Thinking about 2012

Shauna Niequist linked to an interesting blog post this morning: Mastering the Art of Living Meaningfully Well by Umair Haque

 "What we've got plenty of are wannabe-bankers whose idea of a good life goes about as far as grabbing for the nearest, biggest bonus — what we've got less of are well-rounded people with the courage, wisdom, and capacities to nurture and sustain a society, polity, and economy that blossom."

This made me think of my great-grandfather. He was a successful business man - the vice president of Swift & Co. and the head of the Board of Directors for Libby Canned Food Co.- but he was also an alter boy (altar man?) at his local parish, the vice president of Catholic Charities of Chicago, drove his grand-kids to school every morning, and served as the President of the Chicago Public School System for several years.  He was committed to his local church, his family, and the city he lived in and he gave back immeasurably more than he took.  Our nation would not be in the position it is in today if there were more men like him directing the goings-on of Big Business and Wall Street. 


I am proud of and inspired by my great-grandfather and thinking of him always makes me consider the life I am living. Am I shuffling along, as the blog post says, or am I living courageously? I am not a courageous person, but I am a person of faith, and faith in action is in amazing thing. I want my 2012 to be a year of faith in action.  What are some of your hopes for 2012?  

The Sacred Journey

I'm noticing I gravitate toward biographies and memoirs when life throws me a curve ball. Makes sense, I guess. When you are walking through the valley, what could be more comforting than the testimony of those who have gone before you? And since there really is nothing new under the sun it is impossible to open up a good biography and not see some of your own struggles and fears represented there. Right now I'm reading The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days by Frederick Buechner.

In the book, Buechner examines his childhood and young adult life looking for, listening for, God. Here is an excerpt from the intro:

"Life itself can be thought of as an alphabet by which God graciously makes known his presence and purpose and power among us. Like the Hebrew alphabet, the alphabet of grace has no vowels, and in that sense his words to us are always veiled, subtle, cryptic, so that it is left to us to delve their meaning, to fill in the vowels, for ourselves by means of all the faith and imagination we can muster. God speaks to us in such a way, presumably, not because he chooses to be obscure but because, unlike a dictionary word whose meaning is fixed, the meaning of an incarnate word is the meaning it has for the one it is spoken to, the meaning that becomes clear and effective in our lives only when we ferret it out for ourselves."

Good stuff.