Author Debie Thomas considers how Jonah’s story challenges our notions of God’s mercy:  

Following his preposterous marine adventure, Jonah grudgingly obeys God’s instructions and warns the people of Nineveh that their wickedness is about to be punished. But then the impossible happens.  

The Ninevites listen to Jonah’s warning, take it seriously, and repent. And God, seeing their penitence, changes God’s mind and shows them mercy. In other words, Jonah preaches a sermon, and his congregation responds to it!… You’d think that Jonah would be thrilled. But no. He’s furious, and he tells God so.  

After hearing Jonah’s complaints, God asks, “What right do you have to get angry?” (Jonah 4:9). Thomas continues: 

To Jonah, then, God’s question is a ridiculous one. Of course he has a right to be angry. Isn’t it right to be angry that God’s mercy extends to killers? Isn’t it right to be angry when people who break the rules don’t get the comeuppance they deserve? Isn’t it right to be angry about a grace so reckless and wasteful that it challenges our most cherished assumptions about justice?  

God doesn’t scold Jonah for his anger. Instead, God engages it with compassion. God even goads it in a playful attempt to broaden Jonah’s horizons. God wants the grumpy preacher to see the Ninevites as God sees them. For while the Assyrians are everything Jonah believes them to be—violent, depraved, and wicked—they are also more…. They’re human beings made in God’s image, but they’re lost and broken. What they deserve is neither here nor there. What they need is compassion….  

God challenges Jonah to consider the hard truth that even his worst enemies are God’s beloved children…. Should God not care for God’s own? Is it right for Jonah to be angry? The story wisely ends with these questions unanswered. We’re left with Jonah still sulking…. 

All too often, we are also left to wrestle with the scandalous goodness of God, a goodness that calls us to become instruments of grace even to those who offend us most deeply. God’s goodness gently probes beneath our pieties and asks why we often prefer vindication to rehabilitation—prison cells and death sentences to hospitality and compassion. It exposes our smallness and stinginess, our reluctance to embrace the radical kinship God calls us to embrace. Why do we grab at the second chances God gives us, even as we deny those second chances to others? God’s goodness dares us to do the braver and riskier thing: to hold out for the hearts of those who belong to God, whether we like them or not.  

Do we have a right to be angry? God knows that the only way to answer this question, and so many others like it, is to wrestle it to the ground. God meets us in the ring, openhanded, willing, forbearing. God’s hand rests on us in love, even as we prepare to attack. God’s patient love enfolds us, absorbing our anger into God’s all-sufficient self.  

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Jesus Didn’t Promise You a Mansion. from Skye Jethani, With God Daily

In his book, The King Jesus Gospel, New Testament scholar Scot McKnight makes a simple but stunning observation. The Book of Acts, in which Jesus’ Apostles travel broadly proclaiming his gospel, contains no mention of heaven. Not one of the seven gospel sermons in Acts speaks of salvation as entering heaven after death. (Hell is also never mentioned in Acts, in case you were wondering.) This raises an important question—If going to heaven was not part of the gospel Jesus and his Apostles proclaimed, why is it so central to the one we often hear? It’s hard to imagine a gospel sermon today that doesn’t emphasize the centrality of one’s postmortem residence. Since at least the Middle Ages, much of Christianity has been obsessed with avoiding hell’s eternal slum and entering the gated community of heaven.This ironically unbiblical fixation on heaven is why we see endless religious movies about the coming apocalypse, and why travel guides written by those who claim to have returned from heaven become best-sellers. American pop Christianity is enamored by heaven’s golden streets, pearly gates, or other opulent architecture while dismissing their scriptural symbolism to create a virtual map of the afterlife. We also do this with Jesus’ words in John 14:2-3. There he speaks of his Father’s house having many rooms, and that he is going to prepare a place for his followers. The old King James Version, which poorly translated “many rooms” as “many mansions,” has caused Christians for centuries to view the afterlife as merely an idealized version of earthly life, but without the nuisance of taxes, health care, or non-Christian neighbors. We’ve even composed hymns about the mansions and palaces that await us as if the greatest reward of the gospel is an upgrade in real estate.Just like the golden streets or pearly gates spoken of in Revelation, in John 14, we tend to focus on the metaphor rather than its meaning. We want to know about literal mansions or rooms in heaven rather than what Jesus was communicating about himself and the Father. The word Jesus used is difficult to translate because it only occurs one other time in the New Testament, and it’s just a few verses later in John 14:23. There, Jesus speaks of the Father and the Son making their “home” or “dwelling” within those who keep his word. The word has nothing to do with mansions or rooms in a palace; it’s simply referring to where one resides. And the context eliminates the silly idea of Jesus literally building a house inside our bodies. Instead, he is speaking of the intimacy and unity that will exist between us and him.Remember, Jesus’ disciples were confused and distraught about his announcement that he was leaving them. His words about preparing a place for them in his Father’s house were meant to comfort their anxiety about losing Jesus. In other words, these verses aren’t about mansions, houses, or even heaven (which, like Acts, is never mentioned in Jesus’ farewell discourse). It’s about Jesus promising his frightened friends they would have a permanent place in God’s presence with him. John 14, like the gospel itself, isn’t ultimately about heaven; it’s about God and living in unity with him.Our common misreading of these verses exposes the pervasive misunderstanding of Jesus’ gospel altogether. The goal of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension was not to get us into heaven. His goal was to reconcile us to God. He is the goal. He is our reward. When we make heaven or avoiding hell the goal we’ve exchanged the true gospel of Jesus Christ for a false gospel of pop-Christianity. If we make a celestial mansion our true desire we’ve reduced Jesus into a broker who merely secures it for us. Such a gospel makes Jesus instrumental rather than ultimate in our hearts. As one theologian put it, “People who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there.” In John 14 Jesus isn’t promising his followers a mansion in heaven. He’s promising us something infinitely better—himself.

An Imperfect Messenger

The story [of Jonah] is glorious because it reveals unerringly a universal God of mercy and justice and because it pokes holes in the self-righteousness of those who think themselves religious while blaming others for the evil in the world and taking pleasure in their suffering.  
—Megan McKenna, Prophets: Words of Fire 

Father Richard Rohr has always felt a deep connection to the story of the prophet Jonah, while recognizing how imperfectly Jonah follows his call:  

Even though I love Jonah, he is what I call an unfinished prophet. He rejects his divine commission at first, refusing to preach God’s mercy to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria and Israel’s ancient enemy. After he flees and boards a ship going the wrong way, he’s cast overboard in a storm, swallowed by a great fish, and rescued in a marvelous manner. Only then does he obey God’s call and go to Nineveh. The people repent upon hearing his message and thus are saved from God’s wrath. But Jonah complains, angry because the Lord spared them. He is so detached from his own real message that he’s disappointed when it succeeds!  

From that point on, poor Jonah is simultaneously angry, lamenting, and praising YHWH for four full chapters. His problem is that he cannot move beyond a dualistic reward-punishment worldview. Jonah thinks only Israel deserves mercy, whereas God extends total mercy to Jonah, to the pagan Ninevites who persecuted Jonah’s people, and to those “who cannot tell their right hand from their left.” To make the story complete, this mercy is even given to “all the animals” (Jonah 4:11)! The world of predictable good guys and always-awful bad guys collapses into God’s unfathomable grace.  

I love this story so much that I have collected images of a man in the belly of the whale for much of my adult life. I think I live in that whale’s belly permanently, with loads of unresolved questions and painful paradoxes in my life. Yet God is always “vomiting” me up in the right place—in the complete opposite direction that I’ve been trying to run, like Jonah himself (Jonah 2:10).  

Jonah’s story breaks all the expectations of who is right and then remakes those expectations in favor of grace. It is a brilliant morality play, not a piece of dogmatic theology, as some try to make it. Yet it does have political implications, in the sense that it provokes us to change our notions of who deserves power and who doesn’t. 

Jonah thought he had the exclusive cachet of truth and thus could despise those to whom he was preaching. He wanted them to be wrong so that he could be right, yet in his anger at Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire, he failed to appreciate God’s desire to offer forgiveness and grace even to Jonah’s enemies. In fact, he even resented their joining his “belief club.” He struggled mightily to accept the new “political” arrangement. 

Have We Listened to God’s Call?

At the CAC’s CONSPIRE 2018 conference, Dr. Barbara Holmes (1943–2024) shared her own personal “Jonah story”:  

There is a crisis of disobedience when we choose to disobey God’s will for our lives. In this instance, I think of Jonah…. He thinks he’s right. He hates the Assyrians, and understandably so. After all, they were a marauding, land-grabbing nation, a real threat to Israel. He had national pride. He wanted to see them destroyed. When he gets the call from God, he travels 2,500 miles to the southern area of Spain. He couldn’t get much further away. Why does he flee? He flees, he says at the end of chapter four, because he knows God is merciful. There is no worse situation than a merciful God when you want to see your enemies get what’s coming to them. Jonah wants to do things his way and ends up in the belly of a sea monster.    

Do you have a Jonah story? I do. From the age of ten through my twenties, I knew I had a call of God on my life. Through dreams, waking visions, and moments of surprising attunement with the Divine, I knew God was calling me. But there I was, a ten-year-old girl, with a call to something I didn’t understand. I’d never seen a woman in ministry. For that matter, I’d never seen a woman leading in any spiritual capacity. So, what was I to do?   

Well, I went on with my life. I got married, had two children, and after a decade heard the call again even more strongly. This time I turned my head to where I thought God lived (up there) and I said, “Excuse me, sir, or ma’am”—I wanted to cover my bases—“I don’t know if you know about the divorce, but I have two children, I’ve got to feed them and ministers don’t make any money. So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to law school.” [1]  

It took time, but Holmes eventually said “yes” to God’s call. At CONSPIRE 2021, she encouraged listeners to remain open and faithful to God’s invitations to serve:   

As I was standing at my law school graduation ceremony, I heard a voice say to me, “This isn’t it.” I was startled, and I said to my girlfriend who was standing in line with me to get our degrees, “I just heard a voice say, ‘This is not it.’” She started laughing and said, “Well, you sure have wasted a lot of time.”… There was nothing to do but hear the whispering and continue my practices. I now allow life to lead me to the precipice of the newness that was already seeded in my life….  

Trust God, trust Holy Spirit to lead you into all truth. Make your intention clear that you will follow as called, without exception. Make your intention known to God and wait for the Holy Spirit to lead you into the fulfillment of your vocation. [2]  

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God Never Wanted Kings

The establishment of monarchy in ancient Israel was a theological disaster that God explicitly opposed—which should fundamentally challenge how we conceptualize divine authority today.

The establishment of monarchy in ancient Israel was a theological disaster that God explicitly opposed—which should fundamentally challenge how we conceptualize divine authority today.

First, let me start with something that’s always bothered me about 1 Samuel. As we talked about earlier, Eli’s sons are corrupt priests who steal from sacrifices and abuse their religious authority. God’s response? The entire lineage gets cut off. Divine judgment, full stop. 

But fast forward a few chapters, and Samuel’s sons are taking bribes and perverting justice as judges. The consequence for Samuel? Absolutely nothing. The text never addresses this glaring double standard, never explains why one father faces devastating judgment while the other walks away unscathed. 

Sometimes scripture’s inconsistencies are worth sitting with rather than explaining away.

But this smaller inconsistency points us toward a much larger theological tension. When Israel demands a king after Samuel’s sons fail, God’s response should shake any simplistic theology that claims everything happens according to divine plan. God explicitly tells Samuel: “They have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Samuel 8:7). The people are literally rejecting God’s kingship in favor of human monarchy.

What follows in 1 Samuel 8 reads like dystopian political theory. God, through Samuel, lays out exactly what monarchy will mean. There’s a 4x repetition of the Hebrew verb יִקָּח/yiqqāḥ, “he will take” (which correlates with what Samuel’s own sons are doing, “taking bribes”). Samuel says, “Your sons conscripted for war and forced to run before royal chariots, your daughters taken as perfumers and cooks and bakers, your best fields and vineyards and olive orchards confiscated and given to royal officials. A tenth of your grain, your vineyards, your flocks—all flowing upward to sustain the machinery of monarchy.”

God essentially says, “You want hierarchical human power structures? Here’s your future.”

And they choose it anyway. Not everything happens according to divine plan.

Redactors

From a textual perspective, this is super interesting. The biblical editors who had to make decisions about what was included in the Bible—we call them redactors—had to make choices about what to include and what to leave out. These ancient editors were working during or after the monarchic period, when kings were simply a fact of life in Israel and Judah. Many of them, particularly those we call the Deuteronomistic historians, clearly favored David and worked to legitimize dynastic succession.

Yet they kept this blistering anti-monarchy critique right at the foundation of the monarchy narrative. They could have smoothed over this tension, could have edited the story to make monarchy look like God’s idea all along. Instead, they preserved this text that essentially says kings were never part of the plan. The Hebrew Bible’s ambivalence toward monarchy isn’t an accident or an oversight—it’s theological resistance preserved in canonical form.

This preservation of competing perspectives matters enormously for how we read scripture today. The Bible isn’t a monolithic document with a single perspective on power. It’s a collection of texts that argue with each other, that preserve minority reports and dissenting opinions. The same tradition that gives us royal psalms and Davidic covenant theology also maintains this fundamental critique that God never wanted human kings in the first place.

Jesus is…Lord?

Which brings us to contemporary theology and the language we use for the divine. Hebrew scholar Dr. Wil Gafney points out that even the word “Lord” in our prayer language emerges from slaveholding contexts. The Greek kyrios, the Latin dominus, the English “master”—these are terms from imperial and slaveholding societies. When we exclusively use imperial metaphors for the divine, we’re theologically legitimizing the very power structures that significant portions of scripture critique.

Think about how often our God-language relies on metaphors of domination: King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Sovereign, Ruler. We’ve so internalized these power metaphors that we rarely stop to ask whether they actually align with the God revealed in scripture—the God who warns against human kings, who sides with the oppressed, who shows up as a refugee baby rather than a conquering emperor.

The biblical editors understood something we sometimes forget: divine authority and human power structures are not synonymous. In fact, scripture often presents them as opposed to each other. The prophets consistently critique royal power. Jesus explicitly rejects the devil’s offer of all the kingdoms of the world. The early church proclaimed “Jesus is Lord” as a direct challenge to “Caesar is Lord,” not as an endorsement of lordship as a concept.

If scripture itself preserves skepticism toward concentrated power, then reimagining our God-language isn’t liberal revisionism or theological innovation. It’s fidelity to what the Bible itself does—preserving tension, maintaining critique, refusing to let power structures go unchallenged. 

The God who warned against kings might not be thrilled with our imperial Christologies either.

Real theological imagination means finding language that sounds like liberation rather than domination. It means taking seriously scripture’s own skepticism about power rather than selectively reading only the texts that reinforce hierarchical authority. It means being honest about the ways our traditional God-language might actually work against the liberation that God desires for creation.

The ancient redactors left us a gift: a sacred text that argues with itself about power, that refuses to resolve the tension between divine sovereignty and human authority. Maybe it’s time we stopped trying to resolve that tension and started learning from it instead.

What Is Emancipation?

Richard Rohr teaches that a deeper understanding of freedom and liberation are needed today:  

I would use the word “emancipation” to describe the kinds of freedom and liberation that are needed today. Instead of focusing on personal freedoms only, emancipation directs our attention to a systemic level of freedom. With the exception of a very few who are fully emancipated, we each live inside our own smaller security systems of culture, era, political opinion, and even some quiet, subtle agreements of which we may not even be aware.  

Political and economic liberties such as free speech, free markets, and the freedom to be secure and defend ourselves can only offer us as much freedom as we ourselves have earned from the inside. If we haven’t achieved the inner freedom to love, we are totally dependent on outer systems which, paradoxically, can never fully deliver the very freedoms they promise. Our inability to recognize this has made our so-called freedoms very selective, class-based, often dishonest, and open to bias.  

For example, are we really free to imagine that there could be better alternatives to our free-market system? We’re likely to be called dangerous or un-American if we dare broach the topic. Does our freedom to protect ourselves with gun rights and limitless military spending give us the right and freedom to use the vast majority of the economic resources of our country for our protection? Even if it means not providing food, healthcare, or education for the same people we say we are securing?  

When we place all our identity in our one country, security system, religion, or ethnic group, we are unable to imagine another way of thinking. Only citizenship in a much larger “Realm of God” can emancipate us from the confinement of certain well-hidden, yet agreed-upon, boxes we have labeled “freedom.” In fact, because these are foundational cultural agreements, we hardly even recognize them as boxes.  

Such boxes are good, helpful, and even necessary sometimes, but my job, and the job of Christian wisdom, is to remind us that “We are fellow citizens with the saints and part of God’s household” (Ephesians 2:19). We have been called to live in the biggest box of all, while still working and living practically inside the smaller boxes of society. That is a necessarily creative and difficult tension, yet it is really the only way we can enjoy all levels of freedom. “In the world, but not of the world” was the historic phrase commonly used by many Christians, whereas today most of us tend to be in the system, of the system, and for the system—without even realizing it!  

So, let’s use the word emancipation to describe a deeper, bigger, and scarier level of freedom: inner, outer, personal, economic, structural, and spiritual. Surely this is the task of our entire lifetime. 

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Homeland Ambiguity

The question of faith and citizenship never go away

DIANA BUTLER BASS. JUL 3

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National holidays always give me pause. As a Christian, I’m never entirely sure how to engage patriotism. I’ve waved many a flag in my life, hung a few upside down, pretended to be Canadian to avoid the issue, shouted Frederick Douglass’ famous speech from the rooftops, and refrained from such celebrations altogether. 

July 4 is my day of national ambiguity.

Today, I’m sharing a reflection I wrote in 2003 in response to 9/11 and the dangers of mistaking one’s homeland for God’s city. 

It is interesting re-reading this now. My writing voice has developed — as well as my theology (which has become much more inclusive). But, in the twenty-two years since it first appeared in Broken We Kneel, the issues have only become clearer and more pointed. 

And it still represents a central concern that I’ve struggled with for my entire adult life. 

Whether you live in the United States or another nation, perhaps you feel this struggle too. Because it isn’t exclusive to a single country. It is a fundamental tension in Christianity, expressed differently in different nations through the centuries. 

I think that the poem below from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “Dear America,” best “gets” my sense of homeland these days.

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Homeland security. Until very recently, those words were not about politics, they were about faith. In the phrase, I inwardly heard the longing echoes of “Land of Rest,” a traditional American folk hymn:

Jerusalem, my happy home,
When shall I come to thee?
When shall my sorrows have an end? 
Thy joys when shall I see?

As a Christian, I trust that I have a homeland, one that is secure in God’s care. But that homeland is not a political nation. Theologically, I am a sojourner, an alien citizen of the United States; by virtue of my baptism in Christian faith, my primary citizenship is in God’s city.

Throughout church history, Christians in many nations have tried to associate their geography with God’s holy city (for example, the Byzantine Empire, the medieval Holy Roman Empire, or the realm of Russian tsars), but such biblical territorial claims have always resulted in some tragic corruption of Christianity. The homeland of Jesus’ followers is God’s city, a non-geographical city embodied in the way of life of its people in the present — and a city whose full revelation awaits some future time. The city is, as much of Christian theology has affirmed, “already and not yet.” Today, some people identify the biblical homeland as the state of Israel or the United States of America. But neither can truly claim that title. The homeland of God’s faithful remains a promise, both a way of life and a place of rest for which God’s people still long.

I do hope for a land of rest, as described in the traditional American hymn, a peaceful homeland. This is a holy hope, the same hope expressed by biblical patriarchs and prophets. The Scriptures and Christian tradition teach that the hope for a homeland is theologically fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. And that one day the long awaited city will be more clearly manifest in creation. In the meanwhile, however, God’s people are promised neither an earthly homeland nor security. I am not convinced that a government department can deliver either — when God’s people have been waiting since the time of Abraham for both. To seek homeland security is, at best, a misguided quest.

New Testament writers seem ambivalent about the whole idea of a homeland. To describe it, which they rarely did, they used the Greek term, patris, the root for the English word patriotic, which refers to one’s fatherland or one’s own native place.

The most significant homeland story in the Gospels appears in Luke 4:18, where Jesus returns to his hometown of Nazareth and preaches: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” His fellow townspeople rejected his claim, leading Jesus to conclude, “No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown” (Luke 4:24). This criticism did not go over well with his neighbors. They responded by driving him out of town and trying to hurl him off a cliff. For Jesus, his earthly homeland was a dangerous place for someone choosing to do God’s work. 

Indeed, in Hebrews 11:13–16, the writer describes those living the life of faith as people who “were strangers and foreigners on the earth,” men and women who were “seeking a homeland . . . a better country, a heavenly one.” Or according to Philippians 3:20, “our commonwealth is in heaven.”

Although some Christians have used these ideas to justify antiworldliness or withdrawal from society, the fundamental truth remains: the homeland of God’s people is not a theocratic earthly nation.

Occasionally, as was the case for medieval Catholics and nineteenth-century Protestants, Christians have rejected the otherworldly orientation of God’s realm by making the kingdom of God coterminous with human society. In both cases, the body politic — or the hoped-for body politic — is identified as God’s political order. Medieval popes believed they ruled over the earth in Christ’s stead. Earnest American Protestants thought they were bringing God’s city to earth through prayer and democratic politics. Throughout history, identifying one’s homeland as God’s formed the basis for Christendom, the earthly reign of the church. The confusion started with the Emperor Constantine in 313 and, in Europe and America, continued well into our times. The most recent manifestation of the tendency is the political objective of some evangelical Protestants to reclaim, redeem, or retake America as a Christian nation. 

Historically, the United States proved uniquely poised to interpret itself as God’s homeland, a kind of New World Israel, given to European Christians by God as a second chance at Eden. Our forebears busily refashioned Christian tradition to support their colonial project and justify American ideals of freedom, democracy, liberty, and capitalism. But there was a price to be paid for that accommodation. For most American Christians, pulling apart the interwoven threads of “Christian” and “American” has proved difficult. Indeed, the relationship between faith and nation has been so confusing that, in the minds of many, despite the separation of church and state, America is a Christian nation. There may be no established national church, but God himself guides, blesses, and oversees the American experiment, “the last great hope of earth.” In America, the government may not start or sponsor a church, but the nation itself is an embodiment of the will and plan of the biblical God.

In recent years, as evangelical Protestants articulated a political theology of American Christian nationhood, some mainline Protestant theologians have begun to recover the idea of God’s heavenly reign and reject the cozy worldliness that had been the hallmark of their denominations. In an ironic reversal, many mainline Protestants now tend toward Scripture’s exile tradition, “that the church exists today as resident aliens, an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief” (Stanley Hauerwas, Will Willimon). They have returned to the biblical idea of the church as a community of strangers and foreigners whose commonwealth is heaven.

That Christians are an exile people seems an apt—and even providential—reminder in light of so-called homeland security. The Christian patris is a distant realm, and our loyalty to any secular homeland is that of an exile community. We work, have children, raise families, care for the poor, work for the betterment of our communities, pay taxes. We try to figure out what Jesus meant when he said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God, the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17). That is harder than it seems.

Christians believe, like Jews, that as the Psalmist says, “the earth is the Lord’s and all that is therein” (Ps. 24:1). Thus at the heart of Christian citizenship is a dilemma: Christians submit to Caesar so long as Caesar’s laws do not conflict with the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Christian patriotism is practicing a way of life based in the virtues of faith, hope, and love. We are citizens, only secondarily, of our earthly homelands. As Christians, we may or may not appreciate the ideals, politics, or policies of the country in which we reside. Patriotism is often a matter of lament, prophetic challenge, and protest.

That means, of course, that there are no easy answers when it comes to issues of faithful citizenship. Christians must consider every political issue theologically in light of the tradition, authority, practice, and wisdom of the faith community, with a keen sense of their primary status as alien citizens. Faith is a kind of risk culture, lending itself to what theologian Barry Harvey calls “holy insecurity,” as the citizens of God’s city “must always struggle to detect the delicate counterpoint of the Spirit” to mediate between engaging the world and challenging it.

(adapted from Broken We Kneel: Reflections on Faith and Citizenship, pp. 99-105)

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INSPIRATION

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
—Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

A Leading Voice for Liberation

Thursday, July 3, 2025

CAC’s We Conspire publication explores the work of Brazilian Archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara (1909–1999), an advocate of liberation theology.  

Despite standing no taller than 5’1”, Dom Câmara was a giant in his convictions. He did not begin his career, though, as a champion of justice and nonviolence. In his early years as a priest, Câmara offered a faith-based voice for an authoritarian political movement in Brazil called “Brazilian Integralist Action.” A momentous exchange took place when the French Catholic Cardinal Gerlier urged Câmara to prioritize poverty as part of his work. The encounter became a transforming event in Câmara’s faith that he described as being “thrown to the ground like Saul on the road to Damascus” (Acts 9:1–19). [1] Câmara dedicated the rest of his life to organizing the wider church to consider the systemic causes of poverty and violence…. Considered a leading voice for peace and justice in the twentieth-century Catholic Church, Dom Hélder Câmara was informally called the “bishop of the slums” for his steadfast commitment to the urban poor and economic justice. [2] 

Here are a few of the convictions that Dom Câmara lived by:  

I would like to say to everyone: 

• Where [humanity] is, the church must be present. 
• The egoism of the rich presents a more serious problem than Communism.  
• Today’s world is threatened by the atom bomb of squalid poverty.  
• Profound changes must be made in order to establish justice in every sphere throughout the world.  
• Without a deep personal conversion, no one can become an instrument for the conversion of the world….  
• To revolutionize the world, the only thing needed is for us to live and to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ with real conviction.  
• Dire poverty is revolting and degrading; it taints the image of God in every [human]….
• My door and my heart are open to all—to all without exception.  
• Christ has prophesied what will happen at the last judgment: we shall be judged according to the way we have treated him in the persons of the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden. [3] 

Banned by the media in his own country, Dom Hélder Câmara traveled the world spreading the message of the gospel and liberation. He urged contemplative, inner transformation as necessary for structural changes in our systems and world. Câmara connected the work of liberation with the liberation that God provides:  

Just as the Father, the Creator, wants us to be co-creators, so the Son, the Redeemer, wants us to be co-redeemers. So, it is up to us to continue the work of liberation begun by the Son: the liberation from sin and the consequences of sin, the liberation from egoism and the consequences of egoism. That is what the theology of liberation means to us, and I see no reason why anyone should be afraid of a true, authentic theology of liberation. [4]   

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Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

My children make it a pastime of judging one another–and themselves. But I am the only capable Judge, and I have acquitted you through My own blood. Your acquittal came at the price of My unparalleled sacrifice. That is why I am highly offended when I hear My children judge one another or indulge in self-hatred.
     If you live close to Me and absorb My Word, the Holy Spirit will guide and correct you as needed. There is no condemnation for those who belong to Me.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Luke 6:37 (NLT)
Do Not Judge Others
37 “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven.

Additional insight regarding Luke 6:37: A forgiving spirit demonstrates that a person has received God’s forgiveness. If we are critical rather than compassionate, we will also receive criticism. If we treat others generously, graciously, and compassionately, however, these qualities will come back to us in full measure. We are to love others, not judge them.

2 Timothy 4:8 (NLT)
8 And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.

Additional insight regarding 2nd Timothy 4:8: Whatever we face – discouragement, persecution, or even death – we know we will receive a reward with Christ in Heaven.

Titus 3:5 (NLT)
5 He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.

Additional insight regarding Titus 3:4-6: All three persons of the Trinity are mentioned in these verses because all three participate in the work of salvation. Based upon the redemptive work of his Son, the Father forgives us and sends the Holy Spirit to wash away our sins and continually renew us.

 

Set Free for Freedom

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

The liberating message of the Gospels and his own lived experience has shaped the theology of Palestinian Anglican priest Naim Ateek. He writes: 

In 1948, I was a boy living in Beisan, a Palestinian town of six thousand people…. Beisan was a mixed town of Muslims and Christians and had a vibrant Christian community that belonged to three churches—Eastern Orthodox, Latin (Roman Catholic), and Anglican. I cherish fond memories of living in my hometown…. It was a beautiful town blessed for its delicious fruits and vegetables. It had freshwater springs flowing from the adjacent mountains irrigating people’s land and gardens. I still remember our garden and the variety of fruit trees my father planted and our family enjoyed.  

Our life was turned upside down when the Zionist militias came into Beisan in May 1948 and occupied us…. We were forced out of our homes at gunpoint and were ordered to meet at the center of town. The soldiers divided us into two groups, Muslims and Christians. The Muslims were sent to the country of Jordan, a few miles east of Beisan. The Christians were put on buses and driven to the outskirts of Nazareth, where they were dumped outside the city limits, never to be allowed to return home.  

When we arrived in Nazareth, we discovered that hundreds and thousands of Palestinians from the neighboring villages had suffered a similar fate. 

Ateek exhorts the church to stand with those who are suffering.   

Today the church continues to exist in the midst of a suffering and broken world. Every day there are men, women, and children who face war, famine, discrimination, violence, and poverty. The church has an ambiguous history in responding to these needs. At times the church has shown solidarity with the oppressed, while at other times it has been silent or complicit in their oppression.  

For us Christians, the model of Jesus Christ as seen in the Gospels exhorts us to love and care for our brothers and sisters in humanity. What does this care look like? How can we best love those who are marginalized or oppressed? What does it mean to confront and challenge injustice and oppression in both word and deed?  

In order to reflect on how we can respond to suffering, it is helpful to consider first the kind of life Jesus offers us:  

Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Paul said, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).  

The life Christ offers us is life in all its fullness. This fullness is not offered in some distant, far-off future, but in our present circumstances. We are able to enter into the fullness of life because Christ has already achieved our liberation through his death and resurrection. Indeed, Christ is our liberator, and God in Christ wills that we should be free. Therefore, we need to stand firm and must not submit to anything that dehumanizes or enslaves us.  

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Let Me show you My way for you this day. I guide you continually, so you can relax and enjoy My Presence in the present. Living well is both a discipline and an art. Concentrate on staying close to Me, the divine Artist. Discipline your thoughts to trust Me as I work My ways in your life. Pray about everything; then, leave outcomes up to Me. Do not fear My will, for through it I accomplish what is best for you. Take a deep breath and dive in the depths of absolute trust in Me. Underneath are the everlasting arms!

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Psalm 5:2-3 (NLT)
2 Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God,
    for I pray to no one but you.
3 Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord.
    Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 5:1-3: The secret to a close relationship with God is to pray to him earnestly each morning. In the morning, our minds are more free from problems, and then we can commit the whole day to God. Regular communication helps any friendship and is certainly necessary for a strong relationship with God. We need to communicate with him daily. Do you have a regular time to pray and read God’s word?

Deuteronomy 33:27 (NLT)
27 The eternal God is your refuge,
    and his everlasting arms are under you.
He drives out the enemy before you;
    he cries out, ‘Destroy them!’

Additional insight regarding Deuteronomy 33:27: Moses’ song declares that God is our refuge, our only true security. How often we entrust our lives to other things – perhaps money, career, a noble cause, or a lifelong dream. But our only true refuge is the eternal God, who always holds out his arms to catch us when the shaky supports that we trust collapse and we fall. No storm can destroy us when we take refuge in him. Those without God, however, must forever be cautious. One mistake may wipe them out. Living for God in this world may look like risky business. But it is the godless who are on shaky ground. Because God is our refuge, we can dare to be bold.

Freedom Results from Action

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society. 
—John Lewis, Across That Bridge 

Pastor Janelle Bruce reflects on how Jesus’ liberating acts in the temple (Mark 11:15–17) were the model for clergy-led Moral Monday protests in North Carolina and beyond:  

When Jesus comes to the temple, he drives out those who are selling and buying, and he overturns the tables of the money changers. He says, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a ‘den of robbers.’” 

Doing justice and overturning tables is not an option but a mandate. Holy disruption is a mandate for those who follow Christ, those who profess love as their religion, and those who believe in justice. While comfort leads us to accept more of the same, our faith calls us to disrupt that which harms God’s people. 

We cannot become so comfortable having a seat at the table that we refuse to flip it over when it becomes a tool of oppression. We cannot fail to act because we fear the consequences. I watched the radical work of the Forward Together Moral Movement when the group’s protests first began in 2013. I was awed by North Carolinians of different backgrounds standing together, with the crowd growing from dozens to hundreds to thousands, Monday after Monday. These holy disruptors fought against the destruction of voting rights, tax codes that would hurt the most vulnerable, and policies that would devastate students, the poor, the elderly, and African Americans…. For far too long, churches have depoliticized the gospel of Jesus that demands love and justice in action.  

Bruce names areas that deserve disruption in the United States today:  

When we have fewer voting rights today than we did fifty years ago, we need holy disruption. When seven hundred people die every day from poverty in the United States while the richest amass and hoard wealth, we must engage in holy disruption. Holy disruption demands that people be treated justly and reminds our legislators that they are servant-leaders who will be held accountable to the people. If we walk in the radical nature of Christ when we step into spaces of injustice, people will think, here comes trouble: good, liberating, loving, Christlike trouble!… 

On that first Moral Monday, Jesus showed us how to overturn tables. May we remember Jesus the revolutionary, the refugee, the prisoner, and the table turner. May we embody Jesus who fought for the poor, questioned corrupt religious establishments, and challenged the evil policies of the government. Just as Jesus disrupted the Roman Empire, we are the moral witnesses of today, and we are called to disrupt the unjust empires of our time. 

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Jesus Calling Sarah Young

 I am leading you, step by step, through your life. Hold My hand in trusting dependence, letting Me guide you through this day. Your future looks uncertain and flimsy–even precarious. That is how it should be. Secret things belong to the Lord, and future things are secret things. When you try to figure out the future, you are grasping at things that are Mine. This, like all forms of worry, is an act of rebellion: doubting My promises to care for you.
    Whenever you find yourself worrying about the future, repent and return to Me. I will show you the next step forward, and the one after that, and the one after that. Relax and enjoy the journey in My Presence, trusting Me to open up the way before you as you go. 

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Deuteronomy 29:29 NLT

29 “The Lord our God has secrets known to no one. We are not accountable for them, but we and our children are accountable forever for all that he has revealed to us, so that we may obey all the terms of these instructions.

Psalm 32:8 NLT

8 The Lord says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life.

    I will advise you and watch over you.

Hearing Another Story

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Father Richard Rohr explains how the Gospels impart a message of liberation, particularly for people pushed to the margins of society: 

The vast majority of people throughout history have been poor, oppressed, or in some way “on the margins.” They would have read history in terms of a need for change, but most of history has been written and interpreted from the side of the winners. The unique exception is the revelation called the Bible, which is an alternative history from the side of the often enslaved and oppressed people of ancient Israel, culminating in the scapegoat figure of Jesus himself. 

In the Gospels, the poor, people with disabilities, tax collectors, sinners, and outsiders tend to follow Jesus. It’s those on the inside and the top—the Roman occupiers, the chief priests and their conspirators—who crucify him. Shouldn’t that tell us something significant about perspective? Every viewpoint is a view from a point. We must be able to critique any winner’s perspective if we are to see a fuller truth. 

Liberation theology—which focuses on freeing people from religious, political, social, and economic oppression—is often dismissed by official Christianity. Perhaps that’s not surprising when we consider who interpreted the Scriptures for the last seventeen hundred years. The empowered clerical class enforced their own perspective instead of that of the marginalized, who first received the message with such excitement and hope. Once Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire (after 313 CE), we largely stopped reading the Bible from the side of the poor and the oppressed. We read it from the side of the political establishment and the usually comfortable priesthood instead of from the side of people hungry for justice and truth. Shifting our priorities to make room for the powerless instead of accommodating the powerful is the only way to detach religion from its common marriage to power, money, and self-importance. [1] 

When Scripture is read through the eyes of vulnerability—what Catholics call the “preferential option for the poor” or the “bias from the bottom”—it will always be liberating and transformative. Scripture will not be used to oppress or impress. The question is no longer, “How can I maintain the status quo?” (which often happens to benefit me), but “How can we all grow and change together?” We would have no top to protect, and the so-called “bottom” becomes the place of education, real change, and transformation for all. 

The bottom is where we have no privilege to prove or protect but much to seek and become. Jesus called such people “blessed” (Matthew 5:3). Dorothy Day said much the same: “The only way to live in any true security is to live so close to the bottom that when you fall you do not have far to drop, you do not have much to lose.” [2] From that place, where few would choose to be, we can be used as instruments of transformation and liberation for the rest of the world. [3] 

Liberation and Justice

The Liberation Journey

Monday, June 30, 2025

Father Richard Rohr understands liberation to be the underlying story of both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures: 

The theme of liberation is the largest frame in which to understand spirituality. The term liberation theology has a negative connotation for some people. It sounds like something heretical, leftist, or Marxist, and certainly not biblical. In fact, liberation is at the heart of both the Jewish and Christian traditions from the very beginning. It’s amazing that much of Christianity has been able to avoid that truth for so long, probably because many of us read history from the top down and seldom from the bottom up, which is the recurring perspective of both the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures.  

We see the beginnings of the liberation theme as early as fourteen hundred years before Jesus with the enslavement and exodus of the Jewish people. Something divine happened that allowed an oppressed group of Semitic people in Egypt to experience many levels of gradual liberation. This story became the basic template and metaphor for the entire Bible. The Exodus was both an inner and an outer journey. If our inner journey does not match and lead to an outer journey of liberation for all, we have no true freedom or “salvation.” That is what liberation theology is honest enough to point out.  

Moses is the historical character at the heart of the Exodus event and of the spirituality that grew from that experience (Exodus 3:1–15). The voice Moses hears from the burning bush immediately calls him to confront the pharaoh and tell him to let his people go! It does not tell him to go to a temple or to build one.  

Here we see a primary inner experience that immediately has social, economic, and political implications! Liberation theology shows that spirituality and action are connected from the very beginning and can never be separated. Some people set out to act first, and an inner experience may be given to them on the journey itself. Others have an inner experience that then leads them into action. It doesn’t matter on which side it begins. Eventually action and spirituality must meet and feed one another. When prayer is authentic, it will always lead to actions of mercy; when actions of mercy are attempted at any depth, they will always lead us to prayer.  

Very early in the Jewish tradition there is a split between the Exodus tradition—which I believe is the original tradition of liberation—and the priestly tradition that develops in Leviticus and Numbers. The priestly mentality invariably tries to organize, control, and perpetuate the initial mystical experience with prayer and ritual. It’s the Jewish prophets who bring together the inner God-experience and outer work for justice and truth. This connection is desperately needed and yet resented and avoided to this day. We always and forever need the prophets or else most religion worships itself instead of God. The pattern is persistent.  

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

  I am involved in each moment of your life. I have carefully mapped out every inch of your journey through this day, even though much of it may feel haphazard. Because the world is in a fallen condition, things always seem to be unraveling around the edges. Expect to find trouble in this day. At the same time, trust that My way is perfect, even in the midst of such messy imperfection.
     Stay conscious of Me as you go through this day, remembering that I never leave your side. Let the Holy Spirit guide you step by step, protecting you from unnecessary trials and equipping you to get through whatever must be endured. As you trudge through the sludge of this fallen world, keep your mind in heavenly places with Me. Thus the Light of My Presence shines on you, giving you Peace and Joy that circumstances cannot touch.

RELATED BIBLE VERSES:

Psalm 18:30 (NLT)
30 God’s way is perfect.
    All the Lord’s promises prove true.
    He is a shield for all who look to him for protection.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 18:30: Some people think that belief in God is a crutch for weak people who cannot make it on their own. God is indeed a shield to protect us when we are too weak to face certain trials by ourselves, but he does not want us to remain weak. He strengthens, protects, and guides us in order to send us back into an evil world to fight for him. Then he continues to work with us because the strongest person on earth is infinitely weaker than God and needs his help. David was not a coward; he was a mighty warrior who, even with all his armies and weapons, knew that only God could ultimately protect and save him.
Isaiah 41:13 (NLT)
13 For I hold you by your right hand—
    I, the Lord your God.
And I say to you,
   ‘Don’t be afraid. I am here to help you.’

Individual and Collective Responsibility

Friday, June 27, 2025

Authors Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom reflect on the Alcoholics Anonymous community and the powerful lessons we can learn from them.   

Starfish have an incredible quality to them: If you cut an arm off, most of these animals grow a new arm. And with some varieties, such as the Linckia, or long-armed starfish, the animal can replicate itself from just a single piece of an arm.… They can achieve this magical regeneration because in reality, a starfish is a neural network–basically a network of cells. Instead of having a head, like a spider, the starfish functions as a decentralized network….  

Let’s look at one of the best-known starfish of them all. In 1935 Bill Wilson was clenching a can of beer; he’d been holding a beer, or an alcoholic variation thereof, for the better part of two decades. Finally, his doctor told him that unless he stopped drinking, he shouldn’t expect to live more than six months. That rattled Bill, but not enough to stop him. An addiction is hard to overcome….   

Bill had a huge insight. He already knew that he couldn’t combat alcoholism all by himself. And experts were useless to him because he and other addicts like him were just too smart for their own good. As soon as someone told him what to do, Bill would rationalize away the advice and pick up a drink instead. It was on this point that the breakthrough came. Bill realized that he could get help from other people who were in the same predicament. Other people with the same problem would be equals. It’s easy to rebel against a [counselor]. It’s much harder to dismiss your peers. Alcoholics Anonymous was born.  

The organization models how to be responsible for self and others:   

At Alcoholics Anonymous, no one’s in charge. And yet, at the same time, everyone’s in charge…. The organization functions just like a starfish. You automatically become part of the leadership—an arm of the starfish, if you will—the moment you join. Thus, AA is constantly changing form as new members come in and others leave. The one thing that does remain constant is the recovery principle—the famous twelve steps. Because there is no one in charge, everyone is responsible for keeping themselves—and everyone else—on track.… There’s no application form, and nobody owns AA.   

Nobody owns AA. Bill realized this when the group became a huge success and people from all over the world wanted to start their own chapters. Bill had a crucial decision to make. He could go with the spider option and control what the chapters could and couldn’t do. Under this scenario, he’d have had to manage the brand and train applicants in the AA methodology. Or he could go with the starfish approach and get out of the way. Bill chose the latter. He let go.  

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John Chaffee 5 On Friday

1.

“I have come to think that care of the soul requires a high degree of resistance to the culture around us, simply because that culture is dedicated to values that have no concern for the soul.”

– Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk

There is something rebellious about taking faith seriously.

It is utterly counter-cultural.

This is NOT to say that it is against conservatism or liberalism.  It does, however, seem to be against a whole culture that wants to separate things into broad binaries.

Not only that, but care of the soul probably includes being passionately against hurry, noise, and crowds, which are the three main societal obstacles to spiritual formation.

To follow the Christian faith seriously is not for those who wish to fit in.  The Christian faith will put you at odds with everything that is not pulling humanity in the direction of health, holiness, compassion, welcome, forgiveness, hospitality, disarming nukes, putting down guns, ending violence, ending homelessness, caring for the orphan and the widow, treating the addict, hugging the leper and our cultural “lepers”, and so much more.

Merton is right.

To be Christian is to rebel.

2.

“God has a powerful thirst to draw all of humanity into himself.”

– Julian of Norwich, English Anchoress and Mystic

I have come to the position that the “powerful thirst” of God will one day be satiated.

3.

“He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world (Cosmos/Κοσμος).”

– 1 John 2:2

Here is yet another passage that I have never heard a sermon or a Bible study on.

As I have said elsewhere and before, there is an unconscious or even deliberate attempt to avoid these passages, which point rather overtly to a form of Christian universalism.

About two years ago, I was at a gas station when another member of the church pulled up whom I had not seen in a while.  He seemed a bit of a gruff guy, but would flash a smile that was so playful it was disarming.  While he was getting gas next to me, he asked me a question.

“You know, John, I’ve been thinking over that hell thing…”

Then, fascinatingly, he felt the need to whisper…

“It just doesn’t make sense.  Jesus forgives everything, but then he will send the majority of humanity from the dawn of time to hell?  He wouldn’t do that, would he?”

I smiled at him.

“Nope, it doesn’t make sense at all.  Infinite love and mercy have a limit?  That doesn’t make sense.  God is like a Divine Lifeguard who will draw or drag all people back to himself.  It is not that Jesus atoned for some; he atoned for the whole cosmos.”  Right there, I wrote up a few other passages to look up on a slip of paper and handed it to him.  “Don’t expect ever to hear a sermon or Bible study about these passages.  The real Good News is better than we were told.”

We shook hands, smiled, said our well wishes, and each headed off on our own way that day.

Now, every time I drive past that gas station, I think about that interaction: an impromptu Bible study next to a pump of unleaded gasoline.

If God has already reconciled everything, the entire cosmos has already been atoned for, and we have a God of infinite love and mercy…

Let’s connect the obvious dots?

4.

“Christians hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice, but we are not utopians. Failing to achieve their ideals, utopians and idealists too easily become cynics who, in their frustration, are willing to kill in the name of a good cause. Christians are revolutionaries, but we believe the revolution has happened and we are it.”

– Stanley Hauerwas, American Theologian and Ethicist

There is a great deal of work to be done to help the world become a better place.

The Christian faith is not an excuse to passively sit back and applaud God for doing what is necessary to save the world.

No, there is more grit and grim to it all.

To not get one’s hands dirty is the exact opposite lesson of the Incarnation.

The idea that God would take a vested interest in a particular planet, with a whole human race who struggle to be human themselves, and how that negatively affects things around them…  It is nigh unbelievable.

But if God chose to get God’s hands dirty, then it is probably past time for us to also put our hands to the plow.

5.

“For human beings, the most daunting challenge is to become fully human. For to become fully human is to become fully divine”

– Father Thomas Keating, Founder of Contemplative Outreach

This is relatively close to the teaching of Irenaeus of Lyons, who said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.”

Much of Western Christianity has little understanding of Theosis, or the process of becoming “like God.”  It has been a long-standing aspect of the Christian faith to believe that one day we will “share in the divine nature”  (2 Peter 1:4).  Instead, we focus on the part about being forgiven for any faults we might have, which to me is not negated by Theosis but happens en route to Theosis.  This means, I think, that we preach a truncated and smaller Gospel than we could. 

The brilliance of the teaching of Theosis is that the problem is not that we are human; it is that we do not know how to be human, and therefore would benefit from learning how to be human from the God-man Jesus of Nazareth.

Humanity and Divinity are not opposed; it might be more that when the seed of Humanity is fully blossoming, it becomes Divine by participating in the life of God.

 

A Collective Impact

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis considers how individual decisions create collective change:  

All of us must face and embrace the urgent need for deep social change—change that begins within, then spreads like ripples on a pond, and finally becomes a tsunami of love-inspired change. No matter your age, race, faith, gender, or sexuality, I hope … [to] give you a new sense of the power you have to be good and to insist on good; to care for others and insist on being cared for; to stand up for the vulnerable and stand against injustice; to love and be loved.…  

I know this to be true: The world doesn’t get great unless we all get better. If there is such a thing as salvation, then we are not saved until everyone is saved; our dignity and liberation are bound together. We must care for ourselves and the village around us. If we don’t, the village’s problems become our problems, and together our children will continue to hide from bullets in their classrooms. Our elders’ safety nets will be threatened. Our young adults will face mounting debt and earn less than their parents. Fear, xenophobia, racism, bigotry—these problems belong to all of us, and they will get better as we all get better!  

Father Richard points to the value of faithfulness to the common good: 

What’s the great principle of Catholic moral theology? The common good. What is needed for the common good, and not just my private good? That’s a very hard question for Western people to ask. In fact, many of us don’t even know it’s a question anymore.  

In our postmodern, secular culture, it can feel old-fashioned to be faithful to something. Sometimes people thank me for staying in community and faith, which feels like the best compliment. That doesn’t mean that I’ve done it perfectly all these years—I went down my dead ends. But faithfulness is being faithful to God, faithful to Christ, and faithful to the gospel that is calling all of us beyond ourselves.  

So be faithful! Go to the edge, find the beloved community, build the alternative, the parallel culture, in small communities. Václav Havel, the poet-president of the Czech Republic, is a good example. He was already building an alternative culture before the Berlin Wall fell. Through literature, study, poetry, ritual, and education, he helped create people who had a bigger vision and who thought in another way. When the system fell apart, they were ready to live with positive belief—not only clear about what they were against, but what they were for. [1] 

Lewis concludes:  

I can see a bold new path led by a vision of the sacred goodness of humankind and the abundance of the planet’s resources…. You and I are the ones we’ve been waiting for to create better lives for ourselves and our communities and to build a better world—together. All we need is the courage to imagine, and the will to make it be so.  

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

I am all around you, like a cocoon of Light. My Presence with you is a promise, independent of your awareness of Me. Many things can block this awareness, but the major culprit is worry. My children tend to accept worry as an inescapable fact of life. However, worry is a form of unbelief; it is anathema (something. that one vehemently dislikes) to Me.
     Who is in charge of your life? If it is you, then you have good reason to worry. But if it is I, then worry is both unnecessary and counterproductive. When you start to feel anxious about something, relinquish the situation to Me. Back off a bit, redirecting your focus to Me. I will either take care of the problem Myself or show you how to handle it. In this world you will have problems, but you need not to lose sight of Me.

RELATED BIBLE VERSES:
Luke 12:22-31(NLT)
Teaching about Money and Possessions
22 Then, turning to his disciples, Jesus said, “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food to eat or enough clothes to wear. 23 For life is more than food, and your body more than clothing. 24 Look at the ravens. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for God feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than any birds! 25 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? 26 And if worry can’t accomplish a little thing like that, what’s the use of worrying over bigger things?
27 “Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. 28 And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?
29 “And don’t be concerned about what to eat and what to drink. Don’t worry about such things. 30 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers all over the world, but your Father already knows your needs. 31 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and he will give you everything you need.

Additional insight regarding Luke 12:22-34: Jesus commands us to not worry. But how can we avoid it? Only faith can free us from the anxiety caused by greed and covetousness. Working and planning responsibly is good; dwelling on all the ways our planning could go wrong is bad. Worry is pointless because it can’t fill any of our needs; worry is foolish because the Creator of the universe loves us and knows what we need. He promises to meet all our real needs but not necessarily all of our desires. Overcoming worry requires: (1) Simple trust in God, our heavenly Father. This trust is expressed by praying to him rather than worrying. (2) Perspective on your problems. This can be gained by developing a strategy for addressing and correcting your problems. (3) A support team to help. Find some believers who will pray for you to find wisdom and strength to deal with your worries.

Additional insight regarding Luke 12:31: Seeking the Kingdom of God above all else means making Jesus the Lord and King of your life. He must control every area – your work, play, plans, and relationships. Is the Kingdom only one of your many concerns, or is it central to all you do? Are you holding back any areas of your life from God’s control? As Lord and Creator, he wants to help provide what you need as well as guide how you use what he provides.

John 16:33 (NLT)
33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

Additional insight regarding John 16:33: Jesus summed up all he had told them this night, tying together themes from John 14:27-29; John 16:1-4; and John 16:9-11. With these words he told his disciples to take courage. In spite of the inevitable struggles they would face, they would not be alone. Jesus does not abandon us to our struggles either. If we remember that the ultimate victory has already been won, we can claim the peace of Christ in the most troublesome time.

A Community of Care

Rabbi Sharon Brous places individual care and relationships at the heart of meaningful community.  

Relationships of mutual concern are rooted in both love and trust. These are people we know will hold our hearts with care. We’re prone to forgive them when they make mistakes, and we hope they’ll do the same for us. We feel accountable to one another. We want to share with them our important moments, both the hardships and the joys. We thrive when we’re together. Relationships of shared purpose are rooted not only in a commitment to one another, but also to a shared dream…. 

If the sweet spot … is the intersection of mutual concern and shared purpose, I want to root in a community that stands at that same intersection. Such a community sees every ritual, every service, and every gathering as an opportunity for a deepening of connectivity. It invests in people as complicated, multi-faceted, wounded, beautiful individuals, each one essential to the greater whole. This kind of community is fueled by questions like “Who are you, and what brings you here?” rather than “Where do you work?”… This kind of community establishes spiritual anchors—regular opportunities for people to pray, sing, grieve, learn, and reflect together. It recognizes the collective power of people of good will working to help heal the broader society and prioritizes creating pathways for the holy work to be done. It invests in the creation of sacred space that fosters not inclusion, but belonging, intimacy and authenticity, love and accountability. [1] 

Recognizing the collective loneliness and despair experienced by so many in our culture, Brous’s community made a deeper commitment to meeting people where they were.  

Our work is not only to preach a theology of love and belonging, but to ensure that our communities strive to embrace that mandate. I am certain that this is the most important work we have done. That is the amen effect—the sacred mandate to hear each other, to embrace each other, to love each other up, especially on the hard days. To say to one another, “Amen.”  

To take this mandate seriously means to do everything we can to free our sacred spaces of shame and stigma. It means to speak honestly and openly about disconnectedness and loneliness, depression, anxiety, and addiction…. Communities of love and belonging are spaces where even at our most vulnerable, we’re still willing to show up and start walking, trusting that our community, those circling toward us, won’t look away.  

The scientific data and spiritual insight here are in strong alignment. Disconnection is a plague on our society, a plague of darkness. The antidote is rich, meaningful connection. We all need an ezer k’negdo [2]—someone to meet our vulnerability with concern and care, to weep with us through the night, and to stand with us in the trenches, working with love to build a better world.

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From Andrew Lang:

Hey CO Few,You’re probably familiar with the Buddhist parable of the Two Arrows.It goes something like this: when we experience harm or pain, two arrows fly toward us. The first arrow we experience is the pain of the event: the physical injury or the initial feeling of loss, change, or challenge. The second arrow is the suffering we experience from how we respond to the pain itself: the narratives, stories, and behaviors we weave together or embody in reaction to it. As the parable states: the first is unavoidable; the second is chosen.This past week, my daughter lost her two front teeth at once – and she was ecstatic. It was a celebratory moment, for sure! But rather quickly, she started hearing less-than-congratulatory messages from friends and family around her:“Good thing picture day isn’t for awhile!”“Ooh – bad time for that with the wedding coming up.”The first arrow.And now, at the young age of 7, she has to navigate not only those responses, but her response to those responses (the second arrow.) Will she decide to start smiling with a closed mouth? Will she feel ashamed whenever a camera is present? Or will she say – in 7-year-old-language – screw that! and give a big smile nonetheless?To the extent that she is able, she gets to choose her response. Similarly, we also face “first arrows” almost everyday of our lives: both the personal and intimate as well as the political and expansive. The loss of loved ones, the stinging words of others, but also the impact on our bodies and communities of ICE raids, reading the news, challenges to reproductive rights, and rising authoritarianism – these are all “first arrows” that can pierce through us. Unlike the parable, however, I’m not so sure we get to “choose” whether or not we experience the second arrow – but I do think we have a say in how it lands.The Second Arrow: Two Types of Pain. In his book My Grandmother’s Hands, trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem details two types of pain: dirty pain and clean pain. We experience the second arrow as dirty pain when we turn away from the reality of the first arrow, seek to bypass its impact on us, or try to pin it on somebody else.In other words, we experience dirty pain when we never truly sit with and face how the first arrow has pierced us.Living with the dirty pain of this second arrow can look and feel like: Ruminating about who’s to blame for the situation. Getting stuck in our stories of why this happened to us. Blowing our pain and frustration through our communities. Reading news apps compulsively to avoid the impact of the first arrow Pouring ourself into work and activism rather without taking care of our bodies Refusing to acknowledge the impact of the first arrow or minimizing its significance On the other hand, the second arrow can land as clean pain when we feel that first arrow and stay with it.Instead of bypassing the hurt or casting it onto others, we opt for a second arrow of clean pain by naming the reality of the first arrow, feeling its impact in our minds and bodies, and from that space, identifying how to move in a way that is aligned with our values and sense of self.Menakem writes that it still “hurts like hell,” but that opting for this clean pain “mends and can build [our] capacity for growth.”Especially in our current political context, experiencing clean pain is vital for us in order to remain present without burning out or checking out.To that end, here are a couple ways we can practice choosing clean pain: Identify ways to soothe yourself. In the Gentle Change Collective, we use Menakem’s language of “primal reps.” These are practices and activities that help you stay grounded in the midst of challenge. A few examples: self-touch, deep breathing, tapping, singing, stretching, orienting, etc. Notice and name. Become accustomed to noticing your emotions and thought patterns and naming them, whether to a journal, your phone’s notes app, or to someone else. Engage community. When that first arrow hits and our defense systems activate, it can be extremely helpful (and sometimes life-saving) to have a friend or community of care that can hold you in the midst of it. Find your people and practice being open about your experiences. Safely metabolize with movement. While facing that first arrow, it’s also vital to move with it. Go for a walk, engage with dancing, exercise, or stretching. Push and pull heavy things, to your capacity and ability. Movement like this releases endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, and others chemicals in our brain, supporting our ability to be resilient and grounded. Safely metabolize with action. One of the results of metabolizing the impact of that first arrow is often a desire to take action for justice and healing. And paradoxically, one of the best ways to metabolize the impacts of that first arrow is to take action for justice and healing. It’s not a first-we-metabolize-then-we-act situation; taking action is one of the core ways we invite healing within ourselves and our communities.