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Sidewalk Spirituality

March 18th, 2024

Richard Rohr identifies mysticism as a way of knowing accessible to all: 

While most Christians consider themselves disciples of Jesus and try to follow his teachings, a smaller number move toward practical acts of service or solidarity. But I’m afraid even fewer Christians have the courage to go on the much deeper mystical path. The most unfortunate thing about the concept of mysticism is that the word itself has become mystified—relegated to a “misty” and distant realm that implies it is only available to a very few. For me, the word “mysticism” simply means experiential knowledge of spiritual things, in contrast to book knowledge, secondhand knowledge, or even church knowledge.  

Much of organized religion, without meaning to, has actually discouraged us from taking the mystical path by telling us almost exclusively to trust outer authority, Scripture, various kinds of experts, or tradition (what I call the “containers”), instead of telling us the value and importance of inner experience itself (which is the “content”). In fact, most of us were strongly warned against ever trusting ourselves. Roman Catholics were told to trust the church hierarchy implicitly, while mainline Protestants were often warned that inner experience was dangerous, unscriptural, or even unnecessary.  

Both were ways of discouraging actual experience of God and often created passive (and passive aggressive) people and, more sadly, a lot of people who concluded there was no God to be experienced. We were taught to mistrust our own souls—and thus the Holy Spirit! Contrast that with Jesus’ common phrase, “Go in peace, your faith has made you whole” (see Matthew 8:13; Mark 5:34; Luke 17:19). He said this to people who had made no dogmatic affirmations, did not think he was “God,” and often did not belong to the “correct” group! They were people who affirmed, with open hearts, the grace of their own hungry experience—in that moment—and that God could care about it! 

Pentecostals and charismatics are significant modern-era exceptions to this avoidance of experience; I believe their “baptism in the Spirit” is a true and valid example of initial mystical encounter. 

Richard praises the Franciscan approach to mysticism:  

In my experience, Franciscan mysticism is a trustworthy and simple path precisely because it refuses to be “mystified” by, or beholden to, doctrinal abstractions, moralism, or false asceticism (although some Franciscans have gone this route). The Franciscan way is truly a sidewalk spirituality for the streets of the world, a path highly possible and attractive for all would-be seekers. It doesn’t insist every person must be celibate, isolated from others, highly educated, or in any way superior to our neighbors. In fact, those kinds of paths might well get in the way of the experience itself. A celibate monk or nun may have a totally dualistic mind and live a tortured inner life—and thus torture others too. Everyday workers and caregivers with mystical hearts and minds can enlighten other individuals, their families, and all they touch, without talking “religiously” at all.  

A Life Steeped in Mystery

CAC teacher Barbara Holmes shares her experience with everyday mysticism. 

Every person has had some mystical experience. Maybe the seas have not parted, and maybe they haven’t walked on water, but there have nevertheless been amazing miracles in our lives. We just haven’t shared them in community, so we don’t feel comfortable sharing them as individuals. I will tell you the basis of my personal mysticism so that you will consider yours…. 

I’m an ordinary, everyday mystic. I’m not claiming special powers, just a life steeped in mystery. My family was comfortable with mysticism, spiritual discernment, and the use of spiritual gifts such as healing and words of knowledge. My Aunt Lee, a Gullah shaman Catholic, was my biggest influence. She saw dead people and mediated mystery for our family. She could tell you who was coming and going and how they were when they got to the other side!… She relayed messages from ancestors on the other side back to us. Once a relative transitioned to the other side, she would tell us the age they had chosen to represent their physicality.  

It seems that at least in her understanding, you could choose your age in the life after life. So when you saw people in dreams, you would see them embodied as the age that best reflected their spiritual joy. My dad chose his 50s, and when I see him in dreams, that’s what he looks like. My mom chose her late 30s. I’m not familiar with that look for my mom, so I always hesitate, because at this point on the spiritual side, she’s younger than I am. There were all kinds of rules about dreams and encounters. My aunt’s messages always included what they called “verification.” She would seal the deal with the information that no one would know except the loved ones who had gone on. She’d tell you where a piece of lost jewelry could be found, or the content of a few last words spoken in private.  

Those were the mystics of my dad’s side of the family. And wouldn’t you know it, we have a bunch of them on my mom’s side too.… We’ve traced our DNA linkages, and my mom is from the Tikar people of Cameroon with surprising interconnections with China. As an everyday mystic, DNA testing helped me with the spiritual healing of cultural and historical loss.  

The weird part is that all of this seemed normal to me. Despite the fact that schooling and further education tried to invalidate my experience, I knew that everyday mysticism was real. I could not be persuaded or taught otherwise. I’m describing mysticism as a natural part of everyday life and all of the things that I’m describing happened in ordinary time. There was no weird music, sweeping cloaks, or spooky incantations … just a deep understanding of the sacred and a willingness to allow the gifts to lead.  

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Gratuity ≠ Gratitude
Tipping has long been customary at full-service restaurants and bars, for taxis, and in hotels. Coffee or ice cream shops often had a tip jar where a customer might drop their change, but most fast food and counter-service restaurants never asked for a gratuity. When Starbucks added a tip screen to their credit card transactions in 2022, however, it signaled a change. Suddenly it seemed like every business in America started asking for tips.A few weeks ago, while purchasing a protein bar and bottled water from one of those airport terminal snack shops, the self-checkout screen asked me if I wanted to add a 20 percent tip. For who? I thought. That’s when I realized our tipping culture is getting out of control. It also provoked me to research the trend.When traveling in Europe, some Americans are surprised to discover that other Western democracies do not share our habit of tipping.

That’s because America’s gratuity culture germinated from its unique history. Following the Civil War, when millions of formerly enslaved African Americans were seeking jobs, few white business owners were inclined to hire them. Eventually, some were allowed to work in service positions without pay. Instead, they relied entirely on tips from customers. Most famously, black workers on Pullman train cars “shined shoes, made beds, woke up passengers and so on. They worked long hours and relied heavily on tips for pay.” In time, African Americans filled more gratuity-funded service jobs as doormen, elevator operators, and drivers.Eventually, as more business owners realized tips were an easy way to reduce their expenses and shift labor costs directly to customers, the practice expanded throughout the country. So, what began as a racist policy to avoid paying African Americans a fair wage became a widespread, and uniquely American practice.
Even today, 160 years after the Civil War, more businesses are adopting the custom—even ones that have replaced their employees with a self-checkout screen!

Why am I sharing this history lesson? Because it illustrates that gratuity isn’t necessarily about gratitude. Strictly speaking, a tip or gratuity is supposed to be a gift offered in thankfulness. It is neither expected nor demanded. But in reality that’s not how it’s practiced. In many places, failing to leave a tip is deeply offensive and the moral equivalent of stealing. The worker feels cheated out of their well-earned pay. I know this snub well having worked for tips at a car wash in high school. At least as it’s done in America, tipping is not a free act of appreciation; it’s an obligatory act to finalize a transaction.Which finally brings us back to Naaman’s story. After following Elisha’s instructions and bathing in the Jordan River, Naaman’s leprosy disappears. After this miraculous healing, Naaman returns to Elisha and presents him with “a gift.” Remember, he had traveled from Syria with an astronomical amount of wealth—approximately 750 pounds of silver and 6,000 pieces of gold. To the casual reader, this looks like a very generous tip—an act of gratuity flowing from Naaman’s thankfulness.But despite urging him to accept the money, Elisha refused. “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.” Why did the prophet reject Naaman’s gift? Because Elisha recognized when a gift was not a gift. He understood that not all gratuities are about gratitude. In the coming days, we will examine what was really behind Naaman’s gift, and why Elisha’s refusal to accept it is what ultimately caused Naaman to give his allegiance to Israel’s God.

DAILY SCRIPTURE
PSALM 50:7-13 
2 KINGS 5:1-27


WEEKLY PRAYERIgnatius of Loyola (1491 – 1556)

Take, Lord, and receive all my freedom, my memory, my intelligence and my will—all that i have and possess. You, Lord, have given those things to me. I now give them back to you, Lord. All belongs to you. Dispose of these gifts according to your will. I ask only for your love and your grace, for they are enough for me.
Amen.

Facing Reality

March 15th, 2024

Father Richard reminds us of our deepest Reality in God, which we cannot access except by facing our lived realities.

Both God’s truest identity and our own True Self are Love. So why isn’t it obvious? How do we find what is supposedly already there? Why should we need to awaken our deepest and most profound selves? How do we do it? By praying and meditating? By more silence, solitude, and sacraments? Yes to all of the above, but the most important way is to live and fully acknowledge our present reality. This solution sounds so simple that most of us fabricate all kinds of religious trappings to avoid taking up our own inglorious, mundane, and ever-present cross of the present moment.

As James Finley says, “The greatest teacher of God’s presence in our life is our life.For some reason, it is easier to attend church services than quite simply to reverence the Real—the “practice of the presence of God,” as some saints have called it. Making this commitment doesn’t demand a lot of dogmatic wrangling or managerial support, just vigilance, desire, and willingness to begin again and again. Living and accepting our reality will not feel very spiritual. It will feel like we are on the edges rather than dealing with the essence. That’s why many run toward more esoteric and dramatic postures instead of bearing the mystery of God’s suffering and God’s joy inside themselves. But the edges of our lives—fully experienced, suffered, and enjoyed—lead us back to the center and the essence, which is Love.

We do not find our own center; it finds us. Our own mind will not be able to figure it out. We collapse back into the Truth only when we are spiritually naked and free—which is probably not very often. We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking. In other words, our journeys around and through our realities lead us to the core Reality, where we meet both our truest self and our truest God. We do not really know what it means to be human unless we know God. And, in turn, we do not really know God except through our own broken and rejoicing humanity.

In Jesus, God reveals to us that God is not different from humanity. Thus, Jesus’ most common and almost exclusive self-name is “The Human One” or “Son of Humanity.” He uses the term dozens of times in the four Gospels. Jesus’ reality, his cross, is to say a free “yes” to what his humanity daily asks of him. It seems we Christians have been worshiping Jesus’ journey instead of doing his journey. The worshiping feels very religious; the latter just feels human and ordinary. We are not human beings on a journey toward Spirit; we are already spiritual beings on a journey toward becoming fully human, which for some reason seems harder—precisely because it is so ordinary.

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Five for Friday John Chaffee

1.
“Lovers are the ones who know the most about God; the theologians must listen to them.”

  • Hans Urs von Balthasar, Swiss Theologian
     
    There are two ways of coming to a knowledge of God.  One way is by studying and the other is by loving.  The curious and wonderful thing is that since God IS love, then any love being given or received can become our lesson about God.

In Western, post-Enlightenment, northern hemisphere culture, the study of God has been overemphasized to the detriment of the whole tradition.

Fortunately, it is an extremely short distance to get back to the occasion of love (and experience of the Divine) that is possible in every moment.

2.
“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”

  • F. Scott Fitzgerald, American Writer
     
    I mean, we call these things “the Humanities”, don’t we?  It is all well and good to make progress within and to learn STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), however, we should not be surprised that those topics allow us to forget what it means to be human.

If the modern world has something against it, it’s that the endless pursuit of money, property, assets, business, etc. can shape us to see others more as obstacles to our agenda rather than people with whom to live and to love.

In response to that, the Humanities (and I would argue spirituality) offer a necessary correction to help round us all out.

3.
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

  • Simone Weil, French Philosopher
     
    I don’t think I can or should comment on this.  It is so succinct and to the point.

4.
“You can measure an organization (church, denomination, government, business, etc) by the number of lies you need to tell to be a part of it.”

  • Parker Palmer, American Poet and Activist
     
    The degree to which truth or untruth reigns, is the degree to which an organization is healthy.

If an organization has robust, open, and unrestricted dialogue about things in the organization, then it is bending toward health.

If an organization has restrained, behind closed doors, and whispered dialogue about things in the organization, then it is already bending toward unhealth.

Truth is not merely a philosophical ideal, it is a symptom of health and an inoculation against unhealth.

5.
“Do not [take on the same schema/form] of this [eon], but be [meta-morphed/transformed] by the [ever-newing/maturing] of your mind.”

  • Romans 12:2
     
    You have likely heard or read this verse translated into English as, “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  Although the above may read clunky, at least it carries with it some of the original ideas or nuances Saul of Tarsus intended!

This past week I was driving and became curious about what the word “renewing” was in the original Koine Greek…

I found out that it was a variant of ανακαινοωσις (anakainoosis), which breaks down as ana- meaning “again”, kaino- meaning “new”, and sis- meaning “process.”

IN ADDITION TO THAT…

Anakainoosis also means “to cause to grow up.”

This means that the transformation that many of us are looking for may not be found in simply learning new things, or going back to having what our Buddhist brothers and sisters call the “beginner’s mind,” but taking the initiative to “mature” the way we think about everything.

This blew me away because, for more than a few years, I have been shifting my theological paradigm concerning faith away from being focused on perfection and more toward maturity.  It was astounding to see that the idea of maturity was right here in a Bible verse I had to memorize during my Freshman year of college.

After all these years of being a student of the Bible, it still surprises me.

We Can’t Bypass Reality

March 14th, 2024

Therapist and author Aundi Kolber names the paradox of experiencing difficult realities while honoring our God-given dignity.

We must begin with honoring—respecting the inherent dignity and value that we and our fellow image bearers share. We honor our stories, our pain, and the actual flesh-and-blood realities we live with. There is no bypassing reality, and there is no bypassing the bodies that have carried us in and through this reality. This is where we must begin. Not because all truth is found here, but because without our whole selves there can be no true healing. When we experience difficulty through the lens of respect and dignity, we are more likely to be able to move through what comes our way.

Most healing occurs as we move toward wholeness and integration, which gives us access to fullness of life. Sometimes I think about this when I read Jesus’ words that He came that we may “have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10, author’s emphasis). How can we honor our pain and yet know we are created for fullness?

Kolber names some of the painful experiences of our shared reality:

The death, the loss of freedom, the fear, the sickness, the anger, the polarization, the scarcity, the pain. It feels hard because it is hard and has been hard.… Those who had experienced a certain level of healing before the [COVID-19] pandemic may have found themselves either triggered again or retraumatized. Folks who were already carrying the burden of chronic trauma, poverty, racism, discrimination, or other hardships may have felt those experiences intensified or worsened. Certainly, we do not want to make our home inside grief, but let us be clear: Unless we make room for the reality of our entire human experience, grief will insist on taking over the whole house.

But as we are able, God invites us to see what is so we can unlearn all the untrue narratives, keep our eyes open for safety and goodness, and enter the deeper and truer story. Dear ones, we don’t have to pretend that simply existing doesn’t hurt sometimes. It does and it has. Instead, without bypassing this reality, we are invited to move toward the resources that will allow us to soften into hope.

Kolber offers this prayer to ask God’s help as we honor our experiences:

God, here in this moment, empower me to honor everything that arises in my body, mind, and soul today; even if it means I have to return to it at another time.

Creator of all things, remind me that in honoring my experiences, You help me affirm dignity to the parts of myself that have at times felt stripped of it.

God, help me know that my desire for safety and connection is valid. In Your wisdom You designed me to need both.

But as I’m able, grant me the ability to open up to the possibilities of healing and newness while staying connected to the reality of Your love.

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Sarah Young; Jesus Calling

Do not hesitate to receive Joy from Me, for I bestow it on you abundantly. The more you rest in My Presence, the more freely My blessings flow into you. In the Light of My Love, you are gradually transformed from glory to glory. It is through spending time with Me that you realize how wide and long and high and deep is My Love for you.
    Sometimes the relationship I offer you seems too good to be true. I pour My very Life into you, and all you have to do is receive Me. In a world characterized by working and taking, the admonition to rest and receive seems too easy. There is an intricate connection between receiving and believing: As you trust Me more and more, you are able to receive Me and My blessings abundantly. Be still, and know that I am God.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

2nd Corinthians 3:18 (NLT)
18 So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.

Ephesians 3:17-19 (NLT)
17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

Psalm 46:10n (NLT)
10 “Be still, and know that I am God!
    I will be honored by every nation.
    I will be honored throughout the world.”

March 13th, 2024

The Age of Breath

The Jesuit author Patrick Saint-Jean writes of the reality of racism that violates the desire of God: 

In Ignatian spirituality, breath symbolizes both God’s Spirit and the continuous gift of life. The breath embodies our ability to connect body and spirit. When breath departs from the body, so does the spirit. In that sense, breath is both universal and utterly unique to the individual….

Breathing testifies to the Divine Presence within each human. This means that when someone robs another human being of breath, they are denying that person’s most essential dignity. Furthermore, they are usurping God’s place. They are claiming a privilege that is not theirs to claim. To deny breath severs the living connections that are meant to unite us with God and one another….

Every breath is a reminder of God’s presence; every breath affirms the God-given value of each person’s spirit. In other words, the struggle for breath is a sacred struggle. It is an expression of the Holy Breath seeking to find freedom in our world.

During the summer of 2020, as I turned more deeply to the faith tradition I love so much, I learned to breathe as a person who is seeking Christ. I realized that racism’s ongoing refusal to acknowledge Black people as fellow human beings expressed not only disrespect for the Black community but also a disrespect for God and creation…. At the same time, I began to sense that, despite the ugliness of racism that has marred the Age of Breath, God continues to breathe through all things. I believe it was the Divine Breath that fanned the fires of racial protest, calling us around the world to speak out for justice.

Saint-Jean believes the pandemic and racial justice reckonings of 2020 compel us to pay attention to who can breathe, and who cannot.

Until the COVID-19 pandemic, breathing was something most white people took for granted. They may have never before realized the breathlessness that so many of us in the Black community experience daily. For centuries, people of color have had to constantly beg for oxygen, even though this is a gift that God grants freely to everyone. But now, in that breathless summer of 2020, whites were also called on to come face to face with the deeper significance of breathing….

Whatever the color of our skin, all of us have experienced the consequences of living in a world that has historically chosen to be unaware of some of its children. For centuries, people of color have been invisibly bleeding on the floor of systemic oppression, gasping for breath, dying from the thirst of repression, and starving from the lack of recognition and dignity. They have been the “least of these” of whom Jesus spoke (Matthew 25:40), those who surprise us by revealing the presence of the suffering Christ in our midst. They challenge us all to be aware of their dignity. They demand that we face what we have become.

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From “How?” to “Who?”
Our modern consumer culture is obsessed with the question “How?” How do I find success? How do I lose weight? How do I raise healthy kids? How do I overcome my anxiety? How do I live my best life now?Many of our best-selling products and books are predicated on answering the question “How?” And this question dominates American pulpits with sermons designed to attract religious consumers looking for practical help. Ours is a society fixated on techniques, formulas, and processes.In this regard, we share a lot in common with pre-Christian societies. Pagan religions—like the sort practiced in Naaman’s homeland—were a spirituality of technique. They were interested in securing desired outcomes through the appeasement, manipulation, and control of deities and spiritual forces.

Idolatry and pagan worship were all about “How?” How do I defeat my enemy? How do I know the future? How do I ensure a good harvest? How do I make it rain? How do I cure my disease?The answer to “How?” required employing the right techniques or processes in the form of incantations, witchcraft, divination, sacrifices, astrology, or other superstitious practices. If done precisely and correctly, the gods would give you what you sought. Deviate from the correct process, however, and you’d be denied. It was very mechanical, transactional, and fearful—like ordering lunch from Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi.”

Naaman carried these pagan assumptions when he sought healing from Israel’s God. He expected Elisha to give him elaborate instructions and detailed rituals to cure his leprosy. And, we must assume that Naaman had already tried every kind of spell and sorcery available in Syria without success. So, when Elisha told him to simply bathe in the Jordan River—the most ordinary activity imaginable—Naaman was furious.Was Elisha mocking him? Was he deliberately treating him with disrespect because he was a foreigner? Was the prophet of Israel hiding his knowledge about how to control his God because Naaman was his Syrian enemy? Was he holding out on Naaman hoping to get paid before giving up his secret knowledge?

No. Elisha was not being cruel. And unlike the pagan priests in Syria, he was not being transactional. He was being transformational. Elisha knew that Naaman’s idolatry and paganism were fixated on detailed techniques, so he didn’t give him any. He wanted to shift Naaman’s focus from the question “How?” to the question “Who?” The most important thing was not how to heal his leprosy, but who would heal his leprosy.

Elisha wanted Naaman to discover the living God of Israel who was beyond the control of any priest or prophet.Be wary of ministries or Christian leaders offering endless techniques with guaranteed outcomes. And be cautious of those always selling solutions about how to do something God’s way, but who display very little of his character themselves. It is entirely possible to run our lives with biblical principles or Christian values, and still miss the only thing that ultimately matters—Jesus Christ himself. The real question of our faith, and of life itself, is not “How?” but “Who?”

DAILY SCRIPTURE
MATTHEW 7:18-23 
2 KINGS 5:1-27


WEEKLY PRAYER Benedict of Nursia (480 – 543)

Almighty God, give us wisdom to perceive you, intellect to understand you, diligence to seek you, patience to wait for you, eyes to behold you, a heart to meditate upon you, and life to proclaim you, through the power of the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.

A World of Beauty

March 12th, 2024

In her letter “Earth Hope,” Ghanaian theologian Mercy Oduyoye calls on future generations to encounter the reality of the earth and our place in it.

The long and short of all this is that if we want to live long, and have a healthy earth with healthy waters, we have to stop being self-centered. Life is stronger than us but life is also fragile and vulnerable in human hands. We are greedy and inconsiderate and so degrade the earth, the waters, and other human beings. If we are to leave a beautiful world for you and your grandchildren, we have to take seriously the fact that creation does not belong to us; we are part of creation. We cannot do what we like with earth, water, and other human beings. God expects us to keep the earth in good condition. The earth takes care of us and we have to take care of the earth and of each other.…

The spirit of God the Creator has been with us and we are all fired up like the disciples at Pentecost. We shall go out to tell others that another world is possible. I hope you will also tell all your playmates, classmates, and schoolmates that a possible world of beauty is in sight. [1]

Theologian Larry Rasmussen writes letters to his grandchildren, reflecting upon wonder, beauty, and our planet’s future: 

Did you know that before your generation, no humans of any stripe ever lived on a planet as hot as this one?…

Still, the world has not stopped being beautiful. You will remember our days on the red rock mesas of New Mexico, “this beautiful broken country of erosional beauty where rocks tell time differently and the wing beats of ravens come to us as prayers.” [2] You’ll remember our adobe-style house, too, and many patio hours sketching with colored chalk or doing a puzzle together. You may also remember dark skies of bright stars, even here in town, and the blue and pink stripes on the horizon at dawn.

I guess the Greeks had it right. Their word cosmos means “order”—those stars in their courses—and it also means “beauty,” as in cosmetics, though cosmetics is a bit trivial for the life and death of a hundred billion galaxies! Or for a striped dawn.

Cosmos as beauty and order belongs to life, [grandson], so go Greek and claim the beauty that exists. Let it guide you. Beauty is its own resistance, contending with all that is ugly and chaotic.…

If the tumultuous world has not stopped being beautiful, neither has love stopped being love: “Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy.” [3] That’s my latest most favorite author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and she’s right: if we choose joy over despair and love over hate, it’s because Earth offers love and joy daily. [4]

The Problem with Experiences
After arriving at Elisha’s house, Naaman was furious for two reasons. First, the prophet had shamed Naaman by not personally greeting him. Instead, Elisha sent one of his servants to greet the “great man” from Syria and give him the instructions for healing his leprosy. And that was the second reason for Naaman’s anger.Elisha’s messenger told Naaman to wash himself in the Jordan River seven times. It was a shockingly simple procedure; nothing like the elaborate healing rituals demanded by the pagan gods of Naaman’s homeland. And there was nothing particularly special about the Jordan either. As Naaman noted, the rivers back in Syria were much more impressive. Therefore “he turned and went off in a rage” (2 Kings 5:12).Naaman’s pagan religion had taught him that asking a deity for an extraordinary request required an extraordinary ritual. He believed that the power of the gods was only accessed through sacred experiences, in sacred locations, and mediated by sacred priests.

But Elisha was deliberately challenging Naaman’s pagan expectations. First, by refusing to even meet with him, the prophet was ensuring Naaman did not think Elisha possessed any control over Israel’s God. Now, with these uncomplicated instructions, he was showing that Israel’s God would not be manipulated by human rituals. Naaman was having his trust in both religious experts and religious experiences deconstructed.It’s remarkable how little has changed over 3,000 years. Every time we expect to encounter God at a massive, highly-produced worship event, or by traveling to some sacred retreat or conference, we are showing that Naaman’s pagan proclivities are still prevalent today.

Many of us carry the assumption that to really know God’s presence and power, we must escape from our ordinary circumstances. We must metaphorically—and sometimes literally—climb a mountain. We need to surround ourselves with hundreds or thousands of others in a space made sacred through amplified music, theater lighting, and projected graphics. And when that “mountaintop” experience no longer gives us the spiritual high we seek, we’ll find another even louder and higher experience.Of course, even when these experiences do meet our emotional expectations we are still left wondering—We’re my feelings really the result of encountering God and his Spirit, or were they just the neurological byproduct of a meticulously controlled environment?Elisha wanted Naaman to have no doubts about who and what was responsible for his healing. So, rather than finding God’s power through elaborate religious experiences, he told Naaman to seek God in the mundane. Perhaps we should too.

DAILY SCRIPTURE
JOHN 4:19-24 
2 KINGS 5:1-27


WEEKLY PRAYER
Benedict of Nursia (480 – 543)Almighty God, give us wisdom to perceive you, intellect to understand you, diligence to seek you, patience to wait for you, eyes to behold you, a heart to meditate upon you, and life to proclaim you, through the power of the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.

March 10th, 2024

The Really Real

Richard Rohr invites us to enter the Reign of God—what he describes as the “Really Real”—even though we face many difficult “realities” in our lives.

Jesus announced, lived, and inaugurated for history a new social order. He called it the Reign or Kingdom of God, and it became the guiding image of his entire ministry. The Reign of God is the subject of Jesus’ inaugural address (Mark 1:15; Matthew 4:17; Luke 4:16–21), his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), and most of his parables.

Once this guiding vision of God’s will became clear to Jesus after his baptism and time alone in the desert, everything else came into perspective. In fact, Matthew’s Gospel says Jesus began to preach “from then onward” (4:17). He had his absolute reference point that allowed him to judge and evaluate everything else properly. [1]

What we discover in the New Testament, especially in Matthew’s Gospel, is that the Reign of God is a new world order, a new age, a promised hope begun in the teaching and ministry of Jesus—and continued in us. I think of the Reign of God as the Really Real.

That experience of the Really Real—the “Kingdom” experience—is the heart of Jesus’ teaching. It’s Reality with a capital R, the very bottom line, the pattern-that-connects. It’s the goal of all true religion, the experience of the Absolute, the Eternal, what is. [2]

In order to explain this concept, it may be helpful to say what it’s not: the “Kingdom” is not the same as heaven. Many Christians have mistakenly thought that the Reign of God is “eternal life,” or where we go after we die. That idea is disproven by Jesus’ own prayer: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). As always, Jesus joins earth and heaven.

“Thy Kingdom come” means very clearly that God’s realm is something that enters into this world, or, as Jesus often says, “is close at hand.” We shouldn’t project it into another world. It’s a reality that breaks into this world now and then, when people are like God.

God gives us just enough tastes of God’s realm to believe in it and to want it more than anything. In his parables, Jesus never says the Kingdom is totally now or totally later. It’s always now-and-not-yet. We only have the first fruits of the Kingdom in this world, but we experience enough to know it’s the only thing that will ever satisfy us. Once we have had the truth, half-truths can’t satisfy us anymore. In its light, everything else is relative, even our own life. When we experience the Kingdom or love of God, it becomes ultimate and real truth for us.

When we live inside the Really Real, we live in a “threshold space” between this world and the next. We learn how to live between heaven and earth, one foot in both, holding them precious together. [3]

Our Limited Perspectives

For Father Richard, contemplation begins as we realize the limits of our own perspective. Reality is far vaster than we can perceive. 

Every viewpoint is a view from a point. Unless we recognize and admit our own personal and cultural viewpoints, we will never know how to decentralize our own perspective. We will live with a high degree of illusion that brings much suffering into the world. I think this is what Simone Weil meant by stating, “The love of God is the unique source of all certainties.” [1] Only an outer and positive reference point utterly grounds the mind and heart.

One of the keys to wisdom is that we must recognize our own biases, our own addictive preoccupations, and those things to which, for some reason, we refuse to pay attention. Until we see these patterns (which is early-stage contemplation), we will never be able to see what we do not see. Without such critical awareness of the small self, there is little chance that any individual will produce truly great knowing or enduring wisdom. [2]

Only people who have done their inner work can see beyond their own biases to something transcendent, something that crosses the boundaries of culture and individual experience. People with a distorted image of self, world, or God will be largely incapable of experiencing what is Really Real in the world. They will see things through a narrow keyhole. They’ll see instead what they need reality to be, what they’re afraid it is, or what they’re angry about. They’ll see everything through their aggression, their fear, or their agenda. In other words, they won’t see it at all.

That’s the opposite of true contemplatives, who have an enhanced capacity to see what is, whether it’s favorable or not, whether it meets their needs or not, whether they like it or not, and whether that reality causes weeping or rejoicing. Most of us will usually misinterpret our experience until we have been moved out of our false center. Until then, there is too much of the self in the way. Most of us do not see things as they are; we see things as we are. That is no small point.

When we touch our deepest image of self, a deeper image of reality, or a new truth about God, we’re touching something that opens us to the sacred. We’ll want to weep or to be silent, or to run away from it and change the subject because it’s too deep, it’s too heavy. As T. S. Eliot wrote, “human kind cannot bear very much reality.” [3]

That’s why I—and so many others—emphasize contemplation. It’s the way of going to the experience of the absolute without going toward ideology. There’s a difference. It’s going toward the experience of the good, the true, the beautiful, the real without going into a head trip, or taking the small self—or one’s momentary vantage point—too seriously. 

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Everything is Going to be Ok. Everything.
Near the end of his life, Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest, professor, and author, became fascinated by a German trapeze troupe called the Flying Rodleighs. In their flying and spinning, he saw more than an exhilarating show—he saw an illustration of our life with God.Nouwen recognized that the flyer—the person soaring through the air—was not the star of the trapeze show. The flyer’s maneuvers are only possible because he fully trusts that he will be caught. Everything depends on the catcher.

Nouwen saw the connection to the life of faith. “I can only fly freely when I know there is a catcher to catch me,” he wrote. Nouwen continued:“If we are to take risks, to be free, in the air, in life, we have to know there’s a catcher. We have to know that when we come down from it all, we’re going to be caught, we’re going to be safe. The great hero is the least visible. Trust the catcher.”Nouwen’s trapeze illustration captures an important reality. The courage to obey God is proportional to how safe we believe we are.

In Naaman’s story, this sense of safety is what the king of Israel lacked. His fear prevented him from courageously helping his neighbor, and from fulfilling God’s purposes for Israel. I suspect his vision of God and his goodness was deficient.Maybe the king had forgotten the stories of how the Lord had rescued his ancestors from Egypt with signs and wonders, how he gave Joshua victory when the people entered the promised land, or the great ways he protected David—Israel’s greatest king. The king most certainly had ignored God’s many promises to protect Israel if they remained faithful to his covenant. Without being grounded in these stories and assurances the danger of his enemies filled his imagination more than the benevolence of his God

.For the Christian, the New Testament takes this assurance even further. The cross is where we witness Jesus’ ultimate surrender of control to the Father. In death, Jesus released the bar to fly through the air entrusting himself entirely into the Father’s hands, and the resurrection is proof that God caught him and that he will catch us too. Therefore, we are free to truly fly—to trust God by loving both our neighbors and our enemies no matter how much the world threatens us.

Last year, Tim Keller, one of our generation’s most influential Christian ministers and thinkers, passed away. I had the privilege of meeting Tim a few times and found him to be as thoughtful, humble, and wise in person as he was in the pulpit and with his pen. In 2020, after his cancer diagnosis, he was asked what he would say to Christians who are nervous about the future. His response is a reminder to trust the Catcher:“If Jesus Christ was actually raised from the dead…then everything’s going to be alright. Whatever you’re worried about right now, whatever you are afraid of, everything is actually going to be ok. Because we’re not just talking about resurrected people—and this is where Christianity is unique—we’re talking about a resurrected world. There are plenty of other religions that talk about a future afterlife which is a non-material world. In other words, you get a consolation for the world we’ve lost. Christianity says it’s not just your bodies being resurrected but the world is actually going to be a material world that’s cleansed from all evil and suffering and sin. If Jesus Christ was raised from the dead then the whole world is going to be resurrected and everything is going to be ok. Everything.

”DAILY SCRIPTURE
ROMANS 8:18-25 
2 KINGS 5:1-27


WEEKLY PRAYERAmbrose of Milan (340 – 397)Preserve your work, Lord. Guard the gift you have given even to those who pull back.
For I knew I was not worthy to be called your servant, but by your grace I am what I am.
And grant that I may know how with genuine affection to mourn with those who sin. Grant that as often as I learn of the sin of anyone who has fallen, I may suffer with them, and not scold them in my pride, but mourn and weep with them, so that in weeping over another I may also mourn for myself.
Amen.

God In All Things

March 8th, 2024

Father Richard acknowledges the shift that is required to recognize and honor the soul of nature:

Acknowledging the intrinsic value, beauty, and even soul of creation, elements, plants, and animals is a major paradigm shift for most Western Christians. In fact, many in the past often dismissed such thinking as animism or paganism. We limited God’s love and salvation to our own human species and then in this theology of scarcity, we did not even have enough love left to cover all of humanity! To be honest, God ended up looking quite stingy and inept—hardly “victorious,” as our Easter hymns claim.

The word profane comes from the Latin words pro (“in front of”) and fanum (“temple”). We thought we lived “outside the temple.” Without a nature-based spirituality, it was a profane universe, bereft of Spirit. We had to keep building shrines and churches to capture and hold our now domesticated and tamed God. Soon we didn’t know where to look for the divine, as we made God’s presence so limited. We became like fish swimming around looking for water, and often arguing about who owned the water!

I’m not saying that God is all things or that all things are God (pantheism). I am saying that each living thing reveals some aspect of God. God is greater than the whole of our universe, and as Creator inter-penetrates all created things (panentheism). [1]

When God manifests spirit through matter, then matter becomes a holy thing. The material world is the place where we can comfortably worship God just by walking on it, loving it, and respecting it. Everything visible, without exception, is the outpouring of God. What else could it really be? The incarnation is not only “God becoming Jesus.” It is a much broader event, which is why John’s Gospel first describes God’s presence in the general word “flesh” (John 1:14). This is the ubiquitous Christ that we continue to encounter in other human beings, in a mountain, a blade of grass, a spider web, or a starling. [2] When we can enjoy all these things as holy, “we experience the universe as a communion of subjects, not as a collection of objects” as the “geologian” Fr. Thomas Berry said so wisely. [3]

When we love something, we grant it soul, we see its soul, and we let its soul touch ours. We must love something deeply to know its soul (anima). Before the resonance of love, we are largely inattentive to the meaning, value, and power of ordinary things to “save” us and help us live in union with the Source of all being. In fact, until we can appreciate and even delight in the soul of other things, even trees and animals, we probably haven’t discovered our own souls either. Soul knows soul through love, which Jesus teaches as the great commandment (Matthew 22:37–39). [4]

__________________________________________

Five For Friday John Chafee

1.
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

  • Carl Rogers, American Psychologist
     
    The work of Carl Rogers has been drifting to the forefront for me.  Something about his approach of having “unconditional positive regard” for people resonates with me…  Probably because there is some lesson in that topic that is next for me to learn.

The Christian tradition has held on to the truth of this quote for a long time.  When we say that “grace changes people” it is because there is some ancient and universal truth that when we accept ourselves exactly as we are we are then most able to change.

Shame, on the other hand, has the unfortunate consequence of leading people to hide/excuse/rationalize/deny their problematic sides rather than accept them and confront them.

Grace and shame are in a sense dialectical opposites of one another.

2.
“Father Dan Berrigan was here: an altogether winning and warm intelligence and a man who, I think, has more than anyone I have ever met the true wide-ranging and simple heart of the Jesuit: zeal, compassion, understanding, and uninhibited religious freedom. Just seeing him restores one’s hope in the Church.”

  • Thomas Merton, 20 Century Trappist Monk
     
    Most of my heroes in the Christian tradition were the punks and hooligans who stirred the pot, disrupted the status quo, and challenged conventions.  What is striking about these figures is that they came from deep devotion and reverence for the core of the faith, just like Jesus.  Most reformations were begun by people who were more than simply distanced admirers of Jesus and were people who sought to live out their cruciform lives with wholehearted conviction…  Just like Berrigan and Merton.

3.
“Religion depends on the maturity of the one interpreting it. If it is being interpreted by someone immature and unwell, then it will be immature and unwell. If it is being interpreted by someone mature and loving, then it will be mature and loving.”

  • From The Wonderstanding of Father Simeon
     
    When I wrote The Wonderstanding of Father Simeon, I did not know what was coming out of me at the time.

By the time I was more than halfway done, I realized that the dialogue between the two main characters was two sides of my personality reconciling with each other, my cynical side with my monastic side.  Sometimes I would write a sentence or paragraph and realize that I just worded something I believed to be true but had not said out loud before…

Today’s 3rd quote was one of those insights.  Religion in the hands of mature people will always be interpreted in a mature manner.

4.
“Your imperfections do not shock me, for I see myself with so many.”

  • Teresa of Avila, 16th Century Carmelite Nun
     
    Perhaps one of the reasons we fail to show compassion or hospitality for others is that we fail to see ourselves in others.  The reality is that we have far more in common than we initially realize. 

5.

  • Chuck DeGroat, Pastor and Professor
     
    A short while ago Chuck wrote a fantastic book, When Narcissism Comes to Church.  It is a compassionate exploration of what can happen when there is narcissistic leadership and/or a narcissistic church culture.

In the book he covers how church cultures can be seduced by narcissistic leadership who (without their knowledge) have a pathological need to be in the spotlight and to do large or grand things for “God.”

He also covers how unhealthy church cultures have a vested interest in NOT confronting the unhealth within their emotional system because they have invested too much time and capital around the narcissistic leader who is still able to “fill the pews.”

Healthy church cultures are committed to action, not to whispering lip service.  They may not be perfect, but they at least can self-correct, self-diagnose, and self-regulate.  Chuck DeGroat is absolutely correct, healthy churches walk the walk rather than just talk the talk.

Parable of the Week:

The Gardening Samurai

One day, an older Samurai warrior was out in his garden.

A potential student approached him and inquired if he was still able or willing to take on a protege.

The Samurai put down his gardening tools, stood, and turned around to inspect the potential student.

He was young and strapping, clearly physically fit, and brandishing two swords at his hips, one short and one long.

The Samurai inspected him for a moment more, but not at anything without, he was inspecting something within the young man.

“No, I will not train you.  Go home to your family.”

“But I cannot, I gave everything up to follow this path in life.  I have trained and disciplined myself on my own for this moment… and you reject me?”

“You have not yet discovered that gardening tools are more desirable than blades.  You are in love with war, not with peace.”

A Pattern of Reciprocity

March 7th, 2024

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Potawatomi botanist, writes of our place in nature:

In the indigenous view, humans are viewed as somewhat lesser beings in the democracy of species. We are referred to as the younger brothers of Creation, so like younger brothers we must learn from our elders. Plants were here first and have had a long time to figure things out. They live both above and below ground and hold the earth in place. Plants know how to make food from light and water. Not only do they feed themselves, but they make enough to sustain the lives of all the rest of us. Plants are providers for the rest of the community and exemplify the virtue of generosity, always offering food….

Many indigenous peoples share the understanding that we are each endowed with a particular gift, a unique ability…. It is understood that these gifts have a dual nature, though: a gift is also a responsibility. If the bird’s gift is song, then it has a responsibility to greet the day with music. It is the duty of birds to sing and the rest of us receive the song as a gift.

Asking what is our responsibility is perhaps also to ask, What is our gift? And how shall we use it? [1]

Author Debra Rienstra considers the destructive role humanity has often played in relation to the earth:

If humans didn’t exist at all, life would continue on earth. Let’s not flatter ourselves: biologically speaking, the earth does not need us to tend and care for it. Life on earth existed for eons before we arrived. Have we made the earth better by our arrival? Theologians have long interpreted Genesis 1:26–28 [“be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it”] as God’s instruction to humans to unfold the potential of creation. Very well, but in our unfolding of potentials, we can also destroy, especially now that we have become so very fruitful and multiplied to so many billions. “Stewarding” and “caring” are only necessary because humans take things from the earth to survive.

Rienstra responds to Christians who do not take responsibility to care for the earth, believing “God will do something” to rescue us:

God allows people a great deal of freedom to do evil and ruinous things. Giving humans moral responsibility entails allowing us to act immorally and to suffer the consequences of our actions—or in the case of climate change, to let other people to suffer the consequences, at least at first. Do we really want to find out just how far God will let this go before God “does something”? Or could we instead perceive that God is indeed doing something, through the knowledge and work of people and through the self-healing powers built into the planet? The question for each of us is whether to resist or cooperate….

What can we give back through a pattern of reciprocity to a planet that gives us so much? What will make the more-than-human creation glad that we are here? [2]

__________________________________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Listen to the love song that I am continually singing to you. I take great delight in you…I rejoice over you with singing. The voices of the world are a cacophony (a harsh discordant mixture of sounds) of chaos, pulling you this way and that. Don’t listen to those voices; challenge them with My Word. Learn to take mini-breaks from the world, finding a place to be still in My Presence and listen to My voice.
    There is immense hidden treasure to be found through listening to Me. Though I pour out blessings upon you always, some of My richest blessings have to be actively sought. I love to reveal Myself to you, and your seeking heart opens you up to receive more of My disclosure. Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Zephaniah 3:17 (NLT)

17 For the Lord your God is living among you.

    He is a mighty savior.

He will take delight in you with gladness.

    With his love, he will calm all your fears.*

    He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”

*Or He will be silent in His love. Greek and Syriac versions read He will renew you with his love.

Additional insight regarding Zephaniah 3:17: Zephaniah points out that gladness results when we allow God to be with us. We do that by faithfully following him and obeying his commands. Then God rejoices over us with singing. If you want to be happy, draw close to the source of happiness by obeying God.
Matthew 7:7 (NLT)
Effective Prayer
7 “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.

March 6th, 2024

Earth Spirituality

The ecological theologian Thomas Berry (1914–2009) reflects on our much-needed connection with nature:

What do you see when you look up at the sky at night at the blazing stars against the midnight heavens? What do you see when the dawn breaks over the eastern horizon? What are your thoughts … in the autumn when the leaves turn brown and are blown away … [or] when you look out over the ocean in the evening? What do you see?

Many earlier peoples saw in these natural phenomena a world beyond ephemeral appearance, an abiding world, a world imaged forth in the wonders of the sun and clouds by day and the stars and planets by night, a world that enfolded the human in some profound manner. This other world was guardian, teacher, healer—the source from which humans were born, nourished, protected, guided, and the destiny to which we returned….

We have lost our connection to this other deeper reality of things. Consequently, we now find ourselves on a devastated continent where nothing is holy, nothing is sacred. We no longer have a world of inherent value, no world of wonder, no untouched, unspoiled, unused world. We think we have understood everything. But we have not. We have used everything. By “developing” the planet, we have been reducing Earth to a new type of barrenness. Scientists are telling us that we are in the midst of the sixth extinction period in Earth’s history. No such extinction of living forms has occurred since the extinction of the dinosaurs some sixty-five million years ago. [1]

Berry calls for a spirituality that honors the natural world:

The ecological age fosters the deep awareness of the sacred presence within each reality of the universe. There is an awe and reverence due to the stars in the heavens, the sun, and all heavenly bodies; to the seas and the continents; to all living forms of trees and flowers; to the myriad expressions of life in the sea; to the animals of the forests and the birds of the air. To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine voice. [2]

To preserve this sacred world of our origins from destruction, our great need is for renewal of the entire Western religious-spiritual tradition…. We need to move from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to a spirituality of intimacy with it, … to a spirituality of the divine as revealed in the visible world about us, from a spirituality concerned with justice simply to humans to a justice that includes the larger Earth community….

We cannot save ourselves without saving the world in which we live.… We will live or die as this world lives or dies. We can say this both physically and spiritually. We will be spiritually nourished by this world or we will be starved for spiritual nourishment. No other revelatory experience can do for the human what the experience of the natural world does. [3]  

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A Contracting Posture of the Soul
Nothing changes a person more quickly or more dramatically than fear. We saw in Naaman’s story how the king of Israel misinterpreted the letter from the king of Syria because he was afraid. Rather than faithfully fulfilling Israel’s calling to reveal God to the nations, the king refused to help Naaman find healing, tore his own robes, and lamented what he feared was an imminent invasion from Syria.

Here’s a more recent example of how fear causes a rapid and dramatic change. In a 2011 survey, evangelical Christians were the religious group in the U.S. most likely to say that the personal character of elected officials mattered. By 2016, evangelicals were the religious group most likely to say character didn’t matter. What caused the sudden reversal of values? Journalist Tim Alberta asked one prominent pastor and he answered with two words: “Under siege.”He explained that evangelical Christians now feel afraid, persecuted, and threatened. Under those conditions, their previous commitment to certain public principles and ethical standards has loosened or been abandoned altogether. Like Israel’s king in Naaman’s story, fear has caused them to forsake their calling to pursue safety instead.

Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian, said fear causes a contraction of the soul. He compared its effect on a person to a city under siege. In the pre-modern world, when an army attacked a city, the inhabitants in the countryside would gather their resources and barricade themselves behind the city’s walls. From this contracted, inward-focused position they would hunker down and hope their food and water outlasted the attacking army’s resources and will to fight.

Similarly, when we are afraid we also contract; we pull our resources—physical, emotional, economic, and moral—inward in a posture of protection and self-preservation. We can think only about ourselves, our needs, our survival, and nothing else. As Aquinas said, “Fear is such a powerful emotion for humans that when we allow it to take us over, it drives compassion right out of our hearts.”From this defensive, contracted posture the callings we’ve received from Jesus Christ get quickly abandoned, and the higher reasoning necessary for compassion and ethics becomes impossible. Give to the one who asks, forgive those who’ve sinned against you, turn the other cheek, love your enemy—these commands are nonsensical to the soul contracted by fear. As Henri Nouwen said, “Fear engenders fear, it never gives birth to love.”In this election year, regardless of your political affiliation, there will be many voices seeking to make you afraid, to contract your soul, with the effect of preventing you from following the generous, self-giving way of Jesus. Some of these voices may even claim to be Christian. But fear is never the way of Christ; it is the way of antichrist. Because God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power and love (2 Timothy 1:7).

DAILY SCRIPTURE
ROMANS 8:31-39 
2 KINGS 5:1-27


WEEKLY PRAYER
Ambrose of Milan (340 – 397)
Preserve your work, Lord. Guard the gift you have given even to those who pull back.
For I knew I was not worthy to be called your servant, but by your grace I am what I am.
And grant that I may know how with genuine affection to mourn with those who sin. Grant that as often as I learn of the sin of anyone who has fallen, I may suffer with them, and not scold them in my pride, but mourn and weep with them, so that in weeping over another I may also mourn for myself.
Amen.

March 5th, 2024

The Stones Cry Out

Marya Grathwohl, a Sister of St. Francis, describes an experience with a longtime friend driving up Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains: 

Dorie, who had distanced herself from organized religion, nevertheless coins the phrase “rock rosary” to express the sequence of life mysteries locked in the rock layers: reptiles, forests, amphibians, fish, bodies of cooperating cells, photosynthesis.

As the mountain reveals the splendor of life’s evolution, I find myself asking, “Who are we human beings? Within this array of life-forms, what is our role, our gift to Earth?” These immense questions require a universe or religion….

Then near the summit, we abruptly round a cliff. Another sign: PRECAMBRIAN 2.9 BILLION YEARS AGO. GRANITE. And my soul slams into awe….

We find a pull-off. I race back to the cliff and near the sign pick up something small. A stone, heavy for its size, glistens with quartz. I hold it close to my lips.

“You,” I whisper, “you witnessed life’s genius in creating photosynthesis.”

I stand silent, listening. Time stops.

In my hands is a scripture, a stone crying out. I recall that it was a mere two thousand years ago that Jesus said, “If the people are silent, the stones will cry out” [Luke 19:40].

Earth, a rocky planet, cries out. Earth cries out against global mass extinction of species, the destruction of human-caused climate change, and the prowess of militarized and industrialized humanity to poison and destroy Earth’s support systems: soil, air, and water. Earth cries out against the suffering we humans cause each other.

Here is my question for the mountain. How do we learn to become contributing members of the pageant of life, of this ongoing story of a communion of species, subjects in their own right? [1]

Grathwohl describes soulful beauty in nature as the Divine Presence: 

After almost fifty years of being a Franciscan Sister, I learned that beauty for Franciscan theologians and philosophers is the ultimate and most intimate knowing of God, another name for God, the name for God. Saint Bonaventure and Blessed John Duns Scotus teach that the beauty and diversity of creation nourish us through suffering and loss. When we’ve run out of purpose, when memories of war sicken us, when Earth is attacked with unparalleled savagery for coal, gas, oil, timber, and profit, when poverty runs rampant and extreme wealth for very few soars, when friends betray us, and everyone we love lives far away … then, still beauty endures, and helps us make it through. Like God…. [2]

I sense now that soul knows itself and its life within the great compassionate Mystery we strive to name. Soul stirs, rises, grows toward and within the unnameable silence and beauty of God, a mothering watery God, a rain beyond Catholic, beyond any specific religion or creed, a rain that soothes us in suffering and challenges complacency. Soul flowers in this rain of the worlds, of meteor showers, of the cosmos. [3]

==================

Hillsong’s Joel Houston Clarifies Evolution Views After Sparking Debate With Worship Song ‘So Will I’

By Jeannie Ortega Law, Christian Post Reporter Friday, June 29, 2018

Joel Houston explains the meaning behind the Hillsong Worship song, 'So Will I (100 Billion X)', December 2017.
Joel Houston explains the meaning behind the Hillsong Worship song, “So Will I (100 Billion X)”, December 2017. | (Screenshot:Youtube)

With one of Hillsong United’s latest hits, “So Will I (100 Billion X),” at the center of a creation versus evolution debate, worship leader Joel Houston is setting the record straight on where he stands.

“So Will I (100 Billion X)” is a song off of the album, There Is More, recorded live at ‪the Hillsong Worship and Creative Conference in Sydney, Australia. Houston was recently asked on Twitter why the song mentions evolution.

The lyrics in question are: “And as You speak/A hundred billion creatures catch Your breath/Evolving in pursuit of what You said.”

Houston, who is the eldest son of Hillsong Church’s founders as well as lead musician in the worship band Hillsong United and worship leader of Hillsong Church in New York City, responded by saying:

“Evolution is undeniable—created by God as a reflective means of displaying nature’s pattern of renewal in pursuance of God’s Word—an ode to the nature of the creative God it reflects—and only ever in part—not the SOURCE! Science and faith aren’t at odds. God created the Big-Bang.”

His response sparked a Twitter debate on evolution versus creation and drew some backlash. In back-and-forth exchanges with various Twitter users, Houston went on to offer some context to his earlier tweet.

He wrote: “Context—things evolve, they change and adapt, I DON’T believe in evolution as a theory of SOURCE, I believe it’s merely a pattern of nature—created by God, reflecting Nature’s desire for renewal, survival, new life—something-SomeONE—Like God.”

He also said: “I think what gets lost, strangely enough, is that in any case, The Word, comes before any kind of Big Bang.. ‘let there be light’!! BOOM!! And there WAS!!! 

When asked if he believes in the “Big Bang theory” or “literal 6 day creation,” Houston said, “It means I believe God created everything and His Word cane first..”

He further clarified his beliefs on whether man evolved from an ape, saying, “i believe God created humanity out of the dust.. and breathed his breath/Spirit into us..”

The popular worship leader admitted that when writing the song, the band was “aware of the implications ‘evolving’ would serve as a conflicting adjective for some” but said they still felt “it was worth it—if just a foolish desire to enlarge our thinking of a God who was-is-&-is to come, making all things new, ‘from-Him, through-Him, To-Him.'” 

He explained that God is “way bigger than we think,” and regardless of one’s theological or scientific beliefs, He “is undiminished by our limitations.”

“If God’s creative process was an easy working week, or finely crafted over six-ages of millennia, does it make Him any more or less God?” Houston posed. “Or us any more or less created in His image? Either way, it was an unfathomably wonderful six-day process, however you think to see it.”

He added, “The way I see it—the NATURE of a fallen-world evolves in-decay BECAUSE of our best attempts to adapt to a—’survival of the fittest’ kind of existence—yet God, fully reveals His NATURE in-and-through JESUS, who embodied ours, and showed us a DIFFERENT way. Spirit & Flesh.”

The millennial worshiper went on to break down the structure of the song to help critics understand the development of the lyrics. He maintained they couldn’t sing of or understand God’s promises (in second verse) without the premise of the first verse (God of Creation). “Nor can we fully comprehend the reconciling power of the third-verse (God of SALVATION), without the tension in the middle.”

“The entire premise of ‘So Will I’, is the redemptive, creative, authority & power of God’s Word. That at the end of the day, all our best theories, ideas, dogmas & best attempts at understanding, will ultimately surrender to the ‘Word at the beginning,'” he concluded.