The Fragrance We Leave Behind

 

Dear Reader,

This morning I came across a quotation attributed to the Buddha:

“Neither the scent of flowers, nor sandalwood, tagara, or jasmine travels against the wind. But the scent of good people travels even against the wind. A virtuous man pervades all directions.”

I found myself thinking about the simplicity of that image.

A flower does not have to tell us that it is beautiful. It does not announce its fragrance or ask anyone to notice it. It simply blooms, and in doing so, something of itself is carried into the world.

Yet even the fragrance of the most beautiful flower is limited. It travels where the wind carries it.

The quotation suggests that goodness is different.

Kindness can travel against the wind.

Compassion can reach beyond the person to whom it was originally given. An encouraging word spoken today may be remembered years from now. The few minutes we spend listening to someone who is hurting may give that person enough hope to face another day.

And we may never know it.

I think of the many times someone has shared an experience in an AA meeting and, without ever knowing it, given me a new way of looking at something happening in my own life. Sometimes those words have helped me immediately; other times they have returned to me months or even years later.

I believe we often underestimate the influence we have upon one another. In recovery, I have seen evidence of this in the countless lives changed because one person was willing to share honestly with another.

We live in a world that likes measurable results. Yet life’s scorecard can never fully record the number of people helped simply because someone listened, offered comfort, or shared honestly from personal experience.

And so, many questions may remain unanswered:

Who have I helped?

Did my words help?

Did my kindness matter?

Did anyone notice?

Was anything changed because I was there?

But maybe goodness does not require an answer.

The flower does not know who enjoys its fragrance.

There have been people in my own life who probably had no idea of the influence they had upon me. A conversation, a kindness, a word of encouragement, or simply someone’s willingness to sit quietly and listen became part of the person I am today.

I suspect the same is true for each of us.

And there is another side to this thought:

What fragrance do I leave behind?

When I leave a room, end a telephone conversation, finish a meal with someone, attend a meeting, or simply encounter a stranger during the ordinary business of the day, what remains because I was there?

There are questions of self-awareness that I may not always ask:

• Did someone feel heard?
• Did someone feel less alone?
• Did someone feel accepted rather than judged?
• Did I bring peace into the room, or did I add to its turmoil?

These questions may be uncomfortable at times, but I believe they are worth asking.

My spiritual life has taught me that some of the greatest opportunities to serve God arrive disguised as very ordinary moments. There is seldom an announcement telling me that this particular conversation matters. I simply encounter another human being and am given a choice about what I will bring to that encounter.

I always have a choice in my interactions with others. I can bring impatience, judgment, and self-interest, or I can bring kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and love.

Jesus taught:

“Ye are the light of the world.”

Light and fragrance are very different things, yet they share something beautiful: neither exists merely for itself.

Light illuminates what surrounds it.

Fragrance fills the air around it.

And a life filled with love touches other lives.

🙏🧘‍♂️💕🤗☮️

Quiet Enough to Receive Grace

 

Dear Reader,

This morning, I read Alma 13:28–30 in the Book of Mormon. The passage begins:

“But that ye would humble yourselves before the Lord, and call on his holy name, and watch and pray continually…”

As I read that first line, the words “humble yourselves” stood out to me like a beacon.

They caused me to consider what it truly means to humble myself before God.

Too often, I approach God almost as an equal—with my plans already made, my conclusions already drawn, and even the outcome I believe He should provide.

For example, I have sometimes decided to join or leave a group after only a short period of thought. I may already know who could be affected or how the decision might limit my time, yet I convince myself that I have adequately planned the outcome.

Then I ask God to bless my decision and spare me from its consequences without ever sincerely praying, “Not my will, but thine, be done.”

That is the mortal part of me speaking.

I may say, “Thy will be done,” while quietly hoping His will looks very much like mine.

Through more than a few painful experiences, I have discovered that this is rarely an effective way to communicate with God—not because He fails to hear me, but because I am not prepared to hear Him.

When I approach prayer with humility and allow time for quiet meditation, the conversation begins to change.

It first requires a little silence.

That silence allows me to begin with an honest recognition of the relationship:

He is God.
I am not.

Instead of coming before God saying, “Here is what needs to happen,” I begin asking:

“Lord, what would You have me understand?”

“What would You have me change?”

“Where would You have me go?”

And sometimes the most difficult prayer of all:

“Lord, what am I refusing to see?”

There is also an important difference between humility and humiliation.

Prayer is a free act of faith and love, not a forced act of shame.

Humility does not require me to believe that I am worthless. I am, after all, a child of God. Humility simply asks me to recognize the relationship correctly.

He is God.

I am not.

Like Job, I do not see everything God sees. I do not understand everything He understands. My experience is limited by time, circumstance, emotion, fear, and desire.

His vision is not.

This may be one reason Alma connects humility with being “led by the Holy Spirit.”

Before I can be led, I must first become willing to follow.

Alma then describes what begins to develop within us: becoming “humble, meek, submissive, patient, full of love and all long-suffering.”

I find the order meaningful.

He does not simply tell us to try harder to become loving, patient, and meek. He begins by telling us to humble ourselves before the Lord, call upon His name, and pray continually.

Then something begins to happen within us.

We become teachable.

And I believe it is within that teachable space that we begin to recognize the grace of God.

Grace is not something I earn by becoming humble enough.

Grace was already there.

Humility allows me to receive what pride, fear, and self-will may have prevented me from recognizing.

I have spent enough of my life trying to direct God, negotiate with God, explain myself to God, and occasionally tell God how I thought things should turn out.

Age and experience have taught me another kind of prayer:

“God, I do not know. You do. Please lead me.”

Or, in words familiar to me through recovery:

“Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will.”

There is tremendous freedom in those words.

I no longer have to understand everything.

I do not have to control every outcome.

I do not even have to see very far down the road.

I only need enough humility to take the next step when the Spirit shows me where to place my foot.

And somewhere in that surrender, grace appears.

Or, more accurately, I finally become quiet enough to recognize that grace had been there all along.

---

Alma 13:28–30

28 But that ye would humble yourselves before the Lord, and call on his holy name, and watch and pray continually, that ye may not be tempted above that which ye can bear, and thus be led by the Holy Spirit, becoming humble, meek, submissive, patient, full of love and all long-suffering;

29 Having faith on the Lord; having a hope that ye shall receive eternal life; having the love of God always in your hearts, that ye may be lifted up at the last day and enter into his rest.

30 And may the Lord grant unto you repentance, that ye may not bring down his wrath upon you, that ye may not be bound down by the chains of hell, that ye may not suffer the second death.

Where Spirituality Becomes Real

 

Dear Reader,

I have heard a saying in recovery circles:

"Man created religion; God created spirituality."

As I have reflected on those words, I have found myself drawn a little deeper into the thought.

My experience in Alcoholics Anonymous has clearly demonstrated to me that an awareness of a Higher Power is essential to the spiritual life I try to live today. Yet I have also come to believe that we should be careful not to dismiss religion simply because the word itself may carry difficult memories or experiences.

I do not argue with those who have found formal religion difficult to accept. There are understandable reasons why some people have stepped away from churches, doctrines, and religious institutions.

But neither would I automatically reject a religious tradition, theology, or community that helps a person discover principles by which life becomes freer, happier, more compassionate, and more useful.

Perhaps the question is not simply religion or spirituality.

Perhaps the greater question is:

Where does our spirituality find somewhere to live?

When I consider my own life, I realize that community and my understanding of a Higher Power have worked together in molding the person I am today.

My family—both by blood and by extension—is vital to that life.

Spirituality may awaken within the individual, but most of us still need a here-and-now community in which that spirituality can take root.

We need places where we gather.

We need people who know our names.

We need people who notice when we are missing, celebrate with us when life is going well, and sit beside us when life becomes difficult.

Call it what you will.

I sometimes think of it as my religion-of-life.

Religion, at its best, can provide such a place. It gives us traditions, sacred stories, prayer, worship, service, and a community in which we attempt to practice what we say we believe.

But if someone cannot feel at home within a church or other formal religious structure, perhaps there is another place to begin.

Begin with family.

And by family, I mean much more than blood.

Family may include parents and children, brothers and sisters, grandchildren and grandparents. But over a lifetime its boundaries can expand.

A friend may become a brother.

A neighbor may become family.

A church congregation, a recovery fellowship, or simply a community of people walking through life together may provide relationships every bit as meaningful as those created by blood.

Perhaps this expanded family is one of the places where spirituality becomes most visible.

It is relatively easy to speak about love.

It is much harder to practice it.

Family asks us to forgive the person we thought we had already forgiven yesterday.

It teaches us patience when patience is inconvenient.

It requires us to listen when we would rather speak, to remain present when walking away would be easier, and sometimes simply to sit beside another person when there are no words capable of fixing what hurts.

These are not merely family experiences.

They are spiritual experiences.

My belief is: spirituality is not found only in moments of prayer, meditation, scripture, temples, churches, or quiet contemplation.

It is also found around the dinner table.

In a telephone call to someone who is lonely.

In caring for a child.

In forgiving an old hurt.

In welcoming someone who once stood outside our circle.

In becoming family to someone who needs one.

Religion may give us a language for God.

Spirituality may awaken our awareness of God.

But loving one another may be where we finally begin to experience God.

Perhaps that is why our earthly relationships matter so deeply.

They give eternal principles somewhere to live.

And maybe, in the end, spirituality is not primarily about how high our thoughts can reach toward heaven.

Perhaps it is about how completely the love of heaven can pass through us and reach the person sitting beside us.

Religion may provide the gathering place.
Spirituality may awaken the soul.
But love creates the family—and within that family, spirituality becomes real.

🙏🧘‍♂️💕🤗☮️  

While We Still Have Breath

Dear Reader,

I began this writing with what seemed to be a random collection of thoughts:

one life → a flowing river → unnecessary pebbles → breath → gratitude and praise.

At first, I wondered whether they really belonged together. The more I reflected, however, the more I began to see a single message running through them.

There are words often attributed to Confucius:

“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”

For me, those words point toward a moment of awakening—the realization that mortal life is finite. There is no second earthly life waiting somewhere beyond this one. There is simply this journey, stretching from birth until we return to dust.

At some point in my own journey, I began to understand the difference between simply existing and truly living.

For me, living became increasingly connected with charity, service, gratitude, and love for others.

Yet this new way of living did not mean that life suddenly became predictable or unchanged.

Heraclitus gave us the wonderful image:

“You cannot step into the same river twice.”

Yesterday's river is gone, and in a sense, yesterday's version of ourselves is gone as well. Life keeps moving. Circumstances change. People enter and leave our lives. Day becomes night, and night becomes another morning—but the new day is never exactly the same as the one before it.

The question, then, is not whether life will change.

The question is: What will I do with the life flowing through my hands today?

A second lesson I have learned is that a new life does not necessarily mean a perfect life.

The road may become smoother, yet some of us still carry sand in our socks.

Muhammad Ali expressed this wonderfully:

“It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe.”

In my own experience, some of those pebbles came from the wreckage of my past.

I needed to make amends. I needed to repay financial obligations. I needed to humble myself before former wives and my son and acknowledge places where my actions had caused pain.

Those things were not easy.

Yet in doing them, something began to change. It was almost as though I had finally stopped along the road, washed my feet, removed the stones, and put on better boots for the journey ahead.

Slowly, I discovered that I did not have to spend the remainder of my life being held back by resentment, old regrets, something someone once said, or fear of what tomorrow might bring.

And that brings me to a third lesson: gratitude.

Psalm 150 closes with one of the simplest and most beautiful invitations in scripture:

“Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord.”

While I still have breath, I still have something for which to be grateful.

Today, as I try to express that gratitude through service and love for others, this life feels more whole. I feel more firmly anchored. I have begun to experience something I can only describe as living the air—recognizing the gift of simply being here, breathing, serving, loving, learning, and becoming.

The river still changes.

There are still stones along the road.

There are still days when the current carries me somewhere I did not expect to go.

But increasingly, I trust that the journey has purpose.

Sir Walter Scott once wrote:

“Each age has deemed the new-born year the fittest time for festal cheer.”

Perhaps we need not wait for January to experience a new year.

Perhaps a new year can begin on any morning when we awaken and recognize that we have been given another day.

Another river.

Another opportunity to remove a pebble.

Another chance to love someone.

Another breath with which to praise God.

Dear Reader, while we still have breath, may we not merely exist.

May we live.

May we serve.

May we love.

And may we be grateful for the river carrying us home.

Amen

🙏🧘‍♂️💕🤗☮️

When Good People Suffer

Reflections on the Book of Job

Dear Reader,

Lately I have been reflecting on the book of Job. As I have done so, I have also found myself relating Job’s experience to the loss of my mother when I was 20 years old. That was a time when I chose to blame God and abandon the religion of my childhood.

Like Job, I was spiritually troubled. At the time, I was deeply involved in my church and in its teachings about physical healing through faith. I believed I was a good person—honest, faithful, and devoted to God. By the usual reasoning of the world, I felt I should have been protected from great tragedy.

To me, there seemed to be a kind of universal law: that good deeds produce good lives—lives of security, blessing, and peace.

So when loss came my way, part of me became convinced that either I had failed in my prayers or there was no God in the universe who truly cared. Perhaps the greater wound was the thought that some unknown sin in my childhood may have somehow blocked my mother’s healing.

That way of thinking is not far from the thinking found in the book of Job.

Even Job’s friends tried to explain his suffering by insisting that he must have done something wrong. In their minds, suffering had to be punishment, because their understanding of God left little room for anything else.

To Job’s credit, he refused to fit neatly into that kind of thinking.

For many of us, there is comfort in believing life follows a simple pattern: if we are good, good will come to us; if we are unfaithful, hardship will follow. There is some truth in the idea that wise choices often lead to better outcomes. Yet the book of Job reminds us that this is not the whole story. Life is not always a straight line between virtue and reward.

Sometimes sorrow comes without asking permission.

Sometimes pain enters a life that has tried to be kind, faithful, and sincere.

Sometimes the righteous suffer not because God has abandoned them, but because mortality itself is far more mysterious than we wish it to be.

I do not believe the message of Job is that suffering is good, or that evil and goodness are equal forces that must be kept in balance. Rather, I believe the book invites us into a deeper understanding: God is Lord not only over what we call blessings, but also over a world in which agency, loss, uncertainty, and grief are real.

That is not always easy to accept.

We naturally want life to make immediate sense. We want a universe that rewards decency on schedule and explains every wound in language we can understand. Job teaches otherwise. He reminds us that God’s wisdom is greater than our formulas.

Perhaps that is one reason the Lord answers Job not with a simple explanation, but with a vision of a creation far larger than Job could grasp. The message seems to be that human beings see only a fragment, while God sees the whole.

This does not erase sorrow. It does not make pain pleasant. It does not mean that every tragedy was individually arranged for a hidden lesson. But it does suggest that the presence of suffering does not prove the absence of God.

To me, one of the great truths in Job is this: faith is not a contract by which we purchase a trouble-free life. Faith is a relationship of trust with God, even when life becomes difficult to understand.

Job begins by trusting God while his life is blessed. He ends by seeking God in the middle of mystery. That may be the greater faith.

There are moments in all of our lives when the old formulas no longer work. A prayer seems unanswered. A loss feels undeserved. A burden arrives that cannot be explained by fairness. At such times, the book of Job asks us to let go of the belief that righteousness guarantees immunity from pain.

Instead, it invites us to hold to something deeper:

that God remains God,
that truth remains truth,
and that our suffering, though not always explained, is never beyond His sight.

I believe one of the hidden gifts of Job is that it moves us from asking, “What did I do to deserve this?” to asking, “How shall I walk with God through this?”

That is a harder question, but perhaps a holier one.

The wisdom of Job may be that life cannot always be measured by reward and punishment. Some things remain mysterious. Some sorrows remain unresolved for a season. Yet even there, God has not lost His integrity, nor has He surrendered His place over all things.

And perhaps that is enough for today:

not to understand everything,
but to trust that we are not abandoned within what we do not understand.

The Wisdom of Silence

 

Dear Reader,

While reading several texts this morning, I began forming a quotation that expressed how I feel about chatter, wisdom, social media, and our noisy world. The following quotation is my contribution:

“The wisdom of the sage is seldom known, for silence is the sage’s favorite tool.”

At first, I wondered whether silence could truly be called a tool. For much of the world, isn't wisdom something we share by speaking? Yet the more I reflected, the more I realized that nearly every great spiritual tradition teaches us to value restraint, listening, and stillness.

Lao Tzu wrote that those who truly know have little need to prove it with words. Confucius taught that the noble person is modest in speech but abundant in action. The Stoics encouraged discipline in speech and careful attention to what we hear. James in the New Testament reminds us to be “swift to hear, slow to speak.” Even the Lord often teaches His children not through thunder, but through “a still small voice.”

In my experience, silence is never truly empty; it can become the workshop where wisdom is formed and refined.

For example, in my own life, the people who have influenced me most were rarely the loudest in the room. They did not rush to offer advice or dominate every conversation. Instead, they listened with genuine interest. They asked thoughtful questions. They allowed another person the dignity of discovering truth rather than forcing it upon them.

Their silence spoke volumes!

Through recovery and grace, I have witnessed that the most meaningful conversations often begin only after someone has finished speaking. There is a brief pause—a moment when no one feels compelled to fill the silence. In that space, understanding often arrives. Sometimes a heart softens. Sometimes a tear is shed. Sometimes God quietly enters the conversation.

I sometimes wonder whether our world has become uncomfortable with silence.

We surround ourselves with music, television, podcasts, notifications, and endless opinions. Rarely are we simply still. Yet if every quiet moment is filled with noise, how will we hear the whisperings of the Spirit?

I am reminded of a line by Mary Baker Eddy in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany (p. 210): “It is plain that nothing can be added to the mind already full.” She was speaking of a mind filled with Truth and Love. Her words also caused me to wonder what happens when our minds are filled instead with noise, distraction, and endless opinion.

How will we recognize the gentle impressions that invite us to become kinder, more forgiving, or more willing to trust God if we are unwilling to become quiet and allow the Spirit to enter our meditations?

Silence is not merely the absence of sound. It is the presence of attention.

For me today, it is where listening becomes deeper than hearing, where prayer becomes more than speaking, and where wisdom has room to grow.

Perhaps that is why the sage treasures silence.

Not because the sage has nothing to say…

But because the sage has learned that some of life’s greatest truths are not spoken at all—they are received.

Hush for a moment, my friends, and find a little quiet today. Trust that God often speaks most clearly when our hearts become still.

🙏  🧘‍♂️  💕  🤗  ☮️

Keep Walking. Keep Sharing, Keep Learning

Dear Reader,

This morning, two quotations found their way into my reading. Though written centuries apart, they seem to express the same truth.

“It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.”
— Confucius

And:

“It is by teaching that we teach ourselves.”
— Henri Frédéric Amiel

At first glance, each author's words speak of different things. One is about perseverance. The other is about teaching. Yet I believe they describe the same path.

In my experience, many of us measure life's progress by comparing ourselves with those around us. We notice how quickly others recover, learn, forgive, and move forward. In those moments, it is easy to become discouraged by the pace of our own journey.

I believe that, at such times, God is less concerned with our speed than with our direction.

As children, we learn to walk without apologizing for taking small steps. Every prayer, every act of kindness, every attempt to forgive, every effort to begin again is another step toward becoming the person God intends us to be.

We may feel unqualified. We may believe we have little to offer. Yet as we share our experience, something remarkable happens. We discover that the lessons we thought we were giving become lessons we ourselves hear more clearly.

I have experienced this many times in recovery.

When we remain observant, we will often find, almost unexpectedly, someone walking beside us who is struggling with the very path we have already traveled.

When I sit with someone seeking hope, I often leave with greater hope myself. When I encourage another person to trust God one day at a time, I find my own faith renewed. The words I offer another have a way of quietly returning to my own heart.

To me that is one of God’s gentle miracles.

He allows us to become both student and teacher at the same time.

The Savior taught this principle perfectly. He invited His disciples to follow Him, and then He sent them to strengthen others. As they served, they grew. As they lifted others, their own discipleship deepened.

The same invitation is extended to each of us.

Keep walking, even if your steps seem small.

Keep sharing, even if you think your experience is ordinary.

You may discover that God is teaching two hearts at once.

With every step forward, and with every hand extended to another, He quietly continues His work within us both.

Perhaps one of life's greatest blessings is this: as we help expand another person's horizon, God quietly expands our own.

  🙏🧘‍♂️💕🤗☮️