Guiding Words

The late Unitarian Universalist preacher Forrest Church, who led the All Souls congregation in Manhattan for nearly three decades, articulated three guiding principles for life shortly after September 11, 2001. His mantra, as he called it, was simple:

Want what you have;
Do what you can;
Be who you are.

Not necessarily easy to live by, these words nonetheless help me to think each day about how to be in the world.

Mma Ramotswe, the protagonist and lead detective in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, proposes a similar set of guidelines at the end of Book 11, The Double Comfort Safari Club. She tells readers that her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, taught her "almost everything she knew about how to lead a good life":

"Do not complain about your life.
Do not blame others for things that you have brought upon yourself.
Be content with who you are and where you are,
And do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself."

Echoing much of what Forrest Church says, Mma Ramotswe could be his Botswanan counterpart. They both offer wisdom for this Memorial Day, when we honor those whose service to our country reminds us, the living, of the precious gift of life.

For as Forrest Church says, "The purpose of life is to live in such a way, that our lives will prove worth dying for."