Abraham Lincoln was no stranger to Mary the Mother of God. He once told the story during a Cabinet meeting of an Italian captain whose ship was punctured when it struck a rock. The captain set his men bailing water while he said a prayer to a statue of the Virgin Mary in the bowel of the ship. The water continued to pour in and it appeared the vessel would be lost. The captain, in a fit of rage at not having his prayers answered, seized the statute of Mary and threw it overboard. Suddenly the leak stopped and the ship was able to sail safely into port. When docked for repairs, the Virgin Mary statue was found stuck head-first in the hole.

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who spent three years in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau. He survived the war and went on to write, among other books, Man's Search for Meaning. In this classic text, Frankl argues that finding meaning in one's life is the cure for many neuroses.

Logotherapy, the form of treatment that Frankl founded, focuses on the patient's future. Whereas psychoanalysis is retrospective and introspective—trying to discover the cause of a patient's neurosis—logotherapy attempts to help the patient find meaning in his life, for someone who has something or someone to live for lives well.

A new title for Mary, and one that is quite expedient, is "The Silent Mother."

Striking in the Gospels is the silence of Mary. After several significant scenes, we find the Blessed Mother rather reserved. When the Angel Gabriel announces to her that she will conceive and bear a son, she simply says, “Be it done unto me.” The angel departs and there are no more words we hear spoken by Mary. Nothing is recorded of her during the birth at Bethlehem, and when Simeon prophesies during the Presentation of the Temple that a sword of sorrow will pierce her heart, Mary does not respond. Likewise in the face of suffering, the Blessed Mother walks silently alongside her son through Jerusalem to Calvary. Nor did Mary ever respond and take offense at her son’s sayings. There is no rebuttal from the Blessed Mother after the finding in the temple when Jesus says, “Did you not know I must be at my father’s house?” At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry during the wedding feast of Cana, Mary ignores the quip, “Woman, what is it to me? My hour has not yet come.” Nor does she retort when, asking to see her son, Jesus responds, “Who is my mother? Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my mother.”

Henri Nouwen provided this parable from Chuang Tzu. It's called, “The Useless Tree”:

A carpenter and his apprentice were walking together though a large forest. And when they came across a tall, huge, gnarled, old beautiful tree, the carpenter asked his apprentice: “Do you know why this tree is so tall, so huge, so gnarled, so old and beautiful?” The apprentice looked at his master and said: “No...why?”

“Well,” the carpenter said, “because it is useless. If it had been useful it would have been cut down long ago and made into tables and chairs, but because it is useless it could grow so tall and so beautiful that you can sit in its shade and relax.”

Molecules and compounds were the topic of discussion when I popped into our school's science lab one day. A molecule is two or more atoms of an element chemically joined together. A compound, conversely, is when the two or more conjoined atoms are of different elements. Sodium chloride (NaCl), for example, would be a compound. Sodium and chloride combined form salt, salt being the whole or end result. Complementarity, two different elements fitting to complete a whole, is the spiritual principle at hand.