Tuesday, May 19, 2026

CAC Dean of Faculty Carmen Acevedo Butcher translated The Cloud of Unknowing, the foundational text for Centering Prayer. Contemplative practice creates space for us to be with God, after which we return to our daily lives and commitments. The anonymous author of The Cloud encourages beginners to enter contemplation with these simple instructions:

Lift up your heart to God with a gentle stirring of love. Focus on him alone. Want him, and not anything he’s made. Think on nothing but him. Don’t let anything else run through your mind and will. Here’s how. Forget what you know. Forget everything God made and everybody who exists and everything that’s going on in the world, until your thoughts and emotions aren’t focused on reaching toward anything…. Let them be. For a moment don’t care about anything…

Everyone on earth has been helped by contemplation in wonderful ways. You can’t know how much…. So stop hesitating. Do this work until you feel the delight of it. [1]

The author urges beginner contemplatives to welcome the temporary experience of “unknowing” that takes place in this type of prayer: 

The first time you practice contemplation, you’ll only experience a darkness, like a cloud of unknowing. You won’t know what this is.  You’ll only know that in your will you feel a simple reaching out to God. You must also know that this darkness and this cloud will always be between you and your God, whatever you do. They will always keep you from seeing him clearly by the light of understanding in your intellect and will block you from feeling him in the sweetness of love in your emotions. So be sure you make your home in this darkness. Stay there as long as you can…. It’s the closest you can get to God here on earth, by waiting in this darkness and in this cloud. [2]

For Acevedo Butcher, contemplation is an essential practice of our time, enabling us to meet the challenging conditions of our lives with greater wisdom and compassion: 

We need contemplation because, as our globe gets more crowded by the hour, more and more we act like elbow-to-elbow passengers in cheap coach seats on a commuter flight…. Who doesn’t rush through the day? Who never feels the pressure to produce? How often are you in cyberspace? Our new frantic pace is like poison to our holding hands with those we love. That is where contemplation comes in. It reconnects us to ourselves, to God, and to others. It helps us learn to forgive and heal our souls….

For the first sixteen centuries of the Christian church, contemplative prayer was the goal of Christian spirituality, and now in our own time of transition and upheaval, … we are returning to our roots. Contemplative prayer is more relevant than ever before. More and more of us are practicing this ancient form of prayer and finding peace in a world of war, extreme political divide, epidemics, terrorism, technology, overcrowding, noise, inequality, and a Church in need of humility.

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From Diana Butler Bass’ Sunday Musings

“Maple Spiral” by Freeman Patterson. Please visit the photographer’s website to view his prints, workshops, and books. You can also discover more about his work in this short film.

On a recent trip to New Brunswick, my host arranged for me to meet Freeman Patterson, a world-renown Canadian photographer. 

I confess that I hadn’t heard of him. But my friend knew how I love art, gardens, and theology — and that Freeman’s interests combine all three. And so I did what any decent person would do in advance of such a meeting. I looked him up on the internet. 

Richard was also on this trip. As we pursued Freeman’s website, the photograph above caught his attention. “This looks like an illustration of your work,” Richard said. “You could have used it in your powerpoint in last night’s lecture!” 

He passed me his phone. On the screen was a breathtaking image of a spiral, whirling oranges, yellows, and greens with a single cobalt blue crescent at its center. “You’re right,” I said. “It is stunning. What do you think it is?”

We didn’t know. We couldn’t figure it out. 

The next day, we had the privilege of spending an afternoon at his home and garden in rural New Brunswick. The conversation was delightful and wide-ranging, and, as often happens, we discovered threads that connected our seemingly very distant lives. I finally asked him about the spiral photograph we’d seen online. “What it is? Something like a fiddlehead fern?” 

He laughed. “No. It is a maple tree!”

“A maple tree — one maple tree?” I asked incredulously. “Yes. A maple tree in the autumn, taken in a series of exposures, moving the camera slightly in each frame. The blue is the sky above.”

He shared with us a little bit about how he creates his photographs, with double and multiple exposures, slight camera movements, and widened apertures. We looked at the prints he had displayed in his home, thumbed through his books, and walked in his woodland garden. Inwardly, I marveled. This wasn’t about just making photographs or creating a garden. This was his vision of both everything and himself. It wasn’t just about a camera. It was about his open aperture. He could see deeper and further and differently. The spiral was far more than a cleverly exposed maple tree — it was his journey, wisdom and wonder, and an image of the oneness of all things.

That maple tree was a living spiral, an entirely different vision of the Tree of Life. There, in the garden. 

We didn’t really want to leave. 

*****

Does the Gospel of John ever drive you crazy? 

It probably should because today is one of those days. This is not the work of a linear thinker. The text whirls about with words, pulling ideas from here and there, weaving them together to create an effect, an experience, an uncommunicable vision. The Jesus in John’s story doesn’t tell parables. He doesn’t offer sermons or moral lessons. Instead, he roams about in mystical experiences and waxes poetic. Some scholars refer to John’s style as paroimia (παροιμία), a Greek term for “sideways” truths usually expressed in allegory, riddles, or metaphors.

What is this? All these words about glory and the world and oneness? 

I mean honestly: What is this? 

“All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 

And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

You could try to explain that in a thousand ways and probably never come close to what it is. Who is this Jesus? Who is going where? What, truly, is his relationship with “Holy Father”? And who is one with whom? 

I’ve heard genuinely tortured sermons on this text over the years. Some poor pastor trying to make sense of this as narrative, a story with a beginning, middle, and end, with an arc and plot lines, and clearly drawn characters. But it is not that. 

It is, instead, a sideways truth. 

More like a spiral. 

That recent visit, surrounded by photographs and woodlands, books and water vistas, opened my soul-aperture a bit wider. I wasn’t just meeting a well-known photographer; I was encountering a gifted teacher, a seer the world. As we talked about all manner of things and walked in the garden, he was showing me how to appreciate small movements, to see differently, to layer multiple views, and to let more light in. It wasn’t narrative; it wasn’t didactic; it wasn’t polemic. It was sideways. 

A spiral. 

I think that is the Gospel of John. Like “Maple Spiral,” the whole thing is a series of multiple exposures by modest repositioning to create a single image. From John’s magisterial opening:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

To the moment when a grief-stricken Mary tries to embrace her dearest friend:

Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew,^*‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher).

And the blue clearing in the sky? The central point of the image:

Love. 

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

Love is the oneness, the still center of the spiral. The blue dot. Love, love, love. Love is the origin point of creation; love is Mary reaching to hold the body of Jesus. For God so loved the cosmos that he gave his only Son…. Love is the Alpha and Omega. The “I am” and the “You are.” 

Do you see it? Tilt your gaze sideways, open your eyes just a little wider. One maple tree, spiraling through time and space. One whirl of love sweeping every frame toward the same focal point, the heart of it all. 

One. Love is the center. Love winds to the One. 

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Individual Reflection

Where are you being invited to abide rather than to understand?

Group Discussion — choose one:

• Where do you notice love as the still center in your life — or where do you long for it to be?
• What does it stir in you to be told to “make your home in this darkness”?
• What would change if you tilted your gaze sideways at your own life today?

Sunday, May 17, 2026

In his book Just This, Father Richard Rohr considers how contemplative prayer allows us to release our thoughts, finding deeper wisdom and guidance:   

Contemplation is a panoramic, receptive awareness whereby we take in all that a situation, moment, or person offers without judging, eliminating, or labeling anything. It is pure and positive gazing that abandons all negative pushback so we can begin to recognize inherent dignity. It takes much practice and a lot of unlearning of habitual responses. 

We have to work at contemplation and develop practices whereby we recognize our compulsive and repetitive patterns. In doing so, we allow ourselves to be freed from the need to “take control of the situation”—as if we ever really could anyway! 

It seems we are addicted to our need to make distinctions and judgments, which we mistake for intelligent thinking. Most of us think we are our thinking, yet almost all thinking is compulsive, repetitive, and habitual. We are forever writing our inner commentaries on everything, commentaries that always reach the same practiced conclusions. That is why all forms of meditation and contemplation teach a way of quieting this compulsively driven and unconsciously programmed mind. 

The desert fathers and mothers wisely called this process “the shedding of thoughts.” We don’t fight, repress, deny, identify with, or even judge them; we merely shed them. We are so much more than our thoughts about things,and we will feel this more as an unlearning than a learning of any new content. [1] 

When we meditate consistently, a sense of our autonomy and private self-importance—what we think of as our “self”—falls away, little by little, as unnecessary, unimportant, and even unhelpful in many cases. The imperial “I,” the self that we likely experience as our only self, reveals itself as largely a creation of our mind. 

Through regular practice of contemplation, we become less and less interested in protecting this self-created, relative identity. We don’t have to attack it; it calmly falls away of its own accord, and we experience a kind of natural humility. 

If our prayer goes deep, “invading” our unconscious, as it were, our whole view of the world will change from fear to connection. We won’t live inside our fragile and encapsulated self anymore, nor will we feel any need to protect it. In meditation, we move from ego consciousness to soul awareness, from being fear-driven to being love-drawn. That’s it in a few words! 

Of course, we only have the courage to do this if Someone Else is holding us, taking away our fear, doing the knowing, and satisfying our desire for a Great Lover. If we can allow that Someone Else to lead us in this dance, we will live with new vitality, a natural gracefulness, and inside of a Flow that we did not create. It is the life of the Trinity, spinning through us

Forgiving Our Thoughts

Monday, May 18, 2026

For Father Richard, true prayer begins with a positive “yes,” a surrender to God and Reality:  

When I entered the Franciscan seminary in 1961, part of our training was learning to avoid, resist, and oppose all distractions. It was such poor teaching, but it was the only way we thought back then. It was all about willpower: celibacy through willpower, poverty through willpower, community through willpower. But willpower isn’t what we need—or it’s not all that we need! We need the power to surrender the will, to face, and even to trust what is. Now, that’s heroic! Anything less is a fruitless and futile effort, because if we start with negative energy, a “don’t,” we won’t get very far (see Romans 7:7–11). That was the extent of the teaching I received, and it was really no teaching at all—just “Don’t!” When we hear that, the ego immediately pushes back. Some days we have strong willpower and we succeed, but most days we barely succeed. [1]

We know the old shibboleth, “Don’t think of an elephant.” If we try not to, that dang elephant invariably sneaks back into our minds! Just wait. To actively oppose something actually engages with it and gives it energy. That’s why so many spiritual teachers say, “What you resist persists.” 

Our first energy has to be “yes” energy, an acceptance of what is. From there we can move, build, and proceed, even if in opposition. We must choose the positive, which is to choose love, and rest there for a minimum of fifteen conscious seconds. It takes that long for positivity to imprint in the neurons, I’m told. [2]

Father Richard advises “neither clinging nor opposing” when it comes to facing distractions in contemplative prayer:  

If I had told my novice master I wasn’t going to fight my distractions, he would have said, “So you’re going to entertain lustful or hateful thoughts?” But that would have missed the major point. The real learning curve happens when we can admit we’re having a thought or feeling and recognize that it’s empty, passing, and part of a fantasy that has no final reality except as a source of information. 

We must listen honestly to ourselves. We must listen to whatever thought or feeling arises long enough to ask, “Why am I thinking this? What is this thought revealing in or about me? Why am I willing to entertain this negative, accusatory, or lustful thought?” 

We don’t have to hate or condemn ourselves for a thought or feeling, but we do have to let it yield its wisdom. Then we will realize it is a wounded or needy part of us that creates these unhealthy thoughts. Our true self, our whole self, doesn’t need them, and will not identify with them. 

If we can allow our thoughts and feelings to pass through us, neither clinging to them nor opposing them—and without ever expecting perfect success—I promise that we will come to a deeper, wider, and wiser place. Even our inability to fully succeed is, in itself, another wonderful lesson. [3]

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Individual Reflection

What in you today is fear-driven rather than love-drawn?

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Group Discussion — choose one:

1. What does it look like to be “love-drawn” rather than “fear-driven”?
2. What thought have you been resisting that might be asking to yield its wisdom?
3. Where might surrender — not willpower — be what’s being asked of you today?

JULIAN OF NORWICH: A UNIVERSAL MYSTIC

God Dwells in All

Friday, May 15, 2026

Matthew Fox traces the universal nature of Julian’s message of mystical hope and divine love:

Julian makes explicit on many occasions that she is speaking to a very broad audience—one that includes those of us who live 650 years later. It follows, then, that we recognize that sense of inclusion. “In God’s sight, all humanity is one person, and all people are a single humanity.”… [1] For Julian, the traditional teaching of the church as the mystical body of Christ is extended to the entire human race….

When she celebrates the beauty of being human, she again makes explicit that she is talking about all and not some sectarian group. “God made us so rich and noble in our essence that all we can do is strive to enact his will and honor him in all things. When I say ‘we,’ I mean all true spiritual seekers.” [2] When she says “all,” she means all. This would include, in our time, all versions of Christians and all Jews, all Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Muslims, goddess worshippers, those of indigenous religions, and those of no religions, whether agnostic or atheist. That is how ecumenical she is—and in the fourteenth century, no less.

When speaking of retreating “into our own souls, which is where our Beloved dwells,” she again speaks out about the universality that encompasses our spiritual search: “Let no man or woman think this truth applies personally to the individual. It does not; it is universal. This beautiful human nature of ours was prepared for our precious Mother Christ.” [3]

Through contemplating her visions over many years, Julian recognized that God’s love wasn’t only for her but for all creation:

In explaining how she came to write her book, she confesses that she first saw [her visions] as a personal thing, but then she came to understand that they applied to humanity as a whole. “At first, I applied this teaching to my individual self, because at the time I was not moved to see it otherwise. But the great and gracious comfort that followed made me realize that God meant this insight for the whole of humanity.” [4] She learned that her work ought to reach a broad audience, “I made the mistake of privatizing this showing instead of taking it to mean loving my fellow Christians better. What could make me love my fellow Christians better than to see that God loves us all as we are all one soul?” [5] …

Such a sense of universality translates into action, for “those who have universal love for all their fellow Christians in God have love towards everything that exists. For in us all is comprehended all, that is, all that is created and the Creator of all.” [6] Creation and cosmos belong to everyone—and no one—and it call us to a larger consciousness of expanded love.

References:
[1] Julian of Norwich, The Showings: Uncovering the Face of the Feminine in Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Mirabai Starr (Hampton Roads, 2022), 133. Selection from chap. 51.

[2] Julian, Showings, 157. Selection from chap. 57.

[3] Julian, Showings, 172. Selection from chap. 62.

[4] Julian, Showings, 212. Selection from chap. 79.

[5] Brendan Doyle, Meditations with Julian of Norwich (Bear & Co., 1983), 64.

[6] Doyle, Meditations, 33.

Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond (iUniverse: 2020), xxxii–xxxiii.

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Jesus Calling – Sarah Young

I AM the Gift that continuously gives — bounteously, with no strings attached. Unconditional Love is such a radical concept that even My most devoted followers fail to grasp it fully. Absolutely nothing in heaven or on earth can cause Me to stop loving you. You may feel more loved when you are performing according to your expectations. But My Love for you is perfect; therefore, it is not subject to variation. What does vary is your awareness of My loving Presence.
     When you are dissatisfied with your behavior, you tend to feel unworthy of My Love. You may unconsciously punish yourself by withdrawing from Me and attributing the distance between us to My displeasure. Instead of returning to Me and receiving My Love, you attempt to earn My approval by trying harder. All the while, I am aching to hold you in My everlasting arms, to enfold you in My Love. When you are feeling unworthy or unloved, come to Me. Then ask for receptivity to My unfailing Love.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

1st John 4:15-18 (NLT)

15 All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. 16 We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.
God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. 17 And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.
18 Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.

Deuteronomy 33:27 (NLT)

Psalm 13:5 (NLT)
5 But I trust in your unfailing love.
    I will rejoice because you have rescued me.

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John Chaffee – Five on Friday

1.

“The Christian of the future will be a mystic, or they won’t exist at all.”

– Karl Rahner, German Jesuit Priest

Drop the theo-logic.

Drop the religious tribalism.

Drop the spiritual pride and the moral elitism.

God is not found in any of those things.

Nor is God coerced or impressed by any of those things.

I am convinced that we all have a deep itch and a desire for true transcendence.  However, in pursuit of it, we become more seduced by describing transcendence, dictating who gets to experience it, or trying to manufacture an experience of transcendence.

Let’s be honest, we are all just looking for a life-changing experience of the Divine.

For me, that Divine Presence is truly found in the Blessed Trinity, which invites the whole of everything to join in its Cosmic Dance.

The problem is that people go to church, and we teach them to become members but not mystics.  We invite people to open their hymnals but not open their eyes and see that God-is-in-All-Things and All-Things-are-in-God.

I hope I am not coming across as cynical; I do not mean to do so if I am.  All I want to say is that I hope Christianity can reclaim some of its own contemplative and mystical dimensions.  Unless we reclaim those roots, Christianity in the West will continue to be a cute country club with which to convince ourselves and others that we are good people.  I believe it is so much more than that.  I sincerely believe it is a true expression of devotion to the infinite mystery we call God, revealed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

2.

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”

– Brene Brown, Researcher and Author

It feels as though a fair amount of energy is spent in our lives just trying to avoid vulnerability.

The problem is that it is exhausting to even try to do that for any duration of time.

There was a whole season of my life when I utterly failed to connect with people, and looking back, I see that is because I primarily did not know how to be vulnerable with myself.

Once I opened that door, or learned that skillset to a sufficient degree, I found the quality of my time and conversations with other people changed dramatically…

Why?

Being closed off tells other people they should be closed off, but being vulnerable invites people to drop their guard and risk being vulnerable themselves.

3.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

– Rumi, Persian Sufi Poet

Man, that’s a good one.

Here we are, all looking for love.

And yet, the most important thing may not be to look for love, but to remove all the ways in which we are stopped up within ourselves from receiving it from where it is already coming.

4.

“If a church never gets into conflict with the ruling powers, it should question whether it is a church of Jesus Christ.”

– Jon Sobrino, Spanish Priest and Theologian

This coming Sunday, I will be giving a guest sermon at a local church I have known for at least a decade.  It is a lovely little church just about an hour outside of Philly.

I am looking forward to preaching, not merely because I will see familiar faces, but because the text assigned to me is Isaiah 14:1-20.  Since I had never preached on that topic before, I felt as though it would be a unique challenge.

The passage is interesting on the surface because it is often attributed to the downfall of Satan.  The passage describes how Satan will be overthrown due to his oppressive stance towards the faithful and his spiritual pride.

HOWEVER,

The passage, in context, is actually about the King of Babylon.  In fact, Isaiah 14:3-4 says, “On the day the Lord gives you relief from your suffering and turmoil and from the harsh labor forced on you, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon.”

It is supposed to be a taunt of the king of Babylon!

God does not suffer tyrants and oppressors for long.  They, too, will have their day.

So, when I came upon the quote above from Jon Sobrino, it resonated with what I was learning myself about the context of Isaiah 14!

5.

“Believe me, don’t wait until tomorrow to begin becoming a saint.  The time is NOW!”

– Therese of Lisieux, French Catholic Mystic

I am not my best self.  Not by a long shot.

Of course, I have better days than others, but that is frighteningly affected by how good a night’s sleep I have had or whether or not people treat me the way I want to be treated.

For about a week now, I have been reading The Story of a Soul, the spiritual autobiography of Therese of Lisieux.  At times, it is a bit saccharine and easy to skim, but there are many pieces within it that completely grab my attention, so I grab my highlighter.

Therese’s life was cut short in her mid-20s because of Tuberculosis.  She suffered greatly and knew that she would likely die an early death because of the amount of blood she would cough up.

As a result, she knew that time was a finite resource.

The stakes are high; the world desperately needs both you and me to become the best, healthiest, and holiest versions of ourselves.  Time waits for no one, and as a result, it benefits us and those around us to do what we can to become saints as soon as possible.

Let us give up our vices, our sarcasm, our despair, our scarcity mindset, our need for approval, etc., and finally and freely embrace lives that live in the Light (as He is in the Light).

Goodness of God

Essential Joy

Thursday, May 14, 2026

Julian of Norwich is without a doubt one of the most wonderful of all Christian voices.
—Thomas Merton, Seeds of Destruction

Dr. Gloria Durka explores Thomas Merton’s love of Julian’s positive theology:

Learning to remain hopeful amidst the darkness of suffering is a struggle in which all of us become engaged from time to time—and it can be a bitter trial. The optimism of Julian can help us as it did Thomas Merton. In his book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Merton wrote the following:

I pray much to have a wise heart, and perhaps the rediscovery of Lady Julian of Norwich will help me. I took her book with me on a quiet walk among the cedars. She is a true theologian…. She first experienced, then thought, and the thoughtful deepening of experience worked it back into her life, deeper and deeper, until her whole life as a recluse at Norwich was simply a matter of getting completely saturated in the light she had received all at once…. Her life was lived in the belief in this “secret,” the “great deed” that the Lord will do on the Last Day, not a deed of destruction and revenge, but of mercy and of life, all partial expectations will be exploded and everything will be made right…. [1]

Julian’s writings are permeated with Christian hope. She experienced all of the aspects of hope in her own spiritual life: the rocklike dependability of God, the God who is always near, the God of the impossible, the God who is Father and Mother to us.

Julian was especially aware of the joyful character of hope…. Human joy is essential to Julian’s spirituality. To her, we are meant to be full of joy because our joy in God reflects the joy of the Trinity. Creation is an act of God’s joy. The more faithfully and hopefully we respond to God’s love in our life, the greater will be the fullness of our joy.

Was Julian ever more relevant? Her message of hope surely lightened the spirits of many in her troubled age. We probably need her message at least as much today. The threat of nuclear holocaust, the possibility of extinguishing all life forms on the planet earth, and deadly violence between warring peoples are daily reminders of the cloud of despair that hovers above us. Great faith and hope are required in order to penetrate the gloom caused by shattering events…. We need great faith and hope to see beyond the darkness of our personal life—our failures, weaknesses, and fears.

But gloom, fear, and anxiety are only one side of reality. The other side is that we are an Easter people. Even though suffering is real, the life, Passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus have won for each of us the assurance that death is conquered…. Alleluia!

Sarah Young – Jesus Calling

I am with you and for you. You face nothing alone–nothing! When you feel anxious, know that you are focusing on the visible world and leaving Me out of the picture. The remedy is simple: Fix your eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. Verbalize your trust in Me, the Living One who sees you always. I will get you safely through this day and all your days. But you can find Me only in the present. Each day is a precious gift from My Father. How ridiculous to grasp for future gifts when today’s is set before you! Receive today’s gift gratefully, unwrapping it tenderly and delving into its depths. As you savor this gift, you find Me.

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Romans 8:31 NLT

Nothing Can Separate Us from God’s Love

31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?

2nd Corinthians 4:18 NLT

18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

Genesis 16:13-14

13 Thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord, who had spoken to her. She said, “You are the God who sees me.”[a] She also said, “Have I truly seen the One who sees me?” 14 So that well was named Beer-lahai-roi (which means “well of the Living One who sees me”). It can still be found between Kadesh and Bered.

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

Beloved One, may you be blessed because it is so: all is well.
—Julian of Norwich, Showings

Spiritual teacher and translator Mirabai Starr describes how Julian’s positive experience of God sustained her when things were not “well” in the world around her:

The medieval English anchoress Julian of Norwich bequeathed us a radically optimistic theology. She had no problem admitting that human beings have a tendency to go astray. We rupture relationships, dishonor the Divine, make unfortunate choices, and try to hide our faults. And yet, Julian insists, “All will be well and all will be well and every kind of thing shall be well.” [1]

Take that in.

This assertion is meant to penetrate the fog of our despair and wake us up. She does not simply state, “Everything’s going to be okay.”… She does not ask us to engage in a spiritual bypass by relegating everything that unfolds to the will of God, calling it perfect against all evidence to the contrary. She squarely faces the inevitability that we will miss the mark and that there is wickedness in this world. Even so, she is convinced that the nature of the Divine is loving-kindness, and she wants us to absorb this into every fiber of our being.

Starr considers Julian’s teachings on sin: 

In her mystical masterwork The Showings, Julian shares that she used to obsess about sin. She couldn’t figure out why God, who is all-powerful, wouldn’t have eliminated our negative proclivities when he made the world. “If he had left sin out of creation, it seemed to me, all would be well.” But what God-the-Mother showed Julian in a near-death vision was that all shall be well anyway….

Julian unpacks this for us [in chapter 27]. In doing so she dispenses with the whole concept of sin and replaces it with love. “I believe that sin has no substance,” Julian writes, “not a particle of being.” While sin itself has no existential value, it has impact. It causes pain. It is the pain that has substance.

But mercy is swiftly forthcoming. It is immediately available. Inexorable! It is frankly rude of us to doubt that all will be well (and all will be well and every kind of thing shall be well). “When he said these gentle words,” Julian writes, speaking of God-the-Mother, “he showed me that he does not have one iota of blame for me, or for any other person. So, wouldn’t it be unkind of me to blame God for my transgressions since he does not blame me?” The merciful nature of God renders the whole blame game obsolete….

For those of us who do not subscribe to a belief in some perfect afterworld but, rather, are focused on making things better right here on Earth, this teaching may feel disconnected. But what Julian is saying, with heartbreaking compassion, is that we cannot know this now, from our limited, pain-drenched perspective. Yet eventually we will awaken to the truth that we are unconditionally adored by God. =

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Never a Lonely Prayer. Skye Jethani

In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, we find the most well-known passage in all of Scripture: the Lord’s Prayer. Long before most people had access to the Bible, and well before most people were educated enough to read it, Christians were taught the Lord’s Prayer. It has been used in Christian worship since the beginning of the church, and continues to be a guide for how we commune with God. Interestingly, the Lord’s Prayer is found in the sermon immediately after the section where Jesus warns his followers not to pray openly in public for others to see. He calls them to pray alone, in private. However, the prayer he then teaches them to recite while alone is entirely corporate in structure and language. In other words, Jesus commands us to pray in private while understanding that our prayers themselves are never private.For example, the Lord’s Prayer begins by addressing God as “OurFather.” John Chrysostom, the early church father, noted that Jesus “did not say ‘My Father’ but ‘Our Father,’” and that when we recite the Lord’s Prayer, we are “offering petitions for the common body, and not looking merely to each man’s own interests but everywhere to his neighbor’s.” Of course, he is correct. Nowhere in the prayer do the pronouns I, me, or my appear. Only our and us.The prayer of Jesus assumes we are connected—that we are part of a community. I appreciate how Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it in his book,Life Together: “The prayer of the Christian is never a lonely prayer.” The individualism that marks so much of our culture does not contaminate Jesus’ teaching. He recognizes that even when we are alone in prayer, our prayers are never lonely because we are forever connected to one another. We are all part of the great family of God, which transcends every boundary: national, ethnic, cultural, even generational. When we bow our heads and pray these words, we are taking part in a family prayer. The Lord’s Prayer binds the people of God together across time and space.This morning, as you commune with God alone in silence and in prayer, recite the Lord’s Prayer silently or aloud. As you do, allow the plural pronouns “our” and “us” to resonate and inspire your imagination. Pay attention to the faces that come into your mind. Remember your sisters and your brothers. Remember that we all share the same Father in heaven and that your communion with him cannot be separated from your communion with them.  DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 6:9–13 ROMANS 8:12–17 WEEKLY PRAYER. Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) O Lord, let me no longer desire health or life except to spend them for you and with you. You alone know what is good for me; therefore do what seems best to you. Give to me or take from me; conform me to your will; and grant that, with humble and perfect submission, and in holy confidence, I may receive the orders of your eternal providence; and may equally adore all that comes to me from you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A Mystic Who Suffered

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

READ ON CAC.ORG

In a time parched for wisdom like ours … we are invited to return to our ancestors who have proven themselves wise. Julian is such an ancestor.
—Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich

Theologian Matthew Fox describes Julian of Norwich as a mystic for our times. He highlighted her writings during the COVID-19 pandemic, living as she did through the Black Death (bubonic plague). He writes:

A time of crisis and chaos, the kind that a pandemic brings, is, among other things, a time to call on our ancestors for their deep wisdom. Not just knowledge but true wisdom is needed in a time of death and profound change, for at such times we are beckoned not simply to return to the immediate past, that which we remember fondly as “the normal,” but to reimagine a new future, a renewed humanity, a more just and therefore sustainable culture, and one even filled with joy.

Julian of Norwich … is one of those ancestors calling to us today…. Julian is a stunning thinker, a profound theologian and mystic, a fully awake woman, and a remarkable guide with a mighty vision to share for twenty-first-century seekers…. Julian knew a thing or two about “sheltering in place,” because she was an anchoress—that is, someone who, by definition, is literally walled up inside a small space for life. Julian also knew something about fostering a spirituality that can survive the trauma of a pandemic. While others all about her were freaking out about nature gone awry, Julian kept her spiritual and intellectual composure, staying grounded and true to her belief in the goodness of life, creation, and humanity and, in no uncertain terms, inviting others to do the same. [1]

Julian was not afraid to face reality. By entering fully into it, she discovered God’s grace:

Julian’s response to the pandemic [of her time], as we know it from her two books, is amazingly grounded in a love of life and gratitude. Instead of running from death, she actually prayed to enter into it and it is from that experience of death all around her and meditating on the cruel crucifixion of Christ that she interpreted as a communal, not just a personal event, that her visions arrived….

What is remarkable about her life and teaching is that instead of yielding to despair or blame, she sought out in depth the goodness of life and creation. Indeed, she established her entire worldview on this sense of goodness and the sacred marriage of grace and nature, a sense of God-in-nature. [2]

Julian’s teachings are encouragement for our time:

Our sister and ancestor Julian is eager not only to speak to us today but to shout at us—albeit in a gentle way—to wake up and to go deep, to face the darkness and to dig down and find goodness, joy and awe. And to go to work to defend Mother Earth and all her creatures, stripping ourselves of racism, sexism, nationalisms, anthropocentrism, sectarianism—anything that interferes with our greatness as human beings. And to connect anew to the sacredness of life.

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Thoughts…DJR

Yesterday we sat with John’s sentence: God is love. Period. Today we meet a woman who tested it.

Julian of Norwich lived through the Black Death. Estimates run from a third to half of her city dead — and this wasn’t a once-and-done event; the plague came back in waves through her lifetime. This is the world she was praying in. Walled into a small cell attached to a church, by choice, by vocation. Sheltering in place, as Fox puts it, before any of us knew what that phrase meant.

And out of that world, she wrote a sentence that ought to be impossible: There is no wrath in God.

Not “less wrath than we thought.” Not “wrath balanced out by mercy.” None. She said it plain. And she said it after watching her neighbors die. Whatever we make of that sentence theologically, let’s sit for a second with the fact that it wasn’t written by someone who had the luxury of not knowing what suffering was. It was written by someone who had seen more death than most of us will ever see, and who came out the other side saying — He was good the whole time. The wrath was never there.

This is what I trust about Julian. She earned the right to say what she said.

Fox calls her a mystic for our times. I think he’s right, but not mainly because we’ve been near a pandemic ourselves. She’s a mystic for our times because most of us are carrying some version of the question she answered. Can the goodness of God hold when the bottom drops out? Is “God is love” a sentence that works in the daylight but evaporates at 2am? Julian’s whole life is an answer. Yes. It holds. And not because we white-knuckle our way into believing it — because, if we go down far enough into the dark, we find it was already there. Holding us the whole time.

Her famous line — all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well — gets read sometimes like a refrigerator magnet. It is not a refrigerator magnet. It is something Christ said to a woman in the middle of visions of His own crucifixion, while plague-pits were being dug in the next parish over. That sentence has teeth. It’s the sentence of someone who looked.

If we’re in a hard stretch right now — and a few of us are — let’s not reach for Julian like a pill. Let’s meet her as a sister who’s been there. She’s not telling us to feel better. She’s telling us that the ground we’re walking on, even now, is held. The love John wrote about in our reading yesterday is not a fair-weather sentence. It’s bedrock. It was bedrock when her city was dying. It’s bedrock today.

Let’s sit with that for a minute. Let it be true.

For Contemplation: Where in our own lives have we had to discover that “God is love” actually held — not in theory, but in the dark?

Sunday, May 10, 2026

Father Richard Rohr praises the wisdom of the mystic Julian of Norwich (1342–ca. 1416), who experienced the motherhood of God and Jesus.

Translator and dear friend of mine Mirabai Starr offers these words from the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich: “This beautiful word ‘mother’ is so sweet and kind in itself that it cannot be attributed to anyone but God.” [1] With these words, Julian offers us an amazing and foundational statement. She is not saying that the most beloved attributes of motherhood can analogously be applied to God, although I am sure she would agree they could. She is saying much more—that the very word mother is so definitive and beautiful in most people’s experience (not everybody’s, I must add) that it evokes, at its best, what we mean by God. This perspective is not what most of the world’s religions have taught or believed up to now—except for the mystics. Among these, Julian of Norwich stands as pivotal. 

The concept and human experience of mother is so primal, so big, deep, universal, and wide that to apply it only to our own mothers is far too small a container. It can only be applied to God. This is revolutionary! Mother is, for Julian, the best descriptor for God Herself! I use this to illustrate the courageous, original, and yet fully orthodox character of Julian’s teaching.

Father Richard considers the archetypal human need for maternal care:  

Julian helps me finally understand one major aspect of my own Catholic culture: why in heaven’s name, for centuries, did both the Eastern and Western Churches attribute so many beautiful and beloved places, shrines, hills, cathedrals, and works of religious art in the Middle East and Europe, not usually to Jesus, or even to God, but to some iteration of Mother Mary? Many people in Julian’s time didn’t have access to scripture—in fact, most couldn’t read at all. They interpreted at the level of archetype and symbol. The “word” or logos was quite good, but a feminine image for God was even better.

The soul needs a Mother Savior and a God Nurturer! God is, in essence, like a good mother—so compassionate that there is no need to compete with a Father God—as we see in Julian’s always balanced teachings. [2] 

Mirabai Starr translates one of Julian’s teachings on God as Mother:

Only [God] who is our true Mother and source of all life may rightfully be called by this name. Nature, love, wisdom, and knowledge are all attributes of the Mother, which is God. Even though our earthly birth is low and humble … [God] is the one responsible for the birth of all babies that are born to their physical mothers.

The kind, loving mother, aware of the needs of her child, protects the child with great tenderness. This is the nature of motherhood…. Whenever a human mother nurtures her child with all that is beautiful and good, it is God-the-Mother who is acting through her

An Anchor-Hold of Love 

Monday, May 11, 2026

Father Richard recounts the circumstances of Julian’s mystical experience:  

Ever since I discovered Julian of Norwich so many decades ago, I have considered her one of my favorite mystics. Each time I return to her writings, I always find something new. Julian experienced her sixteen visions, or “showings” as she called them, all on one May night in 1373 when she was very sick and near death. As a priest held a crucifix in front of her, Julian saw Jesus suffering on the cross and heard him speaking to her for several hours. Like all mystics, she realized that what Jesus was saying about himself, he was simultaneously saying about all of reality. That is what unitive consciousness allows us to see.

Afterwards, Julian felt the need to go apart and reflect on her profound experience. She asked the bishop to enclose her in an anchor-hold, built against the side of St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, England. Julian was later named after that church. We do not know her real name, since she never signed her writing. (Talk about loss of ego!) The anchor-hold had a window into the church that allowed Julian to attend Mass and another window so she could counsel and pray over people who came to visit her. Such anchor-holds were found all over 13th- and 14th-century Europe.

Julian first wrote a short text about the showings, but then she patiently spent twenty years in contemplation and prayer, trusting God to help her discern the deeper meanings to be found in the visions. Finally, she wrote a longer text, titled Revelations of Divine Love. Julian’s interpretation of her God-experience is unlike the religious views common for most of history up to her time. It is not based in sin, shame, guilt, fear of God or hell. Instead, it is full of delight, freedom, intimacy, and cosmic hope. How did she retain such freedom? Maybe because she was not a priest, ordained to speak the party line?

As I read her words lately, what strikes me is the similarity between Julian’s time and our own. Here is how Episcopal priest and scholar Mary Earle describes Julian’s fourteenth-century context:

Julian lived at a time of vast social, [religious,] and political upheaval, incessant wars, and sweeping epidemics. Norwich, with a population of around 25,000 by 1330 … was struck viciously by the plague known as the Black Death. At its peak in the late 1340s in England, it killed approximately three-fourths of the population of Norwich. A young girl at this time, Julian was certainly affected in untold ways by this devastation. When the plague returned, she was about nineteen. [1]

In her anchor-hold, Julian certainly would have recognized the spiritual benefits of contemplation, such as the awakened ability through solitude to be personally present to divine love. Yet we must remember that she also let God’s love flow right through her to those on the street requesting her counsel, and to us through her writings.

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Individual Reflection

Where does the word Mother open something in your experience of God that the word Father does not — or where does it close something?

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Group Discussion — choose one:

• What stirs in you when you hear God called Mother?
• Julian sat with one night’s vision for twenty years before she felt she understood it. What in your own life is still asking that kind of patience?
• Julian’s faith was “full of delight, freedom, intimacy, and cosmic hope” rather than sin, shame, and fear. Where have you tasted that kind of faith, and where do you still hunger for it?

When My Baby’s Beside Me – Lyrics

Don’t need to talk to my doctor
Don’t need to talk to my shrink
Don’t need to hide behind no locked door
I don’t need to think

‘Cause when my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me all I know
When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me all I know

Read all my books and talked about
Listen to my radio
Been in school and dropped right out
Tryin’ to find what I didn’t know

But when my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me all I know
When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me all I know

Don’t need to talk to my doctor
Don’t need to talk to my shrink
Don’t need to hide behind no locked doors
I don’t need to think

‘Cause when my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me all I know
When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me all I know

When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me all I know
When my baby’s beside me, I don’t worry
When my baby’s beside me all I know

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Alex Chilton / Christopher Bell

When My Baby’s Beside Me lyrics © Birdees Music Corp., Koala Music (us), Koala Music, Inc.

Friday, May 8, 2026

Set me as a seal upon your heart, a seal upon your arm,
For love is as strong as death, passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame.
—Song of Songs 8:6

Mirabai Starr describes how the language of romance and erotic love is the universal experience of mystics across religious traditions:

Every spiritual tradition on the planet seems to have some version of the Song of Songs. The language of romantic love describes and evokes the soul’s relationship with the divine more accurately than any descriptive theological language ever could. I guess that’s why the Song of Songs, which is quite revolutionary and hard to explain, made it into the canonical texts….

All of the love language with which the mystics speak is arising from that same wellspring from which the Song of Songs unfolded. There is this place in the heart that is the truth of spiritual communion, of spiritual longing. The longing becomes the portal to union and communion, and that union becomes the reference point for the longing. Any time any of the mystics touch upon the themes of yearning, anguish, separation, and the sweetness of taking refuge in the arms of the beloved, they’re singing this essential song, this Canticle of Canticles, whether or not they actually are familiar with this particular text…. The Song of Songs is an essential blueprint that’s instilled in all our souls, the fuel that propels us on a spiritual path, even if some of us never get around to it. I think it’s in all of us. [1]

In the Song of Songs, the lover sings of her search for her beloved: 

At night on my bed I longed only for my love.
I sought him, but did not find him.
I must rise and go about the city,
the narrow streets and squares until I find my only love.
I sought him everywhere but I could not find him. (Song of Songs 3:1–2)

Starr describes longing as an essential aspect of nuptial mysticism:

Something in our souls recognizes this dynamic of exile and return. We remember that our source is Love. We suffer from the illusion of having been pulled up from our soul roots. We long to go home. We engage every practice we can get our hands on to restore our birthright of belonging. And when we attain those fleeting moments of union, we realize we were never two to begin with. We were always one and always will be one.

The language of love is like a spaceship that blasts us through the layers of illusion and delivers us to the truth of our essential connectedness with the Divine and our interconnectedness with all of creation. There’s nothing like a passage of mystical poetry, incandescent with the fire of longing and besotted by the wine of union, to evoke our own burning yearning and reveal our capacity for melding. [2]

References:
[1] Mirabai Starr with James Finley and Michael Petrow, “The Song of Love Lost and Found,” The Living School: Essentials of Engaged Contemplation, Center for Action and Contemplation, 2025.

[2] Mirabai Starr, Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics (Sounds True, 2019), 57.

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Sarah Young – Jesus Calling

It’s all right to be human. When your mind wanders while you are praying, don’t be surprised or upset. Simply return your attention to Me. Share a secret smile with Me, knowing that I understand. Rejoice in My Love for you, which has no limits or conditions. Whisper My Name in loving contentment, assured that I will never leave you or forsake you. Intersperse these peaceful interludes abundantly throughout your day. This practice will enable you to attain a quiet and gentle spirit, which is pleasing to Me.

     As you live in close contact with Me, the Light of My Presence filters through you to bless others. Your weakness and woundedness are the openings through which the Light of the knowledge of My Glory shines forth. My strength and power show themselves most effective in your weakness. 

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Deuteronomy 31:6 NLT

6 So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.”

1st Peter 3:4 NLT

4 You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.

2nd Corinthians 4:6-7 NLT

6 For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

7 We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.

2nd Corinthians 12:9 NLT

9 Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.

Additional insight regarding 2nd Corinthians 12:9: Although God did not remove Paul’s affliction, he promised to demonstrate his power in Paul. The fact that God’s power is displayed in our weaknesses should give us courage and hope. As we recognize our limitations, we will depend more on God for our effectiveness rather than on our own energy, effort, or talent. Our limitations not only help develop Christian character but also deepen our worship, because in admitting them, we affirm God’s strength.

Five on Friday – John Chaffee

1.

“Everything that rises must converge.”

– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 20th-century French Jesuit

In the summer of 2016, I binge-read the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  I did not read everything, but I did knock out 7-8 of his books and another 2-3 about him.

His integrated theology, which seems to me like a modernized, evolutionary form of Ignatian Spirituality, gave me a complete and utter paradigm shift.  Prior to reading him, I would say my spirituality was more “static” (meaning, figure out God’s divine plan and live stoically according to it).  After reading Teilhard de Chardin, my spirituality became much more “dynamic” (meaning, it was more focused on personal growth and growth in virtue).

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin taught me a spirituality of becoming.

Am I becoming greater or less?  Am I active or passive in the events of my life?  Do I see it as a form of love of neighbor to work on myself as much as possible, to heal my traumas, and invite others to do the same?  Is my life integrated, or am I working against myself?  Is the direction of my life in the direction of greater or less health and holiness?

If I live by these things, I will eventually come into contact with others who are also “aiming high.”  After all, “Everything that rises must converge.”  If you are reading this, it is possible that we are “converging.”  You were drawn to read this newsletter, and this quote, and my typing this is somehow our common spiritualities finding a friend for the journey.

2.

“For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore, the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.”

– Thomas Merton, 20th-century Trappist Monk

Merton’s teaching on the True Self and the False Self was a game-changer for me.  This quote comes from Chapter 5 of New Seeds of Contemplation, and the first time I read that chapter, I teared up.

(In fact, I love this teaching so much that I am incorporating it into the next online class I hope to offer this summer.)

The teaching of the True Self/False Self is not so much a question that you answer once in your life and be done with it.  Rather, it is more of a question to be holy haunted by for the rest of your life.

The True Self/False Self teaching requires me to ask myself certain questions…

• Am I being my True Self?
• Am I saying or doing things born out of my identity or from the expectations of others?
  Am I being a False Self that I believe others will like more?
• Why is it that I am my False Self when I am with this or that group of people?
  Who in my life allows me to be my True Self?
• Who in my life encourages me to find my True Self?
• Is there anyone in my life who does not want me to be something other than my False Self?
• Can I have meaningful relationships if I am only my False Self?
• Can I join God in God’s own understanding and love of my True Self?
• If Christ was his own True Self, can that inspire me to be my own True Selfless?

The list could go on!

I think this teaching resonates with me because sainthood, then, is less a matter of moral perfection, and more a matter of constantly discovering my True Self (which is loving, gracious, virtuous, joyful, etc.) and living from that center or ground.

3.

“Christianity is an entirely new way of being human.”

– Maximus the Confessor, 8th-century Syrian Monk

If Adam is the Old Man, and his progeny are the Old Humanity…

Then Christ, as the New Man, leads the way for a New Humanity.

I believe Maximus the Confessor made this comment after reading Ephesians 2, which talks about creating a New Humanity that operates by a completely different set of values.

The New Humanity has different values because it has different goals, and it has different goals because it has a different starting point.  For the New Humanity, the starting point (and ending point) is always Love.  And, since Love seeks to do no wrong to anyone, and instead to help carry one another’s burdens, Love is the fulfillment of the Law.

To me, Christ invites me to a completely other mode of existence.  I sincerely believe there is sophiological importance to the Gospel teaching.  There is more wisdom in the faith about how to live life than I believe most know.

To follow the teachings of Christ is inherently rebellious to a culture that is hedonistic (pleasure-seeking), sees people as a means to an end, focuses on what can be gained rather than who can be helped, and refuses to participate in anything that diminishes oneself or others.

Truly, it is a new way of being human.

4.

“The important thing is not to think much but to love much, and so to do whatever best awakens you to love.”

– Teresa of Avila, 16th-century Spanish Carmelite

I am a recovering Enneagram 5.

This means I live in my head, and fear often gets the best of me.

So, when I first read Teresa of Avila’s masterpiece, Interior Castle, I was gut-punched.

I am far too cerebral in how I live my life.  Too much of my focus is on my own interior life, on thinking big thoughts, and trying to assemble theories for why certain things are the way they are.

Add to this that I am a professor and occasionally have the opportunity to preach, and you have a recipe for someone to share what they know, yet perhaps not always grow in love.

It is good for me to shut off my darn brain, with its scarcity mindset and fear-mongering, and just try to love better.

5.

“All will be well, all will be well, in every manner of thing, all will be well.”

– Julian of Norwich, 14th-century English Mystic

Julian of Norwich was potentially dying from either the grief of her whole family being lost to the Bubonic Plague and/or dying from the Plague herself.

On her deathbed, the whole world was closing in around her until she essentially had just tunnel vision straight forward to where there was a crucifix hanging on the wall opposite her.

It was then that she had a mystical experience of the Christ, and the two of them had 16 different conversations.

Miraculously, and much to the surprise of those attending her final moments, Julian recovered.  It was not long before Julian put to writing the content of her conversations with the Christ.

Julian’s understanding of God is utterly kind, patient, paternal, and maternal, joyful, compassionate, and tender.    Much like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Julian caused me to shift my paradigm for understanding and relating to God.

The God revealed in the person of Jesus is completely hopeful.  And at those deathbed conversations, God showed Julian that even with all the darkness and vice and sin in the world, “all will be well.”  God, who is infinitely creative and infinitely capable, is going to turn all things for Good.

Reflection

The first two readings suggest that intimacy with God is less about achieving and more about returning — again and again. What does that kind of practice look like in your daily life?

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A Prayer to Close

Lord, set me as a seal upon Your heart. In my longing, draw me near. In my weakness, shine through. Let me not be surprised by my wandering mind or my restless heart, but simply return — again and again — to You, the source of all love. Amen.

LOVER AND BELOVED IN THE SONG OF SONGS

I Am My Beloved’s

Thursday, May 7, 2026

I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.
—Song of Songs 7:10

James Finley celebrates Bernard of Clairvaux’s emphasis on love:

When I was at the monastery, they had a statue of Saint Bernard holding a scroll. In his commentary on the Song of Songs, he says, “Amo quia amo.” “I love because I love.” He writes, “Everything we do, we do for a reason, but only love is its own reason.” [1] Clearly this is the motivation of the lovers in the Song of Songs. Love is their only reason, their only reward. This is how I would put it: Ultimately, God is speaking just one thing. Only one thing is happening: The infinite love of God, in an ongoing self-donating act, is pouring itself out, emptying itself, and giving itself away in and as the intimate immediacy of the gift and the miracle of our very presence, the presence of others in all things, and our nothingness without this infinite love. Love is our origin, love is our ground, love is our sustaining reality, and love is our destiny. Love and love alone is the substance of reality. Everything else is smoke and mirrors, really. [2]

Bernard of Clairvaux recognized that there’s fraternal love, our love for our siblings. There’s the love of parents for their children, and the love of children for their parents. God also gives us love for our friends. But nuptial love is unique in that two people freely choose to give themselves to each other completely: to support each other, to be there for each other, and to be with each other. So, their sexual union is a physical, somatic celebration of the love in which they give and receive.

Arise my love, my fair one,
  and come away.
O my dove, in the clefts of rocks,
  in the covert of the cliff,
let me see your face;
  let me hear your voice,
for your voice is sweet
  and your face is lovely….
My beloved is mine, and I am his. (Song of Songs 2:13–14, 16)

You can see why Bernard saw nuptial love, portrayed in the Song of Songs, as the supreme love. It’s like when spouses love and give themselves to each other—the infinite love of God infinitely gives God’s self to us. Nuptial mysticism is like being married to God. God wants us to be married to God in this kiss, this ultimate, sovereign, and supreme love.

The philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, “The heart has its reason which the mind knows not.” [3] Bernard of Clairvaux understood this long before Paschal wrote it. In working with the Song of Songs, he is dropping down into the heart realm, searching for words and metaphors that will resonate with us. When we hear these words, we’re touched by them because we can tell Bernard is trying to put into words what our own hearts know is true. The depth of who we are is God’s beloved. [4]

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Sarah Young – Jesus Calling

I AM with you always. These were the last words I spoke before ascending into heaven. I continue to proclaim this promise to all who will listen. People respond to My continual Presence in various ways. Most Christians accept this teaching as truth but ignore it in their daily living. Some ill-taught or wounded believers fear (and may even resent) My awareness of all they do and think. A few people center their lives around this glorious promise and find themselves blessed beyond all expectations. 

When My Presence is the focal point of your consciousness, all the pieces of your life fall into place. As you gaze at Me through the eyes of your heart, you can see the world around you from My perspective. The fact that I am with you makes every moment of your life meaningful.

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Matthew 28:20 NLT

20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Additional insight regarding Matthew 28:20: How is Jesus “with” us? Jesus was with the disciples physically until he ascended into Heaven and then spiritually through the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4). The Holy Spirit would be Jesus’ presence that would never leave them (John 14:26 – “But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.”). Jesus continues to be with us today through his Spirit.

NLT Bible Versions

Psalm 139:1-4 NLT

Psalm 139

For the choir director: A psalm of David.

1 O Lord, you have examined my heart

    and know everything about me.

2 You know when I sit down or stand up.

    You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.

3 You see me when I travel

    and when I rest at home.

    You know everything I do.

4 You know what I am going to say

    even before I say it, Lord.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 139:1-5: Sometimes we don’t let people get to know us completely because we are afraid they will discover something about us they won’t like. But God already knows everything about us, even the number of hairs on our head (Matthew 10:30), and still he accepts and loves us. God is with us through every situation, in every trial – protecting, loving, guiding. He knows and loves us completely.

Reflection question: Do you tend to treat God’s presence as background knowledge or as the focal point of your daily consciousness? What’s one practical way you could shift toward the latter?

A Book of Devotion

Wednesday, May 6, 2025

READ ON CAC.ORG

The theologian Stephanie Paulsell considers how praying with the Song of Songs can help us discover “good news”: 

What would we find if we turned to this poem listening for God’s voice, as countless readers before us have done? What would we hear if, as Origen long ago urged, we made the words of the Song our own?

One thing we find when we pray with the Song is good news: good news about the glory of the human body, the joy of mutuality in love, the responsiveness of a world that is cherished and loved, and the longing to know and to be known. These are the Song’s own concerns, the Song’s own preoccupations. Bringing the Song into our prayer brings our bodies, our relationships, the earth, and our longings into our prayer as well. This is precisely where these concerns belong: at the intersection of our life and God’s life, at the place where we turn toward God with all we are. [1]

Paulsell encourages us to linger in our reading with the Song of Songs:

The Song offers us a way of reading that is also a way of receiving the world, a way that leads to prayer. By inviting us into the dialogue of the two lovers, we are encouraged to read as they love—lingering in the presence of the beloved, admiring the beloved’s beauty and grace, and adoring both what can be seen and known and spoken of, and what is beyond our sight, beyond our ability to know or describe. In a world marked by speed and overwhelmed by information, the Song offers us a space beneath the pine branches and cedar boughs to read slowly, admiringly, meditatively….

The Song does not rush us…. Rather, it invites us to read and reread and read again, listening for unexpected resonances, allowing multiple meanings to accumulate. It is a banqueting house, a garden, a vineyard, a field: a place to be explored in every season, a place that discloses something new each time we move through it….

Hidden like a jewel at the heart of the Bible, the Song of Songs waits for us to take it up again and so enter with other faithful people in a song that never ends. [2]

Paulsell invites us to encounter the Song of Songs as an opening to prayer and life:

Think and pray with the Song about the life of the body, our life with one another, our life in creation, and our life with God. It is just one life, after all.… One life that opens onto depths that are spiritual, erotic, compassionate, and, on some level, not entirely knowable. One life touched and blessed by the kiss that has been sung about over centuries in language unutterably beautiful.

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Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Easter
Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church, Santa Barbara, on April 26, 2026
by The Rev. Sarah D. Thomas

“Awe came upon everyone” – these people were experiencing a spiritual high. They were becoming a new kind of community in those post-Easter days. They called themselves “the Way.” A Greek word used to describe their life together is koinonia, which means fellowship, communion, shared life. To our ears their new way might sound simple, quaint, or idealistic. But to Jesus’ early followers, it was electric. Risky. Brave. Awe had come upon them and they were reoriented to living differently. 

We have all just lived through something like this, something electric, brave, and risky.

During Holy Week this year, four humans left Earth, launched into space at 25,000 miles per hour to achieve a first for humanity: a mission around the back side of the moon. Some of you followed it closely. Some of you may have missed it in the flood of everything else. I’ll admit, I was captivated. I marveled that I was able to watch live video footage inside a space capsule floating 250,000 miles away from Earth.

The first thing that really hit me wasn’t the technology, but the conversations that took place between the astronauts in space and the scientists on the ground. The way they spoke to each other was respectful. Attuned. Intelligent. Kind. Even though I didn’t understand any of the scientific language they were using, I was riveted to the live feed because the way they were all speaking to each other was so different from what I’ve become accustomed to hearing in public discourse. Apparently, I have become accustomed to snark. Mistrust. Disrespect. Competition. But now I was hearing something different. There was humor. Competence. Supportive, clear communication. Real teamwork. The mere words “copy that” made me tear up a little. (They said it a lot.) “Copy that”: “I hear you. I believe you. I will address that.” The Artemis II mission didn’t just show us space, it showed us our better selves.

And then there was a moment I can’t forget: As the crew passed the farthest point from Earth any humans have traveled (a record set by Apollo 13 over 50 years ago), they paused to mark it – not with data or achievement, but with love. They wanted to name two craters on the moon. One they named “Integrity,” after the spirit of their mission. And the other they named “Carroll,” after the late wife of one of their crewmates, who had died a few years ago. “Copy that,” said mission control. At the moment they were the farthest yet from Earth, their first instinct was to care for one another. 

I pulled my car over and watched them. Their voices wavered and there were some tears. They formed an unplanned group hug and their legs drifted upward in zero gravity, forming a web of connection. This moment spread quickly on social media. Suddenly the whole world was paying attention. Because when humans act like this, it draws us in. Their survival depended on it. They needed each other. They shared everything: tight quarters, weird space food, exhaustion, wonder. Together, they looked back at Earth, just a small blue crescent as they drifted behind the moon. It did something to them. And by extension, it did something to us.

When they returned and spoke at a press conference one day after “splashdown,” their words were unpolished and emotional. Astronaut Christina Koch said this: “What struck me wasn’t necessarily just tiny Earth, it was all the blackness around it. Earth was just this life boat hanging undisturbingly in the universe.”

And then she said something that sounds remarkably like our reading from the Book of Acts.

She said, “A crew is a group of people that is in it all the time no matter what, that is stroking together every minute with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, that gives grace, that holds accountable. A crew has the same cares and the same needs, and a crew is inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked. I know I haven’t learned everything that this journey has yet to teach me, but there is one new thing I know. And that is: Planet Earth, you are a crew.”

Listen again to Acts: “Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

Awe came upon everyone. And it made them see life differently. Jesus’ followers experienced his risen presence in the days following that first Easter morning. It was shocking and surprising. And it changed them. It made them want to be together, to share all they had; to care for each other, to care for those in need. They had glad and generous hearts and had the goodwill of all the people. They became a crew. 

This is what it means to be saved – not saved for some kind of afterlife, but to experience something in this life that leaves us in awe; to have our hearts opened to realities we often don’t see; to be filled with gladness and generosity; to let that spill over into the world. This is what being saved means.

Those four astronauts experienced a kind of salvation, too. Awe came upon them. They were shaken into what is real: Earth is tiny, we need each other, and there is great love when we bear witness to that together.

On this Earth Day Sunday, could there be any better message for us to hear? We are here on this tiny lifeboat floating in space, together. One small fragile crew. And yet, we have a hard time living that way. Every day we see division, greed, violence, and systems that pull us apart.

But we’ve also seen something else: a mirror held up to us, reminding us of what is also true.

Bill McKibben, a famous environmentalist, spoke at UCSB a few days ago. While his talk was full of sobering and alarming science regarding climate change, his message was also hopeful. Solar and wind energy are accelerating at a very fast pace. He said that the past 36 months have made all the difference in ways many of us don’t really see. The earth is producing roughly a third more power from the sun this spring than it was last spring. China is at warp-speed-ahead on solar energy. We are almost too late, but if we can continue to speed this up, we have the ability to make a difference for the future. The problem is, the progress is being slowed by those invested in fossil fuels. 

A journalist summed up McKibben’s main point: “Time is short. The technology is here. The obstacle is power. Fortunately, sunlight is much harder to hoard – or to wage war over.”^[1] A student in the audience asked, “What can I do?” And McKibben replied, “We need to stop thinking of ourselves as individuals, as an ‘I,’ and join others. Join a movement.” 

In other words, become a crew!

Astronaut Jeremy Hansen, in his little speech right after splashdown, asked his fellow astronauts to stand up there next to him. They put their arms around each other as he said, “What you saw is a group of people who loved having meaningful contribution, and extracting joy out of that, and what we’ve been hearing is … that was something special for you to witness. If you look up here, you’re not looking at us. We are a mirror reflecting you. And if you like what you see, then just look a little deeper. This is you.”

The Artemis II mission became a mirror reflecting ourselves back to us in a way we needed to see. We saw teamwork, we saw sacrifice, we saw humble intelligence put to use for a greater good, we saw humans trembling with awe and wonder at the mystery of our universe, and we saw deep love. When I looked into that mirror, something in me shifted, and I haven’t been able to shake it for days.

We must take care as we look into the mirrors that are around us. There are plenty that distort, magnifying fear, division, and scarcity. But there are other mirrors that remind us who we are at our best, and mirrors that connect us to awe and the wonder of life itself.

When the church is at its best, it gets to be one of those mirrors – a people of koinonia: a community of joy and shared life, with glad and generous hearts, sharing presence and resources with those in need, and reminding the people of the world that it is a crew, held together in the love of Christ.

“Awe came upon everyone” and reoriented them to becoming a new kind of community.

Awe is a renewable resource! And one that we can easily harness if we cultivate it, if we become a crew. Our salvation depends on it. 

Copy that?

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Individual Reflection

Where is awe trying to reach you?

Group Discussion — choose one:

1. Where are you being invited to linger and behold rather than rush past?
2. When have you experienced shared life that reoriented you toward awe?
3. What would it mean for you to live as if “Planet Earth, you are a crew”?