Last year at my 40th Demontreville Retreat, one of the exercises that we were given by the Retreat Master included a very challenging set of thoughts. The worksheet for the activity was labeled as “A Testament.” I took the worksheet and instructions home with me. It had fourteen tasks or reflections to complete. I did not desire to complete them during the retreat. It is now almost a year since my retreat, and I have decided to make the mental and emotional effort necessary to complete this “Testament.”
I am going to complete one or two reflections every other day for the next few weeks. I would love it if you would do these tasks along with me. If you would like to share your thoughts, that would be great, but I am not expecting anyone to do so. I would like to know if you find any benefit in completing these activities.
The worksheet started with these instructions:
Imagine that this is the last day of your life on earth. In the time that you have left, you want to leave a “Testament” for your family and friends. Each of the following could serve as chapter headings for your “Testament.”
- These are the Convictions that I have lived by.
I do not like the sound of the word Convictions. I think I have lived by too many Convictions in my life. There are of course two somewhat very different meanings that can be attached to this word. Dictionary.com provides the following two definitions. Let us look at these for a second.
- A formal declaration that someone is guilty of a criminal offense, made by the verdict of a jury or the decision of a judge in a court of law: “She had a previous conviction for a similar offense”
- A firmly held belief or opinion: “She takes pride in stating her political convictions”
Regarding the definitions, one can see where a person might have some anxieties about the first association of Conviction with jail and prison. I assure you that this is not where my anxiety comes from. I am pretty sure it stems from the second definition. “A firmly held belief.” When I look back upon my life, I have had too many firmly held beliefs. Behind my back, I know that I have been called “A know it all” many times. I am still a very opinionated person as any of my readers can probably attest. However, I would like to think that seldom if ever do I get into robust arguments any more with other people. I even gave up trying to convince Trump supporters who include veterans, evangelicals, businesspeople, college graduates, relatives, and friends that Trump is a total scumbag with no morality or ethics.
I am trying hard to find any Convictions now that I am so dedicated to that I let them rule my life. All of the great quotes, aphorisms, metaphors, analogies, theories, and ideas that I know of would fill an old encyclopedia Britannica. But not one that I can think of would I waste five minutes defending. I think that there are pro’s and con’s to everything in life. For every up there is a down. For every night, there is a day. For every light, there is a dark. For every right, there is a wrong. Perhaps, Ecclesiastes comes as close to a Conviction as I want to live with today.
“For there is no lasting remembrance of the wise, just as with the fool, seeing that both will be forgotten in the days to come. Alas, the wise man will die just like the fool! So, I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. For everything is futile and a pursuit of the wind.” — Ecclesiastes 2
Is the above a Conviction or is it simply a belief? Not sure it even matters. Everything we do is blowing in the wind.
One story I like very much was told by OSHO about a mighty king who died. This King believed that he was the greatest King on earth and also that he was the greatest King who ever lived. The King died and found himself in the realm of the Golden Mountains. These mountains were higher than the Himalayans and more vast than the entire Asian continent. Here the King met the Caretaker of the mountains. The Caretaker gave the King a magic pen and told him that he could write his name in the mountains. This was permitted because he was a mighty King. A few days later the King came back to the Caretaker and complained, “I have walked for many miles through the Golden Mountains and everywhere I went to sign my name, some other person had already signed their name. Who are all these people?” The Caretaker replied, “These are all the other mighty Kings before you who died.”
- “Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.”
- “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”
- “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
I would rather live by a set of virtues and values than a set of convictions.
Next Reflection:
- These are the things that I have lived for.
Over time, I have noticed that the most popular post I have on my blog site is my Home page “Who is Dr. John Persico Jr.?” I realize that most readers want to know my credentials to see if anything I am going to say has any credibility. Am I someone you can trust? Can you depend upon my words or my facts? Am I just another wannabe Guru so full of my own opinions that I have no room for other points of view?
Those who march to the proverbial beat of a different drummer live with risk, but they also are not bored. We only experience life when we are open to the unknown and the unpredictable. Walk through a cemetery at midnight. Take a train or bus to someplace you have never been before. Read a book in a new genre. Watch a movie that is offbeat. Try some foods that you think you might not like. Meet some new people. Embrace the strange and esoteric. Life is not a cherry; it is a seething caldron of uncertainty and innumerable possibilities. You will never truly live if you simply stand at the edge of the caldron and wait for it to stop bubbling.
Despite attending forty 3-day Jesuit retreats and regularly going to church with my spouse, I remain adamantly somewhere between an Atheist and an Agnostic. See my blog 
I can see some positive sides to a church ideology that addressee inner spirituality, but I think it has serious drawbacks. You can focus too much on what I will call the “inner spirituality” of church members. The reasoning behind the emphasis on inner spirituality can be faulty. The theory is that if each member becomes a better Christian, they will be better neighbors towards others. If they feed the hungry and cloth the poor, they will be ridding the world of the evils that Jesus preached against. Unfortunately, these propositions are not evidenced by historical fact. For hundreds of years many Christians supported slavery and sexism by doing little or nothing to condemn or speak out against it. Furthermore, many Christians were major protagonists of racism and sexism. If their ministers spoke out against it, it obviously made little difference. Being a card carrying member of a Christian church never seems to correlate with ending war, sexism, racism, homophobia or even poverty. I think without an equal emphasis on “Outer Spirituality” Christianity is a worthless religion.
There are many definitions of spirituality. What does it mean to be a spiritual person? Some people lean towards accepting a higher being or creator. Some lean towards accepting a more conventional religious perspective. Many on-line definitions list several factors necessary to be a spiritual person. My own definition is much simpler. I think being a spiritual person involves two elements. The first is seeking meaning in one’s life. The second is seeking purpose. Meaning is inner spirituality. Purpose is outer spirituality. Meaning and purpose must go beyond what is simply good for oneself and must embrace what is good for humanity and the universe. Thus, a truly spiritual person is one who finds and balances inner and outer spirituality.
I suppose in one sense, “life is not fair” means that life is indeed following a bell-shaped curve and some of us are on the undesirable end. In other words, some of us are too short, too fat, too unappealing, or any number of other less-desirable traits that we find on the extremes of the bell-shaped curve. Last night I was watching a 3-year-old do stunts on a sized down motorcycle. I could not do these stunts if my life depended on it. This young boy was a natural on the motorcycle. He took to it like a fish to water. We have all seen and perhaps envied some of the more fortunate on our bell-shaped curve who can do things we only dream about doing. For those of us on the wrong end of the bell-shaped curve, life will never seem fair.
I understand why so many people want to believe in heaven and hell. It would be much easier to go on living peacefully if I could really believe that there was someplace better to go to than this earth I now reside on. Too many bad days now seem to intrude on my equanimity. You and I and everyone else that resides on this 3rd rock from the sun are abused and tormented every day with disease, starvation, accidents, environmental devastations, and pandemics. I could handle all of these things but for one thing. It is called “mans’ inhumanity to man.” The stupid cruel things we do to each other over and over again. The wars, murders, and injustices that we inflict on other human beings. And it is not just the average person that inflicts these cruelties, it is the “best” people in the land. In fact, it would seem that the inhumanities done by those with the most money, most intelligence and those we call our leaders are the worst of all the brutalities and savagery that we see in the news each day.
Faith is number five of my seven essential virtues for leading a happy and successful life. Every Friday I start my day with the following prayer:
I decided that I must first understand what Faith really means. To do this, it is helpful to deconstruct how we think about Faith and how we use the word. I thought about how we use both Trust and Faith in common language. For instance we use trust in English as follows:
I think you can readily see that there is a certain degree of overlap between the two concepts. However, Faith generally seems to convey a more sectarian or theological concept of belief whereas Trust is generally used in more secular terms. Thus, we don’t “trust” God but we have Faith in her. Faith seems to be a term that is not contingent upon any kind of physical or logical proof. We might not trust a person with our money without proof that they are “bonded” or trustworthy, but we would not expect such displays of material evidence when it comes to having Faith in God. So what is the relevance to this in our lives? What good is Faith if we can substitute trust for faith and have more security in the long run?
The answer seems to be (IMHO) that sometimes we can trust without evidence but generally we are better off trusting with some element of surety that can mitigate the risk of our trust being unfounded or mistaken. Whereas, there is little or no evidence that can prove your need or desire to have Faith. You must have Faith like a parent has love for a child. It is unconditional. You have Faith simply because you want to believe. You have Faith because you accept something without conditions. You need no proof or evidence to support your Faith. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Should you have Faith without proof? What would a life without Faith be like? Would we be safer or happier with less Faith?
Fortunately, the 3.4 percent of respondents have been more than enough to help me keep my Faith. (Should I really need such sustenance if I have Faith?) Yes, I have Faith that my writing is making a difference to the world but alas, I have no proof for the empiricists, the materialists or the skeptics. I have to ask you as well as myself to believe that I am. It is Faith that keeps me motivated. Without Faith, life would appear to be a futile waste of time. Faith helps us to carry on when everything and everyone is saying to quit. The woman in the life raft, the athlete with a severe injury, the parents with a disabled child, the poor fighting hunger, the righteous fighting injustice are all sustained by the power of Faith.
Faith can believe everything
Samson was the strongest most well-built man on the block. He had muscles chiseled in stone. His muscles had muscles. He stood 6 feet 4 inches tall and did not have an ounce of fat on him. Samson worked out seven days a week, twice each day at the Philistine Gym on Gibeon Street. He worked out before he went to work each morning and after work for two hours each evening.
wanting something more because you can’t have it. Delilah had only one other person she admired, herself. Much like Sampson, she could not pass by a mirror without staring at her reflection and thinking “how beautiful I am.”
Delilah grew more and more desperate in her attempts to get Samson to notice her. Finally, she hit on the idea to simply approach Samson and remark on his wonderful hair. So, one day while he was practicing his dead lifts, she sauntered by and casually remarked on how beautiful his hair was. She proceeded to compliment him on his marvelous muscle definition. She followed up these compliments with the suggestion that they go back to her place after working out and she would cook him a nice microwave dinner and brush his hair. This idea delighted Samson and after working out, they both went to Delilah’s house.
Delilah waited until the night before the World Weightlifting championship. At around midnight, she used the key that Samson hid near his door to let herself into Samson’s apartment. Moving as stealthily as a cat, she entered Samson’s bedroom. Samson was a sound sleeper and he had no inclination of what awaited him. Delilah took the surgical scalpel that she had borrowed from a medical admirer and in one quick slash, she lopped off Samson’s braid. Samson was totally unaware and did not move a muscle. Delilah slipped back out the way she had come and placed Samson’s key back where he hid it.
As the little boy grew up, he became an even more devout believer in God. Everywhere he went, he saw the hand of God. In the clouds, in nature, in the weather, in the oceans, in good times and in bad times he believed that God was present. The little boy thought how hard God must have to work to try to keep life sustained. Each night he would pray to God that when he grew up, he would be able to help ease God’s work somewhat and do his share to help make the world a better place.
Aging Capriciously 