Lauren Masino - Milton, Soto, Kolvenbach

 At a first glance, all of these writings gave me a different message. I then looked them over again and realized the similarity they have. Life is about the work we personally put in, physically and mentally. It is also about following our faiths and respecting them. 

The first piece of writing, “When I consider how my light is spent”, we read and question how we spend our own days. The light that is given to us is so special, but do we work hard doing those hours? Is that what it is really all about? John Milton makes us think about these questions and helps us realize that God does not need our physical labor necessarily, but our mental strength and show patience. In many ways, I think  mental strength and showing such strong patience is much more difficult to master, than it is to master your physical strength. This is seen in the next piece of writing as well. 

“A Red Palm”, is a story of a father who works in a cotton field. He expresses how the harder physically he works in the field, the more he can give to his family. Although on the surface it seems like all he is talking about is his physical labor, deep down he is referencing the mental strength it takes to push forward in that labor. With that mental strength, he finds himself able to succeed and pursue life. Although he does not mention his faith, it is easy to imagine that being a driving force for him as well. We can see how it can be in the last piece of writing. 

In The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education, we learn about following our faith, which includes promoting justice and seeing the injustice in our world. It explains to us how we need to make it a part of our goals in life, and it is the Lord who has expressed this to us. I think this is very interesting and related well back to how hard we work. Although this is not physical labor, such as mentioned in the other two writings, it is still critical. We need to work hard mentally to change how we perceive the world, and incorporate that in our education. 

All three of these writings are from different perspectives, but to me they make me take away that life is about the work we put in, physically and mentally. Faith can help guide us in the right direction of how to do so.