Mystics of the Rhine Valley

This week’s meditations will explore some of the mystics of the European Rhine Valley from medieval times until the 20th century. Father Richard Rohr begins:  

We live in a time of both crisis and opportunity. While there are many reasons to be anxious today, I still have hope, not only in God, but in the fact that many Westerners, including Christians, are rediscovering the value of nonduality: a way of thinking, acting, reconciling, boundary-crossing, and bridge-building based on inner experience of God and God’s Spirit moving in the world. It moves us beyond binary, either-or, us-against-them mentality. To be clear, nondual thinking isn’t about throwing out our rational mind or refusing to act against injustice; it’s about growing in mystical, contemplative, and unitive consciousness. When we have both, we’re able to see more broadly, deeply, wisely, and lovingly. We can collaborate on creative solutions to today’s problems. I’m encouraged that there’s renewed appreciation in the Christian tradition for people like the mystics who model such wholeness. [1]  

My own cultural roots are in the Rhineland of Northern Europe. The Rhineland mystics were mostly German-speaking spiritual writers, preachers, and teachers, who lived largely between the 11th and 15th centuries. Their importance has only recently been rediscovered. The “trans-alpine” Church (meaning those on the other side of the Alps from Rome) always enjoyed a certain degree of freedom from Roman oversight and control, simply by reason of distance, and drew upon different sources and inspirations than did the “cis-alpine” Church of Italy, France, and Spain. The Rhineland Mystics were outstanding in their courage and very creative viewpoints.   

Some of the most familiar Rhineland mystics would include the Benedictines Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) and Gertrude the Great (1256–1302); the Beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1212–c. 1282); the Dominicans, including Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1327), Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361), and Henry Suso (1295–1366); and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464). A more recent Rhineland mystic I’d like to include is psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961), who acknowledged the influence of Hildegard, Eckhart, and Nicholas of Cusa.  

After the Protestant Reformation, the mystical path was largely mistrusted. Some would even say it was squelched because of Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) emphasis on the Bible as the only source of knowledge about God (sola Scriptura). Personal spiritual experience was considered unimportant and suspect. To be fair, Luther’s contributions led Christians to an early stage “rational” use of the Scriptures which was a necessary corrective to Catholic over-spiritualization. But within Luther’s own reformed tradition, profound mystics arose such as the German shoemaker Jacob Boehme (1575–1624) and the inventor Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772).  

In the following centuries, German academic theology flourished, relying almost exclusively on post-Reformation rationalism. While theological study continues to be an immense gift to the world, one can easily get trapped inside of endless discussions about abstract ideas with little emphasis on experience or practice. In contrast, mystics honor the experience of the essential mystery and unknowability of God and invite us to do the same. [2]  

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Hildegard of Bingen: A Multi-Talented Mystic

I burn in the sun and the moon and the stars. The secret Life of Me breathes in the wind and holds all things together soulfully.   
—Hildegard of Bingen, Book of Divine Works 1.1.2  

CAC affiliate faculty member Carmen Acevedo Butcher describes the extraordinary life of Hildegard of Bingen:  

Between the summer of 1098 and the autumn of 1179, a remarkable German woman lived eighty-one years at a time when half that long was considered a full life. The Über-multitasking Frau, this Benedictine nun founded two convents; organized the first-ever public preaching tours conducted by a woman; authored nearly four hundred bold letters to popes, emperors, abbesses, abbots, monks, nuns, and laypeople; worked as healer, naturalist, botanist, dietary specialist, and exorcist; composed daring music; crafted poetry with staying power; wrote the first surviving sung morality play; and spent decades writing three compelling theological works. Meet the incomparable Hildegard of Bingen. Her long resume is impressive in any age, but it pales when compared with her life, which she considered her best divine offering. [1]  

Acevedo Butcher highlights Hildegard’s passion for music as a pathway to God:  

A multi-faceted artist, Hildegard was not only an author and a talented visual designer, but a musician of note. Her allegiance to God through her music is one of the strongest refrains in her life. She believed music was necessary for salvation, because it was the best representation of the state of humanity before the Fall. If a person wanted to know what it felt like to be alive before the Fall, Hildegard believed holy music could take you there, as she writes in her famous letter to the Prelates of Mainz:  

Music stirs our hearts and engages our souls in ways we can’t describe. When this happens, we are taken beyond our earthly banishment back to the divine melody Adam knew when he sang with the angels, when he was whole in God, before his exile. In fact, before Adam refused God’s fragrant flower of obedience, his voice was the best on earth, because he was made by God’s green thumb, who is the Holy Spirit. And if Adam had never lost the harmony God first gave him, the mortal fragilities that we all possess today could never have survived hearing the booming resonance of that original voice. [2]  

Hildegard’s songs often praised God’s presence in creation:  

O Holy Power who forged the Way for us!  
You penetrate all in heaven and earth and even down below.   
You’re everything in One.   
Through You, clouds billow and roll and winds fly!  
Seeds drip juice,   
springs bubble into brooks, and   
spring’s refreshing greens flow—through You—over all the earth!  
You also lead my spirit into Fullness.   
Holy Power, blow wisdom in my soul and—with your wisdom—Joy! [3]  

Mystical Union in Times of Crisis

MARK LONGHURSTFEB 23

from CAC editor Mark Longhurst

The crises of our time demand that our spiritualities no longer navel gaze. That’s the criticism, at least, of contemplation. How can we pray when authoritarian leaders grow in power, when they scapegoat immigrants and transgender people, and when the earth burns from fossil fuels? How can we pray when genocide and ethnic cleansing take place? To me, the question is: How can we not pray in times like these? The true mystics are not those who retreat from the world but who find union with it. Such people are the ones whose intimacy with God and Life itself is such that their eyes are wide open to reality and their hearts necessarily break with those who suffer.

People who chronicle the mystical life often use language of “union” to describe what they’ve only glimpsed. Evelyn Underhill says mysticism is “the art of union with Reality.” There’s even a long tradition in Christian tradition of so-called “spousal mysticism.” Sixteenth-century Spanish mystics like John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila found such delight in divine love that only ecstatic exclamations of erotic, marital union could approximate their experience. Mystics from early Christianity onwards read the erotic poetry of the Hebrew Bible (yes, it’s in there!) and applied it to the soul and God: “I am my beloved and he is mine,” says the poetic voice of the Song of Songs (6:3).

But anyone who cares about the world, or even their neighborhood, today is painfully aware how far we are from union. Our cultural, political, and moral landscapes are filled with wounded division, the grossest abuses of power, groupthink, vitriol, scapegoating, and attribution of evil to the other. It’s almost enough to give up on unity. What can the mystical vision possibly offer such a world? How can there be true oneness without justice for all, especially for those who suffer most? And if we take sides, say, with the poor or immigrant person, or the incarcerated person, or the transgender person, does that mean we are giving up on oneness because certain other neighbors will be upset? If we are concerned about what’s happening to democracy in the United States, and stand against the President’s assault on longstanding legal norms, we are necessarily generating conflict, indeed a type of division rather than oneness, with the way things are. What’s a compassionate, everyday mystic to do?

I once heard speaker and author Brian McLaren talk about three stages towards union, or “unitive consciousness.” First, he said, there is naïve oneness, followed by duality, which eventually gives way to a more mature and heterogeneous oneness. Naïve oneness, on the positive and innocent side, is the undifferentiated union of mother and baby in utero. But out of the womb, naïve oneness often takes a harmful turn: it’s the narcissistic claim of the white, privileged person doing yogic breathing and heralding “oneness with the universe”—but while spinning COVID misinformation and demonstrating no awareness of systemic racism.

Bible readers will recall the desired “one language” of the builders of Babel’s tower, the imperial claim of powers to make the world in their image: “Look they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do” (Genesis 11:6). Instead of a oneness that values diversity, naïve oneness is the ego doing the self-preservation that the ego usually does. When naïve oneness meets institutional power and privilege, it clings to it at all costs. 

Duality and separation are a fact and not negative in themselves. We order our lives by binaries. For instance, I’m grateful for the code that wrote the program to build the computer on which I’m typing this post. I drove to the library today and made a binary, either-or choice to stop at the stop light when it turned red instead of crashing into the oncoming car. We necessarily differentiate from our parents in order to become our individual, adult selves. We are constantly choosing “this” and not “that,” and that’s good.

The holy and ordinary mystic knows how to operate in a world of binaries but also sees that reality is always more than two. A consciousness that has moved beyond dualism understands and participates in a wide and inclusive reality beyond Black/white, male/female, LGBTQ+/straight, Christian/non-Christian, citizen/undocumented immigrant. Compassionate wholeness holds a consciousness that is more than dual or what some writers call non-dual.

But just what is such a nondual or “unitive” consciousness? It’s far easier to name what it’s not than to articulate what it is, but you know it when you see it. The elderly person with a unitive heart who has nothing to prove, shines authentic joy, and speaks with just as much sparkle to children as to adults. The person who awakens the passion of being alive within you and makes you laugh more than you thought possible. Union is when I hunker down by my local brook and the incessant gurgle and flow of water cracks open something spacious inside me. Nondual or “unitive” consciousness is the elusive oneness that emerges only after learning from and even loving duality and difference.

First-stage, naïve “oneness” is really another word for domination and homogeny. When white people in the United States nurse resentments and grievances against “those” people, it festers into white nationalism and supremacy. It is “oneness” only for the few. Mega-corporations who sell the world their products may seem to be bringing people together but the brand façade often hides the injustice of Babel all over again. The world uses Google to search the internet and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram to share their lives—but whatever nondual consciousness is, it is more than digital non-intimacy and a platform for oligarchy. Instead of homogeneity and echo-chamber scrolling, unitive consciousness is, paradoxically, an oneness that includes difference. It is the spacious ability to honor multiple truths and identities without falling prey to the postmodern trap that would have us believe that multiple truths and identities are all there is.

Jesus lays claim to a spiritual fact of unity when he says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and then prays “that they may all be one” (John 17:21). But Jesus also shows in his life and ministry that the oneness he experiences with the Father is anything but naïve. The oneness he experiences with the divine is the same oneness that he enacts with everyone around him—whether eating with tax collectors, healing lepers, hanging with the poor, or delivering the demon-possessed. “You will always have the poor with you,” he tells his followers (John 12:8), not because he is insensitive to the pain of poverty, but because Jesus followers are the ones who are united with those who suffer.

The mature mystic understands that the excluded can form a cast of saints rather than a deviation from the binary code. The degree of solidarity we demonstrate with people who suffer mirrors the degree of growth in true unity.

This is an adapted excerpt from my book The Holy Ordinary. If you haven’t read it yet, I hope it might be a resource for you to discover divine depths, even in these times.

Friday, February 21, 2025

Father Richard considers the transformative impact of people who live within the cosmic egg: 

The person who lives within the total cosmic egg is the mystic, the prophet, the universal human, the saint, the whole one. These are people like Mahatma Gandhi, St. Bonaventure, Martin Luther King Jr., St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. John Henry Newman, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Julian of Norwich (my favorite mystic). These are the people who look out—with eyes wide as saucers—at the smaller pictures because they observe from the utterly big picture. These are the ones who can both honor and listen to smaller, personal stories, and also live in the final state of affairs, already, now. They are often called seers because their perspective contains many eyes, even, somehow, the eyes of God.  

Great “seers” operate beyond mere group loyalties; beyond any simple, dualistic thinking that always puts them on the “right” side; beyond winners and losers, good and bad. They are somehow able to live by universal principles while still caring for the specific; honoring cultural norms, yet making room for the exceptions. They have seen in a contemplative way, beyond the shadow and the disguise, beyond the suffocating skin of the private self and the self-serving egotisms of group. The contemplative mind integrates and gives focus to all our calculating and controlling. Without it, there is only civil and self-serving religion.  

True reconstruction will be led by those who can engage reality at all four levels simultaneously. They can honor the divine level and live ultimately inside of a great big story line. They appreciate the needs and context of our story and other stories and don’t dismiss them as mere cultural trappings or meaningless traditions. They won’t say that my story is not important, either. They won’t demean or dismiss people who are working on personal issues or addressing the important identity concerns of the first half of life.  

Most importantly, we cannot separate personal healing from societal healing. It’s not sequential, but simultaneous. Many in our therapeutically focused society think they first must find healing and integration personally and then they will be free to serve groups or search for God. Yet it seems to me that it all happens in a spiral. In fact, there is a natural ecology of checks and balances between the four domes of meaning. I was lucky and blessed enough to have good family, religion, community, helpful therapy, and time for self-knowledge—overlapping one another like waves from an endless sea. Most people emphasize only one or the other, but those who honor all four levels have transcended the limitations of a single story. True transcendence frees us from the tyranny of I am, the idolatry of we are, and the scapegoating of they are. When all four stories are taken seriously, as the Bible shows us very well, we have a full life—fully human and fully divine.  

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5 On Friday; John Chaffee

1.

“Distrust anyone in whom the desire to punish is strong.“

– Friedrich Nietzsche, Atheist German Philosopher

Lutheranism surrounded Nietzsche in his younger years.  His father was a Lutheran pastor.  And, although he is understood as a strong critic of religion and Christianity in particular, there are ways in which he was critiquing the dominant religiosity with what Christianity already taught him.

From my Lutheran upbringing and seminary education, it was a central point that God is not punishing.  God might prune us, but that is not the same as punishment.  I cannot help but think that this quote above is in complete harmony with what Lutheran theology teaches.

Here is the thing: Our image of God creates a moral limit for us.  If God is allowed to punish, then we are allowed to punish.  If God does not punish but seeks to restore, then we should not punish and should seek to restore.  If God’s mercy eventually runs out, then we are permitted to, at some point, become merciless with others.

Do you see what I am getting at?

If we do not trust a false god who is quick to punish, then perhaps we should stop trusting figures who are also quick to punish.

2.

“Whether this is the first day of the Apocalypse or the first day of the Golden Age, the work remains the same… love each other and ease as much suffering as possible.“

– Ram Dass (aka Dr. Richard Alpert), Havard Professor

This is fantastic.

In other words, this is the work of the Tikkun Olam.  I have mentioned this idea many times in the past, but it is just that good.

Tikkun Olam is the “ongoing repairing of the world.”  It is a task that none of us can complete, and none can abdicate.  We are all called to participate in and help the world heal, no matter our life circumstances.

The Tikkun Olam is the work of Divine Love.

3.

“The closer one approaches to God, the simpler one becomes.“

– St. Teresa of Avila, Spanish Catholic Reformer

If I were to point out the two most influential female Christian mystics and theologians in my life, they would undoubtedly be Julian of Norwich and Teresa of Avila.  I would love to reread Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, but I have already read Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila 4 times.

It feels like the simple life is less and less valued in today’s culture.  It feels as though people are chasing after being complex or multifaceted.  We want to stand out by being masters of all things and to chase after the endless treadmill of being unique “enough” to be loveable.

However, the idea that God is simple and invites us into simplicity is attractive.

In the past month, I have debated not just deleting all social media but the accounts altogether.  I have wondered what my life would be like if I had more quotes coming to me from Jesus rather than Trump.  How might my life look if I intentionally downsized my life’s activities so that I could have more time to be slow and intentional?  What could my life look like if every moment was grounded in presence rather than distraction after distraction?

If Teresa of Avila is correct here, I wonder if our pursuit of complexity and increase is also a way of running away from God.

4.

“There is no way to peace, peace is the way.“

– AJ Muste, Reformed Pastor and Activist

The idea that peace must be fought for or that violence must happen and that there might eventually be peace is a common one.  We all know the adage, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

Some history buffs might also know about the Pax Romana, a Latin phrase meaning “The Peace of Rome.”  The Roman Empire indeed produced a lot of peace for its citizens. However, it came at the cost of obliterating anyone who opposed Rome.  The Roman Empire would crush and destroy any foreigner or civilian who opposed its rule.  Hence, there was “peace.”

AJ Muste put it simply, though.  “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.”  It is not that we must fight to have peace; if we want peace, we must learn to practice it now rather than in an imagined or delayed future.  It means that we must disagree and even argue with one another peaceably.  Peace itself IS the way.

5.

“The Gospel of liberation is bad news to all oppressors because they have defined their freedom in terms of slavery of others.”

– James H. Cone, American Theologian

To all the kings and pharaohs and presidents of the world, the true Gospel of Jesus is inherently disruptive.  It means that those at the bottom are worthy of being treated with dignity and respect and that God turns a special eye to them.  In Liberation Theology, this is the “preferential option for the poor.”  In Jesus’ verbiage, “Whatever you do for the least of these brothers and sisters you do for me.” (Matthew 25:45)

To those at the top of the hierarchies of the world, the “Gospel” benefits them when it only cares about sins but not about structures of oppression.  They want the “Gospel” to be about forgiving people when they disobey their government.

(Sin is so much more than simply violating the laws of the land.)

To any oppressors who stand upon the backs of poor peasants and slaves, it means that their little empires deserve to crumble.  God is not willing that any human empire be built upon the backs of forced labor; that is a significant theme of the Book of Exodus, and yet we miss it!

It is fascinating, though, that the Greek word for Savior is Σοτερ (Soter), and it also means “Liberator.”  Conservatives love to focus on Christ as a Savior of Sinners, and Liberals love to focus on Christ as a Liberator of the Oppressed.  Our task is to hold Christ fully as both Savior AND Liberator.

The Earth Story

There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.
—Linda Hogan  

Cofounders of the Wild Church Network, Victoria Loorz and Valerie Luna Serrels are passionate about helping people reconnect to the sacred wildness of the earth and recognize how it connects us to the story:  

The wisdom we need for this time of great unraveling will be gained as we remember that we are not separate from nature. The voices we need to listen most closely to at this time are the voices that the dominant culture has overlooked, dismissed, ignored, or silenced. The voices of Indigenous peoples who have never forgotten our place in the web of belonging. The voices of women, of communities of color, of those from the queer community who have suffered the impact of a dominant culture of supremacy for generations. Voices from the Southern Hemisphere, from religions outside our comfort zone whose perspectives are essential to even see our own blindness. The voices of the trees, the storms, the cicadas, the rivers, and the tiny viruses whose interconnected suffering and resiliency is essential in this time of dramatic change. The wisdom we need at this pivotal time in our history will be found there, outside the edges of the dominant culture. And by listening, we mean practicing kinship, intentionally entering into relationship, through respectful and authentic conversation and presence.  

This kinship is at the core of wild church. Kinship is recognizing that our beloved community includes the whole, alive, interconnected world…. It is falling in love again with the world, considering the well-being of all the sacred others in our decisions. It is taking on the suffering of our beloveds and engaging in their healing. It is an embodiment of a Hebrew concept known as tikkun olam, which means “repairing the world”—the whole world.  

As we learn the language of leaves and the banter of berries and then share these little moments of poetic wisdom with one another, we are re-storying our place. We are creating new stories that can guide us into a new and yet ancient way of being human…. Re-storying our relationship with Earth as sacred kin provides a spiritual and emotional foundation of belonging we need to support all the layers of work ahead of us. [1] 

Earth has her own rituals, expressed in stories of glaciers, seasons, spring blossoms, anthills, wildfires, and birdsongs. As we listen with affection to the stories the land tells, we are compelled to integrate their stories into our stories. To remain alive, our old narratives need to be connected with new meaning particular to our geographies and context. A beloved myth or story from a sacred text or scripture carries deep wisdom that comes alive when it is reoriented to our own time and place. [2] 

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Sara Young Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: February 20
    Learn to live from your true Center in Me. I reside in the deepest depths of your being, in eternal union with your spirit. It is at this deep level that My Peace reigns continually. You will not find lasting peace in the world around you, in circumstances, or in human relationships. The external world is always in flux–under the curse of death and decay. But there is a gold mine of Peace deep within you, waiting to be tapped. Take time to delve into the riches of My residing Presence. I want you to live increasingly from your real Center, where My Love has an eternal grip on you. I am Christ in you, the hope of Glory. 

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Colossians 3:15 NLT

15 And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.

Colossians 1:27

27 For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.

Philippians 4:6-7

6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Embarking on a 21st-century Freedom Ride in the southern United States, writer-activist Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove shares how civil rights icon Vincent Harding encouraged the riders to honor their own stories and those of others.  

Vincent Harding [1931–2014] taught me to pay attention to the holy ground that we often forget in the American story. An African American colleague and co-laborer of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Harding was also a historian who saw the world through the eyes of faith…. Dr. Harding believed, as Revelation reprises from Psalm 46, that “there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God” (46:4). That great river flows through history, connecting people of faith to the Christianity of Christ. Dr. Harding’s life’s work was to baptize people into that river….  

Dr. Harding taught us that every pilgrimage toward freedom begins with attention to our basic identity. “Where did you spend your childhood?” he asked each person, even the ones who were still children. “And where did your maternal grandmother spend her childhood?” Each of us comes from a household and a story, Dr. Harding knew. “Tell me her name,” he said, leaning forward with his gentle smile.  

Before our freedom ride was done, “Uncle Vincent” had adopted us all, inviting us into the freedom family that stretched from the Hebrew midwives in ancient Egypt to the enslaved mothers of Southern plantations to “Ella’s Song” in the twentieth century. [1] “We who believe in freedom cannot rest” became our anthem. But our voices, though they could be joined in harmony, were not the same. We had to wrestle with the stories we’d heard at our grandmothers’ knees—with the ways each of our fathers’ households had taught us something about who our people are.  

I watched young white people on that freedom ride unpack their so-called privilege, questioning basic assumptions about success and faithfulness. Our liberation was tied to that of young undocumented sisters and brothers who were also questioning the American dream—how the future it promised did not include their own parents. A formerly incarcerated African American man stood tall, celebrating a newfound pride that he was the son of women and men who had shown America what freedom means….  

The other half of history doesn’t erase everything we ever thought we knew about ourselves and our God, but it does invite us to see all things in a new light. As pilgrims in a strange land, we leave our people and place for a country as yet unknown in order to see and name the holy ground beneath our feet. This cannot be a solitary journey because it entails the sharing of very different and often painful stories. But in the people who bear those stories, we meet the beloved community that both prefigures and prepares us for the country we’ve not yet been. The other half of history is an invitation to live into another story.  

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From Nadia Bolz Weber

My trick for “increasing” your faith

(spoiler: it’s lowering the bar)

Dear Nadia, 

Do you have uncertainty? I LOVE Jesus, but my faith is wobbly at best. Is your faith ever wobbly?

-Donna

Dear Nadia, 

How do we increase our faith?

-Jason

Dear Donna and Jason,

For most of my life I thought that the only physical exercise that “counted” was going for a run, or working out at the gym – those sorts of things. And there were times in my life I would do just that for 30 minutes a day and then be sedentary for 23 ½ hours. 

But I have started wearing a fitness tracker and am stunned to see how on days I don’t “workout” I still walk 10,000 steps a day just living my life. Just doing things like housework and grocery shopping – things I never thought counted as “fitness”.

So Donna and Jason, you probably have a lot more faith than you realize.

Because when it comes to spiritual fitness – sometimes in our lives we can hit the God Gym so to speak, and sometimes we just can’t and in thoseseasons, try and trust that there are a lot of spiritually unassuming parts of our lives that have an element of faith to them and that those parts really do add up.

Here’s an incomplete list:

If you dream about a good future for your children, that’s a form of faith.

If you are moved by the faith of your ancestors, that also counts.

If you have doubts – that is also a form of faith because at least you’re still engaged in the question.

Do you hold those you love in your heart when they are suffering? And even ask God to come to their aid? Faith.

Do you, as you say, LOVE JESUS? …totally counts.

Do you see the inherent dignity of other human beings – also faith.

Have you asked someone to pray for you because you just can’t pray right now? Faith.

Is there a feeling of gratitude for anything at all in your life – I mean AT ALL? That’s a kind of faith.

Here’s a good one: do you ever complain or tell God off? In the Bible, that’s called a lament – and you know what? It’s a form of faith.

All of that is to say, all the faith you need is already there no matter your thoughts and feelings at any given moment. 

My own faith morphs and shifts into things that my Sunday School self would never recognize. 

I guess I just no longer think of faith as intellectually assenting to theological propositions, or as regularly confirming in myself that I believe all the wildest stories in the Bible are literally, factually, historically accurate. Faith functions in my life as something closer to gravity than ideology.

So, as I’ve been known to say, if you are straining to touch a faith that feels out of reach and judging yourself for falling short please know this: God always puts all the best shit on the bottom shelf.

I promise.

So maybe your prayer for today doesn’t need to be Lord, increase my faith, but Lord increase my awareness of what faith already looks like in my life.

In it with you,

Nadia

Using the language of the cosmic egg, author Felicia Murrell shares her experience of growing up with a strong sense of our story that was limited by the power of other stories: 

I never questioned the world in which I grew up. I followed the rhythms set for me by those around me, understanding the world and how to situate myself in it through the lenses and lives of those in authority over me.… In the small rural North Carolina town of my youth, Blacks lived on one side of the tracks and Whites on the other…. Nothing about this life seemed abnormal. This was our story.… 

No one talked about race. No one expressed discontent or named things aloud. No one mentioned the way things were. We didn’t buck the system. We kept our heads down and did what we were supposed to do. Success and advancement were others’ stories, for people across town on the other side of the tracks. We were to stay in our place and follow the natural order of things, which I did until I no longer could.  

Like matryoshka dolls nesting within one another, my story as a small child was a fragmented, compartmentalized part of our story. In the shadow of dominant voices, my story felt less essential, even unnecessary. Without a clear understanding of the whole, my story was incomplete. But my story was all I knew until I was exposed to other stories.  

Murrell highlights the importance of allowing other stories to draw us into intimacy with one another and into the union of the story.  

When we remain stuck in the loop of our story without consideration of other stories, particularly when “our” is framed in (or lived in response to) a Eurocentric, patriarchal, dominant paradigm as the standard of measurement for all other stories, we are left with an incomplete model. Exposure to other stories is an invitation, a gateway to knowing. But it’s merely that—an opportunity to know. A welcoming and acceptance of diversity may create familiarity, but it’s not the same as knowing. Deep, intimate knowing empowers agency, offers reciprocity, and, through mutuality, affords us the opportunity to be the custodians of our own story without being othered as an aside or a concession to dissent…. 

How do we move toward each other in love, the truth of our authentic power? Perhaps, we welcome change instead of resisting it. To expand my worldview beyond the paradigm of Southern, Christian, rural or working poor to a larger cosmic frame that is inclusive, universal, affirming, and accepting, I needed to see the parts and the whole in all their majestic splendor and their messy complexity.  

Transcendence is not a denial or detachment from my story or our story. It is an arduous commitment to truth-telling; to fully seeing; to empathetic listening that requires the work of living and be-ing in the world; of deep, intimate knowing; of moving beyond our theories and maps into relationship building.  

Read this meditation on cac.org.

A few Shards from our friend Chris Green

“Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.” 
Job 2.8

“Christ is a shard of glass in your gut.” 
Christian Wiman

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The opposite of powerlessness is not power but playfulness. 

†

Psalm 19.10: God’s words are honey not only because they are sweet but also because they are slow and sticky.

†

Difficult passages of Scripture are like gastroliths—the gizzard stones toothless birds need to digest what they’ve eaten. If we cannot stomach the hard words in the Bible, we will get no nutrition even from the chewable ones. 

†

Jer. 23.29: God’s word is the hammer and you are the rock it shatters—into bread. 

†

Jesus lets his father die. The Father lets Jesus die. That “letting” is the room created by the infinite love of God so we can grow up into the fulness of Christ. 

†

It’s tempting to think God wants us to be Christians and that he wants us to make other people Christians—as many as possible, as quickly as possible. It’s tempting to believe God wants us to be Christian, believing as we should, living as we should. But no, what God wants is for us to be Christ’s, not just devoted students but dear friends and confidants, his nearest co-conspirators. And God wants something infinitely more even than that—for us to be Christ, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

†

The boundaries of our understanding are never the same as the borders of the faith.

†

It is better to have received mercy than never to have needed it. 

†

The opposite of powerlessness is not power but playfulness. 

†

Finally, a house blessing: 

Sweet Jesus, the Spirit who made all things 
was at home in your body 
as you were at home in your Mother’s.  
Bless us with your presence 
and make this house a sanctuary 
for us and for anyone 
who shares the road with you. 
Amen. 

Keep praying for me! 

Fr. Richard Rohr uses the metaphor of a “cosmic egg” to explain how stories offer us meaningful connections to ourselves, one another, and the divine:  

If we are going to be the rebuilders of society, we need to be rebuilt ourselves. A healthy psyche lives within at least four containers of meaning. Imagine four nested domes. The first is called my story, the second is our story, the third is other stories, and the fourth is the story. This is what I call the cosmic egg. It’s the unique and almost unconscious gift of healthy religion. Much of the genius of the biblical revelation is that it honors and integrates all four, while much of the weakness of our deconstructed society is that it often honors only one level at best. The whole/healed/saintly person lives happily inside of all of them. 

The smallest dome of meaning is my story. The modern world is the first period of history where a large number of people have been allowed to take their private lives and identities seriously. There is a wonderful movement into individuation here, but there’s also a diminishment and fragility if that’s all we have. This first dome contains my private life. “I” and my feelings and opinions are the reference point for everything. This dome is the little stage where I do my dance and where the questions are usually, “How do I feel? What do I believe? What makes me unique?” 

My story isn’t big enough or true enough to create large or meaningful patterns by itself, but many people live their whole lives at this level of anecdote and nurtured self-image, without ever connecting with the larger domes of meaning. They are what they have done and what has been done to them—nothing more. This self becomes fragile and unprotected, and therefore constantly striving, easily offended, and fearful. 

The second dome of meaning is our story. This is the dome of our group, our community, our country, our church—perhaps our nationality or ethnic group. We seem to need this to contain our identity and security as social beings. It’s the good and necessary training ground for belonging, attaching, trusting, and loving. If we don’t have a supportive family, group or community with which we can bond, we create people who struggle to bond. Fortunately, most of us have multiple memberships: family, neighborhood, religious affiliation, country. These are schools for relationship, connection, and almost all virtue as we know it.  

This second dome of meaning gives us myth, cultural heroes, group symbols, flags, special foods, ethnicity, and patriotism. These tell us that we’re not alone; we’re also connected to a larger story. We might understand that it’s fanciful, but it is shared meaning and that is important. Regrettably, a lot of people stop at the level of this shared meaning because it gives more consolation and security to the small self. In fact, loyalties at this level have driven most of human history up to now.  

The Cosmic Egg: Other Stories and TheStory

Richard Rohr continues to explain the cosmic egg, focusing on the next two domes of meaning: other stories and the story. Read about the first two domes of meaning—my story and our story—in yesterday’s meditation.  

The third dome of meaning is what I call other stories. The term “other stories” illustrates the significant but sometimes painful recognition that our story is not the only frame, not likely the most important frame, and maybe even a frame with a lot of shadow and bias. This is the great advantage of studying history, literature beyond our own language, anthropology, world cultures and religions, and experiencing some world travel, whether by opportunity or necessity. This is also the invitation modeled by Jesus to move beyond my story and our story, and to stand in friendship and solidarity with other stories.  

As we encounter more and more of the world’s other stories, many people are broadening their wisdom, while others are broadening their fear. There is only one thing more dangerous than the individual ego or my story and that’s the group ego that insists that our story is the measure of all things and so seeks to label other stories as ignorant, dangerous, or inferior. It looks like it will take us some time, perhaps centuries, to resolve the human drive to exclude, to scapegoat, to judge, and to dismiss other peoples’ stories. Only nondual thinkers, mystics, and some saints seem capable of such universal capacity. [1]  

The fourth dome of meaning, which encloses and regulates the three smaller ones, is called the story. By this, I mean the patterns that are always true. This is much larger and more shared than any one religion or denomination. All healthy religions would, on some levels, be telling the story, as the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council authoritatively taught. [2] For example, forgiveness always heals; it does not matter whether we are Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or Jewish. Forgiveness is one of the patterns that is always true, although it reveals its wisdom in countless ways. It is part of the story. Also, there is no specifically Christian way to feed the hungry or to steward the earth. Love is love, even if the motivation might be different.  

The biblical tradition takes all four domes seriously: my story, our story, other stories, and the story. Biblical revelation is saying that the only way we dare move up to the story and understand it with any depth is by moving through and taking responsibility for our personal story, our group story, and other stories. We have to listen to our own experience, to our own failures, to our own sin, to our own salvation, and we’ve got to recognize that we are a part of history, of a culture, of a religious group, for good and for bad. We cannot heal or honestly examine what we do not acknowledge. 

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TODAY IS THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

The season of light ends soon — there are only two more Sundays in the Epiphany cycle. Ash Wednesday is March 5, the beginning of Lent.

This year, the contrast between epiphany — the manifestation of God’s dominion of love — and evil — the iron grip of hierarchical domination of power — has never seemed more obvious or pointed. In both the scriptures and in the headlines. 

The birth of a Child, the Prince of Peace, opened the way for a contest here in the world. Love and light spread, yes. But not without resistance from the powers that rule this world. 

Where are we in this struggle? Following the Star, journeying a different way home toward a Dominion of Love? Or, do we remain subjects of Herod and Caesar, pawns cowering under their murderous schemes of Domination of Power? 

Epiphany has raised the spiritual and theological stakes. As it is written in John 1, “in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” 

To extend the biblical metaphor, the light is brighter than ever. The darkness deeper. We live on the edge. Do we keep lighting candles and walk into the territory we can’t quite see? Or not? 

The lectionary today — readings from Psalm 1 and Luke 6 — draws clear lines between God’s dominion and worldly domination. 

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Psalm 1

Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.

The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgement,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

Luke 6:17-26

Jesus came down with the twelve apostles and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

Then he looked up at his disciples and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.

“Blessed are you who are hungry now, 
for you will be filled.

“Blessed are you who weep now, 
for you will laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.”

“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.

“Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.

“Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.

“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

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This week, every sermon in America wrote itself. 

Here’s a tweet from Elon Musk (quoted on Bluesky by Bruce Wilson, who writes on authoritarianism and Christianity, to make sure readers get the point), wherein the man now running the United States government (and who is illegally dismantling food and medical assistance programs) calls the poor “parasites.” 

Contrast that with Jesus in Luke 6. Almost as if he’s subtweeting the world’s richest human:

Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.

and don’t forget his follow—up:

But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.*

As we say in my church, “Here endeth the reading.”

Pretty much says it all.

* * * * * * 

When Christians think of the Beatitudes, they usually recall the version found in the Gospel of Matthew: 

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

No doubt about it, but Matthew’s got a gift for poetry. He placed this sermon on a hillside, making this Jesus’ central teaching in what is called the “Sermon on the Mount.” Indeed, the setting matched the prose. There’s a lyrical lift to Jesus’ words — the couplets elevate readers, freeing our souls to spiritually soar. We find ourselves up on that mount with Jesus, eagerly awaiting the blessings coming from heaven to those denied them here on earth. 

Luke is blunter. There’s no rhapsodic rhythm in his words. Indeed, Luke’s Jesus delivers the truth straight up, like a good scotch: 

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

In Luke’s account, Jesus isn’t on a hill. He has just come down from a mountain and is in a “level place.” New Testament scholars call this the “Sermon on the Plain,” in contrast to Matthew’s mount. The stage is flat; any sense of hierarchy — that “up” and “down” of human social structure — is gone. All the characters are standing equally with Jesus. We don’t soar. Instead, we look at Jesus face-to-face: Blessed are you who are miserable right now because the kingdom is with you. 

And it wasn’t enough for Jesus to insist on this seemingly elusive reality. He added that oppressors aren’t really as powerful as they believe:

But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.

Nothing is as it seems, Jesus insisted. The playing field of human relations is far more equal than we think — and in God’s kingdom, the poor are blessed and the rich are cursed. 

Blunt, even kinda brutal.

And “blessing” and “woe” aren’t vaguely spiritual words whose import is only about some distant, promised reward or punishment. 

“Blessing,” μακάριος (makarios) in Greek, means happy, fortunate, or favored. I wrote about the Beatitudes in Grateful:

Blessing is not just happiness, but favor. In the Christian scriptures, the word specifically means God’s favor, often called “grace” or “abundance.” “Favored are the poor” or “Gifted are the poor” would be equally valid ways of making sense of makarios.

The sense of the Beatitudes is not “If you are poor, God will bless you” or “If you do nice things for the poor, God will bless you.” Nor is it “Be happy for poverty.” Instead, “Blessed are the poor” could be read, “God privileges the poor.” If you are poor, you are favored by God. God’s gifts are with you.

As is the case with us today, people in the ancient world thought that the rich were blessed. Indeed, the word makarios itself had a more popular, slangy use: It also meant “god” or someone who was “elite.” Basically, a blessing wasn’t just something you had (or might get), it was who some people were. They were the Blessed. Caesar was makarios. 

Today, you might say that Elon Musk is Chief of the Blessed. God-like. The makarios. 

Again, from Grateful (with two relevant asides):

The “Blessed” were the big shots of the ancient world, the upper crust, those who lived above all the worries of normal existence. The poor, “the losers,” had to live with shame. Even back then, the blessed were the rich, not the poor. [An added aside: you might even say that the poor were “parasites.”]

In the Roman Empire, the world in which the Beatitudes were first preached, the richer and more powerful you were, the more valor and virtue you possessed, the closer you were to the emperor at the top of the social hierarchy, the more blessed you were, the more blessings you could seize for yourself, and the more blessings you could (if you chose to) bestow on those beneath you. [An added aside: typically “blessings” were bestowed to control underlings.]

When Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor,” he overturned the hierarchical structure of blessing. 

But maybe Luke thought that Matthew was being too subtle. (Luke was written after Matthew.) And so, Luke lowered the sermon from mountain to plain — and made his point plainer, too. 

Blessed are you who are poor…Woe to you who are rich.

There’s nothing “spiritual” or uplifting here. This is worldly, tough, prophetic. 

“Woe,” οὐαί (ouai) in Greek, is an interjection of grief or a denunciation. In the New Testament, Jesus used it to pronounce judgment on the wicked. The explanation of this term in Strong’s Greek Lexicon is chilling:

In the ancient Near Eastern context, expressions of woe were common in both secular and religious texts. They were used to lament misfortune or impending doom and were often part of prophetic literature to warn of divine judgment. In the Greco-Roman world, such expressions were understood as serious pronouncements, often linked to the moral and spiritual failings of individuals or societies.

Blessed are you who are poor…Woe to you who are rich.

Again, there’s nothing “spiritual” or uplifting here. This is worldly, tough, prophetic. 

It is a holy denunciation. From Jesus himself.

Jesus repeated warnings like this throughout his career with harsh rebukes and threats toward the rich. This is one of the major themes in Luke’s gospel. He began his book with Mary’s prophecy of the rich being cast down, it runs through Jesus’ parables about Good Samaritans, rich fools, and sending the privileged away, and ends with Jesus’ poorest followers sharing meals of gratitude to overcome their grief. 

Luke’s next book, Acts, opens with the early Christian practice of communalism — “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.”

The poor are NOT parasites. It is among the poor that the commonwealth of God is made manifest. The poor are favored by God. The poor are closest to the heart of all compassion. 

We can have political and policy discussions about how our societies — especially societies shaped by some vague commitment or memory of biblical ethics — treat the problems of poverty, inequity, and poor people themselves. 

But there’s no question about how Jesus saw the poor. Or how he treated them. Blessed are the poor; woe to the rich.

That’s the Bible. Jesus got these “radical” ideas from the Hebrew scriptures. Ancient prophets, like Jesus, warned that societies who neglected or abused the poor stand under God’s judgment. Leveling the economic playing field between the rich and poor was the intention of Sabbath. Jesus was born among the poor; Jesus was poor. His teaching challenged the hierarchy of wealth and power. The early church was built on common property. Period. Full stop. 

Any teacher or leader who denies this, denies the Lord. Any politician who believes that the poor are “parasites” clearly violates the central moral teaching of Jesus — and a political movement based on such beliefs puts a nation in jeopardy of God’s judgment. 

That’s the politics of woe, the politics of the wealthiest man in the world, the politics of MAGA — demeaning and abusing those whom God favors. 

The poor are not parasites. Blessed are the poor.

Nothing could be clearer. 

Here endeth the reading. 

*”Consolation” means “comfort.” The Common English Bible translates this verse: “But how terrible for you who are rich, because you have already received your comfort.” 

The Mystical Path

Friday, February 14, 2025

The condition of mysticism will never be over, for we are of it. We never feel at home elsewhere, but only in the serenity and comfort of our communion with God. We may attempt to make excuses for this state, hoping that it would finally go away and we would then we able to function well in the “real” world. Yet, not only has this never been meant to be, we must no longer yearn for what we are not.  
—Beverly Lanzetta, Path of the Heart 

Theologian Beverly Lanzetta writes of the universal nature of mystical longing: 

In religious traditions, the word “mysticism” refers to a direct experience of Divine Presence, and to the highest levels of union with Divine Mystery. It also includes the human longing for the ultimate, and the path the soul follows toward intimacy with God. It implies that the mystical quest is intrinsic to human nature—that our souls are constituted to turn toward the divine light as a plant turns toward the sun…. The impetus of one’s entire being never rests until it rests in God. This internal movement toward divine communion—rather than our daily distraction—is the essence of spirituality. When our hearts are diverted from the quest for meaning and love, we suffer. When we experience the true longing of the soul, seeking union with the divine—we know the meaning of life itself and are illuminated by the light of peace.  

Yet, haven’t most of us attempted to make excuses for this deep, interior longing, hoping that it would finally go away and we would be able to function in the “real” world?… We tell ourselves we are not worthy of communion; we’re not capable. Yet despite our denial, the mystical heartbeat never abates; its lifeblood courses through our veins, calling us home.  

When we focus on this one essential need, we discover the soul’s passion to belong to God. And it is this insistent tug from the infinite that guides our souls on the mystic quest and compels openness of heart.  

Lanzetta encourages us to nurture our mystical longing for God through all the challenges we face: 

Through this pursuit of devotion to God, you will at times grieve over abandoning what society considers necessary for material and professional survival. Daily you will struggle to reconcile the tension between what is socially practical and your desire to give your heart to the quest. Then the false self will resist: “I must be practical, I must take care of my survival needs, I must not give too much.” These are the voices that obstruct the soul’s desire, even as it experiences the inner light and is consumed by a need for love.  

No doubt some will view spiritual longing as impractical. But, mystically, the passion for the Divine is extremely practical; in fact, it is the only practicality. For the soul’s longing to rest in God [is] a road map and a key to unlocking the true self.  

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5 On Friday; John Chaffee

1.

“Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.“

– Isaiah 5:20, 8th Century Prophetic Text

Several years ago, I did a chapter-by-chapter read-through of the book of Isaiah.  It was during that first year of COVID-19, and much was happening worldwide.

During that time, I read a commentary on Isaiah straight through while I was teaching it.  Teaching is always the best way to learn a topic thoroughly.  I discovered that the book of Isaiah contained so much timeless wisdom that it became one of my favorite books of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Alongside Job, the two of them are probably the books I reflect on the most often.

Jeremiah talks about the need for a New Covenant because Israel had botched the previous one so terribly that God essentially divorced Israel.  Ezekiel preaches about the need to return to true holiness and the need for a New Temple.  Isaiah takes a different turn, saying that Israel’s exile is a New Exodus that will somehow lead to a New Creation.

All the prophets maintain the need to call things truthfully what they are.  Only by looking at the world honestly can we truly assess if we are heading for our demise.  The problem that every generation must face is whether or not it is calling good as evil and evil as good, and we are prone to listening to people with the loudest microphones or the largest bank accounts the most.

2.

“To those who ask us from whence we have come or whom we have for a leader, we say that we have come in accordance with the counsels of Jesus to cut down our warlike and arrogant swords of argument into plowshares, and we convert into sickles the spears we formerly used in fighting.

For we no longer take ‘sword against a nation, nor do we learn ‘anymore to make war, having become sons of peace for the sake of Jesus, who is our leader.”

– Origen of Alexandria, 2nd Century Early Church Father

It boggles my mind how Western Christianity seems to have a fixation on weapons.

I saw a clip about a year ago where a tank drove out over some cars in a Christian men’s conference stadium.  Guns were being displayed, and fireworks/pyrotechnics were alongside the American flag.  The ordeal made me think, “This is not what Jesus had in mind.”

Origen, a controversial figure in the Early Church and the first person to develop a systematic theology, disapproved of war and violence. He also disapproved of nations using violence against one another.

It is hard to believe that some consider America a Christian nation when we have the largest military budget in the world.

Something has gone terribly wrong, and the only solution is a profound return to the red lettering of the Bible.

If you want to read an interesting book on this topic, I highly recommend Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw.

 

3.

“‘Gospels of Sin Management’ presume a Christ with no serious work other than redeeming humankind. They foster “vampire Christians” who only want a little blood for their sins but have nothing more to do with Jesus until heaven.“

– Dallas Willard, American Philosopher & Theologian

This past Monday, I sat down with a mentor over dinner.  We had not seen each other in almost a year.  (Life has just been that busy.)

Nearly 3 hours of catching up happened.  I honestly enjoyed it and needed it.

One fascinating thing is that we lamented/commented/acknowledged that the conventional understanding of Christianity and Church attendance is built around morality.  We go to Church because our morals are out of wack, or we want to be encouraged to continue being moral.  Perhaps some enjoy the community and the songs.  All of these things are good, but they are a fraction of what the whole thing is supposed to be about.

Jesus lays claim to everything in our lives.  Either Jesus means everything, or Jesus means nothing.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes about this in the first few chapters of his book Discipleship (aka The Cost of Discipleship).

The scope of God’s redemption plan is so much larger than simply creating moral people who hold the door open for each other at the gas station.  It is so strange to me because in all my years of Church work, the more I started to teach and preach beyond simplistic morality lessons, the more I was told I was being “disruptive” or even “doing the devil’s work.”

If we have a current understanding of Church and Christianity that does not dive into the fullness of what it means to be human, to engage the topics of redeeming the earth, reconciling world conflicts, enacting mercy, and helping the least of these…

Well, then we shouldn’t be surprised if people eventually find that definition of the faith as vacuous and not worthy of our time.

4.

“Hey, sorry I missed your text. I am processing a non-stop 24/7 onslaught of information with a brain designed to eat berries in a cave.“

– A Meme from the Internet

Man, isn’t this the truth.

This Lent, I have some ideas for what I want to do, and it will likely mean pulling back hard from all forms of media.

5.

“You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.“

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian Nobel Prize Winner

Solzhenitsyn’s book, The Gulag Archipelago, is considered the single piece of literature that brought down Communism.

In it, he considers falsehood the prime sin and the ability to tell the truth as the prime metric for whether or not someone has integrity.

It is the inability to tell the truth that can snowball into a whole avalanche of destruction, lead to oppressive regimes, abuse of power, and full-scale war.  All of these things can be avoided if there is the deliberate choice to always tell the truth, even in the smallest things.

If Jesus says that the “Truth will make you free, ” we can probably argue the inverse… “Untruth will take your freedom.”

 

Public Mystics

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Dr. Barbara Holmes describes what it means to be a “public mystic,” someone whose experience of the divine leads them to take action on behalf of others: 

There is within the human spirit a source of renewal, courage, and ingenuity that equips us to fulfill our purpose here on earth. Howard Thurman refers to this powerful interiority as “the sound of the genuine within.” This deeply contemplative wellspring strengthens both individuals and entire communities as they seek freedom…. 

When I was growing up, most of the mystics that I was introduced to were of European lineage. Although their messages of faith, personal salvation, and the love of God continue to bless me to this day, I needed more. I needed leadership that lifted and protected the community; I wanted to see women and men who looked like me leading freedom’s charge…. 

In Joy Unspeakable, I refer to public mystics as leaders who embody the ineffable while attending to the ordinary, those who host the transcendent, the mystical, and the mundane while engaged in pragmatic justice-seeking acts. [1] 

Spiritual director Therese Taylor-Stinson upholds Harriet Tubman as a model of a “public mystic”:  

Like Mama Harriet, we must learn to embrace the ways of our ancestors, connect with the Supreme, and find the internal freedom to do our part to lead our people, our communities—the inhabitants of this planet—to freedom and a new way of being….  

We can all be mystics. We should all know our mystical gifts are meant for our use in community. Our relationship with the Supreme is evidenced through our public interests in loving our neighbors. Sister Harriet is still speaking to us, along with other ancestors. Just as Harriet, in her treks to freedom, drew on many sources of the mystical to answer the sound of the genuine in herself, encouraging internal freedom in her charges as she led them to be physically free from brutal enslavement, we too must be in tune with the resources available to us today and the necessity for emotional freedom to even enjoy the rights of physical freedom. The mystical calls us to Ubuntu (“I am because we are”). That gives us the charge to become public mystics so that we may all endure…. Come with me across the bridge to freedom, and don’t forget to see and experience the beautiful falls of love, peace, beauty, and community along the way! [2]  

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Sara Young Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: February 13

Peace be with you! Ever since the resurrection, this has been My watchword to those who yearn for Me. As you sit quietly, let My Peace settle over you and enfold you in My loving presence. To provide this radiant Peace for you, I died a criminal’s death. Receive My Peace abundantly and thankfully. It is a rare treasure, dazzling in delicate beauty yet strong enough to withstand all onslaughts. Wear My Peace with regal dignity. It will keep your heart and mind close to Mine. 

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

John 20:19-21 NLT

Jesus Appears to His Disciples

19 That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. 20 As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! 21 Again he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”

John 14:27 NLT

27 “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.

God in You

Mystic theologian Howard Thurman (1899–1981) describes the freedom each of us possess to experience the divine:  

The claim of the mystic is, at last, that you don’t need anything to bring you to God. You don’t need a mediator. You don’t need an institution. You don’t need a ceremony or a ritual. God is in me, and the ladder from the earth to sky is available. So, I can ascend my own altar stairs wherever I am, under any circumstances, and the key to the understanding of the experience, and to the experience itself, is never in the hands of any other human being.  

When I love people, then I find God in me. Whether I bow my knee at any altar doesn’t make any difference, the God in me begins to move up through the corridors of my mind and my emotions … and moves out from me and broods over you….  

If you love somebody, you never give that person up. Isn’t it interesting how Jesus always insisted upon this, and how completely we have missed it in our doctrine? Nothing that I can do can kill the God in me. Nothing. Nothing. Since I can’t destroy it, perhaps if I listen, if I can become still enough, I will hear it whisper to me the precise word I need to take away so much of my unhappiness and my misery and my pessimism about the nature of life and the meaning of my own life. If I can be still so that the God in me can get on the march, I don’t need any priest, I don’t need any preacher, I don’t even need any church. All these will help perhaps, but I don’t need them. At last God is in me, and if I find God in me, when I come to church, I’ll find God in the church. The burden of proof at last is on the vitality of my own awareness. [1] 

James Finley turns to the mystics as teachers who reveal how to abide in God’s love.   

Mystics are men and women, who, through mystical experiences are touched by the realization that down in the deep-down depths of things, God is welling up and giving Herself away in and as every breath and heartbeat. They taste that oneness, and in moments, when we taste that oneness, we’re like a momentary mystic. The mystics are teachers, because they bear witness that it’s possible to be habitually established in that oneness, instead of merely experiencing a little, momentary flash of it—God resting in us resting in God.  

In the mystical experience, the depths of God, by the generosity of God, have been given to me as the depths of myself. That experience of oneness is God’s infinite identification with me—with God’s own life—in my nothingness without God. Love is never imposed, it’s always offered, so once I’ve tasted that spiritual experience, then I have to freely give myself to the love that gives itself to me. In the reciprocity of love, then destiny is fulfilled. That’s the real story of our lives—where we are in the reciprocity of love. [2] 

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The Idol of Mission: The Shadow Side of Service

Click Here for Audio The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the most beloved and well-known stories in the Bible. We often focus on the son who left his father to selfishly pursue his desires, but it’s critical to remember that Jesus was telling the story to a group of Pharisees—religious leaders who would have identified much more with the older son in the parable. This older, obedient son refused to celebrate when his rebellious younger brother came home. When the father begged the older son to join the party, the son was furious.“Look, all these years I have served you,” he said, “and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!” Many people sympathize with the older son. His anger seemed justifiable. Why should the disobedient son get a party while the obedient son gets nothing? But we must look more closely. Notice where the older son roots his significance: “All these years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command.” The older son obeyed, and for his obedience, he expected a reward. This attitude of entitlement is often linked to the Idol of Mission. It’s the view that I deserve a reward for my hard work.In this way, the older son is not that different from the younger son. Neither boy was particularly interested in a relationship with the father. Instead, both were focused on what they might get from him. Both felt entitled and demanded the fulfillment of their desires. The younger son simply took what he desired, and the older son, being a more patient and self-disciplined person, worked for it. Jesus told this story at a gathering of very devoted religious people who drew a great deal of significance from their obedience to God. They were men devoted to the false god of mission. Was Jesus saying there is something wrong with serving God or faithful obedience? Of course not. The problem comes when we find our significance and worth in it.In the parable, Jesus was not diminishing the older son’s service, just as he was not endorsing the younger son’s sinfulness. Rather, he was showing that pouring our lives into activities, even godly ones, is not the center of the Christian life—God is. And what our heavenly Father desires most from us is not our service but our presence. DAILY SCRIPTURE JOHN 5:39–40 LUKE 15:11–32 WEEKLY PRAYER Ignatius Loyola (1495–1556) Lord Jesus Christ, fill us, we pray, with your light and life, that we may reveal your wondrous glory. Grant that your love may so fill our lives that we may count nothing too small to do for you, nothing too much to give and nothing too hard to bear. Amen.

Translator of the mystics and spiritual guide Mirabai Starr shares her definition of mystical experience: 

A mystic is someone who skips over the intermediaries (ordained clergy, prescribed prayers, rigid belief systems) and goes straight to God. Meaning, someone who experiences the divine as an intimate encounter rather than an article of faith…. Mysticism is not about concepts; it is about communion with ultimate reality. And ultimate reality is not some faraway prize we claim when we have proved ourselves worthy to perceive it. Ultimate reality blooms at the heart of regular life. It shines through the cracks of our daily struggles and sings from the core of our deepest desires.  

A mystic knows beyond ideas, feels deeper than emotions, is fundamentally changed by that which is unchanging. Mysticism is a way of seeing—beyond the turmoil, the rights and wrongs, the good guys and villains—to the radiant heart of things. [1] 

On the Everything Belongs podcast, Starr explores how receiving divine love through mystical experience strengthens the mystic’s commitment to others:  

Mystical experiences brim from all kinds of moments in any given day. This is not a rarefied, specialized, meritocracy-based reality; it’s not about some belief that I’m espousing or buying into. It’s not even necessarily about a practice that I’m engaged in, although there are some practices that are fairly reliable for opening the heart. A mystical experience is an experience of the heart opening—out of that open heart flows the parts of us that are often in the way of a direct experience of the divine and into that open heart flows grace, that sacred substance, that mercifully helps me forget for a moment that I am separate.  

For me, the mystical path is not fluffy. This love of which I speak is what I think Jesus was referring to by the “narrow gate” (Matthew 7:13–14). It’s rigorous and demanding. This is a love that welcomes all that we are. As Richard Rohr so often teaches us, everything belongs in this love, but we have to show up for it and we have to do our work. Fr. Thomas Keating also taught me that this path of love requires courage and fortitude because it’s so much easier to actually just keep your heart closed. The thing about living with your heart open—and this is part of where the rigor comes in—is that it’s harder to “otherize.” It’s harder to make “the other” evil and wrong and stupid, and all of the things that we’re tempted to judge people for on a daily basis in small and larger ways. This mystical disarming of the heart creates a felt experience of our unity with all beings.… 

The sacred is always brimming from the heart of everything. If what it means to be a mystic is to walk through this world looking through the eyes of love, then anything and everything that we do with the intention and attention on the sacred, including our most difficult experiences, counts and belongs. [2

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Learning from the Mystics: St. Teresa of Avila. (from John Chaffee)

Quote of the Week: “For the love of God, friends, let us benefit from our faults and learn from our mistakes.  Then our imperfections will clear our vision, as the mud healed the blind man when our Spouse placed it on his eyes.  By witnessing our transgressions we are able to surrender ourselves to the mercy of our Beloved so that he can draw goodness out of our negativity and we can be even more pleasing to him.”- From Interior Castle, 6.4. Reflection  St. Teresa of Avila is a curious figure.  Not only because she led a remarkable life, but also because she wrote remarkable things.  Toward the top of the list is her insight that we can be thankful for our sins and mistakes. To many, this makes no holy sense.  To those with eyes to see and ears to hear, it is deeply sensible. Our sins and our mistakes, while they can certainly be repented of, are also gifts and teachers.  They can humble us as well as to teach us.  They, when responded to properly, tear down our pride, hubris, and defense mechanisms and display to us how we are still immature in the life of faith.  “As the mud healed the blind man…”  The “mud” of our transgression might be the very thing that God can use to bring us back to a larger fullness, wholeness, and holiness.  To be sure, this is a paradox.  However, God has the ability to reclaim, redeem and reconcile anything, and that includes even our own transgressions that have the potential to take us further away from God. As St. Teresa of Avila says, out of divine mercy our Beloved “can draw goodness out of our negativity and we can be even more pleasing to him.” Prayer  Dear God, grant us the courage and the fortitude to look directly at our own transgressions, sins and mistakes.  Help us to rest in the fact that these things do not inhibit Your love for us, and instead come to realize that these are the very things from which You wish to heal us.  Help us to overcome our own pride and hubris, to take on the role of a student, and learn from our mistakes.  In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen and amen.

Life Overview of St. Teresa of Avila:  Who is She: St. Teresa of Avila Where: Born in Avila, Spain. Died in Salamanca, Spain.  When: 1515-1582AD  Why She is Important: She was a member of the Carmelite order, and sought to help reform the Catholic church of her day along with St. John o of the Cross.  Most Known For: St. Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle was considered a classic relatively quickly.  Using the local imagery of castles, she wrote about spiritual marriage with God as “mansions/rooms” within the human soul in which the innermost “mansion/room” is where the Lord already sits enthroned. Notable Works to Check Out: Interior Castle |  The Way of Perfection |  The Book of My Life