Category Archives: Contribution

In our senior year of college, a group of friends began hosting “professor dinners” in which we crowded around a mediocre meal and asked a beloved teacher an impossibly difficult question.

In the final weeks before graduation, three professors were asked, “what is the greatest challenge of our generation?”

The first answered, “the ability and conviction to speak truthfully.”

The second answered, “solidarity with the poor.”

Then, the third answered that “the cultivation of solitude” was to be our greatest challenge.

Wait… the WHAT?

Largely an overzealous, justice-minded bunch, reactions ranged from sceptical acceptance to muffled horror. Didn’t this guy know about the urgency of the struggle for justice?

Of course he knew. But, he also knew that without solitude, we would not be centered within ourselves, be capable of sharing this center with others, or authentically build communities worthy of trust strong enough to bear the challenges of our age.

A friend once told me that, when he would visit his mother’s home, he found her preoccupied many times a day with searching her pool and screened porch for tiny trapped frogs. When she found one, she would catch it in a net and release it into the yard.

For her, the house was the extent of her sphere of influence. This assumption limited how she considered the possibility of her life and thus bound how she chose to spend her attention and energy.

Certainly, to engage the world productively, we have to judge what is actually in our control, and then make prudential decisions about how to engage the world. None of us is infinite.

Too often, though, we encounter too little, and spend time stressing out over frogs.

Far better to encounter actual suffering and address it actively and compassionately.

Years ago in Chicago, we had a friend who, on someone’s birthday, would put them on the spot and ask: “So, now that you are x years old, what do you have to say for yourself?”

I came to love the exercise, to watch others take account and share a bit of their distilled wisdom.

My birthday was this week, and my brother challenged me to answer the beloved question on the blog.  So, for 2021, here is my answer.

It has been of great value to me to discover my story, to understand who I am and how I tend to engage the world.

It has also been of great value to me to discover our stories, to understand the narratives of the tribes of which I find myself a part.

And it is of ultimate value to me to consistently lay both my story and our stories into the narrative of The Story, the mystery of a loving God.  This movement saves my story and our stories from becoming idols over which I obsess.  

Put another way, kenosis before The Story returns me to my story and our stories with power, clarity, and the freedom to love, tuned to what is of ultimate value.

If we want to limit our intelligence, the following list is a good place to start:

1) Love being right.

2) Be addicted to the moral high ground. 

3) Restrict your sources of knowledge.

4) Relate only with people who are like you.

5) Relate only with people who agree with you.

Let’s acknowledge that intelligence can be a communal virtue, and work diligently to cultivate it.

Memento mori, latin for “remember your death,” is a powerful spiritual practice.  When we recall that we are finite, we are freed to live with singular purpose and focus on the most important things.

Relatedly, I wonder what happens when we consider memento senectus, “remember your old age?”

God willing, we will reach old age and, during that time, our bodies and minds will probably work less well and the context of our days will have changed considerably.  

When we consider this reality, what effect does it have on how we want to live today?