Running out of steam after a long Friday at the newspaper, so I'm going to cheat and post something I found this week in a column by Helen Gray of The Star in Kansas City called "Voices of Faith." This was sent to us via McClatchy-Tribune News Service under the header "We create meaning." I read it today while getting my weekly allergy shots, so it counts as my daily Lenten devotion. Enjoy!
The Rev. Holly McKissick, pastor of St. Andrew Christian Church, Olathe, Kan.:
"I talked (barely taking a breath in nine hours) to our van-driving youth minister as we made the journey home from our church mission trip. It was before seat belt laws, and I sat on an ice cooler crammed between the driver's seat and the passenger's seat in the old van.
"I wasn't naive or overprotected, but I'd never seen folks that poor. In south Texas I had seen an old woman eating cat food and kids growing up without running water.
"I've spent the past three decades on that ice cooler, struggling for meaning, especially when life is tender and broken. I'm not alone. The search is universal and lifelong. You don't leave it behind with adolescence.
"After he survived Auschwitz and Dachau, Viktor Frankl wrote the profoundly powerful 'Man's Search for Meaning.' In a world of unimaginable brutality, Frankl witnessed starving people sharing their bread. He wrote: 'Everything can be taken from a man but one thing ... to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.'
"We are meaning-seeking creatures. Hopefully, somewhere along the journey we figure out that meaning is not something we find, it's something we create. The meaning you create and the contribution you make depend on how much time you spend sitting on the cooler and how much time you spend sharing your bread."
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