Offering Our Presence

Friday, September 5, 2025

Poet and author Alexis Pauline Gumbs reflects on what we can learn about a practice of presence through the study of dolphins for whom proclaiming presence is a life-saving operation:   

What could it mean to be present with each other across time and space and difference? Presence is interpersonal and interspecies and intergalactic, in some ways eternal. How can we rethink our presence on the planet and its precarity by paying attention to how the Indus dolphins have brought themselves back from the brink of extinction?… Marine mammal mentorship offers us the chance for presence as celebration, as survival and its excess, as more than we even know how to love about ourselves and each other…. 

The Indus and Ganges river dolphins live in sound. They make sound constantly, echolocating day and night. In a quickly moving environment they ask where, again where, again where. The poem of the Indus river dolphin is the ongoing sound of here, a sonic consciousness of what surrounds them, a form of reflective presence. Here. 

The home of the Indus river dolphin has gone through many manmade changes. First of all, pollution. First of all, illegal poverty-induced fishing methods. First of all, before that, a legend about a sea monster, and more recently, in the 1980s, a takeover of the river banks of Sindh by the Daku Raj, a group of organized gangs who effectively scared all the fisherfolk away. Through all of it, the Indus river dolphin, who clicks all day and night, has been saying, here. Here. Here. Here. In a language I want to learn. According to the scientists who have been counting the endangered Indus river dolphin population since 1972, their population has steadily increased every year. From 132 when they first started counting to 1,419 this year. Here. Here. Here.  

Gumbs invites us to consider how we might offer our presence:  

In the language I was raised in, “here” means “this place where we are,” and it also means “here” as in “I give this to you.” Could I learn from the Indus River dolphin a language of continuous presence and offering? A language that brings a species back from the brink, a life-giving language? Could I learn that? Could we learn that? We who click a different way, on linked computers day and night?  

What I want to say to you requires a more nuanced field of receptive language than I have ever spoken. It requires me to reshape my forehead, my lungs. It requires me to redistribute my dependence on visual information. So, I will close my eyes and say it: Here. Here I am. Here I am with you. Here is all of me. And here we are. Here. Inside this blinding presence. Here. A constant call in a moving world. Here. All of it. Here. Here. Humbly listening towards home. And here. And here. Right here. My poem for you. My offered presence. This turbid life. Yes. Here you go.  

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5 On Friday John Chaffee

1.

“The point is to unify the opposites, both positive and negative, by discovering a ground that transcends and encompasses both.”

– Ken Wilber, American Philosopher

The New Testament word “repent” (metanoia in Greek) can be more accurately (and playfully) translated as “reconsider” or “elevate the way you think.”

There is one mode of thinking about the world that loves to divide, separate, name, and categorize things into specific, little containers.  This is likely a helpful task to a point, but after that, it can become a way of dissecting the world and yet never putting it back together.

Perhaps this is the grand work of the reconciliation of all things mentioned in Colossians 1…

The whole cosmos is aching to be put back together again, and it begins with us “repenting” from one way of thinking, and reconsidering how a larger Mystery is holding all things together.

2.

“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.”

– Abraham Maslow, American Psychologist

We humans don’t know what we don’t know.

It is part and parcel of what it means to be limited beings with a finite perception of an infinite universe.

We probably have no idea what needs to change about us if we do not have people in our lives who can reflect to us aspects of our lives that we cannot see in ourselves.

For some reason, this leads me to imagine how a boss might fire someone because they “reflect” back to the boss something about the boss that the boss does not know is a problem.  The same could be said about a parent who is frustrated with a child who points something out, or a family member who says out loud what everyone else has been noticing.

The primary task is to remain open to learning more about ourselves at all times.

Why?

Because we cannot change what we do not know about ourselves.

3.

“Some of us believe that God is almighty, and can do everything; and that he is all wise, and may do everything; but that he is all love, and will do everything— there we draw back.”

– Julian of Norwich, English Anchoress

So, if God is all-powerful, why wouldn’t Infinite Love at some point do all that is necessary to redeem, reconcile, renew, restore, reclaim, repair, and rescue the whole of everything?

4.

“The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God.”

– St. John Chrysostom, 4th Century Bishop

It seems to me that the first thousand years of Church history had a better sense of the intimate presence of God in nature.  It was more in response to the rise of the Enlightenment that we began to separate God from nature.

It should come as no surprise to us that if our theology leads us to view nature as distant from God, we would start to exploit the natural world for gain, fail to protect and preserve it, and instead avoid it rather than treasure it.

No wonder many of us feel closer to God after spending intentional time in the natural world, away from traffic and cities.

5.

“Many people feel unaware of any guidance, unable to discern or understand the signals of God; not because the signals are not given, but because the mind is too troubled, clouded, and hurried to receive them.”

– Evelyn Underhill, Anglican Mystic

Almost entirely across the board, every one of the Christian mystics gives commentary on the need to turn off the brain with all of its cares and chatter.  It is difficult to hear the voice of God or even to notice the presence of the Great I Am if we have earthquakes, tornadoes, and firestorms within.

Too often, I sit down to pray and talk right away.

I have noticed a change over the past few years that when I begin a time of prayer, there is an unspecified amount of silence.  It helps the mind-chatter to tire itself out and dissipate.  At that point, I can feel my breath slow down and my heart rate relax.

It is only then that I finally feel myself able to receive something.

The world already has enough “sound and fury” (as Shakespeare might say), it is so odd that we think our prayers should have the same approach.

Love Knows What We Can Do

Thursday, September 4, 2025

Love knows what we can do. Let’s begin. Perhaps God is only waiting for our kind intention.
—Brother Lawrence, Practice of the Presence 

Brother Lawrence engaged in an ongoing correspondence with a nun who lived in a nearby Paris convent. In this letter, he encourages her in her practice: 

You are telling me nothing new in your letter. You’re not the only one who has distracting thoughts. The mind is extremely likely to wander, but the will is the mistress of all our powers, and must draw the mind back and carry it to God as to its final end.  

When the mind has not been taught early on how to return, to be led back to itself, it can develop some unhealthy habits of becoming distracted and scattered. These are difficult to overcome. These tendencies ordinarily drag us off to earthly things, in spite of ourselves.  

I think that a solution for this is to admit our stumbles and humble ourselves before God. During set times of silent prayer, I advise you not to use many words. Long discourses often create distractions…. Do your best to keep your mind in God’s presence. If it wanders or pulls away sometimes, don’t be discouraged. Distress tends to distract the mind rather than to focus it. We must use the will gently to bring it back. If you persevere in this way, God will have mercy on you.  

An easy way of bringing your mind back during the set time of prayer and holding it there more at rest, is not to let it wander much during the day. Hold it attentively in God’s presence. As you get used to thinking of God from time to time, it will become easy to remain calm during times of prayer, or at least to bring the mind back when it wanders.  

In his letters to a laywoman, Brother Lawrence shares: 

God does not ask much of us, merely a brief thought of them from time to time, a little love, sometimes asking for grace, sometimes offering them your sufferings, other times thanking them for the blessings they have given, and are giving you. In the middle of your tasks you can comfort yourself with Love as often as you can, in all these ways. During your meals and conversations, lift up your heart to God sometimes. The slightest little awareness will always be very pleasant. We don’t need to shout out to do this. God is closer to us than we may think…. 

Remember, I beg you, what I recommended. Think of God often, night and day, in all your activities, even when you relax. God is always near you and with you. Don’t leave them alone. You would think it rude to leave a friend alone who came to visit you. Then why abandon God and leave them alone? Don’t forget Love. Think of God often and love them without stopping.  

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: September 5th, 2025

Jesus Calling: September 5th

I am your best Friend, as well as your King. Walk hand in hand with Me through your life. Together we will face whatever each day brings: pleasures, hardships, adventures, disappointments. Nothing is wasted when it is shared with Me. I can bring beauty out of the ashes of lost dreams. I can glean Joy out of sorrow, Peace out of adversity. Only a Friend who is also the King of kings could accomplish this divine alchemy. There is no other like Me!
     The friendship I offer you is practical and down-to-earth, yet it is saturated with heavenly Glory. Living in My Presence means living in two realms simultaneously: the visible world and unseen, eternal reality. I have equipped you to stay conscious of Me while walking along dusty, earthbound paths.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

John 15:13-15 (NLT)
13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.

Additional insight regarding John 15:13: We are to love each other as Jesus loved us, and he loved us enough to give his life for us. We may not have to die for someone, but there are other ways to practice spiritual love: listening helping, encouraging, and giving. Think of someone in particular who needs this kind of love today. Give all the love you can, and then try to give a little more.

Additional insight regarding John 15:15: Because Jesus Christ is Lord and Master, he should call us servants; instead, he calls us friends. How comforting and reassuring to be chosen as Christ’s friends! Because he is Lord and Master, we owe him our unqualified obedience, but most of all, Jesus asks us to obey him because we love him.

Isaiah 61:3 (NLT)
3 To all who mourn in Israel,
    he will give a crown of beauty for ashes,
a joyous blessing instead of mourning,
    festive praise instead of despair.
In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks
    that the Lord has planted for his own glory.

2nd Corinthians 6:10 (NLT)
10 Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything.

In this Daily Meditations interview, Buddhist teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo introduces the teaching “present moment, wonderful moment” from her tradition. The simple practice of being fully present can help alleviate suffering.  

A Jewish rabbi says in the Talmud that you have to bless both the good and the bad that comes to you. I could speak of it in terms of two dimensions. There’s a historical dimension in Buddhism where things are born, things die. Things come, things go. Things are, things are not. But there’s also an ultimate dimension in Buddhism which is just as real though it’s less tangible—where things are never born and never die; there’s no coming, no going, no here, no there…. The ultimate dimension is beyond the limitations of the historical dimension, so all the things that happen in our lives that we have joy over or we grieve over, those don’t define us in the ultimate dimension.  

That’s one way to understand this teaching of “present moment, wonderful moment.” Life is unfolding in ways we can’t always understand when we’re right in the thick of it…. Some things are going to happen that cause suffering. Some things are going to bring us joy. Some things will happen in our lives that we want. Some things will happen that we don’t want.  

There’s tremendous freedom that can come from learning to turn towards all of it with an open heart, rather than pushing away … and fighting what we don’t think should happen…. There’s a certain amount of pain that we’re all going to have in our lives; that’s unavoidable. But whether or not we suffer on top of that pain is up to us. This teaching “present moment, wonderful moment” helps us to say that if we can dwell in the present moment and just be with this now, not project into the future … then we can bear it…. If we can stay with the present moment, … as hard as that may be, and take care of this present moment, then the next moment is a continuation of this moment, so we can also take care of that moment.  

Lingo shares a conversation she had with a woman who was grieving the loss of her husband.  

She was really struggling with this “present moment, wonderful moment,” teaching and I said, “It can be present moment, opening to the moment. It can be present moment, allowing the moment. It can be present moment, feeling the moment.”… If it’s not appropriate for you to go towards wonderful, it can be just “present moment and it’s the only moment.” That’s why it’s wonderful. It’s the only moment we have. We aren’t guaranteed any future moment, so as hard as it may be or as unwanted as it may be, it’s like asking, “How do we bless this too?” because this is part of the life we’ve been given and if we’re going to live it, we have to decide to live it. 

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SEP 3, 2025
Persecution or Privilege?

Skye Jethani With God Daily.

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Yesterday, we looked at what Jesus meant when he told his disciples, “the world hates you” (John 15:19). We saw that in John’s gospel when Jesus speaks about “the world” he’s not referring to everything and everyone outside the community of his followers, but to those forces opposed to God and his kingdom. Therefore, we must be careful not to dismiss the critique of the church that comes from our culture or from a non-Christian source. In some cases, they may be instruments of God’s correction and grace to be welcomed rather than enemies to be shunned. However, a proper reading of Jesus’ warning in John 15 also depends on how we understand persecution. As he said, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20).

When Jesus spoke about persecution, he made it clear that not all suffering his followers experience is persecution. For example, in the Sermon on the Mount, he said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted . . .” and he went on to bless those who are persecuted, “on my account” (Matthew 5:110-11). It is when we suffer for doing what is right or for being identified with Jesus that we are blessed. But there are plenty of Christians who may claim persecution who are actually suffering due to their own foolish or unrighteous behavior. Some suffer for righteousness. But frankly, some Christians suffer because they are insufferable.

“Persecution,” as John Stott deftly defined it, “is simply the clash between two irreconcilable value-systems.” The value system presented by Jesus is radically incongruent with the one presented by much of the world. Therefore, anyone who follows Jesus’ way should expect to be misunderstood, maligned, or mistreated. In fact, persecution is often seen as a sign of genuine faith in Christ. This is why Martin Luther listed suffering as an identifying mark of the true church, and any church that never suffers must be so at home in the world that it cannot possibly be faithfully representing Christ and his kingdom.

A desire to be seen as a “genuine” Christian, however, may cause us to claim persecution where none exists. This temptation is compounded by the rapidly changing cultural realities of our age. As the United States has become more diverse, with many more religious traditions, and an increasing number of people with no religious affiliation at all, the privileged position that the Christian faith and its values once enjoyed in our culture is diminishing. For example, in some places, Christian prayers and symbols have been removed from public spaces, or they now exist alongside religious symbols from other traditions. This loss of Christianity’s privileged status in our culture can often be misinterpreted as persecution.

This conflation of privilege and persecution was uncovered by a recent Barna study concerning the state of religious freedom in the United States. Evangelicals were the Americans most likely to say “Religious freedom in the U.S. has grown worse in the past 10 years” (77%). And yet, evangelicals were also the most likely to say that their religious values “should be given preference in the U.S.” (76%). Preferential treatment of one religion over another is precisely what religious freedom was established to prevent. How do we make sense of these seemingly contradictory findings? There are two possibilities. Many American evangelicals may not fully understand what religious freedom means. Or, as David Kinnaman, president of Barna, asks, “Is it possible that evangelicals are interpreting a loss of religious privilege as loss of religious freedom?” I suspect both may be true.

To be clear, religious persecution is a very present reality in our world. In fact, according to Open Doors International, more than 340 million Christians are experiencing high, very high, or severe persecution for their faith, and the number has risen considerably in recent years. The experience of our sisters and brothers around the world who are suffering for their devotion to Christ ought to make us reconsider our own situation. Before we cry “Persecution!” we should pause and ask whether we’re truly being targeted for being a Christian, or whether we’re simply being asked to make room for our neighbor who isn’t. When we claim our loss of privilege is actually persecution, we’re not only misapplying Jesus’ words in John 15. We’re also disparaging those who are genuinely suffering for his name both in the U.S. and around the world.

Work Gently

Everything is possible for those who believe, even more for those who hope, still more for those who love, and most of all for those who practice and persevere in these three powerful paths.
—Brother Lawrence, Practice of the Presence 

Brother Lawrence wrote down a short list of spiritual maxims or suggestions for the spiritual life that were published after his death. They included the reminder that “everything is possible” and to remain “humble and authentic.” CAC core faculty member Carmen Acevedo Butcher offers a modern translation of his instruction to “work gently”:   

The most sacred, most ordinary, and most necessary practice in the spiritual life is the presence of God. When we practice the presence, we enjoy and become familiar with God’s divine company, speaking humbly and looking to them [1] lovingly for support all the time, at every moment, without methods or limits, especially during times of temptation, pain, loneliness, exhaustion, and even disbelief and stumbling….  

We do all actions deliberately and thoughtfully, without being rash or rushed (which are signs of an untrained mind). We work gently and in love with God, asking them to accept our work. By our ongoing attention to God, we will break the cycle of harmfulness, and make all weapons fall. 

During our work and other activities, even during our reading and writing, no matter how spiritual, … we must stop for a brief moment, as often as we can, to love God deep in our heart, to savor them, even though this is brief and in secret. Since you are aware that God is present before you during your actions, that they are in the deep center of your soul, why not stop your activities and even your vocal prayers, at least from time to time, to love God, praise them, ask for their help, offer them your heart, and thank them?…  

Ultimately, we can offer God no greater evidence of our faithfulness than by frequently detaching and turning from all things created so we can enjoy their Creator for a single moment. I don’t mean to give the impression, though, that you should stop working or abandon your duties. That would be impossible. Wisdom, the mother of all our spiritual strengths, will be your guide. I am saying, however, that it is a common oversight among spiritually minded people not to turn from outside engagements from time to time to worship God within ourselves and enjoy in peace some small moments of their divine presence.  

This practice begins with a faith that God is truly present in all times and circumstances:   

All this reverence must be done by faith, believing God is really living in our hearts, and we must honor, love, and serve them in spirit and in truth…. Infinitely excellent and with sovereign power, they deserve all that we are, and everything in heaven and on earth, now and through eternity. All our thoughts, words, and actions belong rightly to God. Let’s put this into practice. 

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Learning from the Mystics: George MacDonald

Quote of the Week:   “The mind of many is not the mind of God.” Reflection  Although this is such a short statement from MacDonald, it is a striking one.  Did he say this as an observation or as a lament? Philippians 2:5 tells us to have the same mind as Christ, not the same mind as the authors who wrote the Bible… and yes, there is a difference. At no point during Jesus’ earthy ministry did he quote Joshua, Judges, or other violent passages of the Old Testament.  He did, however, often quote from Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, Isaiah, and other minor prophets.  Jesus seemed most concerned with quoting the Old Testament wherever it was redemptive, healing, etc. Not everything in the Bible is what we would call “the mind of God.”  Sometimes there are passages in the Bible that are more to be understood as cautionary tales than stories to be emulated. Being “biblical” by some people’s standards is NOT the same thing as being “Christ-like.” The Pharisees and religious leaders of Jesus’ day were “biblical” but they were not reading their Bibles with “the mind of God” and therefore they missed what the whole arch of cosmic history was actually about, the restoration of all things in Christ. For George MacDonald, one might wonder if he was closer to the mind of God than others around him.  He was often reacting to the abusive and harsh Calvinism/Reformed theology around him that was telling people that they were chosen for hell and there was nothing that they could do about it, except repent and pray that they might be one of the “elect.”  (And even then, you were never really sure.) MacDonald was even famously said to not be a Christian by Tim Keller and John Piper for his views on atonement.  That being said, one has to wonder, have the writings of George MacDonald, and the influence he had on CS Lewis, Lewis Carroll, and JRR Tolkien stood the test of time because they were showcasing a minority position, or because he possibly did have the mind of Christ? Is it possible to be so close to the Scriptures that one misses the overall scope of the mind of God?  Absolutely.  The Pharisees did it as well. All this goes to say, is that good theology is at the end of the day a tool.  Good theology is a tool for proclamation.  And what should be proclaimed?  “Good Advice” or “Good News”?  Good News.  And what is that Good News?  That in Christ, the first, middle, and last word spoken to and over all of us is Love.Prayer Heavenly Father, help us to let go of our certainty that we see the world exactly as you do.  Enable us the courage to set aside our assumptions and to learn from Christ alone, our truest and deepest, and most real “Scripture.”  Grant us the grace to put on the mind of Christ, and not the fanciful worldview of anyone else.  May it be so.  Amen.

Life Overview of George MacDonald:  When and Where: Born on December 10th, 1824.  Died on September 18th, 1905.  He spent most of his life in England and Scotland.  Why He is Important: The Cloud of Unknowing is considered a spiritual classic, that in some ways, worked against the logic and the rhetoric common in that day.  What is understood about God is deemed less important compared to what can be experienced with God.  Most Known For: His poetry, fantastical stories, and unspoken sermons on God as Father, God as Refiner, and the salvation of all people. Notable Works to Check Out:Unspoken Sermons Phantastes. Lillith

Father Richard Rohr describes prayer as a practice of being present before the mystery of God.   

Anyone familiar with my writing knows that I believe that immediate, unmediated contact with the moment is the clearest path to divine union. Naked, undefended, and nondual presence has the best chance of encountering the Real Presence. I approach the theme of contemplation in a hundred ways, because I know most of us have one hundred levels of resistance, denial, or avoidance. For some reason in our complicated world, it is very hard to teach simple things. Any mystery, by definition, is pregnant with many levels of unfolding and realization. That is especially true of the “tree of life” that is contemplative awareness. 

In my novitiate I was exposed to an early method of silent Franciscan contemplation called pensar sin pensar or no pensar nada as described by the Spanish friar Francisco de Osuna. I didn’t totally understand what I was supposed to be doing in that silence of “thinking without thinking” and probably fell asleep on more than one occasion. Yet it had the effect of moving me away from the verbal, social, and petitionary prayers I had been taught almost exclusively up to that time. 

Prayer is indeed the way to make contact with God/Ultimate Reality, but it is not an attempt to change God’s mind about us or about events. It’s primarily about changing our mind so that things like infinity, mystery, and forgiveness can resound within us. A small mind cannot see great things because the two are on two different frequencies or channels, as it were. The Big Mind can know big things, but we must change channels. Like will know like. [1] 

Of all the things I have learned and taught over the years, I can think of nothing that could be more helpful than living in the now. It’s truly time-tested wisdom. So many leaders in so many traditions have taught the same thing: Hindu masters, Zen and Tibetan Buddhists, Sufi poets, Jewish rabbis, and Christian mystics, to name a few. In the Christian tradition, we have heard it from Augustine, the Cloud of Unknowing, and the Carmelite Brother Lawrence. Contemporary teachers like Alan Watts, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Eckhart Tolle have done much to help us understand the importance of living in the now. It’s a shame that this real and deep tradition of the present moment has been lost to so many. 

Jesuit priest Jean-Pierre de Caussade called this type of prayer the “sacrament of the present moment.” In his book, Abandonment to Divine Providence, the key theme is: “If we have abandoned ourselves [to God], there is only one rule for us: the duty of the present moment.” [2] To live in the present is finally what we mean by presence itself! God is hidden in plain sight, yet religion seems determined to make it more complicated.

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Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection

CAC’s We Conspire introduces the life and teachings of Brother Lawrence (1611–1691), whose simple guidance and humble life inspired countless people to “practice the presence of God.” His wisdom reminds us that Divine connection is available in every moment if we learn to quiet our minds and surrender our hearts.  

In the mid-17th century, a man named Nicolas Herman joined the Carmelite monastery in Paris, France. Wounded from fighting in the European Thirty Years’ war, and suffering a sustained leg injury, he took the monastic name “Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection.” He worked in the monastery kitchen and eventually became the head cook. Amid the chaos of food preparation and the clanging of pots and pans, Brother Lawrence began to practice a simple method of prayer that helped him return to an awareness of Divine presence. He called it the practice of the presence of God and described it as “the most sacred, the most robust, the easiest, and the most effective form of prayer.” [1] 

Brother Lawrence’s method of prayer is so simple that it might seem misleading. It is to cultivate and hand over one’s awareness to God in every moment, in whatever we are doing. Brother Lawrence recommends that newcomers to the prayer use a phrase to recollect their intention toward the Divine presence, such as “‘My God, I am all yours,’ or ‘God of love, I love you with all my heart,’ or ‘Love, create in me a new heart,’ or any other phrases love produces on the spot.” [2] Practice of the Divine presence sometimes simply means taking brief pauses “to love God deep in our heart” and “savor grace.” [3] It involves a surrendered and resting trust in God to which one returns at all times.    

Brother Lawrence might be a surprising teacher of enlightenment. He lived through war, plague, and poverty. He suffered anxiety, injury, various humiliations, and even called himself a “clumsy oaf.” His leg pain became so great that, after twenty years in the kitchen, his monastic superiors transferred him to work repairing sandals. Yet translator and CAC core faculty member Carmen Acevedo Butcher commends him to us: “His exceptional calm and responses to life’s hardships make this unassuming friar an accessible and humanizing mentor of the time-tested practice of the presence prayer.” [4] 

For Brother Lawrence, even suffering itself becomes fodder to practice the Divine presence. We know of Brother Lawrence’s kind and gentle witness through numerous spiritual maxims he wrote down, letters that he penned to others, and interviews he gave to a curious, eager-to-learn monk named Joseph of Beaufort. In one letter, written to a nun at a nearby convent undergoing health challenges, Brother Lawrence is convinced that the Divine love given to us through practicing the presence heals our wounds despite painful circumstances. Nearing death and unable to walk, Brother Lawrence nevertheless envisions God as a parent full of love, affirming when we are embraced by such a Divine friend and parent “all the bitterness is removed, and only the sweetness remains.” 

sufficiently suspicious 

how to not be disappointed in community. ( Nadia Bolz Weber)

I always try and remain sufficiently suspicious of two things:

1. Myself

2. Vision statements, mission statements, (even 5-year plans) when it comes to community. 

I know I will never win this argument – most organizations are all-in with their statements – but just hear me out.

I know they feel good. But they always seem a bit like lofty nonsense. (sorry sorry sorry – I know we spend an ungodly number of hours trying to get these precious things right).

But one of my readers recently posted this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“He who is in love with his vision of community will destroy community. But he who loves the people around him will create community wherever he goes.”

Such an important truth. 

When we started House For All Sinners & Saints, it was during a time when a lot of church plants had a “what we believe” tab on their website. I remember hemming and hawing about whether or not to have one ourselves (I was quickly overruled when I suggested we just post the Nicene creed). Then someone said why don’t we just say “if you want to know what we believe, come and see what we do”, and that felt so much better. Nothing to aspire to and then criticize each other for falling short of. I mean, honestly, we can say anything we want about what we believe, or value – but what we do is what matters. The rest is just aspiration and ego. Or spin.

I’m generally more interested in the descriptive than the prescriptive.

At one point during my 11 years as their pastor, I realized that the congregation just seemed to be really good at loving each other. It was wild. But it wasn’t because LOVE was the focus. It was because GRACE was the focus. Some things only happen as a result of focusing on other things, and yet as Americans we want to approach everything head on. I know for a fact that, over the years HFASS was around, if new folks were welcomed with “the thing we want you to know about this community is that we love each other well!” we would have failed to become a community that ended up being pretty good at loving each other, but we for sure would have succeeded at becoming a community that was endlessly disappointed in ourselves and others for everything said or done that could be deemed “not very loving”. I know the following claim does not fill anyone with sparkly inspiration, but I think it is true: aspiration so often becomes the raw material of accusation.

Instead, when we would have a Welcome to HFASS Brunch for newcomers, folks were invited to say what drew them to the church – or for the old timers, what has kept them there. “I love the inclusivity, or the sense of community or the singing, or the fact that I don’t have to believe certain things in order to belong”, etc… And that’s when I would say “I love all those things too! But what I need you to hear me say is this: this community will disappoint you. We will fail to live up to your expectations of I will say something stupid that hurts your feelings. We invite you to stay after that happens, because if you leave you will miss the way that grace flows in to fill the cracks left behind by our failures.”

I’ve seen it. It’s real. I’ve seen grace fly in with healing in her wings and fill in the cracks – and I’ve seen how it softens me and leaves me with a cleaner heart than just getting it all right from the beginning (because I aspired to do so) – ever has.

Some of the best things in this terrible/beautiful life happen without us trying, and in fact could never happen as a result of us trying. That’s grace and it is absolutely everywhere.

Maybe this is why my favorite thing I ever heard in a yoga class was, “try less hard”.

Here’s to trying less hard, friends. 

In it with you,

Nadia

Can Christians Be Makers of Peace?

Friday, August 29, 2025

I can think of nothing more prophetic than to preach the gospel of Jesus. Nothing more radical, more countercultural, than to nurture and promote the values of the Spirit—love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness as well as self-control—in little ways and great. —Cyprian Consiglio, Epiphanies 

Camaldolese monk and songwriter Cyprian Consiglio shares a memory of visiting Israel and Palestine:  

One of the strongest images I have from my brief but intense pilgrimage to the Holy Land is of Rabbi Eli, who was probably the closest thing to one of the Hebrew prophets I have ever met. This was an Israeli who had been arrested several times for standing in solidarity with Palestinians, protesting the human rights violations against them…. We were standing at a high spot in East Jerusalem looking out over the disputed territories, and Rabbi Eli was pointing out the various iterations of the security wall making its serpentine way through Palestinian land. He was showing us a map of a new settlement about to begin construction in defiance of the UN and the US, which would effectively cut Palestine in half, thus preventing any possibility of Palestinians ever having a contiguous piece of land to call their state and effectively destroying the so-called two-state solution. Rabbi Eli said, “And so we are asking ourselves: What time is it? Is it a quarter to midnight? Is it five minutes to midnight? With this development I think it’s one minute to midnight. It’s almost too late.” 

That moment seared so deeply in my mind that on the way home on the plane I wrote a whole song about it called “One Minute to Midnight,” the closest thing to a ’60s-style protest song I had ever written. One of the verses included lines that were my sadly ironic version of the famous verses from the prophet Isaiah: “We’ve beaten our ploughshares back into swords / and made spears of our pruning hooks.” And I added, “We’ve turned revelation to a battle of words / and made weapons of our holy books.”  

Consiglio finds himself changed by Rabbi Eli’s solidarity with the Palestinian people:  

My friends told me that when I came back from that trip to the Holy Land my preaching changed. It was more fiery, more “prophetic,” I suppose. I was fired up by the frustration and energized by the agitation that I felt witnessing up close a situation that was patently unsustainable and obviously unjust, but with no visible solution and no one with enough real moral authority to “fix” everything. And I think I felt like never before the challenge of being a follower of Jesus, and I glimpsed what a privileged position we Christians have there in the Holy Land as well as in the world at large, to stand in the breach between our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters and dare to preach love of our enemies, dare to believe that peace if possible, dare to take Jesus at his word.  

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John Chaffee 5 On Friday

1.

“Love is my true identity.  Selflessness is my true self.  Love is my true character.  Love is my name.”

– Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk

If you and I are made by God and of God (as Julian of Norwich teaches us), and if God is Love, then it would make sense that, on a deep spiritual and even material sense, we are Love as well.

2.

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”

– Flannery O’Connor, American Author

This feels true to me.

It is not only that the truth shall set us free, but it will make us odd to a whole world that prefers to live in illusions, half-truths, and fabrications.  The world has sanctioned stories that it chooses to tell, it has pre-approved narratives that it wants us to live within because they keep us from challenging the status quo and not rocking the boat “too much” for everyone else.

However, the truth shall make us odd.

To live truthfully, listening to the sound of the genuine around us, will invariably make us antagonists to falsehood.

Perhaps this is why many of us feel uneasy or even lonely when we consider the scope of Christianity in the West today.  What passes for “truth” is often merely rhetoric or propaganda tailored to a particular group of people.

However, it will be okay.

Truth always eventually roars like a lion, falsehood eventually crumbles, and the odd ones will be shown as those who have been made free.

3.

“For we no longer take up “sword against nation,” nor do we “learn war any more,” having become children of peace, for the sake of Jesus, who is our leader.”

– Origen of Alexandria, 2nd Century Early Church Father

The way of violence has nothing to do with the way of Jesus of Nazareth.

Who would Jesus shoot, bomb, starve, cage, or execute?

No one.

After all, the Beatitude says, “Blessed are the peacemakers…” not “Blessed are the warmakers.”

4.

“If every man took only what was sufficient for his needs, leaving the rest to those in want, there would be no rich and no poor.”

– Basil of Caesarea, 4th Century Cappadocian Theologian

44% of the world’s population (that’s roughly 3.5 billion people) live on less than $6.85 per day.

And yet, I live in a country where we spend that much per day on coffee on the way to work.

It is interesting to me that what marks so much of Christianity in America is centered around topics of the culture wars, and yet the early church had much more of an emphasis on the poor.

In fact, the topic of the poor is mentioned more than 2,000 times across both the Old and New Testaments.

Regardless, the actual ethics of the Bible are much more socially aware than many might want to acknowledge.

5.

“Whoever has ears, let him hear.”

– Jesus of Nazareth in Matthew 11:15

There is a strange paradox that even Jesus himself encountered people who were not ready to hear the teachings he gave them.  He who is the Christ could not communicate in a way that more people could understand him.  It is perplexing.

This means we should not be too surprised if the teachings of Christianity are not heard or understood by more people today.  We are, by no means, as good a teacher of the faith as Jesus was.

And, there are plenty of lessons that Christ is still trying to teach each of us individually that fly completely over our heads.

Christ, have mercy.  We don’t know what we are doing, and we are a stubborn people who think we know better than we do, failing to have the humility to keep learning throughout our lives.

May we each stay open to the new lessons and insights that Spirit is trying to teach us, and be willing to hear from new teachers who can phrase things in a way that they can finally sink in.

Brian McLaren recalls how he felt led to reach out to local mosques in the days after the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks: 

While praying, I felt a voice speaking, as it were, in my chest: Your Muslim neighbors are in danger of reprisal. You must try to protect them. The next morning, I wrote and made copies of a letter extending, belatedly, friendship toward Muslim communities in my area, and offering solidarity and help if simmering anti-Muslim sentiments should be translated into action. I drove to the three mosques nearby—I had never visited them before—and tried to deliver my letter in person. The first two were locked tight—no doubt for fear of reprisals…. 

When I arrived at the third … I clumsily introduced myself as the pastor from down the street…. I then handed [the imam] my letter, which he opened and read as I stood there awkwardly…. Suddenly, he threw his arms around me—a perfect stranger…. I still remember the feeling of his head pressed against my chest, squeezing me as if I were his long-lost brother.  

“It means so much to me that you have come,” he said. “Please, please, please come inside.”… My host welcomed me not with hostility or even suspicion, but with the open heart of a friend. And so that day a friendship began between an Evangelical pastor named Brian and a Muslim imam we’ll call Ahmad. 

A few days later, the youth group from our church made a colorful banner expressing their desire for there to be friendship between the youth of the mosque and the youth of our church…. The mosque began hosting community dinners to which our people were invited along with people from other faith communities in the area…. 

The friendship between our congregations grew through a series of interfaith dialogues … and Ahmad and I began meeting for lunch every month or so…. If Ahmad wanted to talk about something or arrange for our next lunch meeting, he knew one place one day each week where I could be found—Sunday mornings at church…. 

Some people were, I imagine, a little shocked at first to see a Muslim cleric walking through the church lobby as people chatted over coffee and bagels. But because our congregations had developed a friendship, he was soon recognized and welcomed…. There was something wonderfully right about Ahmad feeling so at home that he could come find me before or between services on a Sunday…. 

Imagine what might happen around the world if more and more Christians rediscover that central to Christian life and mission is what we could call subversive or transgressive friendship—friendship that crosses boundaries of otherness and dares to offer and receive hospitality…. Imagine the good that could happen—and the evil that could be prevented from happening—if more Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and others cross the roads and other barriers that have separated them, and discover one another as friends.  

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From Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. (Brad Jersak)

Matthew 7

^{16 “}You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? ¹⁷ In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. ¹⁸ A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ Thus you will know them by their fruits.”

In context, Jesus warns his immediate audience about false prophets. He coined the phrase “wolves in sheep’s clothing” in the previous verse. Then in the paragraph above, he lays out a simple rubric for who passes or fails the test of credibility: “You will know them by their fruits.”

I’m not interested in pointing fingers at false prophets today. I know all too well Jesus’ warning in this same sermon how we’re judged by the measure with which we judge. This passage does, however, make an important point about the criteria by which we can distinguish healthy teaching from the unhealthy content that should be tossed into the fire. It’s all about the fruit.

Biblical & Theological Debate 

Religious movements spend an awesome about of time, energy, and ink trying to sort truth from error in biblical and theological debate. It’s an industry of which I’ve spent much of my life, whether behind pulpits, in classrooms, on social media, or the publishing world. There’s probably something important happening in those conversations (IF they every get beyond duelling monologues, weaponizing sacred texts, or flexing our factions). 

But in this text, Jesus cuts to the chase: just watch the fruit. If the fruit of our teaching, preaching, writing, or theology nurtures or heals or restores, perhaps we’re on the right track. When you can recognize and identify a pattern of damage, I’m not convinced further biblical or theological debate is necessary. 

When God is an Abuser

One of our students at St. Stephen’s University saw this clearly. Tabitha Sheeder is an experienced domestic violence advocate with experience in recognizing the signs of abuse in her clients, including the violence of power over and control by abusive partners. Her trauma-informed ministry helps those who’ve suffered to move forward.

As Tabitha researched her M.A. thesis, she became aware of patterns of religious trauma that looked eerily familiar, a pattern of indoctrination in which believers in a particular construct of God showed the same signs she had seen in her clients. The common factor was the notion of divine retribution. Out of those studies, she gathered her findings into capstone thesis titled “When God Is an Abuser: Dismantling the Abusive Gospel of Original Sin, Penal Substitutionary Atonement, and Eternal Conscious Torment.”

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The abstract of her essay, which I think needs to published as a book, includes this description:

Rooted in power and control, this retribution-laden theology bears similar markers to the tactics used by domestic violence perpetrators. This thesis will argue that this “gospel” proves to be abusive, and the God behind it is an abuser. While others have argued against these dogmas using biblical, theological, and philosophical grounds, I will demonstrate, using the tools of a domestic violence advocate, that their most potent refutation is their inability to pass the litmus test laid out by Jesus in Matthew 7:15-20: “Good trees cannot bear bad fruit.” 

The Moral Community

From there, Tabitha completed her project by describing a healthy alternative—a “moral community” that conveys a liberating counter-narrative and bears the good fruit and restored people we’d associate with a healthy gospel. 

Anyway, Tabitha’s point is simple and poignant. Jesus’ model for testing truth from error was not about who could win in a biblical or theological debate. That’s often just a test of one’s rhetorical skills. Watch the fruit. Fear or freedom? Hatred or kindness? Exclusion or hospitality? Withering or flourishing? I guess we’d need to examine what we imagine good fruit looks like, but I found Tabitha’s thesis and Jesus’ point as profound as it is simple.

I know Thich Nhat Hanh, and am privileged to call him my friend.  
—Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Peace Prize Nomination 

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022) and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) shared a friendship based on solidarity with the suffering of one another’s communities.   

A. J. Muste, working on behalf of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, arranged a meeting between Nhat Hanh and King in Chicago on May 31, 1966. They conferred privately for some time, discussing the latest crises in Vietnam, and then held a joint press conference…. The main artifacts of the 1966 meeting are photographs of Nhat Hanh and King at the press conference…. If the photographs can be considered to have iconic quality, it would be of friendship and solidarity. They are not two men working on isolated issues; their message is their commitment and their common cause.  

At some point that day, likely during the press conference, they released a joint statement. The statement read: 

… We also believe that the struggles for equality and freedom in Birmingham, Selma and Chicago, as in Hue, Danang and Saigon, are aimed not at the domination of one people by another. They are aimed at self-determination, peaceful social change, and a better life for all human beings. And we believe that only in a world of peace can the work of construction, of building good societies everywhere, go forward…. [1]  

This brief statement of mutuality and solidarity bursts with meaning…. Common cause is made between those in the Vietnamese peace movement and Black civil rights activists….  

To make this statement together, on their first meeting was an extraordinary step in their relationship. At the … meeting, with its private conversation followed by the press conference, we may say that Nhat Hanh and King began a friendship that is at the heart of the Beloved Community to which both men dedicated their lives. [2]  

After King’s death, Nhat Hanh was inspired by their friendship to continue exploring the connections between their two religions: 

The challenges to maintaining the Beloved Community are easy to discern in our everyday world. Wherever we encounter divisions that lift some up and oppress others, we recognize the betrayal of the Beloved Community. Among the most notorious divisions of our world are those between religions…. Nhat Hanh has helped lower the barriers between two of the great world religions, Buddhism and Christianity.  

The continuing and developing friendship between King and Nhat Hanh led Nhat Hanh to further explore the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity. As he wrote in Living Buddha, Living Christ,  

It was only later, through friendships with Christian men and women who truly embody the spirit of understanding and compassion of Jesus, that I have been able to touch the depths of Christianity. The moment I met Martin Luther King, Jr., I knew I was in the presence of a holy person. Not just his good work but his very being was a source of great inspiration for me. [3]  

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PARROTT.INK When Every Generation Thinks It’s the Last: Reading Revelation as Living Metaphor

A church member once handed me a copy of a DVD that proved that Obama was the Antichrist and insisted I watch it. I (not so) politely refused. “If I watched every video or read every article that someone sent me about the end times, I wouldn’t have time to do my real job.”If you’ve been in the Christian sphere at all, you’ll know that Obama was the Antichrist. Then Trump. The covid vaccine was clearly the mark of the beast. Every earthquake, every blood moon, every political upheaval gets filtered through the apocalyptic anxiety machine that American Christianity has become.Some segment of every generation for the past 2,000 years has thought they were living in the last days. Every single one. And maybe—just maybe—they were all right?There are (very basically) two ways to read Revelation: Futurist and Preterist. I inherited a view of Revelation that turns John the Revelator into some kind of first-century Nostradamus, receiving visions of nuclear weapons and computer chips and whatever other modern technology we’re convinced matches his strange symbols. This futurist approach treats the book like a detailed prophetic timeline, complete with charts and diagrams showing exactly when the rapture will happen and who the Antichrist will be.But this means John wrote an entire book that would be completely meaningless to its original audience. Picture getting a letter from a friend that consists entirely of detailed descriptions of events that won’t happen for another 2,000 years, involving technologies and nations that don’t exist yet. You’d probably think your friend had lost their mind.The early Christians were being fed to lions, crucified upside down, and burned as human torches to light Nero’s garden parties. They needed hope for their situation, not a cryptic roadmap for some distant future they’d never see.This is where preterist interpretation comes in—the view that Revelation was primarily about events in John’s own time. In this reading, the beast with the number 666 represents Nero Caesar (whose name adds up to 666 in Hebrew numerology), Babylon is Rome, and the destruction described in the book refers to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.This does make more sense historically. John is writing to persecuted churches, using coded language that would slip past Roman censors while offering his audience real comfort about their immediate circumstances. The book becomes a powerful act of resistance literature, saying “Rome looks invincible, but God’s justice will prevail.” But if we stop there—if Revelation is only about the past—we’re left with a beautiful historical artifact that has nothing to say to us today. And that doesn’t match how the book has continued to speak to believers across centuries of different circumstances.What if both approaches are missing something crucial? What if John wasn’t trying to write either a literal prediction of the distant future orjust a coded message about his own time, but something far more sophisticated—a typological framework that would remain relevant across generations?This is the approach that makes the most sense to me, and I’m not alone in this. Typological interpretation recognizes that biblical authors often wrote about patterns that repeat throughout history. John uses the specific circumstances of Roman oppression to illuminate universal truths about empire, violence, and resistance that transcend any single historical moment.Think about it this way: dystopian literature works similarly. When Octavia Butler wrote Parable of the Sower, she wasn’t predicting exactly what would happen in 2025. But damn if her vision of climate chaos, corporate feudalism, and religious authoritarianism doesn’t feel prophetic. When Margaret Atwood created Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale, she wasn’t forecasting a specific future but revealing patterns of patriarchal control that exist in every era. Revelation functions like the Bible’s great dystopian novel. John uses vivid, archetypal imagery—the beast, the whore of Babylon, the new Jerusalem—to create a framework for understanding the cosmic struggle between empire and kingdom, violence and peace, oppression and liberation.This is why every generation has seen itself in Revelation’s pages. There is always a beast—some empire or system that demands ultimate allegiance and crushes those who resist. There is always a Babylon—some center of wealth and power built on the exploitation of the vulnerable. There are always martyrs crying out “how long, O Lord” for justice against violence.The Roman Empire that John wrote about followed patterns that Stalin’s Soviet Union would repeat, that corporate oligarchy repeats today, that every system of domination throughout history has repeated. The specific details change—lions in the Colosseum become gas chambers become drone strikes—but the underlying spiritual dynamics remain constant. This isn’t to say that all empires are equally evil or that we can’t make moral distinctions between different political systems. It’s to say that Revelation gives us a lens for recognizing and resisting the recurring patterns of dehumanization and violence that show up in every age.What I love about a typological reading is how it centers Revelation’s most radical claim: that the way to overcome empire isn’t through superior violence but through what Eugene Peterson called “reverse thunder”—the power of sacrificial love.The lamb who was slain conquers not by becoming a bigger, scarier beast but by revealing a completely different kind of power. The martyrs overcome not by taking up swords but by refusing to bow down to the lie that might makes right. The new Jerusalem descends not as a locked-down fortress but as a place of healing, where the leaves of the tree of life are “for the healing of the nations” and her gates are never shut. This vision remains as subversive today as it was when John first wrote it. In a world still dominated by the logic of redemptive violence—where every problem is met with calls for bigger weapons, tougher penalties, stronger borders—Revelation insists that God’s power works differently.If we take Revelation seriously as ongoing metaphor, then the church is called to be that new Jerusalem here and now.We’re meant to embody the alternative to empire, to be the community where swords get beaten into plowshares and the healing of the nations actually happens.Most of the time, we fail spectacularly at this. American Christianity in particular has often functioned more like Babylon than new Jerusalem—blessing empire rather than challenging it, accumulating wealth and power rather than laying it down, building walls rather than offering healing.But the vision persists. In every generation, there are communities that catch glimpses of what the new Jerusalem could look like. I see it in churches that open their doors to immigrants, in congregations that choose reconciliation over retaliation, in believers who refuse to let fear drive their politics.This typological approach helps us live in what theologians call the “already and not yet”—the tension between God’s kingdom breaking into our world and the full realization of that kingdom still to come.The beast has been defeated in principle through Christ’s death and resurrection, but beastly systems still rampage through our world. The new Jerusalem is already present wherever communities embody God’s justice and mercy, but we still wait for the day when every tear will be wiped away.This means we can read Revelation with both hope and urgency. Hope, because the ultimate outcome isn’t in doubt—love wins, justice prevails, death itself gets thrown into the lake of fire. Urgency, because our generation faces its own beasts that demand our resistance, its own opportunities to be new Jerusalem for our neighbors.Revelation refuses to let us sit comfortably on the sidelines of history, waiting for God to fix everything from the outside. It calls us to embody the alternative here and now, to live as people who know how the story ends but understand that how we live in the middle matters immensely.The apocalypse isn’t just coming—it’s happening, generation after generation, wherever the kingdom of God breaks into the kingdoms of this world. The question isn’t whether we’ll recognize the signs in tomorrow’s headlines, but whether we’ll recognize the call to be new Jerusalem today.

Overcoming an Exclusionary Faith

Sikh activist and author Valarie Kaur recalls an experience of a childhood friendship ending because of a difference in faith:  

I was in eighth grade, sitting in the library with my very best friend in the whole world. Her name was Lisa. We were working …, but we were really giggling and passing notes to each other and messing around, when Lisa gets really quiet for a moment. She has this far-away look in her eyes and she says, “Valarie, I just can’t wait until judgment day.”… 

I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Well, then it’ll just be us. It’ll just be us. I can’t wait until it’s just us who are left.” I said, “Well, where will everyone else go?” Then she looked at me, very uncomfortable. She said, “Well, you know, down there.” It was that moment that I had to break to my very best friend the fact that I was not Christian…. I could see the blood drain from her face…. How could her very best friend not be saved? Not be good? Not be Christian?…

She had inherited a theology that divided the world into good and bad, right and wrong, saved and unsaved. Her theology severed her from her own deep knowing that her best friend was good and beloved. It’s like her theology stole me from home. She was trying to make it all make sense, try to hold both, but she couldn’t hold both. She had to let me go. [1] 

In the wake of that loss, Kaur visits a church where she can confront a Christian about the belief in a God who discriminates against people of other faiths. There, she meets a church organist and recalls saying,  

“I just can’t believe that there could be a God who would send me to hell,” I said. There was a pause as she looked at me. I was ready to fight.  

“I can’t either,” she said. She saw my shock and explained. “I think that there are many paths. It just doesn’t make sense otherwise….” Her name was Faye and she was the first Christian I had ever met who did not believe I was going to hell. I would go on to meet many more people like her and learn that there are many ways to be Christian, just as there are many ways to be Sikh. Our traditions are like treasure chests filled with scriptures, songs, and stories—some empower us to cast judgment and others shimmer with the call to love above all…. 

Fifteen years after I thought our friendship was over, Lisa would reach out with an apology. She would still be Christian and I would still be Sikh, but she would have long abandoned the particular theology that had tried to sever us from one another. She had gone on her own journey … and had eventually come back to our friendship. In the end, we learned that love was the way, the truth, and the life. 

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An Excerpt from Here Comes the Sun by Bill McKibben

The central role of the sun in the religious life of humans has faded in most places over the millennia. Look to the Middle East, for example, the place we sometimes think of as the cradle of civilization. The sun was pre-eminent for the Sumerian civilization; Utu, the sun god, and his Akkadian successor Shamash could see, as they traversed the sky, all that happened on earth, making them the arbiters of justice and equity (Shamash gave Hammurabi the famous law code that served as the model for so much that came after). Sun worship may have reached its apogee next door in Egypt, where Ra, with his sun disk on his head, was numbered the king of the gods, sailing the sky in his solar boat. Pharaohs were considered his sons; the great temples at Karnak and Luxor captured the sunrise at the solstices, and many of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings were aligned toward the setting sun. The shape of the pyramids themselves is likely symbolic of the rays of the sun as they spread down from the heavens.

This region no longer belongs to these gods, of course. Instead it’s firmly in the grip of the various religions of the book — Judaism, Christianity, Islam — which frown on anything even resembling sun worship. And yet, as Freud argues in Moses and Monotheism, there’s a sense in which “modern” religion comes in a direct line from that earlier era — that monotheism really originated in Egypt and that Judaism just dropped the sun. Moses, he insisted, was not Hebrew but an Egyptian follower of a monotheism based on the sun, “who chose the Jewish people to keep alive an advanced ethical and religious belief which the Egyptians were abandoning.” 

Scholars don’t accept this version as historical truth, but those of us who grew up with the Bible understand Freud’s deeper reasoning — the sense of light as a metaphor for the divine, the idea that God, like the sun, is a source of life and energy. Yes, the Bible is harsh on idolators: “beware lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and worship them and serve them.” And yet “Sun of Righteousness” is the name that the Hebrew prophets used to forecast the Messiah. 

Though I’m not a preacher, I lead the Christmas Eve services in our tiny Vermont church, and I always make sure we sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” in part for those lyrics:

“Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all He brings, Risen with healing in His wings.”

Christmas, in fact, is the reminder that none of our meaningful traditions are ever pure or disconnected from the past. Was Jesus born on the 25^th of December? The Bible doesn’t say, and early accounts — Clement of Alexandria, say — suggest April or May; but there was an existing Roman solstice feast (Saturnalia) and as Constantine was baptized into the new religion customs began to be absorbed. (Cultural appropriation!). In 354 Liberius, bishop of Rome, picked December 25, and for many centuries Christmas continued pretty much as the drunken feast around the darkest days of the year that it always had been (even in the new world the Puritans frowned on Christmas, which they called Foolstide.) It’s taken two thousand years to wring most of the old sunlight out of the day.

But hey, what do you know, the Roman Sun Day became the Christian day of worship. There’s no escaping it. I’m a Christian — a Methodist, the least excitable of all denominations. That means I worship the Son, not the sun: the radical code that Jesus laid out, with its insistence above all on caring for the poor and vulnerable, works for me. But my form of the faith (increasingly remnant in modern America where a cultish and brutal Christianity is now the norm) is perfectly compatible with some low-key reverence for the sun. I am reminded constantly of Francis of Assisi and his Canticle of the Sun.

Praised be You, my Lord, with all your creatures;
especially Brother Sun, who is the day, and through whom You give us light.

And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
and bears a likeness to You, Most High One.

It’s worth noting, in fact, that the last Bishop of Rome took his papal name from that earlier Francis. And when he wrote his overpoweringly radical 2015 encyclical on climate change, Laudato Si, he took that phrase (Praised be You) straight from the Canticle.

As the author of Ecclesiastes (Solomon, at least by legend) put it:

“What has been will be again
What has been done will be done again.
There is nothing new under the sun.”

An Open Christianity

If something is true, no matter who said it, it is always from the Holy Spirit.  
—Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate 

Father Richard Rohr reflects on how his commitment to Christ and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit have continually helped him recognize God in other religious traditions: 

In my own life, going deep in the Christian religion of my birth has enabled me to see the same Spirit and love in other religions as well. It’s been quite a journey from growing up in a Catholic “ghetto” in Kansas, and hardly even knowing any Protestants. And yet, at age fourteen, I was sent to study with the Franciscans in Cincinnati, Ohio, and they gave me an expansive theological education. 

One of the best courses I had was on the Hebrew Scriptures, which gave me a great love for Judaism. It’s probably why I emphasize the prophets so much, because I realized the prophets really weren’t about what we call today retributive justice. They were about restorative justice. When we stay with their message, there are these magnificent passages toward the end of their books that invariably point toward love. God eventually says through the prophets: “I’m going to love you anyway. I’m going to redeem you by my perfect love. I’m going to love you into wholeness” (see Isaiah 29:13–24; Hosea 6:1–6). 

In 1969, when I was sent as a deacon to the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, I had only a basic introduction to Indigenous religions. I observed how mothers in the pueblo would show their children how to silently wave the morning sunshine toward their faces, just as many Christians learn to bless themselves with the sign of the cross. I realized that Indigenous peoples had contemplative prayer long before we Franciscans ever appeared. 

The rediscovery of Christian contemplation opened my eyes to Buddhists and Sufis—their teachings and practitioners. Buddhism taught me the phenomenology of perception—what’s going on in our brains. Every world religion at its mature level discovers some forms of practice to free us from our addictive mind, which we take as normal. Starting in the 1960s, our increased interaction with Eastern religions in general, and Buddhism in particular, helped us recognize and rediscover our own very ancient Christian contemplative tradition. The Sufis’ deep love of mysticism, especially as expressed by their poets Rumi and Hafiz, often captures the stirrings of my own heart. 

My latest discovery was Hinduism, which is considered the oldest world religion. In the early 1980s, I gave a retreat in Nepal. Between talks I would just walk the old streets, go into temples, and try to remain invisible. I remember these lovely Indian women coming in so gracefully, wearing saris, and paying no attention to anything else except perhaps the flame or the oil they were holding. With what reverence they would bow! What do we think they’re bowing to except God, the Mystery? Like the wind, the Spirit blows where it will (John 3:8). 

Learning from Thomas Merton

In the CAC’s Essentials of Engaged Contemplation course, James Finley reflects on what he learned about interfaith friendships from Thomas Merton:  

Thomas Merton had a sense of depth and integrity to the search for God and how it interfaces the world. He had a deep love for his own mystical, contemplative Christian tradition, down through the ages. He wrote two books on Zen Buddhism, Zen and the Birds of Appetite and Mystics and Zen Masters. In his letter to D. T. Suzuki, who was a Buddhist scholar, he wrote: “When I read your teachings about these talks between the master and the teacher, where the student is enlightened in the presence of the teacher, something leaps off the page at me and says, ‘This is true.’” [1] He said in essence, “I would like to know if I, as a Christian, could dialogue with you as a Buddhist about our common ground.” And Suzuki accepted the invitation. Merton approached everyone that way, and they came to talk with him.  

What Merton saw was that the world will not survive religion based on in-group consciousness. It’ll bring the whole world down. But if those who have been awakened within their tradition to the Divine Mystery which also transcends their tradition, when they all come in toward that all-encompassing center, they recognize each other. And if they would speak up, religion’s awakening could be a source of world unity and peace. Merton was trying to be someone who spoke out of this unified clarity. He saw that each religion is like a different language of the universality of awakening.  

Finley recalls how he sought Merton’s guidance in developing his own curiosity about Buddhism: 

Merton would talk about the beauty of these religions, their analogies and similarities. When I would go see him for spiritual direction, I’d ask him to help me to go further. He never pushed it or anything, but I asked. He introduced me to the Dharma or Buddhist teaching, and it had a deep effect on me. The same with yoga. He practiced yoga and introduced me to it. A yoga monk came from India and we all went up to the front porch of Merton’s hermitage to practice asana—the postures—together. People were drawn to Merton, because they sensed the depth of awareness that he carried.  

Thomas Merton once said that if we want to study Buddhism, the answer is not to read a lot of books on Buddhism; it’s to meet a holy Buddhist instead. There’s an unmistakable quality of presence. And if someone tries to understand Christianity, they don’t need to read a lot of books on Christian theology. Philosopher Jacques Maritain, who came to visit Merton at the monastery once, said, “If there’s a place where Christ isn’t present, you go there. Christ will be present this way.” I think it is this transformative place of living from presence that allows us to resonate with others—meeting them in their presence, rather than through our ideas about them, or their ideas of us.  

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Learning from the Mystics: George MacDonald

Quote of the Week:   “Sad, indeed, would the whole matter be, if the Bible had told us everything God meant us to believe.  But herein the Bible itself greatly wronged.  It nowhere lays claim to be regarded as the Word, the Way, theTruth.  The Bible leads us to Jesus, the inexhaustible, the ever unfolding Revelation of God.  It is Christ ‘in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, not the Bible, save as leading to him.” – from the Unspoken Sermon “The Higher Faith.” Reflection  The Bible is indispensable in the life and practice of Christianity.  It is rightfully the first conversation partner and influence for Christian spiritual formation. However, It is not the cornerstone upon which everything should stand or fall. That title, the Cornerstone, is reserved for Christ alone.  To make the Christian Scriptures the main thing in one’s life is actually to make an idol of the Bible.  Idolatry is so sneaky, it will even take something pious and make it primary. MacDonald is making a sharp distinction: The Bible exists to point toward Christ.  Any interpretation of the Scriptures that esteems them more than Christ is faulty and misguided. The fervor and the intensity to which some of us defend, quote, and uphold the Scriptures might be communicating something else.  Is it possible that our fanatic devotion to the Bible is a wall, a distraction, a means by which we hold God at a distance? Take a moment to consider these questions…What is more important to you, being “biblical” or “Christlike”?What does a Christian do, follow the Bible or follow Jesus?Is the Bible the “way, truth and life” or is the Carpenter from Galilee?Can quoting the Bible become a shallow replacement for instead doing what Christ would do?Jesus himself encountered this problem of pious people making an idolatrous god of the Bible… “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them is eternal life.  These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” – John 5:39-40 Theologians of Church history have taken to understanding the Bible, not as the Word of God per se, but as the echo or the testimony that Jesus is the Word of God.  This may sound striking, but it is only because we have confused the testimony about Jesus with the person of Jesus himself.  MacDonald, through rather direct wording, is doing the pastoral thing of reminding his people to keep Christ at the center of their faith and practice rather than the Scriptures.  Again, this does not negate that the Scriptures can rightfully be the first and primary conversation partner and influence in the life of faith, but the Scriptures serve a function… The Scriptures are not the Christ, they unwaveringly point toward Him as the self-revelation of God. Prayer  Heavenly Father, we acknowledge that we often take secondary things and make them primary.  Often, we do this with pious things but we recognize that to do so is still idolatry.  Help us to understand the Scriptures for what they are, as a guide pointing us back to you.  Do not allow us to be tempted to love anything more than we should you.  Amen and amen.

Life Overview of George MacDonald:  When and Where: Born on December 10th, 1824.  Died on September 18th, 1905.  He spent most of his life in England and Scotland.  Why He is Important: The Cloud of Unknowing is considered a spiritual classic, that in some ways, worked against the logic and the rhetoric common in that day.  What is understood about God is deemed less important compared to what can be experienced with God.  Most Known For: His poetry, fantastical stories, and unspoken sermons on God as Father, God as Refiner, and the salvation of all people. Notable Works to Check Out:Unspoken Sermons Phantastes Lillith

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