Barbara Holmes identifies sacred space beyond our usual holy environments:

We are told that Jesus hung out with publicans, tax collectors, and sinners. Perhaps during these sessions of music, laughter, and food fellowship, there were also sacred moments when the love of God and mutual care and concern became the focus of their time together. Contemplation is not confined to designated and institutional sacred spaces. God breaks into nightclubs and Billie Holiday’s sultry torch songs; God tap dances with Bill Robinson and Savion Glover. And when Coltrane blew his horn, the angels paused to consider.

Some sacred spaces bear none of the expected characteristics. The fact that we prefer stained glass windows, pomp and circumstance … has nothing to do with the sacred. It may seem as if the mysteries of divine-human reunion erupt in our lives when, in fact, the otherness of spiritual abiding is integral to human interiority. On occasion, we turn our attention to this abiding presence and are startled. But it was always there.

Dr. Holmes finds a welcome and fertile space for the Divine in the arts:

Art can amplify the sacred and challenge the status quo. The arts help us to hear above the cacophony in the midst of our multitasking. The arts engage a sacred frequency that is perforated with pauses. Artists learned … there were things too full for human tongues, too alive for articulation. You can dance and rhyme and sing it, you almost reach it in the high notes, but joy unspeakable is experience and sojourn, it is the ineffable within our reach.

When you least expect it, during the most mundane daily tasks, a shift of focus occurs. This shift bends us toward the universe, a cosmos of soul and spirit, bone and flesh, which constantly reaches toward divinity. Ecclesial organizations want to control access to this milieu but cannot. The only divisions between the sacred and the secular are in the minds of those who believe in and reinforce the split….

All things draw from the same wellspring of spiritual energy. This means that the sermonic and religious can be mediated through a saxophone just as effectively as through a pastor…. How can this be?… [Can] tapping feet and blues guitar strokes … evoke the contemplative moment and call the listener to a deeper understanding of inner and outer realities?… The need to create impermeable boundaries between the sacred and the secular is … a much more recent appropriation of western values….

Historically, most efforts to wall off the doctrinal rightness and wrongness of particular practices failed. Instead, hearers of the gospel enculturated and improvised on the main themes so as to tune the message for their own hearing. Given Christianity’s preferential option for the poor, the cross-pollination of jazz, blues, and tap with church music and practices could be considered the epitome of missional outreach and spiritual creativity.

___________________________________________________

Sarah Young

Hebrews 12:1-2 NLT

God’s Discipline Proves His Love

12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. 2 We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.

Additional insight regarding Hebrews 12:1: This “huge crowd of witnesses” is composed of the people described in Chapter 11. Their faithfulness is a constant encouragement for us. We do not struggle alone, and we are not the first to struggle with the problems we face. Others have run the race and won, and their witness stirs us to run and win also. What an inspiring heritage we have

Additional insight regarding Hebrews 12:1: Long-distance runners work hard to build endurance and strength. On race day, their clothes are lightweight and their bodies lean. To run the race that God has set before us, we must also strip off the excess weight that slows us down. How can we do that? (1) Choose friends who are also committed to the race. Wrong friends will have values and activities that may deter you from the course. Much of your own weight may result from the crowd you run with. Make wise choices. (2) Drop certain activities. That is, for you at this time these may be weight. Try dropping them for a while; then check the results in your life. (3) Get help from addictions that disable you. If you have a secret “weight” such as pornography, gambling, or alcohol, admit your need and get help today.

Additional insight regarding Hebrews 12:1-4: The Christian life involves hard work. It requires us to give up whatever endangers our relationship with God, to run with endurance, and to struggle against since with the power of the Holy Spirit. To live effectively, we must keep our eyes on Jesus. We will stumble if we look away from him to stare at ourselves or at the circumstances surrounding us. We should be running for Christ, not ourselves, and we must always keep him in sight.

Richard Rohr considers how dwelling in sacred space ultimately involves seeing God and the world through a unified vision. But we don’t get there without some sort of suffering:

Whenever we’re led out of normalcy into sacred, open space, it’s going to feel like suffering, because it’s letting go of what we’re used to. This is always painful, but part of us has to die if we are ever to grow larger (John 12:24). If we’re not willing to let go and die to our small self, we won’t enter into any new or sacred space.

Prophets lead us into sacred space by showing us the insufficiency of the old order; the priest’s role is to teach us how to live in the new realm. Unfortunately, priests too often operate separately from prophets. They talk of a new realm but never lead us out of the old order where we are still largely trapped.

In this new realm, everything belongs. This awareness is sometimes called a second naivete. It is a return to simple consciousness. The first awareness is a dangerous naivete, which doesn’t know but thinks it does. In second naivete, darkness and light coexist, paradox is revealed, and we are finally at home in the only world that has ever existed. This is true knowing. Here, death is a part of life and failure is a part of victory. Opposites collide and unite, and everything belongs.

In mature religion, the secular becomes sacred. There are no longer two worlds. We no longer have to leave the secular world to find sacred space because they’ve come together. That was the significance of the temple veil rending when Jesus died. The temple divided reality into the holy world inside and the unholy world outside. That’s why Jesus said the temple had to fall: “Not a stone shall stand on a stone” (Matthew 24:2). Our word “profane” comes from the Latin words pro and fanum, meaning “outside the temple.” Teilhard de Chardin said, “Nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.” [1] There is only one world, and it’s the supernatural one. There is no “natural” world where God is not. It is all supernatural. All the bushes burn now if we’ve seen one burn. Only one tree has to fill up with light and angels, and then we never again see trees the same way. That’s the true seeing we call contemplation.

We need to refresh our seeing through contemplation because we forget. We start clinging and protecting. Unless there is a readiness to let go, we will not see the vision of the whole. God cannot be seen through such a small lens.

I can see why Christians use the language of “born again.” The great traditions seem to recognize the first birth is not enough. We not only have to be born, but also remade. The remaking of the soul and the refreshing of the eye is the return to simplicity.

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Sarah Young

 Be on guard against the pit of self-pity. When you are weary or unwell, this demonic trap is the greatest danger you face. Don’t even go near the edge of the pit. Its edges crumble easily, and before you know it, you are on the way down. It is ever so much harder to get out of the pit than to keep a safe distance from it. That is why i tell you to be on guard.

    There are several ways to protect yourself from self-pity. When you are occupied with praising and thanking Me, it is impossible to feel sorry for yourself. Also, the closer you live to Me, the more distance there is between you and the pit. Live in the Light of My Presence by fixing your eyes on Me. Then you will be able to run with endurance the race that is set before you, without stumbling or falling. 

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Psalm 89:15-16 NLT

15 Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship,

    for they will walk in the light of your presence, Lord.

16 They rejoice all day long in your wonderful reputation.

    They exult in your righteousness.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 89:14,15: Righteousness, justice, love, and truth are the foundation of God’s throne; they are central characteristics of the way God rules. They summarize his character. As God’s ambassadors, we should exhibit the same traits when we deal with people. Make sure your actions flow out of righteousness, justice, love, and faithfulness, because any unfair, unloving, or dishonest action cannot come from God.

Sacred Refuge

CAC faculty member Barbara Holmes teaches about contemplation that arises in collective experiences of crisis. Against all odds, crisis becomes transformative “sacred space.” In her podcast The Cosmic We, Holmes reflects that in such a space:

We let go of our narratives, our plans, and the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are and where we come from. We toss our resumes or CVs to the winds, and we finally realize with regard to our corporate or social climbing that there is no there, there. When a crisis impacts a community, we collectively plunge into a space of stillness and unknowing, a shared interiority of potential and spiritual re-birthing.

After each crisis, questions loom. Will we rise to the occasion and allow the planet to recover from our toxic greed? Or will we continue to destroy our planet, our only home? A crisis forces those caught in its clutches to come to terms with the fact that life as we knew it may never be the same. When the crisis strikes, the response from the village must be a pause. There’s little that we can do, but we can be. We can listen. We can love our neighbors and we can host the Spirit that utters over every dawning day. [1]

Barbara Holmes describes the transformative benefits that can emerge from crisis—if we allow them:

I see crisis contemplation becoming a refuge. When everything around you is beyond your control and you shatter, you find within you a space of solitude, peace, and refuge that allows you to begin to gather yourself again. Howard Thurman talks about an inner island that no one can breach without your permission.

A second benefit is that crisis contemplation becomes a wellspring of discernment in a disordered life space. In other words, there is this moment of shattering where we can do nothing, and we have an opportunity to be still. We are told in Psalm 46:10 to “Be still and know that I am God,” but how many of us allow time or even have the capability to be still? Our nervous systems are such a jangle that sitting still can also be nearly impossible for some of us. When we have no choice but to be still, though, there’s an opportunity to discern what comes next. Many of us operate on instinct and impulse, but there is a way to live where we’re operating out of discernment and where there is a knowing that is beyond our own. [2]

In her book Crisis Contemplation, Barbara Holmes—or “Dr B”—ends with a prayer of gratitude: 

For the crises, the disruption of order,
and the plunge into contemplation,
we are grateful.
For the welcoming darkness
and the wounds that bring us
to a place of unknowing,
we thank God!
For the nurture of our many villages
Of belonging, we are grateful.
For healing that comes in unexpected ways,
and the imaginative pathways
of futurism and cosmic rebirth,
thanks be. [4]

Liminal Space 

Father Richard describes how both life and religion can invite us into liminal, sacred space as well as provide us opportunities to escape or ignore it:

We keep praying that our illusions will fall away. God erodes them from many sides, hoping they will fall. But we often remain trapped in what we call normalcy—“the way things are.” Life then revolves around problem-solving, fixing, explaining, and taking sides with winners and losers. It can be a pretty circular and even nonsensical existence.

To get out of this repetitive cycle, we have to allow ourselves to be drawn into sacred space, into liminality. All transformation takes place here. There alone is our old world left behind, though we’re not yet sure of the new existence. That’s a good space where genuine newness can begin. We must get there often and stay as long as we can by whatever means possible. It’s the realm where God can best get at us because our false certitudes are finally out of the way. This is the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed. If we don’t encounter liminal space in our lives, we start idealizing normalcy. The threshold is God’s waiting room. Here we are taught openness and patience as we come to expect an appointment with the Divine Doctor. 

I believe that religion’s unique and necessary function is to lead us into liminal space. Instead, religion has largely become a confirmation of the status quo and business as usual. Religion should lead us into sacred space where deconstruction of the old “normal” can occur. Much of my criticism of religion comes about when I see it not only affirming the system of normalcy but teaching folks how to live there comfortably. [1] 

Culturally, we don’t want to embrace liminal space or recognize our natural egocentricity. In fact, we avoid trying to experience it at all. We shut away people who are ill and dying in hospitals and nursing homes, rather than allowing them to spend their final days at home, surrounded by loved ones who will learn and grow by dwelling together in the liminal space between life and death. We avoid other times of liminality in our lives through denial, escaping with the help of alcohol, sugar, and drugs to avoid truly experiencing the opportunities of liminal space. Yet the irony is that liminal space doesn’t have to be difficult. While it can be challenging, it can also be extremely rewarding. I discover there is another Center, and it’s not me! 

Liminal space relativizes our perspective. When we embrace liminality, we choose hope over sleepwalking, denial, or despair. The world around us becomes again an enchanted universe, something we intuitively understood when we were young and somehow lost touch with as we grew older. [2]

Sacred Space

In a 1994 retreat on the Hebrew prophets for CAC interns, Richard Rohr stressed that the prophets’ love for God and passion for justice came from a transforming experience of “sacred space”:

Comparative religion scholar Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) describes sacred space and profane space. He identifies sacred space with an inbreaking of divine reality, and thinks that modern people have uneasy and weak connections to sacred space. [1] Since the Enlightenment, we live almost entirely in profane space. If we picture a circle as sacred space, inside the circle, there is one reference point, and everything bounces off of that center point.
 
Most of us have been inside sacred space before. It’s whenever something jolts us into the absolute now. It could be when we’re frightened to death, or it could be like the moment we received the call that our mother or father had just died. That’s sacred space. Sometimes it lasts for days or weeks, and it’s where everything is experienced in terms of that one reference point. We can’t think of anything else. After I heard my mother died, I went down to the local store, and I really wanted to shout narcissistically to everybody, “Why are you just going ahead with your business, don’t you know my mother died?!” We’re that caught up in this differently shaped universe. I really couldn’t believe why anybody else would be buying and selling things, because don’t they know the world has been rearranged? Maybe we’ve only experienced it for a second, but this sacred space is anything that pulls us to experience the Total Now.
 
The secret of the Hebrew prophets is they had a transforming experience of sacred space. The calls of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel each are a clear description of a transformative moment of sacred space. Their world is reconfigured, life is reconfigured, and afterwards they have to go back to what looks ordinary but now has become entirely extraordinary for them. They see reality with a different set of eyes. I think the reason that we need a place like the CAC or a school for prophets is because we’ve got to find a way to honor and send people on this serious search for God. That is primary, and it’s from this that we develop critical consciousness.
 
I don’t think this will ever be a grand agenda for a large amount of people, but I do think the prophetic gift can be educated, and I do believe the prophetic gift can be called forth. Once we start speaking about the prophets and naming the prophetic gift, a lot more people might recognize, “I might just have that gift now and then.” We don’t need to name ourselves as prophets, or for anyone else to call us prophets, but we can operate prophetically now and then. We can be radically committed to the big picture, the great tradition, while being free to critique it.

A Sense of Presence

Minister and author Howard Thurman (1899–1981) stressed the importance of coming face to face with God: 

The central fact in religious experience is the awareness of meeting God. The descriptive words are varied: sometimes it is called an encounter; sometimes, a confrontation; and sometimes, a sense of Presence. What is insisted upon, however, … [is that] the individual is seen as being exposed to direct knowledge of ultimate meaning … in which all that the individual is, becomes clear as immediate and often distinct revelation. He is face to face with something which is so much more, and so much more inclusive, than all of his awareness of himself that for him, in the moment, there are no questions. Without asking, somehow he knows.

The mind apprehends the whole—the experience is beyond or inclusive of the discursive…. The individual in the experience seems to come into possession of what he has known as being true all along. The thing that is new is the realization. And this is of profound importance. [1]

Spending time with Quakers provided Thurman with sacred space to experience his oneness with God and other people. It proved to be a doorway to both action and contemplation. Author Lerita Coleman Brown writes:  

For more than four hundred years, a vibrant Quaker commitment to the mystical practice of silence has persisted…. Staunch promoters of the “still small voice,” Quakers believe that everyone carries the divine light of God within them and that we are all equal regardless of title or socioeconomic status. They believe that God speaks ceaselessly to us and that quietness and stillness are prerequisites for hearing the soft, gentle, wordless communication of God. Yet for Quakers, being contemplative is not enough; they assume that actions emerging from the silence should facilitate the end of social injustices and the creation of a more benevolent world. As advocates of peace and equality, many Quakers participated in the Underground Railroad, assisting thousands in escaping slavery.

As part of his study of mysticism, Howard Thurman attended Quaker meetings and sat in the silence that characterizes unscripted forms of Quaker worship. In a 1951 sermon on the strength of silence in corporate worship … Thurman speaks of his personal experience of group silence during a traditional Quaker meeting:

Nobody said a word … just silence. Silence. Silence. And in that silence I felt as though all of them were on one side and I was on the other side, by myself, with my noise. And every time I would try to get across the barrier, nothing happened. I was just Howard Thurman. And then … I don’t know when it happened, how it happened, I wish I could tell you, but somewhere in that hour I passed over the invisible line, and I became one with all the seekers. I wasn’t Howard Thurman anymore; I was, I was a human spirit involved in a creative moment with human spirits, in the presence of God. [2]

A compassionate presence is one of the fruits of contemplation. Richard Rohr writes about the great compassion St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) had for others, which is inspired by the great compassion of Jesus. 

The most obvious change that results from the holding and allowing that we learn in the practice of contemplative prayer is that we will naturally become much more compassionate and patient toward just about everything. Compassion and patience are the absolutely unique characteristics of true spiritual authority, and without any doubt are the way both St. Francis and St. Clare led their communities. They led, not from above, and not even from below, but mostly from within, by walking with their brothers and sisters, or “smelling like the sheep,” as Pope Francis puts it. Only people at home in such a spacious place can take on the social illnesses of their time, and not be destroyed by cynicism or bitterness. 

Spiritual leaders who lack basic human compassion have almost no power to change other people, because people intuitively know they do not represent the Whole and Holy One. Such leaders need to rely upon roles, laws, costume, and enforcement powers to effect any change in others. Such change does not go deep, nor does it last. In fact, it is not really change at all. It is mere conformity. [1] 

We see this movement toward a shared compassion in all true saints. For example, St. Francis was able to rightly distinguish between institutional evil and the individual who is victimized by it. He still felt compassion for the individual soldiers fighting in the crusades, although he objected to the war itself. He realized the folly and yet the sincerity of their patriotism, which led them, however, to be un-patriotic to the much larger kingdom of God, where he placed his first and final loyalty. What Jesus calls “the Reign of God” we could call the Great Compassion. [2] 

Catholic author Judy Cannato (1949–2011), who worked to integrate the gospels with the new cosmology, believed this Great Compassion was Jesus’ primary objective. She writes: 

The realm of God that Jesus preached and died for was one that was known for its kindness and generosity, its compassion and healing. There was no one deemed outside the love of the Holy One whom Jesus called “Father.” No one was excluded from fellowship, not the rich or poor, male or female, slave or free. Jesus went beyond superficial divisions and called for a culture of compassion.  Compassion changes everything. Compassion heals. Compassion mends the broken and restores what has been lost. Compassion draws together those who have been estranged or never even dreamed they were connected. Compassion pulls us out of ourselves and into the heart of another, placing us on holy ground where we instinctively take off our shoes and walk in reverence. Compassion springs out of vulnerability and triumphs in unity.

____________________________________________

Sarah Young

Be still in the Light of My Presence, while I communicate Love to you. There is no force in the universe as powerful as My Love. You are constantly aware of limitations: your own and others’. But there is no limit to My Love; it fills all of space, time, and eternity.

    Now you see through a glass, darkly, but someday you will see Me face to Face. Then you will be able to experience fully how wide and long and high and deep is My Love for you. If you were to experience that now, you would be overwhelmed to the point of feeling crushed. But you have an eternity ahead of you, absolutely guaranteed, during when you can enjoy My Presence in unrestricted ecstasy. For now, the knowledge of My loving Presence is sufficient to carry you through each day.

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

1st Corinthians 13:12 NLT

12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

Ephesians 3:16-19

16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

For Franciscan scholar Ilia Delio, compassion stems from knowing that we belong to one another:   

I think our greatest fear is our deepest desire: to love and to be loved. We long to be for another and to give ourselves nobly to another, but we fear the cost of love. Deep within we yearn for wholeness in love, but to become more whole in love we must accept our weaknesses and transcend our limits of separation in order to unite in love. We long for oneness of heart, mind and soul, but we fear the demands of unity. Sometimes I think we choose to be alone because it is safe. To be comfortable in our isolation is our greatest poverty.   

Compassion transcends isolation because the choice to be for another is the rejection of being alone. The compassionate person recognizes the other as part of oneself in a way that is mystical and ineffable. It is not a rational caring for another but a deep identification with the other as brother and sister. [1] 

Delio stresses that compassion nourishes our interconnectedness with each other and the earth: 

We must seek to unite—in all aspects of our lives—with one another and with the creatures of the earth. Such union calls us out of isolated existences into community. We must slow down, discover our essential relatedness, be patient and compassionate toward all living creatures, and realize that it is a shared planet with finite resources. We are called to see and love in solidarity with all creation. Only in this way can the earth enjoy justice and peace which means right, loving relations with the natural world of God’s good creation.   

Compassion requires a depth of soul, a connectedness of soul to earth, an earthiness of person to person, and a flow of love from heart to heart. [2]  

Recognizing our relatedness creates space within us that we wouldn’t otherwise find, and opens a deeper capacity to love: 

Compassion is realized when we know ourselves related to one another, a deep relatedness of our humanity despite our limitations. It goes beyond the differences that separate us and enters the shared space of created being. To enter this space is to have space within ourselves, to welcome into our lives the stranger, the outcast, and the poor. Love is stronger than death and the heart that no longer fears death is truly free. Compassion flourishes when we have nothing to protect and everything to share. It is the gravity of all living beings that binds together all that is weak and limited into a single ocean of love.   

We have the capacity to heal this earth of its divisions, its wars, its violence, and its hatreds. This capacity is the love within us to suffer with another and to love the other without reward. Love that transcends the ego is love that heals. When we lose ourselves for the sake of love, we shall find ourselves capable of real love. [3]   

__________________________________________________

Sarah Young

Receive My Peace. It is My continual gift to you. The best way to receive this gift is to sit quietly in My Presence, trusting Me in every area of your life. Quietness and trust accomplish far more than you can imagine not only in you, but also on earth and in heaven. When you trust Me in a given area, you release that problem or person into My care.
     Spending time alone with Me can be a difficult discipline, because it goes against the activity addiction of this age. You may appear to be doing nothing, but actually, you are participating in battles going on within spiritual realms. You are waging war – not with the weapons of this world, but with heavenly weapons, which have divine power to demolish strongholds. Living close to Me is a sure defense against evil.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

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.

Sacred Self-Compassion

For psychologist and theologian Chanequa Walker-Barnes, offering ourselves self-compassion is connected to our ability to love others:  

There can be no self-care without self-compassion, which is compassion turned inward. It is the ability to connect to our feelings, to respond to our suffering with kindness, and to desire that our suffering be ameliorated. Self-compassion prompts us to treat ourselves in ways that alleviate, rather than cause or amplify, our pain and suffering. While many Christians understand compassion, mercy, and kindness to be essential in our interactions with others, we don’t always see these as core values for our relationship with ourselves. We neglect our self-care, directly and indirectly contributing to our pain and suffering. We judge ourselves for our own suffering, listening to the voice of our inner critic as it rehearses our shortcomings, our errors, and our deficiencies. As James teaches us, it doesn’t have to be this way (James 3:10).  

Implicit in Jesus’s commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves is the assumption that we are supposed to love ourselves. We are supposed to be kind and gentle, caring and nurturing, empowering and forgiving of ourselves. If we are unable to do this, ultimately we may be unable to do it for our neighbors. And if we cannot love our neighbors, whom we can see, we cannot love God, whom we cannot see (1 John 4:20). Self-compassion, then, is not indulgence; it is a necessity for true discipleship. [1]  

CAC friend and Love Period podcast host Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis emphasizes the importance of loving the particularities of ourselves:  

By self-love I mean a healthy delight in your true, imperfect, uniquely wonderful, particular self. I mean an unconditional appreciation for who you are, head to toe, inside and out: quirks, foibles, beauty, and blemishes—all of it. I mean seeing yourself truthfully and loving what you see.  

Honestly, the stories playing out in the world can make it difficult to love yourself, and therefore your neighbor. Messages from the culture that you don’t matter, not just because of your race, but because of your gender, sexuality, economic status, or religion, can thwart self-love. Though her skin gives her some privilege, a white child might grow up in a context of poverty or domestic violence that can cripple her self-love. A child traveling across deserts and rivers to emigrate with his parents might lose some of his self-love in the wilderness. Even if you’re born into circumstances that others consider ideal, messages in the culture can signal that you’re not good enough, light enough, thin enough, smart enough, feminine or masculine enough to measure up to some ideal. The space between those ideals and your realities can make it difficult to embrace your particularities and love them. Learning to love your particularities is not just an individual project; you need your communities—your posse—to see those pieces of you, to accept them, and to love all the parts of you, fiercely. [2]  

God’s Compassion and the Prophets

Sister of St. Joseph Catherine Nerney writes of God’s maternal love and compassion for the world:  

In Exodus 34:6, God proclaims that God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. These attributes of God need pondering.  

According to God’s own self-revelation, “God’s very being is determined by rechem, which is mercy, lovingkindness, compassion.” [1] Translations of the Hebrew most carefully connect rechem with the feminine for womb. God’s way of being poured out in the world is womb-love.… 

A womb provides a safe, holding place for life to grow. Let this space, which God provides for all, become in you a sacred spot, an expansive opening in your own heart, where God and you can indwell—you in God and God in you. As a child lives within her mother, and the mother gives over her very life blood for her child, so the God of life, Compassion itself, gives life to our world. 

The Hebrew prophets remind us of God’s boundless compassion: 

Some of the most poignant images of God’s untiring love and faithfulness are captured in the words of the prophets. In Hosea 11, the prophet has God speak to God’s unfaithful people, who insist on turning away. “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?… My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender” [Hosea 11:8]. Instead of the people being cast aside for their evil ways, the subversion takes place in God’s own heart. God’s compassion flares up, and God decides not to execute [God’s] burning wrath. Mercy is victorious over justice in God. Mercy doesn’t trump justice; it transcends it. Mercy is the profound mystery of who God is. “For I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst and I will not come in wrath” (Hosea 11:9). The fundamental characteristic of God, elevating the divine above all humans, is God’s boundless mercy, God’s womb-like love. With gratitude and awe for such a God, the psalmist prays: “For you, O God, are good and forgiving, abounding in merciful love to all who call on you” (Psalm 86:5) and again in Psalm 103:1—“As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for all who fear Him.” And: “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in merciful love” (Psalm 103:8; 145:8)….  

God’s relentless care for those who are poor and suffering is the visible expression of our compassionate God, which moved the prophets from the praying stance of the psalms to courageous action on behalf of God’s children in need (Amos, Hosea, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Baruch, and Zechariah, to name just a few). That God’s very life imprints in us that same dynamic rhythm from prayer to action, from contemplation to lives of compassion, reveals the God in whose image we are made. 

Creating a Community of Compassion

When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick. —Matthew 14:14  

This week of meditations begins with a homily from Richard Rohr on Matthew 14:13–21. He describes how Jesus created a community of compassion:  

The gospel passage is quite good and delightful because it tells us very directly what God is about. Jesus is all about meeting immediate needs, right here and right now. There’s no mention of heaven at all. It seems we’ve missed the point of what the Christian religion should be about, but we see how the disciples themselves missed the point: “Tell them to go to the village and take care of themselves” (Matthew 14:15). But Jesus does not leave people on their own!  

Look at the setting. Jesus is tired. The gospel begins with him withdrawing to a deserted place to be by himself. Sure enough, the crowds follow after him, but he doesn’t get angry or send them away. He recognizes the situation and moves to deal with it. Then the passage goes further and states, “His heart was moved with pity” (Matthew 14:14). If Jesus is our image of God, then we know God has feelings for human pain, human need, and even basic human hunger. The gospel records that he cured the sick, so we know God is also about healing, what today we call healthcare. Sometimes, we don’t even believe everyone deserves that either! Jesus says, “There is no need for them to go away. We will feed them” (Matthew 14:16). 

The point in all the healing stories of the gospels is not simply that Jesus can work miracles. It is not for us to be astounded that Jesus can turn five loaves and two fish into enough for five thousand people, not counting women and children. That is pretty amazing, and I wish we could do it ourselves, but what Jesus does quite simply is feed people’s immediate needs. He doesn’t talk to them about spiritual things, heavenly things, or churchy things. He doesn’t give a sermon about going to church. He does not tell us what things we are supposed to be upset about today. He knows that we can’t talk about spiritual things until we take away people’s immediate physical hunger. When so much of the world is living at a mere survival level, how can we possibly talk about spiritual things?

The important thing that God seems to want to be doing in history is to create a community of compassion where people care about one another. It is not only the feeding that matters to us, it is also the caring for other people’s hunger and needs. Jesus never once talked about attending church services, but he talked constantly about healing the sick and feeding the hungry. That is what it seems to mean to be a follower of Jesus.  

Mirrored Suffering Leads to Compassion

Father Richard reflects on how sitting with our own suffering allows us to extend compassion to others:  

The outer poverty, injustice, and absurdity we see when we look around us mirrors our own inner poverty, injustice, and absurdity. The person who is poor outside is an invitation to the person who is poor inside. As we nurture compassion for the brokenness of things, and learn to move between action and contemplation, then we find compassion and sympathy for brokenness within ourselves. We, too, are full of pain and negativity, and sometimes there is little we can do about it.  

Each time I was recovering from cancer, I had to sit with my own broken absurdity as I’ve done with others at the jail or hospital or soup kitchen. The suffering person’s pain and poverty is visible and extroverted; mine is invisible and interior, yet just as real. The two sympathies and compassion connect and become one world. I think that’s why Jesus said we have to recognize Christ in the least of our brothers and sisters. It was for our redemption, our liberation, our healing—not merely to “help” others and put a check on our spiritual resume. Rather, when we see it over there, we’re freed in here, and become less judgmental. I can’t look down on a person receiving welfare when I realize I’m receiving God’s welfare. It all becomes one truth; the inner and the outer reflect one another.  

As compassion and sympathy flow from us to any person marginalized for whatever reason, wounds are bandaged—both theirs and ours. We’ll never bandage them all, nor do we need to, but we do need to get close to the wounds. That idea is imaged so well in the gospels with Thomas, the doubting apostle, who wanted to figure things out in his head. He had done too much inner work, too much analyzing. He always needed more data before making a move. Then Jesus told Thomas to put his finger inside the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side (John 20:27). Then and only then did Thomas begin to understand what faith is all about. [1]   

Jesus invites Thomas and all doubters into a tangible religion, one that makes touching human pain and suffering the way into both compassion and understanding. For most of us, the mere touching of another’s wound probably feels like an act of outward kindness; we don’t realize that its full intended effect is to change us as much as it might change them (there’s no indication that Jesus changed, only Thomas). Human sympathy is the best and easiest way to open heart space and to make us live inside our own bodies. God never intended most human beings to become philosophers or theologians, but God does want all humans to represent God’s own sympathy and empathy. And it’s okay if it takes a while to get there. [2]