopefully more interesting. I hope I have lived up to their recommendations.)

A thing of beauty is a joy forever

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth….
(John Keats)

In the midst of dreary, sometimes sad days, when the world is too much with us (Wordsworth) or when the best seem to lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity (Yeats) we need to stay quiet and watch for what is beautiful around and in us, for a thing of beauty is a joy forever (Keats).

I look outside and this is what I see, a garden of flowers and colors after the long winter:

After the long days of winter, it was hard to believe that there was life in the ground waiting to burst out. But these gifts of spring are enough to show me that some things are worth the wait, like soul mates, good friends, work to be done and flowers. The flowers teach taking the long view, remembering what can yet be, and most of all patience. And in this age, this is worth knowing.

In Memory of My Mother

My mother, Margaret Lyon Morgan, was the daughter of an evangelist and the wife of a minister. She didn’t have a chance to realize her dream of becoming an actress. In those days, women, especially those married to a pastor, were expected to stay home and manage it. She raised five of us, and at least for my two brothers and two sisters, all rather well if one can measure the results of their lives and impacts in the world by how much they helped change it for the better. She died too young at the age of sixty-six and sadly in a long and tough process.

My father, being the public performer, always seemed to me to be the role model, yet as I have gotten older I have realized just how deeply my mother had an impact on me in ways I only now realize. For example, while not an actress on the stage, she gave dramatic readings to church and civic groups and would memorize poems and repeat them to me. I especially remember traveling with her by train from Philadelphia to Denver, where she would entertain me with her stories of the bald headed many and the fly and others.

I think her love of story telling impacted me in a number of ways–from writing stories myself to telling them, whether in speeches or teaching. And her recitation of poetry took root somewhere in me because not only have I written poetry but learned to love it. I still can recite a number of poems by heart, just as she did.

She may not have made it to Broadway, but in ways I am still discovering her impact on my life was great, and for these gifts of poetry and story telling I am grateful. And because she was a gentle soul, I have no memories of her ever being harsh with me, and that is truly a mother’s gift. In this world, kindness is really an important quality. I never had the chance to thank her. So, today, on Mother’s Day, thank you, mother, for your gift of life to me.

Margaret Lyon and John Morgan, Philadelphia, Pa.

Tweeted Out, Facebook Weary and Ready for Real Life

There’s a cartoon going round (on Facebook, of course) that shows a man running and shouting with the words: “I don’t have a Facebook or a Twitter account, so I just go around announcing out loud what I’m doing at random times. I’ve got 3 followers so far, but I think 2 are cops.”

I keep laughing every time I see this because it pretty closely monitors how I am feeling these days about our means of communications–they are usually short, shallow and without more wisdom. What makes the cartoon more humorous to me is that it comes in the form of an electronic card, one of the world’s worst ways to remember anyone’s special day, as if to say: “Look I didn’t have the time or money to get you a real card or even phone, but this was easy and didn’t cost anything, so here you go!”

The “real stuff” of our lives takes more than a few words over Twitter or the click of a mouse over a packaged picture or message. These days we hit words or pictures over the internet as if we were driving a tennis ball, more to say we hit the ball and less to indicate whether or not the other person hit it back. This is called “discussion,” a word with the same root as “concussion” or “percussion.” Dialog is very different requiring the actual presence of another person or two who practice listening to one another. The root meaning of dialog is to “seek the meaning between” not to shout the other person into submission–the mark of too much of our so-called “political discourse” these days.

Don’t get me wrong, I realize there are great things done with our modern means of communication, from showing a revolution up close to hearing from someone across the ocean you might not ever see in person. But I grow tired of trivia, what the philosopher Kierkegaard called “twaddle.” I am not interested in what you ate for breakfast or what color your new shirt is or tidbits like these. I am interested in what’s going on with your life and how you are really doing and feeling, and that requires more than a tweet across cyberspace.

I am thinking about getting off Facebook (I have stopped tweeting), saving my cell phone for occasional text messages, and using my email for communications that don’t require more than a sentence or two. I am tempted to put into practice what the cartoon shows and go around one day announcing what I am eating or thinking at random times to no one in particular and see how long it takes before someone tells me to keep quiet.

The problem is that many of us think in Tweets these days–brief sentences that say little and show no depth. It is taking me time, the rarest of resources these days, to think more clearly and more deeply without having to reduce my thoughts to less than a hundred words. Not all life problems can be resolved with the click of a mouse or a Tweet. Some things take time and presence. After all, the first and most rule of life–the one we seem to violate the most these days–is just to show up. That’s what life requires of us until we can’t show up any longer–be present in mind, body, and spirit.

*someecards

‘No Plans, No Panic”

We can’t live in the past (it’s gone). We sometimes lug the past into the present We can only learn from it. We can’t live in the future. It’s not here, though we can envision what it might look like, as long as we realize the truth of John Lennon: “Life is what happens to you when you are planning something else.”We only have today, and perhaps not even that. Although there are some philosophers who talk about the Eternal Now, the belief that the past, present and future are all present at the same time; only we are missing.

If we think of our lives as a book, then roughly seven years are a chapter (though some may live a chapter in less or more chronological time). I am thinking about the next chapter in my life, trying to figure out what it will be about, imagining where I might be and what I might be doing–all the time realizing life is an adventure where the authorship is not ours alone. The problem is that sometimes thinking too much about the future or the past robs us of a day or two along our life journey and that’s a loos no matter what else you do or think.

I love the story my brother told me about his friend’s grandmother (after I was asking what the next chapter in his life would be). She was asked the same question and responded simply: “We’ll see.” And my grandfather retiring at the age of eighty and asked by others what he was going to do, replied: “No plans, no panic.” Sometimes wisdom comes with simple words but layers of meaning.

No plans, no panic. A very wise, Buddhist-like wisdom to settle the mind and heart, words I need to ponder.

(G. Campbell Morgan, London, England)

Wisdom of the Seasons

There were days not long ago when in the midst of chill and wind, I thought about how wonderful it would be to live in a place where it was always summer and the sun beat down on purple flowers and the green trees danced in a mild breeze while I sipped a cool drink beside a still lake and gave thanks for another warm day. And then I realized something ancient people knew long before we had computers giving us weather forecasts–the seasons provide a wisdom for living that if we pay attention can impact our internal weather as well.

The last few days have made living through a winter worthwhile. But would I have appreciated the green buds and bright skies without the cold and dreary gray skies? I might have, but I doubt it. It is the contrast that awakens my senses to give thanks. And when the hot, humid days of summer arrive, I can better appreciate the cool fall evenings.

The lesson of the seasons is not that different from modern physics or the ancient Taoist philosophy: Opposites are complementary. We tend to think about differences, seeing separateness, not unity. Without day there would be no night, without heat no cold. One great metaphor for this age is that we are learning about the great interconnectedness of life, how we are related to all living things, on this earth or on another somewhere in outer space.

The seasons certainly impact our inner life as well. I know from living in Vermont how the long, bitter winter can damage one’s inner world. I also know when Spring bursts onto the Vermont scene, what a great joy one feels. And I remember moving from a Vermont winter to the beginnings of a Pennsylvania Spring, and feeling an inner shift. But here’s another piece of wisdom from the human world–one can adjust one’s inner world to shape what’s happening on the outside. It is possible to feel good about oneself in winter and, conversely, poor in Spring. The trick is learning how to balance the inner and outer worlds.

The ancients knew before our technology that the seasons have much to teach us about how best to live. But you have to pay attention, else the seasons pass without our being aware of them. I appreciate the story of the Buddha traveling down a road, when someone asked him if he was a God. “No,” he responded. “Are you then a great prophet?” the questioner asked. The Buddha again said no. “Then what are you?” The Buddha responded: “I am awake.”